Twenty-Five
Outskirts, the next morning
“Not much of a town, this,” Nathaniel Tzukuli noted as the scouts climbed out of the same skimmer bus Mike had ridden to the little village on his first day on Forest.
Mick Menmunny reached down to shake the shoulder of a thin-faced boy who dozed in a seat. “Wake up, Tak.”
Menmunny had created quite a stir when he’d reported half an hour before sunrise with his oldest son in tow.
“What do you mean, he’s coming with us?”
“He’s fifteen, mate. Old enough, he’s a man now. Besides, he’s a slick little bastard, really sneaky, and a good shot. You said we needed every hand we could get, right?”
“He’s just a kid!” Major Wells objected.
The argument had gone on for a few minutes – until Major Wells reached out to take hold of Tak’s shoulder and found himself on his back in the red dust in front of the Mercantile. He looked up to see skinny Tak Menmunny standing over him with a large, razor-edged knife.
“If you were one of those things, you’d be dead, mate!” the boy chided him.
The scouts had burst out in laughter to a man. Tak Menmunny was accepted into their fold without further question, despite Major Well’s objections.
“We do need every man we can get,” Mike pointed out. “He’ll do.”
Now, an hour and a half later, they scrambled off the bus in Outskirts, yawning and stretching. Beauregard Rousseau and Yuri Pyak were particularly bleary-eyed, both men were vague about their whereabouts the previous evening.
“You know ‘ow it is, boy, when a man is goin’ off to th’ wars, eh?” Rousseau had confided in Mike with an exaggerated wink. Mike suddenly remembered walking past the “Blue House,” Settlement’s legal, if not too discreet, brothel. Yuri was grinning, but not as broadly as usual, and he blinked painfully at the bright morning sunlight.
“Well, anyway,” Mike stammered, somewhat embarrassed. “Let’s get going. Thomas, why don’t you lead off? I think we’ll leave Beauregard and Yuri back in the column for now. Will you two please look after Doctor Richfield?” The scientist was struggling with his pack straps. The guy may be a rocket scientist, Mike thought, but he sure isn’t an outdoorsman. I hope he doesn’t get hurt or killed out here.
The column snaked off into the morning woods, following the same course Mike had taken out of Outskirts that first afternoon.
They covered only a few kilometers that first day. “We’ll stop a little while after noon, lay up until dark, and then move on after dark,” Mike informed the group. “Once we get to the river, we’ll only move at night. I figure that’s about where we cross into enemy territory now.”
Evening found the scouts in a dry camp a kilometer or two short of the bend in the Settlement River. Mike planned to cross the river in the dark, dodging any Grugell patrols on the crossing – or dealing with them as quietly as possible if necessary. “We can’t let them know we’re out here,” he pointed out.
Nathaniel Tzukuli spoke up then. “I think I can handle one or two of them fairly quietly, if it should come to that, and I’m told our young Cheyenne friend here is quite good in that respect.”
Tzukuli had been carrying a two-meter-long wooden staff, using it as a walking stick. Mike had assumed that’s all it was, but now the tall Zulu delved into his big frame pack and retrieved a half-meter long polished steel spearhead. A few moments fiddling, and Tzukuli had a silent, formidable and deadly weapon to go along with his 15mm Transvaal Express double rifle.
“My ancestors used to hunt lions with these,” he pointed out. “I’ve killed bosers with this one. I’m sure it will work for one of our alien friends, should the need arise. Wouldn’t you agree?” he asked, holding the spear up with the point in the dim light of the scout’s tiny fire.
“Mon Dieu,” Rousseau muttered. Thomas Quiet Water nodded appreciatively but said nothing.
They moved out again when the woods fell fully dark, ghosting silently through the darkened woods. To everyone’s surprise, Gerald Richfield quickly picked up the knack of moving quietly in the night. Tak Menmunny was another pleasant surprise, with movement skills that rivaled Thomas Quiet Water’s. The scouts moved in a loose formation, each at least twenty meters from the others, with either Thomas Quiet Water or Mick and Tak Menmunny ranging five hundred meters or so ahead to check the route.
The river crossing was accomplished without incident and the group covered another six kilometers towards the mountains before they stopped to spend the day in the shelter of a rock overhang. They set off again at dusk. “We’ve got another good hundred klicks up there, and we’ll want to be there as fast as we can,” Mike informed them. They filed silently into the trees, resigned to another four or five night’s marching. Open country leading up to the foothills was coming up ahead and in those mountains. Mike knew the Grugell camp was laid around the ruins of a tiny cabin. He grinned savagely into the night muttering under his breath to invoke one of the oldest of all human philosophies:
“Payback’s a bitch.”
Settlement, five days later
“OK, swing the top a little to the right – there you go – now forward!” Another mammoth tree trunk fell into place, and four men swung in to hammer crossbeams in place.
Someone had been designated as foreman of the work gangs building the palisade around the main Company buildings in the town, and the work was proceeding quickly now. The work crews expected to have the palisade finished later in the afternoon. Most of the homes and some of the smaller businesses would lie outside the wall, but the main Company buildings and the Mercantile were inside, and there was enough room to get most of the non-combatants inside and under cover.
Jennifer Aggruder/Crider didn’t belong to that group.
She stood on the firing step built below the edge of a completed portion of the palisade wall, staring out into the endless forest. Just to her right, the red-dirt road to Outskirts led north. Outskirts, she knew, stood empty now except for five OWME Security officers with light weapons and a comm-link for raid warning, plus one other nasty surprise for the invaders. Two other small villages to the east and south, Fairport and Glen, were likewise empty now, their tiny populations brought into Settlement for safekeeping. Every able-bodied adult that owned a weapon had been pressed into service in the colony’s defense, but the line was thin – a little over a thousand men and women all told. Forest’s total population was almost four thousand, but almost half were Company specialists that had no arms to bring to the fight. The Company supplied weapons only for the two hundred or so trained Security troops. The armed colonists themselves, bearing their own weapons they’d brought from Earth for hunting, would fight the battle for Settlement. It was to be a battle fought by a civil militia, in the oldest and truest sense of the term.
Where are you, Mike?
Her old Remington leaned against the wall next to her. An old pair of optical binoculars from Mike’s hunting gear hung around her neck. For the thousandth time that day, she lifted them to her eyes to scan the sky and the trees. Somewhere out there a horde of armed aliens was biding their time, no one knew where or when they’d attack.
But attack they would.
A married couple, Sam and Karen Dix, farmers from Outskirts, held a position a few meters to her left. The hard, fortyish red-haired doxie from The Blue House standing watch to the right was holding a vicious 5.6mm Steyr Magnetic assault rifle, a state-of-the-art piece of military hardware. The doxie, Carrie Manns, was rather evasive about how she’d obtained the weapon and why she had it, but nobody was too concerned. She was better armed than OWME’s Security troops, and Jenny imagined she could fight like a logger having a bad day.
Whenever the Grugell came down from the mountains, they’d be in for one hell of a scrap.
North of the river, a temporary assembly point
Dispotratik surveyed his gathered forces. At least a hundred scooter troops, six scout ships, two-hundred-foot soldiers on cargo scooters, and they all awaited his orders.
Activating a throat mike attached to his uniform collar, Dispotratik barked orders.
“Scout ships Two and Four, proceed to the northern village and destroy it. Report back here when that’s completed.” He turned to his new Assistant Commander, Lepotraskit VI., “We’ll smash that northern village first, then mass all our forces and strike the main colony all together. The smaller villages to the south we can clean up later.”
“It will be a great victory, sir,” Lepotraskit fawned. Overhead, two of the hovering silver scout ships peeled off, floating across the river towards the south.
Outskirts
“Roger that, we’ll keep an eye out up here.”
“What’s up, Sarge?”
“Two spiders just crossed the river, heading south. They may be headed our way. Get the others up, everybody stand-to.”
The attack came without further warning, a spidery silver Grugell ship descending suddenly from the sky, firing bolts of jade-green energy into the empty houses. Another ship followed within seconds.
“Base, this is Eyes One,” the Sergeant in charge of the detail at Outskirts whispered into the comm-link microphone. His squad was dug in hard into a concealed position on the southern edge of the village. “We’ve got two, say again two spiders firing into the houses – whoa, and there goes the Mercantile. One spider’s landing and unloading troops.”
“Eyes One, engage at will,” Base responded. “Weapons are free, say again weapons are free. Remember, ships are likely to be shielded. Be careful, disengage and get your men out as soon as your position is compromised.”
“Roger that, Base. We’ll get back to you. Eyes One out.”
Roughly a fourth of OWME’s supplies of explosives had been sunk into the ground in the open center of the rough square of buildings that made up Outskirts. Somewhat predictably, the slightly confused Grugell troops began to congregate there when they found no sign of the village’s inhabitants.
“Wait, not yet,” the Sergeant advised the troop holding a radio detonator. “Let them gather around a little more. Looks like that one’s in charge, he’s yelling orders.”
One tall, stick-thin figure was shouting in a thin, reedy voice. At his apparent command, the rest of the alien troops came trotting in to gather around. “Looks like an orders group,” one of the OWME men whispered.
“No, I think they’re getting ready to pull out,” the Sergeant replied. “See, here comes one of the spiders in to pick them up again.” He pointed at the silver ship that was floating gently to the ground.
“Yeah, they’re going to pull out. Time to give them something to think about. OK, when I fire, hit the charge,” the Sergeant ordered. He raised his OWME-issued Marquardt magnetic rifle, flipped the selector switch to Single, and aimed carefully. The rifle discharged with a loud crack, the electrets driving a steel dart at two thousand meters a second. The Grugell leader’s head disappeared in a puff of black, a second before the massive HE charge exploded.
The entire enemy squad and their transport disappeared in a thundering flash. In their covered hiding place, the OWME troops rode out a sickening shock wave, coughing as dust and dirt filled the air. The Sergeant clung to the firing port, watching as one disconnected driver pod from the spider cartwheeled into the sky above a rising column of smoke. “Damn!” he exclaimed. “I guess their shields aren’t completely impossible to beat, huh!”
The second ship had been almost flipped over by the blast where it hovered a hundred meters away. Recovering, it swooped down on the blast site, the white guide beam of its primary weapon scanning the ground. “Let ‘em know we’re here,” the Sergeant ordered, and the five opened fire, five magnetic rifles cracking away, sending high-velocity steel darts glancing off the ship’s energy shields.
The spider swung towards the source of the troop’s firing position, the white guide beam flickering towards them. “Now!” the Sergeant called. One by one the troops ducked down a tunnel to the rear of their hide, the Sergeant last. They had to crouch-walk down the hastily dug passage, moving as quickly as the hunched gait would allow. Behind them, their hiding place erupted in a blast of green energy fired from the Grugell spider, the edges of the blast singeing the Sergeant’s clothing slightly. They emerged in the woods a hundred meters beyond the tree line.
“I guess that gave them something to think about,” one of the troops muttered.
“That was nothing,” the Sergeant replied. “They’ll be on their way to Settlement next. Let’s get out of here.”
Settlement
The word percolated out from the Company Security offices. Colonel Davies himself had made the announcement to a small group gathered in the courtyard of the Security building, and the news traveled out quickly to the people standing watch on the wall.
“Everyone’s supposed to look sharp,” Carri Manns informed Jenny. “The bad guys have hit Outskirts. They’ll be headed here next.”
Jenny nodded and walked over to tell the Dix’s the news. The day dragged on, stress levels slowly building in all of Settlement’s defenders. Dark clouds were gathering in the north, and thunder muttered in the distance. A storm was brewing.
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
Big bada boom!
Firing on the ship seems like a poorly weighed gamble.
Sorry, but this is just too precious:
Pay up, suckers
“I understand that donors want some kind of a reckoning,” said Steve Schale, a Florida-based Democratic strategist. “But I also think that the kind of state party building that I think [DNC Chair] Ken [Martin] wants to do at the DNC is really vital to our success. And so I hope people kind of get over themselves pretty quick.”
Don’t pretend you should have some sort of input on what we do. Just write the checks. We’re the geniuses, not you.
“while the small-dollar donors who have long been a source of strength are not growing nearly enough to make up the gap.”
ActBlue’s scam relied on USAID money?
I don’t know if it was all USAID.
Act Blue’s “small” donors were always highly suspicious and a quick Google search will reveal various attempts to investigate. Donors who were listed who never gave a dime, for instance.
That was my very clumsy point. I don’t believe those “small” donors ever existed in large numbers, so I wonder part the money problem is that their scam dried up.
Open your wallet and shut your mouth.
Did anyone else picture Thumbelina from Total Recall?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100802/mediaviewer/rm4188621056/?ref_=ttmi_mi_5_1
nope
Nope, I assumed said doxie was of at least average height.
Of course, why would a 40-something prostitute decide to go on a colony mission? Was her career that bad back home?
Winston’s Mom to the white courtesy phone, please.
Bah. You think a woman of her tastes is going to move to a backwater where there’s not even a Jimmy Chu outlet?
Running from whoever she got that assault rifle from, maybe?
Obligatory.
Happy Birthday to Patrick Swayze, the best worst actor in my lifetime.
Bruce Campbell would like a word!
The Chin was never a bad actor.
He played the role he was supposed to play in every schlock comedy he was in. And he exceled at it.
kinnath:
Not just comedy, horror films as well. Putting Bruce Campbell in something will immediately make me be willing to give it a shot.
I thought Bruce was actually a very good actor. He fit every role that he played.
For my money, Swayze’s finest performance was in the SNL sketch “The White Trash Bed & Breakfast.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stqG2ihMvP0
That’s exactly the other sketch that came to mind. 😄
Good luck getting that past the NHTSA
Ford rolled out this unexpected Bronco concept during Monterey Car Week at Pebble Beach on Saturday, August 16, another way the automaker is celebrating the Bronco’s 60th anniversary.
——-
Ford said the Bronco Roadster Concept is “directly inspired by the 1966 U13 Bronco Roadster, the sportiest of the three original Bronco configurations.”
I like it (assuming it comes with an internal combustion engine and a manual transmission) but I don’t know if they could actually sell them.
Comments are “Where’s the roll bar?!” Just keep it right side up.
Sometimes I wonder if concern trolls are paid by the whiny post. We may find out soon enough that they were.
Put in your own rollbar, whiny!
I don’t see a tailpipe anywhere
I don’t hate it.
So what stupid decision underpins it all?
It’s a Ford.
My Merc SL500 has a “auto deploy” roll bar. and their other convertibles have equivalent passenger protection.
If you trigger it on a rough road, it will scare you, deployment in well under a second.
If you trigger it on a rough road, it will scare you, deployment in well under a second.
Yikes.
My Mustang has no roll bar and never will.
It looks kinda like a Willys Jeep….. only ugly.
Sooner or later the aliens have to stop acting stupid and change tactics. Then what?
I’m driving a loaner care this week. And god, I fucking hate it. The lane departure system actually tries to turn back in to the original lane if I make the “mistake” of changing lanes without using the turn signal. The infotainment system is a clusterfuck.
Why I am driving the loaner is an interesting story. I dropped my Versa off at lunch on Friday for an oil change, and then went back to pick it up after work. After paying the bill, the bubbly young lady who was checking me out went off to see what the delay was. Ten minutes later, she comes back and says they’ll be giving me a loaner for the weekend. The hydraulic lift has broken, and they cannot lower the lift to get my car down. It’s late Friday, and they hope they can get a service tech to show on Monday.
Haven’t heard from them yet. I don’t want to drive this loaner anymore.
The lane departure assist on my car got turned off forever immediately after it decided a seam in the blacktop was a lane line and tried to swerve me into a parked car.
Similar. I have a lot of “walled” exit ramps that look like cement slides. Lane departure systems lose their shit on those. I keep it permanently turned off.
You don’t live in NJ, use your turn signals.
no
In rural Iowa where traffic is sparse, few people use turn signals to change lanes. Only in high traffic with shorter distances between cars.
Ok no argument that you should ideally signal lane changes, but I’m not convinced failing to use one should result in your car trying to cause a wreck. In fact on the scale of evils if Kinnath failing to signal a lane change into an empty lane is a 1, the regulators and engineers who decided that the car should resist this sin by fighting him for control of his car rate around 99999
In reality, IDC. I’z just being snarky.
By all means, snark away.
That’s mostly here in the north, unfortunately.
In the south where I grew up we use them all the time when we are forced to pass the PA drivers on the right who can’t read the left lane is for passing only signs.
You ain’t passing me, buddy!
😛
Is there no way to turn off the lane departure system? Usually it’s a clearly marked button, occasionally it is buried in the touchscreen menus.
Youtube just showed me how to turn it off.
The loaner is a 2025 Subaru Crosstrek. The last Subaru I drove was from 2009.
My wife’s 2019 Rogue has the lane departure check, but she disabled that immediately. My 2006 Z; 2017 Versa; and 2017 Titan are all blessedly free of this horseshit.
The steering wheel has twice as many buttons on it as any other vehicle that have driven. Like I’m supposed to recognize the lane departure button without reading the manual first.
But now I know. Thanks google (even though google sucks now).
Subarus creep me out. I don’t want driver facing cameras.
We traded in a 2009 Forrester (which was a great vehicle) for a 2019 Rogue. We didn’t even look at Subaru again.
We had a 2019 Outback as a loaner when the Rogue was being undercoated. It was loaded with horseshit like lane departure and adaptive cruise that I came to hate within minutes of getting on the freeway.
Subaru has gone all in on “drivers are stupid and must be protected from themselves”. The user interface of the Crosstrek is appalling (in my opinion).
I don’t see a tailpipe anywhere
Needs a 289.
The hydraulic lift has broken, and they cannot lower the lift to get my car down.
That’s less bad than dumping it off the lift from 6′ in the air.
That is correct.
Until they forklift it down and don’t tell you.
So what stupid decision underpins it all?
Nostalgia. The roofs were just bolted onto the first gen Broncos. Lots of people pulled them off in Colorado. It was pretty easy.
https://x.com/KatieMiller/status/1957260078303658258
I tapped out before a full minute.
Fat bitch doesn’t understand food. News at 11.
O…M…G….
Kennedy is gonna call in a SWAT team for that family.
The Department of Health almost certainly does have swat teams. That’s the sad thing.
Don’t forget the corn and other agricultural subsidies propping all this up too.
Welcome to my world. That would be my oldest if there weren’t three of us preventing it.
Jesus. How many microwave pizzas was that? Eating one of those things makes me feel gross for about a day…
Mrs. TOK and I have realized when it comes to eating and exercise, we’re the freaks. To some degree, this is how most people in our country eat.
Ahh NYT.
Hurricane Erin Is Growing, and So Are the Dangers It Could Bring
Rip currents are the third leading cause of deaths from hurricanes, and they can happen on a sunny day hundreds of miles from the storm.
Naturally they don’t tell you the one or two causes or the percentages. I’m guessing getting crushed and hit by debris and drowning from flooding outweigh this by a large percentage. No idea which of the two is first, but I’d bet drowning from flood.
Paywall – https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/weather/hurricane-erin-rip-current-east-coast-carolina.html
Flooding is the big killer in a hurricane.
That would be my guess. I lived through a few. One of which destroyed a house. Fortunately evacuated at the time.
I had the privilege of being home for another that wiped out my detached garage. Fortunately no damage to my vehicle.
A union uses its dues for entertaining the leadership? Shocking…
Air traffic control team members outraged after shocking image leaks from annual union trip: ‘Needs to be investigated’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/air-traffic-control-team-members-040000539.html
Bonus:
On top of that, taking a yacht for a staff retreat may not be the most environmentally conscious choice they could have made. Yachts of all sizes consume significant amounts of fuel and often do not burn that fuel efficiently. They pump carbon dioxide, methane, and other pollutants into the atmosphere, adding to our planet’s continued heating.
And the aircraft in the industry they work run on what kind of magic?
“Yacht”.
Yes, one of those yachts with steel gunwales with fishing rod holders.
Tell me you’ve never seen a fishing boat without saying you’ve never seen a fishing boat.
We haven’t reached GM levels of stupidity. I’m assuming because there are fewer underfunded unionized pensions.
Trump administration in talks to take 10% stake in Intel, Bloomberg News reports
https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-administration-talks-take-10-stake-intel-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-08-18/
I haven’t paid any attention. Are we “rescuing” Intel?
It’s different when Trump does it!
Stupid fucking white man
You might have heard of an “AI race” heating up between the US and China, a bitter rivalry between two global adversaries that could shape the direction of world history.
At least, that’s how some in the US feel. While China has repeatedly tried to establish a geopolitical friendship with the richest nation in the world, officials and pundits in the US have doubled down, reframing artificial intelligence as the 21st century’s nuclear bomb.
In the meantime, China may have gotten a massive lead — by actively investing in its power grid, while the United States’ is quickly running out of capacity to power immensely power-hungry AI models.
As Fortune reports, Americans who’ve had a look at China’s technological development firsthand found that the two country’s aren’t even in the same league, given China’s next-level power grid.
Wave that white flag. Beg for honorable terms.
How much did China pay Joe Wilkins to write that?
As Fortune notes, this effectively makes electricity the key bottleneck for expanding AI infrastructure.
That’s caused some critical shortages in the US. Short on energy and hopped up on fantasies of an arms race, American companies are resorting to all kinds of bizarre strategies to get their juice. Elon Musk’s xAI, for example, is running 35 portable methane gas generators in the parking lot of one of its main datacenters in Memphis, encircling nearby communities in a cloud of noxious smog.
There’s no pleasing some people. I want him to build generators powered by tire incinerators.
We will destroy the environment so that people can sit in their hovels and experience AI porn 24/7.
More bad news
In a major blow to climate change science, NASA is officially not continuing its work studying global warming and will instead just stick to space exploration.
During a Fox Business news segment, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy (who also happens to be the Secretary of Transportation) dropped the bombshell during a live interview on Thursday.
“All the climate science and all of the other priorities that the last administration had at NASA we’re going to move aside, and all of the science that we do is going to be directed towards exploration, which is the mission of NASA,” he said. “That’s why we have NASA — is to explore, not to do all of these Earth sciences.”
The news is not so surprising given the fact that President Donald Trump has long been known to be a climate change denier.
They are going to focus on their mission? That’s no way to run a government agency.
That is so awesome. Choke on the bitter tears, NASA.
It is encouraging that he’s clawing back all of Biden’s orders for every Federal agency to concentrate on lefty issues like DEI, climate change, and Democrat voter registration.
Yes. Many fine things are in progress. I wish they could go faster. I do understand why is has not.
Oh no! Anyway…
SOME SAY…
NASA keeps climate change deep in their rectum, where Bad Orange Man cannot touch it…