Earth unavare (the first formic war) Read online

  “Please wear your helmets and visors at all times. You have five hours to deliver me to the safe house.” Wit donned his own helmet and tightened the chinstrap. “Begin.”

  The men immediately moved into action, putting on their helmets and forming a perimeter around Wit with their backs to him.

  “Please kneel down, sir,” said one of the men.

  Wit took a knee, hiding himself behind the circle of soldiers.

  Mazer had hung back and was now snapping cartridges into the rifles and tossing them to the soldier in the perimeter nearest him. That man passed two rifles to his left and one to his right until every man in the circle was armed.

  Wit was impressed. The whole maneuver had taken only a few seconds, and the men had reacted smoothly without speaking to one another, as if this had been a drill they had run hundreds of times.

  Shots from the trees to the north pegged into the dirt around them. Intentional misses. Something to get the blood up.

  Rough hands lifted Wit to his feet, and the men retreated to the south tree line, maintaining a defensive wall around Wit. One of the New Zealanders laid down cover fire, having set his P87 to three-round bursts. Mazer grabbed three rucksacks and followed. The men set up a defensive position in the trees and emptied one of the rucksacks. Mazer found the coordinates and compass and mapped out a route.

  Once their destination was known and they felt safe from enemy fire, the real discussion began. Everything was considered. There was a sniper to the north. There were two rucksacks still in the field. The three rucksacks they had recovered all had the same equipment, so they weren’t likely to find anything new in the other two sacks. They had limited ammunition. The forests narrowed at some spots, which were ideal locations for an ambush. They had water, yes, but no food. And the clock was ticking.

  Wit noted how each of the men spoke calmly and intelligently, pointing out potential dangers or possible alterations to their route. A few of the suggestions Wit hadn’t considered, and he was pleased to see that the others recognized the wisdom of these comments. No one tried to talk over anyone else, and each of them was humble enough to recognize an idea better than their own.

  All of them were aware that Wit was watching them, of course. They knew that this moment was as important as any action they would undertake along the way. And yet it was clear to Wit that none of them was trying to impress him. This was how they had been trained to act. Orderly, efficiently, cohesively, and without ego.

  Mazer Rackham turned to Wit. “Are you a soldier, sir, as well as a diplomat in this exercise? Meaning, for the purpose of our exercise, do you know how to fire this weapon?”

  “Yes I do.”

  “And will you use it to defend yourself to the best of your ability?”

  “Yes I will.”

  Mazer immediately surrendered his rifle to Wit.

  A second soldier spoke up. “Sir, as a diplomat familiar with this hostile scenario, do you have any intel about the men seeking to harm you?”

  Wit smiled. Normal soldiers would treat Wit as nothing more than a warm body to pull along. Pumping him for information would be against the “rules.” These men knew better. “I know our enemy well,” said Wit. “Both their skills and their tactics.”

  The questions came fast. How many men? What are their strengths? What weapons do they possess? Where might they take positions? How are they communicating?

  Twice the group picked up and moved their location, never staying in one spot for long. When the questions were exhausted they modified their route and made preparations to move. The first objective was to retrieve the last two rucksacks.

  Rather than venture into the open, three of the men spent half an hour hunting down the sniper, who had hid himself in a tree. The sniper put up little resistance. Once he had been spotted, he allowed himself to be shot, and his dampening suit glowed red.

  The New Zealanders retrieved the last two sacks and then, with Wit, moved east toward the safe house. They advanced with two men far out front, sweeping ahead of them. Two others protected Wit in the middle-though one of these, Mazer Rackham, was now unarmed. The last man took up the rear.

  The ambush came two kilometers later.

  Two of the New Zealanders went down, their bodies twitching, before any of the others had returned fire. The MOPs were all around them, in trees, behind logs, tucked in foxholes.

  Wit fired three shots, and three dampening suits glowed red in the trees. Two more shots, and two foxholes became quiet. The remaining New Zealanders took out another three MOPs before pulling Wit away to the south. Mazer Rackham, Wit noticed, had retrieved a weapon from one of the fallen soldiers. Spider rounds pinged into the trees and undergrowth around them.

  Seventy meters later, they were clear, hustling toward a ravine.

  They moved quickly, taking a circuitous route up the ravine, staying close and moving cautiously. Despite the weight of the rucksacks and the rush of adrenaline from the firefight, no one seemed winded.

  “Why did you give me your weapon?” Wit asked Mazer. “By arming me, you put me further into the fight. You drew more fire to me since I was now a threat to our enemy as well as a target.”

  “They were going to be shooting at you anyway, sir. And after weighing the advantages, after considering all we had to gain by arming you, I took that risk.”

  “What advantages?”

  “You’re more familiar with our pursuers. You’re a decorated and skilled soldier, so you’ll be at least as vigilant as I am. You also know our ammunition better than I do, so you’re more familiar with its velocity and other targeting considerations. You also intimately know the weapon and all of its capabilities. I don’t. Which means you’re probably a better shot than I am. Considering how you performed back there, I see that I was right. Most importantly, you have the capacity to defend yourself. In the chaos of a fight, we may not see all the threats to you. If something escapes our notice, you have the ability to eliminate that threat. Our mission is not to survive, sir. Our mission is to get you to the safe house. If you’re armed, you might be able to reach it even if the rest of us are dead.”

  Wit stopped moving. “Halt.”

  The three men stopped.

  “We should keep moving, sir,” said one of the other soldiers. “The safe house is only two kilometers away, and our position has been compromised.”

  “There is no safe house,” said Wit. “It’s an empty field. We’ve gone far enough.”

  “The exercise is over?”

  “Yes, it is. Come with me, gentlemen.” Wit entered a command on his handheld.

  Five minutes later they were down from the ravine, where a dozen MOPs soldiers were waiting. The two New Zealanders who had been shot in the ambush were there as well, visibly disappointed, certain they had failed.

  “Congratulations, gentlemen,” said Wit. “All five of you have passed this preliminary exercise. My objective was to witness how you functioned as a team, and you did not disappoint. Your actions were especially impressive considering that each of you were handpicked from different units and had never worked together before. This suggests to me that you could easily be integrated into our team should you pass our screening. I should forewarn you, however. The screening is difficult. If any of you have had second thoughts and would rather not participate, now’s the time to say so.”

  No one spoke.

  “Very well,” said Wit. “As soon as you wake up, we’ll begin.”

  One of the New Zealander’s looked confused. “Wake up, sir?”

  Five MOPs raised handguns and shot the five New Zealanders with tranquilizers. The New Zealanders looked surprised. Then their eyes rolled back and they dropped.

  Wit sat in the back of a rented semitrailer truck, heading northwest on Route 1 into Auckland. The trailer was long and wide and well ventilated, with more than enough room for the five men sleeping on stretchers.

  Wit didn’t particularly enjoy shooting men with tranquilizers. Especially s
killed and capable soldiers who had served their country well. Yet Wit knew it was a necessity. He needed men who were utterly ruthless in the execution of their duty, and the screening, as ugly as it was, as inhumane as it was, measured exactly what Wit needed to know.

  A short Filipino soldier named Calinga walked up the line of stretchers, pausing at each one to check the men’s vitals. When he finished he sat beside Wit and gestured to the stretchers. “Who do you think will pass?”

  “All of them, I hope. We need a lot more than five.”

  “My money is on Mazer Rackham. The one who gave you his gun.”

  “Surrendering your weapon is hardly the trait of a supersoldier, Calinga.”

  “Under the circumstances I thought it smart.”

  “Would you ever give up your weapon?”

  Calinga shrugged. “Depends. If it meant I got a better, more powerful weapon in return, one that was better suited to the task at hand, then absolutely. I’d surrender that puppy in a heartbeat. And that’s what Rackham did. By giving you his weapon, he got a bigger, more powerful weapon in return. You. He knew that you with his weapon was better than him with the same weapon. And it paid off. You took out several men, including me. And I don’t go down easily.”

  “I don’t need me to take out the enemy. I need men who can take out the enemy without my assistance.”

  “You need men who can think unconventionally and do things that traditional soldiers would never consider. Him giving you his weapon seems like out-of-box thinking to me.”

  “It’s not enough to think outside the box,” said Wit. “We need men to tear the box to shreds and burn it.”

  “So he should have broken your gun into tiny pieces and set it on fire?”

  “I’m not criticizing his decision,” said Wit. “Under the circumstances it might have been the smartest course of action. But it would have been better if he had kept the weapon and taken out all those men himself instead of having me do it for him. Besides, knowing what and where to attack is far more important than knowing how to attack.”

  “But he was humble enough to realize that he wasn’t as good as you. That has to count for something. I’ve read the guy’s file. He’s young, but he has a head on his shoulders.”

  “They all have heads on their shoulders,” said Wit. “Although a headless army would certainly intimidate the enemy. What would we call ourselves, ‘The Sleepy Hollow Squad’?”

  “‘The Guillotined Gang,’” said Calinga.

  The noise outside the truck increased as they got closer into Auckland and traffic picked up. They exited the highway north of town and moved west toward the shipyards. After a series of stops and starts, the truck parked. Wit heard the driver and passenger doors open, and then the rear door of the trailer slid up. Two MOPs soldiers in civvies were standing outside.

  The semi was parked inside an abandoned warehouse on the waterfront. Wit had paid cash to rent it for the month, but he hadn’t bothered with any of the utilities. Other than a row of small generators humming quietly in the corner, the warehouse was empty and quiet.

  One of the MOPs soldiers spoke with a British accent. “How was it riding in the back with the stiffs, Captain?”

  “They’re not dead, Deen,” said Wit. “They’re sleeping.”

  “When they wake up, they might wish they were dead,” said Deen, laughing.

  “Anyone who wakes up and sees your face, Deen, will think he has died,” said Calinga. “And it won’t be heaven.”

  “You’re a bucket a laughs today, Cali,” said Deen.

  Deen hit a button in the rear of the truck. The wheels spread farther apart, and the bed of the truck lowered to the ground. He and the other MOP, an Israeli named Averbach, brought the stretchers out onto the warehouse floor. While Wit checked the candidates’ vitals one last time, Deen and Averbach changed into full combat gear. Black body armor, boots, helmet, sidearms, assault rifles. When they were finished, they looked impenetrable.

  “We all set?” asked Wit.

  “The room’s prepped and ready,” said Averbach. “You tell us who’s first, and we’ll get them in position.”

  Wit pointed. “That one. Mazer Rackham.”

  Deen and Averbach each took one side of the stretcher and pushed it toward the administrative offices on the far side of the warehouse. Wit followed. Calinga stayed behind with the other stretchers.

  They pushed Mazer through a series of doors until they reached the room designated for the screenings. It was roughly ten meters square, probably an old conference room. No windows or furniture. Bare walls. One door. High ceiling. Like a cell, only for white-collar office workers.

  Deen and Averbach pushed the stretcher to the middle of the room, pulled the straps free, and then lifted Mazer off the stretcher and gently laid him on the floor.

  Wit removed a metallic crown from the bag he was carrying and placed it on Mazer’s forehead. The crown had three bands: two that wrapped around the side of Mazer’s head, and a third that went up over the top and extended three-fourths of the way to the back. Wit entered a code on the front of the crown and then lifted Mazer’s head while the two bands on the sides extended to each other and locked together in the back, securing the crown to Mazer’s head. Wit gave the crown a tug to make sure it was tight. Mazer would likely get a migraine from the pressure, but that was the least of his problems. Wit then pulled an injection dot from his bag. The dot was a small coin-sized disc with adhesive on the back. Wit stuck the dot atop the veins in the bend of Mazer’s arm, then stood up and turned to Deen and Averbach. “You guys ready?”

  The soldiers nodded and took their positions inside the room, guarding the door. Wit placed a flat holopad on the floor and extended two slender vertical posts from the back corners. He then retrieved his bag and pushed the stretcher out into the hall, closing the door behind him. Moving quickly, he went to a small office three doors down, where an identical holopad was up and ready. Wit turned on a monitor, and an image of Mazer Rackham asleep on the floor flickered on-screen. There were Deen and Averbach, rifles slung over their shoulders, on either side of the door, blocking any escape.

  Wit leaned forward and put his face into the holospace above the holopad. On the monitor, a hologram of Wit’s head appeared above the holopad on the floor beside Mazer, as if a ghost one floor down was poking his head up through the floor for a look around.

  Wit entered a command on his handheld, and in the other room, the injection dot initiated. A tiny needle pierced Mazer’s vein and injected the drug to counter the tranquilizer. Mazer blinked his eyes open. Two seconds later he was up, bent low in a crouched position, with one hand on the ground in front of him, helping him maintain his balance. It looked like a weak, defenseless position, but Wit knew better. Mazer was set to spring upward and attack. For a moment, Wit thought Mazer would strike then and end the screening. But then Mazer ripped the injection dot from his arm and tossed it aside, still blinking his eyes and forcing himself to wake.

  Wit’s hologram spoke. “Lieutenant Rackham, should you ever be captured, there is a high probability that you would be tortured for information. The device you’re wearing on your head directly stimulates various brain areas. With it, I can make you experience agonizing pain, see blinding light that you can’t shut out, or feel like you need to pee so bad your gut will explode. It’s not pleasant. If you give me the information I want, however, I will stop the pain. Let’s complicate matters further by saying the information I seek would likely compromise fellow members of your unit and most certainly lead to their deaths. Now, let’s pretend the information I want is the name of your first pet as a child. Tell me that name now or suffer the consequences.”

  Mazer smiled. “Seriously? Torture? That’s your special screening? I’m surprised, Captain. I was anticipating something a little more innovative.”

  A light on the front of Mazer’s crown blinked, and Mazer threw back his head and screamed. His whole body buckled, and he crumpled to the flo
or, stunned. He lay there trying to catch his breath.

  Wit’s holo remained cool and impassive. “On a pain scale of one to ten, Mazer, with ten being the most painful, the shock I just gave you was a five. And that was only a two-second burst. I am prepared to go much higher and for much longer should you refuse to cooperate. Now, the name of your pet please.”

  Mazer got his hands under him and slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. He shook his head, got to his feet, and began doing jumping jacks.

  “Calisthenics will hardly appease me, Mazer. Tell me the animal’s name now.”

  Mazer began singing a marching song as he continued with the jumping jacks, something ribald and silly, no doubt learned in the SAS. Wit allowed him to finish the first verse simply because he found it entertaining, then he hit Mazer with another burst and dropped the man to his knees. Mazer pressed the palms of his hands to his closed eyes, gritting his teeth.

  Wit hated doing it. The whole process made him sick. But he needed men resourceful enough to take any situation and immediately see their own way out of it. “Your eyes believe you’re staring straight into the sun, Mazer. They’re begging you to stop this useless resistance and surrender the information I want. Tell me the name, and I will stop.”

  Eyes clenched shut, muscles tight, Mazer got back to his feet and continued with the jumping jacks, though with far less fervor and coordination.

  “All right,” said Wit. “We’ll come back to the pet. Let’s try another one. Your mother’s maiden name. Give me that. Surely you remember your mother’s maiden name.”

  Mazer responded by counting his jumping jacks aloud.

  “I am beginning to lose my patience, Mazer. This is not difficult. Surrender the information or I will break you.”

  Mazer’s counting grew louder, almost a shout.

  The shout became a scream.

  Mazer went down, writhing, every muscle taught, back arched, fingers and hands curled awkwardly, his face twisted in a rictus of agony.

  Wit released the pain and paused, giving Mazer a chance to move. Mazer didn’t.