Welcome to Percotran -Part XIII

By Richard Davidson

Badson knew Thurgood had gone insane. In this time, war is madness. All three major corporations had nuclear, chemical, biological, superlaser, sonic, and disintegration technology, so if they went to war, the world would be destroyed completely on the first day.

And Percotran International was no Cellulex, either. It was the most powerful company in the world, with weapons of destruction and torture like no other entity in history. There were rumored to be 200,000,000 troops available at a moment’s notice, not to mention all the robot troops, which no one even had a guess at, regarding numbers.

They had pioneered minibomb technology, sending out explosives the size of molecules in a great cloud. They would work their way into an enemy soldier’s pores, (or any civilians, cows, or friendly troops who happen to get in the way,) and then explode. Their kill ratio was 99.45%, with only a tiny fraction of them getting wasted in the wind.

And they had used those effectively way back in 21345, which was nearly a thousand years ago. Badson couldn’t even imagine what sort of horrors Percotran had available these days. Intelligence had been terrible for at least the past three centuries. For some reason, Bogotron just had a hard time getting people inside.

But what Bogotron lacked in Intelligence, it certainly made up for in firepower. It’s 10,000,000 nuclear helicopters where equipped with large caliber weapons, neutron bombs, rockets, and a device simply known as “Buzzy.”

Buzzy was an internally powered sphere, about 3 inches around, with millions of tiny teeth, that spinned furiously, and bounced up and down. It tore through flesh like a buzzsaw, which is how it got its name. Each helicopter had thousands of Buzzies on it, and if the helicopter sustained a direct hit, all Buzzies were released.

The weapons of the 215th century were truly terrible, and there hadn’t been a real war in over five hundred years. The last one, World War MMXXXVII, had cost over 17 billion lives; almost 1/3 of Earth’s population.

It had also raised the Earth’s temperature again, causing the ocean to swallow up Axlicon Corp, which had once been Australia. Many of the workers perished, but the top executives traveled in ships to Bogotron, where they were all killed slowly and painfully, except the lucky few who were shipwrecked, and started the first Pirate companies.

“Badson, are you listening?” shouted Thurgood.

Of course he wasn’t. He didn’t want to. There were going to be billions of people killed, and there was no chance at all that any good would come of it.

“Of course I am, sir,” said Badson out of habit, “you were talking about the invasion.”

“And what was I saying about it?”

“That it wasn’t suicide.”

“You idiot! Of course it isn’t suicide! But that’s NOT what I was saying!”

Thurgood’s hologram stared contemptuously at Badson.

“We are going to stage an initial attack on the damaged sector. We’re going to go in dressed as Pirates.”

“Pirates?” Badson could take no more.

“That will never work!” he screamed, falling to his knees.

“Why not?” asked an incredulous Briggs.

“You don’t think they’ll figure out our troops aren’t Pirates?” Badson was looking at him as if he had two heads.

“I’m glad you appreciate the difficulty of the task,” boomed Thurgood.

Badson knew what was coming next.

“Because you’re serving as Tactical Advisor on the S. S. Rattlesnake.”

“So you’re having me killed.”

“That will be up to you.”

“No, it really won’t. And when they figure out who we are, Bogotron will be a smoking cinder, if you’re lucky.”

He was going to say more, but Thurgood shouted, “you will now be briefed!” and Badson winced, as tiny beams began scanning his entire body. His reflexes were being recalibrated, his muscle tone improved, and millions of mission plans were screaming past his mind at about 200 miles per hour, near as he could tell.

Badson used every ounce of his being not to pay attention to any of them. He’d been Thurgood’s lackey for far too long, and he was going to have his own Pirate Ship. If the captain wasn’t too bright, and they usually weren’t, he would be able to use mind control techniques on him.

The beams stopped, and buzzers began going off.

“I don’t think so!” spat Thurgood.

“What?”

“Your captain is a Citidroid.”

A Citidroid was bred from birth to be a slave to the company. Implants were installed when they were born, and systematically altered throughout their lives, so that a Citidroid was telepathically and electronically connected to the Board of Directors, and the Main Database.

Shit.

“Don’t be so disappointed,” said the attractive woman with the severe hairdo.

Badson looked at her in amazement.

“It’s you?”

“Captain Citidroid 3745 at your service,” she smiled.

“You blend in so well,” he thought, smiling back at her.

To his surprise, her voice was in his mind.

“Yes I do,” she thought. “I think you’re going to like me.”

Badson thought about his youth. He thought about the first time he fell in love. He thought about the first time he made a billion dollars. He thought about his cat. He thought about anything he could think about, so that he wouldn’t think about the one fact that he didn’t want to be thinking about.

He was going to have to throw this girl overboard.

About that, there was no doubt.

Talkback: Post Reply | View replies (0)