Spooker
patreon
Grass Eaters 3 | 33 | Evasion III
🕑 Added 2025-01-08 16:47:01 +0000 UTCGrantor City South Mall, Grantor-3
POV: Torsad, Grantor Underground (Department Leader)
Torsad and Insunt picked up their pace as they heard the sounds of gunfire echoing throughout the large building in front of them. They were greeted at the mall’s door by the local cell leader shouting directions at his subordinates.
“You! Are you in charge here?” Torsad barked.
His head snapped over to her. “Yes, Department Leader! I am Cell Leader—”
“Have you found him yet?”
“No, ma’am,” he replied as a fresh wave of gunfire erupted inside the building. “We saw them dragging another… We think one of them is injured or dead, and the other one is guarding them with their life.”
“What’s taking so long?” Torsad complained. “The other cells can’t delay their ground teams forever!”
As if in response, there was an explosion somewhere in the distance towards the outskirts of the city. She hoped it was one of the Grass Eaters’ armored vehicles brewing up to one of their mine traps, but it was hard to tell.
“They keep popping in and out of the building vents, Department Leader. We’re trying to flush them out, but frankly, my people aren’t used to sustained fighting like this! We’ve already lost six people to them, four killed and two more critically wounded.”
“Whatever you do, we need to get to them fast!” Torsad snapped, pointing at the dimming sky. “It’s going to get dark, and there’s no chance our units can hold them back once their ground strike team comes in with night vision when it darkens!”
“Yes, ma’am! Is there any chance we can get our guys across the streets outside to direct their drones—”
“You’re telling me you haven’t been using those?!” she screeched at him.
“No, ma’am. They’re a different cell, the guys from Sixteenth Street who are supposed to be construction workers — one of them was a cub-sitter for our pack before— Anyway, you said we’re not supposed to talk to them or know their names or—”
“What? How do you know— Never mind. Screw that! This is their Grand Fleet Commander we’re trying to get! Insunt, get Cell Leader Glersiu and tell them to send everything they have into there until we drag two Grass Eaters out. Dead or alive!”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
With the swarm of drones racing in, it only took three minutes to find the fighting Znosian Marine and another thirty seconds to corner her outside a pre-war electronics shop. An explosive-laden drone dove onto her position, finally putting her out of the fight.
Torsad sprinted towards the last known location on her tablet without waiting for the all-clear. She noticed the downed enemy was still alive, and as she approached, it was crawling… crawling towards her rifle thrown a few meters away, dragging a trail of blood and entrails with her.
Not fast enough.
Torsad casually reached her and picked up the Znosian rifle. She pointed the rifle’s barrel back down at the injured enemy, who simply slumped into the tiled mall floor in resignation. Even through the durable armor, the explosive had blown off one of her legs and injured the other. The suit itself appeared to have sealed some of the perforations, but the remaining wounds looked mortal anyway.
She examined the Znosian face through her helmet’s visor. “You’re not the eleven whiskers we’re looking for,” she said in annoyance.
The enemy coughed twice with effort through her mortal wounds. “Not… unless I got… a big promotion… recently.”
Torsad pulled out the mag remaining in the gun she held in her paw. It was empty. A quick check on the rifle itself told her there was a single round remaining in its chamber. “Saved one for yourself?” she asked.
The Znosian Marine groaned, pain evident on her face even through the visor.
“I can respect that, Grass Eater,” Torsad remarked, bringing her tablet up to the enemy’s face. It ran the facial recognition program, finding the match in under a second. “You are… Five Whiskers Zdurbu. Znosian Marine. Ah, State Security affiliation. You must be his handler. Where’s your charge now?”
Zdurbu didn’t reply.
Torsad looked around her. And there it laid, the other body facedown next to her. She pushed it over with a paw.
The suit was empty.
Torsad sighed. “I expected as much. It’s what I’d do too.”
“Yes… but… stupidly,” Zdurbu gasped, her voice strained with pain as her breathing got shallower. “I’ll… never… tell you… where. Not… in time… anyway.”
“Probably not,” Torsad shrugged, bringing the rifle up to her shoulder. She aimed it at the helmet of the dying enemy. “I’ll give you the courtesy of allowing you to say your death prayer, Grass Eater. Just make it quick now.”
“No… no… no need.”
“No?” Torsad cocked her head in mild surprise.
“The Prophecy is… not… probably not… not real.”
“An agnostic Grass Eater? That’s a new one.”
Zdurbu said nothing in response and closed her eyes.
Torsad sighed, her claw on the trigger. “Fair enough, Zdurbu. Find out for me.”
Bang.
The Znosian Marine gurgled for a second, twitched, and then exhaled her last.
Torsad collected the empty magazines next to her corpse.
Waste not, want not.
After just a few more seconds of fruitless searching, her eyes snapped back up as Insunt ran up to her. “Department Leader, Department Leader! We have to go! The Grass Eater Longclaws! They’ve broken through the second chokepoint! Have you found the target?”
Torsad shook her head as she looked around the massive mall around her, its shadows darkening as the sun set. “No. We’ll never find him in here in time. Tell the teams to go to ground.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Sprabr, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Eleven Whiskers)
Sprabr realized he must have dozed off inside the flesh room when he was woken up by talking outside its heavy metal doors. The voices…
His stomach tightened when he realized they were Lesser Predators.
“We found him! We found him!” he heard one say. “He’s in there!”
“You abominations always thinking with your stupid stomachs,” another voice said, this one a Znosian, to his relief. “We’re here to find the eleven whiskers, not sit down for a disgusting flesh meal!”
“He is in there! I can hear him breathing!” the first voice insisted.
“Open it up. If he’s not in there, I’m going to have your handlers recycle both of you.”
Sprabr slowly stood up, dragging his numb paws towards the opening metal door. He showed them his empty paws as they pointed their flashlights at him.
“Eleven Whiskers! By the Prophecy! It’s him! We found him! Eleven Whiskers, are you alright?” the Znosian Marine at the doorway said in excitement into her radio.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he said, squinting his eyes at her weapon light in the dark.
The Marine activated her radio. “We found the eleven whiskers! Get the transport ready! We’re coming out!”
“Four Whiskers,” Sprabr addressed her as he read the rank on the Marine’s striped insignia patch. “Did you find the other ejected passenger? Five Whiskers Zdurbu.”
“Yes, Eleven Whisker. Her body is downstairs. Died fighting the savages, it appears.”
Sprabr hid his relief. “Too bad.”
The four whiskers bowed her head. “Her life was forfeited to the Prophecy the day she left the hatchling pools.”
He suppressed a sudden and overwhelming urge to correct her. It wouldn’t do, for his subordinates to think he was going senile in his old age.
The journey back to base was uneventful. As bad as the Grantor Underground had gotten in the city, the Znosians still owned the night with their ubiquitous night vision equipment.
Most nights.
Well… some nights. Tonight, at least.
When Sprabr got back to his room, he collapsed into his bunk in exhaustion.
He dreamt of his former subordinate and traitor to the Dominion, then Ten Whiskers Ditvish. In his dreams, they were both lined up against a red brick wall, facing a State Security firing squad together. He wondered if he deserved it…
And whether anyone really did.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Grantor City Safehouse Yankee, Grantor-3
POV: Torsad, Grantor Underground (Department Leader)
Torsad covered up her disappointment as she reported the failure. The humans said nothing, their faces impassive.
Mark nodded when she was done. “Good.”
Good?
“I apologize for my failure. We promised you we’d get him, and we failed. Ultimately, I am responsible,” Torsad said.
“Ultimately, you are. Assumptions in war kill, and your assumptions were part of your failure,” Mark agreed. “As they are often ours. But I’m sure we’ll both learn from it and do better next time.”
“We might not get such a good shot at Eleven Whiskers Sprabr again next time,” she replied miserably.
“Probably not. They’ll learn from this, and they probably won’t make the same mistakes again. They’ll make new mistakes. As will we, isn’t that right, Department Leader?”
“Yes, Director.”
“Good,” Mark said, smiling. “And don’t be too harsh on yourself, or your people. We could have made that mistake ourselves too. This assault was improvised, and it wasn’t a total failure.”
“It… wasn’t a total failure?”
“No, you still took down seven of their choppers in a single day.”
She nodded reluctantly. “I guess we did.”
“That’s not too bad. Probably the worst day for their Marine aviation in years — on a planet where they have orbital superiority anyway. On top of that… when your people kicked up the hornet’s nest, they emptied all their armed guard units out of their city spaceport to try to reach him.”
Torsad’s eyes widened. “You— what— you broke into their spaceport— What did you steal?”
“Well, let’s just say the better question is less: what did we take… and more… what gifts we left for them. It is the holiday season, after all.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Atlas Naval Command, Luna
POV: Amelia Waters, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Fleet Admiral)
“Um… hm… You have a call for you, Grand Admiral,” former analyst Samantha Lee and now flag aide reported to Amelia.
“What? Here? Who?”
“There is an open, unsecured call for you on the FTL radio.”
“Open call? Is it the Puppers again? Didn’t we tell them to stop using their old—”
“No, ma’am. It’s uh… it’s from Znos.”
“Znos?! The Buns are calling me?” Amelia asked. “What?! What for?”
“They’re using our first contact greeting protocols.”
She raised an eyebrow and asked sarcastically, “They’re boarding our diplomatic ships with specially trained operators in stealth shuttles—”
“No, no. You know what I mean. The protocols we gave the other species.”
“I know… I just— I didn’t even know the Znosians were capable of diplomacy!”
Samantha shrugged. “They— they say they want to speak to the commander in charge of our war effort. The operator wasn’t sure if they meant you or President Havel, but war effort implied you, so they routed it here.”
Amelia frowned. “Am I even legally authorized to conduct diplomacy with declared enemies of the Republic?”
“I’m not sure, but the legal intelligence monitoring the call will stop it if it thinks you’re in danger of breaching the law or revealing anything important to them.”
“Right. Alright. Let’s— let’s see what the assholes have to say for themselves.”
A female Znosian popped up on the screen. The computers helpfully displayed her TRO profile and her identity: Svatken, Znosian Office of State Security.
Amelia snarled into her microphone, “Hello, meat. This is your nightmare speaking. What do you want?”
Svatken’s image shrank back for a second before she peered into the camera on the screen. “Is that… Terran Republic Admiral Amelia Waters. Please… Admiral. There is no need for intimidation or emotional gestures. After all, we are civilized creatures unlike the rest of the galaxy around here, aren’t we?”
“Civilized creatures?” Amelia repeated into the headset, her voice thick with disbelief. “Civilized? You call yourselves that?!”
“Of course. What else? A civilization is a people that has transcended the natural bounds placed on them by the accidents of their birth. We are a prey species that overcame the natural disadvantage of our genetics to dominate our food chain and venture into the stars. Therefore, we are civilized. And you. Well, you were a predator hybrid species, but from the latest information we have acquired from captured prisoners from your new pets, it appears you — or most of you, at least — have also transcended your predatorial birth in numerous ways. For example, most of you no longer eat natural meat, preferring instead to satisfy your base hungers with artificially produced proteins. Some of our people disagree, but as a xenobiologist by training, I have no problems considering you objectively civilized.”
“Woah, the murder Bunny considers us civilized. Thank you so much!” Amelia replied sarcastically.
Svatken continued without breaking a sweat. “You’re welcome, Admiral. As for your pets, those other predators — they have not overcome much of their birth. The only thing we can credit them for overcoming are gravity and the speed of light. But for the sake of your sensibilities in this conversation, we can refer to them as barely civilized aliens if you wish.”
“You’re serious.”
“Of course I am. What else could I be?”
“Delusional. What do you want?”
“I’m here to begin negotiations with your people. Like civilized creatures would.”
Comments
Nicolae
So if we remove your (and in affect you'r races) access to "The Prophecy" you won't mind will you.
Spooker
Bah, a minor consideration. I'm sure no grudges will be held.
Krzychu0304
I didn't expect Svatken to call at all, willing to negotiate, I suspected much more that Sprabr would somehow contact the Terrans.
Nicolae
Yeah, you failed hard when you decided to send an extermination fleet to our home planet.
DeWhit
Woah, that’s quite the surprise development at the end there! Curious how it’ll play out, though I’m pretty sure talks won’t go far
