The Hive: Book 2 of the Second Formic War - Hardcover

Card, Orson Scott; Johnston, Aaron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765375648 ISBN 13: 9780765375643

Verlag: TOR BOOKS, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

New York Times bestselling authors Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to the prequels to Ender's Game following The Swarm with The Hive, book two in the Second Formic War.

Card and Johnston continue the fast-paced hard science fiction history of the Formic Wars―the alien invasions of Earth’s Solar System that ultimately led to Ender Wiggin’s total victory in Ender's Game.

A coalition of Earth’s nations barely fought off the Formics’ first scout ship. Now it’s clear that there’s a mother-ship out on edge of the system, and the aliens are prepared to take Earth by force. Can Earth’s warring nations and corporations put aside their differences and mount an effective defense?

Ender's Game is one of the most popular and bestselling science fiction novels of all time. The Formic War series (The First Formic War and The Second Formic War) are the prequels to Ender’s story.

THE ENDER UNIVERSE

Ender series
Ender’s Game / Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind / Ender in Exile / Children of the Fleet

Ender’s Shadow series
Ender’s Shadow / Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant / Shadows in Flight

The First Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)
Earth Unaware / Earth Afire / Earth Awakens

The Second Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)
The Swarm / The Hive

Ender novellas
A War of Gifts / First Meetings

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Orson Scott Card is best known for his science fiction novel Ender's Game and its many sequels that expand the Ender Universe into the far future and the near past. Those books are organized into the Ender Saga, which chronicles the life of Ender Wiggin; the Shadow Series, which follows on the novel Ender's Shadow and is set on Earth; and the Formic Wars series, written with co-author Aaron Johnston, which tells of the terrible first contact between humans and the alien "Buggers." Card has been a working writer since the 1970s. Beginning with dozens of plays and musical comedies produced in the 1960s and 70s, Card's first published fiction appeared in 1977--the short story "Gert Fram" in the July issue of The Ensign, and the novelette version of "Ender's Game" in the August issue of Analog. The novel-length version of Ender's Game, published in 1984 and continuously in print since then, became the basis of the 2013 film, starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin.

Card was born in Washington state, and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he runs occasional writers' workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University.

He is the author many science fiction and fantasy novels, including the American frontier fantasy series "The Tales of Alvin Maker" (beginning with Seventh Son), and stand-alone novels like Pastwatch and Hart's Hope. He has collaborated with his daughter Emily Card on a manga series, Laddertop. He has also written contemporary thrillers like Empire and historical novels like the monumental Saints and the religious novels Sarah and Rachel and Leah. Card's work also includes the Mithermages books (Lost Gate, Gate Thief), contemporary magical fantasy for readers both young and old.

Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card. He and Kristine are the parents of five children and several grandchildren.

AARON JOHNSTON is the coauthor of The New York Times bestselling novels Earth Unaware, Earth Afire, and other Ender's Game prequel novels. He was also the co-creator and showrunner for the sci-fi series Extinct, as well as an associate producer on the movie Ender’s Game. He and his wife are the parents of four children.

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The Hive

Volume Two of The Second Formic War

By Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnston

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 2019 Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7653-7564-3

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Dedication, 
Epigraph, 
1. Commander, 
2. Ghost Ship, 
3. Saboteurs, 
4. Zipship, 
5. GravCamp, 
6. Imala, 
7. Heist, 
8. Blinds, 
9. Lem, 
10. Wila, 
11. Vandalorum, 
12. Analysis, 
13. Rescue, 
14. Hegemon, 
15. Khalid, 
16. Superstructure, 
17. Fighters, 
18. Warheads, 
19. Money, 
20. Pain, 
21. Mothers, 
22. Hives, 
Acknowledgments, 
By Orson Scott Card from Tom Doherty Associates, 
About the Authors, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

Commander

To: chin.li21%colonel@ifcom.gov

From: gerhard.dietrich%colonel@ifcom.gov/vgas

Subject: no place for children

* * *

Colonel Li,

It has been brought to my attention that you intend to bring a group of boys between ages twelve and fourteen to GravCamp for training in zero G combat and asteroid-tunnel warfare. I will respectfully remind you that GravCamp, known officially as Variable Gravity Acclimation School, is not a school for children. It is a training facility of the International Fleet for marines. As in, grown men and women. It's not an orphanage. Or a day care. Or a summer camp. Our facilities are not intended for the amusement of children.

Do not bring these boys here. Our position out near Jupiter puts us a good distance from the fighting in the Belt, but this is a combat zone. And war is no place for a child. The articles of the Geneva Conventions on this subject are clear. I have attached them to this message for your review. You'll note that special protections were articulated to orphaned children under the age of fifteen. Protocols were adopted to protect children from even helping combatants. You cannot discard international humanitarian law.

Do not board your transport bound for this facility. If you do, you will be denied entry upon arrival. I won't have a bunch of little boys scurrying around this facility like a swarm of rats. It is an affront to the dignity of men and women in uniform and a dangerous precedent within the IF. I have informed Rear Admiral Tennegard and Admiral Muffanosa of my strong objections.

Signed, Colonel Gerhard Dietrich Commanding Officer, VGAS

* * *

They found the captain's body drifting in his office with a slaser wound through the head and a mist of blood hovering in the air around him. The self-targeting laser weapon was still held loosely in his hand, and the suicide note on the terminal's display was brief and apologetic. It took the ship's doctor and officers over an hour to remove the body and document the scene, and by then word had spread throughout the ship and Bingwen had learned every detail.

The ship was a C-class troop transport that had left an International Fleet fuel depot in the outer rim of the Belt five weeks ago. It was bound for GravCamp out near Jupiter — the Fleet's special-ops training facility in zero G combat and asteroid-tunnel warfare. Bingwen and the other Chinese boys in his squad were the only real anomalous passengers on board. At ages twelve to fourteen, the boys stood out sharply among the 214 marines on board headed for GravCamp. A few marines had made quite a fuss about having a bunch of boys along for the ride, claiming that war was no place for children. But several of the marines on board knew Bingwen's squad well, having been with them when Bingwen had taken out a hive of Formics inside an asteroid and killed one of the Hive Queen's daughters. Upon learning that, the hostile marines had shut up, and everyone had left Bingwen and the boys alone.

But now, following the captain's death, the cargo hold where all the passengers were quartered was abuzz again with heated conversations. Everyone had a different theory on why the captain would take his own life. The prevailing — and unfounded — belief was that the captain had simply "space-cracked," that the isolation and emptiness of space, compounded by the daily depressing reports on the war coming in via laserline, were too much for the man to handle.

Bingwen didn't buy that theory. In his sleep capsule that evening, he hacked into the ship's database and accessed the incident report and autopsy, neither of which put his mind at ease. The medical examiner suggested that the captain had a hidden history of mental illness and perhaps suffered from an untreated case of PTSD stemming from a previous incident in the war. Bingwen's review of the captain's service records revealed that he had recently captained a warship in the Belt but had lost his commission after he had failed to aid another warship requesting assistance, resulting in the death of over two hundred crewmen. Based on what Bingwen read, the captain was lucky he hadn't been court-martialed for violation of Article 87 of the International Fleet Uniform Code of Military Justice, on wartime charges of acts of cowardice. Someone up the chain had given the captain a break and made him the captain of a transport rather than force him to face a tribunal.

Yet even that didn't sit well with Bingwen. Had the man killed himself out of guilt? Out of shame?

The following morning Bingwen gathered with the rest of the marines in the main corridor. A funeral march played over the speakers as a few members of the ship's permanent crew carried the body tube toward the airlock. Once the captain's remains were secured inside the airlock, one of the officers read a few verses from Christian scripture and offered a prayer. The ship's former XO, who was now the new captain, signaled for the loadmaster to open the exterior hatch. Bingwen watched as the body tube launched away silently with a burst of escaping air, spinning end over end until it was lost from view.

Slowly, as if not wanting to be the first to leave, the officers solemnly dispersed and returned to their posts. The passenger marines quickly followed suit. Bingwen and the boys in his squad lagged behind, watching the airlock as if they thought the captain might rematerialize.

"Good riddance, I say," said Chati.

Nak looked horrified. "Have you no respect for the dead? Or your elders? You shame yourself and China."

The boys, like Bingwen, were all orphans, recruited out of China by Colonel Li during the first war. They had each scored exceptionally high on tests designed to identify strong potential for military command. More impressive still, they had survived Colonel Li's aggressive combat and psychological training, or as Nak called it: Colonel Li's Totally Deranged and Borderline Psychotic Military School of Abuse for Orphans.

Chati rolled his eyes. "Spare me the sermon, Nak. This captain was a monster. You all disliked him as much as I did. Cruel to subordinates. Driven by ego. Plus, I hacked the guy's service records in the database. He was a total coward. Got all kinds of people killed."

Nak gave him a withering look. "You read his records? Those are private."

"He's dead," said Chati. "What does it matter?"

"You have no respect," said Nak. "He was a superior officer."

"Emphasis on was," said Chati. "He's spinning with the stars now."

Bingwen kept quiet.

"Whatever his motivations," said Micho, "it's still sad. I feel for the man's family."

"He was a total turd muffin," said...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TOR BOOKS
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0765375648
• ISBN 13: 9780765375643
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: RUE DE SEVRES; https://www.hachette.fr/; ; 1 AVENUE GUTENBERG; MAUREPAS CEDEX; 78319; Frankreich