Earth Afire (The First Formic War) (39 page)

“You’re right,” said Wit. “It’s not your business.”

*   *   *

Four hours later a convoy of five Rhinos and forty MOPs were heading south out of Changsha on secondary highways. Wit and Calinga were up in the cab of the lead vehicle. The northbound lanes were packed, but the southbound lanes were wide open.

Calinga gestured to the containment suit he was wearing and the rifle in the seat beside them. “Dare I ask where you got the money to buy all this?”

“MOPs has emergency accounts all over Europe,” said Wit. “I emptied a few of them. If we help win the war, the expense may be forgiven. If we die in the process or if the Formics seize Earth, it won’t much matter anyway.”

“Such confidence,” said Calinga.

“This won’t be an easy fight. No reason to avoid that fact.”

“So what’s the plan? You said we’ll strike key targets and sabotage. What are our targets exactly? The landers? They’re shielded. Missiles can’t touch them. The air force is hitting them with everything they’ve got and not putting a scratch on them.”

“Then we’ll have to find a way inside one.”

“How?”

“No idea. If we can reach one, we can do some recon and investigate.” He brought up a map of southeast China on his holopad. “We’ll hit the second lander first. The one in the middle. The northernmost lander near Guilin is where the highest casualties are, but it’s also where the military is concentrating. I’d rather avoid direct contact with the army right now. Let’s accomplish something first. Let’s prove our worth to the Chinese. Then they’ll ask us to stay.”

“Why not go for the southernmost lander, where the flyers are seeding bacteria into the sea? That’s serious ecological damage. The faster we stop that the better.”

“That lander is more isolated,” said Wit. “It’s at a higher elevation and harder to reach. That’s better left to the air force. Plus the casualties there are in the hundreds, whereas they’re reaching the thousands and tens of thousands at the other two. The second lander is the best strategic position as well. We can easily get to either of the other two if we suddenly have to.”

They drove for a hundred kilometers without any problems. Traffic on the northbound lanes became increasingly more congested. Soon the cars and trucks were moving over into the southbound lanes and driving in the wrong direction in an effort to scoot the traffic. Calinga kept laying on the horn and flashing his lights to prevent a head-on collision. Most of the cars swerved, but soon the traffic took on a fast and frantic pace.

“Pull over,” said Wit.

Calinga took them off the road, and by the time the other Rhinos in the convoy had followed, the oncoming traffic was in a frenzy. Two trucks collided, blocking the road. The car behind them rammed them, trying to push its way through, getting stuck in the process. A pileup resulted. Four cars. Five. Seven. Horns blared. People screamed at each other. The congestion spilled over into the roadsides, where more cars got stuck in the mud and blocked any further passage. Drivers then abandoned their vehicles and ran north on foot.

Wit then saw why. A line of six Formics with mist sprayers was walking up the grass median of the highway, spraying the vegetation and anything that moved. The mist was coming out strong in thick, steady streams, rolling across the ground at waist height like a dense fog just above the surface.

Wit spoke into his radio, addressing the convoy. “Helmets on. We’re in a hot zone. Stay put until I verify that these suits work.”

He slid the helmet over his head, and it sealed itself to his containment suit. The oxygen valve initiated, and cool air filled the helmet. Wit dropped down from the cab onto the blacktop and closed the door behind him. Crowds of people ran past him, heading straight up the highway in a panic. A few of them were staggering, coughing, wheezing, dying from the mist. A woman collapsed into his arms, eyes rolling back in her head. Wit felt helpless. He had nothing to offer her. He laid her gently on the ground away from the rushing crowd so she wouldn’t get trampled. Then he turned and pushed his way through the crowd toward the Formics. The pieces of his rifle were strapped to his hip. He snapped them together as he pushed his way forward, then he extended the barrel and popped in the magazine.

“Calinga, get on the radio. See if you can find any EMTs in the area. We need medics here immediately.”

“On it,” said Calinga.

Wit forced his way through the crowd, which was in chaos now, the people pushing and screaming and knocking others aside in a mad panic. Some of the fallen got back to their feet. Others were stepped on, kicked, and trampled. Wit helped one woman up, but he nearly got knocked down in the process.

He pushed on. The targeting system on his HUD told him the Formics were eighty-two yards away and closing the distance, coming toward him shoulder to shoulder, casually spraying the mist, as if treating the ground for weeds. It was the first time Wit had seen one in person, and the sight of them was like cold water down his spine.

He raised his rifle, but the civilians kept running into his line of fire. No good. He ran to his left and climbed up onto the hood of one of the wrecked trucks. Now, with some elevation, he had a clear shot. He put the stock to his shoulder, and all kinds of thoughts ran through his head. He didn’t like using a weapon he had never fired before. Maybe Shoshang had acquired these guns because they were DOA, duds, Chinese rejects. Maybe the sight was a foot off target. Maybe the barrel was bent. Maybe the thing would blow up in his hands.

He zoomed in with his sight, aimed at the head of the Formic on the far right, and squeezed the trigger.

The rifle fired and recoiled. The back of the Formic’s head exploded in a gray mist. Its legs buckled, and it dropped from Wit’s sight.

Field test was over. Rifle passed. Time to get to work. Wit squeezed off five more quick headshots, one after another, straight down the line, right to left,
bam-bam-bam-bam-bam
.

The five remaining Formics dropped one after the other, their wands falling from their hands, their bodies crumpling. Wit watched the wand tips. A moment later, the mist stopped spraying.

The misty fog was thick around him now. Wit blinked a command to test his suit for leaks. The sensors beeped and indicated the all-clear; the suit was airtight apparently. Shoshang hadn’t skimped them. His goods were legit. Miracle of miracles.

Wit hopped down from the truck and ran ahead through the mist to where the Formics lay. He stood over them, weapon up, ready to plug them with more rounds if they so much as twitched. None of them did.

Calinga’s voice sounded in Wit’s helmet. “Emergency personnel aren’t coming. We’re too far from an urban area. They say they don’t have a treatment for the mist anyway, and they’re short on people. They’ve got more calls like ours than they know what to do with.”

“Move the people several hundred meters upwind,” said Wit. “Get them away from mist until the air clears.”

Wit squatted down and examined the Formics as Calinga relayed the order and mobilized the men. The Formics weren’t wearing any clothing. Nor were they carrying any equipment other than the mist sprayers. No radio transmitters, no receivers, no comms equipment of any kind. Wit turned one over with his boot to be sure he wasn’t missing anything. He hated touching the things, even with his boot—he disliked feeling the weight and thickness of them—but he couldn’t afford to have any such reservations.

He noticed slight differences in their insectlike faces. Subtle things. A wider mouth here, larger eyes there. Darker fur on one than the other. At first glance they had all looked exactly alike, but now Wit could see that they were as different from each other as any group of humans.

He couldn’t tell if these were male or female. They had no visible sexual organs. Maybe they were asexual, like parasites.

Wit snapped several photos with his HUD, first of the whole group, then of an individual headshot wound. Then he blinked a command to take down his dictation. He spoke for five minutes into his helmet microphone, describing the weapon he had used and where he had hit each of the Formics. They had all been headshots, yes, but he was specific about where each bullet had entered. He used medical terminology for the human head as a context, like a doctor describing an ER gunshot victim. Then he stated his conclusions. The Formics could be killed. Their landers were shielded, but their infantry was not. Headshots did the job nicely. He would try other ways in the future.

Wit then uploaded all the text, photos, and geotags to the nets. He created his own site using a minimalist theme design and the URL StopTheFormics.net and signed it “The Mobile Operations Police.” He then ordered the site to translate this entry and all future entries into Chinese, and to place the Chinese text first in the post, followed by the original English. Then he used push software to send the same information to hundreds of social platforms and media venues across the world, including all the forums and sites used by servicemen in the Chinese military.

The military no doubt already knew that a headshot was fatal, but Wit wasn’t going to assume anything. If he had information, he would share it, regardless of how obvious it might seem.

Wit returned to the Rhinos. Calinga and the rest of the men had moved the crowd upwind. The panic had subsided. Now the people were mourning. Fifty-four people were dead, most of them had been killed by the mist, though a few had died in the rush of the crowd.

“Now what do we do?” said Calinga. “These people are asking for a ride north to the nearest city. Some of their cars can’t be driven anymore. We obviously can’t give everyone a lift. The moment we start carrying people north, every other car we passed on the way down here is going to stop us and ask that we do the same for them. And we can’t fit all these people anyway, not unless we’re going to pile them on top of the Rhinos and take five trips.”

“Tell the crowd everything you’ve told me,” said Wit. “Explain that we’re moving south, not north. We’re going toward the Formics, not away from them. Tell them they’ll move much faster if they help each other. We’ll use the Rhinos to clear the wrecked vehicles and open up the highway. Those who have a functioning vehicle should make room for those who don’t.”

“What about the bodies?” asked Calinga.

“We’ll dig a massive grave. The survivors can help, but we should lead that effort. We’ll record everything, edit it down, and upload it to the site.”

“We have a site now?”

“I’ll explain while we dig.”

They went to work. Soon the air cleared enough for the MOPs to remove their helmets, which made digging and breathing easier. Many of the civilians joined in. Some of them had tools and shovels in their trucks. Wit had sent MOPs out in a wide circle to form a perimeter. Just when the grave was done, the warnings came in over Wit’s radio.

“Incomings!”

Wit was out of the hole with his helmet on when the skimmers came flying in over the trees. There were three of them: small, single-manned aircraft, moving fast. The lead one fired a burst of laser fire. An explosion to Wit’s left knocked him off his feet. Dirt clods and rock rained around him. His ears were ringing.

All three skimmers were firing now. An explosion hit the crowd of civilians, sending bodies into the air. The others scattered, screaming.

Wit was on his feet with the grenade loaded two seconds later. The lead skimmer came around for a second pass, and Wit aimed and fired the HEAB at a point in the air ahead of the aircraft.

It wasn’t a direct hit, but it was close enough. The HEAB detonated and blew out a burst of shrapnel that ripped into two of the skimmers flying in close formation. The skimmers jerked violently to one side, lost control, and crashed. No survivors. Not a chance.

Wit turned and scanned the sky for the third skimmer and saw that a troop transport had landed behind him, near where the six dead Formics lay. The transport doors opened, and Formics poured out. Several of them carried wands and began spraying immediately, unleashing steady streams of mist into the air. A squadron of MOPs hurried toward them, firing their weapons. Other Formics exited the transport and began recovering the Formics Wit had killed, carrying their corpses and equipment back inside the transport.

Wit turned back to the sky and saw the third skimmer retreating toward the horizon, well out of range. He then ran toward the transport. The new Formics with mist sprayers were going down, taking fire. It was easy pickings; they were right in the open and took no measures to conceal themselves. For a moment it looked like the skirmish would end quickly. Then the transport lifted, rotated, and opened its guns on Wit’s men, who were using the cars and trucks as cover.

Sustained lasers from the transport sliced through the cars and cut through the asphalt, leaving deep, gouged lines in the earth. Globules of a laserized substance then shot forth from side-mounted cannons. The globules seared straight through whatever they hit, leaving gaping holes through engine blocks, people, the highway guard railing. Windshields shattered, parts and shrapnel blew in every direction.

MOPs went down.

The doors of the transport were still open. Wit fired in a grenade just as two other MOPs did the same. One grenade went in one side door and out the other, but the other two ricocheted right and stayed inside. The explosions blew fire and smoke out the doors in a deafening boom. The transport rocked to one side, wavered a moment, then dropped from the sky. It hit the ground and stayed upright, spilling out dead Formics.

MOPs were on it in an instant, unleashing gunfire inside the cockpit to make sure the job was done. Wit ran to where he had seen some of his men go down. The mist rolled through like smoke, obscuring his vision. The remnants of four men lay on the decimated blacktop, all of them in pieces. Wit had to resort to body scans to identify them. Toejack, Mangul, Chi-Won, and Averbach. Wit had handpicked each one of them. He had studied their backgrounds, tested them, trained them, shaped them into the soldiers they were. Two of them he had known for years.