It felt as if the beam flipped a dozen switches in my mind and I became dull-witted as my anger drained away. There was a final moment of panic and then the feeling evaporated. This entire episode began to feel like a dream. Alien landers, tanks, beams—I grinned. Maybe the aliens would come out and I’d get to meet them. The idea filled me with something approaching giddy excitement.
The beam stopped and I massaged my forehead, even rubbing my eyes. A strange languor gripped me. I felt torpid and more than a little sleepy.
Something in the alien tank uncompressed in a blast of noise like a trucker’s air brakes. It should have frightened me or made me flinch, at least. I felt my lips stretching into a smile. I was going to meet creatures from another planet. This was exciting.
Lines appeared on the glacis of the tank. Steam rose from inside as the front part of the vehicle opened like a jackknife, the slab of armor becoming a mini-ramp from the tank. Behind it was a blank wall, or what appeared to be another membrane. Something oozed out of the membrane until a humanoid in battle armor, or perhaps a spacesuit, stood at the top of the tank ramp.
The being was humanoid in that it possessed two arms and two legs. It also had a long tail. It wasn’t a monkey-like tail, but something an upright walking alligator might have.
“Saurian,” Rollo said in a lazy voice.
“Huh?” I asked, feeling unreal starting at an alien from a distant star system.
“It’s a Saurian,” Rollo muttered.
Oh, I saw what he meant. The alien had a bubble-like helmet. The creature was a walking lizard, or looked like one, a giant gecko from those insurance commercials. That widened my smile, and for a second I wondered if this Saurian would speak in a British accent. The Saurian had a different gait than we did, walking in a springier manner, and it was smaller, maybe four and half feet tall.
It stalked down the tank ramp, its lizard-like eyes regarding us. Moisture appeared on the inside of its helmet. The thing opened its mouth and a forked tongue flickered.
How very interesting.
The creature must have pressed a switch somewhere on its suit. Air seemed to blow inside the bubble helmet and the moisture on the inside glass—or whatever the substance was—vanished particle by particle. Perhaps it tasted our air.
Rollo cleared his throat, and I had the impression he planned to say something to the Saurian.
I’m not sure exactly, but…an inner caution perhaps dampened a modicum of my joy. Something seemed…different. I’d watched the lander come down and, and…
“Wait,” I told Rollo.
“We should try to communicate with him,” Rollo said. “This is the chance of a lifetime.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking at Rollo. He smiled and his eyes shined with excitement. Did I look like that too? The pink light—
“We should greet him and let him know we’re safe,” Rollo said.
Greet him, I thought. Hadn’t my dad greeted the aliens earlier? My memories were fuzzy. Yeah, I think my dad had gone up in a shuttle and—the memory slammed against me. The aliens had shot a beam of light at my dad, killing him. So why would I grin at this lizard now as if he was a friend?
A pink light; the Saurians had just beamed a pink light into our eyes. Had the light play havoc with our minds?
Wheels turned in my sluggish, dreamlike thoughts. These aliens were screwing with our minds just as they had messed up our world. No. I wasn’t going to play along. Whatever the aliens had just fired at us, my inner rage burned through like a bright welding arc.
Rollo must have seen something different on my face. He recoiled from my glare and took a step back.
I turned and glared up at the alien, at this Saurian bastard with his pink, mind-altering ray. Its eyes flickered back and forth between Rollo and me. It raised a hand, paw, talon, whatever the thing possessed. Something radio-like crackled on its suit. Then it moved its lips.
A second later, a synthetic voice issued from a suit speaker. That told me this thing must have a device to take its words and translate them into our language. Sure, its pink beams could alter our moods or thoughts. Clearly, it knew something about human psychology. But the fact that it had to speak meant it could not communicate directly to our minds.
This suit speaker must be hooked up to a translator. Both items proved the aliens had studied Earth in the past. Words boomed forth from it, but whatever it said sounded Russian to me.
“Why don’t you try English?” I said.
The Saurian watched me closely, and I had the impression it listened to my words in its alien language. The lizard twisted a dial on its suit.
Its gloved hand or talon consisted of three claws and what would have to pass for an opposable thumb. The individual claw or finger appeared to have one more joint than ours fingers did.
The Saurian spoke again. The outer speaker crackled, and it said in English: “Do you understand me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “What do you want?”
“Creed,” Rollo warned from behind. “You gotta take it easy. They’re peaceful.”
A pressure built up in my chest. I yearned to unlimber my rifle and blow away this world-destroyer. It had been a fool to climb out of its tank, trusting in its mind-altering beam. Had they tested it on other humans? Hadn’t anyone broken through the beam’s quick conditioning before?
“My indicators show you are radiating emotions,” the Saurian told me.
“How about that,” I said.
“This is good,” the Saurian said.
Good? The arrogance tripped a wire in me. I slid the strap from my shoulder and gripped the M-14 two-handed, pointing the barrel at Mr. Lizard.
“Creed, don’t,” Rollo pleaded. “They’re here to help us.”
“You are an aggressive beast,” the Saurian told me. “This is excellent. The Jelk will be pleased.”
I scowled. “Who are you calling a beast?”
The Saurian waited before speaking again. “Beast, animal, creature, monster, does the translator not render my meaning into a word you can understand?”
“You think we’re monsters?” I asked, outraged.
My stepdad had called me an animal before. He’d been slapping me as he said it. Some of the guards at prison had told me I was nothing more than a caged beast. One guard in particular who liked nudging convicts with the tip of his baton had told me society should throw away the key and leave us animals to rot in here. I hated cages, confinement and being treated like scum. I’d had my fill of it. My chest constricted now and my anger tightened into a coil.
The alien waited, apparently listening to my words and then thinking about them. “Not monsters,” it said, “but beasts, animals. Yes, you are an aggressive beast with a rudimentary language. Training will render you useful to the Jelk.”
The words struck like slaps to the face. It figured I was a wolf to capture and train—what else could such words mean? No! The aliens wouldn’t collar me like a wolf, a wild mustang or a convict. In its arrogance, the alien before me had made a fatal mistake. The tightened coil in my chest snapped and rage washed through me. He’s not going cage me? He almost had me with his pink ray.
I shouted profanities at him: I decided to think of the Saurian as male. Not only had the aliens destroyed the Earth, but this one insulted the first human it met and threatened me with capture and beast-training.
The Saurian recoiled as if I’d struck him. How did his device translate my curses? His demeanor changed. It was obvious. One of his limbs—arms—dropped toward what looked like a gun attached to his spacesuit.
It was the last straw. I tucked the M-14 stock against my shoulder, aimed and pulled the trigger three times. The first bullet starred the glass of his helmet and knocked him back. The second round made crackling lines so I couldn’t see his scaly features as well as before and the second impact also made him stagger more. The last bullet did the trick, smashing his low forehead and splattering blood and bits of bone inside the glass.
“Creed, you’re insane!” Rollo shouted.
The alien slid down as if his bones simply dissolved. He crumpled, with his body and suit tumbling down the small ramp and landing on Earth soil.
I was in overdrive, blood-mad at these murderers, but I also kept my wits, my rationality. I had to finish what I’d started and take out the tank crew.
I vaulted over the alien and charged up the ramp. The end of the turret glowed pink once more. Maybe the crew planned to give me another dose of its mind-stealing ray. The membrane looked solid ahead of me, but I’d seen the alien move out of it. The tank had moved through a membrane earlier before it had come down the lander’s ramp. I lowered my shoulder and met resistance. Then I powered through the substance. Heat slammed against my face and the air in here tasted foul and was sticky, making my eyes water.
Three Saurians sat at various stations. One of them was up higher in the bubble dome. No doubt he was the gunner. They whipped around on their stools to stare at me. One hissed angrily like a snake. Another flicked its tongue at me.
Each blasting retort of my M-14 was deafening in the confines of the alien tank. The nearest Saurian pitched backward, its chest erupting with blood. Methodically, I shot the bastards, careful to use each bullet where I thought it would do the most damage. I had three magazines with me and a lander-full of these creatures to kill. It took four bullets to take out these three, meaning I still had some ammo left in the original magazine.
As the last shot echoed in my ears, I found myself panting. The stench of their blood clung inside my nostrils. It was a nasty odor. The aliens stank, and they flopped on the floor, acting too much like shot snakes for my peace of mind. Moving as if on autopilot, I shoved a hand into a parka pocket, reassured that I had put two grenades there earlier. These would help in the coming assault.
Hisses from several screens and an alarm rang inside the tank. The screens showed alien creatures, likely those remaining in the lander. There were strange symbols or words written on various bulkheads around me.
While charging within, I’d had some idea of figuring out how to use the alien tank against the lander. As I looked around, I realized that wasn’t going to happen fast enough. It would take too long to figure out their controls. Besides, this seemed like a human-netting tank: an alien version of a dog-catching vehicle. They thought of us as beasts or animals. It was better to use what I knew right away—my M-14—than to waste time. The initiative in battle counted for a lot. It might be the only thing I had going for me.
I turned, readied myself and burst through the membrane and back into the Antarctica cold.
Rollo stood at the foot of the tank ramp, with his .45 Browning in his hand. That was a good sign. He looked confused, though.
“What happened in there?” he asked.
“You didn’t hear anything?” I asked.
“Soft pops,” he said.
“I killed the alien butchers.”
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“They beamed you with a mind-altering ray,” I said. “They screwed with your thoughts. They’re evil, Rollo. They destroyed our world. Don’t you remember watching them kill my dad, Mad Jack Creed?”
“Oh,” he said. “You’re right.”
“We gotta fight back,” I said. “We gotta take over their lander.” I motioned with my head at the stadium-sized ship.
“That’s crazy,” Rollo said.
“I know it,” I said, “but now’s our only chance. Are you with me?”
He stared into my eyes, glanced at the dead Saurian, keeping his gaze there for two seconds and then stared up into my eyes again. He nodded. Rollo was a good man.
I took a breath of pure clean Earth air. It felt cold in my mouth like the best spearmint. I’d overcome their mind ray and killed some of the world slayers. Now it was time to take out more and capture a lander if I could.
-3-
I led the way, with the sound of snow crunching under my boots. We had to move fast and keep attacking in order to keep the aliens off balance. They must have figured we Earthers were fainthearted creatures, ready to wilt for the first master race aliens to come along. They were learning differently now.
“Why did the Saurian come outside its tank?” Rollo asked.
“What?” I said. “I don’t know, to capture us, I guess. It called us beasts.”
“And that was reason enough to kill him?” Rollo asked.
“Hey,” I said. “The alien beamed our minds, right, and then he went for his weapon. Besides, I don’t need any more reason than this: his kind nuked our world. They declared war on us, not the other way around. After that he wants to talk to us while we’re smiling idiots? No, I don’t think so.”
I stepped onto the larger, lander ramp and saw a space-suited Saurian appear up top. The lizard had a long gizmo in its hands or talons. The device looked like a long-barreled rifle.
Charging up the ramp, I fired from the hip. That didn’t make for the most accurate shooting. My first bullet missed and whanged off the hull of the lander, creating a spark. The Saurian ducked. Then it seemed to think again, gained resolve and stepped forward, aiming its gizmo down at me as if it was a long Kentucky flintlock.
My second bullet caught a hand. The Saurian opened its mouth and let out a shrill hiss. It dropped the alien rifle. This time it took two bullets to do the trick: cracking the bubble helmet and pumping lead into the face.
I hadn’t stopped panting from my fight aboard the tank. Instead of weird alien stenches and atmosphere, now I was tired from sprinting up the long ramp. The Antarctica cold freeze-burned my throat as if I’d swallowed an ice cream cone. I could hear Rollo behind me gasping for air.
The top of the ramp proved flat, and the membrane opening into the lander meant I couldn’t see what was on the other side.
“Take his weapon,” I said, using the M-14’s barrel to point at the alien gizmo.
“I’ve been thinking,” Rollo told me. “We might have made a mistake.”
Here on the ramp, we were at least fifty feet high. The top of the lander might be another one hundred and fifty feet above us. The thing was massive.
“These lizards nuked our world!” I shouted. “They sprayed something afterward that makes penguins spit black gunk. Then they tried to capture us. This is our one chance. We have to grab it and do the best we can.”
“But capture a whole ship?” Rollo asked.
“Once it’s ours, we fly to an Army base and pick up more soldiers. Then we head into space and see if we can capture the big daddy spaceship.”
“That’s just crazy,” Rollo said. “There’s no way we can pull that off.”
“You got a better idea?” I asked. “Or do you want to be one of their trained beasts?”
He blinked at me several times, apparently trying to process the ideas. Maybe the pink ray still messed with his thinking.
“Take the alien rifle,” I said. “Start figuring out how it works. You’re the tech guy, the computer geek, so you should be able to do that.”
Rollo blinked one more time. Then he holstered the .45, nodded stubbornly—to himself, I think—and picked up the long gizmo.
I dragged my upper teeth across my lip, trying to psyche myself up to charge inside and wreck what mayhem I could. Would the aliens use poison gas on us inside their vessel? Did their atmosphere hold treacherous elements that would render us unconscious in several minutes? I had no clever ideas now, no big plans other than shooting aliens until I ran out of bullets. Then I’d use my Bowie knife and find out how strong these lizards were.
“Here we go,” I said.
Expecting the worst, I ran at the membrane and dove. I hit the barrier low and burst into a large, gym-sized chamber. It had three more alien tanks waiting. Crews climbed into them through the front. I didn’t have time to see more of the chamber, although five Saurians with long rifles marched toward the outer entrance. They wore spacesuits but without helmets. At the sight of me, they unlimbered t
heir weapons and fired a volley.
Every one of the lizards aimed too high. It was the reason I’d instinctively dived through and come in low. The long rifles shot finger-sized projectiles that sizzled through the air. Each alien bullet or grenade hit the membrane behind me, plowing through, but not before shorting the barrier, destroying it in some fashion.
The howling Antarctica wind swirled into the lander. None of the firing Saurians wore helmets. Some of the tank crews stared in what I’d swear was horror at the lost membrane. Was Earth air bad for them, as Rollo had suggested earlier?
Rollo crawled through the burst opening, swinging his alien rifle wildly.
“Here,” I said. I’d crawled to a box of some kind for cover.
Rollo saw me, and he aimed the long gizmo, pressing a button. The alien rifle discharged another of those finger-sized grenades that sizzled as it flew. It struck near an open tank and detonated. Sizzling lines of electricity, or something like electricity, felled the nearest lizards.
A savage sound of laughter tore out of my throat. How I’d wished for a moment like this during the last several days.
I began aiming carefully, shooting aliens. Some scrambled to get away from me and out of this chamber of death. Others rushed into their tanks.
One of the tank ramps began to close into the front glacis. I stood up, took out a hand grenade, yanked the pin—it tinkled against the alien floor—and hurled the explosive like a fastball. The grenade flew into the vehicle. I heard it explode as the ramp eased into the glacis.
“We’re doing it!” I shouted. I scooped up my M-14, tore out the spent magazine and slapped in another. Some of the lizards had sprinted for an opening deeper in the chamber. I headed that way. “Come on, Rollo!” I shouted.
We raced through the gym-sized compartment. None of the canopies on the alien tanks had begun moving yet. No engines revved, nor did turret-guns beam their mind-screwing rays. We’d caught them by surprise.
Assault Troopers Page 3
