Invid Invasion: The New Generation Read online

  “Well, this character with the ax isn’t exactly my idea of a comedian either,” Rand answered to let Lunk know how things were on his side of the circle.

  “Ugly bunch of gorillas …” Lunk growled, lowering himself into a crouch and beckoning one of the men to come in on him.

  “What are they waiting for?” Rand started to say, when one of the circle said, “We have your friends.”

  Rand felt Lunk straighten up behind him. “Throw the weapon down,” Lunk told him.

  “We’re just going to let them take us?”

  Lunk already had his massive arms raised. “Take it easy,” he said to Rand under his breath. “My guess is they’ll take us to Lancer and the girls. Then we’ll make our getaway, all right with you?”

  “Well, if you say so …” Rand gulped and tossed the autopistol to the dirt, much to the amazement of the circle. “It’s your party,” he shrugged as the men moved in to bind his wrists.

  A short while later, in the back of the same truck that had surprised Lancer, Rook, and Annie at the bridge, Lunk had a change of heart. The truck had entered the plaza and was moving slowly past José’s Café. Lunk spotted the owner standing in the doorway and said: “There’s that bird José! I bet he knows where our friends are!”

  And the next thing Rand knew, Lunk was standing up and shouldering his way toward the street. Rand jumped out of the truck and was right behind him. As the two of them rolled, got to their feet, and made a mad dash for the café entrance, propelled by blasts from the very weapon Rand had surrendered only moments before.

  Lunk crashed through the swinging doors at full speed, knocking frail-looking José halfway across the room.

  “I sometimes have my doubts about you, partner!” Rand said, out of breath and dodging blasts that were entering the bar from the street. The truck was backing up, disgorging men who were already closing in on the café. “Hope you have another plan ready,” he added, noticing for the first time that there was a woman in the room.

  Lunk was behind the bar, cutting the cords that bound his hands with a knife he had gripped between his teeth. José was cross-legged on the floor, shaking his head as if to restore himself to consciousness. The woman was kneeling beside him. Lunk freed himself and tossed the knife to Rand, who had to catch it in both hands and duplicate his friend’s Houdini act.

  “Okay, what’s next?” Rand managed with his mouth full.

  Lunk grinned and pulled a hand blaster from beneath his shirt. “Surprise,” he said, shoving the weapon into José’s ribs. “Now, my closed-mouthed friend, you’re going to do a little talking.”

  Rand took a cautious look out the swinging doors and turned to Lunk. “I hate to bring up an unpleasant subject, but there’s quite a crowd gathering out there, and since we’ve only got one blast—”

  “In a minute,” Lunk cut him off. “Start talking,” he said to José, ignoring the pleas of the man’s wife.

  José swallowed hard. “What about? It isn’t my problem.”

  “You can begin with where our friends are—and no stalling!”

  “Maria,” he said, looking imploringly at his wife. “What should I do?”

  “Please believe us,” she told Lunk from her husband’s side. “We don’t know what became of your friends. Only Pedro knows what happened to them.”

  “Fine. So produce Pedro.”

  “He is the mayor,” Maria continued. “He’s giving all the orders.”

  “Maria!” José yelled, trying to stop her. “Then take us to him—now!”

  “But how?” said José. “We can’t get past that mob.” He gestured toward the door.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Rand said from the door. “José, you’ve put on a pretty good act so far, and now you’re going to do some acting on our behalf.…”

  José pulled Rand and Lunk through the cafe’s swinging doors a few minutes later, leading them along on a leather leash. Their hands were now bound in front of them with white cloth napkins Maria had helped to knot, one of which dutifully concealed Lunk’s blaster. The townsmen were suitably impressed (if somewhat bewildered) and moved in to retake custody of their prisoners, but José waved them off.

  “Pedro has asked me to take them to him. He wants you men to stay here and capture their companion when he shows up.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Lunk complimented him under his breath. “Now just keep walking. Get us out of here and you’ll save your skin. Tell the driver to take us to Pedro.”

  José motioned to the idling van one of the villagers had driven in from the bridge. “Is this their vehicle?”

  The man behind the wheel nodded. José shoved his prisoners into the rear seats and joined them there. Maria rode shotgun.

  “Be alert for their comrade,” José reminded the men as he ordered the van off.

  Away from the café, Lunk loosed the cloth knot and brought the blaster out for the driver to see. He ordered José and the driver out of the van when they reached the mayor’s offices.

  “Now don’t get any funny ideas when we get inside,” Lunk advised them, making his point with the weapon. “I don’t want to hurt anybody, but I’ll do what’s necessary.”

  “You want me, too?” said the driver, Gomez.

  “You, too,” said Rand, giving him a light shove.

  The building was a wooden two-story structure with tall, curved-top entry doors. Lunk and Rand stayed behind the two men as they climbed the staircase to the upper floor, but once at the office, José and Gomez burst through the doors shouting warnings to their friends inside. Lunk was only a step behind them, though, and fired a shot at the ceiling to quiet the room.

  There were a dozen or so townspeople in the office, not counting Lancer, Rook, and Annie, who were bound hand and foot on the floor in the center of the spacious room.

  “Hands up!” Lunk bellowed.

  “Well, hello, boys,” said Rook as plaster rained down on her from Lunk’s ceiling shot.

  “Where’s Scott?” Lancer asked.

  Rand moved in to free his friends while Lunk threatened to air-condition the room unless someone directed him to the mayor.

  “That’s me,” said a large man seated at a table.

  “Be careful, Pedro,” José warned him.

  Lunk leveled the blaster at him. “We’ve got a few questions for you.”

  “Like where you hid the Cyclones,” Rand said, moving to Lunk’s side. Lancer and Rook had some nasty bruises, and a new anger was evident in Rand’s voice.

  But the mayor wasn’t impressed. “We have them, and we mean to keep them,” he told Rand. “You people are free to go, but we keep the machines.”

  Rand showed his teeth. “Hear me, mister, and hear me good: We’re giving the orders now, not you.”

  “Give all the orders you want, but we’ll do what we have to do.”

  Rand made an impatient sound and grabbed the blaster from Lunk’s hands. “Talk to him, Lunk, before I do something I might regret.”

  The big man nodded and stepped forward. “All right, Mr. Mayor, forget the Cyclones for a moment. What I want now is the truth about Alfred Nader.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Nader,” Pedro said, meeting Lunk’s glare. But the stifled gasps from others in the room told a different story.

  Lunk slammed his fists down on the table. “I’m sick of listening to lies, pal!”

  Rand put a hand on his friend’s arm. “Hold on a minute,” he started to say. But suddenly the building was shaking. Annie pointed at the window: Rand saw flashes of brilliant orange light in the skies above the mesa.

  “Annihilation discs!” said Rand. “Invid patrol ships!”

  “Now at least we know where Scott’s been,” Lancer chimed in.

  Rand turned to the mayor, furious now.

  “Your time is up, Pedro! We need those Cyclones!”

  The mayor remained tight-lipped. “We don’t want any more fighting in our village.”

  “If we don’t get out ther
e and help our friend, there won’t be any more village,” Lancer pointed out.

  Pedro scoffed at him. “Do you imagine you heroes are going to repel an Invid attack by yourselves?”

  “You better let us try,” Rand said as the sounds of distant explosions infiltrated the room.

  “I mustn’t endanger the town!”

  “We’re trying to help your town,” Rook told him.

  Lunk took the blaster back from Rand and raised it. “That tears it! I’m not standing by while my friend dies for this stinking excuse for a town. Pedro, you’ve got ten seconds!”

  “Wait!” José said, stepping into the projected line of fire. He turned to Gomez. “Tell them where the Cyclones are hidden.”

  “You’re responsible for this, José,” the mayor shouted. “If anything should happen to our village—”

  “I’ll take the responsibility then,” José answered, whirling on him.

  “They’re in the warehouse,” Gomez said softly.

  The warehouse was a barn situated close to the bridge, an odds-and-ends storage facility for grain, farming tools, and rusting examples of early Robotechnology. The Cyclones had been rolled into a corner and covered over with a couple of mildewed canvas tarps.

  Lancer, Rook, and Rand headed straight for their machines, activated them, and rode off to the sound of the guns. Annie and Lunk wished them luck and watched as the Cyclones reconfigured to Battle Armor mode. Lunk was heading back to the van when he heard his name called. It was Pedro, looking somewhat sheepish and conciliatory.

  “Lunk, you’re determined to go through with this?”

  Lunk gestured to the by-now-distant Cyclones and said harshly, “That oughta answer your question.”

  Pedro nodded sullenly. “Then there’s something I want you to see,” he said, leading Lunk back into the barn. Inside, he motioned to an object concealed under a nylon cloth and pulled the cover away.

  “I want you to have this.”

  Lunk knew it by its slang term—a “Stinger”—a lightweight autocannon no larger than a turn-of-the-century M-70 machine gun that ran on Protoculture and delivered piercing bursts of Reflex firepower. Stingers were the weapon of choice for the resistance early on, but with the Invid’s control of Protoculture, the weapon had passed quickly into disuse. This one looked as though it had never been fired, but it hadn’t been well cared for either.

  “This was given to our town by a group of freedom fighters,” Pedro began to explain while Lunk inspected the gun. “Before I was mayor, when … Nader was alive.” Lunk straightened up at the mention of the name.

  Pedro’s voice took on a harder edge. “But Nader didn’t want it used. He actually believed we could make a separate peace with the Invid and hid the gun, afraid that fighting back would end in death for all of us. But many of the townspeople misinterpreted his concern; they accused him of cowardice and worse. When he still wouldn’t reveal where he had hidden the thing … they beat him to death. They burned his home, they …”

  Lunk saw that Pedro was sobbing. “So that’s your dirty little secret … the reason why those men attacked us. You’re all ashamed of what happened here.”

  Pedro nodded. “May God have mercy on us. By the time we found the gun, it was too late to do anything. The Invid had overrun everything.”

  “And now you’re the one who feels responsible for this place. You’ve inherited Nader’s legacy.”

  “You could say that.”

  Lunk’s hard look softened. “Pedro, maybe I’ve misjudged you.”

  “And I, you,” returned the mayor. “A common enough mistake these days.”

  Out on the flats things were looking grim for Scott and the team. The arrival of the Cyclones had taken the pressure off him to some extent, but the Invid still outnumbered them three to one.

  Shock Troopers again. Scott wasn’t sure why they had showed up. It was possible that one of the Scouts they had tangled with earlier had gotten away. He had seen the first of the Troopers just as the team had been entering Roca Negra and had doubled back to deal with it. But on the tail of the first came a second, then a third and a fourth, and before Scott knew it, he was in the midst of a full contingent of Pincer units.

  He dropped the Alpha in for a release run now, going after three grounded Invid who had pinned down Rook and Rand with cannon fire. The already cratered and fused terrain was being torn up by annihilation discs, the air above superheated and crosshatched by missile tracks launched from the Cyclones’ forearm tubes. Scott loosed a flock of heat-seekers at the bottom of his dive and climbed sharply, looking back over his right shoulder to catch a glimpse of the results of his run. Two Invid ships were flaming wrecks, collapsed and bleeding green nutrient. Another was badly damaged but still on its feet, one of its pincers blown away.

  Scott swung his head as he thought the Alpha through a roll and saw Lunk’s van streaking across the sands, seemingly on a collision course with three more Invid ships. Alert to the van’s approach, the Troopers lifted off, forming up in a triangular pattern to deal with it.

  But in a moment it was obvious that they had misjudged Lunk.

  Scott caught sight of a brilliant flash at the front of the van an instant before one of the ships exploded in midair. A second flash and another Invid was blown to pieces. Scott realized that Lunk had mounted some sort of cannon to the van. Apparently the Invid also recognized the weapon, because they were suddenly giving the van a wide berth. Rook, Rand, and Lancer took advantage of the opportunity to deal out death blows of their own, managing to fell two additional Troopers with precision shots to the ships’ optic scanners.

  Scott smiled broadly and uttered a short, triumphant cry to the skies outside the Alpha’s canopy. Not only had they cut the odds, they had won the battle.

  The remaining Invid were actually turning tail and fleeing the area!

  It was the first time Scott had ever seen them retreat.

  Lunk returned to Roca Negra alone. He had a longer talk with Pedro and José about Alfred Nader. Both men had known Nader’s son, Lunk’s friend, and were sorry to hear that he had been killed.

  The battle on the flats hadn’t affected the rest of the town’s attitude toward Lunk, but he understood this and pitied them the cross they had to bear. He had his own, and the emotional weight of it hadn’t been lessened any by this brief stop at Roca Negra. In fact, he felt even more confused than before. Would Nader have turned out to be a sympathizer in the end? Would his town have been just another place where the people were too busy maintaining their separate peace to rally to the cause of a greater one?

  Lunk spent some private time at what had once been Nader’s ranch, picking up ripened olives from the tree and drinking cool water from the well. Lunk kept the book. More than the object of a promise now, it had become a symbol of confusion, of mistrust and treachery … markings engraved upon Earth’s tortured and embattled landscape and upon the very fabric of Human life.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Psychohistorian Adler Ripple traces Jonathan Wolfe’s treachery to his illicit affair with Lynn-Minmei. He had met her on Little Luna (the Robotech factory satellite), during the Hunters’ wedding and fallen in love with her while the two of them were, for all intents and purposes, stranded on Tirol. It’s likely they would have married had the Sentinels not come between them. (Minmei had vowed to steer clear of soldiers after her brief and disastrous fling with Rick Hunter. Ironically, she caught the bridal bouquet at Hunter’s wedding and in a sense felt destined to marry Wolfe. The subsequent degradation she fell into can be attributed in part to her learning about the wife and child Wolfe had left behind on Earth.) Ripple asserts that Wolfe’s decision to return to Earth was motivated by the broken engagement with Lynn-Minmei. Wolfe was suddenly convinced that he could take up where he had left off with the family he had abandoned. When that didn’t occur, he turned to drink and drugs and embarked on a campaign of self-destruction. (Information that has only recently come to l
ight suggests that Wolfe also had a brief affair with Dana Sterling—the daughter of Max and Miriya, who took Wolfe’s ship back into space with the hyperdrive perfected by her former Southern Cross comrade, Dr. Louie Nichols—and that Wolfe had learned the Invid were holding hostage both his wife Catherine and his son Johnny.)

  Selig Kahler, The Tirolian Campaign

  A week of hard riding brought dramatic changes in both the terrain and the social climate of the settlements the team passed through. The land was thickly forested except where it had been cleared for farm cooperatives and villages. The road system was well maintained, and food and supplies were readily available. Lunk knew the reason for this: They were approaching one of the Invid’s so-called Protoculture farms, where Human laborers were forced to toil endlessly in vast gardens, maintaining and harvesting the aliens’ nutrient plant, the Flower of Life. But where the team had expected to encounter armies of Scouts and Troopers, they found none; and in place of a downtrodden populace, they found people in a celebratory mood. The Invid were said to have stopped their patrols a little over a month ago, and there were rumors to the effect that this had something to do with the arrival of a platoon of Robotech soldiers who were currently engaged in an assault on the Protoculture farm itself.

  Scott was certain this unit was composed of men and women from the Mars Division attack wing. One of the predesignated rendezvous points set up by the mission commander was located some five hundred miles north of the team’s present coordinates, and it was likely that a splinter group from the main force had moved south to engage the Invid at the farm. Scott was tempted to take the Alpha north to see for himself, but his sense of loyalty wouldn’t permit leaving his friends on their own. At least not until each of them had found a peace of sorts or, better still, a home. It was no secret to any of them that the team was more like a family than the invincible military machine each member sometimes imagined it to be. And it was something none of them took for granted, least of all Scott, the most recent victim of the war’s dispassionate savagery.