Earth Afire (The First Formic War 2)

"We'll dig a massive grave. The survivors can help, but we should lead that effort. We'll record everything, edit it down, and upload it to the site."

"We have a site now?"

"I'll explain while we dig."

They went to work. Soon the air cleared enough for the MOPs to remove their helmets, which made digging and breathing easier. Many of the civilians joined in. Some of them had tools and shovels in their trucks. Wit had sent MOPs out in a wide circle to form a perimeter. Just when the grave was done, the warnings came in over Wit's radio.

"Incomings!"

Wit was out of the hole with his helmet on when the skimmers came flying in over the trees. There were three of them: small, single-manned aircraft, moving fast. The lead one fired a burst of laser fire. An explosion to Wit's left knocked him off his feet. Dirt clods and rock rained around him. His ears were ringing.

All three skimmers were firing now. An explosion hit the crowd of civilians, sending bodies into the air. The others scattered, screaming.

Wit was on his feet with the grenade loaded two seconds later. The lead skimmer came around for a second pass, and Wit aimed and fired the HEAB at a point in the air ahead of the aircraft.

It wasn't a direct hit, but it was close enough. The HEAB detonated and blew out a burst of shrapnel that ripped into two of the skimmers flying in close formation. The skimmers jerked violently to one side, lost control, and crashed. No survivors. Not a chance.

Wit turned and scanned the sky for the third skimmer and saw that a troop transport had landed behind him, near where the six dead Formics lay. The transport doors opened, and Formics poured out. Several of them carried wands and began spraying immediately, unleashing steady streams of mist into the air. A squadron of MOPs hurried toward them, firing their weapons. Other Formics exited the transport and began recovering the Formics Wit had killed, carrying their corpses and equipment back inside the transport.

Wit turned back to the sky and saw the third skimmer retreating toward the horizon, well out of range. He then ran toward the transport. The new Formics with mist sprayers were going down, taking fire. It was easy pickings; they were right in the open and took no measures to conceal themselves. For a moment it looked like the skirmish would end quickly. Then the transport lifted, rotated, and opened its guns on Wit's men, who were using the cars and trucks as cover.

Sustained lasers from the transport sliced through the cars and cut through the asphalt, leaving deep, gouged lines in the earth. Globules of a laserized substance then shot forth from side-mounted cannons. The globules seared straight through whatever they hit, leaving gaping holes through engine blocks, people, the highway guard railing. Windshields shattered, parts and shrapnel blew in every direction.

MOPs went down.

The doors of the transport were still open. Wit fired in a grenade just as two other MOPs did the same. One grenade went in one side door and out the other, but the other two ricocheted right and stayed inside. The explosions blew fire and smoke out the doors in a deafening boom. The transport rocked to one side, wavered a moment, then dropped from the sky. It hit the ground and stayed upright, spilling out dead Formics.

MOPs were on it in an instant, unleashing gunfire inside the cockpit to make sure the job was done. Wit ran to where he had seen some of his men go down. The mist rolled through like sm

oke, obscuring his vision. The remnants of four men lay on the decimated blacktop, all of them in pieces. Wit had to resort to body scans to identify them. Toejack, Mangul, Chi-Won, and Averbach. Wit had handpicked each one of them. He had studied their backgrounds, tested them, trained them, shaped them into the soldiers they were. Two of them he had known for years.

Wit closed off the part of him that allowed him to mourn. There was no time. He spoke fast into his headset.

"Calinga, we need to get these people out of here. The Formics collect their dead. More might be here at any moment. I want this highway cleared, the bodies buried, and the people on the road immediately."

Everyone moved quickly. The civilians were in a state. Confused, terrified, panicked. Seven more civilians had died in the attack. Others had run off into the forests and not come back. Calinga found the ones who were coherent and could take orders and put them to work, gathering and calming the others. MOPs fired up the Rhinos and moved the vehicles blocking the road. Other MOPs pulled the bodies into the grave and pushed in the dirt. The most recent deaths were lowered in, some of them piece by piece. It was crude and fast and no way to handle fallen soldiers, but it was better than leaving them out on the road.

Calinga and his team gathered the surviving civilians and put those who didn't have vehicles with those who did. Once everyone was loaded up, the MOPs directed the traffic and got everyone moving north.

Wit and his team didn't pause to mourn those they had lost. There was no time. They drove the Rhinos farther off the road, concealing them in the nearest trees. Then they hiked back to the downed troop transport and waited.

Their containment suits were a bright yellow, probably made for field research, certainly not for combat. But they were tight fitting without being uncomfortable and offered plenty of mobility--perfect for the job at hand, really, except in terms of camouflage, and that could be easily remedied. Yet even with non-chameleonic suits, the MOPs were still able to hide themselves. In moments all of them were invisible, even to Wit. Trees, brush, abandoned vehicles. They melded with the landscape.

Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. The transports were silent, so Wit watched the sky. Finally he saw them. Two transports, flying low on approach, moving fast. At first Wit thought they wouldn't stop--they showed no sign of slowing. Then they descended quickly to the right and left of the downed transport.

Doors opened. Formics emerged. Alien hands picked up the fallen Formics.

Then Wit gave the order and all hell broke loose. He had been clear in his instructions. Do not let the transports in the air. That's where the firepower was. Take out the pilot first. Cripple the ship. Then mop up the others.

The men moved fast and efficiently. The transports remained grounded. Formics fell. It was over in less than ten seconds.

When the smoked cleared, Wit stepped up into the transport. There were dead Formics at his feet, their blood on the floor of the ship thick like syrup. Wit took video of everything. The flight controls, the switches and levers. He had no idea what anything did, and he did not experiment. He did the same outside. Every inch of the machine.

His preference was to get the aircraft into human hands for examination, but that wasn't going to happen. Instead, once they documented as much as they could, they fired two incendiary grenades and burned the vehicles.

Then they headed south, sticking to secondary roads and avoiding people as much as possible. As they went, Wit updated their site. He explained the new "kill, bait, and ambush" strategy: Take out a few infantry Formics, then lie in wait for the transport to collect them, and hit the corpse-recovery team. He stressed the importance of hitting the pilot first and avoiding the transport fire. He uploaded video, photos, and directions of attack--it was best to rush the transport from behind and slightly to the left or right, giving you a clear shot of the cockpit where the pilot was positioned as soon as possible. Attacking from the front was suicide.

Wit then checked the site's forum. He already had five different media requests for interviews. They all wanted the same thing: the face behind MOPs, the human-interest story, the juicy details that would set the ratings on fire.