Sam's First Last Stand by Jack Ravenhill

Author:Jack Ravenhill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sterling & Stone

Chapter Fifteen

Another scout ship blazed by.

Sam’s stomach knotted. They had to know. Even if the boundary masked them psionically, it was a whole town sitting right there in the open. The boundary didn’t make them invisible. Probably.

And even if it did, the titans had gotten their signal out. They’d sent it long before the boundary went up. For all Sam knew, they’d been calling for reinforcements psionically even while they were still standing back-to-back-to-back in the middle of the Key. They were advanced alien lifeforms. They could probably multitask.

“Gus,” he snapped. He needed someone to bounce ideas off of. Someone he’d known for long enough that he could just talk, not think about the talking. Plus, Gus probably already thought he was an idiot, so if he came up with bad ideas, it wouldn’t matter.

“Yes, my liege.” Gus trundled over with a showy flourish. “How may I be of assistance? You need a little jestering? A little cheering up? A little of the ol’ rum-ta-tum-tadada-pah-ta-dum...” He started a little soft shoe routine to the accompaniment of his own humming.

“No, not — Just no. Whatever that is. Stop it.” But Sam found himself grinning despite himself. It was like the old days for a moment, just Sam and Gus being silly. He missed that. It got exhausting, being serious and stern all the time, constantly thinking through plans and contingencies and all the things that might go right and all the ways you’d try to handle them. And then having Gus screw them up in some totally unexpected fashion.

“Do you think there’s any way we could just leave the boundary up?”

The words slipped out unpremeditated. Which was part of why he’d wanted Gus. He could do that around Gus. But still, he was embarrassed that he’d said it out loud. Sam was supposed to be leading this thing. “Hunker down and hope it all goes away” wasn’t exactly the most admirable course of action.

But Gus surprised him with a grin and a hearty slap on the back.

“Totally, dude. That’s what I’ve been thinking myself. Why fight a massive invasion force when you could just settle in and see if, perhaps, the Peculiar Steak House still has some brisket in the back of the walk-in. You know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Sam hardly dared to hope. Maybe it was okay. Maybe that was a fine plan.

“I bet the acolytes don’t even need to eat much. Probably just tell the titans to shut them down for a while or whatever. You know? Like, screensaver mode. And we’ve got a couple dozen houses inside the bubble, I bet. Some stores. We could do pretty okay for ourselves. Take up fishing, maybe even. I wonder if fish can get in through the boundary? I wonder if it goes underwater? I wonder if it goes underground? Hey, do you think we could tunnel out without breaking the bubble?”

Sam raised an eyebrow. Gus seemed to be in oddly high spirits. And it wasn’t typical for him to go along with a Sam plan quite so easily.

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