CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR
Slowly, nearly everyone on the battlefield turned to face Abe, and it was not with malevolent intent. Sligs looked at him with narrowed eyes, the Mudokons with curiosity; the battlefield seemed unOddworldly silent after the cauterized death that had been sown only moments before.
“Listen to me!” Abe shouted over the loudspeaker. “Fools! This is all a misunderstanding!”
At the word fools, several Sligs turned their guns on him with intent to fire, but Abe followed up with more interesting words. “King Fragg is dead! There’s no reason for our fight!”
He jabbed his hand up at the sky. “The real enemy we should be fighting is the Bringer of Pain – that Gabbit!”
Several briefly flicked glances upward at the Gabbit’s jetcopter. Abe chanced a look that way himself, and noted with apprehension that the jetcopter in question was moving quickly toward the battlefield now.
“That Gabbit doesn’t want to rule over us!” Abe shouted. “He wants us all in pain, and eventually dead!”
A Slig laughed, its mechanical voice making the words even more like a sneer than usual. “Why would he want that?”
“He says he serves the Dark!” Abe shook his fist in the air. “He’s totally insane! We have to destroy him, and then we can find a solution to our fight!”
Huge laser bolts slammed into the ground a few feet from his own, burning and sizzling down through the grass and plowing deep through the soil. Abe threw aside the microphone and dove and rolled out of the jetcopter’s firing area, grabbing at a Slig rifle that had been dropped at the death of its wielder.
As soon as he made sure the weapon was on Automatic settings, he spun to face the Jetcopter and jerked back the trigger. Laser bolts sprayed out of his weapon and rippled across the jetcopter’s shield.
“Everybody!” Abe screamed, as the jetcopter began to launch more huge lasers at him. Again he ducked, tucked, and rolled. “Fire! Fire now!”
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