Monsters Win Wars: A Novella (4 page)

“We are experiencing engine trouble.” He
said. He’d disguised his voice to suppress the hissing accent. It
wasn’t a great imitation of a human voice, but it sounded
convincing over the radio. Besides, it was better than having the
voice of the rebel leader on the line. “We can’t move it.”

Outside the window, Henry looked at the rock
walls that lined both sides of the road. He could vaguely make out
some of the commandoes there, camouflaged as they flattened their
skinny bodies against the rocks. Only someone looking for them
could have noticed them.

“Can you be more specific? What kind of
trouble?” The gruff voice asked.

“Our engine simply gave out. We’re not sure
what happened.” Aric said. Outside, he could see his men beginning
to move, their limber bodies gently pushing themselves away from
the wall. “We called for a repair ship about a half-hour ago.”

“Citizen, you are creating an obstruction,
and must move your vehicle out of the way immediately.” The gruff
voice said.

“I apologize but we simply-”

“What the hell was that?!” The gruff voice
said on the radio. In the background could be heard a sound like
squealing metal.

Henry stared out the window, and watched as
the commandoes leaped onto the tops of the armored vehicles. Rand
still stayed by the rock wall, surveying the battlefield.

The commandoes atop the convoy cars pried
loose the large machine guns mounted on the roofs. Their skinny
arms dug under the metal, and lifted. The three guns were already
detached from their roofs, when the honor guards came out of the
cars.

The honor guards wore heat suits. They were
the standard military model; lighter and less cumbersome than the
ones that the civilians in the dome cities wore. One could move his
joints with relative ease for combat situations. The helmets were
bucket shaped, and could only allow you to see out the clear glass
visor on the front. They were colored blue and silver, with red
stripes on the shoulders to signify that they were part of the
honor guard. But the suits were still very heavy, and the helmets
they wore made it difficult to turn around.

Very quickly, the commandoes leapt off the
cars to meet their combatants on the ground. From the cab of the
truck, Henry saw the soldiers firing every which way, as they tried
to hit their acrobatic attackers. There was a lizard-like growl, as
a commando collapsed to the ground, clutching at the gaping hole
where he’d been hit. The guard that’d killed him stood mere feet
away, his smoking rifle shaking in his hands, as he beheld the
gangly form that writhed on the ground in front of him.

He didn’t even move, until another of those
gangly forms snuck up behind him, and sliced a vertical cut up the
back of his heat suit. Within seconds, his suit became filled with
the suffocating heat and poisonous fumes of Venus’ atmosphere. His
skin blackened and charred, and his lungs were corroded from within
by the toxic fumes that’d invaded his nostrils. He collapsed on the
ground, where he died lying next to the Saurian solider he’d
killed.

The other human soldiers went down without
much of a fuss. The commandos effortlessly dodged their plasmas
blasts, and lunging blows. They’d jump into the air, quickly duck
low to the ground, and sidestep; all with a gracefulness befitting
a ballerina. No matter what they did, the honor guards, the cream
of the crop of Earth’s military forces, could not compete with
these warriors from beyond the stars.

After fighting for less than a minute, the
honor guards had all met the same end; a large gash in their heat
suits. They squirmed on the ground, the life being ripped away from
them by the harsh elements of Venus.

Henry sat in the truck, feeling like he could
puke. It wasn’t anywhere near as gruesome as when Rand had saved
him in the villa. But he was half-dead that time. This time he’d
been completely alert, and could fully take in the efficiently,
brutality, and elegance of a saurian assault.

“Impressive, no?” Aric asked.

“Yeah…” Henry said. He turned to the wall
that lined the road. Rand still stood there, surveying the carnage
around him.

Once the last solider had finished choking on
the Venus air, Rand left his spot on the wall, and slowly
approached the middle car. Two of the remaining commandoes
accompanied him, as he opened the back door, and pulled out the man
that sat inside. His heat suit was also of the flexible kind that
the guards had worn, but he wasn’t holding a rifle. He shook
violently as the Saurians grabbed onto his arms, and escorted him
to back to the truck. Henry opened up the back, and heard the
commandoes and their captor climb aboard. Once they were all
inside, he closed the back, and lowered the wall that separated the
back from the cab.

They all sat on the floor of the truck,
taking long gasping breaths of the clean air inside. The human in
the heat suit was shoved to the ground with the others, and had his
bucket helmet ripped off, revealing the face of President
Sallis.

“Let me out of here!” The president shouted.
“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes we do.” Henry said from the front seat.
He’d turned back to face his enemy. The president began to shake
his head in anger.

“Oh Patrick, you’ve really fucked up this
time!” He said. “You think they’ll really let you get away with
this?”

“We’ve come this far.”

“So what, within twenty minutes they’ll know
I’m missing and-” he stopped when his eyes fell on Aric, who sat in
the passenger seat. “What is that?”

“Let’s just say I’m a friend.” Aric said.

“Your soldiers were pathetic.” Rand
interjected bitterly. He took off his helmet, and his scarred face
turned to Henry. “You told me they were the best warriors your race
could offer. I didn’t even need to aid in the fighting.”

“And we only lost one man.” One of the other
Saurians said.

“Yes.” Rand turned to the president. “Are we
sure this is the right man?” President Sallis just kept looking
around at the lizard men.

Henry was about to answer Rand’s question,
when he quickly turned out the window, and spotted the dead Saurian
among the bodies littered around the convoy.

“Shouldn’t we go out and get him?”

“Why?” Aric said.

“If you’re worried about them finding out
about us, don’t.” Rand said. “The human government gains no
tactical advantage from the knowledge they’re fighting saurians. If
anything, it’ll just intimidate them.” He turned to Sallis’
frightened face and said, “Our scaly visages seem to have an
interesting effect on your race.”

“But shouldn’t we try to give him a proper
burial?”

“A warrior’s resting place is on the
battlefield.”

“What about his family?” Henry asked. Rand
was silent, and he turned to Aric.

“Saurian customs are a little different from
yours.” Aric said. “I assure you it won’t be a problem.” Henry
opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He just
nodded.

They called Emily, who in turn contacted the
spaceport authorities. She told them that the repair crews at the
dome were still low on dry ice, and that her ship needed to take
off immediately to get more supplies. The authorities let the truck
board the ship and they promptly took off. They’d just exited the
Venusian atmosphere, when the call came in that the president had
been kidnapped, and a state of emergency was declared across the
entire solar system. No ship was allowed to leave any planet they
were stationed on without government authorization.

Back at the base, Emily and Henry had
prepared a room to serve as President Sallis cell. It was a ten by
ten room, that’d previously been used as a storage closet. Its
supplies had been moved to another room, to be replaced by the
modest furniture that Emily and Henry had installed. They’d gone
out of their way to try and make their prisoner’s quarters
hospitable; they’d installed a proper lighting fixture, a small
table, and an old cot from the barracks that wasn’t being used.
Henry wanted to show that he and the rebels were not uncivilized,
and would treat him in a humane way. They wanted to be the better
people.

After he’d been secured in his cell, two
Saurian guards were posted at the door. The president was only
alone for about a half-hour, when Henry came into the room. He was
accompanied by Emily. Aric and Rand waited outside. Despite Aric’s
suggestion that Rand perform the interrogation, Henry insisted that
he do it.

“I don’t think we’ll need an interrogation
anyway.” Henry had said. “We have him backed into a corner. I think
we can appeal to his sense of reason, and show him that we have the
advantage.”

“Alright,” Rand had said. “And when that
backfires, you know where I’ll be.”

The president was sitting on his bunk,
staring at the floor when Henry walked in. Sallis no longer had the
look of terror he’d had on in the truck. He seemed to have gotten
acclimated to his situation.

“Nice place you got here.” He said. “Needs a
new coat of paint I think.” Henry didn’t say anything, and just sat
down on the table next to the bed.

For a few silent moments, they just stared at
each other, until Sallis said, “You can’t win.”

Henry let Sallis’ words sit in his mind a
moment while he thought up a response. He knew the president was
just stalling, trying to buy time. At that moment, military ships
were combing the solar system trying to find him, looking under
every rock, inspecting every remote corner. It would only be a
matter of time before they found the base. Henry needed to work
fast if he was to get those security and command codes to reroute
the starships searching for him.

“I have a list of codes that you are going to
give me.” Henry said.

“We have you outnumbered and outgunned.”

“Not necessarily.”

“You’re talking about your lizard friends?”
Sallis said with a knowing smirk. “I’m surprised they contacted you
first.”

“You knew about them?” Henry tried not to
show the shock on his face.

“Maybe.” Sallis continued to smirk. He gave a
small chuckle. Henry remained silent, and the president continued,
“We found a few of their probes scattered around the solar system a
few years back. They were picking up communication signals; radio,
TV, Wi-Fi, things like that. Some of our scientists were able to
reverse the signal. We got a couple of jumbled images, and a few
recordings of them speaking in that hissing language.”

“You knew about them all this time?” Henry
said. He tried to keep the shock and indignation out of his voice,
but could tell by the expression on Sallis’ face that it wasn’t
working.

“We actually did think about telling the
public.” Sallis said. “You remember Morrow?” Henry nodded. Tony
Morrow had been a Press Secretary for the government before the
coup. The rebel leader remembered Morrow as an intelligent,
insightful, well-spoken, cynical man, with enough ambition for
twenty Napoleons. So naturally, when the new government needed a
propaganda manager, they went to Morrow.

“He immediately suggested that we hold a
press conference and disclose everything we had. His idea was that
it would scare the ever-loving shit out of people, and…well…a
population is quite a bit easier to manage when they’re scared.”
The president started to laugh. Henry tried not to look too
annoyed. “It was brilliant; frighten them with threats of alien
lizard men. But we decided against it. We simply weren’t confident
enough in what the scientists had found. The audio and visual data
received was usually of so low quality, that it was difficult to
say for certain what was being shown or said.

“There was also the possibility of deception.
If this was just a trick being pulled by someone, I don’t know who
maybe one of my generals, and I fell for it…well you can imagine
how foolish I’d look.” Sallis smiled that enormous shit-eating grin
that he’d plastered on at the press conferences. Henry hated that
grin.

“But it would appear that they were indeed
real. Tell me, what are you giving them in return for their help?”
Sallis asked.

“That’s not important.” Henry said. “Now what
is the authorization code for the-”

“Did you promise them some land?” Sallis
asked. Henry didn’t say anything. “You traitor, I bet you promised
them Mars.”

“I need the override codes for the
fleet-”

“Or did you actually promise them a seat in
public office?”

“Tell me the codes.”

“It’s hilarious, the leader of the
revolution, defender of the people, willing to sell his soul to
lizard men so he can have power.”

“That’s not what’s happening!” Henry
shouted.

“Okay, then what is happening?” Sallis asked.
“Why are they helping you?” Henry explained, in as few words as he
could, Aric’s reasons for wanting to aid in the resistance.

“And you believe that?” Sallis asked.

“They’ve helped me to capture you. That’s
enough.” Henry said.

“Oh c’mon, you really think it’s that
simple?”

“I don’t have time for this. Give me
the-”

“I’m not telling you shit.” Sallis said. “My
men are going to come here, kill all of you, and I’ll be back on
Earth before they can put your head on a pike.”

Henry punched the president in the face.
Sallis was thrown to the ground.

“Henry!” Emily said. Henry stood up from the
table, and looked down at the president sprawled on the floor. He
was breathing hard, and his hands had balled into fists. Sallis
grunted, as he began to push himself off the ground. Emily had run
over to Henry, and grabbed him by his shoulders.

“Henry, stop.” She said. Sallis looked up at
the rebel leader, and rubbed at the side of his head, as a smile
creased his face.

“You know you’re so innocent.” He said,
pushing himself off the ground. Emily was still holding Henry back,
and Sallis began to sit himself up. “You look at the world, and
think that everything is so simple, that if you just speak the
truth and work for the common man, that everything will just work
out.”