“Consider yourself lucky to be in the air,” one of the shock troopers answered. “Garth has ordered double shifts here until the engineering teams can rebuild the processing centers the resistance has destroyed. Our only hope for relief is that the commander will return to the Mother Ship in Houston—soon!”
Rick pieced together the bits of information revealed in the soldier’s few sentences. Apparently the Dallas-
Fort Worth resistance had made things so hot that this Garth, the commander of the Houston Mother Ship, had come to personally supervise the troops here. Rick smiled beneath the shield of his dark visor. The Forth Worth resistance would find an added prize waiting for them when they arrived.
“Commander Garth, the guards at the gate reported that the two skyfighters have landed,” the sergeant at the communications console turned and called out. “The prisoners are presently being brought to the processing line.”
“Good, good, Sergeant.” Garth pushed from his chair and glanced at Major Lawrence. “Shall we go and see if the one I seek is among the prisoners?”
“Commander, photographs of the female were distributed to my pilots as you commanded. If this Sheryl Lee Darcy was among the humans, you would have been informed immediately,” Lawrence answered.
Garth gritted a double row of reptilian teeth to hold back the curses that rode on his forked tongue. The major was incompetent and would be dealt with when time permitted. Now there were other matters with which to deal.
Without uttering a word, Garth strode from the communications room. Major Lawrence grunted, but followed. Down a dimly lit corridor and through a pair of sliding doors, the two Visitor officers moved, eventually reaching the heart of the processing center. Through this Garth also briskly passed, walking out the doors through which the line of humans entered.
“They should be at the end of the line.” Major Lawrence pointed ahead. “There, I see one of the guards from the gate.”
Brad nudged Rick’s side. The resistance leader rolled his eyes forward. Rick’s pulse raced at double time when his gaze lifted. Fifty feet ahead of them in the line stood Sheryl Lee. Her head was downcast, strands of her red hair nearly covering her face, but there was no way Rick could mistake the khaki-clad angel.
The young woman’s face jerked up when a shock trooper shoved her forward as the line shuffled closer to the doors to the center. Rick tensed. A nasty purple bump marred the smoothness of her brow. She had been injured in the car wreck, or Visitors had inflicted the injury after she had been captured.
Rick tried to tell himself the bruised lump didn’t matter; Sheryl Lee was alive! Now all he had to do was gradually maneuver up the line so that he stood beside her when the Fort Worth resistance force struck.
His gaze dipped to the watch on his wrist—four forty-five. Fifteen more minutes. His temples pounded; at the line’s present rate, they would be inside the processing center before the attack came. He had to come up with . . .
“Lieutenant, are these the Dallas prisoners?”
A voice to the left fragmented Rick’s thoughts. He jerked rigid, his head snapping around.
“Commander Garth wishes to know if these are the prisoners brought in from Dallas on the sky fighters.” A Visitor officer tilted his head to a man in a white uniform beside him.
“Yes, sir.” Rick forced himself to speak though the cotton that suddenly filled his mouth.
“Where were they taken prisoner?” This from the man in white—Garth.
The young man’s mind raced. “East side, near the Trinity River.” The river was the only thing he could immediately remember about the unfamiliar city.
Garth stepped along the line of twenty prisoners, then shook his head. “It seems you were correct, Major Lawrence. She’s not here.”
The two Visitor officers pivoted and walked back toward the wide doors to the processing center. Again Rick gave silent thanks for the dark faceplate that hid his relieved expression. He glanced at his watch again. Five more minutes had passed.
“Major!” Garth’s voice came from ahead.
Rick looked up; his blood ran cold. The commander of the Houston Mother Ship stood beside Sheryl Lee!
“I was right after all, Major Lawrence!” Garth took the young woman’s arm and jerked her from the line. “Here is the female! You fool, she was only feet away from processing!”
Rick’s temples pounded. This Garth wanted Sheryl Lee! Why?
“Who brought this woman in?” Major Lawrence’s head jerked from side to side.
“My patrol, Major.” A shock trooper stepped forward. “She was taken in a car chase with a ground patrol on the far south side of Dallas two hours ago.”
“A ground patrol!” Lawrence repeated, his chest swelling defensively when he turned to Garth. “An honest oversight, Commander. Photographs of the female were distributed only to pilots—as to your orders.”
Photographs . . . orders? Rick strained to hear every word, his confusion mounting by the second.
“Major, your pettiness is unbecoming an officer,” Garth snapped. He would relish watching Lawrence slosh through the muck in the Mother Ship’s septic tanks. “My task here is complete. Have a squad vehicle prepared for my return to Houston.”
“Houston.” The single word hissed between Rick’s teeth.
“You heard the lizard.” Brad wrenched a hidden energy pistol from inside his shirt. “We’ve run out of time! Now let’s move!”
Raising the Visitor rifle to his shoulder, Rick sighted down the blue-black metallic barrel, taking aim at the center of Garth’s back as the Houston Mother Ship commander led Sheryl Lee toward the processing center. Behind him the prisoner-disguised resistance fighters came alive.
“Commander!” Major Lawrence tugged at his bolstered pistol while throwing out an arm and shoving Garth to the right.
Rick squeezed the rifle’s trigger. Blinding energy burst from the muzzle in a crackling ball of fury that slammed into Lawrence’s chest. The Visitor screamed as the deadly force of the impact flung him into two shock troopers behind him. All three fell, never to rise again.
“Move it, Rick!” Charlie pushed his friend forward. “He’s got Sheryl Lee!”
The harsh barking of pistols and shotguns filled Rick’s ears. He squeezed the energy rifle’s trigger again, unleashing a string of bolts at four guards who rushed up the line toward his position, then he ran to the center’s open doors.
Two more shock troopers pushed through the line of people. He fired again, hitting the closest with a blast that engulfed the alien’s head. Charlie’s beam sliced into the second soldier’s chest. The black personal armor was of no avail; the Visitor crumpled to the ground.
“Get their weapons!” Brad shouted from somewhere behind the young Californian.
Leaping over the fallen shock troopers, Charlie and Rick darted into the processing center. In a quick glance Rick’s gaze took in the ten stainless-steel-capsule stations that stood in a line at the center of the immense room he had entered. The heads of white-smock-clad Visitor processing attendants snapped around, their faces masked by confusion and fear. But nowhere did he see Sheryl Lee or Garth!
“Down!”
Charlie threw himself into the younger man. Together they hit the floor rolling. Sizzling balls of energy splattered and flamed out on the walls behind them.
“The doors!” Brad shouted. “Close the doors. We can make a stand in—”
The resistance leader’s command ended in a cry of agony! Two blue-white bolts leaped from out of nowhere and tore into Brad’s back. With flames licking at his clothing, he toppled to the floor and died.
“There!” Charlie jabbed a finger toward the source of the bolts.
Shock troopers stormed through a pair of sliding doors to the left side of the processing room. Their black rifles blasted fiery death as they came. In a single heartbeat, chaos reigned within the immense center.
Chapter 22
Garth threw the red-haired human female
behind a stack of empty capsules, drew his pistol, turned, and fired three quick bursts at the two humans in shock trooper uniforms who raced through the processing center’s door. A curse hissed from his lips as the two leaped aside. He aimed the pistol again.
The ugly spitting of a machine gun came from directly ahead of him. He forgot the two and ducked behind the plastic containers. Whining slugs of angry lead ricocheted off the wall behind him—bullets meant for his chest.
Temples pounding, Garth suddenly comprehended the gravity of his situation. This attack meant more than the loss of another processing center; it could mean his own life—the life of a Mother Ship commander!
Sheryl Lee groaned to his left, her emerald eyes lifting. This female was what he had come for, and he had her. There was no need for him to remain here and die.
His head rose to poke above the stack of empty capsules. Shock troopers rallying to defend the center pushed into the main processing room from the center’s interior. There was no escape through the sliding doors they came through or the center’s entrance, which the resistance closed and blocked behind them.
Trapped! His mind raced, panic fed by five shock troopers who fell beneath a hail of bullets. His eyes
dipped to the redhead for an instant. It can’t end like this! Not when I’ve gone through so much to get this female.
Like a frightened animal, he darted a glance about the processing room. Hope vanquished the frigid sensation that clenched around his stomach like an icy fist. There was another avenue out of the room! The conveyer belt still moved, and it fed directly to the squad vehicles outside.
Stuffing the pistol back into its holster, he reached out with his good right hand, wrenched Sheryl Lee from the floor, and dragged her toward the conveyer belt.
Rick sprayed a barrage of bolts at the horde of shock troopers who attempted to press into the processing room. Five of the alien warriors toppled. In a scene reminiscent of the Visitors’ trap at John Wayne International Airport, the fallen dead formed a bottleneck for those behind. Rick fired another blast and added a sixth red-uniformed soldier to those already piled on the floor.
“Rick!” Charlie nudged the younger man’s shoulder as they lay prone on the floor. “Sheryl Lee!”
A glance in the direction of his friend’s pointing finger revealed the Mother Ship commander across the room, tugging the redhead after him. “The bastard’s trying for the conveyer belt!”
“Son of a bitch’ll get to the squad vehicles outside!” Charlie squeezed off five sizzling bolts into the doorway.
His own safety forgotten, the young fighter ripped off his helmet and shoved to his knees. Firing a covering burst at the doorway, he bolted toward the processing units lined at the center of the room. Two bolts of blue-white energy tore at the floor ahead of him. He leaped the flames left in their wake and kept running.
Ahead he saw Garth throw Sheryl Lee atop the moving belt, then scuttle on after her. Then a field of spitting and hissing white fury rose in front of him!
Rick’s brain barely registered the unexpected danger— one of the smock-clad Visitor attendants. His trigger
finger simply squeezed without thought. Energy blasts sizzled and the acrid stench of burning alien flesh assailed his nostrils. The field of white fell at his feet, twitching spasmodically—death claiming another of the reptilian invaders.
“Sheryl Lee!” he shouted as the woman and the Visitor officer disappeared through a square-cut hole in the wall. “Sheryl Lee!”
Clambering over the barrier of alien equipment that separated him from the conveyer belt, he sprayed another covering barrage at the door, then jumped atop the belt. TWo more Visitors in smocks raced after him. Swinging the energy rifle on them, he squeezed the trigger and left their bodies smoldering on the floor.
Rick dropped flat and came through the hole in the wall with his rifle ready for attack. The harsh glow of the perimeter floodlights gave him a clear shot at the back of the white uniform that raced to an open squad vehicle. He fired.
“Damn!” Rick watched the bolts crackle through the air, shoot over Garth’s shoulder, and die in fiery blossoms inside the Visitor ship.
Searing heat flamed by Garth’s face. He yowled in agony as the disguise covering his face melted. Releasing the redheaded female, he clawed at the makeup with his sole hand, to no avail. The human-imitating plastic welded itself to the vulnerable scaled flesh it hid.
Two more flaring balls of energy shot by his head. Enduring the burning pain that consumed the right side of his face, he reached out to retrieve Sheryl Lee. She was gone!
His head jerked from side to side. There to the right, he saw her stumble behind a squad vehicle. He took a stride after her and stopped. The ground before him exploded as energy beams ripped at the pavement.
The female could wait until another day. At the moment he had to make sure that there would be another day!
He wrenched his pistol and hastily fired two rounds at the human who rolled from the conveyer belt, then he turned and darted inside the waiting squad vehicle.
Rick’s shot splattered and flamed out on the closing doors of the alien ship as its engines whined to life. The craft lurched and wobbled, then shot up into the night sky. He fired two more bolts, which arced high to miss their mark.
“Sheryl Lee!” He turned his attention to his reason for being here. “Sheryl Lee!”
The redhead cautiously poked her head around the nose of a squad vehicle. “Rick, is that you? Rick!”
“None other!” He raced to her, scooping her into his arms and squeezing her tightly.
“Surfer Boy, I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life!” she managed to slur over a drug-thickened tongue. Then her lips pressed against his.
“Later, you two!” Charlie called out. “This ain’t the time for snugglin’. We’re right in the middle of a battle!”
Rick turned to see the older man come sliding out of the processing center on the conveyer belt. He opened his mouth to speak when the thunderous sounds of firing rifles tore through the night.
“The Fort Worth resistance!” He glanced at his watch.
The attack was five minutes late, but they came.
Garth’s half-exposed nostrils flared. The odor of burning plastic wafted in his nose. His gaze shot across the squad vehicle’s control console—nothing!
A sputter of short-circuiting wiring came from behind him. Swiveling the pilot’s seat around, he stared in horror. Flames and sparks leaped from the interior of the craft.
In an instant he realized that the blast that had melted his disguise had struck the inside of the ship, damaging the shuttle’s circuitry. “Got to land,” he mumbled aloud, cold fear creeping up his reptilian spine.
TUming the chair back to the control console, he reached out. . . .
Flames burst from the panel of blinking lights. The squad vehicle shuddered.
Garth’s mouth opened. He sucked in one breath to scream a terrified denial of his fate. That “no” was never spoken. Flames flared, searing his lungs as he drew the last breath he was ever to know.
A nova rent the sky; daylight swallowed the night. A churning ball of red and orange flames erupted, dominating the heavens. Then, in the blinking of an eye, it winked out. Darkness crowded back across the heavens.
“Garth.” Rick watched pieces of flaming debris stream downward like blazing meteors. “His squad vehicle exploded; why?”
Neither Sheryl Lee nor Charlie answered. They simply stood staring at the sky with mouths wide open.
Shouts, screams, the steady reports of barking rifles slowly penetrated Rick’s dazed mind. His head turned to the processing center. “Fort Worth’s resistance!”
“And we can give ’em a hand, son.” Charlie nodded to the two skyflghters. “You up to a little aerial support for the ground troops?”
“Right!” Rick grinned and, with Sheryl Lee still clinging to him, followed the older man to the now abandoned gates of the center.
A line of shock troopers stood on the eastern side of the perimeter fence, their energy rifles spitting death at the small army that advanced across the floodlit terrain. The scene was far worse than Rick had imagined earlier. The resistance fighters were sitting ducks in the harsh glare of the lights.
“If you can let go of that pretty liT lady a moment or two, I could use a tailgunner,” Charlie said as they entered the nearest fighter.
Rick reluctantly released Sheryl Lee and watched as Charlie helped her into the co-pilot’s seat. The young man then took his place at the rear of the ship. He pressed the black button on the left side of the chair while Charlie brought the craft’s engines to life. His thumbs rested on the firing buttons of the gun grips by the time the older man lifted the skyfighter into the air and swung it about.
“Go for the lights on the first pass,” Charlie called out.
Which is exactly what Rick did. With the ship no more than twenty-five feet above the ground, he opened up with both barrels, his blasts picking off the lights Charlie missed with the nose cannons. Here and there he placed shots that rent wide, ragged holes in the chain-link fence surrounding the center.
The second run brought their full firepower to bear on the red-uniformed shock troopers defending the processing center. Like ants, the aliens scattered before the ground-ripping power of the craft’s bolts. The aliens’ flight was fruitless. At least half of the two hundred reptilian soldiers fell beneath the skyfighter’s four guns.
The remaining Visitors died as the resistance assault force swarmed out of the night like a black wave.
Charlie hovered in the air until the last energy bolt flashed below, then he let the skyfighter drift to the ground. Ten minutes later five survivors of the Dallas resistance team packed themselves into the craft. The remaining five climbed into Jace’s ship. Twelve of the twenty-four who had entered the processing center had been cut down, their bodies left where they had fallen.
Together the two skyfighters lifted into the air and banked eastward. From his tailgunner’s seat, Rick watched the processing center recede, growing smaller by the moment. He barely blinked when the explosives set by the Fort Worth force went off. His mind was elsewhere, remembering a bear of a Texan named Mark who did not make the return flight.
V 11 - The Texas Run Page 16