Invasion: The complete three book set

by J. F. Holmes

  Chapter 115

  Nick Agostine had been in a lot of weird places in his time, but this one took the cake. The walls seemed, well, off center, and the lighting was a hellish blue, with dust from the explosion drifting in the air. A dead Octo was splattered against the far wall, and another was trying to drag itself to a bank of lights in the wall. He put a round where he knew its brain to be, then another, just to make sure.

  They had aimed their entrance to be at the center of the building, to give them as many options as possible once inside. Hal had given them a detailed location, based on the atoms of the ansible, but other than “twenty feet inside and ten feet up”, they had no idea which way to go. Hell, they didn’t even know what they were looking for. “You’ll know it when you see it,” Warren had said.

  On the objective, speed and violence is the key to success. Team One ran through the first floor of the building and killed everything they saw. Mostly the engineering species, and several other unknown aliens, including one that looked like, well, a blob. Ahmed blasted that one with a shotgun, his sniper rifle useless in close quarters.

  Their first actual fight was when three Wolverines came charging down a stairway, all firing, and a wild, point-blank melee erupted. In times like this, training wins most of the time. Those other times, chance wins. This time, the goddess of chance rolled doubles.

  Angelo Redshirt, younger and faster, reacted first, shoving his boss out of the way. A plasma bolt took off his head as Agostine stumbled to the side. Jones swept his SAW across the three Wolverines in one long burst as they fired again. Two went down, and the third dove under the lead, stabbing upward and catching Jonesy in the gut. The claw ripped outward, came around, and stabbed through Reynolds’ knee. She screamed and grabbed at her leg, falling to the floor. Ahmed fired his shotgun, blowing a hole in the Wolverine’s side. The creature bit down on her thigh and ripped a chunk of flesh out. It howled in triumph, despite the blood pouring from the shotgun wound, and Ahmed placed the barrel to the fur on its skull and fired.

  “Give me a check!” shouted Agostine, firing a double tap into each Wolverine’s skull.

  “CLEAR!” said Doc as he knelt down over Reynolds. She was grunting, trying to get a tourniquet above her knee. Her face was pale white, and a puddle of blood was spreading on the floor. Doc shoved her hand out of the way, pulling on the tourney above the bite wound and tying it off.

  Then he turned to Jones as Ahmed stood over them, scanning for targets. His friend was laying on his back, eyes closed, breathing short, shallow breaths. “Hang in there, Jay, gonna get you out of here, Medevac’s coming, brother.”

  “Don’t…bullshit me…you cracker ass. Ain’t no medevac…on the moon. Forgot how damn fast those bastards are!” He grimaced in pain as the medic gently lifted the torn entrails and placed them back in. Doc unfolded a plastic sheet and placed it over the wound, taping it off.

  Then he knelt down and said into Jonesy’s ear, “You ain’t dying on me. Not today. Not tomorrow. You got it?” He flipped open a pouch on his tac vest, withdrew a needle, tapped for a vein, and plunged it in. The clear liquid in the vial flowed out, and Jones’ eyes rolled back, going limp, his dark skin ashen. His breathing settled out, steadier. “Nanos are good shit, brother. You just hang in there!” Doc looked back at Agostine and said, “Unless we get him to the autodoc on the Lexington, he isn’t going to make it. Reynolds needs blood, and she’s in pain, but she’ll be OK. Might lose the leg, though.”

  The team commander looked at his soldiers, grieving deeply inside. “Shiva, this is Lost Boys Six, we have multiple casualties. Continuing mission. Out.” Agostine let go of the handmic and nodded to Doc Hamilton. “Stay here with them, Rob. Ahmed and I will finish this.”

  “Me being here isn’t going to do shit for them. Jay is sedated, and infection will kill him, not blood loss. Tiffany’s got some plasma, and there isn’t anything else I can do for her. We have a job to do.”

  His boss nodded and knelt down by Reynolds. Handing her his .357 revolver, he said, “Anything furry or scaly comes through here, you blast the shit out of them, OK?”

  She nodded weakly, pain killers taking hold. Agostine got up and went over to the headless body of the Navajo, but there was nothing to cover it with. He knelt down and said quietly, “I have been to the end of the earth, I have been to the end of the waters, I have been to the end of the sky, I have been to the end of the mountains, I have found none that are not my friends.” Then he touched the blood on the floor, reached up, and drew a line across his cheek.

  “OK, let’s go,” he said, and they moved cautiously up the stairs, weapons raised. Nothing showed in the weird light until they saw a doorway standing open. Ahmed pulled out a drone, smaller than his hand, and flicked it toward the door, watching the video display. Inside was a glass-walled room, a Dragon and a half dozen humans mixed in with a dozen Octos and another of the jelly things. Three of the humans were armed and had rifles pointed at the door.

  “I’ve got three armed greenies, a Dragon, and the rest look like scientists or engineers,” said the Afghani. “Two on the left, by a computer bank, and one by the window.” He quickly sent the video feed to his two teammates.

  “OK, I’ll take the one by the window; Doc, right; Ahmed, Dragon. Flashbang, on three. Try not to hit any civilians, but do what you have to do.” Ahmed slung his shotgun over his back and drew a 10mm pistol, swapped out a magazine for armor-piercing rounds, flicking on the laser sight, then the three men stacked just below the top step of the stairs.

  Before Agostine could throw the flashbang, a volley of shots splintered the concrete over their heads, and a piece of hot lead splashed down on his exposed neck. “Fuck it,” he muttered, pulled the pin, flipped the spoon, held it for two, and threw overhand into the room. They started up the stairs before it even went off, trusting the door, face shields, and integral hearing protection to minimize the shock effect.

  They stepped into pandemonium. One of the armed humans was shooting wildly, blinded and stunned by the grenade, and he cut down two others before Doc put three rounds into his throat and chest. Agostine was second into the room, and his target must have been a trained soldier, because the older man had knelt and assumed a firing position pointed at the door. Despite not being able to see or hear, he waited a few seconds after the blast and emptied his magazine in their general direction, standing up as he did so. The team leader’s burst hammered into the man’s body, and he was thrown back against the shattered window, flipping over the edge and falling out.

  The Dragon, unaffected by the stunning light and sound, flowed toward them, blades in each of its forelimbs, like a charging freight train. It knocked Hamilton aside, blade scoring across his helmet, stabbing wildly at Agostine, and cutting viciously at Ahmed. The Afghani sniper put all fifteen rounds into its head, and they crashed to the floor together, the Dragon almost landing atop him as he rolled aside.

  “EVERYBODY DOWN!” yelled Agostine, firing another burst into the ceiling, and shooting one man who failed to comply. Even the aliens understood the command, lying flat. He came over to the two humans who were cowering on the floor, a man and a woman.

  “YOU! GET UP!” he yelled, shoving the barrel of his rifle into the face of the man, overcome with passion, adrenaline, and anger. “IS THIS THE AI CONTROL? ANSWER ME!”

  “Y-y-yes!” stuttered the man in his fright. “You’re wounded!”

  Nick Agostine glanced down and saw that the whole side of his uniform, from below his armor on down, was soaked with blood. “It’s just a fucking scratch! Now tell me how to access the system!” he shot back, pressing the gun further into the man’s face.

  “I-I don’t know! We’re here as FOOD, dammit!” The CEF soldier shoved him away, disgusted.

  “Shiva, this is Lost Boys, we’ve secured the AI room, come on up. Make yourself known to Reynolds, she’s armed but wounded on the first floor by the stairs,” he called into the radio, then sat down heavily in the cor
ner, exhausted and shaking.

  Chapter 116

  Sergeant Tiffany Reynolds was dying. She knew it, could feel the blood draining from her. The tourniquet couldn’t stop it; it came out slowly, but still, every beat of her heart forced out a little more. There wasn’t anyone to get her back to the shuttle, back to help. Everyone had a job to do, even her, to the last. Guard Jonesy until Nick came back.

  She clutched the .357 in her hand, resting it on the knee of her unwounded leg. The edges of her vision were greying out, but the luminous dot of the sight at the end of the short barrel still shone brightly to her.

  She heard a noise behind her, and she slowly turned her head. Colonel Singh was advancing into the corridor, M-6 raised to her face, cheek to stock. Behind her came General Warren, clumsily carrying his own carbine, and Reynolds snickered a bit. Then she waved the pistol in the direction of the stairway. “Up there,” she muttered.

  Looking first at Jones, pale as death, and then the headless corpse that had been Angelo Redshirt, Rachel Singh locked eyes with her and nodded. She had seen soldiers, her soldiers, dying a slow death before, and she read it in Reynolds’ face. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, a brief thank you to her, then continued up the stairs.

  Warren followed, then knelt next to the bloody sergeant. He started to pull out a bandage, but Reynolds shoved his hand away. Singh hissed at him, “Let’s GO!” and he dropped the bandage to the floor. He looked at her, then reached over and pushed a lock of red hair away that had fallen in front of her eyes.

  “Thanks, now get the hell out of here and do your thing,” said Reynolds, and she gave a weak salute with the barrel of the .357, touching it to her forehead. He stood, returned it as if he were on a parade field, and followed Singh up the stairs. “You’re still an asshole,” she muttered and let the gun drop to the floor, but not out of her hand. A minute went by, and she felt like she was floating up and away, then heard another noise.

  Something was coming down the opposite corridor, around the corner. A measured, cocky tread mixed with a hissing sound. Instantly she was alive again, adrenaline coursing through her. She quickly took her empty hand and slapped it into the puddle of blood around her leg, wiping it across her face. With her other hand, she shoved the revolver behind her back. Then she lay absolutely still, not daring to even breathe.

  A Dragon stepped into view, carrying a heavy multi-barrel flechette gun. Pointed into a room, that thing would shred every living thing in front of it. It cautiously looked around, snake-like head darting to and fro, tongue flicking out to taste the air. First it used one of its mid legs to pull the shirt of Angelo’s body, then lapped up some of the blood from the semi-cauterized stump of his neck.

  Then it turned to Jones, licked at his wounds, and hissed with laughter. Either Jay was dead, or the Dragon thought he was. Blood was smeared on its gold helmet, and the thing flipped up the visor, leaning close down to Reynolds. She had closed her eyes all the way when it turned toward her, and she could feel its hot, musty breath. Then a dry, rasping tongue ran across face, licking up the blood there. She almost screamed with fright, but let the tongue push her head aside. Her heart was racing, pushing out blood from her leg even harder, and greyness was settling in behind her closed eyes. Then voices from upstairs, and the Dragon whipped its head around to listen. It hissed with pleasure and started to slowly creep up the stairs. Reynolds opened her eyes, and as quietly as she could, moved the hand holding the pistol out from behind her back.

  The Dragon had put one true leg up on the stairs and was trying to pull a grenade from its vest. Reynolds shakily raised the gun and thumbed back the hammer. With lighting quickness, the huge creature spun, and she coolly fired her first shot.

  “IN YOUR FACE, MOTHERFUCKER!” she croaked, and fired three more times as it crashed into her.

  The last thing she saw was Doc Hamilton charging down the stairs, rifle blazing, but she knew. She knew, knew the Dragon was dead, and that she’d gone down fighting. Sergeant Tiffany Reynolds walked willingly into the light with a smile on her face and her head held high, all hurts forgotten.

  Doc reached down and closed her eyes, sick to his stomach. Then he checked on Jones, knowing that the nanos had only bought him a little time. “Nick,” he called into the radio over the personal Team One net, not wanting it to go out generally, “Tiffany is dead, but she smoked a Dragon. I’m going to stay down here and make sure nothing else comes up at you.”

  “Got you, Rob. We might be here a bit, Over,” came back the response.

  “You do what you gotta do, and don’t bleed out on me.”

  “It’s just a scratch, don’t worry about it, Six Out.”

  Just a scratch my ass, thought Hamilton, but he knew nothing he could say to his friend would make any difference. Mission first, fix yourself later. He sat down next to Jones and kept a finger on his wrist, timing his pulse. Six beats per minute.

  Nothing else disturbed him until he remembered to switch back over to the command net. Vlonski, the big Polack from Team Four, shouted, “SHIVA, WE’RE GOING TO BE OVERUN! YOU HAVE TO BUG OUT, NOW!”

  There was no response for almost half a minute, then Singh came on the radio. “We need ten more minutes, and everyone MUST hold their positions!”

  Funny, they hadn’t heard anything from Team Three at what was assumed to be the Gate control facility, but everyone was on radio silence unless necessary. He guessed that it meant it was going well for them.

  Chapter 117

  ‘Going well’ wasn’t exactly what Major Padilla would call his mission. He was in a full-on firefight, and an EMP grenade had destroyed all his electronics. Occasionally a Wolverine would peer out through a slit in the barrier and let off a flurry of shots, to be followed by a Scout doing the same. No one had been hit yet, but every single piece of electrical equipment had been fried by a grenade that had come sailing down the corridor. Apparently this WAS the Gate control, or something else just as serious, because heavily-armored blast doors had slammed down on the corridor as they’d breached the wall. They were pierced by narrow firing slits, almost impossible to hit. Several grenades had gone off, to no effect.

  “Putas!” he muttered and motioned to Sergeant First Class Jason on the opposite wall. The man raised his arms in an ‘I don’t know what to do’ motion. More plasma splashed against the back wall.

  “How much C-4 do we have?” asked Padilla. His engineer, a big, dark-haired woman with a thick Cajun accent, opened her bag to reveal more than a dozen bricks.

  “Ah guess plenty. Was counting on maybe blowing up the whole building.” She smiled.

  “Can you blow that doorway without damaging the control room?” asked her boss.

  She shook her head, then said, “I really don’t understand who put you in charge of this team. Dumber than a frog on a log, like my daddy used to say.”

  Padilla started to say something in retort but stopped; he was used to the former Navy Seal talking shit to him, but Chief Petty Officer Angela Devereaux knew her explosives. “OK, Kaboom, what’s your plan?” he asked her.

  She took out a brick, looked at it, took out a knife, and jammed it into the concrete wall, then looked at the brick again. “You wants to be someplace else when I do this, Sir. Like across the hall. That’s where I’m gonna be.”

  He sighed, took out a smoke grenade, popped it, and threw it down the hall. Of course that brought a nonstop flurry of shots down the corridor, but he threw himself across the hallway as low as he could go, waiting to get this head blown off. Devereaux just waited for the shots to stop and nonchalantly walked across through the smoke.

  “You ain’t right,” said Jason. Behind him, the other two team members, Specialist Roy and their civilian team member, Doctor Morano, crouched, watching their backs. Well, Jellico watched their backs. Morano’s job would come later.

  “I ain’t wrong, neither,” answered the demo expert. “Good thing, too. Cover your ears and open your mouths, gentlemen!”


  “That’s what she…” Jason started to reply, but he was cut off by an ear-splitting BANG!

  Across the hallway through the smoke, they could see a section of wall had been blown down, giving access to the room that ran parallel to the corridor the Invy were shooting down.

  “ON ME!” yelled Padilla, and he charged back through the smoke, heedless of any plasma bolts. Once he reached the still-smoking hole, he charged into…

  …a cafeteria. Behind the counter hung headless human corpses, male and female, from meat hooks. Tables and benches designed for various Invy were scattered about in the weird blue light, but none were in evidence. Apparently they HAD hit them at the local version of nighttime.

  A cold fury built up in the Team leader as he caught sight of a child’s corpse laid out on a counter, packed in ice. She was young, no more than five, he guessed. The Team piled up behind him, as shocked as he was.

  “Dev, blow the next one beside that door. It should lead to the center room of this building.” He motioned to a double door, over which armored panels had dropped.

  She ran past him, placed a brick about four feet up, molded it flat, then stuck a chemical timer in it. They repeated their earlier motions and waited. This time the detonation wasn’t as deafening, the open room helping.

  Again Padilla was first through the hole, swiveling left and emptying a whole magazine into the two Wolverines who had been shooting down the hallway at them. As he reloaded, Jason fired single shots into each of their heads, while Dev methodically killed each of the technicians huddled in a corner of the room, including two humans. Team Two had been fighting Invy together for more than a decade, and took no chances, and no prisoners.