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  Assault Troopers

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  Invaders:

  The Chronowarp

  (Invaders Series 2)

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Copyright © 2017 by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  -1-

  With Rax in my pocket, the two of us hurried through an underground corridor deep in the Utah salt flats. Lights shined from the ceiling. Alarms rang behind us in the secret facility.

  A genuine Neanderthal led the way. His name was Kazz. He was five-five and had incredibly broad shoulders. He was wearing a fancy hat, a silk suit and patent leather shoes, and he kept looking at a tiny instrument in his left palm.

  “There!” Kazz shouted in a gritty voice. “He must be in there!”

  A blunt index finger, with dirt under the fingernail, aimed at a heavy locked door.

  “Logan,” Rax warned me from the earbud in my left ear. “Enemy reinforcements have arrived.”

  I spun around and fired my snub-nosed .38. A man—or an alien in human guise—ducked back around the corner. Sparks emitted from the metal walls where he’d shown himself.

  “Go,” I said over my shoulder.

  Under the ceiling lights, Kazz hurled himself at the metal door. He grunted and caromed off it like a billiard ball, landing on his back.

  The enemy darted his head around the far corner to check on us.

  I snarled an obscenity, flipping open my revolver. So far, I’d managed to insert one bullet into the cylinder. Another two fumbled out of my fingers, striking my boots.

  The sight must have emboldened the reinforcement. He stepped out as he brought up a machine gun.

  I snapped the cylinder into place, aimed and fired my single bullet. He started spraying bullets just as mine caught him in the neck. He stumbled backward, his next bullets spanging up the walls and then off the ceiling. He shot out a light, sending shattered glass raining down. Then, he hit the floor and quit firing as his machine gun skittered across the tiles.

  I stood indecisively for about two seconds. In that time, Kazz raised his ugly head. His fancy hat lay on the floor. He had thin dark hair, a bony ridge for eyebrows and the widest, flattest nose I’d ever seen on a man. Technically, a Neanderthal was almost human.

  He began to climb to his feet. Despite being short, Kazz had to weigh twice what I did, and I was a big tight-end kind of guy.

  “Work on the door,” I said, breaking into a sprint.

  I didn’t bother trying to reload my Smith & Wesson. Instead, I tucked the snub-nosed into the suit pocket opposite where I kept Rax.

  Rax was a living crystal from Rax Prime. He was the size of a large cell phone and wore a sheathing of metal, which was part machine, allowing him to communicate. Rax was also an advisor unit to a Galactic Guard agent I’d found six months ago, said agent having been little more than a moldering pile of bones. Thus, I’d taken Rax and the Galactic Guard ship and had saved the Earth from a plundering Min Ve privateer and something called the Starcore.

  The being I had just shot seemed to be a man. That wasn’t what Kazz had told me earlier. The Neanderthal had said the underground facility was run by Others, by aliens. I’d met Kazz earlier this evening. According to Rax’s biorhythm readings, the Neanderthal had been telling us the truth with this crazy story. Because of Rax, I’d decided to trust Kazz.

  The man on the floor was bleeding copiously from the neck wound. He stared at me with open eyes and his mouth kept opening and closing.

  I knelt beside him and ripped off his shirt. I tied that around his throat, pulling it snug, with the knot over the wound, leaving just enough slack so he could breathe. Then I picked up his right hand and shoved it against the bleeding spot.

  “Keep pressing there,” I said.

  He didn’t nod, but he had enough strength left to press.

  I grabbed the machine gun, took a pouch with extra magazines, and sprinted back to Kazz.

  The Neanderthal was kneeling at the metal door with tiny tools in his hairy-knuckled hands.

  “Was he human?” I asked Rax, meaning the guy I’d shot.

  “Affirmative,” Rax said through my earbud.

  “Was Kazz lying to us before about the Others being here?”

  “I do not see how that is possible,” Rax said. “I scanned his biorhythms as he relayed his message. He spoke truthfully.”

  “Could the Neanderthal have tricked you?”

  “I cannot conceive how that would be possible.”

  “What’s he using to pick the lock?”

  Rax took a half-beat before saying, “It is an interesting mechanism. I suspect alien manufacture.”

  That made my hackles rise. “What kind of alien?”

  “I have no idea,” Rax said.

  The lock in the door clicked. Kazz grinned up at me, showing his horse-like teeth. He stood, opened the door and charged in.

  I followed, pulling the spent magazine from the machine gun and inserting a loaded one. I had some questions for my newfound friend. I was beginning to have my doubts about his truthfulness.

  What I saw in the room changed my suspicion. There was a child strapped to a table with all kinds of electrodes taped to his hairy body. Computer and medical machines surrounded the apish—

  I looked at the supposed child more carefully. He was hairy, fully male—adult male—and had a face that was a cross between a chimpanzee and a man. I’d guess him to be around four and a half feet tall and to weigh about a hundred pounds.

  “Philemon,” Kazz said. “Are you awake?”

  The apeman opened his eyes, staring at the Neanderthal.

  “He is drugged,” Rax informed me.

  “What is he?” I whispered.

  “I have run a scan,” Rax said. “The one named Philemon appears to be a Homo habilis.”

  “Come again?” I whispered.

  “According to your evolutionary charts, he is a proto-man. I suspect he belonged to either the Starcore or the Polarion’s crew.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said. Six months ago, each side had used hominids as worker drones.

  Kazz yanked off the restraints with ease, gently slinging Philemon over a big shoulder.

  “We must leave,” Kazz told me.

  I fingered the machine gun before snapping about-face. In three strides, I reached the door and looked outside.

  “You will stand down,” a loud-voiced security officer shouted from the far corner. They’d already dragged the wounded man out of sight. “We have you surrounded. There is no escape.”

  I looked back into the room at Kazz. Whoever those men were—Others or humans—they definitely had us trapped in here.

  -2-

  This was a
high-security underground facility in the Utah salt flats. Sneaking in had been easy after we scouted out the place. Getting out…

  According to Kazz, Others—aliens—controlled the facility. But I was beginning to believe regular humans did.

  I used to be a security chief for Western Sunlight, Inc. in Nevada. A little over six months ago, I’d discovered aliens that had beamed down from space. They’d then captured me, but I’d escaped, found Rax and gotten my cellular structure altered so I healed fast and had become considerably stronger. I’d also reached a Galactic Guard ship. It was a glorified shuttle that could also act like a submarine. My girlfriend Debby was presently cruising off the California coast in it. We’d had a spat and I’d gone to the Peppermill in Reno—

  Six months ago, I’d defeated a maniacal Starcore, a giant live-crystal entity thousands of years old, who was stuck on Earth. A Polarion named Argon—the next thing to an ancient space god—had helped me. I thought the Polarion had died during the surface-to-space battle in low Earth orbit. Apparently, he was still alive.

  Kazz had found me in the Peppermill in Reno earlier today. Kazz said he’d worked for Argon. He said the Polarion needed help. I’d been in Argon’s control center in Greenland six months ago, and he had indeed had Neanderthals and other hominids working for him. The problem was that Starcore also had Neanderthals and hominids working for him.

  The real point was that Kazz had fended for himself on Earth these past six months. I guess, so had the little Homo habilis slung over Kazz’s shoulder. Then, Philemon had gotten himself caught. Kazz had found me and begged for help springing him.

  I had helped, obviously. We had Philemon, and now the underground Utah salt-flat facility personnel had us blocked down here.

  What had they been doing to the Homo habilis? If the security personnel were regular humans…they must have figured he was the find of the century. Those like Philemon were supposed to have died out a million years ago, or something like that.

  “We must leave immediately,” Kazz said. “Philemon needs medical attention.”

  I looked back at the squat Neanderthal and his boy-toy.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Go ahead, Rax. Take us to the Guard ship.”

  I faced Kazz as I said that. I held the machine gun, ready to raise it if necessary. It was good to be prepared just in case.

  “Logan—” Rax said.

  “Come on,” I said, interrupting. “Hurry already. I want to get out of here.”

  The Galactic Guard ship had a fantastic machine inside it. That was how we’d gotten here from Reno. The device was a teleportation machine. The machine could scramble a person’s molecules, beam them just about anywhere on Earth, reassemble the molecules and, presto, the person had gone from A to E in an instant.

  That’s how we’d gotten deep into the facility in the first place. Rax had remote-launched a spy probe from the Guard ship. The probe’s sensors hadn’t spotted Philemon, but they had allowed us to teleport into a safe space down here.

  “Throw out your weapons,” an unseen security officer shouted.

  “We’re thinking about it,” I shouted back. “Rax—”

  I faded. I could actually feel my tissues going thin…and solidified on the teleportation dais inside a chamber on the Guard ship. The machine had several discs embedded on a raised dais and more discs directly overhead, partnered with the embedded ones. Kazz appeared a moment later, with Philemon still slung over his shoulder. The two of them were considerably closer to me now.

  I raised the barrel of the machine gun. It was almost touching Kazz’s chest. The Neanderthal looked up, and our eyes met. His were black. I expected to see shock or fear in his. I did not. He stared at me—

  Philemon, still lying on Kazz’s shoulder, grabbed the barrel of the machine gun and jerked it hard.

  “What?” I said, stumbling forward.

  Kazz swung. I tried to twist aside. Instead of Neanderthal knuckles smashing me in the face, he struck just below my neck. It felt as if a jackhammer had slammed into me. I stumbled off the teleport dais and tripped backward.

  The dais was several inches off the floor, meaning that I sailed a short distance before my shoulders struck the deck. The floor-blow slammed me a second time. I lost hold of the machine gun, and Rax fell out of my suit pocket, sliding across the deck.

  I didn’t have time to consider any of that. Philemon had slid gracefully off Kazz’s shoulder. Had he been faking the drugged state and his injuries?

  Kazz jumped off the dais with a wicked grin. He charged me as I tried to scramble up. One of his expensive leather shoes caught me in the ribs. The kick hurt, and it knocked the air out of me, causing me to fall back down.

  Philemon also leapt off the dais, racing for the machine gun. Did these two bastards figure they were going to hijack my Galactic Guard ship?

  I rolled away from a second kick, rolled again and caught Kazz’s foot as he tried to stomp me. As I said, I’d had some cellular changes six months ago. I’d always been strong and on the bigger side. I twisted that foot as hard as I could, but it wasn’t hard enough. Kazz forced the foot down. It struck my chest instead of my head, bent a finger under his sole—

  I shoved upward, grunting explosively.

  That did the trick. The squat Neanderthal hopped away and collided against the apeman aiming my machine gun at me.

  They both went down in a heap.

  I laughed deep in my throat, scrambling up, deciding it was time to finish these two.

  Kazz seemed as if he were made of spring steel, though. He fairly flew up to his feet. We glared at each other for a second. Then, we charged each other, trading blows. I might as well have struck a wall. My blows seem to slough off him. I staggered back as he hammer-hit me twice in quick succession.

  During my stagger phase, the back of my calves struck the teleportation dais. I sprawled backward onto it. This was getting ugly.

  Philemon laughed like a wicked young boy. He was on his feet again with the machine gun aimed at me. The laugh seemed wrong coming from the apeman.

  “Surrender,” Philemon said in a high-pitched voice. “Surrender or I will kill you.”

  I told him to perform an anatomically impossible action.

  Philemon smiled evilly.

  “I could have used you,” he said.

  “Wait,” Kazz told him.

  “No,” Philemon said. “It is obvious. He is stubborn—”

  That was the last thing I heard him say, as the room faded from view. The next thing I knew, I lay on my back in a chilly pine forest beside a highway with sporadic nighttime traffic.

  Rax must have teleported me out of danger. The two interlopers were on the ship with Debby, my estranged girlfriend.

  I stood. “Rax?” I shouted. “Bring me back to the ship. You’ve got to bring me back.”

  Nothing happened.

  I tapped the earbud in my ear. Rax and I were still connected, right? No. The earbud was dead. I was on my own, and I had no way of getting back onto the Guard ship unless someone teleported me there.

  -3-

  It was evening on the Carson Highway, which was U.S. Route 395 in the Sierra Nevada. I was in California, I’d discovered, about twenty miles from the Kirkwood Ski Resort. That put me somewhere around eight thousand feet in elevation.

  Stars glittered outside, and I was cold. There was snow on the ground, most of it an ugly gray color. I’d seen the snow color every time a car passed with its high-beams shining. No one had stopped to help me.

  I couldn’t say I blamed them.

  ***

  An hour later, I reached an old time country store with wooden floorboards and heat inside.

  My suit coat was scuffed-up and rumpled in places. I had a discolored mouse over an eye and dried blood clotted in my nose. I knew I probably looked like trouble.

  The three hundred pound clerk in the store certainly eyed me uneasily from his stool behind the counter.

  I began debating my options as
I moved between aisles. I had the .38 in my hip holster. I’d dug it out of my suit pocket earlier and loaded it with bullets. I did not have a wallet. I did not have any money or a credit card. I was cold, thirsty and hungry, and I needed transportation.

  The clerk looked as if he was getting ready to summon the courage to question me. Then, the sounds of several motorcycles rumbling outside seemed to change his mind.

  A few minutes later, three bikers ambled into the store. They were big old boys in boots and leather jackets, heavily bearded, with chains attached to their wallets. Each of them had a woman in biker attire. They were loud but friendly with the clerk.

  I slipped out the front door, glancing at their bikes. Each was a Harley. I stood there thinking. I was hungry. I was thirsty—

  “Hey,” a biker said.

  I turned around.

  The man was bigger than me, a little taller and a good bit wider, and his beard came halfway down his chest. He must have been in his forties. He looked mean, with a handkerchief tied over his balding head.

  “Stan says you look like a stray.”

  I said nothing.

  “He says you’re casing his store.”

  I couldn’t deny that.

  “We’re friends of Stan.”

  I wanted to give him a flippant reply, but managed to hold it in.

  “I’ve been there, brother,” he told me. “Here.” He pitched me something.

  I caught a package of beef jerky. I stared at the package, finally looking up at the biker.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I… I was going to take one of your bikes.” I shook my head. “I can’t do that now.”

  The biker looked at me hard, and finally threw back his head, laughing. “Hey,” he shouted into the store, “the stray told me he was going to take one of our bikes, but now he’s not going to.”

  Laughter rang out of the store.

  The big old biker looked at me again, giving me a nod. “You’re all right, brother. You take care.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He went back into the store, the door slamming behind him.