[Act] Invade

well I have been working on this for a few weeks and I finished the first draft so here we go please enjoy and tell me if I need to change anything or any tips on improving it in anyway
quick overview:
it begins in Roswell,NM in 1947 aliens crash land, 60 years later more aliens land and take over most of the earth then 3 years after good aliens land and the war to recapture earth begins.
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INVADE



A man is out on his horse in rural New Mexico, he dismounts and starts a fire he brings out a pan and fries up some bacon. He looks up to see the night sky filled with billions of stars, a shooting star streaks across the sky.

“Did you see that,” he said to his horse.

He continued to watch as the space rock fell from the sky. With a loud crash the object struck the earth just west of his camp site.

“That reminds me Saint-Lô three years ago,” he said with a look of worry on his face, “let’s go check it out Baine.”

He quickly put out the fire and jumped up on to the saddle and spurred the horse on to the site of the space rock. Before he arrived he found a long scar on the earth where the space rock slid on the ground. As he approached the object he saw that it was glowing he also noticed that it was not a rock at all but metallic in nature.

“Woah what is that,” he asked with pure shock in his voice.

He dismounted and slowly walked up to the metal ship. It opened with blinding light. The man drew his revolver, and advanced extremely slowly. The light from the ship dimmed.

“Who is that,” the man asked nervously.

“No time,” the creature said with agony, “earth in trouble, they are coming.”

“Who are you,” the man asked, “who is coming?”

“Must prepare,” it said as it started to cry, “build the plans, save your people.”

The alien crawled out on his belly and to the man, reaching his hand out. The man just stood looking at the alien stunned, it was red, lying on the ground he looked about 6’ 11” easy, very thing, the head was big the size of a watermelon it eyes were near the chin what looked like ear holes were on its forehead cone like appendages above the eyes looked like the ears and nose under the chin the mouth was between the cones and holes, it had four legs that looked like elephant feet very short though the arms were just above them and extraordinarily long, it was warring a white tunic with a green sash that had some sort of lettering on it, a white helmet with a green strip going around the whole thing with the same lettering, and some basic black pants on, no shoes at all.

“My god,” the man said, after a few more seconds of gawking he jumped on the horse turned it around and dashed for the nearest town all in one second. A one hour ride gave him time to think, ‘would anyone believe me’, ‘what should I do’, ‘that fellow needs a doctor’. He decided to get a doctor and then call his old army buddies.

The next morning he woke up next to the space craft the doctor and his friends franticly trying to save the poor alien’s life.

“There is nothing more I can do,” said the doctor solemnly, “he is dead.”

“We tried our best,” said one of the friends, “all three of them died.”

Dust began to rise from the east; something was heading toward the men. A motorcade stopped next to the men and the aliens, one car and three big trucks in all. A clean primed and pressed general stepped out of the car and look around at the men, the dead aliens and then the ship. He walked over to the doctor look in his eyes for a few seconds and turned.

“Alright men,” he said in a commanding voice, “load the bodies into one truck and the ship into another put these gentlemen into the last one, and don’t let them leave.”

The men were escorted in to the back of the truck and the dead bodies and ship were loaded in to the other two, while this was happening the General walked over to the back of the truck and stepped inside, he look around at everyone and smiled.

“Hello,” he said with a smile on his face, “I want all your names, now.”

“I’m Lester Kroderwitz,” said the doctor, the General took out a note pad and scribbled something quickly.

“Stan Martin,” said one of the man’s friends, the General wrote something again.

“Hank Are,” another friend said, the General wrote again.

“Sylvester Baker,” the last friend said, the General looked at Sylvester with a puzzled look on his face but wrote anyway.

“Charles Siegrist,” the man said, the General wrote for the last time.

“Thank you,” the General said while putting his note pad away, “you will now be processed and hopefully released soon; I will see you Gentlemen later good bye.”

He jumped out of the truck and slapped the back, the signal for the truck driver to begin driving and he did.

“What have you gotten us into Charles,” asked Stan

“What,” Charles asked shocked, “I didn’t know that this was going to happen, if I did do you really think I would have called my best friends to come share my fate?”

“It will be alright if we look out for each other,” said Hank, “just like Saint-Lô all over again.”

“What about him,” Sylvester asked as he point to the doctor, who was now crying.

Charles got up and walked to him and knelt down so he could see Lester’s face, “listen Lester, we are going to be fine, the General just needs to know what we know, that’s it, and the we can go home.”

“I am never going to see my family again,” said Lester.

“That is not true,” said Charles, “we will be out of this in no time.”

He stopped crying and looked around at everyone’s reassuring faces, “thanks you guys you make me feel much better.”

“No problem,” Hank said while patting him on the back.

An hour after they left the crash site they stopped. Talk could be heard outside other random noises could be heard as well. The back door was unlocked and the men were led out into a building, there they were separated into four rooms. Charles was the first to be interrogated. The General walked in still looking as sharp as he did at the crash site.

“Hello,” he looked at his note pad, “Charles is it?”

“Yes,” Charles retorted.

“Good,” said the General, “now answer my questions quickly and honestly, and we can get you out of here.”

“Yes sir,” Charles said.

“Which one of you was the first one on the scene,” he asked shortly.

“I was.”

“Good,” said the General, “did the aliens try to communicate with you?”

“Yes sir.”

He looked up from his note pad and asked nervously, “could you tell what they wanted?”

“It was only the one that talked,” Charles corrected, “He was babbling on about some danger and that earth had to get ready by building a fleet.”

“I see,” said the General, “did he happen to say what we are to build?”

“Yes,” Charles said, “as a matter of fact he said the plans were in the ship.”

“Good, good,” said the General, “you may go now.”

“What of my friends?”

“Yes we have no need for them guard let the rest of them out as well.”

The men were released and parted ways only seeing each other two more times in life.

The world moved on from aliens. The Crash soon became myth; all discounted it as a mire hoax or apparition. Sixty years later few believed in or had time to think about aliens; least of all a man who had just retired from the military and was signing up for classes to become a website designer.

“Mr. Siegrist,” a woman called out through a speaker.

A man stepped up to the desk, warring a white tee-shirt and blue jeans, his hair jet black with a light back beard and mustache covering his cleft chin, he handed the woman a piece of paper. Her desk already cluttered with papers and other office supplies spread out across her table, the pencil/pen holder was the only think keeping the mound of papers on the desk, there were particularly high winds that day. She glanced at the paper and then looked at her computer then she typed something, after a second she looked back at Mr. Siegrist.

“I see Haradin, is it?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“This looks fine I’ll place you in these classes this semester.”

“Thank you,” he said with a smile. He turned around and left the building a gust of wind blew and in Haradin’s face.

“Damn New Mexican sand,” he muttered to himself, and then spat on the street.

He walked over to his car and pressed the button to unlock the doors. He looked up and saw a large white object heading straight toward him. He ran away back to the college building. The ship crushed his car and several others. After a minute of staring the ship opened, a bright light shown out from within, and out stepped aliens warring battle armor and holding a strange type of gun.

“Holly crap Grandpa wasn’t lying,” he muttered to himself, “they look just like he described.”

The aliens looked around at everyone staring at them. A nod was given to by one of the first out. They cocked their weapons and began to fire at everyone and everything. Haradin ducked behind a car and grabbed out his cell phone to call his old CO Major Herbert Kroderwitz.

“Hello,” said Herbert.

“Sir,” said Haradin desperately, “you need to mobilize your force and get down to in front of the community college right now!”

“Why?”

“Aliens are attacking!”

The car was hit and blew up tossing Haradin onto the grass and the phone against the wall, breaking it. When he came to an alien had him by the ankle and was dragging him toward the ship. He let go and fell to the ground a bullet in his head. The Major and his men slaughtered all the aliens.

“Thank you sir,” said Haradin as he got to his feet.

“Don’t thank me yet,” said Herbert fearfully, “more pods are landing all over the world, we are being invaded!”

Haradin quickly rejoined the army. In the early stages things looked good, but they were only dealing with lightly armored scout troops, the main invasion fleet landed three months later with artillery, tanks, and more heavy duty armor for the infantry. Soon all humans were pushed back to Egypt, the ones who stayed behind the retreat died. The Aliens were ruthless and the people of earth were tired and scared. Three years after the main invasion fleet landed all seemed hopeless. The battered and hardened Earth Defense Force was on its last legs, and could not fight anymore.

Hope was gone. Happiness was gone. The will to fight was gone. All that was around Haradin was sadness, despair, and fear.

“Look,” shouted someone, “a pod, we are done for.”

“Everyone,” Haradin started, “it has been a long time since we had safety and peace, let’s not end this cowering for our lives; let them say of us that we fought and died defending our people and our land; that we did not go out with a wimper but with a roar, come on who is with me?”

“They will just spin it however they want,” said a woman, “we should just give up and they might let us live.”

Haradin sat down disappointed, his great hero speech failed. The pod fell from the sky and all the people cried they knew that this was the end, the end of humanity and their way of life.

The pod landed, and promptly opened the blinding light flooded the last human strong hold. It dimmed and out walked one of them, no one fired a shot, they just gave up.

“Humans,” the aliens said in a loud booming voice, “it is time.”

“Good,” said the woman, “can you please not kill us?”

“We are not here to kill you,” the alien replied, “we are here to help you defeat those from Kragore IV, we are from Kragore V.”

“What,” asked Haradin as he jumped up and ran over to the aliens, “you are here to help us?”

“Yes human,” replied the alien, “They have gone to far this time they must be stopped.”

“You know why they have attacked us,” asked the woman.

“Yes, it is because you did not say thank you.”

“Thank you for what,” asked Haradin.

“Those pyramids over there, they helped build them,” replied the Alien, “and your people did not say thank you.”

“War over a thank you,” asked Haradin.

“It is customary,” the alien said mater-of-factly.

Haradin turned around and looked at the small band of humans, scruffy and dirty, tired and weak; there was no way they could win on their own. The aliens where offering help Haradin was going to take it.

“No more will we be made to die on the battle field we will kill the aliens,” Haradin said he looked at the alien next to him, “the bad aliens not these ones.”

The retreat ended there the very next battle with the human-Kragorian coalition won; the humans began to recapture earth. Hope was returned, and the initiative was taken. Earth would be retaken.
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I have ideas for part 2 that will be cool I might start writing tonight.

This has got to be one of the best short stories I have ever read!!!!

thank you I'm working on part 2 right now but it's not quite ready yet

So Earth is attacked and beaten back to Egypt some more aliens land, oh no what will happen???
THIS:

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PART 2
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Haradin and the alien forces leader, Zikzuku, laid plans to recapture the earth. The oil fields of the middle east were the first place they needed to recapture, to power there gas powered vehicles and the aliens lightly armored scout units.

The Sinai Peninsula was lightly defended the men and aliens attacked and ripped through with no problems. They attacked north to what was Israel, the farm land and factory space was put to immediate use, building weapons of war and feeding the people and aliens. Jordan fell quickly; all the humans who stayed were found in a large pile, burning.

“Haradin,” Zikzuku said apologetically, “I am sorry for what has happened here.”

“We will make them pay,” Haradin said with resolve, “America and the Middle East may have their problems, but we are all Humans and we all need to learn to live together in peace that includes the aliens that are attacking us.”

Huge garrison forces lay before them in Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia but with most of the world’s oil laying in these few countries it was a necessary sacrifice to all the ones who would die in the campaign.

The attack into Iraq began, with the stellar bombers of the Kragorian Stellar Fleet (KSF) bombing the areas not near the oil fields. The ground attack began, one million men and women, fighting fit ran at the enemy, though heavily shelled the defenders put up quite a struggle, making the attackers pay for every inch of land with blood. The first oil field was captured with seventy seven thousand casualties; the Kragorians began their attack with fifty thousand to the second and third oil fields.

“Zikzuku we can’t continue like this,” said Haradin worriedly, “all the reserves of humans have been tapped out.”

“I know of a way,” Zikzuku said, “I can’t let the humans die, but I cannot take you anywhere else to live; gather your women and I will do the rest.”

The women were gathered together and taken to a ship where eggs were extracted.

“What now,” asked Haradin.

“The men must be gathered now,” Zikzuku answered, “they must be harvested as well to make human babies.”

“So what happens after that?”

“We will combine them in the Genetic Growth Accelerator.”

“So they will grow twice as fast then?”
“No, they will grow one year for everyday they are in the Chamber.”

“So they will stop growing so fast once they leave the chamber,” Haradin asked.

“That is correct.”

Three days later the report came in, second and third oil fields were captured, the attack had gone so well the rest of the countries in the area where captured. From Israel to India was left undefended and easily taken by the humans. The Kragorians attacked Europe and stalled; the humans reentered Africa and captured it.

Five more years of warfare and only two continents were left, North America and Australia. The Kragorians volunteered Australia because it was like their home planet. The Humans went for North America.

“My brothers,” Zikzuku announced, “we will advance on Australia soon-”

“I thought we already had Austria,” asked a grunt.

“We do,” replied Zikzuku, “we are taking a different place that is named similarly, but the place we are going looks nothing like the place we have been.”

“Why do they have similar names?”
“Focus,” yelled Zikzuku, “this place is going to look and feel like home-”

“Sir,” said a Kragoian with a note.

“What,” he asked.

“A message from India,” said the messenger, “the Bregans are attacking.”

“You have got to be kidding,” Zikzuku said to himself, “change of plans, we are going to attack the Bregan forces in India”

“But I wanted t-”

“We are going to India and I don’t want to hear another word against it!”
The Kragorian forces left for India immediately. While in North America humans attempted to retake the continent with the Grown Army, as it was known, but the supply of unaltered men and women, was running low the humans as a whole were at fourteen million while the number of unaltered humans were at just less than one million. All the fighting was done by the Grown Army and the unaltered humans settled back into their normal routines like nothing was happening; Haradin still lead the Armies of man, he knew that even though these people where just fast grown, they where humans too, though most did not share this feeling, treating them like slaves.

The Grown Army marched through the sparsely defended Canadian North in a forest.

“Hey guys, people,” yelled a man from the side of the road.

“STOP THE COLUMN,” Haradin ordered, “who said that?”

“It was I, King John Kuddles,” said John.

“King of whom” asked Haradin.

“King of all humans,” he replied.

“How many do you have with you,” Haradin asked.

“Sixty-eight,” Kuddles replied.

“Ok well I have thirteen million under my command, so I think I control a little more of humanity than you.”

“Fine we will join you.”

“No,” Haradin said quickly, “HAGL 2-7701 take your fellow humans to safe camp NA 2-7.”

“Yes sir,” said 2-77001, he saluted and walked with his men and the only other survivors of the Bregan invasion.

The rest of the Grown Army marched east to Quebec so they could flank the plain line made up by a series of fortifications in the plain region of the former United States.

The Advance Probe lead by 1-0002, the second grown human to be decanted, left soon after 2-77001 was turned back to the settle camp.

The battle to draw the attention to 1-00002 and away from Haradin started. Bregan defenses held fast while the humans lost more and more men, more than Haradin had hoped. If they didn’t get reinforcements they would have to withdraw leaving Haradin’s forces wide open to attack. The call to Haradin for a few more men was placed, but the request was denied due to the highly defensible plain line. The men and women would be whipped out. 2-77001 over heard on the radio about the failed battle.

“Excuse me sir,” said Kuddles, “are we not going to help them?”

“It is my mission to get you to the settle camp,” said 2-77001.

“Wait, our human brothers are dying, you have to help save them,” questioned Kuddles.

“That is not my mission,” 2-77001.

“We are all someone’s kid you need to save them.”

“Are you kidding,” said 2-77001, “I was ‘born’ and grew up in twenty-two days, I can barely pass as human, let’s get going now.”

“You know what a human would do right now,” Kuddles asked, “He would save them.”

2-77001 made up his mind, he wanted to be human, he turned his men around and moved to 1-00002’s position.

“That’s more like it, eh, what is your name?”

“Two dash seven seven zero zero one,” said 2-77001.

“That is no name,” said Kuddles, “your name will be Charles.”

“Charles,” said 2-77001, “let’s get there friend.”

Charles’ men arrived and blustered 1-00002’s forces and the line held, until Haradin hit the Bregan flank, that is when Charles and 1-00002 made progress and took out bunkers and defensive positions.

The line fell and all Haradin’s men gathered.

“Good work 2-77001,” said Haradin, “you disobeyed an order but without you we would have lost”

“It’s Charles now Haradin,” said Charles, “and thank you sir.”

“You named yourself?”

“King Kuddles named me.”

“Right,” said Haradin, “Kuddles you need to leave now, 12-29436 will escort you to the nearest settle camp.”

“Sir,” said 9-45039, “Zikzuku has retaken India.”

“Good,” said Haradin, “the last push will be on Australia, so pack up cause we need to be there.”

“Yes sir,” said Charles, “I’m glad for fight for my planet.”

“You are a good man Charles,” he smiled, “let’s go.”
Haradin and the Grown Army wiped up the rest of the defenders at the plain line, after they left North America for India, where the Kragorians were waiting to invade and capture Australia. The Fleet transporters where damaged and needed repairs so the humans and Kragorians took amphibious landing craft to the outback. In a few days the land mass came into sight, and they could see the burning ruins of the city of Perth. Haradin peeked his head over the ship’s rails and looked at Perth’s harbor 'look at all of them' he thought to himself, 'how will we win?' He looked at Zikzuku and at his men, "FULL SPEED AHEAD," he yelled after a minute and the ship began to move toward the harbor.

“Fire the Ion Canons,” Charles called out when the ships began taking fire from the coast.

As the ships came even closer and closer to the sandy beaches the warriors, readied themselves loading their bandoliers with plasma grenades and extra ammunition and loading the rifles and sub machine guns, they would soon kill with.

“Are you ready to do this Zikzuku,” asked Haradin.

“I am adequately armed,” Zikzuku replied, “I am ready.”

“I hope you live through the recapture,” said Haradin.
“And I hope you live as well.”

“Good luck sirs,” Charles said from behind, then walked away.

While the attack on Perth was raging street by street other units were attacking Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Darwin and Hobart. After the cities were won, the advance inland began, but no enemies where found until they hit Alice Springs a defensive zone had been set up and the Bregans were just buying time before the main people of their armies and other important people who just happen to be their escaped by transporter. The Bregans fell back and most died.

With the help of the Kragorians, the Bregans were kicked off of earth.

“Thank you Zikzuku,” said Haradin.

“We only helped because they did to us what you did to them,” said Zikzuku.

“Really,” Haradin said with worry, “so what happens now?”

“We have defeated them, the war is finished.”

“What,” asked Charles, “that is it, I demand vengeance for all my fallen brothers and revenge for the near genocide of we humans.”

“We have what we want Charles,” said Haradin, “I don’t think we should press them any further.”

“Kragorio would be willing to take some of their planet if the humans would like to help,” said Zikzuku.

“Really, Charles you would risk more of your brothers to fight a fight we have won.”

“Yes.”

“I want revenge too,” said Haradin, “I’m in for and assault on Brega.”

The plans were laid and the arrangements made, the planet Brega V would be attacked and captured by the humans and the Kragorians.
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what will happen next? I'm so excited!!!!

okay :'( this is that sad conclusion of Invade please be kind to it.
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PART 3

Without consulting anyone about anything Haradin prepared to attack the far off planet of Brega V. The ships that would take the Kragorians and the Grown Army to Brega V arrived in Australia quickly. Haradin looked at his planet; he remembered the burning piles of human bodies in the Middle East, and he grew angry.

“Come on Charles,” said Haradin angrily, “we need to make them pay with their planet.”

“Haradin,” said Zikzuku, “are you sure you want to do this?”

“I am.”

“Remember in Jordan you said you wanted piece for your people,” said Zikzuku.

“I remember,” replied Haradin, “I also said I wanted revenge for my fallen comrades.”

“I see then I will ready the fleet.”

Zikzuku ran aboard the command ship. Charles looked around and realized that he most likely never see this planet again. Haradin and Charles walked onto the command ship, while the Grown army and the Kragorian forces filled up each of the stellar transport ships. They blasted off, leaving the Earth behind. Three years of space travel gave the armies time to hone their skills and to their objective the star system Brega. One more day on they reached the planet Brega V. The war to wipe out the Bregans would begin soon, and the revenge of the destruction of earth would be complete, Charles smiled at the thought, but first something had to be done about the planetary defenses, the Ion turrets and Solar rays would not be easy to get around or attack, the Bregans already knew they were there by the extra solar vehicles detection blanket that is posted in their outer most asteroid belt. The planetary defenses were punched through with ease.

“Sir,” said a grunt in the Kragorian ranks, “where should we land?”

“A big open area,” Zikzuku replied.

“What about that desert down there,” he asked.

“No we have creatures on board that cannot stand such solar power.”

“Well that is a big open spot,” he replied.

“I don’t care don’t land there,” Zikzuku said annoyed, “find a place with green fields.”

“What about the Green Sea?”

Zikzuku looked at him, “can we land on water?”

“No sir.”

“So don’t land in the water,” Zikzuku said, “land in a place with a nice open flat area, no water, and no desert,” he began to walk away, “and make sure it is flat.”

“Yes sir.”

The landings began; the landing crews had chosen a very parched piece of green area.

“Hay we have no source of water near here,” Haradin said to Zikzuku.

“What,” he said questioningly, “oh come on I meant don’t land in water not don’t land where there is no water.”

“We will need to attack an urban center take the water from there,” said Charles.

“Agreed,” said Haradin, “you guys better get to your sectors.”
Charles and Zikzuku left. Haradin with half the Grown Army headed to the City to the north, he did not know the name, but his men needed water and he was going to get it for them.

He and his men moved forward, the rocky craggy terrain hampered movement a bit, but the men needed to move forward. Pops suddenly rang out in front of them, his forces charged forward to the next ridge through the hail of plasma and ion weaponry, Haradin stopped and looked back, many of his men and friends had fallen and the enemy was advancing toward him. There was no choice he and the remainder of his forces had to surrender and hope for the best from the Bregans. The Bregans approached.
“Hold it,” Haradin said as the Bregans came close, “we surrender.”

“Surrender,” the Bregan officer asked, “I see, take these men to the prison in Fnologa, we will wait for the rest to attack the Capital.”

“Yes sir,” a grunt said.

They were marched to the Capital, one hundred thousand were left out of the four million he had, it was a massacre and Haradin was ashamed.

“Sorry sir,” 5-48394 said, “we let you down.”

“No 5-48…,” Haradin started, “I’m going to called you David, no David I failed you, we were too eager to take the city we didn’t do any recon, we should have, it was my fault.”

“We need to do something about this,” said 13-33295, “I demand action.”

“No Stan,” said Haradin defeatedly, “we need to just sit back and hope for the best.”
“Can we choose our own names,” 8-32342 asked.

“Do whatever, I don’t care,” Haradin said, “I’m a frailer.”

The Growns began talking amonst themselves while Haradin walked as if he wanted to die. They finally walked into the city, where they boarded a planetary transport and left the Capital. Four hours later they arrived at a remote location, it was snowing with mountains all around them and they skies permanently cloudy. Survival without provision would be next to impossible, and with Haradin still feeling like crap, they would not be escaping soon. After a week some of the men came to Haradin.
“Haradin,” said David, “what are we going to do now?”

“Whatever you want, I don’t care,” said Haradin.

“Sir we have a plan,” said Stan, “Wendy came up with it.”
“Which one of you is Wendy?”

“Me sir,” said a woman in the back, “formerly 10-84395.”

Haradin poked his head up and looked at Wendy, “well hell if Wendy came up with we should do it, what’s the plan?”

The morning inspection was their best chance to rally an escape, they were let out and people walked forward, the Bregans began to search everything, the humans attacked and knocked out some of the guards and stool their guns, executing them in the process.

When all the guards in the inside were taken care of Haradin yelled, “to the outside!”

Everyone dashed for the doors but they were headed off by bregan defenders, the Ion guns they picked up made easy work of them. They ransacked the prison and let every human out. The doors were broken down and the only thing that separated them from freedom was the large front gate, try as they might they could not breach it. More guard arrived and the humans fired upon them; the gates were open and freedom was in site. Everyone made a mad dash for the door, only to encounter the Bregan army in overwhelming force just outside, it was either prison or death.

“Men,” Haradin said looking around at everyone around him, a meager force of a few ten thousand, “FIRE!”
They obeyed and fired on the Bregans, they fired back and it seemed like a lost cause, but the fighting went on nonetheless.

Just a few thousand remained; Haradin, Stan, Wendy and David kept up the fire. Explosion from the backs of the enemy lines began, “they have artillery,” Haradin said, but the explosions were hitting the Bregans, “looks like we have friends,” Haradin called out with a smile on his face.

The battle was finally over the humans had won and Haradin’s men were free from imprisonment, but more battles still needed to be fought as long as at least one Bregan still lived.

“Haradin,” said Charles, “are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” said Haradin, “we barely made it out of that one alive.”

“How did you make it so close to escaping?”

“My plan almost worked like I wanted,” Wendy said, “I didn’t count of the army helping them out.”

Charles smiled, “10-84395, you-”

“It is Wendy now Charles,” said Wendy

“A name impressive,” said Charles, “now like I was saying your plans have gotten us out of many a sticky situation.”

“We need to get a move on,” Haradin said, “strike while and where they won’t be expecting.”

“Yes sir,” said Charles, “everyone gather your things we are moving out, now.”
Haradin’s and Zikzuku’s forces regrouped and headed out to the nearest urban center to attack and gather supplies.

The camp was set up just a few hundred feet from the city, Haradin and his armies prepared for the impending battle. Charles, with his advance guard hit the city on the left while Haradin went up the middle and his third, Drewdin, went right. Haradin charged up the middle leading his forces from the front. The enemy began to fire at them with their ion and plasma based weapons, much like the ones Haradin’s men used. Using the natural terrain as cover they were able to bypass most of it, but the last fifty feet had to be covered unveiled soldiers. Heavy losses were taken, but Haradin persisted, a mistake he was hit, his arm fell off and his men were forced to drag him away from the battle. He watched as the city before him began to burn and saw as the Bregans evacuated, at which point he ordered a team of rapid fire multi-barrel plasma guns to fire on them, even though they were civilians and were just trying to save themselves, his men obeyed the order but deplored what they had done.

“Haradin,” called out Charles, “where have you been?”

“I’ve been here,” said Haradin calmly, then he suddenly flew into a rage, “taking care of my missing arm!”
“Oh man, what happened?”

“A plasma rifle was shot and took off my arm,” Haradin cried.

“Maybe there is something Zikzuku can do?”

Drewdin walked up and looked at where Haradin’s arm used to be, “Haradin what happened to your arm?”

Haradin glared at him so Drewdin looked away, after a minute he just walked away.

“Charles get in touch with Zikzuku,” said Haradin, “tell him about what happened.”

“Yes sir,” replied Charles.

“And Charles,” Haradin paused, “you are in command for now.”

“Yes sir,” replied Charles.

Charles finished capturing the city and plundering it, food, water and and other basic essentials were the spoils of battle. Haradin laid in the city, still hurting and unhappy with what had happened, Zikzuku had come and said he could help Haradin, but the loss of a limb still made Haradin unhappy, and it made him even madder at the Bregans.

Haradin obtained a new arm from a clone of himself, who was then humanely put down. Reenergized, Haradin took back command of the armies of man, and under his new found ruthlessness the planet was ravaged and the cities destroyed. Finally only one city was left, the first that Haradin had tried to take, the Capital. Zikzuku had seen the insanity that had grown in Haradin and had pulled his support, but promised if they won he would take them back to earth.

“Haradin,” said Charles, “how are we going to take the city, Zikzuku left us.”

“Charles shut up,” yelled Haradin, “now listen you are going get over there and take that city, got it?”

“Sir,” said Charles calmly, “I think we should just leave let’s just go.”
“Are you getting soft on me, I don’t need you I still have that idiot Drewdin,” Drewdin looked down and walked away.

“No sir,” said Charles, “I’m sorry sir.”

“Good,” said Haradin with an evil smile, “MOVE OUT!”

The battle began. Haradin lead his men with Charles at his side. Fire came from the city, Haradin was not detrude, he ordered his troops to advanced faster.

The Golden Gate was breached with ease; they moved quickly and took the outer parts of the city and during the night rested here. In the morning the Bregans retreated to the Government building in the center of the city and had set fire to the rest of the city. The fire spread quickly and threaded Haradin’s troops burning and maiming some, killing others. The ones who made it through pressed forward to the Government building, the great park and river made it a safe place to be. Once again the gates are blasted through and the movement was swift.

Charles was one of the first through and he was shot down quickly, upon seeing this Haradin ran over to him, “Charles are you alright?”

“Sorry sir,” he said weakly, “I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

“No you are fine,” Haradin lied knowing full well that the plasma shot to his chest would kill him soon.

“I let you down sir.”

“No, I should have listened to you yesterday,” Haradin said, “you death is my fault,” Haradin waited for a response, it did not come, “I’m sorry Charles.”

Haradin put down the dead body and called for a ceases fire. The Bregans came out.

“I am Lugid and I must say, you are a messed up person,” the Bregan negotiator stated.

“You know what; I was just doing what you did to my people back on earth.”

“I have no knowledge of what happened there,” Lugid said.

“I want to make peace here,” said Haradin, “I’m tired of my people suffering because of this.”

“Brega will win,” Lugid said, “we will fight to the end.”

“Hey listen to me,” said Haradin, “you and your people are about to die surrender and you can have your planet back, we will take ships so we can start interstellar trade.”

“You just want ships,” Lugid asked, “and we get our planet without a fight, fine it is done.”

Haradin boarded the trade ships with his men, he looked back before entering, “I’m sorry Charles.” The ships took off and in three years Earth was in sight. They landed in Kansas and were taken to the capital of earth in Frankfurt, Germany. Emperor Kuddles meet Haradin.

“Haradin,” Kuddles said, “where have you been?”

“Brega,” Haradin answered.

“How did that work for you?”

“Not good,” said Haradin, “we won but it didn’t really help anything.”

“Where is Charles,” Kuddles asked, “I wanted to make him my vise-emperor.”

“He died and is the reason there are still Bregans, on Brega.”

“I see.”

“You know,” said Haradin, “killing and trying to punish them for what happened here did not help at all, I never should have left earth and now I wish I didn’t all I feel like I did there was waste the lives of my people and it is something that I cannot take back and something that I cannot be forgiven for, though I am sorry for it.”
Haradin left the army and went back to school, but nightmares of Charles haunted him until he died.
---------------------------------

I'M SORRY BUT IT NEEDED TO BE DONE!!!!

Wait so you died in your story?

what, no a character named Charles died in my story, but no I'm just the guy telling what happened.

Okay, I'm finally getting around to giving you that critique I said I was going to. Here's how I'm going to do this critique. I'm going to quote a passage from your first chapter, tell you what's wrong with it piece by piece, and then show you how to correct and better each of those pieces. Essentially, I am going to take you on a step by step journey through the writing process, explaining each individual piece.

By the end, I think you'll see a major difference between where it starts and where it ends. The thing to keep in mind throughout all of this, is that even though the ending piece might be vastly different than the beginning, it will still be based on it. I'm not going to tell you what style to adopt or anything like that. Rather, I'm going to show you what kind of potential is hidden in every sentence you write.

So, here we go:

Originally Posted by candc32

A man is out on his horse in rural New Mexico, he dismounts and starts a fire he brings out a pan and fries up some bacon. He looks up to see the night sky filled with billions of stars, a shooting star streaks across the sky.

There is one thing wrong with every part of this passage I have emboldened. They are each separate enough thoughts (called independent clauses) that they need to be separated with more than just commas. When connecting two independent clauses the ONLY time a comma is used is if it is succeeded by a conjunction (i.e. for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so; those are the big ones). Otherwise they should be separated by periods, semicolons, and in some cases a colon, though this is by far the rarest. Let me show you how I would have written the above passage using the exact same words.

"A man is out on his horse in rural New Mexico. He dismounts and starts a fire; he brings out a pan and fries up some bacon. He looks up to see the night sky filled with billions of stars. A shooting star streaks across the sky."

Though in all reality, I wouldn't have worded it the exact way that you did. Instead of making all of your thoughts out of independent clauses, turn some of them into dependent ones. That is, they have to be attached to another clause in some way to form a complete sentence. Let me show you what I'm talking about:

"A man is out on his horse in rural New Mexico. Dismounting, he starts a fire and brings out a pan. He begins frying up some bacon and looks up to see the night sky filled with billions of stars, a shooting star streaking across the sky as he does so."

You see how I mixed some of the stuff up there? I changed the order of words and their tenses to form various sentence styles and consistencies. This makes the wording flow much better, rather than just having a huge block of independent clauses, which can make your writing seem kind of stilted. Every thought has to be addressed individually, and pauses have to be taken between each of them, rather than connecting them and making several flow together, like I've done.

Another thing you'll notice is that the word "he" wasn't used nearly as often in this version of the passage. That's another great thing about changing your word order, tenses, and sentence context: it'll necessitate that you change your pronouns around, which helps your word choice flow more smoothly. Using the same word over and over again, especially in quick succession, can make your writing seem stilted. Word repetition is something you desperately want to stay away from.

However, this passage is still incomplete. What is missing from it you ask? Well, how about some detail and description. This passage is lacking in that tremendously. I honestly don't really have a good idea of what's going on at all. I don't know what your character looks like, I don't know what his horse looks like, I have no idea of his location in the desert, I don't know what he's thinking about or feeling, I don't know how he's starting the fire or where he's bringing the pan out from. Is it in a satchel on his horse? Is it in a satchel he's wearing? If so, describe the satchel. What's it made out of, how does it feel. So on and so forth.

Describing these things to your reader will paint a picture for them, and help clarify just what is going on. Are you familiar with the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words"? Well, while you might not have to use all thousand to describe a scene, at least a few hundred would help. But hey, the more the merrier. So, how can we describe what's going on here? I'll show you:

"A man is out on his horse in rural New Mexico. Traveling across the harsh desert lands, the sand kicking up behind the hooves of his burgundy horse creates a trail of red dust in his wake. A cold wind blows. Shivering, the man pulls his navy blue jacket tighter around his body. Unable to take any more of the cold, he pulls the reigns on his horse to bring it to a halt. Its dark mane whirls around in the gusts of wind as it stops and bows its head.

Dismounting the creature, the man's brown leather boots crush the dirt beneath him, covering him in more of the red dust. He reaches into a satchel tied around his horse and produces a lighter. Scanning the area around him, he sees several brambles and tumbleweeds; perfect for starting fires. After he collects several of the dried and dead branches, he attempts to light them. Flicking the lighter once, it is immediately blown out by the wind. He flicks it again, and it is again put out. He leans in close and places his hand in front of the wind. A flame is finally produced. The brambles light up and a fire starts, doing all it can to stay alive in the harsh wind.

Returning to his horse, he reaches into the satchel again and produces a pan and some salted bacon. He heads back to his humble campfire, and begins cooking the bacon over the flame, warming himself over it as he does so. The light of the fire reveals a man with tanned skin, hard facial features, and a large black mustache resting above his lips. Several minutes pass by. He takes the bacon off the flame and dumps the grease out of the pan. It's dried by the cold wind within seconds.

As he chews on the dried, tasteless meat, he stares up at the night sky. Billions of stars greet the wanderer's gaze, and he can't help but be mystified by them in a way. By their beauty and majesty. By their sheer number. So many stars in so many galaxies. Without warning, a shooting star quietly crosses the night sky, a flaming red trail left in its wake."

There now, do you see how much better that is? This paints a picture for the reader much better than what their was before. Now, obviously, I'm sure I got some of the details wrong. I was just improvising here. This is by no means what you should put in your story. I'm not saying you should copy and paste what I've written. The exact opposite in fact. Rather, you should look at this as an example, see how I've explained and detailed some things, and then do this on your own. If your character has pale skin, blue eyes, and a shaven face, then describe it as such. I just chose the ones I did out of the blue.

It can be anything you want. That's the great thing about description. You can detail it any way that you want, but you have to do it some way. Without these kinds of important details, the reader just isn't able to connect with what's going on in the story.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that there are some cases where detail is actually better left out. If you want to see an example of that, I have an original short story posted up on ZU called Traffic Lights. The reason I left detail out of that though, is because it's the idea of the story that's important, not what's actually happening. It's a conceptual piece of work. This is not the case with yours. This is clearly a plot emphasized story. As such, you need to tell us what is going on. It's the job of the reader to interpret somewhat, yes, but really, you need to build the foundation for us.

Actually, no, you need to build the foundation, and the first level for us. It is then the readers choice to either put the roof on right there, or build the second level of the house on their own. You need to give us enough that we know what's going on so that if we don't want to imagine any more, we don't have to. I think that takes half the fun out of reading, but you can't assume that your entire audience is going to be like that. If there are any important details, they need to be conveyed to us. That's your job as the writer. We need the foundation and the first level of the house from you. We can take care of the second level (if there's going to be one) and the roof on our own.

Okay, so, now we've changed this passage up quite a bit, haven't we? We've fixed the grammatical errors, we've changed our tenses and words around a bit, and we've added a great bit of detail. I think this is all I can tell you about this single passage. I would call this complete. Were it me writing this book, this would be a good enough passage to get be in the rough draft. Obviously after the whole story was completed I would come back and refine what needed to be refined, made sure that any ideas I came up with throughout the story got incorporated in the passages that were written before I came up with, touch up any little grammatical errors, so on and so forth. But for the most part, this is a good passage.

So, now that I've taken you through the steps of micro-writing, it's time to go macro! That's right, the part where we look at the story as a whole. Plot development and flow, character arcs, and just all around purpose and focus of the story.

Let's begin with the characters. Have you ever heard the term "two-dimensional" in reference to characters? Well... these are worse than that. Because, these characters aren't really anything. These characters are... dialogue. Nothing more. I have no idea who any of them are or what they look like. The only I know for certain anything about is the doctor. And all I know is that he's a doctor, and his name. As for the others (are there three or four, cause I'm actually kind of confused about this. At first you said three, but in the truck there were four names, not including the doctor) they seem to be old war buddies, but I'm not even sure about that.

Your characters NEED more to them. How can I possibly relate to someone who I know nothing about. It's like coming up to me and telling me that someone I've never known or heard of has died. I am just not going to care. And the same goes for the characters in your story. I don't care if any of them die. In fact, I don't even remember if any of them did die or not. That's how little I care about them. Make me care. Make me worry about their lives being in peril. How do you do this? You tell me about them. Tell me a little about your main characters past (see, I don't even remember the guy's name), tell me why this motivates him to act the way he does. Tell me what he's thinking and his thought process as he makes decisions based on these motives.

These are how characters become three-dimensional, and in turn, relatable and believable. As it stands, I have no way of relating to your characters, and have no reason to even believe that they're real people.

Okay, now on to plot. I've only read the first part so far, so keep that in mind. To be honest, your plot is all over the place. Actually, no, I'm wrong in that. It's not all over the place. It's everywhere. It permeates your story every step of the way. Quite literally, all your story is at this point is plot. This is one of the reasons why character development is so important. It keeps the plot a little more broken up and well paced, and as such, it's more likely to hold our interest for longer. Having a whole bunch of plot thrown in your face with every sentence you read is a huge turn off.

Also, you are not explaining your plot nearly well enough. I mean, we went from the aliens not even being on earth, to them being three years into the war and a new alien species coming to help them in ONE CHAPTER! No, just no. You cannot do this. If you were explaining the war like a backstory or a prologue, that would be one thing, but by the way you write, it's clear that this is not a backstory or a prologue. Backstories generally don't have explanatory dialogue in them. There's no need for such detail in a backstory. So this leads me to believe that this is an integral part of the story and plot.

As such, it needs to be HEAVILY expanded upon. For one, explain how of all your beginning part is happening. I mean, if you're explaining the buildup to a war, we need some serious explanations here. Skipping sixty years is fine, since your drawing a connection between two things separated by that much time, and all the between stuff isn't important. So there's nothing wrong with that. Explaining a bit of what happened to the characters you introduced us to during that time wouldn't be a bad idea though. Especially explaining how this computer guy knows one of them (I don't remember the names now, but I remember recognizing his name when the computer kid was talking with him).

Now, the skipping three years part is acceptable, but you have to explain to us what has happened in those three years. This is the time to go into backstory mode. Even though it's kind of in the middle of the story, it's okay. Your story is more focused on the new alien arrivals and how that helped the war effort, not the beginning of the war. And that's okay. We just... need to know how the war has progressed up to that point. In more detail than you gave us. Perhaps mention if any characters were killed or wounded, what the battles were like, so on and so forth.

On a final note about the story, the pyramid thing I don't like for two reason. For one, the pyramids being built by aliens has become a bit cliche. A fun little theory I'll admit, but honestly, the first time I was ever introduced to this theory was back in 1994 when I watched Stargate. And it wasn't even the first movie to do it, not by a longshot. It just happened to be the first one I saw. So yeah, a sixty year old idea should probably be nixed, unless you have found some new way to implicate it. Which I guess you kind of did by saying the war was started because the humans didn't say thank you, but honestly, that's retarded.

I just... that's a really juvenile reason to have a war. And highly inconsistent. I mean these aliens obviously have superior weapons and travel technology, so we can assume that they are tons smarter than us. This being the case, I don't see how an alien race this advanced can, for one, get offended by such a small thing. And secondly, wouldn't they immediately see that our most advanced space travel is getting men to the moon, so how could we possibly know about their existence?

They should have been able to immediately deduce that we didn't know they built them, in which case they could have talked with the "leaders" of the world or whatever, explained the situation and what they wanted. So yeah, I would remove this. Even something as cliche as they're invading for the resources of earth would be better than what you've got going now, I think.

Okay, and that's the end of my critique. Hopefully my advice will help you better this story. Like I said earlier, that passage I created was based on your work. The words I wrote weren't really mine. Rather, they were just the potential (and not even the full potential) of the words you wrote. So I'm sure that if you really put your heart and mind into it, that you can produce something just as good or better. All it takes is a little work. Oh, also, something else you can do is have a friend or something read what you write and get their advice on it before posting it here. That way you can at least fix a couple of the obvious problems and revise it a bit before we see it.

Well, that's all from me. Hopefully this helps you.

I must say I finally got around to reading this and I was impressed... I laughed, I cried, I had erotic fantasies, errr... I mean I loved it all the way through.

I think one of my favorite parts was the short arguements in part 2 over Austria and Australia.

“I thought we already had Austria,” asked a grunt.

“We do,” replied Zikzuku, “we are taking a different place that is named similarly, but the place we are going looks nothing like the place we have been.”

“Why do they have similar names?”

Had you gone into a Monty Python-esq sorta rant with that I would applaud, and applaud and applaud.

But even so, I like how you mixed humor and seriousness together.

thank you very much! I think your cratique was as long as my story lol, but ok I'll get working on it, right now!