Battlefield Earth

He told the Russian Coordinator the orders for the Russian officer. In a very gingerly, alert fashion they began to strip the Brigantes, going over their monkey skin uniforms for knives and concealed weapons, which abounded.

They were in the process of tying the descendants of the long-ago mercenaries when Captunk Arf Moiphy pleaded, “You min ufl attembt to my wounded?”

Jo

Smiling and gratified he threw down the club and turned to a Russian so his hands could be retied.

"Thanunk you,” he said.

Part XVIII

Chapter 1

Bittie MacLeod, carrying a blast rifle as tall as himself, followed along behind Sir Jo

Sir Jo

And Bittie admitted to himself that it did look dangerous! There must be twenty-five hundred or three thousand of these people scattered around this clearing deep in the forest.

They had landed at the top edge of the open space. The prisoners– ooh, how they had stunk up the ship!– had been held in a lump in the big marine attack plane, well separated from their weapons, and when they landed, the prisoners had been put on the ground first. Then Sir Robert had looked over the place and made some defense dispositions to cover their possible retreat as was proper for a War Chief.

Bittie had taken the opportunity of persuading Sir Jo

It had been hard to get Sir Jo

Sheets of water were marching across the wide clearing full of people. Somebody had cut down an awful lot of trees and burned them sometime past. The blackened stumps stood all about. A crop was half-grown but these people were ru

Bittie looked about him through the rain. These creatures did not fit into his sense of fitness of things. He had read quite a bit in his school– he liked the very old romances best– and he hadn't ever encountered anything like this!

There were no old men or old women. There were quite a few children in various bad, unhealthy conditions-potbellies, scabs on them, dirty. Shocking! Didn't anyone properly feed them or clean them up?

Men they passed gave them a fu

They seemed to speak some strange kind of English like they had oatmeal in their mouths. He knew he didn't talk really good English, not like university men such as Sir Robert, nor as good as Sir Jo

Where were they headed? Oh, toward that big lean-to that had a leopard-skin-sort-offlag on a pole in front of it. Bittie saw they had been following the prisoners who were still under guard, probably being taken to their chief.

This was a pretty awful kind of people. They simply halted wherever they were, right in the path, and relieved themselves. Awful. Over there a young man had thrown a girl down and they were...yes, they were! Fornicating right out in public.

Bittie turned his head away and tried to purify his thoughts. But the direction he turned showed him a man making a child do something unspeakable.

He began to feel a little ill and walked much closer to Sir Jo

Bittie followed Sir Jo

He had a fu

The creature they had captured, Arf, was standing in front of the fat man. With a fist beat on his chest, Arf was making a report. What was he calling the fat man? General Snith? Wasn't "Snit" a Psychlo common name? Wasn't “Smith” the common English name? Terrible hard to tell with that oatmeal accent. The general was chewing on a haunch of something and didn't seem much impressed.

Finally the general spoke: "Didjer gitcher serplies? The sulphur?”

“Well, no,” Arf said and tried to tell it all again.

“Didjer bring bock yer stiffs?” the general said. Stiffs? Stiffs? Oh, bodies!

This "captunk" Arf seemed to get a bit scared and back up.

The general hurled the haunch straight at him and hit him in the face with it! "Howjer oxpect ter eat, den!” screamed the general. Eat? Stiffs? Bodies? Eat? Their own dead?

Then Bittie looked down at the thrown “haunch” that had ricocheted toward him. It was a human arm!

Hurriedly Bittie got out of there and got back of the lean-to and was very sick at his stomach.

But Sir Jo

Sir Jo

Who were they looking for now? The rain was coming down and these people were racing around and the blast rifle was very heavy and getting heavier. Oh, the Coordinators!

They found them in another lean-to, a pair of young Scots...wasn't one of them a MacCandless from Inverness? Yes, he thought he recognized him. They sat there, soaking wet even under cover, their bo

Sir Jo

So Sir Jo