Lunar Alpha 4 by Reid Magnus

Author:Reid, Magnus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

I got a glimpse into the world of the rat people—just for a minute while we went through their portal to get geared up. They kept side-eyeing me, looking me up and down, and inspecting my arm. I asked them to upload their language into my brain, but they refused, not trusting me enough. “We’ll speak to you in Basic Tongue when we need to speak to you,” they said, and then they went on chattering in their own language. I’m not sure I had the muscles in my mouth to make those sounds anyway—but their refusal really did make me feel expendable.

And I was truly starting to worry about what the other sniper told me. I suddenly had a very, very bad feeling that I was going to be used as cannon fodder.

I looked around at their world: a dark, barren landscape, covered in large hills. There were holes peppered in the hills: windows into their little underground homes. The occasional metallic spire penetrated up from the ground, hundreds of feet into the air, like giant spikes, spiraling upwards. It was a fascinating sight, but hard to appreciate because of the rancid smell that seemed to be everywhere, like a neglected bag of garbage, festering with old food and maggots. I kept covering my nose, which the rats didn’t appreciate. They glared at me, and then I did my best to pretend as though I was just satisfying an itch.

“What kind of skirmish is this?” I asked, trying to get their attention off of my body.

“Standard five-on-five,” the rat leader said to me. He looked especially silly now, with bands of large shells across his furry chest, a bucket helmet on his head, and a bazooka larger than his body in his hands. The rat to his left was armed with the same weapon, and so was the rat to his right. The fourth rat was holding two sharp blades, with no firearm at all. He was getting warmed up, spinning the blades around, practicing stabbing maneuvers in the air. But there were heavy metal chunks strapped to his chest, which would surely weigh him down. Maybe they were armor, but they didn’t cover all of him.

“We’re attacking?” I asked.

“Yes, attacking. We all go for their portal beacon first—no holding back. No guts, no glory.”

My heart fluttered. Three demolitionists and a close-combat specialist weren’t exactly great support units for a sniper.

“You must land your hits, Hoo-min,” said the blade-wielding rat.

“Yes,” agreed the leader of the pack. “No hits, no arm.”

“Who are we fighting?” I asked.

“Never mind that. No time for that. Focus, Hoo-min.”

“But they’re bad guys, right?” I asked.

Now the rats were all eyeing me strangely. “Focus, Hoo-min. No hits, no arm. That’s the deal.”

I nodded my head quickly, feeling more out of place than ever before. I’d been hired by some weird-looking aliens before, but the rats took home first prize in the weird-looking category. The tallest of the four stood at my waist. A pack of

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