"General Muller. Sir? Please. Sir?" Specialist Gunther said in a shaky voice from outside the Captain's tent.
"Yes, what?"
"Somebody. I mean. Some. Thing. Sorry. I mean. Some ... body. Is here to, see you."
"What do you mean some....." The former Captain turned from where he had been putting on his boots while sitting on a large wooden box and totally froze. For the first time since he'd been given his emergency field promotion to take command of what had been the Pacific Northwest of the United States he didn't know what to say or even what to think.
The things standing behind Gunther had to have come from an old science fiction show made by somebody who, as a child, had been frightened by the animals in an aquarium. The only term that Muller could come up with was that they were related to the Humboldt squid only without the fins on top. They were standing on four thick tentacles and had four thinner ones about halfway up their bodies. The closest squid thing had two of its tentacles by its sides, while two of its other 'arms' ended in three fingerlike protrusions, one of those was holding a 'handful' of objects on thin cords, the other held a small oblong object. The five foot tall aliens didn't appear to be armed with any obvious weapons.
The closest one had one large multi-lensed eye that focused on him., it offered him one of the discs and Muller took it.
"General Muller," it said without speaking.
It couldn't speak, for one main reason being that it didn't have a mouth that he saw. What it did have was a small flat pendant around what might best be described as its neck that spoke for it without any flashing lights or other indication that the object was working. It dawned on him that the disc was some sort of communicator that allowed him to understand the creature.
"I'm Muller," the captain said when he found his voice again.
"As you can see, I am not from your world," it said.
"Yeah, OK."
"We are of the enemy of those who destroyed your world." Another one of the aliens said.
"OK."
"We need pilots and troops to assist in our fight against them. We have long range deep space fighters, anti-ship planetary defense particle beam weapons, ground assault craft and weapons. But we do not have the personnel to use them. Would you like to know more?"
"Why couldn't you have stopped the attack in the first place?"
The squid was silent for a moment, "I'm sorry, we couldn't have, even if we had known you were here. We only learned of your existence shortly before the attack."
"But even if we had, we do not have the strength to have repelled an attack of this magnitude."
Muller wasn't sure if he believed the alien or not, but he nodded and said he would like to know more about the proposal.
Later, Muller felt like he had been in a three day briefing session. But in reality, it had only taken a couple of minutes for the 'squid' to transfer a great deal of their history as well as their entire strategic scenario and logistical ability to him.
Two things happened to Muller, first, he had a instant migraine headache complete with spots before his eyes that faded slowly, and he had a sudden and very profound understanding of the beings that had spent the last five hundred years avoiding direct conflict with the enemy.
Muller's immediate reaction was to volunteer his entire command, such as it was, to sign up as mercenaries with them.
But then he had to tell the others that they were leaving, and, of course, check with his own superiors to make sure they were OK with them leaving Earth, taking only what he could get together and carry in a matter of a couple of hours, and possibly never coming back.
DrLeftover
Elite Member
MOTM
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