Invaders_The Antaran

by Vaughn Heppner

  I noticed a bright wink in the distance, almost as if a particle of sunlight shined intensely in one location for one brief second. The centralized brightness caused my head to sway back in surprise. The intense but localized brightness occurred again, once more for a slightly longer duration…and stopped.

  I waited for the phenomenon to appear again. It did not. I finally shook myself and turned to the others.

  “Did either of you two just see that?” I asked.

  “See what?” asked Rax.

  I told him.

  “This is interesting,” Rax said. “Jenna was monitoring a sensor board while I used the ship’s sensors. We both focused on local fauna. The event must have occurred farther afield, considerably farther, I should think. Where exactly did this happen?”

  I give him the best directions and estimate I could.

  “Given the brightness and that our boards picked up nothing concerning it…” Rax said. “I believe the phenomenon occurred—oh, this is interesting. According to my calculations, this must have happened very near the South Pole.”

  “Do you have any idea what that…wink was?” I asked.

  “There are several possibilities, none of them more agreeable than the others,” Rax said. “I suggest we head in that direction and scan at a wider range. It is possible the phenomenon will occur again and I will get a bead on it”

  “If we do that,” Jenna said, “we’ll break out of our search-pattern grid. We’ve been strict about that so far. If we’re going to veer—”

  “We are searching for anomalies,” Rax countered abruptly. “Logan has clearly seen one. Thus, logic dictates we head there immediately.”

  Jenna considered that and finally nodded.

  I climbed back into the piloting chair and turned the Guard ship. We headed deeper inland, flying toward the South Pole while trying to figure out what had caused the bright wink effect.

  We flew for quite some time without anything interesting showing on the sensors. The phenomenon did not reappear. I finally increased speed, did it again and yet a third time.

  “We’re straining the sensors and we’ve covered a lot of territory,” Jenna said. “Have either of you heard of ice blink? Maybe that’s what Logan saw. Maybe it was a mirage of some sort.”

  “It was real,” I said.

  We kept flying. My gut had been tightening. What had I seen? Maybe this was a wild goose chase. I kept wondering if I should tell them Jenna was right. Stubbornly, I shook my head.

  “I don’t know,” Jenna said.

  I sighed, opened my mouth to speak—

  “Check your screen, Jenna,” Rax said. “We may have just found something.”

  -42-

  Rax had picked up a trace of a strange radiation. What made it weird was that the radiation signature did not last long. That didn’t seem to make sense.

  “Could it have come from a mobile machine?” I asked.

  “I do not think so,” Rax said. “The radiation trace seemed to be in snow—ice, to be more specific. I did not scan the presence of any nearby metals.”

  “All sensor traces have vanished,” Jenna said, studying her board.

  “Fortunately, I have the location,” Rax said. “It is another two hundred and thirty-seven kilometers away in our present direction of travel. The locale is less than three hundred kilometers from the South Pole.”

  “You know…” I said a few minutes later. “I’m thinking we should come in low. If Beran or his people caused the effect, it means they’re already there. We need to catch them by surprise, remember?”

  “There is a negative to the suggestion,” Rax said. “If we fly lower, we cannot scan as much territory.”

  Despite that, I took us ground-skimming low so the dark snow-scape flashed underneath the ship. I rechecked the laser banks. They were fully charged. I rechecked my targeting sensors. They were good. I was ready for teleporting floaters, Beran, and Tosk tripod cannons if they had any.

  In time, Rax said, “We’re coming up on the location.”

  I slowed down, checking my targeting sensors. I couldn’t see anything but the bleak icescape. It was fifty below out there with buffeting winds. Swirls of snow flew every which way. The craft shook from time to time.

  “What are you seeing?” I asked Jenna.

  “It’s barren,” she said. “There aren’t even any polar bears out there.”

  I laughed. “This is Antarctica. Polar bears only live in the Arctic. Just to let you know,” I added. “There aren’t any penguins in the Arctic. They’re just in Antarctica and then almost always along the coast.”

  Jenna hunched over her screen. “Logan—”

  At that instant, a green beam flashed up from the ground. It speared over three kilometers, striking the ship.

  “Hang on,” I shouted, veering sharply.

  The green beam tried to follow us, but failed to move as sharply. The beam flashed past us. One of my instrument panels blinked on and off. According to it, the beam had almost punched through the underbelly armor while it had been targeted on us. Just what kind of beam did the enemy use? It must have been stronger than anything I’d faced in the past.

  “Was that a handheld beam carbine?” I asked.

  “No,” Rax said. “It came from a turret cannon, from a vehicle you have named a floater.”

  A second beam flashed from a different location. It struck the armored underbelly. I was ready for it this time. I veered again, going up as I did so.

  “I have a lock on target,” Rax said.

  I saw it on my readout. A floater, just like Rax said, was a little less than three kilometers from the Guard ship. I didn’t bother firing my lasers because that would leave me as a target for the green beams. I wanted pointblank range so I could take out the floater with one or two quick shots.

  For the next few minutes, I juked this way and that. I went up and down, sideways, expelled chaff, deployed two decoy emitters and took three hits. One green beam stayed on target too long—

  “Rupture,” Rax announced.

  I lost a little power and we dipped. I smelled electrical burning and saw smoke trickle through what should have been a sealed hatch.

  “Son of a gun,” I shouted.

  Now the floaters were at pointblank range. There were two of them with two turrets each. I didn’t spot any extra Tosks on the ground—on the ice, I mean.

  I took the Guard ship as low as I dared. It was hardly five meters off the deck of Antarctica. I had to veer over icy hills—

  I pulled the triggers. Red lasers stabbed from my twin cannons. There was one on each wing. The lasers drilled a floater, burning into armor, burning—

  The floater disappeared. It must have teleported out of danger. That was a clever move. Had a Tosk pilot done that of his own volition?

  “Behind us,” Rax said.

  I went left, roared up, juked right and did a complex maneuver that pulled hard Gs against us. I felt my concentration slipping as we kept turning at speed.

  A second floater drilled the Guard ship from a different location.

  I cursed profusely, took us down hard, broke off my turn and zeroed in on the second, beaming floater.

  The green beams drilled us directly. I poured laser fire into it. It was a game of head-on chicken. Then, I saw the bulkhead before me melt as if made out of candle wax. It was more than a little disturbing.

  “Rax!” I shouted, but I did not veer away. Two enemy turrets poured the green beams at us.

  One speared through, slashing past me as I sat in the piloting chair. I could feel the heat and I wondered if radiation was soaking into me from the beam.

  If the beam lasted too long—

  The enemy floater exploded. They must have tried to teleport at the very last second because some parts of the craft seemed to simply disappear. The rest twisted as a fireball shot up into the darkness. We flashed through that mass. I could feel the heat through the hull rupture.

  Then, we were past th
e burning floater, or what remained of it. In seconds, it became unbelievably frigid in our chamber as icy cold blew in through the rupture.

  “Jenna,” I shouted in order to be heard over the howling noise. “We need parkas on the double.”

  “I’m on it,” she said, unbuckling.

  As I turned the Guard ship, beginning a second game of maneuvers with the remaining floater, Jenna staggered out of the chamber.

  Foul smelling smoke poured in when the hatch opened. The icy breeze coming in through the hull breach did just enough to keep the smoke from choking me so that I could still function.

  I don’t know what happened in the next few minutes. I flew by instinct. I did crazy stunts, bypassing most of the green beam shots.

  Then a parka landed on my lap. Jenna was already wearing one as she buckled back in at her station. She had cuts on her face and blood running from her nose. She must have taken more than one fall because of my piloting antics.

  “Logan,” Rax said. “We are taking more direct hits. We cannot win this exchange.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” I shouted.

  “What are you doing then?”

  “Killing the enemy,” I said.

  For a moment, Rax said nothing. The Guard ship roared over a huge hole in the ice. Rax and I must have seen it at the same time.

  “What was that?” Rax asked.

  Another green beam punched through the ship, taking my left laser cannon. That also disrupted the aerodynamics of the vessel. We began to wobble as everything shook around me, including my piloting chair.

  How can I explain my next move? I guess I saw red. I guess I figured I was going to die anyway. I know I’ve spoken before about the Japanese during WWII. They did one thing I could dearly appreciate. When a Japanese pilot knew his plane had taken too much damage, he used the airplane itself like a guided missile.

  I aimed the Guard ship at the floater, pouring laser fire from my last cannon. They beamed us. I beamed them.”

  “Turn, turn,” Rax said. “You are going to ram them.”

  Normality returned to me in the last moment. “Rax!” I shouted. “You have to teleport us outside. Bring the knife, too.”

  “Logan—”

  “There’s no more time, Rax.”

  I was dead on right, as the Guard ship crashed against the Antaran floater.

  -43-

  I materialized lying face down on a thin layer of snow over ice. I started shivering right away. Explosions in the distance caused me to look around. A fire burned maybe five klicks away. No doubt, I saw the result of the Guard ship crashing against the floater.

  I stood up, wiped off snow and shrugged on the parka that had been under me. Even after I zipped it up and threw the fur-lined hood over my head, I continued to shiver uncontrollably.

  I remembered that it was fifty below out here, worse if one added the wind-chill factor. The icy wind howled like a banshee, forcing me to lean against it just to stand upright.

  I sensed one other item in the starry darkness. It was the knife, the otherworldly weapon. I stared at it for a second and reluctantly picked it up. With a sense of fatalism and foreboding, I hiked up the parka and buckled the knife belt around my waist.

  I was still shivering afterward, but I knew it wouldn’t last that long. All I had to do was kill Lord Beran and my part in this little game would be over.

  I saw a light shining nearby and a person turning in circles.

  “Jenna!” I shouted.

  The light didn’t shine my way. I doubt she could hear me over the banshee howl. Before I left my location, I looked around, spotted Rax and picked him up.

  It was too loud for me to hear him, so I put an implant in my ear so we could communicate.

  “I thought you were going to leave me,” Rax said.

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  I didn’t have a flashlight, and Jenna’s was no longer pointed at me. I could see a flicker of light over there, so I stumbled across the icy wasteland, knowing I had to get to her soon. I wasn’t sure how long either of us could last in this freezing weather.

  A few moments later, I grabbed her parka. “Jenna!” I shouted.

  She whirled around, shining the light in my face. Then she lurched to me, putting her arms around my torso and hugging fiercely.

  I patted her on the back. It was awkward. That wasn’t because of Jenna, but because our parkas and the wind made us like two clumsy fat people.

  She released me and punched me in the stomach.

  “Hey,” I said, caught off guard.

  She leaned near and shouted, “What kind of idiot are you? How are we going to survive this?”

  “At least we’re still alive,” I shouted back. “The floaters were winning. They had the better beam cannons, and there were two of them and only one of us.”

  “We’re stranded at the South Pole,” she shouted. “How much more screwed can we be?”

  “I know what you mean. Let’s check out the hole in the ice and find out.”

  She stared at me in the Antarctic cold, and finally wrapped my left arm with the two of hers. We stumbled like that in search of the giant hole Rax and I had seen earlier.

  “Logan, look out,” Rax warned several minutes later.

  I stopped, and I yanked Jenna back. The wind and icy particles had been blowing in my face. I needed goggles for this weather. I swayed in the darkness and finally knelt, dragging Jenna down beside me.

  She put her face against me so the fur of our hoods touched. “What are you doing?”

  “Feel out with your hand,” I shouted.

  She reached out, leaned more and almost fell into the edge of the giant hole. Fortunately, I yanked her back in time.

  She put her face against mine again. “That’s the hole,” she shouted.

  “Yup,” I shouted back.

  “So now what do we do?”

  I pulled off a glove, thought about what I was going to do, and lay down on the ice. I stretched out my hand. Just like I suspected, I felt warmth billowing up from the hole.

  I sat back as I put on my glove. Maybe I could climb down, but I didn’t think Jenna could. We could jump, but that would probably end in our splattering deaths.

  I pulled her close and shouted, “We’re going to circle the hole. Maybe whoever made this thing has a machine to take us down.”

  In the star-lit darkness, she searched my eyes. “I have to tell you, Logan. I’m not going to last long in this weather. I’m freezing.”

  “We’ll make it,” I shouted.

  Jenna had started to seriously shiver. I knew I could last a while out here due to my gene therapy, but I had a responsibility to Jenna for putting her in this mess.

  “Get on the other side of me,” I said. “I don’t want you collapsing and tumbling into the hole on accident.”

  She did what I said, and we set off. I began by crawling, but realized that would freeze us quicker. Besides, it would take too long to circle the hole this way.

  I stood, dragged Jenna upright, let her lean against me, and started circling the crazy hole. Earlier, had I seen Beran or some other alien burn the giant hole in the ice in a matter of seconds? Or had I seen some sort of giant teleportation? The truth was that I didn’t know what I’d seen. It had led us here, though, so either of those possibilities could be true.

  What do you want to hear? The wind howled. Icy particles pelted us and the cold leeched our strength. I had become ravenously hungry. This was the South Pole. I was at the bottom of the world. Part of me wished I could have had an American flag to plant in the ice. On second thought, I’d plant the old “Don’t Tread on Me,” snake flag.

  I know a certain section of society doesn’t like that flag anymore. But I didn’t know of a better flag to express how I felt as an old-style Davy Crocket American and as a pissed off Earthling regarding these extraterrestrial invaders. I was going to beat them. I just had to figure out how to stay alive long enough.

  Jenn
a clutched my arm more tightly. “Did you hear that?” she shouted.

  “No. What is it?”

  “Listen,” she said.

  I did, but I couldn’t hear anything besides the howling wind.

  “Logan,” Rax warned. “There are creatures approaching.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about them sooner?” I asked Rax.

  “Something…” but Rax didn’t finish his thought.

  At that moment, five big Tosk appeared out of the icy particles as if coming from behind a curtain. They wore their harnesses but little else. Their wolf-like ears were pinned back against their scalps, and each of them aimed a beam carbine at me.

  “Hands up,” the leader said.

  I put my gloved hands in the air.

  “Come,” he said, motioning with his carbine.

  “Stay behind me,” I told Jenna. Then I faced the Tosks and started to crunch across the snow in the direction he’d shown.

  -44-

  It didn’t come as a surprise when the Tosks herded us aboard a floater. Getting out of the blistering cold and coming into this warmth was its own reward.

  The leader patted me down, found the knife easily enough and went to take it.

  I didn’t see what I could do about it. The other Tosks watched, two of them keeping their beam carbines aimed at me.

  There didn’t appear to be any other people aboard the floater, just the five Tosks, Jenna and me. Was Beran finally running low of his slave creatures? I had a feeling that the answer was yes.

  The Tosk chieftain reached for the knife, as I’ve said, and he hesitated. A Tosk hand, incidentally, was narrower than a regular human hand. It had longer fingers and doglike claws instead of fingernails. The chieftain’s hand trembled, fingers curled up against the narrow palm, and pulled back. The Tosk peered at me and cocked his head.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He uncurled his index finger and pointed at the knife hanging from my waist. “It is…different,” he said.