Echo of Tomorrow: Book Two (The Drake Chronicles)

by Rob Buckman

  “Take away - prepare for dinner,” the lord commander ordered. The two guards nodded and ushered President Skinner out of the room. When he turned to leave, the lord commander reached over and shut the translator off.

  “Treat it gentle. I don’t want the meat damaged, and make sure it is clean, inside and out.”

  “Yes, Lord Commander, to serve and obey.”

  This time his escort guided rather than pushing Skinner through the ship while they descended down to the lower levels. After what felt like an eternity, they ushered him into a bare steel room that stank even worse, and handed him over to an even larger creature. Words were exchanged, but without the translator, Skinner had no idea what they said. He felt a little ill even breathing the fetid air, and wondered if something had died in here recently. The only thing in the room was a large steel tank full of steaming water. A bath at last! Breathing a sigh of relief, he started to undress. Even the huge creature walked over and assisted by pulling his clothes off. It felt a little strange being naked in front of the alien creature, and he hurried over to the tank and stepped in. The water was hot, very hot, and Skinner quickly withdrew his foot.

  The next second the creature flipped him over, dumped him in the water and held him there. Skinner let out a scream and fought to get out. The creature was having none of that, and simply held him there for several minutes before pulling him back out of the bath to hold him under a spray head. Some sort of foamy liquid poured out that made his skin tingle all over. The creature began to scrub him then, starting with his head and working down his body to his feet. This definitely wasn’t the sort of bath he had in mind, and certainly not the kind he was used to.

  Once the scrubbing was completed, back into the bath he went. This time it wasn’t so bad, and since he didn’t struggle, the creature let go and left him there to soak. Now that he was used to the hot water, Skinner started to relax and wonder about the strange cleansing ritual these aliens performed. Maybe it had something to do with his upcoming dinner with the commander of this ship, or even some high government official. In a moment of clarity, he wondered if he stank to them as they did to him. That would account for him having to take a bath.

  A short while later, the huge creature returned with a large jug with a long, thin, flexible spout and pressed it to Skinner’s mouth. At first Skinner shook his head, since he wasn’t thirsty at that moment, but the creature insisted by grabbing him by the back of the neck and pushing the spout into his mouth. Skinner gulped down a few mouthfuls of the foul-tasting liquid, and tried to pull his head away. The creature growled and held him tighter as he pushed the long spout all the way into Skinner’s mouth. Once all the way in, the lizard tilted the jug and slowly emptied the contents down Skinner’s throat while Skinner splashed and fought to get away. Coughing and gagging, he held onto the edge of the tub, half in, and half out, stomach churning and belching foul-smelling gas.

  “Allah preserve me. What did you force me to drink, barbarian!”

  In answer, the creature jerked him out of the tub and pushed him down to squat over a hole in the floor. All too soon, Skinner found out what the foul-tasting liquid was for, and his bowels emptied and he puked his guts up for what seemed like an hour. Completely drained, he gladly accepted the jug of water the creature offered. Once he’d drunk it, the creature stood him up and washed him with clean, warm water, and then dried him off with gentle movements. That was a surprise considering the rough treatment he’d been given so far.

  While he dried his arms, Skinner suddenly realized he was hairless, not that he had much hair there in the first place. He touched his head to find his scalp as hairless as the rest of him. This seemed as if they were taking the cleansing ritual a bit too far, but there was no use in complaining without the translator. Wrapping him in the towel, the creature scooped him up in his arms as if he were a baby and carried him out of the room, down a passageway and into another room. This one was just as rank as the last, but as before, he had no idea what purpose this room served. The creature placed him on a table or bench and stood back just as another creature, equally as ugly as the last, came in. This one was slightly smaller than the other, but not by much. By now, Skinner was feeling very relaxed for some reason, so didn’t object or protest when the second creature pulled the towel off and began to massage his body.

  That felt good, and he obediently turned over when the lizard started to lift him. The massage went on for a long time, first one fragrant-smelling oil, then another, and even some flavored liquids to drink. By the time they were finished massaging him all over, Skinner felt very relaxed, even lethargic, yet he was only mildly concerned when they stood him up and pushed him against a flexible metal frame. Very close-fitting and oddly man-shaped, but it wasn’t until they placed a similar metal frame in front of him and forced it shut against his fat body that he started to feel fear. They quickly locked both halves together, trapping him in what he suddenly realized was a form-fitting cage.

  He watched in horror as the smaller creature rolled in a long bench with brackets at each end. Between them, the two lifted the cage into the horizontal and lifted it over the bench and set in onto the brackets, with Skinner face down. Skinner tried to scream then, only to find he couldn’t; whatever they’d given him to drink seemed to have frozen his vocal cords. Struggling of any kind was futile, he soon found out, when they wheeled him out of the room and onto an elevator. Within a few minutes, the elevator stopped and the doors opened to the sound of a party. Lifting his head a few inches, Skinner saw the lord commander sitting in the center of a horseshoe-shaped table.

  “At last. Our dinner guest has arrived,” the translator boomed.

  “Please … what is happening?” he tried to ask, but no sound came from his lips.

  The creature must have guessed his question by the look on his face. It said, “I invited you to dinner.”

  Just then Skinner felt searing heat radiating up from the metal plate on top of the bench under him. Over his screams, he could hear the creature, saying, “You are the main course, President Skinner.”

  At last the Lord Commander of the Horde gained a moment of satisfaction from this disaster when he saw the look of terror in the human’s eyes as it tried to scream. For his part, Skinner at last knew that the stories of these creatures collecting humans for food were true. Slowly the spit began to turn, filling the room with the delicious, mouth-watering smell of roasting human.

  * * * * * *

  “Slow to one-third.”

  “Aye, sir, slowing to one third.”

  “Lady Gray, bring the fleet into battle formation Echo One.”

  “Fleet now reforming into Echo One configuration, my admiral.”

  Echo One was what Scott called the punchbowl formation, with the battered Australia in the center and the remainder of the fleet forming up around him like a punchbowl laid on its side. This presented the maximum amount of firepower and shields toward the alien fleet. The ten missile-delivery ships formed a ring around the Australia, all primed and ready to begin spitting out their deadly cargo.

  “Send the go code to all ghost riders, Lady Gray.”

  “Sending go code now.”

  Now for his last little surprise.

  * * * * * *

  Fleet Commander Zulia felt an unaccustomed shiver run up his armored spine when light from the last battle finally reached him. He watched in growing horror as the tiny hewman fleet decimated First Fleet, a fleet three times its size. That shouldn’t be possible but the data didn’t lie. All that was left of the First Fleet was a burned-out, hollow shell. Even now, as additional data came in, more ships exploded in soundless fury when their fusion cores went critical. Even so, his fleet was twice the size of the hewman fleet.

  “Bring the fleet to readiness. Ours will be the honor of destroying this puny fleet.” Zulia hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.

  Only his bridge crew and a few others knew the real story, and even now he had no idea how
the hewmans had managed to cause such destruction. The smaller hewman fleet now rushed toward him, and he found some solace in the fact the hewmans must be short on munitions at this point. His fleet was larger, and his ammunition magazines were full, and if nothing else he could saturate and overload the hewmans’ shields. Then he could get among them and complete his revenge. None of the hewmans would go home to their nest mates and young ones, and in time, would be meat for his table.

  None of the bridge crew took notice of the wandering asteroids that littered the system as they passed. Dead lumps of rock were of no concern to the Horde. Had they looked closely, they might have wondered how and why the blunt ends of the asteroids slowly turned to face them. Now light seconds behind them, they were no threat to the safety of the Horde fleet.

  “Missile engagement range in five sub-cycles, Commander,” his sensor officer announced.

  “Very well. Launch the moment you have a positive lock on the hewman fleet.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  From the disk configuration the hewman fleet moved into, it appeared they wanted to get into a slugging contest with his fleet. So much the better. With limited munitions, they couldn’t sustain a prolonged engagement.

  “Commander! The hewmans have begun launching their missiles.”

  “Good, order all ships to tighten the formation and prepare for a bombardment on their forward shields. I don’t want any gaps for the hewmans’ to exploit as they apparently did with First Fleet. We will wait until they have emptied their magazines before launching our attack—”

  At that moment, something traveling very fast impacted the forward shields. The energy discharged across all the interlocking shields was spectacular, but other than diminishing the shield strength slightly, there was no damage.

  “The fools waste precious munitions on such a pathetic attack,” Zulia reassured his crew. Yet it worried him as he looked at the shield degradation. Was this the weapon that caused the destruction of First Fleet? “Order all ships to divert all available energy to their forward shields. Soon, we will eat them.”

  * * * * * *

  Scott noted the second alien fleet close up into an even tighter formation. He understood the intent: to make it almost impossible for the Earth fleet to punch its way through, as it did with the first fleet. He smiled slightly while he watched the first missile barrage speed on its way. He’d just gotten word that the auto-conveyor system in the underground bunker system in the Ural Mountains had broken down under the strain. Not that it would affect the overall number of missiles he could launch, but the sooner they got it back online the happier he’d be.

  “Enemy increasing their forward shield strength, skipper.”

  “Good. By now all their attention should be on us. Lady Gray, send the go code for all ghost riders to launch.”

  “Yes, my admiral, go code sent.” Scott grimaced and shook his shoulders, wishing he could stop Lady Gray from calling him “my admiral” all the time now. No matter how many times he’d told her she still insisted on using it, much to the amusement of his bridge staff.

  “Here we go folks, all ahead one-thirds.”

  * * * * * *

  “Commander, the hewman fleet is advancing toward us,” a nervous youngling announced.

  “I see them, young one. Stay calm. There is nothing this puny fleet can do to harm us.”

  “Incoming!” the sensor tech screamed in panic.

  “That is clear, young one.” The battle board showed the incoming hewman missiles.

  “From astern!” the youngling screamed.

  Commander Zulia punched up his rear viewing screen, his crest turning from the bright blue of combat to the sickly gray of fear.

  “Impossible …” was all he managed to say before the first cloud of hewman missiles struck his unprotected rear elements.

  He watched in horror when one after the other, ship after ship at the rear of the fleet vanished into a soundless ball of expanding plasma and debris. Trapped between the oncoming blizzard of missiles from the hewman fleet in front, and the avalanche of missiles coming at him from the rear, he had no way to turn. This couldn’t be happening. There was no way the hewman ships could carry that many missiles! And where were the capital ships behind him that launched them? With so many soundless explosions going on at his rear, it was impossible to see where they were coming from. How the hewmans had managed to hide capital ships that size from his sensors was unknown, but it suggested some sort of cloaking technology. Whatever the reason, bit by bit the hewmans were decimating his fleet as they’d decimated First Fleet, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  “Order all ships to break formation and return to the warp point as quickly as possible.”

  “Retreat, Commander?” It was unheard of for a front-line fleet to turn tail and run. Only harvester ships did that. Before he could even countermand, or send the order, his battle ship was struck three times in quick succession.

  “Drive system inoperable, Commander … power system failure, all weapons …” Zulia never heard the rest of the report; his fusion bottle fractured and exploded in a white-hot flash hotter than the surface of the sun. In a microsecond, the commander and all his crew were nothing but expanding gas and particles.

  * * * * * *

  “Release the gunslingers and let’s finish off the stragglers.”

  “Aye, aye, skipper. Wipeout time.”

  That put everything in a nutshell, and Scott just smiled at the woman’s exuberance. For a moment he slumped down into his combat seat and breathed a long sigh of relief. It was over. Or at least a major portion of it was. With both major fleets destroyed, all that remained was the ground attack fleet, but that didn’t consist of many heavy units, and the New Zealand and her escort should be able to handle that.

  “Lady Gray. Order the ghost riders to finish off the remaining ships, and detail the gunslingers to assist until all alien ships have been destroyed.”

  “Yes, my admiral, orders transmitted.”

  “Good. Order the fleet to turn and head for Earth and the remaining lizard fleet.”

  * * * * * *

  Ground Force Leader Lecar, along with a hundred of his fellow soldiers, dragged themselves off the shuttlecraft into the bright sun and looked around. Lush vegetation surrounded them, but it wasn’t the wet, swampy land he’d grown up in. A short distance away he could see a shoreline, blue water washing across gleaming yellow sand. As the last warrior walked away from the shuttle, it took off, so another one could land to disgorge more warriors.

  “Find out where we are,” he ordered his security team leader.

  More shuttles came to land, disgorging more warriors of the Horde, now stripped of their weapons and body armor, all under the watchful eyes of the autocannon mounted on the top and sides of the shuttle. Lecar snarled, his crest lifting in anger. Even if there were hewmans out in the open, he’d found out the futility of attacking one of them. Smaller they might be, but far stronger than any reports he’d ever seen. Watching several of his warriors beaten to death in hand-to-hand combat by these meat animals, he learned these were no herd animals as reported, but seasoned warriors without mercy. Any show of resistance, and they simply shot whoever it was out of hand. Not that it surprised him; he would have done the same, and sent the body down to the kitchen for processing if his larder was low. No, it was the sheer difference between what he’d been told about these hewmans, and what he’d seen. Whatever weapon they used against his attack force wasn’t atomic in nature, but just as devastating. Out of the twenty thousand ground troops and ten thousand reserves, barely a thousand remained. So far he’d seen none of the space fleet crewmen, and suspected they were all dead, or floating in space, frozen to death.

  “Force Leader … I have to report.” His team leader stopped speaking and looked around, his crest flat and gray. “We’re on a small island.”

  “You are wrong on both counts.”

  “How’s that, Force Leader?”


  “I am no longer a force leader of any kind, and we are not on an island.”

  “Then where are we then?”

  “We’re in the land of the dead. There is no escape from this place, and rather than waste ammunition on us, they have simply left us here to die. They don’t want the smell of our rotting corpses to pollute the air they breathe.”

  CHAPTER NINE: …Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind

  one lonely sheepdog… LTC (RET) D. Grossman

  “You are probably wondering why I have asked you all to come here today,” Scott began while he looked around the huge conference room at the faces of the 345 remaining men and women of the 3rd Marine Division.