Chapter 16

Excerpt from Alexander Harlow's Personal Journal. Day 582, Endeavour, Terra Prime

I finally sacked up. For the last three months I've been putting off running Project Hulk. I admit it, most of the excuses I used were utter bollocks that sounded good on paper, "Oh dear, what if they need me in the FSU and I'm incapacitated", etc.

In hindsight I don't know why I held off so long, it's bloody great! Oh the pain sucked hardcore, but the benefits far outweigh the temporary discomfort. The small scale tests had nothing on a full deployment. Enhancing the bones and muscles in my little finger might have been a smart test, after all with access to SW level prosthetics if I needed to cut it off it wouldn't be a big deal, but it hardly showed the benefits.

I tested it out earlier today, I can now lift approximately FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY KILOGRAMS in a clean weightlifting style jerk. And I don't think that's anywhere near my top capacity. Between the reinforcements I made to my bone structure and the overall enhancements I made my muscle mass I hardly broke a sweat, even after I held it above my head for three minutes, but I want to take it easy, last thing I want to do is hurt myself, I have no idea about the long term consequences of the improvements.

So far everything looks good internally, my heart and lungs seem to have taken their enhancements fairly well and haven't exploded at least. As it stands I've got a reversal macro ready incase something should go wrong.

Once I finish my research on Project Wolverine's enhanced healing and Project Beast's enhanced skin I'll be one tough bastard... I'm still pretty hesitant on screwing around with my mental processes, all the research I've done, even with access to the SW information on the human brain, and I still only feel like I've scratched the surface.

***

Day 590, Vladivostok, Falling Skies Universe.

Alexander sighed deeply as he gently banged his head down on the conference room table.

"You'd think an alien fucking invasion would get these morons to work together..." He whined.

"It's been my experience that once the knife comes away from their necks politicians tend to revert to form." Arkady Dyatlov, former Ukrainian diplomat and current Terra Prime Foreign Affairs Advisor, said softly.

"We need to get them to pull together, otherwise they'll scatter and start fighting amongst themselves and in fifteen years when the Espheni show up again they'll just roll over them again" Alex said.

"I know Knez Alexander," Arkady said using the Ukrainian word for Prince or Duke, "I know, you need patience, diplomacy takes time, at the moment they are in the 'strongman' phase, showing no weakness, establishing their positions, but give it time my friend, once they get a feel for each other then things will progress."

Alexander looked at Arkady intently for a moment before laughing, "Arkady, I'm glad I found you"

"Not half as glad as I am tovarishch" Arkady said with a sardonic smile.

***

Day 170, London, England, Zombieland Universe.

"Eat this!" Alexander yelled out, racking another shell into his shotgun. There was something cathartic about blowing the heads off Zombies. The young Australian spun, quickly firing twice in rapid succession, taking down another zombie that was rapidly gaining ground on him.

Alexander was in a narrow London street, dozens of abandoned cars providing the zombie horde plenty of cover, and horde was the correct word, Alexander had lost count of the number of zombies he'd put down at around twenty, and he knew he'd reloaded his pump action shotgun at least a dozen times.

The young interdimensional traveller was acting as bait for this mission, his goal was to make as much noise as possible, drawing the zombies towards him, and away from the retrieval team that was currently looting a research laboratory nearby for material that would be hard to get in any other universe. It had become standard procedure since they lost a man looting a furniture warehouse of all things.

Alexander took off at a run away from the rapidly approaching zombies, loading more shells into his weapon as he moved. He turned slightly, bringing the shotgun up to his shoulder and sighted on the nearest zombie and fired, the recoil staggering him slightly, taking it's head off. The others in the pack nearest quickly broke off their pursuit and fell on their fallen comrade in a feeding frenzy.

Vaulting over a nearby bench Alexander ducked into a nearby house, only stopping to slam the door shut, and shove some debris against it. He then moved quickly up the stairs two at a time only to stop dead. Standing near what he assumed was the master bedroom was a man and two small children hiding behind, the man holding sawn off double barreled shotgun.

"Err... Hello?"

***

Day 591, Vladivostok, Falling Skies Universe.

Alexander watched in silent awe as Arkady twisted a bunch of mean, brutal, tough bastards into doing exactly what he wanted. They might have been good leaders, able to keep their people alive during an alien invasion and it's aftermath, but compared to a man who had spent over thirty years dealing in the shady world of diplomacy they were babes in the woods.

Alexander mused he should be thankful that most of them were either military officers or lower ranking politicos that managed to survive the initial orbital strikes, and not professional politicians who knew the tricks of the game.

The one Alex really worried about was Tom Mason, acting as advisor for the American delegation, the man really had a hardon for democracy and had been giving Alex hell over how he was running Terra Prime. The ungrateful sod didn't even seem to care that without Alexander's intervention he and his sons would still be on the run, starving, and hiding from the Espheni.

"How do we know the Aliens will even come back?" The French representative was asking.

Alexander nodded to Arkady and stood up, there were roughly forty people in the conference room, mostly aides and bodyguards protecting the seventeen delegates. Each representing the dominant power in their respective nation.

"We don't." Alex said bluntly, "For all we know you might be right, they might have written Earth off as a bad investment, but conversely they could see it as politically necessary to punish the 'primitives' who humiliated them, we simply don't know enough about how they think or how their society functions." he paused and took a sip from his water glass, "All that being said, are you willing to risk it?" As he sat down the Russian representative, and their host for the conference, was already echoing his sentiments.

Alexander had a feeling it was going to be a long few days.