Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

looked down inside. At the bottom, clumped together in a heap was a mass of alien bodies, all of them armed with the same defoliant canisters on their backs. “It’s a troop carrier. It’s hard to get an exact count of how many creatures are in here. The bodies are all clumped together. I’m going to guess nine.”
    Mazer did the math in his head. He wasn’t sure how many troop carriers had come out of the lander, but it had to have been at least a hundred and maybe double that. If each of them were filled with ten troops armed with defoliants, the casualty count to the Chinese could be enormous, to say nothing of the ecological implications.
    One of the aliens moved, still alive. Mazer emptied his gun into it.
    The pile went still.
    He knelt down, took out his laser cutter, and began slicing away at a corner of the troop carrier, trying to cut a piece of the metal off for analysis. The laser, which normally sliced through steel with ease, cut slowly, having a hard time with the metal. Mazer had hoped for a larger piece, but the pace of the cut prompted him to settle for a tiny piece no bigger than a coin. He blew on it, letting the metal cool, then dropped it into a small container at his hip. Then he stepped off the door and tried to push it forward back into place, hoping to seal the aircraft closed and thus lock the chemical inside. The door didn’t move. He briefly looked inside for a lever or switch or button but saw none.
    He lowered himself from the troop carrier and ran for the HERC.
    He stepped up onto the landing skid and grabbed a handhold. “Take us up,” he told Reinhardt. “Directly over the dead grass.”
    The HERC rose.
    With his free hand, Mazer dug under the dash until he found the flare gun. There were several signal flares attached to its base. He would have preferred another method, a more reliable incendiary that was easier to control—flares were so unpredictable—but it was all he had and he didn’t want to get any closer to the dead grass. He loaded a flare and fired it straight down into the black patch of grass. The flare bounced once and ricocheted off to the side, landing a distance away, spinning like a firework in a patch of perfectly healthy grass, spewing sparks and flame.
    Mazer loaded another flare and tried again. This time the flare hit the ground and spun wildly in place, spewing sparks in every direction before it shot off elsewhere. It wasn’t as accurate as Mazer had hoped, but it was enough; the dead grass caught the flames and began to burn.
    Mazer turned to Reinhardt. “Find us a flat surface nearby, preferably away from vegetation. A road maybe. Fast.”
    The HERC banked east. Mazer scanned the skies. The troop carriers and smaller aircraft were elsewhere, moving away from them.
    Reinhardt brought the HERC down onto a dirt road, the first one Mazer had seen in a while.
    Mazer hopped out, removed his helmet, and set it on the ground. “Patu and Fatani, we need to strip down. Whatever was exposed to the air, whatever may have come in contact with the defoliant, starting with your fatigues. Dump them here in a pile. Don’t let your clothes touch another part of your skin or anything inside the HERC, if it can be avoided. Keep your boots.”
    Mazer undressed quickly, keeping on his undershirt, shorts, and socks. He left his fatigues in the dirt. Fatani and Patu stripped down as well. Mazer then removed a first-aid kit from under his seat and took out a bottle of surgical antiseptic. He poured it into Patu and Fatani’s cupped hands and told them to wash their hands and neck thoroughly. Mazer then did the same. The liquid was cold and brown and smelled like a hospital. When they finished they used gauze loaded with the antiseptic to wipe down their helmets, boots, and weapons.
    Mazer then grabbed another of the flares and pulled the igniter pin. The end of the flare spewed hot sparks. Mazer bent down and set the sparks to the clothes. They caught fire and burned. He tossed the flare into a nearby rice paddy, where it sizzled and extinguished.
    “Now what?” said Reinhardt. “We’ve got no one on the radio. No extra clothes. Barely any weapons.”
    “We need extra clothing,” said Mazer. “More of our skin is exposed now. And there could be hundreds of troops out there putting that mist in the air. We need to cover up.”
    “We need to reassess what the hell we’re doing out here,” said Reinhardt. “We’re not equipped for aerial combat, Mazer.