Alien Manifesto Read online

  Alien Manifesto

  The Adventures of the Human

  Thomas Scott

  Book I

  By T.W. Embry

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by

  Crimson Cloak Publishing

  at Smashwords

  First Edition

  July 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of Fiction. Names, characters, events or locations are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for private, individual entertainment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form by ANY means (electrical, mechanical, photographic, audio recording or otherwise) for any reason (excepting the uses permitted by the licensee by copyright law under terms of fair use) without the specific written permission of the author.

  Cover by

  Les Holmes

  Cover Design by

  Helen Rusinoff

  Edited by

  Veronica Castle

  Acknowledgments

  To the many whom I owe so much. Where this tall tale started and to whom I owe a debt of gratitude is the question I will try to answer here.

  This tall tale started out as a short story, a gift for my lovely and talented wife Linda on her birthday. It was written on a camping trip, under a 500-year-old Florida live oak tree. Whom I am deeply honored to call my oldest friend. Its fate unsure this day, for man has designed a better way to which the water should flow, killing us all with their ignorance by rerouting Mother Natrure’s design of the Kissimmee river.

  To my lovely wife Linda, you are my other half, for I could not survive without you. You are my inspiration in things that really matter, my counsel, my biggest fan and always and forever my love. My love, all I can say in my defense is that the story grows taller on down the line. I beg your indulgence once again.

  A big thank you goes out to my wonderful daughter Corri for her help when I was stuck with the story line, for being a sounding board for new ideas. I am proud of the woman you have become.

  To my loving mother for her unwavering and fiercely loyal support of anything I ever tried, in whose eyes I can do no wrong.

  To my Grandma Scott for passing on to me her quiet determination and for teaching me the true meaning of unconditional love, a lesson I hope I learned well and will always try to live by. In life and as in the game of rook, I promise, I will not go set until I have to!

  To my Uncles Paul and Joe Scott for their love of my tall tales, a hard-won hand of Rook and their encouragement of my artistic endeavors.

  To my brothers Paul and Don who will love me even if I fail, again.

  To my nephew Ian for all his work on the cover art, thank you, I am and always will be eternally grateful.

  To my departed father, for telling me I can’t do it. Too late, I realized that in his own way he was pushing me onward to bigger things in the only way I could be pushed successfully. For that, I am both grateful and sad that it took me so long to see it. I do truly regret the fact that I cannot tell him that I finally got it, and share this story with him. I think of him often and I miss his counsel and certainly his dry wit.

  To my sister Cathy for her cheerful and enthusiastic encouragement of my first attempts at artistic expression, one that for once may do well. Thank you for keeping our business out of any trouble so I could afford to take the time to write this story.

  To my extended family for all their loving support, for cheering me on, for putting up with my absence from many a family outing. Because of this support I could finally finish this story, a long and difficult labor of love.

  To my second father Jim, thank you for your fiercely loyal support, for your unconditional love from which I benefit so much.

  To master Yoda for his words of wisdom, “Do or do not, there is no try.”

  Last, but certainly not least, my gratitude to the feline masters and the canine fight masters for being such good sports, you know who you are.

  PART ONE

  The Adventures of the Human, Thomas Scott

  My name is Thomas Dale Scott, chief petty officer third class, U.S. Navy, retired. Former Navy S.E.A.L. now soldier of fortune, minus the fortune. I was not retired either by choice or by mandatory retirement. My career was over the minute the hostilities first ended in Iraq then Afghanistan. Some pencil pushing politician in D.C. decided that Tom Scott, and anyone like me, was no longer necessary in the new Special Forces. I knew too much and I had seen things those in power never wanted to become public knowledge. I was a liability, turned out like the next day’s garbage. Now if I came forward with what I knew, I would simply be discredited, jailed under false pretenses like a common criminal.

  You see, I was with S.E.A.L. Team 4 for two tours in Iraq and then three tours in Afghanistan fighting the Islamic radicals. I have twenty-one confirmed enemy kills to my credit, all in hand to hand or small arms combat. I even have some of those unconfirmed, long distance non-combatant kills. The ones I won’t ever talk about and will try desperately to forget for the rest of my life.

  I was very good at my job. I have the scars as proof; I’ve been shot twice, stabbed four times and hit with grenade shrapnel in my left shoulder. Let’s not forget the scars no one could see, I had plenty of those. Now, to the military brass I am just a broken down has-been waiting for his shrinking government pittance at the end of each month, discarded and forgotten. If it weren’t for my meager disability pay, I might not even exist at all.

  In order to survive, I decided to try my hand at a life of crime. I ran into a former comrade of mine a while back who, like me, was out on his ear. He had been discharged by the US Army Rangers without even a thank you from a grateful nation for killing in the name of God and country. The both of us were a modern version of crusading Christian knights of old. He introduced me to some friends of his, all ex-Special Forces with no other skills except teamwork, breaking into places, killing and blowing shit up.

  Trouble was, we were fresh out of Johnny jihads here in the States. It would be a dishonorable thing to kill my fellow Americans for a living. Not after I swore a sacred oath on my personal honor, to protect them from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Even from each other if needed.

  We could start a revolution, and teach those corrupt, greedy, self-serving politicians the true meaning of honor and patriotism. Bring back a government that defends the rights of the people, instead of dispensing them to us as if we were unruly children, ignorant and unable to think for ourselves. This was, however, not my idea of a good career choice. Since killing and blowing shit up was out, this limited our skill set to a kind of specialized teamwork, one not much in legal demand. I figured I might as well put all that expensive training to good use now that Uncle Sam could care less about me, or my future.

  I have no family; the sisters at the Good Shepherd Home for Boys orphanage in Miami raised me. I had bright-red hair as a kid and a temper to match. I learned to fight bigger opponents early on, much to the anger and dismay of the good Sisters, who ran the orphanage. To escape, I went straight into the military on my eighteenth birthday. It was either join the military, or a short life of crime followed by lots of jail time.

  So why not a life of crime now that I have the skills, while I am still young enough to use them? It might be fun. Beats the hell out of being broke, homeless and despised like so many other of my older fellow veterans. I missed the sound of nightly gunfire and the camaraderie. I especially missed the helicopter rides in the dark, I thought to myself. What I did not know was that tonight my whole life was about t
o take an abrupt turn into the “holy shit I can’t believe this is happening to me” direction.

  My newfound associates were staging a raid on a high security warehouse, just outside of the port of Miami security perimeter. The plan was to steal a shipment of recycled money scheduled to be withdrawn from circulation and replaced with new. Having drawn the short straw and as the group’s newest member, it was my job to stand guard over the team’s secondary escape route. Never mind that I had more combat experience than any one of my newfound friends. It didn’t matter; I was the FNG so I got the shit detail.

  It began when something moved into the corner of my vision, silent like a ghost from my imagination, snapping me to full alert. I turned my head, instinctively scanning, and saw a black silhouette on the nearby street, silent, stopped, waiting. The incoming threat, if that is what I saw, was outlined faintly in the pallid flickering of the only working streetlight left in this deserted section of the wharf district. Probably some lost biker, getting directions from his GPS. No need to alert the others, not yet, they would just think I was a nervous rookie. They would be wrong because I was as far from a rookie as any living, breathing ex-S.E.A.L. can be.

  We were in the outskirts of Miami. I was guarding a dock jutting out into Biscayne Bay, near the inlet and the intercoastal waterway. It was hot, gusty and insufferably humid as only it can be in south Florida at night. My black fatigues were damp with sweat and sticking to my back. It was pitch-black, not even the full moon shone through the thick, black clouds. It would rain again soon, lightning was flashing in warning of another oncoming thunderhead. Perfect conditions for a heist; no one would venture out voluntarily in this weather.

  My teammates had fanned out, moving into attack position, headed for the warehouse, close by, yet out of sight. We intended to escape down the inter-coastal with our loot by the speedboat I was guarding, should the need arise. Our backup plan, in case an alarm was raised and the land route was blocked by the cops.

  The silhouette suddenly vanished from the flickering light, just as silently as it had emerged from the darkness. A brief glimpse of a helmeted figure on what looked like a motorcycle was all I had seen, in the streetlight’s pitiful attempt at illuminating the sticky darkness. Whoever it was turned toward me, moving closer, raising my alert level to high. Was it a cop on a motorcycle? No, it was moving too fast, too quiet!

  Instinctively I retreated deeper into the shadows, trying to melt into the darkness. I reached for the com-link to warn the others. My gut told me it was too late. Damn it! I am better than this. I had been made by whoever was riding that bike.

  He must have night vision, which ruled out the local cops. This spelled a different kind of trouble. Closer the bike came, straight at me now, silently, deliberately, without slowing. Then, braking suddenly, he stopped about one hundred feet directly in front of me, smashing all of my remaining hopes of escape.

  With my back to the water, the only place to retreat was down the dock; I was trapped. I could attempt to escape into the shallow water around the dock, abandoning the speedboat and my teammates. It meant a long swim in the dark. It wouldn’t be my first long, dark swim. That would be my emergency plan. I would make my stand here; there was only one of them. If it wasn’t the cops, then who? And why?

  I tensed for the biker’s move, my fighting knife drawn in my left hand, held low along my leg. It would have to be a quiet kill. Suddenly a flash of very bright light stunned my eyes, completely disorienting me. In those couple of seconds my warning to my teammates went unsent, forgotten in the changing of the situation.

  Suddenly the bike was much closer than it had been. As my eyes struggled to regain focus, I heard a deep almost mechanical male voice hiss in perfect English, “Tom, I have been watching you for quite sssome time, my boy, and I must sssay I am very impressssed.”

  He knows who I am! That strange voice caused a cold chill to run down my spine. What the hell is going on here!

  Slowly the stranger dismounted his bike, swinging his left leg up and back over the seat, leaving the bike between us. Standing, he removed his helmet, tucking it under his left arm. He remained in the darker shadows of the two huge oak trees that guarded the entrance to the dock. He was right-handed. I crouched, tensing, preparing my attack, waiting for his, remembering my S.E.A.L. hand-to-hand and small arms combat training. But Who? And Why?

  “You ssseee,” he hissed softly as he began moving toward the front of the bike, getting closer, “I saw you get your assss kicked by ssShorty in the sssecond grade. And I sssaw you covering for that girl they caught sssmoking on the playground, after ssschool. What wasss her name? Jill? Jan? No matter,” he hissed, “what isss important isss that you ssstood up for sssomeone weaker than you. I doubt you thought the whole thing through at that age. But you ssstuck to your gunsss and never told what really happened, no matter how hard the nunsss punissshed you. They forced the church’sss twisssted versssion of right and wrong on you for all thossse yearsss. Thossse church run orphanagesss can be ssso dehumanizing if you are not a believer or at leassst pretend to be one. Later in high ssschool,” he continued, as I was still speechless to say the least, “Good at sssports but not good enough to go pro. Then a little trouble with the law and it wasss the military or jail. Followed by 2 toursss in Iraq then 3 toursss in Afghanissstan with the ssS.E.A.L.s You have become quite the bad-assss, my boy. You will, however, be very sssorry you fell in with thisss group of losssers sssoon enough. That bringsss usss to why I am here,” he hissed.

  He knows all about me! How could he? No one knows me that well! Regaining my voice I growled, “Who are you and what do you want? Tell me quickly, I’ve no patience for this kind of game.”

  By now, my eyes had completely regained their night vision. I could make out what could only be described as an alien, not the kind from Mexico either. The shadowy voice had stepped in front of the cycle’s headlight revealing the identity of the mysterious stranger, who knew all about me.

  It, or should I say he, was well over six feet tall. Complete with small, slender tentacles surrounding a very large mouth full of long, needle sharp teeth. His bulging, muscular arms had hands with claws on the end of the fingers. His equally muscular legs ended in bare, clawed feet. His skin was leather-like, a dark, dull green, almost reptilian.

  He was wearing a plain, black, short-sleeved fabric tunic, much like the fighting Gi used in Earth martial arts. Around his waist was some sort of equipment or weapons belt. He wore a small, square, metal device on his neck, as to its function I could only guess. His voice seemed to emanate from it. Equally strange was his bike, it had no wheels, made no sound and it was suspended somehow in mid-air, seemingly floating.

  As he moved even closer, I moved my right hand, reaching to bring the Beretta .40 cal. on my right thigh to bear on mister mysterious. He was getting too close. In a blur of motion, I was facing a similarly fashioned hand weapon. I had not even seen him begin his reach for his weapon. Frozen, poised to draw, I waited. I would have never drawn my weapon in time, I realized.

  “Now, Tom, I am jussst here to talk, I have sssomething for you,” he hissed softly, carefully.

  “What could you possibly have that I might want?” I growled, fully tensed, intending to strike, and just waiting for an opening, my right hand gripping the still holstered Beretta.

  “My name is ssSnarth and I have a job offer for you,” he hissed ever so gently.

  “What kind of job? Why should I trust you?” I asked, relaxing my stance and sheathing my knife.

  “Becaussse if I wanted you dead dear boy, I would have just disssintegrated you long ago, and sssaved myssself consssiderable time and expenssse,” Snarth hissed louder, confidently, relaxing his stance in kind, holstering his weapon with a twirling flourish. “Keeping tabsss on sssomeone from acrossss the galaxy getsss expensssive, no matter what planet you are from.”

  I relaxed my combat stance completely now and stood facing the alien, Snarth he called himself. Having be
en raised in an orphanage I was not one to let opportunities pass me by no matter how strange they may be. “Where might that be?” I asked, releasing my grip on the Beretta, yet not letting my hand stray too far.

  “Where isss what, dear boy? Snarth hissed, confused.

  “The planet you are from!” I said evenly, trying not to let the strangeness of this encounter show in my voice, yet unable to stop the sharpness in my answer.

  “Oh that, noticed did you? ssSuffice it to sssay it isss a very long way from here,” Snarth hissed with a guttural chuckle and a casual wave of the hand opposite his weapon.

  As if this happened to him all the time, meeting an alien for the first time: and who is to say he did not?

  “To dessscribe it to you would be an exercissse in futility azsss you have no frame of reference to underssstand it in. It would be a sssafe bet to sssay that I am not from Earth,” Snarth hissed casually. “No matter, that isss a dissscusssion for another time. My ssship isss nearby. Won’t you join me in a chilled glassss of the finessst Belgian abbey ale you have ever had? Or a sssmoke of the finessst, if you prefer itsss delightsss inssstead.” My now gracious, new-found, seemingly best friend hissed smoothly with what must pass for a smile on his tentacle-wiggling face.

  “Besssidesss,” he hissed, “thisss whole job isss a ssset up by Metro-Dade police department and Homeland ssSecurity. There isss no money ssshipment in that warehoussse. Your friendsss are walking into a trap that will either get them killed or arresssted. And when they do they may blame you. It would be a ssshame to wassste all that talent of yoursss locked away in sssome jail cell, now wouldn’t it, my boy? I am here to help you essscape if you would rather. I do wisssh you would look passst who I am and hurry up and make up your mind. Time isss very ssshort, the authoritiesss are on their way, a large number of them,” Snarth urged in response to the trill of some sort of sensor alarm on the bike.