bad road to the dead river - 0. prologue

by nick nelson

part zero of thirty-two

the space fleets and home fleets of the combined human empires had been wiped out. * it seemed just a matter of time before the humans were overrun. the only mystery was why the aliens had not simply blown the human headquarters to kingdom come and been done with it. the only explanation the humans could think of was that the aliens wanted to capture the last leaders or representatives of the human empires, to study for their own purposes. although the aliens, once they had made their real intentions known, had never shown any interest in capturing humans for any purposes, and had simply obliterated them. * the human armies had been reduced to two companies of infantry, which were attempting to protect the human headquarters. the headquarters was located in a valley somewhere east of suez, in the shadow of some mountains . the valley was enclosed on three sides by rivers, but these of course posed no obstacle to the alien armies. there were several castles on the plain, abandoned by humans centuries ago, and the aliens were quartered in them, and the only plan the humans had was to periodically attempt to attack and retake the castles. attempts which had not met with any success, or were expected to. morale among the human troops was low. * the time for recriminations among the humans had passed, and the representatives of the seven human empires were left to ponder what might have been, if they had met the alien threat in a different fashion. when the aliens had first appeared, the first instinct of each of the various human empires had been to attempt to align with the aliens, to gain advantage over their historic rivals. chancellor hitler of the teutonic empire, mr capone of the american empire, and ms x of the olduvai empire had been the most forthright - or at least the most obvious - in pressing their claims on the aliens, but the others - general khan of the golden horde, prince saladin of baghdad, ms nan of the pacific empire, and lady chiang of the middle kingdom - had also made their advances in less obvious or more subtle fashion. * but the efforts of all were thwarted - by the rise of the popular movement led by the lovely and charismatic joanie smith . joanie had, seemingly, come out of nowhere, to the consternation of the oligarchs and their lackeys. * 1. benny