Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

he had tried to speak up and offer to take a look at it, they hadn’t even heard him. He was a child, after all; what could he possibly have of value to offer to the discourse? Well, he would show them. That was when he had hatched his plan to sneak in and fix the damned thing. Then he could learn the secrets of the ancients, and they would respect him and title him a man.

The child went right to setting up shop, taking off his pack and dumping its contents onto the table. He plucked a cloth-wrapped morsel of salted meat, grinding it into a lump along with dried fruit and grain powder. Thoughtfully munching away on it, he walked in a slow circle around the projector, examining and scrutinizing it as if he were a pre-Storm consumer considering the purchase of a car.

By the time he had finished his snack, he knew how to proceed. Ratt went to work, sifting through the bits he had dumped out on the table; he played nurse as well as surgeon, trading one tool for another with fevered intensity. A screwdriver here, a 6-inch adjustable wrench there, and then his fingers mashed up some quick-dry epoxy like teeth to chewing gum.

Pausing only occasionally to wipe the beads of sweat from his furrowed brow, Ratt worked for no less than an hour before he finally stopped, stepped back, and brushed his grubby hands on his pants legs. He crossed his arms and looked his work over.

“Well, I think that’ll do her.”

He made his way over to the steel racks that ran from floor to ceiling around the perimeter of the room and began to browse through the reels of film.

Where do I even begin? he wondered as he stared at the thousands of titles, completely overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of choice.

“Huh.” Ratt stopped when he saw a title that reminded him of his current situation as if it were a meaningful synchronicity.

From Dusk till Dawn, the sticker on the film canister read in old English.

Ratt pulled the canister down from the shelf and brought it over to the table. Like a seasoned professional, he set it up and then produced an object from his pack’s pile. It was what was called a power pack—a cell of energy, common to and smuggled out of the war-mongering “Human Republic” of the north. Ratt, being the antique aficionado that he was, had converted it to take pre-Storm, North American 110.

Ratt plugged the antiquated device into the energy cell, pointed it at a blank wall, and hopped a squat on the floor, ready to unlock the secrets of the ancients.

When the film ended, Ratt sat transfixed until the reel ran its course, sending the screen into blackness and making a flap flap flap sound as it spun around and around, slapping its loose end against the body of the projector.

Ratt moved to stand and switch the machine off, his thoughts still hypnotized by the cinematographic marvel he had just witnessed, when the room grew dark. Darker than it should be, darker than he remembered.

Remembered? Wait? This isn’t happening, this is a memory.

“This is happening, Ratt,” said a disembodied voice.

Ratt couldn’t argue for once. He recognized his infiltration of the theater and movie viewing as a memory; he also realized that his current situation was not part of that memory.

“Who’s there?” The child stood up, glancing furtively about, only to realize that he was no longer a child, but the man-boy he currently was. He was here, in this dreamworld, while also, somehow, distantly aware of his body lying on the sandy ground of a desert, at the feet of the goddess he served.

The dark theater continued to darken until no shapes or distances could be perceived. A second longer and Ratt was in a perfect void of black, yet still able to see his own body as clear as day.

“What’s going on? Who are you?” Ratt demanded.

“I’m waiting for you, Ratt. I need you to finish what I’ve started. To help my old friend.” The voice came from all around, as if it were a loudspeaker in his skull, making its location in the void impossible to discern. But Ratt was beginning to suspect there wasn’t a “body” to this voice anyway. This place, this vision, was outside the pale of a normal Earth-and-physics-bound encounter.

“You cannot perish now. I’ve pulled this memory from your mind to show you your adversary. It is old, and has been on Earth before. Enki was not the only prisoner kept in Hell, after all.”

“Enki? What are you talking about? Why don’t you show yourself?”

“I won’t be able to maintain a connection with you much longer. Awaken, share your knowledge. Survive. Enter the Labyrinth inside the Engine. My old friend needs your help.”

“Wait!” Ratt shrieked, throwing his open hands up in a pleading gesture. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about!”

“You will, Ratt. You will.”

7

“To your right!” Carbine shouted out, and Jon reacted with his hammer before his eyes, swinging the glowing head into a savage that charged in to test the waters while Jon was tangling with another.

The blow sent the foe tumbling into the dust. A moment later, it stood back up, snarling.

Two flat shots rang out from Carbine’s pistol, and Jon watched the exit wounds blossom open on the savage’s chest. Only the concussive force caused the man-beast to stumble; otherwise, it did not seem hurt at all.

“We can’t fight this!” Jon yelled, holding back panic more effectively than he was holding back the pack of beastly thugs. The savage ignored the gaping chest wounds and redoubled its efforts to overtake Jon. Its boldness tipped the scales of caution for the rest of the pack, and they all charged in from the edges of the camp, their half-circle closing around the party like a fist.

Maya perched over the comatose Ratt like a mother bird protecting its young while more flat cracks issued from