The Swarm (25 page)

“You make it sound so obvious,” said Captain Li. “Why then did China not commit troops a long time ago? Why did the Hegemon have to force us into action?”

“Simple,” said Bingwen. “Fear. The more troops we send into space the fewer troops we have defending our homeland. There persists the fear in Beijing that the Formics will break through whatever defense the IF tries to establish and that the enemy will reach the planet. And if all of our military resources are in space, the people of Earth, and particularly the people of China, would be vulnerable and exposed. China cannot withstand another land-based attack. If the Formics land in China, our nation as we know it would be wiped out. We don't have the military we did before, even by hoarding all of our troops. To give up any troops makes us even weaker and more vulnerable.

“It's easy to fault Beijing for this thinking,” Bingwen continued, “but this is the culture of China. There is no nation other than China, no society and traditions worth preserving other than those found in China, no people more important than the Chinese. We have a very insular way of looking at the world. In a universe where humans are the only dominant sentient species, this perspective could be excused. But not anymore. The world is our nation now.”

“You speak disrespectfully of our leaders in Beijing,” said Li.

“I mean no disrespect,” said Bingwen. “I'm merely trying to articulate what I think may be the ideas and perceptions that drive their decisions. But of course I cannot know for certain. I am but an ignorant child. You of course understand these matters far better than I do.”

Li smiled. “Always so deferential, Bingwen. Always so polite.”

“You are my elder. What can I be other than polite and deferential?”

“I sent men to kill you, and still you show me respect?”

“If you sent men to kill me, you clearly wanted me to learn something from the experience. You are a brilliant teacher, and some lessons must be learned the hard way, I suppose. Either that or I deserved to die.”

Captain Li laughed. “Let's stop playing pretend for a moment, Bingwen. Do you honestly think I would want you dead, after the years of investment I have made into your training? Would I send ignorant thugs to take you down?”

“You just admitted that you had.”

“I sent ignorant thugs to make an attempt on your life. That's a very different thing. And I did so because I knew you could easily best them. Why do you think you are sitting here? Because I wrote Beijing a letter of recommendation? Because I tossed your name into a hat? I am not the only commander who controls your life, Bingwen.”

“So it was a test? To see what I would do to those men?”

“The men were only part of the test. My superiors also wanted to see what you did afterward. If you killed the men, there would be consequences in your unit. How would you handle that? Many in your company despised you already, which gave some of my superiors pause. A disliked commander can be effective, yes, but it is preferable if he has the loyalty and respect of his men.”

“They despised me because I'm a child. You made sure they despised me. You wouldn't allow me to keep anyone who supported me.”

“Which forced you to constantly find ways to earn their respect,” said Li. “Men cycle in and out constantly in war, Bingwen. Not everyone survives. When replacements and reinforcements arrive, you must earn their respect as well. You can't count on the loyalty of your original unit to carry you through.”

“So I passed your test?”

“It wasn't my test. There are many people who watch you and evaluate the decisions you make, Bingwen. I'm merely their representative. But yes, you passed. Your actions were a little more theatrical than we had expected, but it got the job done. Even so, there are many who think me a great fool and fail to see the wisdom of what I'm doing.”

“And what are you doing?”

“I am preserving China, Bingwen. You said so yourself. China needs heroes. China needs commanders to exude strength and wisdom.”

“I'm twelve years old,” said Bingwen. “I can't be a war hero. The world would think it a violation of a child's rights. I'm not a commander.”

“No. But you will be someday. Years from now. When you're older. And your training from a young age, your experiences through your childhood and adolescence will make you all the more capable to lead when the time comes.”

“Then why not keep me on Earth? Away from the fighting? If China hopes to use me as a tool when I am an adult, why throw me into the fray and risk my life?”

“You said so yourself,” said Li. “Some lessons must be learned the hard way.”

“Are there others?” Bingwen asked. “Like me? Orphaned children being thrown into war?”

Li smiled. “First off, you're not a child. And we're not throwing you into war. You're going willingly. Second, while you are special, you are not so special that China is putting all its chips on you. There are others. Many, in fact. I can tell you that now. Some are far more capable than you. But we expect the program to experience losses. Not everyone will rise to the top. The hope is that those who excel and survive are those who have the capacity to lead in the future.”

“So you're willing to kill off a few children to weed out the ones who don't measure up,” said Bingwen.

“You make it sound unethical,” said Li.

“Isn't it? I'm a preteen. There are international laws against this kind of thing. It's a war crime to put a weapon in my hand.”

“I don't see a weapon in your hand,” said Li.

“I
am
the weapon,” Bingwen said. “Or at least the hope is that I will be someday.”

“You're in training, Bingwen. This is a continuation of your training. There is nothing illegal about putting you in school. The state demands it, in fact.”

“So this is school? Me leading a company of soldiers, that was school? That wasn't the military?”

“The respect you normally preserve in your tone is quickly eroding, soldier. I suggest you take a moment to remind yourself that you are speaking to a senior officer.”

Bingwen was quiet a moment. “Yes, sir. My apologies, sir.”

“It has always been school, Bingwen. From the moment Mazer Rackham saved you, to your involvement in the MOPs, to your training since the war. Those are experiences that have shaped you. Hard experiences. Painful even. But you are who you are because of them.”

Other passengers began to arrive and take their seats, and Li and Bingwen fell silent. Moments before takeoff a young woman in white Buddhist robes boarded and took the seat across the aisle from Bingwen. There were no other passengers near them. Bingwen looked down the aisle and saw several commanders and dignitaries sitting in more comfortable chairs in the front. Captain Li seemed to notice also, and just before the shuttle took off, he moved seats and took an available one near the front, hobnobbing with senior brass.

The shuttle lifted straight up into the air, and the woman beside him tensed, maintaining a white-knuckle grip on her armrests. After a few minutes, the sudden shock of liftoff wore off and Bingwen felt himself calming. The woman seemed no less terrified.

“First time flying?” he asked in English.

“I flew from Thailand to get here. But other than that, yes.”

“Me too,” he said. “Except we flew from China.”

“You're handling it much better than I am,” said the woman.

“It's not so bad, really. Your body is already used to it. We'll be weightless soon, and then it's easy. Or so I'm told. I'm looking forward to it, really. You hear all about it, that constant state of free fall … I'm not helping, am I?”

“Just don't say ‘free fall,'” the woman said. “Even though I know that's precisely what the sensation is.”

He reached across the aisle. “I'm Bingwen.”

She hesitated, not sure if she wanted to release her grip to take his hand. Then she finally did so. Bingwen gave it a quick shake. “Wila,” she said.

“Are you headed to Luna?” Bingwen asked.

“No. To the Rings. It's a research facility that encircles the Formic scout ship.”

“Are you a religious leader?” Bingwen asked. “A venerable Buddhist monk or something?”

She laughed, which relaxed her a little bit. “I'm not a monk at all, in fact. Not in our order. I'm a woman. Hence the white robes instead of the saffron ones. And no, I'm not a religious leader. Just a believer.”

“So you work for Juke Limited?” Bingwen asked.

She looked at him, as if surprised that someone so young would know that Juke ran the facility. “I'm a new hire,” she said.

“Good company,” said Bingwen. “Congratulations.”

“We'll see. I hope I made the right choice.”

“Lem Jukes has his enemies,” Bingwen said, “and he can come off as narcissistic and obnoxious, but he actually has good intentions. I think you're probably in good hands.”

She looked at him curiously. “You say that like you know the man.”

Bingwen shrugged. “We met once. Via holo. He wouldn't remember me.”

She held her gaze on him a moment, as if not sure if she believed him.

“I'm guessing you're not a factory worker,” said Bingwen. “I'd say a scientist of some sort. A physicist maybe.”

“Close,” she said. “Biochemist. I've been studying the hull of the Formic scout ship.”

Bingwen remembered then. It had been all over the press. “So you won the contest, to see who could help crack the hull conundrum?”

“It wasn't a contest, per se,” said Wila. “They're just looking for new ideas and perspectives.”

“And you gave them one,” Bingwen said.

She shrugged. “I suppose. I don't know if I'm right, though.”

“But you think you're right. And someone at Juke believes you might be right. Otherwise they wouldn't have scrambled to get you on the next shuttle out of Asia.”

“And where are you headed?” she asked.

Captain Li had not given him specific instructions to keep his destination quiet, and he was curious to see how someone else would respond. It had been so long since he had spoken with anyone outside of the military, and he was certain this woman was not IF. “Immediately we're headed to Luna,” he said. “Then we leave for a space station near Mars called Variable Gravity Acclimatization School, or VGAS. More commonly known as Gravity Camp, or GravCamp, which is shortened to Gramp, colloquialized as Gramps. It's got all kinds of names.”

“Sounds like a military facility.”

“It is.”

She glanced at him. He was not wearing a uniform, per Li's instructions. “Are you going to live there with your father?” she asked.

Bingwen laughed. “You mean Captain Li? He's not my father.”

“Oh. I just assumed since he was sitting with you.”

“No. My father was killed in the First Formic War. He was nothing like Li.”

She turned her head then, regarding him intently. “I am sorry for your loss, Bingwen. I wish I could take that hurt and suffering from you.”

To his great surprise, he saw in her eyes that she meant every word. If there were a way, if it could be done, she would take his sorrow and carry it for him. The sincerity in her voice, the intensity in her eyes, the gentleness in her expression so moved him that he had to swallow to fight back tears.

“That's kind of you to say,” he managed. There was a moment of silence between them, then Bingwen asked. “So the hull, you figured it out?”

“No. I still have no idea how to breach it, but I floated a theory that intrigued them, I suppose.”

“Which is what?” he asked.

She hesitated.

“I'm not some executive at a rival company, Wila, if that's what you're worried about.”

“It's not that,” she said. “This was a very public initiative. It's just … I think it would bore you. Most people your age aren't interested in this kind of thing.”

“Believe me,” Bingwen said. “I have a keen interest in all things Formic.”

She looked at him strangely, as if seeing him for the first time. “Yes. I think you do.” She rotated in her seat slightly to face him. “All right. When we look at the Formic scout ship from a distance, we see a perfectly smooth bulbous shape, right?”

“Right.”

“The surface appears flawless. Very delicately engineered. And yet when you go inside the ship, the interior walls in the tunnels are starkly different. The metal looks poorly processed, almost like raw harvested ore. And there are imperfections in it everywhere.”

“That has always bothered me,” said Bingwen. “The exterior was perfect as you say, but inside, it's like an entirely different ship. Totally incongruent. Ugly metal, little regard for symmetry. The landers that set down in China were the same way. Their tops were made of that same polished hull material. But the sides of the landers seemed crude and slapped together as if the Formics had no sense of aesthetics.”

“Right,” said Wila. “The smaller Formic crafts were just as ugly, their metal just as crude. Nothing like the indestructible hull of the scout ship.”

“It's like the hull was built by someone else entirely,” said Bingwen.

Wila nodded. “Yes. You say that flippantly, but that's precisely my theory.”

“That someone else built the hull? Someone other than Formics? Who?”

“Let me back up for a moment,” said Wila. “We've always assumed that the hull was constructed in the same way that we construct the hulls of our ships, which is to say with plates, large sections of metal that are fastened together piece by piece like a patchwork puzzle to eventually form the shape of the ship. For big ships that's how we do it. And when we do, each of those plates must be made to mathematically precise specifications. Their measurements can't be off by a hundredth of a millimeter. Width, thickness, the curvature of their surface, it all has to be perfect. Otherwise the plate won't fuse properly with adjacent plates and you'll have a domino effect of mistakes. If plate A is imprecise, for example, then plate B is off and won't fuse properly with plate C and so on. It would be a mess. No shipbuilder would tolerate that.”