Monsters Win Wars: A Novella (3 page)

“The best tactic I can think of is to somehow
draw the president out into the open.” Henry explained.

“Away from Earth you mean?” Aric asked.

“Yes.”

“But why would he risk leaving the safety of
the capital?” Rand asked. His black military uniform was gone, and
he now wore a formal red robe like his superior. His demeanor had
also changed, taking on a more subdued quality. Henry and Emily
suspected that maybe Aric had had a talk with him. “After what
happened on Mars, he knows that you will take any opportunity to
get him when he’s off-world.”

“For the moment, yes.” Emily said. “But he
will have to leave eventually. It’s very unusual for a president to
spend all of his time in the capital, even during times of war. If
he spends too much time hiding on Earth, his opponents will accuse
him of being weak, and cowardly.”

“Alright. So we wait until he leaves Earth.
Then what?” Aric asked.

“We kidnap him.” Henry said. “We’ll
interrogate him; as commander-in-chief, he’ll know every single
important security and military secret there is. We gather as much
intel from him as we can, and use it to plan further attacks.”

“Pretty straightforward.” Rand said. “So,
when do we start?”

“As soon as he leaves Earth.” Emily said. “At
some point he’ll go to some rally on Mars, visit a disaster area,
or something like that, and we’ll get him. I just hope we’ll move
fast enough when the time comes.”

“We need to stay alert, be ready to go out at
a moment’s notice.” Henry said.

“We could be waiting awhile,” Aric said. “Me
and Rand will be in our ship training our men. We don’t want them
getting complacent.”

With that, Rand and Aric left the briefing
room.

Henry and Emily then spent the next few weeks
in the communications room sifting through countless radios signals
traveling though the solar system, careful to search for anything
that might reveal the president’s next move. It took them almost a
month, but they eventually got something.

“He’s going to Venus.” Emily said.

“Are you sure?” Henry said.

“Yes. Apparently there was another breach on
one of the dome cities.”

Henry scowled. The planet Venus has a
volatile, poisonous atmosphere, where noxious fumes are as abundant
as oxygen is on Earth. For decades, no one could come up with a
feasible way to make a habitable city there. The closest anyone had
come was the dome cities; entire cities under enormous metal domes,
keeping out all the poisonous gasses, while creating an artificial
human habitat within. But this idea was still unfeasible; the
materials and resources necessary for building a metal shield big
enough to house an entire city would be too expensive for anyone
taking on the project, government or otherwise.

But President Sallis, in his infinite wisdom,
approved the construction of no less than five Venusian dome cities
within his first month in office. Initial projections stated that
construction of the cities could take decades, but Sallis wouldn’t
listen. He wanted them up within his first year in office. He
wanted to get his administration started off with a bang. But the
cities quickly became notorious for their breeches, taking many
innocent lives with them.

This last one that Emily spoke of sounded
like the worst one yet; half of the city, about 5,000 people, had
been killed. The rest were either confined to hospital beds, or
forced to walk around in cumbersome quarantine suits.

“It’s been a PR disaster for him.” Emily
said. “He’s going to make an appearance there in a few days.”

The next day, they summoned Aric and Rand
down to discuss their next move.

“What is he planning to do once on Venus?”
Rand asked.

“Give a speech or two,” Henry said. “Maybe
visit some victims in the hospitals.”

“No, no, what’s he doing for the recovery?”
Rand was sounding impatient. “What’s he planning on doing that will
actually help fix the domes?”

“Nothing.” Henry said. Rand frowned.

“It’s just to look good.” Emily said. “It’s
like a publicity stunt.”

“It’s a bit of theatrics.” Aric explained.
“Human leaders sometimes make appearances at locations where
tragedies have taken place, so as to show their support for
recovery efforts.”

“But they don’t actually do anything?” Rand
asked.

“No.”

“They just talk, and people associate this
with action?”

“That’s politics.” Henry chuckled.

“It’s a disgrace.” Rand said. “How does your
race expect to function if it can be manipulated like this?”

The rest were silent for a few moments,
before Aric spoke.

“Ah, Senator, what is your plan?” The saurian
leader asked. Henry locked eyes with Rand. He tried to think of a
response to the commando’s question.

“Senator Patrick?” Aric asked.

“Right sorry.” Henry turned from Rand to
Aric, keeping the saurian commando in the corner of his vision as
he spoke. “The president will be touching down on Venus in three
days.” He went to the wall where a large map had been placed. It
was a satellite view of a stretch of land on Venus.

The ground was a sickly shade of yellow,
partially obscured by thick poisonous clouds. At the center of the
map was the damaged dome. It appeared as a metal bowl that had been
flipped upside down. Little black dots surrounded the dome. They
were the workers fixing the breaches. To the right of the dome was
the beginning of a long gray trail that stretched all the way to a
dark square that sat at the very edge of the map.

“The president is going to land at this
spaceport on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. Venus central time.” Henry said,
pointing to the dark square at the edge. He then began to run his
finger along the long gray trail. “It’s about a hundred miles from
the spaceport to the city. Emily.”

“Based on the messages we’ve intercepted,
we’ve found he’ll be traveling with three armored cars like these.”
Emily said, as she taped a photo of a black armored car on the wall
next to the map. A machine gun was mounted on the roof of the
vehicle. “He’ll be riding in the middle of the three cars. Each car
will have at least a few armed guards.”

“What we need to do is somehow intercept the
convoy, get the president, and bring him back here alive.” Henry
said.

“We already know how to get on the planet
without raising suspicion.” Emily said. “The night before he
arrives, we land in the spaceport posing as workers transporting
supplies for the repair of the dome.

“We have a stolen supply vessel here at the
base. We land with that. It has a small supply truck in it. We can
stow some of your soldiers aboard, drive out to about halfway down
this long road, and ambush them.”

“These troops that will be with the
president,” Rand began to ask. “Are they going to be the same types
of troops we saw on Mars?”

“Even worse.” Henry said. “Honor guards;
taken from the best the military has to offer.”

“Good.” Rand said. “The villa was too easy. I
want an actual fight.”

“There is still the question of how we’ll
deal with the poisonous atmosphere.” Emily said, trying to ignore
Rand.

“It’s no trouble.” Aric said. “Our suits are
very resilient, and saurian lungs are very strong.” He gestured to
his second-in-command. “Rand himself can hold his breath for
forty-five minutes. The others can hold theirs for thirty at
least.”

“We won’t even need that.” Rand said. “We’ll
have your president out of there in fifteen minutes.”

Henry sweated as he sat in the front seat of
the supply truck. The temperature outside of the airtight vehicle
was almost five-hundred degrees Fahrenheit. In addition to the
poisonous gases, Venus was also notorious for the extremely high
temperatures.

Through the thick transparent aluminum
windshield, Henry looked out at the Venusian landscape before me.
The barren yellow landscape stretched out to the horizon. Thick
grayish-yellow clouds hung above, blocking out the sunlight. Off in
the distance, Henry could see a mountain, whose peak soared all the
way up above those clouds, as though it were trying to escape this
barren hellhole. The rebel leader reflected that the peak of that
mountain may be the only remotely hospitable place on this planet,
and shook his head in disgust.

This place could never be colonized, not
without decades of terraforming. The dome cities were more like
prisons, their citizens forced to remain inside their metal walls,
lest they be killed by the harsh forces from without. He promised
himself that the moment he took office that he would make
relocation of these poor people one of his top priorities.

He again reached into the glove compartment,
and took out the canteen. It was noticeably lighter than when he’d
first landed on the planet. He unscrewed the cap, and downed the
final two ounces of warm water inside. He held it over his open
mouth for another few moments, as he tried to shake out the last
few drops.

“Hey.” Aric said sitting next to him. Henry
turned, and saw the saurian holding out his canteen.

“No, no.” Henry shook his head. “I’m…I’m
okay.”

“No you’re not, take it.” Aric said. He was
no longer wearing the formal red robe, and instead wore a black
fighting suit like the others. He didn’t intend to join in the
fight, but this was going to be a battlefield in a little while;
might as well be prepared. “I’m not thirsty anyway. Take it.”

Henry took the canteen, and was both
surprised and delighted by its weight. He undid the cap, and took
two stratifying gulps from the canteen.

“Thanks.” He said, passing the canteen back
to Aric. The saurian leader shook his head. Henry held out the
canteen a moment longer, before shrugging and putting it in the
glove compartment. “The heat doesn’t both you?” Aric shrugged.

“It’s not much worse than my homeworld,
actually.” He said. “Our kind is much more resilient to heat than
yours. Personally, I prefer this place to your frigid rebel base.”
He and Henry shared to chuckle. Henry turned to the back of the
truck. Seven saurian commandoes sat back there. They sat quietly
along the wall of the truck. Some checked their helmets, most just
sat in the corners doing nothing, as they waited to begin. Rand sat
just behind Aric’s seat, looking out a window at the stretch of
road they’d parked on.

They’d stopped halfway to the dome city,
their truck parked sideways so that it blocked traffic. Both sides
of the road were lined with a seven foot-tall rock wall. When the
convoy came to the stopped truck, it would be difficult to drive
around it. Henry looked down at his watch; the convoy was due there
in about a half-hour. The soldiers in the back were getting ready
to leave the truck and get into their positions on the road. Their
suits weren’t black like before; they’d been dyed to be the same
sickly shade of yellow as the ground outside.

Emily was back at the spaceport, inside the
stolen cargo ship. Cargo ships with supplies for the dome repair
were coming in on an almost daily basis, and the spaceport had been
ordered to allow such supplies through as soon as they arrived.
When they asked if they could just do a quick inspection of the
cargo, Emily told them that they were transporting pellets of dry
ice to help fuel the cooling suits for the workers repairing the
city. She added that the workers were running low, and needed this
new batch ASAP. When they pushed, she asked, “What are you going to
tell all those reporters when those repair men are cooked to death,
and the dome repair project stops dead?” The port authorities
obliged immediately.

A few minutes earlier, Emily had sent them a
signal telling them that the presidential convoy was on their way.
Henry watched as the commandoes made their way to the very back of
the truck. Once they were in position, Henry pressed a button on
the dashboard, and a thick metal wall went up just behind the two
front seats. Once it was fully closed, and the cab of the truck was
totally sealed from the back, Henry pushed another button. Through
the metal wall that sat behind his seat, he heard the back of the
truck open. The heat from the outside was muffled behind the
protective metal wall, but the cab still became noticeably
warmer.

He wondered about how the commandoes would be
doing out there. Even with their tolerance for heat, it would still
be like walking into an oven. He’d asked Aric about it beforehand,
and the Saurian had assured him that the suits would protect
them.

“But Venus is almost five-hundred degrees.”
Henry had said.

“And those suits will protect them.” Aric had
said casually. Henry shook his head. Even the most flexible heat
suits were bulky things that resembled ancient diving suits from
hundreds of years ago on Earth. When Henry asked what made those
suits so special, Aric proceeded to list off several material and
compounds that Henry had never heard of.

“Well that’s because they aren’t found on
Earth.” Aric smiled a lizard grin. “Just trust me.”

As Henry sat in the cab of that truck,
listening to the footsteps as the commandoes disembarked, he
listened for any indication that the commandoes were in danger. But
all he heard were reptilian feet hitting Venusian soil.

Through the side window on the truck, he
watched them take their positions on the road, and waited.

The convoy came a few minutes earlier than
expected. From the cab of the truck, Aric and Henry watched as the
front most truck slowly came to a halt on the road. It stood there
for a few seconds, before they got a call on the radio in their
truck.

“Civilian, why is your truck in the road?” A
gruff voice asked on the radio. “Move your truck immediately.” Aric
picked it up and cleared his throat before speaking.