General Tsav Raton held the Suppay Chair, or lead position, of the general staff, and with it was the military’s representative on the Committee of Ten. Just a glance at Raton was enough for anyone to know they were in the presence of a man who meant business, who when he gave an order it was meant to be obeyed. Raton held every major award bestowed by the Orian military but wore none of them on even his full-dress uniform—he didn’t need to. As soon as someone walked into a room they knew who was the leader, who was in command.
Raton had the insight—it wasn’t a gift, it was learned from trial and error, experience and observation—of what separated the warriors, even the greatest captains, from the soldier-statesman: he could accept the frustration that in politics, unlike the military, you can’t just order people around.
No one outside his immediate family called Raton by his first name: to everyone he was “General.” Yet he never lost the common touch. One of the most famous pictures of Raton from the Bolldog magazine shows him trimming his fingernails with his pocket knife.
He exercised daily, and although in his early nineties, late middle age on Oria, younger men had difficulty keeping up with him. Raton wore a short-sleeve shirt that fit his shoulders, chest and abdomen closely, highlighting his muscular frame. But those forearms: the slightest movement of his fingers, even just picking up a piece of paper, caused the ripple of muscles most men didn’t even know they had—because they didn’t. His arms were also more hairy than most. On some men it would be a little much, but on Raton it just made the muscles look more powerful. The only analogy in the galaxy, probably in the history of the entire Universe, would be a twenty-five year old Mickey Mantle, batting left handed, who had just rolled his wrists to send another ball rocketing into the upper deck of Yankee Stadium. Even Popeye would be jealous.
Raton’s speech was articulate and precise; not fast, not slow, and with no pauses; no “uhs,” no “like,” no “you know.” He was always in control. The general prided himself on knowing every detail; he overlooked nothing. As always, he was meticulously prepared, speaking without notes. “Our two military options will be implemented simultaneously. The first is to step up the fighting here on Oria, to defeat the revolutionaries before Rennedee can return with the nuclear weapons. As recently as last week, we were confident we could successfully end the conflict within six to eight weeks. But if we could step up the fighting, bringing all of our resources to bear, we could possibly defeat them before Rennedee could return.
“However,” Raton noted with a hint of concern, “within just the last few days we’ve noticed a tremendous increase in the intensity of fighting. The revolutionaries have become absolutely tenacious; they will not retreat even a centimeter. Yesterday a battalion of our men engaged a much smaller force outside the resort city of Paytan-Lavowel. From the outset, our numerical superiority and tactical position were obvious to both sides. There were several times they could have made an orderly retreat and saved their men. Several times we asked for their surrender. Not only was our request rejected out of hand, but the rebels were berating, insulting, and cursed profusely. They chose to stand and fight from an obviously hopeless position. When the rebels ran out of ammunition, they used stones and clubs. One of our men had several fingers bitten off. The revolutionaries died to the last man.
“We have never seen fighting like this before. Never. I’ve seen people die for their way of life, their homes, their families, but never quite like this; it is beyond maniacal. They’re not suicidal; they are not sacrificing themselves. There is no retreat, no surrender, no capture. They just fight. It’s as if they consider their lives worthless but at the same time priceless. They fight more like gevaudans than men.”
The gevaudan is a sentient wolverine-like animal larger than a black bear. It can walk on two legs but runs on all four. They are faster than a horse and strike quicker than an upset, three meter long king cobra. Its stiletto-sharp claws can slice open a man’s belly in one swipe. Their teeth and jaws can crush a man’s head and its skull is so strong that it can withstand the blow of a sledgehammer. A small-caliber bullet can’t penetrate its fur. Gevaudans are generally solitary animals, but when attacked by outsiders, will fight in packs. They are known as the most ferocious animal in the Universe. The gulleys and ravines of their heavily-wooded planet make any large-scale operations by conventional military forces impossible. No beings have ever conquered their planet.
A gevaudan’s fur is considered the premier big-game trophy in the galaxy. There is a persistent folklore—or it could be fact—that gevaudans feel the same about man.
Unknown to the Orian military was that the day before he left for Earth, Rennedee had made an “example” of two soldiers who had escaped a skirmish that claimed the lives of their comrades. The soldiers were to receive an “honor” for their heroism and bravery at a meeting in the town square, attended by their families, friends and compatriots. But as they stood on the stage in their uniforms, beaming with pride for their valor, metal spikes exploded up through the wooden floor to impale them. Shrapnel, wooden splinters the size of tent pegs, injured another score among the crowd. One soldier, the lucky one as they said later, died instantly with a spike through his heart and his head. The other poor young man suffered for almost five agonizing minutes, screaming the names of his wife and children, imploring them—anyone—to save him as he slowly exsanguinated. As the horror of the crowd died down, Rennedee announced, “This will be the fate of all cowards, of anyone unwilling to fight to the death for our cause.”
“We will bring all of our resources to bear,” said the general. “All leaves have been canceled, and we are recalling all units within two weeks’ travel of Oria. During this time, we are potentially vulnerable to an outside attack,” and then quickly added, “but the situation here is acute. We are re-distributing our forces along the frontier, and in exchange for future considerations we have received a pledge of support from the Septadians (the ‘Seven Fingers,’ the most powerful society in the galaxy) should we be attacked by the Grog or some other aggressor. But whatever Rennedee has done to energize his men will make it unlikely we can defeat the rebels here within the two to three weeks time. By then Rennedee could return from Earth with the nuclear weapons.”
During Rennedee’s trip to Earth, the revolutionaries were under the command of Cossette Epial-Tese Rodomontade. Whether you liked him, tolerated him, disliked him, couldn’t stand him, hated him, or really, viscerally despised him so much that just thinking about him made you want to hurl, no one could deny that he was a piece of work. He was short and fat with almost no neck, his head just sitting there on top of his shoulders, as if held on by no more than Velcro® or bobby pins. His eyes were the most bug-eyes you ever saw, the left a little more buggy than the right. He also had an unfortunate medical condition with a long name, but was commonly called “the gleets,” that made his skin feel greasy and oily, almost like a frog. His large tongue looked like a piece of raw liver and protruded out from between his lips and teeth even when his mouth was closed. It was impossible to look and him and not think of an over-sized, butt-ugly toad, with that tongue ready to shoot out to grab a cockroach for its next meal.
Rodomontade considered himself to be a ladies’ man and flirted constantly. Unfortunately, his dreadful appearance was exceeded only by his lack of insight. He had little talent and no morals and owed his position as the number two man to his constant flattery of and unquestioned loyalty to Rennedee.
One of Rodomontade’s typical suck-ups to Rennedee was, “It continues to amaze me how you think of all these things, Your Excellency. How can they unjustly deny you the power you have deserved for so long? I know you will win. The people love you.” Rennedee ate it up. Sometimes it wasn’t clear who was manipulating whom.
When not in Rennedee’s presence, his sycophant ways were replaced by constant berating, and verbal and even sometimes physical abuse of those under him. There was incessant boasting about his importance, the power, land, and wealth he would have when the rebels were victorious, and his ultimate place in history. After he had a little too much to drink, which was almost every day, he would say, “No one tells the truth. No one! Rommeler’s