#alien wold

Иии снова Тинар!)

Немного инопланетной красы))))))))))))))))))

- Здравствуй, о прекрасная морская дева! Я пришел к вам с миром!

- میں بولتا ہے ایک عجیب زبان! توہین بظاہر

Hundred Flowers’ thoughts were clouded with red, as if the little red child sun had blossomed inside her head. Glorious Victory was lying on the floor, but all the girl could think about was her son, the horrible noise making his tiny brain shriek, drowning out his cries of terror. She was having trouble focusing her eyes, but she could now see the blue-black metallic faces of the horrible creatures. Each was astride a seat upon a black log branched with metal, bug eyed, shells for heads, bodies bulging and malformed. Her eyes clouded when she tried to look at their unholy forms, the air itself shimmering, fighting her sight. They passed over and around the factory in a buzzing, swirling cacophony that made the inside of her face drain tears of terror.

Did she say? Did she think it? “My scissors--where? My baby...” She didn’t even register hitting the floor, breaking her nose as she fell.

The keening moved on across the valley as the massive demon army flew on, leaving behind a small wing of about 20 monsters behind. With much snapping and clatching they unbroke themselves from their incomprehensible vehicles. They shouted as they swarmed into the factory.

“Secure!” the young trooper, an uhlan, called back down the hallway, her short stun-lance resting on her forearm. She shook her head at the sight of the two women laying in the end room. She rolled the young girl onto her back, noting the scissors clutched in her hands. Many of the other women clutched shears, awls, scissors. In the last valley the farmers had collapsed clutching their scythes and hoes.

The kenturius entered, his faceplate already off, and the uhlan took the opportunity to remove hers, letting the air cool her sweaty face. The kenturius was a slight man, with the dark, swarthy look of the natives of Kolala peninsula of the Aktha continent, the obligatory toothpick between his teeth. She had the light green eyes and pale skin of the Orthakhidhes nearer the southern pole.

“Freepin’ cheeps,” she chuckled to him. “I can’t get over this campaign. I wish our war games were this easy. We’re just rolling up this country from one end to the other.” Outside she saw the rest of the wing still waiting warily. “Hey, this building’s secure,” she shouted out the window. Despite their covered faces, she could see their attitudes relax. “Nobody sneeze, though. You’ll knock it down on a bunch of old women and cripples.”

“I don’t envy the rebuild teams.” He muttered to her. “They’re the ones who’ve got the work. For us, I mean, a few EMPs fried their missiles. Neural nets to knock out the civvies. Kraff! Everywhere we’ve gone, it’s a bunch of skeletons with hoes and sticks. Look, a grandma and a little girl holding scissors.”

The uhlan knelt down next to Hundred Flowers. “She looks like my kid sis. Couldn’t be much older. I don’t think she looks well, Kenturius. Think we can get a medic over?”

He blinked her to silence for a moment as he touched his jawline, activating the dark radiopatch running along it. “Popelka, get a team in here to carry these folks into the central room. A picket squad for when they wake up. We’ve got a good view from here, so let’s make it a comm center. The usual.” He looked back at the uhlan doubtfully. “We’ve been scattering medics like seeds behind us. Don’t know how many are still in the front lines.”

The uhlan shook off her typically cynical demeanor with disgust. “It still gets me. It’s been what, sixty, seventy years since these valleys closed off--”

“Seventy-six.”

“Yeh, and the darf-heads running it smashed it into a freepin’ stone-age prison camp. These people’ve been living like animals. Kraffing animals! Look at this kid. Why’d we wait so long?”

“You think Command is slow, try League of Nations politicians.” He shuffled his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. He looked out at the dry landscape, the stony mountains denuded of trees, and allowed himself a moment to join her in disbelief. “Three generations, and these people have been busted down into a living hell. Look at this, almost a freeping desert. I betcha half these people never even known they were part of a living, thriving, beautiful world. I saw some old briefing pix of the land we’d be going into, how it used to be. This place outta be a garden.”

He snorted, and drew patterns with his boot-toe in the dirt of the floor. “Yeah, we’ll capture it in a couple of days. But it’s probably going to take another three generations to save these people. To dig up the mass graves, bring back the plants and animals. Rewire the survivors into something close to a civilization again. And you know what happens after we do? These people, here, this girl, this old lady, will be forgotten. These living skeletons will just be another history show on the vids.

“Reforest these hills, and I betcha our great-grand kids will look at these valleys as a good place to live, marry some local kid. And about then some dumbass somewhere else will do the same thing over again. These poor ladies, hell, you and me, we won’t even be remembered.”

The uhlan looked at the young girl with the scissors. “Hey, but-- We’re here now aren’t we?”

“Hunh!” he grunted, before pressing the side of his jaw again. “Hey, get me Central, see if the next wing coming over’s got any medics left”

End