Only, the godwits had changed. One moment they were fat, long-beaked birds, the next they were Formics, miniature in size, scuttling through the water on all six appendages, scampering across the mud and then onto dry land, rushing toward Mazer and Kim like a wave, thousands of them, each growing larger with every step until the Formics were actual size and then twice their size. And Kim had grabbed Mazer's arm and screamed, and an instant later her scream was a high-pitched clicking noise, and she was wasn't Kim after all, she was a Formic, with her maw wide open, ready to envelop him.
Three more knocks on the door. Hard and insistent.
Mazer found his pants, dressed, and made his way through the dark to the door. Two Chinese soldiers with flashlights were standing in the hall. One was a lie bing, the other a zhongzhi, or the Chinese equivalent of a private and a sergeant.
"Please come with us," said the zhongzhi in Chinese. "You and Captain O'Toole are wanted downstairs immediately."
Mazer finished dressing and grabbed what little gear he had. They stopped at Wit's room on the way and roused him. "What's this about?" Wit asked.
The Chinese soldiers didn't answer.
"I don't think they speak English," said Mazer. He translated Wit's question into Chinese, and the soldiers responded.
"Captain Shenzu will explain," said the zhongzhi.
They reached the lobby and found Shenzu conferring with a young officer in a biosuit. Shenzu motioned them over and gestured to the man opposite. "Captain Rackham, Captain O'Toole, this is Lieutenant Hunyan. He'll be leading the convoy to Dragon's Den. We've had a slight change of plans."
Hunyan held up his wrist pad and projected a map in the air in front of them. "This is the route the convoy will take. Most of it is a straight shot west across this state highway here. We sent out dozer crews two days ago to clear the road, and they've been pushing aside abandoned cars and obstructions ever since. That is, until four hours ago. We lost contact with them here." Hunyan tapped a spot on the route about sixty klicks out. "They were hit by a swarm of Formic skimmers. We have satellite images of the aftermath."
Hunyan brought up one of the infrared images. The devastation was obvious. Three dozers lay in ruins. They were massive, bulky vehicles, not street dozers or landscapers, but the large industrial breed, with impenetrable cabs and wheels three meters high. Each dozer had a long, V-shaped blade that jutted out from the front like a spearhead. The blades were almost twice as wide as the vehicle and nearly as long--giving the dozer a threatening aspect, like a giant iron arrow. One of the dozers was burning, smoke billowing up from its cabin, obscuring the image somewhat. Another dozer lay on its side, the left half of it crunched inward. A third had a gaping hole in the center where a blast of plasma had seared straight through.
"Any survivors?" asked Wit.
"One of the drivers," said Hunyan. "This dozer here, the one turned on its side. The driver's stuck in the cab. We sent an armored vehicle to rescue him."
"Judging by the look on your face and the fact that you pulled us out of bed," said Wit, "I'm guessing your armored vehicle never reached its destination."
"Sadly no," said Hunyan. He swiped through the holofield and a new sat image appeared. It showed a different stretch of road, the features all outlined in a varying shades of gray. An armored vehicle lay in two pieces on the asphalt, the edges jagged and twisted as if it had been ripped in half. A tire engulfed in flames was burning in the grass nearby. A Chinese soldier lay on his back in the middle of the road, a pool of blood beneath him. Two shapes that appeared to be Formics were standing beside the man's body, hovering over him.
Wit reached into the holofield and spread his thumb and index finger apart, zooming in on the Formics. The move didn't help; the image was still fuzzy. "What are the Formics doing to him?"
"They pulled him from the wreckage," said Hunyan. He made another gesture in the field, and a vid began. It was the driver's helmet feed, from immediately after the crash. The video was dark and green, with lines of interference and static dancing across the screen. The man was on his side. His biometrics in the corner of the vid suggested serious injury. His blood pressure was dropping. His breathing was labored.
Dark shapes appeared, pulling the metal of the cabin back. Two Formics, bug-eyed and calm, equipment in their hands. The soldier gave a weak protestation. His heart rate accelerated. He tried backing away, but there was nowhere to go. Hands reached in and lifted him out. The man cried out in pain. A small silhouette of the soldier's body in the upper right corner of the feed began flashing red over the leg. There was serious trauma to the man's femur.
The image shook as the Formics carried the man out and laid him on the asphalt. One of the Formics reached in and removed the helmet. The world spun. The helmet was set on the ground, pointing away from the man now, back at the wreckage.
"There's a full minute of silence here," said Hunyan. "We don't know what transpires. The driver's blood pressure continues to drop until he flatlines. We think he bled out. We don't know if the Formics did anything to him." Hunyan reached in and switched off the vid. "After that the Formics left."
"What do you want us to do?" said Wit.
"The driver of the overturned dozer at the site of the first attack is still stuck in his cab, alive," said Hunyan. "And we still have five kilometers of road to clear. I need you and Captain Rackham to free the driver. Then you'll provide cover while the driver clears the rest of the road. Otherwise, our convoy can't get through."
"The dozers are all damaged," said Wit. "Unless you have another one, no one's clearing anything."
Hunyan turned to Mazer. "I'm told you're a HERC pilot."
"He's the best HERC pilot," said Wit. "What you are thinking? Flying a dozer out there?"
"It's faster than driving one," said Hunyan. Then to Mazer, "Have you ever carried a load that heavy?"
"Weight isn't an issue," said Mazer. "The grav lenses deflect gravity waves from Earth, sending them around the aircraft. All I need to do is adjust the lenses to perfectly balance with the landforms and maintain a constant distance."
"What if the driver is too injured to finish the job?" said Wit.
"Then I'll drive the dozer," said Shenzu. "I'm coming with you. You just make sure a skimmer doesn't drop a plasma slug in my lap."
"Dragon's Den is much closer to the damaged dozers than we are," said Mazer. "Why not send a rescue team from their end?"
"They can't reach our man," said Hunyan. "They don't have dozers to get through the obstructions."
"So much for a full night's sleep," said Mazer. "Where's the airfield?"
Hunyan led them outside where a truck was waiting. Shenzu, Wit, and Mazer climbed up into the bed, and Hunyan got behind the wheel. They drove west through the city, the truck's headlights cutting through the darkness. The night air was cool and damp, and Mazer pulled his jacket tight around him. They saw no one and heard nothing. The buildings stood like giant hovering shadows, dark and vacant and eerily quiet. A stale, rotting smell permeated the streets: uncollected trash, perhaps, or the stagnant water of the sewer lines, kept still because the power was out.
On the outskirts of town, the buildings gave way to large industrial complexes, with their oddly shaped pipes, towers, and silos. Next came the flat rice fields, which to Mazer's surprise were still alive, the tall grass swaying in the dark like the surface of the sea.
Hunyan turned onto a service road, passed through an open security fence, and drove up onto the tarmac at a small airfield. A HERC sat parked outside a hangar, where a team of technicians with lights on their helmets were giving it a once-over. Beside the HERC was an armored spearhead dozer, its massive blade extending outward like a wedge. The satellite image hadn't done the spearhead justice. It was twice as large as Mazer thought it would be. Each wheel was taller than the truck.
"You sure that little aircraft can pick up that thing?" said Wit. "That's like an orange lifting a pineapple."
"We'll be fine," said Ma
zer. "Science is on our side."
Hunyan parked the truck inside the hangar beside three large crates. He hopped out, opened the crates, and began distributing the gear. "You'll wear these biosuits at all times. Each can carry four mini tanks of O2. There's extra oxygen in the HERC. I'd advise you to keep at least two cans on your person at all times." He handed Wit an assault rifle. "It has built-in smart targeting. Pick your Formic with your HUD, and the smart munitions do the rest. If the target's within a thousand meters, it's a near guaranteed kill. Snap on this secondary barrel here for the grenade launcher."
Wit snapped on the barrel and removed it, getting a feel for the mechanism. Mazer took a rifle and a box of grenade rounds then unwrapped the biosuit and pulled it on over his clothing.
"We'll be tracking your progress from here," said Hunyan. "Good luck."
Shenzu, Wit, and Mazer zipped up their biosuits, donned their helmets, and loaded into the HERC. Shenzu sat in the copilot's seat while Wit buckled into a jump seat back in the main cabin.
"You give the word to go, Shenzu," said Wit. "This is your op."
"I'm just the liaison officer," said Shenzu. "You're the experienced field commander. I say you're in charge."
"Very well," said Wit. "Mazer, take us up."
"Yes, sir."
Mazer lifted off, maneuvered the HERC over the dozer, and turned on the talons, which unfolded from the side of the HERC and descended to the dozer like giant spider legs. Four of the talons gripped the dozer's side and lifted it off the ground to allow the last two talons to extend underneath and lock in place beneath it. Mazer ran a few tests to ensure the load was secure, then he adjusted the lenses and slowly lifted off.
They picked up the highway south of Lianzhou and flew straight up the center of the road, low and fast, the bottom of the dozer just a few meters off the ground.
"Watch the skies," said Wit. "With a load like this, we're easy targets. We'll have very little maneuverability."
"If something zeroes in on us," said Mazer, "we should set the dozer down, land fast, abandon the HERC, and make for cover."
"Why not drop the dozer and fight?" asked Shenzu.
"Because dying doesn't accomplish anything," said Mazer. "This isn't a combat aircraft. It's a load carrier. It's not nimble. The Formics can dance around us. I learned that the hard way. Plus we're not armed for a fight. We've got a few rockets and a laser. That hardly makes us battle-ready. If we fight, we lose."
"He's right," said Wit. "If the bugs close in, we bail or we fail."
They flew in silence, Mazer watching the radar screen for Formics. It felt strange to fly without Patu, Fatani, and Reinhardt beside him. They had been with him through thousands of flight hours, every takeoff, every maneuver.
And now they were gone.
Mazer had played the crash over and over again in his mind. The HERC had fallen in a dead drop from a low altitude. The chutes had failed, and the rotor blades hadn't deployed fast enough. All things considered, Mazer should have died also, and yet somehow here he was, saved by airbags and luck with nothing more than an ugly gut wound to show for it.
It was the angle at which the HERC had landed that had saved him. Fatani was heavy and sitting on the opposite side and in the rear, and perhaps that was what had tipped the HERC just enough to have it land the way it did, with Mazer farther from the ground than the others at the moment of impact, giving his airbags a microsecond more time to deploy.
He never saw what punctured his lower abdomen. A torn section from the front console perhaps. Or a flying piece of shrapnel. Whatever it was, he was lucky it hadn't torn him in half. Perhaps he had removed it immediately after the crash, yanking it out in some survival reflex. He couldn't remember. Everything was hazy at that point, a murky blur of noise and heat and pain.
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."
Earth Awakens Page 10