“Sure looks that way,” Rook said in an interested way.
Yellow meanwhile had removed her top and tossed it into the open jeep. She still had her back to them, long lavender hair falling all the way to the narrow band of her brassiere.
“H-hey, now hold on!” Rand said with a desperate tone.
Lunk laughed. “Well, she’s right about one thing—she’s not wearin’ no slinky outfit anymore.”
Yellow turned to throw them a wink over her shoulder, then reached back the way only a woman can and unfastened the bra, letting it slip from her breasts. She still had her back to them when she undid her trousers and let them fall. The pink jeep concealed whatever treasures these moments might have held for the red-faced team.
“Now what’s she doing?” Lunk said as Dancer picked up a towel and began to scrub her face with it.
“I don’t know,” Scott responded sternly. “But I want an end to it right now, hear me, Yellow? You can stop this little game, because we’re not taking you with us, and that’s final!”
Then Yellow swung around to face them.
And something was wrong, very wrong, indeed.
“Oh, no!” Rook screamed, and began to laugh hysterically.
“Y-yellow Dancer?” Rand said tentatively.
Lunk, Kevin, and Spider drew in stunned but disappointed intakes of breath. Annie was simply confused; Scott, wordless. It was plain enough to see that Yellow Dancer was a man—a tall, rather hairless, lean and attractive man.
“You can start by calling me Lancer,” he told his stunned audience, his voice deeper now. “I think the name suits me a little better. So, I hope there are no further objections to my tagging along with you.”
“Well, I don’t know …” Scott started to say. Woman or cross-dresser, what was the difference? he asked himself. But looking down at Rook now, he began to have second thoughts about all of this. Earth was a fascinating but bizarre place where women seemed to want to mix it up as much as the men. So maybe there was a place for her, er, him.
Rand meanwhile was beside himself. There were all those dreams of Yellow Dancer he had lived with for months—all those fantasies! “It can’t be!” he was saying. “How could you do this to me—your biggest fan?!”
“I wasn’t exactly thinking about you, Rand,” Lancer said.
“Yeah,” Rook chimed in. “Not like he was thinking about you!”
Everyone laughed, except Lancer. “So how about it, Captain? Do I make the team or not?”
Scott and Lunk exchanged looks and shrugs. “Yes,” Scott said at last. “I guess you do.”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Mom, who thrived on adversity, had met her perfect foil in Rand. Fortunately for me, they eventually worked it through.
Maria Bartley-Rand, Flower of Life: Journey Beyond Protoculture
A team had been formed: Scott, Rand, Rook, Annie, Lunk, and Lancer (although Scott wondered if the singer shouldn’t be counted twice). None of them promised to accompany Scott all the way to Reflex Point—if such a place actually existed; it was simply a loose agreement among six people headed in the same general direction, each with a separate purpose in mind. Scott wanted to see the Invid defeated; at the very least he hoped to link up with other downed fighters from the Mars Division and establish an organized resistance. Lunk was searching for a redemption of sorts; Annie, for a family. But the aims of the others were less clear-cut; their pasts remained unrevealed, their motives somewhat suspect. Nevertheless, Scott had himself a team.
All he needed now was an adequate plan.
The present one wasn’t working well at all. Rather than risk calling attention to their latest acquisition—the Alpha Fighter Lunk had so reverently maintained after his rather hasty departure from the Army of the Southern Cross—Scott and Lancer had flown the mecha north under the cover of night and secluded it along the river that marked the border of the neighboring territory. Lancer was to remain with the Veritech while Scott rode back to town on his Cyclone to collect the others. In the meantime, Lunk and Annie would be in charge of gathering up what they could in the way of supplies and foodstuffs. Rand and Rook would secure a safe route out for the loaded APC.
Things went smoothly enough at first; Lunk had seen to his assignment, and Scott rendezvoused with the APC/Cyclone convoy on schedule. They had begun their trek north and entered the highlands when the Invid appeared. It hadn’t paid to leave enemies the likes of Ringo behind.…
Scott held the lead up the rugged mountain road; Rand and Annie were a few lengths behind, then came Lunk in the APC and Rook on her red Cyclone. There were at least five Troopers in pursuit, with annihilation discs striking the cliff faces above and below the roadway.
Scott waved for the others to pour it on and accelerated along the arid slope.
Rook pulled alongside him and shouted above the deafening explosions. “They’re gaining on us!” To maintain their low profile, they had opted against suiting up in helmets or battle armor.
“We haven’t got a prayer unless we can reach the Alpha.” Scott turned to Rand, who had come up on the inside, and told him to take the lead. He and Rook would stay behind to armor up and reconfigure for combat.
Rand signaled his assent, cautioned Annie to hold tight, and moved out front. But no sooner had they reached the crest than two Invid rose into view. Rand engaged the brakes, pivoting the mecha through a clean 180, and headed back down the hill.
Scott hadn’t even dismounted yet. “Why are you turning around?” he shouted.
“They’ve got us surrounded,” Rand reported. “We’d better go cross-country.” He indicated the steep grade above the roadway and lowered his goggles.
“No. No detours,” Scott argued. “The Alpha’s only a few miles down the road—we’ve got to break through!”
Rand snorted and shook his head. “You break through, Captain. I’m heading for the hills.” He stomped the Cyclone into gear and took off, scrambling up the rutted incline, heedless of Scott’s shouts to stop. But not a moment later, Invid Troopers were ascending into view at both ends of the road, and Scott saw the logic of Rand’s choice. He gestured to Rook and Lunk and screeched off up the hill.
There was a barren stretch of plateau at the top of the slope, separated from twin fingers of pine forest by steep crevices too wide to jump. The Invid Troopers realized their advantage and began to loose disc storms of energy from their cannons. As always, there seemed to be an effort made to incapacitate rather than kill the humans, but it could just as easily have been poor marksmanship on their part. In any case, the plateau—great swirls of weathered rock and shale—was being torn up and superheated by the Troopers’ fusillades. Lunk’s APC, slower and far less maneuverable than the Cyclones, provided the best target, and the Invid were soon concentrating their bursts against it. Inside the cab, the big man was bouncing around like a featherweight, barely in control of the thing anymore. When a blinding disc streaked by inches from the carrier, he lost it completely; the APC crashed into a boulder and overturned, hurling Lunk twenty feet to a hard landing facedown on the shale. At the last instant, however, he had grabbed two sacks of supplies and had managed to hold on to them during his brief airborne journey. The sacks cushioned his fall somewhat, but he blacked out momentarily nevertheless. Coming to, he heard Rook’s voice behind him, warning him to keep his head down. He did as instructed and felt rather than saw the red Cyclone streak over him.
Scott and Rand had witnessed the collision and stopped their Cyclones to return fire against the Troopers, bringing rear weapons into play. Behind them, Lunk was attempting to gather together and rebag items spilled from the sacks.
“Lunk! Forget that stuff and come on!” Scott shouted.
“But we need these Protoculture energy cells for the mecha!” Lunk countered, ducking as a series of annihilation discs Frisbeed overhead. The Invid were close at hand now, upright and laying out salvo after salvo of white-hot fire. Explosions began to erupt all aroun
d him, orange blossoms in the shale, and he was forced to abandon the supplies. He made a beeline for Scott’s idling Cyclone, straddling the rear seat not a moment too soon.
“My toothbrush!” Lunk moaned, looking back at the wrecked APC as Scott gunned the mecha into a wheelie.
“So your teeth will fall out,” Scott said into the wind. “It’s better than having your head blown off.”
They were headed downhill a moment later, across a smooth flow of solid rock with an inviting forest of tall firs and eucalyptis at its base. As they neared the trees, Scott spied an unpaved road and made for it, signaling the others to follow his lead.
Two of the Invid attempted to track them but eventually gave up; it was widely believed (but certainly unproven) that the Invid had a kind of fearsome respect for forests in general. The Troopers circled overhead for a long while, then began to fan out trying to cover all possible points of egress. Meanwhile, Scott directed his band north in an effort to strike the river. By his reckoning, they were now somewhat west of Lancer and the Veritech, but reaching the river would put them in good position for a direct eastward swing.
The forest thinned as they worked their way north, giving way to a series of tall grass terraces that dropped in measured steps to the river gorge itself. The grass was deep enough to offer places of concealment for themselves as well as the Cyclones, so they continued their cautious advance. There was no sign of the enemy.
“Do you think we lost ’em?” Lunk asked, poking his head above the grass. He could see tall buttes and stone tors in the distance.
Rand answered him from nearby. “We must have—there’s no way those things can follow a trail through the woods. Believe me, I know.”
“How ’bout some food, then?”
Rook showed herself. “You really take the cake, Lunk.”
“I wish I could—”
“First you nearly get us all killed, and now all you can think about is that selfish stomach of yours!”
“Drop it!” Scott said more harshly than was necessary. He switched on his Cyclone briefly to read the system indicator displays. “You were right about those Protoculture cells, Lunk,” he admitted. “It’s imperative that I get back to the Alpha. Someone’s going to have to draw the Invid off in case I’m spotted. We can’t let them find the ship.”
Rand suddenly shushed him. “They’re coming,” he whispered.
The team dropped themselves into the grass, raising weapons as they did so. Minutes later, three Troopers could be seen patrolling the gorge, their scanners alert for movement on the cliffs above the river.
“Everybody hold your fire,” said Scott.
“How did they find us?” Rand said to no one in particular.
Annie put her hands to her breast. “I betcha they heard the sound of my heart pounding.”
Rand stared down at the Mars Gallant Scott had given him earlier; it was a long-barreled version of the sidearm blaster the offworlder wore, shaped a bit like an elongated closed-topped Y. Time to go on-line with this thing, he said to himself. But no sooner did he flip the switch than the Troopers stopped their bipedal patrol and turned on them.
“Open fire!” Scott yelled as globes of fulgent energy formed at the muzzles of the Troopers’ cannons.
Lunk, Rook, and Rand stood up, bringing their H-90’s to bear against the invaders. Phased-laser fire seared into the Troopers’ armored bodies, while annihilation discs ripped into the cliff’s grassy terrace, touching off violent fires and clouds of dense smoke. Two more Invid appeared above the cliffs behind the team, adding their own volleys to the arena.
“We’ve gotta get back to the trees!” Rand shouted above the angry buzz of disc fire and concussive detonations.
“Lead them away from the Alpha!” said Scott.
“You worry about the Alpha. I’m gone!”
Abandoning their Cyclones, the team broke ranks and began to belly-crawl their way through the grass back toward the tree line. They scaled slope after slope, beating a circuitous retreat across each terrace. The closest call came when Rook miscalculated and nearly slipped into a narrow ravine; but Rand was there for her, hauling her up and supporting her while they ran. In the forest once more, they took to the trees and hid themselves high up in the branches. Invid Troopers were walking sweeping patrols along the perimeter; two were actually braving the cool and dark mystery to probe deep into the woods. Rand flicked his Gallant on-line again as one of the latter group was passing beneath him. Curiously, the Invid stopped short, its would-be head rotating upward.
Rand took a sudden, sharp intake of breath—not out of fear but from realization. Of course! he told himself. At the river they stopped when I activated the power cell on my blaster. And just now …
It made sense, but it was time to try an experiment to validate his findings: He disarmed the power cell, and sure enough, the Invid lost interest and stomped off. “Yeah, that’s gotta be it,” Rand said softly. He was exhaling pent-up fear when something orange and menacing suddenly dropped on him from the branch above. His throat refused to utter the scream his guts demanded, but he gave a start nonetheless, raising the weapon like a club, only to realize that it was Annie, upside down and dangling from her knees, carrot-colored hair like an unfurled flag.
“Were you talking to yourself?” she demanded. “Were you? Huh?”
“Don’t ever sneak up on me!” Rand seethed.
Scott, Rook, and Lunk were on the ground now, telling Rand that the coast was clear. Excitedly, Rand scrambled down out of the tree.
“I think I know why we’ve been having so much trouble getting these blasted walking lobsters off our trail,” he announced. He gestured to the weapon’s on-line switch. “We’ve been giving ourselves away every time we switch on our Cyclones or our blasters.”
“How so?” said Lunk.
“They can detect the bio-energy given off by our Robotech mecha.”
Lunk helped Annie down from the tree. “You could be right,” he said to Rand. “Back at the river Scott left the panel gauges of his Cyclone on. They could’ve homed in on that.”
“Right!” Rand agreed.
“It makes sense,” said Scott. It had never been an issue on Tirol, but then, there were a lot of things about Earth that separated it from Tirol.…
“Of course it makes sense,” Rand was continuing. “They thrive on Protoculture, right? Well, it’s like they can smell the stuff, the same way a shark is able to smell blood in the water.”
“Charming thought,” Rook said distastefully.
Annie laughed. “Mr. Wizard! You really thought that out by yourself, huh?”
Rand smiled with elaborate modesty.
“Sure doesn’t happen very often, does it?” Rook scoffed.
Rand whirled on her. “Yeah? Besides your looks, what have you contributed lately?”
Rook’s nostrils flared. “All right, that does it! Let’s step aside and settle this once and for all!”
“You sure you don’t just want to get me alone in the bushes?” Rand said, smiling and stroking his chin. “Admit it—”
“Stop it!” Scott broke in, silencing the two of them. “Arguing among ourselves isn’t going to help matters any. We’re supposed to be friends, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Oh, is that so?” Rook said, arms akimbo. “Well, I don’t remember him ever becoming a friend of mine,” she threw to Rand.
“Then what the hell are you doing here?” Rand barked. “I didn’t ask you along! We don’t need this kind of nonsense.”
Rook and Rand faced off defensively.
“Cool off,” Lunk told everyone. “There’ll be plenty of time to scream at each other later. But right now we gotta get back to the Alpha.”
“Kiss and make up,” Annie said to Rand as Lunk walked off. “Or at least shake hands.”
“Fine with me.” Rand shrugged and glared at Rook. “But maybe you should ask the lady with the chip on her shoulder!”
Gradually, in single
file, they began to work their way back to the river. Rook and Rand opened a second front in their war when Rook insisted that something was following them and Rand called her paranoid. Scott came down on them again and ordered Lunk to walk between them as a buffer. And it was in this way that the three men managed to avoid the leeches …
Scott and Rand heard Annie’s scream and turned around in time to see the descent of the mutant worm rain. They dropped from the forest canopy, instantly attaching themselves to the two girls.
Lunk made a sound of disgust and backed away. “There’s millions of them!”
Annie was crying and stamping her feet. Rook’s face was contorted, her body shaking all over. “Do something!” she screamed to Rand, but he only smiled. “You creep! Get these things off me!” She stood paralyzed, as if not knowing where to begin—on her arms, her neck, her face … Just then another leech dropped from the trees and landed on her forehead; Rook screamed and collapsed to the ground, wailing and kicking her feet in frustration.
“Hold still,” Scott said, kneeling alongside her and pulling the leeches off Rook’s arm. But Rand stopped him before he had detached more than two or three. He took Lunk’s lit cigarette and touched the lighted end to one of the creatures.
“Make things hot for them and they’ll pop out on their own,” he explained as the leech dropped off, sizzling. “Pull them off and you end up leaving the sucker intact.” Methodically, he moved the cigarette from leech to leech.
“I tell you, I get a real kick seeing city girls in the country,” Rand told Scott while he labored. “They look so darn cute when they start screaming.” He smiled at Rook. “You should’ve seen yourself …”
She made a face, averting her gaze from Rand’s handiwork. “Can you blame me? It’s disgusting.” She shuddered. “I hate to break this to you, Daniel Boone, but there’s something called civilization out there. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”
Rand snorted. “That’s where you have crime and filth, right?”
“Better than slimy little blood-sucking tree leeches.”
Invid Invasion: The New Generation Page 9