Earth Awakens (The First Formic War 3)

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."