Battle Earth V Read Online Free PDF Page B

and they sure aren’t marines. They are not your responsibility. Only a few months ago, they were probably killing our allies.”
    “After all they have done for us, they are my responsibility. We have been at war with many nations in the past, and yet we stood beside them in the last war. Anyway, I will have no more discussion about it. Jafar and Tsengal are members of our unit. We each rely on one another. If you cannot, I suggest you request a transfer.”
    Eli sighed in disgust and leapt up from the chair. She charged across the room and ripped the door open, leaving in a furious rage. He shook his head in response. Her overly dramatic response didn’t impress him one bit.
    “And to think I looked forward to this shit,” he muttered.
    He turned his mind back to the day’s events and remembered he had agreed to meet Major Weller shortly. Mitch walked barefoot across the smooth floor, enjoying the relaxing sensation that was easing his mood. He tapped the button on his wardrobe, and the doors slid apart. Inside was a line of uniforms that were immaculately clean and had been untouched in a long time.
    Mitch reached in for his dress uniform and realized quite how long it had been since he had last seen it, let alone worn it. A few minutes later, he was strutting across the base and looking a far cry from his bedraggled appearance from earlier in the day. Meeting Weller had given him a glimmer of hope for his future on the base. Despite being loved by so many of the serving marines, he was ever more hated by so many of his superiors and others in the service.
    As he stepped into the mess, he could see Weller had identified him immediately and turned to the barman to order him a beer. He stepped up to the bar and thanked his new acquaintance.
    “You sure know how to win friends,” said Mitch.
    “I didn’t think I needed to.”
    Taylor threw back his beer and took a long relaxed sigh as he slumped down against the bar.
    “Just when you thought it was all over, eh?” asked Weller.
    “I never thought for a minute that this was over,” he whispered. “We’ve humiliated an enemy which consider themselves infinitely superior to ourselves. Do you think for a minute that they would let it slide? They are down but not out.”
    “I have to say, you’re not as I expected at all, Taylor. Your reputation made you appear as a glory seeker.”
    “Don’t hold back now,” he replied with a smirk.
    Weller held out his arm in friendship.
    “The name’s Bryan.”
    Taylor accepted his gesture.
    “Mitch, and for the record, you’re not the pencil pushing stuck up bastard I would have expected, either. You are no stranger to this war, where were you?”
    “New York, from the very beginning. I was liaising with the National Guard there when the invasion of the east coast began. I lost communication with my CO and jumped on the first truck I could find to take me to the front. We thought we could hold them there and then. We were wrong.”
    “You saw all of that, and yet you treat Jafar and Tsengal with such respect?”
    “You do, don’t you?”
    “I have my reasons. You have none.”
    Weller raised his eyebrows and turned back to his drink, thinking about Taylor’s observance. Bryan finally looked back to Mitch who was awaiting some answer.
    “I guess it’s my job to give these things a little more consideration. The automatic response of a human being now is to want to kill the aliens upon first sight, but isn’t that what human beings have done to each other for thousands of years? We need to be a little more progressive. Somehow, you have managed to find allies among them. If two defected, maybe more could follow?”
    Taylor shook his head. Bryan could tell that he was not at all convinced.
    “No? So what made those two so special?”
    He remained silent for a moment. The moment they became his allies was still something he had not fully explained or shared with anyone, but he knew the time would come when he