Free Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) by Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnston Page A

cart’s side above him. The strap of the bag, tight around Victor’s chest, was all that kept him from falling off. He needed to secure himself another way, he realized, get a better grip on the traces, lock himself into the wall somehow. If the bag tore loose, the weight of the tools would pull him down like a stone.
    He tried readjusting his grip so he could free his other hand to reach back and unstrap the bag.
    But then the anchor rod bent again with a screech of twisting metal and the cart tipped downward. The duffel bag slipped free and slammed into him, knocking Victor free. Arms flailing, he reached out, grabbed nothing but air, and fell.

 
    CHAPTER 5
    Alliance
    Just outside the city of Lianzhou, at the foothills of the Nanling Mountains in southeast China, Mazer Rackham sat cross-legged on the dirt floor of his tent, eyes closed, back straight, deep in meditation. He was aware of everything around him. The cot to his right. The wind on his face and bare chest—blowing in gently from the open tent flap. The warmth of the sun. The dirt and grass and pebbles beneath him. The soldiers and vehicles moving about the camp. The four armed Chinese guards outside the tent, each ready to shoot him should he try to escape.
    Mazer inhaled deep, exhaled slowly. His Maori mother had taught him to believe in Te Kore, the void, the place unseen, the realm beyond the world of everyday experience, an existence between nonbeing and being. The realm of potential being.
    Mazer knew he was well below his potential at the moment. His body was not as strong as it had been—his abdominal wound had sapped him of energy and strength. Nor was his mind as clear as it should be. The deaths of his crew and companions still swirled in his mind like a storm. Patu, Fatani, and Reinhardt—killed when the Formics shot down their HERC. Then Danwen, the grandfather who had tended Mazer’s wounds. And now Calinga was gone as well, vaporized in the nuke detonation.
    The loss of them all left an emptiness inside him, as if a plug had been pulled from his foot and a portion of his soul had drained out of him like water.
    No, not soul. Mana. Energy, essence, power, the presences of the natural world. That’s what had flowed out of him. That’s what the whakapapa taught, what Mother had whispered in his ears at night as a child as she tucked him into bed. “We are all brothers and sisters, Mazer. People, birds, the fishes, trees. All of this is family. All of this is wh ā nau .”
    His Father had called it nonsense. He had never said so while Mother was still fighting cancer, but Father had made his feelings plain enough after she had died. He never forbade Mazer from believing, but Father’s skepticism and disdain for it was so thick and bitter and obvious that Mazer had abandoned it for no other reason than to remove anything in their lives that might keep him and Father apart.
    But now here Mazer was, drained of mana , sapped of his essence.
    The rational, educated side of his mind—the side shaped by Father and books and computers—said that such thoughts were ridiculous. The mystical Maori mana was a thing of fiction. A fool’s hope, a religion born of ignorance.
    Yet there was a stronger voice inside Mazer. A voice that clung to the notion. Mother’s voice. Soft and gentle and layered in love. A voice that told him to believe.
    He had not entertained such thoughts for many years. Mazer’s faith had died when Mother did. And yet he couldn’t deny that something had leaked out of him. He could feel the vacancy as assuredly as he felt the ground beneath him. And until mana flowed back into him, he could not be who he was, who he should be. His mind was clear on that point. Unless he found mana, unless it flowed back into him, he would continue as a lesser form of himself.
    He opened his eyes and dug at the dirt. He found a pebble just below the surface no bigger than a pill. He lifted his canteen off the cot and poured water over the small