An explosion rocked the building. Krajenar presumed it was Harec setting off a distraction charge to help him gain some distance from the approaching soldiers. And while Harec and the remaining team members moved farther away, Blue Comet and Krajenar’s electricity spiraled deeper into the Sekkalan network.
Her vision faded into blackness. She felt adrift again, and then a tugging sensation. A pinpoint of white light appeared at the center of the darkness. It drew her in, but the light remained so small.
Around her, as if swirling ahead behind shadows, code strings and data sets raced by. Looking down for her body, she saw nothing but the same, and felt unafraid. She became aware that Blue Comet and her had merged, becoming one in the same. Together, they navigated as coded vengeance, a virus of many forms whose purpose was to dig, strip, spy, analyze, wreck, pillage, and defeat.
“Here we come, you monsters.”
Another door near the coffins shattered. Apparatus-encrusted faces emerged. The mottled skin of the creatures flickered as photosynthetic nanites registered the low light inside the bay. The Sekkalans stepped forward, rifles raised. They fired, ripping apart the body of the Mokisiaan spy.
Ahead, the pinpoint of light grew and swept Krajenar along.
She felt no pain, only intense excitement and curiosity.
She could not wait to find out what was on the other side.
Epilogue
Lizard Men
**EXEC**LEVEL I DISSEM**ONLY**
Sensitive Compartmentalized Intelligence
Mineral 99
The latest data exploitation and analysis from my colleagues in the Helaen system indicate multiple urgent Mineral 99 communiques referenced attacks on their ships in space from “blue-chested devils” using “enhanced” armor and projectiles laced with “God dust.” Finding a chemical match to the God dust apparently became a priority, and they ordered geological surveys of any planets they encountered outside of their home system.
Mineral 99
Sensitive Compartmentalized Intelligence
**EXEC**LEVEL I DISSEM**ONLY**
Eigil Damgaard, Chief Archeologist
Science, Research, and Development Branch
Frontier Combine Metallurgical Enterprise
Classified Internal Communication, 2 August 2312
<> <>
Blue lightning sizzled over the heads of the terrified, warm-blooded prey, trapping them in ever tightening topography. Hovering just above the hot desert, sky ships spewed fire from their heat weapons and then delivered creatures—cold-blooded, red-chested, reptilian hunters—onto the ground. To Earth’s humans of 15,000 B.C., the sky ships looked like giant, fire-breathing, smoke-spewing tortoises.
The creatures set loose by the sky ships flicked their forked tongues. Their bodies absorbed the desert heat, accelerating their metabolisms. With heightened speed, the killers overwhelmed and surrounded the fleeing humans. Although both humanoid, the internal differences of both species were vast. Not the internal organs that performed vital functions to sustain their existence, but their blood differences—cravings—made them alien to each other.
The “lizard men,” as the ancient humans called the lethal intruders, didn’t eat their quarry’s flesh. Instead, they seemed to hunger for their life energy, their inner souls. The magical black apparatus some of the hunters harnessed onto their backs disabled the humans in an invisible way. The device had tentacle arms that reached around its carrier like the legs of a large, black insect. The insect’s head attached to the back of the neck of the lizard who wielded it. In the eyes of the ancient humans, victims seized by the black device lost their minds or succumbed to lifelessness.
Sometimes, after the lizard men subdued their victims, a frenzy engulfed them. Violent sexual gratification followed. It didn’t matter if the victim was dead or alive, male or female, the violent ritual ensued.
Most mothers took their own lives before getting too far along. In rare cases, a few babies were born, but these aberrations never lived long. Death at the hands of the mother or from others in the tribe took care of that.
A scarcity of the beasts born out of the ravages managed to survive delivery, but only because their reptilian progenitors stood guard. At best, they protected the thing as an experiment—a research subject—and not as a new addition to the family. No love, no joy. Then they always took it away.
More sky ships corralled the latest herd of human prey into a narrow arroyo. The walls on either side of the dry riverbed grew higher. The red-chested ones, on foot now, chased after the fleeing humans.
Nothing stood in their way.
The black weapon one of the lizard men carried disabled entire groups with its menacing invisible reach. Victims fell. Some of the hunters carried them away to their sky ships. A few humans fought back, but the lizard men cut them down without delay.
An unbridled frenzy ensued.
A small boy, restrained and beaten, witnessed his mother’s rape and murder just steps away from him. They had killed his father earlier. Tears streamed down the boy’s dirty cheeks. Fear and sadness paralyzed him. Evil pinned him down.
From above, a sudden, thunderous disturbance deafened the child. A sky ship roared by overhead.
Ignoring the noise, the boy’s lizard man attacker raised his arm, preparing to hack him to death with his dead father’s stone axe. The boy flinched and shut tight his eyes.
The sound of swift movements, followed by sliding metal, thumps, and death howls, raked his ears.
Tightened grips loosened.
And the boy felt no pain.
He opened his eyes.
A lizard man stood over him, hand outstretched. The boy looked around. Dead monsters laid all around him. He gazed again at the lizard man standing over him. He had a blue chest and held a bloodied bladed weapon. The lizard man tried to speak to him, but the boy did not understand. Still, the child felt no fear. He looked into the blue eyes of the lizard man. They looked like the loving sky above and made him feel safe.
The boy took the lizard man’s hand, and the creature hoisted him upward onto his back, where he slid him beneath a circular disc slung there.
That day, the boy moved swifter than he ever imagined possible.
The End
THE OUTWORLDS:
RESURGENCE
Chapter 1
Demons
December 2312…
On Oeskone, variations of thick wild green jungle foliage surrounded a brown and tan modular complex of buildings and large dual landing pads. Inside her workplace within the depths of that complex, Tatiana Kolesnikov felt out of place on the most remote planet in the Outworlds.
Computer and communication equipment cramped the office, while a small portion of it also functioned as her personal quarters. Sitting at a table adjacent to her narrow bed, Tatiana studied computer data and communication feeds. She glanced at David, her eight-year-old son, who slept on the nearby bed. She managed a smile, but sadness strained it. How could she have brought him here? How could she have left him behind? At least here, she could watch over and protect him. There was no one she trusted enough to do that for her if she had left him behind.
Turning back to multiple computer screens in front of her, Tatiana watched more streams of data. She isolated portions and examined them closer when she or her analysis software detected what looked like a pattern or trend that might tell her something more about the layers of protection guarding CISOS, the Combine Intelligence and Security Operations System.
“You have a beautiful child.”
The sound of his voice dumped a heavy sickness into Tatiana’s gut. On impulse, she wrapped an arm around her waist before twisting around to greet her new “boss.” The full lips of the thirty-year-old single mother turned on a well-practiced, seductive smile that so many men, especially the elderly Abraham Harel, seemed to like. She winked at him and said, “So nice to see you in my bedroom, Mr. Harel.”
Abraham Harel, the Oeskone colony lea
der, sat next to David. He stopped stroking the boy’s straight blond hair, folded his hands on his lap, and then peered at Tatiana with beady dark eyes and a mild grin. With his black goatee beard, he looked like the devil himself.
“Your work excites me,” Harel said. “I know it’s only been a few days, but I wanted to check on your progress and needs.”
Her rich Slavic accent carried the next breathy words forward. “I’m glad I can stimulate your attention.” She leaned back in her chair and held out her hand at the screens of flowing data. The movement accentuated her breasts rising underneath her royal-blue tunic. “I give you the tip of the CISOS iceberg. Soon, we should have our first taste of Combine intelligence reporting.”
Harel’s gaze danced around at the myriad data, but it soon settled instead on Tatiana’s chest. Shifting his attention to her green eyes, he said, “Russia’s greatness produced Joseph Stalin and superior hackers. You can be proud of your heritage.”
“Mr. Harel, outside of my bedroom, I prefer the term, ‘data acquisition and exploitation engineer.’ In here, though, you may call me ‘hacker.’ It will be our dirty little secret.”
Harel leaned forward and caressed Tatiana’s black leather-clad knee. “Oh, Miss Kolesnikov, I am so very glad that I hired you.” David stirred. The old man rose and grinned, narrowing his beady eyes into slits. “You may continue. Please come to me for any reason.” He turned and, navigating around various pieces of electronic equipment and cables, made his way toward the exit.
Tatiana glimpsed a pronounced circular scar on the back of Harel’s neck that protruded above his shirt collar. She grimaced at the sight of it.
“Mama?”
Looking at David, Tatiana smiled despite her sadness. “Yes, my little man?”
“I don’t like—”
Tatiana hushed her son. She gestured with her hands to lower his voice.
David crawled toward his mother and peered up at her from the bed. He whispered. “I don’t like that man. He scares me.”
Lifting David and holding him close eased Tatiana’s aching chest and subdued her rising tears. But the guilt remained. “I promise to keep you safe, and soon, we will go somewhere far from here.” A better life for both us will be our reward, she thought.
David hugged tighter and said, “I promise to keep you safe too.”
<> <>
“The Engineer,” Eagan Rodenmeyer, had never trusted Bancroft in the first place. But Harel had needed someone with parapsychology know-how, and so he rolled the dice. In so doing, the old man got his psychokinesis expert, but one who also happened to work in secret for the Combine. Because of Harel, the Combine had succeeded in penetrating his emergent crusade with Bancroft, their wholly owned spy.
Harel accepted too many risks in Rodenmeyer’s opinion and now mitigation occupied the top of his to-do list. Task oriented, Rodenmeyer had served Harel well, and now the old man’s second-in-command grew aroused in anticipation of a gratifying resolution to the Bancroft matter.
“Where are we going?” Bancroft said. Nervous laughter followed, and then he said, “I’ve never strolled this far from the complex. I have a fear of reptiles that is of biblical proportions.”
Rodenmeyer paused his steps and then turned around to look at the dead man walking behind him. Bancroft ducked and swatted at a Vorte wasp that buzzed around his head. The creature was twice as large as his hands and had sonar capability similar to bats. It dodged the man’s hands and then hummed away.
“Not to worry, Professor,” Rodenmeyer said, tapping the blaster pistol holstered on his right hip. “I’ll take good care of you if we run into any lizards or snakes.”
“That’s very nice of you, Eagan. But that still doesn’t answer my question.”
“It’s a surprise. Mr. Harel asked me to show you a new discovery. He requests your objective opinion, so he doesn’t want me to describe it in advance.”
“A new discovery? How exciting. Yes, yes, let’s go. What are you waiting for?”
Rodenmeyer smiled as he swiveled around. “Right this way then.”
After a few minutes of trudging through the jungle, the sweaty pair arrived at the edge of a circular pit roughly ten meters deep and twenty-five meters wide. Camouflage netting covered most of it. Around it, four posts held electronic equipment that jammed any nosy air or space borne sensors. Concrete covered the pit’s interior sidewalls and the bottom held local flora and fauna.
“It looks like a zoo exhibit,” Bancroft said.
Rodenmeyer ignored the comment and busied himself opening a hatch that led to an enclosed ladder into the pit. “Follow me.” He slithered into the opening and waved at Bancroft to join him. “When you clear the top, press the green button to close the hatch.”
Bancroft held up his finger as if he wanted to ask a question, but Rodenmeyer didn’t give him time to ask it. Instead, he slid down the ladder in a speedy descent. After reaching the bottom, he opened another hatchway into the pit and then stepped out and aside to make room for Bancroft.
“Waiting, Professor.”
“Which button, did you say?”
“The big green one.”
Rodenmeyer heard the familiar metallic clank of the upper hatchway closing followed by the sounds of repetitive footsteps on the ladder. His gratifying moment drew closer. He smiled at the appearance of the children peering out through the palms and ferns in the middle of the pit. One stuck its leathery and scaly leg out in an effort to move forward, but Rodenmeyer held up his hand. The leg withdrew.
The bespectacled Bancroft stumbled into the pit and, after rising, took off his eyeglasses and wiped them with a dingy handkerchief. Rodenmeyer closed the bottom hatchway.
“Now then, Eagan, what is this new discovery? This pit looks of fairly new construction. Hardly what I’d expect at an ancient Angorgal site.”
“Patience, good doctor, patience.” Rodenmeyer whistled and then they emerged one at a time. They walked, upright, bipedal, into view of both men.
Bancroft stood motionless, mouth agape, eyes wide open.
“Well, Professor, what do you think?”
“What the…? They are like…upright, short-snouted Komodo dragons…with bright red chests…”
Rodenmeyer nodded, and then said, “Not bad, not bad.” He walked forward and the seven creatures moved toward him, their forked tongues flicking the air. About half his height, the erect anthropoid lizards encircled him. He nodded at one. It took a few more steps and then leaned in and hugged him.
“Children need love, Professor.”
“Children? Eagan, should we be in here?”
“Especially young ones like these.”
The nervous laughter squeaked out again. “Young? How old are they?”
“This group is about five years old. They still have a lot of growing to do. They’ll make fine soldiers someday.”
“Soldiers? Eagan…”
“Just like their older siblings and cousins.” By this time, all of the child lizards had formed up in a line behind Rodenmeyer. “You see. Already they drill.”
Bancroft started a slow shuffle backwards. “I think I’m ready to leave now. I’ve seen enough.”
“But for now, they are children. And you know what children need in addition to love, Professor?”
“No…I don’t…I would like to go now.” He turned and scampered toward the lower hatchway.
“They need nourishment. They need to EAT!”
The lizards surged forward, running on their two legs, bearing sharp fangs and claws. Bancroft screamed and fumbled at the hatchway’s panel. The first creatures to grasp him with their clawed hands tore into his body, spinning it beneath his head before they severed it. Rodenmeyer grinned as the head rolled aside and one of the creatures kicked it away. The hungry children yanked at Bancroft’s twisted, disemboweled body. As they slashed into him, his blood splattered across their red chests. One lizard tore off Bancroft’s left arm and held it over his head like a trophy. He
grunted and hissed.
“Eat well, children.”
A doorway in the nearby concrete wall slid open and Abraham Harel stepped out from a shadowy corridor. He smiled at what he saw in the pit. “Doctor Bancroft, I presume?”
“What’s left of him. Where were you earlier?”
“I visited Miss Kolesnikov in her quarters. Don’t be jealous.”
“Another outsider, Abraham.”
“You were an outsider once. Besides, we need her talents.”
“Just like we needed Bancroft’s? No telling what the Combine knows about us now.”
“All the more why we need Miss Kolesnikov. Besides, she is money-motivated. Wants to make a better life for herself. We have met, and probably exceeded, her price for loyalty.”
“I think you just want her around for other reasons.”
“Like I said, don’t be jealous. Come, let’s take the tunnel back to the compound. The sun is much too warm right now.”
The two colony leaders entered the corridor, which soon gave way to a long, rocky tunnel.
“Eagan, now that the Bancroft matter is settled, I want your only priority to be the ship.”
“A test flight is forthcoming.”
“And its stealth protocols? Its EMP cannon?”
“Both functioning sporadically.”
Harel rubbed the back of his neck. “We can’t continue to rely on the single harness for protection.”
“Train others,” Rodenmeyer said, noticing Harel’s discomfort.
“They must show aptitude first. Not all are as well focused as you.” He paused and sighed. “I fear our enemies are closing in. We must get the ship in proper order.”
“It will be ready.”
“A weapons and chemical shipment is also due to arrive any day now from Earth—”
“Abraham.”
“But I’ll delegate its details to others with fewer priorities to handle when it arrives.”
“Our typical logistics partners?”
“Yes.”
“Will they have the thermonukes?”
“As much as this shipment cost, they better.”
War Torrent Page 11
