Book two of the Alien Manifesto series will be out very soon
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 have 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 to 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 twissssted 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.