It gets uncommonly dark at night. Presently the planet's lone moon is in a new phase. Camping at night we are forced to rely on artificial sources of illumination. With our lamps and flashlights we are vulnerable to sniper attack.
The captain has forbidden us from listening to the nightly reports from the colony ships. We are allowed only to read capsule summaries. He claims that he wants to maintain sound discipline. I think he is more concerned with morale. Our spirits crumble further every day that we are pinned to the surface of this world, searching for a thing that we do not understand. I tried to explain that images from home might improve our mood, but he would not listen. I think he knows more about our mission than he has let on.
And he is afraid.
We found an intact wood and mortar building today that seemed to fit the profile. The upper stories were mostly wrecked, but there was a staircase leading to a basement, and in it, among the rotting corpses and insects, were several computers. Marr set about connecting batteries and the data interface to them. As we watched the encrypted text flying along the uplink there was a brief moment of anticipatory thrill. Then the analysis came back. DATA INVALID. Keep looking.
Tresst, unhappy from the first day of this mission, became incensed. "Why?" he shouted. "Why are we here? Why must we put up with these disgusting conditions, the stench, the ugliness? What do we seek that is so damned important? Our families need us. After years of fighting we have claimed victory only to celebrate by climbing around in the mud like these infernal bugs? We won the fucking war!"
I was forced to strike him to keep his insubordinate behavior from infecting the others. The captain wants me to formally punish him, but I am reluctant. We need his skills, and he only says what we all are thinking. We have fought a long, costly war. We are tired soldiers who need to see our families to remind us what the struggle was about. One day we may live on this planet, but first let us celebrate the victory.
The nights are dark and cold and filled with odd sounds. The wind brings the noises of the insects and other wildlife, and unexpected whistling through the battle-ravaged buildings. The humans ripped the life out of their world, and now it rushes back in their absence. They paved everything. I long to remove my boots and feel the soil beneath my feet. Here and there grass pushes up through shattered blacktop, but I have not seen a tree for days. We drink only the water that we have brought, for we can not trust the "purified" water in their wells and reserves.
It seems that in all things, not just in battle strategy, were the humans shortsighted.
The sun was just setting. Lancaster took one last quick glimpse at the horizon, then tucking his rifle down to clear the opening, entered the library. Inside, amidst stacks of blackened books and soot-covered magazines, the remnants of Ohio Resistance Company 22 gathered. An assortment of rifles, Dragonovs, Kalashnikovs, Heckler & Kochs and various brands of hunting rifles displaced the books on the shelves. Steel ammo canisters formed a wall before the Philosophy section. Grenades mingled with the romances.
"Two more ships departing," Lancaster reported. He unslung his M-16 and leaned it against the checkout desk. "One Durante one MF." The alien ships had nicknames based on their appearance. One with a long, bulging nose was the Durante; the one resembling the space craft from Star Wars was the MF. "Spotted two full squads, light, on the ground and heading our direction. Six miles south, maybe." The only sound in the room was the click of his webgear as he unfastened it so he could sit down.
The five other faces stared at him for a moment. Balding, neatly trimmed Rodgers; angular, scarred Martinez; fat, sunburned O'Neal; lean, intense Retton; strong, clean-shaven Schnur. The surviving members of the Company. One Staff Sergeant, Two Corporals, Three Privates. Only Rodgers and Schnur had had previous military experience when the invasion had mandated conscription. Martinez had never held a gun six months ago. Now they were practically all that remained of the United States' military capability.
"Fuckin' great. Now what do we do?" O'Neal. Constantly complaining. He had left the unit once, three weeks ago, when it was obvious that the fight was over and they had lost. He had learned that survival on his own was impossible. But some people never really get it until it is too late.
"We follow orders." Rodgers. Sober, for now. "The Command says we got to hold out until they get the coding done. So we lay low and keep the monkeys out of this building."
"And if we gotta expend some ammo in the process, we do it." Retton. Angry and battling dementia since the Virus.
"They're on foot?" Schnur asked.
"Right. Looks like the monkey normally humping the Bulldog," the heavy machine gun assigned to an alien squad,"has got some other equipment instead." Lancaster took a long pull from his canteen, then pulled a box from inside his field jacket. He propped it open on the desk next to him and carefully selected a long, fibrous object from within and brought it to his mouth. "Don Diegos. Help yourself." He puffed one to life.
"What the hell." Martinez, scared, like everyone else, but still good-spirited. "You know each one of those takes an hour off your life." He borrowed Lancaster's lighter and started in on one.
"Tomorrow we scout 'em out." Schnur, around a cigar. "Maybe we take care of both squads at once."
The captain allowed us each ten minutes on the video to communicate with our loved ones. Lern, my beautiful wife held up our second child to the camera, Barrash'n. I have never seen him in person. He has the horizontal stripes of my clan, but no tail yet to tell whether he takes after his mother in that regard. He scarcely opened his eyes during the entire conversation, merely burrowed into his mother's fur. I recorded the entire conversation on my portable. Eventually the admin will notice and I will be reprimanded.
Lern was very strong. She did not cry and immediately hushed Alern, our daughter when she began to wail. She has grown during this struggle. When we married, my father insisted that Lern was too flighty, too immature. Had he lived through Black Week, he would have told a different story. Lern wears her commendation ribbon with pride.
There was much that I should have said to reassure her and Alern. I was not man enough. Instead I could only think of better times, of holding Lern in my arms, of stroking her face. Watching her speak, the muscles of her jaw, the sleek fur of her throat, the soft pink of her tongue. She talked but I heard little. I had rehearsed a speech meant to soothe, but choked on my words in her virtual presence. It was all that I could do not to weep myself.
Over the past three days I have seen twelve transports leave the surface to return to the fleet. I believe that the senior staff, who had arrived with such fanfare just a few weeks ago, are fleeing. Fearing for their lives. Whatever it is that we seek has put a scare into them.
After my conversation with my family, I attempted to familiarize myself with the terrain from our aerial photos and computer analysis. But my mind wandered. The other squad members were taking their turn on the phone. I tried to give them some privacy, but in this urban canyon voices reverberate and echo endlessly. Knowing that Tresst would be next, and emotional, I should have taken a walk. I stayed and could not help but listen in as he talked to his wife.
He insulted myself, the captain, the staff, the High Command. He used the words "suicide mission." And finally, as I struggled with my restraint, he broke down, sobbing like a whelp.
I pounced on him, digging furrows in his face with my claws. He resisted for a few frantic moments, but under my repeated blows he finally went limp in supplication. I bared my fangs in his bleeding face. I finally regained my control, finding that I was on the verge of ripping his right ear off. I released him and allowed Linger to attend to him.
Despite my recording, the lasting vision of the morning will be, not my newborn child, but the horrified look on the face of Tresst's wife, pixilated in direct sunlight.
Lancaster filled his canteen from the tap on the inverted plastic bottle. There was an abandoned Alhambra truck a few blocks away, so he and Martinez had carted off a dozen five gallon bottles and brought them here to the first basement.
"So there's no Bulldog in either squad?" O'Neal was sitting on the edge of a metal desk, his combat boots drawing circles in the air. He favored a standard M-16 with M203 grenade launcher, though the Company had precious few anti-personnel grenades. He also had a Glock 9-millimeter on his right hip and a gas mask in its case on his left.
Lancaster replaced the canteen in its pouch. O'Neal and Lancaster were supposed to be updating the sit map, but it had become so out of date there was hardly any point. "Correct.
Lancaster did not like O'Neal in the slightest. Schnur was aware of that, and normally did not assign them to work together. But Rodgers had cleaned up and unexpectedly started acting like the senior man that he was. So Lancaster drew O'Neal for this assignment.
"So there's eight of them and they don't have any big gun. Figure they know we're here?"
"If they even suspected that we were here, they'd have lobbed gas already. No, they're still looking. Something put them on the right track, though."
"Rats. They fucked us again."
Word had it that the pacifists, in the wake of the massive counter-offensive known as Operation Knockover, had given the monkeys key medical information about humans that had allowed them to create the Virus. A bargaining chip, supposedly, to bring the UN to the table. Because they felt such remorse about the missiles and nuclear attack satellites. About the only human success in the war.
"You see that wreck near the Wal-Mart?"
O'Neal nodded. "At least we got that one."
Lancaster smiled and said nothing.
Boots on the stair. Without even noticing that he had done it, Lancaster pulled his G3 across his body in a ready position. It was Retton.
"O'Neal, Sarge wants you to send word to the Command." He held a hand-written note out. O'Neal slid to his feet, and as he reached out his hand to receive the paper, Retton dropped it. Purposefully, mockingly. "He says don't screw it up."
A day that began with violence has led to deep sorrow and depression. Emotions that haunt us every step of the way on this accursed mission. It is almost as though the too-high mix of oxygen, despite our breathers and drugs, bears with it these sentiments. As though the planet is trying to shake us off. We have defeated its best defenses so it now poisons us.
We discovered a crumpled wreck of a transport. The Vigor. It was once a medical evacuation ship, now it is an ugly, twisted, gray monument to our brazenness.
When the High Command decided that we would take this planet by force, that our search for a new homeworld had finally met its conclusion, there was too little debate, too little thought given to the ethics of stealing a planet from it native populace. Our people had grown weary of travel, of artificial sunlight, of generations who had never felt the cool wind on their faces.
I fear that no matter our successes, we will never feel at home here. And there certainly seems to be no guarantee that we will be allowed to keep it. I mention this only here in my log, but it seems evident that the humans have some last trick up their sleeve, that if it does not strike directly at the Fleet, at least will attempt to sour the victory for us.
The Vigor was discovered by Lantan, the young, usually excitable scout. As he lead us through the rubble and desolation of this former human city, I watched him creep around a corner, then his shoulders just slumped and he froze in his tracks, his weapon loose at his side.
The sight of the vessel and its molten inhabitants struck us all similarly, like a tree withering without water.
We withdrew to the relative safety of a shattered, foul-smelling structure, still-smoldering fabric covering the cement floor. There was silence, even from the captain. The activities of the morning had pushed my emotional state to a dangerous precipice, poised on the point of a claw. I now felt like the ledge had crumbled.
Kkove wandered out into the street and poked about the ruins. Somewhere I could hear the sound of a ship far overhead. Evacuating. The captain drew all eyes to himself, and in his booming voice recited the Oath of the Responsive Soldier. Those poetic words fell on deaf ears.
Kkove returned, breaking the silence by hurling an unidentifiable piece of blackened slag powerfully into the enclosed space. "The Vigor exploded from the inside. Somehow they got a bomb aboard the hospital ship and blew it up as it tried to bring the wounded back to the Fleet."
Not a word was said.
The morning appeared as faint red smear on the horizon, revealing a shroud of fog over the dead city. Lancaster had arisen early and taken care of some business. Retton was on watch, but, as usual, was sleeping slumped over his 16, the burnt-out corpse of a cigarette still clutched in his hand.
Lancaster woke up O'Neal first, so he could make breakfast. Schnur heard O'Neal stirring and rose himself. Like Lancaster, he was a light sleeper who seemed to go from unconscious to fully alert without transition.
Schnur snatched up his shower kit and crossed the library lobby. Retton continued to snore in his chair near the front doors. As he passed, Schnur hooked his foot through the sling of the rifle and pulled, unbalancing Retton who toppled with a startled snort. Schnur opened the doors on his way to the gym next door. "Don't let me catch you sleeping on watch again," he said. The door swung slowly shut behind him.
Retton mumbled something about being the senior corporal, but not so anyone could really hear.
The smell of canned ham and instant eggs on the skillet followed Lancaster to the head. He liked to shave before breakfast, just as he liked to rise before everyone else and accomplish something, even if it was a trivial thing. To feel that, in some small measure, he had earned his breakfast.
Lancaster's father had taught him that. A negative lesson, actually, as Lancaster senior had never earned a meal in his life. He had been a lazy dreamer who sucked his wife's life force from her until she died at 35, then moved himself and his twelve-year-old in with his own mother, to leech her dry. Presumably the Virus had got to him. Not nearly soon enough.
While Lancaster was shaving, Rodgers came in to relieve himself. Rodgers was a physical wreck in the mornings, coughing, eyes half-lidded and the color of meat, shuffling like a man twice his age. Until recently you could have added "smelling of gin," and "retching like a Kansan fishing for Marlin." One arm supported him away from the wall as he unzipped and let fly, clearing his throat and spitting into the urinal every few seconds. The raspy, wet sounds filled the tiled room.
Lancaster had been flirting with the idea of growing a goatee. He had been letting his soul patch spread out and his mustache was looking pretty shaggy, too. He carefully shaved around the as-yet-hypothetical outline of his beard. Lancaster watched signs of life slowly surfacing in Staff Sergeant Rodgers. He still leaned over the pisser, but at least his head was up, his eyes open. By the time Lancaster was drying the water and shaving cream residue from his face, Rodgers could almost pass for a living human.
Martinez staggered into the room, seemed startled that there were not just one, but two others present, grunted at each of them and entered one of the stalls, the door slamming and bouncing wide open again. Martinez made no effort at it a second time.
"Got a full day ahead of you, Lancaster," the sergeant said. "We're depending on you to work your magic."
Lancaster watched his reflection in the mirror, Rodgers an indistinct blur beyond him. He watched his mustache move, his revealed lower lip, the wrinkles at his eyes, a silvery patch of light from the fluorescence overhead on his purple-black skin. "When it comes to this sort of thing, Sarge, you can count on me."
Obviously, I have read of such things. But I am a Voyager, having been born aboard a crèche ship. I have only previously stood on one other planet, and that one had virtually no atmosphere. I confess that I was not prepared to deal with this condition called fog.
It leeches the color from its surroundings and obscures all but the largest of shapes after only a few meters. The moisture hangs heavy in the air and interferes with our breathers. Mostly, of course, it obscures that which we must find. Earth, once again, attempts to thwart us.
Marr has been experiencing increased communications difficulty, perhaps due to meteorological conditions. The radmeter detects nothing unusual. Command is insisting that we must be close, but we can only wander blind in this thick, concealing blanket.
Lancaster rolled over in the wet rubble and raised his left hand with index finger and thumb extended. He rolled back into position and looked down the barrel of his G3. Just beyond the front sight he could make out the siloughette of a monkey head, ears pointing forward, breathing device strapped across its large snout and mouth. It seemed to be one of the orange tiger-striped ones, but in the fog it was hard to tell.
A crunching of powdered concrete announced the arrival of Schnur; low-crawling like they showed you in Basic, his M16 cradled in the crook of his arms. "Patrol?" he whispered.
The head was dipping and rising as the monkey trotted along. A heavy knapsack occasionally came into view over the charred, grafittoed wall remnant, as did one of their heavy slug-throwers. "No. Scout." Lancaster turned to meet Schnur's pale blue eyes. "Bad one."
Schnur crawled forward as Lancaster held his position behind a Dial-A-Ride minibus that had been split in two by monkey air bombardment. As the corporal reached the low wall, he carefully placed his rifle on the ground, and with the slightest of sounds pulled his blackened wakizashi from its sheath. Schnur took direction from Lancaster, and slid along the wall, staying just a few paces behind the bobbing head. As the wall ended the monkey came fully into view at the end of Lancaster's sights. Schnur took two long strides and with a single stroke removed the head.
It had been one of the orange ones.
Finally. One of the prisoners has revealed the location of the object that we seek. Under interrogation it has been divulged that we seek a particular building only two and one half kilometers away. It is in a building where books and media are stored. A library for public access.
We are heading there immediately. A conclusion to our quest, perhaps to our entire race's quest, is at hand. For good or ill.
The squad was in a hurry. There was a lot of monkey-talk on the radio that they had taken from the dead scout. Most likely they suspected that he had been hit. Lancaster was not worried about this group. His team was more than a match for them. But where was the other squad? If they joined in the firefight they might delay things until some airsupport arrived. With their bombs and gas.
Lancaster put down his binocs, climbed down from the top of the fire truck, its ass end protruding from a Wells Fargo. Ohio Resistance Company 22 waited below. Martinez with his big M60, O'Neal with his backpack of ammo for that weapon, and his own M16. Schnur in his gray camos, shirtless under his flak jacket. Retton sweating in his green chemical gear. Rodgers in greasy jeans and camo field jacket, a bandoleer of grenades across his chest.
"They're coming fast. In the fog I can't see the other squad, but they ain't far. We get into it heavy-duty with these guys, the others are going to drop by."
Retton smiled and lifted his weapon over his head. "So we take these guys fast." Tough talker, he was the only one prepared for gas. If that suit was any damn good against their gas. Lancaster had seen fields of dead troops, their protective masks melted to their face from monkey gas attacks.
There was, inexplicably, a smell in the wind that Lancaster identified as peanut butter cookies. It was some trick of mixed odors, from this limp, dead city. But the end result was striking.
Everyone looked to Schnur. But it was Rodgers who spoke. "Let's take up positions in these two buildings. Schnur, you and Retton and Lanc move into that office building. Martinez, O'Neal and I will position ourselves in that law office. They got to come through here, Carson's all torn up and Mitchell's jammed with cars. We'll wait for them to get right beneath us, then we'll take them."
That would screw up the plan. Lancaster looked to Schnur. His jaw muscles were working. "Uh, Sarge. You got the gun and you and O'Neal got the only 203's. Makes our group pretty light. Maybe Retton goes with those two and you come with me and Lancaster?"
Rodgers almost snarled. "You have your orders, Corporal."
No one moved for a moment. Then Schnur turned toward the office structure. Lancaster and Retton followed.
"Figures he takes the 60 with him," Retton groused.
The building had been a CPA office, according to the sign. It showed a smiley dollar sign and bore the slogan "Taxes done right." It occurred to Lancaster that he would never have to pay taxes again. He moved ahead and made his way up a wretched smelling stairway. At the end of it he discovered the source, a woman in gray tweed, her body turned half to liquid from the Virus. She had locked herself in here and had stuffed a towel under the door as if that would keep the wasting disease out.
Lancaster struggled with the door, and with his stomach, then emerged into a plushly carpeted hallway lined with certificates and pictures of the accountants shaking hands with big deal politicians. Lancaster passed a water cooler which gurgled at him. Suddenly, a sound, movement to his right. Lancaster spun, knowing that someone/something had the jump on him. A startled cat screeched and ran past him, a blur of white and orange. For a moment Lancaster had to catch his breath, allow his racing heart to return to normal
Schnur came up behind him, smiled at his condition. He slapped Lancaster on the back. "Almost shot the little fucker." For a second there was life in those eyes. Then they went dead again. "Look, I don't care what happens. We do it now. I want that bastard gone."
They followed the hall, stepping over a fat man in a blue suit, his hand still clutching a briefcase, a black stain where he had been apparently shot from behind by some unknown, probably human assailant. The woman? Lancaster would have to check her for weapons, as distasteful as that would be. You never knew when you would find a gem.
Retton eventually joined them in the big office facing the street. That guy was always screwing off somewhere. Schnur pulled the room's long leather couch over to the huge, shattered window and lay down on it, his rifle pointed toward the street. Lancaster moved a two-drawer filing cabinet over and kneeled behind it, using it as a brace. From an ammo pouch on his web belt he withdrew a fist-sized device. He extended the antenna on it and placed it before him.
"Get ready," Retton said from his spot at the next window.
Schnur glanced at Lancaster. "Do it whenever looks good," he said.
Retton fired off a shot, though Lancaster could not yet see anyone on the street. A burst came from the other group across the way. Lancaster spotted O'Neal's bald head in one of the windows. He was holding the belt for the 60, feeding the ammo cleanly into the chamber as Martinez fired.
Lancaster could see shapes on the street now, just beyond the fire truck. Monkeys sprinting for cover, one caught in a steady stream of 5.56-millimeter automatic fire from Schnur and Retton. It looked like it was trying to fall down but the bullets were holding it up. It looked like a moth pinned to a tree, flapping like hell to get away.
Lancaster took his time, sighted in on a monkey who thought that it had found safety in the doorway of the bank. He breathed slowly out and when the sights settled back on the alien's black eye, Lancaster eased the trigger. The monkey jerked and slid to the ground.
The M60 opened up again, spraying 5-8 round bursts continuously for a couple seconds. That seemed like a good time. Lancaster couldn't see the Sarge right now, but he would be out of the way of the flying expended casings. Lancaster took up the detonator, flipped the safety and pushed the activator. There was an immediate response from the C4 that Lancaster had hidden in the Sergeant's jacket and bandoleer. Then the grenades went more or less simultaneously.
Lancaster had misjudged. Both the amount of explosive to use and Rodgers' proximity to the M60 team. The power of the blast blew O'Neal out of the window. His body convulsed, then slammed into the sidewalk two stories below. Martinez appeared once in the window, thrashing in pain, his face a bloody mess.
Schnur continued firing. Retton shouted something incomprehensible then staggered awkwardly toward Lancaster, a barefoot man walking on coals. He twisted and fell. The black hole in his chest from a monkey slug thrower.
Lancaster returned his attention to the enemy squad. Four were lying dead, two were returning fire, two could not be seen. Lancaster sighted in on a silver monkey face. He breathed slowly out. Then he was inside a ringing church bell. A slug had impacted the filing cabinet, throwing his aim off. The next one struck the plastic foregrip of his weapon, missing his hand by an inch, the impact driving the butt painfully into his shoulder. He hit the ground.
Lancaster writhed in pain, oblivious to the glass shards on the floor, scratching up his back. "Schnur. Let's clear out." No response. "Schnur! We're fucked, man. Let's go." Finally he rose to his knees, peered over the cabinet.
Corporal Schnur was still stretched out on the couch with his M16 held out in front of him. But a monkey slug had ripped out a good portion of his neck. His head was leaning over at an angle that would be impossible if his neck muscles and spine were intact.
Lancaster crawled back to the hall and sprinted down the stairs, exiting out the back.
Things had not gone well.
Finally, things are going our way. Looming ahead of us in the dissipating fog is a gray, multi-storey building. Marr says that the rad readings match the target.
Third squad had a near-ruinous encounter with a human contingent not far from here this morning. They do not think that there were any survivors. That human patrol might have been the security for this structure, for there seems to be no activity within and we have thus far been unmolested. The probability of a trap, however, is still great.
Lancaster watched the monkey squad from the glass elevator in the Bolger Building. They were camped two blocks from the library, obviously keeping tabs on it. Probably waiting for him to come back.
The windows of the elevator were covered with filth. Waste, probably human waste had been rubbed over the glass and allowed to harden. There had been some real twisted bastards wandering around in the aftermath of the Virus. Lancaster had probably killed as many of them in this town as had the monkeys.
A USA Today was blowing around from an open or broken window somewhere. Lancaster could just make out the heading next to an indistinct color photograph. Alien Fleet No Threat Says Astronomer.
That bastard, or one of his "United Species League" had probably spilled his guts about the whole project. That was how the monkeys knew exactly where to come. A human defector, human by birth perhaps, but no longer human in Lancaster's eyes, had sold out his entire race. Little tip here, asshole, nobody's gonna be handing out Nobel Peace Prize's when there's no fucking Earth left.
This team was probably too late already. Even if not, there was not much that Lancaster could do to stop them. He didn't even have his G3 anymore. Lancaster was going to need transport off the surface, and pretty damned fast, if he read it right. He'd sneaked onto monkey craft before. Of course, that time he'd just been there to plant explosives. This time he would have to smuggle himself. That would be tougher.
But one way or another, the fink was going to get what was coming to him.
We are ruined. The captain is frantically trying to get a transport here to pick us up, but it is in vain. Marr has triple and quadruple-checked his findings. There is no mistake. We have moments to live.
I think of Lern, Alern, Barrash'n. They will have to push on without me. Should the Fleet survive. Doubtless they are even now speeding away from this doomed globe at full speed. Even if they are destroyed by this, I am afraid of the impact this will have on the spirit of my people. To come so close, and then to be so suddenly turned away.
The humans had one last trick to play. Deep under complexes such as this one, scattered all over the planet are chambers containing gigaton bombs. Enough to ruin the atmosphere of the planet for generations, if not to literally destroy its structural integrity. And the mechanism to trigger them has begun its inexorable descent.
We entered the library, found the basement without meeting any resistance. In a room were stairs leading further down. One human, a weak scientist like those who have been providing us information was there. We were forced to kill him, though orders are to use restraint with those types. Marr knew right away that the computer in the room was the device that we had been seeking all along. And his fears of its purpose were confirmed.
The squad did not take the news well. There was much shouting and some violence directed at the captain. I had to take drastic measures. Marr, myself and the captain are all that remain.
We have found our way to the surface. As I had made my way out the doors of the library building, I spotted far off the lights of a transport fading. Perhaps, at least, Third Squad made it out.
I am to die on this barren planet. I can accept that, had accepted that possibility before we ever spotted this structure. But it is all in vain. All of this fighting, all of this death, what may well be the deaths of two races, has all been for naught. Our quest has failed. This will not be our new homeworld. High Command was wrong for advocating the destruction of another race to meet our selfish needs to feel grass underfoot.
Lern. You are so strong. Protect our family, our people. We must not repeat this failure. You and the children must survive. At least you need not fear the treachery of the humans and their protective Mother Earth.
The captain is shouting orders. I must go.
Private Lancaster slid a crate out of the way so that he could lie down fully. A radio was chattering not far away. He unfastened his web belt so that he could relax. Might as well get comfortable. This was likely to be a long flight. And much to do upon arrival.
The End
Paul E. Gibson is a part-time writer, full-time network administrator and meta-full-time husband and father. He has most recently been published in Planet Magazine.
E-mail: pegibson@nov6.com
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