Invid Invasion: The New Generation Page 31

  Framed there against the mountains with the sun gleaming from her, Scott thought Marlene was somehow a higher being. She seemed finer than other Humans—a creature possessed by an unconscious beauty and a natural grace so overwhelming that it caused an ache in your heart just to see it, and left you changed.

  Lancer had calmly, almost gently, grabbed Rand by the earlobe to stop his raving. “Don’t you know it’s not polite to stare at a lady? You might make her feel self-conscious.”

  And who’d know better than you? Lunk thought, but not unkindly.

  “Ow! Okay!” Rand was yelping, trying to squirm out of Lancer’s hold. “I didn’t mean to! I won’t do it again! Uh, but maybe what I need’s a swim—”

  Lancer shoved him over in mock disgust. Rook, having watched from the lake, was suddenly scowling.

  Gawdamn hick!

  They were all to remember the interlude by the lake wistfully, though. Their route soon descended to a sand-blown desert region that didn’t appear on twentieth-century maps. It was a desert more resembling those of North America than anything that had existed in the South before the devastations of the Zentraedi, Robotech Master, and Invid.

  The terrain and climate hampered their rate of travel, but the enemy activity was much more of a problem. In the wake of the fortress raid, the Regess had saturation patrols scouring the countryside for them—consisting mainly of immense Shock Troopers now, with Pincers and Scouts in support roles.

  They knew the aliens were concentrating a great deal of their resources on the freedom fighters, and Scott began to fear the team had attracted a fatal amount of attention to itself. What none of them could know was that the Regess was also enraged and frustrated that she had lost contact with her Simulagent—Marlene.

  There came a time when the team was held up in a cave as a sandstorm raged outside and Shock Troopers paced the desert outside, searching for their trail. Though it should have been broad daylight, the world was a sand-red dusk, and even in the cave that tinted the air and layered everything, making their world monochrome.

  Marlene, who had become ill once they had come down onto the desert, was nearly in a coma, shivering in her sleeping bag. In reality, she was suffering a delayed reaction to the impact of the Sensor’s destruction and the PSI emanations’ impact on her.

  And their water supply was virtually gone; their main supply, in jerry cans rigged to Lunk’s truck, had been shot up in a brief skirmish when they made their dash from the high country. Morale was so bad that Scott blamed Lunk for it, and Rand in turn jumped all over Scott; the argument almost had them at each other’s throat. It didn’t blow over so much as spread to the others. They were sick of seeing and hearing each other and being crowded into the cave with their mecha, the sand in everything, and the endless howl of the wind.

  At last Marlene cried out in her fever-dream and startled everyone. There were some shamefaced apologies, as Rand knelt to squeeze some moisture into her mouth from a rag-twisted bit of cactus flesh. She opened her eyes at the taste of the juice and, despite its sour flavor, smiled up at him gratefully, almost adoringly. Outside, the rumble of Shock Trooper thrusters came over the wind, as the aliens went to search elsewhere.

  Rand couldn’t help smiling back, losing himself in those mysterious eyes, even chuckling to himself. But the others weren’t laughing; they accused him—absurdly—of keeping the information about cactus moisture to himself.

  He jumped to his feet, fists cocked. “A guy just can’t win around you people, can he? Any Forager knows that trick; I guess I just assumed you weren’t so dumb you’d just die of dehydration when there’re cactus all around out there!”

  He started for the cave entrance. “Did you see me holding out? No! I gave what I had to Marlene, or are you all blind?”

  “Rand, wait!” Rook spoke to him sharply, and yet there was a note of alarm in it.

  “You want cactus? You’ll get it!” She would have gone with him, but his hate-mask expression made it plain that he was in no mood for company. Rook watched him go, then turned to study Marlene, who had fallen back into a fitful sleep.

  Even with his goggles on, Rand found himself all but blinded by the storm. He counted his steps and tried to remember the layout of the area. He had barely gotten thirty yards before he fell off the lip of a deep sandpit. He rolled and tumbled down its side, scraping skin and having the wind knocked from him.

  Back in the cave, Marlene’s eyes suddenly opened wide, though the others were busy making plans and didn’t notice. The howl of the wind blotted out her one soft cry, “Rand!”

  Rand was doing fine until an outcropping of sandstone grazed his head. Then he was seeing stars, and there was no desert, no earth, no nothing around him.

  There were in fact cactus and other plants near where his body lay. The Invid Rower of Life took root where it willed, with no predictable pattern or limitation. Rand lay, out cold, in a miniature garden of them, with several of the tripartite Flowers crushed under him.

  The sandstorm had stopped, and the beat of great, leathery wings, and the sound of a very special voice crying his name, roused him. He opened his eyes to a night sky, and saw that a dragon was passing overhead. And in its right forepaw, amid gleaming claws like sabers, it held—

  “Marlene!” He was on his feet in an instant.

  What the flamin’, flyin’—“Stop!”

  Then his Cyc materialized next to him and he was off to the rescue. The mechabike took to the air, and suddenly he was in armor, riding across a rectilinear landscape. He sped towards the dragon, only to discover that the dragon had turned to fight.

  Rand couldn’t shoot without risking hitting Marlene. The dragon faked him out with a snap of its jaws, making him dart back. He managed to recover as Marlene yelled for him to save her.

  His back burners ignited as he climbed back at the dragon for Round Two. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m coming, Marlene!” He bulldogged the dragon, assisted by the powered suit. The monster’s saliva ate at his armor like acid. “Let ’er go, ya oversized iguana!”

  Then it did, and she was falling, wailing. Rand went after her like a meteor and caught her, but the dragon was hot on their trail.

  But all of a sudden, somehow, it was Rand and Marlene on the Cyc again, no armor, dodging and evading, while the beast blew flamethrower shots at them. Marlene, arms around his waist, cheek pressed to his back, called out, “Rand, listen: maybe this isn’t happening.”

  “Huh?”

  “Maybe you’re dreaming all this.”

  “I like that idea better than being crazy as a restroom rodent!” Still, it was nice to feel her arms around his middle.

  The firedrake stayed in their six o’clock position over a Frazetta-scape of crags, peaks, and dire moors. It bird-dogged them through a long cave with a bright light at the other end. Rand wondered if he was supposed to be reliving his birth trauma or something, even though all he felt was scared. It chased them under an impossibly big, bright moon, and Rand wondered if the Cyc’s silhouette resembled a certain oldtime movie production company logo.

  Then it was daytime, the desert, and the pursuit was still on. Rand realized that Marlene was giving him the adoring look that said it all, and revised his opinion of the dream.

  Next thing, somehow, they were back in the Hive Center, and Marlene had another one of her strange attacks, and Rand, staring at the Sensor, made the connection. “It’s like a telepathic link with all the other Invid,” Rand said slowly, eyeing the Sensor, “but why would you be so strongly affected by it, Marlene?”

  No time to wonder; the dragon was back. Rand was on the Cyc and turned around to tell Marlene to get on, and then realized she was naked and unspeakably beautiful, as he had seen her by the lake.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  A trillion light-years high,

  Expanding primordial fireball,

  Your Universe is still

  Your body

  Mingtao, Protocu
lture: Journey Beyond Mecha

  This isn’t gonna be one of those numbers where I find myself in school with no pants on, is it? Rand wondered.

  Suddenly Marlene, clothed, was behind him on the Cyc. But he saw that he was back in the Lizard Lounge. Appropriately enough, the dragon showed up. At least the Cyc wasn’t mired in mud; he accelerated away past dueling dinosaurs.

  Then he had to dodge some Shock Troopers. I told Scott there were Invid here! “I get the feeling this is some kind of laboratory,” he told Marlene, whose hands pressed him tighter to her. “That the Invid are experimenting with the evolutionary processes of Earth. But why?”

  A ridge of rock rose up to send Rand and Marlene head over heels. When he had crawled to her, to cradle her head, she groaned, “You mustn’t fight with Scott.”

  Scott? What’s she telling me, here? “The two of us just don’t see eye to eye. I honestly don’t think our lives—any of us—mean a thing to him.”

  “Rand … water, please …”

  But when he fetched it from a pool, she couldn’t sip. He brought some in his mouth, pressed it to her lips. Then he was kissing her, and her eyes opened.

  He laughed and tried to joke. “Um, in some places, that would mean we were engaged.”

  But the roar of the dragon filled the cave as it came at them like a bomber, and they were off again on the Cyc. Off to one side was Annie, leering over the flames once more in the Genesis Pit, speaking in the voice of the Regess.

  “Look, Human, into the flames of truth and tremble, for it is your doom that you will see there. Even now the final chapter of your people is being written in the great Book of Time.”

  Annie wasn’t finished. “Once the Invid were a simple race, content with our own existence. But with our world destroyed, our Flowers stolen, we were changed forever. And once we have conquered the Universe we shall rise, rise—we shall ascend beyond the physical. We shall rule the higher planes of existence, as a race of pure intellect, pure spirit!”

  Rand saw again those mindshapes in the flames called up by the possessed Annie. Somehow he saw Reflex Point, and the very dwelling place of the Regess herself, though he could not see her.

  She said, “So we have come here, to regenerate, to take Earth from the dying hands of Humanity. From the ashes of your people we shall arise, reborn, like the Phoenix!”

  There was a lot more to the dream, and it got even weirder. The dragon snatched Marlene again, and Rand found himself riding to the rescue with his teammates, all of them dressed in combination Wagnerian-R.E. Howard getups, but using mecha. And even Lunk’s truck could fly. Rand noticed that Rook seemed very displeased with him.

  Couldn’t I just click my Ruby Slippers three times and call it a night?

  Still, it was great to have a team to back him up, great to have friends. He realized that it was still a new thing to him, but he also realized that he had felt a little lonely back there, facing the Leaping Lizard all alone.

  Somewhere along the line even the VTs got swords, gleaming silvery ones as big as telephone poles. When that dragon came at bay, the team pureed him.

  But when demigoddess Marlene had thanked the warriors for saving her, and they were following the Eagles of Light homeward, after having been assured that a new day was dawning for the Human race, Rand could still hear the voice of the Regess. From the ashes of the Humans, the Invid would rise like a Phoenix.

  What happened subsequently seemed dreamlike, but it hurt so much that he decided it wasn’t. The sandstorm had passed and he was being helped back to the cave by Rook, who had come looking for him, and his scalp was matted with blood.

  But when he saw the look of concern on her face, Rand reconsidered the possibility that he was still unconscious.

  When the team—except for Lancer and Marlene—ran out from the cave demanding answers, Rand found himself slurring, “Listen, a new day is dawning, for the Dragon is slain at last. Shut up and listen! The, the day of oblivion’s come f’r us all. Who th’ hell were we, t’believe we could rule the Earth forever?”

  There was a lot of crosstalk and some friction, some of them mad at Rand, others—especially Rook—telling them to lay off. But Rand plowed on, “The Invid have come here from across the Cosmos to regenerate themselves into a new form. They want to rule the physical Universe, and the higher planes of existence, too!”

  “Wow! His brain’s been fried!” Annie whispered.

  “Naw, Annie,” Rook countered. “The boy just hasn’t woken up.” She gave him a therapeutic slap on the cheek that she tried not to enjoy too much. Rand found himself back in the real world.

  He took a few deep breaths and started again. “I know now why the Invid are here. They’re trying to survive by plugging themselves into the Earth’s evolutionary system. Don’t look at me like that; you can’t hardly blame ’em! We’d do it, too, if we faced racial extinction!”

  Which we do, he realized.

  Scott was close to taking a swing at Rand. “I couldn’t care less whether the Invid survive or go the way of the Zentraedi and the Robotech Masters, just as long as they leave Earth. This is our planet!”

  “Well, I wasn’t saying that we—”

  “I don’t know what happened to you out there, Rand,” Scott seethed, “but it seems to have knocked your loyalties out of whack.”

  “He was lying on a bunch of Flowers of Life,” Rook blurted. “A whole little field of them. And the sandstorm hadn’t bothered them, not even a bit.”

  While the others were thinking about that, Rand said, “What about Marlene? Is she all right?”

  Rook looked at him for long seconds before she said, “She’s still pretty weak, I’m afraid.”

  Rand went down on one knee next to her. Under his gaze, she stirred, wakened, smiled up at him as she had hours and an eternity ago. It had taken a look and a thought, not a kiss, to wake the sleeping damsel.

  Well, Fair Milady, I don’t know if you’ll ever realize it, but you and I have just been on quite a spin. And I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

  Rook, leaning against the cave wall with her arms crossed, glowered at the two. Maybe Marlene was braindamaged, but that was no excuse to gaze up at a bumpkin like Rand with liquid, lambent eyes. He was nothing but a wasteland Forager!

  “Hi,” Rand smiled down gently. And now Scott, too, was scowling. In true military style, he didn’t bother to consider his reasons for being irked at Rand. It was easier than examining his feelings for Marlene.

  Rand touched Marlene’s cheek. Her gaze gave him the eerie feeling that she had truly been along on the all-time championship motocross run. Marlene smiled up at him.

  A thought crossed Rand’s mind. What was it Rook said he had been lying on?

  Eventually, as Scott had fatalistically expected, a patrol of Shock Troopers spotted them. The freedom fighters jumped the Invid right away.

  They knew little about the Regess, but they were beginning to suspect something. The simple fact was that the Regess’ attention was often diverted to matters elsewhere in her world-embracing scheme, and offworld as well. Although the whereabouts of her Simulagent and this persistently bothersome group of enemies were high on her priorities list, the Regess had a staggering number of projects and operations to control and guide.

  All the freedom fighters knew was that there was still a chance to avoid disaster if the team could act quickly enough. Once more the VTs dodged and fired, barrel-rolled and spat missiles.

  This battle took place over a strange landscape. The place looked like a jungle, except it appeared to have been roofed over. A translucent, shell-like pink covering stretched over hundreds of square miles of river valley. The roof, or whatever it was, had numerous irregular openings in it, openings so big that the VTs could fly in and out virtually at will. But so could the Invid.

  The Humans were hampered by low Protoculture levels and ordnance supplies; Scott wondered if they would even have enough to get them through this latest mass dogfight. But
Lancer was a tough, precise fighter jock, frugal with fuel and ammo when it was necessary, and he and Scott had taught Rand and Rook well. Trooper after Trooper went tumbling, burning, from the air under the weird shell-roof.

  Down below, Lunk, Annie, and Marlene were having it a little tougher, as a Trooper noticed them and came swooping down’ at them. “Hey, you fancy fly-boys up there!” Annie squawked over the tac net, “you forgetting your friends here on terra firmal”

  Rand broke away from the “ratrace” and, nearly at deck level, went after the Shock Trooper that was on the APC. But suddenly a bunch of trees came at him out of nowhere. I think I zigged when I shoulda zagged, he thought, as retros proved insufficient and the Beta hung up in a treetop.

  A disc’s explosion overturned the truck and the Trooper closed in for the kill, as the shocked Lunk, Annie, and Marlene watched. All in an instant, a bolt from a heavy VT cannon holed the enemy through and through, and it toppled.

  The three looked up to where Rand’s Beta hung like a fly in web. “Some shot, huh?” he beamed, although he was draped over his instrument panel at an undignified angle.

  “Jeepers, what a dopey landing,” marveled Annie.

  Above, Scott and the others switched from Protoculture to reserve impulse power, and used their jamming gear and spread clouds of aerosol smokescreen behind them. Then they dived through one of the holes in the river valley’s “roof,” breaking contact. As they had hoped, the Invid went off in all directions, apparently mystified as to where the prey had gone.

  The group made its camp and held council. With power and ammo levels so low, Scott unveiled what he considered to be the only workable plan for continuing the trip to Reflex Point.

  “A raft?” Rand exclaimed.

  Scott sipped from his mug. “There are two things to recommend the idea: We’ll save what little Protoculture we have left, and we won’t attract the Invid by activating our mecha.”

  Lancer blew on his coffee. “I think it’s a brilliant idea. We’ll just let the river do all the work.”