The Swarm Read Online Free PDF

he were really running, putting the military behind him and heading southwest toward Vietnam. Toward freedom.
    But of course he would never make it. The tracking chip inside him would alert Captain Li and the others the instant he stepped off base. They would track him down and collect him easily. And even if he somehow did elude them and removed the chip, what would he do? The International Fleet would not take him. He was far too young. And if he found employment and waited until he was eighteen, the war would be long over. Or, more likely, he would be dead, the Earth would belong to the enemy, and he would have done nothing to help stop it. At least here, hell that it was, he was doing something, accomplishing something. At least he was a soldier.
    The checkpoint came into view ahead of him, and Bingwen began to slow.
    During daylight hours the Formic tunnels were filled with soldiers running training exercises. But at night, after the temperature dropped and the lights were extinguished, the tunnels were dark and still and deserted, just as Bingwen wanted them. For it was in this setting, with all evidence of the human world gone, that Bingwen could focus his mind completely on the enemy.
    He parked his skim cycle near the checkpoint. A pair of guards were posted outside the gatehouse. They came to attention and saluted when Bingwen approached. He spoke a greeting in Chinese and returned the salute, moving around their barrier and continuing toward the giant hole in the ground. The first dozen times he had come here, the guards had dutifully checked his credentials before letting him pass, but now his presence was routine, if not expected.
    It still felt odd to have grown men salute him, even now, a year after making lieutenant. It went against the natural order of things. Particularly in China, where respect was reserved for your elders and those with experience. Twelve-year-old boys were to be deferential, submissive, silent, and low. Everyone was your senior. Everyone deserved your respect. You were nothing. To give a boy command was an offense not only to the individual obligated to obey those commands, but also to China, to its heritage, its families, its very soul. And yet here Bingwen was, commanding a squadron of fifty grown men in the Chinese army, all of whom hated having a boy as their commander.
    But of course that was the point. Captain Li had handpicked the men for Bingwen’s squadron because their psychological profiles suggested that they would vehemently resist Bingwen’s authority and maybe even take steps to remove him. They were thugs, hardliners, traditionalists—men who could not abide the idea of a child giving them any orders. Bingwen knew they wouldn’t dare attack him publicly or defy him openly. For there was a higher power that could inflict harsh punishments for any show of insubordination. But they could despise him in their hearts and find less obvious ways to resist him.
    Usually, after a period of working with Bingwen, the men would soften somewhat. A few even grew to respect him. He was not as incompetent and weak as they had assumed. Some even began to defend him when others spoke ill of him or called him “the Child.”
    Of course that was always when Captain Li would yank those men out of the squad and replace them with men who took great offense at having to serve under a child. It meant Bingwen was commanding a different group of men every two months or so, with Captain Li finding soldiers even more unyielding and malicious than the ones before. The most recent replacements, a group of four men, had come from a military prison along the coast. Bingwen couldn’t access their records, but they seemed like the kind of men who were in prison for good reason.
    But that was Captain Li, molding Bingwen through the school of pain.
    Bingwen reached the hole in the ground, a perfectly cylindrical crater dug straight into the earth, measuring seventy meters deep and