They had only been at Pelican Farm for six hours, but Private Niko had already sensed that something bad was about to descend upon them.
The soldiers were loading crates onto the heavy transports parked behind the main corn silo as the vicious, glaring sun slowly rose overhead.
Sergeant Higaro tossed another crate into Niko's hands and ordered him to shut his beak.
"Of course trouble's coming, you idiot! That's why we're here! That's why we got emergency orders half an hour ago and turned around to race over here! That's why we're busting our backs loading this pile of filthy junk onto the transports so we can pull back to the evacuation point! There's trouble! Real big trouble!"
Niko looked down at the sergeant as though he had just blurted out some scandal about his wife.
"Don't look at me like that!"
Higaro turned and glared at another group of soldiers from the Fourth Militia Regiment, all of whom had stopped working.
"Not one of you!"
He was like an enraged rooster.
"Holy Father forgive me, you lot do nothing but stare wide-eyed and complain. We're the army! We only come to places like this because trouble is coming! I mean, would the generals say, 'Oh, nothing bad will happen there, let's deploy our brave lads there right away!' Would they? Huh? No, they bloody well wouldn't! We're here because we're the army, and people thank us because when trouble comes, we step up! Now, pick up those crates and tell yourselves this..."
Higaro lowered his voice and grinned at his comrades.
"Every one of us is a cold-blooded Killer, the toughest bastard on the block! That thing had better be insanely strong, because when it gets here, it'll find us—and we'll butcher it so many times it'll regret