The Boy From The Forest

“Entering the atmosphere, Great Overlord.”

“Very well. Do not rush it. This vessel is not really designed to enter an atmosphere.”

Their spaceship slowly made its way through the atmosphere of the third planet. The crew had plugged the holes in the hull where the rail gun projectiles had struck. The Great Overlord hoped that these would not be a problem now.

“Leveling off. The heat from the atmospheric entry is dissipating. Where are we to put down, Great Overlord?”

“Look for a place where it is clear and level. No need to hurry.”

“Great Overlord, there are these tall plants everywhere. How can I land?”

“Hover a short distance from the surface, then slowly make your way along. Look for a clear place.”

“Great Overlord!! I see a place where there are no tall plants. I can land us there!!”

The great vessel settled to the ground in a clearing in the Forest.

“Lesser Overlord!! Assemble a team and scout the immediate area. Report on any hostile natives.”

The Lesser Overlord chose the cook’s helper and the third assistant machinist. For this type of away mission, you need to choose those who are not essential to the running of the ship. The Lesser Overlord was not terribly essential himself.

They armed themselves with pulsar rifles and long knives. Out the main airlock went the three of them.

Adumpx, the cook’s helper was puzzled. “Lesser Overload, what are we supposed to do out here?”

“Keep your communication orifice closed and your aural receptors open. You might learn something.” Bnuoild, the third assistant machinist, did not suffer fools gladly.

“Be quiet both of you. First, we are just going to walk around the ship.”

They started to walk around the ship, at a distance of about a hundred yards. In the immediate area were plants that were almost as tall as their heads. These plants were very thin and flexible, and it was no trouble to push their way through them.

Bnuoild motioned for silence. “What is that noise? It just started.”

The three of them froze in place. As far as they could see, they were not under attack.

“Exploration party!! Report!!” The Great Overlord was becoming alarmed at the sudden silence on the com channel.

“Great Overlord, a sound has started. I think it is coming from the large plants a short distance away. It is actually kind of pretty.”

The Great Overlord groaned to himself. Kind of pretty? What kind of military report was that? No wonder their faction lost the war of succession.

In the trees surrounding the clearing, the birds sang their little hearts out. They had stopped singing when the spaceship landed in the clearing, but after a few minutes, they started singing again. Tweet tweet!!

The Great Overlord opened a com channel to Zeublon deck. “Are you waking the warriors like I ordered?”

“Yes, Great Overlord. The first phanex is now awake. It is pretty crowded down here. Is there someplace else they can be so we have room for the second phanex?”

“Yes, there is. Order them to go outside and report to the Lesser Overlord.”

The first phanex gathered their equipment and went out the main airlock. They looked around. After a moment, they spotted the Lesser Overlord.

The centurion of the first phanex approached the Lesser Overlord. He made a motion with his right upper appendage, which indicated his submission to the military authority of the Lesser Overlord.

The Lesser Overlord looked at the centurion. The warrior was maybe half again as tall as the Lesser Overlord. The warriors were a special caste, genetically modified to be taller, stronger, quicker than the ordinary citizen. And dumber. That last part was really important.

“Lesser Overlord, I await your orders.”

What did need to be done now? It would be nice to have some natives that slavishly obeyed their every command.

“Centurion, we need to make contact with the natives. Go capture a native for us.”

“Lesser Overlord, what do the natives here look like?”

“What is this? Are you trying to shirk your duty by standing around asking all sorts of silly questions? Get going!!”

The Lesser Overlord fumed to himself. How was he supposed to know what the natives looked like?

“Norman, what is that thing? It came out of the sky!”

“Vincent, I don’t know. What is more, I have never heard any tales about anything like this.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“People are always telling wild tales about giants, unicorns, women with two heads. Never about a mountain of metal coming down from the sky.”

“Those things are imaginary. I hope you knew that. This is real. And look at the size of the things that just came out of the mountain. Keep your head down.”

The warriors were spreading out looking for a native to capture. Nobody knew what a native looked like, but the warriors were used to obeying confusing orders.

“So the Lesser Overlord wants us to catch a native of this planet for him.”

“I think he wants it for a pet.”

“Of course he does, no one else likes him.”

“Hey, there is a reason he is the Lesser Overlord.”

“Cut the chatter all of you.” Growled the centurion. “A native could come up and bite you on the ankle, and you would never notice.”

“Hey, those things bite? Nobody told us that!!”

“Norman, we have to get out of here. They are looking for something. If we don’t get away now, they will find us.”

The boys wormed their way down from the top of the hill. They did not stand up until the hill was between them and the aliens.

“We need to tell someone about this. Who is the nearest chief? This is an invasion, no doubt about it.”

Vincent thought a minute. “Chief Reid is not far from here. He leads a good-sized clan, and he will fight absolutely anybody, even if they are bigger than him.”

“Hey, I got one!”

“Let me see.” The centurion walked over to the warrior who made the capture. “He has lots of spunk, that is good. Look at him try to get away. Good job everyone, now back to the ship.”

The rabbit struggled in the grip of the alien warrior. No matter how it kicked its legs, it could not get free. But it was not giving up, not this rabbit.

“Yes, Chief Reid, that is what we saw.”

Chief Reid looked at the two boys. Neither was from his clan, but it kind of pleased him that they had come to him. It sounded like a wild tale, except that he himself had seen something in the direction the boys were pointing. Others had reported seeing all sorts of things. That meant it was something unknown, not the type of thing that they usually saw in the Forest.

“All right. Caleb, Luke, you are with me. Boys, take us back to this place.”

The party set out. Norman really hoped that these strange things would still be there.

Norman need not have worried. There was a crowd around the native with the big ears.

“Unconditional surrender!!” The Lesser Overlord spoke slowly and loudly. “You have no hope of resisting our superior technology. If you just sign this statement of unconditional surrender, you will all be spared. Quit trying to talk your way out of it.”

He held the document and a writing stylus out to the struggling rabbit. The misguided native kept trying to negotiate with him.

Adumpx started to shift the native in his arms. He always had to do jobs like this. The native moved his head and bit Adumpx on the thumb.

“Ouch!! That ungrateful native bit me!!” The rabbit squirmed free and disappeared into the tall grass.

Adumpx held up his injured thumb. He had two thumbs on each hand, but this one still hurt. “I heard that these natives bite. I should have been more careful.”

The Lesser Overlord held up all six hands in a gesture of resignation. “I can’t do anything more. The natives do not want peace, that is plain. From now on, it will be war.”

The warriors nodded in agreement. It was always this way – Inferior beings like the Lesser Overlord would talk and talk. Finally, it would be resolved by force of arms.

Chief Reid motioned to the men with him to hunker down in the bushes. Yes, indeed, there was something there. There were quite a number of strange looking creatures walking about as if they owned that clearing. The woodlanders’ usual enemies were the bread eaters, but this was something else altogether.

Chief Reid looked at the men he had assembled. Not quite two hundred fighting men. He had absolutely no idea what these invaders could or could not do. And there were the two lads who had told him of this invader. Vincent was from the Hamlet of Om. He would probably run away screaming, calling for his momma as he went.

And what about Norman? He was not a woodlander. He tried to talk and act like a woodlander, but once in a while, he would say something that showed that he was from the Cultivated Lands. Maybe even from the ruling class there, Chief Reid was not sure of the accent. He was too young to be a spy; he must somehow be out of favor back home. Norman was not going to hurt anything.

Time for Chief Reid to make a speech. “We are going to war against an enemy that has appeared in the forest clearing that is near the great sandstone cliff. We do not know what will happen today. I will not tell you nice stories about how everything will be just fine. I do know that these creatures are wanting to take the Forest for themselves and shove us aside. We are going to fight like men!!”

Early the following day.

The hastily assembled fighting force was all gathered just inside the Forest at the edge of the clearing where the aliens had landed. Everyone was quietly conversing about the upcoming battle.

“Vincent, it just bothers me that we are going into this without knowing anything about their offensive capabilities or their military doctrine.”

“Norman, those are big words. So tell me, do you know anything about how they fight or how good their warriors are?”

“Of course not.”

“But we still have to meet this challenge. There are times when you have to step into the unknown.”

“That will be real soon, Vincent. I hope you are ready with that sword of yours.”

Vincent looked at the sword in his hand. It was rusted, with nicks and gouges all along its length.

“Chief Reid loaned this to me. He made it very plain it was a loan. I have to give it back when the war is over.”

All up and down the line, there was the sound of men preparing. Nothing was stirring on or around the metal mountain. With a human enemy, you could see them getting ready for battle, and you got yourself ready too. These aliens had no idea how to do it.

“Get Ready.” Chief Reid whispered. The word spread all up and down the line. Maybe they would have the element of surprise.

“eeeeyah!!!”

Every man of them ran out of the cover of the Forest and into the clearing. They all ran toward the big silver spaceship gleaming in the sun.

“Great Overlord!!

“What is it?”

“They are attacking the ship!! A whole bunch of them.”

The Great Overlord swiveled the one remaining external camera. Nothing over there, now look the other way.

A great mass of yowling creatures was running toward the ship. They did not look friendly.

“Seal the main airlock. Alert the warriors that are outside.” He wished now that he had ordered all the warriors to be awakened from cold sleep. But it took a lot of food to feed them. The First Phanex would have to handle it by themselves.

“Activate tactical laser. I will run it from my throne here.”

The tactical laser came to life. From it issued a blinding lance of fiery death. At a patch of weeds, but formidable nonetheless. While the weeds burned, the tactical laser blinked offline. Then it came back online with a shower of sparks.

“Get that laser working again. Right now!!”

“That laser will not work. Not ever again. And now it has caught fire.”

Indeed, the external housing of the tactical laser had overheated, and the whole thing was burning merrily. The woodlanders looked at each other. That threat was no more.

“eeeeyah!!!” Again the order to advance.

The Great Overlord was thinking furiously. What to do? He pulled up a stock image of a monster. Claws, teeth, tentacles. He routed it into a holographic projector and instructed it to render the image outside the ship.

A really frightening apparition arose from the ship. It soared above the treetops. It was like your worst nightmare suddenly stepped out and said hello.

Norman had a thought. He nocked an arrow and aiming as high as he could, he sent the arrow flying toward the horrifying creature.

The arrow came to the monster, near the top. It did not really have a head, but Norman had aimed his arrow near the top.

The arrow passed right through the holographic projection. It landed somewhere behind the invaders’ ship. Fear changed to astonishment, and astonishment turned to laughter.

“All my life, I have heard that a magician can make something that is not real look like it is right there. I never saw it done until today.”

“This magician is not even all that good. He needs to take lessons. Ha ha!”

The warriors outside the ship rallied to make their defense. “There is not all that many of us. Why did they only wake up one phanex?”

“We are the best phanex. The others do not have any idea how to do it.”

“Shut up, both of you. Activate your personal shields, everybody. Remember your personal shields are excellent protection. They are proof against virtually any kind of attack. There is nothing they can do to us!!”

“Archers,” Bellowed Chief Reid.

Twang twang!! The archers fired a volley of arrows. Their arrows had primitive flint arrowheads.

Flint was the one substance that the personal shields did not guard against.

Thump thump thump!!! The arrows went through the personal shields and stuck into the warriors. A number of the warriors went down, looking like some kind of giant bird because of all the arrows sticking out of them.

The Great Overlord switched to an image of a volcano erupting. He might as well not have bothered. The woodlanders had realized that it was just an image with no power to hurt them. They swarmed over the base of the ship. The Lesser Overlord went down in a barrage of spears thrown. Adumpx had three swords run through his body.

The warriors fought valiantly. They had no leadership, but they still knew how to fight. They had knives and other hand-held weapons. If nothing else, they could make a fist from an appendage.

The woodlanders fought like men possessed. They always worked themselves into a battle rage where fear and pain were irrelevant. Two of them would engage one of the aliens and die in the effort so that someone else could come around and put a spear in its back. There was a seemingly unending supply of woodlanders, while the alien warriors were getting less and less every second.

“Sound Dire Recall.” The Great Overlord was still giving orders.

“It shall be done, Great Overlord.”

“Beep Beep” Sounded over the external speaker. That meant that in one bvfffdr of time, there would be another Beep and then immediately, the main airlock would open for a very short time. Those that could get inside, they would get inside. When the main airlock closed, that was it. Those still outside were stuck out there.

“Beep” The main airlock opened slightly. Bnuoild stumbled in, missing one whole appendage. Two warriors and a computer technician also made it inside the ship before the main airlock closed again.

“Surviving senior officers, gather around. We need to review our options.” The Great Overlord was glad of some breathing space.

“Boom!!!” Something crashed into the main airlock.

“What is going on out there?”

“Camera, let me see the exterior of the main hatchway.”

What the Great Overlord saw was not comforting. These natives had cut down one of the large plants that grew in profusion near where the ship had landed. The main stem of this plant seemed to be sturdy, because they were working together to bang the end of it against the main airlock.

Chief Reid and his remaining men were working the battering ram. They had the foresight to leave some of the large limbs on the tree trunk, to use as handles.

“One. Two Three. Heave.”

“Boom!!” This time, you could actually see a dent on the inside of the main airlock. A few more like that and they would be inside the ship.

“Helm, lift us out of here.”

“Great Overlord, only two thrusters are working. Neither of those is working as well as it should.”

“Use them anyway!! If you do not do it soon, I will find a way to throw you out to those creatures.”

The ship rose. It did not rise far, and there was an obvious wobble. After a moment, it rose higher than the treetops. Then it moved off, rather slowly.

Chief Reid turned to Norman. It happened that they were standing right next to each other. “They are leaving. But somehow, I do not think this is over.”

Norman turned to face Chief Reid. “It is not over. No way is this over.”

Johanaston was satisfied for the moment. It had worked well, having the tactical laser fail like that. His interference was not at all obvious. That laser might even have failed on its own. But it was best to be sure. He had expected that the Shadrachians would leave the planet after this defeat. But no, they were flying low, probably looking to put down somewhere in the Cultivated Lands.

The flow of events. If you could think quickly and channel events so as to achieve your goals, that was a very powerful thing. This alien invasion could be a catalyst to bring all the civilizations together.

His Aunt was universally despised because she did not manage ongoing events well, and had gotten trapped in a corner with no good options. Or so said Those Who Question. Those Who Question sat in their towers of yyyxxxtrl stone, far away and long after the events in question. With the gift of perfect hindsight, they were very confident that they knew all about it, and would have been able to manage perfectly.

Johanaston knew that he would either succeed brilliantly or fail so utterly that he would join [She who must not be named] in everlasting infamy. It was time to make some plans.