Taurian invasion 32: The Date of Infinite Awkwardness

This time when we came back I got to be right in the middle of the festivities! Have I mentioned that I don’t like crowds? It was getting pretty bad until I got pulled up on stage for a photo op with the Director. At least they had food and drinks for everyone and plenty of tables and chairs set up. When I was allowed offstage Sylvia pounced on me and gave me a big hug and a peck on the cheek. That was awesome but surprising as she had never done anything like that before.

I got to do several impromptu interviews and even saw Janet Somethingortheother again. It was a good diversion but I knew that there were a number of essential tasks that had to be done. We had lost Maury and Jessie had taken a serious hit to her leg and there was a possibility that she could still lose it. Two others were hospitalized (broken ribs and a broken arm that happened out of combat) that were expected to make full recoveries.

I also needed to meet with the higher ups about the Australian Method and how to teach it to other units and militaries as well as everything else we learned while there. I needed to actually take over everything else here in our headquarters as company commander. I needed to talk to Sylvia about what happened in Australia. I also needed to debrief and connect with my command staff as well. Somewhere in there I needed to study the things that General Harrison had laid out for me. All of this and I knew for a fact that Sylvia wouldn’t allow me to just give up sleeping for the next couple of months.

Sylvia let me know when it was OK to disengage from the festivities and we headed to my apartment to unpack. “Congratulations, Captain. you’re now well on your way from celebrity to legend. We’re going to have to watch it or you’re going to be swarmed with groupies.”

“I have decided that being famous, although occasionally useful, is mostly a pain in the neck. Have you seen some of the thing they have been writing about you and me?”

“Yes, and don’t worry. There are people taking care of the most obnoxious stuff.”

“It not that big a problem to me because I just don’t pay that much attention, but when it starts hurting those around me; that’s when I get angry.”

“Did something happen?”

“Well you know how Lena is about rumors. Well I had a visit from Rowen, Lena’s child part. She started searching my room for hussies.” Sylvia had just taken a drink and did a classic spit-take and started coughing. “You OK?” She nodded and motioned for me to continue as she got some paper towels, “Well she had heard from her other parts that they needed to watch out for hussies around me. She didn’t know what they were, but she was sure looking for them. That was when I found out what was being said on the net about me and those around me.”

She looked at me with the most wide eyed expression I had ever seen on her. “Seriously! That is what you got from that?”

“I take it I missed something important.”

She started rummaging through her purse. “No. It’s not important, just surprising. We’ll work on that later. I have some news that goes with your promotion. It was decided that you needed an administrative assistant to be your extra hands. So as of today I will be spending part of each day working with you as part of your unit.” She brought out her tablet and showed me the memo.

“Well that’s awesome! Congratulations, you’re now a Giant Killer! So, Madam Secretary, what do we have on the agenda for the rest of the day?”

She rolled her eyes at my attempt of a joke. “Well, you have dinner with the Director, Angelia and General Moore at 7:00. Until then your appointment calendar is clear.”

“As much as I long to just rest and blow off the rest of the day, I have a number of things on my mind that I need to get taken care of before I can relax.”

She took out her tablet and a stylus. “OK. Tell me what you’ve got and we’ll make a plan.”

“I need to debrief my command staff, or at least schedule it. I need to create a schedule to study the materials that General Harrison recommended to me. I need to at least look over the offices to see what I need to take care of now that I am company commander. And, last of all, I need to talk to you about what happened between Lena and me on this trip.”

Sylvia dropped her stylus but quickly retrieved it. “Anything else?”

“Not off the top of my head.”

“Why don’t we start with what happened between you and Lena? You already mentioned the incident with the hussies. What else happened?”

“Lena seems to be divided into more than one person. I’ve heard of this, but I have no idea how it works or what to do about it. Lena has a little girl part called Rowen. I get along with kids really well and I just treated her like I would a kid and that worked out pretty well. I suspected that the main part of Lena didn’t know that Rowan was visiting me and found that out for sure on this trip. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to embarrass her, but I ended up doing so anyway.”

“So are you wanting my help with how to make up with Lena?”

“No. I talked with Lena and we’re getting along now. I just want to know how do you deal with people with different people inside them like that so I don’t end up screwing up and hurting her. Is there some sort of rules for acting around people with her … condition?”

“Lena has multiple personalities. It’s very rare but usually only happens to people who have had very bad things happen to them.”

“Like PTSD?”

“Yes, it’s caused by the  same kind of things that cause PTSD only this is more serious. Lena is also a Savant, which makes her more vulnerable. Sukari and I have been working on ways that we can help her, and we were wondering if you could help us out.”

* * *

Sylvia looked over Allen and resisted the urge to facepalm. “Allen Spencer, you have killed giant killer aliens single handedly and given speeches in front of some of the most powerful men and women in the world. What in the world are you so nervous about?”

“What makes you think I’m nervous?”

Your voice just cracked, you are pale and sweating, and you look like you are about pass out or throw up. Sylvia decided to keep those observations to herself because she didn’t think they would help the situation. “Never mind. You are just going to town with your friend Lena. You are going to do some fun things and then you are going to come home. The only slightly romantic thing you are going to do is hold her hand at some point. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Allen looked like she had just told him that he needed to rip out his spleen with a spoon. He failed to look her in the eyes and lied badly, “I-I think I can handle that.”

The urge to facepalm was rising again but she managed to beat it down through sheer willpower. “You have your note cards and your back up note cards?”

“Yes.”

Notes are usually a horrible idea for a date, but after working with him to prepare, Sylvia had run out of alternate ideas with a snowball’s chance in hell of working. “Now when you see Lena, what do you say?”

“I, um, say something nice about her?”

She may have facepalmed a little, “Almost.”

He fished a stack of note cards out of his pocket. “Say something nice about the way she looks.”

“Anyway, it’s time to go pick her up. Just try to relax and have fun.”

“No problem.” he said with a hysterical hint to his voice.

As he drove away, Sylvia sighed and muttered, “I’m going to hell for this.”

* * *

I drove around to the main (impress the visitors) entrance and found Lena waiting with Sukari. I had the first couple of note cards in my hand as I drove and so I: 1)turned off the car, 2) got out to greet her, and 3) asked, “Have you been waiting long?”

“Only a few minutes.”

I had never seen Lena dressed up before. I had seen her in uniform a couple of times, but other than that it had either been t-shirt and shorts or the longjohns that they wore on duty. “Your dress looks nice.” And it did, but she just didn’t look comfortable in it.

“Thanks you look nice too.”

We stood there just long enough to be uncomfortable before I noticed Sukari making shooing motions. Then I remembered to open the door for her. I managed to get us on their way before I ran into the next problem. I was supposed to talk about something, but I could only remember what he wasn’t supposed to talk about. Not work, not the war, not video games, not the other people in the unit, not other girls, not about myself, and not politics or religion. What did that leave? “So, how are you feeling today?”

“Fine, how are you?”

“Pretty good.” Thirty seconds down, four hours to go. I looked around desperately for something to talk about. I saw a mileage sign. “I’ve never been to this city before, have you?”

“Only a couple of time when I was running away from Sukari, but that’s been years.”

The obvious question seemed like a bad idea so I continued my desperate search for another topic. I saw a cow! “What kind of food do you like?”

“I’m not picky, I’ll eat just about anything.”

Five minutes down, three hours and fifty-five minutes to go. Oh! I know! “What kind of movies do you like?”

“I really don’t like movies. I kind of get anxiety attacks in movies.”

I took my cards out of my pocket, shuffled through them, and tossed two of them out the window. Lena looked at me funny but didn’t say anything. I really wished that she had. Six minutes down … I really have to quit with the countdown. Let’s see… “Do you have anything you like to do in town?”

At this, Lena looked down and blushed. “I kinda have a lot of bad habits from when I was younger that I’m trying to break.”

I started to reach for my cards to throw the rest of them out of the window, but decided not to bother. What to talk about … I glanced at Lena to see if she was bored. Well duh, I could find out about her. That was even on one of the cards somewhere. “As much as we’ve worked together I really don’t know that much about you.”

“What do you want to know?” She tried to sound casual, but a bit of hostility slipped through.

“I don’t know. Where are you from, what are your hobbies; things like that.” That sounded reasonably safe.

“I’m from SoCal, you know, Southern California. No place in particular. We moved around a lot. Let’s see. Hobbies … You might have guessed that I like gymnastics and shi… stuff like that. I used to like surfing but I haven’t done that in like forever. Oh I like hiking but I don’t really get out there and do much even though the campus has all these mountains and stuff.”

That had seemed safe but she was looking embarrassed. When in doubt, say something nice. “Well, you’re definitely the best athlete we have. But, I’m not supposed to talk about work. Sorry.” That pretty much killed any conversational momentum we had. It was a good thing we were getting near the city. I was following the directions to what Sylvia had said were some “fairly nice” restaurants. I didn’t actually know what they were and since Lena hadn’t expressed any preferences, thought I would pull into the first one that looked interesting. Oh, there’s a steak house. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a real steak house.

I pulled in and found a parking place several rows back. I remembered to get the door for Lena. We got to the front door and there was a bunch of people waiting outside. I went up to the girl at the podium and she said that there was a two hour wait. We retreated a bit and I asked, “What do you think?”

She mumbled, “I think I’d rather get a burger.”

I fished my cards out of my pocket and removed two them and tossed them into a nearby trash can. “You know, I think I saw a Burger King and a Denney’s. What do you think?”

We both laughed and got back in the car. One nice thing about the cities on the Front Range in Colorado is that it’s never far to find a place with a good view. We sat on the hood of the car with a to-go bag between us. I had ditched the jacket and tie and she had left her shoes behind. We had a good view of the stars between the pines.

After we had watched the stars for some time, she asked, “So what was with the cards?”

I laughed self consciously, “It was a list of what I should and shouldn’t do.”

“OK. I understand why I got a list. So, why do you have a list?”

I sighed. “I’m afraid that I’m a giant nerd who has never been on a date ever and I have no idea how to ‘show a girl a good time.’”

“You’re kidding! Not even a date with friends?”

“What friends? I was the weird kid to that no one wanted to hang around with. It was always the same from grade school until I was recruited by Prometheus. This is the first place I have ever been that I felt like I even sort of belonged.”

“I know what you mean. If Prometheus hadn’t taken me out of that Crazy Camp, I don’t think I’d even be around anymore.”

“Well. I for one will always be glad they did. I felt like I won the lottery that day when you said that you’d join my team.” I decided to risk accomplishing my “romantic” goal for the night. I took her hand and said, “I always feel safer knowing you have my back.” She actually smiled shyly and looked down! I must have done something right!

She started to say something, but both of our alarms went off at the same time. The date was over and it was time to head home. We chatted about battlesuit maneuvers on the way home and when we reached the main (impress the visitors) entrance opened the door for her and returned her to Sukari.

Sylvia was waiting for me in the parking garage. I wrapped the evidence of fast food in my jacket and sat beside her in the cart, “Well, how did it go?”

“We didn’t get to see a movie and the wait at the restaurant was over two hours but we talked some and watched the stars for a while and I even held her hand like I was supposed to. Overall … heck if I know.”

“I should have known.”

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Taurian Invasion 31: Learning From Your Superiors

Our victory celebration that night was a big one. The only thing that I think kept it from completely getting out of control was when we heard that Maury had been lost. He had taken a pair of head shots from the initial volley from the first group of Centaurs. Unlike when we lost Zach, Maury hadn’t done anything wrong. He had just had plain old bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know why, but that made it easier for me to deal with. I only stayed at the celebration for about 30 minutes and then went over to the C & C plane. I had scheduled a meeting with the Australian leadership that evening to go over the plans for the next night.

The Australian officers began filtering in after that and joined in the conversation. We never actually formal convened the meeting we just kept brainstorming with more and more people. There are those who have this image of military men as brainless lemmings that are ready to rush to their deaths as soon as the orders come. They imagine that a military meeting is a stilted affair with all ideas coming from the top down. While the Australian military is much more formal than we are at Prometheus, everyone there knew that lives were on the line (including their own) and they were all engaged and full of ideas and questions for the coming operation.

After two hours of discussion, it was decided that the Australian and Prometheus forces would switch places for the next night’s assault. The Australian forces would be going on the offensive while our company would form the reserve. The Australians were eager to test themselves against the enemy that was invading their homes, and I couldn’t blame them. The decision was the right one and the obvious next step, but for some reason it really bugged me. At the time I put it down to the fact that I would just be watching and would not be able to do anything myself, and tried to push it to the back of my mind, but it never quite went away. I talked to Sniper and we decided that I would watch over the battle from the command center and that he would lead the reserves.

I was a bundle of nerves for the rest of the day as I worried endlessly over what would happen during the next night’s battle. The debacles in China and Southeast Asia were a constant reminder that things could always go very wrong. They had the older, slower mechanical suits and did not have the same training and leadership that we had. In the end all I could do, was to sit down with my command staff and wait to see what happened.

The Australians decided to use a different approach and only had their scout squads sneak past the sentry line. Once their scouts were in position, 1st Company simply ran up to one of the sentries and killed it, then began killing more sentries in a clockwise pattern. 2nd Company went through the gap unnoticed and began setting up defensive positions. The Taurians sent out their standard three forces and immediately their left flanking force ran straight into a preset fire zone without the scouts even needing to ‘nudge’ them at all.

The artillery rain reduced that force from about 200 to around 40. This prompted General Harrison to have the 1st Company captain to move his force in to finish off this group while the other groups were still heading for where his group had killed their last sentry. I was a bit uncomfortable with this decision, as it took them a long way from their supporting units. I thought about saying something, but decided that unless there was a clear danger, I would just be meddling. I’m glad that I held my tongue.

The Australian Heavy Armored Infantry is an elite group of professionals who have plenty of experience. Nitpicking their decisions would have just made me look foolish. General Harrison was an excellent officer with experience going back to the fifty years. My apprehension was replaced with fascination as I watched how expertly he controlled his forces. His people engaged the aliens only when he wanted them to. There were no mishaps or accidental engagements in this fight, just a calculated clash of forces under favorable circumstances.

The scouts were then instructed to draw the left flanking force into another fire zone before the 2nd Company moved in to finish off the survivors. His approach was clean, crisp and efficient, and so different from my own in many respects. I always dealt with the larger bio-soldiers before I took care of anything else. He had made no special arrangements for them and they were falling right alongside their comrades. When the sentry ring started back toward the base, he simply made sure all of his forces were out of the way so that there were no accidental meetings. The last force was not pulled into a fire zone at all. He let them get to their destination and stop while keeping both of his companies out of range. The bio-soldiers simply stopped and looked around when they got there, giving his people plenty of time to put a laser finder right in the middle of them for a bombing run from Australian fighters. The remnants were chewed to pieces by a crossfire from both companies.

They then went on to the Taurian base and dug entrenched positions all around it. The General didn’t trust the distraction ruse to always work, so he devised a new plan. His people all fired a single volley at the enemy and then ducked into the trenches and waited for the firing to stop. I have to admit that it worked just as well as my plan and was faster besides. The storming of the base was anti-climactic after that. After all my worries, they had done a nearly flawless job (three casualties, only one of them fatal) and I had learned a lot from watching an old master in action.

General Harrison invited me to meet with him privately after the AARs. I hastily agreed and found myself sweating for reasons that had little to do with the heat. I entered his office and found him alone. His cap and jacket were hung neatly on a coat rack and he was pouring himself a drink. “Care for a drink Captain?”

“I would be honored to share a drink anytime with a man of your stature.” He poured me a glass of something strong (I think it was scotch.)

“I take it that my lads and I have passed your alien killing test.”

“Frankly, sir, I think that I have a way to go to even be in your league, much less to judge your performance. I just wish I had someone like you to teach me rather than having to make it all up as I went along.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, lad. I learned quite a bit about fighting these beasties for watching what you’ve done, both here and in the Brazilian jungle. But, I’ve also learned quite a bit from a few other blokes over the years. Tell me lad, what sort of military education have you had?”

“None to speak of sir. The closest thing I have is playing strategy games on the computer.”

“A good game can sharpen your mind, but not as much as a good education. You obviously have a good head on your shoulders, or you wouldn’t have gotten as far as you have.” He took a drink and then continued; “I was wondering if you would take some advice from an old campaigner?”

“Any you give me would be really appreciated.”

“Then you need to learn from those who have come before you. Study the old campaigns and their leaders. Study what they did, both good and bad. This way you can pick their brains for good ideas and avoid their mistakes.”

“So how would you suggest going about this sir?”

He handed me a paper from his desk. “Here’s a list of books to start you off.”

“Wow, you’re really organized, sir.”

“I spent some time teaching the lads at RMC Duntroon before the beasties showed up. Feel free to call me up for anything you want to ask in the meantime.”

“I’ll do that, sir, although I’ll try not to take up too much of your valuable time.”

“Don’t worry too much about that, lad. This campaign to clear the northern bush is my last hurrah. I’m too old to finish out this war and I thought that the best I was going to be able to do was train my replacement. If I can pass on what I’ve learned to a few aspiring lads like yourself, then I can rest easy when I go.”

“To learn from feet of someone like you would be a rare honor that I would be a fool to pass up.”

“Then drink up and have at it, lad. We have a lot of beasties to kill before you head home.”

I don’t really like drinking, and Sylvia says this is because I have control issues. This evening I was willing to make an exception. General Harrison was an expert in both the theory and practice of warfare. That evening I learned just how incredibly arrogant I had been in thinking I knew a lot about strategy and warfare. We talked until morning about wars past and challenges and mysteries of this conflict. He finally paused in the middle of a tail and instead of continuing, he began snoring. I picked up and quietly left his office only to find a sleepy aid waiting outside. He assured me that he would take care of the general and I checked in quickly with my staff (boy that sounds strange in my ears) and returned to my motorhome for the night(?).

I started looking up some of the books he recommended and knew what I was going to be doing with my free time in the foreseeable future. I might have read all night (day) if Rowan hadn’t appeared.

“Hi.” and she gave me a big hug. She then started looking around my room intently.

“Are looking for something?”

“The others said that we needed to watch out for hussies around you. What are hussies?”

That innocent quizzical look caught me off guard and I knew I couldn’t laugh. The resulting coughing fit was painful, but it was better than breaking her heart. Once I could talk again, “Let me see. How do I explain this? Hussies … hussies are really mean or bad ladies.”

“Do you know any hussies?”

“You know? I don’t think I do. I’ve run into them before but I try to stay away from people like that.”

“Good. They were really worried about one of them getting a hold of you and using you.”

“Well, I’m glad that you are here instead of any hussies because you give much better hugs.” She gave me a big hug and then climbed into bed while I finished up on the computer and was soon snoozing away. Hussies huh? Why would Lena’s “they” be worried about that when I had never so much as had a girlfriend. Wait a minute. Was this another rumor thing? I began an internet search and turned up far more than I wanted to know. Apparently I had a whole harem and was a big enough bastard to have fathered a whole clan of out of wedlock children. There were entire forums about my supposed exploits and even fanfiction stories. This was ridiculous! I started to write a letter of denial, and only got a few lines before I remembered feeding the internet trolls only made them bigger.

I stopped and turned off my computer and fumed for a while. No wonder Lena was worried! So much of this trash involved her. Lena was a shy person (at least most of her). All this ridiculous attention couldn’t be good for her. That’s right! One of the members of my staff is a PR guy. Maybe he would know what do do about this.What was his name Harry … Larry? At least I have something to work on in the morning. I was able to finally go to bed, but I had disturbing dreams about being chased by something.

* * *

The next two days were spent further refining our assault technique with special emphasis on capturing enemy soldiers and reducing casualties. One of the Australian engineers came up with what turned out to be one of the best life saving techniques of the war. He called it the portable Faraday shield. My people just called it the fence. It was a simple concept: A set of iron rods that you put in front of your firing position when you were setting up an ambush. Orbs from the bio-soldiers had a natural tendency to hit the rods and short out. It wasn’t perfect but something like this might just have saved Maury.

The mystery of where the alien soldiers evacuated to just deepened. We were able to verify that there were more soldiers at the base than we found when we captured the base, but there were always a few soldiers that were deliberately left behind apparently to die. Tony Moore said that they they had people working with the prisoners, but they had to break the language barriers before they could answer any questions, and each species spoke a different language. About all they had been able to figure out so far was that the race of Centaurs seemed to be in charge.

The last night, we decided to up the ante even further, we split our forces and assaulted two bases at the same time. Everything went pretty much as planned, except when we started the second base assault, there were still a bunch of enemy soldiers present. The two assaults had only started a few minutes apart. but somehow that made a huge difference. Two of the soldiers were well armed and did their best to try and hold us off, unlike any of the others we had encountered. They had large handheld personal weapons that threw some sort metal disks that exploded into springs on contact. The weren’t enough to get through battlesuit armor, but they left some serious dents that would have been lethal on unarmored troops.

By the time morning arrived, we had finalized a report on our method for taking Taurian bases (which I insisted that we name the Australian Method). My group was exhausted and ready to head home and the Australians were ready to start organizing a campaign to “take back the outback.” We parted on great terms and promises of further collaboration.

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Taurian Invasion 30: The Right Plan

We moved out at dusk. Fifty men and women in armor clambered off the flatbeds, formed into our squads and moved toward our first checkpoint. This battlefield had about ten times the number of trees than the last, but that still didn’t add up to any real cover. The Australian scouts had found another wash that would allow us to sneak inside the Taurian perimeter and we were planning on heading in as soon as it got dark enough, but we never got the chance.

“Sapper One to base! We took a bad bounce and one of the bloody things spotted us and is in pursuit!”

“Acknowledged.”

“Giant Killer Leader to Sapper One. You’ll never outrun a Centaur in a gully and you’d be and easy target on the plain. What are your weapons?”

“We have M-16s with armor piercing rounds and a .50 cal on an armored Humvee and some grenades.”

“Stop running, deploy your men and kill the Taur as soon as it comes into sight. Your squad is more than a match for a single Centaur as long as you don’t have your back to it.”

“Understood sir.”

“Giant Killers, let’s go, flat out!” We all broke into a sprint at the top speed of our heavy units.

“Sapper One to Giant Killer. We got the bloody sausage, but I have two casualties.”

“Gather your casualties and get back to base ASAP! There are already fifty Taurians heading for your location, and you don’t want to be there when they arrive.”

“Understood, heading for base.”

“Any air units over the battlefield report in.”

“This is Chinook Two. We are in position over the battlefield and we have twelve loads of Chaff ready to drop.”

“Excellent, but I need you eyes right now. There should be a mob of Taurians heading out from the headquarters building. I need you to track their progress and report their location when I ask.”

“Roger that.”

We had a few minutes of running before we reached the site of the skirmish, which gave me too much time to think. I had just given my first order that had sent someone to their death. I wanted desperately to call up the Australian scouts and have the squad leader deny what I already knew in my gut, but I knew that I didn’t have that luxury at that time. I knew that the decision had been the right one, but I was still felt sick because of it.

My thoughts raced like this until we reached the gully. I saw the dead Centaur first, and looked around to find where the Scouts had fought from. I shouldn’t have done that. The blood soaked ground wasn’t particularly gory … and then I saw the arm that had been left behind.

That jolted me to my senses. I couldn’t keep worrying about how I personally was feeling about what had happened. I had to let all of that go and deal with what was about to happen or a lot more people would end up dead. I filled my mind with coming up with a plan to deal with what had gone wrong. The helicopter pilot confirmed that the Taurian force was still at least ten minutes away, so I had time to confuse the enemy.

“Sniper, head east and take out the next ten sentries, Rusty, head west and take out the next eight. I want a hole in their line big enough to take an army through. Once you’re finished, join us at Redoubt One.”

“We still sticking to the plan?”

“Yes, but we’re going to have to make up a few things as we go along. Chinook Two, do you have any Taurian mobs in sight?”

“I have one group with two of the larger monsters headed directly toward your location.”

“Would you indicate their location on the tactical maps.”

“Sorry, sir. This is an old bird and she doesn’t have the equipment to connect to the tactical net.”

“Crud! Give me an estimate of the distance between our forces instead.”

“About 6 kilometers and closing fast.”

“Thank you, Giant Killers, follow me!” We made a sharp turn to the right to keep some distance between us and the Taurs. The light was fading fast, but I didn’t want to chance them spotting us in the twilight. The plan called for us to be in position by the time it was fully dark. Despite the premature contact, the main elements of the plan were still intact. We moved into position and began constructing Redoubt One.

By the time the trenches were complete, Sniper and Rusty had returned, and all of the supporting Australian forces were in position. We would have a couple of hours of almost complete darkness before the moon rose, and I intended to make the most of them. The alien mob that had gone out earlier had stopped at the site of the earlier skirmish and waited there for a few minutes before heading back to their base. The only other activity was units sent to replace the sentries that Sniper and Rusty’s squads had killed and those sent to retrieve their comrade’s bodies.

Leon and Laura’s squads now moved forward to establish reconnaissance positions near the base, while the rest of us set up Redoubts Two and Three. Everything was set and now it was time to kill some Taurians. “Wombat Three, are you ready?”

They had been shadowing the first mob of Bio Soldiers “We have an active paint on the ugly buggers and are ready for some payback!”

“Hornet One and Two you are cleared for your runs.”

“Copy that, we have active tracking and are going in.” Laser guided cluster bombs are nothing new, and I have seen plenty of bombing footage on TV over the years, but seeing it first hand was much more impressive. I was in an armored battlesuit, four miles from where four anti-armor cluster bombs hit and I could still feel it through my feet.

“That got most of them. There are a few of them still moving, should we clean them out?”

“Negative, Wombat Three. There are still more of them where they came from and I don’t want any of them moving in your direction. Leon, what’s the activity like at the base?”

“No mobs are forming as of yet, but I have a rush of bio-soldiers exiting the … Crap, we have a Titan, I repeat, we have a Titan.”

“Alright, Tusker Battery, you are released to kill any large or giant bio-soldiers that you have a clear shot at.”

“Aw, we can’t kill any of the little ones?”

“Can it Tusker-P … actually that’s a good idea as long as you make sure your primary targets are gone and you have an ammo reserve.”

“Will do!”

“Allen, the Titan and three Cyclops just fell.”

“Great Leon, wait two minutes and set off the first noisemaker.” The noisemakers were a new touch which had been suggested by Beth. They were basically just a string of firecrackers that could be set off by remote. She asked why we should risk personnel or even equipment when they could just be reacting to the noise and muzzle flashes. (It turns out that bio-soldiers are stone-deaf but they could still see the flashes, so they worked fine anyway.) We would eventually add this to the Chaff packs as well to add to the confusion.

“Wow, I would hate to have been that patch of weeds. A mob is moving out to investigate.”

“You know the plan Leon; lead them to the slaughter.” Leon lit off one noisemaker after another while shadowing the Taurian mob silently. He led them on this particular wild goose chase until I could see the Taurs in the distance. “I have them.”

“They’re all yours, boss.”

I set off several more noisemakers to draw them on until the entire mob was right in front of the main force. “Launch Chaff.” The Chaff packs bursting made a lot of noise, but very little light, and the Centaurs didn’t react to them. I kept my eyes glued on the mob and when the first piece of Chaff fluttered across my vision I gave the order to fire. I was kind of surprised when Fluffy reported that I had downed three of them. With forty of us and 53 of them, that doesn’t leave much room for doubles, let alone triples, but sometimes you just get lucky. “Good job, everyone. Let’s head for Redoubt Two.”

“Maury’s down.”…and sometimes you get unlucky.

“Take who you need and get him back to base.” Fluffy’s display told me that the whole squad had left. That’s not what I intended to happen, but I was not going to question one of my squad leader’s judgment on the battlefield. That was a significant drop in firepower, but if all went well, we wouldn’t miss it much. On the other hand, relying on things to go your way in battle was a good way to die.

“Allen this is Laura. Three groups are forming and are moving out. All three seem to be about 200 strong and include a Cyclops with a rider.” Well, the Taurians were changing things a bit, but it wouldn’t be enough. “The northern group is approaching Kill Zone One.”

“When they are in it, give the order to fire.”

“Uh, OK. All batteries, they are starting to enter Kill Zone One. The will be completely inside in five, four, three, two, one. All batteries FIRE!” I could see the flashes, although the artillery itself was over the horizon. The flight time seemed so long that I started wondering if they had missed or if the Taurians would escape the kill zone.

Then a little patch of the Australian outback turned into hell. It almost didn’t seem real. The lights and the sound were out of sync, like a bad movie, but the effect was real enough. “That got them! There are maybe two dozen who are still moving.”

“Pick off any stragglers and follow the rest. Only engage if you are confident you can take them down.”

“Yes sir!”

“Leon, are you in position?”

“Just about, and the mob is getting pretty close.”

“All batteries, prepare to fire on Kill Zone Two.”

“Crap! They’re off course, too far north.”

“You know how to draw them in. Don’t give the order until they’re in and you’re clear.”

“Chinook One, I need a Chaff drop between my position and the Taurs. I just took out their rider.”

“Acknowledged. Dropping Chaff now.” Leon needed to enter the kill zone in order to draw the aliens into it, and although it was just lines on the display until the artillery fired, it still felt like I had ordered him into a minefield.

“Wombat Two to Giant Killer Leader, they are pulling their pickets.”

“Acknowledged. Wombat Three, are the remaining units at your location pulling back?”

“Yes sir.”

“You have permission to engage any stragglers that you see fit.”

“Yes sir!”

I was watching Fluffy’s display as Leon zigzagged across the plains. He was expertly herding them toward the kill zone while trimming their numbers with precision fire. I heard him give the order to fire and I remember thinking that he was still awfully close to the kill zone when the night was lit up for the third time. I heard a scream over the radio, “Leon!…” I had to stop for a second to get control of myself, “Situation report. Are you OK?”

“I’m still with you. A stray round hit right by us. Jessie took a hard hit and the rest of us got peppered by shrapnel.”

“Pull your squad back to base and give me an assessment from there.”

“On my way.” There was relief in his tone that told me that I had made the right decision, but that left me two squads down. Besides that, Leon’s squad was the one who specialized in capturing the headquarters building itself, which could cause problems later, but that consideration could wait until all the bio-soldiers were dead. The immediate problem was that there was no longer anyone to monitor the remains of the second group of Centaurs.

“Sniper, take your squad and see how much is left of the mob from Kill Zone Two.”

“You got it Boss. Can I engage the goat sucking things?”

“Feel free to pick off any stragglers. Engagement is up to your discretion. Take them if you think you can.”

“Got down right. We’ll keep these things occupied.”

I was down to 30 battlesuits in my main force, which should be enough to do the job if nothing else went wrong. It helped that the third mob of aliens was potentially the easiest to deal with. The central group had always made a bee line toward the last place that our main force had been spotted. This left them extremely vulnerable to a preset kill zone. Sure enough, this group ran straight into Kill Zone Three without needing any encouragement from us.

The resulting firestorm was both terrifying and beautiful to see this close up. I was watching it with the spectrum shifted toward infra-red by our helmet displays. Fountains of earth and fire went up in strange colors as the ground shook beneath our feet and the pressure waves rolled over us. The effect was hypnotic in its own way as the sensory overload left you dazed in the abrupt silence that followed. I might have stood there staring with my mouth open for a while if I hadn’t seen several Centaurs still moving in the kill zone.

“Let’s finish this group off and go clean up the stragglers.” Within ten minutes we were setting up our positions around the Taurian base itself. The noisemakers really made wiping out the sentry ring a breeze. Unfortunately, Leon’s group was out of action. All of their suits had been damaged by that artillery shell, although only one of them had been seriously injured. The scout squads from the Australian battlesuit companies had arrived, but they were supposed to be learning about how to take a headquarters building, not doing it themselves. Sniper and I had a conference and we finally decided that Laura and her squad would storm the headquarters building.

It turned out to be a good thing, as there were still a group of Gargoyles in the entryway. Unfortunately for the Gargoyles, everyone in our company had gone through a hundred “assault the alien headquarters building” simulations. A few smoke bombs and a lot of ammo later, there were twelve dead Gargoyles and two battlesuits out of the fight (one of ours and one Australian.)

An Australian lieutenant tazer packed the pilot and the others threw grenades that exploded into fire retardant foam (which had been delivered for our scouts specifically for this purpose), which put a real damper on the self destruct mechanism. We had captured our first intact Taurian base! The only bad part for me was that Leon should have gotten the honor, but that’s the fortunes of war.

Our victory celebration that night was a big one. The only thing that I think kept it from completely getting out of control was when we heard that Maury had been lost. He had taken a pair of head shots from the initial volley from the first group of Centaurs. Unlike when we lost Zach, Maury hadn’t done anything wrong. He had just had plain old bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know why, but that made it easier for me to deal with.

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Taurian Invasion 29: Taking Command

The next morning back at Prometheus there was a high level meeting. The Director addressed a screen at the end of the room on which Sniper joined the meeting. “Your decision was just a bit abrupt. What made you decide to give him a battlefield promotion at that particular time?”

“Other than the fact that it was long overdue, it was because he hesitated while in the middle of combat, while directing the battle, because he needed to give me an order. My rank, or his lack of it, was in the way, so I took care of the problem.”

“Alright, does Allen seem to be adjusting to being in command?”

“That’s it? You’ve blocked this for months causing me all that freaking grief and now it’s no big deal?”

“Sniper, you are a battlefield commander, and I am a civilian with no military experience. I have to completely rely on the judgment of the people who are in the field; and hopefully I am wise enough to not sit here and second guess your decisions from the comfort of my office. You gave what sounded to me like a valid military reason for a military decision. Unless I hear from one of my other military commanders that you made a bad decision for a bad reason, I am not going to second guess it. Now, how does Allen seem to be adjusting to being in command?”

“Like a duck to water. He is a bit hesitant about the parts that are new to him, but he leads, and so people follow.”

“Tony, what’s your assessment?”

“He’s doing well, but trying to do far too much himself. I’m putting together a list of names to form a command staff for him. I’d pull him for my command group, but he’s still too young to accept being away from the action.”

Angelia caught the General’s attention, “I might have some names for your list, if you think it would be helpful.”

“I wouldn’t dream of making the list without your input.”

“Why a command staff so soon?”

“He has a brilliant combat team that he has put together around himself, but they are not the right kinds of people to be able to help him with the types of problems he is already encountering while trying to come up with workable strategies for the war. So, he has been trying to do it all himself and its starting to show. I think that if we give him the tools, he will be able to use them properly, which will allow him to work more efficiently.”

“Herman, what is the status of the new weapons systems he requested?”

“Well the Chaff systems that he requested are not a really difficult engineering challenge. The biggest problem is to figure out what form of it will provide the greatest distraction for bio-soldiers under low light conditions. We already have several study groups … OW!” The research director looked sharply at his councilor, Heather, who was looking excessively innocent. “Where was I?”

“I was wondering how long it would be until workable Chaff units reached the field.”

“A set of working prototypes will be in Australia tomorrow.”

“Excellent. Anything else on this matter before we move on?”

“Yeah, before I go, how long until Allen starts attending these meetings?”

“If things keep going the way the way they are, I would be surprised if it was more than a couple of months.”

“Great, more waiting.”

* * *

I woke up with a crick in my neck and fifty things running through my head. I had been sleeping in an odd position and one arm was asleep and as I tried to turn and stretch, my elbow clunked into something solid and I heard a sleepy, “Ow!” I turned quickly and saw nocturnal visitor rubbing her forehead and looking at me with wide, frightened eyes.

“Sorry. I really didn’t mean to bonk you.”

She said, “It’s OK,” but her eyes were still full of fear and distrust.

“Please don’t leave, it was an accident.”

She had started to gather herself up but, at my outburst, she stopped and shifted on the bed. She looked me straight in the eye and sneered “What can I do for you Hon?”

OK that woke me up! My visitor was definitely gone. I glanced quickly at the clock which said it was five in the afternoon. I tried to convert that to what time it was at home and failed completely. “I just woke up because I had a crick in my neck. I was going to just go back to sleep when I accidentally woke you. You’re welcome to stay or go; whichever you like.”

She snorted in mixed disgust and amusement and started to get up, then stopped and stared at me intently, “You’re Allen right?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“So you’re the goody two-shoes that has everyone in such an uproar.”

“I guess so.”

“Does you neck still hurt?”

“Uh … yeah?”

“OK then, turn around.” I hesitated, not knowing what she intended. “I’m just going to rub your neck. No big deal.” I turned and sat facing away from her and she began her massage.

No big deal indeed! I had never gotten a real massage before in my life and especially not from a pretty girl. It was having quite an effect on me! On the one hand, this was completely outside of my comfort zone and I was completely embarrassed and had no idea of what I should do. Back to the first hand, I was really sore and very tense from all that had been happening and everything that was coming up. The matter was decided by relaxing effect that the massage had on me, which made me feel like I was going to melt into a puddle at any moment.

And then she started kissing my neck! Now I know it doesn’t fit the macho hero stereotype, but I nearly jumped out of my skin. Despite the battlesuit and the giant killer image that I’d earned, at heart I was still a nerd who lived with his mother, and this scared the tar out of me. I turned to ask what was going on and received the first full on kiss of my life.

She sat back and gave me this measuring look, and sighed, “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?” I simply shook my head no as I was too busy hyperventilating to speak. “Crap on a cracker, now the others are awake and I have to go.”

She closed her eyes briefly, and then opened them and looked around in a confused manner. “I think I’d better go.” Now that was Lena’s voice, but I was too breathless and confused to do more than nod my agreement and get up and out of her way. She hurried out, obviously embarrassed, which confirmed some of my earlier suspicions about her not remembering her nocturnal visits. I felt like I was near figuring out what was going on with Lena until this morning’s events. Now I was completely lost again and flustered besides.

I looked at the clock and tried to figure out how much sleep I got, but decided that it really didn’t matter. There was no way I was going back to sleep after that. I grabbed a quick shower and came back to my computer to continue working. It was actually a relief to bury myself in reading intelligence reports to find out the extent of the alien presence on our world.

I had a group of people arriving this evening (they were already in the air) to form my staff which meant that today was the last day that I had to myself. With the Chaff ordinance not arriving until tomorrow, I decided that we would take two days to get prepared for our first push. The goal would be to take out four Taurian bases in four nights. I needed to come up with at least four battle plans that were similar enough that our people would be able to get into a routine, but varied enough that the Taurians would not know what to expect. I also needed some sort of training routine for our people to prepare on, but getting the simulators reprogrammed in such a short time was simply out of the question. Besides all of that, I had to figure out what to say to the company as the new commander.

* * *

The morning meeting started as normal except that I was at the helm. “Anyone who hasn’t heard about the change in command by now really needs to get out from under your rock more often. Sniper and I have decided to trade places because he for some reason wanted to be promoted down to XO, which left me in charge. Now whenever I got a new boss, the first question I always have is what is he going to change? I have come up with only one major change that I want to make: Some journalist somewhere tried to label me as the ‘Giant Killer.’ I managed to turn that around on my first interview by saying that it was my squad name. By doing that, I wanted to let the world know that I was part of a team who did great things and not some idiot who thought that I could do it all by myself. Now that I think about it, I was wrong to limit it to just my squad. We couldn’t have done it without the rest of you any more than I could have done it without my squad. Therefore, I have made the Giant Killers the official company name.”

“Most of you were here when I was hired and you are the people who turned a series of wild ideas from me into battlefield success. We are now the most powerful and successful alien fighting unit on the planet, but I don’t think that we’ve come anywhere near hitting our limits. In two days, we are going to show the world how to drive the Taurians off of our planet.” I actually got some cheers for that one.

“What I need most at the moment is ideas and suggestions on how to improve and alter the assault we had last night. We had a great success last night, but if we keep doing the same thing over and over, they will eventually catch on and cut us to ribbons. Anyone who has a good or bad idea, please come see me. Even a bad idea could be combined with another idea to make a great idea. Feel free to come see me as often as you like and don’t worry about being a pest. If I think that you’re a pest I’ll tell you. Until then you’re a welcome guest. I’ll have some training exercises for you later this afternoon … tonight … well later anyway. Until then, you’re free. Try not to blow anything up unless it’s an alien.”

As far as speeches went, I thought it was a pretty good one. The only major gaff was that this was the first that Sniper heard that I had accepted him as my executive officer, which I didn’t realize until someone pointed it out to me much later.

I headed back to my room and continued reading intelligence reports. I got a number of visits over the next couple of hours, but I kept feeling disappointed every time I saw who it was. I tried to dismiss the feeling, but it kept bugging me until I decided that I needed to deal with it directly.

Lena came in a little while later and would not make eye contact. “You wanted to see me sir?” (She had never called me ‘sir’ before as far as I could remember, so this was a bad sign.)

“I would like you to listen to a story of something that happened to me and tell me what you think I should do after I finish. Would you be willing to do that for me?”

She looked up with a suspicious glare, “I guess so.”

“While we were in the Amazon, a little girl wandered into my room one night. She seemed lost and scared, and when I asked her what she needed, she just wanted a hug. She seemed very familiar, but I wasn’t sure who she was. I didn’t know exactly what to do, but that seemed like a reasonable request. I gave her a hug which seemed to make her feel better and I sent her off to bed.”

“The next night she returned, but this time she asked if she could stay because she didn’t want to be alone. I still wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew it wasn’t safe for a little girl to be wandering around there, so I let her stay and watched over her while she slept. In the morning she went on her way, only to return each night. I didn’t know what else to do, but I knew that at least I could keep her safe. When we left the Amazon, she disappeared, and she never even told me her name.”

“Her name is Rowan.”

“I thought you might know her, but that’s not the end of the story. I didn’t see her again until last night. It might seem strange, but I was very glad to see her again, and had missed her quite a bit. Unfortunately, I fell asleep in an odd position and woke up hurting. When I tried to shift to a more comfortable position, I accidentally knocked her in the head with my elbow. This seemed to really scare her, and I tried to apologize, but she started to run away. I felt terrible and I asked her not to go, but it was too late and she was gone.”

“To my surprise someone else arrived as soon as she left. She too looked familiar, but I knew I had never met her before, but she seemed to know me. I tried to explain what had happened to Rowan, and she seemed to understand. She offered to give me a neck rub because I was still hurting. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do because she was a stranger, but she seemed to be a friend of the little one, so I let her. When she started kissing that back of my neck, I nearly jumped out of my skin, I turned to ask what was going on, and she kissed me. Now, I am not in the habit of kissing women whose name I don’t even know and apparently it showed. She stopped and told me that she had to go and then you arrived. I’m still not sure what all is going on, but I thought that there might have been some mistaken impressions that needed to be cleared up. I had the feeling that you might know these two, and I was wondering if you could give them some messages for me.”

“I think that I might be able to arrange that.”

“Please let Rowan know that I would never hurt her or let anyone else hurt her on purpose and I am very sorry that I accidentally hurt her. I miss her hugs and hope to see her again soon. As for the other lady…”

“Bubbles.”

“Er, OK. Please let Bubbles know that I wasn’t trying to lead her on in any way. I appreciated the massage, but I’m kind of shy and she really surprised me. If she wants to visit or talk to me, she is always welcome, but I’m afraid I might always be a bit shy around her.”

“Anything else?”

“Just that I want you to remember that you are always welcome to visit and talk as well.”

She hesitated for a moment, “You seem kind of busy, I’d better go.”

“Alright, I’ll see you later.”

I still didn’t know all of what was going on, but I had learned a few things and I certainly felt better. I really wanted to know what was happening, but I recognized that pushing things would only end in disaster. At the very least, our talk let me concentrate on what I was doing without being constantly distracted.

* * *

My decision to meet my new staff as they landed turned out to be somewhat of a mistake. Even though the sun had only been up for a little while, it was still hot enough to make wearing my dress uniform a torturous affair. Add to that just how much of a dust storm a jet landing on a dirt runway raises, and you have all the makings for a bad time.

As the plane taxied to a stop, I stopped coughing long enough to recognize it as the command center that Rodolfo had brought to the Amazon. As the back ramp of the plane opened, a thin man with a crisp uniform and thick mustache greeted me with a perfect salute.

“Major Brent Jacobs reporting for duty sir!”

“Pleased to meet you sir.”

“Yours is the honor sir, as I will be reporting to you as your head of security.”

I should have said something about it being an honor to have him, but his perfect military manners, higher rank and thick British accent had thrown me a bit. I really needed a moment to process what this meant, but I didn’t get it as Major Jacobs led me inside and introduced me to about twenty people in just over a minute. Now I am very good at keeping a huge amount of information straight in my head, but there is a weakness in that I must understand each piece and figure out where it fits in relation to the others in order to do so. The Major seems to be the kind of person who has endless amounts of energy and lives life at a pace that just makes me tired to watch. These things combined into a situation where I was about to panic because I was getting serious information overload during an important event. “Major!”

“Sir!”

“I need to speak to you privately.”

“There is a conference room right here sir.”

Ten seconds of silence was just enough of a break to get myself under control and figure out something to talk to him about. “How many security personnel do you have right now?”

“None have been assigned to this command yet.”

“Then maybe you could help me with a problem. I have a tactical reserve of seventeen pilots who have nothing better to do than sit around and get themselves in trouble. I was wondering if you could find a use for them until they are called on.”

“I can think of a few things sir.”

“If you could get right on that Major, I would really appreciate it.”

He gave me another salute and executed a perfect military turn and was gone. I took a minute to catch my breath and get my thoughts in order. I had just missed a lot of important information during the introductions, and tantalizing bit and pieces of it were gnawing at my subconscious until I found out what was what. I walked back out to the command and control deck looked over everyone and picked the calmest looking one, “Can I have a word with you?” Once the door to the conference room closed, “Would you be kind enough to give me your name and tell me what you do again?”

He gave me a friendly smile that immediately put me at ease, “David Ford, military chaplain.”

“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name the first time.”

“We met back in Brazil, but you were a bit out of it at the time and Sir Jacobs is enough to confuse anyone.”

“Sir Jacobs?”

“We just call him that because he’s British, says ‘sir’ way too much and because it bugs him. He’s fun to tease, but he really knows his stuff.”

“It sounds like you have all worked together before.”

“Most of us have been together for about four years now. The Director had Tony put together a military command team during the Troubles. We got to fly around the world to any trouble spot that involved Prometheus, but there usually isn’t all that much for us to do. When Tony asked us if anyone wanted to join your command team, we all jumped at the chance to do something useful.”

“Do you guys come with the flying command center?”

“I take it Tony didn’t tell you that this plane is now your official headquarters.”

“I was kidding, but it fits the pattern.”

“The Director likes to play his games, but it always seems to work out for everyone in the end. By the way, may I ask what you did with sir Jacobs?”

“I sent him to form my reserve pilots into a security squad.”

“That will keep him happy. I almost hate to get my hopes up, but do you have anything for me to do?”

“You know, there is something that would take a big load off my mind. Three of our pilots were injured in last night’s battle. I really wanted to go and see them, but I just haven’t been able to get to it yet. If you could check in on them and tell me how they are, I would really appreciate it.”

“I’ll take the Doc with me if you don’t mind.”

“Sounds good. That way I can meet him when you get back.”

“Her.”

“If it’s Barbara Sullivan, then I know her.” He nodded and I continued, “If you two could do that right away, that would be great.”

“I’ll take that as a dismissal and get right on it. Should I send someone else in?”

“I need to meet everyone, so send in whoever’s next.”

I spent the next several hours meeting the entire crew of the C&C plane. I now had a staff and command crew of over twenty people that I seemed to have inherited from the Director himself. I found myself surrounded by people who were older and more experienced than me, but who were looking to me for leadership. I needed to know one more thing before I could act, and so I called in Phil Gerard, my strategic consultant. I showed him my assault plan for the Taurian bases to keep his mind occupied and asked him to work on coming up with variants that would keep the aliens guessing. He was able to come up with so many of ideas in such a short period of time that I nearly forgot the real reason for calling him in. After brainstorming for a half hour we had at least twenty workable ideas, “What made you decide to take this assignment?”

“It’s quite simple really. I came for the same reason that I joined Prometheus. I spent twenty three years playing armchair general while spending my days selling paint. When I found out the aliens were coming, my whole life up to that time seemed like a complete waste. I joined Prometheus and took this assignment because, here, I just might be able to make a difference.”

* * *

I finally reached the haven of my motorhome. The state room of the C&C plane was mine to claim, but I really need a familiar place. After meeting everyone and giving them assignments, they started giving me reports on those assignments. I had to admit that they were extremely good and accomplished in a couple of hours what would have taken me several days. The pace was frantic and exhausting, but I felt the kind of exhaustion that you have after a day at an amusement park; so tired that you can barely smile.

Everything was ready for tomorrow. A detailed plan was being given to General Harrison so that he could go over it while my people and I slept (A sixteen hour time difference is a pain in the butt.) I opened the door to my quarters and saw that sleep would have to wait. “Hello there.”

“Hi.” It was Rowan. I thought it was from her posture, but I couldn’t be sure until I heard her voice.

“I am so glad to see you. Going a day without a hug from you is really hard on me.”

“Really?”

“Yep. How are you tonight?”

“Isn’t it daytime?”

“It is here, but it’s night at home. Besides, I’m sleepy and about to go to bed, so night works for me even if it is hot and sunny outside.”

“Sorry that I ran away. I was scared.”

“So was I.”

“That’s silly. Why would you be scared?”

“I was scared that I would never get a hug from you again.”

She gave a little giggle, “You’re funny.”

“I like you too. I like your hugs and I love your smile.” She rewarded me with a bright smile and a big hug for that. “Well, I am very tired, and I am going to bed unless you have something else you want to talk about.”

She frowned as I took my jacket off, “I know you said that you said that hugs make things better, but now that she knows I come here, she might not let me come sometimes.”

“That’s OK. I don’t want to get you in trouble. Just let her know that I said that you can come anytime you want.”

A mischievous smile appeared, “Good, cause you’re her super-lee-er, so she has to do what you say.”

“It doesn’t quite work that way, but, I’ll talk to her for you.” I finished getting ready and she moved over to give me room to lay down.

“Do you want to talk to Bubbles?”

Now it was my turn to frown, “Can I tell you a secret Rowan?”

“Sure.”

“It’s kind of silly, but Bubbles is kind of scary to me. I feel safer with you.”

“OK, I’ll stay with you and keep you safe.”

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Taurian Invasion 28: The First Battle

My first impression of Australia was that it was hot and dusty. It was actually hotter than the Amazon had been, and all of the dust made you constantly thirsty, but I still prefer the outback to the jungle. My reaction to seeing Australian soldiers surprised me. I have never envied anyone else’s clothes before in my life, but I was really jealous of the shorts and short sleeved shirts of the tropical uniforms of the Australian Army!

I was really glad that air conditioners of the Gulf War surplus command tent were in good condition. As I laid out the plan for General Harrison and his staff, I was thinking that it was so nice to not need translators, and then they started in with questions and comments, and I thought for a moment I had been wrong. It actually didn’t take too long to get used to their accents, and we worked together for most of the day getting the plan ready for action.

As the sun set, we finally got suited up and went through our pre-battle checklists. As far as the company went, the number of bad starts were down to 5% which is the kind of numbers you were looking for in a production model. However, my personal confidence was a lot lower than the last battle. I had gotten very little training time in due to my injuries and other duties.

The air units were already circling overhead as we headed out of camp. The whole camp seemed to be in motion as everyone headed toward their assigned positions.

We were jogging to a small gully that the Australians had found that ran into the Taurs perimeter. A lot of hunched running and a couple of crawls later, we were in. We only had two hours to get our defenses in place before everything was scheduled to start. Dirt flew as we dug a series of trenches and berms overlooking our chosen kill zone. We finished quickly and then moved closer to the enemy base and repeated the process twice. As they were finishing the last one, my Giant Killers and Leon’s scout squad headed in toward the Taurian base.

When we could see the mob of Taurians surrounding the base, we each dug a concealment trench. Leon’s squad went on to camouflage theirs, but ours would not be in use long enough to merit such details. “Sniper, everything is ready up here, how is your position?”

“Just waiting on you dumb slowpokes.”

“Giant Killer Leader to base: slaughter the lambs.”

“Acknowledged, commencing operation.”

Prepositioned Australian battlesuit squads obliterated the five bio-soldier sentries closet to our main camp, opening a large gap in their sentry ring. I was watching the mob near the base as this happened. Most of the bio-soldiers were just standing there or pacing, only occasionally would one move into or out of the base. Suddenly, all of the bio-soldiers froze. Two figures ran out of the main building and clambered onto two of the Cyclops. A group of about fifty Centaurs and the two Cyclops who were nearest the direction of the eliminated sentries turned away from the base and took off at a dead run. My squad followed after as soon as they had passed, while Leon’s scouts stayed to observe the Taurians surrounding the base.

One aspect of my plan immediately started going wrong. In the jungle, the Cyclops tended to fall behind because they were not as fast at going around trees as their smaller brethren. In the open ground of the outback, they were not only keeping up with the mob, but they were starting to pull to the head of the group as they were big enough to simply run over bushes and small trees that the Centaurs had to go around. This meant that having my Giant Killers pick them off from behind was out of the question.

Time for plan B. “Giant Killer Leader to Tusker Battery, The Cyclops are yours as soon as they reach the kill zone.”

“Acknowledged, Giant Killer Leader. Be advised to move out of the fire cone.”

“Understood, we’ll be well clear. Sniper, this group is all yours. We’re heading back to the trench by the base to pick up the next group.”

“Alright, we can handle these fruitcakes.”

Looked like my team was out of the first round. “Fluffy, tactical map.” We hit the trench just as the Tuskers opened up on the Cyclops. For all the power and lethality of the Tuskers, they lack the impressive display of traditional artillery. This made them a little hard to market, as most generals and leaders expect a big light and sound show. The people at Prometheus managed to overcome this by calling it stealth artillery. The Tusker has twin cyclonic magnetic accelerator cannons. This means that they spin a set of steel ball bearings the size of softballs around in a circle until they shoot them out going about mach 7. There is no flash, no boom. The first thing you usually notice is that something that was just fine a split second ago, all of the sudden has a big hole in it. Watching it in action is far from being unimpressive; it’s downright spooky.

The Cyclops were running at full speed in the middle of the mob of Centaurs when they both just fell down. That was the signal for the rest of our company to pop up and open fire. Within 30 seconds, all of the Centaurs were dead. While this was going on, I was watching the Taurians gathered around the base. During the battle and for a moment afterward, there was no reaction among the bio-soldiers, then they all froze and none of them moved for two solid minutes. Suddenly, they all started moving at once. About 300 of them formed a defensive ring around the base, while the others formed three groups. The center group consisted of about 100 Centaurs, a dozen Gargoyles, and two Wyverns, who galloped, flew and flutter-hopped off directly toward Sniper’s position. One either side of this group, two flanking groups of about 200 Centaurs and three Cyclops took off in slightly different directions. They were trying the same maneuver that we had seen in the Amazon where one group would approach our forces from the front while the larger forces tried to hit us from the sides.

Unfortunately for them, flanking attacks require surprise in order to be really effective, and both here and in the Amazon, we saw them coming long before they arrived. “Giant Killer Leader to Tusker Battery, you are cleared to take out the Cyclops and Wyverns. Leon, as soon as they are down, it time to play follow the leader.” As they both acknowledged, I was watching my tactical display to for confirmation of when the heavy bio-soldiers fell. The Tuskers went about their tasks with silent efficiency. Within 30 seconds, there were no living heavy bio-soldiers on the battlefield. As I turned to tell my team to move out, the door of the headquarters building opened and something new began emerging. It was so large that it had to wriggle its way out of the door, making it look like the alien base was giving birth to the nightmare creature. “G-giant Killer Leader to Tusker Battery, we have a Titan, repeat we have a Titan.”

“Tusker Battery to Giant Killer Leader, we do not have a clear shot without hitting the headquarters. Do we fire?”

You might have noticed from my little stammer, that the appearance of the Titan had scared the crap out of me (not literally, thankfully.) The panicked part of my mind was screaming, ‘Yes! Make that freaky thing go away!’ But, the logical part of my mind was able to retain control, so I said, “No.” I took a deep breath, swallowed my fear, and was able to come up with a plan. “Tusker-1 & 2, maneuver until you have a clean shot at the Titan. Tusker-P keep locked on it in case it gives you a clear shot or moves out.”

“Acknowledged.”

I changed to my squad’s frequency. “Alright, let’s move out.” It was remarkably hard to get my legs to follow my own orders. The Titan had nearly unnerved me and I really wanted to hide in the trench until it was dead. I was really glad that my duties took me away from it instead of toward it because I don’t know if I could have made myself move towards it at the time. I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure it wasn’t following us, until the mob of Centaurs that was our target came into view. I forced the Titan (mostly) out of my mind and turned to the task at hand. “We’re going against 200 Centaurs this time without any cover. Long range shots to keep their attention only! I don’t care if we get no kills at all as long as we do our job and delay them until the main event.”

“Command to all units. The sentry ring is heading inwards.”

“Crud! Rico, your job is now to watch out for sentries so that one of them doesn’t shoot us while we are looking the other direction. Chinook-1 are you in position over the western flanking force?”

“We are in position and awaiting orders.”

“Unload your cargo as soon as you see fire coming from the Taurians. Giant Killers, fire at will.”

I distinctly heard someone say, “Who’s Will?” It was a running gag in our unit so I ignored it. In our first volley, only Sureshot brought one down (no surprise there,) but the whole mass wheeled around and headed in our general direction. We ran at an angle away from them, so they missed us entirely the first time.

“Why aren’t they firing?”

“I don’t think they saw where our fire came from, but don’t worry, they’ll try to kill us soon enough.”

As soon as we got far enough out to the side that I judged we were out of their field of vision, we let off another volley and dropped three more of them (Buddy missed.) The Centaurs charged in our general direction as we sprinted elsewhere. I was hoping to pull this off a few more times, but Rico let off a volley before we had gotten out of sight of the mass. A lone Centaur sentry was right in our path. Rico had let us get pretty close to it before letting it have it, but that still hadn’t given us enough time. The night was immediately filled with the blue spheres from the Centaurs, and I took a hit in my shoulder, but it didn’t penetrate. I vaguely heard the chopper pilot say he was dumping his cargo, but I was too busy running to reply. We had all taken hits, but the only real damage so far had been that Buddy had lost his recoilless cannon and was down to his rocket launcher. Still, although the Taurs were firing blindly, they were all firing at us. There was a good chance that they would have gotten us too, if the cargo from the Chinook hadn’t arrived just then.

Officially, we called it Chaff, but it was really all of the garbage from the camp being tossed out of the back of a helicopter (we improved the design quite a bit later.) In the Amazon, the Taurians had fired at everything that moved, which meant that they were frequently not firing at us. In the outback, there was very little else for them to fire at. I had hoped that giving them alternate targets would mean that they hit us less often, and it seemed to be working. Most of the garbage was paper that fluttered and blew about in the breeze, giving the creatures lots of moving things to shoot at in the dark. (We were actually saved by paperwork!) With the volume of fire heading our way dramatically reduced, we headed for a nearby gully to regroup and come up with a new plan.

I checked the tactical map to see what the overall situation was. The central mob of bio-soldiers had not reached Sniper’s position yet, and both flanking forces were being distracted. I made Buddy jettison his damaged cannon (We can pick it up later Buddy, ) and we followed the gully for about a half mile and then popped up to fire another volley (I got one, Sureshot got one and Buddy got six with a napalm missile.) I now had a plan for where to lead them other than just around. I was now actively leading them toward the other flanking group. The idea was to run the two groups into each other and try to make them act as one big mob.

After three more volleys, (the second of which my sniper cannon stopped working) we finally had the two groups moving towards a common destination. I sent Leon and his scouts back to watch the base. About this time we figured out that if you drop the Chaff first and then fire through it, it makes your night a whole lot easier.

“Allen, this is Sniper. We took care of these fudge rocks and are ready for more.”

“Head for the main gun line. I’ll meet you there and I’m bringing about 400 guests.”

“I have a set of trenches that we haven’t even used yet.”

“There’s no point. It would just expose everyone to unnecessary risk without any real gain.” Then I remembered that I was talking to my superior, “Unless, you think that using them is a good idea.”

“I’ll meet you at the gun line.” Something was wrong with his reply, but I didn’t have time to figure out if he was pissed with me or not.

It took us two more volleys before we herded the Centaurs in the right direction. As we were making the final sprint to the gun line I hear something that took a big load off of my mind.

“Tusker-1 to command, the Titan is toast, I repeat, the Titan is toast!” I nearly cheered.

“Giant Killer Leader to all units, your prey is on it way. Prepare to fire as soon as we get clear of the kill zone.” We headed for our designated place on the gun line and jumped into our trench, “All units FIRE!”

The combined firepower of an Australian Heavy Armored Battle group into a pre-targeted kill zone left me speechless. I was supposed to add my guns to the maelstrom, but at that point it just seemed like watering the ocean. To my amazement, about a dozen Centaurs survived long enough to be cut down by volley of precision fire. I thought that the firepower of our company was impressive, but it was nothing compared to this. I stood there awed by the spectacle of destruction that I had just witnessed until Lena came and tapped me on the shoulder, “Are you OK Allen?”

“Yeah, sorry, I was just lost in thought.”

“Sniper called you a couple of times and you didn’t respond.”

“Whoops! Sniper, this is Allen, what’s up.”

“Just need to know if we are flogging ready for Phase Two.”

“Absolutely. We should get everyone moving ASAP.”

“Good! Are you OK? I was starting to get worried.”

“Sorry, I was just thinking about some things and got distracted.”

“No problem as long as your sorry apple is OK.”

Phase One had gone extraordinarily well. Within an hour of the first shot being fired, we had wiped out the Taurian base’s entire offensive force as well as all of their heavy units. Phase Two was to wipe out their defensive ring. It took us nearly two hours to get everything into position, but once it was there, it became less of a battle and more of a turkey shoot. An old SWORD robot would fire a burst, the Centaurs would all turn and fire at that point (while the robot dropped into a trench) and three companies of Armored Infantry would slaughter the bio-soldiers from their blind spot. 350 or so dead Centaurs later, Phase Three commenced with three scout platoons (one of ours and one from each Australian company) entering the headquarters building while other squads secured the outlying buildings.

As this was happening, two fuel trucks and a group of engineers with heavy cutting tools arrived at the back of the headquarters building, and began the process of cutting an opening in the wall of the headquarters building. The scouts secured the lower deck of the headquarters and set a watch on the central hall of the upper deck and then went to help the engineers. The engineers carefully cut a hole in a large tank on the bottom level and began draining the fluid in it into the fuel trucks. The tech boys back at Prometheus had determined that this reservoir was what had exploded to destroy the last control room directly above it, so we decided to drain it before we tried to enter another one.

After the tank was dry, the scouts finished securing the upper areas of the headquarters, and finally stood at the entrance to the control room. Leon insisted that he would be the one to enter the control by himself and promptly received both good news and bad news. The good news was that the room did not explode! The bad news was that the room caught fire and he had no way to put it out, so we lost another alien soldier. Poor Leon was so mad it was hard not to laugh. I finally broke down and told him that he would have another chance sooner than he expected.

I only put in a brief appearance at the unit’s victory celebration before slipping out to go to a series of meetings that extended well into the morning. Prometheus and Royal Australian Engineers both assured me that they could put together some more effective and efficient Chaff dispersal systems in short order. The Chaff had really been an afterthought, but it had proven to make a big difference in open country. I had thought that the night on its own would be enough of a handicap to the enemy, but the sheer volume of fire had resulted in numerous hits as well as three serious injuries in Sniper’s group (no fatalities this time.)

After that, I went over to Sniper’s motorhome, and was quite surprised that none of the other squad leaders were there. “Am I early?”

“No, but we needed to talk one on one before everyone else arrives.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Did you do something wrong? Are you smoking me? We just took a Taurian base almost completely intact and didn’t lose a single gold drunk man! You just engineered to most brilliant engagement I have ever seen and have probably thought of fifty ways to improve it by now. Haven’t you?”

“I hadn’t counted them.” (I was caught off guard by his accusation and said the first thing that came to mind.)

“The only thing wrong with this whole monkey fishing situation is that you’re not commanding this company, and I’ve decided to fix that right now. As of this minute, I am resigning as commander of the FNC Special Forces First Armored Infantry Company, which leaves you in command. Here are your captain’s bars.”

I gaped at the insignia in my hands, “Are you serious? You’re retiring?”

“Heck no, I’m not flaking retiring. I’m just tired of doing a farting job that I’m not all that good at and never wanted. I took the job because there was no one else qualified and they promised me that they would give the damaged job to someone else as soon as they found someone who was more qualified. Well, my boy, that’s you.”

“Sniper, you’re a darn good commander.”

“No, I’m not. I’m a draping good NCO. I don’t see the big picture the way you do. I see the job at hand and the people around me: That makes me a good NCO. You see the big picture and how everything fits together: That’s what will make you a good commander. Now, I don’t want to leave the company, and since you don’t have an XO, I would be more than happy to fill that position for you, but that’s your decision. But, before you make that decision, your squad leaders are arriving, and you need to tell them what their new company commander expects of them and what our plans are.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“Yes!”

“Have you cleared this with headquarters?”

“They know.”

“If you have decided to resign, I don’t see any choice, but we really need to talk about this later.”

The meeting that followed was a bit surreal for me. When I announced the change of command, I expected some shock and protest; I didn’t even get surprise. They all seemed to be expecting it and just took it in stride. The shock and surprise came when I told them that we were not heading home, but were going to take down several more alien bases before we were done. “We did a great job last night, but I know that we are capable of taking down more than one base every two weeks. I see no reason that, once we hit our stride, we can’t be taking down a base every night. More than that, we need to teach the national forces how to do the same thing. Remember, our first job is to make sure that the Warrior battlesuits are ready for action and to show the locals how to use them.”

We spent the next two hours going over the battle with a fine toothed comb and, figuring out ways to improve performance while reducing risk. After refining the plan quite a bit, we then came up with a number of alternate variations and gambits to use to keep the aliens guessing. “Right now we are slaughtering the Taurians because they are predictable. If we become predictable, we will be the ones who are slaughtered next.”

After the meeting broke up, I wanted nothing more than curl up and go to sleep, but I had one more thing to do that couldn’t wait. I went back to my room and smiled when I found my nocturnal visitor softly snoring (at least it seemed to me that she was snoring, while she insists that she never snores.) I sat down at my desk and dialed a connection, while I was waiting, I checked what time it was at Prometheus. To my surprise, General Moore picked right up even though it was close to midnight there. “Hello there, what’s on your mind Captain?”

“I just wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page about Sniper’s resignation.”

“It was a little sudden, but not unexpected. Are you going to keep him on as XO?”

“I’m beginning to think that he’s been my XO for a while and nobody told me.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, but I think that this arrangement will work out best for everyone.”

“OK, then he’s my XO and I’ll consider that matter settled. That brings to the next thing I need to talk to you about. I just left a meeting where I informed all of the squad leaders that we were not leaving, but were planning on taking down several more Taurian bases before we went home. I realize that I was probably out of line making a pronouncement like that before I had even gotten permission to do so. I need to know if there are any problems with this change in plans, and what procedures I need to go through to make any such changes in the future.”

“Whoa there cowboy. Part of your problem is that your mind moves so fast that you often get ahead of yourself. You are trying to do too much for any one person to accomplish, so you have been taking shortcuts to get everything done. You need a command staff.”

“A command staff? Does Sniper have a command staff?”

“No, but he was just running a company. You, on the other hand are trying to create a strategy that will win the war. That’s a much harder job that will require you to keep in contact with a lot of people on a frequent basis. You need people to help you sort out the permissions, collaborations, research, political and financial considerations and much more. My young friend, you are going to need a group of very talented people around you if you are going to accomplish the tasks that you find before you.”

“How the heck do you get a command staff?”

“It’s like hiring people for any job position. You let people know you are hiring and interview them to see if you think that they fulfill the requirements for the position. Haven’t you ever hired anyone before?”

“No.”

“Well, I assume that you’ve interviewed for a job before.”

“Yes, but I sucked at it.”

“ OK then, how about I recommend some people to you and we’ll go from there.”

“If you think it will help, I’m willing to try just about anything you suggest as long as I don’t have to give up piloting.”

“I’ll send some good people over by tomorrow. Take some time to go over everything in your plan and once your staff arrives, go over it with them to make sure that everything is in order, then call me up for a conference and we will get it final approval and implement it fully. In the mean time, get some rest. You look like you can hardly keep your eyes open.”

“Now that’s the best order I’ve heard all day. I’ll talk to you soon sir.”

“Good night.”

I singed off and looked over at my nocturnal visitor. Too much had changed in just a few hours, and I was too tired to process it. One or two changes and I might have tried to work through them, but so much had happened that I was just overwhelmed. I just lay down next to my visitor and went to sleep.

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Taurian Invasion 27: Invaders Down Under

Part Four:

Getting it Right Down Under

Once we had boarded the motorhomes and settled in, I started looking over the intelligence we had on our next target. It was deep in the Australian outback, near the northern coast. The base was sitting out in the open in an area of sparse scrub land. There was no real cover anywhere, and the top of the headquarters building could be seen from 30 miles away. This meant that the sentry ring, that had been so useless in the jungle, made it impossible to approach within ten miles without being detected. If we tried to attack it the same way we had in the Amazon, we would be crushed before we could get anywhere near the base.

Little vegetation meant better visibility for everyone. We had a big advantage in the jungle because most of the time they couldn’t see us very well. This led to wild firing that missed almost all of the time. Our firefight in the village showed that they had much better accuracy if they could see clearly. Night attacks seemed to be a good option for getting the advantage, but it would not be enough by itself.

There had been little for the Brazilian military to do other than support functions in our last battle, but this would have to change. Our battlesuits were the most powerful infantry force that mankind had ever produced, but there are times that infantry are just not the right people for the job. We would need artillery, armor, and air support this time if we didn’t want massive casualties or glacial progress. The Australians already had a battle group from the First Brigade in position, so we had plenty of backup.

A stray doubt caught my attention, and I followed it to Prometheus’ intelligence on possible Taurian base locations in Australia. They were everywhere! Hundreds of possible locations all over the north and northeastern part of Australia. A quick count showed over 50 confirmed active Taurian bases. The base we were after had three confirmed friends within 50 miles. A global search left me stunned. I had no idea that we were this far behind. They weren’t everywhere, but seemed to be concentrated in jungles, desert regions, as well as the northern forests of North America and eastern Russia. No wonder they were rushing the development of the hybrid suits.

We had killed over 700 bio-soldiers in our last battle. At that rate, the enemy numbers were staggering. I checked the battle data for other assaults and the trend was not good. Each time we attacked a Taurian base; there had been more bio-soldiers than the last. I also found out that assaults that I was aware of and had studied were not the only ones. Prometheus had made five assaults so far. All of these had actually been for reconnaissance purposes rather than trying to wipe out the aliens. We had lost some 30 personnel so far, which I had been thinking was bad, but then I saw how other militaries had done.

The US and Russia had both taken a long range bombardment approach, which was effective, but left a large number of wandering bio-soldiers to cause havoc until they starved to death. Trying to contain these wanderers had actually produced more casualties than our direct assaults had. The Chinese had tried a direct assault with conventional forces and had lost over a thousand men before destroying a base in Manchuria. But even this was better than what had happened in Myanmar and Thailand. The respective militaries of both of these countries had attacked the first Taurian base found in their territories, and so far neither had destroyed one despite massive losses.

The only thing that kept this from being a total disaster was that the Taurians had shown no interest in leaving about a five-mile radius around their bases so far. They seemed content to sit there and slowly build up their forces while kidnapping the local population for an unknown fate. How long they would remain this passive was anybody’s guess, but I don’t think that anyone rational thought that they would just stay there forever. We were using this opportunity to learn what worked and what didn’t against our enemies, but picking off isolated bases at a rate of one a week or so wasn’t going to bring us victory in this war, there were just too many of them.

I started out trying to figure out how to take out one Taurian base, but I now knew that a much bigger plan was needed. Capturing the base could not be the only goal, but the first step of many that together would rid earth of the invaders. There were hundreds of reports here that I had never had access to before. I don’t really think that anyone meant for me to be reading all of these, but once I was in, I wanted to know everything.

The problem of how the aliens moved from place to place was a huge mystery. Their bases could somehow appear and disappear overnight, and when I compared the results of bases destroyed by bombardments, I found something interesting. We had found five enemy soldiers during the assault in the Amazon. The results for both American and Russian bombardments showed that there should be closer to twenty. This means that unless that Amazon base was severely undermanned, they had been able to evacuate their personnel while we had them completely surrounded with a sensor grid.

I had been reading for a while, when something started beeping. It took me a minute to realize that it was my alarm clock. Crud! I had just spent the whole night reading! I didn’t get any sleep and I didn’t even have the assault plan that I was supposed to be working on in the first place. I was feeling well enough to be back on duty, but not well enough to pull an all-nighter without feeling the effects. Worse yet, I wasn’t even halfway through everything I wanted to read!

I sat back and thought for a moment and nearly nodded off. That wasn’t going anywhere, so I got up and started getting ready for the morning. I started forming a plan in my head but I would need to get the cooperation of the Australian Army and Air Force for it to work. It wasn’t going to be Prometheus to the rescue by ourselves, if we wanted to live. I decided to call up Sniper and work from there; “You got it all figured out, Genius boy?”

“That depends a lot on our allies. How long will it take to set up a meeting with the commander of the Australian force?”

“Face to face or video?”

“Video. We need to start setting up for a coordinated attack as soon as possible.”

“Whoa! Sounds like you have completely changed the whole dog operation.”

“If we try to use the same plan that we used in Brazil, we wouldn’t last an hour before they brought all of their forces down on our heads. I have some ideas for a new approach that will turn the Taurs into hamburger without us getting barbecued in the process.”

“Alright, I’ll call headquarters and get this stinking meeting of yours set up.”

“You want to hear the plan?”

“I’m sure it’s flapping brilliant. I’ll wait till you present it to the Generals Harrison and Moore. That way, you don’t have to repeat your soaking self so much.”

OK, now Sniper was upset with me. “So, what are you planning on telling the troops this morning?”

“I’ll just leave that part of the briefing to my XO. See you in two hours,” smiling slyly as he signed off.

I was wrong; he wasn’t upset; just up to something. More to worry about. I had to put that out of my mind and get ready to talk to General Harrison. I managed to locate the order of battle for the Australian First Brigade’s battle group that had been deployed to support us. It was a relief to see that they had sent their best. Along with the M1A6 Abrams, Challenger IIs and artillery, they had sent two battlesuit companies of Groundpounders and two Tusker heavy tanks (we had brought a Tusker as well). This was far more firepower than we were bringing with us. They clearly had enough strength on site to take this Taurian base down, so what were we doing here? I dug around some more until I found the joint mission statement. After reading it for a few minutes, I decided that I hated bureaucratic legalese. As far as I could tell it said that we were there to train the Australians in the finer points of killing bio-soldiers and capturing a Taurian base.

The stated reasons were grade “A” baloney. I needed the real reason before I ran out of time and I wasn’t finding it. I could think of three people off hand who would know: General Moore, the Director, and General Harrison. Of the three, General Moore was the obvious choice for me to talk to. I just hoped to get him in time to talk before the conference call started that I had set up.

As I set up the connection, the memory of my first conversation came forcefully to mind. His lack of surprise and personal attention was one of the first things that had made me suspicious of my treatment once I had joined the battlesuit program. “Hello Lieutenant. I was just about to call and tell you that General Harrison’s staff had just informed me that he was in transit and wouldn’t be able to set up a meeting until a couple of hours after you arrive. I hope that won’t be too much of a problem for you.”

“That actually works out pretty well for me as I found some things I would really like to talk to you about. I was doing some research for the mission, and I came across some intelligence that might have not been meant for me to see.”

“If you weren’t supposed to see it, you couldn’t have accessed it. I’ll just check what you’ve looked up just to be sure… Wow, you’ve been busy. Did you actually read all those or just look at the pictures?”

“There were a few I just skimmed, but I read most of them last night and this morning.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“I didn’t realize that I had stayed up too late until my alarm clock went off, but I’ll catch a nap later.”

“So what did want to know?”

“The Australians have more than sufficient forces to take down this base; so why are we here?”

“Did you see the number of bases we have already located in Australia and the surrounding areas?”

“Yes.”

“The Australians have one of the best equipped militaries in the world, but it’s a comparatively small force. Part of the reason that you are here is to help them develop a successful method for assaulting Taurian bases with minimum casualties. The other reason is to show off the capabilities of the Warrior Battlesuits and to convince them that it is worth their time and money to invest in them. The last reason is to continue to develop your company’s expertise in assaulting and retrieving intact Taurian bases while field testing the Warrior Battlesuits. Does that answer your question?”

“I hadn’t thought of the demonstration and sales angle.”

“I know it seems a bit crass, but it’s part of the big picture.”

“I see where it fits in now. My only remaining question is whether anyone will have a problem with a combined assault using both Australian and Prometheus troops to take out the closest three Taurian bases in the next few days.”

“Three bases?”

“There are two other bases that are close enough to send reinforcements to the base we are assaulting, which also places them within easy striking distance. They will need to be taken out eventually. Why not take them out now while everything is already in position?”

“You don’t think small, do you?. Just don’t bite off more than you can chew.”

“We’ll see how it goes and adjust the plans as necessary.”

“I’ll look forward to seeing your full plan when you present it to General Harrison.”

After breakfast, I explained tonight’s plan to the company and I was surprised at how much resistance there was to waiting until after dark to attack. After some jokes about being afraid of the dark went around, it became obvious that everyone was eager to go and just didn’t want to wait around all day. I went back to my room to continue planning, but ended up doing much more snoring than planning.

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Taurian Invasion 26: Command Decision

I came into work glad to be somewhere where I understood everything … and one look around told me that something was wrong. The development lab was always busy, loud and sometimes chaotic. There were always people in motion and (odd) things were always happening, but not today. The place was quiet as a tomb and everyone was trying to look busy without making any noise. My squad was sitting at the simulator monitoring station while an AAR (after action report) video was playing with the sound turned off while they were all carefully studying their feet.

I came up to my group and whispered, “What’s going on?”

There was silence for a few seconds before Lena replied, “It’s a good day to not to upset Sniper. Something to do with Zach.”

I added up a few things in my head, “Does he have a bottle?”

“Several, I think.”

Crud! “Where’s Rusty?”

“Hiding over there.”

I tried to walk calmly over to him. When I tapped him on the shoulder, I saw a suspicious looking welt and I knew that the situation was completely out of control. I closed my eyes and thought for a minute. I spoke without opening my eyes, “Rusty, take everyone down to the weapons lab. Have the pilots suit up and arm their suits with sniping weapons only. Go to the weapons range and have everyone qualify or re-qualify on the sniper’s course. Anyone who finishes can see who gets the best score on the skeet drills.”

“But, what about…”

I cut him off, “Rusty, I have never even considered giving you a direct order without asking your opinion or permission. I am doing so now.”

“Yes sir!”

Rusty got everyone moving, and I just stood there and watched and made sure that no one tried to stay behind. Once everyone had gone, I called Sylvia.

“What?”

She was still upset, but that didn’t matter anymore. “This is an emergency! Call Gloria and have her come to the Warrior development lab immediately. Call security and have them wait outside the doors in case I need them.”

“What’s going on?”

“Sniper is out of control and I’m going to take care of him,” and I hung up before she could ask me any more questions. I then did something I had never ever considered doing before. I went over to the weapons locker and put on a sidearm. Then I went over to the control booth where Sniper usually hung out.

I knocked on the door, and a bottle smashed against it, “I told you to leave me the flock alone!”

I opened the door, and found sniper with another bottle. He was just starting to pull his arm back when he realized that he was looking down the barrel of a 9 mm Beretta, “Put the bottle down now!” I shut the door and pulled up a chair without ever taking the gun off of him, “Now, we are going to calmly discuss whatever’s bothering you.”

“Are you going to put the dang gun down?”

“I don’t think so. You’re a trained US Marine who is currently drunk and dangerous. I’m a pansy civilian whose last hand to hand lesson was a karate class when I was twelve. You could break me in two without half thinking about it … So, what’s bugging you?” I didn’t have any illusions that the gun put us on equal footing. He could probably take me without a problem, but I thought that it just might be enough to keep his attention and make him focus.

“They want me to decide what to do with Zach’ fu … freaking body.”

“And his family?”

“They don’t give a flying fart”

“Have you asked anyone to help or have you just used it to rip your own guts out?”

“You’ve been puking hurt and busy.”

“I’m not the only person in this company … in Prometheus who can help.”

He was silent for a moment. This was going much better that I thought it would. I fully expected to have had to shoot something by now to keep his attention. As I had never fired a handgun in my life, this was probably the weakest part of the plan, but I was going to give it (if you’ll pardon the pun) my best shot.

The silence was going on too long, “Gloria will be here soon. Go with her, sober up and I will take care of things.”

“What makes you think I’ll do what you say.”

“Because you’re not fit for command at the moment, or are you going to tell me that Rusty walked into a door?” He looked at the floor and his shoulders slumped, and I knew it was over. Just in time because I couldn’t have held my arm up for much longer. (Guns are a lot heavier than they look.) My hand was shaking as I put the gun back in its holster. I was just hoping that Gloria would get there before something else happened.

It took her nearly ten minutes to get there (which seemed like hours) and he never so much as moved in that time. I opened the door at her knock, “Take him home.”

When she asked, “Can we have a moment?” I just nodded and walked out.

My hands were still shaking as I put the pistol back. I really wanted to curl up and take a nap until I had completely calmed down as I was shaking and developing a headache. I really hoped it was from stress and not my injuries getting worse again because I had just set myself up for a lot of work. First thing was to talk to security.

There were five large armed men standing outside. “What’s the situation sir?”

“Things are better. Just make sure that someone is here to help Gloria get Sniper home if she needs it.” It was then I noticed Sylvia peeking down the hall. I went over to her, “Everything should be fine now. Thanks for getting everyone here so quickly.”

“Is everyone all right? Are you hurt?”

“The situation is back under control and everyone’s OK. On the other hand, I‘m getting a headache, shaking all over and there’s a bunch of things I have to do that can’t be put off until later. I don’t know what else you need to do today, but I could really use your help for the rest of the day.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“More than anything, I need you to make sure that I’m not losing it like I did at the conference. Other than that, there are just a million little things that need to be done to clean up this mess and I could really use an extra pair of hands.”

* * *

There was an amazing amount of paperwork to be filled out over an incident like this. (If I had known how much more trouble it was to deal with an incident with a gun, I might not have used it.) I put in a request to speak to General Moore as soon as possible. I also wanted to talk to Zach’s former Counselor. After the sixth interview with someone from security, I went and checked on the company at the firing range. Everyone seemed in reasonably good spirits when I told them that Sniper was home sleeping it off. Someone had the sense to have lunch delivered to the firing range, so I grabbed some leftovers and headed back in.

The meeting with Zach’s former partner, Allie, went very well. She and Zach had been very close, and she was outraged, but not surprised by his family’s behavior. They were an anti-military bunch and had apparently disowned him when joined the US Army ten years back. She agreed to make the funeral arrangements and to call me when they were finalized or if she needed anything.

Cleaning up the mess took the rest of the day. By the time it was done I was wiped out. When Sylvia told me that I was going straight home to rest, I didn’t put up a fight.I don’t know what time I got back but I immediately crashed and slept clear through till morning.

In the morning I was informed that the entire company had been given a rest day and that I wasn’t to go in. This left only the big meeting with General Moore. I was really dreading what he might say when I told him what happened. What I really didn’t expect was for him to nearly fall off his chair laughing. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted. “I’m sorry, but I never would have expected that from you in a million years. Your decision was correct, even though you methods were unorthodox, even for this place. As second in command, it was your job to remove him while he was unfit for command. Now, do you have a problem working under him after this?”

“None at all. I certainly hope this doesn’t happen again, but I know him to be a good man and a good leader. The only thing that I’m still upset about is that the mess with Zach got dumped in his lap in the first place.”

“In the Army, that’s what is called a SNAFU. Situation Normal, All Fouled Up. Now that you are in a leadership position, it’s you job to deal with them. Prometheus has some of the best procedures to keep things running smoothly that I have ever seen, but there’s always going to be something that slips through. There were a lot of worse ways that you could have handled what happened, seeing that, I’m confident that you will be able to handle most anything that comes your way.”

“I’ll certainly do my best for you and the company.”

* * *

As soon as Allen signed off, Tony got up and went into an adjoining meeting room in which sat The Director, Angelia, Sniper, and Gloria. “He still has full confidence in you, Sniper.”

“I know. The kid has a good heart. I just wish that he was in command already. I only took this position temporarily until you found someone better. Yesterday only confirms that it’s not where I belong.”

“Sniper,” The Director snapped to catch his attention; “I remember well what you were promised when you took this position. You were also promised that you would never have to deal with any of the paperwork or arrangements if you lost someone in your company. That promise was broken and I take responsibility for that and much of the consequences.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that I screwed the pooch today.”

“Although there were better ways to have handled the situation, I am not displeased with the result. The way that Allen handled the situation has put him closer to being ready to taking command, and that’s the goal of everyone here. The only question left is: Are you willing to continue with the project or are you planning to resign?”

“I’m getting tired. He’s never realized that every time he complains that the simulators are getting too easy, that he just trashed everything I could throw at him again. I was willing to go along until we faced real combat to make sure it wasn’t a fluke or he wouldn’t freak out when facing the real thing. He’s proved himself in combat! How much longer is it going to be?”

“Phase II of the battlesuits be ready for development by the time you get back from second combat deployment, which starts in two days. I would like to see how he does in a battle as second in command before we make the final decision. Can you wait that long?”

“I can wait, but I think you’re underestimating him.”

Tony turned to Sniper, “Last question. Will you be OK with him after that little performance of his?”

“You know, I may be losing my edge, but I never even considered that he might shoot me. The thought that sobered me was that he had never qualified with a handgun and might hurt himself. I thought he had made the mistake of thinking that the gun made him more powerful than me, so I asked him why I should do what he said. I expected him to pop off with something about shooting me if I didn’t. If he had, I would have taken the gun away from him and taught him a lesson about power.”

“He simply told me that I was unfit for command and why. I was the one who learned a lesson about power today. There is something inside him that commands and people obey. I’ll keep the rank and position for as long as you need me to, but this company already has a commander, and it ain’t been me for a while.”

Sniper stood, saluted and left with Gloria following. Angelia raised an eyebrow, “Tony, can you translate that from military for me?”

“Sniper will do whatever we ask of him, but he thinks we are making a mistake in not giving Allen command right away.”

“Any problems between the two of them?”

“Not unless Allen won’t make decisions when Sniper asks him to.”

* * *

The next day I had a newspaper interview, but Sylvia still insisted that I wear one of my dress uniforms. (I looked in my closet and one uniform had magically multiplied into five.) The interview was unremarkable until he asked some silly question about whether violence was really the answer to the alien problem. I replied that I would be quiet interested in hearing any alternative that didn’t involve death, subjugation or enslavement of the human race. He got all huffy about violence never being the answer, and I decided that he did not have a firm connection with reality and that pretty much concluded the interview.

I was very grateful that I had an uneventful day at work. Sniper was back and everything went smoothly. Sniper called us together just before quitting time, “Alright you sausages, the word has come down, and the word is we move out tomorrow evening. That means that we spend tomorrow prepping. We have a new target and a new plan. Last time the aliens threw us a curve-ball at the last second, so we’re going to try it again, but this time we’re doing it in Australia.”

“You’ll notice that your battlesuits now have your grubby kill totals stenciled on them. These will be changed between each mission, and if you think you’re being shortchanged, tough.”

After hearing that, we all had to go down to the weapons bay and check out our suits. Mine had a Centaur outline with Roman numerals totaling my kills in the outline as well as a Cyclops with a single ‘I.’ Lieutenant Spencer had been prominently added, but the best part was that everyone on my squad had also had ‘Giant Killers” added as well.

Sniper signaled me over, “As XO, your job is to go over your assault plan and make any changes we need before we get there. Got that?”

“Not a problem, sir. What do we know about them so far?”

“You’ll have to check in with Tony Moore on that one. He’ll tell you what we know.”

Sylvia took the news in a much better way this time. I promised her over and over that I would be more careful this time and come back safe.

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Taurian Invasion 25: The Interview

Angelia suppressed a sigh as Sylvia and Sukari entered the room together. Sylvia may have forgiven the offence from the last time they had gathered, but the more recent betrayal was still a raw wound. This made her fury at him being pushed to the point that he ended up in the hospital despite their promises, all the more intense. That Allen was being pushed in an effort to protect Lena could have driven a wedge between Sylvia and Sukari. However, Sylvia was a Mother bear at heart and had become protective of the broken girl as well, and Angelia had shown herself as a possible threat to her “cubs.”

Sukari was just relieved that her charge had been pulled back from the edge once again and was glad to have found a new ally. Now all Angelia had to do was somehow take these wild threads of emotions and weave them into a plan. “Welcome ladies. Now that all the chaos of the conference is over, lets see where we are and what we can do to keep our charges moving forward. Sukari, why don’t we start with how Lena is doing.”

Sukari is a matronly woman of Hawaiian and Japanese descent. She grew up in a tri-lingual household, leading her with an interesting accent, which becomes more prominent when she is upset or excited. “My girl is doing much better. Once she realized that she and Allen hadn’t done anything to be embarrassed about and that no one was upset with her, she started recovering. Allen taking most of the attention has helped a lot. About the only downside for Sylvia here is she has developed a crush on your boy and may give you a run for your money.”

Sylvia rolled her eyes and Angelia smiled at her and asked, “Well Sylvia, how is ‘your boy’ doing?”

“Physically he’s doing a lot better. He hasn’t had any episodes of incoherency in the last few days and he’s getting restless. Both Doc Sullivan and Sniper are watching him closely to make sure he doesn’t over do it at work. Fortunately, he’s a thick headed doofus and hasn’t even noticed that he’s famous. I found out from him before all the hoopla of the conference that he has never checked his finances. He has no idea how much money he has, and really doesn’t seem to care. I need to go over his finances with him carefully.”

Angelia looked thoughtful, “Do you know how much he has?”

“Over a quarter of a million last I checked.”

“I think you would be better off getting him a financial adviser at this point, as celebrities with money are going to have every two-bit con man coming out of the woodwork. We need to make sure that he is financially secure before it becomes an issue. Of course that doesn’t even consider gold diggers coming after him, which reminds me; how do you think he’ll react to the interviews coming up?”

“He seems perfectly OK with doing interviews. The doofus seems completely immune to stage fright. My only worry is that he’ll get tongue tied because he’s talking to a pretty girl.”

“He’d already our poster boy and it’s just going to get more intense as the war goes on. Keeping his public image up is mostly going to fall on you.”

“I seriously don’t think he could do anything scandal-worthy if he tried. He has no vices except video games. He has to be dragged to parties and leaves as soon as he can. He is as dumb as a brick regarding women. You would think he was gay if he didn’t blush so often around us. He’s a pure, brilliant nerd that kills giant aliens. All I have to do is see that he shows up looking presentable and on time. I think I can handle that.”

“Good. I think that means that we have the situation stabilized for the time being. Unfortunately, we know for a fact that the situation in the future is going to be dangerous in any number of ways. I think that we need to be proactive in order to meet the upcoming challenges. So I propose sending your charges on a friendly date.”

Sylvia stood up out of her seat, “Why? I mean, what good would that do?”

Angelia smiled. “In Allen’s case, he needs to be more aware of the relationships between the sexes. He is very vulnerable to manipulation and seduction by women right now and his celebrity status and travels make it a matter of when, not if, someone will try to take advantage of him. As for Lena, she needs to know that there are men out there who can be trusted and like her for who she is and not just because they want to use her. A friendly date is step one on working with both of them.” Not to mention, this would be a shot across Sylvia’s bow to wake her up to the fact that she would need to do something to get a relationship with Allen started or he might just get snatched away. “I’ll let the two of you work out the details.”

* * *

Sylvia got me up early and fussed over getting my appearance just right for nearly a half hour while giving me advice on what I should and shouldn’t say, before taking me to the campuses’ studio facility. (I sometimes wonder if there is anything that they don’t have on this campus.) The studio then had people fuss over my appearance for another half hour while people from PR and security briefed me on what I should and shouldn’t say.

I found out quickly that the worst part of a video interview is the lights. I wanted to squint at the brightness, which looks bad and I was quickly sweating in my dress uniform which also looks bad. These things are really distracting when I need to be able to concentrate on the questions. The questioner was a pretty young lady from a morning show in Denver that I had never heard of. I chatted with her for a few minutes while they were setting up the equipment:

“Is this your first interview?”

“Yeah, and I’m afraid that if I do a bad job, it will be my last. I would really appreciate any tips you might have.”

“Just try to relax and be yourself. If you could pretend that all of this equipment and all of the people were not here, and we were having a private conversation, it would be best. It’s not very easy to do, but that’s what people want to see.”

“I’ll try my best if you promise to be patient with me.”

I saw Sylvia frown out of the corner of my eye and wondered what I had done wrong. I was following her advice and trying to get the interviewer on my side by showing interest and asking for her help in her area of expertise. I decided to ask Sylvia about it later and concentrate on the interview which was about to start.

“We’re here with Allen Spencer, who some people are calling the Giant Killer after seeing him take down a giant alien solo on video. Can you tell me what that was like?”

“Despite all the training and simulations, there is no feeling I have ever experienced like realizing you have just challenged a creature that’s 50 times your size to a fight. The Giant Killers were actually taking down two of the Cyclops at the same time. If you look closely at the video, you can briefly see the other Cyclops on the left side of the screen. While I was going after my target, my squad-mate Lena was taking down the other one.”

“How did you kill a giant alien anyway?”

“Well, there are three ways it has be done. You can put really big holes in it, but this requires a tank or artillery, which we didn’t have with us at the time. You can set it on fire, but this gives it enough time to kill you before it dies, which could be bad. The last way is to destroy the creature’s mechanical core, which was the only method available to us. The problem is that their cores are only the size of a suitcase and it’s buried deep inside their body, which is the size of a bus. We had to actually jump on the things back, and stab a sword deep into the creature near its core. The sword then sent out a 50,000 volt charge which shorted out the it’s brain.”

“That sounds terrifying, weren’t you scared?”

“Scared, yes. Terrified, no. It would be really stupid not be afraid when fighting giant aliens; on the other hand these two were the squad’s sixth and seventh giant kills. We knew what we were up against, and we were confident that we could handle it. And we did handle it, but I still managed to mess myself up pretty badly.”

She leaned forward and breathlessly asked, “Really, what happened?”

Allen tried not to look at her distinctly feminine assets only to blind himself by looking directly into the studio lights. He blinked and paused for a couple of seconds trying to get back his sight and train of thought. “Everyone who has seen the video, watched me jump into the air and come down, plunging my light-saber into the Cyclops’s back, killing it. What they couldn’t see from the camera angle, was that instead of landing on my feet, I missed my footing and ended up landing on my face instead. I hit hard enough that I got a pretty serious concussion and I just now returned to duty from medical leave. Even then, I was lucky. One of my friends didn’t come back at all and another has been permanently maimed. I have read too many times where people have said fighting in our battlesuits is like playing a video game. Video games only mimic the intensity of combat, but soldiers risk injury, maiming and death every time they go out and fight.”

She seemed thrown off by his intensity and seemed to fumble for one of her prepared questions. “Speaking of battlesuits, how did you end up in the battlesuit program?”

“I was recruited directly by Prometheus. When you are hired here they give you a battery of tests, and they showed that I had an aptitude for battlesuit piloting. They offered me a place in the battlesuit development program, and I accepted.”

“I thought all of the pilots had a military background.”

“Almost all of them do. I’m the only one in the research and development company who never served in the military. It was a lot of work to catch up to where they were, but it looks like my situation will become more common as the war goes on. We need people from both civilian and military backgrounds will join us if we are going to win this war. We also have a new program where currently serving military from all over the world will be stationed with us here at Prometheus while they receive training in battlesuit piloting and form alien fighting units that can be deployed all over the world.”

“You’re piloting the newest generation of battlesuits, what can you tell me about them?”

“My company is part of the development team that is getting the Warrior Battlesuits ready for combat. These suits outperform the older Groundpounder Battlesuit in nearly every category. They are faster, stronger and more agile, which gives them an edge against the invaders. When we fight the enemy we are also testing all aspects of the battlesuits to get them ready for full production. Taking prototypes into the field is a risky venture. Sure we have the latest gizmos, but they are untested and it is our job to find and fix any flaws or problems that come up.”

“Are you confident in the eventual outcome of the war?”

“Absolutely. There is still a long way to go in this war and there are more than likely going to be some dark days ahead, but I have no doubt that we will win in the end.”

“Why do you think that?”

“So far, the aliens have failed to win even a single victory. We have consistently out thought and out maneuvered them. Even setting that aside, there is another more important reason. This is our home, and we are not giving up and letting them take it away from us. The only possible way that the Taurians could win is if we give up and just stop fighting, and that’s just not going to happen.”

That finished my first interview. I thought that things had gone pretty well and apparently so did the interviewer. “Are you sure that was your first interview?”

“Unless you count job interviews.”

“Well, you handled that like an old pro. I look forward to doing this again if the opportunity arises.”

“Well then, I hope to see you later.”

Sylvia was strangely quiet on the ride back, “Well, I thought that everything went pretty well. Did you see any problems?”

“Oh no, you handled yourself quite well.” The sarcasm in her reply confirmed that she was irritated with me.

“Do you think that they will want me to do any more interviews?”

“I’m sure that they will have them lined up for you after that.”

Now I was starting to get confused. Was she just mad or did I do a bad job? I decided to try one more question to see if I could figure out what was going on. “Did you see anything that I could have done better?”

“Didn’t Janet say you were perfect?”

OK, I was now officially lost. She was answering my question with a question, and who the heck was Janet? Oh yeah! The interviewer’s name was Janet Somethingortheother. Sylvia seemed to be getting more upset and my questions were making things worse instead of better. I decided to chalk the whole thing up to ‘dealing with women confuses me,’ and just go on with my day.

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Taurian Invasion 24: Consequences of the Conference

I woke up in the hospital the next day. I spent most of the morning getting sick with Sylvia refusing to leave my side. When I stopped heaving, I tried to go over everything that had happened the day before to see what I had done wrong. Wow, what a list! I couldn’t understand why I didn’t seem to have any sense at all! I collapsed or nearly collapsed at least three times that day and all I could think about was that I couldn’t stop because I might look weak. On top of that, I had completely lost my temper when someone had made a very predictable comment. To round out my evening, I had babbled in front of a bunch of very important strangers while drinking everything I was handed. I don’t even like wine! Sylvia kept trying to get me stop and rest and I fought her every step of the way. “Silvia, how bad was I yesterday?” “What do you mean?” “I was going over yesterday in my head, and some of the things that I did don’t make any sense, although they seemed perfectly rational at the time. Was I that incoherent?” She looked thoughtful, “You have been having incoherent periods since you got back, where you will ask the same question or say the same thing several times in a row. That’s how I know when you need to rest. Yesterday it just got worse and worse and resting didn’t even seem to help after you collapsed on stage that first time.” “I remember that I needed so desperately to get everything done, that nothing else seemed to matter. I remember that I knew I wasn’t doing well and you trying to get me to stop, but … I just couldn’t stop until just keeping going was the only goal.” “It’s something that Savants do. You get tunnel vision and forget everything else. You were already hurt, and the Director was there encouraging you every step of the way. He was doing the same thing, obsessing on his goal and forgetting everything else. I’m really mad at Angelia right now because she could have put a stop to it and she didn’t do it. I just cant figure out what they thought was so important that they would push you like that when they knew what shape you were in.” “I’ve been wondering that myself. Once the presentations were done, anyone could have given them, but they seemed to think it was essential that I was the one to do it. And then there was that stupid dinner party.” “You know, I’ve always dreamed of going to something like that, an elegant state dinner with important people from around the world, but last night was a nightmare. Do you even remember anyone who you met?” “A couple of the US Secretaries, but after that it was a blur. Toward the end, I couldn’t even see people’s faces anymore. Some of that was the alcohol. I don’t even know how much I drank, but someone kept handing me glasses, and I was thirsty from all the talking I was doing.” “You did drink a lot, which surprised me because I thought you didn’t like to drink.” “I don’t. I kept hoping that the next glass would be something besides wine.” “Why didn’t you say anything?” “I honestly couldn’t figure out how to. It seems silly to say now, but it was really beyond my capacity at the time. You were the one person who was really looking out for me and I didn’t listen to you. If anything like this happens again, I’ll know better.” “We are to join the Director and the Chief Counselor for dinner again tonight as long as you are doing well enough. The Director would also appreciate any appearances you feel like making during the rest of the conference.” “Would you mind if I left those decisions up to you for the rest for the week? My judgment doesn’t seem to be exactly sound these days.” That got me the first real smile I had seen all day, “Well, before we do anything you have a doctor’s appointment in about an hour. Once we see what they say, we can decide from there.”   * * *   The Director and Angelia were sitting in a small conference room as she finished a phone conversation. “Allen is doing fine and on the road to recovery. The Doctor was more worried about the alcohol he consumed than the fainting spells.” “I pushed him pretty hard. I hope that he isn’t angry, that would make things a bit awkward.” “Sylvia is the one you need to worry about. She was so angry last night that I was afraid she might resign. Losing her and breaking their partnership up would be much more difficult to deal with than Allen being upset.” “I know. I normally wouldn’t have pushed things so far, but it was an emerging situation and I was playing it by ear. In the long run, this is going to be an important turning point and his part will have been essential.” “That does not mean that an apology and some strategic bribery are not in order. You have made her completely rearrange her life so that she could get him ready for the conference and nurse him back to health.We also promised her that she could pull Allen if she thought he wasn’t doing well and then we broke that promise. They were both pushed to their limits to pull of this coup of yours.” “Yes, I know, and I already have Allen’s reward lined up. You decide what Sylvia has earned, because I’m sure she’ll like it better than what I would give her.” “I think I might be lower on her list than you are, but that’s my own fault.” “What happened?” “You’re not the only one with things up their sleeves. Unfortunately, I got caught this time.” “This is certainly rare. Is there anything I can do?” “No, I can clean up my own mess.” The Director found himself at a loss for words for a moment.With nothing else to add he decided to just move on. “So what’s next on the agenda?” “Herman has been bursting at the seems to tell you something. Heather said she had to practically sedate him to keep him from breaking into the conference this morning.” “Well then, we should see what he wants.” Herman rushed into the room clutching a laptop, with Heather in pursuit. He cued up a file, “Listen to this!” An odd indistinguishable mumbling could be heard beneath a loud buzzing sound. “We’re still trying to figure out how to filter out all of the interference from the signal, but this is audio feed from the aliens. We have actually broken the code heard their voices! We got one of the devices from the latest alien control room working and we have been getting these signals all morning.” “Have you sent any of these recordings to the sound lab to see if they can remove the interference electronically?” “No, we’ve been trying to fine tune the signal.” “Herman, here’s the plan. Record everything you get while you work with the receiver. Send everything you hear to the sound lab so that they can try to clean it up. Send both the original and the cleaned up recordings to the people at NASA.” “I can do that easily enough.” “This doesn’t sound like anything we’ve gotten before. Why is that?” “This device works on completely different principles than any transmitter that mankind has ever used. My people have at least five competing theories about what makes it tick. I’ll get back to you when there is progress on that.” “Let Tony know which machine it is so that he can add it to the list of objectives for the current assault. Speaking of which, how is Phase II of the hybrid project coming?” “The Type IV battlesuits are in final assembly and testing and will be ready for development in a few days. The Type Vs are on schedule and should be ready in two or three weeks. The Type VIs are giving us fits though. We just started a full redesign of the circulatory system.” “That’s excellent progress! As disappointing as setbacks can be, don’t forget just how much progress you have made. What’s the status of Phase III?” “We are at least a year from development there. There are some parts that we can’t even start until Phase II is in production.” “We need those units as soon as possible, but I understand that some things just take as long as they take. Have you made any progress on any of the other machines?” “Well we figured out machine is related to their traveling ability, bet we still haven’t received one that is in good enough shape to even guess how it works.” “Keep working on it and I’ll see if we can get you one that’s in better shape next time. I always look forward to your reports, Herman; they always give me so many new ideas to play with.” After Herman and Heather leave Angelia shakes her head at Herman’s antics, “Heather needs to know if she did the right thing in delaying him.” “Yes, she did. Although there were several things that he said that were very important, nothing there was actually urgent. Herman was just excited. Although, send Tony my way the next time you see him. He needs to be briefed on some of this.”   * * *   The rest of the day, I spent at Sylvia’s discretion. I encouraged her to pick our activities and even got her to talk about herself a little bit. She likes the outdoors, especially since her job keeps her indoors all the time, which led to a walk in the park. It was nice to get some fresh air, and nicer to see her more relaxed than any time since I met her. While we were walking, we worked on proper etiquette and manners for the formal dinners that we were expected to attend for the rest of the week. Sylvia guided me through dinner and all the social things that went along with it. I was still lost as to what I was supposed to do half the time, but I managed to avoid any major mistakes with her help. Dinner conversation was actually the easiest part as everyone seemed to want to hear about fighting aliens. I just waited for someone to ask me a question, and I was off with a story. Otherwise, I just stayed quiet and listened. After dinner, I met up with the company for a little of our after dinner down time. Apparently, they had completely reprogrammed the simulators to be consistent with what we had found out about Taurian behavior, and Sniper had been running them ragged on training days. I took a lot of grief for making their lives harder, but I was just glad to reconnect with them. The next day I had no set schedule before dinner, so Sylvia and I spent nearly the whole day at the park. I even found out where Silvia lived that day. There are a number of apartment buildings and family neighborhoods in the hills of the campus. She had an apartment where we had lunch. She seemed to be embarrassed that it was so small, but I thought it was cute (if a bit girly for my tastes.) I don’t know if it was the fresh air and relaxation or what, but the symptoms from the concussion faded over the next week to the point that Silvia set a doctor’s appointment for me for the morning after the conference ended. As fun as some of this was I was starting to get anxious to go back to work. My mind was beginning to wander to some of the problems that I had set aside, and Sylvia was beginning to notice. She said that it was OK but I could see that it made her sad. When I joined the company for downtime that evening everyone seemed happy to hear the news. There were lots comments about my laziness and all of the things that they had been saving up for me. I kind of expected that kind of thing from my squad, but the excitement was coming from everyone, including the new replacement pilots. I passed my medical exam with flying colors. The only restriction I had was that I was not to break anything open with my head for the next month under any circumstances (Doctors trying to be funny; so sad.) Sylvia looked like she was about to cry when she dropped me off at work, but I got a sad smile when I sad that I was looking forward to seeing her this evening when I got off. It was so good to get back into the swing of things. Despite all the threats of reprisals, it became quickly obvious that they were treating me with kid gloves until they were sure I was up to speed. Even Lena seemed to be coming out of her shell and talked to me like normal. My first day back at work went pretty well overall, but I did have to admit that I was more exhausted than usual by quitting time, despite the fact that it had been a short day for me. I almost fell asleep twice before dinner and I did drift off once while at down time with the company. On the way home, Sylvia caught me completely off guard, “Now that you’re back at work, PR would like for you to consider doing some interviews.” “Who would want to interview me?” “Just about everyone, according to PR. They all want to hear from the pilots of the newest alien killing machines. PR really wants you to do the interview because the next choice is Sniper.” I winced at that thought. Sniper was a great guy, but his quirky method of speaking might not go over so well. “OK, when would we do this and how many interviews would there be?” “We could start tomorrow morning before we take you to work. How many there were after that would depend on how well you did on the first try. How are you at public speaking?” “Being in front of a crowd doesn’t bother me. Being in the middle of a crowd bothers me.” “I should have known that from how well you did at the conference. If you can give interviews half as well as you did your presentations, you are going to have a lot of interviews to do.” “I’m willing to give it a go, and I guess we’ll see how it goes from there.” After she left for the evening, I went to the computer instead of going to bed as I was supposed to. Those creepy feelings were getting to strong to ignore, so I decided to do some digging. I did a web search on my name and and was floored by what I found. There were already dozens if not hundreds of articles which mentioned me by name as a battlesuit pilot. Much of the battle footage that I had used in my presentation was now all over the web as well. I was already a celebrity, no wonder they wanted interviews with me. A little more digging found that Prometheus was actively encouraging this. The company’s press releases and press kits were the source for most of the information that was being used about me. I turned off the computer and actually went to bed, but sleep did not come easily. Everything was pointing me to one conclusion: They were holding me up as a “War Hero.” My first reaction was that the idea was ridiculous; I hadn’t done anything braver than anyone else. But, there was more to being a Hero than being heroic. Everyone in my company was heroic, but to be a Hero, you have to catch people’s attention and imagination. There has been a tendency in certain quarters to deny that heroes exist, especially war heroes. The reasons for this are simple: They believe that everyone is equal and therefore extraordinary people like heroes can’t exist, and they also believe that war is completely evil, and therefore good things like heroes can’t possible come from it. In the past it was very popular to tear down heroes by finding their human flaws and using that to say that they were never heroes in the first place. They then started holding up people who did things that they approved of as alternative heroes. This was all well enough as long as we were safe and threatened by nothing, but the invasion shattered this. The guy who started the local recycling drive just doesn’t hold up when aliens are threatening to come in and slaughter your family. People need someone who gives them hope and makes them feel safer; they need a War Hero. A war hero allows people to stop worrying and to go on with their lives despite the threat. The real question in my mind was could I be the kind of person that could be seen as a hero? On one level, it seemed so silly to me. I still felt like the loser nerd who couldn’t hold a job for over six months. On another level, I could see the need for someone to fill the role, and I was in the right place at the right time to do it. People were scared of a real and clear threat; they needed someone to believe in. I had all of the support I needed here. I had people who would show me in the best light and others who would keep me from doing stupid things to ruin it all. One of the biggest pitfalls for would-be heroes was to start believing the hype. People have a tendency to idealize (if not idolize) their heroes. I wasn’t worried about that because I just plain didn’t have the self esteem to believe that I was better than everyone else. I am also completely lacking in the belief that I was destined for greatness somehow. Some heroes got that to work out for them somehow, but it usually got in the way of most people. I was also unafraid of being in the spotlight and public scrutiny. I had certainly made my share of mistakes in life, but I had always done my best to do the right thing and had a pretty clear conscience (one of the few good side effects of having no life.) I finally decided that I would play the game, but I would go in with my eyes open. Doing my job would always come first. I was determined to always be a warrior and never let myself become a media plaything (a LOT easier said than done.) They would have to work around my duties. I started trying to plan just what I would say in the interview and somewhere in there I fell asleep.

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Taurian Invasion 23: The Conference

I had Sylvia escort me to conference center early the next morning. My excuse was to find a small out of the way place to set up a cot in case I needed to lay down, but I really want to see who was coming and who was already there. The conference center was by the main (impress the visitors) entrance, and there were already a lot of visitors. Young men in uniform and business suits were everywhere. They were still setting up when I went in, and by adding a couple of questions while figuring out where to set up my cot, I was able to find out that the Lecture hall was being set for 300, but catering was setting up to feed 600. I then allowed Sylvia to drag me back to my apartment for a quick nap before I got ready for the conference.

This was more than a conference, this was an international incident. Now, I was no expert on military uniforms, but it seemed obvious even to me that a number of the uniforms were not from the US and were not the same as each other. Also, almost all of the men and women that I saw in either uniforms or suits were young. This meant that they were for the most part security and staff for the attendees, rather than VIPs who had been invited.

So, why was I in the middle of all of this? Somehow, I was essential to this conference. It wasn’t what I had to say, that was simple enough that nearly anyone could have said it for me. For some reason, I had to be there personally, and that’s what didn’t make sense to me yet. If I could figure that out, I could figure out why they were treating me the way they did.

Sylvia knocked on my bedroom door, “Allen, it’s time to get up and put your uniform on, then come out here so I can make sure it’s done right.”

I followed instructions, and came out to find Sylvia had changed into a formal dress. She looked stunning. Calling upon all my grace and charm, I said, “Wow!” She gave me the first smile I had seen in a while and straightened a few things on my uniform. “Rats, I forgot to have someone fix the rank on my uniform.”

“No, that’s right. You went up a pay grade when you became a squad leader.”

“You would think that someone would tell me that.”

“I would think you would have noticed that from your bank account.”

“Well, I haven’t checked my bank account in … ever?”

“What do you mean you’ve never checked your bank account!”

“Going to the Amazon was the first time I left the campus since I arrived here. There really wasn’t any need.”

“Allen Spencer! I swear that I would hit upside the back of the head if you didn’t have a concussion! Listen, we don’t have time for this Savant lapse right now. We’ll go over your finances this evening when we get back.”

While we were heading to the convention center, she gave me a crash course on how I was supposed to act and how to escort a lady to a formal event. I got the part about how I was supposed hold her arm, mostly, but the whole secret handshake thing completely eluded me. (OK, they weren’t really secret handshakes, but there were different handshakes for different people, and I just got completely lost.)

I escorted her to a small conference room off the main meeting room, and found General Moore, Rodolfo, and his wife, Carmen, already there. The general seemed pleased to see me, “Allen, how are you feeling?”

“Better, not 100 percent yet, but I think I can survive this.”

He turned to Sylvia, “Has Allen been briefed on today’s events?” She just stared at him and put one hand on her hip and he tried again, “Have you told Allen what’s supposed to happen today?”

“No, because nobody told me what’s going on today. They just told me to have him here appropriately dressed and on time.”

“Crud! OK, this is our annual conference where we tell the world everything Prometheus figured out about the aliens this last year. Well, actually, this is the first conference, but we promised everyone that we would make this an annual event. Your little insight into why the aliens shoot some people don’t shoot others is going to be our key point in our alien psychology presentation.”

“So, would this be a bad time to mention that last night I figured out the pattern of tactical deficiencies in the deployment of bio-soldiers by bases in the absence of on site soldiers?”

General Moore was silent for a moment, “Say that again without all the big words so I can be sure of what you just said.”

“I think I can show why the Taurs have been so much dumber in the last few battles than they were otherwise.”

“And you have proof?”

“I have a full presentation 90% done that shows all the evidence. I think I could have it done in a few hours, but my recent injuries left me where I get tired really easily.”

The general whipped out a phone so fast that for a split second, I thought he pulled a gun on me. “Angelia … Get the Director to small conference room 16, ASAP. … Yes, this is top priority … Allen just blew the conference wide open.”

I sat down at the conference table and a computer seemed to appear out of nowhere (it was actually built into the table.) I was getting what I had of my presentation ready when Angelia and the Director arrived. “Allen, my boy, what have you got for me.”

“It’s not finished, but I’ll show you what I have.”

I showed them the combat overviews and footage followed by the how the game would play out in roughly the same situation. The game did not always play out exactly the same, but the parallels were obvious. The clincher was when I showed how the limitations had worked out to our advantage in our battles against the alien bases. Every time that the bases had been faced with a second threat before the first had been resolved; it ignored the second threat entirely.

“So, what’s missing?”

“I still need to contrast what happened in earlier battles with alien soldiers present, and to show where the bio-soldiers have certain built in reactions that can still be dangerous even when the base is distracted.”

“Then we will provide you with a computer, and you can work on it while you’re sitting up there. At least you won’t be as bored as the rest of us.”

Angelia cleared her throat to get everyone’s attention, “Sylvia will be watching over Allen the entire time making sure he doesn’t get too tired, and if she thinks he is getting too tired; he WILL take a break.”

And thus I found myself sitting at a table with many of the most powerful people in Prometheus, facing the audience. The podium where people made their presentations was between us and the audience, which made it just a little less awkward. I was kind of disappointed that I would be too busy with getting my second presentation ready to watch the other presentations until I realized that the screen was behind us and I couldn’t really watch them anyway. Sylvia made me take a break after about an hour, “so that I would be rested enough to actually give my presentation, rather than just collapsing in front of everybody.” She was right, of course. My vision had been getting blurry again near the end and I passed out as soon as I hit the cot, which had been moved to the small conference room. I hated feeling weak, but with both Sylvia and Angelia there I went without protest.

Then it was my turn. The presentation was not easy to watch, as I had to show many actual pictures of the dead in order to illustrate the point (I left out the pictures with dead children because what I had to show was horrific enough.) Everything went extremely well until the question and answer period, when someone asked the wrong question and I shot my mouth off again. Some officer asked if it would be possible to build a backpack based weapon that would allow us to walk among the enemy and destroy them at will. Without thinking I spat out, “That’s a stupid idea!” I really need to learn not to pop off like that, but I had already let it out so, I was forced to justify my outburst. “If we use the knowledge properly, we can save an untold number of lives. If we abuse this knowledge, we will be throwing all of those lives away. Our enemy is sophisticated enough to both create these biological weapons systems and to cross interstellar space to reach us. I think that they are capable of reprogramming their minions to shoot everyone instead of just people carrying things.”

“As it stands we have figured out one of the ‘rules of the game’ from the enemy perspective that correspond to our Geneva Conventions. This seems to be their way of saying ‘we kill enemy soldiers, but we leave innocent civilians alone.’ It seems to me that we always want to try to play by these rules except for the most extreme of circumstances. This gives the civilian caught in the battle zone and the wounded or lost soldier a chance that they wouldn’t otherwise have. Beyond all this, it will allow us to do the one thing that we have failed to do in this war: Communicate something important to our enemy! Despite any other differences we have, we share this one value: We do not slaughter the innocent. Yes, we could get some easy kills, but I think that if we go in that direction, we could easily start on a path that leads to a war of annihilation, and I can’t foresee any circumstances where that would be a good thing.”

When I finished letting all of that out, I was completely drained and the room started spinning. I had to grab the podium to keep from falling. I vaguely heard someone dismiss the assembly for lunch and someone came up on either side of me and half carried me back to the conference room. They laid me on the cot and I was so exhausted I couldn’t even move, yet for some reason sleep wouldn’t claim me. I lay there for a while listening to people move about the room. I felt a nurse come and check on me, but I couldn’t make my body obey to even answer her questions.

“He seems to be OK, just out cold. What happened?”

Sylvia’s voice seemed weak, “He was doing just fine. He was getting a little worked up over the last question, but nothing worrying. As soon as he finished speaking, he turned pale and almost fell down without any warning. You can watch the video yourself. He was fine one minute and collapsing the next.”

“I’ll be back to check on him in an hour. Call me if anything happens. If he’s not better by then, I’m taking him to the hospital whether the Director likes it or not.”

“If you think he needs to go, I’ll back you and Angelia will back me.”

“He may have just fainted from all the excitement, so I don’t want to jump the gun.”

“I hope that’s all it was, but he’d be mortified if that was what happened.”

Their conversation seemed to fade out and I may have dozed a bit, because the next voice I remember was Angelia’s, “How is he doing?”

“If he doesn’t wake up soon I’m taking him to the hospital.”

The Director’s chimed in, “Did the nurse check him?”

“She seemed to think that the big goof just fainted, but I can’t help but be worried.”

“We’re all worried about him.”

“Then why are you pushing him? He’s not well!”

“Everyone said it wouldn’t be a problem as long as he took it easy. This is a critically important meeting that is going to affect the course of this war. Even if he doesn’t give his second presentation, he has already made a difference.”

“By collapsing on stage?”

“You were watching him and not the audience. He had a group of the most powerful men in the world completely spellbound. His presentation was very harsh, but it was the first to bring the danger and loss home to everyone. He made them realize that people are already dying, and if we didn’t do something, there would be a lot more people who will end up like those poor souls. His next presentation will show them that our enemies have flaws and can be beaten. He made them care, and he will give them hope. If we don’t have these things, we will lose the war. That is why I am going to have him give his other presentation if he thinks he can handle it.”

“And if he can’t?”

“Then I’ll do it myself and just hope it’s enough.”

* * *

When I woke up, you cannot believe how happy I was to be able to move. It sounds silly, but I was really afraid that I’d done something stupid and paralyzed myself for life. Sylvia was sitting beside me reading a book. She looked very relieved when I sat up, “How are you feeling Allen?”

“I think I really needed that nap, but I’m ready to go again. Is there any lunch still available?” I didn’t really answer her question, but the previous conversation had stung my pride more than a bit. I had basically passed out in front of everyone, and now they were all worried that I was too weak to continue. I felt a bit weak and shaky, my vision was a bit fuzzy, I was developing a headache, and was starving besides. But, I wouldn’t have admitted if you put a gun to my head!

Sylvia went to get me a plate of food, and I staggered over and started working at the computer again. I was determined to get this presentation done if it killed me. Luckily, I was almost done. I was just going over everything to make sure it all made sense when Sylvia returned with the food. I scarfed down a couple of bites, but when it hit my stomach, it was all I could do to keep from losing it then and there. So much for showing no weakness in front of Sylvia. I was forced to only take one bite every few minutes to keep it down; even then I gagged several times but tried to hide it. I knew if I didn’t eat, I wouldn’t be able to continue, but it was the hardest meal I have ever eaten.

I rejoined the meeting after a short nap and put the finishing touches on my presentation. It was still two hours until my second turn, which was enough time to get thoroughly bored with listening to presentations I couldn’t see. I started to play solitaire on my computer, but the screen refused to come into focus. I might have dozed off a couple of times, but I felt pretty good when I went to the podium again.

I began showing both tactical overlays and battlesuit camera footage of where Taurians were making glaring errors in combat, and how we were taking advantage of it. And then the unexpected happened; People started cheering when I showed the parts where we devastated the bio-soldiers. When I got to the part where Lena and I took down the Cyclops simultaneously, I got a standing ovation. It hadn’t even occurred to me that people would get this excited. Everyone calmed down a bit when I got to the parts about how bio-soldiers were dangerous even without orders, and how much more dangerous they were when they had soldiers riding herd. Despite this I received a second standing ovation at the conclusion of my presentation. I think I blushed.

I managed to keep my feet until I got to my place at the table, but I was shaking all over. I didn’t complain when someone (General Moore I think) helped me back to my cot in the meeting room. It was odd; training and combat had never been this hard. I decided that getting injured in battle sucked big time. In the movies, the hero shrugs off being shot, beaten, stabbed etc. without it affecting him at all. I just hit my head and I couldn’t function for over a few hours without collapsing, and it was five days later. I decided that it would be a good idea for me not to get injured anymore.

I heard Silvia talking to the Director and Angelia, but I couldn’t make it out and fell asleep. I really wish I had heard what was said because when I woke up, Sylvia was there and she was pissed. “As soon as you feel up to it, we’re going to dinner.”

“OK lets go,” trying to sound casual. I felt terrible, I probably looked terrible, but I would have rather gnawed my own arm off than admit I was weak at that moment. I think that I usually have better judgment than this (others disagree), but for some reason, because I felt bad, I couldn’t admit that I felt bad (at the time it made perfect sense to me.)

On the way over to one of the more elaborate and expensive dining rooms at the cafeteria, Sylvia was mumbling to herself. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I swear that it was definitely unladylike. She composed herself and was all smiles to everyone we met, but she had a grip on my arm that left a bruise.

The room was filled with older men in uniform and expensive suits (at least I assume the suits were expensive. I couldn’t tell a cheep suit from a designer one to save my life.) These were the powerful elite, the advisers to presidents, prime ministers, and kings. I felt more out of place than if I had wandered into the women’s rest room. I was introduced to dozens of Very Important People. The only two I recognized were the US Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security. I soon found out that there was a rhythm to these things. I would be moved to a group and seated, everyone would be introduced, and I would tell the story of how I gave myself a concussion taking down a Cyclops. After doing this about twenty times, I couldn’t even make out faces anymore. Drinking several glasses of something along the way probably didn’t help at all. When I sat at a table and went into my story without realizing I was talking to the Director and Angelia, Angelia decided that it was time for Sylvia to take me home. I remember getting into the cart, and that was it.

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