Damage Control - ARC Read Online Free PDF

their numbers, they will not be able to break
through to access their weapons stronghold."
    About half the people present shook their
heads, and the Kirove said, "We can't keep an accurate fix on the
locations of the Aberikekks after the map moves. There are just too
many."
    There was a rumble of agreement from the
group, and Luak grabbed a net bag he had tethered to the railing
and swam to the speaker. "These may help," he said. "They are toys
for Aberikekk children: models of Aberikekk warriors in fighting
poses."
    The speaker gave a warrior to each person in
the room before attaching several to the wall. When Chegg got his,
he saw that it was a little plastic army man with a suction cup
tied to its feet. Chegg stuck his to the railing and wished he
hadn't finished his coffee.
    Beside him, the Medical keev was still
drinking hers. "These Earth people are a very pleasant color," she
remarked. "I'm eager to meet them in person."
    "So am I," said Deet. "Nuclear
weapons...impressive communications and targeting technologies...I
like a good challenge."
    Luak's turn was next. He tapped his Personal
Device, replacing the map with a picture of a Human holding a bulky
projectile weapon. The army men were still stuck to the wall, and
Luak waited until Goke had pulled them all off before announcing,
“These are some of the portable weapons currently popular on
Earth.” The picture slid to the left and was followed by several
more in succession, each showing a Human posing with a different
weapon. Chegg wondered if the Medical keev had noticed that not one
of the warriors was green.
    "I have with me a translation of the personal
testimony of an Aberikekk warrior,” Luak continued, “telling about
his experiences during a recent war. Preliminary investigation has
turned up an overwhelming amount of corroboration; so far, his
testimony appears to be accurate.
    “He says that his own troops, and many
others, were sent to war without their standard supply of weapons
and armor, and with communications devices that didn’t have enough
range to function on the battlefield. This was not due to a lack of
resources to procure these items, nor a lack of time to transport
them. Here is a selected passage."
    He tapped his Personal Device again, and a
block of text appeared. To the left and right of the text were two
columns of pictures. Each picture showed an Earth weapon and had a
faint line running from it to the first mention of that weapon in
the text. It read:
    They sent us out to secure the city without
arming us for the task. The enemy had light machine guns, AK-47s,
rocket-propelled grenades, and even a few heavy machine guns, while
we had nothing but nine-millimeter pistols.
    Fortunately, there were more than enough
confiscated AK-47s to go around, so we were able to get something
to defend ourselves with.
    It was the perfect solution—until the Army
found out. They ordered us to put the AKs back in the locker. The
war was to be fought, they said, with Army-issued equipment or none
at all. That was what the regulations said, and the regulations,
apparently, were more important than either protecting our lives or
winning the war.
    They wouldn’t send us our standard weapons
because they said the war was basically over now. So we tried to
fight with whatever we could find, until the Army found out and
took it away and we had to look for something else.
    And so the war dragged on.
    At first, no one spoke. People grabbed
tethers from the railing and ran them through their fingers, or
pretended to suck the last drops of coffee from empty cylinders.
Then the Zirode said, "If they're that disorganized and
incompetent, how did they manage to develop satellites?"
    "Or nuclear weapons?" said the keev who had
proposed engaging the Aberikekks in Arkansas.
    Deet looked at her empty drink cylinder. "Or
coffee?

4
the fumble

    W hen the call finally came, Chegg Jaigg was on a ladder
pruning his kitchen ceiling.
    Being a keev wasn’t always
as