Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 83

“PREPARE TO FIRE on my order!” Seth screamed to his soldiers. “And summon more backup. I want a full squadron of battle tanks and missile drones! Get me a million squadrons!”

“Anybody moves, they’re dead. Same goes for you, Seth,” I said.

Our eyes locked and held. This was the crucial part of my plan. The next ten seconds or so meant everything, the future of this planet, and probably of Earth. Hey, you can never be too dramatic when you’re psyching yourself up before a battle to the death.

“On Earth, this is what they call a Mexican standoff,” I said. “You move, you die. I move, I die. So how about instead we actually see who is more powerful: Alien? Or Alien Hunter?”

“What are you saying, Daniel?” Seth said.

“You and I fight man-to-man. Man to whatever you are. Winner take all. You win, my warriors disarm and become your slaves. I win, you and your hideous cretins slime back into your flying Dumpster and never come back.”

After all my thinking and searching through annals of every strategy and warfare book ever written, I’d actually gotten the ploy from The Iliad, by Homer. Achilles gets Hector outside Troy ’s walled gates to fight him one-on-one while both their armies watch. Check it out in The Iliad. Great story!

Seth suddenly laughed at me.

“Sounds exciting, except I really don’t care how many of my drones die. How about I just give the fire order and go back and watch the end of 24, the fifth season, on my DVD?”

“Oh, I get it now,” I said, shrugging. “Seth is afraid of a fifteen-year-old. I’m not surprised.”

“What did you just say?” Seth said, putting a claw to his ear.

“You heard me. Gutless. Ugly. Slime-bucket. Horse-headed beast. How can I put it any clearer? Let’s see. You’re totally petrified of me? You’re quaking in your bedroom slippers? You just soiled your undies with the little hearts on them? Isn’t that right, Dumb-Dumb?

Seth, already halfway inside the door of the ship’s elevator, stopped suddenly. “Dumb-Dumb,” he muttered.

“Hold this,” he said, handing his coffee, paper, and robe to one of his hench-creeps.

“Bring down the Earth slaves!” Seth roared. “Watching the death of this fledgling nothing will be a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience for them.”

I resisted the urge to wipe sweat from my forehead, and just about everywhere else on my body.

My plan was working so far, I guessed. I’d used what I’d learned from Seth’s dream to manipulate him. In the dream, he was a little mutant horse-head, and all the other horse-heads were chanting “Dumb-Dumb” at him while he was being humiliated by a horse-head teacher.

Being thought dumb was Seth’s greatest fear. Join the crowd.

And mine? Maybe being torn limb from limb by one of the strongest and most evil creatures in the known or unknown universes.