V01 - V

by A. C. Crispin

  "Blasting caps?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay, bring 'em here. Chris and I have some stuff stashed outside—"

  "Where is he?"

  "Gone to get it, along with our heavier artillery."

  "Right." Mike was already moving for the door.

  A minute later he was back, carrying a wooden box piled helter-skelter with explosives. "This is all we got."

  "Okay, Gooder, get your people out of here."

  Setting the box down, Donovan nodded and vanished. Tyler and Faber could hear him directing the removal of the laboratory equipment. Ham nodded at Chris. "Okay, sounds like he's handling that end. You set the charges—I'll cover you." He hefted the automatic machine pistol Faber held out to him. "You got Teflon loads in this?"

  "You bet."

  "All right. Let's go."

  "I checked with Sam while I was back at the car. Ten minutes isn't going to be enough," Faber said, stacking grenades methodically into a cardboard container.

  "I'll tell 'em."

  In the hall Tyler found Donovan at the upstairs window watching the van, camouflage net and branches still attached, pull away. "There goes the lab equipment," he said.

  "Chris checked the status of the snake patrol. You gotta get out now."

  Donovan gave the older man a harried glance. "Great." Raising his hands and his voice, he waved for attention. "Calm down everybody! Listen!"

  Obediently, the frantic rush slowed. Tyler spoke to them. "You got one escape route through the sewer system tunnel. Bad planning, folks—but you'll learn. Take it now, with what you can carry."

  "Okay, you heard him! Get moving!" Donovan shouted.

  "Have we got all your munitions?" Ham asked a few minutes later as they stood in the doorway with Faber, watching the fighters scatter down the culvert.

  "Those who have flashlights stay with those who don't!" shouted Donovan, before he turned back to Tyler. "There's the bazooka—it's in the room upstairs, next to the one we were in. Also a small rocket launcher. I think it's got a shell or two left."

  "All right, Gooder. We'll handle it from here. Get your tail out of here. Your people are gonna need you. Have you got a hidey hole picked?"

  "Yeah."

  "One this Juliet Parrish doesn't know about?"

  Pain shadowed Donovan's eyes for a second. "As a matter of fact, yes, we picked it this morning, figuring we'd move just to be safe. But Julie didn't talk—"

  "Sure, right. Get your ass in gear, Gooder."

  Donovan turned, flashlight in hand, and raced for the culvert.

  Tyler turned to Faber. "Remember what we pulled at that armory in Afghanistan?"

  Faber nodded.

  "Same drill."

  "You got it."

  Several minutes later they heard the squad vehicles outside, and Ham, sneaking a peek out the window, saw several SWAT team uniforms mixed in with the red ones. "You set?" he asked Faber, who was checking the walls of the main second-story corridor, a box of grenades in his hands. Feet rumbled downstairs.

  Chris nodded, carefully setting down the grenades. "Here's the spot."

  "Take some of the grenades with you in case they've blocked the rear windows, and clear out."

  Nodding, Faber took his grenades and disappeared into the shadowed corridor. Tyler set up the bazooka, positioning it carefully, making sure it was just far enough from the grenades. Quickly, he dragged mattresses out of the dorm and set them up in a screen behind the bazooka, taking up his position at the weapon.

  Seconds later, the far end of the corridor filled with Visitor shock troopers. Sighting carefully, Tyler fired at the grenades, then threw himself behind his shield. There was a huge ka-thump, then a searing whoosh of displaced air as the box of grenades, placed under the main support beams for that side of the structure, went off. The entire western end of the ancient plant buckled and fell in, directly onto the troopers, taking most of the floor as well.

  Flaming debris had set several of the mattresses to smoldering, but Tyler crawled out unharmed. He surveyed his handiwork complacently. Red uniforms poked through the pile of debris, arms and legs thrust stiffly out like pins from a pincushion. From where he stood on the questionable solidity of what remained of the second floor he could see the greenish-black of reptilian skin through the human flesh.

  "What a waste," Ham said, grinning happily. "You would've made nice luggage."

  Chapter 25

  Harmony Moore's catering truck bumped along the ancient dirt road so violently that she worried about the kerosene in the stove in the back. She forced herself to slow down, reassuring herself that nothing could have happened to the others in the hour she'd been gone.

  She was returning from the new headquarters to pick up another load of supplies—many of the laboratory chemicals and drugs required the refrigeration supplied by the tiny refrigerator in the back of her specially equipped truck. The new hideout was clear across town, an abandoned movie set in a deserted stretch of country

  Quickly Harmy swung the wheel hard right to avoid a particularly vicious rut, then hard left to head straight down the hillside. The path was marked with flattened grass from the traffic today. With relief, she saw Elias, Brad, Donovan, and Caleb sitting on the tailgate of a pickup in the middle of the field. The dark hole of the sewer outlet gaped blackly in the white concrete culvert near them. Harmy shuddered, remembering the nightmare of that hasty scramble through the sewer clinging to Caleb's hand as he searched out the uncertain footing for them with a steadily weakening flashlight.

  When the blast had come, rocking them even underground, the light had dropped from Taylor's hand, and they'd had to grope their way through the darkness. Harmy was pretty sure she'd have nightmares about their escape for some time to come. She didn't like the dark.

  As she pulled up, Donovan climbed off the tailgate to meet her. "Everything all right back at the ranch?"

  "Father Andrew seemed to be doing the best he could toward getting the place organized. Robin didn't look too good—seemed kind of disoriented. You know how she's been lately."

  "Yeah."

  Harmy glanced around the area. "What else has to go?"

  "Just Willie. He's sitting in the truck. Said the sun was too bright, and he's lost his dark glasses. Mind driving him back to the new HQ?"

  "Well . . ." Harmy hesitated. "Would you mind if I didn't drive this time? This is my third trip, and I'm kinda tired."

  "Oh, sure—no problem. Elias or Brad won't mind driving the pickup."

  "Thanks, Mike."

  Several minutes later William sat in the back of Harmy's truck, handcuffed to the stove. When Harmony peeked in at him, he was staring dejectedly off into space. Biting her lip, she hesitated, then went around to the cab of the truck. "Mike? I think I'll ride in back—keep Willie company."

  "Sure," he said, starting the truck. "I've got plenty of thinking to keep me occupied."

  Quickly Harmy ran around and climbed into the back of the truck. She barely had time to sit down and brace herself, before the truck moved, turning, then growling up the hillside. The jolting was worse in the back.

  William was watching her but when Harmy turned to him, he quickly looked away. She hesitated, then smiled, "Hi, Willie."

  He looked back at her startled, grateful, and wary all at once. "Hello, Harmony. I am glad to see you safely."

  "Are you hungry? I have plenty of stuff in here. Vegetables, cheese . . . You can eat cheese, can't you?"

  "I am not sure," William said, "but I am not hungry, anyway. Thank you for asking."

  "It's the least I could do," she said. "It's too bad they feel they have to handcuff you. It looks so uncomfortable."

  "It's not so bad," Willie said. "I understand why they must do what they do." He hesitated, then gave her a quick, sideways look of embarrassment. "Harmy, why are you being so nice to me?"

  "I like you, Willie," she answered softly, looking straight at him. "We're still friends, aren't we?"

&nbs
p; "But you saw what I look like!" Shame was evident in every line of him. "You saw . . . my hand. My back." He took a deep breath. "John's face."

  "Yeah, I did," Harmy said slowly. "You guys really aren't very handsome, at least to our eyes. But I guess maybe we looked kinda ugly to you at first, didn't we?"

  William was visibly taken aback. "Well . . . yes. Of course you people never showed us anything but your true faces." He hesitated. "You are a different sort of person, Harmony. No other human has ever treated me with such . . . uncaringness. Is that the right word?"

  She smiled gently. "I don't know. What are you trying to say?"

  "That to most people it makes a difference, knowing how I look beneath this covering." He touched his smooth, unlined face. "But to you it does not. You are uncaring of that."

  "I think maybe the word you want is 'tolerant,' Willie."

  "Tolerant. Thank you."

  "Well, to tell you the truth, even before I knew, I wasn't falling in love with you for your looks, Willie." She grinned. "There just aren't that many good people around that I can stop caring about you because you look different. Life is too short for that."

  He looked at her then very slowly reached over and touched her hand. "Thank you, Harmony. I'll always remember you said that, no matter what happens to me." He smiled timidly. "Even among my own people I am not what you call an ox."

  She frowned, puzzled, then burst out laughing. "That's 'fox,' you dope! You've been listening to Robin and Polly, haven't you?"

  "I listen, because I like all of you. I want to help."

  "I know," she said gently, moving closer to him. She sat braced against him, cushioning the lurching bumps of the truck for both of them.

  It took the resistance a full day to unpack and set up their new headquarters in the abandoned movie set. Since many of the buildings were merely facades, they kept the old saloon as a headquarters. Bill Graham, Caleb's friend, found them two old trailers, veterans of many construction jobs. The rebels used one as a lab, and the other to store their munitions. True to his word, Ham provided them with weapons and ammunition designed to be more effective against the Visitors.

  Cal Robinson, Robert Maxwell, and Harmony Moore worked in the laboratory, analyzing samples, running down every biological clue that might lead to a weapon against the Visitors. They were hampered in their efforts by their lack of Visitor guinea pigs—testing substances on William's blood was not the same. Certain terrestrial reptiles exhibited some of the same characteristics as the aliens, so the scientists were able to use them in a few experiments. It was slow, discouraging work—especially for Maxwell, who was laboring outside his chosen discipline, striving to pick up the threads in subjects he hadn't studied since getting his Ph.D. eighteen years ago.

  The anthropologist also had to fight against letting depression overwhelm him—as it threatened to every time he looked at his daughter. Robin was sinking deeper and deeper into herself. Several weeks after Juliet's capture, the girl attempted suicide, but only succeeded in making shallow, inexperienced cuts across her wrists before Polly, alarmed by her sister's locking the bedroom door, roused their father. After this incident, Robin was never left alone. She made no further attempts, but sat quietly most of the time, staring at nothing. They had to urge her to eat.

  The Maxwells weren't the only fighters struggling against a miasma of depression. Most of the time, Mike Donovan was too busy to realize how despondent he was, but when he had a few moments to himself, he spent them wondering why he didn't just take off on his own—nobody could survive under this kind of burden, he thought. Saddened and angered by Kristine Walsh's death, tormented by guilt over Juliet's capture, Mike had to fight his tendency toward action—any action—and play a waiting game. He'd never been a patient man, but during the long days following Julie's capture, he was learning. Hating every inactive moment, but learning.

  In Juliet's absence, Donovan had assumed de facto leadership of the group, and in doing so, achieved even greater respect for the young woman than he had had before her capture. Julie's brief tirade against the pressures of leadership hadn't even to tell the whole story.

  It was a full-time job, for instance, just overseeing the acquisition and distribution of supplies, and not just guns and ammunition. People had to eat, bathe, wash clothes—Donovan found himself the target of scathing criticism and scorn a day after the Visitor raid on the sanitation plant, when it was discovered that he'd forgotten to include toilet paper on the shopping list.

  Then there were the finances! When Mike unearthed Juliet's records of income and expenditures, he was dismayed by the neat columns of figures, the myriad bankbooks and checkbooks under carefully established false identities. Running a resistance movement was expensive—even though a number of the fighters, Elias for one, channeled all their income into the movement, the underground teetered on the bare edge of solvency. Contributions from people like the Bernsteins helped, but the cash flow was a never-ending drain. Donovan had never liked figures. His nightmares about Sean began to alternate with sweaty, frantic dreams of crouching over the account books, realizing the underground was doomed for lack of money.

  But the worst nights of all were when he dreamed of Juliet. They had had no news of her beyond the snippets Maggie Blodgett had garnered from Daniel Bernstein—until the day Donovan took Ham Tyler to meet Martin for their next scheduled encounter.

  Tyler picked Donovan up in an L.A.P.D. squad car. He was wearing a police uniform, and as Donovan looked through the window, the older man shoved another at him. "Here, Gooder. This oughtta fit you. Get a move on. We don't want to keep your scaly buddy waiting."

  As they turned onto the dirt road leading away from the underground headquarters, Donovan looked down at his disguise. The outfits were a good idea—they would make it a lot easier to get around. "Where'd you get the car and the uniforms?"

  "I have my sources, Gooder." Ham said. "Remember I was in this business when you were still in diapers."

  "Really?" Donovan said, with a half-smile. "I had no idea you were so close to retirement. Or is it true that old assassins never die—they just get so hyped on death that they off themselves one day when there's nobody else to wipe out?"

  Tyler's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "You shitty little bastard, I oughtta—"

  The car swerved, just as Donovan shouted, "Look! There's another one!"

  Tyler stopped the car and both men got out to stare at the sky. Another huge ship was gliding effortlessly into position over the Mother Ship, even larger than the original. "Where the hell did that one come from?" Tyler muttered.

  "Sirius is probably a safe bet," Donovan said. "Christ, the thing covers the whole damn county."

  "Great. All we need are more of those scaly bastards to fight."

  "With two of 'em blocking out the sun, there won't be a tree left alive in the whole county." Donovan jerked open the door of the squad vehicle and climbed in. He spent the rest of the drive silently staring at his shoes.

  Parking the squad vehicle several blocks away from the rendezvous point, the two men walked, as if on patrol, into the bowels of an underground parking lot. Coming from the sunlit street into the abrupt underground, the world dissolved into pools of gray and black. They stood there blinking, smelling the pungency of gasoline and exhaust fumes. Ham looked skeptically around the echoing concrete darkness. "Okay, Gooder. Where's your gator buddy?"

  "He's done more for us than you have, Ham," Donovan scowled, "so watch that kind of talk. He'll be here."

  "It's nice that some people in this world are so trusting."

  They waited about fifteen minutes before the scuff of a footstep made both men jump. Martin stepped out of the shadows. "Hello, Mike."

  "Jeezus! Just like a swamp gator—slides right up on you, no noise at all!" Ham glared at the Visitor.

  Donovan gave him an exasperated glance. "Martin, this . . . person . . . has joined us, and is helping us. I don't like him, but I'm willing to trust h
im, at least during this particular war. I ask that you do the same."

  "I trust you, Donovan. That's enough for me."

  "Okay, then, meet Ham Tyler. He heads up the U.S. branch of a worldwide resistance network our group is cooperating with. Tyler, this is Martin."

  Glancing over at the older man's face, Donovan could plainly see Ham's disgust. Donovan felt a spark of genuine amusement, the first in days. "Any news about Julie?" he asked, sobering.

  Martin looked grave. "She hasn't broken yet, but she will. Diana will convert her or kill her, I've never seen her so determined."

  Donovan began cursing under his breath, helplessly grinding a fist into his palm. "We've got to get her out!"

  "Has she talked?" Tyler asked.

  "Not that I know of," Martin said. "She has a very strong will, and has shown surprising innovation in getting around Diana's methods."

  "If she didn't talk, how did they find the HQ in the sewer plant?" Ham wanted to know.

  "Pascal, the counterfeiter. Diana tortured him, and he talked. They had him with them at the raid, and when the explosion went off, they killed him for lack of anyone else."

  "Too bad," Mike said. "The guy was a real artist at what he did." He glanced back down at his clenched fist. "Martin, you've got to help us get Julie out."

  "She is kept under such tight security that I haven't even been able to speak with her, It's impossible, Mike."

  "But if you and the other fifth columnists help—"

  "There are too few of us, and too many of them. It's incredibly dangerous for us."

  Ham took a quick step forward, balancing on the balls of his feet as he glared at the Visitor. "Hey, scaly, you listen to my friend here, and do what he says. 'Cause if you don't, I'm gonna wrap you up in your human skin and serve you to your buddies up there as an exotic hors d'oeuvre. Get me?"

  Martin looked at Tyler for a long moment, then turned a dubious gaze on Donovan. "This man is not like any other human I have met."

  Mike, rolled his eyes, shrugging. "I know. Fortunately, selective breeding keeps their numbers at a minimum." He turned a long look on the older man. "What I said to you about the others, goes for Martin too. Don't forget it."