Greenflies Read online

  For a moment, there was silence. The human forces had orders not to make an aggressive move until their official representatives tried to establish contact with the creatures. There were MP’s trained in hostage negotiation in some of these vehicles. They were the ones who would be put in harm’s way to attempt to start a dialogue. Once that was accomplished, more important people might come to visit. For safety sake, none of those more important people were here now. Just people like John.

  John stood from his crouching position and manned the fifty caliber machine gun. He didn’t aim it per se, but it was certainly pointed more towards the nearest alien vehicle, the one between the Humvees, than away from it.

  The flanks of the alien transports gaped open, looking like the wide mouths of fish. Three Greenflies scampered out of each, moving on their lower four limbs for speed and agility. They each wielded a weapon, but it was not the blunt white bug gun that the troops had been told to expect. Instead, they were long, sleek silvery weapons. They consisted of a single tube leading to a stock and trigger. The tubes themselves bulged at regular intervals, as if they contained a dozen or so toroids along the length of the weapon. The weapons still possessed the organic aesthetic of the Greenflies, but their skin was more reminiscent of the inside of a clam shell or some kind of silver beetle.

  Something else moved out of each transport, a creature not yet seen. It was hemispherical, about three feet high, moving along a bed of thousands of insect-like legs, each no more than an inch long. The creature had a single eye, a replica of the Greenfly eye. More importantly, it possessed one of the silvery weapons, although much larger than those held by the Greenflies. It passed through the body of the hemispherical creature, slightly left of center, and two feet of gun barrel could be seen on each side. The hemispherical creature’s purpose became immediately clear. It scuttled up the side of the alien transport and planted itself on the transport’s roof. Perhaps calibrating itself, it rotated its weapon, scuttled back and forth along the transport surface. Seeing the turret beetle flush to the transport, the two brown hides were identical, and it was difficult to determine one creature from the next.

  The Greenflies spread slightly, but they were taking no aggressive action yet. They were merely taking position, their skins writhing madly.

  A man in a white radiation suit got out of one of the Humvees that John was focused on. Across the zoo, there were most likely other such delegates fulfilling their duty. Or chickening out.

  Because of the close proximity of the Humvee to the alien transport, the negotiator had little more to do than emerge from his car to be face to face with a Greenfly. The closest alien was about ten feet away, and it was on this creature that the negotiator focused. He held his hands slightly up and out to the side. With no obvious weapons and wearing only the white radiation suit, the negotiator was essentially a walking white flag.

  In the first human-like move John had seen any of the aliens make yet, the Greenfly seemed to cock its head quizzically. It took a moment for the humans to realize the move was actually the Greenfly’s method of sighting down the barrel of its weapon. The negotiator went rigid. The Greenfly’s skin just writhed. It made no other motions.

  The negotiator very slowly reached back to the Humvee and was handed a large bound book like a photo album. The book was quite thick and had the look of having been a dusty tome consigned to a library or private collection a few hours before. He very slowly held it out in front of him and opened it to a random page, facing the Greenfly.

  The Greenfly took a couple tentative steps forward, still staring down its gun but aiming more at the book than at the negotiator holding it. The page displayed a pressed butterfly.

  Taking the Greenfly’s reaction as interest, the negotiator reached forward and turned the page to reveal another butterfly. Then another.

  The Greenfly lowered its weapon and stood up on its hind two legs. While still holding the silver weapon in its foremost limbs it walked over to within three feet of the negotiator. Towering over the man in white, the Greenfly gently extended an abdominal limb and grasped the book. John was certain there were cameras somewhere around here snapping pictures of the two species grasping the book, an historic image that looked almost like shaking hands.

  The alien was a little less gentle in taking the book, but still there was no hostility. It held the book clumsily; it hung by its cover from one of the Greenfly’s abdominal claws. Its serpentine neck maneuvered down to the book, and it began prodding at the pages with its free abdominal claw. Not quite turning the pages, but nudging them enough to see that there were dozens of similar pressed insects in this book.

  Another Greenfly joined the first one in front of the negotiator. It had been stationed some twenty feet away, but it bounded over to the Greenfly with the book in a single easy leap. Then it too stood on its hind legs and began to prod the book. Between the two of them, they were almost able to open the book to specific pages. When not killing people or firing weapons, their hands seemed clumsy, like those of an ape, and the long claws frequently got in the way.

  The second Greenfly took the book and scampered back to its transport, three limbs on the ground, three off. The first Greenfly turned back to the negotiator.

  A mental image flashed into John’s mind as he watched this encounter from the relative safety of his turret. When he was a child, he had been camping in the outback with his family. When walking away from the camp one day, he and his sister had come across a dingo, a halfbreed actually. It had the mottled coloring and ears of a hound, but the distinctive look of a creature at home in the bush. It had little fear of people, and his sister had had the bright idea to feed it a candy bar. Before the camping trip was over, that dingo had bitten him and his father, rummaged through every tent, and had to be shot by a local hunter.

  The Greenfly loomed over the negotiator and poked him with one of its abdominal limbs. The gesture was not subtle; it pushed the negotiator back three feet and left him holding his ribs. The Greenfly followed with another poke to the shoulder, moving in the process to stand between the negotiator and his Humvee

  “We’ve just shown the dingo we have food,” John muttered, flicking the two safeties off the machine gun

  One of the other Greenflies jumped onto the top of the Humvee the negotiator had come out of. It looked like it was prepared to rip the thing apart with its claws. The ‘diplomatic’ Greenfly, on the other hand, was taking its frustrations out on the negotiator himself. He threw the MP to the ground and began mauling him. The alien rifle was held out of harm’s way behind the Greenfly’s back by the upper limbs, and the abdominal limbs were being used to savage the negotiator. Given the size of the Greenfly, all that could be easily seen was the back of the alien, with shreds white plastic being flung in every direction.

  Before the order could be formally given, combat was declared by the sound of automatic machine gun fire from somewhere on the other side of the ape enclosure. Evidently, the negotiator over there was having similar luck to the one being shredded here. It started as just a few quick bursts, but quickly grew to a cacophony.

  John opened up on the alien transport between the Humvees. The fifty caliber rounds thudded wetly against its hide, sitting gobs of purple blood everywhere. Other soldiers were doing the same. The armored personnel carrier beneath him was pumping clips of small arms fire into the same transport. There was some effort to concentrate fire on the turret beetle, but that creature seemed more densely armored than the transport proper.

  The crew of the Humvees on either side of the alien transport were focusing their firepower on the Greenflies themselves. Neither had a mounted gun, so the soldiers inside were leaning out the windows and firing with short-stocked assault rifles. The Greenfly atop the left Humvee was flung off the vehicle by the volume of fire. One soldier was getting out of the vehicle to more safely attack the Greenfly atop the negotiator.

  The Greenfly response was memorable.

  The turret beet
le atop the nearest transport scuttled rapidly to point the silver tube at John’s APC. A bolt of bright white lashed out. Blinded by the flash, John could feel the rush of heat and metallic rumble beneath him as the impact of the bolt was tilting the APC. The force of the blast wasn’t enough to completely tip over the APC, but it was more than sufficient to throw John from the turret. He hit the pavement of the pedestrian walkway blinking and cursing.

  The world was rhythmically flashing with the firing of Greenfly weaponry, and all John could hear was the staccato pops of gunfire. He put on the goggles that came with the radiation suit, and the tint provided just enough protection to see despite the onslaught of light from the alien weaponry.

  He was behind the APC relative to the alien transport between the Humvees. From this vantage point, he could only make out the alien transport on the artificial cliff face and a few odd Greenflies clambering nearby. All were firing. The Greenfly infantry weapon fired the same sort of white bolt, but the yield was much lower. Still, John could see that the effort to control the recoil of these ray guns was tremendous. The aliens had to be braced with all four of their lower limbs on the ground to do so. The turret beetle was not so constricted. From the transport atop the cliff-face, it was raining down death.

  John pulled his M-16 from its position strapped on his back and prepared to enter the APC. As he reached for a side door latch, the APC shuddered again and began to tip. Before its weight could right it again, the APC was struck twice more by fire from a turret beetle. It tipped further, reaching an angle John was sure would topple it. He bolted.

  The APC crashed onto its side, the vibration of its impact sending John sprawling to the ground yet again. As he looked up, he got his first hint at the damage the plasma blasts were inflicting. He could see an edge of the side of the APC struck by the blasts, and it glowed a dull red. He could see down into the APC from the top, now, through the turret he had been occupying a few seconds ago. There was smoke and steam in there. The smell was that of barbecue and burnt hair.

  As they fought, all of the Greenflies and their equipment were changing. Small shiny insects were crawling out of the upper part of the Greenfly torsos, emerging in a layer of frothing alien blood. The mirrory insects, each individually only a centimeter or so across, were trying to plate themselves across the Greenflies and their equipment, presumably some kind of armor. A similar coating of mirrored insects was creeping out of holes in the skin of the transports. The aliens had transformed from organic and insectile looking creatures into mirrored, almost robotic forms, spitting plasma.

  John ran. He did not pause to consider that he was deserting. He did not even take the time to rationalize that he was seeking better cover. He did not even know whether the battle was going for or against the humans. Sure enough, there was as much machine gun fire as there was plasma. He just bolted away down the footpaths, in the opposite direction from where the negotiation had been.

  Moving several times faster than a human could run, a Greenfly tackled him from the side. The impact sent both alien and soldier slamming into a steel railing. While John was out of breath, the silver-covered Greenfly ripped at his possessions and clothing. Shreds of white plastic, cloth, and blood flew in all directions. The thing moved so much faster than a human and with such great strength, there was little John could do to resist.

  In an act of desperation, John wrenched something from his equipment and offered the Silverfly a grenade, with pin pulled. The Silverfly examined the grenade closely, losing interest in John. It held the artifact at arms length while pointing the rifle at it with an extra pair of arms, using the rifle like some sort of scientific instrument. It didn’t seem to notice as John sprinted away for all he was worth. He got about thirty feet away when he heard the explosion behind him. A glance over his shoulder showed a pile of alien gore surrounded by the scattered shells of thousands of silver armor bugs.

  John saw a couple human soldiers waving him on from cover behind the remnants of a wrecked Humvee. The car seemed to have taken a plasma bolt to the engine block, leaving it half fused to the concrete. John darted around the back of the car and slumped against the rear tire. The Humvee had been parked beside a brick building, which provided good cover from that direction. This was a damned good position.

  There were two men back here as well as the body of a Greenfly, punctured by dozens of bullet wounds. At the Greenfly’s death, its mirrory insects had abandoned it, and they crawled in aimless circles around the corpse. The two soldiers here were giving it a wide berth.

  “Here!” one of the soldiers shouted while offering John a pistol, “Take this weapon!”

  John realized he had lost his assault rifle in his scuffle with the Silverfly. He snapped up the pistol and then looked over the edge of the Humvee.

  Plasma light continued to flash from various direction, and the sound of gunfire was omnipresent, but the Greenflies had spread out to the point where only one was visible from his current location, the transport atop the artificial cliff. By contrast, there were several clusters of humans visible despite their hiding behind cover. While the initial display of Greenfly firepower had been impressive, it might not have been enough to offset the humans’ superior numbers.

  Still, the silver transport atop the artificial cliff continued to spit plasma. It was aiming someplace beyond John’s current position, perhaps at the tanks in the parking lot. The transport was clearly drawing a lot of human fire, as small bursts of silver bugs would fall off the transport. They were quickly replaced. The silver insects seemed to function both as a form of ablative armor and a method for plugging wounds in a corrosive atmosphere.

  Suddenly, there was a pair of loud explosions, and clouds of insects erupted from the transport. The transport was pushed backwards by the impact and hovered right off the edge of the cliff. Apparently unable to hover in mid air, the transport crashed to the ground and rolled, crushing the turret beetle and leaving the alien transport inanimate on its side.

  A pair of helicopters flew low over the cliff, smoke still drifting from the missile launchers that had felled the transport. They continued on to further hunt the alien transports. While some plasma seemed to lash up from the ground to reach them, the plasma weapons seemed inaccurate at long range. The bolts seemed to dissipate in strength prior to reaching the helicopters. John witnessed a direct hit on a helicopter from an infantry plasma weapon, but it only seemed to singe the aircraft. A similar bolt had probably been what melted this Humvee to the ground.

  The two other troops behind the Humvee cheered at the passing aircraft. John wasn’t quite ready to join the sentiment. Instead of following the aircraft, he swung his head in a slightly different direction and saw a Silverfly standing atop the roof of the brick building. It was preparing to fire.

  Once again, John just bolted, vaulting over the rear of the Humvee. He could have shot the alien with his borrowed pistol. He could even have just shouted to warn the other troops behind the Humvee.

  The soldiers may not have even felt the blast, death came so swiftly. The combination of heat, kinetics, and charge blasted the bodies apart and left a glassy crater in the ground. More shots followed John, blasting apart a tree and steel fence near him before he found cover in the doorway of one of the zoo’s public restrooms. The rear of the small building had been blown apart by a turret beetle, so there was still a means of retreat. John took the moment to regain his breath before making a break for the edge of the zoo.

  There was a blue flash up in the sky, very high up. John peered out from his tenuous cover to see. A set of five contrails began there. It was just like the contrails you might see behind a 747, except these ones just began in empty space. From the look of the contrails, whatever was leaving them was spiraling lower towards the zoo.

  “Alien air support,” said John, “I am so fucking out of here!”

  He ran again, this time out the back of the wrecked restroom. He felt he knew his bearings well. It should be a simple matter
of a few hundred yards to the rear parking lot of the zoo and then out to the highway. If the troops in the rear lot were still there, he’d have to join them and fight, but even that was preferable to being alone in a combat zone. First priority was getting out of danger. If that could not be managed, company would have to suffice.

  He ran perhaps fifty yards towards the rear of the park when he felt it, a tingling from his scalp to his feet. An alien transport shot down the footpath from the rear parking lot. John had been unaware they could move so fast; it had to be traveling nearly a hundred kph, with just that dull rumble and tremendous static electricity to give it away.

  There was no time to do anything else. John just dropped to the ground prone while the hover-vehicle passed over him. It felt like a million ants crawling across his skin, while at the same time a giant anvil was placed on his back. He could smell his own hair being singed along with the metallic scent of ozone as the vehicle passed. He managed to point the pistol upwards and fired several times, instinctively just trying to make the pain stop.

  In a fraction of a second, it was over. The alien transport, and the electrical field beneath it were past. John clambered to his feet slowly, dazed and sore, most of his plastic suit singed to yellow. The transport had been heading away from the human command post in the rear parking lot, in what John considered a good sign the post was still intact. He limped in that direction, skirting close to the fencing and trees along the side of the path.

  He got into sight of it. There was a half-ring of APCs just like the one he had been manning, except that these were still manned. In the center of those APCs were the bodies of a pair of Silverflies, their insectile armor beginning to desert them and spread in pools beneath them. Beyond the APC ring were Humvees, command trucks, and nearly a hundred of his countrymen. The plasma damage seemed light.