The Star Cross: The Dark Invaders (35 page)

“Our rounds aren’t causing enough damage,” grated
out Captain Reynolds as she fired a dozen rounds into the chest of a
Trellixian. The shots only dented the armor.

Suddenly brilliant flashes of light went off
around the five remaining enemy soldiers. Mark’s eyes closed involuntarily, and
he could feel the searing heat from the blasts. Flash grenades, he realized.
Someone had thrown flash grenades at the remaining enemy troops. Where had they
come from?

Stepping out from the undergrowth, Sergeant
Anderson and two other soldiers fired their weapons at the stunned Trellixians,
the only difference being that the sergeant had a weapon that fired small
explosive rounds. It was his weapon of choice, and he always carried it. The
only problem was for it to be effective, he had to be at almost point-blank
range. He was carefully putting a round into the chest of each of the remaining
enemy soldiers, who were still dazed from the flash grenades. In just a few
seconds, the battle was over as he blew a smoking hole the size of a person’s
fist in the chest of the last Trellixian.

Anderson
handed his weapon to one of the other soldiers in exchange for a shotgun. He
then stepped over to the downed Trellixians and fired a single slug into their
visors. “Damn lizards!” he shouted, as he turned toward Mark.

“We thought you three were dead,” Mark said,
stepping out from behind the boulder he’d been firing from, immensely pleased
to see the sergeant. “You didn’t show up at the rendezvous coordinates.”

“We got cut off by some Trellixian ground troops
and had to take the long way around,” Anderson replied. He was a twenty-year
veteran and knew how to stay alive. He looked over where Corporal Sampson’s
body lay, shaking his head. “The corporal was a good soldier. I hate that we
lost him.”

“We better get out of here,” Lisa said as she
walked up to gaze at the dead enemy. She took a few photographs and then turned
toward Mark. “The aircraft that dropped this squad could return at any moment.”

“She’s right,” Mark said to the others. “Private
Donly, disarm those other two Claymores. We may need them later.”

“It’s been a tough day,” said Sergeant Anderson
as one of the privates who had come with him covered Corporal Sampson’s body.
“A lot of good men and women died today.”

“We need to get the information we gathered back
to the alternate command post,” Mark said.

“I don’t see what good it’ll do,” Anderson replied with a grimace. “We don’t have anything left to fight with now that the
base has been destroyed.”

Mark nodded. Sergeant Anderson was right. There
were probably a few scattered military units still fighting across the world,
plus millions of unarmed civilians who had taken to the countryside and the
mountains after the first attacks. The Trellixians would be hunting them down
and eliminating the humans wherever they were found. Any type of organized
resistance was just about over. The enemy had won, and Earth was theirs.

-

It took another two days for them to reach their
destination. They’d been careful to stay off the main trails and roads and had
even taken the precaution of immersing themselves in streams when they heard
the approach of alien aircraft, to prevent detection from thermal scans. The
sun had already set, and they were using their night-vision optics to travel
when Mark called a halt.

“We’re nearly there,” Mark said, as he paused to
allow them to catch their breaths. The others had never been to this location
before, as his immediate commanding officer had brought only him to this
secretive site. He suspected there might be a small research facility hidden
deep beneath the mountains somewhere.

“Any idea what might be waiting for us?” asked
Sergeant Anderson.

“No,” Mark replied. “I’ve only been here once
before, and that was with Colonel Branson.”

“What about you, Captain?” asked Anderson, looking over at the military analyst.

“I’m not certain,” Lisa replied with a frown.
“I’ve heard rumors, but they sounded so fantastic I didn’t believe them.”

“What type of rumors?”

“I don’t really want to say,” Lisa replied,
looking over at the sergeant. “We’ll know what’s going on when we get there.”

“Captain Reynolds is right,” Mark said. He was
beginning to think Captain Reynolds was more than just a military analyst. He
wondered just how much she wasn’t telling them.

After a brief rest they resumed walking again,
only this time they were ascending the steep slope of a low mountain. For
several hours they struggled upward, avoiding loose boulders and areas where
rockslides had occurred in the past. Reaching a huge rock that stood at the
base of a high cliff, Mark stepped around it and squirmed into a small cave. The
others followed closely behind.

“We need to stack those rocks up to conceal the
entrance,” he told the others, pointing to a loose pile of nearby stones.

“Let’s get to it,” ordered Sergeant Anderson, as
he bent down and picked up a large one, carrying it to the small entrance. The
others quickly followed suit, and it wasn’t long until the passageway was
blocked. To anyone passing by, it wouldn’t be obvious the stones were
concealing the entrance to the small cave.

Stepping back, Mark pointed a light at their
handiwork, satisfied that no one would find this place. Indicating for the
others to follow him, he proceeded down the narrow cave for a number of meters,
shining his flashlight before him, until the tunnel opened up into a small
cavern roughly twenty meters across and six or seven high. Walking over to one
wall, he searched carefully for a hidden recess in the stone and then,
inserting his hand, he pressed a tiny concealed button. Instantly a section of
the wall slid open, revealing a tunnel with a small, monorail-like car.

“What the hell?” muttered Sergeant Anderson.

“We’re supposed to take this vehicle to our
destination,” Mark explained. He had no idea where it would bring them, but
Colonel Branson had told Mark that it would take them to a place of safety.
More than that the colonel had refused to say, only telling Mark the eventual
destination was classified.

As they stepped into the waiting vehicle, the
wall behind them slid shut, hiding the small cavern from view. Mark activated
the controls as the colonel had shown him and then leaned back in one of the
comfortable padded seats. Almost instantly the car moved and rapidly
accelerated.

“Someone spent a lot of time and money to build
this,” commented Sergeant Anderson, as he watched the walls of the tunnel flash
by.

“I wonder what’s waiting for us when this car
stops?” said Private Donly.

“We’ll know when we get there,” replied Captain
Reynolds, leaning back in her seat with her assault rifle across her lap.

For nearly twenty minutes, the air-conditioned
car slid forward and down, going deep beneath Earth’s surface. Mark had no idea
where the car was taking them. His orders had been to observe the battle with
his squad and to make sure Captain Reynolds survived. He was then to return to
this car and activate it. He’d originally thought the car might be connected to
the large base he had seen so recently destroyed, but now he was convinced it
led elsewhere.

“This wasn’t easy to build,” commented Private
Donly. “This has to lead to something more than just a small research
facility.”

Sergeant Anderson looked over at Captain
Reynolds. She had said very little since they’d entered the vehicle. “Still no
idea what’s going on, Captain?”

“Possibly,” she admitted, glancing over at the
sergeant. “If my suspicions are correct, we’re all due for a major surprise
shortly.”

“You’re not just a military analyst, are you?”
asked Mark as he looked over at the captain.

“No,” she admitted, looking briefly down at the
floor and then back up at Mark. “It was important that I see one of the
Trellixian battlecruisers up close and take readings with some special
equipment I brought along. If we hope to survive, what we learned from
observing that battle might be crucial.”

Mark nodded. He was right about something more
going on. Now he just wanted to find out what it was.

At last the car slowed. Mark sat up straighter,
curious to see their destination. The car came to a stop in front of a small
platform, and a section of rock wall slid open. With surprise, Mark saw his
immediate superior, Colonel Branson, standing there with several other men, as
well as a squad of heavily armed marines.

Mark climbed from the car, followed by the
others—all with confusion on their faces except for Captain Reynolds. They
stopped and gave a quick salute in front of the colonel. Maybe now they would
hear some explanations.

“At ease, Major Dolan,” Colonel Branson
commanded. “Welcome to your new home!”

“Lisa, we’re glad you made it,” said one of the
other men with the colonel. “We were very worried about your safety.”

“I was in good hands, Professor Wilkins,” Lisa
responded, surprised to see her old friend and mentor. “Major Dolan carried out
his assignment very professionally.”

Mark turned to gaze at Captain Reynolds
questioningly.

“I guess I owe you an explanation,” Lisa said,
her eyes focusing on Mark. “I’m not only a captain in the reserves. I’m
actually a nuclear physicist with a number of advanced degrees in space
sciences. Professor Wilkins and I have worked together on many projects over
the years, though I’m not quite certain what’s going on now. I haven’t seen him
in months.”

“I think you’ll find this very interesting,”
Professor Wilkins said with a mysterious smile. “Why don’t you come with me
while the colonel debriefs the others? We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

-

Hours later Captain Dolan sat in front of Colonel
Branson, preparing to undergo his debriefing. The others were being questioned
by another officer. Mark had been shown to a small set of comfortable quarters
and allowed to clean up and rest before eating a decent meal and being brought
in front of the colonel.

“I suppose you have a lot of questions,” began
Branson, giving Mark a measuring look.

“Some,” answered Mark, shifting his weight in the
well-padded chair he was seated in. “Where am I, and what exactly is going on?
Why was it so important to observe that battle? It was gruesome, and we lost a
lot of good people at that base. Our forces never stood a chance once that
battlecruiser showed up.”

Branson nodded and looked over at Mark from
across his desk. “Those are the very questions I would start with, if I were in
your place. First off, you’re in a highly secret complex deep beneath the
Colorado Rocky Mountains. Special shielding and the tremendous depth of this
installation should protect us from Trellixian detection. One very large
civilian complex and two smaller military complexes are all connected by deep
underground tunnels.”

“How did this get built?” Mark interrupted. He’d
thought, after everything he had witnessed above over the last three months,
that the human race was all but finished. The big military complex he’d watched
being destroyed only a couple days earlier was the last one he knew of that
contained any type of advanced military technology.

Colonel Branson took a deep breath and leaned
back in his chair. “Back in early July 1947, a UFO crashed on a ranch northwest
of Roswell, New Mexico.”

“Roswell!” Mark said, feeling even more confused.
“I thought that was just a weather balloon.”

“That’s what everyone was told,” Branson
responded. “In reality it was a small interstellar spacecraft from a star
system the Trellixians had only recently attacked. The ship was never designed
for trips of more than a few light-years, and its systems were taxed to the
limit just to make it to Earth. Their life support was failing, and the ship
was experiencing numerous mechanical problems when it tried to land.
Unfortunately for the crew, it crashed, killing all but two.”

“Two survived?” Mark could scarcely believe what
he was hearing.

“Yes, two did. One died within a week of the
crash, and the other lived at Area 51 for twenty-two years.”

“We had a real live alien for all that time, and
no one knew about it?” Mark remained dumbfounded.

“We kept it a secret, after we learned what
happened to their home world. Can you imagine the panic such a revelation would
have caused?”

“What did we do?”

“We started to prepare,” Colonel Branson replied.
“We formed a secret military alliance with a number of key countries across the
globe, to do everything we could to prepare Earth for the coming of the
Trellixians. Unfortunately our science was so far behind that we couldn’t do
much initially. With the help of the alien survivor, we were able to reverse
engineer some of their systems, particularly their computers.”

“That explains the rapid advancement of our
computer technology in the late twentieth century,” Mark said in sudden
realization.

“Yes, that and several other areas as well,”
Branson added.

Getting up, Colonel Branson walked across the
small office, putting his hands behind his back before turning around to face
Mark once again. “We knew we didn’t have time to adequately prepare Earth to
mount an effective defense to hold back the coming Trellixian invasion. The
science and technology just weren’t there. We did manage to improve some weapon
systems and build the big base up above that the Trellixians smashed so
thoroughly, but we didn’t put all our eggs in just one basket.”