"Ye stoopid?"

Chief looked at his warband, expecting an answer. A displeased murmur rippled across the crowd.

 

"Chief," Jawrippa pulled a bone he was gnawing out of his mouth and pointed it at the shack they had been forced to construct. Raising the matter was worth having his teeth kicked out. Chief's head had been full of nonsense as of recent. The need for a "fort" did not compute then and would not compute now. There were no obvious flaws to the routine of raiding outposts and loading the hogs' saddle bags with everything worth taking. "...tiz useless, ah sez".

 

"Yer useless, ah sez," Chief's kick, as expected, filled Jawrippa's mouth with coppery taste of his own blood. He craned his neck, spat out a tooth and pocketed it.

 

Chief knew that the rest remained unconvinced. The hands that built the hangar hardly itched for this kind of work, nor were they used to it. But the warband was growing, and so grew its needs. They were after bigger beasts. He could beat the dumb youth into submission, and they might do the bare minimum again. Or he could show them.

 

"Watch," he said, walking over to one of the outpost's buggies, and drove it inside the shoddy hangar. The next few hours were spent guided by instinct, memory older than himself. He raided the storage for tools and jury rigged a cannon onto the rust bucket - the same one humans hoped to fend them off with. The shift from dull annoyance to jubilation in the crowd was complete when a gobbo caught by the scruff of his neck was shoved down the barrel. Whatever remained of him was sent flying across the deserted outpost.

 

"Build BIGGAH 'N BETTAH," he bellowed, silencing the thunderous laughter. They understood this time, and went fishing for steel plates, spikes, chunks of reinforced concrete.

 

Humans lured by radio silence would not recognize the place.