Wit returned to the Rhinos. Calinga and the rest of the men had moved the crowd upwind. The panic had subsided. Now the people were mourning. Fifty-four people were dead, most of them had been killed by the mist, though a few had died in the rush of the crowd.
“Now what do we do?” said Calinga. “These people are asking for a ride north to the nearest city. Some of their cars can’t be driven anymore. We obviously can’t give everyone a lift. The moment we start carrying people north, every other car we passed on the way down here is going to stop us and ask that we do the same for them. And we can’t fit all these people anyway, not unless we’re going to pile them on top of the Rhinos and take five trips.”
“Tell the crowd everything you’ve told me,” said Wit. “Explain that we’re moving south, not north. We’re going toward the Formics, not away from them. Tell them they’ll move much faster if they help each other. We’ll use the Rhinos to clear the wrecked vehicles and open up the highway. Those who have a functioning vehicle should make room for those who don’t.”
“What about the bodies?” asked Calinga.
“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 smoke, 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.