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Grass Eaters 3 | 49 | Close Air III
🕑 Added 2025-02-14 16:47:01 +0000 UTCGrantor City School for Gifted Hatchlings, Grantor-3
POV: Spisme, Znosian (Teacher)
“… then you see another hatchling being teased and pushed around by another. Do you… one, join in because other people are doing it; two, ignore it and walk away; three, report it to the local security official; four, try to stop—”
“If she’s being pushed around, she is probably a defective anyway, Teacher Spisme. I think it’s just natural—”
Whack.
“Ow!” the little hatchling yelped, clutching his ear in pain where Spisme smacked it with a thin, wooden stick as a couple of other hatchlings covered their snickers. “I was just making—”
“We don’t use that word around here… anymore!” She bent down to an appropriate height to scream into the hatchling’s face. “Do you understand?!”
Whack.
“Ow!”
She stared at the hatchling — he was nursing his ears — severely. “I asked you: do you understand?!”
“Yes, Teacher Spisme! I understand!” he answered hastily. “I understand!”
“Good,” she said, stealing a quick glance at Torsad and Insunt — observing intently at the back of the classroom. “Now… answer the original question.”
“I— I report— report the incident,” he stuttered nervously, stealing a not-so-subtle glance backwards at the Granti rebels himself.
Spisme nodded sagely, flipped her datapad to the answer key, and then frowned. “Hmm, wait a second…”
Whack.
“Ow!”
“Wrong answer!”
“Ahem! Ahhhhemmmm.”
Spisme looked up at the source of the deliberate throat-clearing. “Yes, Department Leader Torsad?”
“Would you care to join me in the hallway, Teacher Spisme?” Torsad asked.
“Of course… All hatchlings, continue your reading until the end of the chapter.”
“Yes, Teacher Spisme,” they replied in unison.
Spisme followed the Granti operative to the hallway. “Is there something dissatisfactory with my hatchlings?” she asked nervously.
“No— not really. When I was a teacher— never mind. Do you really have to… hit them like that?” Torsad gestured at her own ear.
Spisme looked at her for a second, contemplating the question, then her eye lit up. “Ah, of course, Department Leader, I can hit them a little harder next time — on the nose, perhaps? — if you think my method of discipline is inadequate?”
“Harder?!” Torsad shook her head strongly. “That’s— not what I meant. Why hit them at all?”
“So they learn appropriately,” she answered matter-of-factly. “In time for you to administer their end-of-training assessment.”
“And you can think of no— no other way? Other than applying pain? Isn’t that a little— a little too much for such minor mistakes? And they’re— they’re so small.”
Spisme narrowed her eyes at the massive predator towering over her. “I can think of several other ways. I am an experienced hatchling teacher, after all. But this is the fastest and most efficient method available to me. Have you given my request the other week more thought?”
“We are not going to give you a zapper for you to use on your hatchlings!” Insunt cut in.
If Torsad hadn’t seen how Znosian teachers educated their hatchlings in other settings, she might have suspected it was merely a ruse to get her paws on a weapon…
Spisme shrugged. “A zapper would be significantly more efficient. The latest model from Znos has two additional settings for—”
“It’s— it’s outright hatchling abuse!” Torsad countered. “I can’t believe I’m saying this— What if they learn better another way?!”
“Then they are probably defect— I mean, below baseline intelligence. You have been sending more and more of these… substandard hatchlings to my school the past few months,” she complained. “So many behavioral issues! I have to pay extra attention to them because I don’t want them to all fail their tests and get recycled by you. Again.”
“Ahem,” Torsad covered up a cough. “Of course not. Uh— carry on with your good work, Teacher Spisme. I look forward to your positive results.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Torsad, Grantor Underground (Department Leader)
They watched the hatchling teacher get back to her class and resume screaming at her hatchlings again.
Insunt turned to Torsad, “If we tell her the truth about the other ones—”
“— It would not help,” Torsad shook her head firmly. “She is trying her best. There’s no need to add unnecessary complications to her job.”
“Did you see that hatchling though?” Insunt asked, thoughtful.
“Which one?”
“The one that said the naughty word. The last one.”
Torsad snorted, “Ah, that one. Yeah. Spisme must have accidentally used that word where they can hear it. Probably called them that herself. It’s… whatever. Just look at her; I’m sure it’s not intentional or—”
“No, that’s not what he meant. I— I could have sworn he was just joking or something,” Insunt said.
“Intentional humor? From a Grass Eater hatchling? Perhaps you’ve been reading too many of the Terran books… which I didn’t think was possible. The Znosians don’t do that; everyone knows that.”
“Well… maybe it was mimicking us… Maybe I’m imagining things…” his voice trailed off.
Buzz.
Torsad glanced down at her radio, its indicator light blinking yellow. She picked it up. “Hello? Nexus here.”
“Department Leader!” the slightly garbled other end of the call sounded excited. Then again, most of her operatives were easily excitable people. “Department Leader! There’s something going on!”
Torsad rolled her eyes. She had to remind herself that these people were not all properly trained in radio procedure like herself. “Yes, yes. I’m sure it’s very important. But surely you can report your status in slightly more specific terms?”
“Yes, Department Leader. Our high-rise lookouts at the eastern edge of the city say they’re seeing a lot of activity around the occupier Marine bases. They’re drawing a bunch of troops out of their barracks—”
“Where are they going?” Torsad asked sharply as Insunt prepared their vehicle. “I’m heading that way right now.”
“That’s the thing… it’s not any of the bases we have on the map we have. And there are so many of them! I’m talking entire forward bases just being emptied… Here, I’ll transmit the coordinates we have to you.”
As Insunt drove, Torsad got on her radio.
Her other radio.
She tried the pre-arranged urgent channel. There was no response.
In just a few minutes, they arrived at one of their many hidden checkpoints at the edge of the city.
“Who’s in charge here?” Torsad asked as she almost jumped out of the back of her moving truck.
A scruffy-looking youth stepped forward, gesturing at his company of a couple dozen people and their two well-camouflaged vehicles in a covered net. “I am. This is my action cell, Department Leader.”
“Get your weapons and your vehicles. Let’s go.”
“Where are we going, Department Leader?” he asked excitedly. “We weren’t told where we’re going, only that we’re needed for an urgent mission—”
There was a flash from outside the city. A bright flash.
Far brighter than the rising Grantor star.
“Uh… yeah. That way.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Grantor City Outskirts, Grantor-3
POV: Bertel, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Five Whiskers)
Five Whiskers Bertel gasped in surprise and shielded her eyes with her paw instinctively as the horizon flashed and erupted in a blinding blaze of light. A few seconds later, her Skyfang shuddered violently as the shockwave from the nuclear explosion raced across the landscape below. Glancing back at her pilot, she saw Sminski struggling to maintain control, their main rotors groaning under the sudden pressure.
And just as quickly as it arrived, the danger passed.
She looked out the window to the front. A large orange mushroom cloud rose ominously in the distance, a towering inferno of radioactive ash and heat… She didn’t need to check her orbital positioning unit to know that was the target location they were supposed to provide air support to.
Bertel dialed her radio to her new command frequency. “Zigzag Aviation, this is Skyfang Floppy-4. What is going on?”
To her surprise, there was a response, albeit not a helpful one. “Floppy-4, this is Zigzag. Hold one, please. We’re trying to figure out what’s going on. There— we’ve been having problems pinpointing the detonation—”
“It’s at the base we were supposed to respond to!” she provided back to the radio.
“Uh… Floppy-4, we don’t have the coordinates. We’re trying to get confirmation from our supervisor—”
Useless.
She shut off the radio and activated her radar and sensor systems. Which, also to her surprise, were still functional, albeit at a degraded state because of the amount of radiation in the air and the soot now raining down near the base. It scanned the area in a narrow arc in front of them, and a few seconds later, it returned a moving target. A friendly transport vehicle.
Moving away from the detonation.
She frowned.
That is odd. Aren’t the ground troops supposed to be swarming—
She panned the thermal optic view to the target, and what she saw erased all questions from her mind. “Sminski, that vehicle! It’s hostile! That’s the Great Predators! Get me a shot!”
“Holding steady!” he said after a few seconds of adjustments to their tilt and collective.
“Launching!”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: “Mark”, Terran Reconnaissance Office
Mark had been tracking the chopper in his enhanced vision — hoping it didn’t notice them. Then, he saw the air-launched missile leave its pylons in a puff of smoke.
John saw it coming too. “Incoming! Get out!” he screamed both audibly and in his mind as he leaped out of the moving truck.
Kara reacted half a second later. Her feet caught on the undersized vehicle’s steering wheels. She grunted as she tried desperately to free herself from the vehicle.
At just over a kilometer, Mark calculated he had less than four seconds to act.
Without hesitation, he grabbed Kara’s shoulder with both hands. Leveraging his taller position behind her, he swiftly flung her out of the cabin like a ragdoll, propelling her away from the truck with all his strength and adrenaline. Half of the vehicle’s dashboard went flying with her, including a chunk of the steering wheel.
The truck immediately swerved and toppled off the road. As it did, Mark lost his balance and fell back into the truck bed. He struggled to get back up—
Boom.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Bertel, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Five Whiskers)
“Hit!” Bertel screamed excitedly. “Target destroyed!”
Sminski’s voice in her ear was skeptical. “The Great Predators? We got them?! Are you sure?”
The doubt echoing her own in the back of her mind; she double-checked in her thermal sensors. The fire and smoke in the area were obscuring its vision, but the truck was clearly overturned and burning a trail of black smoke into the sky above it. As she watched, two figures picked themselves up from right next to the wreck and started moving again.
“They’re still alive!” she yelled. “Line us up again! Switching to autocannon!”
“Lining us up— wait a second.”
Every indicator light on their dashboard lit up, screaming a dozen warnings at them.
She could hear Sminski hit a series of buttons and controls in the back seat as he screamed, “Incoming surface-to—”
Bang.
A loud crack emitted from under the Skyfang reverberated through the cabin, and the rotary wing tilted roughly to the right.
“We’ve been hit!” Bertel screamed as she checked the status panels. “We’re hit! Main engine loss! Can you get us to land, Sminski? I see a patch down to our right—”
Not getting a response, she turned to the back seat to a gruesome image. The shrapnel from the surface-to-air missile had made pulp out of her pilot, smearing his remains across the perforated back seat. Half his dashboard was missing, and there was a large hole in the cockpit glass.
She gulped.
Remembering her training, Bertel placed her neck in a perfectly upright position, reached her paws over her shoulders, and pulled hard on the ejection loops.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Torsad, Grantor Underground (Department Leader)
Torsad watched as her Talon swat the enemy choppers out of the sky with satisfaction. She leaned forward to her driver. “Targets destroyed. Get us to where they were shooting at.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: “Kara”, Terran Reconnaissance Office
John examined the suit still containing the badly mangled body of the TRO director and shook his head at Kara as she approached, limping.
“He’s gone,” he said out loud, sounding as if half in shock and the other half still operating on the inertia of combat instinct.
She bent down to the suit, activating the quick release and shedding it as quickly as she could with a broken bone in her left arm.
John grabbed her shoulder. Kara, he’s gone!
“Help me get him out of there,” she snapped back.
What? He’s gone. We don’t have—
“We need to recover his implants and destroy the suit in place.” Returning to their shared implant thoughts, she replied coldly, Standard procedure. Can’t let them capture our tech or bodies.
He stared at her for a heartbeat, then nodded as he bent down to try to pry Mark’s helmet off him. Right.
A second of fruitless struggling later, Kara shook her head as she pulled out her laser cutter. No time to go digging in his head for everything. I’m going to sever it at the neck.
“Are— are you sure?”
Get out his explosives for the suit and body, Kara ordered as she made the quick cut.
Sssssssssss-snip.
Mark’s entire head came off surprisingly easily with the laser cutter. Carefully wrapping the fallen director’s decapitated head — blood half-spurting, half-cauterized — in a roll of bandage, she packed it all into her backpack.
Hurry, she commanded, as John primed the explosives for the rest of Mark’s suit. Judging from that Talon hit, I think our Teddy friends are coming for us, but there’s no way to know. Move quick.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Torsad. Thanks for coming for us,” Kara said stiffly as she mounted the oversized Granti vehicle.
“Kara! What is going on? Why was there— the massive explosion— was that you guys?”
“Yes. Let’s get out of here before more of them arrive.”
“Where is—” Torsad glanced at the other Granti operatives near them, and lowered her voice. “Where is the director?”
Kara sat down in the truck bed. She made sure her helmet tint was still active as she hugged her backpack close. “He’s gone, Torsad. He’s gone.”
Comments
Thomas McCubbin
There's still the head...
Valdis Trautmanis
A sign of a good writer and an immersive world is well established charachters not being larger-than-life, not having impenetrable plot armor and occasionally getting killed while doing Very Dangerous Things 👍 RIP Director Mark, you will be remembered even without an entry on the War Memorial wall
M
RIP. He was a cold-hearted machine, just as Kara, but I can't help but feel sorry for her.
DeWhit
RIP “Mark”
Scipio
RIP, He was a bro
