The wooden fort crouched on a hillside overlooking the snow covered valley could have been in the American Wild West in the nineteenth century rather than the twenty-third. It could have even have been Washington or perhaps north of the border in British Columbia, Canada with the towering mountains stretching across the horizon but was neither.
New Seattle, the fortified village of a little over a thousand humans was so far removed in distance and time. Except for Jordan Wittenburg and the handful of Generation 4 centenarians, the inhabitants had forgotten their ancestry. They didn't know the significance of the two flags that blew with equal prominence from the corners of the fort's four-meter high log walls. One was a light blue with white circle of symbols around the center, the long forgotten United Nations and the other was merely called The Stars and Stripes. The history of both had been purposely withheld from Generation 5 eighty years earlier by an unanimous vote in the Survival of Humanity Protocol.
But the two flags survived to represent the last bastion of humanity on the entire planet of Delpe, hundreds of light years from their ancestors" "home" of Earth, information also withheld from the younger generations.
On this 16th day of February 2248, True Time, the inhabitants had more pressing problems on their minds. A scout had returned with important information. The clickers were already across the international boundary at the New Colorado River. Over the summer and fall, the lower plains had been evacuated as the enemy had moved through the human state. Worse, though, were the creatures" new body suits equipped with thermal heating so their cold blood could remain functional in the winter climate that normally froze them into immobility. It was also believed twenty or more flying females were assembling behind the front line. This was unusual as these females were normally only used for reproduction of the species.
The native inhabitants of the planet were only slightly shorter than a human and stood on two legs with the other four limbs used like human arms. In intelligence, they were equal to the humans but lacked any kind of morality or conscience to go with it. Old Jordan Wittenburg called them giant ants, another word lost in antiquity, but to the succeeding generations they were simply clickers because of the sound they supposedly made when they were annoyed or surprised. Most Generations 6 and 7 could speak Crucnon but preferred to converse in English, the language of their ancestors. The alphabet the enemy used was identical to theirs but the theory was that clickers had stolen it more than a century earlier to replace a less functional hieroglyphics. Nobody, though, could give a reason why the structure of both languages were similar, in fact Crucnon was closer in syntax to English than Russian, an Earth language that had been phased out two generations earlier.
However, more practical problems were being discussed in the besieged village that day. Andrea Jurjevics, the Proctor, dressed in her usual blue jeans and red woolen pullover, sat in the underground council chambers and frowned.
"What else have you found out, Ron?" she asked.
The Generation 6 man wiped a somewhat dirty hand across his brow and grimaced. "They have mechanical vehicles on gigantic wheels that can travel up our highway from the river in a few hours. The ones we saw can hold twenty or more clickers and have reinforced bars at the front. I believe they intend to batter our walls down or perhaps surround New Seattle and starve us into surrender." "Have they learned to manufacture gunpowder in sufficient quantities to make explosive weapons, yet?"
"I don't believe so," Ron Cotterell replied. "The mechanical vehicles have been seen pulling gigantic catapults on skids. I earnestly believe they are preparing for one last attack on our walls. By attacking in mid-winter they are hoping to catch us with our defenses down."
"I see," muttered Commander Toby Evans, the tall gray-headed officer who was head of the village's Defense and Police Force, colloquially called the DPF. "This supports other information I have gathered."
Andrea glanced up but refrained from inquiring how Commander Evans gained his information. It was believed he had contact with an underground clickers" movement that supported coexistence on the planet with humans. She, instead, glanced around at the members of the Inner Council and spoke in a hushed voice.
"It appears we have little time, Fellow Councilors, " she said. "We may need to prepare to evacuate New Seattle and withdraw to the caves beneath the mountains."
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