Lucas felt the bandage stretch tight as Zack squeezed. The gauze slid across the wound underneath, tugging at the scab, but he didn’t feel the warmth of fresh blood, at least not yet. “Likewise. But you can call me Lucas.”
“I prefer Doc.”
“Sure, T-Rex,” Lucas replied, wishing he had a cool nickname.
“Only my friends call me that.”
Lucas caught his drift—he wasn’t a friend yet. He wondered how hard it would be to earn that title. Would he have to kill someone or wipe out a small village? Maybe it was a much simpler process, like bringing Zack a cold six-pack and a warm hooker every night. With any luck, maybe Zack would share some of the leftovers so he wouldn’t need to acquire the courage to ask Carrie Anne out. “Okay. Zack, it is.”
Lucas had thought about calling his new friend Hulk to lighten the mood, but decided against it. The giant could probably tear him in half and never break a sweat, unless this man’s intimidating appearance was simply a ruse. If it were, he might actually be a cuddly, three-hundred-pound teddy bear, much like Lucas’ dead lab assistant, Trevor.
Zack held a stun gun in front of his face and rammed a power cartridge into its stock. “This is all we have?”
“Silent but deadly,” Lucas added, “just like my brother.”
Zack didn’t seem amused.
“No casualties. Kleezebee’s orders,” Rico said.
“Where’d he get ‘em?” Zack asked.
“He had the stunners all along. Brought them with him from the other ‘verse. Stored ‘em over at Three Rivers.”
“The dump site?” Zack asked.
Rico nodded. “In the bio-hazard containers.”
Lucas thought Kleezebee’s plan to hide the illegal energy-based weapons at the dump was pure genius. After all, who in their right mind would wander into a toxic disposal site littered with yellow-and-black warning signs? Certainly not a sane person, but Cyrus the Virus wasn’t in his right mind, so it was a calculated risk by Kleezebee either way.
“We’ll only get to use them once, so we’d better make it count. They’ll light up the security net.”
“Agreed,” Zack said. “Once Cyrus learns of the breach, he’ll come at us hard.” He slid the weapon into a holster sitting on one of the unopened crates. “Would be a whole lot more fun if we were using shredders.”
“I second that,” Lucas said, hoping someday he’d get to fire one of the powerful hydrogen cell rifles. They unleashed a deadly stream of depleted uranium rounds that could rip through body armor like butter. The rounds used on-board nano-sensors to slow their flight after contact, allowing more time for their whirling blades to inflict damage. Best of all, they were reusable, provided their Teflon-coated, razor-sharp fins weren’t damaged.
“We still get to smoke him, right?” Zack asked.
“Not until after we rescue their friends.”
“Why?” Zack asked, jaw pushed out.
Rico didn’t answer.
Zack’s face flushed red, then the tension in his face subsided. “Ah, hell. You gave them your word, didn’t you?”
Rico nodded.
“Then I guess we wait. But this better happen fast,” Zack said, angry. “It’s just about killin’ time.”
“A few more days, that’s all. Then you can do what you need to do.”
Zack clipped the stunner’s holster to his equipment belt. “We’ll need something more than these zap-guns.”
“Definitely. But when it’s time, remember: Cyrus is all mine. You can take care of your old buddy, Freakshow.”
Zack nodded slowly, wearing a hint of a smile. He pulled out a long-handled nine-inch knife from a sheath hanging on the left side of his waist. He twisted it slowly in the air. Its serrated blade glistened under the warehouse lights as Zack seemed to make love to it with his eyes. “I’m gonna enjoy bleeding him, slow. It’ll make sure he stays alive for hours, before I end him.”
Maybe the term “teddy bear” was a poor choice of words, Lucas thought. Everything about the man screamed cold-blooded assassin—a true alpha male. He decided it was safer if he moved on the other side of Rico to the far end of crates.
Rico opened another crate to his right, put his hand in and pulled out four bricks of plastic explosives. He tossed them two at a time to Stonebridge. “You’re in charge of demo. Get it right this time.”
“Count on it, sir.”
Rico raised his voice. “Saddle up, ladies. We leave in ten. Keep your shit wired tight. Let’s run this by the numbers.”
Lucas’ heartbeat picked up steam. This was his first chance to be part of a bona fide assault team. He had been in a couple of firefights before on the hive ship and back on his version of Earth, but they were out of desperation and not a coordinated attack with seasoned mercenaries.
Rico handed a stack of folded street clothes to both Lucas and Zack. “Change out of your greens.”
“Why?” Lucas asked.
“You and Zack are going in as civilians. The reservations are in your name.”
Lucas looked up at Zack. “The two of us?”
“Yep. He’s your backup in case this op goes sideways.”
“They don’t call me T-Rex for nothing,” Zack said with a spark of pride in his eyes. He ripped off his t-shirt, revealing a litany of scars across his chest and back. Some were shaped like rounded starfish, while others were long, thick, and raised above the skin. Some of the surrounding tissue was discolored, as if someone had tried to patch him together using someone else’s skin. Maybe he suffered from post-op infections, or perhaps the skin grafts didn’t take the first time. Either way, it was obvious that Zack was hard to kill and no stranger to pain.
The most noticeable scar across Zack’s chest draped like a slanted “T,” which must have been how he’d been tagged with the nickname T-Rex. Lucas figured Zack was the kind of man who stood at the local bar and bragged that he ate glass and crapped napalm, then used a flame thrower to melt the skin off his arm to prove his toughness.
“Where are your men gonna be?” Lucas asked Rico.
“We’ll be outside, waiting for your signal.”
“Leaving us a little exposed, aren’t you?”
“Trust me, Doc, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Zack’s got your back and we’ll be only seconds away.”
“Can you at least have a couple undercover guys in the restaurant when we arrive?”
“They’re already on the list. Now, give me your left arm.”
Lucas held out his arm. “Why?”
Rico turned Lucas’ arm over, exposing the wrist. He pressed a stubby, cigar-shaped metal tube against Lucas’ skin. A second later, Lucas heard the sound of compressed air releasing, followed by a sharp prick along his wrist.
Lucas jerked his arm back and rubbed his wrist. “What the hell was that?”
“Protection.”
“Against what?”
“Capture and torture.”
“You mean like a tracking device?”
“No. Something a little more interesting,” Rico said, wearing a crooked smile. “An explosive charge.”
“A what!”
“I implanted a small explosive next to your radial artery. It’ll release a fast-acting chemical agent directly into your blood stream if you’re not back here in twelve hours.”
“It’ll kill you in a second,” T-Rex said, grinning as if he were getting a kick out of it.
“Fuck that. Get it out of me. I didn’t sign up for this shit.”
Rico held up his left arm. So did Zack and the rest of the men.
“We all have them,” Rico said. “It’s not an option if you want to be part of our team. We can’t take the chance that Cyrus gets his hands on you. You’d compromise the mission.”
“Bullshit,” Lucas said. “I’d never say anything.”
Zack laughed. “Trust me, Doc, you wouldn’t last an hour. They’re damn efficient at making captives talk. First, they’ll pump you full of adrenaline to keep
you awake and alert. Then, while you watch, they’ll skin you alive by peeling back hunks of your skin and feeding them to you. Hell, just Freakshow’s breath alone is—”
“That’s enough. He gets the point,” Rico said.
“Does the professor know about this?” Lucas asked, pointing to his throbbing wrist.
“Who do you think invented it?”
Lucas couldn’t believe the professor had never told him about the lethal device or that they’d plant it in his arm. But he knew how seriously Kleezebee believed in his Need to Know credo. The man was a walking cryptogram. “Fine. But once I’m back here, you’d better dig the thing out of me, first.”
“Won’t need to. We have a neutralizer device. Only takes a second,” Rico said. “Now, get changed. We’ve got work to do.”
SEVEN
Zack led the way to the Dunn-Rite Café wearing his signal watch, white button-down shirt, blue dress pants, and leather shoes. Lucas was dressed the same, minus the communicator watch and ten inches of macho.
“Dude, we look like gay bankers,” Lucas said, unbuttoning the top button of his collared shirt. Zack snickered at the joke, but never looked at Lucas. He kept walking toward the diner, still two blocks away.
“How long have you known Rico?” Lucas asked, scratching the injection site on his wrist.
“I served with him on Avanti Prime, during the first Krellian assault. Those damn bugs were relentless. We lost a lot of good men that day.”
“I heard about that. Wasn’t the casualty rate something like eighty percent?”
“Closer to ninety. We lost most of our squad. But we gave more than we got. Took out a whole regiment before they withdrew.”
“Is that where you got that huge T scar on your chest?”
Zack nodded. “I took a Sentinel’s claw straight on. Damn thing wouldn’t let me go until Rico blasted that creature’s head clean off. I owe him my life. I heard you saw some action on the hive ship before it crashed in the desert.”
“Sure did, but that wasn’t the first time. The bugs appeared out of nowhere back on Earth in Kleezebee’s underground silo, and snatched by little brother. Took him right out of his wheelchair and jumped back through a rift in space. Chicken-shits.”
“Impale and run. One of their favorite tactics.”
“I wanted to blast them, but couldn’t react fast enough. Some of Kleezebee’s engineers took grappling hooks in the chest. Tore them apart from the inside. Jesus, what a mess. It was epic.”
“Dodged a few of those in my day.”
“Bruno managed to get a shot off before the last one disappeared. Slowed the fucker down enough that the rift cut it in half when it closed. At least we got one of ‘em. We eventually got Drew back, but it wasn’t easy.”
“Bruno’s one of your friends, right?”
“Yeah. Haven’t seen him since we got here. One of the conditions of the non-aggression treaty with the bugs was that Cyrus had to dissolve all our BioTex replicas; one of ‘em was Bruno. He’s Kleezebee’s oldest friend and a warrior like you. I miss him. The guy makes me laugh.”
“BioTex?”
“It’s Bio-mimetic Latex. It’s one of Kleezebee’s best inventions and the reason the Krellian Empire invaded my version of Earth. It’s living synthetic latex that can be used to mimic a living organism right down to its DNA. Pretty cool stuff. At least it was until Cyrus stole it from us.”
“That asshole will steal anything. Especially if it gives him a tactical advantage. You have any other run-ins with the bugs?”
“Fuck, yeah. The Krellians used impale-and-run on the hive ship when they appeared and killed my mom and our lab assistant, Trevor, in the hallway outside the mess hall. It was horrible; the bugs ate them alive.”
Zack didn’t respond. Lucas wondered if Zack already knew the story. Maybe Kleezebee told Rico and Rico passed it along to Zack. It was a small planet, after all.
“Sad thing was, we were just about safely here and let our guard down. Never saw the ambush coming. Wish you and Rico had been there. Probably never would’ve happened.”
“It’s difficult to predict where those things will strike. They’re damned clever.”
“Yes, they are. Except the one time when Kleezebee outsmarted them during the exchange for Drew. We got my little brother back in one piece and didn’t have to give up anything. Kleezebee’s the second smartest person I know.”
“Who’s the first? You?”
Lucas sensed the sarcasm in Zack’s voice. “No. My brother. He makes us all look like meatheads.” As soon as the last word left his tongue, he wished he’d chosen a different phrase to describe his brother’s intelligence. Meathead? Where the hell did that word come from? He wondered how much it was going to hurt when Zack buried his knuckles wrist-deep into his cheekbone. Lucas waited for the punch, but it never came.
“What did your brother do?”
Lucas let out a long, silent exhale. “He took my dad’s pest-control invention and turned it into a supercharged sonic disrupter that attacked the Krellians’ nervous system. It was biblical! Orange blood and guts everywhere. Exploded every one of those fuckers and we never had to fire a shot. That’s how we got our hands on their hive ship and ended up here.”
“These sonic disruptors . . . are they anything like Cyrus’ SDVs?”
“Actually, they’re the same exact thing. SDV stands for Sonic Disruptor Vest, which he stole from us and then used to stop the Krellian attacks in this sector. He didn’t even have enough imagination to change the goddamn name. That was my dad’s invention and we brought it here from my Earth.”
“Does Rico know all this?”
Lucas nodded. “He’s about the only one. Cyrus used our technology to vault himself to the Chancellor’s office after he stopped the bugs and got them to sign the peace treaty. We’re the reason this colony still exists. Not him.”
“Too bad you guys didn’t show up a month earlier. Earth could have used the tech.”
“What was your Earth like before the bugs invaded?”
“Crowded. Not so much anymore.”
“When we decided to come to Kleezebee’s home universe, Drew and I were excited to see the future. We figured there’d be awesome new technology, medical advancements, personal spaceships, you know, the kind of stuff that science fiction authors had promised us for years. What a total disappointment. It’s like I’m stuck living on the pages of some pulpy sci-fi novel.”
“Earth had the tech you were expecting, at least until the Krellians leveled the major cities. This colony only has their hand-me-downs, but I prefer it that way. Too much tech just gets in the way.”
“No offense, but I still think this place blows.”
“Did Cyrus confiscate anything else?”
“Let’s see . . . the sonic disruptors, the BioTex, our jump pad technology, and all of our remaining E-121 power modules.”
Lucas wanted to brag about the items Cyrus didn’t find, like the activator enzyme for the BioTex, the rift-slipping device, and the new incursion technology that Kleezebee and Fuji had built in the basement of the cabin, but decided against it. Rico had vouched for Zack, but Lucas barely knew the guy. He needed to know more about him first, before he gave away all their secrets.
“I’m surprised Cyrus let you go,” Zack said with genuine-sounding curiosity in his voice.
“Believe it or not, Kleezebee talked him into it. He told Cyrus that he needed our expertise to help rebuild the colony and train his men how to use our tech. The first chance we got, we took off and hid in the mountains—been there ever since. So, what’s the deal with you and Freakshow?”
The look on Zack’s face suggested that he didn’t want to answer the question. But a few seconds later, he did. “He killed my younger brother.”
Lucas wondered if he should continue to pry or just let the man be. His curiosity won out. “What happened?”
“Me, Rico, and Freakshow were all part of the same combat unit on Avanti Prime.
One night on watch, camp surveillance showed Freakshow leaving his post, which we later determined was to go get high. Wasn’t long before the base’s perimeter was breeched and the bugs tore through most of our troops. One of the KIA was my younger brother, Marco. He’d just turned sixteen and only signed up three days before.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know.”
Zack grunted as his eyes glazed over and his hands shook. “I was out on a bug hunt with Rico and wasn’t there to protect him.”
“It’s tough to lose a brother, I know,” Lucas said with a heavy heart, thinking of the last time he saw his brother—eighteen months ago. Drew was smiling and linked arm-in-arm with Abby, ready to move through the portal to Kleezebee’s universe. Lucas had gone through the portal first, escorting their adoptive mother, Dorothy. He and his mom waited for them on the other side. But Drew and Abby never made it. The portal collapsed with them still inside. Lucas managed to reopen the rift and get the rest of the crew across to the stolen Krellian hive ship, but they never found Drew. He’d been missing even since. “That kind of loss can really change a man.”
“That lowlife is gonna pay,” Zack snorted. He whirled and punched a nearby blue trash dumpster, sending it spinning to the left. It crashed into a moss-covered brick wall, lunging upward on the back pair of caster wheels. The fist impact left a two-foot dent in the side of the rusted bin. Zack’s knuckles were bleeding, but he never shook his hand. He continued walking, letting the blood drip to the ground.
Lucas gave Zack a minute to calm down. “Was it M-B? The stuff Freakshow was getting high on?”
“Yeah. I found the stash in his duffel the next day.”
“I thought so. M-B is everywhere. I know a few tweakers in town who are addicted to it. Word has it that Cyrus is the major supplier.”
Zack nodded. “He gives samples away to get them hooked. Then he rations the supply as leverage to keep them under control.”
Lucas wondered if Zack knew about the ingenious delivery system for the drug. “It all starts with a swarm of microscopic bees that are released into the bloodstream at the injection point. They travel to the subject’s brain and attach themselves to targeted nerve clusters, flooding the senses with pleasure signals.”
Incursion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 2) Page 6
