"Another back-to-back mission! What happened to the Regulations' mandated five-minute rest, debrief, re-brief and all that good stuff? I am not a machine, I am a Mzzit, I need rest! And what about all the other squadron pilots, the brown nosers! Yessir, yessir! Have them fly back-to-back missions!"

Torl took a deep breath and relaxed a bit at the bio-controls, sipping refreshing Spank gratefully while programming the bio-zoid to maintain same course at current speed and altitude for two seconds.

Much needed rest. Dangerous but within tolerances of the current situation. Torl shut down most of his eyes tiredly, leaving just a few open to scan the instruments and any dangers ahead. And dangers there were, to be sure, somewhere ahead. In Quadrant ZZX.

Torl was briefed in-flight (instead of in the Briefing Room-yet another Regs violation!) on the ill-fated scout mission to ZZX with subsequent equally disastrous recovery and rescue missions, four in total. He was also patched through to the bits and pieces of battle transmissions from his fallen comrades. Something about the Snooga, naturally. Torl shuddered. He was the best Snooga Expert 1st Class of the entire 11th Zoid Rapid Descent Division and wore the insignia with considerable pride. He glanced at the stylized image of the Snooga battle craft etched on his thorax. Yes indeed, the prestige of the rank stroked his ego most pleasantly but, to be perfectly honest, he was terrified of the Snooga. Nobody ever managed to find out even what Snoogas were. The Ancients believed them to be Gods, as witnessed by the beautiful ballads, prayers and cathedrals built to warship them. Unfortunately, the devotion of thousands of generations of Mzzits went completely unnoticed by the Snoogas who kept on murdering Mzzits en masse. Currently viewpoint has shifted to a more scientific theory as to the origins and intentions of Snoogas. According to the prevailing party line, they were enemy battleships to be avoided or destroyed. Since nobody ever managed to destroy a Snooga craft as yet, they were to be avoided.

Torl stared at a Snooga schematical on his screen. The enemy battleship was huge! The weirdest looking thing, too. A Snooga was just a perfectly flat and flexible plain with lots of holes in it. The aft of the craft was a long, slim protrusion. That's it. The entire craft was usually roughly a hundred times the size of a Mzzit bio-zoid and roughly a thousand times it's weight. The Snooga would come out of nowhere at considerable speed and crash Mzzits' bio-zoids with incredible force, squashing them flat, killing the zoids and their Mzzit pilots instantly, usually-although there were stories of second strikes to finish off the wounded Mzzits. It is the 2nd strikes that prompted Command to issue the Enemy Judgment on Snoogas. They were enemies-evil, heartless and unfeeling murderers. They knew no mercy. Just flat evil beings flying their huge flat crafts and killing peaceful Mzzits, such as Torl, for example. Torl was a peaceful Mzzit, a husband, a son and a father. So why was he supposed to go alone into a Snooga-infested quadrant? Orders.

The Target Acquisition Monitor came to life with a beep, indicating the proximity of the target quadrant. ZZX was a huge rectangular plain studded with mysterious geometrical objects of various sizes and, yes, covered with lots and lots of organic matter for his people. Oh, will you just look at the riches of this place! The camera, though, did its own target acquisition and zoomed in on the gory remains of one of the Rescue Mission zoids with letters HAP on one of the broken zoid wings. Must be the ship of Lieutenant Zing "Happy" Zong, may he rest in peace. What force would it take to flatten a zoid this way? Incredible, unbelievable, mind-boggling force-enough force to kill a thousand zoids. What an insane and pointless ferocity!

The Proximity Alarm blared suddenly, auto-response instantaneously propelling zoid on evasive trajectory. Torl yanked the controls a nanosecond later, just in time to force in a lateral correction. A beautiful evasive maneuver. Wham! The Snoogist missed its target, smashing the ZZX surface with an incredible bang dislodging all kinds of debris, immediately identified as organic by the main on-board computer.

One of the Mzzit crafts was accounted for and confirmed as total loss with no survivors. There were three more to confirm but all Torl wanted to do now was to GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE FAST! He couldn't, however. Duty. A Mzzit's gotta do what a Mzzit's gotta do.

Snooga re-grouped and was attacking again from the same exact position at the same speed. Evasive maneuver. Wham! Snooga pilot missed again. Idiot! God, how much Torl hated these evil morons! Another attack, another miss, another wham. Cretins!

The Snooga pilot kept his senseless attacks but changed his tactics. The attacks were coming from different directions now. Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Then deafening silence. Torl was not the Expert 1st Class for nothing, he earned his rank in battle. Snooga retreated. Probably reloading back at their base somewhere. Ha-ha! There! Screw you!

Torl made a victory lap around the target area and landed on top of a chunk of organics to recharge his zoid's batteries.

The sudden Proximity Alarm siren was the last sound that Torl ever experienced. Snooga came crashing down out of nowhere. Torl's death was instantaneous.

----------------

"Lay off whackin' them flies, Earl, this minute! Get your fat ass in here! Billy's on Skype!"

Old Earl dropped the fly swatter, got up heavily and wobbled away from the rickety dinner table set up in the back yard next to the decaying remnants of his pappie's old Model T Ford surrounded by decaying remnants of all kinds of other things. Billy, their youngest, their pride, was a Navy pilot fighting them crazy Ai-rabs clear half-way across the world. Earl forgot all about whacking flies, his favorite pastime. He walked to the computer, smiling with anticipation and scratching his sizeable stomach under the usual grungy shirt. Billy's on Skype!