Earth Afire (The First Formic War 2)

Wit looked down again at the images on his wrist pad. Three alien landers in China. He flipped the images away and called up a button, one that when pressed would alert everyone in his unit and call them to assembly. Wit pressed it.

Around him were twenty two-man tents, clustered together on the hillside. Almost immediately there was movement inside the tents. Seconds later men began to emerge, their hair unkempt, their clothes disheveled. Many of them were barefoot. But they were all alert and eager for news.

Six hours ago Wit had ordered his men to get some sleep. They would have preferred to stay up and watch the live coverage of the alien ship in space, but they had already been awake for thirty-six hours at that point, and they needed their rest. They were MOPs--or Mobile Operations Police--the most elite special forces unit in the world. Yet even soldiers as skilled and lethal as they were needed sleep.

The men gathered around Wit, some of them wearing only their long underwear, hugging themselves in the morning chill. They were a diverse group. Forty men from thirty different countries. Europeans, Asians, North and South Americans, Africans, Middle Easterners--all of them handpicked from special forces units in their respective countries. They had all discarded their old ranks and uniforms and agreed to represent their country in an international force in which they were all equal and all devoted to a single cause: stop human suffering, anywhere in the world.

Wit thought it unfortunate that there were no Chinese soldiers among them. He could use one right about now. He had tried over the years to recruit from China, but the military there had alwa

ys patently refused his offer. They would stand independent and not insert themselves into international matters. Or so said the official memo Wit had received from China. He would not have access to their soldiers under any circumstances. Period.

"The aliens have sent three large landing crafts down into China," said Wit. He removed his holopad from the pouch at his hip and held it in the palm of his hand. He then extended the projection antennas at each of the four corners and turned on the holo. An image of one of the landers appeared in the air. Some of the soldiers in the back strained to look over the heads of those in front of them.

A supply truck was to Wit's left. He climbed up onto the back bumper to give everyone a better look.

"You can't tell from the holo," Wit said, "but these landers are massive, many times larger than the world's biggest sports arena. Each of them could easily hold tens of thousands of troops or hundreds of aircraft or land vehicles. We don't yet know what's inside them. At the moment, they're just sitting there. They landed only a moment ago."

"Where in China?" said Calinga. "We're close to the border."

"Nowhere near us," said Wit. "Southeast China, north of Guangzhou."

"When do we deploy?" asked Calinga.

"I haven't asked Strategos for orders," said Wit. "And I won't be asking them either. In fact, I cut off all communications with Strategos three minutes ago."

The men exchanged looks.

Strategos was the high commander of the Mobile Operations Police. The general, so to speak. Except, instead of being a single person, Strategos was actually thirty people. Twenty-two men and eight women, each from a different nation, and each with a wealth of experience in black ops and peacekeeping operations. Some had been leaders of intelligence agencies. Others were military leaders still in active duty. Together they identified and planned MOPs missions and gave Wit his orders. Sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council, Strategos was a model of international military cooperation, a fraction of the size of NATO and far more effective on small-scale ops. Where NATO was a show of force, MOPs was a lightning strike, hard and fast and out before the enemy knew what hit him.

"You cut off lines with Strategos?" said Calinga. "Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Captain, but won't that make it difficult for us to get our deployment orders?"

"You won't get deployment orders," said Wit. "Even if the lines were open. Strategos won't send us to China. If orders come through it will be for us to stay put and maintain our position."

"Why?" said Deen. "The war's in China."

"China is the reason why," said Wit. "They're a stable state. Strategos won't send us in without a referendum from the U.N. Security Council and the blessing of the Chinese government, neither of which will likely happen any time soon, if at all. China won't ask for help."

"Why not?" asked Deen.

"Because they're China," said Wit. "If the landers had set down in Europe or Australia, we'd already be on a plane. China will be less cooperative. They'll want to handle this alone. Accepting help would be a show of weakness. Their military would take it as an insult. They won't abide that."

"This isn't solely their problem," said Calinga. "It's everybody's."

"China won't see it that way. If anything, they'll see this as an opportunity to assert their strength. If they rid the world of invading aliens, suddenly they're the strongest nation on Earth. Everyone would think twice before crossing them."

"Who's stupid enough to mess with China anyway?" said Calinga.

"The U.S. would have done the same thing," said Wit. "They don't want foreign troops on U.S. soil. It feels like a loss of sovereignty. It spooks the civilians and it implies that the nation helping you is stronger than you are. It's selfish and asinine, but that's national pride for you. A month from now, after a few million Chinese civilians have died, China may reconsider."

"You think it will get that bad?" asked Lobo.

"Probably worse," said Wit. "Think about our approach to alien combat."

Calinga said, "Analyze before we act and presume hostile intent."

"Right," said Wit. "And hostile intent is now a foregone conclusion. They wiped out a few thousand space miners and they turned a U.N. secretary and a few shuttles of reporters into space dust. We can safely assume they're not carrying gift baskets in those landers."

"So why did you cut communications with Strategos?" asked Calinga.