Beachhead Series Collected Adventures Volume One: Invasion Earth series box set

by Chris Lowry

  Lutz looked at the other men.

  “Any of you guys know how to build a rocket ship?”

  “It’s already built,” said one of the men.

  “Then we’re halfway there,” said Lutz.

  He didn’t know what that meant, but he if the Lick wanted to put him in proximity to a potential weapon just so they could figure out how it worked, he felt he owed it to them to learn just that.

  Then turn it on them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “We’re just gonna fly it in,” said Waldo.

  The Lick base was nestled in a valley between two small mountains. A series of ridges ran up one mountain, like crumbled broken steps dotted with pine trees and anemic evergreens.

  The road ran over one of the ridges and through a series of switchbacks, as if the government that built it hadn’t wanted to spend the money to blast a straightaway to the door.

  Each section of the road that dipped behind a ridge gave them an opportunity to hide from view of anyone on the base.

  It also gave anyone on base time to set up a welcome party if they were identified.

  Waldo pointed this out.

  “We don’t look like a Lick patrol.”

  “They’re going to be lazy,” said Lt. “They’re going to see one of their own ships, and they won’t know anything’s gone sideways til we’re on top of ‘em.”

  “And then it’s too late.”

  “You could be underestimating them,” said Jake.

  He was staring at the rail line on the far side of the compound that drilled straight into the heart of the buildings and ran along a line to the mountain on the far side.

  “Don’t give a Lick credit for thinking for itself, Chief” warned Lt. “Lick got lucky, that’s all.”

  “They wiped us out on Mars,” Jake snapped. “They almost killed the human race here. I don’t think you’re giving them enough credit.”

  “You know how many Lick we’ve killed Chief?” Lt squinted at the young man. “Ain’t nobody knows what they’re capable of better than me. Lick didn’t kill most of the human race, that was damn human stupidity doin it for ‘em. Infighting, jockeying for power and position. Fuckers took their eyes off the prize and we’re the ones paid the price for it.”

  “I think you’re overestimating us,” Jake said.

  His eyes never left the railway tracks.

  “I don’t overestimate nothing. I don’t underestimate neither. What I do is make a plan that ain’t gonna survive contact with the enemy. None ever does. So we improvise. We overcome.”

  “We adapt,” Babe added. “Looks quiet.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” said Waldo. “I figured Lutz would have stirred them up.”

  “If he’s alive,” Jake muttered.

  “See those little dots down there Chief? Those are people. If those people are alive, then Lutz is alive.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Lt shrugged.

  “You might be surprised at what I know.”

  The tone of his voice made Jake jerk his head over and look at him. But Lt was glaring at the gates manned by a Lick guard.

  He could spy others scattered around the compound, and a cluster of humans in front of what looked like a warehouse.

  “Alright, here’s what we’re gonna do.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Here’s what you need to do,” said a human voice from the other side of the starcraft.

  Lutz didn’t jump, even though he was startled by the sound of it. He thought it was just the four of them.

  A paunchy man with long stringy hair stepped around the side of the derelict space shuttle and blinked at them.

  “He told me he was bringing help. I guess you’re the best he’s got?”

  “The best you’re going to get,” said Lutz.

  The man stuck out a grimy palm.

  “Johnson,” the man said by way of introduction.

  “Lutz.”

  They shook. Lutz watched as he introduced himself to the others.

  “He told you we were the best?” Lutz asked.

  “Yeah,” Johnson answered. “I’ve been telling him I need help down here if I’m going to get it started for him.”

  “You told him?”

  “Yeah,” said Johnson.

  “You’re working with him?” Lutz tried to keep the edge out of his voice.

  He had heard of collaborators before. Hell, they’d run across a few before and it didn’t end well for them. Lt hated collaborators almost as much as he hated Licks, and he really fucking hated Licks.

  “Just trying to survive, man,” said Johnson. “You guys have any mechanical training from before? Computers?”

  He ran through several other options, waiting for one of the four to nod. When he got nothing from any of them, Johnson sighed.

  “I don’t know what he expects me to do.”

  “Make it work,” Lutz hissed.

  Johnson chortled.

  “You don’t sound like him,” he snorted. “But don’t let them hear you do it. You could really piss them off.”

  Lutz glanced at the line of guards as they stood unmoving.

  “If I gave a fuck what they thought, we’d be in trouble.”

  “Well, I’ve managed to avoid trouble so far, so let’s keep it like that,” Johnson said and this time, there was a harsh edge to his voice.

  He turned and puttered back to an open panel on the shuttle. The interior was a mass of circuits and wires under a thick shielded hull.

  There was an oversized three ring binder on a rolling workbench, open to show two pictures and diagrams.

  Johnson tinkered with a small green monitor on the cart with wires attached to a motherboard inside the craft.

  “I don’t know how he expects me to do this,” he muttered as he double checked the connections. “They fried all the tech when they landed. This thing hasn’t been working right.”

  Lutz kneeled and looked into the belly of the star craft.

  “Did the hull shield the components?”

  He wasn’t sure if that was even possible, but his brother liked to talk and Lutz thought he remembered him talking about something like that.

  A new prototype had the capability, but Lutz wasn’t sure if it was the XS-J or some other star ship.

  “They say yes, I say I don’t know. I can’t get any readings from the ship, and I can’t get it turned on to run an on-board diagnostic.”

  Lutz rocked back on his heels and studied the wiring. It was a jumble to him, and made no sense, but he wanted to buy time and make the Lick think they were working on it.

  “How long have you been at this?”

  “Months,” said Johnson. “But he’s getting impatient.”

  “He?”

  “The Lick Commander. He’s planning something.”

  “With this?”

  Johnson nodded.

  “What?”

  The man with the paunch shrugged.

  “I don’t know how his mind works. But he’s a crafty one.”

  Lutz kept his mouth shut and studied the ship. But what he was really looking for was a weapon and an opening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lick Commander returned to the room where the Nestmate was resting.

  “Is it done?” she asked.

  He licked the air.

  “Not yet.”

  Her yellow eyes narrowed.

  “These humans are worthless,” she stated. “We could return in my vessel.”

  Lick Commander shook his head.

  “It would be unexpected, but a tactical error,” he said and didn’t explain himself further.

  He knew she would not argue tactics with him, even if she thought she understood the overarching strategy.

  “I grow impatient,” she said.

  “In time.”

  She had been here for weeks and she grew impatient, he thought. He had been here for years, since phase one, and working with the
humans grew tiresome.

  “My talent is wasted,” he thought and turned his back to her to stare at a monitor that showed the grounds around them.

  Human slaves working on the base. Human prisoners brought to him by other humans to buy their own lives. Such a species, his tongue flickered in disgust.

  He was destined for grander things. Even though he wasn’t of ruling stock, he knew he could rule better than the current occupant of the throne.

  She slid off of the chaise lounge and joined him at the monitor. The Nestmate of His Imminence, sent to spy on him, he thought, but perhaps his ally, a champion for his cause.

  “Do we have time?” she hissed.

  It was a question he wondered himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  “Time!” Lt screamed as the hovercraft vaulted over the closed hurricane fence.

  Babe leaned over the side of the craft and blew the head off of the Lick guard in pop of vapor.

  Lt, Waldo and Jake stared out at the grounds, rifles ready to meet the response. But there was none.

  Instead, the craft barreled nine feet off the ground over the unkept cracked asphalt that looked like a blackened version of the alien invader’s skin.

  After a few seconds of quiet flying, Waldo pulled his rifle down and took command of the yoke again.

  “Lt?”

  “I’m thinking,” Lt said.

  He expected a response. But no one seemed to notice the dead guard, no one paid attention the hovercraft as it approached the cluster of buildings that made up the center of the compound.

  Closer now, he could see the humans shuffling with their heads down. That’s why they didn’t respond to the assault.

  But the guards with them should have noticed something.

  Except they didn’t. So bored or used to the routine, they didn’t even notice the quiet approach of the hovercraft or the single shot of the blaster rile that took one of their numbers.

  “Set her down,” Lt instructed.

  Waldo steered for a row of hovercraft and landed with a small bump on the far end of the tarmac in line with the others.

  “This is where it gets interesting,” said Lt and signaled them over the side.

  The hopped out with the craft between them and the rest of the base, a buffer and screen in case they needed it.

  There were Lick soldiers milling several hundred meters away, but they didn’t glance in the direction of the soldiers in suits.

  Lt remembered something his grandfather had told him when he was a kid. Act like you own the place and nobody would bother you or ask you questions.

  The man usually said it when they were trying to get away with something. Nothing illegal, just stuff like sneaking backstage to meet some country singer the man liked, or trying to get some behind the scenes peek at what was going on somewhere.

  Lt wasn’t even sure if it would work with the Lick. Alien psychology wasn’t even close to human reasoning, and the doubts a person would experience in the face of authority might not exist with the Lick social structure.

  But what’s the harm in trying, he thought.

  “Line up, follow me,” he ordered in a low voice. “Eyes up and move like you mean it.”

  He marched across the tarmac toward the warehouse where he had seen the prisoners gather.

  No one bothered them. No one called out a challenge, or sent a bolt blasting into them.

  No one even seemed to notice them.

  Lt glanced back at the squad to make sure they were keeping up and stopped.

  Babe whipped his rifle around, ready to fight, but the aliens still ignored them.

  “Your suit,” Lt indicated and stared down at his own arm.

  The suits were changing, shifting in patterns of chameleon colors that matched the background and surrounds of the buildings they were against.

  “It’s camo,” said Babe as he stared in wonder.

  “Doc didn’t tell us about this,” said Waldo. “Wonder if he knew?”

  Lt ran his eyes over the display in his helmet, wondering if the scroll of information could help him.

  He found it in the lower right corner with the words INNATE SCREEN.

  “It’s the damn nano,” he said.

  Waldo looked from Babe to Jake and back to Lt.

  “The Lick’s can’t see us.”

  “Nah,” said Lt. “I think we’re just harder to see. We stand here long enough holding our peckers one of ‘em’s bound to come along and shoot it off for us.”

  He started toward the warehouse again and didn’t wait to see if the others fell in line.

  “Scorch marks,” Babe pointed out. “That entrance is new.”

  Lt saw it too.

  The front of the building had been hastily repaired, the burn and shoot marks of a fire still evident on the exterior of the structure.

  Broken windows flickered in the sunlight on one side. Two Lick soldiers stood guard on the doorway, watching the last of the slave’s trudge in from their various workstations.

  The air around them flickered and part of the wall detached. They had just enough time to slip out their tongues in surprise before two pops turned their faces into scalding mist.

  Waldo grabbed one body and dragged it into the room. Babe grabbed the other. Jake and Lt moved in behind them.

  “Watch our six,” Lt instructed the boy.

  There were two more guards at the far end of the building.

  Lt used a hand signal to send Babe and Waldo to dispatch them while he studied the inside of the warehouse.

  He was glad he couldn’t smell through the helmet. He saw pockets of prisoners huddled in small masses on tattered and lice infested blankets.

  They were crammed in tight, at least a hundred of them in a space where fifty would be crowded.

  Babe and Waldo dragged the guards on the far side into the building and jogged back to him.

  “Why aren’t they reacting?” Babe asked.

  Lt wondered the same thing.

  The sudden appearance of soldiers in suits should have started a surge of chatter or at least a reaction of some sort.

  Instead, the prisoners stared at them with wary exhaustion and creepy silence.

  “Let’s get Lutz and get the hell out of here,” said Waldo.

  He popped up his visor with a snick

  “Lutz,” he took a deep breath and gagged.

  Babe slid his visor and snickered.

  “Lightweight,” he chided. “Lutz!”

  Jake ran up with a prisoner in tow.

  “Lt,” he said. “This one asked for the one in charge.”

  Lt looked at her, but kept his visor down.

  “He said Lutz,” she pointed at Babe.

  “You know him?” Babe shouted as he tried to hold his breath.

  Waldo slid his faceplate back in place and cursed the stench of unwashed bodies and death that seemed to cling to him in his suit.

  The girl nodded.

  “They took him on a special work detail,” she said.

  Lt noted her thin arms, thin legs and greasy hair. She would have been pretty under different circumstances, but as a prisoner, she looked haunted and beaten. Sores crusted the corners of her mouth.

  “You know where?” Lt asked.

  She nodded.

  “Show us,” Babe ordered.

  She nodded again and led them toward the back door past the two dead Lick guards.

  Lt saw she didn’t flinch. In fact, she was a pretty cool customer for four suits showing up in the middle of her giant prison cell.

  “Something’s squirrely,” he said to Babe.

  Babe kept his rifle ready as he followed her.

  “Yeah, but she knows Lutz,” he answered.

  The girl led them through the back door and across the compound. Another warehouse stood with the door ajar.