Ultima Thule: Invasion Earth series Read online

  ULTIMA THULE

  Invasion Earth book 4

  By

  Chris Lowry

  Copyright 2018

  Grand Ozarks Media

  All Rights Reserved

  ULTIMA THULE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Darkness. It was absolute. Nothing stirred, except for miniature avalanches of dust, dirt and debris that trickled in spurts and fits. The echoes of the rock falling filled the room and bounced off steel walls.

  Lt stirred. His nose itched. It shouldn’t itch, he thought. The helmet would keep the dust out.

  “Helmet? That’s right, I’m wearing a helmet. But it shouldn’t be dark,” his brain felt like it was moving through a fog of dust.

  He moved his chin to toggle the heads up display and watched tiny letters scroll across the screen as the system began to reboot. At least that’s what he thought it was doing.

  He didn’t speak basic, or any other kind of computer code. But it looked like it was running through a series of commands, words he couldn’t recognize, but the servo mechanical motors in the joints of the battle arm began to hum and whir.

  The screen of his helmet blacked out, then blossomed with a brilliant flash of red light that hurt his eyes. He squeezed them shut until he felt it disappear and squinted into the darkness.

  A shadow rose above him.

  Eight feet tall, wearing armor like his.

  “Babe,” he grunted through his dry and thick throat, the words sounding like a croak.

  But it wasn’t Babe.

  One of his second in commands was gone, disappeared up the tunnel to escape before it blew up.

  If it wasn’t Babe, then who?

  Lt rolled aside as the shadow lifted up a giant section of beam and raised it over its head to smash down on him.

  He realized he could breathe better as he rolled, his legs now free.

  Lt scrambled up, limped backwards, hobbling in the suit as the systems sought to reroute power supplies and routines.

  The lights inside his helmet flickered as the world around him came into green focus. Small LED’s on the toes of his boots twinkled on, creating the small light source the helmet needed to create the images around him.

  The giant shadow that had been towering over him, shifted left and tossed a beam away from them.

  “You are not dead, human,” the voice hissed. “I will not have to live with the stench of your rotting carcass until my soldiers arrive.”

  Then he remembered.

  He was trapped in a chamber, a hidden underground flight hanger with the Lick Commander, the leader of the alien invading forces on earth.

  Lt glanced around for a weapon. His rifle had bent, been damaged in a fight with the alien and created the explosion that shattered the tunnel entrance, trapping them together.

  All he had was his hands.

  “Only thing going to be stinking around here are your guts when I spread ‘em across the floor,” Lt threatened.

  The hissing chuckle sounded foreign in the translator box strapped to the alien suit.

  “I find your arrogance refreshing,” Lick Commander said as his laughter trailed off. “So many humans roll over in fear when confronted with their imminent demise.”

  The alien took a step toward him. Lt saw he was standing on a pile of rubble from the collapsed tunnel, the same pile he had been half buried under.

  The Lick Commander set both boots on the ground, the visor of his helmet pointing at Lt.

  “One of us is gonna die today,” Lt promised. “But it ain’t gonna be me.”

  “You are weaponless. You wear the armor we first encountered on Mars. My species has reverse engineered it to build my own version. I know your every weakness, human.”

  Lt glanced at his fists, the only weapons he had at hand.

  The armored gloves would do no good. The damn lizard was as safe as he was. He was going to have to find another way to kill him.

  “Then I’ll crack that can you’re in and spill you out like fucking soup.”

  He wished his voice didn’t sound so strained, so tired. He wished the suit of armor he was wearing was full strength. The scrolling across the screen inside his helmet continued as he squinted at the strange words and configurations that flashed red and read OFFLINE more and more.

  “What is soup?” the alien helmet head tilted to one side like a confused dog.

  “What you’re about to be,” Lt backed up until he reached the wall.

  He could see the outline of the experimental star craft parked under a retractable roof. It was untouched by the fallen rock and concrete roof of the tunnel.

  If he could get to it, get in it, and figure out how to fire it, then maybe he could make good on his threat.

  “Fuck that noise,” he muttered.

  He shook his head. That was the problem with tech, he thought. Once you use it, you start to think it’s the only way to get the job done. But he’d killed hundreds of Licks with conventional weapons. Watched several dozen die with a bat to the head.

  He didn’t need the lasers, the blasters or the suit to kill the alien watching at him from ten meters across the room.

  Lt just had to decide how to get the thing out of its armor first.

  CHAPTER

  He lined the crosshairs in the scope on the base of the fabric that shifted in the wind. The gritty sand would alter the trajectory of the bullet, the wind scooping it lower and to the east, the microscopic dirt in the air stealing a microfraction of speed for each second it spent in flight.

  He calculated it at three seconds from this distance.

  “Flash,” he breathed in and held his breath. His thick finger squeezed the trigger in an almost too gentle motion.

  One. Two.

  “Bang,” he breathed out as the keffiyeh puffed out in a rolling billow and the man in his cross hairs dropped to the hard packed ground.

  Sherill shifted his rifle to the right, lined up on the next man who started running for cover.

  “Idiot,” he thought. The man held an IED in front of him at full arm’s length, and though there were buildings closer by to hide behind, he was running in a straight line for the furthest one away.

  Sherill led him by three feet, squeezed the trigger and watched through the narrow scope as the would be terrorist ran into the path of the bullet.

  The man fell, spilling the bomb in front of him, his body half on the lump of material.

  The shooter waited.

  It would only be a matter of time before someone came to reclaim the unexploded bomb. Too much time, too many resources went into creating the package to just leave it.

  The men would wait, and recover it when they thought he wasn’t looking. Or they would send a few others to pepper the walls with Russian issued AK-47’s to distract him long enough to recover the improvised explosive.

  But he was hunkered down behind a wall, bits of furniture stacked around his nest.

  It would take a lot of AK’s to reach him, he thought.

  Movement on the edge of the building caught his eye.

  He adjusted the scope and zeroed in on a moving target.

  “Shit,” he huffed.

  It was a kid. The damn terrorists had sent a kid to recover the bomb. Sherill tracked the skinny boy with his rifle as the small body scurried across the dirt in hunched over run.

  He could barely lift the body off the bomb, succeeding on the third try. Sherill lined up the shot and kept his finger on the trigger, but didn’t pull.

  He didn’t know if he could shoot a kid.

  The boy struggled under the weight of the bomb as he lifted it, and clutched the metal pot to his chest.

  Sherill cou
ld see in the scope. A metal container, filled with screws and nails and other small bits of metal, the better to do more damage with as it flew out of the explosion.

  He’d seen bodies shredded by them, men and women he served with. That was why he was here, to protect them, to make a safe way for them to travel.

  To keep the corridors clear.

  He was damn good at it.

  The kid was halfway to the safety of the wall.

  Sherill followed his bouncing head, crosshairs locked into the base of the boy’s neck where the skull met the spine.

  It would take one second to end it. One second and the boy would feel zero pain. He would cease to be, and Sherill could knock one more future killer off the list.

  Ten yards to the wall.

  The boy’s feet shuffled in the dirt, his chest heaving under the weight of the bomb. He wobbled a bit as weak muscles struggled to keep him upright and moving.

  Five yards.

  Four.

  Sherill took a deep breath and held it. He shifted the sights a little ahead of the boy, letting him walk into the shot, just as the man who had carried the bomb first had done.

  Two yards. Six feet.

  Then he was gone and Sherill let go of the trigger, resting his finger against the guard.

  He might have just killed American soldiers, he sighed and shook his head. But killing kids wasn’t a line he was ready to cross.

  He started to pull his eye away from the scope when he saw the flash from behind the wall. A miniature mushroom cloud erupted in a fireball, and moments later he heard the explosion, the bits and pieces of metal falling down like tin raindrops on the landscape.

  Sherill studied the wall, but no kid emerged, nor did any of the other men. When the bomb dropped, it must have knocked something loose in the already unstable package.

  Now that kid was dead and whoever else was with him, whoever told him to pick up the fallen bomb.

  He shrugged his shoulders and stretched his neck.

  He wouldn’t mourn the kid, nor the men who sent him into danger. But he was damn sure going to try and stop more men like them before they could hurt more children.

  Sherill pressed his eye to the scope again and began hunting.

  He sat up with a start and clutched his rifle to his chest. His lower back screamed in protest.

  “Fuck,” he grunted and shifted to find a more comfortable position.

  He had created a small seat in the crook of a tree to sleep, his legs stretched out on a branch and his back hated him for it. Years of sleeping in holes, in the dirt, on hard floors and sandy much had taken it’s toll even before the aliens showed up.

  Now, he just needed a few extra seconds to get all his muscles back in order and working right.

  He untied the climbing rope around his torso he used as a safety catch, and removed the rifle from it’s short sling that kept it from falling.

  Sherill lowered one leg on one side of the branch, then the other and let the blood circulate the way it would, biting back a groan at the muscle spasms.

  Something cracked a branch on the path he was watching and all thoughts of pain was pushed aside.

  He lifted up his rifle to his shoulder and took aim at the path.

  Sunlight glinted off an armored suit and he relaxed the tension in his finger, though he didn’t take the rifle down.

  The Suit was not alone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I can’t believe he’s gone,” Babe grunted.

  “He’s gone,” said Jake. “Believe it.”

  “What are we going to do now?” Waldo stared at Babe.

  The second in command shrugged, but the movement was lost under the hard shell of his combat armor suit.

  Lutz ran his hands across Babe’s arm, then rapped his knuckles against the shell.

  “Nice toys,” he said. “Did you bring one for me?”

  “We’ve got one for you,” Waldo answered. “Back at the base.”

  “Base? When did we get a base?”

  “When we got the suits,” Babe cracked. “Keep up.”

  “I’ve been a little busy hosting this whole revolution in the enemy camp to read your letters,” snapped Lutz.

  Babe cracked a tired smile and slipped his visor down.

  “Damn glad you’re back you son of a bitch.”

  Lutz returned the grin with one of his own, just as tired and full of sadness as the one he had seen disappear behind the reflective mask.

  “Don’t talk about my mom like that.”

  He eyed Jake for a moment.

  “He gets a walking tank suit and I don’t?”

  “Relax,” Babe said. “Waldo told you. We got one on special order for you.”

  “Back at the base,” said Lutz. “I was listening.”

  He peeked around the corner of the warehouse.

  “What do you think’s got them so stirred up?” Waldo asked.

  Lick Soldiers ran across the tarmac and from building to building in small groups.

  “I’d say us, numbnuts,” Babe answered.

  “My nuts are warm and toasty, Babe. This suit has got a heater in it.”

  “Well I don’t,” Lutz interjected. “And Babe’s partially right.”

  “What do you mean?” Jake asked.

  “We taking comments from this peanut gallery now?”

  “Chief,” said Babe. “Lt called him Chief.”

  “Like the cook?”

  “That’s chef.”

  “Right. Chief huh? You an Indian?”

  “I don’t know why he called me Chief,” Jake answered.

  “Hell kid, I don’t know why he called me Lutz.”

  “Because you’re clumsy as fuck,” said Babe. “A world class Clutz. I remember it.”

  “Oh yeah,” Lutz grinned. “Thing is kid, I’ve been called Lutz so long, it’s practically my name now.”

  “Chief,” said Jake.”

  “That’s what Lt called you.”

  “You can call me that too. Not kid. Not Jake. Chief.”

  “Alright Chief, don’t get your undies in a bunch,” said Lutz. “You do wear undies under there, right Babe?”

  “Total commando,” Babe hefted his rifle. “We gonna talk about your fashion choices or get the fuck out of here.”

  Lutz peeked around the corner again.

  “We’ve got a few minutes for them to get out of our way.”

  Waldo ducked his head around to get a good look too.

  “The coast is clear Lutz.”

  “No,” the other man answered. “We’re getting the prisoners free.”

  “Not a good idea,” said Babe. “It’s tough enough to get you out.”

  Lutz crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re not leaving without them.”

  Babe took a look and pulled his head back.

  “You’re asking for trouble.”

  “Begging for it.”

  Babe shook his helmet.

  “Damn it Lutz,” he took another look.

  “Waldo, Chief, get to the hovercraft and bring it back to us. Where?” he asked Lutz.

  “That warehouse,” Lutz pointed. “Two guards here, two on the other side, and a couple of sneaky fuckers hiding in the pipes here and here.”

  Babe snorted.

  “Are they watching us now?”

  Lutz shrugged, and his shoulders could be seen.

  “Could be.”

  “Give me the odds.”

  “Never tell me the odds,” Lutz gave a tight grin. “That’s what Lt would say.”

  Babe just stared at him, the reflective visor casting back an emaciated skeletal image of his friend.

  “Better than average,” Lutz said.

  Babe nodded.

  “We’ll take that. You ready to move now?”

  Lutz glanced again. The coast looked clear.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  And even though he didn’t have the protective
armor surrounding him, he led the way.