"We don’t have the resources to do that," Goss objected.
To Trevor's surprise, Snowe said, "I agree with General Goss. We should concentrate on the Chaktaw."
Trevor ignored their objections. "Sure we do. We just have to work a little harder. And trust me on this, we start poking around out there," Trevor jabbed his thumb over his shoulder in reference to the world outside, "we’re going to start finding the things we need to survive."
"Big plans," Nina said. "Maybe we should forget the Duass and hit the Chaktaw again."
Trevor glanced at her. He sensed how thrilled she was to be a part of the meeting. No doubt another reason why she had wanted Trevor back. There she was, hanging with the Generals planning grand strategy.
"We may reach too far," Goss protested. "I hope saying as much won't cost me my head."
Trevor put a hand on his shoulder. "Now is the time to present different opinions. But once the decision is made, it will be followed. Failure to do that will cost you your head."
– "Team one, stand by, here he comes," Nina transmitted via radio.
Ahead of her stretched a wide open mountaintop surrounded by tall, frosty pine trees.
The ground rumbled.
An incoming transmission reported, "Standing by. Damn, is this really going to work?"
She radioed, "Corporal Brewer, just get your team ready to fire. You get one shot."
"Copy that."
Nina raised her binoculars and peered into the clearing. She saw puffs of snow pop off branches as trees swayed violently side to side.
General Gronard spoke in her ear, "He sure is a crazy one, isn’t he?"
"Crazy? No. He’s not crazy. He’s brave."
"I suppose that’s why you went to the trouble of bringing him here. You're really walking a thin line with him, aren't you?"
She replied, "Just make sure your men keep up their end and I'll take care of the rest. He might be our only hope of staying alive. Keep that in mind and we'll get by."
The trees beyond the rim of the clearing swayed as if a tornado approached.
"Watch your aim, Brewer," Nina communicated a warning to the man whose nose Stone broke a month ago.
Trevor ran out from the forest and across the glaze of snow on the open mountain. Behind him, trees crashed and splintered as the pursuing monster stepped into the clearing.
Standing some twenty-stories tall, it wore a scaly, tinny skin that occupied some middle ground between flesh and artificial armor. Its thick legs resembled industrial-sized support struts of a biological nature while ram horns wrapped its head to either side of a goat-face sporting glowing red eyes. Instead of hands at the end of two gigantic arms the creature used cloven hooves that could serve no purpose other than adding to the beast's power to destroy.
This fiend appeared demonic in nature, certainly one of the most horrid of the invasion’s horrors. And Trevor Stone had just duped its Hell-born ass.
The new leader of humanity’s war on this Earth crossed the field and stopped. Trevor knew that a dozen soldiers watched. A dozen of his soldiers; a new breed birthed from the ashes of a neglected army.
So why not a show?
Trevor turned and faced the massive monster. It glared at the puny prey. Trevor held his two hands aloft with one finger on each above the rest.
"Drop this BITCH!"
Anti-armor missiles shot out from the tree line, trailed by strands of black and gray smoke streaming from flares of burning red propellant. The projectiles smashed into what Nina’s people called a Windigo and Trevor called a Goat-Walker.
The impact sent it falling backwards. Explosions knocked off thick slabs of skin and gory, colorful innards splattered onto the snow below.
The soldiers cheered Trevor, the man who mocked the monsters.
Nina's radio crackled, "Tactical team, this is Mother. You ready for that delivery?"
"Ten-Four, Mother. We’re ready."
The hum of jet engines drifted over the mountain top. After a moment, another giant came to the clearing, this one man-made. To Trevor's eye it resembled a large cargo airliner except with the center stretch of fuselage hollowed out in favor of a harness and hoist.
It moved lazily, more like a helicopter than a plane. Its turbines rotated down putting the craft into a hover. Then the plane descended vertically toward the surface of the clearing aided by a soldier with bright blue directional cones.
A portable drilling well dangled from the hoist and lowered toward the mountaintop not far from the destroyed giant demon. The engines roared as they struggled to ease the payload to the mark. The drill touched the ground and the hoist cables unhooked in a series of metallic clanks. Workers shouted orders over the roar of the huge cargo vessel that retreated to the sky after delivering its package.
"We’re going to need a couple of days worth of oil from the well just to make up for the fuel used by the Heavy-42 to get it here," Gronard approached Trevor and said.
"You’ll get it, General. You’re going to get everything you need."
– Three days after establishing several drilling sites they found black gold. Dozens then hundreds of barrels began arriving at Thebes via ground convoy.
Trevor assigned General Goss the job of finding and blasting the predatory hostiles who disrupted the convoys, mainly a pack of Jaw-Wolves. However, the drill sites and convoys shut down for a couple of days anyway as a nasty early March snow storm ravaged the area dumping nearly a foot of grainy white stuff.
Trevor turned the annoyance of bad weather into one gigantic party. He arranged sled racing and snow-fort building contests in the name of "Winter’s Last Hooray."
Surprised at this sudden soft side, Nina wondered why he became so magnanimous. Trevor admitted that the partying served a practical reason. He wanted socializing; he wanted mating. If they were truly the last batch of humans on Earth, then the only way to save the race was to start repopulating the planet. That meant babies. That took social interaction.
As was often the case with late snow, it did not stay around for long. A blast of warm air sent the temperature into the fifties and melted everything away.
The time came to get back to work.
– Reconnaissance reported large numbers of Chaktaw soldiers and equipment, including artillery, occupying an outpost north of Thebes. Like so many of the structures on this Earth, the 'outpost' was comprised of mountainside buildings that came across as one part cave and one part building. In this case, those buildings were lined up at the base of a steep red rock hill in a manner suggesting an old commercial district, maybe even this world's version of a strip mall.
As he led the assault from onboard a Skipper, Trevor found the situation had changed.
Below, a column of infantry transports and armored attack vehicles moved north on a series of dirt and concrete roads cutting through forest-covered hills. Ahead, columns of smoke marked the Chaktaw outpost despite the fact that no human weapons had yet fired.
"Say again, recon?" Trevor responded to a message from a forward ground team.
Corporal Brewer repeated, "Severe damage to enemy position. Perimeter barricades breached at multiple points, I have eyes-on destroyed heavy weapons and looks like a lot of Chaktaw casualties."
Trevor turned to Nina. "One of the other legions playing games?"
"No," she said with surety. "Not a chance. The Generals know you don't like games."
She steered the craft in close but instead of making the originally planned attack run, Major Forest flew slow for a good view of the outpost.
As the scouts reported, the flat stone lot in front of the mountainside showed signs of battle; blast craters, a rock wall smashed in several places, and the destroyed carcasses of Chaktaw vehicles and artillery pieces, some of which still smoldered. Around everything, poncho-clad bodies sprawled on the ground.
The buildings of the compound sprouted from the mountain and had been constructed of some kind of rock, making Trevor think of the cliff dwellings of the ancestral pueblo tribes from the southwestern United States back home, very much like what he had seen at the lake when he went searching for Trevor's estate. What had been a rather isolated, regional architecture on his Earth had apparently gained wider acceptance on this one.