SF Books by Vaughn Heppner:

  DOOM STAR SERIES

  Star Soldier

  Bio Weapon

  Battle Pod

  Cyborg Assault

  Planet Wrecker

  Star Fortress

  Cyborgs! (Novella published in Planetary Assault)

  EXTINCTION WARS SERIES

  Assault Troopers

  Planet Strike

  Star Viking

  OTHER SF NOVELS

  The Lost Starship

  Alien Honor

  Alien Shores

  Accelerated

  Strotium-90

  I, Weapon

  Visit www.Vaughnheppner.com for more information.

  Planet Strike

  (Extinction Wars 2)

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Copyright © 2014 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-

  I remember the day the aliens struck back at us. They didn’t like it that some of their combat slaves had killed their overlords and stolen a high-grade battlejumper.

  We were in Earth orbit. It had taken us twelve days to get here from the Sigma Draconis star system. The “we,” by the way, was one hundred and sixty-eight assault troopers, former assault troopers. We were free men now, looking down at our radioactive world.

  The last humans lived in several dozen, city-sized space freighters: zoo specimens, I suppose. Most of the aliens thought of us as beasts. I’d come back to save humanity, to give us a fresh start. Thanks to yours truly, we had a military space vessel all our own. It wasn’t much, but it was a start, the kernel to my plan.

  I should have known the aliens of the Jelk Corporation couldn’t let our rebellion stand. They had a grudge against us, which was symmetrical, because I had a granddaddy load of resentment against them.

  I wore coveralls and boots when the aliens made their first attempt, a stealth attack we should have foreseen, but we didn’t. I floated before an observation port in our battlejumper. My gut seethed because I had a terrible decision to make, one with no good answers. I’d come here to mentally wrestle with the issues, not fight to the death.

  The clock showed three o’clock ship time. I floated because the grav-plates were down again, as engineers tinkered with the main system. We were still trying to figure out all the angles concerning the alien tech, and it was taking longer than I liked.

  Our battlejumper orbited Earth about three hundred and sixty miles above England. I remember because of the wispy clouds high above the shallow cratered lake where London used to be. Like most of the great cities of Earth, London had been obliterated, leaving nothing but a radioactive pool of cobalt-colored water. I was looking at a dead world and it made me angry.

  I could faintly see my face in the inner glass of the observation port. In the reflection, I saw a man floating toward me. I’d told the others I needed to be alone to think. They understood the importance of the decision. So what was the man doing here?

  I turned around, and I realized I didn’t recognize him. That should have given me a clue about what was going to happen.

  He looked ordinary enough, a little under six feet with dark hair, a round face and slightly protruding frog’s eyes. He wore an engineer’s coveralls and seemed to be having trouble in zero gravity. He carted a toolkit in one hand and pulled himself along a rail with the other, showing the grace of a seal humping across ice.

  “Commander Creed?” he asked, in a stilted way.

  Something about his speech, about him, felt wrong. On general principle, I drew my laser pistol, aiming it at his head.

  “Do not be alarmed,” he said.

  The way he spoke… Something jarred in me, turning my spine cold. “You’re not human,” I said. “You’re an android.”

  Instead of answering, he pulled the toolkit closer to his chest, unlatching it with a snap.

  I’d learned bitter lessons this past year. They had turned me into a paranoid killer. Shoot first; ask questions later. That sounded like good advice about now.

  I aimed between his eyes and listened to my trigger click as I pulled it. To my shock, no laser beamed from the pistol’s orifice. I clicked the trigger several more times and came up just as empty. Either my gun was defective, which I doubted, or… The android had something in the toolkit that shorted electronics. What else made sense?

  Without any change of expression, the android told me, “Shah Claath sends you greetings, beast.” Then he reached into the kit.

  His words caused a small shock at the base of my skull. Then fury erupted in my heart. I’d never be anyone’s slave again, certainly not the little red-skinned Rumpelstiltskin of a Jelk named Claath. If my laser didn’t work—

  I grabbed a float rail and pulled myself toward the android. As I moved, I let go of the useless pistol and slid my Bowie knife from its sheath.

  I’d kept a blade on my person ever since my stint in prison as a youth. In those days, it had been a shiv with a cloth handle. The Bowie was bigger and better than that. It was my baby, a razor-sharp instrument of high-grade steel.

  As I flew in the zero G, I noticed the android snapping something together in the toolkit. Was it a gun? If he’d already had it pieced together, I wouldn’t have had a chance. He must have figured he’d have enough time so he’d left it unassembled. And this way, if someone had looked inside the toolbox too soon, he wouldn’t have suspected the android. Very clever.

  I grabbed the float rail two more times, giving myself greater velocity. I had to get to him before he assembled his weapon.

  He pulled out a long-barreled gun with an oversized chamber in front of the trigger. He raised it, and his eyes widened.

  I was there. I stabbed. His head shifted impossibly fast so the steel hissed against his cheek, making a hairline scratch but nothing more. Since I was speeding by, I didn’t have time for another stab. Instead, with my other hand, as he turned to fire at me, I grabbed the barrel of the gun. The tip of the iron sights dug into my palm. I yanked the weapon out of his grip.

  I laughed in an ugly way and twisted my body so my feet aimed in the direction I traveled. Sometimes my Jelk-induced training came in handy. Reaching a bulkhead, I used my legs to absorb the shock and brought myself to a stop about forty feet from him. I lined up the long-barreled gun and pulled the trigger. The weapon hissed, and it shivered slightly each time a thin sliver sped from the tube. They stitched against his coveralls, shredding the synthetic material. Unfortunately, they crumpled against the android’s toughened skin, failing to penetrate and do damage.

  I could solve that. I switched targets, aiming for his eyes. They’d have to be soft enough, right? He lowered his head, taking the slivers against the hardened skull. Then he latched onto a float rail with his left hand, grabbed the toolbox-handle with his right and hurled the thing at me.

  The box opened all the way and tools floated out. They still sped at me, coming like a cloud of meteors. I crossed my arms over my head and endured the box, wrenches and power drills. Something knocked my hand hard enough so the gun tumbled out of reach.

  My forearms ached and cuts lacerated the skin. I looked up in time to see the android sailing at me. I leaped out of the way, barely in time. Open-palmed, he clanged a magnetized left hand against the wall. His right fist smashed against the bulkhead where I’d been. With a metallic screech, a section of wall folded and broke like tinfoil, with his forearm sinking halfway in. Circuitry behind the wall sparked and made crackling sounds.

  Damn. He was stronger than I was, because I sure couldn’t punch through metal like that. The thing was deadly, a killer.

  I sailed in the zero G and bounced off a bulkhead like a ballerina, having nearly perfect body control. I’m not trying to brag. I’m just telling it like it was. The Jelk had trained me to combat perfection and I was going to use it now to stay alive. In those seconds, I realized I couldn’t give the android time to go for the floating gun, so I sailed straight back at him. You don’t win a fight by defending, but by going over to the assault. I had a feeling I had to take him down quickly, as his presence indicated other problems.

  I reached him as he pulled his fist out of the wall, with driblets of insulation foam drifting from his wrist. With one hand behind his head, anchoring me, I stabbed the Bowie, thrusting the blade into his right eye.

  That should have finished it. Instead, he shook his head and reached up for me. Despite my surprise, I pushed off and spun away, twisting free of the grabbing fingers. He ripped my coveralls, though.

  I watched as I floated away, waiting for the thing to die. Black gunk like oil dribbled out of the ruptured eye-socket, staining his nose and dripping into his mouth. To my surprise, he reached up, grabbed the bone handle and slid the Bowie out of his skull. The blade came out slowly and black-stained. How could he do that? He had pain sensors, right?

  As if reading my thoughts, he grinned with oily teeth. “I do not keep my brain where you keep yours,” he said.

  I felt a terrible sense of deja vu. Claath had said something similar once, but concerning his heart. That he kept it in a different place where I kept m
ine.

  The android lowered himself as if doing heavy squats. Sure, he must have magnetized his feet. He was getting ready to sail up at me.

  I waited tensely. I’d have to time my reaction perfectly.

  He jumped at me. I flew away from him but not fast enough. He grabbed an ankle with a bone-crushing grip, stopping my momentum. How much mass did this thing have? I used my free foot to hammer at his face. Once, twice, three times I struck, smashing the nose and breaking teeth with the heel of my boot.

  He released me, trying to grab my kicking foot with both hands. My final kick came in faster and catapulted me away from him. I struck the floor, pushed off, shoved against a wall and reached the floating toolbox. Welded inside it was a small black container. I felt it buzz until I flipped a switch, turning it off. This must have been the device shorting the electronics in my laser pistol.

  He stared at me with his good eye. I peered back at him for a frozen moment. He leaped. I leaped. We both went in different directions, trying to reach different objects. He touched the sliver-firing gun as my hand curled around the laser pistol. We each swiveled around. One of his thin projectiles stitched into my side. It hurt like a son of a bitch. I fired a fraction slower so I could aim, and I melted enough of his weapon to render it inoperative.

  “Surrender,” I said. “We’ll reprogram you so you can work for us. You’ll get to live that way.”

  He hurled the useless weapon, launching it like a missile. I’d expected him to say something first, so I almost failed to dodge in time. I could feel the thing lift my hair in its passage. At that speed, the melted gun would have killed me if it had struck my head.

  I couldn’t give him any more chances, so I fired the laser in a continuous beam. It put the smell of ooze in the air. Even as he magnetized his feet again, I used the laser like a giant scalpel and sliced his head free of the torso.

  That didn’t stop him, though. He jumped as his feet demagnetized, and he sailed at me. The head remained floating where it had been, gently turning.

  The surreal spectacle slowed my reactions, although I ducked the grasping hands by flattening onto the deck plates. Then I leaped away. I had to put an end to this now. Maybe more were coming. Maybe androids attacked all over the battlejumper, hunting us down one by one. The vessel was huge, as I’ve said earlier. There were still areas we hadn’t checked in detail. Could they have hidden there like vampires waiting for night to fall?

  After two more bounces, I reached the drifting head. I burned out the remaining eye, blinding it. I figured the torso had a wireless connection to the head.

  Still, the body kept attacking, following in my general direction. Did it use sound, smell or radar to locate me?

  My pistol’s battery indicator blinked red. I didn’t have enough juice left to burn through the armored chest chassis. I imagined that’s where it kept its AI. What was my goal anyway? It would be good to capture the mind, to interrogate or download it, find out what the thing knew. No. I had to disable it and find out if there were more like it aboard.

  The torso sailed at me. I jumped at it. We collided. It grabbed flesh, and its fingers crushed with heightened strength.

  I had an idea; and it came from an ugly expression I’d heard in prison from angry cons: “I’m going to rip off your head and piss down your neck.” The android no longer had a head. It had a gaping opening in its torso there instead. I shoved the gun barrel into its neck. Instead of pissing, I used the remaining juice and beamed the laser into the body cavity.

  Seconds later, the fingers relaxed their grip as the construct convulsed. I hadn’t been able to burn through the chest chassis to the brain. Just like on a tank, though, the armor had been less thick above.

  My ribs ached and the flesh felt pulped where it had held me. I checked my side where I’d been shot. My fingers came away bloody, but it could have been worse.

  I jumped to the android’s weapon. I’d never seen the design before: black, with a flat top. Breaking the gun open—it was the barrel that had melted—I discovered it had a gas cartridge. Yeah, I remembered hearing it hiss. The gas propelled a spring, ejecting a sliver. The weapon lacked electric impulses of any kind. Thus, the device in the toolbox hadn’t shorted it. Tricky android.

  I stuck the defective gun in my belt for further study later and remembered I’d left my communicator in my room. I’d wanted to be alone to think. Given what had just happened, that had been a stupid idea.

  I swore, and I leaped for the hatch down the corridor. The android had originated from somewhere. The way I saw it, two possibilities existed. Either he had flown through space to the battlejumper, gaining entry from the outer hull, or there was a secret compartment in the vessel where he’d hidden for who knew how long. That would mean something had activated the android. At least that seemed like the most logical explanation. If he came from space, wouldn’t that imply an enemy force was in the solar system? But if he’d been a sleeper aboard ship, my questions were two: first, were there more like him aboard? Second, what had woken him?

  In some manner, the battlejumper was under attack. I swore again, opening the hatch. Was it already too late for us?

  Why couldn’t the damn aliens leave us alone? What had we ever done to them? One way or another, I was going to make them wish they’d never heard of me or of Earth.

  -2-

  For a time, I float traveled through empty curving corridors, straining to reach the others. I risked slamming against bulkheads when I made sharp turns because I sailed so fast.

  The battlejumper was huge, a true space ark never meant to enter a planet’s atmosphere or gravity field. It could hold tens of thousands of individuals and masses of equipment. Counting our engineers and techs, there were only a little over two hundred humans aboard. A pittance, really, less the number of curators it would have taken to keep the vessel a clean museum piece. To make matters worse, I had gone a long way into the uninhabited areas to ensure I could think alone, without interruption.

  In case you’re wondering about my big decision, it was this. We had three defective freighters. Nothing anyone did could get the grav-mechanisms working again on those three. That’s how the Jelk had landed them in the first place. Without the gravity nullifiers, the huge scows could have never endured the Earth’s Gs without breaking apart. If they remained broken, it meant none of the three freighters could lift off planet, and that stranded half a million humans.

  The battlejumper had three working assault boats and a few air-cars. When the warship had been in top condition, there had been one hundred assault boats launching from the shuttle bays at a time. With a measly three boats, it would take us weeks to transport that many people to the other freighters already in orbit. In my estimation, we didn’t have weeks. As I traveled through the haunted corridors, I wondered if we even had a few days left.

  Time was a huge problem. If I couldn’t transport the half a million souls to the freighters, did I stick around as the techs tried to fix the grav-plates? Or did I write off those half a million humans in order to take the rest to a safe place? Yeah, I realized our situation called for hardhearted, no nonsense thinking. What was the most logical answer? I wanted to bring humanity back from extinction. If I saved too few people, maybe we’d simply die off like old dinosaurs because we lacked enough genetic diversity.

  I’d racked my brain for an answer, arguing pros and cons both ways. Now the android assassin had showed up, ending the debate for the moment.

  I gulped, and my heart beat faster. Three dead… I squinted. They were engineers by their coveralls and toolkits: red ones with black handgrips. Their toolboxes opened into levels. The men, their kits and tools floated in the middle of the corridor.

  Using a rail, I slowed down until I reached the corpses. Blood globules drifted around them, while their faces had frozen in painful grimaces. A quick examination showed me tiny and multiple puncture wounds in their chests and necks. None wore communicators or smartphones. Androids must have taken them.

  I nodded to myself.

  I hadn’t seen any comm-equipment on the one I’d slain. That implied different androids had killed these three. It told me the battlejumper was definitely under assault.