Invid Invasion: The New Generation Page 14

  “I decided to show myself after Rook split. I brought the Cyclone to life and pulled out from my place of concealment in the bushes, surprising the hell out of Romy and Lilly. I popped a small wheelie for effect and screeched to a halt, allowing the tail end to slide around to where Romy stood with his mouth half-open.

  “ ‘Well, don’t just stand there waiting for flies to land,’ I said to him. ‘Hop on and let’s give her some backup support.’

  “Romy flashed Lilly a look that communicated several dozen things at once and climbed on. I could tell that Lilly wanted to hold him back, but she knew better than to try. Romy had to get this out of his system for his sake as well as Rook’s. I mean, nobody likes to be thought of as a Khyron, even if it was all a misunderstanding.

  “Cavalierly, I nodded to Lilly and powered the Cyclone up the staircase, getting a rise out of the fact that Romy was white-knuckling the seat grips all the while. I have to admit that I liked impressing would-be motorcycle toughs like Romy; they were an all too frequently encountered breed in the wastes, and I was bored to tears by them.

  “Once up top, I asked Romy about this ‘Highways’ place Rook had mentioned; he shouted directions into my ear, and I wristed the Cyc’s throttle, letting it open up along the undamaged sections of roadway that led back to the narrow heart of the city.

  “It must have been about this time that the three Invid paid a call on Scott and the others. I had been wondering what they had made of our disappearance from camp. Perhaps they figured we had run off together or just decided that individually we had had enough of Scott’s search for Reflex Point. As it came out later, Annie was all for going out to look for us, but Scott felt differently. ‘I prefer not to meddle in people’s private affairs,’ is how Annie told me he had put it: But I guessed correctly that they had opted to hang in for another day, thinking that we would find our way back to them. There was a good chance they would have literally passed right over Trenchtown on their way north, but strangely enough, Scott found his own way to the city in the canyon—with a little help from the Invid, that is.

  “They came swooping down on the camp early in the morning, laying waste to that beautiful patch of forest. Whoever was in charge had elected to send in the big guns again: combat ships like the one we had seen after our run-in with the black bear. The team had no chance to hit back, only take cover and keep their heads down. The other thing I learned afterward was that neither the Alpha nor Lancer’s Cyclone was activated or otherwise engaged before the attack, which suggested that the combat units had a means of zeroing in on Protoculture even when it wasn’t being tapped for energy.

  “Scott did manage to make it to the Alpha, though. He brought up the VTs power and launched before the Invid reduced the camp to a fiery ruin, but apparently that was only the first of his woes. The three aliens formed up on his tail and went after him with an unprecedented fury, layering the zone above the forest with unforgiving streams of annihilation discs. When Scott glimpsed Trenchtown’s canyon, he saw his out; he led the Invid down into the seemingly deserted city, intent on battling them there.

  “Closing on Highways, I heard what I then thought was thunder but later learned were the detonations of the eight heat-seekers Scott had dumped on one of the Invid ships.

  “Highways turned out to be the headquarters of the Red Snakes. It was on the roof of a skeletal fifteen-story building, reached by a series of jerry-rigged ramps that connected it with an adjacent (and equally devastated) ten-story parking garage. Romy and I arrived a few moments after Rook, who was braving it out on her own against more than a dozen outlaw bikers. At the center of the group stood the Snakes’ main man, a mean-looking hulk named Atilla. He must have stood six-six and weighed in at two eighty, most of which was pure muscle. He had a pot, like most of these rogue leaders do, and affected a getup that was part street, part costume, including armless goggles no larger than bottlecaps he had had stitched to his eye sockets, black leather wristbands, shin guards and knee pads fashioned to resemble poised cobras, and a kind of pointed, twin-horned Viking-like helmet and cowl combination. There was a large S emblazoned on the front of his sleeveless T-shirt, and he had a face not even a mother could love, with a nose that was wide and flattened from countless breaks.

  “ ‘I’ve gotta admit it, Rook,’ he was saying as we pulled up. ‘You got a lotta guts. It’s just too bad you ain’t got the brains that go along with it.’

  “At that, Atilla gestured to his assembled pack, and they responded with the appropriate litany of hoots and hollers. The implication was clear enough: Rook was about to receive a stomping that would make the first seem like a love fest.

  ‘“I didn’t think you had it in you, Rook,’ Atilla added.

  “But if Rook was at all worried at that moment, she had me fooled. Somewhere along the way she had suited herself up in Cyclone battle armor. But even so, she looked vulnerable, straddling her bike, glaring right back at them, her blond hair mussed by the wind.

  “ ‘I’d say you’re the one who’s the coward. Snake Eyes,’ she fired back. ‘You’re nothing without this army of slugs you call a tribe.’

  “During this little exchange we were parked on the remains of a roof balcony, above and behind Rook. Romy was eager to go down to her, but I told him to hang back a moment more, at least until the rules were laid down.

  “ ‘You’re Mr. Mean,’ Rook was saying, ‘only because you’ve got the odds on your side, and not one of these rogues has the balls to challenge your position. But I think you’re hollow to the core, and I came back here to tell you that.’

  “This was the same Rook I had fallen in love with that day in Pops’s biker bar … And unless Atilla was a lot quicker than the scuz she had seen to there, he was soon to be one sorry rogue, and I knew it.

  “To Rook’s taunts, Atilla returned something befitting his intellect—something like: ‘Oh yeah? Prove it!’—before she got down to the challenge.

  ‘“Just you and me,’ she told him. ‘One on one, right here in front of all your boys. And I’ll even make it easy for you. We won’t even fight; we’ll just have a chicken race.’

  “ ‘A race?’ Atilla roared laughingly. ‘I thought we were gonna have some fun.’

  “Rook grinned and said, ‘The beam,’ pointing to something off to her left.

  “This brought a real chorus of cheers from the spectators. I didn’t understand what she was talking about until Romy showed me what the beam was. It was either the remains of a bridge that had once linked Highways with the building across the street or a collapsed structural member from one of the two buildings. In any case, it was no more than foot wide and now ran roof to roof more than one hundred and fifty feet above the city’s main street. But that wasn’t all: The beam was not entirely straight. Midway along was a bend and a slight dip—from who knew what—to test the mettle of any rider. Reaching the beam first was only part of the game; reaching the other roof was something else again. It was obvious from everyone’s reactions that the beam was one of Trenchtown’s rites of passage, an initiation that had certainly ended in more than one death.

  “While I was taking all of this in, Romy was dismounting from the Cyclone. ‘We can’t let her go through with this,’ he told me, showing an intense anger that almost led me to reevaluate my initial impression of him.

  “Atilla, meanwhile, was doing his best to back away from the challenge without losing face. He pointed out to his assembled buddies that what he had envisioned was a genuine physical mix-up with Rook—winner taking all, so to speak—and they were buying it.

  “ ‘Let’s pluck this chicken now!’ he shouted, leering at Rook.

  “I could understand his misgivings, but if I were him I would have been pointing out the fact that Rook’s Cyclone was not only faster than his old Kamikaze but capable of reconfiguring and actually flying across to the opposite roof should Rook misjudge the beam itself. Well, perhaps he had never seen a Cyclone before, I thought.

  �
�Romy and I were standing side by side on the roof balcony now. Below, Atilla and his Huns were beginning to take a fancy to the idea of jumping Rook’s bones, so I decided it was time for us to show our color, pulled out the hand H-90, and fired off a quick vertical burst for the boys that stopped them dead in their tracks.

  “ ‘Stay where you are!’ I warned them, feeling a little like Atilla with the blaster backing up my threats. ‘The two of them fight it out alone, just like the lady says.’ Rook was more surprised by my sudden appearance than any of them. I figured that by backing her I was doing a little better than Romy, who was now urging her to give up the idea. His presence elicited as many comments from the Snakes as Rook’s idea of riding the beam had. It seemed that the former leader of the Blue Angels was not very well thought of in the Snakes’ side of town.

  “ ‘Don’t worry, Romy, I won’t blow it,’ Rook was saying, not entirely successful at hiding her concern. ‘Let’s just say my riding skills have improved a lot.’ She looked hard at Romy and thanked him for standing by her. ‘Coming back here was a good thing,’ she said, smiling. ‘I think it cleared my head of a lot of bad memories. More than you’ll ever know …’

  “ ‘Rook,’ Romy started to say.

  ‘“I’m counting on you to take care of Lilly,’ Rook added, activating the Cyc.

  “I walked down the stairs and casually aimed the blaster in Atilla’s direction. ‘You gonna run this race, or what?’ I asked him, unsure about my next move should he refuse.

  “The Snakes threw words of encouragement to their leader, and Atilla stepped forward to accept the challenge. Romy ceremoniously handed Rook her helmet, and some of the Snakes ran to the edge of the roof for a better view of the race.

  ‘Things got under way without the preliminaries and fanfare that usually characterize such events; Rook and Atilla positioned their machines on either side of a flag bearer, maybe a hundred feet from the beam. The starter, a shaved-skull Snake in T-shirt and fatigues, jumped up and brought the flag down with a shout. The two machines patched out and headed for the beam. Again, I thought I heard distant thunder but made nothing of it.

  “I had noticed Atilla give the red Cyc a dismissive once-over before the flag dropped and figured he would be in for a surprise. But I was the one surprised: The old Kami was a real sleeper and must have concealed a turbocharger somewhere within its works, because Atilla beat Rook off the line and stayed a half length ahead of her for the first fifty feet. In fact, I’m pretty sure Snake Eyes would have hit the beam neck and neck with Rook if fear hadn’t revealed his own true colors.

  “Just shy of the beam he glanced over at Rook, saw that she wasn’t about to yield an inch, and bailed out, bouncing and sliding all the way, his cycle plummeting over the edge and exploding when it hit the street.

  “Rook rode the beam like a pro. She told me later that at no time did she even consider using the mecha’s capabilities to save herself from wiping out. I ran forward to the edge of the roof, along with everyone else who was applauding her feat, including more than a few Snakes. The loyal members of the gang were ministering to their bruised and road-rashed leader, who knew, I think, that many more challenges would soon be coming his way.

  “Rook had raised the faceshield of the helmet and was waving back to us when I realized that that distant thunder was no longer either distant or thunder. And an instant later, we saw Scott streak overhead in the Alpha, pursued by two Invid combat ships. The Snakes began to freak and scatter for cover. I turned and heard one of them shout: ‘They found out about the Protoculture I stole! They’re gonna blow us apart!’

  “I looked back at Rook in time to see her spin the Cyc through a 360, accelerate along the roof, and launch herself into Battle Armor mode. This was lost on most of the Snakes, but I noticed Atilla staring at the transformed Cyclone like he had just witnessed some kind of miracle.

  “Rook put down on a roof a few blocks down the canyon, raised the mecha’s cannon, and took out one of the ships. Scott, at the same time, had thrown the VT into a booster climb and was now falling back down upon the second, unleashing a rain of six missiles to deal with the thing. The Invid dropped itself to street level, dodging as best it could, but ultimately took one of the heat-seekers full force and spun out of control, impaling itself on a spiked piece of construction infrastructure. You would have thought Rook and Scott had planned it that way.”

  “After the action died down, I used the Cyc’s tac net to notify Scott that his errant troops would be home soon; we made plans to rendezvous on the north road.

  “I didn’t have any doubts about Rook’s bidding a swift good-bye to Trenchtown, even though some wrongs had now been redressed and some old worries laid to rest. But I knew also that there was still a scene that had to be played out with Romy, and I was anxious to see it.

  “The four of us—me, Rook, Romy, and Lilly—got together for eats at his place. Small talk for the most part; Romy made no mention of Rook’s staying on in Trench town, and we made no mention of Reflex Point, Lancer, or the others.

  “ ‘Rook, it’s been so good seeing you again,’ Lilly said as we were preparing to shove off. ‘I just can’t tell you … If it hadn’t been for your courage, the Snakes would still be ruling this city …’ She started getting weepy about then, and it made Rook angry.

  “ ‘What on Earth are you crying about?’ Rook said, putting her hands on the smaller woman’s shoulders. When Lilly exchanged looks with Romy, Rook caught on and lightened up. ‘Hey, don’t worry about me,’ she told Lilly. ‘There’s a person in my life now who means a lot to me …’

  “I was leaning against the building with my hands behind my head when she suddenly turned to me. ‘Rand,’ she said, leadingly and with a sweetness that didn’t fit her. She came over and took hold of my arm, finding a pressure point in my wrist at the same time. ‘Come on, give me a kiss like you always do.’ Under her breath, she told me to pretend to be her honey or else. ‘Kiss me on the cheek—and make it look good,’ she added.

  “Romy and Lilly were watching with a mixture of bemusement and anticipation, and Rook was standing there, offering me her left cheek like she was my aunt or something, so I did what I had to do to make it look good! I took hold of her upper arms and pulled her to me before she even had a chance to close her mouth. I didn’t hold her long, and she kept her eyes wide for the duration, not returning the favor, but it was long enough to bring a scarlet blush to her cheeks.

  “ ‘Rook is my baby and always will be,’ I told Romy over Rook’s shoulder, putting some bass in my voice to keep from laughing. ‘Come on, honey. Let’s get back to the ranch,’ I said as I mounted my Cyc.

  “Rook climbed on her mecha without looking at me. Lilly started to say something, but Rook just said good-bye and motored off. I did the same, leaving Romy and Lilly in the street, his arm draped over her narrow shoulders.

  “When I came alongside Rook, she flashed me the anger she didn’t want to show in front of her sister, and I decided to have some fun with it. ‘You kiss pretty well for such a tough gal,’ I ribbed her.

  “ ‘That was supposed to be the cheek, dirtbag.’

  “ ‘Jeez, I’m sorry … I must have misunderstood or something …’

  “ ‘Pea brain! Degenerate!’

  “I laughed, then tried to switch tracks. ‘What about your folks, Rook?’ I asked her. ‘Are they still living in this hole?’ I was sincere about it; Rook’s past was my way into her present.

  “But she just shook her head and made for the conduit, not bothering to look behind.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  The book Lunk had promised to deliver was called Inherit the Stars, a piece of speculative fiction written by the noted twentieth-century British author and inventor James P. Hogan and first published in 1977. It was the first in a series of novels that dealt with humankind’s contact with an alien race indigenous to Ganymede (the Ganymeans), who in many ways were the antithesis of the Opteran Invid.
>
  Footnote in Xandu Reem, A Stranger at Home: A Biography of Scott Bernard

  When they were reunited and on the road north once again, it was business as usual. Four hundred miles north of Trenchtown the team was attacked by five Invid Troopers, which they disposed of almost without breaking stride. Scott took out the first two from the Alpha and left the rest of the work to the three Cyclones, piloted by Rook, Rand, and Lancer, who had by now become a finely honed unit. There had been no signs of Pincer ships for several days, and though the Troopers were bothersome, they posed no real threat provided that each one glimpsed was accounted for on the battlefield.

  The desert terrain helped them to easily spot the Troopers. They had left the highlands behind. Gone were the forests and misshapen buttes of those plateaus, as well as the cool air and sparkling rivers they had come to take for granted. But this was not true desert, waterless and unforgiving, but rather a broad expanse of arid lowland, with solitary flat-topped mesas to break the monotony of the horizon and enough spring-fed lakes to support a wide assortment of settlements.

  Lunk, demanding equal-time benefits after Rook’s “dalliance in the Trench”—Rand’s words—was calling the shots on the latest detour along the way. The group was headed toward a town called Roca Negra, sixty miles west of the north road and said to be a community that had managed to retain an old-world charm.

  The team had an overview of the place now from the tableland a few miles east. Roca Negra looked neat and compact, enlivened by groupings of cottonwood and eucalyptus trees, and lent a certain drama by the mesa and rounded peaks that all but overshadowed it. Scott made a pass over the town in the Alpha, the VT’s deltalike shadow paralleling the course of the main road, and reported his sightings. There was a large circular fountain and plaza central to the town, with an assortment of rustic-style buildings grouped around it and the few streets that radiated out from the hub like the spokes of a wheel. Scott could make out tile roofs and cobblestone streets, a church steeple, and a number of people, some of whom were staring up at the Veritech, while others ran off to inform the rest of the townsfolk.