The big question was how she felt about Miguel. He was the most aggravating person she'd ever met. On the one hand, he was bright, emotionally sensitive and exceedingly handsome for an alien. On the other hand, he refused to treat her with the respect a royal should have. He would not refer to her with proper reverence. Her royal standing meant nothing to him. He treated her like an ordinary woman instead of a Princess.
The Chrysallamans frightened her. Yes, the children were cute, but everyone was cute when they're little. It's when they grow up that they get mean and nasty. Take General Dunnbull for instance. Caroline was sure the only reason she was alive was because Miguel protected her from the lizard.
"There I go thinking about the Human again!"
***
Sitting alone in a corner, Miguel angrily thought about his last encounter with Caroline. Kicking aside a small stone near his foot, he vowed to forget the Asiddian Princess and concentrate on developing some way to contact his friends back on Earth. It'd take some materials from the wrecked saucer, but he was sure he could cobble together a working FLR if he could just get his hands on the wreckage.
"I've got to stay away from her. She takes everything I do and say the wrong way," he thought. "She has no idea what sacrifice and humility mean. To her, everything is about her comfort, her clothes, her feelings. I was not put on this world to cater to a selfish woman!"
"With a working FLR, we can contact Earth. Help will only be minutes away."
"It's about time she learned how the rest of the planet lives. Constant fear of death or reprisal. Slaves to the whims of her soldiers. I'm tired of her demands!"
"I'll have to work with pieces and parts, but I think I can put together something that'll work. An HKG or two would change the face of Chrysalis."
"Caroline has demonstrated true kindness and humility. I've watched her show love and understanding to the Chrysallamans on many occasions. Lately her attitude towards me is horrible. It's like there're two personalities hiding under her skin. One is a haughty sheltered princess. The other is a sensitive lovely woman. Trouble is I don't know which one is going to respond at any given time."
"I'll speak to Doug and Becky about my tech needs. They'll see the wisdom of having a radio and a generator. A simple raid on the warehouse holding the scout saucer will provide the parts I need."
"Damn woman!"
***
The raid on the building where the remains of the Chrysallaman scout saucer was hidden had to be fast and specific. The possibility of Miguel cobbling together a working HKG from the wreckage was too important. Doug, Becky, Miguel, Whatsit, Boottall, his gang of toughs and 10 Chrysallaman soldiers huddled near the warehouse. The attention of the Asiddian guards had to be diverted, and Boottall's gang was the key. The distraction wasn't long in coming.
Raising his hand, Boottall signaled to his gang to begin their assault. His gesture was based on his observations of signals made by the human, Doug Jenson. Over the last few days, Boottall had struck up a friendship with Doug, and the teenager always seemed to be near the man. Doug treated the boy as a capable leader, and Boottall liked the way the Human deferred to his knowledge of the target warehouses.
The boy and his followers were what the older Chrysallamans referred to as warehouse scavengers. They knew how the buildings were laid out inside and protected outside. It was their illicit foraging that had provided most of the food for the survivors until the humans arrived and changed the dynamics of the raids. Human aggression was beginning to wear off on the Chrysallaman survivors, and the successes of the warehouse assaults only served to increase their combativeness.
The plan was for Boottall's gang to annoy the guards and run away when the Asiddians gave chase. The adults thought the easiest and safest way to attract the guards' attention was to pelt them with rocks. Trouble was the kids had decided mundane items like rocks weren't good enough. Instead the hooligans used 3/8ths inch steel hex nuts propelled by slingshots. Each hex nut was marked with words such as 'ouch' or 'damn it'. Other more choice words scraped on some of the nuts were of such bad language they can't be repeated, and Doug marveled at the creativity of the young lizards. The competition between the gang members to see who could hit the most targets was fierce. One of the female gang members named Mayybell had to be the winner.
Mayybell was a feisty 13 year old whose father had been killed by the Asiddians when he dared steal an old tarp to keep the rain off his wife and two children. General Harrier thought the death of the lizard would be a marvelous example to all Chrysallamans of what happens when they dare try to steal. The unexpected result of his fatal decision was to make a permanent enemy out of the family of the dead Chrysallaman. Slavery was bad enough, but wanton murder was intolerable. Mayybell looked forward to the day when she was big enough and old enough to join the military. Her accuracy with a slingshot was uncanny. Instead of aiming at the helmet or bulletproof vest of her targets, she concentrated on the sensitive upper arms and shin bones. Many an Asiddian screamed in pain and anger as steel nuts struck them.
Fully 2/3rds of the guards took off after the gang, firing their disintegrator rifles at the fleeing Chrysallamans. Fortunately not a single discharge hit its target. It was time for the main attack, and Doug regarded his troops and smiled. It was like looking at 10 copies of Whatsit. All the Chrysallaman soldiers wore green trench coats and black boots. Each one sported a brightly colored sombrero tied under the chin by a draw cord. Bolo ties clasped with a stylized Asiddian skull circled their necks. Brown bandoleers fitted with hoops for a ray pistol and extra power modules crossed their chests. Each one held an Asiddian disintegrator rifle at the ready. The success of the recent warehouse raids had served to buoy to spirits of the Chriks. Everyone's eyes were sharp and focused as they prepared for action.
"My God, it's like looking at Whatsit in a mirror," Becky whispered.
Grinning at the comment, Doug said, “Whatsit, get your fellows ready. Its time."
Nodding, Whatsit looked at his squad and mentally projected, "The distraction worked. Be careful. The only good Asiddian is a dead Asiddian."
Like a trained Seal Team, the Chrysallaman commandos moved into their preplanned positions, eager to begin their assault on the building.
***
Whatsit gave the signal to his squad of doppelgangers. Four of the soldiers swept their disintegrator beams across the waists of the remaining guards standing near the warehouse door. The rest took off after the Asiddians chasing Boottall's gang. The door guards weren't expecting trained, well-armed Chrysallamans, and they fell into pieces that spilled gore all over the pavement. Disintegrator beams didn't cauterize the flesh like Chrysallaman cutter rays, and guts flowed out of the bodies in a shower of blood and entrails. One of the Asiddians was still alive when Doug ran up to her. Screams of pain from the alien bit into Doug's ears. He did the only merciful thing and shot her in the head.
The mercy killing didn't go unnoticed. Becky understood the reason from a Human perspective and sympathetically squeezed Doug's shoulder. The Chrysallamans liked the accuracy of the shot and pounded Doug's back with congratulatory thumps. The rest of the soldiers finished killing the Asiddians chasing Boottall's gang members and returned. Not a single guard had escaped. Everyone paused for an order from Jenson.
"Be alert. We don't know how many of them may be in the building," Doug warned.
Nodding his head at the guard he'd shot, he said, "Her screams may have been heard. Our goal is the scout saucer. Nothing else matters at this point."
The Chrysallamans entered the warehouse two at a time followed by Doug, Miguel and Whatsit. Becky and Boottall remained on alert at the main door. Boottall's gang hid. Their distraction job was done.
The inside of the 6,000 square foot warehouse consisted of a smooth concrete floor with a high roof line. Steel rafters crisscrossed 50 feet above their heads, and the floor space was randomly littered by piles of debris pulled from the saucer's interior. The spaceship sat in
the open, and it was obvious from dusty tracks on the floor and the saucer's entrance ramp that many people had been inside it.
Storage racks filled with boxes lined the southern and western walls. It was eerily quiet. Normally, birds built nests in open buildings like the warehouse, but not a single living thing fluttered in the roof supports. As his squad moved closer to the saucer, its bulk obscured the storage racks on the western wall.
"Fan out around the entrance to the saucer. Shoot to kill anything you don't recognize." Doug ordered.
Motioning to Miguel and Whatsit, he skulked in a combat crouch into the area between the main door, the debris piles and the saucer. When he had covered half the distance to the craft, the hum of disintegrator rays filled the building. Three of his Chrysallaman commandos fell to pieces as the red rays sliced through them, and clear bubbles of protective screens blossomed around Doug, Miguel and Whatsit. Dropping to one knee, Doug returned fire, but he couldn't see any open targets. If it wasn't for his PDS necklace, he would've been dead. Nothing was proof against the disintegrator beams except the shields, and their protection relied on tiny built-in FLIT gens. If the deadly beams had been fired with a battleship's power instead of handheld rifles, the miniature gens would've failed.
Two more Chrysallaman commandos were killed, and the odds of survival for Doug, Miguel and Whatsit plummeted. Doug swept his disintegrator beam across the bottom of the storage racks on the southern wall and was rewarded by multiple screams of agony. The body of the saucer protected his group from accurate shots by enemies hiding behind the storage racks on the western wall, but that protection wasn't going to last. Praying the black hole power source in his necklace would hold against the onslaught of multiple disintegrator beams, Doug unleashed another salvo at the inventory racks on the southern wall hiding his attackers. Time and protection were running out. In seconds the Asiddians hiding behind the western wall racks would change their positions to get clear shots.
A red disintegrator beam sizzled through the air over his head. Then another beam sliced through one of the Chrysallaman commandos crouching behind the nearest pile of rubble. The hole in the lizard's side was large enough pass a soccer ball. The angle of the beam proved it came from the direction of the western wall. Doug realized his luck had run out. Time to die.
Out of nowhere, a black ball swooped into position near Doug's head and unleashed a MA ray into the southern inventory racks. The white ray with sparkles that winked on and off and flowed in dazzling swirls was only six inches wide as it left the Bowler but quickly widened to 5 feet. Everything it touched disappeared in a blinding flash. The bottom of the racks vanished. There was no smoke or explosion as the ray destroyed the structures. Even the warehouse wall behind the racks dematerialized.
The ball jerked itself out into the open and scanned the southern area of the warehouse where the inventory racks once stood. It was bracketed by four disintegrator beams from the direction of the western wall. A halo of red and yellow light appeared around the black ball when the beams struck it. Nothing happened. No disintegration. No explosion. As if annoyed by the shots, the ball turned its baleful eyes toward the western wall. A white MA beam erupted from the ball's mouth and the disintegrator rays cut off like a light switch had been thrown. Silence was followed by muffled shuffling as surviving Asiddians hiding behind the western racks ran out the building.
The Bowler turned, floated over and 3 dark black eyes regarded Doug. A familiar voice said, "I've got a single malt scotch just beggin' to be opened. You think you might find time in your busy schedule to help me with it?"
"McPherson!" Doug exclaimed.
Chapter 8 – Arrival
Arriving 1.2 light years from Chrysalis, the Destinnee inched toward it while orienting itself with the other planets. Mapping a solar system was time consuming as far as Tom was concerned, but it was essential that his crew know the specific location of any large objects affecting space travel. Heinbaum worked with McPherson to imbed the outlying planets with special locator beacons based upon the FLR technology and enter their coordinates into the GPC. Completing their task encompassed four days but enabled Destinnee to traverse the solar system in the blink of an eye with pinpoint accuracy. Chrysalis was the only planet they couldn't visit.
It was obvious the Asiddians had cleared every planet except Chrysalis of Chrysallaman installations and the natives who manned them. Rubble from the remains of the various outposts littered the worlds. The original anger of Destinnee's Chrysallaman crew at the wanton destruction and murder of their fellows grew to deep hatred. The murderous nature of Asiddian style warfare was on full display. It was clear they took perverted delight in releasing thousands of Chrysallamans into orbit around the system's planets. Death came from battle wounds, burning up on re-entry into the planet's atmosphere or suffocation. Spacesuits simply weren't designed to protect against those inevitable consequences especially if no spacesuit was provided when the victim was blown out an airlock.
Lloyd calculated the positions of the largest dead body clusters and did his best to avoid plowing through them; however, despite all his efforts, the Destinnee sometimes couldn't avoid unexpected swarms of floating Chrysallamans long dead from battle damage or exposure to the dark airless silence of the universe. The cold vacuum of space is a near perfect preservative. While water in unprotected bodies tended to evaporate, the boney structures and dried leather-like skin of hundreds of thousands of Chrysallaman cadavers testified to the unforgiving nature of the Asiddian invasion.
No Asiddian battleships had been encountered as the Destinnee worked its way into various orbital positions. So far it seemed the invaders concentrated their control on the habitable planetary zone where Chrysalis circled the Sun. Lloyd avoided contact with enemy ships flying near the outer planets with ease. Instantaneous space travel made dodging simple, but constant vigilance to the pings of sensors as ships were detected was essential. Although battleships routinely arrived and departed, the courses they traveled were well-marked and fastidiously avoided.
The crew wanted to engage the Asiddians and practiced daily firing their weapons in computer simulations; however the veil of patience with playing games was becoming thin. Sooner or later, someone was going to shoot MA beams at live targets first and ask for permission later.
It was on the tenth day of system espionage when the Bowler spy network spotted Doug and most of his crew. The Bowler spy network was the brainchild of Miguel. He was the first person to come up with the idea of using the black balls as surreptitious data gatherers. Roemer had developed the spy drone for missions where Human presence was dangerous or unnecessary. The device looked like a black bowling ball even down to the standard three finger holes. McPherson had christened the drone as a Bowler. The three holes were actually a powerful telescopic HiDef video camera, a multi-function instrument for scientific and electronic analysis and a MA weapon. Powered by two miniature FLIT gens and controlled by an FLR, the Bowler was a formidable tool.
Dedicated teams of controllers and analysts worked in continuous shifts with the balls. At any given time, close to 100 Bowlers were FLITing around Chrysalis gathering Intel. From the data gathered, it was clear the Asiddians were actively hunting someone important. From the photos plastered on every street corner, there was no doubt the crew of the scout saucer Salteer were the quarry. Belief the crew still survived raised the spirits of everyone on the Destinnee.
***
"The outskirts of the city are nothing but warehouse buildings," Lance Corporal Josh King said. "I wish something would happen to threaten our little playthings. I'd love to retaliate."
Josh was a 25 year old 5 foot 11 inch barrel chested man. His gut was relatively flat but the love-handles at his waist testified to his love for snacks. He had medium brown hair cut in mohawk style. Every morning he fastidiously shaved the sides of his head and then ran a playing card edgewise over the shaved area. If the card made any scrapping sound, King carefully noted the location of
the stubble and removed it. Many people thought he was too obsessed with perfection, but King was convinced his girlfriend liked the look.
"Don't wish for combat unless you're ready for it Josh." Jesús Martinez responded.
Sergeant Martinez was a 28 year old by-the-book soldier. An ROTC captain in his senior year of college would have loved the way Martinez's coverall was always perfectly pressed; his unit identification and marksmanship pins polished bright and shiny. His skin was swarthy, and his black hair was picturesque military.
"The point of these things is not to be seen. If the Assids knew we're here, they'd make a point of trying to kill us all."
Assids had become the favorite way of referring to the Asiddians. The Chrysallamans got a kick out of the slur because it sounded like the name of the liquid used to embalm their dead. Humans liked the label because it sounded like ass.
"What's the point of having this if we don’t use it?" King grumbled just as the picture on his monitor screen slewed sideways and the sound of disintegrator fire burst from the speakers. "Oh damn. Gracie has discovered some trouble."
Every operator had a pet name for his or her Bowler. King's was named Gracie.
"Find out what happened," Janniss Whirrnigg demanded.
Janniss was a Chrysallaman tech who'd distinguished herself with precision remote control of Bowlers. She was small for an adult lizard at only 4 feet 7 inches in height; however, her steady hands and fingers were famous. Whirrnigg had been a computer programmer before her selection for resettlement on planet HG-281. Needless to say she'd been thrilled when her background was deemed desirable by the humans. Her affinity with electronic controls allowed her to fly a drone and land it on a 6 inch bullseye in a 60-mile per hour wind.
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