Bombardier - The Complete Trilogy

by SD Tanner

  It took them less than fifteen minutes to load ten ships with the vials. With three Bombardiers or Navigators in each ship, they took off in different directions. After borrowing a helmet from one of the other crews, he was flying across the largest city between CaliTech and the sea. Tiana believed the virus was potent enough to wipe out any critter at even the lowest of doses. Caught by the wind, it would scatter across Earth, making it uninhabitable for critters.

  Everywhere they went, critters exploded in a puff of dust. Some were caught in the air, creating a black cloud that quickly dispersed. Others were on the top of buildings, leaving piles of dark dust. As they died, people began emerging from their hiding places. Some cheered at the sight of the silver ships. Others looked stunned as if they still couldn’t believe what had happened.

  He was owed a victory flight, but he left it to the squads to finish the job. With Byte by his side, he turned his Scorpion back towards CaliTech. No war was ever won by a single man and his was no exception.

  “We did good, Byte.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE:

  Dead Man’s Bluff

  (Ark Three)

  “What happened?”

  Granger looked to have aged ten years since he’d last seen him. His face was covered in black dust and he was taller than he remembered.

  “Did you transform?”

  Looking at his body as if he hadn’t seen it in a while, he nodded. “Yeah. I thought it might convince more people to do it.”

  “Did it?”

  “Yeah,” he replied with a tired nod. “Good thing too or there’d be even less of us left.”

  His gloomy tone caught him by surprise, but he supposed Granger wasn’t used to losing this many people. When he’d first seen thousands of his troops die it had brought him low too. “You need to act confident even when you’re not feeling it.”

  Granger gave him a surprised look. “What are trying to tell me?”

  “We won.”

  “At what price?”

  “That doesn’t matter. You’re the President so go rally your people.”

  Sighing deeply, Granger nodded. “I didn’t want this job.”

  “That’s why I gave it to you.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  While they walked across the blackened lawn towards the medical center, he replied, “We’ve only stopped the critters, not their controllers. If we don’t kill them then the critters can still attack us in space.”

  “Where are their controllers?”

  “I don’t know, but…Dunk Three took off in the middle of the battle.”

  “He what?” Granger said, only it came out as an angry roar. “Where did he go?”

  “Aria.”

  “Why there? I would have thought Tracha was a safer bet. We don’t have anything to do with the Arians.”

  It was very good question. Why had Dunk Three chosen Aria? What sort of protection could Mariana’s people offer? Tracha at least had weapons, so that would have been a more logical choice. His brother never did anything without a good reason so why Aria?

  Stopping on the lawn, he turned to face Granger. “I don’t know why he went there. Maybe he was trying to protect Mariana.”

  Granger shook his head. “Dunk Three has gone a bit…well, crazy. He’s been seen talking to someone who isn’t there. Some people suspect he sees his dead clone, the one he killed.”

  That didn’t sound like his brother, but he had a brilliant mind. Even as a kid, he’d seen the world in a very different way to everyone else. “Did he do anything crazy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did he say or do anything that was wrong?”

  “You mean other than shout at everyone, talk to someone who wasn’t there and hide in the wormhole hangar?”

  Anyone else behaving that way would have been crazy, but not his brother. “Did he eat worms?”

  Giving him a surprised look, Granger shook his head. “Err, no, but why does that matter?”

  “I’m asking if he did anything that was completely insane. You know, like think he could fly and jump off a building.”

  Granger’s screwed up his face in disgust. “No, he did what he always did. He directed the engineering teams and worked long hours on the wormhole.”

  Feeling relieved, he batted Granger’s bicep. “Then he’s not crazy, he’s just a bit weird.”

  “OK,” Granger replied, but he sounded uncertain.

  Turning to walk into the medical center, he said, “I don’t believe he just ran away. He went to Aria for a reason.”

  “Maybe he was scared.”

  “I’m not sure my brother knows what fear is.”

  “Dunk didn’t want to die so badly that he stuffed himself into a cryogenic chamber. Maybe Dunk Three is the same way.”

  Bombardiers and Navigators were emerging from the underground floors in the medical center. Holding the hands of tiny children and carrying babies, they weren’t wearing helmets. Tiana appeared behind the crowd with a baby wrapped in a soft silver blanket.

  Pushing past the people, she stopped in front of him. “This is Leon.”

  Tank had asked them to raise Leon as their own. Tiana couldn’t conceive and he didn’t want anyone else’s child. Gently pulling the silver blanket from his face, he peered at the only child he would ever have with her. “He’s perfect.”

  Her eyes shone warmly at Leon when she nodded. “Yes, he is.”

  Turning to Granger, he said, “Bring the survivors to CaliTech. You’ll need to rebuild the city. Continue transforming people into Bombardiers. If this has taught us anything, it’s that we need to be stronger and tougher than we are as humans.”

  “Where are you going?” Granger asked.

  “I need to find Dunk Three. I want to know why he went to Aria.”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t scared?”

  He shook his head. “The Dunk blood line isn’t scared of anything. If he’d only been trying to save Mariana then he would have sent her alone. He went to Aria for a reason and he’s too arrogant to be a coward.”

  Kissing Tiana on the forehead and gently stroking his son’s cheek, he added, “Stay here and keep Leon with you until I get back.”

  “I should come with you.”

  He shook his head. “No. Leon needs you and I need to know you’re taking care of him.”

  Turning on his heel, he walked out of the main doors of the medical center. Bombardiers and Navigators were moving along the road leading to the barracks. The buildings were riddled with bullet holes and smoke was still billowing from several of the barracks. It had been a hard fight, one they’d nearly lost. If Dunk Three hadn’t fixed the wormhole then they would all be dead. Why had his brother been so determined to get it working? What had he learned once he did?

  Troops were nodding to him as he strode along the now black road. Ships were flying overhead and soldiers were walking in and out the barracks with guns slung across their shoulders. Never much of a conversationalist, Byte was silently trudging by his side. Pulling out the vial he still had in a pocket on his armor, he studied the fluid inside of it. The alien planet they’d found had been abandoned, so where had the creators of the critters gone? The only legacy they’d left were these vials.

  Seeing a Bombardier emerging from another barracks, he called, “Hey, trooper! Got any ammo?”

  “Some, not much.” Seeing his face and the insignia under the dirty armor, he added uncertainly, “Sir?”

  “Forget that. I need an armed squad to come with me.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Through the wormhole to Aria. I need back up.”

  “Gotcha.” Speaking into his headset, the Bombardier looked across the barracks. “I need a fully armed squad on the double. Meet me at the wormhole hangar.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO:

  Face of the Enemy

  (Ark Three)

  “Is it working?”

  Still standing in front of a console, the
technician turned to look at him. “We think so.”

  “Good. Set coordinates for Aria.”

  “They’re already programmed. It looks like two people went there already.

  “I know.”

  When the technician gave him a puzzled look, he flicked his head at the console. “You’re sending me, four troopers and my droid, Byte. I want to land at the same coordinates.”

  Shrugging, the technician replied, “You got it.”

  The chamber was now empty. The two Scorpions returned from deep space were being used to disperse the virus. Mex had been taken to one of the barracks acting as a morgue. Lace was helping to collect the corpses littered across CaliTech. Cardiff and Samson were with Tank’s squad leading the Scorpions. They were now calling themselves Killer Squirrels, but when he asked why they called themselves that they’d only laughed.

  Standing in formation, he was at the front with Byte by his side and four Bombardiers behind him. The chamber began humming. Pressure was building in his already bruised chest. The door to the chamber was shut and, despite the space around him, it felt like the walls were closing in. Reaching a high pitch, the humming noise was shrieking through his brain. Resisting the urge to drop to his knees, he drew his hands into fists. Just when he thought his lungs might burst, the room disappeared. When his vision cleared, he was standing inside of the room with carved reliefs along its walls. The circle of eight chairs were just as he remembered and the elder alien was sitting in one facing him.

  Raising his gun, he aimed for his head. “Where’s my brother?”

  To his surprise, Dunk Three turned around in another chair. “I’m here.”

  Redirecting his aim so that Dunk Three appeared in his scope, he asked, “Why did you come here?”

  Dunk Three answered his question with one of his own. “Why did you?”

  “I want to know why you did.”

  Turning fully in his chair, he gave a slight smile. “Finding me was more important than saving Earth?”

  “No, it was just the next thing on my list.”

  Nodding as if he understood, Dunk Three asked, “How did you do it?”

  Pulling the vial from his pocket, he held it up so Dunk Three could see it. “It’s a virus that kills the critters. I found it on a planet in deep space.”

  “Bronze colored, was it?”

  “How do you know that?”

  Not bothering to reply, Dunk Three turned to face the older alien. “I told you it’s survival of the smartest and you’re not it.”

  Never as quick on the uptake as his brother, today was proving to be no exception. “Would you mind cluing me in?”

  Twisting in his chair again, Dunk Three’s voice took on a patient tone. “The Arians control the critters. They seeded our planet millions of years ago. This is their breeding cycle. They seed, and once they’ve wrecked their own planet, they take over one of their nurseries. They use the critters to weed out the people they can’t use. They were supposed to take over the bodies they wanted and colonize Earth.”

  Redirecting his aim squarely at the center of the older alien’s head, he said, “You killed billions of people. Our world has never recovered from what you did to us.”

  Dunk Three raised his hand as if to make peace. “They don’t see it that way. They think something went wrong with the breeding cycle. We were supposed to be docile and we’re not. Now they want to wipe us out. Apparently we’ve been upgraded from unborn to dangerous.”

  Torn between aiming his gun at Dunk Three and the alien, he didn’t move. “And you think this is ok?”

  “They have some interesting capabilities. They’re telepathic and Mariana is empathic. I’ve never seen either skill before.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “This place has critters so you might need that virus.”

  For the first time he noticed the tiny creature plucking at the floor. “What’s it doing?”

  “Cleaning.”

  Only hours earlier he’d nearly been killed by something that looked similar to the one scuttling across the floor. Admittedly, his prospective killers had been twenty times its size, and there had been at least fifty of them inside of the hangar. Even so, seeing a miniature version acting as a domestic Goddess was beyond comprehension.

  Sounding relaxed, Dunk Three said, “They’re tools, not weapons. We’ve had this all wrong. They’re like BattleDroids, only these are controlled telepathically.”

  “Byte’s smarter than a critter. He’s learning from me.”

  “Maybe so, but these guys can do something we can’t.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “We should team up.”

  There was a clank of weapons as he and the rest of the squad sharpened their aim on the aliens. Dunk Three had to be joking. It was insane to suggest that they should form an alliance with a species that had almost wiped them out twice. Maybe Granger was right and his brother really had lost his mind.

  Standing so that he was between him and the older alien, Dunk Three pulled out a handgun from the back of his tunic trousers. “You need to listen to me.”

  “What the hell are you going to do with that pea shooter?”

  “I’m not going to shoot you. If I shoot anyone, it’ll be the alien behind me then Mariana. In that order.”

  “Why Mariana? What did she do?”

  “She was planted as a spy. Nice work, by the way. You’ve been harboring an enemy agent.”

  Lowering his gun, he turned to look at Mariana who was standing near the door to the room. She’d once told him she was sorry and now he knew why. Even knowing that, he still didn’t want to see her die. “Why would you shoot her? Maybe she had no choice.”

  Dunk Three nodded. “Possibly not, but if you declare the Arians our enemy then she dies.”

  “Step aside, Dunk.”

  “No, not until you hear me out. The problem between you and I is you. Your grandfather never listened to Dunk and you never listen to me. We’ve always been at our best when we work together, but we only ever do that when there’s nothing left to lose.”

  Giving Dunk Three an impatient look, he shook his head. “Now is not the time for therapy.”

  “But it is, Ark. Now is the perfect time. I’ve been talking to Dunk Two…”

  “He’s dead.”

  Dunk Three waved his hand impatiently. “I know, but he’s good to talk with. He remembers things I don’t. It’s true that Dunk only ever wanted power, so that’s what I want too. Ark wanted to lead the troops to victory and you’re as good as he was. Dunk always conceded to Ark’s military leadership, but Ark never listened to Dunk’s intuition about building an empire. We are their descendants and we’re behaving the same way they did.”

  Did he really ignore his brother? He didn’t think so, but he’d never had any respect for Dunk Two. Maybe that was the problem. If Dunk Three hadn’t killed Dunk Two then he and Tank would have. If it had been left up to Tank then the entire Dunk line would be dead, including Dunk Three. Who started this fight between them? Was it really his fault?

  Unable to deny what his brother was saying, he sniffed unappreciatively. “Are you saying I don’t listen to you?” Leaning towards him, he pursed his lips. “Because if you are then you sound like a pissed off wife.”

  Smirking at his comment, Dunk Three nodded knowingly. “You’re only saying that because you know I’m right.”

  “Maybe you are, but I don’t see how it’s relevant to this situation.”

  Waggling a finger at him, Dunk Three shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. The universe is a dangerous place and we need every edge we can get.” Pointing to the older alien, he gave him a contemptuous look. “We’ve beaten them twice and we’ll do it a third time if we have to. Now that we have control of a virus that destroys their weapons, we own them.”

  Dunk Three’s face became stern. “We need to build our strength and capability, not waste what we find. They won’t be the first aliens we’ll do battle with. To take contr
ol of the universe we’ll need everything we can get our hands on. I propose we add the Arians to our empire and build their capabilities into our own.”

  “An alliance?”

  “Less than that.”

  “Slaves?”

  “More than that.”

  “Docile partners.”

  The older alien rose to his feet. “That is acceptable.”

  Giving him a contemptuous look, he felt his upper lip curling in disgust. “Why?”

  Raising his long thin hands, the older alien appeared defeated. “We procreate by moving from one entity to the next. We seed planets with our DNA so the host is receptive to us.” Sighing as if disappointed, he shook his head. “This has been our way for many lifetimes, but something went wrong. You fought our collectors. You killed our unborn. You are…ruthless.”

  “Do you surrender?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good enough.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE:

  Empire

  (Dunk Three)

  “I think it worked out rather well.”

  He gave his dead clone a tired look. “We lost a third of the population to the critters. How is that good?”

  Sitting on the console inside of the wormhole hangar, Dunk Two dangled his legs over the edge. “Humans breed like vermin. We’ll catch up again.”

  “It’s still a huge loss.”

  “Maybe so, but now we can be immortal.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I got the Bombardier thing wrong. They’re the next evolution of the human race. Combine what they are with the body hopping game and mankind is immortal.”

  Sighing irritably, he studied the numbers on the screen. “Humans aren’t telepathic and the medics say that’s how they do it.”

  “Don’t think so small. In a few hundred years, our DNA will be blended with theirs. Who’s to say what capabilities we’ll have? Bombardiers are like smart critters, toughened and indestructible. Combine that with the ability to body hop and the human mind will be immortal.”

  “Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you?”

  Dunk Two sniffed. “I suppose so. We need to shore up the empire first.”