Page 30 of Trigger Discipline
Tommy looked thoughtful. “The tall ones are almost like handlers.”
The room turned to look at him. He flushed under the sudden attention. “I just mean…we never saw one of the four-legged ones without one, right? And they seemed to take orders from them. Like they’re holding the leash.”
“A command structure.”
“So the fucking ugly dog things are what? Grunts?”
Gabriel nodded. “That makes sense. The two higher ups have weapons.”
Judd underlineddroneand erasedbipedalto writeHandlerin its place. “Bipedal is a mouthful.”
“Drones control the Handlers, Handlers control the FUDs.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows rose. “FUDs?”
“Fucking Ugly Dogs,” Phin supplied.
Judd wrote that down and none of them had the energy to argue with him.
“Blake noticed they can’t move and shoot at the same time,” Gabriel pointed out.
The room turned to look at Blake. He picked at a piece of jerky. “It’s probably why the FUDs don’t have guns. The aliens use a type of rail gun—they have to lock down completely to brace for the recoil, which means they can’t move and shoot. They need something faster, more agile to attack.”
Phin’s face dropped and for the first time since Blake had known him, he looked unsure. His gray eyes were distant as he stared at the whiteboard. “Rail guns? The US military has been working on getting a working rail gun for close to half a century.”
Blake couldn’t remember much from the documentary he’d seen over ten years ago, but some stuff stuck. “Right. I’mnot intimately familiar with the technology, but I know they require insane amounts of energy.”
“And they destroy themselves,” Phin continued. “Because of the energy issue, the only working models we’ve got have to be attached to massive destroyers. And they chew themselves up with each use.”
“They don’t seem to have that problem,” Gabriel mused, sighing heavily. His breath ghosted across the top of Blake’s head.
“Ok, so they’re smarter than us.” Judd jabbed his marker into the board. “We already knew that. They have spaceships!”
“So do we,” Phin bristled.
“Not really,” Tommy yawned. “We have a spaceshuttle. There’s a difference. Have you seen what our shuttle looks like after reentering our atmosphere? Beat to hell. We can get one exit and one entry—if we’re lucky. Whatever they have, that ship destroyed one of the US’s biggest cities in less than twenty-four hours, is capable of interstellar travel, and has weaponry we can’t even begin to understand.”
The room stared at him blankly. Tommy shrank under the attention. “I like space,” he mumbled.
Blake pinched his nose. “Picture it like this: we’re cavemen. While we’re busy rubbing two sticks together to make a fire, they’re the fuckingEnterprise.”
That had the desired effect. Everyone was quiet as they contemplated just what that meant.
“Great,” Judd muttered, his drawl extending the final syllable. “Now we’re going to get fucked by Kirk.”
Phin snorted. “Oh, like you wouldn’t love that.”
“Shut it, red shirt.”
Blake sighed as the two grown soldiers started squabbling with each other. Again. They reminded him of his colleagues. They could be hosing blood and brains out the back of the ambulance while discussing what they wanted for lunch. Thelittle arguments were infantile, but they did break the tension. And when it was time to suit up, they were both as serious as it came. Blake had seen it.
“I don’t understand,” Tommy whispered, ducking his head so he was closer to Blake. “Where is the military?”
“Gabriel said the aliens took out every military installation in Virginia before they even landed.”
“But still,” Tommy’s voice dropped lower, like he didn’t want the soldiers to hear him criticizing. “We havethousandsof military bases, weapons silos, and stuff. And that’s not counting the fleet offshore. They destroyed them all?”
“Another thing,” Tommy let his voice travel this time. “They destroyed the power grid, so that’s why we don’t have electricity. But what about radio? There are a billion HAM radio operators out there. Why can’t they get through?”