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Grass Eaters 3 | 03 | No Good Deed
🕑 Added 2024-10-30 16:47:01 +0000 UTCQuist City — 115th Combined Arms Division HQ, Quistqueu-3
POV: Vzglars, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Seven Whiskers)
Bang.
As Vzglars scrambled to find cover in her tiny command bunker, her world went white. A painfully loud sound assaulted her eardrums and she lost her balance, toppling over where she stood.
It took ten seconds for her to recover her senses. When she did, she realized that not only was she alive, there were several new unfamiliar figures in her bunker. Several… metallic figures. Her vision recovered. The white spots in her eyes disappeared, replaced by two of them pointing their weaponry at her.
Combat robots. I guess the reports from the Grand Fleet are true.
One of them roughly grabbed her paws and hauled them behind her. In desperation, she looked over to see her computer officer on the floor, tussling with one of their machines. It pinned him down as he struggled, his body squirming and crawling on the floor even as the robots clasped metal restraints on one of his rear paws.
“Our lives were forfeited the day we left the hatchling pools!” he screamed as he somehow managed to wriggle free for a second, hopping towards the back of the bunker.
Her eyes widened. She saw what he was going for: the orders safe containing secrets and plans of the Dominion. If he could input the wrong key combination twice, the new self-destruct explosive could detonate the bunker and—
Bzzzzzzzzzzzt.
Thud.
He dropped to the floor with a loud thump.
“None of that today, Grass Eater,” one of the figures said — a real Lesser Predator, not one of their robots. It made a grotesque chuckling sound, apparently amused by the sight of her computer officer twitching uncontrollably from their application of electricity. “Marvin, analysis. What was our enthusiastic friend going for?”
The robot putting restraints on her immobilized computer officer — its name was Marvin, apparently — answered, “Locked command safe, High Pack Leader. Possibly a self-destruct mechanism.”
“Ah, well, since we’re here anyway, might as well get into it, right?” the predator said as it looked directly at Vzglars.
She shrank away from the approaching beast as best she could. Bound tightly by the new restraints and held from behind by a combat robot's metallic claws, there wasn't much she could do.
“What do you want from me?” she asked it coldly and much more calmly than she felt inside.
The abomination paused in its step and winked at her. “Sure, I’ll try the polite way. The keycode for your orders safe, please… Seven Whiskers.”
“Go to hell! You’ll never get what you want from me!”
It revealed all its sharp teeth at her. “Hey look, I tried. Hold her down, Marlene.”
“You always get our names wrong, High Pack Leader. I am not Marlene,” the robot complained as Vzglars felt the claws holding her from behind tighten painfully. “I am Marcy. Marlene is the one watching outside.”
Seemingly amused, the live predator carefully produced a delicate-looking device from its utility pouch. It looked like a headset, and its size looked suspiciously like it was tailored for a Znosian head.
“What is that?” Vzglars demanded, alarmed as it approached her ominously. “No, don’t put that on me! Get it off! Ahhhhhhhhhh! Ow! It hurts! Ow! Get it off me! Get it off!”
She felt something sharp poke into her skull, her dignity forgotten as she screeched in pain.
“Relax, Seven Whiskers,” the predator said, and magically, the pain dulled then disappeared. It was an odd feeling. “We aren’t going to torture you like savages. Besides, everyone knows that applying pain is an unreliable way to obtain information.”
“What did you do to my head?!” Vzglars screeched, squirming in the steel grasp of the robot behind her, her eyes looking up in futility to determine just what the headset was doing… up there.
“Alright, let’s move it along, Seven Whiskers. We don’t have all night. What’s the code for the orders safe? Come on. The code for the orders safe, please.”
Vzglars stopped moving long enough to spit into its helmet cover. “I’ll never tell you!”
It tilted its head. “What won’t you tell me? What about the first number? Just tell me the first number. Is it a one, two, three— Ah. Thank you for your cooperation, Seven Whiskers.”
What?
The beast left her to approach the safe, tapping in the keycode as it read the numbers to itself from a datapad. Correctly, somehow. “4-2-4-3-8-1-9. Is that like your cub’s birthday or something?”
Impossible.
“We don’t have cubs, you idiot. We have hatchlings. And how did you get my safe code?” she demanded, unsettled enough to stop struggling.
It ignored her and hummed an annoying tune as the safe beeped its confirmation and its doors swung open. The predator took out the hard copy papers within, laying them out on her table.
“Ah… what have we got here? Orders, protocols, memos, messages from the fleet. And in paper too; must be important secrets. Very nice, we’ll be borrowing these if you don’t mind,” it beamed. It pointed to the robots and gestured to the papers on the table, “Scan and transmit those upstairs, Marvin.”
“Yes, High Pack Leader.”
The predator returned its gaze to Vzglars. “So… Seven Whiskers, I hope you don’t have any plans for the next few months.”
“My life was forfeited—”
It interrupted her with a snort, “Relax, Grass Eater. We aren’t going to kill you. You’ll have plenty of time to practice your whining on your way.”
“Where are you taking me?” Vzglars demanded.
“You’re coming with us. To somewhere considerably more exciting than this place — now that we’ve basically taken Quistqueu.”
“Where?”
“Hm… No clue. Super big secret. But my personal guess is occupied Grantor.”
“You’ll never take Grantor,” she said frostily. “It’s not like this under-developed backwater. Grantor is a fortress star system. Took even our people years to break through the perimeter, and that was against you people.”
It winked back at her. “Maybe, but have you considered… that we are simply better at this than you?”
“Lesser Predator Marine… you know that you are the joke of your service in the known galaxy, right?” she sneered back at it. “Almost small enough to be naturally weak like us, and none of our civilized discipline or—”
“Just regular Federation Marine Infantry? Crayon Eaters?” it asked her mockingly and then pretended to be injured. “A year ago, maybe. But surely you can’t think so little of my special squad, Grass Eater.” It gestured towards the direction of the bunker exit. “Let me ask you something: do you hear that?”
Vzglars paused for a moment, trying her best to hear and wondering where it was going with this. She heard nothing out of the ordinary, just the regular noises of the city at night. She rolled her eyes. “I don’t have your primitive hunting ears, predator.”
“What do you hear?” it insisted.
“Nothing irregular.”
“Exactly. No sirens. No shooting. And no sounds of shouting sentries. Our Marines will approach the city tomorrow, and how well do you think your people will fare when they get the authorized commands coming from this bunker? Can any of your Marines do what we do here?” it asked smugly.
“We have infiltration teams too, you know?” Unsettled, Vzglars kept up her sneer. “We’ve always wondered how long it would take you savages to figure things out and copy from us.”
Instead of getting mad and killing her as she secretly hoped it would, it howled in laughter. “Copy from Grass Eaters? Well, you’re not completely wrong about that, Seven Whiskers. Just about the type of Grass Eaters… Now, take a seat and get comfortable. It’s going to be a long night.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Naval Station Charon, Charon
POV: Spommu, Malgeir Federation Marine Special Warfare Team (Rank: Head Pack Leader)
“This is not a legal hearing or a trial, do you understand?”
Head Pack Leader Spommu nodded her head wordlessly.
“Can you confirm verbally, please?”
“Yes, I understand… sir.”
The serious-looking man with the same uniform as her nodded. “Good. We are just here to lay out the facts for the record. At this point, you are not required to make a plea or a defense. You don’t need to answer any questions about what happened. And you have the right to have an attorney present with you here — a right which I’m told you’ve chosen not to exercise at this time. Is that accurate?”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“You have the right to re-invoke that right at any time during these proceedings. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So… let’s get to it then,” the judge advocate continued. He switched on his tablet and began reading off it into the microphone in front of him, “Head Pack Leader Spommu was part of Assault Carrier Crete’s complement, a joint Malgeir-human task force put together as part of the recent Red Zone strike campaign. She served in this role as a Federation Marine Pack Leader for nine months, including time in the fast-tracked Alien Marine Familiarization Program. Her record was excellent, and her squad received the Navy Unit Recommendation Medal in June for their actions in the Red Zone. As a result, she was promoted to Head Pack Leader later in September.”
She nodded when he stopped to look up at her.
He continued, “On August 17th, Spommu’s squad took part in a boarding action against a Znosian Dominion ship designated ZNS 4291 in interstellar space, in the Plaunsollib system. During the boarding action, her squad breached a section of the enemy ship and came upon a grouping of enemy combatants. Her squad neutralized fifteen to eighteen enemies defending an interior position with a barrage of high explosive grenades. When they reached the enemy position, Pack Leader Spommu came upon what appeared to be a heavily injured Znosian Marine burning to death inside their pressurized suit. At this point, she chose not to render aid. Instead, she deliberately fired a shot into their helmet with her service weapon. This sequence of events was captured by the suit sensors of all her squadmates, the six combat robotic units they were deployed with, and her own helmet camera. She does not deny this, and she confirmed these events in her after-action report.
“Pack Leader Spommu claimed that her shot was an act of compassion — a mercy killing of a suffering, former enemy combatant. Four independent legal intelligences — including her ship’s onboard legal intelligence — have reviewed all the evidence available, and they have come to the same conclusion: there is no reason to doubt her motive… Nonetheless, this is legally irrelevant. Under the Republic Navy Code of Justice, there are no allowances for mercy killings. The Znosian Marine she shot was clearly incapacitated, incapable of combat duties or defending themself. Furthermore, she did not attempt to render aid to the wounded, as is also required by the Code of Justice. The precedents are clear: over the years, dozens of Republic spacers and Marines have been convicted of war crimes even as they claimed to conduct mercy killings of injured noncombatants, regardless of whether their victims took part in hostilities.
“We looked at several potential defenses and mitigating circumstances. First, it is not immediately clear to us whether the Znosian Marine was already deceased the moment Spommu fired her weapon. They were severely injured, and two out of the four legal intelligences argued that it is not beyond a reasonable doubt that they were still alive; one argued that she could not have known whether they were. We have observed cases where muscles of corpses continued moving well after the individual would be considered legally deceased. Second, the mercy killing argument is allowed as a mitigating factor, though not an excuse, to the intentionality of the killing. Third, they considered the argument that the Znosian Marine was still within arm’s reach of their service weapon, and their erratic movement could possibly convince a reasonable person in Pack Leader Spommu’s position that they still posed a genuine threat. All four of our legal intelligences rejected the last argument, but all conceded it is possible that a human jury or judge could accept its validity in court. Weighing the evidence and mitigating circumstances, our office concluded that there is reasonable basis to proceed with a more in-depth investigation.
“There was some initial confusion as to the specific institution that would be responsible for investigating this case, but as Head Pack Leader Spommu is a citizen of the Malgeir Federation and the incident occurred in recognized Federation territory, it was decided that Spommu’s native service — the Federation Marine Infantry — would be the overriding jurisdiction of choice. Thus, as soon as the legal intelligences concluded their assessments, we referred all the evidence we gathered in this case to our established contacts in the Federation.” The judge advocate frowned as he read, “We expected they would give her a fair, rigorous, and speedy judicial process that took into account the strength of the evidence and the relevant mitigating circumstances to ensure that justice would be done.
“The Federation authorities transferred the case to the Federation Home Fleet, to a Beta Leader in charge of judicial investigations named Pincrio. Two weeks later, our legal intelligences discovered that Pack Leader Spommu’s squad leader, High Pack Leader Baedarsust, remotely transferred six hundred credits from his personal bank account to the Home Fleet general fund on Malgeirgam, and we traced the money to Beta Leader Pincrio’s personal account four hours later. Within twenty-four hours, Pack Leader Spommu’s case was officially dropped by Home Fleet. Upon questioning, High Pack Leader Baedarsust admitted quid pro quo for this sequence of events but denied that Pack Leader Spommu solicited or requested for him to transfer the money, nor could we find evidence that she compensated him for it. Our legal intelligence reviewed this and determined unanimously that, though this act would be considered a blatant act of open bribery in the Republic, it clearly does not fall under the jurisdiction of the Republic and is thus not prosecutable conduct. We transferred the evidence of this bribery to the Federation authorities, and,” he frowned again, a little deeper as he kept reading, “they declined to prosecute.”
Whew.
“However, under Republic law, all war crimes are universally prosecutable regardless of the jurisdiction they were committed in, as long as the principle of complementarity is respected. Under the precedent of Republic v. Barbier, it was determined that non-Republic justice systems in offworld non-Republic colonies are conditionally qualified to adjudicate universal war crimes and preserve the rights of the accused against double jeopardy — as long as certain legal standards are followed. In this case, they clearly were not. Therefore, this investigation was re-opened in our office.
“It was at this point the details of this case were unfortunately leaked to the press, inviting comments from the public. As Head Pack Leader Spommu’s action was conducted during a battle in defense of the Republic, many citizens spoke out in favor of her and pressured our office to drop the case, including President Havel who publicly offered a blanket pardon to the high pack leader in case she was convicted. However, in the Republic, guilt and innocence are determined in the court of justice, not the court of public opinion.
“At the final stage of the investigation, our legal intelligences concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Head Pack Leader Spommu could be charged with assault with intent to kill. This charge is a class A felony that carries a potential sentence of ten years’ incarceration, dishonorable discharge, and monetary fines up to one hundred thousand credits.” At this point, the judge advocate sighed. “However, given the judicial, jurisdictional, and moral complexity of the case involved, the myriad of mitigating factors, the number of high profile calls for leniency, the expected resources required for a successful prosecution, the remorse that Head Pack Leader expressed when informed of our findings, and the low likelihood that she would actually face sanctions even if a conviction was secured… we have agreed with Head Pack Leader Spommu’s commanding officer that our office will conclude our investigation in exchange for her facing the maximum penalty allowed by non-judicial discipline. This course of action would retain the integrity of the military justice system, serving as a reminder to all Republic spacers and Marines that we take the rule of law seriously, while maintaining our humanity and flexibility to act decisively in complex moral situations.”
He cleared his throat and looked straight at her. “Head Pack Leader Spommu, your commanding officer has elected to impose non-judicial discipline on you. You have the right to demand trial by court martial in lieu of non-judicial discipline. If you refuse non-judicial discipline, charges could be referred back to the Office of Naval Investigations. If you decide to accept non-judicial discipline, you may request a personal appearance before the commanding officer or you may waive this right and submit a written document to assist them in determining an appropriate punishment. You are entitled to be informed of your rights, and you have the right to talk to a military lawyer before you make a decision. Do you understand everything I have described to you here?”
“Yes, sir.”
He sighed again. “In this case, the maximum punishment for non-judicial discipline is 45 days of extra duties, 30 days arrest in quarters, forfeiture of 30 days pay, and reduction in grade until you have completed a course demonstrating your full understanding of the laws of armed conflict. At this point, would you like to talk to an attorney before you make a decision?”
Spommu shook her ears. “No, sir. I’ve made up my mind. Where do I sign?”
Comments
Krzychu0304
There is a war of extermination going on where the Znosians are killing billions of innocent civilians because they can. Meanwhile, the Earth's legal system is taking care of any possible conviction for finishing off a mortally wounded Znosian. XD
AnAbsoluteVillain
Warcrimes- the great monument to our hubris. To pretend the wholesale slaughter of men is anything other than just one big societal crime scene. That anyone in one can be anything other than a victim.
