CHAPTER 28

TACTICS: SEA – A SPECIAL NOTE TO WATER BREATHERS

The Tritonians are an aquatic species, and they had an unsuccessful incursion several decades back. Their troubles illustrate the pluses and minuses when it comes to being a water-breathing invader.

First, the good news.

The Tritonians found they didn’t need weapons. Their natural environment is a weapon all by itself. All they had to do was get the humans in their element, and sit back and wait until the bubbles stopped. For some reason, they chose to exercise this advantage not on Earth’s elite aquatic commandos, but on a bunch of co-eds.

The rumor has it this was part of a breeding experiment, which makes no sense in and of itself. We’ll get to that later on. But if that was the plan, they needed to rethink things, because they ended up asphyxiating their breeding subjects.

The Tritonians discovered, as aquatic beings that could stand the salinity of Earth’s oceans, they could roam pretty freely over seventy-five percent of the planet’s surface. The Earthlings did and still do have subsurface ships, and a few subsurface bases, in addition to a very large surface fleet. But the seas are a hostile environment to them. The Tritonians had a huge advantage because the Earth’s surface and subsurface ships were designed to combat other large vessels; they didn’t have the ability to fight off swarms of individual aquatic troops.

Plus, the oceans at the time were rising due to the warming of the planet. Given the rate the ice caps were melting, the Tritonians might not have even needed a land invasion force. They could have just come in with the tide.

But they quickly ran into one of the big minuses of being an aquatic being on Earth. It happened just a few hours after they played Drown-the-Cheerleader, and it’s the reason I didn’t list them in the failed invasion section. It was over so quickly, and the Earthlings really didn’t have to do anything. Or rather, they didn’t have to do anything directly.

Because the Tritonians quickly discovered they were swimming in Earth’s toilet bowl.

I shit you not. Though the humans shat on the Tritonians quite a bit. I wish that was a joke.

The invaders started out in a remote area, and that was okay. But once the Tritonians moved towards a major population center, they were swimming through sewage, industrial run-off, and other substances. Yes, fish and whales poop in the water all the time, but how many fish had a grande burrito platter with extra beans and cheese, the complimentary nacho platter, strawberry margarita, and slice of mile high chocolate cake for dessert, with a side order of cyanide?

Want to know what that looks like after it passes through a human digestive tract? The Tritonians could tell you first hand! Or they would have, had any of them survived the journey.

So it turned out that, while they were able to just hold the humans by the ankles and drown them, the Earthlings just had to squat and flush.

Sounds disgusting, right? But many of you seem to be wondering why that should be fatal. Remember what I said about uniforms, hygiene, and infections? Times that by a million. The Tritonians weren’t just swimming through this feces wonderland, they were breathing it in. They were getting urine and fecal matter into their gills and blood stream. Get the picture now? Yeah, makes me want to vomit at the thought of this.

And that’s just the sewage. That stuff was pretty tame compared what else makes its way into the oceans and lakes. The Tritonians sent a team to the bottom of a place called Lake Erie. That group never even had a chance to cause even minor damage. The bottom of that lake was covered in mercury! They didn’t get two strokes before keeling over. Another advance scout team in the Gulf of Mexico was also wiped out when a fossil fuel drilling platform sank and covered the water with black sludge. All-in-all, hundreds of Tritonians were killed, and none of it was due to enemy fire. That’s why I couldn’t include this in the invasion category. Even the Vuralans managed better than this.

Let’s suppose the Tritonians had avoided death by sewage and toxic waste, and had been drawn into a battle with Earth forces. Then they would have faced another problem: the high ground. This is just like the orbit problem, only in reverse. The Tritonians would have had their bases at the bottom of the ocean, while the humans would have been the ones with the high ground. Their forces and weapons would have had to fight against gravity and the weight of the water in order to reach the Earthlings. They, on the other hand, would have been able to roll their weapons down onto the Tritonians’ heads.

In the past, you would have been able to overwhelm the humans. Those days are over. The humans have done quite a number on Earth’s oceans. What was once a pristine and vast paradise is now poisoned and, in many areas, dying. Honestly, your best course of action is to stay away. Let the Earthlings soak in their own waste.