Hell Fighters from Earth
Page 35
Shortly he heard another one coming up the tunnel. He began firing down the tunnel. It exploded and scorched him pretty good. Maybe that’ll hold them a while.
He then used the gun to demolish as many of the surface structures as he could. There were no secondaries and no radiation leaks. Of all the rotten luck.
Off to his left, he caught movement. There was a tunnel exit he had not seen before, and something had just come out of it. He quickly drove over to it and parked the lift on top of the exit.
A roar got his attention, and he jumped from the lift in time to keep his head, just. He hit the ground and fell; scrambling to his feet, he fired point blank into his assailant. It was a big, male lizard.
Some debris from his demolition began to move. He ran over to it and dropped a grenade into the opening. He did not have that many grenades and all around him were small explosions. They were getting out. Good time to make yourself scarce old boy.
He got out of the base as quickly as he could and found a good hiding place from which to record what ensued.
“Friend Denver, what are you doing?”
He jumped as the words filled his head.
“Cee, is that you? I was wondering where you’ve been.”
“It is difficult to explain, but I was sent away to keep me out of trouble. Now I have been reassigned and have secretly been observing your exploits. You have done well.”
“Are you on this planet?”
“No, but I am near. I ask you again, what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to shut down this facility to stop them from launching any more troop carriers.”
“What assistance do you need?”
He thought quickly. “I really need to blow this whole thing up. Can you bring me a small nuclear detonator?”
“I can’t bring you anything, but maybe we can send you something. But I must let you know, this contact is secret. I was only to contact you in the most difficult of situations.”
Cee broke contact. Smith could feel the release of pressure in his head. He peeked back at the lizard base. They were pouring out now, but instead of fanning out and looking for him, they began running toward the LZ.
These guys are nuts; he thought to himself. There must have been several hundred all jogging off to battle.
He checked his heads-up. The LZ was managing to hold on but for how long was anybody’s guess. The artillery and the attack craft had evened up the odds a bit.
Switching screens, he could get some idea of how the space battle was shaping up. Tactics his guys had come up with seemed to be paying off. They and the small fighters were keeping the enemy away from the fleet for now.
“Denver, where are you?”
“Argie?”
“We are sending you a surprise package. It will be on the ground about a half a kilometer from your location. Don’t know what‘s in it. Someone baking you cookies?”
“Don’t know. Hope it’s ammo. I’m getting low.” He headed off toward the coordinates she sent.
The chute dropped almost at his feet. He opened it and grinned. It read: Acme Tactical Nuclear Device – Use only with adult supervision.
Must have been Farouk; he loves those old cartoons. Now let me see, what would a poor boy do with a small nuke off on some hostile planet crawling with lizards? He shouldered it, then added, and heavy too. Off he went.
Just setting it off at the surface would hurt, but maybe they had planned for this. I wonder if I can get down one of those tunnels I saw them coming up through. It seemed a long way back.
Let me see; wait something is different. There were several boxes set up on the surface. It appeared they covered the tunnels. Not good. He eased toward the compound as stealthily as he could.
Wonder if anybody is minding the store. He noticed that in their haste they had knocked over their own fence. These guys must be berserkers. He stopped and recorded the scene. He slipped around to where he could clamber over the fence carrying his load and crawled in the direction of the only unguarded entrance to the underground fortress.
He was breathing hard and had to stop from time to time to rest. His oxygen rebreather system might be getting clogged. He ducked down behind some rubble, rested, and made the change out. It was getting hard to care enough to keep going; sweat burned his eyes. He had to get this thing fixed and quick.
After his head cleared, he quickly moved out and eased up to the tunnel the troop carriers had been using. Smoke was still coming out, and he could hear noises. He looked around and quietly entered the sloping tunnel.
After about thirty meters he found the wreckage of not one but two ships. No one was working to clear the chamber. A little farther on he saw why. Most of the troop carriers had already made it out. There were less than fifty left. Why bother, just jog off to battle he thought.
Ahead there was noise and movement. He knew if he was caught now he would have to set off the nuke. Quietly he moved forward. Then he saw them. He had never seen lizards without their battle dress. But these were smaller.
Females he asked himself? There was much activity; trucks of a sort were carrying material down a long winding tunnel deeper into the planet. It had the look of organized pandemonium. He crawled on his stomach past piles of equipment. These pallets were being loaded and moved deeper down into the complex.
Was this a response to the destruction of the base where he and Argie had rescued the prisoners; hide everything underground? Or was it their normal way of doing things; were they troglodytes of a sort? Man, this place was warm, too warm.
It was clear that these boxes were being carefully loaded on trucks and quickly taken to safer depths. He eased a small container out of its secured place. He could not guess what it was. It did not matter. He slipped the Acme nuclear device in its place and set the timer. On an impulse, he slipped the small lizard container into the nuke’s bag. He was curious.
He made his way back the way he came. He turned and looked behind; it was clear. When he turned back toward the exit, he looked right into the flat eyes of a lizard. It roared, Denver stood and shot it with a single round. It dropped, black blood flowing out over the floor.
The alarm had others frozen staring in his direction. He threw a grenade and ran back up the way he came. There was a terrible explosion and what sounded like screams, terrible screams, screams like he had never imagined; screams from the belly of hell. He ran.
He heard footfalls behind him. He stopped only long enough to throw his last grenade then turned and ran. Where the tunnels came together he stopped to make sure he had the right one, turned and fired a burst back the way he had come. The lizards took cover.
Now he could see the sky. Running as fast as he could, he climbed over the fence. Several lizards were coming out of the tunnel; he halted just long enough to fire at them. They fell back. He took only a moment to gauge wind direction then took off upwind as fast as he could.
His legs ached, but he pushed on. He stopped a moment to check for pursuers. There were none. He continued to run.
That is until a rumble knocked him over. The ground shook and behind him came the most incredible blast. The earth heaved up and dropped back down. The cloud went high into the atmosphere.
He crawled into a gully and hoped this was far enough and upwind. An incredible wind blasted over him and the mushroom cloud reached for the sky. It would have been visible for many kilometers.
“Smith?” There was a pause on the com. “Smith, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
He could hear the uproar his friends made behind Fitz.
“What the devil have you done?”
“I set off the nuke you sent me.”
Fitz said, “I didn’t send you any nuke.”
“Somebody did.”
“Where are you?”
Denver sent him the
coordinates. “You need to turn to these coordinates; otherwise, the high altitude winds will drift the cloud in your direction. We’ll drop out of orbit and pick you up, but right now you’ve got to move.”
“Right, how’s the rest of the battle going?”
“We drove them back in the space battle. When you set that thing off, the ground attackers broke and ran. We were almost overrun, but that stopped them. Now get moving Captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
Smith remembered the thing he had picked up. He opened the container and held what looked like a small soccer ball without any markings. Why would they be in such a hurry to hide little white balls? It suddenly hit him; these weren’t soccer balls, they were eggs, and he had just blown up a nest. He looked back at the ascending cloud. He shouldered his rifle; he had a long hike ahead of him and a war to win.
THE END
Other novels by William C. Seigler:
Free’s World
World War III - Home Front
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Barbara Terry, Beth Stifflemire, Carol McCrow, Danielle Vann, and Marc Isaac at Waldorf Publishing, without whom this book would not have been produced.
I would be remiss if I did not thank John Wyatt whose computer genius was of great assistance in this work. I would also like to thank Lia Wyatt and Thomas Brooks for proofreading. Many thanks also go to Bill Terry for his assistance.
Any mistakes or errors in this volume are totally my own doing. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is merely coincidental.
Author Bio
Born in Anderson, South Carolina, William discovered early on, a desire to see the world. While in the Army, he lived on the economy in Germany and worked on his German while making friends with the locals.
He backpacked the Black Forest, visited the World War II concentration camp at Buchenwald, drank excellent beer at Oktoberfest in Munich, day hiked in the Swiss Alps, met a beautiful girl in Paris, consumed fish and chips late at night in London, and stood on the Acropolis in Athens.
Later, William traveled by ship to Antarctica on a magazine assignment, flew cargo jets, and traveled in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
He received an MS in geology from the University of Texas at El Paso and now teaches geology at Weatherford College in Texas when not writing, bow hunting, or kayak fishing.
He somehow managed to marry the prettiest Mexican girl and best cook west of the Pecos. He and Maria have a son. All these experiences and the people met are woven into his tales. These stories often deal with men and women struggling to live their lives free of the statists-collectivists.