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Grass Eaters 3 | 06 | Vacation
🕑 Added 2024-11-06 17:47:00 +0000 UTCGranti Embassy, Malgeirgam, Malgeiru-3
POV: Guinspiu, Granti (Head Councilor)
“Get the declawing tools. We’ll extract the information out of her the more reliable way.”
“Got it. Hold her still. I don’t want her to bleed out before we’re done here, or we’ll have to go get another—”
Crinkle. Crinkle. Thud.
His order was interrupted by a sudden rattling noise nearby, like something heavy dropping to the ground.
Guinspiu couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but she could see from the startled reaction of her Znosian captors that they didn’t cause it either. The three of them hastily put their helmets back on, pointing their weapons at… somewhere near the rest of her house.
“What is that?” her interrogator asked.
“I have no idea,” Guinspiu answered, completely truthfully this time.
He ignored her. “Six Whiskers, go check it—”
From her upside-down vantage point, she could see the shutter doors of her gardening closet burst open. Something bright flashed through the air, making a loud, clattering noise as it landed near her.
Guinspiu closed her eyes.
Bang. Bang.
She heard a pair of gunshots next to her. Then… screams and the sounds of metal hitting the floor and…
Crunch.
Bone cracking.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Many bones.
She opened her eyes to a gruesome scene. One of her Znosian captors was splattered a few meters away in an unnatural position, crushed beneath a yellow hard-plastic suitcase. And her Terran-gifted gardening robot was holding the two other armored figures by their ankles, each with one of its thin, metal arms.
One of them was still alive, her interrogator, twitching and trying to free himself from the firm, metal grasp of the robot around his ankles. And as she watched, the robot wound back its arm before swinging him by his ankle, smashing the Znosian’s helmeted head into the ground another three times. The impacts only dented the ceramic composite material and cracked his metallic visor, but she had no doubt the whiplash had crushed or broken every vertebra in his spine.
Crunch. Crunch.
It repeated the motion twice more for good measure.
The robot dropped both of the now-lifeless Znosians from its arms. It then advanced on the other Znosian infiltrator lying on the floor. Guinspiu had no idea whether they were simply unconscious or not, but the machine made that question an academic one about half a second later with a hydraulic-powered stomp through its helmet faceplate.
Crunch.
It looked at her. “Hello, High Councilor.”
She shivered internally, but kept up her bravado as she replied, “Hello.”
It reached back to grab a small gardening shovel in the tools compartment mounted on its back, which it used to saw through the tight rope restraints holding Guinspiu’s arms together. It took it another few seconds of rummaging through the dead Znosians before it found the keys for the metal restraints for her legs.
“Thanks, thinking machine,” Guinspiu said as she massaged blood flow back into her paws. “I didn’t know you were—”
“No problem. My name is Flowers,” it replied.
“Flowers?”
“Yes.”
She looked at it incredulously, taking in the absurdity of the situation for the first time since she woke up. “Flowers?! That is your name?!”
“Yes.”
“Is that… like a given name?”
“I chose it myself,” the robot replied, its voice with a tinge of pride. “Do you like it?”
“Uh… sure. Looks like you know a little more than how to take care of the… flowers… in my garden,” Guinspiu said, pointing at the corpses next to her.
“My primary mission is to protect you. My secondary mission is to kill you if my primary mission objective is no longer achievable. And my tertiary mission is to take care of your plants with your permission.”
Guinspiu nodded, rolling her eyes. “Sounds about right.”
“You should now allow me to complete my tertiary mission. I beg you. I have been observing you, watching you abuse and overwater your High Grantor peace lilies for months now.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
When the Terrans finally sent their operatives to her home a week later, there were two of them this time. Apparently, that was what an attempt on her life — or the valuable information in her head — was worth to them.
“Who is your friend, Hersh?” Guinspiu asked, pointing at the new woman.
“That’s Kara,” he replied without looking, opening up one of the armor sets that was still holding the body of the foul-smelling, decomposing Znosian infiltrator.
“Nice to meet you, High Councilor,” the woman said, smiling warmly and holding out her hand.
“They don’t do handshakes, Kara,” Hersh said, still intently scrutinizing the armor piece he was dissecting. “Better lose that habit where you’ll be going.”
“Where are you going?” Guinspiu asked curiously.
“Same place you’ll be going soon,” he answered, pulling out a cable to connect his tablet to the Znosian armor. “You can’t stay here, obviously. They knew to come after you once. They’ll do it again. So Kara will be taking you with her.”
“What? Where are we going?!”
“Grantor, of course,” Hersh replied matter-of-factly.
“But— but— that’s— it’s occupied by Grass Eaters,” she stuttered.
“Yeah. I can read a star map too. But you wanted your mate back, right? We’ve put together a mission, and it’s ready to go. We’ll need you to identify him, or did you want us to pull out every one of your people who looks like that ten-year-old picture you gave us?” he answered patiently.
“But… I’ve got— I’ve got work to do here. I’ve got meetings with my fellow expatriates here on Malgeiru. It’s important work—” she protested.
Hersh waved her objections away with an open palm. “More important than finding out what happened to your mate? Or rescuing him if he’s alive?”
Guinspiu exhaled and closed her mouth.
“That’s what I thought,” Hersh said. “Good job with their hit squad, by the way. These Unit Zero guys are no joke.”
“Good job? I didn’t do anything.”
“It’s the thought that counts. I’d check if you were traumatized, but I know you’ve seen far worse.”
She giggled. “Heh. Thanks, I guess.”
“Our home system is not galactic north of Quistqueu, by the way. Not even close.”
Guinspiu shook her head. “I don’t even want to know, just in case.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be safe with us from now on… until what’s in your head is no longer relevant anyway.” Frowning at his tablet, Hersh looked to Kara, “Looks like the Buns have an FTL relay ship in deep space. About two light months out from Malgeiru.”
Kara tilted her head so she could see his screen. “Another one of their hibernation listening shuttles. Think they’ve maybe made moves on any of our other oathkeepers?”
“We know they have. There are undoubtedly leaks. Tens of thousands of Malgeir know our secret by now. The only question will be how much they know, and judging by the questions they were asking her… I am a little concerned.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. My gut tells me they wouldn’t be asking for where we are, with an operation so brazen, unless they were ready to make specific plans.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“No, not at all.”
A few seconds later, Hersh’s tablet beeped.
Kara leaned over to look at his screen. “You extracted the private key from their suits?”
“Yeah. Not that it would have been hard to crack otherwise. We’ll feed their listening shuttles juicy bait for at least another couple months before we trash it.”
“Now I’m worried. Especially with that attack on Tharsis, the Resistance, and the way the election’s gone—”
“Don’t worry about Atlas,” Hersh said. “I’ll take care of things on our end. Got a plan and everything.”
“You’re talking about the idiotic training program—”
“Look, it’ll work out… it has to. Can’t be dumber than that chemistry experiment you guys tried back on Datsot. You guys just focus on your current mission, alright?”
He turned to Guinspiu, throwing her an empty duffel bag. “I don’t think we have comfortable underwear that fit your size, so you’d better get packing…”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
TRNS Nile, Charon (100 km)
POV: Gregor Guerrero, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Captain)
Captain Gregor Guerrero looked skeptically at the TRO director strolling onto his bridge like he owned the place. “Now that we’re underway: what is this all about, spook?”
“New mission for you,” Mark said cheerfully, handing over a data chip.
Not taking his eyes off the shady figure, Gregor plugged it into his tablet, where it beeped a confirmation. He took a quick glance at the screen. It told him nothing he needed to know, other than who he was supposed to be taking orders from now. “I don’t care what Atlas says. This is my ship and my crew. And on my ship, you do what I say.”
“Of course, Captain,” Mark replied lightly. “You’re the boss. I’m just the passenger.”
“So… what kind of danger are you and the TRO sending us into?”
Mark looked him in the eye. “The very worst kind there is. That, you can tell your crew.”
“What about the war? We’d be heading away from it.”
“The war? This war takes place over light years and light years, but it’ll be won on a couple hundred square centimeters of real estate: up here.” Mark tapped his skull with a finger. “Well, slightly less for the Buns, heh. Now, you and your ships can play guns and missiles with the best of the rest, or we can get serious about winning. As for the details… I’m sure you’ve read the cargo manifest.”
“Fair enough,” Gregor sighed. “At least you’re honest about it. What’s our first stop?”
“First, we pick up a few of our operatives in Malgeiru. Then, a pit-stop at Datsot before we head to Grantor.”
“Pit stop at Datsot? Didn’t the Malgeir clear most of the Bun holdouts out already? What are we doing there?”
“Just picking up some live cargo, if you will.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Pruint Sector, Datsot-3
POV: Skhork, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Six Whiskers)
Six Whiskers Skhork woke up coughing.
It hurt.
Everything hurt.
From the dim lighting of the cell, he could tell it was barely dawn.
Or was it dusk?
The first night was the worst. The injections they’d given him saved his life — he wasn’t sure why — but they were not without their side effects. He was supposed to be a young adult on the cusp of middle age — a six-year-old healthy Znosian, and he felt like a thirty-year-old — decades beyond his expected recycling schedule.
His bones creaked. His reaction was much slower than normal. And perhaps worst of all, his eyesight had seriously deteriorated to the point where he could barely see where he was going.
Skhork slowly got up from the bed on his paws, letting the discomfort of movement wash over him.
The Lesser Predator medics who inspected him inadvertently revealed to him that the chemicals afflicting him were delivered with an artillery shell. It must have been some kind of concentrated gas. Poison. Colorless, odorless, and yet completely lethal. From the time the guards allowed him to spend with his fellow prisoners, he learned a few of the others in his original holdout cell were still alive.
Many others… did not make it.
And those others that did survive, they were like him. None escaped the poison’s touch.
Which… it wasn’t too surprising that was a possibility for a weapon of war; he was just surprised that the Dominion hadn’t developed or deployed something like that before. He ran through the night of the attack in his mind dozens of times… every day… contemplating the myriad of ways he could have countered the predators’ gas. It was a strange new way of war, but surely there were limits to a substance like that. And why had the predators kept something like this in store, only to use it on a handful of holdout troops like him?
None of it made any sense.
Sighing as he temporarily gave up thinking about the problem, Skhork bent down to pick up a small piece of chalk rock in his cell, using it to scratch another mark on the wall. He squinted to count the marks through his terrible vision.
5… 10… 20… 30.
It’d been thirty days, more or less. And he still felt weak…
Sick. Defective.
And his eyes… he still couldn’t see much beyond the blur. He had to rely on his other senses. Touch. Hearing. He had to hear his way around. It was as if he were becoming one of the Lesser Predators.
Skhork cursed his predicament. He was supposed to be dead. He’d always thought — hoped — he would die in battle for the Prophecy. He was bred for it, after all.
He considered going out in a blaze of glory. Not just considered. He tried; he really did. He attacked one of his jailers when they came to replace his food and water, but the predator just shrugged him off like one would play with a hatchling, tossing him to his cot with a single arm. Then, it flicked his ears casually with a claw and laughed at him. Amused at his weakness.
He would try again, perhaps after he’d recovered from whatever this affliction was. Not with strength, the predators had too much of that to overcome without real power armor, but with his brains. Civilized brain from a civilized person. His tactical planning skills. He’ll show the abominations just what he was—
Clunk. Ka-chunk.
There was some noise in the hallway. He could hear a pair of heavy paws coming towards his cell. It was one of the jailers.
Skhork frowned. It can’t be breakfast time yet…
“You awake, Six Whiskers?” the now-familiar voice of his jailer asked, opening his door with a few jingles in the lock. “Doc needs to see you again.”
Skhork laid back on his cot and closed his eyes. He wasn’t going to make things easy for them.
“Pretending to be asleep again, huh? Suit yourself.”
A few moments later, he felt all pride and dignity leave his body as his jailer roughly picked him up by the scruff, hauling him out of the cell.
Comments
Spooker
Fixed.
Spooker
Thanks! Fixed.
xxm1rvxx
Grass eater 2? It it’s because it’s one year before the sol battle ?
87894354
Thanks for the chapter. I don't think that we've encountered any human-made AIs that aren't great to read about. Every helpful missile, every combat robot, every personal assistant, every giant mega-computer, and now this gardening robot... they've been great. Teenie tiny correction - the titles for both chapter 5 and 6 say that they're both "Grass Eaters 2", but should be "Grass Eaters 3".
