Annie threw her arms around Rand’s waist. “It’s g-gonna eat me!”
Rand had his H90 out, gripping it in both hands. “Eat this” he told the remains of the Sensor, and began firing. But the bolts just split the flying lumps into smaller ones, and the firing somehow made them charge at high speed.
The Regess’ voice came from every doughy lump, down to the least globule, as if from a vast chorus, “Attack!”
Rand fired hopelessly as Annie screamed.
One pilot short, the team still got all VTs into the air. The Beta was linked to Scott’s Alpha, which increased its firepower and speed. The fighters moved forward on thrusters that shook the earth and started minor avalanches in the valley behind them. Down below, Lunk’s APC, rigged for cold-weather work, moved cross-country almost as nimbly as a snow-mobile, bound straight for the fortress’s main portal.
As they jumped off a snowbank and roared on again, Lunk said out of the side of his mouth, “I hope your stomach’s stronger than your head, Marlene.” But she sat hugging herself, eyes unfocused, shivering in spite of the outpouring of the heaters.
Rand tried not to retch, as wad after wad of the stuff that had been the Sensor splattered into him, coating him. The stuff had the consistency of runny putty but was warm to the touch. The most horrible thing about it, though, was that it moved by itself, snaillike, spreading wherever it hit. And it wouldn’t come off.
The Sensor knew, even in its dispersed state, that it was dying. But it knew, too, who its enemies—its slayers—were, and it would have its revenge.
Annie’s mind was about to snap. She closed her eyes as she rubbed and brushed at the stuff, uselessly tore it with her nails, batted it and shrilled, “No, no, no, no, n?!”
She flung herself back at Rand, who was trying to clear the plugged muzzle of the H90. He was already wearing a pink mantle that was surging to cover his head. There was a waist-high pile all around them, making it impossible to run.
Rand beat, trying to shield Annie. “Annie, listen to me!”
“Aufff! It’s getting in my mouth!”
The amorphous clots of residue streamed down at them from every quarter. He heaved at her. “Hang onto me and try to keep your head above it!”
Her voice was muffled by a mask of the stuff. “I can’t breathe!”
His arms were all but paralyzed. “Annie, listen! Check the emergency tracking beam! Is it still flashing?” The crud was surging up around his face.
She gathered all her courage and forced down her panic. With a supreme effort, she got her head around and managed to get a glance down at the thing like a silvery fountain pen with a flashing tip that was clipped to one of her pockets.
She forced herself to get out the words, “I think so—yes!”
The Pincer Ships still casting about for Rook’s trail weren’t prepared for the sudden appearance of a vengeful trio of Veritechs. The dogfight had barely begun when four of the Invid personal-armor mecha were falling in whirling, flaming fragments. The team spent its missiles prodigally; their kill score climbed.
Lunk’s truck, bounding and slewing across the open snowfield, attracted other attention. He saw cannons in a half-dozen niches in the cliff face open fire, and he began dodging and juking. Invid annihilation discs began Frisbeeing all around him. Snow was melted and earth blown high in fountains of flame and smoke. As was his habit, Lunk froze from his thoughts the image of what even one hit would do to him, Marlene, and the truck, in view of the ordnance and Protoculture they were hauling.
But Scott had seen what was happening, and dove in, loosing more missiles. The gun emplacements were knocked out in cascades of snow and broken rock, leaving only smoking holes like horizontal chimneys.
Rook and Lancer had vanquished the last of the opposition; the VTs made an attack run and blew open the main gate of the Invid fortress. The fighters slowed, moving on hoverthrusters, sailing into the colossal main corridor. Lunk’s APC brought up the rear, his finger on the autocannon’s steering wheel trigger.
They had little time to observe the fortress, with its bizarre and unnerving combination of alien technology and XT organics. Following Annie’s tracer beam, they came to the Hive Center at last. The aircraft had been forced to slow down in the maze, so that Lunk pulled to a stop just as they grounded VTOL style.
The VTs knelt in a Hive Center of twisting, still-burning Controller mecha. The place was filled with thick smoke, the stench of incinerated organic material, and the reek of the disintegrating matter that had been the Sensor. The pilots jumped down, as Lunk and Marlene both coughed from the foulness around them.
At last they spotted the mound of pinkish stuff that had been the Sensor. Then they saw the dim flashing coming from its summit. Scott dashed toward it. “Gimme a hand here!”
The, Sensor-stuff was beginning to melt; in another moment, Scott and Lunk had pulled two bodies free. Rand was barely breathing when they got him out, but he had shielded Annie in a little air pocket he had formed with his own body.
Rook stood to one side, staring down, not moving. She seemed about to speak, then was silent. But she never took her eyes off of Rand.
At last Rand’s eyes opened. “W-what took you so long, pal?”
Rook let out a breath and pulled her features back into their normal unconcerned, uncaring expression. And so when Rand eagerly looked at her, she gave him a casual look. He still managed a smile, grateful that she was alive, though he would have crawled back in under the Sensor offal before admitting it.
Lunk called over, “Annie sez she’ll be all right once she brushes her teeth!”
Rand was already pushing Scott away from him, coming to his feet, clearing the last of the goo out of the H90, weaving a little. “I’ve had it! I’m gonna slaughter those walking tin latrines!” He steadied himself and lurched away. By the time Scott caught up with him, Rand was standing at a lower entrance to the huge dome where empty mecha waited in fetal repose.
Scott whistled low. “What is it, an incubator?”
Rand brought up his pistol. “Whatever it is, it’s history!”
Something inside him knew he should be off somewhere ferreting out the place where the drones themselves were created—that he should be wiring that place up with all the explosives in Lunk’s truck.
But he just wasn’t made that way. The drones, for all their grotesqueness, were living things. And without their mecha, they were nothing.
Rand fired into the hemisphere in the middle of the dome—the thing that looked so much like the first instant of a nuclear explosion. He didn’t know quite what would happen, but it turned out that the thing was fragile as stained glass. Sections of it geysered, then caved in, and black smoke roiled forth.
Rand was watching it in stonefaced satisfaction when, suddenly, Marlene’s screech echoed to them down the alien halls.
They raced back to find the others trying to help, without any effect, as Marlene knelt, clutching her head. She wept that she couldn’t stand it—though she didn’t say what it was.
When Lunk wondered aloud what could be the cause of Marlene’s seizures, no one answered until Scott said softly, “I wish I knew.”
“Bad news, guys,” Rook cut through their unease. She was standing by Lunk’s truck, examining its beeping displays. “That Invid patrol that left the hive this morning is on its way home!”
Scott didn’t take the time to wonder if it was because the raid had taken too long or because the destruction of the Sensor had alerted the mecha. “Okay, people: let’s get out of here on the double. Rand, take the Beta Fighter.”
Rand was already off and running. When the VTs hovered in the Hive Center and Lunk was racing his engine, Scott said over the tac net, “Listen up: you either break out of this rat’s nest now, or you spend the rest of your lives as sharecroppers on an Invid Protoculture farm.”
“What d’you mean ‘you’?” Rand challenged. “What’s Bernard gonna be doing while we’re busting out?”
&nb
sp; Scott tried to sound matter-of-fact. “I’m the one who got us into this.”
“Nobody’s arguing,” Rand shot back.
“As you were! So, it’s my place to take some of the heat off you. I’m going to block the front door for a while; don’t lollygag getting out the back.” His thrusters lit like blue novas, and his Alpha sprang away into one of the huge elevated conduit-passageways.
“Lancer, we should back him up,” Rand said slowly, pulling on his thinking cap.
“Let him go, country boy; he’ll be fine!” Rook snapped. “We’ve got enough problems of our own!”
Scott mechamorphosed to Battloid mode as he zoomed toward the shattered main gate. He met the first of the returning Pincer Ships with blasts from the mecha’s massive rifle/cannon, a weapon with a muzzle as wide as a storm drain. The enemy flight was coming head-on, and Scott had little chance to dodge them. He blasted the first ship out of the air and scattered the ones near it.
But they came at him anyway, Frisbeeing their annihilation discs. He ducked into a side passageway, an upright Battloid, back and foot thrusters gushing blue. The Invid dove after him.
Then it was a game of evade and hide, ambush and run. The Invid were unrelenting, attacking him even though he had the advantage of standing or fleeing as he chose.
At last he darted like a huge wasp into a corridor that led to an intense light. At its mouth stood two Scout guards, so surprised at his appearance that they were slow to react. Scott knocked them off their feet, and they plunged backward, unable to attain a useful flying attitude. They tumbled and thrashed to their doom.
Scott found himself in a place that was miles wide. In its center was a tremendous globe that reminded him of the ancient ones in dance halls, the ones that reflected light. Only, this one was wired up with Invid Robotech hardware and organic wetware.
This must be the central power core for the fortress!
Pincer Ships entered the spherical vastness from three different conduits, and he felt the sweat run down his face. He eyeballed the power core quickly, spotting a glowing circular opening or access port a hundred yards across. Through it, he could see the scintillating mysteries of Invid Protoculture technology. His computers told him it was the alien equivalent of a main control matrix.
Scott made his decision, and the Battloid roared toward it. Invid noted his presence, drove toward him at full acceleration, claws outstretched to grip and rend, since they didn’t dare fire there. Scott fooled them by hitting the core’s outer hull, absorbing the impact with the Battloid’s mighty legs, and springing away again.
The personal-armor mecha couldn’t fire, but Scott felt no such compunctions. He whirled in midair and dispatched six air-to-ground Bludgeon missiles from his right and left shoulder pods. The Pincers dodged, thinking the missiles were meant for them.
One of the Bludgeons detonated on the rim of the access opening, but the rest lanced through into the power core’s innards. Scott had already turned his Battloid on its heel to run like all hell.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Homer posited two kinds of dreams, the “honest” one of Horn, and the “glimmering illusion” of Ivory. So Dad shot for Ivory, what else?
Maria Bartley-Rand, Flower of Life: Journey Beyond Protoculture
The core’s vitals suddenly turned white-hot, and the whole miles-wide spherical chamber lit up like the interior of an arc furnace.
Although her Sensor was gone, the Regess spoke to her remaining children. “Control Matrix breeched! Reflex furnace overload!” All she could do was tell them that they were all going to die, but at least they would hear her voice in their final moments. Gargantuan sheets of electrical discharge played all through the place.
The core came apart at its seams, like a soccer ball full of Tango-9 explosive. The Pincers were vaporized; the explosion raced outward.
Scott had turned and turned again, hurtling along at max thrust, praying the walls and turns would muffle some of the blast.
Then it caught up with him.
The Beta and the other two Alphas, shepherding Lunk’s truck, arrowed toward the titanic triangle of the alien stronghold’s rear gate. Beyond it, a snowy Earth shone.
“Nice of ’em to leave the back door open,” Rook smiled. Then she felt her flesh goosebump as she saw that the light was dwindling; the two halves of the giant triangle’s door were sliding in from either side.
“But not for long!” cried Lancer. “Lunk, hurry!”
Lunk gritted his teeth, floored the accelerator, and hit a few buttons. “Can’t make it,” he muttered, but the APC leapt ahead in a way that disputed that.
The VTs had to come through standing on one wing-tip; the APC almost got its tailpipe caught. But they all made it, as the massive door halves ground shut.
“I think that one took some paint off my baby, here,” Rook said cheerily, patting her instrument panel.
Lunk just tried to control his trembling; Annie was either meditating, praying, or passed out. Marlene looked comatose.
Rand glanced back over his shoulder at the fortress. C’mon, Scott!
Somehow, being slammed against walls and dribbled along the deck for a bit hadn’t destroyed the superstrong Battloid. Even though the blast from the reflex furnace had shaken the whole mountain and had fissured walls, floors, and ceilings, it had somehow been relatively contained. But he was registering secondary explosions, and there was every chance that the core was going to explode again with an even more spectacular Big Bang.
Then it was on his tail, a fireball even bigger than the first. His sensors picked it up even while he was jetting for a secondary reargate, unable to find the main. Fast as it was, the Battloid had no chance of outrunning the flashflood of utter destruction for long.
And the bad news was that the gate he was headed for was closed.
He let the gate have everything he had left, his only hope being to break through. No room for explosives; he fired pumped-lasers.
Well, Scott: make-it-or-break-it time! he thought, all in an instant, as the valve before him disappeared in a wash of demonfire.
Then he was through, the Battloid thrown into the clear like a marionette fired out of a mortar. But somehow the Robotech colossus held together, straightened itself, and regained flying posture, as the core explosion reached the open air on the mountain behind it. It was as if somebody had opened a floodgate into the heart of a star.
Scott dazedly shook his head, trying to image his mecha along, looking around him wonderingly, and tasting the special sweetness of being alive. Well, what … do … you … know! He went down to join the others.
Down below, Annie, Lunk, and Rook cheered as the mountain shook to its roots. Lancer was silent, but even he nodded approval.
But Marlene only watched dully, hearing the distant wailing of the Regess, and Rand was thinking to himself that somewhere thousands upon thousands of drones had been consumed. When he thought about the horrible things their quickening would have meant for Humans, he couldn’t feel pity.
The stronghold itself began to sink, subsiding into the ground the way the mountains above the Genesis Pit had subsided. Passes everywhere were blocked with the snow shaken down by the fortress’s passing, but at least now the way was open for any who might want to come after; for anyone who had had enough of the south and wanted to try a new life.
Who knows? Annie thought. Maybe there is a Paradise!
Far below the snow line they found a lake that, though cold, was a welcome place of respite. In no time, Annie was in the water, her much-touted bikini covered by a T-shirt. Rook was in, too, in bra and panties, eager to wash off the trail and the deaths and the killing. In no time, Annie had her engaged in a splash-fight. Both of them loved it, even though their lips were turning purple.
Marlene sat on the grassy shore, watching in bewilderment. Maybe if she could figure out this incomprehensible behavior it would help her figure out all the other enigmas that were her life. Thus far,
she had simply gone along with the people who had found her, like a spore borne on the wind. But was that what she should be doing, even if it did feel appropriate? Nothing made any sense.
A few yards away, the men sat at ease after setting up camp. Annie had pointedly informed them that it was ladies first in the bath, and they would have to wait their turn.
Rand was shaking his head, saying, “Poor Marlene. All those attacks or whatever they are. And she still hasn’t pulled out of that amnesia. I wish there was something we could do for her.” He was looking in her direction, but it was also easy to shift focus just a little, and watch Rook splashing around in that skimpy outfit, which, drenched in water, was just about transparent. His breathing became a little ragged.
“Don’t push it,” Scott said. “She’s been through some pretty rough times. She’s got problems she’s got to work through; who doesn’t? She’ll open up when she’s ready.”
Lancer was eyeing Scott, thinking about the matter of Marlene’s naming, wondering what things the team leader was working through.
Annie was hollering for Marlene to come in and join the fun. Rook added, “Yeah, c’mon girl. It’ll do you good.”
Cold water immersion therapy? Rand wondered. I could use some right about now.
Then his predicament got even worse. Marlene said, “All right,” to Annie’s invitation, in a hesitant, unsure voice—as if complying came more easily than deciding.
She rose and began shedding clothes as innocently as a child. All four men stared, bug-eyed, but it was Rand who choked out, “Marlene, stop that! Are you trying to give me a cardiac?”
But she was already naked and seemed not to hear, feeling the sun and the wind on her skin, her fine, waist-length red hair stirred by the breeze. It was the slim-but-full, flawless female body Rand remembered so well trying not to stare at.
Invid Invasion: The New Generation Page 30
