JOYRIDING CRIMINALS INJURE TWENTY-THREE
Yesterday several criminals hijacked a Gebler gear, and in an event later discribed as 'horrific,' engaged in a indiscriminate...

With a grunt of disgust, Joseph crumpled the paper up into a ball and threw it into the wastebasket. That didn't explain what the other Gebler gears were doing there. Lying was harder than it looked. And he still couldn't come up with a halfway plausible explanation for the Weltall.
Mr. Wong...
No one knew what the hell he was, did they? Or if they did, they sure as hell wern't telling him. Poor old Joseph Richardson, no one ever told him anything. He didn't know about the peace treaty untill after Bert was savagely beaten and locked in a back room...
Joseph got up and began pacing around the room. Why couldn't he kill him? Mr. Wong was right there, and so was he, and he couldn't kill either of them. His cause was just, his gear was strong enough to do the job-- but he couldn't kill him. Either of them.
The colonel stopped at the window and stared out at the street, still damaged from the fight. But there wasn't one, was there? That was the point. The Matama didn't fire. The pilot didn't fire. His cause was just, his heart was true, but he couldn't even kill a lamb. A filthy, defenseless lamb, and he had the audacity to stand in front of the Matama! And he didn't kill him!
It was bad enough that Mr. Wong got away.
"Dammit, Scaley," Joseph muttered to himself, "Why the hell arn't you dead?
A few minutes later, he went back to writing. This time, the Weltall was an unknown agressor, and his weakness was the noble Joseph Richardson putting the lives of the brave citizens of Dazil first. At very worst, it would give him an excuse to ratchet up security again.