Chapter 3
Mike looked around at the base: a half-dozen buildings in addition to some warehouses. It didn’t
seem like much.
“Are you sure this is the right place?”
“For the twentieth time…YES, THIS IS THE RIGHT PLACE!” Gupta said.
Mike considered this.
“No way have I asked you twenty times.”
Gupta turned his mech away in disgust. Sinclair and Kissida were in their mechs a little further
off. Kissida shrugged.
“Ours is not to question why…”
“Reason.”
“Excuse me?”
“The correct quote is ‘Ours is not to reason why…’”
“Actually,” cut in Sinclair, “the correct quote is ‘Theirs not to reason why.’”
“Oh shut up.”
“Right-o.” Mike could hear the smirk in Sinclair’s voice.
“And the Raptors are definitely coming?” This was directed at Kissida.
“Oh yes.”
“Great.”
“Sir, why are we about to try and stop a horde of lizards from taking this base?”
“Because…” Mike began. Then he thought back to the day he had lost Alice. There had only
been 16 of the enemy to fight that day, but they had to hold the line against them or the Earth
would have been finished.
“Because…” Alice had sacrificed herself to destroy eight enemy fighters. Mike would have
taken her place, but she had always been impulsive.
“…I have no idea why, but we’ve got to do it.” For some strange reason, this seemed to satisfy
them.
“Incoming in five.” Kissida informed them.
“Right, take up positions.”
Mike got behind some sandbags. Kissida did the same. Sinclair and Gupta jumped onto the roofs
of some buildings.
After a few tense minutes of waiting, Mike could detect some movement in the forest outside the
perimeter. He figured the enemy might try to use snipers to take them out. Instead, one lizard
stepped out of the trees.
“Z3Rg!!!”
The rest of the Raptors poured out of the forest and rushed the base.
Mike leveled his chain gun and started firing.
Kissida let loose with rocket propelled explosive rounds.
Gupta and Sinclair picked off individuals with their lasers.
Lizards were falling left and right but more just kept coming.
The advancing line was fifty yards away.
Mike cut down another five Raptors, but ten more rushed in.
Twenty yards.
Ten.
Mike expected the Raptors to just blast away with their ridiculous laser weapons, a cross
between a six-shooter and something from a steampunk novel, but he was wrong.
These lizards were armed with chainswords.
Mike punched one Raptor ten feet through the air.
He turned and fired point blank, the light from the muzzle flashing like lightning, and backhanded
another one.
He turned to face another, but a sniper got the lizard first.
Then he had to side-step a chainsword directed at his head.
“133T!!!” yelled one of the lizards.
An explosion threw Mike and his mech to the side.
Glancing over he realized that Gupta had lobbed a grenade close to him. A number of lizards
glared up at Gupta.
“w34k!!!” They turned their lasers towards his building and started firing.
“NO!” Mike roared. Stooping, he picked up a fallen chainsword used it to chop the heads off
three nearby lizards.
The startled lizards were swiveling to face him when an explosive round from Kissida’s rocket
launcher tore through them.
Wielding his gun in one hand and his chainsword in the other, Mike rushed the other Raptors.
He fired the gun in one direction and swung the chainsword in the other.
Some lizard must have disabled his gun with a chainsword, the thing stopped firing. Mike threw
it at the advancing horde.
Mike and Kissida were now back to back, surrounded by Raptors.
“Looks like this is the end, chief,” she said.
“In that case, I want you to know…”
“Yes?”
“…that you’re annoying.”
The Raptors started to rush them, but just at that moment explosions tore through their ranks.
With a rushing sound an A-10 Thunderbolt swooped past. Another followed, strafing the lizards
with its 30mm cannon.
The sky above them was filled with swerving and diving aircraft, both human and the odd,
backwards swept wings of the Raptor’s fighters.
Mike took the opportunity to scoop up a fallen lizard’s laser and started firing at the hesitating
Raptors. Kissida did the same.
With a roar, the other Raptors rushed the two of them, heedless of losses.
Soon it was hand-to-hand again. In a few moments, Mike found himself pinned, with a Raptor
trying to cut through his armor with a chainsword.
The lizard glanced up, distracted, then took several rounds from a rifle in the chest. At first it
just seemed to annoy him, but the bullets kept coming. The lizard finally fell over.
Mike managed to dislodge one Raptor from his legs and smashed two others together.
He got up to see human troops pouring into the area.
The Raptors started returning fire with their lasers.
The troops were taking major losses but they were pushing the lizards back.
A nearby lizard shook his fist defiantly at Mike “w3LL g3t YoU, @nD y0ur Lit7le b10b 700!”
The Raptors retreated.
Major Rock Slate pulled up next to Mike as the lizards left the field.
Mike was breathing hard. It looked like one of the Raptors had gotten through his leg armor.
The suit had sealed the cut to limit blood loss.
“I thought I ordered you to stay out of this.” Mike observed.
“I outrank you.”
“I just hope we bought enough time for those damn factories to come online.”
* * *
Sterling seemed very self-satisfied when Mike saw him again.
“So how are things going?” Mike ventured.
“We’re making progress on all fronts. The volunteers for the new mechs are learning quickly
and they seem to be loyal. The factories the Blobs gave us are online and can churn out 200
mechs a month.”
“Aren’t you worried that we’re building our own occupying force? I mean if the Puppeteers took
control of those soldiers and turned the mechs on us…” Mike began.
“Yeah, that’s our primary misgiving with this whole operation. But we need them to fight the
lizards.” Sterling looked at Mike. “What does yours say about all this?”
Well?
It would be very hard to get them to turn on you. Try using one for crowd control sometime –
the most they will do is use non-lethal force. It’s difficult to get them to do anything that would
harm a human being.
What about all those space battles?
They mostly used members of the insane faction that was bent on turning humans into slaves.
Mostly?
Well, you must have noticed how inept they were at fighting, that was partially because what
they were doing went against everything we stand for.
“Mine doesn’t think it would be easy to get them to fight against humans. It suggests trying to
use one for crowd control and see how they react.”
Sterling made a note.
“The good news is that their new biotechnology looks like it could revolutionize human industry.
If their factories are any indication, they produce very little waste, power themselves through
‘plants’ and their products are frikkin biodegradable.”
“Yeah, it’s all just a little too pat.”
Sterling narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“We’re invaded by a race of buffoons whose only advantage is technology then poof! The
Puppeteers come to our rescue! At the same time we are gradually being introduced to some
new technologies that just happen to require Puppeteers in order to use them.”
Sterling got up and started pacing.
“When you put it that way it does sound unlikely.” He stopped “But we need them to win this
war.”
“Yeah.”
“What does your Blob think of all this?”
He could at least call me a Guide.
Cut it out. What do you think?
I’m with you, something stinks.
“He says that something stinks.”
And don’t forget to ask him to stop calling me a Blob.
Mike rolled his eyes.
“And please stop calling him a Blob.”
“Fine. Would it prefer ‘Your Highness’ instead?”
Actually…
Shut up.
“I think we should keep an eye on them.”
“I agree,” Sterling said.
As time went on, however, the adoption of Puppeteer technology, and the Puppeteers
themselves, only accelerated. It seemed like every time you turned around the Puppeteers would
spring some new and invention on Humanity. The use of anti-gravity alone promised to
revolutionize travel. Their chemical processing plants were far cleaner than anything Earth had.
And the troops kept winning.
Armor assisted troops were almost single-handedly winning the war. Kids were now getting
toys that looked like them. Pilots were becoming heroes.
All just a little too convenient.
* * *
“Idiot!”
The Truly Awesome Uber-General slammed his fist down on the table, causing a mug with the
image of a battle cruiser to slosh something that looked suspiciously like coffee onto some
papers.
“If that fool of a colonel had just waited two more days we could have wiped out four of those
damn armored units! Instead he goes charging in and loses two companies before realizing the
mistake!”
“tH@7'$ 7Ru3 bU7 the 8a7tle Wa$ 7Ruly awe$0me!” the general’s aide put in.
The general glared at him. This was the second replacement. They all seemed to talk the same
way. Maybe the general was the only sane one in the whole race. He sighed.
“Tell the first battalion to reinforce them here and then…” For the next several hours the general
tried to salvage what he could of the current mess. When he was done, the assembled staff
saluted as one lizard.
“133+!!!”
They filed out of the room. When everyone had gone, the general looked around suspiciously
and went to a cabinet where he extracted some chicken McNuggets. As he munched them
morbidly he reflected that the things were getting harder to secure, given the battlefield losses
they were enduring.
* * *
Kerr-plunk!
“Ha…ha…ha.”
Mike glared at the Raptor who had just scored another foosball goal. He supposed the thing
could be grinning at him, but with a face like that he couldn’t do much of anything else.
For some reason, foosball seemed to calm the lizards. It could be that they sucked at everything
else, they were really good at foosball.
“Checkmate!”
Tom had just won a chess match against a Raptor. His opponent regarded him emotionlessly,
then took the offending chess piece and ate it.
Mike sighed and went over to where Tom was glaring at his opponent.
“That’s not very sporting of you.”
The lizard took another of Tom’s chess pieces and started chewing on it.
“So what’s this supposed to prove?”
“That they stink at chess!” Tom spat out.
“Ha…ha…ha.”
Tom glanced over to the foosball Raptor.
“And…ok…they’re not bad at foosball.”
Kerr-plunk!
“OK, very good at foosball.”
Mike rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“But what does this prove about the Raptors?”
“Oh…I think they’re gamers.”
“What?”
“I think they regard this whole war as a game.”
“What makes you say that?”
Tom turned back to his chess partner.
“What’s the score?”
The Raptor seemed to be waiting for something. Tom sighed and handed him a bag of chicken
nuggets.
“We @r3 t07alLy 0wnInG you!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. What’s the score?”
“7H3 L3e7: 5, HuM@n5...7. 8U7 it'5 jus7 CUZ 0f tho$3 @W3$0me 5uit$”
“You can understand him?” Mike asked incredulously.
“It’s just a matter of replacing numbers for certain letters.”
“What about the symbols?”
“That’s harder.”
Mike regarded the Raptor as it ate the chicken nuggets.
“And what’s the deal with the McNuggets?”
Tom shrugged. “Beats me, but at least they don’t try to bite the guards when you give them the
damn things.”
Tom got to his feet.
“w@Nn@ pL@y f0058@ll?” The Raptor looked hopeful.
“Later.”
“w3ak.” The lizard looked crestfallen.
Mike and Tom walked out of the prisoner wing of the building.
“So what good does knowing this do us?”
“I think it plays in to your idea that this whole thing is a setup.”
“It does?”
“Well…no. There’s one weak link to this whole chain of reasoning. We didn’t challenge them.”
Mike looked thoughtful. “What if someone did that for us?”
“You mean the Puppeteers?”
“Yeah.”
Tom stopped so quickly Mike ran into him.
“What does yours think?”
Well?
I think we could have taken him if you had let me control the goalie.
About Tom’s idea!
I hope you’re wrong. I mean, what happens if you’re right?
Chapter 2, Chapter 4
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