Monsters Win Wars: A Novella Read Online Free PDF Page A

truck in the road?” A
gruff voice asked on the radio. “Move your truck immediately.” Aric
picked it up and cleared his throat before speaking.
    “We are experiencing engine trouble.” He
said. He’d disguised his voice to suppress the hissing accent. It
wasn’t a great imitation of a human voice, but it sounded
convincing over the radio. Besides, it was better than having the
voice of the rebel leader on the line. “We can’t move it.”
    Outside the window, Henry looked at the rock
walls that lined both sides of the road. He could vaguely make out
some of the commandoes there, camouflaged as they flattened their
skinny bodies against the rocks. Only someone looking for them
could have noticed them.
    “Can you be more specific? What kind of
trouble?” The gruff voice asked.
    “Our engine simply gave out. We’re not sure
what happened.” Aric said. Outside, he could see his men beginning
to move, their limber bodies gently pushing themselves away from
the wall. “We called for a repair ship about a half-hour ago.”
    “Citizen, you are creating an obstruction,
and must move your vehicle out of the way immediately.” The gruff
voice said.
    “I apologize but we simply-”
    “What the hell was that?!” The gruff voice
said on the radio. In the background could be heard a sound like
squealing metal.
    Henry stared out the window, and watched as
the commandoes leaped onto the tops of the armored vehicles. Rand
still stayed by the rock wall, surveying the battlefield.
    The commandoes atop the convoy cars pried
loose the large machine guns mounted on the roofs. Their skinny
arms dug under the metal, and lifted. The three guns were already
detached from their roofs, when the honor guards came out of the
cars.
    The honor guards wore heat suits. They were
the standard military model; lighter and less cumbersome than the
ones that the civilians in the dome cities wore. One could move his
joints with relative ease for combat situations. The helmets were
bucket shaped, and could only allow you to see out the clear glass
visor on the front. They were colored blue and silver, with red
stripes on the shoulders to signify that they were part of the
honor guard. But the suits were still very heavy, and the helmets
they wore made it difficult to turn around.
    Very quickly, the commandoes leapt off the
cars to meet their combatants on the ground. From the cab of the
truck, Henry saw the soldiers firing every which way, as they tried
to hit their acrobatic attackers. There was a lizard-like growl, as
a commando collapsed to the ground, clutching at the gaping hole
where he’d been hit. The guard that’d killed him stood mere feet
away, his smoking rifle shaking in his hands, as he beheld the
gangly form that writhed on the ground in front of him.
    He didn’t even move, until another of those
gangly forms snuck up behind him, and sliced a vertical cut up the
back of his heat suit. Within seconds, his suit became filled with
the suffocating heat and poisonous fumes of Venus’ atmosphere. His
skin blackened and charred, and his lungs were corroded from within
by the toxic fumes that’d invaded his nostrils. He collapsed on the
ground, where he died lying next to the Saurian solider he’d
killed.
    The other human soldiers went down without
much of a fuss. The commandos effortlessly dodged their plasmas
blasts, and lunging blows. They’d jump into the air, quickly duck
low to the ground, and sidestep; all with a gracefulness befitting
a ballerina. No matter what they did, the honor guards, the cream
of the crop of Earth’s military forces, could not compete with
these warriors from beyond the stars.
     
    After fighting for less than a minute, the
honor guards had all met the same end; a large gash in their heat
suits. They squirmed on the ground, the life being ripped away from
them by the harsh elements of Venus.
    Henry sat in the truck, feeling like he could
puke. It wasn’t anywhere near as gruesome as when Rand had