Canto Forty-Two – On the Surface of Galtorr Prime Near the Crash Site
The landed Golden Wing Thirteen was completely surrounded by crazed scabbies with diseased mouths dripping saliva and venom, and wild eyes filmed over in a most unpleasant manner. They gibbered at the crew of the wing without advancing further. Several of the Telleron soldiers were good shots, but it was Harmony Castille’s weapon skills that had skortched half a hundred slavering lizard-scabbies. That kind of brutal accuracy gave even the mindless scabbies pause when it was time to charge again.
“We need to fly out of here, Harmony!” said Shalar. “With this many creatures here, the tadpoles could not have survived.”
“Nonsense! We did not find their bodies in the wreckage. My kids are alive. Davalon and Tanith are too good and too smart to fall to these mindless lizard-things. We just have to find them.”
“But we are outnumbered!” wailed Studpopper.
“They are using their claws and teeth to fight us. We can vaporize them with these skortch rays. There are only half as many now as there were when they first attacked.”
“But we’ve lost half our men already,” argued Studpopper. “They have guns, some of them, and we don’t know how many more of them are out there.”
“Look at those idiots over there with guns in their holsters,” said Harmony. “They are not even using them! I don’t think they are smart enough to even realize that they have guns.” To emphasize her point, Harmony blazed away with her skortch pistol at three of the lizard-men with guns and disintegrated them totally.
“You are right,” agreed Shalar, “about all of it, but we don’t know why these creatures are so stupid. There may be smarter ones out there somewhere. In fact, there have to be.” Shalar skortched two more scabbies who were equally as stupid as the ones they skortched before. “Why do you suppose they are so mindless?” Shalar asked.
“Look at them,” said Harmony. “They are covered in sores and wounds. Their eyes are filmy. I think they are sick. Probably from this foul air that we have to wear the breath-masks for.”
Shalar nodded. It was obvious that Harmony was right. These walking horrors were out of their blogwopping minds. But they were too stupid to be afraid and run away also. That complicated things.
“Let’s charge the mass of them over there,” said Harmony, pointing with her weapon at a group of about thirty of the creatures. “We take out all of them, and then we’ll have them outnumbered.
“Lead the way,” said Shalar. Harmony was their best hope. She was easily the best war-leader Shalar had ever met. Sunday school on Earth was certainly a very effective place to learn small group combat tactics and strategy. How lucky the Tellerons had been to escape from Earth without every engaging Sunday-school-trained military units!
With a great roar, Harmony lead the twelve remaining Tellerons to the group of shuffling scabbies she had targeted for the assault. The confused lizard-men disintegrated into the surrounding air so quickly and so efficiently that it was obvious the Tellerons would not only win this battle, but they would clear the entire area of scabbies in minutes. The rescue mission was looking more and more like a possible success.
*****
Catch a Falling Star 