Noah: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Hell Squad Book 6)

Hell Squad: Noah

Anna Hackett

Noah

Published by Anna Hackett

Copyright 2015 by Anna Hackett

Cover by Melody Simmons of
eBookindiecovers

Edits by
Tanya Saari

ISBN: 978-0-9943584-5-5

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, events or places is coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form.

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Hell Squad: Marcus

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Chapter One

One job down. Five hundred and seven to go.

Noah Kim ducked out of the small doorway and into the bright afternoon sun. He pressed a hidden button on the outside and watched the door—camouflaged to look like rock—slide closed. Once it was shut, there was no way to tell a secret entrance was hidden there.

He turned and started walking into the trees, headed back to Blue Mountain Base.

The secret storage facility he was working in was a ten minute walk from the main base. When they’d turned the former military base into a haven for survivors of the vicious alien invasion that had decimated Earth a year and a half ago, none of them had known this secret storage area was here.

Noah had discovered it when he and his tech team had been busy upgrading a part of the power system. He’d stumbled across old electrical cables that led in this direction from the main base. From what he could tell, the facility had housed some sort of power generator, as there were still giant turbines in place, but over the years—as energy technology increased and nuclear generators had become safe and solar-power systems viable—it had become obsolete.

The best thing about it, though, was the facility wasn’t listed on Blue Mountain Base’s official plans. Plans they’d recently discovered the leader of the United Coalition of Countries had sold to the aliens in return for his own safety.

Noah scowled.
Bastard
. President Howell had saved himself, and not the millions of people he’d vowed to protect. Noah stopped, forcing himself to take a second to breathe in the fresh mountain air to calm his temper. Summer was approaching, and temperatures were beginning to rise. In fact, the afternoon was hot.

Right here, right now, surrounded by the tall gum trees and hearing the rustle of small animals in the bushes and the sounds of birds overhead, Noah could almost pretend the invasion had never happened. That the dinosaur-like raptors had never arrived in their monstrous, giant spaceships and wiped out all the major cities on the planet. His gaze turned to the east, but the view was blocked by the trees. Still, he knew the ruins of Sydney were there—the once-beautiful, busy capital of the Coalition. Now, nothing more than a broken, deserted ruin.

One of those shattered skyscrapers had housed Noah’s billion-dollar, online tech company. He’d always loved electronics, from the time he was old enough to tap on a comp. He’d driven his parents crazy, tinkering with things. At the age of five, he’d freaked his mother out by disassembling the toaster because it kept burning his toast. After he’d put it back together, it had worked like new. At ten, he’d pulled his father’s comp apart. Noah had inherited his father’s short temper. But after a fiery outburst, and after Noah added a few improvements and reassembled the comp, his dad had loved his faster device.

Noah had started work in a private R and D company in his teens, making a small fortune in salary. Then he’d started his own company, made his first million at seventeen, and his first billion at twenty-five. Kim Technology Inc. had been known as a hip, creative place to work, and a place on the cutting edge of tech. He’d been inundated by bright, young grads looking for work. Some days, he’d wished he wasn’t the boss. Some days he hadn’t wanted all the calls, emails, and meetings—he’d just wanted to lock himself in his tech lab and fiddle with his latest ideas.

Well, now he got to hang out in his tech lab all the time. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of tinkering now, though. Mostly he kept the base’s ventilation running, the lights on, and the hot water hot, and fixed every other damn problem the residents had. He started walking again, scraping a hand through his straight, black hair. It had gotten so long, it brushed his shoulders, something that would have given his old-fashioned grandmother heart failure.

The thought of her made him smile, and a small pain burned in his heart. God, he missed her and his parents. His Aussie mother and South Korean father had been on a vacation in South Korea, visiting his grandmother, when the aliens invaded. Some small part of him hoped they’d survived, but Seoul had been wiped out, just like every other major city around the world.

He rounded a tree and kept moving. He never used the same path to the storage facility twice. Devlin, second-in-command of the base’s recon team, had scouted out a few different routes with him. Dev had warned that they couldn’t risk leaving a trail the aliens could spot.

In the storage facility was the base’s last hope if the aliens found them.

General Adam Holmes, head of Blue Mountain Base, was working overtime with Noah to get Operation Swift Wind organized. They had to get it operational
before
the aliens attacked.

And everyone knew it was only a matter of time.

Noah stepped into a clearing, taking a second to enjoy the sun—he missed it, being stuck underground. He might love being hunched over a desk with electronic components spread in front of him, but he’d also been a keen surfer. Bondi Beach had been a favorite place of his to escape to on the weekends.

Needless to say, he didn’t get to surf anymore.

Suddenly, there was a loud rushing noise in the sky. Frowning, he glanced up—and saw a small raptor ptero ship whizz by overhead.

Fucking hell
. He froze. What were they doing so close to base?

Another flew past. Its shape was so distinctive—like the flying dinosaurs of Earth’s past, it had two large wings, and narrowed into points at both the front and back. Red lights glowed along the wings and what had to be the cockpit window at the front.

Fear spurred him to action, and Noah started to run. He glimpsed the pteros wheeling around, pointed wings aimed at the ground as they executed impossibly tight turns. Apparently, it had been too much to hope that they hadn’t seen him.

Shit.

They flew straight back in his direction.

Noah pumped his arms, his heart thumping in his chest. He went to the gym, kept fit. But deep down, he knew he couldn’t cross the clearing in time.

Green poison splattered the ground around him. He skidded to a halt, dirt flying, and dodged to the side.

Frantically, he checked he hadn’t been hit. Nearby, he heard the sizzle as the raptor poison ate through the grass and dirt. He knew the stuff paralyzed, and apparently hurt like hell. He ran again, pushing for all the speed he had. He glanced back and saw the ships turning again for another pass.
Shit, shit, shit
.

Suddenly, people poured out of the trees. Soldiers dressed in black carbon fiber armor.

“Noah!” Marcus Steele yelled. “Get down.”

Noah dropped.

Marcus was leader of the base’s roughest, toughest group of commandos—Hell Squad. The rest of Hell Squad’s soldiers fanned out. They were all holding their carbines, aiming into the sky. One of them, Reed MacKinnon, held a modified carbine Noah knew could also fire explosives.

And the squad’s sniper, Shaw Baird, was balancing a laser-guided missile launcher on his shoulder. The squad’s only female soldier, Claudia Frost, stood beside him, her laser scope held up as she targeted the enemy.

“Steady,” she said. “Steady. Fire!”

Shaw fired the rocket launcher. The missile launched, Shaw absorbing the recoil. The rest of the squad members were firing their carbines.

Noah couldn’t stop himself, he looked back over his shoulder.

The missile flew straight and slammed into the lead ptero.

It exploded in a ball of flames.

Noah held his arm up to shield his face from the huge explosion. The second ptero peeled away and, quick as lightning, disappeared.

Noah released a shaky breath.
Hell
.

“Okay?” Cruz Ramos, Hell Squad’s second-in-command stood above Noah offering him a hand.

He took it and got to his feet. “Yeah. Glad you guys arrived when you did.”

“We’re on base patrol today. Elle saw the damn things zipping in.”

Elle was their comms officer. Noah knew she was in the base somewhere, monitoring drone feed and providing her squad with intel.

The rest of the squad strolled forward, their largest, quietest and deadliest soldier, Gabe, bringing up the rear.

“That was closer than we’ve ever seen them,” Marcus said.

“Hell, that was too damn close.” Shaw set the missile launcher down.

They all stared at the beautiful blue sky.

“Yeah,” Noah answered. He felt a heavy weight settle on his shoulders. He had to get the kinks ironed out of Operation Swift Wind…because right now, if they had to evacuate, they wouldn’t make it.

“How’s the Swift Wind convoy going?” Marcus asked, as though the man had read Noah’s mind.

Noah shrugged. “We have a pretty motley collection of vehicles for the convoy. I’ve retrofitted all of them with small nuclear reactors, so they have power.”

Shaw pulled a face. “Why do I hear a huge
but
in your voice?”

“They’ll run, but I can’t hide them.”

The Hell Squad soldiers were all quiet, their faces grim.

“Can’t you put illusion systems on them?” Reed, a former Coalition Navy SEAL, asked.

Noah wished. Illusion systems provided a cloak—messed with a vehicle’s signature on raptor scans, blurred it from sight, and used directed sound waves to distort any noise. He shook his head. “I don’t have the parts to outfit every vehicle with its own illusion system.”

“Shit,” mumbled Claudia.

Yeah, because if even one vehicle was visible and they were running from the aliens, one vehicle would be enough for the enemy to pinpoint their location.

Noah rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m working on an illusion system to cover the entire convoy.”

“I take it that it would need to be a large system,” Marcus said.

“Yes. And right now, I can’t power it.”