Collector Ship

By Adam Moon

The collector ship is about to conclude it's centuries long mission. It has just landed on Earth to abduct humanity's greatest warrior. He's supposed to join various aliens in stasis as they're transported to a distant planet where they'll battle one another to the death for the Collectors' amusement.

David Cole is a runaway from a secret government program but he can't hide from the alien collector ship. When it tries to abduct him, he fights back and inadvertently releases all of the collected alien warriors on Earth. With the planet swarming with deadly aliens David is forced to contact the government program he escaped from for help.

As he learns more about himself and more about the aliens unleashed upon Earth, he realizes the real threat has yet to show itself: the collector aliens will come looking for their ship when it doesn't arrive as expected. They must be stopped, even if it means he has to form an unnatural alliance to stop them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Moon
• Release date: Dec 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386142836

Adam Moon

Adam Moon was born in California, grew up in Scotland, and currently lives in Wisconsin with his wife and two young sons. His oldest son wants to grow up to be the first American President who is a space-ninja sniper-robot from the future. His youngest son likes to punch things and say bad words. His long suffering wife just wants some peace and quiet for a change. Adam writes science fiction and horror. You can visit his website at: www.moonwrites.com

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Collector Ship

Adam Moon

Collector Ship copyright © Adam Moon 2018

All rights reserved

Table of contents:

Chapter 1: David Cole

Chapter 2: Spaceship

Chapter 3: Fight

Chapter 4: Fetch the dog

Chapter 5: Diner from Hell

Chapter 6: The Team

Chapter 7: The Mission

Chapter 8: Kill Some Aliens

Chapter 9: Pit Stop

Chapter 10: Memories

Chapter 11: South

Chapter 12: Stupid Mistake

Chapter 13: Charleston

Chapter 14: Surprise Attack

Chapter 15: Join Number One

Chapter 16: Battle Planet

Chapter 17: Home

Chapter 18: Orbit

Chapter 19: New Teammate

Chapter 20: Ambassador Cole

David Cole

David Cole was a survivalist in every sense. If he was older he’d be called a lunatic but the fact that he was in his mid twenties made even less sense; young men shouldn’t be alone in the wilderness when the world has so much to offer.

David had a secret and because he wanted to stay anonymous he was forced to live off-grid. He’d moved into a cabin in the north woods of Wisconsin six months ago out of necessity. There were no cameras or pesky neighbors in his neck of the woods. There was no internet access or telephone lines, and the closest cell phone tower was miles away. It was the only way he could live if he wanted to survive.

He wanted to appear like a redneck bumpkin because he was anything but that. He was the product of a classified government program designed to mold elite super soldiers. He knew little about it beyond that. He didn’t know if it was the brainchild of some highly regarded senator or if it was funded by repurposed moneys. All he knew was that he was tortured beyond belief and his memory was periodically wiped with a chemical cocktail. Luckily he’d managed to escape before the program had run its course. And that was why he was living in the woods, eking out a meager survival.

On the plus side of things, with his memories wiped he barely knew what he was missing out in the world. He couldn’t miss a father he didn’t know or a mom whose face he couldn’t remember. He was a young man so maybe he even had children out there, waiting for him to come back home. He could only long for vague notions of family because all of the specifics had been removed from his mind by those bastards back at the program.

He’d cleared a few trees around his property for firewood last week and he was sitting on the biggest stump reading an old book he’d found in the cabin when he first moved in. The cabin had been abandoned, and for good reason; it was dilapidated, with the woods attempting to reclaim it. Most of its walls were held up by clinging vines that covered the entire thing. The windows were more spider web than glass. He worked on trying to make it more livable on a daily basis but it was an uphill struggle.

It wasn’t much of a home but it was the only home he’d ever known. He was just thankful he’d managed to find it in the first place or he'd be living out of a dumpster, or worse, recaptured by the program.

He had his rifle slung over his shoulder in case of bear attacks and a navy issue handgun just for the hell of it. His coffee had gone cold but that didn’t stop him from sipping from it every time he looked up from the book to scan his surroundings. He’d been living on a mixture of coffee, of which the cabin had been stocked with plenty, nuts and berries he foraged from the woods, and his own attempts at cooking which generally didn’t end well. He didn’t have a scale but he knew he’d lost at least fifteen pounds in the six months he’d been there.

He wondered how long he could keep living like this. He didn’t worry about survival; he worried about the tedium of the lifestyle. He should be out in the world forging a career and meeting his future wife. He yearned for such things but the program had stripped him of a real future. The program tried to turn him into a monster, but it wasn’t prepared when that same monster turned its teeth and claws against its creators and escaped. Three men and a woman were injured as he made his escape from the program’s military compound, and for what? To afford David Cole his pitiful existence, and now that he was living it, he knew it wasn’t a price worth paying.

He should have waited to escape until the time was right. He should have holstered his training and found a peaceful way to get out. But that was wishful thinking. Deep down he knew he'd taken the only opportunity that would ever present itself to him. Knowing that didn't make it any easier to sleep at night, though.

All he had to his name was the cabin, a truck he’d stolen in Milwaukee, and the German Sheppard dog that had been fast asleep in the back of the truck when he stole it. He considered bringing the dog back to its owner but he couldn’t risk the added exposure. It was a stupid mistake but one he was glad he’d made since that dog was a Godsend. Its tag had the name Benton inscribed, but David had taken to calling him Buddy. He was about two or three years old and as smart as a dog gets. He was a good companion for a loner stuck in the woods and as a bonus, he was an eager hunter.

Buddy ran from around the back of the cabin, looked past David and started to growl at the woods. He barked and then whimpered before scampering inside the house. David was still getting to know the dog, but he knew enough to be concerned by the odd behavior.

He heard a crash deep in the woods to the east. It was too loud to be a bear or deer. If it was the crack of a distant rifle he’d have to hunker down and hope the hunters didn’t stumble upon his cabin. But it didn’t sound like a shot. It sounded like a thunderclap.

He put his book down and stood up. He sniffed the air but nothing smelled out of place. He had a pair of state of the art binoculars but the trees were so thick they’d do him no good. He looked at the cabin, imagined the boredom that awaited him within, and decided to investigate the sound in the woods. He fetched his handheld taser – one of the few things he’d purchased with the little money he had - just so he didn’t have to rely on the deadly force of his handgun, and then he trekked off in search of the root of the commotion.

The fact that Buddy was so scared that he’d hidden somewhere in the cabin should have tipped him off that whatever made the sound was not worth investigating.

He didn’t get far when he realized he was woefully unprepared.

Spaceship

He saw silver through the trees first but the color was unlike anything he’d seen before. It shimmered like an oil slick and heat radiated from it so much so that he felt it on his face from a distance. He shielded his eyes and moved in for a closer look. Once he was able to take the entire object in, it made even less sense. It looked like a small building on it's side but it obviously wasn’t manmade because it hovered above the ground by several feet and made a sort of low but audible vibration. It sounded like it was humming. The structure was about two stories tall and three times as wide. He knew in that moment that he was staring at something extraterrestrial.

The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. He knew he should run as fast and as far as he could but something intangible drew him nearer, like a moth to a flame.

Perhaps it was the doorway that appeared like a wraith that drew him close, or the fact that he had always dreamt of first contact with an alien race and his mind was racing with all of the possibilities. He knew to expect the unexpected and yet he was caught off guard anyway.

A swarm of gnats surrounded him. He tried to brush them away from his field of view but when his hand hit them he knew they couldn’t be gnats. They were hard and unyielding, like little floating BB’s. He tried to back away from them because they obscured his view of the mesmerizing ship but they followed him. And then they moved in. The swarm grew thick like a cocoon. He tried to swat at the swarm but when he did it was like his hand was hitting needles. He grabbed a handful of the weird bugs and tried to squeeze them to death but they would not yield. One hovered close enough to his eye that he got a good look at it. It was metallic. It was not a bug, but a tiny robot; a nanobot that must've come from the ship.

He panicked, realizing he was out of his element despite his training. He struggled against the swarm but it had him completely under control. He felt himself rise into the air and then move forward across the ground towards the open door of the spaceship.

He screamed out but the cocoon was now solid enough that his voice was trapped inside with him. And then, as if by magic, the little metallic gnat-sized things left him. He gently fell to his feet as the swarm dispersed. But he wasn’t out of trouble yet, especially since he was inside the ship and the doorway behind him had already sealed shut.

Lights blinked on so bright that he was nearly blinded. He looked to his feet until they could adjust to the glare. Several lights strafed his body and he felt a breeze blow past his legs. Soon the breeze increased to a gale force, whipping his clothes and hair around. None of it made sense, even in the context of a first contact scenario. In fact, if it was first contact, where were all of the damn aliens?

He yelled over the wind, Where are you? but there was no response. I am not a threat, he lied. Show yourself.

The wind died down and a contraption was lowered from the high ceiling of the ship by the same swarm that had abducted him. It looked like a steel coffin. Then he looked all around and noticed the walls lined with similar coffin-like objects but of varying sizes. And they were all filled. The floating metal coffin came to rest ten feet in front of him, standing on end and a door opened revealing the inside. He expected to see an alien present itself but the coffin was empty. That scared him even more than the prospect of coming face to face with an extraterrestrial. He knew the coffin was to be his.

A tangle of thick cables and tubes erupted from within the coffin, propelled by those miniscule flying creatures. Before he could dodge them, one attached to the top of his head, making a suction sound as it fought for purchase. He