Invid Invasion: The New Generation Page 8

  “About five miles—” Pops started to say, but the soldier’s younger companion interrupted.

  “Hang on a minute, Scott,” the redhead said. “You can’t keep fighting everybody’s battles for them. You think you’re going to whip the whole planet back into shape single-handed, and I think you’re nuts!”

  “I wouldn’t advise tangling with Ringo, stranger,” Pops added. “Just take our thanks and ride on out of here.”

  But Scott didn’t answer either of them. He put his helmet on, started the Cyclone, and wheelied off. A woman in similar armor riding a red mecha followed him. Lunk heard the soldier’s companion mutter a curse and yell for Scott to slow down; then he angrily straddled his own Cyclone and joined the others.

  “Lunk …” Spider said leadingly.

  Lunk spun around, a determined look on his face now. “All right, let’s go.”

  “Really?”

  “I won’t let those bums make a chump outta me, Spider. Kevin’s our friend, and we can’t leave him out there.” Lunk turned to the crowd. “I need some wheels. I’ve got scrip enough to rent ’em.”

  “Take mine,” said Pops, fishing keys out of his shirt pocket. “And don’t worry about paying me, either.”

  Lunk caught the tossed chain, threw a thanks over his shoulder, and ran over to Pops’ olive-drab tri-wheel. Spider straddled the rear seat. Lunk noticed that the tall woman singer he had seen once or twice in the bar was also headed toward her vehicle. Meanwhile, the little kid with the E.T. cap was beside him, introducing herself as Annie.

  “Are you married by any chance?” she asked Lunk.

  Lunk’s face twisted up in shock. “What, are you kiddin’?”

  Annie threw open her arms and said, “You lucky boy!” as Lunk rode off, a look of bewilderment on his face. “The man of my dreams,” she added a moment later, climbing into Yellow Dancer’s pink roll-barred jeep.

  Scott’s improvised posse of seven followed the road out of town to a turnoff that wound up into the hills. They stopped once so that Scott and Rook could suit Rand up in Cyclone armor and run him quickly through the basics of mechamorphosis.

  The ranch sat at the crest of a gentle rise near a wide stream that made it one of the choicest spots in the district. It was enclosed by a rustic post-and-rail fence, and there were patches of grass and a few beautiful old trees that had weathered more storms, natural and otherwise, than anyone cared to guess. Scott and company rode in without ceremony and found Ringo’s gang waiting for them in the shade of an immense oak. There were five of them: the knife-wielding punk, the hulk, and two others who had been with Ringo in the bar earlier that day. They were all astride their bikes—the hulk in his usual sidecar seat—grouped close together in a shallow arc, cycle weapons pointed outward. Kevin was behind them, lashed by thick rope to the tree trunk.

  Scott ordered his group to a halt two hundred yards from the tree. Ringo’s group wouldn’t have stood a chance against the firepower of one Cyclone, let alone three, but it was obvious from the start that Ringo wanted to go one on one with Lunk. Kevin’s precarious position guaranteed against any Cyclone fireworks, so in a certain sense (as was always the case when hostages were involved) Scott’s position was the more vulnerable one.

  Lunk was aware of what was going down and asked Spider to climb off the triple-wheeler. It was likely, given Ringo’s flair for dramatics, that he would begin the festivities with a bike joust, and Lunk figured he could handle the thing better if he was alone.

  “Okay, but be careful,” Spider said, stepping away.

  Lunk snorted. “I’m sick to death of being careful.”

  Rand and Rook were side by side a few yards away, with Scott slightly off to one side behind them. “I can’t figure out why you came,” Rand was saying to the red Cyclone rider through the helmet. “You’ve got no stake in this.”

  “I’ve got just as much reason to be here as you,” Rook said harshly without looking over at him.

  “Everybody stay loose,” Scott warned. “Keep your fingers away from the triggers. I don’t want anyone getting hurt unless it can’t be helped.”

  “No great loss, if you ask me,” Rook muttered.

  Rand glanced over at her. “Reminds me of a movie I saw once. Gunfight at the … I can’t remember the title. But what happens is that—”

  “People die in real life, pal. Keep that in mind.”

  Before Rand could say anything, Ringo called out: “Hey, Lunky-boy—I can hear your knees knockin’ together! Is it gonna be just you and me, or do you need the army behind you?” Ringo’s gang hooted and howled. “I mean, you didn’t have much use for the army a while ago, did ya? In fact, you got a history of runnin’ away from fights, the way I hear it. Ain’t that right?”

  Lunk gritted his teeth. Sweat was beading up across his face, and indeed, his knees were knocking against the valve covers of the cycle’s engine. “You don’t know nothin’ about it, ya little shit!” he managed to bite out.

  Ringo laughed and slapped his knee. “Sorry if I blew your cover. I keep forgettin’ you’re too modest to brag about your military record!”

  “What’re you trying to prove?” Lunk yelled, muscles and veins standing out like cords in his beefy neck.

  “Nothin’,” Ringo returned. “Nothin’ at all. ’Cept the Invid hate soldiers, and since we don’t have much use for them ourselves, we decided to help them along this time.”

  Lunk began to rev his cycle, but Scott gestured to him to hold his ground. “Hand over your hostage!” Scott demanded of Ringo.

  The gang leader turned to his men and laughed. “We might just make you part of today’s quota, robby!”

  “Yeah, we ain’t picky!” the knifer threw in.

  “And we’re not afraid of your firepower, neither,” the hulk yelled from the sidecar, raising a bazooka-type weapon into view.

  “They’re psyching themselves up,” Rook cautioned the others. “Be ready!”

  On Ringo’s word the four cycles leapt forward in a charge, but all at once a round detonated in their midst, throwing some of them off their machines. Scott, Rand, and Rook exchanged looks, wondering who had fired. Then they heard Spider and Annie’s simultaneous screams and looked up: Three Invid Shock Troopers had appeared over the canopy of the oak tree. Ringo and his boys were bolting for the shelter of the ranch house as continued flashes from the Troopers’ shoulder cannons shook the ground and blew their cycles apart. Kevin was trying desperately to free himself from the tree trunk, and Annie was shouting, “Do something!”

  Scott took the initiative and shot his Cyclone forward, engaging the thrusters and going to Battle Armor mode as the mecha left the ground. Two of the Invid went after him, while the third dropped in low toward Lunk and the others. Rand was working the system switches frantically, eager for the mecha to reconfigure.

  “Come on! Come on!… What the heck’s wrong with this thing!?” he said to Rook.

  “Just calm down,” she told him. “Remember what Scott told you—your thoughts have to help it along. Relax and stop bashing away at it.” Rook lowered her head and threw the thumb switch. Rand watched amazed as the cycle restructured, wrapping itself around her and integrating with her armor. “Treat it gently—like it’s alive,” Rook added, standing now.

  Scott meanwhile was off in another part of the grassy fields dancing between the annihilation discs sent his way by the Troopers who had put down on either side of him. Lunk saw him lift off after half a dozen agile leaps and bounces and return fire from the suit’s forearm rocket launchers.

  “I can’t escape it!” Lunk yelled to no one in particular. “I thought I’d never be fighting again!”

  Rook was engaging the third Invid, while Rand continued to struggle with reconfiguration. He was about to give up on it, when he felt the mecha’s reciprocal vibe, and suddenly the damned thing was actually conforming itself to his armor. He stood up, showing a look of disbelief under the helmet’s faceplate, and gently engaged the sys
tem’s hoverthrusters, searching the skies for signs of Rook or Scott. At last he saw the red Cyclone rider. She was powering up through a backflip one minute and dropping like a stiff-legged bomb the next. But her Invid target leapt away in time, hooking itself overhead and dishing out a blast that nearly caught her. She avoided the explosion by launching straight up, but the Trooper was sticking close, discharging two more bolts, one of which nicked her armor and sent her into a spinning descent toward a stand of trees.

  Scott was handling himself well against the other two Troopers but had yet to land a Scorpion on either of them. He was down on the ground now, getting off another shot before the Invid surrounded him, pincers swinging, discs cratering the soft earth. Rand joined him, and together they managed to chase the Troopers off momentarily.

  Scott was congratulating Rand on his mechamorphosis when Lunk pulled up alongside on the triple-wheeler.

  “You weren’t ever a member of the space battalion, were you?” Lunk asked Scott.

  “Yeah?…” said Scott. “So what?”

  “Then you can fly a Veritech.”

  “Of course I can,” Scott said excitedly. “Do you have one?”

  Lunk nodded. “Follow me.”

  Rand watched them zoom off, Scott running alongside Lunk’s cycle. He dodged an Invid that attempted to flatten him into the ground and brought his forearm up to fire. But the Trooper was already flying off to link up with the other two, all three headed in the same general direction as Lunk and Scott.

  If I hang around with this guy long enough, I’m gonna get myself killed for sure, Rand said to himself.

  Then Rook was suddenly beside him, upright in Battle Armor mode and hovering two feet off the ground. “What’s the matter,” she asked him, “your joints rusting up on you or something?”

  “No, I was just trying to—”

  “You really aren’t much use in combat, are you?”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Rand shouted as she began to hover off in the same configuration. “It’s not like I’m supposed to be here, you know. I mean, technically I’m a noncombatant, did you know that? Did I ever tell you about the time I fought off three Invid patrols at the same time …?”

  From the cover of the ranch house, Ringo watched Spider set Kevin free from the ropes that held him to the tree. Knifer was kneeling by the window, peering over the stool; the hulk was cowering in a corner under a shelf.

  “Stop your whinin’, you lily-livered rogue!” Ringo shouted from the window.

  Knifer looked up. “Hey, Ringo, I think I can hear your knees knockin’.”

  Ringo made an exasperated face and brought his fist down on Knifer’s skull. “It’s because I’m mad, bone-head. Mad, mad, mad!” He punctuated each word with a follow-up blow.

  Elsewhere, Annie was asking Yellow Dancer why she was hanging around. They were in the singer’s pink armored vehicle, parked some distance from the scene of the initial fighting. “What do you want from them?” Annie wanted to know. “I’m warning you, I can get very jealous.”

  Yellow turned to her from the driver’s seat with an enigmatic smile. “Believe me,” she assured Annie, “there’s absolutely nothing for you to be jealous of.”

  “Well, then, it’s okay,” Annie said, perking up. “You can hang around as much as you want.”

  The Veritech hangar was a dilapidated circular building, holed in numerous places, with a hemispherical red roof sectioned off and reinforced by curved trusses. A mostly ruined solar windmill rose alongside the structure, which Scott guessed was a barn of some sort. Up ahead, he saw Lunk give a wave, jump the triple-wheeler from the top of a small grassy embankment, and accelerate through the fallow fields that led to the makeshift hangar. The Invid Shock Troopers were in hot pursuit overhead, their gleaming crablike bodies filling the sky.

  “Hurry!” Scott could hear Lunk shout.

  Scott had been expecting to find the rusting shell of a first-generation Veritech, but once inside the building his hopes took a leap forward. Carefully positioned in the spacious loft was what looked to be a well-maintained Alpha Fighter, sans augmentation pack and boosters, and certainly a leftover from the latter stages of the Second Robotech War.

  “Climb in,” said Lunk. “She’s ready to fly.”

  “Who’s been maintaining it?” Scott asked as he struggled out of the reconfigured Cyclone.

  “Listen, I’m not as stupid as you might think,” Lunk said, raising his voice above explosive volleys from the Invid. Discs were striking the fields nearby, loosening dirt and debris from the exposed rafters. “I was a certified bio-maintenance engineer. Trust me, this baby will fly like a dream.”

  Scott climbed into the barn loft and gave the Veritech’s radome an affectionate pat. He threw himself up to the open canopy, got a good handhold, and slipped into the cockpit. He hadn’t bothered to change out of the Cyclone armor, but now he exchanged his helmet for the Veritech’s own “thinking cap” and began a run-through of the systems. It was so long since he had piloted a VT in atmosphere, he wondered if he could bring it off now.

  “Everything seems in order!” he called down to Lunk as an explosion tore out a huge section of wall.

  Lunk’s hands went to his ears, and he threw himself to cover. Through the breach in the wall, Scott glimpsed the three Troopers land and begin their approach on the barn. I’ll never be able to power up fast enough to get out of here! he thought.

  But just then Rand and Rook arrived to check the aliens’ advance. The red Cycloner launched herself like a projectile straight into one of the Trooper’s optic sensors, while Rand fired two pulses against a second. It was all the time Scott needed to bring up the Protoculture levels of the Veritech, and a moment later, much to Rand’s consternation, the radome of the VT was punching through the barn’s roof.

  Scott threw the VT into a steep climb, luring the Troopers away from their swipe attacks against Rook and Rand. Rand watched the fighter accelerate through a sweeping arc and head back into the faces of its pursuers, destroying one with a missile too swift for his eyes to track. But that was only the beginning: Now the fighter was reconfiguring to Battloid mode and leading the two remaining Invid on a high-speed chase over the countryside.

  Scott thought the ship upright—a techno-knight standing in thin air—while salvos of annihilation discs beamed past him. He reached out, throwing levers that opened the missile compartments built into the Battloid’s forearm, shoulder, and lower-leg armor, and thought the systems through to launch. It was all coming back to him now—it had to! For a moment, the techno-knight was encompassed in energy balloons; then dozens of missiles tore from their launch racks like so many red-tipped arrows of death. The Troopers took the full storm and were all but disintegrated by the force of the blasts.

  Down below, Kevin and Spider were running toward the barn, a few steps ahead of Annie, who had just leapt from Yellow’s jeep and was calling out for Lunk. Rook and Rand had already reconfigured their Cyclones and were doffing the hot and cumbersome battle armor when Scott brought the VT down, cut the engines, and threw open the canopy.

  Lunk stepped from the barn unharmed and caught Annie midair as she jumped up and threw her arms around his neck. “There you are!” she gushed. “I knew they wouldn’t get you, I knew you’d come back to me!”

  Lunk held her away, offering a miffed but understanding grin.

  “I’ve decided you’re the only one for me!”

  “Well, thanks,” said Lunk. “I wish I could say the same.” He smiled tolerantly and gently lowered Annie to the ground. “You’re a little young for me … And besides, I’ve got other plans.”

  Annie stared up at him, despondent, and asked what those other plans might be.

  Lunk threw his massive shoulders back. “Join the resistance,” he said to all of them. “See if I can make up for past mistakes.”

  “I’d be glad to join forces with you, Lunk,” said Scott. “If you mean what you say …”

  Kevin looked from
one to the other. “He’s not serious, robby. Are you, Lunk?”

  Lunk nodded. “I’m sick of sneakin’ around like a frightened little weasel. Face it, Kevin, I’m a soldier, after all. And it’s time I started acting like one.

  “Use your head, Lunk,” Kevin countered. “This war’s a lost cause. What can two, ten, or even two hundred do against the Invid?”

  “We can try,” said Lunk.

  Annie made a disappointed sound and turned her back to Lunk, hands behind her head. “And I thought you were special …”

  Lunk bent down, perplexed, to ask: “But a minute ago I was the man of your dreams, remember?”

  Annie’s lips tightened, and she shook her head. “A long time ago I decided I’d never marry a soldier. They don’t last long enough nowadays.”

  Kevin and Spider laughed.

  “The kid’s no dummy, that’s for sure,” Rand offered.

  Yellow stepped down from the jeep and approached the VT. “I’d like to sign up for the team, Scott.”

  Rook sent a knowing elbow into Rand’s ribs at the same time Kevin sent one into Spider’s. But Scott’s answer disappointed all of them.

  “Thanks,” he said from the cockpit. “But we don’t have enough troops yet to hire an entertainer.”

  “There’s a lot more to me than meets the eye,” said Yellow.

  “As if that isn’t enough,” Rand commented under his breath but loudly enough for Rook to hear.

  “All I see is an attractive woman in a rather slinky outfit,” said Scott.

  “Wrong on both counts,” Yellow answered him, walking back to the jeep. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  A buzz of general puzzlement swept through the would-be team as Yellow sauntered off, especially when she turned her back to them and began to undo the rear buttons of her strapless top.

  “Hey, w-wait a minute,” Scott stammered in protest. “I appreciate your wanting to, er—show me, but don’t think for a moment that’s going to change my mind.…”

  “Is she going to do what I think she’s going to do?” said Annie, gulping.