Alien Alliance Box Set

by Chris Turner

  Yul licked his lips, admiring the suggestive curves of Cloye’s slim figure. Soot-grimed and battle-torn, she was all woman, sexy as hell, foul-mouthed and ornery, but surely, a looker.

  He hooked a hand on her shoulder, the touch sending heated visions into his skull. He shook them off. No time for distraction. “Got to get past that open space, Cloye. Looks like a main drainage conduit, or some kind of vehicular culvert. May be a safe way out of here.”

  They skulked out of their dim alley as the daytime light of Xares streamed down, harsh to their eyes and surreal in the grim, besieged streets of the city.

  Now halfway across the square, with burning vehicles and flutters of movements, stun fire lashed out from the grimy shadows. The surrounding blackened tenements and shabby shops with iron-barred glass, could not help them.

  A grim huddle of survivors lay pinned down behind a fallen air bus, twisted and crumpled on its side. Must have been chased into the slum quarters and shot down. Six or eight figures crouched behind the smoking metal from what Yul could see. A squad of a dozen locusts scuttled ever closer, long lumo-blasters clutched in sharp pincered claws.

  He and Cloye ran around a mound of rubble and bodies, crouching low. They dug themselves in behind a pile of broken bricks, offering covering fire to the doomed before the slavers could flank them.

  Blue fire fanned from their gunmetal muzzles. Bug heads separated from chitinous bodies in smoking yellow-blooded heaps. Only one hostile was left, staggering about, bewildered. The creature fanned its lumo-blaster left and right while one of the besieged, squat, brawny skinheads burst out and brained it with a meat cleaver. He pulled out the weapon from the skull and chopped the thing square in the back.

  The locust fell, in a quivering heap. The offender stomped on its neck, cracking it, whooping with glee.

  Yul grimaced “Come on. Let’s go. There’re more coming in at three o’clock. God help the survivors. Run!”

  Shot gun blasts came from behind him where the others were pinned down. While making their escape, green fire lanced from behind, catching Cloye on her left side, grazing her. She slumped to a knee.

  Yul ran over to her. “You, okay? Where’d you get hit?”

  “My whole left side feels numb. Fuck, fuck.” She slipped another notch lower to her other knee.

  “Damn it. Just what we need.” Yul grabbed her up. “Come on, Cloye, we have to get out of here. More bugs are coming. Quick! Grab on to my shoulders. Cling to my neck.”

  She wrapped her good right arm around Yul’s neck, and they half loped across the rubble square, weaving amidst the rubble and flashes of green fire. Yul lifted his rifle in the other hand and peppered back answering fire while hobbling with Cloye toward the culvert. “Down!” he hissed.

  They crashed headlong to the bomb-streaked asphalt as more locusts came running. On his belly, Yul lay fire into their masses. Dust and metal kicked up around them.

  “Jesus, they’re creeping around us from everywhere! How’d they sneak up on us so fast?”

  “I don’t know.” Slowly she flexed her hand. “Feeling’s starting to come back in my left arm.”

  Four hostiles beetled forth, black-green, shoulder-high menaces, scuttling on hind legs, determined to take them as prisoners. Yul laid down fire before they could get too close.

  He dragged Cloye with one hand behind an overturned air car, then leap-frogged away, drawing them away from her. “Over here, you fuckers!” He waved his hands, roaring.

  They wore no suits, these locusts, for better speed. As a horde they ran, like a swarm of wild locusts would fly. Mentera craft soared overhead. One mantis-shaped craft dipped low and dropped an oblong grey package. Not a gift. A pressure bomb. It never made the ground. It exploded fifty feet overhead, catching Yul full on in the first wave. He clutched at his head with a grimace of pain. He sagged to his knees, as his world went slipping sideways, dim as a crypt. When he opened his eyes, a blurry scene met his eyes, vision opaque, not quite right. He squinted, seeing double, like looking through a fishbowl lens, his ears echoing with thuds and booms and low frequencies like a seashell roar, but slowed down like a recorder machine losing power.

  Cloye, shielded by the air car, had been spared the brunt of the blast. As five crickets skittered in with lumo-blasters, she sprang out of her daze, surprising them. She fought like a demon, slashing out with her combat knife, then jabbed another in the throat. Yellow fluid jetted over her space kevlar suit. Lifting her rifle, she grabbed at the sagging corpse, using it as a shield to shoot around it. Her muzzle sprayed mortal fire, felling locusts. More came. On she staggered, roaring a kamikaze curse, using the puppet locust as a battered shield, nailing locusts right, left and center. She left the street littered with Mentera bodies.

  Stunned human onlookers gaped in awe from the sidelines by the grimed, ruined shops as Cloye dealt death and a squat spaceman with a killer E1 scrabbled to a military crouch and lay mayhem at anything that moved.

  Cloye scrambled over to Yul’s side. He shook his head, mouth opened in a gasping yawn to clear the cobwebs from his ears. “Fuck, that hurt.”

  “You alright?”

  “Not really…but good work,” he rasped.

  “Get up.” Now it was her turn to help him. “Run!” She covered him, kneeling, spraying fire, while he pegged hostiles coming in from behind.

  They hobbled on, ducked into a twelve-foot wide, gaping culvert sighted from before. Shadows crossed both ends, puddles of brackish water massing in stagnant pools. The two advanced, but warily. Yul felt some blood coming back into his brain; though each step was slow, the next was slightly longer and more self-assured. Already a bad feeling brewed. But where to go? Green flashes of Mentera fire spurted behind them. Amplified echoes of Mentera blasts sounded from back in the square.

  Rat-like creatures skittered underfoot, squeaking through tapered, whiskered snouts. Yul winced. They were about fifty feet in, making good progress at the half way point when he jerked back, bringing Cloye to a standstill. A brisk movement startled him in the blue-shadowed gloom. Accompanied by a furtive sound that was not their boots sloshing through dirty puddles.

  “Yul! Behind you.” Cloye loosed a line of fire, clipped one stalker between the eyes. But two more were on her, wrenching at her gun arm. Her last wild shot ricocheted near a reaching figure and buzzed the head of another.

  One of the skinheads behind Yul roared, “Hold up! Put the gun down.”

  A set of eight skulkers scuttled forth, four on either end of the culvert, trapping them in the middle. They gripped improvised clubs and cleavers. The same crew of skulkers who they’d recently liberated, offering covering fire. “Son of a bitch!” croaked Yul.

  He spat fire that sprayed up water at their feet as they dove out of the way.

  Skinhead roared, “Drop the gun or pay the penalty!”

  Street gang? Two skinheads, three long-haired thugs, black-haired, two blond. One woman amongst them, bleach blond with sides of her head shaved and long tail at the back. All had black and red bandannas over their heads.

  “Hand over the weapon, spaceman!” blurted Skinhead from the place where the culvert shadows ran deepest. “Or girlie gets a face full of metal.” They’d wrenched the gun from Cloye and held her in a stranglehold. “Spike and Marv are in need of such items.”

  The gang members sauntered up confidently as if they owned the whole sludge pile of this inner city.

  Yul cursed himself for being taken so easily. He let his blaster fall.

  “That’s it, smart man.” Skinhead kneed Cloye forward. He waved his sawed-off blaster. Why he’d used a cleaver earlier to kill the locust was beyond Yul. Aside from the skinny ruffian who gripped Cloye’s weapon, the headman was the only one who held a gun: some short bully with an eyepatch and small rooster cob of brown hair up the middle of his egg-white skull.

  “Kick the weapon over here where I can see it. Don’t get cute.”

  Yul complied. The echo of his E1 clattered
in the puddle-soaked dinginess, painful to his ears.

  “The other one too.”

  Yul grimaced. He pulled the compact from his belt with reluctance and tossed it in the same place.

  Cloye hissed at him. “You dumb shit! You should have wasted these scum and let me die.”

  Yul shook his head.

  “You! Spaceman. Pzt.” Skinhead jerked a thumb at Yul. “Park yourself over here.” He motioned to a place between slant-eyed Marv and rake-thin Spike.

  Yul hesitated, took a step closer. “Way I see it, we all have to cooperate here, chief, if we’re going to survive. Last time I checked, a swarm of locusts were coming down to toss all our asses in tanks.”

  Smacky spat out a wad of phlegm. “Maybe. But one step at a time.” He shouldered Marv ahead, glancing nervously back at a flicker of green fire that flared from somewhere out in the square.

  Yul scanned his enemies. Nine of them in sour moods, with itchy fingers on weapons, wearing blood-spattered denims and synthetic leathers, ready to kill and run, get some payback for their losses. The dog-eared crew clutched a combo of kitchen knives, meat cleavers and wooden clubs, hand-crafted, and bits of twisted metal.

  “This how you repay someone trying to save your skins?” jeered Yul.

  Smacky smoothed out his rooster cob. “That you back there? Well I’ll be damned, spaceman. Thankee. You’re a life-saver for sure. Reckon my sawed-off jammed and I couldn’t use it to peg any of those crickets off any more than killing pigeons through a pea-shooter. Working fine now.”

  “Name’s Yul. You can thank us by giving us back our weapons.”

  Smacky laughed. “Not just yet, ‘chief’. Don’t trust you more than a wooden nickel tumbling in a slot machine. Until you prove to Smacky you’re loyal, that you’re not going to drive a metal pin through his eye, we keep ’em safe.”

  Yul grumbled. “Smacky’s your name? Look, there’s an alien invasion and we’re—”

  “Preaching to the choir, spaceman. Think I don’t know what’s going on in my backyard? Think I’ll divvy up these weapons to my crew. I like my shotgun, quirky as it is.” He crouched and tossed Yul’s weapon at his feet to two of his redneck crew. “Marv, Wilb. Catch! You can fight over it.”

  Marv won. He gave an ear-to-ear, gap-toothed grin. He eyed the weapon like candy. “Gracias, Smacky! This one’s got double action, and heavy gauge.”

  Smacky nodded, pleased that he could light up the lives of one of his ragboy crew.

  Cloye muttered a sarcastic rejoinder, “Don’t think either of you yobos know one end from another.”

  The taller and larger stepped forward with a menacing grin. “Who you talking about, girlie? Your spaceboy friend here?” He swaggered in closer.

  “Relax, she’s right, Marv,” Smacky conceded. “Who taught you how to work an energy rifle?” He pulled it from Marv’s grasp. “You do it like this, see?” He recalibrated, gripping the stock and adjusting the firing arm, then waited until the green light sighted and stopped blinking. He sprayed a burst down the culvert, deafening everyone. Tossed the weapon back to Marv. “You try.”

  Marv beamed, licking his lips. He snuck in a quick wild shot at a startled rat-like thing darting for cover in the culvert’s end. Likely had some nest there.

  Smacky gave a weary nod. “Marv’s poor aim’ll be the death of us all.”

  “Smacky, you should give me the gun, not Marv,” another long-hair suggested.

  Smacky waved him off. “Don’t pay to linger here. Bugs’ll be after us before long and zap us, take us up in the sky, like they did Nora and the kids.”

  With grim looks and grumbles of hatred, the gang trudged through the shallow puddles to the far end, herding Yul and Cloye along like cattle.

  “So what’s your plan, Smacky?” Yul asked.

  The gang leader squinted into the saffron light streaming in from outside. “Not rightly sure, Yab. A bit of this, a bit of that. Probably some duck and dash before the day’s out. We’ll keep on moving through the night, pegging off bug scum with these new weapons. Reckon they’ll be gone before long.”

  “Think you’re not factoring in the reality. It’s never over. The squids’ll be down soon, and they’ll make the locusts look like angels in a bishop’s wet dream.”

  Smacky sneered. “What do you know? Squids, octopussies, crabs, we’ll keep fighting them in the streets, air, and through flame.”

  “As you should. But think you’re going to need a better plan than the one you got, drawing attention to yourselves, hobbling on through the night.”

  “And what may that be?”

  “Getting ships and firepower to level the playing field. Capturing as many ships as you can: aphids, even the locust mantis fighters.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this, Yab. Thing is, none of us knows how to drive a starship.”

  “Me and her do.” He jabbed a thumb at Cloye. “If we work together, you could get us—”

  “Shut up. I know your tricky little games, spaceman. Get us all keyed up in hopes so you can plug a shell in our backs and fly away, leaving us all stranded. No, Yab, think we’ll do it my way.”

  “Suit yourself.” Yul shrugged and looked away with a frustrated grimace.

  Without warning, Marv shot another few test rounds back down the culvert, making everyone’s ears ring again.

  “Hey, this ain’t no firing range,” Smacky thundered. “You warn people before you fire that gun, hear? Give me that.” He smacked Marv in the ear and snatched back the rifle.

  Marv slunk back and put on a simpering face.

  “Real smart there, moron, get your kicks out of killing a few helpless animals,” muttered Cloye.

  Marv shot her a feral stare. “Black beauty, that’s what we should call her, Smacky. What with the blackened eyes and sooty cheeks. Like a regular weasely marbikin come up from the sewer pipes.”

  “Good one, Marv.”

  They all laughed. Cloye told them to go circlejerk themselves.

  Spike snickered. “Black beauty got a mouth on her.”

  “Shut up, Spike.” Smacky motioned them out of the culvert.

  The dank shadows gave way to a wide traffic circle and what must have been a city park, littered with garbage and now, slumped bodies. More broken up shops and dingy low rises hunched at the far end. Behind them a row of sooty buildings rose over the culvert and what Yul guessed another city street in behind the buildings. At one time the city had been affluent, judging from the formal structure of roads, parks, apartments and squares.

  Members of Smacky’s roughneck gang blinked under the raw light as if seeing real sunshine for the first time. The dome’s semi-transparent material had filtered their source of radiance for who knows how long. Out in the natural light, Yul got a better look at them. A degenerate crew. Skid row types. All wore chewed-up denims and frayed leathers. Some with teeth missing and parts of ears clipped off or torn. Their faces were sullen and cracked with seams and bare arms and necks were grimed and cinder-sooted, fingernails caked in dirt.

  “They keep us holed up here like hogs,” muttered Smacky. “Fuck ’em. Now that their dome is gone batshit, I say we make a move on the rich side of town. Take what’s ours.”

  There were here, heres and grunts of approval. The young woman, dirty, white-knuckled, long-necked, and the loudest of the lot, cat-called out like a street whore. “Sure thing, Smacky! First time the dome’s ever gone down. We got some payback coming so long as we slip by these bugs.”

  Yul did a face-palm and sucked in a breath. “That’s an egg brained idea. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  “Who are you to tell us anything?” Wilb said, edging in with a cleaver.

  Yul cautioned the angry man with an upraised hand. “You want to die? There’s Mentera there, probably more than here, and soon there’ll be squids, thousands of them, looting the place and taking more of you as slaves and looking for resources to capitalize on.”

  Smacky squinted at Yul as he scrat
ched at his scarred chin. “Don’t reckon you know as much of the ground reality, sheltered in your fancy ship up there.”

  “I know lots.”

  A rustle of boots crunched on the pebbles up ahead, alerting them. That and the whirr of a flying engine.

  “Quiet down, you loudmouths,” said Smacky. They hunkered down behind some rubble and twisted sewer pipes. Behind them, a monument leaned on a drunken angle. The handiwork of Mentera pressure bombs.

  Nose in the dust, Yul balled his metal fist, hoping for an opportunity. Cloye crouched, breathing heavily beside him. He caught snatches of the conversation.

  “Gonna find that chump Yul and slit his eyeballs, Vince. Keep looking, Deakes, and quit whining about Grendel. Ship’ll be fine. We can always get Jiminy here with his slide rule to fix it.”

  “I don’t know, boss. Getting a funny, bad feeling here.”

  Regers! How the hell’d he catch wind of them so fast?

  Some amphibious vehicle, a rust-painted globe, hovered eight feet above the rubble, twin blasters trained their way. It jet-thrusted closer. All edged noses deeper in the dirt.

  “Want me to fry that thing, Smacky?” hissed Marv, lifting his rifle, clutching at Smacky’s shoulder.

  “Nah, don’t try.” Smacky shrugged off the arm. He pulled the muzzle down, his voice a dull whisper. “Those are armored plates. Rifle fire’d just deflect off it. Tip him off and they’ll make bread dough of us. They smell like military types. Mean. Can tell by the way they strut and hold those guns. The other fuck though, whitey with the pale, ghost-like face, looks like a newbie. Doesn’t even know how to hold a gun. Looks scared shitless too, as if he’s gonna shoot his own damn foot.”

  Marv snickered.

  “Shh! Want to give us away?”

  Marv glared. “You’re the one yapping—”

  “Shut the hell up.”

  The airborne vehicle slid through the air like a greased lizard. Yul hoped that the pilot didn’t spy them from his loftier angle. Seconds passed. Nope. The operator was another newbie.

  After the four foot soldiers trudged by and the air vehicle passed into the next street, Smacky thumped Yul on the shoulder. “Who are those guys? Some friends of yours?”