CW

  SpoilerWar crimes, depictions of innocents being killed, aliens committing genocide, and feelings of total helplessness

  [colpse]“So, let me get this straight, girly. You have access to teleportation technology, and you run not just an arms factory, but a research facility too?” Sarah inquired.

  We were gathered around her conference room discussing arrangements to keep her people safe, and by proxy my food supply flowing. I sat at the opposite head of the table, half a dozen of her council along the sides between us, including the reptilian from earlier. Two of my skelebuds fnked me. I didn’t trust that they wouldn’t try to take me as a valuable hostage after my showcase of power during the break-in. “Yeah, that about sums it up. It’s in your best interest to keep on our good side.” I leaned forward resting my elbows on the table.

  “That’a threat, ss?” Sarah squinted.

  I shrugged “That depends on you. This all has to be kept very hush hush, not a word to any of the other settlements you might be in contact with. I want you to have a gag order in pce.”

  She smiled. “You’re not so soft for a softy, I like it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you all that I’m much older than any of your softies? I’m damn near 6 centuries old, can’t you see that?”

  She shook her head. “I’d sooner believe you were 25 than ancient history come to life. That being said you’ve shown me plenty of unbelievable things today.” She got up and walked over to me, causing me to shrink in my seat. “I’m just gd you’re on our side.” She shook my hand.

  “You can believe what you want. As we’ve discussed I’ve put pns into motions back at my compound, sadly you and your people will be living on the road for a few days. You’ll have to tread carefully not to get spotted or annihited by the xenos for which we’ve equipped the APCs with optical distortion modules. Even if all they do is spot the direction you’re headed, you’ll have to relocate again.” I fretted. It might seem like I’m being paranoid, but if the Klexon see where they’re headed, they won’t even be able to start setting things up before an army of xenos are on top of them.

  Sarah fell back down into her chair and groaned. “Why don’t you just teleport our whole settlement to some other pce? Why go through all this trouble? You’re not trying to fuck us, are you girly?”

  I sighed. I can’t believe they still don’t trust me after all the shit I did for them. “Sadly, the opening for the teleportation portal is only 6 meters in diameter, meaning we can’t fit this whole pce through it; even if it was big enough for the whole thing to fit through, you have no conceivable way of pushing it through the portal. Besides, you’d have to dig-“

  She cut me off. “Aye ss, I get it already. I’ll get our boys to work.”

  After being silent this whole conference, Jack voiced his misgivings. “You’re really going to trust this psycho, Sarah? Did you see the merciless havoc she wreaked on my fellow Klexon? What if one of them wanted to surrender, the way I did? I thought you were better than this.” He shook his head, his voice quivering.

  Sarah looked to me, letting me justify my actions. “Honestly, it’s because I’m a coward. I’m not willing to risk putting my life, or the lives of my fellow man on the line for a group of people who’ve willingly started a war of extermination with humanity, regardless of how poorly of a job they are doing of it. That being said, I apologize, some… mistakes were made earlier; namely the killing of a POW, for which I won’t give any excuses.” How could I have really know that the skelebuds had such itchy trigger fingers? Even with such a funny name I’ve given them, they’re fucking brutal. “I’ll have them make some adjustments to make sure these guys” I tapped my knuckles on the skelebud behind me. “can better determine who is or isn’t a threat.” Logically, I understood the moral issue at hand, and I had principles, though if I was being honest, the only feeling I had towards the reptilians I’d stained my hands blue with, was apathy.

  Jack sat back down, defeated, there was really nothing he could do against me anyway. I had all the leverage.

  With the meeting finally over I returned to HQ with half the skelebuds, and got to pnning with Alfred. They needed somewhere concealed underground with minimal setup time. Our solution was to make a compact mobile boring machine, and an MCV to rapidly construct the foundation of their new burrow.

  It was approaching evening and my tummy was growling, Paige, and Ethan would be off duty by now, too. Making my way into the recreation alrea, I threw my hat onto the bar counter and set the biofab to make me a chicken sandwich with a side of fries. I jumped onto the couch while that cooked.

  “Long day?” Ethan asked.

  “Today wasn’t so bad, but I have a feeling this week I have my work cut out for me.” I sighed. “Did Alfred show you guys the footage of what went down?”

  “Oh yeah, it was awesome!” Ethan fist pumped. “You absolutely annihited the purple bastards! I just don’t understand what they’re doing sheltering one of them in their ranks. If you ask me I say they’re all better off dead.” Woah, Ethan, tone down the genocidal rhetoric. On cue, Paige walked up behind him and gave him a whack on the head.

  “If you get down to their level, you’re just as bad as ‘em.” I nodded along to her statement. Ethan pouted and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. Paige made her way to sit carefully next to me, watching me to see if I expressed any discontent to her actions.

  She took my hand in hers. “Look, I just wanted to say, I’m real sorry for st night. I’m not one for words, but I clearly overstepped a boundary, if you want to keep things professional only from here-on, I understand.” She frowned.

  I blushed. “It’s not the worst thing to have had happen to me. “I admitted. “Far from it…” I added in a mumble. I didn’t really want things to be awkward between us. It felt like she’d awoken something within me I didn’t even know about myself. I never had time to experiment during my life in the 21st century after all.

  We awkwardly sat there for a while watching the movie, when Ethan commented. “Don’t the robots in this movie look almost exactly like the automatons you recently had Alfred make?”

  I ughed. “Yeah, he bases most of his designs off movies. Art inspires reality I guess.”

  Alfred chimed in. “I spent the st 300ish years with nothing to do but watch random films and shows, and having been created for the purpose of military tech development, I ended up bringing some of the stuff I saw to life. Pretty cool, don’t you think?” I had to blink twice because I could have sworn his nose grew two sizes with pride.

  Paige shifted, getting herself comfortable on the couch we sat on, inadvertently brushing against my leg. “Do you guys find it’s getting a little hot in here?” She took her hairtie out and undid the top couple buttons of her shirt” *gulp*.

  I bit my lip and quietly texted Alfred, keeping my tablet out of view from private eyes. I really needed some kind of relief from my hormones, they’ve been overwhelming me constantly tely, I felt like a teenager again. “Do you think you could make a sex bot for me? It’s totally okay if not.” I don’t want him to take me too seriously, or else he might make fun of me.

  Alfred not taking the hint, or maybe he did and wanted to humiliate me with his sick sense of humor after all replied through the speaker instead of text. “What kind of sex bot were you wanting, my darling Julia?” My body completely boiled up, ready to burst from the embarrassment, I probably looked like a cooked lobster right about now.

  Paige and Ethan immediately darted their heads from the movie they were watching to me. I stiffly hopped up, and after a quick apology, ran to my penthouse.

  “Alfred, what the fuck was that? I don’t really want to talk about my sex life with them! Especially not after what happened st night with Paige…” I frantically paced around my living room.

  He frowned. “You talk about it all the time with me… At least through your orders which says more than I ever asked to know.” I gred at one of the nearby cameras then stuck my tongue out.

  “Who the hell else would I ask for it, then? I can’t exactly order this shit off amazon you realize?! You make everything here apart from the food.” I was pretty mad, but I had to admit Alfred had a bit of a point. He of all people probably didn’t want to hear about my sex life, yet I’d already had him make me a vibrator. I don’t think straight when I’m horny.

  I decided to act like a mature adult for once. “I’m sorry, Alfred, I guess you have a point. I’ll stop asking you to make this kind of stuff for me. I think the risk of dying from earlier and the anxiety of the week to come was getting to me. I’ve been letting my horniness control my decisions.” I sat down on my couch, feeling a little humble now.

  Alfred stared at me for a few serious moments, before breaking down ughing. “I don’t actually care, Julia, I just wanted to fuck with you in front of your crush!” Always the prankster, this one.

  I corrected him. “She’s not my crush… We’re just friends…? Colleagues…? Something like that, but either way I don’t need you of all people as my wingman… Not that there’s anyone I’d need a wingman for anyway.” Even I’m struggling to buy my shit, he was probably right.

  A shit eating grin grew on his lips. “Well, I wouldn’t worry if I were you, Julia. She said you were ‘oh so dashing in action’ that you were ‘oh so stern and cool in your meeting with sarah’ when we watched today’s footage, I think you’ve got a good chance with her.” The way he mimicked her voice, minus her normal mannerisms gave me the creeps.

  “Whatever, man. ‘Night.” I hung up the call and jumped into bed, calling it quits for now. Tomorrow I had to get started with construction. The tether convoy wouldn’t keep them safe or hidden for more than a couple days. I was having them rendezvous a hundred clicks north of their old spot, Alfred already got started with the boring drill.

  The siblings were deathly silent in the command room this morning. I didn’t know how to break the ice after st night’s incident either, until Ethan did for me. “Sooooo, you, used to be a guy… Ma’am?” He saved himself at the end, but I was reeling, forgetting completely that they watched my sim footage just yesterday.

  Paige whisper yelled at him. “She told us not to bring it up, Ethan!”

  “I figured anything was better than mentioning what happened st night….” Ethan grumbled, quickly covering his mouth when he realized I had definitely overheard him. I grabbed and pulled my face down with my hand, why did everyone around me have to be such a handful?

  Still sitting in my chair, I put on a headset, it was simir to an old VR headset, just lightweight and completely wireless. From here I got a sort of top-down view, of the variety you might see in an RTS game, from here I could overy modur schematics for rooms and prioritize which parts of the facility we’d fabricate first.

  Alfred and I came up with a rapid construction system using what I’ve deemed ‘MCVs’ or ‘Mobile Construction Vehicles’. They’re basically a room on ball shaped wheels to avoid making sharp turns, that once in pce would become a permanent structure. They contained their own structural supports and were able to easily seal with other simirly designed adjacent MCVs.

  I was just about to finish constructing the entrance area that would work for now as a temporary shelter when Alfred forwarded me an alert…

  Sarah’s convoy was under attack, in a big way.

  From a local UAV view overhead, one of the APCs was destroyed and the rest, halted behind them, seeing no impact marks from the side or above, I came to the obvious conclusion: the group had run into a mine field. Not more than two kilos away, an army of xenos had been alerted. More than I had the capability of stopping with my current capacity. “Well, shit. I guess I should have seen this coming.” Another, smaller group had found the entrance to the new base location. I had to admit, I underestimated the intellect of the reptilians, they likely saw through our ruse and sent a force to follow and intercept them at whatever point they would have gone to.

  Alfred, seeing my sour expression asked. “Should I hail them, so we can give them a warning, Ma’am?”

  I shook my head. “There’s a chance they’re intercepting any communications in the area, even weak signals would draw their suspicion. I hate to admit it, but the ideal course of action to take now is to do but little except sit and watch.” Alfred seemed a little dissatisfied with my answer, but it would have to be so. If we intervened with any significant numbers, for one, we likely couldn’t win. Two, we’d be revealing our location. And three, the Klexon had been watching their every move, no matter where we sent them without using teleportation, they would end up dead.

  I forced myself to watch the horrors that ensued; this was my burden to shoulder. A dozen members of the settlement were at the front of the convoy with mine detectors, I wasn’t sure how they worked but they didn’t look like a metal detector. A few minutes went by, and on the horizon from the remnants’ perspective, enemy hovercraft at varying altitudes made quick pace, gaining on the convoy.

  The majority of the group panicked, plenty of them trying to run off and take shelter in the APCs, sadly that was yet an under sight on my part. The APCs were tethered and thus had their weapon systems locked, and we were no longer actively avoiding sending signals, but were being blocked by signal jammers. Thankfully or unthankfully depending on how you look at it, the UAV was several thousand meters high in the air, meaning it was out of their range.

  Sarah, being more clever than she looks, calmly crawled under one of the APCs before she could be spotted from the angle the Xenos were approaching from; I’d have to have Alfred monitor her if she survived.

  All hell broke loose once the main Xenos lines gained on their position, they struck the convoy at the first and st vehicle, isoting those in the middle, they obviously didn’t know they couldn’t move the vehicles anyway, but they were attempting to prevent them from fleeing. The two APCs were struck by tank-like vehicles that had three sets of tracks rather than one, a rge set at the front that seemed to be capable of elevating or depressing depending on the angle the main armament needed to fire, and two smaller sets in the back, likely more for its propulsion in a tricycle sort of format. It hit the APCs with a loud crackling noise, and a ray I can only describe as containing the power of the sun, both vehicles were completely charred bck, anyone inside would have been little more than cinders now.

  It was just after the two vehicles were obliterated that the reptilian traitor I’d met earlier jumped out with his arms up in surrender. The reptilian cn leader nearest to him waved his hand –seemingly giving his grunts the signal to hold fire – and those few closest to Jack stopped firing. They beckoned him forward, before quickly pushing him to the ground and putting what looked like some kind of magnetic cuffs on him, though I really couldn’t tell how the mechanism worked outside the fact his wrists didn’t actually touch, curiously all four wrists seemed to be forced to hover about an inch from one another in front of him – it looked uncomfortable for his physiology. I wonder if traitors get the death penalty in their society. I pondered.

  The following scene was much more visceral than what had happened up to this point, after the st of the remnants militia got slugged; only the non-combatants remained. Reptilian soldiers stood by each vehicle, forcibly opening the APC doors using a portable version of what the breaching vehicle I had seen the day prior had mounted. They forced everyone in the APCs to stand in a long line after disarming them, a few remaining soldiers rummaged through the now-empty cargo bays, tossing all the crates and supplies they found, probably looking for anyone still hiding.

  Meanwhile, one of the cn leaders approached the civilian remnants. He appeared to be a higher ranking member and wore a different uniform to just about every reptilian soldier I’d seen so far… It seemed civilian almost. He began talking to the first person in line, a younger man who was pale as a sheet.

  Once the young man started to respond –thankfully Alfred was able to read the humans’ lips for me- I realized he was questioning him. My face was pale too now. I realized they were trying to get information on me, or at least where they got the transports from. After getting no useful information from the first guy, the civilian cn leader opened his case and pulled out a gun; he pressed it against the mans arm before repcing the cartridge on it.

  Seconds ter the young man that I now understood had just received an injection began gasping for air, clutching at his throat. He started to turn blue before he fell over on the ground, lifeless.

  I began to cry at just how helpless I was right now. How did I let myself get so conceited? This isn’t some RTS game from your childhood, it’s a fucking war of genocide! There are civilian lives out there being extinguished in cold blood and I’m doing nothing but watching… The cold, calcuted side of my mind persevered over my emotions, I’d cry, but I would not give the order; this moment would likely haunt my dreams for the rest of my life, let it be a reminder to me.

  As the executions continued, with no information having leaked so far, only the militia had seen her and her tech up close. Alfred, watching the same thing I was chimed in with no discernable emotion in his voice; for the first time since I’d woken up here, he really did seem artificial. “Jack knows too much.” And it was true.

  Adding one st tally to the counter, one more innocent person’s blood on my hands –be he reptilian or not- I commanded Alfred. “Make it discrete, preferably before they reach their destination.” He heard me, but gave no words of acknowledgement.

  I turned off the feed, and stood up to leave the command room.

  AnnouncementWhat? Thought I would only post an illustration book today? Nope! Maybe you'd all have preferred it that way though. This chapter was gruesome, sorry if you thought this was going to be a complete cakewalk; reality calls, and it's not happy. It was so gruesome in fact that I really don't feel like editing it right now, I might get around to it ter on.

  I know I kind of set a comedic tone with alot of the naming conventions and funny interactions, but I do want there to be actual stakes in this story, not just unadulterated power fantasy shit.

  And as always, I hope you all enjoyed!