Shenzu translated, and the man nodded. "The Formics aren't stopping me, sir."
Mazer bandaged the man's head, then the driver climbed up into the cabin of the new dozer and fired up the engines. As he pushed the wrecked dozers off the road, Shenzu read a message off his wrist pad. "The convoy has already left Lianzhou. They said we better have the road cleared by the time they reach us."
"No pressure," said Mazer.
The three of them hustled back to the HERC and got airborne. Wit took the copilot's seat, and Shenzu buckled up in a jump seat in the main cabin. They followed just behind the dozer as it continued down the highway, clearing the road of obstructions.
They made slow progress for several kilometers without meeting any resistance. Mazer was beginning to think they might actually complete the mission when Lieutenant Hunyan's head appeared in the HERC's holofield above the dash.
"We have a situation," said Hunyan. "Over sixty troop transports just launched from the Formic mothership. They've spread out over a distance of three hundred kilometers and are descending through the atmosphere now. Beijing is tracking them, and we've calculated their projected trajectories. Several of them are heading toward our position. I'm sending you the data now."
A series of images and maps appeared in the holofield.
Mazer studied them, saw where the reinforcements were entering the atmosphere, and turned to Wit. "We should get up there and gather what intel we can."
"Agreed. Shenzu, tell the dozer driver to stay the course and clear the road at all costs. Mazer, take us up."
Mazer spun the HERC 180 degrees, then shot straight up into the air. Wit grabbed a handhold to steady himself, and Mazer felt his stomach drop. They ascended at a steady rate, scanning as they went, and stopped at seven thousand meters. At first the sensors detected nothing, then the instruments started blipping and dozens of dots of light popped up on radar.
"We see them," Mazer said to Hunyan. "They're coming in hot. I count four transports dropping to the convoy's position." He read off the distances, speeds, and angles of approach.
"Lieutenant," said Wit. "Can you turn the convoy around and return to Lianzhou?"
"Negative," said Hunyan. "We're twenty klicks outside the city. The path is barely wide enough for the vehicles to get through. There's no place to turn around."
"Who is with you?" asked Wit.
"The science team, a few dozen officers, and over three hundred enlisted men."
"What about firepower?" asked Wit.
"We've got antiaircraft missiles and four heavily armed VTOLs giving us air support. We've stopped and are forming a perimeter."
Far in the distance, Mazer saw four white flashes of light high in the atmosphere. The lights descended, streaking downward at hypersonic speed, leaving puffy contrails behind them.
There was another flash of light to Mazer's left, far to the south, heading in their direction.
"Nine o'clock," said Wit.
"I see it," said Mazer. He swiveled the HERC to the left and angled it upward to allow the sensors to get a better read on the incoming ship.
"Can we get a visual?" asked Wit.
Mazer blinked the command in his HUD, and the transport appeared in the holofield in front of them. There wasn't much to see; a searing heat enveloped the transport, obscuring its nose from view.
"Where is it headed?" asked Wit.
"Already working on it," said Mazer. His hands flew inside the holofield, quickly gathering the data and slinging it into the correct receptacles for processing. The answer appeared on the map, and Mazer's heart sank. "Its trajectory puts it very near Dragon's Den."
"How near is very near?" said Wit. "Near enough that Dragon's Den is clearly its target or far enough away that it could be only a coincidence?"
"Both," said Mazer. "It might be gunning for Dragon's Den. It might not."
"There are civilians down there."
"Thousands of them. Probably mostly women and children."
"Any ideas?" asked Wit.
"We get the transport out of the sky a little sooner than it expected."
"You said this wasn't a combat aircraft," said Wit. "You said we weren't nimble enough."
"All true," said Mazer. "So let's use it for what it was made for."
Mazer's hand quickly moved through the holofield. He had the AI verify the transporter's trajectory and pinpoint its exact position at various points in time. Then he entered a series of commands and the HERC shot forward, slamming him and Wit back against their seats. The altimeter numbers spun as the HERC climbed.
"If there's a plan," said Wit, "now would be a good time to share."
"We can't fire on the transport," said Mazer. "It's shielded. That's how they managed atmospheric entry."
Wit gripped the handhold above his head, his knuckles white. "So we can't shoot it down. Great. That's not a plan."
"We wouldn't want to shoot at it anyway," said Mazer. "Even if it didn't have the shield. Unless you're right on top of them, they can dodge whatever you throw at them. I say we take it down the same way we've taken out other transports. We fill it with grenades."
"Every transport we've disabled was on the ground," said Wit. "We tricked them into landing, then we jumped from the bushes. I fail to see any bushes here at forty thousand feet."
"I'll get above it and seize it with the talons. As soon as the Formics disengage the shield, you cut your way in and toss in the grenades."
"What makes you certain they'll disengage their shields?"
"They'll be threatened. They can't defend themselves with their shields engaged. You know how they are, they retaliate with blind ferocity, even if that puts them at greater risk. Once we clamp on, they'll do anything to lose us, including dropping their shields. And if they don't drop them immediately, they'll drop them when they land. Otherwise they can't disembark from the aircraft. We'll destroy them then."
"I liked it better when I didn't know your plan," said Wit.
"Move back to the main cabin," said Mazer. "The drop door is in the center of the floor. I'll open it when the time is right. Strap yourself into the winch in the ceiling. There are boot anchors in the floor. Lock yourself in tight. Once I open the door, the transport hull will be directly below you. Cut your way in with the laser. Once you drop in the grenades, we detach, get clear, and they become shrapnel in the sky."
"You want to grab an alien spacecraft moving at hypersonic speed?"
"It's not moving at hypersonic speed anymore. It's slowed down drastically. It'll be even slower when we reach it."
"How slow is slow?"
"A few hundred kilometers an hour?"
"Naturally," said Wit. He began unstrapping his harness. "How much time do I have?"
"Under two minutes. I suggest you pick up the pace."
Wit wiggled out of the harness and got to his feet. "How are you going to get close enough to grab them without them shooting us down?"
"We'll come at them from above. They won't be looking in that direction. Probably. Plus these are transports. They're not made for deep space travel. They don't have collision avoidance systems. At least the ones we've destroyed in the past didn't, and this one looks no different. Also, they don't yet know we're a threat."
"Of course we're a threat. We're an armed aircraft."
"Formics ignore us until we pose a threat. Think about the Formics that stormed the dozers. They killed the crew after our man attacked. It's only when we confront them, when we resist, that they retaliate. Otherwise, we're not worth their notice."
"What about the armored vehicle that was ripped in half, the man eviscerated on the asphalt?"
"Maybe he fired first. Maybe his gunner engaged them."
"And maybe you're full of it."
"Maybe," said Mazer. "And maybe I'm right. Either way you've got about sixty seconds until we intercept them. Are we doing this or not?"
Wit considered a moment then nodded. "How do I hook myself to the winch cable?"
>
"There's a body harness in a compartment in the main cabin, directly behind me. Slip it on and tighten the straps around your thighs, chest, and shoulders. Then attach the carabiner on the chest of the harness to the matching carabiner on the pulley cable. There's a screw lock on each. Righty tighty, lefty loosey."
"I know how to tighten a screw lock," said Wit. He left the cockpit and moved back to the cabin.
Mazer heard him rummaging through the compartment, grabbing the gear. They were high above the transport now. It had drastically decelerated. Mazer couldn't tell if the shield was still engaged or not. He called back to Wit. "Are you harnessed in?"
"I've got a harness on. Heaven knows if I strapped it on right."
"Does it feel like the worst wedgie of your life?" asked Mazer.
"The strap's so far up my crack, it's part of my digestive system," said Wit.
"Then you're wearing it correctly. Pull some slack on the cable and buckle in to one of the jump seats. Once we're in position, I'll open the door and you can get up."
A moment later Wit said, "I'm buckled. And I'm already regretting this."
Mazer started blinking out commands, getting ready for the drop. "Hold on to something. Our forward thrusters will still be open, but once I disengage the grav lens, we'll lose altitude fast. The less time they have to react the better."
He put his hand in the holofield where the virtual knob for the grav lens had appeared. "Here we go!"
He cranked the knob hard to the right, and the HERC dropped like a stone.
The straps on Mazer's lap and chest pulled taut as he was lifted off his seat, his stomach roiling with momentary weightlessness. He gripped the stick tight, breathing evenly, staying calm.
The transport was two hundred meters below them.
One hundred and fifty.
One hundred.
Mazer didn't slow. His stomach was in his throat. He watched the transport with the external cameras, their feeds projected in the holofield in front of him. The transport could react at any moment, he knew. It could spin, flip over, rocket forward to evade them.
Fifty meters.
The transport didn't flinch.
Forty meters.
No movement.
"Brace for impact!" said Mazer.
At ten meters, the transport jinked to the left to avoid a collision, but Mazer reacted instantly, adjusted their approach, and threw down the talons right before impact.
The two aircraft collided violently--the bottom of the HERC slamming into the roof of the transport with a bone-rattling jolt. The HERC would have bounced off had the talons not seized the side of the transport and gripped it tight. Mazer was thrown hard against his harness as alarms went off in the cockpit.
The transport dipped momentarily, then it righted itself and wiggled side to side, trying to shake loose its new cargo. Mazer shifted violently back and forth in his harness, the talons creaking and straining.
Wit called up from the back. "We can't do this if they treat this like a rodeo. Are their shields on?"
Mazer flipped through the exterior camera feeds and saw that the talons were a few inches away from the transport's hull. "Affirmative. Shield's are still up."
"We can't hold on forever," said Wit.
"Then we convince them to turn off their shields. Are you still strapped in?"
"Yes, but what you are planning? I've had enough aerial maneuvers."
"Last one," said Mazer.
He shut off the forward thrusters. At once he felt the increased drag and decreased velocity. Now they were dead weight. The transport was pulling them through the air, the HERC held in place by the biting grip of the talons, like a spider clinging to the back of a sparrow. Mazer reached into the holofield and rotated the HERC's two jet engines: one ninety degrees to the right, the other ninety degrees to the left. Now both intakes pointed inward, perpendicular to their flight direction.
"We're going to roll. Hang on."
Mazer tapped the throttle on the left engine, and the sideways thrust put the HERC and transport into a barrel roll, rotating them 180 degrees. Now the HERC was upside down, with the transport upside down and above them. Mazer equalized the thrust on the two engines so they exerted thrust in opposite directions and held the HERC in that position.
"Get ready," said Mazer. "If I'm right, they'll deactivate their shields any moment now."
"We're upside down!" said Wit.
"The plan's the same. I open the hole in the floor, now the ceiling, you cut through and pop in grenades."
"They'll deactivate their shields because they're upside down?" Wit shouted.
"No, they'll deactivate because I'm taking away their gravity."
Mazer rotated the direction of the grav lenses 180 degrees and switched it to full power. Whenever the HERC flew upright, everything above it had less gravity because it deflected the gravity waves from Earth. Now that they were inverted, he had to flip the lenses to achieve the same effect. It also meant the grav lens could once again keep them aloft.
He imagined what was happening inside the transport, with the Formics suddenly experiencing less gravity. Were they strapped down? Were they standing in the cabin? Either way, he'd give them a shake and return the favor. He tapped the two throttles back and forth, rocking the transport from side to side.
The Formics didn't disappoint. Suddenly the HERC flew backward and then caught itself at the rear of the transport, jolting Mazer violently. For a terrifying instant he thought they had been hit with something. Then he realized that the Formics had disengaged their shields and the HERC's talons had clung to nothing for a fraction of a second until they had pinched inward and gripped the hull.
"Shields are down!" Mazer shouted. "Opening door."
The door in the floor of the cabin opened, filling the HERC with the roar of the wind. Mazer watched in his helmet feed as Wit moved to the hole, reached upward with the laser, and cut into the transport's hull.
It was going to work, Mazer thought. It was a ridiculous, half-baked idea, but it was going to work.
Then he saw the Formics.
There were three of them--there in front of him, outside the windshield, clinging to the hull of their transport, flat on their stomachs, looking right at him. They wore gloves on the end of their appendages shaped like flat discs that clung to the surface of their ship. Magnets perhaps.
They scurried forward, rushing toward him, and Mazer saw that his initial assessment was wrong. Only four of their appendages clung to the transport. The other pair held a weapon, short and cylindrical like a dirty metal jar.
One of the Formics rose up and fired. A glob of thick mucus shot forth and splattered against the windshield in front of the copilot's seat, creating a circle of goo half a meter in diameter. Inside the goo was a paper-thin, symmetrical weblike membrane--like a delicately crocheted doily.
The membrane flashed with white light, and the windshield exploded, showering Mazer with tiny shards of glass. Pain hit Mazer, hot and searing, and his HUD started flashing a warning. There were holes in his suit.
The Formics rushed forward, surging for the cockpit.
Mazer had his pistol up in his hands an instant later, firing.
The head of the lead Formic snapped back and its body went limp, still clinging to the hull. The other Formics were undeterred. They scurried forward with unnatural speed. Mazer shot one in the throat and the second in the arm. The latter kept coming, its arm half severed. Mazer put three more rounds in its chest as it tried to crawl into the cockpit, finally killing it.
But that was only the first wave.
Four more were coming, all of them scurrying down the transport with an even greater sense of urgency. One of them fired. The doily glob struck the front of the HERC beneath the windshield. Mazer didn't see where it landed exactly, but the explosion followed an instant later, and then everything went wrong.
Alarms. Smoke. Vibrations. Spots of light twinkling in his vision. A garble of sounds swir
led in his head; one moment they were a thousand miles away; a half second later they were deafening. He couldn't see, couldn't think, couldn't make sense of any of it. It was as if the world had been thrown inside a rattle and shaken vigorously.
His vision cleared. He blinked, shook his head. His ears were ringing.
Where was he?
The HERC.
Something was wrong with the HERC. Why was he upside down?
The pistol. He needed the pistol. He looked at his hands and found them empty.
Something hit him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. It fell to the ceiling in front of him. A Formic. Heavy and hairy, its limbs tangled and scrabbling for purchase, furious, desperate, flopping around in the tight space as it tried to right itself. Mazer couldn't breath. His chest was empty, his diaphragm flat. All the blood had rushed to his head. He sucked in air, filling his lungs.
The Formic got its footing and came at him, its maw biting at the hard plastic of his visor. Two of its hands--still in their disc-shaped gloves--pounded him, hitting him like fist-sized balls of lead. His shoulders, helmet, chest, arms. Mazer grabbed the creature's forelimbs to try to wrestle it away, but the Formic, despite its size, was as strong as he was.
He almost didn't notice the weapon in its secondary hands, compact and gleaming, aimed at his center mass. Mazer only had time to swat it to the side. The barrel swung wide, and when it discharged, the glob fired out the windshield, hit the transport near its nose, and exploded outward.
Mazer was thrown against his seat. The Formic slammed into him again. Everything started to spin. Outside the windshield the world flashed past like an amusement ride. Earth, sky, earth, sky. He had no sense of direction, no idea what was up and down anymore. He heard a voice. Calm and clear. A woman's, speaking in Chinese. Pleasant but insistent. What was it? Who was she?
It was the HERC's AI, he realized, calmly reading off a litany of system failures.
Mazer pushed the Formic's limp body off him. A shard of shrapnel protruded from its back.
He steadied himself against the wall. His equilibrium was shot. He was going to be sick.
"Get ready," shouted Wit.
For a moment the words meant nothing to him. Get ready? Then it came him. Wit. The hole. The grenades. His asinine, half-baked plan. They were still connected to the transport, both ships spinning and plummeting together.
"Hole is cut," shouted Wit. "I'm punching through."
There was a clang and then Mazer heard three deep pops in quick succession. Thoop thoop thoop.