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A quote: “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” ~~ Winston Churchill
I’ll start with a story …
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I’m tired of burying children.
Yes, I know. We got out with barely enough time and numbers to establish ourselves and we are still struggling.
But you haven’t been on patrol, holding a tiny, skeletal form driven out from the city … or staked out as bait by the bastards. Children too far gone for food. All you can offer is a pair of warm arms, whispered comfort and a final kiss on the head as they slip away.
No, I won’t play clean up any more. Now I ride to rescue or die trying. I can do no less.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image by Darleen Click created with Adobe Stock’s Firefly
GWB says: A German Shepherd, an Arabian horse*, and an American hat – a beautiful picture of the new colony. It even had nice colored sunsets. The monitors were pleased; this was going to be a great start.
Then something flashed on their monitors that left the impression of many teeth, and a half a moment later the “cowboy” was gone, as well as part of the middle of the horse. And the dog was just running in circles barking… at something.
“Ahmed, go get the American.” Pierre sighed heavily. “Tell him he was right. We’ll need those guns after all.”
(* Yes, I can tell that’s a quarterhorse. But book illustrations are always wrong, and this one is, too.)
This place is so beautiful you can almost forget you’re a hundred light-years from home. Gravity just a hair above Earth-normal. Sun’s a little redder, so it’s unsurprising the year’s a little shorter. If this planet were as far out as Earth, it’d be an ice-ball.
The Kitties wanted settlers, and they got them. Lots of people whose folks got squeezed out of farming back in the big shake-outs of the 80’s, and people who just want a fresh start. For me it was a chance for wide-open places where I could explore and discover, where I didn’t have to ask permission from a dozen people just to take a look at something I’d never seen before.
But every now and then we get a reminder that nothing comes for free. Out here we’re also looking for signs of Tchiador incursions. Just yesterday I found a silver ball, about the size of a baseball, lying on the sand along the edge of a stream.
Good thing I didn’t grab it up to take a closer look. Sadie wasn’t so lucky. She went running right up to sniff at it, and the next thing I know she’s lying on the ground, twisting and foaming at the mouth.
The Kitties’ investigator says that’s typical of a Tchiador spy-bot. If I’d picked it up, I wouldn’t have just gone into convulsions and died. That thing would’ve sucked out every bit of information in my brain and hyperwaved it back to its spymaster, who can’t be too far away. Maybe a few light-years tops.
Now I’m deputized for this sector, with a badge and everything, even one of the Kitties’ little energy pistols. Things sure look a lot different now that the War we’ve been hearing about ever since First Contact is coming our way.
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