Unfortunately, one of the alien ships had landed just a hundred meters farther up the street from his friends, and it looked like some of the crew were disembarking and setting out in the general direction of the Satori’s ground party.
“Beth, our company beat us here,” he said. This was a complication he’d hoped to avoid. There were a lot of alien ships flying around now. He’d wanted to slip away before they were seen, but it looked like that would be impossible now. He continued to ease the Satori closer, taking a good look at the alien ship.
Dan’s brain automatically cataloged the ship as an assault craft. It looked a lot like the amphibious assault vehicles used by Marine forces on Earth – right down to the large hatch in the front. This one was just designed to fly instead of float. He saw obvious gun turrets on the top and sides of the vessel. The engines looked similar to those on the Satori, which implied a higher tech base than Earth.
“I’ve got the railguns locked on it. I think,” Beth said.
“Confirmed. Target lock acquired,” the ship’s computer said. Dan could hear the relief in Beth’s exhaled breath.
“Let’s not shoot first,” Dan said. “I’d like to find out what their intentions are.”
“That ship is bristling with guns, Dan,” Beth said. “And if those aliens get much closer to John and the others, they’ll be too close to our people for us to use the railguns.”
“Yeah, but I have a hunch these guys are responding to that satellite firing on us.” Dan gently nudged the Satori forward a bit more. Now he was about even with the stone building Andy had described. That put him almost right over the heads of his team, but he couldn’t get lower without their engines stirring up the dust below and giving away their location. “We may have ignored their ‘don’t step on the grass’ sign or something. Let’s see what they do.”
“I wait with bated breath,” Beth said. “And my finger on the trigger.”
Fifteen
Andy was watching the troops unload from the front of the ship through his rifle scope. He’d dialed up the zoom until he could see them all too clearly. They were definitely not human. They looked something like crocodiles walking upright, complete with tails behind and a snout full of teeth. He got a good close up view of one of those mouths; the long, pointed teeth set off part of his brain that wanted to run away from here as fast as his legs would carry him. He quietly shut off that voice and kept observing instead. His instincts said that things were about to get nasty, and he would need a cool head to carry them through.
The aliens were wearing something that looked like body armor across their torsos, leaving arms and legs bare, dark green scales gleaming in the sun. Each carried a rifle with a wide bore – the opening of each barrel was about big enough for Andy to stick his fist into it. There was something odd about the weapons, though. The projectiles a barrel that big would throw would be huge, but he didn’t see anything like a magazine for rounds that large. Some sort of energy gun, maybe?
It wasn’t the rifles or armor that made Andy sure they were troops, though. It was how they moved. He’d seen a lot of different military units over the years, but they all boiled down into three groups. Some moved fluidly as a unit, using modern tactics to cover each other and maximize their combat effectiveness and minimize casualties. Others held to rigid discipline, often to such a level that it made them ineffective. The third, and most common, were units that derived from a warrior culture – where the soldiers were more interested in personal glory than they were in unit cohesion and cooperation.
These lizards were the third kind, and Andy would have either snorted in derision or sighed with relief if there hadn’t been so many of them that it made no difference. The ship had already disgorged a score of the things, and although they were still tucked into cover near their ship, he had a feeling that situation wasn’t going to last. The lack of coordination and unit training the aliens exhibited was a plus for his side, if things came down to a fight. But they were outnumbered so badly it wasn’t going to save them. He hoped Dan was going to get here soon.
Andy peeked back over his shoulder. John was still working to get Charline out of the pit. He wanted to go help, but was loathe to take his eyes off the aliens for more than a moment. They needed more time. He had a feeling they weren’t going to get it.
He almost jumped when the radio buzzed in his ear.
“Andy,” Dan said, “we’re above you and to the right. Ready to get out of there?”
Andy heaved out his breath, relaxing the tension that had been piling up on his shoulders. Dan had made it. The Satori was nearby, invisible, getting ready to pick them all up. Five seconds earlier Andy had no idea how he was going to get his team out of this mess. The Satori’s arrival changed everything.
“Better believe it. Can you get us out?” Andy asked.
“I think so. I’ll maneuver the ship down between you and them and put you on our port side so we can lower the ramp and get you aboard. Watch out – they’re moving!”
Andy looked down toward the alien ship. One of the troops was shouting commands to the others, and then all at once they just started moving directly toward his party like they knew where they were going. Somehow the aliens knew that the humans were in this direction. Andy could see it in the way they walked. They weren’t searching for a possible opponent. They were moving to an anticipated contact.
They were a disorganized lot, but the one who’d been giving orders was out front leading the pack. Andy trained his scope on that one. Take him down, and it might mess the alien squad up even more. He slipped his finger into the trigger well, but held his fire. Maybe they could still get out of this without killing the first alien sentients they ran into. Andy wasn’t one to back down from a fight if the battle was necessary, but he didn’t want to be the one to kick things off. If they could just get the Satori into position and get aboard before the aliens spotted them, maybe they could get out of this mess without firing a shot.
But then one of the aliens shouted, and they all ducked behind rocks. Andy wasn’t sure what had given him away. Maybe they’d seen sunlight glint off his scope, or maybe their sensors had finally picked up the humans huddled down in the rubble. In the end it didn’t matter. Two of them opened fire on his position, and he ducked back in time to avoid being pelted with rock splinters as whatever they were shooting impacted the boulder he was hiding behind. And he was right about those rifles. They were firing something that looked more like ball lightning than a solid projectile. He could feel the shots shaking his boulder.
“Dan, now would be a good time!” Andy said into the radio. He snuck a peek at the advancing force. They were moving forward again, not running, but coming at a fast walk over the broken rubble. Some of them were shooting as they came, firing in his general direction without bothering to aim. Sloppy, poorly disciplined, as he’d thought. But he still needed to slow them down. He took aim on the lizard in front, and pulled back slowly on the trigger.
He had a moment to whisper a brief prayer that he wasn’t starting a war. Then his rifle bucked, and his shot took the alien through one reptilian eye. It dropped face first like a felled tree, and that stopped the rest of them cold for a moment as they all hit the ground. Andy fired two more shots to keep their heads down, then ducked back. He was just in time – the boulder behind his back shuddered with repeated impacts as the aliens fired their weapons in return.
Sixteen
Dan had just about gotten the Satori into position to grab their crew-mates. And not a moment too soon, as Andy and the aliens began exchanging fire. He watched the impacts of the alien rifles on the rocks. They were pounding the rubble around his friends hard, shaking loose a lot of dust, but they weren’t shattering the rocks on impact. He thought the Satori’s hull could withstand at least a few of those shots.
“They’ve opened up on Andy’s position,” Beth said. “I’m taking out that shuttle.”
“No!” Dan said. “The turrets on their ship have
n’t budged.”
Beth growled, whirling on Dan. “So you want us to just sit here while they pick off our friends?”
Dan gritted his teeth. His fingers moved steadily over the controls as he brought the ship slowly down. “Let’s see if we can just get our guys out of there with a minimum of bloodshed.”
Maybe being in the astronaut corps had given him a different perspective, but firing on First Contact simply wasn’t in his plans. He watched the screen carefully, saw huge plumes of dust rise into the air as the energy field which held the ship airborne made contact with the ground. That got the aliens’ attention, and they hunkered down even more. Dan kept the Satori hovering a few feet up, so they could make a quick getaway.
“Majel, analysis of their hand weapons. Can they hurt the Satori?” Dan asked.
“Negative. Hand weapons are firing an energy discharge. Impacts appear to be causing minimal damage to structural integrity of materials they contact. Risk to ship’s hull negligible.”
“Got it,” Dan said. He brought the ship down even more, blocking the path between the aliens and their friends. “Beth, get the hatch open so our people can get in here!” He was still too far away for comfort – they’d have to sprint to cross the gap. But the rubble everywhere was making it hard to get closer.
He was dimly aware of Beth rising from her seat and running to the main hatch, but his focus was on keeping the ship level and clear of debris while they hovered. He heard when the hatch opened and the ramp lowered down. Almost immediately, the starboard side of the ship – the side facing the aliens – rang again and again, as if it was being pounded with hammers. A quick look at the camera watching them showed the aliens firing over and over at his ship. The ramp! It extended out past the cloak. They must have seen the ramp lower out of thin air and opened fire.
“Alert!” Majel’s voice said, louder than usual to project over the hammering noise. “Two airborne ships have shifted course and are closing on this position. Firing range in seven seconds.”
The fighter escort ships! Dan cursed. There wasn’t going to be time to get everyone aboard. He’d bet those fighters had bigger guns than their ground troops. While the ramp was down, they were visible and vulnerable. The fighters would pound them to scrap metal. He jerked the ship’s nose around, angling upward. The little alley between buildings had turned into a death trap, and Dan needed to get the ship out of there. In another few seconds the enemy fighters would be all over them.
“Beth, raise the ramp!” he shouted. That ramp would tell the fighters precisely where they were.
Then he keyed the radio, saying “Andy, incoming fighters!” as he poured on more thrust, steering the Satori forward and up. The ship lifted away from the ground with a lurch just as he heard the staccato sound of projectiles ripping through the air nearby. That would be the fighters’ guns. If they got in a couple of lucky shots, the Satori would be done for. Dan aimed the ship’s nose on a new course to confuse their fire and applied more power, hearing the shredding ping of rounds passing through metal as one strafing run tagged them. The ship shuddered a little, but stabilized and continued to gain altitude.
“Hang on, John,” Dan said. “We’ll be back.”
John was just about to order Charline to go up the ramp to the Satori, when he heard Dan’s warning over the radio.
“Everyone down!” he roared over the gunfire. Distantly, he hear the high pitched whine of something airborne closing fast. He launched himself at Charline, dropping them both face-first down into the gravel so his body would shield hers, but not before he saw the ramp vanish as it was retracted into the invisible ship he knew was gaining altitude above them.
All around them, the world seemed to explode as the fighters strafed the area where they guessed the cloaked Satori might be.
When the bits of rock had stopped falling, all John could hear was ringing. A quick peek showed head-sized marks burned in the ground where the shots had impacted. The aliens had all hit the dirt, too. Now they were starting to cautiously get back up. John’s eyes met Charline’s as she lifted her head. She looked scared, but gave him a thumbs up. The aliens hadn’t started firing on them again, so he grabbed his rifle and scooted a few meters to take cover behind the big boulder next to Andrew.
“You OK?” Andrew asked.
John could just barely make out the words over the ringing in his ears. He nodded in reply. He saw Andrew try to duck his head out to take a shot at the aliens, but a series of blasts hit the rocks in front of them and he pulled his head back, fast. John winced, seeing the small slice one flying rock had left along Andrew’s brow.
Andrew seemed oblivious to the injury. “They’re coming forward again, and we’re pinned here,” he said. “I can’t peek long enough to get a bead on them.”
“If they close with us before Dan and Beth get back, we’re toast,” John said. He keyed his radio, saying “Dan, we’d be grateful if you could speed things up a little.” He didn’t hear a reply back.
They probably were toast. Maybe Dan and Beth could still get away, but the rest of them? It seemed less likely by the moment. John looked at Andrew, who was still trying to get his rifle around the boulder to fire on the approaching foe. For the second time today, he found himself wishing he’d had more time to tell him everything. There was so much that John wanted to say, but he’d never been able to work up the courage to speak the words.
Now or never! whispered a voice in his head, drowning out everything else. Those were his Satori’s words, right before she leaped into whatever crazy thing she was about to do. He recalled her whooping laugh as she swung on a rope out over the river, one perfect summer day, letting go to splash down into the dappled shade below. Now or never, she’d said.
He recalled when he first met Andrew. John was speaking at a conference of the World Energy Council, in New York City. It was a brisk February afternoon, a year almost to the day after Satori had died, their son with her, as she tried to give him birth. The energy crisis was just being felt in earnest, and New York had been doing rolling brown-outs. The people were upset and were protesting a few blocks away from the building – the closest the city police would let them get to the United Nations complex. He’d watched them from inside the safety of the government building, wondering why they were protesting here of all places, where people were meeting in hopes of solving the problem. Sometimes people didn’t make sense, especially when they were frightened and angry.
The protest had gotten ugly. Some of the people in the crowd had brought guns to the party, and when the police had tried to use riot shields and tear gas to disperse the mob, they used the guns on the police. At least one policeman returned fire, and the crowd turned into a furious mob. They swept the police away and stormed the building where the talks were being held. Special Forces teams were called in to defend the building until reinforcements could arrive.
In the middle of that mess, young Lieutenant Andrew Wakefield had taken John under his protection. John, who had rather too little care at that point whether he lived or died, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The mob came streaming up a flight of stairs. Those at the front of the crowd had guns, and there was no remorse in their eyes. John hadn’t fled. If this was his time, so be it. At least he would get to see Satori again.
But Andrew had seen the crowd coming, too. He’d shoved John aside, his rifle at the ready and aimed at the mob. Andrew didn’t fire. He didn’t want the blood of innocent people on his hands, or so he’d told John later on. Instead he stood his ground and ordered the crowd to leave. They hadn’t listened. Instead, one of them shot Andrew and the rest surged forward again.
Seeing the young man gunned down trying to keep him alive changed everything for John. He picked up the soldier’s rifle and defended him with it until help could arrive. Where Andrew had shown restraint, John demonstrated none. He emptied two magazines into the mob before they fled from him. John hadn’t pursued them. He’d stayed by the injured man inste
ad, guarding him from harm. Later, he visited the hospital where he was treated, and donated blood in his name. He stopped back days later, once Andrew was conscious again, to say thank you.
And he’d watched over him ever since. John observed Andrew’s career in the Army through his Department of Defense contacts. And when Andrew ended his term of service to go back to school, John arrived with an offer – his master’s degree in whatever he wanted, at whatever school he went to, and the offer of a job when he was done. His way of saying thank you. Both for saving his life, and for reminding him that it was worth living.
Andrew had declined the offered money. He won his own way through grad school. And then he’d taken John’s offer of a job after he graduated with his MBA. The man was such a contradiction, sometimes!
Somewhere between taking a bullet for him and today, John had come to think of Andrew as the son he had lost when he lost Satori. But he’d never said as much. He’d never actually told Andrew how much he meant. John hoped the young man just knew, but in his heart he was aware that wasn’t really enough. The words needed to be said, and this might be his last chance.
Now or never, she whispered in his memory again. He pushed the thought away. It wasn’t the time. Not while they were being shot at. It would smack of being defeatist, admitting they were likely lost. He brought his attention back to the present, opened eyes he hadn’t realized he’d briefly squeezed shut.
John saw Charline still laying where he’d pushed her down. Was she hurt? No – he realized she wasn’t in quite the same spot. She’d slid forward on her belly, a little farther away from them, using some more rocks as cover. John’s brow furrowed. As he watched, she slid a little farther away. Now she was nestled behind a pair of rocks, each about the size of a large dog. What was she up to?
Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library Page 18