Thoughts of my horrible dream quickly washed away as I rolled over to look at the ever so beautiful Lily. She woke up a couple minutes after me.

"Have fun last night?" she asked.

"You know it!"

"Honey, we can't let my father find us," she kissed me, "so we got to get back inside."

"I thought you didn't care what your father thought anymore."

"Kin, don't turn me into a hypocrite. I don't feel like dealing with my father right now. Let's milk the cows. That way, if my father asks what we were doing out so early, I just say that I was showing you how to milk a cow."

"Yeah… well I sure milked my cow last night!"

She hit me, than began to laugh and so did I.

"Does everybody from your planet have such a sick sense of humor?"

"Only the witty ones," I replied.

* * *

Lily's lie worked beautifully. Her stubborn father never suspected a thing.

"So, I suppose you've never milked a cow before," Lily's father seemed surprisingly comfortable.

"Nope."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"Yeah… it was very nice."

"But probably not as nice as having sex with my daughter… is it?"

My heart started racing, and I gulped. I looked over at Lily, who was wide-eyed.

From out of the blue, a smile grew on Mr. Rider's face.

"I'm just joking with you, boy!"

"Yeah, I figured… since I definitely did not have sex with your daughter." I was so relieved.

"I'm glad you followed my rule, Kin," he seemed to like me now, "a lot of men have trouble resisting my daughter."

"I can't say that I'm surprised," I looked over to Lily to see her smiling.

We were all one big happy family. Just as I thought that things were only going to get better… they started to get worse.

Someone was knocking on the door and Mr. Rider was the one to answer it.

"Hello," he said.

"Mr. Rider!" exclaimed a young excited man, "you've got to come down to the hospital."

"Why? Did someone get hurt?"

"No… more like something," the young man looked over Mr. Rider's shoulder and saw me, "and bring him along too."

"Who, Kin?"

"Sure… whatever you call him. Maybe he's seen one of these things before."

I was a little curious about what he was talking about… but I think I already knew.

* * *

It was a dead zergling lying on a hospital bed. That was exactly what I had figured. Besides Mr. Rider and I, there were five other men surrounding the bed.

"So… you know what it is, stranger?" the same energetic young man asked me.

"Yup… it's a zergling."

"Pretty damn big," he replied.

"It's a baby," I replied.

Everyone grew a little terrified when I said that.

"A baby?" the young man questioned me, "…This hospital is full of men who had their fucking limbs ripped off by a… baby."

"Uh huh."

I walked over to the zergling and poked at it.
"This is a pretty small one."

"We've never seen these things before…" said a previously quiet older man, "where the hell did they come from? Is it your fault they're here, foreigner?"

"No!" I replied in reflex, "well… yes… and no."

They looked as if they couldn't decide whether or not they were angry.
"Explain," demanded the young man.

I told them the entire story from the point of the proposed alliance up until now (cutting out the steamy scenes with Lily). No one seamed to doubt my story at any point. That dead zergling lying on one of the hospital beds was proof.

Everyone was silent for about a minute, thinking about what they could possibly do. No matter how long any of us thought, there would be only one possible solution, and it would be a very difficult one.

"We have to kill them," the old man broke the silence, "We have to kill the Zerg. There is no other way."

"How the hell are we going to do that!?" demanded the talkative young man, "that one baby caused hell. There are probably twice as many Zergs in that ship than there are people in this village!"

"How did you kill this zergling?" I asked.

"We shot an arrow at it," explained the old man, "We tried swords, but we couldn't take it on close range. We shot the arrow when it wasn't looking."

"So you took it by surprise," I explained, "or you could say you outsmarted it…. The Zerg may be stronger than us. The Zerg may be faster than us. But we have the biggest advantage over them… intelligence."

* * *

We arranged all the men and some of the women who wanted to go, together. This would have to be our attack force. It was about a hundred people, mostly farmers. One of these people, to my disappointment, was Lily. I tried to talk her out of it in fear that she might get hurt or worse, but she persisted on going.

We had about five travelers sent out to search for the ship. A day later they came back with the discovery of the ship. It was about fifty miles south of the village.

Everybody was made a bow, ten arrows, and a hunting knife. The bows made were very powerful long bows. A good shot from one of them was much more powerful than that of a gun.

The attack plan was to go straight for Razavar. Once their Zerg leader was killed, the Zerg wouldn't know up from down. They would most likely start attacking each other.

Before we went on the mission, a huge good luck party was thrown.

* * *

The party was held the night before we would depart, and it was wonderful. The folk music played by a local band was easy on the ears and the food was delicious.

I danced with Lily the whole night, with her father's consent of course.

"Lily," I said during one of the slower songs, "I think that maybe you should reconsider going on this mission."

"Kin," she replied, "we've been over this a million times. I'm going, end of story."

"I just don't want you to get hurt."

"I know honey. Don't worry, I'll be fine."

"You don't know what these Zerg are like."

"Neither does anyone else in this village. I'm a tough bitch. You should know that from a couple nights ago."

I smirked at her.
"Yeah."

"Speaking of a couple of nights ago… I was thinking that maybe we could take a visit back to the barn. And you know…"

"Milk some cows?"

"Yeah."

I smiled.
"Let's go."

Chapter Eight

We left the village at the crack of dawn and began our journey. It took us till noon to arrive at the ship.

The ship was parked out in the middle of nowhere. The outside looked fine, but I knew by now that the inside would look… very Zerg. It would be covered in slime and cocoons would most likely be hanging from the roof. It would be dark in there too, since the Zerg weren't crazy about light. A chill was sent down my spine when I thought about what it was going to be like in there. It would be like so many horror movies that I'd seen, except it would be real…

Fear wasn't going to help out the situation; bravery would. I decided to give a motivational speech, because no one looked very stable.

"Look," I said, "I know you're all terrified, and I gotta admit… I'm a little scared too. But you have to put that aside for the next few hours. I've been in the military for quite a while. I don't imagine you know what the military is, so let's just say we're like a large army of warriors. If there's one thing I've learned while in the military it's this… believe you will live… and you will live; believe you will die… and you will die. The Zerg are literally dumber than our five-year-old children! They are just a bunch of animals! Animals aren't on top of the food chain, now are they? No! We're on top of the fucking food chain! So let's kill those overgrown bugs!"

Everybody cheered. My speech really motivated them, and I was quite proud of myself for it.

"Go!!!" I yelled and pointed to the ship. To my surprise the entrance was open. We charged through it, and it that moment I realized why it was open….

Razavar knew we were coming.

To Be Continued...