by Chris Hechtl
Then suddenly something massive rushed out of the water, blocking out the sun for a moment. He opened his good eye to bellow in shock as the mass obliterated the sun and came crushing down on him.
The Selkie walrus beach master felt the crunch of the beast under him. He knew he was hurt by the thing's horns and spikes, but he didn't care at the moment. He roared his triumph as he moved around and humped to make sure it was dead. As he turned, he noted another of the aliens was rushing up, leveling a weapon but unwilling to fire since it was slipping on the rocks and its fellow was under the Neo.
Another Selkie walrus jumped out of the waves and hit the Tauren running to his herd mate's aide from the side, knocking the Tauren off the slippery rocks and into the water on the other side. A pair of Selkie cows grabbed the thrashing alien beast by the legs and dragged him down and out to sea to drown.
~~*^*~~
General Elliot nodded at the latest report from the eastern seashore. The selkie had taken out two of the aliens but hadn't been able to get any others. A short time after taking losses, the aliens had hastily packed up and lifted off.
He had plenty of time to prepare and plan for their invasion. He'd known he was going to have to resort to guerrilla warfare to attrition the enemy. That was why he had Sergeant Maltese and others use snipers, bombs, traps, and ambushes to pick off the Taurens until they retreated back to their ships. If they could destroy a ship or equipment, even better.
He was aware that eventually the enemy leader would dangle out one of their own as bait. If they were cold enough to drop bombs on civilian centers, then they were certainly capable of using their own kind as bait. But so far that hadn't happened.
As long as his people varied their tactics and didn't fall into any predictable patterns, he was confident they'd hold the advantage. It was only a matter of time before someone slipped up, but so far so good.
Now, if they could just find a way to really hit back, hit the ships. He shook his head as he went over the plan to board the ships with a captured shuttle.
Bubba was dreaming if he thought that'd happen. And stuffing a shuttle with explosives was out too he knew. The only way something like that would work is if they somehow captured the shuttle but then let the crew go …
He frowned and scratched behind his ear as he tried to game out the ticklish idea.
~~*^*~~
Jeeves and his organic helper engineers carefully took apart the captured Tauren electronics. All of it had been brought to caves in Faraday bags to prevent exposure. One of the first things the A.I. did was to clone and use parallel bots to translate the databases. What his bots found was compiled. It helped his hacking efforts immensely. Combining what he learned with what he'd known previously from monitoring the alien radio transmissions gave them a better picture of the enemy. They had some encryption but laughable compared to Terran standards. The electronics were all still on the alien network as well or at least attempting to find an alien network. He recorded it all and then worked with Terran coders to find a way to exploit the weakness.
~~*^*~~
The ship's Alpha bull shook his head at the reports of unexpected resistance. Wherever the herd landed, they could expect combat within a day. Sometimes within hours. The aliens must have observers everywhere, but they couldn't see them from orbit. The herd had taken harsh losses, the worst among his security bulls, of which he had only so many to begin with. “Will this be everywhere we land?” he asked.
“Over time, without the means to resupply themselves, they will exhaust their resources and die off,” the Gamma bull said.
“But we have limited numbers,” the ship's Alpha bull replied. “Are we going to concede the ground to them totally?”
The Gamma bull shook his massive head. “Fear not, reinforcements are coming, a colony ship as well.”
“Oh.”
“But I think we have another way of ending this conflict. I have passed on an order to security to break out the armor.”
The ship's Alpha bull looked at him for a moment then nodded slowly.
~~*^*~~
The Tauren task force lacked sufficient security forces to properly deal with so much resistance on the ground. They had not expected the Terrans to put up such a fierce fight or to fight as individuals; the reports from the first colony that had conquered had obviously lulled the herd leadership into a false sense of complacency and arrogance.
That was now over. They still needed to secure water and provisions from time to time, and the Gamma bull was not going to let the enemy rule the ground. When they started to take heavy casualties wherever they landed, he ordered herd security to trot out their version of powered armor. The armor was like an old-fashioned diving suit made out of metal. It was crude in comparison to Terran armor, not very well powered, but it was effective against any ranged fire.
When General Elliot realized that his troops were ineffective, he ordered them to stand back on observing only. It was hard on the troops and their morale; he knew they'd been getting into finally getting some payback. But they needed heavier weapons to get through that armor. He had some but was unwilling to use them up.
~~*^*~~
Jack smiled indulgently as he watched Alyssa burble and toddle around. She had an absolutely infectious smile, one that didn't care that aliens were trying to kill her and her parents.
Ignorance was bliss he thought.
“What are you thinking?” Menolly asked softly as she came over and sat in his lap.
“Just admiring our little girl,” he said, nodding his chin to Alyssa as the little imp stumbled backwards over a cable and fell on her rump.
Menolly made a soft oof of sympathy and went to help her up, but Jack restrained her. “Just watch,” he murmured when she went to look at him questioningly.
Menolly turned in time to see the girl flip over onto her knees and then push herself up. After a moment, a handy table leg helped her chubby fingers pull herself upwards to the vertical once more. When she got upright, she flashed her parents an infectious grin of triumph.
“See?” Jack said. Sometimes you had to let someone stand on their own so they knew they could do it for themselves he thought to himself.
“Little monster,” she murmured with affectionate exasperation. Ever since Alyssa had learned the joys of mobility at five months, she'd found all sorts of ways of getting into mischief. “I didn't think she'd skip crawling. It's like she's in a hurry to grow up,” she said.
“Partly genetics on my side, dear. The Lagroose family has always been fast developers,” Jack murmured in her ear before he kissed her hair.
“Easy, Ally,” Menolly murmured as the toddler started to tug on a few dangling wires. Jack let Menolly go to rescue the baby before she pulled the charging tablet down on top of her.
“Ally,” Jack echoed, amused as Menolly tickled the little imp to distract her from what she'd been intrigued by. He was pretty sure it would only work so often. She wasn't developing as fast as he had, nor her older half siblings, but she was picking up speed now that she was on her two feet. Well, most of the time, he conceded with a mental smile. He didn't know if Aurelia had altered his semen or if Athena had altered his genetic code of his recent body for greater intelligence. He didn't feel any different. Ally didn't seem any different. She was nearly three and burbled and talked up a storm, but she showed no interest in acting as an adult.
Perhaps the late women in his life had left off meddling there? He doubted it.
“What?” Menolly asked.
“Sorry, just thinking of nicknames,” he said with a white lie.
She swung the baby about and then looked at him curiously.
Jack squirmed under that gaze. He knew she knew that she was hard to resist. Finally, he gave in. “Jack-al.”
“Jackal?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said shaking his head. “It …,” he grimaced. “See, my cousins saddled it on me when I was young. It didn't stick long.” He wisely didn't adm
it that they'd stuck a far worse one on him, Brainac. He knew she'd tease him relentlessly if she knew.
“Ah. Jack and Al. Cute,” Menolly teased anyway, smiling as she tickled the toddler in her arms into a giggling fit.
He saw her glittering eyes and something connected in his mind. “Alyssa. You didn't,” he accused, eyeing them both.
She gave him her best innocent look. He shook his head in response.
~~*^*~~
Among a thousand and four things Jeeves had to deal with, he had to also deal with issues with the life support in the bases as well as balancing power demands from their limited supply. It was a delicate balance; one he had to handle carefully. It was imperative that he remain functional and actually process data into something usable for the organics to use.
Now the general wanted him to divert power to make more explosives and drones. If he'd had hands, he'd make neck wringing motions the A.I. thought to himself as he tried to rewrite the schedule. At least the general had agreed to stop producing ammunition for the time being.
~~*^*~~
General Elliot had taken Sheriff Tupper's advice. Instead of attempting to 3D print every part of the drones they had imported and then shaped it into additional pieces by hand to supplement the printers. It had allowed the printers to focus on the parts that couldn't be made easily.
Initially he used them for scouts so his people could get used to flying them. When they had several hundred ready, he turned them loose as he'd intended.
He watched the first mission as it played out.
The Tauren turned, saw the buzzing aircraft, and shot at it. Another flying missile close to the ground level rammed him from behind just as he turned. It exploded upon impact. The bomb wasn't a shape charge penetrator but the explosive was enough to knock a scab of metal off the inside of the interior to kill the Tauren anyway.
The other Taurens didn't understand that. They just saw the explosion go off and the armor still standing there, burned and blackened before it toppled over. They then went to help their fallen comrade as expected.
The general smiled mirthlessly as a second wave of drones moved in for the kill. The ground RC drones were slow compared to their airborne brethren, but they weren't easily seen in the bush. But the sound of their servos gave them away. The aliens reacted by striking at the drones in the air and on the ground. A bomb went off under a Tauren's stomping hoof, sending him flying into the air. The controllers nearby chortled in amusement at the sight.
The general shook his head. Eden had a higher concentration of Neos and Neo veterans than any of the other colonies in Rho he knew, so most likely they would put up the best resistance. They were also damn good innovators. His and Jack's preparations were allowing them to protect their civilians while also fighting back.
Long term he knew they weren't going to win. The aliens held the high ground; they needed a Hail Mary to clear the skies. But he wasn't going to give up or knuckle under.
He wanted to make sure the bastards got that message through their thick skulls.
~~*^*~~
The Gamma bull stared at the reports and image of the carnage bellow. He winced as he watched one of the videos of a flock of flying drone bombs swarm a landing party. The bulls fought valiantly, the drones exploded in the air, but something got through to them and hit two of the armored troopers from behind. One fell, the other cart-wheeled in the air and hit the shuttle hard. Another wave of drones came in and slammed into the shuttle. It exploded in a fireball.
He realized that the aliens had found a counter to his armor. “Pull back,” he seethed. “Pull them back.”
Chapter 27
Antigua
“Sir, there has been a hyperspace emergence, a big one. But it's not where we were expecting it,” Bob, the computer tech in his administration, reported as he came into the governor's office just after sundown. He held up a tablet to show the governor what the satellites in orbit had picked up. “Based on this, it happened over a week ago. But I checked with the spaceport; no one got a call. I'm not sure if we missed it or what is going on. Are we having unexpected visitors?”
Fin frowned and then shook his head. “Not that I'm aware of. We're not due a revisit for at least three years, give or take a couple months. Give them a call. Let's see what's going on,” he ordered.
“It'll be hours before we get a response. Do you want me to call you or …”
The governor shook his head. He was already late for dinner with Deidra. “No. It can keep until morning,” he said as he finished packing up for the evening. “Night.”
“Night, sir,” Bob said.
~~*^*~~
“They know we are here,” the communication's bull reported. The Delta bull turned from his conversation with the sensor tech bull to look at him. “We are receiving radio transmissions from the planet.”
“So, surprise is lost. But they do not know who we are, so it is not lost completely. Continue on course as planned,” the Delta bull ordered.
“Yes, Fleet Herd Leader.”
~~*^*~~
Governor Thrakle realized something was very wrong, but he was still coming to grips with what when his people got a satellite image of the incoming ship. Or ships plural he noted as he stared at the images.
“I was on the board of Lagroose Industries for over a decade. The design of these ships, they are all wrong,” he said quietly, staring at the images. “And why more than one ship?” he demanded. He hadn't seen more than one starship anywhere except in Sol. Now there were eight of them, some small, and some big, all coming straight at them.
And not one ship was responding to their hails.
“What is their ETA?” he asked.
“They are three days out,” his chief of staff said. She shook her head and looked over to the first lady. The woman looked nervous and confused.
Fin scowled as he stared at the plot. “I don't like this,” he murmured, tucking his chin onto his fist as he stared at the plot. He suddenly got an idea and ran a back trace on their vector. Then it hit them. “They aren't coming from Sol,” he said.
“Sir?”
“The vector, it's all wrong!” he pointed urgently to the ships and the vector. “The design, those ships aren't man-made! And they aren't answering our hails!”
“Fin, what do we do?” his wife asked worriedly.
“We save what we can.” He turned to the staff. “Get the alarm out now. Tell everyone we need to move, and it is not a drill, then get packing. Just the essentials, food and water, whatever we've got for survival gear. Get everyone out of the city and towns. We need … we need to get everyone to shelter,” he said as he began to pace. The urgency of the situation started to penetrate into his wife and his staff's minds. “I don't know what's going on, but we need to move.”
“Fin, where do we go?” his wife asked.
“I'm not sure. What I do know is they aren't talking to us. They hold the high ground, and we're a big target sitting here all clustered together. We need to find a place to hide just in case.”
“This has to be a mistake,” his wife said.
“I wish it was, honey,” he said as she trembled. He wrapped her in his arms briefly before he released her. She reeled, not ready to lose his comfort so fast. “Now, get going. Don't worry about clothes and crap we don't need. Get out now.”
“What about you?” she demanded as the staff scrambled and the alarm klaxons began to howl.
“I'm going to stay to coordinate the evacuation,” Fin said as he pulled up a map of the area and began to stare at it as if his life depended on it.
Not just his life he realized, but many lives, he thought as his wife gripped his shoulder tightly, and then pulled him around for a desperate kiss. In a swirl of perfume and soft sobs, she was gone.
He closed his eyes in pain and then opened them again. “Alert Eternia,” he said as he began to issue orders. “Let them know we're all about to be invaded. Then find a place we can hide everyone. We'll dis
perse them if we have to, but I'd rather we find some sort of cover ….”
~~*^*~~
“Doc, what do we do?” Beatrice demanded worriedly from Doctor Destiny's open door.
“Check with … damn it …” The Neocat doctor's ears went back as she remembered that the head resident was out on a fishing trip. So were half of the staff. It meant that she was in charge of the hospital for the moment. She was apparently it.
“Get people moving. I'll find out what we're supposed to do,” she said as she pulled out her phone and tried to dial the governor's office. She wasn't surprised that the line was busy.
~~*^*~~
Malory looked up in alarm at the sound of the klaxon warnings. “What is going on?” she asked Birdy as the elfin woman rushed into the apartment. They'd finally managed to rent a 3-bedroom apartment, but only with Birdy renting one of the rooms and sharing the utilities.
“Aliens!” Birdy said as she rushed into her bedroom.
“Aliens?” Malory demanded, following her down the hall to her bedroom. She paused at the open door to see Birdy throwing everything she could manage into her bags. “What the devil?”
“Aliens!” Birdy said. “There are ships coming in. They just said its aliens! We've got to get out of here! Pack the food and the kids up and go!”
“Go? Go where?” Malory asked dumbly as Birdy rushed past her with her bags. The woman rushed to the kitchen and grabbed what she could in her second bag, then rushed out. “Anywhere is better than here!” Birdy called back as she got through the door. She left the front door open.
Malory went after her and paused in the doorway to see people rushing about, obviously in a panic. Voices were raised; she could hear a kid squalling and some people yelling.
“Aliens,” Don scoffed from his seat in the living room.
Malory went into the living room and flipped his game off the vid screen. Don and the kids protested, but she turned the news on as the klaxons went off again. She used the remote to turn the volume up as the emergency alert came up. Her eyes went back and forth as she scanned the lines. As she did she felt fear start to grow.
