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  DUST OFF

  Invasion Earth series

  Book 6

  By

  Chris Lowry

  Copyright 2018

  Grand Ozarks Media

  All Rights Reserved

  The US gives a defense contract to a Tech giant to build an army of robot warriors. It’s too expensive to train soldiers to control the robots, so the inventor Win Trafford creates a video game where players control the robot and the battles are a game.

  DUST OFF

  "Fuck me," Lt squinted through the scorched camera monitor at the landscape beyond the lander.

  Smoke and dust drifted up in a fog that dissipated over the screen in twirling wisps that obscured the view.

  "Any landing you can walk away from," Warbucks groaned in the seat next to him.

  "I thought you said you could fly this fucking thing."

  She unstrapped from the seat and stumbled up, holding onto the wall for balance as her legs adjusted.

  "That wasn't landing," she said. "That was falling."

  "Fall better next time," Lt unstrapped and stood next to her. "You all right?"

  "Legs are weak," she said as she tried to take a step and almost fell. She caught herself before hitting the floor and stood shaking.

  "Space legs," Lt said. "You're fucking weak."

  "Give me a minute and I can still kick your ass," she said.

  "Those were my balls you kicked, not my ass," he reminded her.

  He went to the hatch and tried to force it open, but the doorway to the outside was stuck.

  "What happened anyway?" he grunted as he gripped the lever and pulled.

  "Licks tried to shoot us down."

  "Did we get hit?"

  The hatch cranked open an inch, then two. A small stream of dirt cascaded through the opening, a tiny patch of blue sky visible near the top.

  "Not directly," she said.

  "Indirectly?"

  "We spiraled out of control. I don't know how far off target we are."

  "Can't get out this way."

  He stepped back from the hatch and gave her a questioning look.

  “You got any ideas locked in that noggin up there?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she grimaced as she reached up and hooked her arm through the strap on the pilot’s seat, wrapping it twice. “Cover your ears.”

  Annie reached out and punched a button on the console.

  CHAPTER TWO

  He tried not to scream, especially when the laser beams started cutting across the sky trying to shoot them down for the second time that morning.

  Lt had been skydiving a couple of times and fucking hated it.

  He wasn’t afraid of heights. That wasn’t it. He wasn’t even afraid of falling. There was a difference between fear and just plain not enjoying something.

  Like being shot at while they dangled from an open cockpit suspended on a parachute floating three hundred feet over the ground.

  Not to mention Warbucks didn’t tell him to strap in.

  He locked and loaded a litany of choice words and names to blast her with as soon as they landed. Right then, he wanted to concentrate on the ground that was coming up fast.

  He braced for impact, and then remembered his training. Land loose and roll.

  He did just that and sent up a prayer that the armor absorbed almost all of the fall.

  He rolled up to his feet and shook mud and grime from the faceplate of his helmet.

  “You worthless, spineless-,” he sputtered to a stop.

  She had warned him to cover his ears, not grab on, and that was why he was pissed.

  She was caught in the web of her straps, hanging upside down, and either dead or passed out.

  It didn’t matter to him at the moment, which it was. She couldn’t hear his cursing, so he decided to wait.

  He marched over to the upside down cockpit and searched for his fallen blaster.

  The Licks had been taking pot shots at them on the way down, and they had to see where they landed, or at least had a general idea of the vicinity.

  Licks were fucking stupid, but not dumb enough that they wouldn’t come to investigate.

  Lt moved to hide behind a tree and wait.

  Annie could stay where she was strapped, bait staked out to the crash, ready to draw the Lick’s in.

  He grinned inside his helmet. Time to get back to business.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lt listened for the sound of the hovercraft floating above the trees. It was hard to hear at first.

  Their landing had set a couple of trees on fire, caught in the backburn of the rear mounted plasma rockets that controlled their descent.

  Though control was a strong word for what actually happened.

  "Here they come," he whispered to himself.

  He was the only one around to hear it.

  The radios weren't working again. He'd tried it after they landed. Crashed, he corrected and settled the blaster against the edge of the tree.

  Slivers of bark rained down on the hard-packed ground, peppering the green moss with gray flakes.

  The sound of the hovercraft grew slowly as it approached, like distant freeway noise picking up as daylight turned a commute into a free for all.

  He saw the glint of sunshine off the carbon alloy hull, dulled by the grime of smog as it drifted over the trees and dropped Lick soldiers into the clearing to explore the wreckage.

  Six of them. Taller than a man. Covered in black or silver jumpsuits and carrying lasers.

  The only thing he knew that could harm his armor. He'd have to be careful.

  The color meant rank, but since he hadn't spied much on the alien invaders, he didn't know which was more important. But size seemed to matter to the Lizard looking men.

  The big guys were the ones they followed.

  He lined up his sights on the largest one in silver and sent a blast through its head. It popped with a smoky hiss, a noise that made the others turn and stare.

  It only bought a second's hesitation, just a fraction of time. It was enough.

  He dropped two more before they pinpointed his position. He got another as they sent the first bolt into the bole next to his head.

  Lt ducked back, hiding the bulk of his armor behind the trunk. The hovercraft whizzed out of the clearing and circled back on his position.

  He raised his blaster and sent three lancets of plasma blasts into the shape steering it.

  A seven-foot reptile body flopped over the side of the craft and smacked into the ground with a wet thud.

  The hovercraft spun upside down and slammed into one of the two Lick soldier's left, splatting him in a splurt of goo and gore that squirted across the clearing and covered the last Lick standing in black ichor.

  Lt rolled on his stomach from behind the tree, aimed and sent a blast into center mass.

  It plopped backwards in a sprawl. Lt watched the leg twitch in a death throe, then roamed the perimeter.

  "Not bad," he said to himself as he got up and checked again.

  It would have been cleaner with a second or third gun. And the element of surprise helped.

  Maybe like a crash, any ambush you could walk away from should be considered a success, he thought.

  Then he went to check on Warbucks.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Doc ran a hand over his hair and pushed it back from his forehead. His eyes were tired to the point of feeling gritty, the ache between his nose like a thin chisel being pounded by a ham fisted lumberjack every time he blinked.

  He pushed back from the desk and sighed.

  The Suits were up and running, but his learning curve on how to maintain them was reaching a flat line.

  The men who ran this department at the secret government laboratory had done a stellar job on
compartmentalization, and even though he had reams of knowledge theory in his brain, the practical application thereof was making his head hurt.

  He stood up and stretched.

  The two civilian refuges conscripted to guard the entrance to the lab glanced over their shoulders at him.

  “You okay Doc?”

  Doc waved one hand at the man on the left, little more than a teenage boy with a dusting of freckles on his pale cheeks and nose.

  Youth may have been their advantage, but they were also loyal to their new positions as protectors of the lab.

  No one got in, no one was allowed to pass without Doc’s go ahead. Not even Burmage, the leader of the community, who skulked about the entrance with a sullen look on his face.

  Doc and Burmage had worked together in the lab before the alien invasion had thrown humanity back into the dark ages.

  No one was sure how they did it.

  An EMP in the atmosphere, maybe, or some computer virus that turned everything off.

  It didn’t matter.

  In one day, almost every advance in recent history disappeared, and the world had yet been able to reboot.

  Part of it was due to losing five billion people in less than a year. The aliens were on a genocidal rampage, and the remaining population focused on survival.

  Small pockets of resistance popped up, people refusing to surrender. People like the Lt and his squad of alien killers that rescued him from an ambushed train.

  Doc moved to a computer console and booted it up.

  He had admired the Lieutenant and told him about the hidden lab he once worked inside.

  When they arrived, they found refugees living inside the building, trapped in a fifteen foot corridor, unable to penetrate the locked rooms further inside, and hunted by roving bands of bandits every time they dared to leave.

  Burmage was with them, though Doc wondered if anyone could call what he did leading.

  He didn’t lead them, so much as lead the complaints and listing of the grievances.

  But Doc was able to unlock the hidden secrets inside the lab and recover a technology thought lost, the suits.

  Armored shells that used nanotechnology to meld with the wearer and augment their skillset.

  The lab had a couple of advantages over the rest of the population as well.

  Hidden solar panels that alien patrols failed to destroy.

  It brought light back to the dark ages, and combined with the suits, ignited a new hope in the fight for human survival.

  And working with Brumage on the computer systems had yielded results as well.

  The man was a piss poor leader, but as a systems analyst for the project before the invasion, he knew how to bring them back on line.

  Or one at least.

  But that was all Doc needed.

  One computer to access a server that existed somewhere.

  He found it after a long search, and assumed it was in the heart of the building.

  It was another learning curve for him.

  Burmage offered to help, but Doc kept him at a distance per the Lt’s instructions.

  Instead, he plodded away, peeling the layers of code in the system to access increasingly complex files.

  Like the one that had been preying on his mind even as he attempted to work on Suit technology.

  He had stumbled on a file that contained video and written documentation. It should have been encrypted. He knew that based on the content.

  Doc wondered again why he was able to open the folder that contained the information, inflammatory history that should have been password protected and eyes only for men who were now dead.

  Still, it tugged at his curiosity.

  He sat in front of the console as it completed rebooting and logged into the

  system.

  He clicked three times to access the computer and selected the next document in the file.

  He wasn’t afraid of what he would learn.

  The men in the videos and mentioned in the paperwork were long dead, part of a government destroyed when the aliens invaded.

  He was only curious to what the files might hold.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Russel marched to the edge of the fence, his face creased in worry lines and a frown.

  Two Suits stood on either side of the slit opening in the large canvas tent he used as a command center.

  He could see the faces of the men inside the armor and sniffed in frustration.

  So far, they couldn't lower the faceplates or utilize the advantages the Suits had to offer.

  The Doc said it was the nanotechnology interface. But it didn't matter to Russel.

  He had a weapon and he couldn't use it.

  That wasn't quite right. He nodded to the men guarding his tent and slipped into the dim interior.

  He had Jake.

  Pale sunlight streamed through mesh windows in the walls of the canvas. A row of chairs lined the center of the room, ready for a meeting.

  But they were empty now. Russel plopped into one and stretched his long legs out in front of him.

  He needed to do something. Somehow convince the squad to come work for him, at least until the Doc came up with a way to reproduce the tech they needed to make the Suits work for them.

  After that, it would just take convincing to get the men and woman to remove the armor.

  He would starve them out, if needed.

  "Parker!" he shouted for his designated aide.

  A young puffy cheeked boy with a round face and untamable cowlick stuck his head through the slit in the tent.

  "Get Jake to bring me the squad leader," said Russel. "I want to talk to him. Grab that Doc and hold him hostage to keep the others in line."

  Parker nodded and disappeared to do his bidding. Russel grunted. He should have asked for a drink too before the kid left.

  He shoved himself out of the chair and went to get it himself. He was about to parch himself to find a way to make this work.

  CHAPTER SIX

  "Fuck."

  "I agree."

  He stared at her from the corner of his eye as he surveyed the smashed hovercraft wrapped around the bent trunk of a yellow pine.

  "Do you even know what the hell you're agreeing with?" he asked.

  She shook her head.

  "I could tell by your look it was serious, though."

  "Yeah it is," he huffed. "I ain't looking forward to walking all the way to where we need to go. It's not such a problem for me, cause I got a shit ton of experience humping it all over this back country. I am a little concerned about you though."

  She jutted out her chin, channeling all the defiance she could muster after having reacted the way she did when the Lick patrol showed up.

  "I can manage," she said.

  "You sure?" Lt turned to her.

  He had a half grin on his face and squinted toward her with a curious glance.

  "This is the first time you been on earth in what? Three years?"

  "Longer."

  "Five?"

  She shook her head again.

  "I shipped out a decade ago."

  "Ten years? Shit, how old are you?"

  "I was young when I joined," Annie stuck her chin out further, her lips pouted in a grimace.

  "I ain't questioning your decisions," said Lt. "Hell, I knew you had a couple years’ experience on me. But you're up in the ranks on your ship, right? That takes time."

  "I earned it," she said. "On Mars."

  "Alright then," Lt said. "You got space legs, but not earth legs. You're kinda like a sailor off the boat for the first time in forever and we got a long way to go."

  "And a short time to get there."

  "Now you know how serious I am about the situation we're in. I could carry you some ways, but I don’t want to do it."