Invaders: The Antaran (Invaders Series Book 3)

by Vaughn Heppner

  DOOM STAR SERIES:

  Star Soldier

  Bio Weapon

  Battle Pod

  Cyborg Assault

  Planet Wrecker

  Star Fortress

  Task Force 7 (Novella)

  INVADERS SERIES:

  Invaders

  Invaders: The Chronowarp

  Invaders: The Antaran

  LOST STARSHIP SERIES:

  The Lost Starship

  The Lost Command

  The Lost Destroyer

  The Lost Colony

  The Lost Patrol

  The Lost Planet

  The Lost Earth

  Visit VaughnHeppner.com for more information

  Invaders:

  The Antaran

  (Invaders Series 3)

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Copyright © 2017 by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  -1-

  Debby and I were on the 18th floor of Harrah’s hotel tower in South Lake Tahoe when it happened.

  To be a little more specific, we were in Friday’s Station Steak and Sea Food Grill, with the best seat in the house, right by the north window. Lake Tahoe looked beautiful from up here as the sun began its slow glide toward the mountains.

  I mashed my baked potato as Debby divided our 16 oz. prime rib. Friday’s Station always did the prime rib just right, so the meat melted in your mouth as you ate it.

  Seeing that the potato was fully dressed with sour cream, loads of butter, fresh chives and real bacon bits, I added straight horseradish to my dish of creamy horseradish sauce. I was particular about my horseradish. I liked it when the condiment sent a sharp spike up against my nostrils and kissed my sinuses, but not so strong that my eyes watered uncontrollably.

  Debby took her half, well, not half, more like one third of the prime rib and handed the main plate to me with the rest.

  “Sure you have enough?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” she said.

  Debby looked fantastic in her new red dress and black choker. Her hair was longer than when we had come back from the side dimension using the ancient chronowarp. We were doing better, too, much better. It had taken time, but that time getting to know one another again had been well worth the effort.

  I kept in touch with the CAU, the Counter Alien Unit, but mostly Debby and I had been cruising around underwater exploring.

  In case you don’t know, I own a Galactic Guard ship, a glorified shuttle that I’d found in Greenland a few years ago. It could act like a sub, it could fly into space and it had a matter transmitter—a teleporting device.

  “Logan,” said what looked like a metallic cellphone.

  The device was in the middle of the table. The metal was protective sheathing. Inside it was a crystal entity from Rax Prime. I’m Logan, and I’d found the entity in the same underground Greenland complex where I’d gained the Guard ship. Since the entity was from Rax, I called it Rax. Not too original, I know, but it worked well enough.

  “Keep it down,” I told him. “Someone might hear you.”

  “This is vital,” the entity said.

  “Can’t it wait, Rax?” Debby asked. “We’re about to eat.”

  “I believe you should leave the premises—immediately,” Rax added.

  I’d forked my first piece of prime rib, brought it to my mouth and closed my eyes as I chewed the meat. It was perfect, just like always.

  I loved coming to Friday’s Station.

  “Did you hear me?” Rax asked.

  I opened my eyes and scanned the restaurant. We were on a lower level down here by the windows. The waiters and cocktail waitresses made their rounds. The hostess led a new couple to another table. The couple looked old, two dressed-up ancients with white hair. The man had trouble walking, but refused his wife’s help.

  “What do you sense?” I asked.

  “It was a momentary…flux,” Rax said.

  “What does that even mean?” I asked. “What’s a flux?”

  “I am uncertain as to its exact nature yet,” Rax said. “It was as if something opened and closed, but in the blink of an eye. That is a correct idiom, yes?”

  “Sure is,” I said, cutting another piece of prime rib.

  “Can you describe this flux a little more fully?” Debby asked.

  She hadn’t started eating her prime rib yet. She also seemed more concerned about Rax’s warning than I did.

  I was more used to his sudden pronouncements. Sometimes, they were important, but at other times, they had been false alarms because he’d sensed a solar flare on the sun, or some other natural occurrence.

  “Double check this flux,” I suggested, already anticipating my next piece of prime rib. After this bite, I would try some of the baked potato.

  “Did you not hear me?” Rax asked. “The flux was sudden. Then it was gone. At this point, it is not there for me to recheck.”

  “You recorded it though, right?”

  “Yes,” Rax admitted. “You have a point. I am analyzing. Strange—”

  Rax might have said more, but I didn’t hear it as people around me and higher up in the restaurant started screaming.

  I looked up even though my fork was halfway to my mouth. I swore a single harsh word as my hand froze. The cursing caused Debby to twist around with fright. She gasped, no doubt seeing what I saw.

  Three hairy…I’ll call them bipedal creatures. They had burst through the swinging kitchen door. They were big, with thick shoulders, and wore harnesses around their furry bear-like bodies. I don’t think they were hominids like Philemon or Kazz had been. They were tall, each at least six-five, and looked to be over 300 pounds apiece. Each wore a heavy pack on his back and each cradled an ugly-looking carbine. The worst part was their faces. They were beastly, with protruding, canine-like snouts. They almost seemed like wolf-men or werewolves, but there didn’t seem to be anything supernatural or paranormal about them, especially with the blinking red lights on their extraterrestrial-looking weapons.

  “Get us out of here, Rax,” I said in a low voice.

  “I have already attempted a transfer,” the crystal said. “Something is blocking my connection with the ship.”

  “Jamming?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Rax said. “It is powerful and from a non-Earth device.”

  “You’re certain about that?”

  “Not one hundred percent,” Rax admitted. “I would give it a ninety-eight percent probability, though.”

  As you might have realized, I had emergency plans. As I said, I owned a Galactic Guard ship or shuttle. It was a one-of-a-kind alien vehicle. There were plenty of people on Earth who knew about it already, although it was hidden from the general populace and from most Earth governmental agencies. Among those that did know, probably all of them would have liked to get their hands on the alien ship. Many of those had tried in the past. I’m talking about kidnapping attempts upon Debby and me, or acting like friends and then attacking me once we were all aboard the vessel.

  I’d implemented and refined emergency procedures that mainly involved Rax teleporting us back to the ship at the first sign of danger.

  As a secondary aside, I considered myself the premier enforcement arm of Galactic Law as regarded Earth. In this instance, that meant keeping Earth safe from marauding aliens. Earth
was a kind of preserve, an off-limits, restricted planet. There were reasons for that, which I’ll explain at the proper time.

  I’d found the Guard ship. I’d also found a dead Guard agent aboard it—his skeleton, to be more precise. In many ways, I was like an Old West gunslinger who had found a dead marshal lying in the desert. I’d taken his star and pinned it to my vest. I was the new marshal in town, or the new Galactic Guard agent for good old Planet Earth.

  “What are they?” Debby whispered.

  “Trouble,” I said.

  The screaming had intensified as everyone in the restaurant now saw them.

  The three beastmen snarled. One of them raised his carbine—

  A shot rang out, a loud retort. Maybe a .357 Magnum? Instead of seeing a guest crumple to the floor, I saw a beastman’s head explode in a spray of blood and bone.

  The big furry creature flopped backward, striking one of his companions as he went down. That caused the second creature to stumble as a line of laser fire, or some kind of beam, emitted from his carbine. That beam sliced against a wall, burning into it as nasty smelling smoke billowed.

  Another shot rang out.

  The third beastman took a slug to the torso. He staggered backward. Another boom sounded, this slug tearing into his throat.

  That alien creature went down hard.

  The one emitting the beam finally got control of himself and his carbine.

  I saw the shooter then, a thick-chested man in a silky business suit. He indeed gripped a .357 with both hands. They were thick-fingered hands, not quite ordinary looking, with massive wrists.

  Kazz the Neanderthal held the revolver.

  Ever since our last adventure, I’d wondered where Kazz had been hiding. Could it have been South Lake Tahoe all this time? I kind of doubted that. I suspected he’d been trailing me—again.

  “Down!” Kazz commanded in his heavy voice.

  Then he unloaded the rest of his rounds into the chest of the last standing beastman.

  The creature went down like the others.

  Smoke curled from the barrel of Kazz’s revolver. The screaming lessened some but could still be heard from various parts of Friday’s Station.

  “Can you transfer now?” I asked Rax.

  “Negative,” Rax said. “The jamming is as strong as ever.”

  “Logan, Debby,” Kazz shouted at us.

  People looked our way. I didn’t like that. As surprising as it might seem at this juncture, I’d tried to keep a low profile in regard to the news.

  The Neanderthal flipped out the cylinder, dumping the spent shells from his .357. I heard the empty cartridges hit the floor. He shoved a speed-round into the cylinder and snapped it shut.

  Kazz and I stared at each other. He had a mop of black hair, a low brow with a bony ridge and an almost nonexistent chin. He looked worried and determined.

  “We have to get out of here,” the Neanderthal said. “We have to leave before the rest of them show up.”

  -2-

  I snatched Rax off the table and stuffed him in a suit pocket. I was dressed up, maybe not as fancily as Kazz or Debby, but it was snazzier than my usual attire.

  Wouldn’t you know that I’d forgotten my blaster in the Guard ship? The piece was probably in my regular jacket.

  “Come on,” I told Debby.

  She was scanning wildly, staring at Kazz, at the spot where the beastmen had been standing and then around her at the people beginning to focus on us.

  I grabbed one of her hands and hauled her into motion. I used to be a U.S. Marine, so I knew how to get a move on when the moment called for it. After the Marines, I’d been a security officer for Western Sunlight, Inc. After that, I’d become the Galactic Guard affiliate. I kept in shape in other words. Plus, I’d had alien gene therapy in the Greenland complex. That had left me stronger than normal, and with the ability to heal much faster than usual.

  The screaming was finally throttling down. Many of the people who had hit the deck on instinct now began looking up like frightened gophers peering out of their holes.

  Debby stumbled behind me as I pulled her.

  “Faster,” Kazz shouted at us.

  The Neanderthal was rubbernecking everywhere, trying to watch the entire restaurant at once.

  “No,” Debby said. She resisted me. I think she realized where I was headed, and she did not want to go there.

  As far as I could tell, we were almost out of time. I yanked her, causing her to stumble into me.

  “Logan,” she said, sounding frightened.

  “This way,” Kazz said, motioning to me. “More are coming. We must leave.”

  I’d already figured out that much. It seemed obvious to me that the beastmen had used teleportation to get there. If it wasn’t exactly like Guard ship transfer, it likely followed the same rules and procedures. I had a sense that whatever jammed Rax, did so from the kitchen. If I wanted that jamming to stop, I had to get in there and shut it off.

  Debby struggled harder now, but it didn’t make any difference. Her feet stumbled across the floor as I dragged her toward the downed and likely dead beastmen. I wanted to get my hands on one of those carbines.

  “Logan,” Kazz shouted. “Don’t. Get over here.”

  I finally let go of Debby’s hand. People were starting to get out of their seats. Their brains must have been working again. They wanted to get the hell out of here, which was probably a reasonable desire. A wise desire, even.

  Several men jostled against me as they fled for the exit. One jock brought up his hands like a lineman and thrust against my chest, shoving me. That might have saved my life because at that moment, three new beastmen exploded out of the kitchen door.

  The first beastman fired his carbine, sending a beam straight at me. The jock’s shove moved me aside. The jock, who rushed forward in my absence, took the beam in his back. The green beam burned through his shirt and into his flesh, creating an almost instantaneous nauseating stench.

  The screaming began anew. If anything, it was louder this time. Now, people realized that aliens had appeared in their midst. A stampede began as people fled in earnest for the exits.

  I no longer saw Kazz. His single advantage—the element of surprise—was gone. Likely, he had hit the deck. It was a wise move, as the beastmen continued to beam the fleeing people.

  I dropped, too. Twisting around on the floor, I saw Debby lying farther away. She stared at me, shaking with fear.

  I began crawling, having to crawl over two dead people and one moaning, stricken woman. I still wanted one of those alien weapons. Then, I would take care of these murdering savages. I had plans to launch off the floor at them from close range. I wasn’t going to let them slaughter my girl.

  Harsh alien words sounded from up ahead. The whine of the beam weapons stopped instantly.

  The screaming had lessened as people had fled the restaurant, but I heard moaning, crying and the sound of splintering wood as something crashed.

  I should have reacted faster. I should have sprinted to the dead beastmen and grabbed a carbine. I’d hesitated too long. Nasty surprises had a way of freezing a man’s thoughts, but a reason wasn’t an excuse, and it wasn’t going to save our lives.

  “Logan,” Debby whispered.

  I looked back at her.

  Debby’s gaze shifted higher and in front of me.

  I turned forward.

  A beastman stepped into our lane. He aimed the carbine at me and snarled in an alien language.

  I stared into his eyes as a spotting light from his weapon no doubt centered on my forehead. I didn’t understand a word of what he said, but I knew he meant we were supposed to surrender. That he didn’t murder me right there was telling.

  “Rax,” I whispered.

  “The jamming…” the crystal said softly.

  I nodded to the beastman, closed my eyes and opened them again as I pushed my palms against the floor. With a grunt, I stood. As I did, I gave Debby an extremely significant gla
nce. It was clear that I meant she should play dead. They might get me. That didn’t mean they had to get her.

  The problem was that Debby stood as I did.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  Debby just stared at me with a hurt look.

  I faced the beastman.

  “Let her go,” I said.

  He snarled in his ugly manner and waved his carbine, indicating a spot for Debby to stand. What other choice did I have?

  I started down his lane, heading toward him.

  The beastman snarled worse than before, raising the carbine to show he was about to fire. Clearly, he didn’t want me coming any closer to him.

  I shrugged, climbed over some table, chairs and railing and moved to an open area near the dead beastmen. I was already envisioning lunging for a weapon, spinning, firing—

  And three additional beastmen emerged from the swinging kitchen door. Their weapons came up, aimed at me.

  The beastman that had caught me snarled to them. The new ones watched me with grave interest. One of them bared his fangs, slung his carbine over his shoulder and produced what looked like handcuffs.

  I didn’t like that.

  The other two new beastmen backed away as they kept their carbines centered on my chest. The handcuff bearer approached me, indicating that I should turn around.

  I did, but I didn’t put my hands behind my back.

  “Rax,” I whispered.

  “I am sorry, Logan,” the crystal said in a soft voice. “I am trying to pierce the jamming, but simply lack the power.”

  Hot alien hands grabbed my wrists. The wolf-man jerked my hands behind my back and clicked the handcuffs into place.

  This was just great.

  Debby was finishing climbing down from the railing. She approached the beastman meekly, turned and allowed the creep to handcuff her as well.

  Debby looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

  “Don’t sweat it, babe,” I said. “They’re not shooting us. That’s a good sign.”

  So far, the beastmen hadn’t attempted to capture anyone else. I didn’t see any sign of Kazz. I don’t know if he’d fled in the general exodus or if he was crawling around looking for an angle to play.