Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

on its first big drop. Mazer felt himself rise slightly in his seat and tighten against his restraining harness, the valley floor rushing up toward them at a sickening pace. Reinhardt pulled up at the last instant, and they all dropped back into their seats, Mazer exhaling and unclenching his fists.
    “Easy,” said Patu. “He said faster, not suicidal.”
    Reinhardt hit the throttle, taking advantage of the flat valley floor to pick up speed. “They’re one and the same, Patu, my queen of the rice. One and the same.”
    The next mountain was coming up fast. Mazer scanned the radar and heat sensors displayed on his HUD. He didn’t see any incomings.
    “Sky looks clear,” said Mazer.
    “That doesn’t mean we’re home free,” said Fatani. “They could have fired a missile from Beijing for all we know. Might take a minute to get here.”
    “Which is exactly why they won’t fire at all,” said Mazer.
    The HERC rose sharply up the mountainside. They flew in silence, rising and falling with the landscape, shifting slightly off course here and there in the hope of evading detection, always scanning the sky around them, watching for incoming threats. None came. A minute passed. Then two.
    “Looks like you called their bluff,” said Fatani.
    “Or they fired something our sensors can’t detect,” said Reinhardt, “and it’ll blow us up any second now.”
    “Not funny,” said Patu.
    “Hey, if the Chinese can make a mole vehicle that drills through solid rock,” said Reinhardt, “nothing would surprise me.”
    “What if Shenzu’s right, Mazer?” said Fatani. “What if we’re kicking the hornet’s nest here? This species doesn’t know what we are. They might think we’re a missile fired on them. We could start a war.”
    “The war is already on,” said Mazer, “despite what the Chinese would like to think. If any of you disagree speak up now. I can’t force you to come along. You heard the colonel. He gave us direct orders. If you come, you will almost certainly be court-martialed when this is over. You need to know that. Your career will be over. If you want to back out now, say the word and I’ll set you down here. You can tell them I forced you to come this far. That goes for you, too, Reinhardt. If you want to sit out, say so. I can fly this thing if I have to.”
    Reinhardt snorted. “You can’t fly the HERC, Mazer. Keeping it in the air and landing it when you need to is not flying. That’s driving. Flying is what I do. It’s an art. And you, sir, are no artist.”
    “We’re all in, Mazer,” said Fatani. “Nobody’s for turning back. But Shenzu has a point. We might incite a response.”
    “It can’t be avoided,” said Mazer. “We’re not abandoning the people on the ground. Patu, any luck with that sat feed?”
    “You don’t need one,” she said. “We’re there.”
    Reinhardt crested the last mountain, and the lander came into view, a massive, metallic discoid, shrouded in a cloud of dust. Mazer stared. It was larger than anything he had imagined. An engineering impossibility. Perhaps sixty stories high and nearly a kilometer wide. The top of it was smooth, shiny, and slightly rotund. But the side was crude, made from thousands of metal plates of various sizes arranged in a seemingly random fashion, as if the builders had no regard for symmetry or aesthetics.
    Beneath the lander was a ring of displaced earth several hundred meters wide, tallest near the lander and tapering off near the edges, as if the lander had stepped on a giant mud pie and spilled its contents in every direction. No, not a mud pie, Mazer realized. A mountain. The lander had crushed a small mountain or large hill, leveling it to the ground and displacing dirt and unearthed trees in a mudslide that had buried much of the valley floor.
    “Patu,” Mazer shouted, “turn on all external cameras and broadcast a live feed to every satellite you can access. Then get on the radio with Auckland and the Chinese and tell them the landers have shields.”
    “How can you be sure?” said Patu.
    “That must be how it crushed the mountain,” said Mazer. “It couldn’t have been the force of the impact. The lander was moving too slow when it set down. And look at the landscape. No shockwave evidence, just the wall of displaced earth. That has to be from shields.”
    “What does that mean?” said Fatani.
    “Means we may not be able to hurt it even if we try,” said Mazer. “Reinhardt, circle this