CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Cloud the Slig didn’t like his job much. It wasn’t just the fact that, as a Slig, he was almost certainly going to meet his end by being possessed and then blown to bits by some sociopath Mudokon terrorist, but the way that their Glukkon overseers were the only ones who profited from the deals the Slig chieftains made with them. True, beating up the Mudokon slaves provided them with some fun, but Abe didn’t like it when they did that, and Abe was somewhere around here now.
The Slig flexed his gun, and glanced around Lord Fragg’s camp. Guard duty was such a boring task. Stationed at a point inside the camp, only a few feet from Lord Fragg’s tent, he was more privileged because he was closer to the fires his fellow soldiers had lit to keep warm. The guards at the south and east posts had been alerted by Mudokons, but here, in the middle of camp, he hadn’t seen anything but sleeping Sligs.
Which was not, in itself, a bad thing. Cloud recognized that boring was usually better than bad, because a bored Slig was better off than a dying Slig, even if boring wasn’t very exciting. Being in the army wasn’t exciting, but, as a slug with mechanical pants and a room-temperature IQ and itchy trigger finger, what better life was he suited for than that of a soldier, just the same as all his soldier brothers and sisters? Why should he be better off than the rest of them? Why should he stay in the city, where Abe would be less likely to strike at them?
Cloud sighed to himself. It was so boring in this army. Abe was supposedly in this area, but –
Zzang!
Cloud looked between his feet at the sudden hole a bullet had plowed into the dirt, his eyes going wide with shock. The Slig traced the bullet’s path to the hole in Lord Fragg’s tent, where he could hear sounds of a Glukkon and Mudokon grunting.
“Attack!” Cloud shouted half-heartedly. “Lord Fragg’s under attack!”
He hurried toward the door of the tent, holding his Barrage laser rifle like a club, knowing he couldn’t shoot in such close proximity to Lord Fragg and all the other Slig soldiers in the army. Maybe it wasn’t so bad being in the army after all, if it involved attacks on their commanding officer’s tent in the middle of the night.
He pushed his way through the tent door, raising his rifle above his head –
And a Mudokon came leaping through the air at him, raising a Snuzi pistol above his head and screaming a war cry. Cloud only had time for one clichéd “Oh, boy…” before the Mudokon brought the butt of that pistol over his head. The Slig suddenly saw nothing but blackness.
* * *
|