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SODF Chapter Twenty-Six

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX // THE MODERN WARRIOR
0900 HOURS // CITY OF LONDON, PLANET EARTH
Watching the TACMAP screen in the lower right corner of his HUD for known enemy soldiers, James led his soldiers towards Buckingham Palace. Quietly confident, but still wary, he used whatever cover he could get. In this case, despite Cat’s misgivings, ‘cover’ was the sewers. They were moving far slower than he would have liked, especially considering the circumstances, but even as slowly as everyone was moving it sounded like a herd of elephants was stampeding in the tunnels. It appeared the aliens had used this particular area as a base at some point; James thought he recognised the ‘decorations’ on the walls. Such decorations were evidently highly prized, so why were there no aliens about?

“We must have scared them away. The noise we’re making, I’d be shocked if even the bravest of enemies hung about. It must sound like there are thousands, even millions of us,” Cat mused, “I hope we don’t run into them anytime soon. This place is too tight a space for us to be able to properly fight.”

“Quiet. The COM channels are down, remember? We can’t communicate without someone eavesdropping,” James said, his voice eerily loud in the now nearly silent tunnels. He stood on something hard – a rat’s skull, maybe? – and the resulting crunch made a good number of his soldiers jump.

It was getting darker farther on in the tunnel, so James switched on the torch mounted on the side of his helmet. A glistening, twisted alien stepped from the now harsh shadows into the bright artificial light of the torch. James held up his left hand, palm forwards, to signal his soldiers to hold their fire until they were sure of the alien’s intentions. He kept his assault rifle trained on the purple-skinned creature, waiting for it to make a move. The vaguely humanoid thing simply stood there, nervously shuffling its hoof-like feet with a disgusting squelching sound, and in its harsh voice it whispered something the translation systems didn’t recognise. It waved its tail, which was tipped with a vicious-looking spike, and bowed. It must have been blinded or stunned by the light, or it would have attacked, but instead it bowed? That was a distinctly odd reaction.

It lashed out with its spiked tail and James leapt backwards, swore, and fired a warning shot at the water. The alien howled in apparent despair and stared at James with terrified eyes. Its face told its own story; the creature was an outcast, tortured then exiled by its fellows. It had no weapons, no armour, and no company. Or was James reading into its expression things that were not there?

The creature pointed at him with a long purple finger, “You. You speak my language?”

James pointed his rifle at the ground, signalling his soldiers to do the same, “I speak the language of humans.”

The alien struck out with its tail again, the terror in its eyes replaced by rage, “You kill my people.”

“Only when they try to kill humans.”

“This human different. This human have hatred also of traitor group, not just all race.”

James nearly dropped his assault rifle, “I- You- What? There’s a traitor group and they’re the ones causing all this trouble?”

“Correct. I show you to their leader. Follow.”

“Just so you know, if this is a trap, there are one hundred and fifty five of us and only one of you.”

“This not trap. Follow.”

The alien took a few steps towards the shadows, stopped, and looked back, growling at him again to follow.

“Wait. How do we know we can trust you?”

“They exile me,” the creature said simply, “They not trust me. They traitors.”

James levelled his assault rifle again, keeping it aimed at the alien’s back in case it was a trap, but followed, signalling to his soldiers to be on their guard.

“You not point weapon at me.”

James lowered his assault rifle, but kept it ready to fire if anything went wrong.

Eventually the alien led them to a ladder that went up to a manhole, “I not take you any farther. They kill me if I go above ground.”

“Will the ladder take us into their base? Just so we know,” James stared at the alien’s right foot, which it had raised and extended towards him, “What do you want me to do?”

“You shake. Like human shake hand. Ladder take you to door of base where leader is. I go now. Goodbye.”

James tentatively reached for the foot and shook it politely, “Thank you.”
He and his soldiers watched the alien’s retreating purple back, then James shouted his farewell and raced up the ladder with his soldiers following not far behind.
Gah! I'm writing too much! XDDD jk

And finally a more comprehensive description of the aliens! As promised.

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SODF, all characters, concepts and chapters are copyright to ~ImmortalShande.
Thanks to ~TheBeadle for bugging me into describing the aliens. :lmao:
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