Why Humans Make Bad Pets!

Check that, I'm a military prodigy III

Really, why was this so difficult for Turkey to understand? Sure, he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer, more like a spoon. Our gesture language was comprehensive to the point that I had assumed conveying my point would be elementary. Really, was my idea that unconventional that no one had thought of it before? Never mind Turkey, someone had to. Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember any indirect artillery fire during the battle. In fact, the tactics I had seen throughout the battle were essentially the same as seen in feudal Europe, just with ray guns. And tanks. And dragons. Yeah, just like feudal Europe.

Were the professional militaries of the galaxy really centuries behind the tactics of humanity? I’m not one for thinking about implications – in case you hadn’t noticed – so I decided to reign my thoughts back to the matter at hand. Maybe my idea was somewhat unconventional. After all, I was proposing we use a spaceship as a glorified guided missile. It had an autopilot, and I had even seen it used enough times over the last 6 months that I was confident I would be able to do what I had in mind without assistance. As far as being wasteful, I had seen the troopship use a massive alien 3D printer to spit a drop ship out every hour. They would be able to make up the loss. I had a feeling our division had lost a lot of men in the battle, so they wouldn’t need their drop ships to return to the troopships. Heartless, but practical.

It would have taken far too long to traverse the length of the battlefield on foot, so I dragged Turkey behind me as I walked to the nearest operational tank. Ignoring the soldier relaxing on its top, I jumped up the hatch motioning for Turkey to follow. As the soldier looked on in curiosity, Turkey, a familiar look of confusion upon his blue-giraffe face – really, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a blue-giraffe without that look – climbed into the tank after me. The inside was a mass of buttons and consoles I had no idea how to use, but the navigational array looked nearly identical to that of the drop ship’s. In fact, I think it was more simplistic, as it wasn’t equipped to move in three dimensions.

Thankfully it was already on and idling. Too bad turning one on wasn’t as simple as pushing a button. I think a lever was involved in there somewhere. Keying up the power – a touch-slide on a console is so much less satisfying than flooring a petal – the tank lurched into action. I may have overestimated the force of acceleration, because the shout of surprise from the top of tank seemed to fade in the distance after the initial lurch. That and I had difficulty maneuvering my sweet ride through the maze of rumbling vehicles despite my many years of navigating Chicago traffic. Actually, Chicago’s usually backed up, so those years were probably counterproductive.

Still, I had made my decision, and I wasn’t slowing down. Handling the tank like a 16-year-old male driving through the red-light district, Turkey was thrown about the cabin. Thankfully it seemed to have been built with the fragility of aliens in mind, and instead of the cramped labyrinth of sharp metal corners that are the cabins of modern tanks, it was far more spacious with padding over every surface. He’d be fine. Not only was my mad rush across the battlefield extremely satisfying to the testosterone driven beast within me, we made it back to the drop ships in record time.

Cursing the fact that the tank floated above the ground, making it impossible for me to skid to a stop in a shower of dirt and gravel, I slid the iPhone accelerator back to idle with a feeling of disgust. Aliens had no respect for the simple pleasures in life. Hopping out, I moved to the nearest drop ship, urging Turkey to speed up. By the time he joined me in the cockpit I was impacitantly tapping my foot as I stood by the navigation consol. Gesturing to an orbital rendering of a 20 kilometers radius around the drop ship, I moved my hands.

Looking even more confused, Turkey pointed to a general area about 18 kilometers from where we stood on the map. I quickly started hitting buttons, racing to finish before he realized what I was doing. It took him a moment, but when I moved my hand to the red-button-of-engaging, he started spitting-clicking in his alarm at what I had done. Trying to undo all my hard work he struggled to cancel my commands, but I stopped him, dragging him from the console. I wouldn't want him to miss seeing my idea in action. Depositing him outside the drop ships bay doors; I walked back to the console and hit the red button. I didn’t need a translator to know Turkey was enraged as I jumped from the slowly closing shuttle bay door to land by his side.

Trxcl hadn’t wanted to go with Human on his adventure of miscommunication. He had had one great idea, but that didn’t mean he would be able to think up another miracle strategy to make an orbital strike appear out of thin air. There was little he could have done, however, as human had all but forced him into a tank, driving with such reckless abandon Trcxl thought he may have survived the battle only to die at the hands of his squad’s most valiant hero. He hoped that 74th man was okay after being thrown from the roof of his charge. Trcxl felt bad for having told the soldier not to bother himself and that they were only going for a look. He had sincerely though it to be the truth when he had said it.

Now he stood, watching helplessly as the drop ship, doomed by Human’s commands, flew into the air on the last trip it would ever make. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised that Human even knew how to enter the meanest of commands into the navigational array. He had shown that he was intelligent in both senses of the word. Well, in some ways. Lessons such as how to recklessly drive a tank and make a drop ship commit an elaborate form of self-destruct he learned with ease, but try to tell him it scarred the new recruits when he shout-growled in the showers – or whatever it was that he had been doing in the communal bathroom after his first battle – well, he still did that sometimes.

So it shouldn’t have surprised him that Human had been able to drive the tank or set coordinates for the drop ship; he had seen Trxcl himself do it for a standard cycle (6 months) now, but he seemed to have missed one crucial point. He had told the ship to go to a particular place as though it were floating in the vacuum of space. It would travel to that location then merely shut off the engines. He hadn’t specified that it was to travel to that location then land. Why he wanted to send the enemy a drop ship Trxcl couldn’t fathom. Did he really think they would just get in it and fly away? Was he really that oblivious? The Celzi never surrendered. Until Human had come they had rarely had any need to even considered it unless facing the 74th.

Whatever Human had thought the drop ship would accomplish, Trxcl knew what would really happen. It would fly a perfect arc to the location Human had specified – at drop speeds too boot, unless Trxcl had only imagined Human hitting that particular green button – then cut its thrusters mere borts (half meters) above the ground, impacting with a terrible destructive force.

Trxcl gasped as this though occurred to him, just as drop ships dark silhouette dipped below the treeline. Turret coil shot, artillery-pulses, and plasma bolts rushed up from the forest to stop it, but it was moving far faster than any pilot wishing to avoid crashing would have dared, making it almost impossible to hit. That was the point, Trxcl realized. The impact could even be faintly heard from where they stood, albeit long after the fact. The debris thrown from the impact was visible much sooner.

Blatvec was nearing panic. Too many men had died! Where was the orbital strike?! What was taking them so long? Were they going to waste this entire day, after all their sacrifice? And a sacrifice it had been. A Major had handed him a casualty report a ri (minute) ago, and it was just as bad as he had feared. Nearly half of the 74th was either dead or unaccounted for, which probably just meant death by Vulza. So intent was he upon the report that he failed to notice the small silhouette fall from the sky towards the enemy defenses.

“Sir! Is that it?”

Looking up excitedly Blatvec glanced up just in time to see a geyser of dirt and debris erupted from the forest canopy in the general area of the Celzi entrenchments.

“It’s about time.” Growled Blatvec, relieved that the 74th had not bled in vain. He looked to the sky, expecting to see a shower of plasma bolts and coil shots falling as rain. He was dissapointed.

“What? Was that all?” he said in disbelief.

“That’s what I asked, sir.”

“Shut it, Gicerpt.”