The millers wouldn’t let us inside their wood-fort which Martialla insists on calling a stockade even though everyone knows, thanks in large part to my stunning performance in the stage play A Harlot’s Progress, that a stockade is the thing you put Elizabeth Needham in so the general populace can stone her to death and absolve the government of responsibility of killing her.
[Martialla’s note – you’re thinking of “the stocks” and also you’re not thinking of the right thing anyway because stocks only restrain your feet, what you’re actually thinking of is called a pillory. Stockade is also common parlance for a holding area in the military the equivalent to the county jail.]
Shut up Martialla, stop touching my journal!
I can’t blame the millers for that. I’ve always hated that in movies when the murderers are like “You’re not going to be RUDE and leave us outside where we can’t murder you are you?” and then people cowering behind the door let them in and get murdered because they don’t want to be rude. It’s probably truth in television though because for as awful as people were in my day many of them were also bizarrely accommodating.
By method of wall diplomacy it was established (unless they’re lying and trying to murder us) that the Invincible likely have two more truck patrols in the area and perhaps three dozen fighters at the hydro-plant along with at last three times again that number of laborers. Which is really something to think about.
The Invincible take slaves but we’ve never really seen what things are like in their lands. The people actually working at the hydroplant, are they being forced into servitude and want to be free? Will they fight to save their own lives but otherwise don’t care? Do they love Duke and will throw their bodies into our attack vehicle axels like fanatics? That would be good to know.
Another good question I have is what will the Invincible do when the patrol we wrecked yesterday doesn’t come back? Do they have reinforcements to call on? It’s maybe safe to assume that they’re busy attacking Antolpe so they can control the river crossing to the north. But if the Trollbridge was a no-go how did they get here in the first place? Are they capable of airlifting all this stuff in?
Between milltown, farmtowns one & two, and the logging camps we could round up more fighters than the Invincible but the issue is weaponry. The Invincible at the hydroelectric generator are all the bumpy-headed ones warrior elite and all have real god damn guns. Our superior numbers armed with slingshots and bows isn’t going to cut it.
Making matters worse the millers and such only had a couple vehicles before and now they have none because the Invincible took them as part of their “you work for us now” program. It’s like we’re in some kind of reverse Magnificent Seven. We’re the weaker force but we have to go on the offensive and attack the superior people in their well-defended home.
Martialla and Lucien were debating the feasibility of mounting the Milltertown machine-gun on our Invincible truck and bickering about the best way to use our bridge-bombs when Paul slunk up to me like a constipated alley cat and all but whispered into my ear like it was one of those old timey listening horns. I could feel flecks of his saliva hitting my eardrum.
“If you need weapons I know where we can get some.”
“Oh yeah” I said disinterestedly, assuming he was talking about some rusty knives he found in a gopher-hole.
He nodded solemnly “I figured out where we. Alpha Complex is only a few days to the south.”
“What’s Alpha complex?” I asked with slightly growing interest.
“It’s a Citadel that my sister attacked and razed in twenty-fifty eight.”
“What?!” I shook my head “Your sister? What . . . I, I, I . . . what?!”
Rocket Cat 
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