by Chris Lowry
LODGEMENT
Invasion Earth book 3
By
Chris Lowry
Copyright 2017
Grand Ozarks Media
All Rights Reserved
I had someone email to ask why I put the disclaimer up front on some pre-orders. Because Amazon is tech, and I use tech to upload the final version. If the Licks are invading, things are bound to go wrong, and rather than leave you with something wrong, I keep this here until the FINAL FINAL is done and ready. So if you’re seeing this, one of two things happened. Tech problems or Me problems. Since I’m a man who takes responsibility, let’s put the check mark in my screw up box. Don’t worry-just shoot me an email and I’ll make sure you have the FINAL FINAL in whatever file you like. (mobi, pdf, epub.) My goal is to make sure you like the story. As I’m telling it, these guys are telling me more back. So even though there is a pre-order for ULTIMA THULE in the back, don’t grab it yet. I’ll send it to you Free as my way of saying thanks.
Chris
LODGEMENT
“Smoke,” Crockett pointed and the rest of their heads swiveled in that direction.
A thin cloud of smoke blossomed over the tree tops, trailing on a higher wind in the same direction they were flying on the stolen hovercraft.
“What do you think, Lt?” Babe asked.
Lt. William Bonney squinted at the horizon through the reflective faceplate he wore connected to his helmet.
A heads up display seemed to respond to his thoughts and zoomed in on the column of smoke with three clicks. He stared at a closer version and marveled as the composition components scrolled across the screen in front of his retina.
“Wood smoke,” he said. “Too big for a campfire.”
“Building?” Babe said.
He was staring at his own scroll of information feeding across the faceplate he wore.
Lt nodded.
Babe put a hand on Crockett’s shoulder.
“Check it out.”
He pulled on the yoke to send the alien hovercraft over the trees and angled them on an intercept vector.
“Be ready,” Lt advised the rest of the squad.
He watched Jake and Steph, two prisoners who had been conscripted into his war against the aliens, shift in their stance and hold their blaster rifles at ready.
Weber and Renard, two veterans who claimed to be from the lost Martian front, knelt behind the partially raised side of the hovercraft and aimed over the edge.
Jake took note and tapped Steph on the shoulder. He imitated the veterans and she followed his example.
The hovercraft floated thirty feet off the ground, the color of the smoke changing as they approached, growing darker and thicker.
From here, Lt could make out a clearing in the trees up ahead, a patch of forest missing in the dense canopy of leaves.
“Circle round,” he instructed Crockett and the man piloting the hovercraft complied.
They were too noisy to make a silent approach, and too high to sneak in. The least they could do was change direction, Lt thought.
Crockett couldn’t set down on top of the trees, so he shot across the edge of the clearing and dropped toward the churned ground.
It was a town of survivors, or once had been.
Five wooden huts, burned shells now, still smoldered from blackened piles of ash.
“Cold blooded murdin’ sons of bitches!” Lt. muttered.
The ground was littered with bodies.
Human bodies.
Men were burned beyond recognition, black skeletons curled in fetal positions, weapons tossed aside on some, clutched in the charred fingers of others.
Women and children were scattered in front of two buildings, only known by the smaller corpses they left behind.
“Another bomb?” Waldo offered as they settled on the ground with only a slight lurch.
Lt shook his head. He didn’t know.
They had been at a compound before when the Licks dropped a concussive bomb that took out a lot of people. But those bodies hadn’t been burned.
The Licks wouldn’t want their new slaves unable to work.
He hopped over the edge of the hovercraft and blanched as his boots squished into the ground. It was wet with blood, or what looked like it.
“Cover,” he said as Babe started to get out with him.
“Lt?”
“Watch the trees, Babe. Anyone left alive is going to come from there.”
“What about the Licks?”
“This was no damn Lick,” Lt grunted.
He trusted his squad to cover the perimeter, but readied his rifle as he stepped among the dead.
There were too many of them.
The entire compound was slaughtered.
“I’ve got to tell you, this gets the Scotch Irish in me pretty damned riled up,” Lt spat. “I got us spending all our time trying to save the fucking human race, and these piece of crap egg suckers go and make all my effort wasted.”
He saw the bush quiver out of the corner of his eye and whipped around with his blaster.
A small scream echoed from the underbrush as he sent a laser shot smoking through the leaves.
“Come on out!” Lt shouted.
Babe and Waldo spread away from him, flanking whoever or whatever it was hiding in the brambles.
They watched a tiny hand reach out and lift the greenery to one side. A second hand spread it farther apart and a mud smudged face peeked through the opening. Large brown eyes blinked at them, dripping tears through the dirt crusted cheeks.
“Come on out now,” Lt said, his voice still crisp with annoyance at being startled.
A small boy crawled out of the underbrush. He was covered in mud, and darker stains that could have been blood. His movements were frantic, jerky, and he kept watch on the alien looking men in giant armor aiming guns at him.
Steph pushed past Lt.
“Lower your guns,” she chided. “He’s terrified.”
She kneeled in front of the boy as he flinched away from her.
“Hey buddy,” she cracked a smile, trying to ease his fear.
“He’s not a dog,” said Waldo.
“I’ve got eyes,” she said.
“You’re talking to him like he’s a dog.”
“I am not.”
“Here boy,” Waldo imitated her voice. “Sounds like a dog to me.”
“Ask him who he is,” Lt ordered.
“He probably speaks English,” said Steph.
“Do you? Do you speak English boy?” Waldo kept up the high pitched voice a lot of pet owners used.
The mud covered kid growled.
“Sounds like a dog,” Waldo shrugged.
“I don’t know Waldo,” said Babe. “Talking to me like that would piss me off enough to growl too.”
“Cut the bull shit,” said Lt. “Ask him what happened.”
He turned and stalked back to the hovercraft toward Weber and Renard.
“You two, circle the perimeter, see what you can pick up.”
Weber glanced at Renard, then readied his rifle. He took a few steps ahead of the younger man, who followed after him, both of their heads on a swivel as they searched for any threats or clues.
Steph held out her hand to the boy.
“How long have you been here?”
He stared at the glove covering her outstretched palm and his lower lip began to quiver. One tiny hand stretched toward hers and settled into her grip.
She closed her glove over it, soft and reassuring as his tiny shoulders began to heave, small sobs hiccupping over the still crackling embers of the ash covered piles.
CHAPTER TWO
Lick Commander stared at the holographic image that floated six feet off of the floor. His long slender tongue flickere
d in and out of his mouth, tasting the air and revealing his frustration as he stared at the back of His Imminence.
His leader had contacted him to deliver instructions and receive a report no doubt. His Nestmate had a hand in arranging this meeting, but no sooner had the bulbous giant Leader signed on to the communications array, he turned away from the Lick Commander to consult with his council.
It was an act designed to show him his place in the scheme of things, Lick Commander realized. What he had considered an honor, to watch over a Nestmate and keep her safe, he now considered as a fellow exile.
She was either a spy sent to report back on his loyalty, or exploit his shortcomings in the fight against the humans, or an ally. He had yet to determine which despite sharing his sex with her.
The back heaved with laughter as someone he could not see spoke to his Leader and amused him. Lick Commander held his shoulders rigid, his yellow eyes narrowed in anger.
That His Imminence would ignore him was expected. That he would do so in front of an assembled group of other commanders was insufferable.
Lick Commander hoped the Nestmate was here to help. He would like nothing more than to eliminate the ineffective and inefficient leadership in front of him, staring with clearing the entire room. A well placed bomb would do the work, he thought. Something from the human arsenals that would lay the blame on that species of parasites.
He wanted to turn away, return to getting reports on the progress of clearing the base with the new slaves. He wanted to return to the Nestmate exiled with him, the scent of their most recent passionate encounter clinging to his scaly skin. But he waited. It was what a good soldier would do.
CHAPTER THREE
“What are we waiting on?” Weber grumbled. “I thought we were fighting Licks.”
“This is wasting time,” Renard added.
Babe grunted his assent.
Lt ignored them.
He was good at ignoring a lot of things, years of practice making him an expert at projecting a stony expression.
But he heard them.
Still, he didn’t take his eyes off Steph as she gripped the hand of the dirt covered urchin in front of them.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The kid blanched away from the alien looking visage bending toward him.
Lt nodded and popped his visor open with a snick, revealing ice blue eyes in a perpetual squint.
“You got a name?” he asked again, making a point to make his voice soft, less threatening than his normal gruff rasp.
The kid nodded.
Tears and snot mixed together under his nose and turned the dirt on his lip into a muddy mustache.
“What is it?”
The kid shook his head.
Lt squinted harder as his eyes moved around the squad.
“That’s Babe,” Lt pointed to the giant standing between the two veterans of Mars. “Waldo, Crockett, Weber, Renard. You’re holding on to Annie Oakley there.”
She squeezed the kid’s hand.
“There,” said Lt. “Now you know us. Want to tell us your name?”
The dirty faced urchin shook his head.
“No? Why the hell not?”
“You’re strangers.”
Lt snickered, an odd sound among the carnage spread around them.
“Last man standing,” Babe snorted. “And still won’t talk.”
Lt glared at the death surrounding them, sniffed the air.
“That’s alright, boy. You don’t have to tell us your name if you don’t want.”
The kid sobbed and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the mud in a long grubby streak.
“I’m not a boy,” he sniffed.
Lt squinted harder. Steph pulled her into a rough armor coated side hug.
“It’s a girl, Lt,” said Waldo.
“My ears ain’t broke,” Lt answered as he watched Steph try to comfort the girl.
“Damn.”
He was looking at her, but his mind was taking a trip, one of those quick memory flashes that steal up on a person and carry them off, usually when things are quiet but on occasion when the timing wasn’t perfect.
He looked beyond the mud and tears, around the armored arm and into the soft lines of her face, the youthful cheeks sunken, the course hair matted and ratty around her face. Clothes, layers of them, hiding the frail young body.
Lt was staring at a girl who might have been the same age as his daughter, had she lived.
“Fucking Licks,” he growled and the little girl flinched, cringing into Steph’s suit as fire flashed in the Lt’s eyes.
“Your folks in there?” he rasped.
She nodded, the tears all gone, or just cried out.
“Give her a drink,” he told Steph and handed her a hydration pouch from a pack.
The little girl took it and sucked on the end like she hadn’t had water in days.
Steph let her get two mouthfuls and pulled it away before she drank too much and got sick.
“Ask her if she saw what happened here?” Lt instructed.
But he was sure she had.
Young eyes shouldn’t be that haunted.
“I can hear you,” she said, her young voice stronger now that it was wet, though still thick with tears and sadness.
“Then answer if you can,” Lt snapped, the words coming out harsher than he meant.
Certainly, harsher than he would have spoken to his own daughter, harder than he intended.
“I can,” she snarled back. “Soldiers.”
She sniffed again and swiped at the mud on her cheeks and face.
“That it?”
“Isn’t that enough?” Steph answered for her. “You knew it wasn’t aliens.”
Lt nodded.
“Lutz,” Babe reminded him, an attempt to steer him back to mission.
Lt waved him off.
“I ain’t forgot Babe.”
“I’m just saying, we can file that rugrat into the Hovercraft and get going. She can tell us whatever story she wants on the way.”
“We could leave her,” said Waldo.
“We’re not leaving her,” Steph huffed.
She held out her hand to the little girl and flexed her palm.
Lt made a circling motion with his finger.
“Let’s go if you’re going Rugrat.”
He marched past Webar and Renard on his way to the hovercraft.
“What kind of outfit are you running here?” Weber whispered after him.
But if Lt heard, he didn’t answer.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lutz stared at the back of the girl, but she wouldn’t turn her head to look at him. No one would. No one dared.
The other prisoners walked with a practiced shuffle, heads bent low, eyes watching the toes of their dingy shoes.
Lutz was surprised at how fast they learned to adopt the walk, as if there was an unwritten code about how to act on the base.
Or maybe he wasn’t so surprised. He had watched another prisoner get his head bashed in for staring.
That kind of instruction made an impression.
That kind of instruction got everyone in line quick.
He cleaned a hovercraft under the slit yellow eyes of a Lick soldier that roamed over the working trio. He watched the six foot lizard from the corner of his eye, seeming intent on the task in front of him, but studying the way it stood, how it held the blaster in its three clawed hand.
The guard’s eyes blinked once, twice, then closed. The tongue that was normally flicking in and out to taste air, to taste scent, was still.
Lutz couldn’t believe it.
The soldier guarding them fell asleep.
He kept moving, kept his motion slow and controlled, and turned his head ever so slightly to get a better look.
Yes, the yellow eyes were closed, the snout frozen in a mask of respite.
Lutz couldn’t help it. He grinned.
He almost motioned to the man next to hi
m, to show him that the soldier acting as their guard was catching a nap. But he needn’t bother.
The man noticed, dropped the mop he was using to scrub soot marks off the hull and pounded across the pitted asphalt toward the fence.
A second guard lifted his rifle and sent a blaster bolt searing into the fleeing man’s back one hundred yards away. The laser almost sliced him in half, the upper torso pitching over even as the legs ran four more steps before falling in a splattered heap.
The Lick who fired the round stepped out of hiding behind a building and watched the rest of the slaves to see if any were going to make a run for it too.
No one did.
He slid back into the shadows of his cover and Lutz lost sight of him.
“Two,” a small voice whispered beside him. “Maybe three.”
The sound of it sent a thrill up his spine. It was the voice from the darkness, the raspy sound made him want to smile almost as much as the still snoozing guard.
“Did you know?” he whispered back.
“We suspected. Now we know.”
Which made Lutz wonder. Did the man sacrifice himself just to give the raspy voiced girl the intel?
He turned his head to look at her, but only caught the back of her dark hair as she scooted away. She was slight of frame, the clothes on her frame oversized making her look even smaller. He couldn’t see her face, just the shape of her from behind, and even that was distorted by the fabric she wore.
But it was her. He was sure of it. There was no mistaking that voice.
And whoever she was, she was planning an escape.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lt shifted onto his haunches in front of the fire, cradling the rifle in the crook of his hips. He almost held out his hands to warm them, and pulled back after a moment of hesitation.
He wasn’t cold.
The suit took care of that.
It was just a habit, born of spending the last several hundred nights sleeping outdoors.
The suit took care of a lot of needs. The nano inside of him modulated his hunger, his thirst. It modulated his adrenal production, and he suspected it controlled his sleep as well, dropping melatonin in his system when he decided it was time to catch some shut eye.
Wonders, he thought.
He stared into the flames and thought about Lutz. He let his mind drift over the possibilities of planning, what they were up against, and it flittered from idea to thought and back again.