"Be that as it may," said Shenzu, "if I help you, I would be going outside my chain of command. I would be court-martialed for treason. And if I accompany you to India, I would be tried for desertion as well. I would never see my family again."
"Then point us toward an airfield, and we'll be on our way," said Wit. "We'll say you tried to stop us, but we subdued you and escaped."
Shenzu said nothing for a moment. He looked down at his wrist pad and tapped at it for a moment. When he finished, he looked up and exhaled, as if coming to a decision. "Shaoguan Air Base is thirty kilometers southeast of us. It's a dual-use military, civilian airport in the town of Guitou. We will likely find a plane there."
"We?" said Wit. "You have a family, Shenzu. I don't want to be responsible for keeping you from them."
"If we don't stop the gas, my family won't live long enough to see me anyway. I'd rather they live and I go to prison than I do nothing and let them die."
"We'll tell the Chinese we took you kicking and screaming," said Mazer. "We'll say we had to gag you and bind you because you fought us every step of the way."
"And I never stopped singing the national anthem," said Shenzu.
"Or waving a little Chinese flag," said Mazer.
"How do we get to this airfield?" asked Wit.
"The Wujiang River," said Shenzu, pointing east. "We're close. The river runs straight southeast to the airport. I say we commandeer a boat and avoid the roads until we get Mazer another biosuit."
"If it's a military airfield," said Mazer, "how do we commandeer an aircraft without causing a scene?"
"No one will resist us," said Shenzu. "The airport fell five days ago. One of the hangars wasn't damaged in the attack, and my database indicates there is an aircraft still inside it." He looked uncomfortable. "But I should forewarn you. The army hasn't returned to the site since the attack. It won't be pleasant."
He meant corpses. Carnage. Bodies bloating in the sun for five days. The military was so overwhelmed with the fighting and so depleted of its resources that it couldn't even spare personnel to bury the dead.
They loaded their packs, grabbed their weapons, and hiked to the river. There were several large homes along the waterway with boathouses. Wit kicked in the door to one of the boathouses, and they found a small fishing boat with a decent-sized engine inside. Wit checked the fuel cell, judged it sufficient, then they loaded their gear, climbed aboard, and cast off.
They heard Chinese aircraft soaring by overhead and later spotted several Formic troop transports as well. But everything remained a few hundred meters up, and nothing dipped in their direction.
Mazer felt exposed without a biosuit. He was keenly aware that at any moment, a cloud of gas could drift into their path and envelop the boat.
He imagined, as he often did, two military officers going to Kim's home in New Zealand, their faces solemn, their hats tucked under their arms. They would be strangers to her, but she would know at once why they were there. We're so sorry, they would say. And Kim would stare at them and lean against the door frame to keep from collapsing.
Mazer should not have listed her as his next of kin. That had been a mistake. They were not married. He had wanted to leave the space blank, but the clerk doing the paperwork had insisted that he list someone. There were uncles and aunts and cousins, of course. Mother had family all over New Zealand. But they were strangers to Mazer now. After he and Father had moved to London following Mother's death, Father had made no effort to maintain contact with Mother's side. That had ended badly. Mazer's grandfather had insisted that Father give Mother a traditional Maori funeral, and Father had flatly refused. There were arguments, raised voices, harsh words, one of Mazer's uncles had moved to hit Father before being restrained. It was as vivid in Mazer's memory as the simple ceremony Father had held. It was just the two of them at the grave site. No minister, no words, no flowers. Just Father's cold hand in his and the silence between them and the smell of fresh-turned earth.
*
They docked the boat at a jetty at Guitou. The airport was close to the water. A faint, rancid, rotting smell permeated the air. It worsened as Mazer left the boat and approached the shore. When the airport came into view, he saw two long narrow runways, several hangars, and a control tower. To the east of the runways, the military had set up enough tents to house over one thousand men. There were tanks, ATVs, antiaircraft lasers, heavy-equipment transporters, EMP trucks, all the firepower needed to conduct a small offensive.
And all of it lay in ruins.
Corpses were scattered across the camp and airfield. Vehicles were overturned, burned out, and half melted. The runway was pockmarked with craters as big as a truck. The tower had burned down, leaving only its steel skeletal structure leaning dangerously to one side. Two of the hangars had completely collapsed.
No one spoke for a long moment. The smell was so strong Mazer thought he might be sick.
"They came at night," said Shenzu. "One of our antiaircraft gunners shot down a transporter, and the Formics retaliated minutes later with a swarm. The air was so thick with them at one point that in some of the satellite photos, you can barely see the ground."
"Did they gas this place?" asked Wit. "Is it safe for Mazer to even approach the hangar?"
Shenzu was holding a device in the air. "The gas has long since dissipated. All I'm getting are elevated traces of hydrogen sulfide and methane, both likely from the decomposition. As long as he doesn't touch anything, he should be okay. There are resupply trucks in the camp. We'll find an unopened biosuit there."
They made their way through the labyrinth of tents, heading toward the resupply trucks. Some of the tents had burned down; others had blown over in the wind and rain. Debris was everywhere. Pots, plates, helmets, weapons. Many of the soldiers had been roused from sleep during the attack and had run out of their tents in their undergarments. They lay in the mud among the soldiers in uniform, bloated and pasty and bleached by the sun.
All of the pathways were thick with mud. There were puddles with standing water everywhere, all of them coated with a thin layer of chemical scum.
They passed vehicles that had burned out, some with the driver still at the wheel. They passed downed Formic aircraft, a few of which had crashed into the tents, leaving a swath of destruction in their wake.
Finally they reached the supply trucks. Shenzu used his wrist pad to scan the codes on the side of each truck to check the truck's inventory. They found a truck with biosuits minutes later.
The lock on the back of the truck was still intact, but Wit found an iron bar on the ground, and beat at the lock until it broke free. They dug around inside until they found a biosuit and four cases of decontaminant wipes.
Mazer stripped off his clothes and wiped himself down with the decontaminant right there in the truck. Wit and Shenzu waited outside. The decon wipes were cold and foamy and smelled stronger than bleach. The vapors burned Mazer's eyes. The chemical dried out his skin. The instructions told him to wipe down three times, and he hated the process more each time. When he was done, his skin felt raw and chaffed and sore at the crevices. He ripped open the plastic bag that contained his biosuit and put it on. The suit was cold and tight-fitting, but the fabric was pliable and offered plenty of mobility.
When he stepped outside, he adjusted his radio to the right frequency, and the three of them headed for the hangar.
Other than a few holes in the metal wall where shrapnel had punched through, the hangar appeared unscathed. They all pushed hard against the two main doors and slid them open. Mazer was relieved to find a large Goshawk C14 sitting inside. He had worried that they'd find an aircraft he didn't know how to fly.
The Goshawk was a sturdy VTOL twenty-passenger troop transport with a chin-mounted cannon and a four-engine design. It was much bigger than they would need, and it would take a lot of fuel, but it had some punch to it in case they met any resistance.
"Can you fly it?" Wit asked.
"If it ch
ecks 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 Shenzu.
"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 pa
ss 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.
Earth Awakens Page 15