Bombardier - The Complete Trilogy

by SD Tanner

  “Where’s the droid?” Cardiff asked.

  Samson’s BattleDroid didn’t appear to be learning anything from him. He was always a quiet guy who barely spoke to the living much less a robot. Deciding it wasn’t worth taking it with them, he replied, “Leave it where it is. It can protect the ships.”

  “From what?”

  Other than the critters in the main city there didn’t seem to be much on the planet. Even the rooms were plain and devoid of anything that hinted at the previous occupants. They’d found no sleeping quarters, kitchens or even living areas. Every room had the same plain tall ledge along a wall with bronze boxes opposite it. They hadn’t even found anything mechanical that might be used to pump air into the ducts, assuming that’s what they were.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. These cities are weird.”

  Walking across the room to the wall where Samson had vanished, Cardiff replied, “Maybe this one isn’t a city.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Maybe Samson is right. Not about it being a toilet, but maybe it’s…a transit area.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because it’s smaller and it doesn’t look like anyone ever lived here.”

  “Maybe they don’t live the same way we do.”

  Cardiff shook her head. “My brother had a dog. It didn’t own anything unless you count the old towel it like to chew. Even though it owned nothing its kennel looked lived in. You know, it was scratched and bashed about.”

  “Maybe the site is toughened.”

  “Why would anyone bother to do that?” Cardiff shook her head again. “No, I don’t think anything has ever lived here.”

  Poking his gun and then his head through the wall, he found Samson peering at something lying on the ledge.

  “What have you found?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A long form was lying on the ledge. At face value, it appeared humanoid with a head, two arms, a torso and long legs. The arms were crossed over its chest as if it had been laid to rest. What he couldn’t understand was why the body was flattened as if all the air had been let out. The facial features were flat with no protrusion for the eyes or nose. Even the bent arms with joined hands were sunk into the torso.

  “That’s weird. It’s like something squashed it,” Cardiff said.

  Samson tentatively jabbed it with the end of his gun. Just touching the body was enough to make it disintegrate. Losing the last of its cohesion, it collapsed in on itself as if it were made of dust. All that was left was a pile of very fine particles.

  “Do you think it was one of the aliens?” Samson asked.

  “It would have helped if you hadn’t poked it.”

  “I didn’t know it was going to fall apart.”

  Already losing interest, Samson turned away and began running his hands across the floor to ceiling cylinder in the middle of the room.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It feels funny, like there’s lumps under the surface.”

  He’d noticed the same thing with the cylinder in the first room. “What do you think they are?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s sort of a pattern to it.”

  Joining Samson, he ran his hand over the surface. When he felt the lumps underneath, he pushed against them. Nothing happened. Disappointed he turned to face Cardiff. “I suppose it’ll have to do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We can’t leave Mex in space. If we secure the first room we entered then it’ll do as a bolt hole.”

  “Do you want me to go back and get them?”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t want us splitting up. We’ll go back to the coordinates together.”

  Samson sighed and began walking towards the hidden door. Watching him disappear, he flicked his head at Cardiff to follow him. Giving the uninformative room one last glance, he too walked through the hidden doorway. It was disheartening to find what looked to be a cure for the critters and nothing else. Whatever or whoever had built the cities was advanced, but they’d concealed their identities well. There was so little hint about them that they could be the aliens controlling the critters in their galaxy.

  By now, they were walking in a row across the middle of the large chamber with black mesh walls. He was about to complain about their situation when the room disappeared.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:

  Live Long and Die

  (Tank)

  “I need that ship down here now.”

  The Ship’s Captain sounded worried and angry when he replied, “We’re under attack. I can’t abandon the fleet.”

  His tone lowered while he stared up at the sky in frustration. “I understand that, Captain, but you have my son onboard and I need a ride to CaliTech.”

  “Tank, I understand your position, but you need to grasp the nature of the situation up here. There’s tens of thousands of airborne critters and the more we stop the less that land.”

  “Forget it. The fuckers are landing in force no matter what. You don’t have the ammo, brother. It’s over. The best we can do is batten down the hatches and hide as many people as we can.”

  “Hide? Is that our only option? Then what are we going to do? Earth is overrun by critters and we live underground like cowards.”

  When he closed his eyes all he could see was Casey’s face. He was going to pay a price for her death. She would invade his mind when he least expected. Sighing, he replaced her face with an image of their newly born son.

  “Listen to me. Casey was killed on landing. I promised to take care of our son so you need to land on my coordinates.”

  His son’s namesake, Leon, had died hundreds of years earlier, but he remembered the man like it was only yesterday. After surviving the critters first attack, they’d been like brothers. He thought he’d let his old squad go, but when Casey asked him to name their son, Leon had burst from his chest like a long lost memory.

  Sounding resigned, the Ship’s Captain replied, “Sorry, Tank. We’re on our way.”

  Children were always the great leveler in a crisis. Trachans couldn’t conceive and there were so few female Navigators that not many children had ever been born. For centuries, they’d lived on Tracha with almost none so they would sacrifice almost anything to save the few they had. Without them, there was no future.

  The ruins of a once prosperous city stretched across the skyline close to the beach. He remembered San Francisco back when it was vibrant and peaceful. Seeing the collapsed towers and forest growing wildly around it was yet another reminder of everything he’d lost. Gunfire and screaming cut across what should have been a sunny day. While the waves lapped peacefully behind him, mankind was dying in front of him. Ark had failed to finish the critters and now his grandson was failing again.

  While he stood staring at the city a critter plummeted into the sand landing heavily on its back. Undeterred, it swiftly rolled onto its many legs, levering itself up until it stood seven feet tall. Eye to eye with the critter, his normally slow heartbeat shot up. Casey was dead, Ark Three was missing, and Earth was lost again. Rage flowed from his brain and into his fists. Instead of swinging his gun towards the critter, both his hands clenched tightly.

  Storming across the sand, feeling it sink beneath each heavy step, he snarled, “Fuck you, you son of bitch.”

  The critter was larger than the ones he remembered from the first attack hundreds of years ago. Its legs were as thick as poles, it claws so sharp they were cutting deep rends into the sand. The body was the size of a small hatchback, its ugly head as big as a Hoppity Hop. Molded round black eyes seemed to be staring back at him. Rearing slightly, it charged. Fury was ruling him now and instead of pulling his gun into position, he launched towards it.

  Critters had ruined his life. Where he’d once been a man and a soldier living an ordinary life, they’d turned him into a freak of nature. No man was supposed to live this long. Sprinting across the sand, they stormed towards one another, e
ach screaming in outrage. Lowering his head, he used it as battering ram, slamming into the critter’s rubbery black eyes. As he hit, he grabbed a thick leg in each hand, digging his feet into the sand to propel himself forward. The critter pushed back, but that only added to his anger.

  “Fuck you!”

  Yanking both arms down sharply, he felt rather than saw the two legs detach from the body.

  “I’m gonna beat you to death!”

  Determined to fulfil his threat, he stepped back, swinging one of the critters own legs at its head. The critters mouth opened showing row up row of deadly looking fangs. It was lunging towards him and he rammed its own leg down the open throat, pushing it in deeply. Stopping as if in surprise, the critter shook its head trying to dislodge the limb now dangling from its mouth.

  “Didn’t see that coming, did ya?”

  Crouching low, he pushed his feet into the sand until he was underneath the belly of the critter. Placing both hands onto its gut, he stood sharply, heaving the critter over. Despite the many legs, it lost its balance, tipping onto one side. Using his boot, he kicked it hard, forcing it to roll onto its back. Now completely confused, the critter was waving its many legs in the air. Before it could roll over again, he jumped, landing heavily onto its torso.

  “Not on my watch!”

  Grabbing a leg on either side, he jerked his arms upward. He was on a roll now ripping off one limb after the other. Tossing each aside, he reached for the next, tearing the critter apart. Tossing the last leg to the ground, he was breathing hard and the fat legless torso was lying defeated in the sand. Finally sliding off its belly, he looked across the beach. While he’d been fighting, the BattleRig had landed and a dozen heavily armed Bombardiers and Navigators stood watching him.

  Bombardier Four-Two was standing only twenty feet away with his gun trained on the critter. Shouldering his weapon, he flicked his head at him. “Are you done?”

  Without bothering to give the prone critter even a final glance, he nodded. “Yeah, it pissed me off.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “Not much.”

  Once he climbed aboard the rig, a female Navigator walked onto the Bridge holding his son. When she tried to hand him over, he shook his head. “What’s your name?”

  “Jenny.”

  “I need you stay with him once we’re in CaliTech. You’ll be his guardian. If anything happens to me then give him to Tiana.”

  “Why Tiana?”

  “She’s Ark’s wife. If he ever makes it back then I want him to be raised by Ark and Tiana.”

  “Sounds like you’re not planning to survive.”

  The view from the Bridge made it clear just how close to annihilation they were. The sky was black with critters. From a distance, they appeared to be floating to Earth, but they were plummeting at two hundred miles per hour. There was more than one critter for every man, woman and child on Earth. They were coming back to finish the job they’d started two hundred years earlier.

  Flying low and fast across the surface, even he could hear the thudding against the hull. A critter spun across the front of the ship. Although it had been hit, it was still alive, stretching its many legs wide as it continued falling.

  “We out of ammo?”

  “Yep.”

  It was a hopeless moment. He wanted to bury his head in his hands or talk to Ark, the man who’d saved them the last time this had happened. There was nobody left. Even Dunk was gone. No longer sleeping in the chamber, he couldn’t wake him up and ask him what to do this time. Dunk Two and Dunk Three had never been a patch on the original. Ark Three was too young and inexperienced to know what to do, assuming he ever returned from deep space. It finally hit home that everyone he’d ever cared about was dead. His friends and family had been gone for centuries. He was alone and had been for a very long time.

  A bitterness he’d long ignored bubbled up inside of his chest. It wasn’t fair that only he was left alive to witness the end of mankind. What purpose had extending his life served? He finally understood that he was more lost than Earth.

  Looking up at the holographic screens surrounding him, he swallowed hard, burying the bitterness back inside his gut. “Land next to the medical center in CaliTech.”

  The Captain looked across at him. “What are we going to do there?”

  “Fight until the last man.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:

  Earth Down

  (Tank)

  “Earth Command to BattleRig Two-Zero. Do not land. Repeat. Do not land.”

  “We’re coming in hot,” the Captain replied.

  Their rig should have slowed for landing only it didn’t. Thrown around by high winds, critters must have clogged the thrusters, stopping them from reducing their speed to land.

  “CaliTech is overrun. You need to get out of here.”

  Earth Command was advising them to run away, escaping the inevitable fate of Earth. “The rig is damaged. We have limited thruster control. You’ll be lucky if we don’t land on top of you.”

  The Controller in the Command Center of the main Navigator base in CaliTech chuckled. “Good to hear your voice, Tank.”

  “Sitrep.”

  The Controller’s tone was smooth as he summarized their situation. “All countries in the Guild are reporting they’re overrun. Russia, China, India and Europe are no longer responding. All US-based cities are reporting they’re under attack. We have advised all civilians to secure themselves preferably underground. CaliTech is holding, but only just. We have critters in all areas of the site. The civilians in surrounding houses have been allowed behind the walls.”

  Gripping the arms of the chair, he prepared for impact as the rig hit the ground. After a thud that almost lifted him from his chair, it skidded across the landing pad refusing to stop. “Gimme troop and ship numbers.”

  “I only have rough estimates based on who we’re still getting signals from.”

  Twisting on one side, the rig was tipping as it slid toward the medical center. Critters too stupid to get out of their way were being smashed and crushed under the rig. “Best guess will do.”

  “We have approximately twelve thousand Bombardiers and a hundred thousand Navigators. Forty-five BattleRigs and twelve hundred Scorpions. A hundred Battleships and a thousand assault ships.”

  The rig came to a shuddering stop only twenty feet from the front doors of the medical center. On the viewing screens, Bombardiers and Navigators were crouched behind the main doors peeking at the large ship that nearly crushed them.

  “Gimme their locations.”

  “All ships are airborne and more are still arriving from space. Land-based Bombardiers and Navigators are in all cities, but the bulk remain at CaliTech. We’re still trying to ship them out to the cities.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Say again.”

  “CaliTech will be our last stand. I want as many Boms and navs as possible located behind the walls. Spread the ammo and weapon supplies across the site. Gimme a status on the wormholes.”

  Seeming to recover from his shock, the Controller resumed his smooth tone of voice. “The small wormhole located on the site is severely damaged. The larger one is in a hangar one mile from the south wall. At last update, it is not operational.”

  “Where’s Dunk Three?”

  The docking bay under the ship had collapsed so the crew were exiting through the emergency hatches. Stepping out onto the now destroyed grass, he waved at several Bombardiers to join him.

  “I don’t have a fix on his location.”

  “Where’s the President?”

  “In a firefight outside of the engineering building.”

  “What’s our most secured position?”

  While he spoke, a critter appeared from behind the rig. Screeching angrily, it was joined by another. Where they had looked small in space, on land they were over seven feet tall and their legs were thick. Rounding the corner fast, their chunky legs scrambled against the torn grass. It di
dn’t do them any good. Gunfire erupted from both the Bombardiers leaving the rig and those in the medical building.

  It was overkill and he shouted, “Don’t waste your ammo!”

  The smooth voice of the Controller sounded through his headset. “We have children secured on the floors under the medical center.”

  Grabbing the Navigator shielding his son in her arms, he pushed her towards the main doors of the medical center. “Kids are under the building. Take him there.” As he was shoving her through the double doors, he stopped, turning her around. “He’s your responsibility until you find Tiana or Ark.”

  “Not you?”

  Realizing what he was implying, he nodded. “I’m too old to raise another child and they can’t have their own.” Looking down at the face barely visible under the soft silver-colored blanket, he smiled. “Casey would want him to have two devoted parents.”

  Nodding, she gave him a tight smile. “I’ve got this. Go do what you need to. Good speed, Tank.”

  Holding Leon tightly in her arms, she disappeared into the stairwell leading underground. He realized he hadn’t said goodbye to his latest child. There had been twenty-two before him, but this one would be his last. It wasn’t that he didn’t care only that he didn’t think he could deal with losing one more person in his overly long life.

  Forcing himself to be in the present, he turned to face the Bombardiers and Navigators disembarking from the rig. “Take positions around this building. Hold your ground.”

  “What’s the plan, sir?” A Bombardier asked.

  “There isn’t one. Just hold your ground.”

  “And if we can’t?”

  Pointing at the main doors, he said, “I want this to be the last building to fall. That’s your mission.” Flicking his head at Bombardier Four-Two, he added, “Four-Two and Six-Three. You’re with me.”

  As they jogged past the medical building, Bombardiers and Navigators were calling to one another, setting up lines of defense around it.

  “What is the plan, Tank?”

  “I need to find Dunk Three. We need that wormhole working or Ark won’t ever make it home.”

  Critters were appearing from between buildings. Some were being shot by shooters in the buildings around them and others they fired at while they ran.