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Episode 25 Iqu said very little en route to Base 11, for two reasons: One, Silverbullet was preoccupied turning her hand/forearms into shields to deflect the bullets that were regularly aimed at their stolen truck's tires. As many as a dozen different trucks, cars and a couple of motorcycles filled with weremen were shooting at them, but a bomb would have been dropped from above if it had been known why they were heading toward the base.And two, because the sun was going down. Having to take the long way to Base 11 to evade attack because of Silverbullet's insistence to save a single life and all the attention that good deed drew took up time Iqu considered precious. Silverbullet could appreciate (but given her powers, she didn't worry about) how the month's last full moon night would soon empower all those after them, and obviously one would want to have made it to one's destination before then. Iqu didn't want to painfully remind Silverbullet of this, but for the most part one thought ran through his two brains: If Colonel Kruger's formula to make every night a full moon by opening up a hole between dimensions has so much as a single flaw... Meanwhile, at Base 11 Captain Rancor had the misfortune of explaining the loss of his blood camp to Silverbullet. He had sped to Base 11 rather than stay and go down with the camp, as it were, to bring Colonel Krieg Kruger, leader of the Vampire Empire and the Wolf Pack, the bad news. They had spent the better part of the day playing the surveillance video from the Sin City Arena security system over and over. At first, Kruger couldn't believe what he was seeing, a metallic, afrocentric woman singlehandedly wiping out several werewolves and even a few of his vampire elite. First he sat in the base's screening room, still littered with the corpses of military personnel too thin to be of any interest to the hungry werewolves who took Base 11 on New Year's Eve, in stunned silence. Then, hours later, Colonel Kruger still kept his silence, only he seemed to look increasingly upset at what he kept playing over and over again. Each and every time the video played, Rancor felt another nail hammered into his coffin, which is exactly the effect Kruger wanted. Psychological warfare, even that levied upon a subordinate, was difficult while wearing (as they were) bulky, concealing solar suits designed to give some protection to vampires during the day, but it was working. Captain Rancor actually jumped when his superior officer finally spoke. "Those other extraterrestrials-the ones who's technology we're using to open the window-I want you to bite them." "What, herr colonel?" "You heard me, captain," Kruger raised his voice slightly, "bite the aliens. I've been meaning to see how our venom would react with their system. Besides, if they do become more powerful, then we can use them against this Silverbullet person. This is how we learn, captain. Through the very kind of experimentation done at my camp over 50 years ago." "But those are not Jews, colonel," Captain Rancor protested, "these creatures have blood like acid! It'll hurt to bite them!" "It'll hurt like any punishment should, captain!" Kruger shot to his feet and barked. Even in the solar suit he seemed imposing. "For sounding like a coward now and acting like one last night by leaving a battle to bring me a tape! Now go!" "Sir!" A weremen burst in and interrupted. "A stolen truck from Sin City is on its way here! They're saying a silver woman is deflecting the bullets shot at it!" TO BE CONTINUED |