*
During the several hours of the flight, Mathew worried. Outwardly calm, inside he was second guessing himself over every decision. They could be pathetic little groups of eight to ten people trying to kill 200+ at each site. But what choice did they have? They had run out of time. He was worried about his Teams. His Team was almost all women and many not young. But his father had always told him where possible to let the Teams choose themselves. So he had. His father said trust, loyalty, mutual respect and compatibility often mattered more than ability. Those with children had agonised over what to do and then decided to split up to hopefully increase the chances of one of them surviving to look after their children.
His father said you never knew what people would do when they were backed against a wall. Most fought. Some of the littlest women in his father’s battalion’s had fought the hardest. Some of the biggest men froze. In hand to hand combat the men were generally better but add weapons and the playing field tended to level out. And Kelly, Stella and Li had been a shock with their ability in unarmed combat. Steve was a wild card and likely to be reckless but the others might be able to steady him and keep him focussed.
Con’s Team of Bert, Dan, Nial, Steve, Karl, Little Ali and Ilse had been delegated the city Mathew thought would be hardest to take as the armoury was in an awkward place to get at, in the centre of the city. A pity any bodies were kept inside. They had no idea how many were killed or incapacitated except where some had been seen being flown up to the spaceships. And that was only the Keulfyd. How ill were the other Races? Helkmid was predicting that his bugs would have killed or incapacitated at least half the targeted Races. He further insisted that sick people didn’t fight if they were mercenaries. They weren’t required to. They could surrender and still get paid. It wasn’t as if they were defending their homes and families. This was a job to them. And unlike most Terran armies, only soldiers fought. Cooks, clerks, medical and all the other support staff were not trained nor expected to fight. That meant a huge number of People that could be discounted. That came off the total of 200. Mathew had found this hard to believe. How could an army not use all of its resources? He had not taken them off the total. He thought if an attack happened, they would fight. He would. He was. Mathew was one of the few in his family not formally army trained. But he had been trained. Through osmosis. He absorbed military training simply by living with his family. Tactics and strategy were normal dinnertime conversation. His family talked tactics, watched war films and documentaries, laughed at the absurdities and inaccuracies. Yelled at the screen when what was shown was wrong. One of his descendants, in the 1920’s had stood up in a cinema and angrily stated that the film was a mockery. Horses couldn’t run that fast.
Mathew had been suspicious of Helkmid. He seemed to know an awful lot more than he should, of military matters in general and of Biological Warfare in particular. When Mathew gently hinted at this, Helkmid cheerfully repeated what he had told Donny which was that medical people had the knowledge to be the best killers and he had lived long enough to have had a lot of experience. While there was truth in that, Mathew had suspected it was not the whole truth. Subsequent revelations had proved him right. Helkmid had been well prepared in his little bolt hole. Too well prepared. Mathew wondered why. He wondered what his plan had been and why none of the other Okme in other cities had survived. And Helkmid had a way to hide from the scanners. A shield of some kind? Had he expected something to happen? Donny said there was a cache of food and beverages, and some securely locked rooms or cupboards. They had also had bedding. Helkmid had explained this away as preparing for major disasters or epidemics. It hadn’t entirely rung true to Donny either but with Donny’s loyalty, Mathew had had to push him for that hunch.
Akira’s Team of Miyuki, Sally, Jolene, Mayling, Nanelle, Pieter, Rani, Bella and Alia was another he was worried about. But the city designated to them, according to the Cats, had had a lot of fatalities. Hopefully, they had no fight left in them so long as they could get the Relogs before the fight started. And the armoury was easily accessible being on the outskirts of the City. Mathew wondered what type of idiot had achieved that neat piece of brilliant military planning.
Ali’s Team was looking good. He was a good leader. So were all the others. His Team of Sarah, Kaz, Stella, Kelly, Mahmoud, Tue, Donny and Harsha were cohesive and reliable. So he had given them a difficult city with what appeared to be a low death count so far.
His own Team was Az, Li, Minka, Simone, Anne, Helene, Julia, Ludmilla, Tasha and Bea. Just as well because their city did not appear to have a lot of casualties. Julia had originally been on Con’s Team but had switched so she could guard Bea and to increase her children’s chances of having at least one parent alive after this day was over. He had left the numbers as they were rather than juggle the Teams. Another decision that could have unseen consequences. Again, he hoped he was right.
He sighed. The blow guns were good stealth weapons but with their short range they wouldn’t be much good once fighting started. According to the Cats, the main weapons they were up against were what was called field standard, a combination stun or kill weapon, or blasters. They could be armed with both. He had heard Bert, Kelly, Sally, Pieter and Ludmilla plan what they would have to deal with in the way of injuries from the information Kaz and Az had given as to the types of injuries caused. If disrupters were used, there was no treatment.
But they had planned for survivable injuries. Blasters cauterised the wound so there would be very little bleeding. Field standard, he still hadn’t figured out quite how they worked but he thought they were a projectile weapon which used a battery, not explosives. Kaz had tried to explain. The main point was that you must carry a spare battery as well as the projectiles they threw. Hits from them mimicked hits from bullets so not necessarily fatal. That was if any survived to treat them.
Helkmid had all the Healing Machines ready to deal with the worst injuries. But there were only eight of them. Mathew knew there would be more casualties than that. And one Team had no doctor (he was counting Ludmilla as a doctor), but he had put Sally and Pieter on it. Both were good. Sally was an experienced and competent nurse. Pieter had some medic training. Their role was to keep people alive until they could be got to a doctor or a Machine. Or maybe not. Sally said she could do a lot that was beyond her scope of practice. There were no laws here they had to abide by. Kelly had told her to do whatever she thought she could do and to go beyond that if she had nothing to lose; if someone was dying. Kelly told her to follow her instinct. They had no proper medical facilities. And they had only eight Machines. Mathew realised with some amusement that his own safety was of little concern to him. This was his battle, his planning, his responsibility. He was far more afraid of getting it wrong than he was of dying. He was chewing over what he could have forgotten or not known.
What a pity the other survivors would not join in. There were a lot of Kepis, almost 60 adults. Ali had done his best but they refused to fight. In one of the cities almost 500 of varying Races had survived because most had been in a spaceship at the time of the gas attack. Incredibly, not only would they not fight, many had walked out into the gas, from this and other planes. Mathew could not understand that attitude. And there must have been others. An airplane would eventually run out of air but anyone in a spaceship could survive indefinitely. And why hadn’t some tried to get away? Why had they given up?
But there were still the Cats. The Cats might help. But they hadn’t helped with getting the planes. They had said they would help but they hadn’t. Their leaders had been racked by indecision and in the end had refused to let the young ones help. They had thought it was hopeless and not worth the risk. Their society was torn over the wish to help and the need to keep their sentience secret. There were millions of them. If they would just help. It was a badly kept secret that some were determined to help this time. How many was some? Mathew, if pushed, would have to admit he was counting on help from them, counting on man
y dead Aliens, counting on the blowguns getting the Yakkidimux and Relogs. Counting on a lot of variables. If the count wasn’t good enough they were finished. But they had nothing to lose. Damn the delay before a battle. Too much time to think!! This was Mathew’s first battle. He wondered how others coped. He couldn’t exactly ask.
It all depended on how many were already compromised and how many they could incapacitate before the attack began. And they had to get the armouries. They needed decent weapons. The blow guns were good as a stealth weapon but they were slow to load, cumbersome, slow to incapacitate and slow to kill. Worse, they lacked the range and were useless at shooting up. If the Aliens got up above them in those skyscrapers, they were finished. There was so little cover. Almost nothing to hide behind or under. They would be sitting ducks.
Alien Alliance Page 43