Invasion Force (The Human Chronicles Saga Book 21)

by T. R. Harris

  “The Humans and Expansion troops arrived about twenty minutes after the Nuoreans,” Riyad reported. “They were surprised to see each other, but so far haven’t fired on each another—just us! As far as our Human brothers go, they have The Strand staked out. There’s about twenty-five of them. They came over in Zodiacs from the mainland.”

  Adam had named the half-mile long stretch of pure white sand on the south side of the island The Strand, after the strip of land that connects Imperial Beach to Coronado Island in San Diego Bay. Back in the day, the SEALS knew the place intimately, using the beaches of the original Strand for training—and torture—of recruits. Memories of the cold morning surf sent shivers down Adam’s spine.

  “That leaves the Nuoreans. What the hell are they doing here?”

  The aliens from Andromeda were holded up on a small beach bordered by a split of land to the west and a rocky crag to the east. Adam called it The Wedge, after the infamous strip of sand at the south end of Balboa Island in Newport Beach. Prevailing winds and currents forced waves to climb to impressive heights before crashing down on the small strip of beach—and fearless body surfers—next to a long, rocky jetty extending out into the Pacific. Like its namesake, this small beach received the most surf on the island and was the most-dangerous to tread. The Nuoreans had seen it as the closest approach to the landing field and the hangar. But now, between the surf and Kaylor and Jym shooting at them from a side door in the hangar, the Nuoreans were getting battered.

  “Yeah, speaking of the Nuoreans, you’re going to love this,” Riyad began. “They came down first and made an announcement over a loudspeaker.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said they are here for the trans-dimension space vehicle. But then they went on to explain how they needed the ship to make contact with Andromeda—they called it the Suponac—so they can be rescued.”

  Adam pursed his lips. “I see. A little too much information? I suppose after hearing their perfectly good rationale for wanting the ship, you agreed to turn it over to them?”

  “I might have…if I hadn’t shot the speaker through the forehead with a round from an M-80 air-cooled, semi-automatic assault rifle.”

  Adam shook his head. “Is that any way to engage in interspecies diplomacy and goodwill.”

  “Bite me!”

  The two Humans ducked behind the wall when bullets began to zing around them. The Expansion troops had their new ballistic weapons out and were taking potshots at them. They had a better angle past the bow of the Defiant. The Humans to the south had their aim completely blocked by the TD-ship, and they weren’t taking any chances hitting the thing. They’d come too far to damage it now.

  But they also wouldn’t sit idle much longer. Sooner or later they would rush the ship and attempt to take control.

  Adam thought of his next move. His team of ATD-equipped defenders had done a good job of confounding the attackers by disabling their flash weapons, but that stalemate was rapidly coming to an end. The Nuoreans, knowing now that the TD-ship was not in either the hangar or the Nautilus, were moving up the beach. There were more of them than any group, around fifty. Nuorean-built flash weapons couldn’t be overcome by the ATDs, so they were sending dozens of bolts into the hangar where Kaylor and Jym were hiding. Adam wasn’t ready to start killing Humans, or even Expansion troops….but he had no qualms about wasting some Nuoreans, especially when it could save the lives of his two alien friends.

  “Keep the others off my back,” he said to Riyad. “I’m going after the Nuoreans.”

  “Alone?

  Adam smiled before tapping his forward and then the area below his right armpit. “Yep, just me and my little friends.”

  Adam slipped past the others, moving to his left and the east side of the building. Scanning the expanse of sand between him and the first Nuoreans, he took a deep breath and was rewarded with a surge of mutant super-strength. He ran, faster than any observer could comprehend, and smashed into a group of five aliens startled by his sudden arrival.

  They were knocked off their feet like bowling pins. Some dropped their flash weapons, yet it was the one who dropped his ressnel—his fighting sword—that Adam was most interested in. He scooped up the fallen weapon and slashed out, slicing deep cuts in the chests of two of the aliens on the sand. A third received a straight thrust through his upper torso.

  The other two were getting to their feet. Adam’s attack had happened so fast that the Nuoreans had no idea what hit them. Then they saw Adam standing over the bloody bodies of three of their comrades. Anger flare in their eyes—until the point they realized Adam had sliced completely through both their necks with one strong swipe of the ressnel. There wasn’t much fire in their eyes when their heads toppled over and fell to the sand.

  Flash bolts were exploding around him, as other nearby Nuoreans noticed his attack. Fortunately, the aliens weren’t very good shots; they never used flash weapons in the arena.

  With the ressnel still in his hand, he conjured up a thin cushion of air under his feet and a swirling column of sand-filled wind around his body. He rose off the beach, sweeping only a couple of feet over the heads of the confused Nuoreans. As he flew, he reached down with his sword and severed the heads of a dozen aliens, the blood spray becoming caught up in the tornadic column of air around him. In seconds, his entire body was covered in blood…alien blood, the best kind.

  The Nuoreans were panicking and for a variety of reasons. First, they had Jym and Kaylor picking them off as they stood flatfooted in the open trying to come to grips with the impossible events taking place around them. Secondly, Adam was still sweeping over their positions, whacking off heads and laughing as he did so. Many hesitated advancing farther towards the hangar. Others turned back to the beach and their waiting boats.

  That’s when Adam soared higher into the air, and with a wave of his right hand, sent a class-five hurricane force wall of wind racing over the beach. All five boats that had delivered the Nuoreans to the island were caught up in the torrent and thrown out to sea, along with ten or more of the aliens. Adam finished off the others a few seconds later.

  Caught up in the blood-lust of the moment, Adam swept next across the island to the Expansion troops. Everyone—including Adam’s team—stood stunned and overwhelmed by what they just saw him do to the fifty Nuoreans. A few of the Expansion fighters recovered in time to send a few rounds from their Human automatic weapons at him. Whether the bullets were deflected by the column of air around him—or they were just bad shots—none found their mark.

  Calling forth another huge gust of sand-filled wind, Adam sent this one straight into Malibu Beach. Alien warriors were swept up in the current and thrown into the water beyond the shore. Their landing boats joined them, many capsized and sinking.

  Adam flew over The Strand next.

  The Human commandos seemed to have no qualms at trying to take out the former SEAL with blasts from their weapons. A few of the rounds grazed Adam’s arms and legs, but his mutant healing powers numbed the pain and set to work repairing the damage.

  In a blur, he flew lower, targeting a line of eight-inch-long barrels aimed into the sky. He sliced off the tips of five weapons with his ressnel before the commandos could dive for the sand. Adam didn’t want to kill them, but they sure did want to kill him.

  He flew higher, five hundred feet or more, and hovered, glaring down at the confused ranks of the Humans. Some were still firing, yet the farther he moved from their positions, the more effective his surrounding column of air was at keeping the bullets bay.

  He began to concentrate, gathering up energy to form another huge wall of air to be sent against the Humans this time. He was angry and frustrated. All he was trying to do was find a way to save the galaxy from the Klin. That’s why he took the TD-module. And that was why no one was going to take the Defiant away from him. Not until he found the—

  A huge flash and accompanying sonic boom blasted the island from above, rattling
teeth and sending a series of high-frequency waves rippling over the surface of the channel.

  All eyes turned to the heavens as a brilliant egg-shaped orb of white light suddenly appeared through a rip in the sky. The light from the object was blinding and its heat could already be felt on the surface. It was a brilliantly glowing orb, silently dropping to the surface of Pyrum-3.

  It touched down at the center of The Strand, instantly turning the sand to glass. Slowly, the radiance began to fade, but before it had completely cooled, the skin of the object cracked open along a centerline.

  Adam still hovered a few hundred feet above the beach, covered in blood and brandishing a ressnel sword in his right hand, with a perfect view of the object below. He wasn’t surprised when first Lila, and then Panur, emerged from the glowing egg-shaped spaceship.

  Arieel squealed and ran forward. Lila turned toward the sound and then headed off to meet her, at a more dignified walking pace. Mother and daughter embraced.

  The mutant Panur walked up the beach, unconcerned with the Human commandos at his back, each armed with deadly M-101 assault rifles. He didn’t need to be. All were standing with their mouths agape watching the surreal scene unfold before their eyes.

  Adam dropped down a little so he could get a closer look. Panur was dressed in a fashionable silk business suit—albeit small to fit his four-foot tall stature—and he also had a mustache. Adam didn’t know he could grow a mustache. The alien never had a trace of hair on his body before. But this was Panur, the five-thousand-year-old alien mutant genius from the Sol-Kor universe. He could transform his body into just about any shape…so why not grow a mustache?

  The alien stepped up until he was just below Adam. He looked to one side of the beach and then the other, taking in the scene like a curious tourist.

  Then he looked up at Adam and grinned.

  “So…what did we miss?”

  The End

  In the next Adam Cain adventure…

  With the help of the two super-mutants, Lila and Panur, Adam and his team set out to find a solution to the galaxy’s ‘Klin Problem.’ But it will take more than a couple of immortal alien mutant geniuses to make that happen.

  They’re up against Nigel McCarthy’s evil 2G son, Robert, as well as a growing resistance within the galaxy to the mutants. The powers that be in both the Expansion and the Union don’t trust their intentions, thinking they’ve come to supplant their leadership. It’s a strange dynamic, as creatures interested in only their limited power fight against those who have come to save them, even as more of the galaxy is being absorbed daily into the Klin’s growing empire.

  When even those you are trying to help are against you, it can be frustrating for a larger-than-life hero like Adam Cain, who just wants to save the galaxy one last time, before he takes a well-deserved vacation. Now he has no patience for mendacity and indecision. He also has powers. So it wouldn’t be wise to upset an already pissed off quasi-mutant superhero, especially not someone like Adam Cain…the Alien with an Attitude.

  The next Adam Cain novel in The Human Chronicles Saga will be out Dec. 15, 2017.

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  Contact

  Email: bytrharris@hotmail.com

  Website: bytrharris.com

  Novels by T.R. Harris

  The Human Chronicles Saga

  The Fringe Worlds

  Alien Assassin

  The War of Pawns

  The Tactics of Revenge

  The Legend of Earth

  Cain’s Crusaders

  The Apex Predator

  A Galaxy to Conquer

  The Masters of War

  Prelude to War

  The Unreachable Stars

  When Earth Reigned Supreme

  A Clash of Aliens

  Battlelines

  The Copernicus Deception

  Scorched Earth

  Alien Games

  The Cain Legacy

  The Andromeda Mission

  Last Species Standing

  Invasion Force

  Jason King – Agent to the Stars Series

  The Enclaves of Sylox

  Treasure of the Galactic Lights

  The Drone Wars Series

  Day of the Drone

  In collaboration with George Wier…

  The Liberation Series

  Captains Malicious

  Available exclusively on Amazon.com

  and Kindle Unlimited.