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Base Omega, Northern Front Line: Conningstone County

How they did it, he didn't know.

Why they were doing it, he also didn't know.

What their ultimate goal was, he wasn't sure of either.

He was, however, quite certain that they were headed directly for the court marshal of the century, something, admittedly, he was quite looking forward to. He had spoken to these people, tried helping them and guiding them through their problems and referring them to various specialists, but none of them listened to a word he said. Maybe a good old fashioned court marshalling was what they needed to straighten them out.

But as he looked on, taking in the quiet, perfectly controlled chaos that was quickly unfolding around him, he wasn't so sure. These people were beyond help. Maybe that was the price to pay for eighty-plus years of constant war with your nearest neighbors about who owed who rent on a patch of land four acres in length and two in width.

His colleagues were right; tankers were a bewildering, belligerent and often senseless species and to try to reason with one was akin to smashing ones head against a brick wall. It was best to just let them get on with it, whatever 'it' was at the time.

He sighed the sigh of the defeated and looked on with slowly mounting horror and a touch of intrigue.

Carl Smith; psychiatrist by trade, father of four, loving husband and bottled ship building hobbyist watched, slack jawed as the crimson fire engine rolled up beside the officer's quarters, emergency lights switched off, battenburg print reflecting brightly in the pitiful generator powered flood lights. It's powerful diesel engine grumbled softly to itself as it idled, waiting like a caged tiger for something to happen as its handlers swarmed carefuly around it with the practiced precision of people who knew they would die if they screwed up in any way.

Carl checked his watch, squinting at the glow-in-the-dark face. It was four in the morning and some genius had managed to bribe the local fire department to do them a 'favour' before they had to help evacuate the remaining citizens of Connigstone to the neighboring counties before the place became the new front line. The favour remained as yet undetermined and Carl had decided that the best way to preserve his own sanity was to stop trying to figure out what had happened to the sanity of the lizards that formed the 150th Battalion.

'Evenin',' One of the firemen greeted him as he dropped from the cab of the fire engine, giving the small brown lizard a friendly nod of the head. His team slipped quietly from the cab in his wake and started rolling up the shuttered flanks of the huge appliance as quietly as possible.

Two spools of fat, canvas wrapped fire hose was unravelled and pulled free to their full lengths and dragged around the rear of the fire engine, the men vanishing silently around the corner of the squat concrete building they had parked behind. Carl followed them out of curiosity, wondering where it was that the fire had popped up.

There was no fire of course. Just eight dishevelled tankers, in full gear, greeting the fire fighters in hushed tones as the windows of the neighboring building were jimmied and pushed up, and the fire hoses were fed silently into the slumbering building. One of the tankers clapped him on the back, a huge grin splitting his purple face. The smell of whisky flowed from the man and Carl immediately recognised him as Lucas Davenshire, commander of the tank Drunken Shenanigans. Marcus Devin, another member of Davenshire's motley crew ambled up to his other shoulder, also reeking of cheap whisky.

''gis hand with these bottles, would ya?' Marcus asked. Another blast of alcohol fumes and Carl wondered how much they'd had to drink between them this time. Lucas was renowned alcoholic and had been an alcoholic for so long that he actually functioned better whilst drunk.

'Whatever it is that you're doing, I want no part of it!' Carl hissed, edging away from the scene. Curiosity was the only thing keeping him quiet and keeping him from running.

'Nah nah nah, yer've sheen t'mush... t'moosh.... Tooooo. Muuuuch-a! Yeah, too much. Yer've sheen t'much t'wiggle outta it now.' Lucas slurred in his ear, a devious smile playing his lips as a finger jabbed Carl gently in the chest. He burped softly and swayed to where a cardboard box was sitting on the ground at the corner of the officer's quarters building. He jabbed a wavering finger at it.

'Too 'ammered to loosen 'em by muhself. You. Sober. Halp.' The last word came out as a mighty burp and he immediately slapped his hands across his mouth, his eyes wide, swiveling wildly as he sought out any movement from the officer's quarters.

'Right meow.' Marcus giggled and started hiccuping.

'And if I refuse?' Carl demanded, trying to keep his voice to an angry whisper.

The four firemen and eight tankers paused what they were doing and looked at him expectantly. Lucas scratched his chin thoughtfully then shrugged.

'Nuffin'. Yer can toddle orf t'wherever yer come from. We won't do nuffink.' He said amiably.

Carl looked at the assembled lizards, all in uniform, all prepared for mischief and quite prepared for the fallout afterwards. He thought about it. He believed Lucas wouldn't do anything and in turn, like a pack following their alpha, the others wouldn't do anything either. But curiosity finally won out; he wanted to know what they were up to this time. Hell, maybe whatever was in that cardboard box could provide a solid lead on their thought processes.

He opened the box.

Maybe that lead he was hoping for was elsewhere.

Either that, or they were all desperate for a bubble bath.

'Bubble bath?'

'Yup,' Said an entirely sober tanker, 'gonna pump it all in, cold water and all.' Commander Briant grinned maliciously, picking up a large pink bottle of 'Suds of Fun' and turned it about in his hands, watching as the light from the floods glittered off the bottle's sparkling sheen. There was a total of forty bottles of the stuff in the box and Carl recoiled, horrified at the thought of what they were about to do to their commanding officers.

Then he felt the first tug of a smile at the corners of his lips. He fought the urge down, but he suddenly, very desperately wanted to laugh, thoroughly tickled by the fate that awaited the overstuffed officers who were currently snoring gently in their overstuffed beds. He suddenly discovered he had no love nor respect for them. Those officers treated their people like dirt. Nobody wanted to be stuck commanding the tanks, they all wanted something coated in gleaming brass and nobility, like the RAF, Royal Navy or the Royal Marines. These days, it seemed, all the worst high ranking commanding officers wanted to land in a place with a Royal prefix. And if they didn't, they simply took out their frustrations on those they were tasked with commanding. Only the fear of losing to Ferron kept them all from stuffing it up too badly.

A small, unprofessional giggle burst past his lips, to freedom. He had used Suds of Fun before. In fact, his youngest child always demanded it at bath time; even a cap full of the innocuous pink goo was enough to turn the average bath tub into a scene from a foam party accident. The Gods only knew what filling up the 1,000 gallon water tank of a fire engine would do. The whole base would reek like cheap perfume for weeks. Months even. And how the engine's pump would handle the substance was a complete unknown.

When questioned, Captain Michaels just shrugged, grinned and said 'We've fed the old girl worse.'

'Like what?' Carl asked out of morbid curiosity.

'Like petrol.' Captain Michaels smiled and ambled off, leaving Carl gobsmacked with a whole new view of the local firemen unfurling in his mind's eye.

'Gunna halp or whut?' Lucas mumbled in some agitation, flailing his uncoordinated hands at the box, prompting Carl to stoop and start unscrewing lids.

'If this goes wrong, I'm taking you all down with me.' He said soberly as hands started groping for opened bottles. He started passing them back, watching as the others formed a line, passing the bottles towards the fire engine where Captain Michaels was sitting atop it, studiously ignoring everyone else as he concentrated on pouring the pale pink bubble bath into the water tank.

In total, it took about twenty minutes to empty the cardboard box of any usable contents. The empty bottles inevitably made it back to him to be placed back in the cardboard box in preparation for the required neat disposal; according Sergeant Crae, gunner of the tank Bone King, the box and its empty contents would end up in the dumpster behind the local corner shop, ten minutes up the road. The owner, a hardy old soul who was still refusing to evacuate, wouldn't care, even if Colonel Dawkins showed up blasting accusations at the man. Last time that had happened, the Colonel had ended up looking down the business end of a twelve bore shotgun and had suddenly decided that the argument really wasn't worth the price of a cheap bottle of scotch and had instead sent some MPs around to 'have words with him'.

Again, the shotgun had been introduced and the argument dropped.

Carl had met the tiny, shriveled shop keeper and even though the man was a ninety-seven year old toothless bag of bones in a cable-knit cardigan and tartan slippers, he was terrifying. No wonder 150th liked him. The old man would easily put a raging Ferroni Shock Trooper in his place without breaking a sweat and then get on with counting his pennies.

Rumour had it, that he'd done it before...

In the face of that rumor, a mob of angry, suds covered, soft and doughy military officers from up the road wasn't exactly going to faze him. He was a perfect - and willing - scape goat who was always up for a laugh. Carl looked down at the bottles. There were no price tags, no labels saying what shop they had come from. Same with the box. It was all nice and innocuous. Chances were, that the box had fallen off the back of a lorry, like so many other things the tankers had acquired.

He stood up, knees clicking painfully after having been crouched for so long and stood beside the swaying form of Lucas Davenshire as he stared glassily at the firemen. The hoses were in place, the bubble bath was in the water tank and the bulk of the tankers were dispersing into the shadows like wraiths to watch the chaos unfold. There was a murmur of assent among the remaining tankers and the gathered firemen, and the engine started to grumble a little louder as the water pump was brought into action.

Lucas hobbled off into the waning night, leaving Carl to stare helpessly in fascination as the hoses suddenly fattened up and started spewing ice cold, rose-smelling foam into the officer's quarters. He glanced at his watch and saw it was almost sunrise. Soon, the rest of Base Omega would be up and about, ready to prepare for the day's events.

It took a good five minutes for the swearing to start, another minute for the lights to come on and a further thirty seconds for the first pyjama clad officer to stagger out of the door in a burst of glittering bath foam, confusion and fury. Somewhere behind him, Carl heard the shutter of a camera clicking. He looked at the firemen and found that they'd taken up positions behind their vehicle, where, no doubt, they felt much safer. Carl edged away before the officer - he didn't recognize the man through all the suds and the soggy pyjamas - noticed him and decided he'd be a good target for some spleen venting.

By the time Carl had dodged around the fire engine and holed up in a utility shed across the road with Commanders Davenshire and Briant, the suds were at the windows of the officer's quarters, seeping out of the cracks where the hoses had been fed inside. The breeze was plucking tufts of foam away from the building and the cursing officers as they staggered blindly into the open, whisking them cheerfully away down the road. The firemen were still cringing and giggling behind the fire engine, trying to pry the doors open on their side so they could climb into the cab unnoticed.

Sliding silently around the front of the vehicle, Captain Michaels shut off the valves and started ordering his team to quickly reel the hoses in, taking advantage of the officer's distress as they tried in vain to wipe the stinging soap out of their eyes. With practised efficiency, both fire hoses were shut down and wound in in less than a minute. A distraction from a laughing tanker fleeing across the road bought them more time to silence the pump, roll down the shutters and get the hell off the base.

It had worked to a point.

Colonel Dawkins, ever on the look out for someone to shout at and to bully, spotted the fire engine as it's engine revved. He jabbed a finger at the back of the retreating vehicle, his other hand wiping a glob of glittering foam from his head.

'SOMEBODY STOP THEM! I DON'T CARE WHO THEY ARE, I WANT THEM ARRESTED!' He screamed at no one in particular, and no one in particular responded as the scene playing out before them was too much to ignore.

Soldiers, engineers, MPs, mechanics, technicians, commsmen, Movers; they all came shuffling out into the chill early morning air to find out what was going on. Some of the more up-to-date lizards had their cameras on them. Phones were raised in the air, digicams flashed and video recorders took it all in for future reference.

Eventually, some MPs that valued their careers more than the others did, started after the retreating fire engine, hopping into an olive painted 4x4 that had seen better days. Carl didn't really expect them to be able to catch up. All Captain Michaels needed to do was to turn the sirens on and the moment other road users saw the dirty great fire engine bearing down on them, they'd move out of the way in a hurry and then pile back onto the road behind it once it had passed. It was like a river flowing around a stone, except the stone could very easily run you over and get away with it.

Being half empty and pulled along by an over powered engine, the firemen could easily outrun the military police in their little under powered 4X4 without breaking a sweat.

'Well, tha' were fun.' Lucas hiccuped cheerfully.

'Now what?' Carl sighed, watching the foam float and flutter in the wake of the fire crew's retreat. Lucas patted him on the shoulder and brushed past him, joining the gathering crowd, acting as if he had nothing to do with it. Briant followed him silently, ignoring Carl as he joined the gathered throng to watch their C.Os hiss and spit.

Carl watched the scene for a few more minutes. Ice cold suds, even colder lizards in soaking wet pyjamas and a gaggle of laughing onlookers flooded the street. When Colonel Dawkins looked directly at him, murder burned into his mottled grey and red face, Carl decided that trying to decipher 150th's mental processes and the driving forces behind them was just too much. The fat paycheck and the first class plane tickets out of the country just wasn't enough to make him want to hang around any longer. These people were beyond help and he figured that their C.Os were to blame as much as their working conditions.

The idea of hanging around for another moment made his skin crawl. He didn't think his own sanity could take it.