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doing staring up at the fucking sky?” he yelled. “The enemy is probably near here somewhere. Get your heads out of your asses and start acting like a military organization. Let’s go! Scouts out! Everyone else, set up a defensible perimeter. Let’s move , people!”
     
     

Anti-Denmark, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date
    “Dude, what’s that up there?” Sergeant Jamal ‘Bad Twin’ Gordon asked, motioning toward a lump 80 feet in front of them.
    “Don’t know,” Sergeant Marcus ‘Spud’ Murphy replied. “Looks like a body. S’pose we ought to check it out?”
    “Beats me, dude. Maybe they leave bodies on the ground here. Looks human, though.” Bad Twin switched to his comm system. “ Hey, Master Chief, it looks like there’s a human body up here. Want us to go check it out? ”
    “ No, I’d like you to wait for the second coming and see if it gets up on its own and starts walking, ” Master Chief replied. “ Of course I want you to check it out, you moron! Just be careful in case it’s booby-trapped. ”
    “ Roger that, ” Bad Twin replied. He looked at Spud. “You heard the man. Let’s go check it out.”
    The soldiers advanced on the body, rifles at the ready, watching for enemy activity.
    Bad Twin reached it first. “Holy shit!” he cried. “It’s Father Z!”
    “Oh, man, someone fucked him up bad ,” Spud said. “Who’d do that to a priest? Medic! ”
    The squad’s medic, Corporal Shaun ‘Lucky’ Evertson, ran up and knelt down next to the body. “Careful,” Spud said; “Master Chief said he might be booby-trapped.”
    “Well, then move back, because I can’t check him out without touching him.”
    Seeing the troopers were more interested in finding out if Father Zuhlsdorf was alive than they were worried about possible booby-traps, the medic shrugged and felt for a pulse in Father Zuhlsdorf’s neck. “I’ll be fu…guys, he’s got a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there.” He started stripping out of his combat suit. “Quick! Help me get him in the suit. I can stabilize him better that way.”
    The three soldiers raced to get the inert priest into the combat suit. As they connected the last seal, the suit came to life, analyzed Father Zuhlsdorf and began injecting him with a variety of analgesics, fluids and life-saving medications.
    “ Can anyone see Lucky? ” Master Chief asked. “ What the fuck just happened to him? His suit is showing him as almost dead. ”
    “ I’m good, ” Corporal Evertson said. “ We just found a human who was near death, so I gave him my suit. It will be close, but it looks like he may make it. ”
    “ It’s Father Z ,” Bad Twin added. “ Looks like someone beat the crap out of him and then shot him with a laser. Of course, that’s after they brought him back from the grave since he was dead and all. ”
    “I’ll need one of your suits, too,” Lucky said, who was monitoring his suit. “My suit isn’t going to have enough meds in its pharmacopeia.”
     
     

Anti-Iran, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date
    “That’s it?” Calvin asked, looking down on the Efreeti capital of Belshazzar. “It doesn’t look like much, considering this is the capital of their home world.” Judging by the geography, Calvin guessed he was somewhere over what would be Iran on Earth. Nightsong had overflown the Black Sea, then Calvin had seen the Caspian Sea go past on the left. The city they were overflying had tall buildings made of adobe and brick, arranged in narrow winding streets. Even though the city spread out to cover a fairly large area, each of the houses had its own enclosed courtyard, so there weren’t as many residences as there would have been in a modern city on Terra. Altogether, the city couldn’t have housed more than 10,000 individuals.
    “Home world?” Nightsong asked as he guided the ship past the city toward an enclosure that housed a number of buildings and looked far more modern. A tall, Efreet-manned wall surrounded the buildings,