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.
“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 author
ization 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.”
Monsters Win Wars: A Novella Page 3
