“Can you fly it?” Wit asked.
“If it checks out,” said Mazer. “I’ve never taken one up, but it’s not unlike the British VTOLs I trained on. And it’s a Juke ship with Juke avionics and holocontrols. I know that system better than any other.”
“Give it a once-over. Shenzu and I are going to raid the trucks for more supplies.”
Mazer spent the next two hours going over the Goshawk as thoroughly as he knew how. He used the loader to pull it out onto the tarmac. He fired up the engines, lifted off, checked flight controls, ran tests. Then he plugged it into the power station and charged its fuel cell. By then, Wit and Shenzu had returned with a pickup truck full of equipment. Wit parked it by the Goshawk and started loading supplies into the aircraft.
“What’s with the shotguns?” asked Mazer, gesturing to the weapon in Wit’s hand.
Wit set it down and picked up a box of odd-looking shotgun shells. “Shocker rounds, high-voltage neuromuscular incapacitators, or NMIs. We’ve got to collect a few goo guns before we head to India. With the shocker round we can incapacitate the Formics without puncturing their goo backpacks. We aim for center mass. Once the projectile pierces the skin, it will deliver two hundred milliamps of juice for thirty seconds. That’s enough to stop a human heart. Hopefully it will do the same to the Formics. If not, we also have this.” He patted the laser mount on top of the barrel. “When the Formic drops from the shocker round, we close the distance, and put a laser through its head. Then we remove the goo gun from the Formic, which will include the wand sprayer and the backpack, and seal it in one of these containers.” He gestured to one of the large biohazard containers in the bed of the truck. “We’ll strap down the containers in the Goshawk and we’ll carry them to India.”
“We’ll need to move fast,” said Mazer. “In and out. The quicker we recover the goo guns the better. We want to be long gone before any Formic reinforcements arrive.”
“That’s your job,” said Wit. “Shenzu and I will get the goo guns. You remain in the cockpit and take off the moment we’re back on board.” He looked at Mazer expectantly. “Unless you see a flaw in this plan.”
It was a test, Mazer realized.
“With all due respect, sir,” said Mazer. “I do have a few concerns.”
Wit smiled. “Show me.”
Mazer took the box of shotgun shells and dumped them on the tarmac. Then he kneeled down and stood each of them on end. He set the empty box beside them and touched it with his finger. “This is a Formic transport. You’re forgetting that every death squad has one. It will be armed to the teeth, and unless we destroy it, it will give chase. That’s problem number one.” He pointed to the shotgun shells. “The shells are the Formics. Each transport can carry as many as twenty. If you and Shenzu take them on individually, that’s two against twenty. If you were mowing them down with heavy machinegun fire or cutting them in half with a swipe of a powerful laser, I might think those odds were possible. But you’re not. What you’re suggesting requires two shots for each Formic: the shotgun followed by a kill shot at pointblank range. There’s no way you can take out that many before they retaliate. You’d have to get off ten shots each and hit every one of your targets before any of them returned fire. Then you’d have to run around to each for the second shot. You don’t have time for that. That’s problem number two.”
Wit was still smiling. “Go on.”
“Problem number three is the goo guns. We have no idea how easy it will be to remove the backpack from a dead Formic. The straps fasten around the shoulders and lock across the chest. I’ve never examined one up close, but we’ve seen plenty of them from a distance. The straps don’t look like fabric. They look metallic. It will take time to cut through that. You don’t want to puncture the tank in the backpack, so if you use a laser to cut through, which is what I’d recommend, it will be a delicate procedure. If you and Shenzu do that there at the site, on the ground, before we take off, reinforcements will be all over us before you’ve gotten one goo gun free. We’d be dead meat.”
“Dead meat is bad,” said Wit. “We should definitely avoid becoming dead meat. What are you suggesting?”
“Extreme violence,” said Mazer. He scooped up all the shotgun shells and put them back in the box. “We follow a transport from a safe distance. The moment it lands, we move in. We attack before all of the Formics have disembarked.” He removed three shotgun shells and put them on the tarmac. “Maybe we wait until three Formics are out. Then we obliterate the transport on our descent. We’ve got a forty-millimeter grenade launcher on the nose turret, two-tube rocket launchers on the sides, and two NATO miniguns mounted in the door gunner position. I suggest we use the miniguns. That’s Shenzu’s job. I come in low, right up to the open door of the transport, and Shenzu unleashes with the guns. The ricochets should kill everyone inside. The grenade launcher and rockets are too much firepower. The transport would explode, and the blast would annihilate the three Formics outside as well as their goo tanks. We’d have nothing to recover at that point.”
“And what am I doing while this is going on?” said Wit.
“When we descend, you’re on the other side of the Goshawk with the second sliding door open, picking off the three Formics on the ground. Head shots. Three quick pops. I’d suggest your rifle with smart targeting. Or, if you think your aim is good enough from a moving aircraft, you can use the shotguns. But that’s riskier and far less accurate.”
“Okay,” said Wit. “The transport is now Swiss cheese. I’ve sunk a few rounds in the Formics’ heads. Now what?”
“You and Shenzu are out the doors the moment the landing skids touch down. You rush to the nearest dead Formic with a goo gun and grab him, backpack and all. One of you grabs his forelimbs, the other grabs his hind limbs. Then you toss him into the Goshawk, climb aboard, and I take off. Once we’re safely in the air, you can figure out how to remove the backpack and take as long as necessary. When the backpack’s off we throw the body over the side and store the goo gun in the container.”
“That only gives us one goo gun,” said Shenzu.
“One’s enough,” said Wit. “The tanks are translucent. If it’s more than half full, we should be fine. That’s enough for Gadhavi to work with.”
“If we’re only getting one Formic,” said Shenzu, “why wait until three Formics have disembarked from their transport? Why not hit it as soon as the first Formic steps off?”
“Because when their transport goes,” said Mazer, “there will be all kinds of shrapnel. We can’t risk puncturing the backpack. With three, we’re playing at safe. At least one backpack should come out of that unscathed.”
“Anything else we should consider, Mazer?” asked Wit.
Mazer tapped the box of shotgun shells. “If we wipe out the transport with most of the Formics inside, we’ll break open all of their goo tanks and unleash the gas. That’s unavoidable. But if the transport is in a populated area, we would be putting a lot of people at risk. I suggest we find a transport headed to either a sparsely populated area or a city or town that’s already been given an evacuation order.”
“They’ll be spraying that gas anyway,” said Shenzu. “Does it matter?”
“It matters if we’re the ones releasing the gas,” said Mazer. “It matters to me.”
“The CMC is tracking the transports via satellite,” said Shenzu. “And we know which cities and villages have been evacuated. We could probably find a match.”
“It also needs to be a transport that’s alone,” said Mazer. “If it’s near other transports, we’re inviting a dogfight.”
“Anything else?” said Wit.
“We’ll be enveloped in the gas during the raid,” said Mazer. “Everything will be contaminated. The entire aircraft inside and out. There’s no way we can decontaminate it before we reach India. If we successfully cross the border, we should warn the Indians and offer to burn the aircraft as soon as we land.”
“Seems extreme,” said Sh
enzu.
“It’s a polite gesture,” said Mazer. “If they refuse and offer to clean it, fine. Otherwise, we will have shown them we value their safety more than the Goshawk.”
“Which isn’t cheap,” said Shenzu.
“Add it to my bill,” said Mazer.
“Is that all?” asked Wit.
“You tell me,” said Mazer. “Did I pass your test?”
Wit smiled. “I’ll tell you when we land in India.” He picked up the box of shocker rounds and placed them in the aircraft.
“So you’re sticking to the shotguns?” said Mazer.
“There’s never a single plan, Mazer. You plan for every contingency.” He snapped open the action, looked inside the empty barrel, and snapped it closed again. “Besides, I like shotguns.”
They loaded the biohazard containers and other supplies into the Goshawk and took off. Mazer followed the Yangxi River through the mountains, staying low and out of sight. They flew west for several hours before Shenzu found their target.
“There’s a Formic transport ten kilometers ahead of us, moving north up the Menghe River. All the towns along the river were given an evacuation order. If the transport stops at one of them, we should make our move.”
“What’s the next closest transport?” Wit asked.
“Twenty-four kilometers away,” said Shenzu.
“We’re not going to find a better window than that. Track them. Mazer follow at a distance and stay out of sight.”
Mazer turned north slightly and made his way toward the Menghe River. They tracked the Formic transport with a sat feed, watching the map in the holofield. Mazer flew low. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. The transport skipped over every town along the river.
“It’s leaving the river and moving north into the mountains,” said Shenzu.
“Heading where?” asked Wit. “There’s nothing in these mountains.”
“We can’t keep this up,” said Mazer. “We’re losing daylight. And other transports are getting closer.”
It was true. On the map, three transports were converging on a point north of them, in the same direction their transport was heading.
“They’re moving toward something,” said Wit. He tapped each of the four transports in the holofield with his stylus. “Computer, trace these trajectories. Where do they intersect?”
Lines from the various transports were drawn. They intersected at a point on the map north of them.
Wit said, “Shenzu, what’s at that location?”
Shenzu was busy a moment with the map. “A mountain. The highest peak in Lipu County. It’s called Mount Pig.”
“Possible Formic targets?” asked Wit. “Is there a village up there? A town? Anything?”
“Nothing,” said Shenzu.
“Can you get us a visual?”
Shenzu went back to the holofield. A moment later a sat feed appeared, replacing the map. There was the mountain peak, and there at its highest point was a round bulbous structure.
“What is that?” said Shenzu. “A water tower?”
“Why would you have a water tower on the top of an uninhabited mountain?” said Wit. “Zoom in.”
The image tightened and clarified.
“That’s not human engineering,” said Wit. “That’s Formic.”
He was right. They were looking from above, but Mazer could see even from that angle that the design was alien. A round, doughnut-shaped structure stood high above the peak with a flat porch encircling it like a giant wide-brimmed hat. The surface was metallic and crude, as if assembled from hundreds of pieces of scrap.
“What are those strings on the porch?” said Wit. “Zoom in further.”
Mazer hadn’t noticed them at first, but as Shenzu zoomed in, he saw what Wit was referring to. Only they weren’t strings. They were hoses.
“It’s a refueling station,” said Mazer. “For the transports. Either that or it’s where they refill their goo guns.”
They watched as the first transport arrived and alighted on the porch. Two Formics exited the transport and grabbed one of the larger hoses and pulled the end of it into the transport, where they disappeared. A crowd of Formics climbed out the other side of the transport and retrieved the small hoses. Working in pairs, the Formics lifted the hoses and attached them to the tanks of their goo backpacks.
“We just hit the mother lode,” said Shenzu. “That doughnut thing is full of liquid goo.”
“There must be an auxiliary tank in each transport,” said Wit. “They fill that up as well as their individual tanks and rely on the auxiliary once their personal supplies deplete. They can stay in the field longer that way.”
“Now what do we do?” said Mazer. “We still need a goo gun. We can’t just climb up there with a jug after the Formics leave and fill it with a hose. We need a proper receptacle for the stuff. The goo becomes gas as soon as it touches the air.”
“We’ll take a goo gun,” said Wit. “But we need to reevaluate. We obviously can’t hit a transport on its way here because it doesn’t have any goo left. It’s on empty.”
“If we hit it when it leaves, though,” said Shenzu, “we’ll blow its auxiliary tank, which will unleash a massive amount of gas.”
“Better to release that gas here in the mountains, far from human habitation, than in the middle of some city,” said Mazer.
“Agreed,” said Wit. “But maybe we don’t have to. What if we hit a transport crew while they’re filling up?”
“Risky,” said Mazer. “If you fire on the transport, you might puncture the doughnut.”
“What if we don’t fire a weapon at all?” He reached to his left, dug through one of the crates of equipment, and found a box of the odd-looking NMI shotgun shells. Wit took one of the shells from the box and unscrewed the shell casing. It slid off like a sleeve, revealing a tube of electronics capped by a small dome with four electrodes. “These electrodes are what pierce the skin when the round is fired. They’re connected to the base, which consists of a battery, a transformer, and a microprocessor.” He gently pulled the electrodes free of the base, and a thin wire uncoiled. “Each of these has three meters of Kevlar-coated wiring in them. When the round strikes the individual, the electrodes pierce them, and the base falls to the ground. Then the electrical charge hits. We have several boxes of rounds. It will take a little work, and a lot of wire splicing, but we could create a decent-sized chain with these. We set that chain on the surface of the porch, and we’re in business.”
“How would you trigger the electricity?” asked Mazer.
“We wire them all to a single microprocessor. I trigger it with a transmitter.”
“The porch is metallic,” said Mazer, “but that doesn’t mean it conducts electricity.”
“We’ll test it,” said Wit. “I’ll set the charge to low.”
Shenzu waved his hands. “I’m sorry. Is this a plan? Because I’m not following you.”
“We’re going to booby-trap the porch of the tower,” said Mazer. “We take apart the shocker rounds, wire the electrodes into a chain, and set them on the porch. As soon as the next group of Formics have filled up their goo guns, we electrify the porch and stun them all at once. Then we rush in, finish them off and take a goo gun.”
Shenzu looked at them each in turn. “Seems like a lot of work for a single goo gun.”
“It’s the safest option,” said Wit.
“Assuming we don’t electrocute ourselves in the process,” said Mazer.
They waited until the four transports had come and gone; then Mazer flew them up to the peak of the mountain and hovered over the porch of the tower. Wit and Shenzu hopped out, and Wit handed Shenzu the disassembled shocker round.
“Walk over there and set the electrodes facedown on the surface. Then hold up the base and push your finger into this groove until you feel the pins break.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Shenzu.
“Put my hand on the surface,” said Wit. “If it shocks me, t
hrow the base over the side immediately. Don’t hesitate. And don’t touch the electrodes.”
“I’ll be standing on the surface. Won’t it shock me, too?”
“You have rubber soles. You should be fine.”
“Should?” said Shenzu. “I need better than a ‘should.’”
“Fine. I one-hundred-percent guarantee you won’t get shocked.”
Shenzu frowned.
“Time is of the essence, Shenzu.”
Shenzu walked to the far side of the porch and got into position. Wit bent his knees, placed his palm flat on the floor of the porch, and nodded for Shenzu to proceed.
A moment later, Wit was falling onto his back and Shenzu was throwing the whole contraption over the side. When they climbed back into the aircraft, Mazer said, “I thought you were going to set it on low.”
“I did,” said Wit.
They found a small clearing nearby surrounded by dense jungle. Mazer landed the Goshawk, and they got to work. It took most of the night to build the chain, with each of them helping in some capacity. When they finished it was several hours before dawn.
Mazer flew them up to the tower. Shenzu held the flashlight while Wit carefully unspooled the wire and laid the chain around the inner edge of the porch, like the band of the hat’s brim. Then they flew to the base of the mountain and waited.
Not long after dawn, the first transport alighted on the porch of the tower. Wit, Mazer, and Shenzu watched the satellite feed. As soon as the first few Formics had filled their goo tanks, Wit hit the transmitter. On screen the Formics began to twitch and fall and convulse and die.
CHAPTER 10
Shield
The lobster was excellent, and the creamy burrata as an accompaniment was inspired, but Lem was finding it hard to enjoy either. Across from him, inside their private booth at La Bella Luna, one of the more expensive restaurants on the east side of Imbrium, Norja Ramdakan was attacking his pasta like a man coming off a three-day fast.
Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) Page 16