Invasion from 2500

by Ted White, Terry Carr

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

As Jack Eskridge sped through the night toward Chicago, the sky was suddenly lit with a flash of brilliance.Jack stopped the car and ran toward the light. He was greeted by a fantastic sight: a huge, weirdly glowing arch, through which were pouring strange-looking tanks, airships and metallic-clad soldiers carrying sinister weapons.Jack knew he had to get away and warn the country of the invasion. But before he could reach Chicago all the major cities in the United States had been conquered by the aliens.No one knew where they came from or what their evil purpose was. Only one thing was certain—they had to be stopped before the whole of mankind fell under their domination.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 126

Sample

THE BRIGHT HEADLIGHTS of Jack Eskridge’s car cut their way through the South Dakota night, showing the narrow two-lane road stretching before him, mile after mile. To the right and left of the road were the South Dakota badlands, rocky and dry, and the highway seemed almost lost in the midst of that vast emptiness. At this time of night the road was devoid of traffic, and the stars were a wash of pinpoint lights that seemed remarkably low overhead. The steady drone of the car’s motor was the only sound.

Eskridge drove automatically through the tunnel of his lights and thought about the events of the past few days…

It hadn’t been at all as he’d expected, he recalled dryly. At the very moment of his arrival at the Wyoming ranch, things had taken a turn for the unexpected. Some-one had put a bullet hole through the windshield of his car.

There’d been no sound of a gun, or if there had he hadn’t heard it over the whining of the engine in second and the clatter of gravel spraying under his wheels. Suddenly, with the sound of a poker thrown against the windshield, the hole had appeared, bits of glass flaking away suddenly from the spreading spider-web of cracks. The bullet gave no other evidence of its passage; later he decided it had gone out one of the open side windows.

Jack had jammed on his brakes, skewing the car to a halt. Dust quickly overtook the car and enveloped it with a brief cloud. He coughed once, then opened the car door and dived to the protection of a boulder on the side of the entrance road.

A small horde of gnats swirled up around him from out of the brush, and the pungent odor of the sage he was crushing with his body was strong in the air. He brushed impatiently at the gnats, and then there was silence.

The sun beat down upon him from directly overhead, and Jack felt sweat roll down his brow and then evaporate in the dry, still air. His rumpled jacket felt as if it were focusing the sun’s rays on his back, and he wished he’d left it in the car—not that there’d been time for that. A bee buzzed around a clump of brush nearby, and once more he felt the need to cough.

But he didn’t. Suddenly he heard the scuff of boots on shale as someone climbed down from the low butte on his left. He shifted around the boulder a little to his right, and waited.

It was difficult to tell, but he thought the person approaching must be small, or young. Or both. The foot-steps—they were out on the road now—were short and quick, and fell lightly. Jack wished for a moment that he’d kept himself in better condition since Korea, and wondered what he’d do next.

Then a girl’s voice exclaimed, “Oh my God! I hit it!” and he heard the footsteps break into a run.

Warily, Jack circled back to his left around the boulder, keeping it between him and the girl, until he was behind her.

She was small, trimly figured, and wearing jeans and a blouse. The jeans looked as if they’d seen a lot of wear and not as though they’d been worn for appearance. The blouse was big, and flopped loose at the waist, untucked. Her hair was long and tied back in a pony tail. He couldn’t see her face, but in her right hand was a rifle.

In four quick strides he was behind her, and then, as his shoe crunched on the gravel and she whirled, his hand was on the rifle.

“What-?”

“I’ll take that, thanks.” He tore the gun from her grasp and whirled her about until she was facing him.

“Okay, now you can tell me all about the hole in my car window,” he said, his voice firm and hard. She started back from him, and with his left hand he grabbed her wrist.

“Please!” She pulled ineffectually against his grip. “It was all a mistake. Let go of me, please!”

He relaxed his hold and then, deciding it made no difference, let go.

“Thanks.” She stepped back and rubbed her wrist, staring at him, apparently not knowing whether to be angry or frightened.

He hefted the rifle in his hand, looking at it quickly. It was a.22, hardly the gun anyone would choose to kill someone with. “What about that bullet hole?” he said, his voice a little more soft.

“I’m sorry; it was an accident. I had no business shooting in this direction, I admit that. But I had no idea anyone was on the road, and I truly never meant to hit anyone.”

“What were you trying to hit?”

“That.” She pointed, and up along the edge of the nearby bluff he saw a tin can stuck on the top of a sage bush.

“It was stupid of me; I hadn’t realized that if I over-shot I might hit anyone on the road. But there’s never anyone on this road. We almost always use the western gate. I had no idea someone would be coming. Who are you, anyway?”

“Well get to that. Who are you?”

“Linda Bates.”

“The Senators daughter?”

“Yes. Were you coming here to see Father?”

He nodded. “I had no idea he had a daughter as young as you.”

“I’m twenty,” she said shortly. “What did you want to see him about?”

He smiled. She looked perhaps eighteen, her face young and quite serious at the moment. She wasn’t wearing any make-up-she didn’t need it, either. The sun had done a good job of tanning her face, but she had the fresh young beauty which only years would weather.

“I’m Jack Eskridge. I represent United Electronics, a company in Chicago. I’m here to talk with your father about defense contracts.”

“You businessmen! You never leave a man alone, do you? Daddy’s always being chased by lobbyists when he’s at home or in Washington, and now he can’t even get a vacation—!”

Jack laughed ruefully. The shoe had shifted to the other foot. The rifle under his arm was suddenly an embarrassing weight. “I’m not just another lobbyist. I used to know your father during the war—Korea—and he’s been after me for years to come out here for some sunshine and fresh air. It’s just that it took a business excuse to get me to break away for the trip. I sent a telegram that I was on my way yesterday.” He handed the rifle back to her. “But I wasn’t expecting such a dramatic reception.”

Suddenly she was contrite again. “I’m sorry. I really am.” She turned and walked over to the car, staring wide-eyed at the bullet hole. It was just to the right of center. “Was it close?”

“I didn’t see it.” He joined her at the carside and leaned over to inspect the hole more closely. “It’s at an angle; you can see if you look closely.” He was strongly conscious of her close body, and hurried on. “It must’ve passed out through the side window. I didn’t hear it hit anything else. Didn’t come close.”

She shuddered. “If you’d been going a little faster—a foot’s difference and it would’ve hit you. I could’ve killed you!” Her face had gone pale under the tan, and suddenly she looked very small and unsure.

He had helped her into the car, putting the rifle on the floor of the back seat, and driven her back to the ranch. It had been a strange way for a romance to begin, he decided, a smile crossing his face, illuminated by the dashboard lights. It wasn’t every day you met the girl you wanted to marry by getting shot at by her.

He’d known Francis X. Bates for years, but never really well. In the war they’d fought together, he the sergeant, Bates the lieutenant, both Marine commandos.

Bates had been an ironhard man in his forties, Eskridge the young kid, fresh out of high school and the suburbs of Chicago, quickly toughening overnight from boy into man. They’d had a personally impersonal relationship; intimate because their lives often depended on each other, but never sharing more than their immediate thoughts, and these mostly concerned with the events at hand.

The intervening ten years had changed a lot of people. They had made Lt. Bates a retired major and then a Congressman. Eskridge had returned home and to school on the GI Bill, and entered the field of electronics.

“That’s the place, Frank,” he’d said. “Electronics. Look at radar, and television, all the other things that’re opening up. I used to be a radio ham; I bet I could get into something pretty good once I’ve got the training.”

Frank had smiled, that tight surface smile which contained his real thoughts without hint. “Ever think, about where this country—where the world—is going to be going now? You hardly remember the last war. But I do, and I remember the Thirties, too. There’re going to be a lot of social problems, Jack. There were problems after the last war—relocation, readjustments and so on, and a lot of unemployment—and it’ll be the same this time. It’s time people got interested in what makes things run the way they do. I’ve got a degree in law, and I think it’s time I stopped taking people’s money for telling them how to get around the capital gains tax and started finding out where those taxes go. If you see me on a ticket, boy, vote for me.”

From then on it had been Christmas cards, and little else. Jack had started his own garage workshop, and, with the aid of a partner, established Eskridge Electronics. Business had picked up remarkably, and they’d gotten in on the ground floor of systems development for the space effort. And along the way they’d outgrown both the garage and the name.

Two years before, Eskridge Electronics had merged with two other Chicago firms and Jack had become a vice president of United Electronics. He rarely saw the workbench any more; most of his time was spent behind a desk. And when he’d heard about Bates’ appointment to the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, he’d at last taken advantage of a long-standing invitation for a vacation on Bates’ ranch in Wyoming.

It was funny; he’d never even known the Senator had a daughter. He’d heard about Mrs. Bates’ death some years back; the Senator must have raised the girl himself. In his mind he could see her again, smiling as she kissed him on the final night of his stay. It had been a full two weeks, he reflected…

Now, as he sped through the night toward Chicago, his full briefcase beside him mute testimony to his business success, their plans for the announcement of their engagement ran pleasantly through his mind. Linda and her father were to fly to Chicago the next morning; there’d be a party there Saturday night at the home of the Seantor’s brother, where the official announcement would be made. The future looked very good, Eskridge thought for the hundredth time that night.

Suddenly the dark night was lit with a flash of brilliance bright as day.

There was no sound, but the great bluffs and outre shapes of the badlands seemed to leap out into stark relief—and then, as quickly as it had come, the light was gone, leaving the bluffs and hills silhouetted in afterimage in Jack’s eyes.

Jack slammed the brakes with his foot, momentarily blinded, and then with a sickening lurch the car slewed into a screaming skid. Desperately, he fought the wheel, his foot pumping the brakes as the car slid off the. . .