Hello everyone! First, I'm gonna say this. If you haven't read my first and second books, STOP right here! Close out, and take a look at them. Otherwise, this won't make much sense.

Secondly, I'M BAAACKK! After not posting anything for almost eight months, I'm pleased to say that I'm back from the dead, ready to post my third TLK story of my trilogy. I am going to do things a little differently, and not all of you will be happy with this. First, I will be keeping the chapters short, around 5,000 words. Second, and this is the bad part, I will only be posting once a month. It may be two or three chapters, it may only be one. But my time is taken up severely, and I don't have the faithful time I had the past two years.

Another thing to note. This story is going to be a lot more sci-fi than the previous two books, but I still plan to stick as close as possible to TLK. Just giving you a heads-up right now. Anyways, I look forward to hearing from everyone and your reviews. Enjoy my third installment!

Captain Jacoby sat in the front passenger's seat of the rover. Convoy escort duty was more of a punishment detail than a serviceable duty. Most of the other officers would agree with him, but the brass' only explanation was that someone had to do it. That, and the fact that nine of twenty supply convoys that went out in the last year had not returned. Communication was generally lost, followed by complete lost contact. Usually when a rescue party went out, none returned.

Jacoby placed a hand on his forehead. And out of all the officers to pick for a convoy commander, it had to be me.

"Are you alright, sir?" The driver asked.

Jacoby looked up at him. "I'm fine. Just needed to close my eyes for a few seconds and collect my thoughts."

After all the attacks on the supply convoys, one would think of either sending out more armed escorts or stopping the convoys altogether. But with the loss of Facilities One and Two, there was no choice but to go out in search of natural resources. The one good piece of good news was the dead human's ship had its artificial intelligence copied and installed in every drone constructed so far. Now, they possessed an inexpensive army that carried immense firepower. Unfortunately, it did little good for most supply convoys, including Jacoby's.

What was worse was that the destruction of Facility One exactly a year before had crippled the Specters' ability to spread across the world. To add insult to the injury, it was caused by the human after he had been killed. Talk about a death from the grave. To complicate things even further, a small group of Specter rebels had escaped from Facility One with the human's ship and began recruiting many others to fight against Dasyu in rebellion. It was another headache they didn't have time for, but had to deal with it, nonetheless.

Why would our own people want to rebel against us, especially now that no one stands in our way? The captain didn't know how to answer that question, only to ponder it and think of reasonable possibilities.

Jacoby noticed a set of pillars, recognizing it as their third checkpoint. "Turn left, and keep going until we see the split waterfall. I want to be back home in time for some R&R."

"I hear you, sir," was the driver's only response.

The rover turned left, with the convoy of rovers and transports following suit. Jacoby was glad that they were getting close to Facility Three. They had extracted a great amount of carbon- and iron-rich resources, and it would help their efforts in stopping this new band of rebels. Of course, even he had doubts they could even complete their mission, not without eliminating the rebels first. Could they succeed? Absolutely. Would it be anytime soon? No. It would be a long time before the securing of this planet would be accomplished. But if they didn't take care of their enemy, then it wouldn't matter how much they tried to transform this world into their own vision.

Jacoby shook his head. The sooner they're all dead, the sooner my job gets a little less stressful.

The driver began to slow down, forcing the convoy to do likewise. The sudden deceleration caused Jacoby to snap out of his thoughts. "Driver, why are we slowing down?"

Pointing forward, the driver said, "There's something out there. It looks like a body, and it looks like one of ours, sir."

Jacoby peered out. The dust was making it slightly difficult to see in front of him, but he did see a dark lump in the form of a body sprawled out in their way. It looked like one of their own, but it seemed odd that there were no signs of vehicle wreckage to make Jacoby believe that it was from one of the earlier convoys. He narrowed his eyes. Bringing his radio to his mouth, he began barking orders. "All units, we have a body of what looks to be one of ours. I want 360 degree protection from all armed escorts." He turned to his driver. "Stop the vehicle."

Behind him, gunners from all of the rovers began communicating on who covered which side. Jacoby stepped out of his vehicle and drew his pistol from his holster. Jacoby trained it on the body. He wasn't going to take any chances with this. He slowly made his way forward. Instinct caused him to look around. He couldn't see anything for miles, but something was screaming in the back of his mind. Jacoby's driver had gotten out of his seat and kept his rifle at the low ready.

Jacoby knelt down and examined the body. It was mostly black with gold armor, and a black helmet on its head. The head of a lion was on the soldier's chest. Jacoby didn't know if this was part of Dasyu's upgrades from Operation Zero Hero, but he definitely didn't recognize this one. Some of the Specters, mostly the leaders, had been outfitted with secondary forms of the predators they had captured. It was how Dasyu had received his form of a lion; how he had a human form, Jacoby didn't know.

The convoy commander got up. The soldier didn't look like he was going to get up again, and Jacoby didn't have time to bring the soldier back for a closer examination. Even though it was just one body, something was not sitting right with him.

"Does anyone have eyes on anything suspicious?" Jacoby asked over the radio.

There was a long silence before anyone answered. "Uh…that's a negative, sir. I see nothing but open field and the pillars we passed."

Jacoby looked over at the pillars, trying to see if he could spot anything out of the ordinary. The driver did the same. However, no one saw the black-and-gold soldier slowly reach for the grenade under his back. He slowly pulled the pin and threw it as hard as he could underneath the lead rover.

The explosion sent a slight tremor through the ground, but the explosion of the rover's fuel tank magnified that quake. That was the signal for attack. A screaming engine came soaring overhead. A Blade swooped in low, coming in for a strafing run. Some of the gunners swerved to train their sights on the fighter, but weren't fast enough. The Blade launched two rockets on the cargo transports.

Jacoby watched as the two missiles homed in on their targets, and punched through the heavy vehicles. Both transports were sent up in the air. He shouted through his radio. "Someone shred that rogue Blade!"

The convoy gunners opened fire on the Blade as it pulled away. The distraction allowed the soldiers hiding in the field to slowly rise up and launch their rockets at the convoy. All of them sped in on their targets with little time to react.

With the distraction of the Blade's missile run was the time for the dark soldier on the ground to reach for his pistol. He aimed at the driver and fired three shots into his chest. The driver crumpled to the ground in a lifeless heap. He got up just as Jacoby turned to the sound of the shooting. Jacoby tried to bring his own pistol up, but the dark soldier knocked it out of his hand. Jacoby made the same move and succeeded in knocking his enemy's sidearm out of his hand.

He moved for a punch to the abdomen of the soldier. The blow connected, and the soldier bent over. Jacoby went for a standing guillotine, but the soldier charged him and rammed his shoulder into Jacoby's stomach. Jacoby felt air leave him as the soldier speared him into the ground. The captain brought his fists down on the soldier's back and brought his knee up, delivering another blow to the soldier's midsection. Jacoby flipped the soldier over him.

He got up and looked around. The convoy was being blown apart right before his eyes. Another setback for them, and he needed to get out of there. The gunners did their best to shoot back, but they were only inflicting a few casualties. This is definitely not my day. He looked down at the downed soldier and glared. This soldier was the cause of this, and he was going to end it. Jacoby began walking back to his pistol.

It was only a few steps when he suddenly was propelled to the ground. The soldier had gotten up faster than he had thought and tackled him. Jacoby shook him off and returned to a fighter's stance. The soldier sent two punches at him, knocking Jacoby's head back. Jacoby responded with an elbow to the face followed by a hard backhand.

The dark soldier slowly turned and smirked. "You're gonna have to hit harder than that."

"I'm just getting warmed up." Jacoby surprised him with a couple quick kicks, followed by a swinging, roundhouse kick. The blow knocked the soldier off of his feet and sent him face first into the ground. Jacoby sighed and reached over for his pistol. This ends now. "Any last words?"

"Yeah," the soldier said. "Get stuffed." He rolled to his side. Jacoby fired, but missed. The rebel reached down and grabbed his pistol and aimed at Jacoby. He fired, emptying the magazine.

The soldier was firing an M9 pistol. It fired 9mm rounds, not a very impressive form of ammunition. Needless to say, he was surprised when Jacoby's head exploded. Sparks of angry electricity ripped out of the neck as the body fell to the side. The soldier got up and looked at the pillars; a shiny glint gave away the position of the distant sniper.

He smiled. "Mheetu, I say we call that one a tie."

A voice came over his communicator. "A tie? Since when does a pistol blow off a person's head? You know that kill was mine."

"I still fired at his face. That's why I'm calling it a tie."

"Whatever," Mheetu said, exasperatedly. "Tojo and I will be working our way down. See you in a little bit."

"Copy that. Out." The soldier looked out at the convoy. It was another successful mission for them. They knew they couldn't attack Dasyu head on, but they could whittle him down by destroying his supply chain. The Specters traveled with light armed escorts, and every single convoy they found was traced well in advance, allowing them time to plan out their ambush. Now came the next part of the ambush: escape as fast as possible.

He turned around to see two soldiers approach him. One was Bren, the soldier who defected to him a year ago. Keeping an AK-47 at the low ready, Bren was a great soldier, and a loyal friend. The other was of orange and black body armor, making him easily identified as Malka, king of the Mountain Pride. He also sported an AK-47, but he had his rifle slung on his back.

"Preliator, we've secured the area. All enemy personnel have been destroyed, all supplies have been either destroyed or taken. Your orders, sir?" Malka asked, flanking him.

That was the name they were instructed to call him in the field, along with General. When they were back home, they could call him by his real name, Daniel Manning. Danny smiled. "Evacuate back to respective checkpoints and proceed back to Facility Alpha. After-action review when we return. Let's move."

The Preliators returned to Facility Alpha. In the last year, Bren had recruited eighty total personnel in the fight against Dasyu. Danny held his suspicions about them, at first, but they sounded just as sick of Dasyu as he was. Over the past twelve months, they had more than proved their worth as soldiers, technicians, and pilots. They had a few mechanics, but only a few. They were kept away from the battlefield most of the time to preserve their skill set.

Of course, with nearly ninety people including the Preliators, there had to be a base of operations to set up. Some originally suggested setting up in the Pride Lands, but Danny feared it being tracked by Dasyu's forces. If that happened, there would be a lot of innocent lives at stake, an unnecessarily huge risk. Granted, Dasyu had sent forces there before, but that was when he knew Danny was alive. Believing he was dead, Dasyu had no reason to return there, and Danny didn't want to give him one. Instead, Danny settled on the second likely place Dasyu would ignore: Facility One.

The base Danny destroyed when he first came to this dimension of Earth, Danny and Bren first used the personnel recruited to rebuild the base. Some of the core equipment was salvaged and restored to full functionality, and the stolen equipment in the last year had helped rebuild the entire facility. The motor pool was cleared, and now held twenty Blades, four Titan tanks, a dozen Rovers, a few transports, and the Paratus Preliator.

All of the personnel called the place Facility Alpha. No one wanted the original title because of security reasons, so the name stuck. The technicians had done their best at shielding any signals from the Specters that remained sided with Dasyu, but even they couldn't guarantee a secure position. However, they could guarantee secure signal channels, and that made Danny relax a little.

Danny stayed in his robot form. He still didn't completely trust everybody, and only Bren and the Preliators knew he was Danny. Because of that, he still was called by his alias.

The transport carrying the Preliators began its docking maneuvers into the hangar. Its blocky shape gave no aerodynamic advantage, but it more than made up for it with straight-line speed and sported a forward and rear cannon for armaments. The whole purpose of the transport was to do just that: transport troops around. The walls on the starboard and port sides of the ship could open up to allow for a quick drop or airborne assault. They weren't much, but they got the job done for Danny and his team. One his transport, one of three, they decided to fly with the walls down, giving them a great view of the lands. Now, they held onto the straps with their hands as the ship began to hover across the floor and set down on the ground.

Danny got out and surveyed the hangar as the steel doors closed behind him. The first time he was here, he was trying to get out as fast as possible to avoid going up with the facility. Now, it was a base of operations. Either way, he remembered one constant: it was huge. Most of the docking brackets were restored, allowing the Blades to be docked above them and create space on the ground. Rovers and tanks were placed in the two motor pools, giving them an area for mechanics to do their jobs with the ground vehicles. The transports were the only vehicles that could stay on the floor the whole time, because there may be a time for an emergency on the ground.

The personnel were hard at work. The mechanics had already begun repairs on the rovers, which had just returned from the long haul back to base. Guards were keeping an eye on the outside, making sure that no enemy was in the area. Danny knew he had a few sniper teams positioned in well-hidden locations within a mile radius in case of anything out of the ordinary. It's a boring job, but it has to be done.

He, Bren, and the other Preliators headed towards the briefing room. The other soldiers in the ambush force fell in step behind them. Danny looked at his long time friends. Malka, Haraka, and Tupac seemed calm and unworried. Chumvi seemed to be doing a good job at keeping his face neutral; whatever he was feeling, Danny couldn't read it in his face.

That left Tojo and Mheetu, who were entirely different stories. They had already vocalized their thoughts to Danny initially about Bren, and they still weren't completely trustworthy of him. They didn't trust the recruited soldiers Bren brought in, either. Danny knew this was a little problem with the potential of getting worse if left unchecked. He was going to need this squared away ASAP. For now, they had their debriefing.

After walking down the main corridor, they came to their room. It was a big amphitheater, basically. Rows of steel-gray benches wrapped around the entire room, where the soldiers sat down. The walls were plain white, and the only illumination came from the projector and the central light in the middle of the room. The Preliators sat in their own section apart from the rogue Specters, obviously still wary of the others. Danny, Malka, and Bren remained standing as Danny began the after-action review.

"Alright, men. This mission was successful. The targeted enemy convoy has been taken care of. Supplies were taken and forces evacuated swiftly. What was the elapsed time from incursion to extraction?"

One soldier raised a hand. "Twenty minutes, General."

"Twenty-three minutes, actually," Danny responded. "Our ambush was good, but we need to shrink down the time to the range of fifteen to eighteen minutes. I know we have the ability to do this, so the next time, I expect a slightly better performance. I know of a few sustains and improves, but I want to hear from all of you." He gestured at all of them.

"Communication was excellent," that was Chumvi. "It helped us coordinate the attack precisely. We need to keep that sustainment going the way we have it."

"Correct. Everyone communicated almost perfectly on the attack. Everyone knew when their cue was in ambushing the convoy and executed the attack methodically. Let's keep it that way. What else?" Danny asked. "How about an improvement other than what I just mentioned?"

Everyone left the briefing. So far, it was the best after-action review to date. Danny only had timing and conservation of ammunition as the only areas that needed improvement. Ammunition was a valuable commodity, since they only had so much to spare and only so little taken from the attacks. The reason he wanted the timing down was to avoid an attack from a Specter rapid response team or be traced somehow. The last few times they attacked convoys, Danny would send squads to inspect for audio and video devices that could compromise them. They had found a few, but not many.

He walked to the Operations room. The other Preliators, Bren included, had followed in step behind him. They needed to discuss further plans on what to do next. After the after-action review, they would meet in the Shadow Room, a small briefing room that was locked down and not under surveillance.

A select few Specters that had defected remained behind in Dasyu's facility as moles. The leader of the group was the one Danny had encountered in Facility One, Gyro. He, along with the other moles, had been able to provide the location of the facility, giving the Preliators a huge advantage. The problem was, there was no easy way into the facility. All conveyor belts were watched and guarded, and flying in was suicide.

Another problem was that they didn't have enough arms and vehicles to directly assault the place. True, they had Titan tanks and Blades, but their weapons were just enough to supply themselves for small hit-and-run attacks. Plans were being formulated for taking down the facility, but they were coming slowly.

However, the destruction of the enemy supply convoys was making things difficult for Dasyu to build his army and air forces. It was small strikes that dealt severe blows. It was forcing the Specter leader to readjust his logistical operations to rebuilding his supply transports, and Danny hoped to keep it that way.

They all entered the Shadow Room en masse to their seats. Tojo and Mheetu remained guarding the doors to make sure that security was maintained. Danny went to the front of the room and turned the computer off its standby mode, and activated the portable webcam attached to the ceiling. It was angled down to show all of the Preliators, with a projector screen rolling down. Danny programmed the uplink to UHF secure, and turned on the webcam. On it was a screen showing Gyro, who looked rather nervous and impatient. Better make this quick. He moved away from the computer and stood where he usually did: right in front of the lens.

The projector finished warming up and Gyro's face appeared on the screen. "Can you hear me, Preliator?"

Danny nodded. "Yes. Can you hear us?"

"Loud and clear, sir. I don't want to be on for too long. I have guards to warn me of unwanted guests, so don't be surprised if I suddenly cut this channel off."

"This is the…" Danny looked at the screen. "…forty-second meeting between us. I don't think I'll feel too surprised if that does happen." Danny looked behind him and back to Gyro. "All Preliators are present. The mission was successful over here. How's Dasyu taking it?"

Gyro let a smile escape. "He's getting frustrated. I've managed to review his logistics tasks. He's having no choice but to shift to constructing all materials to supply vehicles and fewer armaments."

"That's great news," Malka said from behind Danny.

"He's sending out scout parties to locate you, but he's not sure where you are. The only thing keeping him from backing down is that the fuel cells are rechargeable."

"Yeah, that's why I've really liked the speeders he's provided me with," Danny said with a smile. If his speeders or the Preliator needed anything other than the recharging fuel cells, he wouldn't have been able to go anywhere a long time ago. "Have any of them come close to us?"

Gyro looked off-screen for a moment. Either he was getting nervous or he was looking over some information relative to Danny's question. "Two teams came somewhat close to you, but they were fifteen miles away. Personally, I don't believe Dasyu even suspects that you are using his old facility. He hasn't returned there since you had destroyed it years ago. So far, your position is unknown to Dasyu and the remaining Generals."

"That's good, but is there anything I should be concerned about?"

"Just that you have to be aware that Dasyu might send out more escorts to protect his supplies. You also need to keep attacking at random places. If you attack in one general direction, then Dasyu will just avoid that area and devote more defenses to that than convoys. As for infiltration, I'll defer to Bren." Gyro motioned with his hand to the security specialist.

Bren stood and walked forward. He typed up a few commands on the keyboard, and a three-dimensional image of the last remaining facility, Facility Three, replaced Gyro's image. A few conveyor belts were highlighted, as well as a hangar at the end of a wedged canyon. "These are the main entry points where we can infiltrate the facility."

The hangar was the first section to be examined, as evidenced by the view closing on the canyon. "The front door is pure suicide. Unless you're immortal, I suggest we avoid that one," Bren said with a humorous tone. He saw Danny smirk as he continued. "But we can use it as a diversion. An air strike by a flight of Blades can stir up the hornets nest and cause all of them to scramble. Dasyu is sure to believe that his facility's location is still unknown to us, so he'll send what he can after our Blades in order to preserve Facility Three's location."

Danny snorted. "Of course, that would be a good idea if we didn't already know of the location. But what about ground infiltration, Bren?"

"We can set up a sniper team to focus on any one conveyor belt entrance and take out the team guarding it. I can lead an infiltration team and shut down the security systems. We can go to one of the reactor rooms, and place demolition charges to blow the facility. I've been there before, and the only difficulty is getting inside. After that, we shouldn't have much of a problem."

"Once that's done, Dasyu would be finished," Gyro said. "He doesn't have enough supplies to continue his mission. Of course, my team will evacuate with you when this happens."

"I don't like this, Danny."

It was no surprise to Danny that Tojo objected to this. He turned to face his friend. Both Tojo and Mheetu didn't agree with Bren, mainly out of general distrust. "Why do you not like this?"

Tojo stood. "First of all, we don't know if this is a trap. Dasyu could be rolling on whether we make a strike or not, and then make his move. Say he foils the attack and finds our location. Even though most of his original forces are gone, he still has a substantial force that he could commit to attacking this facility. We would be crippled in our fight against him."

"My people are planning a contingency and some experimental weapons should Dasyu attempt that," Bren replied calmly.

"I'm sure you do," Tojo added sarcastically.

"You got a better plan? Because I'd love to hear it," Bren responded. The heat in his voice was rising.

"Maybe you'd love to hear the sound of your jaw breaking if you-"

"Shut up! Both of you," Malka shouted, standing in between them. "We've got enough troubles with Dasyu and his Specters without fighting amongst each other."

"Look, I didn't ask you to be the best of friends, but I am telling you to cooperate and work together." Danny was keeping his tone very authoritative. "Once this war is over, you can do as you please. I, personally, would rather see you either get along or go separate ways once Dasyu has been dealt with."

Bren and Tojo stared each other down, but looked at Danny and nodded. Haraka spoke, though. "With that covered, I think attacking Facility Three would be a good idea. If we can catch them reeling, then we will have the element of surprise on our side. This war could end quickly with little to zero casualties."

Malka made sure nothing was going to happen between the two he was playing referee with, before turning to Danny. "While I don't agree with Tojo's feelings towards our ally, I do agree with him about not attacking the facility just yet. We're doing a good job attacking these convoys, grabbing what we can, and leaving. Time is on our side, Danny."

"But ammunition is not," Danny replied. This was a hard decision. It was really tempting to take Bren up on this plan and end Dasyu and the war once and for all. On the other hand, their hit-and-run missions were showing great results. If they kept it up, the Specters would slowly die out. Danny smiled to himself. Who would've thought I'd be leading this sort of crap?

He looked at Bren. "This plan looks good and I do believe we can infiltrate Facility Three. However, I'm going to stick to whittling away at the convoys that Dasyu sends out to gather raw materials to refine. Once we're certain Dasyu is unable to inadequately defend and sustain his forces in battle, we'll go forward with your strategy. Sound like a plan?"

Bren shrugged, though his expression showed some disappointment. "As good a plan as any right now."

"What do you want me to do?" The voice over the speakers asked.

"Gyro, you are going to keep gathering what information you can on what goes on. Make sure you cover your tracks and hope that Dasyu doesn't find out what you're doing anytime soon. Also, I'm going to send you a message to bring to Dasyu's attention. Erase the location and leave it as unknown."

"What message do you want to send to him?"

"A warning, and possibly a peaceful solution to all of this."

"What do you mean?" Chumvi asked.

Danny closed his eyes. They're not going to like this plan, but I'm going to need them. He turned to face them. "You won't like it, but here's the plan." And he told them.

Hope you liked the intro. I'm only going to say the disclaimer thing once. I don't own the Lion King or any of its characters. My own characters, such as Danny, Zainabu, Bren, Dasyu, among others, you need to get permission from me to use them. Thank you all!