David Scholes, Alien Hunter
excerpt
A humanoid alien designated an Alien Hunter Class 5 and formerly a Star Trooper, Gladiator, and Mercenary is “dumped” on Earth by the Universal forces of nature. The so called “Hand of God.”
With his Earth liaison officer Chicago detective Chris McInnes in tow, the displaced visitor starts a one alien war against corruption, crime, and terrorism on Earth. Both human and alien.
Alien Hunter Publisher: Lulu Self Publishing, 2012 Vendor: Amazon Digital Svc. Length: 106 pages File Size: 141 KB ISBN: 1471619249 ASIN: B007HYRT6K Text-to-Speech: Enabled |
7 Chris’s Secret
Thallalia had been an indigenous woman from the tribes in the Beltran enclave of Wargaran 9. She had possessed exceptional intuitive, empathic, sympathetic and other capabilities. Though not a leader as such it was she to whom the tribes looked for smoothing relationships between them, mediation in disputes, comfort in difficult times, and for advice in the face of adversity.
Earle had suspected that Thallalia was able to draw on the capabilities of the other women of her tribe. Only when he was leaving that star system did she as good as admit it. She had even hinted of a broader capability.
As he thought of Thallalia, Earle was looking directly across at his Earth liaison officer and former Chicago PD detective Christine McInnes. Had he come across another such example? Of a woman able to draw from the empathic and intuitive resources of a pool of her species and sex? And, if so, just how large was the pool? As Earle pondered this, Chris just smiled at him. Was it his imagination or was that smile just a little broader than usual?
He had seen Chris’s file. She had been good, very good, at what she did. An exemplary record in mediation, hostage negotiation, liaison between community groups and other things. He also knew quite a bit of her background before she became a cop. Far more than she knew of him. Yet he didn’t know everything about her. Not at all. Chris had her secrets.
Earle was not telepathic as such and never had been. Yet he could sense another entities general mood, sense fragments of their thoughts, and the general thrust of their thought processes. He could do so with animals of at least rudimentary intelligence and even with remarkably alien life forms. It came in useful when you were hunting them down. Yet he had always resisted the temptation to use this capability to get a sense of Chris’s thoughts. He would never do this to her.
Chris too was able to detect something of the thoughts of others. Yet in an entirely different way to Earle. A softer less penetrating way. Earle seemed to have to go into a mind whereas Chris seemed to just pick up on some of what came out of it.
It was now a matter of record that primordial forces scarcely younger than the Universe itself had been reluctant to separate Earle and Chris. To break the bond between them by returning Earle to his part of the Universe. Ever the pragmatist Earle realized that there was no way he had given pause to these elemental forces. It was something to do with Chris and her side of the bond between them.
Earle knew that each world, even those without sentient life, contained forces of nature that were a sub-set of the Universal natural forces. He knew also that this did not mean the localized, planetary forces of nature were always subservient. He had seen the planetary natural forces even find a way to support and be supported by the dominant indigenous life forms. Always with the women. Always. Had something akin to this happened here? On Earth? Perhaps not, yet it would explain a great deal.
Chris was looking at him again, smiling again. A huge broad grin.
Well now let’s see,” she laughed “now that you have eliminated every alien on Earth who do we take on next? the Mexican drug lords, Al Quaeda and associated organizations, the Italian Mafia, the Columbian Mafia, the Taliban, North Korea, Iran?
She was teasing him of course. They had already discussed Earle’s plans. Even discussed the plans with a select few - in politics, in the military, in government administration, in law enforcement and the judicial system. People in whom they had well placed confidence. People whom they had sussed out early on. Even before Earle and Chris had become a team. For anyone who thought she was still no more than just his liaison was seriously misreading the current situation. These select few were unquestionably well disposed to Earle and his intentions. They were also an influential few that could help a little if and when it was needed.
* * *
Not for the first time Chris wondered how Earle’s race might have fared on Earth. She knew intuitively that no others of that warrior race would have matched his might.
Even so they would all have seemed like supermen here on Earth. Could they have integrated here? Interbred even? It was a purely theoretical question. She knew from Earle that the few survivors of his race were scattered among the stars. Chris had made every effort not to try to sense Earle’s thoughts. Yet near constant exposure to him meant that some of those thoughts, just a few, had seeped into her mind. She knew that he sought one day to bring his race together to re-unify them. Provided they wanted it.
If Earle was physiologically representative of his race, then the two races were indistinguishable from merely casual observation. Only when she came to know Earle better did Chris become aware of some of the differences. She knew the obvious things early on. Things like the greater bone density, higher resistance to injury and disease, accelerated self healing, far more acute sight and of course the life force re-generation. Yet from time to time something would come up that she had not noticed before. Usually something seemingly unimportant, something physical or sometimes something psychological. A way of thinking even that was not of this Earth.
* * *
There was fear in the local Taliban commander’s eyes. A fear mirrored in the eyes of his fellow commanders. A fear they had never known before and something neither the Western military nor any other Earthly force could have evoked in them. It was nothing these redoubtable tribesmen need be ashamed of. That which came for them now had evoked fear in greater opponents. Creatures the Taliban were unlikely to experience in their worst nightmares would have been able to sympathize with them.
Even though it was the fighting season, the insurgents had broken off contact with the Western military. They had known what was coming. Ever since Earle had destroyed the two shifters that had been helping them.
Compared to many the alien hunter had sought out, finding the Taliban was easy. Warm blooded humanoid types lacking sophisticated masking technologies and protected just by meters of rock. No defence at all really.
More, Earle found this place, considered inhospitable by so many, to his liking. Isolated, a trifle rugged, the air rarefied but clean and bracing.
Chris pondered on this. She had never seen Earle troubled by cold or heat for that matter. Never did he need to rug up or dress down. She doubted he ever needed to activate his light armour to compensate for the extremes of temperature anywhere on Earth.
* * *
Earle did not come alone. Chris was with him and a multinational Special Forces group with at least tacit approval from their various Governments. An elite within an elite. The very best of the best. All of whom had worked with Earle and Chris before.
They came in several of the new stealth, whisper helos. Earle had cloaked them so they were silent rather than just whisper quiet. Silent and with zero rather than merely reduced radar signature. Though here the former was more important than the latter.
He was right to do so. The shifters had left the Taliban a legacy. Crude, rifle length, thin, hand held energy projectors that could take down any Earth aircraft. Even a USAAF Raptor or an RAF Eurofighter. It had been not unlike when the CIA had supplied stinger man portable anti-aircraft missiles to the Mujahadeen to counter Russian airpower in the late 1980’s. But the Taliban couldn’t shoot down what they couldn’t detect.
It made Chris wonder how much other alien weaponry, shifter, Drealth and other was still around. Available to criminals, terrorist groups, and countries like Iran and North Korea even though Earle had eliminated all the alien visitors.
Chris knew that any alien arriving on Earth either inadvertently through the hand of god effect or via extra-dimensional teleportation could only bring what they could carry. It was of course the reason, thankfully, that Earth (and Earle) hadn’t had to contend with alien heavy weaponry. None of the visitors had the benefit of Earle’s IDS - interdimensional storage - technology - whereby his IDS back-pack stayed with him when he was transported.
Yet even Earle couldn’t be certain what bits and pieces of advanced technology and cobbled together weaponry had been passed on to the locals.
* * *
At an altitude just above the surrounding peaks Earle sat at the edge of his helo. The Universe’s best sniper using one of the Universe’s best weapons. Taken from his IDS back-pack. A Tolden high energy OTH sniperifle. Carefully appraising the location of his quarries. First using only his natural senses then confirming this with his technology. Then he started firing. Line of site of targets first followed by those that were over the horizon. At times the Tolden weapon fired energy bolts in unison and at times single shots. The tons of rock between him and the Taliban fighters he sought out offering them no protection whatsoever.
It didn’t take long and after this the boots hit the ground in a number of locations around 3am for a clean up operation that continued for the rest of the day and into the next day. Earle took no rest and the others, Chris included, rotated with minimal rest. To the Taliban he must have seemed like a machine. Which was generally how the machines themselves actually viewed him. The cyborgs, the androids, and the bots he had faced and beaten in his part of the Universe. It was the ultimate compliment. If you happened to be a machine.
This was a place where, at one time or another, the British, the Russians, the Americans had all floundered. A place where history had always denied the invader. Until now.
When they had finished Earle, Chris and the elite Special Forces group had not completely defeated the Taliban but they had ripped the guts out of it here in what was still its heartland. The remnants could now easily be dealt with by the briefed and readied conventional military forces in this area.
Chris knew this was going to be Earle’s tactic. To break the back of whomever or whatever he confronted. To tip the scales well against them and then let conventional military and law enforcement agencies finish the job.
In some ways these were heady times. Yet she was worried. Not just the alien weaponry in so many wrong hands. There had been some talk of hybrid human/alien weapons with the shifters and drealth cooperating with the US and other semi-clandestine units. Units set up by different countries to confront Earle if he went bad.
Earle’s actions against the terrorist organization of the Taliban were as much a demonstration of intent as of power. Anyone on Earth who hadn’t been living in a vacuum or a Tibetan monastery for the last few years knew he had the power and now they saw his intent. It left everyone wondering many with excitement, yet others with fear, as to who might be next.
* * *
Not many people in the Universe have confronted raw, naked evil as often or in as many different forms as Earle has. Almost no one really. Not many people in the Universe have such an inimical hatred of raw evil. Almost no one else really.
The evil that is resident upon the Earth, human evil, may not have the power of others who have fought against Earle. Yet make no mistake, there is evil here. Human evil, as inherently evil, as the alien evil you will find out there among the stars.
And Earle, the Universe’s best class 5 alien hunter had only just started to deal with that evil on Earth. A juggernaut had been set in motion.
* * *
For one Mexican drug lord the question as to who was next after the Taliban was rudely answered at about 4am in the morning. The man, the worst among the worst, was pulled out of his bed and still in what passed for pyjamas raised by the throat and lifted effortlessly off the ground.
As the man immediately gasped for air Earle, holding the drug lord with only one arm, looked him in the eyes. He was always curious to see just how tough an adversary might be when they were divested of their protection. Bodyguards and aides and sycophants and such. Not that these categories were mutually exclusive.
Chris indulged this trait of Earle’s which she had seen just several times before.
Usually Earle found his victims turned out to be not nearly as tough as they thought they were. The drug boss proved no exception.
In a way the wheel had turned full circle. Earle was back in the place where he had first arrived on Earth. At that time he had given the local thugs a little something to think about. To remember him by. Now he was going to give them an information overload.
Copyright © 2012 by David Scholes
