Sobek snorted as the water crashed over his huge body. One of the disadvantages of being 60 meters long was that it was not easy to find a place to shelter from the rain. And since he was in the trenches he really didn't have the possibility to look for one…

He looked up and looked towards the boundary line. In front of him were several dinosaurs, each of them sheltering as best they could from the rain and trying to rest; just beyond, were fortifications built of wood and earth and tunnels dug out of the mud, similar to the defenses adopted by armies on Earth in World War I, and other groups of dinosaurs stood guard. Beyond the fortifications was a wasteland at least ten kilometers long. Beyond it, lights could be glimpsed in the distance: it was the trench placed by the imperials.

After Sobek publicly announced his intention to go to war alone, international tensions had calmed down somewhat. The Empire had accepted the declaration of neutrality of the Eden Union and the emperor Wafner himself had recognized that effectively Sobek had to be held solely responsible for the incident, therefore the nuclear war had been averted.

Since most of the Empire's neighboring nations were neutral, Sobek had moved the battlefield to the Sinai. Since he had technically sided with them, it was natural to go to war there.

The best choice would have been to use [Teleportation] to capture the capital and eliminate Wafner and all his aides in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, though, the Empire had taken drastic measures for that. From what Rambo had discovered, Wafner had had a microchip implanted in his neck that monitored his vital signs and was linked to all the nuclear bases of the Empire. If Wafner died, every nuclear base would automatically fire all missiles in all directions. And if the emperor was kidnapped or taken hostage, the commanders of each base would follow the same order.

Sobek had disclosed this to Eden Union; as he had promised, he would no longer have secrets from them. The heads of state had been outraged by the security measures taken by the leader of the Empire: in practice he not only threatened his enemies, but also used the rest of the world as a threat. Under normal circumstances this information would have been sufficient to trigger an all-out war, but with the threat of nuclear power there was little the Eden Union could do. However, thanks to this information, RE/SYST was able to use the frequencies of Wafner's microchip to trace some of the as yet unknown nuclear bases.

Sobek's basic idea was to track down all nuclear bases and destroy them in one fell swoop; by then, the Empire would have fallen. Unfortunately, however, the imperials were good at hiding their secrets. And it got worse: RE/SYST had informed Sobek that they had discovered thanks to one of their infiltrators the existence of a new weapon, the Hellfire bomb, apparently capable of wiping out a large nation and unleashing a small apocalypse on its own.

At the moment, the information Sobek had was too little. Even though he knew the location of most of the nuclear bases thanks to the combined efforts of Rambo's intelligence, Eden Union spy systems and RE/SYST hackers, some of them were still unknown to him and unfortunately they were the ones that contained the most powerful and destructive bombs.

Therefore, Sobek had no choice but to act defensively and buy time in the hope that Rambo would trace each atomic base as soon as possible. He knew the rhamphorhynchus was doing what he could, but even so it wasn't enough. Rambo wasn't omniscient after all.

Any aggressive action against the Empire would surely have triggered a violent retaliation from the latter, so Sobek had devised a more subdued method: in a spectacular action, the dinosaurs had entered the Sinai territory and had forced the imperial army to cease its advance in just an hour. After that they established a defensive line the length of the entire country and never moved again. Within a few days the Imperials had followed suit.

Sobek knew that show of force would not be enough: it was only a matter of time before a nuclear weapon was launched against the dinosaur line. So he had devised a way to intimidate his opponent. His advantage was that the Empire was a dictatorship, so as long as he scared Wafner he would force all the other imperial leaders to duck too.

The plan had been implemented just two hours after the establishment of the trench: Snock and a group of his subordinates had infiltrated the imperial capital and detonated several TNT charges inside the villa of one of the Empire's top generals. The explosion was heard throughout the capital and firefighters had to work all night to put out the blaze. When the flames had subsided, members of Imperial intelligence who had come to investigate found a bag in the rubble, strangely not even touched by the flames, as if it had been placed there afterwards. On it was a note that read "To His Majesty the Emperor". Imperial Intelligence had tried to open it, but the bag was padlocked. They had taken it to a laboratory to open it with a blowtorch, when suddenly Wafner himself had arrived, warned of the event. It was at this point that Wafner, seeing the padlock, realized that it was a copy of the lock to his bedroom in the imperial palace. In fact, his key matched perfectly. Once opened, he found inside several photos of him intent on sleeping in his own bed. The message was clear: "We know where you live and we can kill you at any time". In addition to the photos, there was only one note with four words: "No nuclear, no retaliation". Which translated meant: "If you won't use any nuclear bombs, we won't come to kill you in your sleep".

Wafner wasn't a fool: he knew well that he had the upper hand and that the dinosaurs wouldn't dare to kill him as long as he had the microchip that monitored his vital signs in his body. However, the threat was very substantial. In just one night the dinosaurs had shown that they could enter the capital, blow up a building, enter his bedroom and do whatever they wanted while he slept. So Wafner, although enraged, had chosen not to take too harsh measures against the dinosaurs. Oddly enough Rambo, who was obviously there to observe the scene, claimed that the emperor didn't seem too sorry, as if he never really intended to unleash nuclear hell on the dinosaurs.

Thus, from that moment, the war had become a clash of trenches. Both sides did nothing but stare into each other's eyes for days on end. Occasionally someone from one side or the other tried to attack, but was almost always repulsed. Rarely did one of the two manage to conquer even just a few hundred meters of ground.

That situation had been going on for four months. The dinosaurs could not launch a decisive offensive due to the nuclear threat and the Empire dared not drop any weapons of mass destruction for fear of a retaliation from the dinosaurs. The two parties were linked by a double thread and, as Buck had once jokingly commented, 'the first one that slip ends up screwed'.

Of course, this was only in official warfare. Sobek hadn't sat idly by for four months: in addition to relying on Rambo to find nuclear bases, he had sent Snock to different cities to secretly create incidents and divert the Empire's attention. These incidents involved banks, farms, industrial complexes and power generation plants. In doing so, Sobek was literally cutting off the Empire's funds, dramatically diminishing its economy. Taking advantage of this expedient, Snock had also secretly eliminated many bankers and landowners, as well as a part of the imperial police forces who intervened due to the incidents.

Sobek hoped to exploit this economic depression to create internal strife within the Empire and thus further break the power of the nation. The common populace, indoctrinated and enslaved by centuries of oppression, was unlikely to rebel against the emperor; however, some of the most influential men in the Empire would have felt threatened as their holdings and even their colleagues were eliminated. These men could have formed a faction hostile to the current course of the war; if that faction gained enough power within the imperial circle, Wafner would be forced to listen to their terms. Had Sobek offered this faction support, they could have pressured the emperor to cease hostilities or even reveal the location of the nuclear bases to the spinosaurus to further weaken Wafner's authority. If Sobek had played his cards right, after some time Wafner might even have been deposed and the war would have ended with a rather low number of dead.

Rambo had already confirmed to Sobek that discontent had begun to spread among the high caste of the Empire and even among the military leaders. They hadn't yet teamed up to form a faction, but it still looked like they would in a few more months. Unfortunately, however, none of these malcontents were present in the emperor's inner circle, which remained very strong. Apparently Wafner had chosen his closest associates well. Even so, however, Sobek had the potential to do damage: given that even the military was getting fed up with this situation, it was not unlikely that with the right precautions he would be able to unleash a coup.

This was the big difference between democracies and dictatorships. In democracies there was a strong social structure and many steps were required to take a certain decision, regardless of which influential person requested it. This limited the possibilities of starting a war, but also of stopping it. Dictatorships, by contrast, had no basis but fear and profit. Once a stronger opponent than the dictator arrived and the profits of the elite were threatened, the nation would collapse like a house of cards. The so-called enemy didn't need to do anything except screw up the economy and raise a loud voice. Exactly like Sobek was doing now.

As good as the plan was, Sobek knew he was treading on very delicate ground. Just one wrong word was enough to unleash a catastrophe of biblical proportions. Therefore he had tried to arouse Wafner's wrath as little as possible, by not taking any combative action and by not hitting the main granaries of the Empire, limiting himself to destroying the personal property of the imperial elite.

Therefore, as already mentioned, the situation on the war front had remained almost unchanged during those four months. There had been occasional clashes, but mostly skirmishes. In some cases they had lasted so short that there hadn't been a single death on either side. However, despite that situation of immobility, every now and then something happened there too and broke the monotony.

The most frequent cases were tests. The Imperials would try to sneak into the enemy's camp using the abilities they learned to copy from the dinosaurs to gauge their effectiveness, and the dinosaurs would try to sneak into the Imperial's camp to gauge whether their instruments could detect them even if they used [Ambush] or [Teleport]. Generally these tests were either successful and the team safely returned to its front (whichever it was), or they failed and the team was eliminated. In the course of those four months, the victory had generally almost always gone to the dinosaurs: the means of the imperials were still very fallacious, while instead the dinosaurs could count on abilities that were nothing short of perfect.

Another thing that sometimes happened were negotiations. If during an engagement a particularly important enemy commander was captured, then the generals of the Empire asked to be able to parley with Sobek and arranged a prisoner exchange. Although these were very simple exchanges, the negotiations could go on for hours. But Sobek suspected that this was because the Imperials used that excuse to mitigate boredom.

The last particular event was the refugees.

Although the dinosaurs had halted the imperial advance, Sobek had not dared to attack the enemy front and force him to retreat to prevent the emperor from feeling threatened and dropping the atomic bombs. Therefore many cities of Sinai were still under the control of the Empire. The population inside was desperately trying to escape and take refuge elsewhere. Since Snock was busy with the Empire, some of his underlings had taken his place in teleporting citizens away from conquered areas; however, it was a slow process and many people were unaware of these 'couriers'. So periodically a group of refugees appeared at the front and tried to cross it.

The first time had happened just ten days after the defensive line was established. A group made up of three families, including four children, had managed to get close to the front through a very barren path full of steep rocks which hid their presence. Unfortunately, when they had almost managed to get out of the enemy line the imperials had noticed their presence and had opened fire. Two of the three families had been killed instantly. Since it was the middle of the night, the dinosaurs had been alerted by the shots and fearing an attack they attacked in turn. The surviving family had found themselves in the middle of a firefight, but fortunately a pachycephalosaurus had noticed them and had taken them away. The battle, as usual, had lasted a few minutes, but that was enough.

From that day an unwritten agreement between the two sides was born: if the refugees had passed the trench of the empire, then the imperial soldiers wouldn't have opened fire even if they had been directly in front of them; but as long as they were beyond the trench, the Imperials could do as they pleased without the dinosaurs intervening. Cruel as that method might seem, there was nothing else the dinosaurs could do: the only alternative would be to push the enemy directly across the border, but Sobek couldn't risk infuriating Wafner. Using this unwritten law, at least, someone would have had the chance to save themselves. So every time they heard the shots the dinosaurs alerted and observed the border line, hoping to see people who managed to cross it. As soon as the refugees were beyond the trench the imperials stopped shooting. The refugees then continued alone up to more or less half the distance between one trench and another; at that point the dinosaurs approached and offered them medical and health care, and then carried them safely across the border line.

This was, in essence, what happened at the border. Sobek was a little worried: it seemed strange to him that, after so many attempts to start a war, the Empire didn't make any move. Perhaps, he reflected, the invasion of Sinai should have been just a test and the Empire wasn't yet ready to face a war, so they too were stalling. This seemed to be confirmed by all the tests the Imperials periodically ran to see how efficient their copying dinosaur abilities was.

In any case, he didn't expect the monotony to be broken so soon. That's why he was quite surprised when he heard thunder. But it wasn't thunder caused by the storm: it was the sound of a thermobaric missile being launched towards the dinosaur camp. Flak under Pierce promptly fended off the missile, but many more were on the way. At the same time, the imperial troops advanced towards them overcoming the trench. It was no ordinary skirmish: tanks and warplanes were advancing as well.

"An attack!?" Sobek exclaimed through gritted teeth. "Has the Empire finally decided to act?"