Earth Awakens (The First Formic War 3)

"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."