Reinhardt rotated the HERC until they were facing the lander again. They hovered there, high in the air, a hundred meters away from it, with a clear view of its top, watching it.
The noise was unbearable. Piercing, painful stabs of volume. Mazer wanted to rip off his helmet and press his palms to his ears.
Then in an instant everything changed. The lander began to spin clockwise like a top. Fast, urgent, and easy, as if it lay atop water or air instead of earth and stone.
"What's it doing?" shouted Patu.
The lander picked up speed, spinning faster, screaming like a turbine, slinging up dirt and debris. Small clods of earth and crushed stone pinged against the windshield.
"Take us higher," shouted Mazer.
Reinhardt didn't need to be told twice. He yanked up on the stick, and they flew straight up, well beyond the reach of the slung dirt.
The lander was a blur of motion. The sound was worse than before, high and shrill. Mazer could feel it in his teeth. He looked west. The people running into the fields from the village were falling over, screaming, unable to stay on their feet, the earth shaking beneath them.
"It's digging into the ground," said Fatani.
It was true. The lander was burying itself into the surface, sinking deeper and deeper, spraying gravel and dirt across the valley like hail. Is this its weapon? Mazer wondered. To cause earthquakes? Or will it dig with its shields straight through us, putting a hole through the center of the Earth like a bullet through the brain?
Mazer looked back at the valley floor. The fallen villagers were curled up on the ground, their arms raised protectively over their faces as dirt and stone rained down on top of them. The villagers fleeing up the mountainside were doing no better, stumbling, falling, dumping their possessions from their arms, scrabbling to get purchase and keep from tumbling down the mountainside.
Mazer shouted over the roar of the noise and pointed to the villagers getting pounded in the valley. "Reinhardt! Get us down there to those people."
Reinhardt turned the HERC and dove straight into the maelstrom of flying dirt. Clods of it slammed into the sides and top of the aircraft. Fatani and Mazer closed their doors, cowering under the onslaught. A rock hit Reinhardt's window hard, spiderweb cracking an area of it a half-meter wide.
"There," Mazer shouted, pointing to a cluster of women huddled together.
Reinhardt flew in fast.
"Patu," Mazer shouted. "Help me get them inside."
The HE
RC leveled out and touched down beside the women, using the side of the aircraft as a shield against the dirt. Mazer and Patu were out in an instant, helping the women climb aboard. To Mazer's relief no one resisted. The women practically jumped inside. Fatani made room for them and told them where to hold on. In seconds, the doors were closed and the HERC was airborne again. They stayed low to the ground and picked up four more people on three more stops. One of the men had a bad head wound where a stone had hit him. He was dazed and in shock, and his face was covered in blood. Patu cradled his head, while Fatani dressed the wound.
"Take us up," said Mazer. "I don't see any more, and this is all we can carry."
"Where to?" said Reinhardt.
"Over this ridge to the north," said Mazer. "Not far. These people will need to hook up later with the others from the village. We'll set them down somewhere safe and then go back and search for others."
"We need a hospital," said Reinhardt.
"We need a lot more than that," said Mazer.
Reinhardt hopped the HERC over the ridge. Two women in the back clung to each other crying, their bodies bloody and filthy, their clothes bedraggled. They looked like the end of the world. Mazer didn't want to leave them anywhere; he wanted to rush them into a triage center where doctors would tend to their wounds and nurses would calm and reassure them. But what choice did he have?
Reinhardt found a clearing on the far side of the ridge and set down the aircraft. Patu slung open the door, and she and Fatani carried out the man with the dressed head wound and set him down gently in the grass. The others followed. The lander was over a klick away, but the screeching digging noise was still so loud that Mazer had to shout to be heard. He spoke in Mandarin, his voice clipped and authoritative, not to be questioned. "We're going back for more people. Stay here and stay together. Help each other. We'll be back."
One of the village women knelt beside the wounded man, taking over for Patu and Fatani. Patu pulled more sterile dressings and pain meds from the med kit, gave them to the women, then followed the rest of the team back into the HERC. Seconds later, they were airborne again, heading back over the mountain.
Once again, the lander came into view. Spinning, screaming, digging like a drill. Two-thirds of it was now submerged into the ground. Mazer turned his thermal scans back on and leaned out his window, combing the valley for more survivors. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, the deafening noise began to diminish, like giant turbines winding down.
"It's slowing," said Reinhardt.
Mazer turned back to the lander. It was true. The spinning was decelerating. The slung detritus wasn't getting as much altitude. It dropped even lower as the spinning continued to slow. Then, like a top in its final rotations, the lander went around once, twice, then stopped, settling firmly into the earth as the noise died away.
In an instant Mazer realized what the lander was doing. "It's a fortress," he said. "They were digging in. Literally. Anchoring their position. Getting ready."