Alien Alliance Box Set

by Chris Turner

  Angry bug chatter rang out from the com. Cloye only laughed.

  Guerrilla fighting erupted on in the streets, organized by trained Quenrix militia. But this was sporadic and ineffectual, compared to the better organized offense of the locusts. The defenders were unprepared for the scale of the invasion and fell to the locusts’ stun rays. The Quenrix fleet converging on the Zikri Orbs covering the skies had at last been shot down. The Orbs cut off support and waited for any NOA resistance that might come. But it never did. Not in time. A neat package, this alien alliance, mused Yul grimly. The ground militia had likewise been neutralized.

  * * *

  As Fenli’s mantis fighter hurtled down the light highways toward Veglos he slapped the controls in glee and let out a big yeehaw. Freedom! Master of a starship. What more could a freebooter want? Except maybe some cash? Easy to rustle up yols. A few wheels and deals back in the old haunts and he’d be back in business.

  Hypderdrive into Zostor, work some angles. Spin the bottle and see what happened. Things may have changed in his old digs but at the core it was the same universe, the same old characters, stage and drama, and ways to play the game and capitalize.

  Several ideas raced through Fenli’s mind: the baths at Pompledoris, the dog fights on Agrina, the kinky dives at Mekeroid. The baths, their endless variation of harems, with hot oil, sun, massage…Lot of pigeons there. The dog fights…a prime betting ground and quick ticket to some easy, greasy yols. Mekeroid, well, Mekeroid was Mekeroid…

  Friends of his out in Elsian would be long dead, a tragedy, alas, what with his being stuck in a bug tank for 40 to 50 years or so. But it would be a good world to start to explore some cash ventures and trade, like starships. Maybe resell, snatch up some used starships at good prices before the universe collapsed, all the wonderful worlds gobbled up by squids and locusts.

  A pang hit him at the thought. But he could not dwell on the concept now. He’d have to ditch this starship. Too conspicuous a mark with a bug shape and a bug war now in full swing. Smart thing would be to trade it in for a friendlier craft and not look back.

  The idea brought a hollow feeling to his stomach.

  Too bad about Miko. Bleeding heart was trying to save the universe. When would people like him ever realize that it was impossible to win against these bugs? He’d seen it first hand, stuck in a tank for decades and almost checking out back on Kraetoria in that frozen pool.

  But a sour feeling still ground at his innards.

  What the hell are you thinking, Fenli? A pang of conscience sprang up at him like a hardwood burl grinding at an old wound in the back.

  Fenli, developing a conscience? Certainly a record. Images flashed in his head, Miko saving his ass on the Mentera station so long ago, Yul fishing him out of that frozen bug pool back on Kraetoria…

  He heaved a sigh. Against his better judgment, he dropped out of light drive, violating every practical instinct of self-preservation, and set a course for Quenrix.

  * * *

  Swarms of enemy lightfighters swept through the city. Down a wide street blocked by concrete rubble and buried in the ruins of a fallen building, Yul guided the ship. His eyes scanned for a place of concealment. But they registered something else instead. An aphid command vessel parked at the end by a ruined apartment block where several locust marines in grey suits clambered out to haul the screaming captives toward the waiting slaver vessel. Women and children kicked and fought in the aliens’ pincered grips. No doubt their minds laid bare to the terror of the green-watered tanks.

  Yul grimaced. He glided in, unable to stand the oppression any longer. Hresh, his face a pale mirror of what he expected to come, stared blank-eyed.

  Cloye swore as she cinched her lip and cracked off shots at the nearby parked mantis raider. The ship erupted in ruin, its shields nonexistent from the firefight on approach.

  “Cloye!” rumbled Yul.

  “Oops.”

  He laughed, lips twisted in mockery. The startled Mentera ground troops dropped their wriggling charges and scuttled back, blinking at the inferno of their ship. The human captives staggered off to safety.

  “They won’t miss one ship,” muttered Yul. With a vindictive grin, he banked the ship in closer while Cloye worked the weapons grid and more bright white flashes spat from the starboard cannons to peg off the slavers on the ground.

  “Nuked us some bugs,” Cloye sang out.

  Hresh’s jaw clenched. “How long you think that’s going to work before the locusts peg us off?”

  “Who cares?” Cloye grumbled. “We’re living on borrowed time. Put your mind to work on figuring out a way for us to take out more bugs.”

  Hresh clutched at his hair, his face dripping with sweat. He searched through the ship’s computer for some weakness or loophole that could gain them an advantage.

  An aphid-prowed ship came rocketing from above, lacing heavy fire down at them. Apparently they’d been spotted in the middle of their mutinous act. Its pilot and crew came blitzing in to neutralize the potential sympathizers and spies masquerading in a rogue ship. Yul gunned the impulse thrust down the alley and up, but he knew their chance at escape was slim.

  At that moment, a ship with a menacing blue-and-green mantis prow burst in on the scene: a special task force model, double the size of the invader. It came looping up and over the tops of buildings at breakneck speed. With full force it reamed the enemy vessel broadside, sending it corkscrewing out of control into the street to explode in a blinding flash of molten metal. Yul and Cloye both cried oaths of gratitude. Below, the aftershock rained debris and red hot metal on the littered streets. Bedraggled citizens with grimed faces and torn clothes ran tottering to shelter.

  Yul’s ship banked to safety. He breathed a sigh of relief. “What the hell was that?”

  Cloye whistled. “Our flyboy, if it was anybody. I’ll be damned!”

  Yul grunted into the com, “Thanks, Fenli.”

  “Don’t mention it. You saved my ass earlier, Yul, but you owe me one.”

  “Thought you’d abandoned us for greener pastures.”

  “Started to get lonesome.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  Yul grinned. These were desperate times with small victories. Hardly enough to win the day. But their bombing that slaver and giving the people a chance at escape had at least made a difference. A few ships against many. Fenli had saved them by nuking that ship. It appeared the enemy aphid hadn’t radioed out in time to alert central command. Without NOA support, the invaders would quickly steamroll the planet. At least Hresh had managed to get the universal translator operational. According to reports streaming over the translator, the aliens had neutralized all major capital cities of the continent. Yul didn’t doubt the other wing forces sent to Quenrix’s distant continents had achieved any less appalling devastation and slavery.

  Yul’s heart sank at the sight of the number of blue and grey slavers rising with their bloated bellies full of humans up into the clouds from the ashes of the city. There must have been a hundred or more of them en route to some secret bug colony.

  Orders crackled over the com, “A job well done, lightfighters! Prepare to move out.”

  Lightfighters and mantis craft lifted their noses to join the Zikri fleet in orbit around Quenrix. The grim, toneless robotic voice echoed in everyone’s brain:

  “Assemble your squads. Prepare for the next jump, to Xares.”

  Yul opened a channel to NOA before the ships hyperdrived out.

  “NOA, Quenrix is lost,” he rasped. “The next target is Xares. Xares, I repeat! Out.” He cut the channel as a flood of light swept by the viewports and myriads upon myriads of ships disappeared down the light highways.

  Chapter 20

  Dez had more troubles on his mind than Regers’ manipulations. NOA had contacted him personally and requested a private audience. A certain colonel, Grescon, a tawny-haired officious man, had papers requesting disclosure of all top-secret R & D files and company technol
ogy. After taking an invasive tour of primary R & D lab #1 and grilling his senior scientists with questions, Grescon, short on manners and invested with a pair of piercing hawk eyes, faced Dez. Dez indulged the man, but remained no pushover. “Under what authority can you request classified information?”

  “Under NOA’s new intel directive. Unless you want to have a time bomb up your ass, you’d better comply, Hadley, and don’t hold anything back.”

  Dez scrutinized the hard, angry face in front of him. He gazed afar for some moments. “Very well, follow me.”

  In a secret command booth off a simulation room, the two watched a holoscreen offering a bird’s eye view of a giant test arena. There, a great grey and black-speckled moth flitted about before a rectangular mechnobot. The latter was man-sized, floating impassively in its path. On cue from the technicians, the test mechno glided through the air, smashed the alien moth hard against the titanium wall.

  Grescon frowned and recoiled. “Well, that looks like the end of your specimen,” he said in a critical voice. “Anything else to show me, Hadley? Why’re you wasting my time? Bio-weaponry? These are not military grade items.”

  Dez pointed. “Watch. And the name’s Yadley.”

  Grescon turned his head. The moth, or rather the alien menace hatched from a plant pod on a faraway planet, miraculously revived. Rather than being sandwiched between hard metal and wall, it sent the mechno surging backward with a sudden burst of strength and hovered in the air before its adversary. Its eerie hummingbird wings worked a mile a minute. How it did so was infathomable to the eye, at least Grescon’s as it sped out once again at incomprehensible speed and knocked the mechno tumbling to the floor. To say Grescon was impressed was an understatement. “What—How in hell did it do that?”

  “That, colonel, is alien tech.”

  While Grescon pulled at his chin, Dez went on, “You ready to talk now? What’s all this bullshit of demanding to see top-secret material? Imagine one of those lethal insects inside a protected armor and owned by your little old self.”

  The colonel’s jaw dropped. A wet tongue passed over his upper lip. “Why didn’t the moth finish the mechno while it had a chance?”

  “It protected its habitat.” Dez shrugged. “That’s all it needed. Maybe it sees the hulk as a mechanism to use to its advantage, a type of protective shell.”

  “You were out there on Remus, Yadley. How much damage can these things do, or sustain? Better yet, how many bio-weapons like the one you’re describing can you provide?”

  “Four—five at the most…”

  Grescon scowled, tugged at his nose. “That’s not nearly enough.”

  “We’re preparing more as we speak. You talked to my chief engineers, saw the work they are putting in at the machine shop. Dimensions, specifications, the like, so you know they produce quality merchandise…and that I’m not exaggerating.”

  The colonel nodded with animation. “That was before I saw a demonstration with a live specimen. We’re putting everything we have into this operation, Yadley. Ships, manpower, drones, lightfighters, intelligence, the whole kit and caboodle, any other ideas are welcome. All plans are welcome. You, a senior scientist at a top-grade military research firm, can help us. If the human-colonized planets are to survive this alien invasion, we have to put in an all-out effort.” He grunted. “There’ll be huge kickbacks for you.”

  “I know, Colonel. It’s just that the last models are purely experimental. Results can’t be guaranteed. There are still small glitches that might hamper—”

  “Bullshit! Our intel indicates this is the biggest invasion in human history.” The colonel’s face turned red. His breath exploded in a violent gust. “An unprecedented 10k ships are en route to Xares as we speak, while we stand here wasting time. Our intelligence confirms reports leaked to us days ago dropped by one of your contractors, Yul Vrean. The squids and locusts plan to attack nearby planets one by one until they’ve conquered and enslaved the whole fucking galaxy. Nobody knows what they will do with those innocent souls once they get them in their tanks or where they will take them.”

  Dez shivered and wrung his hands. “Sir, I have a plan. If we can jettison enough of these prototypes into the invaders’ war zone and install them in strategic places, they’ll act as protector magnets—droid magnets if you will. To be unleashed at our discretion.”

  The colonel’s brows rose. “My people are giving a green light to this. We’re sparing no expense in hardware, technology and manpower, whatever it takes. Write up your reports and invoices and submit them to my personnel.”

  Dez nodded. “I can give you all the Star Class A/F mechnobots we have. They’re all trained and programmed to kill. They’ll sacrifice themselves too in the line of duty.”

  “Gather them, and don’t stint. We’ll hyperdrive them in to the war front.”

  Dez licked his lips, his mind buzzing with vivid memories of the armored avatar and his trip to Remus. “We can throw in our complete experimental line—from bio sources, alien pods to be exact, acquired from The Dim Zone.”

  The colonel smoothed his jaw. “Any bio-hazard I should know about?”

  “Not that we can determine. As I hinted, I can’t guarantee the new mechnobots’ outcomes, as the moths are completely unpredictable, but that’s their strength. They’ll protect their habitat at all costs. The good news is our tests have shown them 100% more lethal and effective than our F models—if certain conditions apply.”

  Grescon nodded, his body more at ease. “Transport them to mission control asap. We can transport them into Fygard base on the high probability they’ll prove useful. I haven’t time to go over the minutiae. Only that anything that foils these aliens’ sick plans is a go with us at NOA.”

  Dez felt a shiver pass up his back. His mind roved back to the dragonfly from hell. He wondered what havoc this test model with the moth could wreak.

  Chapter 21

  The next morning, Dez summoned Regers and crew to the main research lab. They came down a complicated series of stairs a few levels below main floor level, escorted by security men taking up the rear. Regers stood with the others in a wide, high-ceilinged lab buzzing with engineers in white coats. Wall-to-wall tech sprawled along the sides: holo monitors, sensors and recording equipment. Regers and CEO faced each other at a healthy distance.

  Dez was all cleaned up: a new blue suit, black shoes, white tie, face and cheeks and sideburns scrubbed and trimmed, his pale ruff of hair as cheesy as ever, hollow eyes pits to nowhere, as if the stress of the last days had dug deep rivulets into his soul. Regers wondered if he’d ever fully recover from the ordeal.

  A dozen demonstration research rooms stood to one side, all with a thick window reinforced with bulletproof glass and close-set iron bars.

  Regers moved toward one and stared at the battered metal hulks within—failed mechnobots. The many white-coated engineers and lab assistants running around and their haggard, stressed looks told a story of its own. “How goes the bug research?” he asked sardonically.

  Dez addressed Regers in a thin icy voice. “The armor is responding well to the alien insertion of the Xesian species.” He studied Regers with a curious expression, bland and noncommittal, as if wondering how scientifically inclined such an uneducated rogue could be. “Once we part ways, Regers, I don’t want to ever see your face again or you laying a hand on my family.”

  Regers shrugged. “Business is business, and our business is done, Dez. Both of us have upheld our sides of the bargain. So, you needn’t worry.”

  Dez nodded, as if convinced of the truth. “Then come to my primary lab, I want to show you something. Your friends can tag along if they wish.”

  Regers shrugged. “Sure, if you have a burning need for it, but don’t try to sandbag me, Dez. Remember our little talk.”

  Dez snorted. “I’m sure you’ll be fine, Regers, a big bad boy like you.” But the CEO’s smile did not reassure Regers.

  Vincent and Ramra opted to stay back a
t the suite and indulge in R-rated holo channels over mugs of dark ale while Jennings and Deakes decided to take the tour.

  Security men fell in behind Regers and his two crew members, fingering their E1s. Regers cast them a smirking look. Though that was mostly bluff. Something was off with Dez and that troubled him. The man was too smug.

  Cyber Corp was an impressive installation as far as research places went: from its botanical gardens and glass cathedral ceilinged foyers to its wall-to-wall lab tech. Regers mused, overkill with its nests of labs lit with bright fluorescent lights, and geeks running around in white lab coats with pencils tucked behind the ear, carrying punch code gizmos, chipboards and robot parts.

  The tense group piled into an elevator and descended several more floors into a secure area, a huge underground complex.

  “Here, put these on.” Dez motioned to a rack of hanging white lab coats and hard hats for everyone.

  “You turning us into a construction crew?” grunted Regers.

  “No, the helmets are for your safety. The white coats are for alerting my security men not to blow you away.”

  “Sounds logical,” conceded Regers.

  Dez scowled, forcing words from his pinched lips, one that he evidently found distasteful and seemed hesitant to relay. “Somebody leaked info to NOA, sprang the news of an invasion. Largest mobilization of defense ships in the history of the free colonies according to Colonel Grescon.”

  “You don’t say. Now who’d do that?” Regers said with a somewhat sour twist to his mouth. “Something you ain’t telling me, Dez?”

  Dez swallowed, as if fearing the sharp edge of Regers’ wrath. “Thought you’d be interested in knowing, the tip came from a good samaritan out in The Dim Zone. Our own, Yul Vrean. NOA was here questioning us, the Colonel, in person. Soon as they heard of this Vrean fellow announcing himself as working for Cyber Corp, they came knocking at our door. Quenrix is lost, the planet dead, the people enslaved. Vrean tipped off to the NOA that Xares is the next target on the fringe of The Dim Zone. Vrean’s commandeered some bug ship and is acting as a spy. With others. We don’t know how he got there or engineered this. He hasn’t been made yet according to NOA.”