His teammates had made no sounds after the impact, and he hoped they hadn’t felt the flames that had followed. That was something he could not forget: the raw heat of it, like the air itself was on fire. He had lain in the dirt a short distance away, breathing smoke and the pungent fumes of melting plastic and seared human flesh as the aircraft popped and crackled and sizzled in the fire.
He had been their leader. It had been his duty to protect them. And he had failed them; failed their families.
“We’re coming up on the armored vehicle,” said Shenzu.
Mazer slowed their approach and hovered over the site when they reached it, shining his spotlights down on the wreck. The two halves of the vehicle lay on the asphalt twisted apart like thin scraps of aluminum. The driver was still on his back in the center of the road where the Formics had left him.
Wit moved up into the cockpit. “Can we get a close visual on the driver?”
Mazer entered the command, and the image of the dead driver appeared in the holofield above the dash, the bright lights from the HERC giving the corpse a pale, ghostly appearance. The Formics had eviscerated him. A gash stretched across the full width of his stomach just above the navel, opening him like a sack. Much of his small intestines had slid out like a slick pink rope, hanging loosely at his side and atop his groin.
Shenzu turned away.
“Zoom in on his stomach,” said Wit.
Mazer complied. It was a ghastly sight. The blood-stained uniform looked almost black in the harsh light.
“He couldn’t have sustained that injury in the wreck,” said Mazer. “It’s too straight of a cut. And he was alive for too long after the fact. With a wound like that he would have bled out immediately.”
“Meaning what?” said Shenzu.
“Meaning he likely didn’t die from the abdominal wound,” said Wit. “The Formics eviscerated him after he was dead.”
Mazer zoomed in further, focusing on the abdominal skin flap. “Look at the incision. It appears cauterized.”
“A laser?” said Wit.
“That would be my guess,” said Mazer.
“Wait,” said Shenzu. “You’re saying the Formics waited until he was dead and then cut him open with a laser?”
“They didn’t just cut him open,” said Wit. “They reached inside him and dislodged a lot of his small intestines.”
“Why?” said Shenzu.
Mazer shrugged. “Maybe it’s their religion. A sort of death ritual. Maybe this is their way of honoring a fallen enemy.”
“Then why haven’t we seen them do this before?” said Wit. “They’ve done nothing to suggest they honor us at all.”
“Maybe they’ve recognized we’re a formidable enemy,” said Mazer. “Maybe they underestimated us before and now they see we won’t welcome extinction so easily.”
“Or it could be the opposite,” said Shenzu. “Maybe this is how they desecrate the dead. A show of dishonor, contempt, like pissing on a grave.”
Wit inserted his wrist pad into the holofield and uploaded the images. “I’ll send these back to General Sima and Strategos. Maybe they can make sense of it. Let’s keep moving.”
Mazer took off again, and they made good time. They spotted a few Formic fighters high overhead, but the fighters maintained their altitude and made no move to approach them. Ten minutes later, a half dozen skimmers popped up on the radar several klicks ahead of them, crossing their path and moving north. Mazer landed quickly near a cluster of trees and killed all power until the skimmers had moved on and were well out of range. Then he powered up again and pushed on.
When they reached the three demolished dozers, the edge of the horizon was just beginning to brighten with the arrival of dawn.
Mazer set the new dozer down on the highway and disengaged the talons.
The overturned dozer lay on its side slightly off the road, its bulky mass traversing a drainage ditch. A huge dent in its side suggested that something had hit it, crushing the main cabin partially inward. Mazer landed the HERC beside the dozer, then exited the aircraft behind Wit and Shenzu. The three of them climbed up onto the overturned dozer and found the driver still alive in the cabin. Other than a gash on his head he appeared unharmed.
“The door’s crushed,” the driver said in Chinese. “I can’t open it.”
It was true. The frame had twisted and folded inward. If not for the bracing bars inside the cabin, the man would have been crushed as well.
“We need to cut him out,” said Wit.
Mazer retrieved a laser cutter from the gearbox and sliced the door free. The driver crawled out and thanked them profusely. His hair and shirt were stained with blood.
“What happened?” said Shenzu.
The driver answered in Chinese. “Troop transports. Three of them. They dropped out of nowhere, gentle as a leaf, no sound at all. Formics poured out and climbed up onto my dozer, right up to the cabin. There were six of them directly in front of me, right there on the other side of the glass. I thought they were going to smash their way inside, but they just stood there staring at me, as if they were waiting for me to invite them in.”
“What did the other drivers do?” asked Shenzu.
“They had the same problem. Formics had crawled up to their cabins, too. We all had bugs on us.”
“This is before they attacked?” asked Shenzu.
“Before anything,” said the driver. “No one had so much as shown a weapon. Then Corporal Jijeng, one of the drivers, got spooked and began screaming, panicked. We told him over the radio to calm down, and maybe they would go away. But he wouldn’t listen. He drew his pistol and shot two of them through the glass. Then everything went bad. The Formics rushed back to their transports and opened fire. They killed Jijeng first. Incinerated him. I’m not even sure what they hit him with. One moment his dozer is there, the next moment, there’s so much fire, I thought the whole world was burning.”
“What about the other dozer?” asked Shenzu.
“They hit it with something else. Not fire. Something thick, like a jelly. It went straight through the cabin.”
“And you?” said Shenzu. “It looks like they rammed you.”
“One of the transports,” said the driver. “It hit me so hard I thought my insides had snapped. I still don’t know why. It would have been easier to shoot me with the jelly.”
“You were lucky,” said Shenzu.
Wit asked Shenzu to translate what the driver had said. When Shenzu finished, Wit said, “Ask him if he can still drive a dozer.”
Shenzu translated, and the man nodded. “The Formics aren’t stopping me, sir.”
Mazer bandaged the man’s head, then the driver climbed up into the cabin of the new dozer and fired up the engines. As he pushed the wrecked dozers off the road, Shenzu read a message off his wrist pad. “The convoy has already left Lianzhou. They said we better have the road cleared by the time they reach us.”
“No pressure,” said Mazer.
The three of them hustled back to the HERC and got airborne. Wit took the copilot’s seat, and Shenzu buckled up in a jump seat in the main cabin. They followed just behind the dozer as it continued down the highway, clearing the road of obstructions.
They made slow progress for several kilometers without meeting any resistance. Mazer was beginning to think they might actually complete the mission when Lieutenant Hunyan’s head appeared in the HERC’s holofield above the dash.
“We have a situation,” said Hunyan. “Over sixty troop transports just launched from the Formic mothership. They’ve spread out over a distance of three hundred kilometers and are descending through the atmosphere now. Beijing is tracking them, and we’ve calculated their projected trajectories. Several of them are heading toward our position. I’m sending you the data now.”
A series of images and maps appeared in the holofield.
Mazer studied them, saw where the reinforcements were entering the atmosphere, and turned to Wit. “We should get up there
and gather what intel we can.”
“Agreed. Shenzu, tell the dozer driver to stay the course and clear the road at all costs. Mazer, take us up.”
Mazer spun the HERC 180 degrees, then shot straight up into the air. Wit grabbed a handhold to steady himself, and Mazer felt his stomach drop. They ascended at a steady rate, scanning as they went, and stopped at seven thousand meters. At first the sensors detected nothing, then the instruments started blipping and dozens of dots of light popped up on radar.
“We see them,” Mazer said to Hunyan. “They’re coming in hot. I count four transports dropping to the convoy’s position.” He read off the distances, speeds, and angles of approach.
“Lieutenant,” said Wit. “Can you turn the convoy around and return to Lianzhou?”
“Negative,” said Hunyan. “We’re twenty klicks outside the city. The path is barely wide enough for the vehicles to get through. There’s no place to turn around.”
“Who is with you?” asked Wit.
“The science team, a few dozen officers, and over three hundred enlisted men.”
“What about firepower?” asked Wit.
“We’ve got antiaircraft missiles and four heavily armed VTOLs giving us air support. We’ve stopped and are forming a perimeter.”
Far in the distance, Mazer saw four white flashes of light high in the atmosphere. The lights descended, streaking downward at hypersonic speed, leaving puffy contrails behind them.
There was another flash of light to Mazer’s left, far to the south, heading in their direction.
“Nine o’clock,” said Wit.
“I see it,” said Mazer. He swiveled the HERC to the left and angled it upward to allow the sensors to get a better read on the incoming ship.
“Can we get a visual?” asked Wit.
Mazer blinked the command in his HUD, and the transport appeared in the holofield in front of them. There wasn’t much to see; a searing heat enveloped the transport, obscuring its nose from view.
“Where is it headed?” asked Wit.
“Already working on it,” said Mazer. His hands flew inside the holofield, quickly gathering the data and slinging it into the correct receptacles for processing. The answer appeared on the map, and Mazer’s heart sank. “Its trajectory puts it very near Dragon’s Den.”
“How near is very near?” said Wit. “Near enough that Dragon’s Den is clearly its target or far enough away that it could be only a coincidence?”
“Both,” said Mazer. “It might be gunning for Dragon’s Den. It might not.”
“There are civilians down there.”
“Thousands of them. Probably mostly women and children.”
“Any ideas?” asked Wit.
“We get the transport out of the sky a little sooner than it expected.”
“You said this wasn’t a combat aircraft,” said Wit. “You said we weren’t nimble enough.”
“All true,” said Mazer. “So let’s use it for what it was made for.”
Mazer’s hand quickly moved through the holofield. He had the AI verify the transporter’s trajectory and pinpoint its exact position at various points in time. Then he entered a series of commands and the HERC shot forward, slamming him and Wit back against their seats. The altimeter numbers spun as the HERC climbed.
“If there’s a plan,” said Wit, “now would be a good time to share.”
“We can’t fire on the transport,” said Mazer. “It’s shielded. That’s how they managed atmospheric entry.”
Wit gripped the handhold above his head, his knuckles white. “So we can’t shoot it down. Great. That’s not a plan.”
“We wouldn’t want to shoot at it anyway,” said Mazer. “Even if it didn’t have the shield. Unless you’re right on top of them, they can dodge whatever you throw at them. I say we take it down the same way we’ve taken out other transports. We fill it with grenades.”
“Every transport we’ve disabled was on the ground,” said Wit. “We tricked them into landing, then we jumped from the bushes. I fail to see any bushes here at forty thousand feet.”
“I’ll get above it and seize it with the talons. As soon as the Formics disengage the shield, you cut your way in and toss in the grenades.”
“What makes you certain they’ll disengage their shields?”
“They’ll be threatened. They can’t defend themselves with their shields engaged. You know how they are, they retaliate with blind ferocity, even if that puts them at greater risk. Once we clamp on, they’ll do anything to lose us, including dropping their shields. And if they don’t drop them immediately, they’ll drop them when they land. Otherwise they can’t disembark from the aircraft. We’ll destroy them then.”
“I liked it better when I didn’t know your plan,” said Wit.
“Move back to the main cabin,” said Mazer. “The drop door is in the center of the floor. I’ll open it when the time is right. Strap yourself into the winch in the ceiling. There are boot anchors in the floor. Lock yourself in tight. Once I open the door, the transport hull will be directly below you. Cut your way in with the laser. Once you drop in the grenades, we detach, get clear, and they become shrapnel in the sky.”
“You want to grab an alien spacecraft moving at hypersonic speed?”
“It’s not moving at hypersonic speed anymore. It’s slowed down drastically. It’ll be even slower when we reach it.”
“How slow is slow?”
“A few hundred kilometers an hour?”
“Naturally,” said Wit. He began unstrapping his harness. “How much time do I have?”
“Under two minutes. I suggest you pick up the pace.”
Wit wiggled out of the harness and got to his feet. “How are you going to get close enough to grab them without them shooting us down?”
“We’ll come at them from above. They won’t be looking in that direction. Probably. Plus these are transports. They’re not made for deep space travel. They don’t have collision avoidance systems. At least the ones we’ve destroyed in the past didn’t, and this one looks no different. Also, they don’t yet know we’re a threat.”
“Of course we’re a threat. We’re an armed aircraft.”
“Formics ignore us until we pose a threat. Think about the Formics that stormed the dozers. They killed the crew after our man attacked. It’s only when we confront them, when we resist, that they retaliate. Otherwise, we’re not worth their notice.”
“What about the armored vehicle that was ripped in half, the man eviscerated on the asphalt?”
“Maybe he fired first. Maybe his gunner engaged them.”
“And maybe you’re full of it.”
“Maybe,” said Mazer. “And maybe I’m right. Either way you’ve got about sixty seconds until we intercept them. Are we doing this or not?”
Wit considered a moment then nodded. “How do I hook myself to the winch cable?”
“There’s a body harness in a compartment in the main cabin, directly behind me. Slip it on and tighten the straps around your thighs, chest, and shoulders. Then attach the carabiner on the chest of the harness to the matching carabiner on the pulley cable. There’s a screw lock on each. Righty tighty, lefty loosey.”
“I know how to tighten a screw lock,” said Wit. He left the cockpit and moved back to the cabin.
Mazer heard him rummaging through the compartment, grabbing the gear. They were high above the transport now. It had drastically decelerated. Mazer couldn’t tell if the shield was still engaged or not. He called back to Wit. “Are you harnessed in?”
“I’ve got a harness on. Heaven knows if I strapped it on right.”
“Does it feel like the worst wedgie of your life?” asked Mazer.
“The strap’s so far up my crack, it’s part of my digestive system,” said Wit.
“Then you’re wearing it correctly. Pull some slack on the cable and buckle in to one of the jump seats. Once we’re in position, I’ll open the door and you can get up.”
A mom
ent later Wit said, “I’m buckled. And I’m already regretting this.”
Mazer started blinking out commands, getting ready for the drop. “Hold on to something. Our forward thrusters will still be open, but once I disengage the grav lens, we’ll lose altitude fast. The less time they have to react the better.”
He put his hand in the holofield where the virtual knob for the grav lens had appeared. “Here we go!”
He cranked the knob hard to the right, and the HERC dropped like a stone.
The straps on Mazer’s lap and chest pulled taut as he was lifted off his seat, his stomach roiling with momentary weightlessness. He gripped the stick tight, breathing evenly, staying calm.
The transport was two hundred meters below them.
One hundred and fifty.
One hundred.
Mazer didn’t slow. His stomach was in his throat. He watched the transport with the external cameras, their feeds projected in the holofield in front of him. The transport could react at any moment, he knew. It could spin, flip over, rocket forward to evade them.
Fifty meters.
The transport didn’t flinch.
Forty meters.
No movement.
“Brace for impact!” said Mazer.
At ten meters, the transport jinked to the left to avoid a collision, but Mazer reacted instantly, adjusted their approach, and threw down the talons right before impact.
The two aircraft collided violently—the bottom of the HERC slamming into the roof of the transport with a bone-rattling jolt. The HERC would have bounced off had the talons not seized the side of the transport and gripped it tight. Mazer was thrown hard against his harness as alarms went off in the cockpit.
The transport dipped momentarily, then it righted itself and wiggled side to side, trying to shake loose its new cargo. Mazer shifted violently back and forth in his harness, the talons creaking and straining.
Wit called up from the back. “We can’t do this if they treat this like a rodeo. Are their shields on?”
Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) Page 11
