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Grass Eaters 3 | 32 | Evasion II
🕑 Added 2025-01-06 16:47:01 +0000 UTCCluxta Apartment Complex 25F, Grantor-3
POV: Torsad, Grantor Underground (Department Leader)
“They’re in effective range now, Department Leader,” Insunt announced as he watched the enemy signals approach on his tablet. “Six enemy choppers. This is their quick response team. You’d think they would learn that flying around here has consequences after we shot their precious eleven whiskers down. Serious consequences.”
“Don’t get too cocky, Insunt. They’ve just had their first chopper shootdown in their own pacified city, probably for the first time ever. Even Grass Eaters need some time to fully digest a lesson like this.”
“I imagine they’ll learn it real quick after this then.”
Torsad grunted her agreement, not taking her eyes off the screen.
48 kilometers.
“We’re not going to shoot yet?” Insunt asked impatiently as he watched the dots on the screen get closer.
“We’re going to give them a little bit more time. Let them come in a little more.”
“Why? They’re in range now.”
Torsad explained, “We shoot now, and some of them might get the bright idea to turn around or try a different route. We took the risk and effort to climb all the way up here. I want to get as many of them as we can. Did the ground cell find the target in the wreckage?”
“No, but one of our spotters saw parachutes. And there was some kind of high priority transmission from the location. Our… friends must be busy because they haven’t gotten the decrypted message to us yet.”
“Doesn’t matter. Unlike Grass Eaters, we are allowed to use our brains. Sprabr must have ejected. Has the search team found traces of him yet?”
Insunt shook his head. “Not yet. They found the ditched parachutes in the abandoned section of the old city, near the mall area, and the cell leader locked down the neighborhood. We think there’s two of them. They can’t have gone far.”
39 kilometers.
“We’ll buy them some time,” Torsad said, raising her launcher to her shoulder. “The choppers should be far enough in. Link me to the first target.”
“Linked. Hm… it says I have to aim for you. Ah, okay. Turn a little to the right… a little more… a little more. Perfect. Raise it up about 45 degrees… A little more— Close enough. Good to go.”
Her electronic sight turned red at an unseen target dozens of kilometers away, and she pressed the trigger as instructed.
Poof.
The missile left the tube in a cloud of smoke, igniting and tracking onto the linked signature.
Torsad carefully put the launcher down back in its case and picked up another tube from an adjacent case. “What do we do for the next one?”
Insunt read the instructions on his tablet. “Okay, the computer says there’s a yellow fifteen-digit number printed on the tube, near your shoulder. Can you read me the last five digits?”
She read the number printed on the tube out loud, “1-6-5-6-2.”
Insunt repeated it back to her as he entered it into his datapad, “1-6-5-6-2. Right?”
“That’s right.”
“Ok, you can turn it on now.”
She activated the new launcher, powered up the electronic sight, and aimed it in the same direction as the first missile.
“Linked,” Insunt said as he operated the tablet. It was… intuitive and guided every step of the way. “Second target acquired. It says: give it a few seconds because we don’t want the heat and debris from the first explosion to interfere… Ok. Ready now. Raise it up to… never mind, you know the spot. Good to go.”
FIRE NOW.
Remembering the procedure printed on the tube, she hastily looked around her. “Backblast clear. Launching.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
If they were the more advanced F-variant, the Talon hypersonic surface-to-air missiles would have coordinated the attack midflight to arrive at approximately the same time to minimize the amount of time the enemy had to respond to them. As it were, the Talon-D’s the Granti rebels were issued lacked the variable-thrust engines required for that kind of sophisticated operation.
Nonetheless, they were missiles designed to shoot down mid-century Terran combat jets. Rotary wing, which flew at much lower altitudes at much slower speeds, posed a trivial challenge. The launch computers calculated a probability of hit of greater than 90% before they even left their tubes.
Ninety percent for six missiles was technically just over fifty-fifty for hitting all six targets, but that was only the maximum PK confidence its makers were willing to guarantee as per the terms of its manufacturing contract.
The last choppers in the rescue response team desperately maneuvered to avoid the incoming projectiles that had already savaged the rest of their formation, dropping barrages of countermeasures that might have worked if the sensors on the missiles hadn’t been specifically designed to identify them… Their Znosian Marine combat pilots discovered in their last moments — the hard way, as usual — the precise reason why most districts in the Terran Republic stopped buying manned rotary wing for their combat aircraft inventories in the mid-to-late-21st century.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Grantor City South Mall, Grantor-3
POV: Zdurbu, Znosian Dominion State Security Unit Zero (Rank: Five Whiskers)
The sonic booms, the sound of the six distant, sequential explosions, and their subsequent secondaries reached the darkness of the abandoned mall clothing store the duo of ejected Znosians were taking refuge in. Fugitives on what was supposed to be their own planet.
Five Whiskers Zdurbu connected the dots almost immediately. Even if she hadn’t, the cheering of the predators below them as the news broke out on their radios would have been another easy clue. Her face turned pale — paler than it already was. “They must have shot down your response team too. We are on our own now.”
Sprabr scratched his armor’s helmet out of habit. “What about our ground vehicles?”
“They’ll need to gather up troops and vehicles… It’ll take at least an hour, Eleven Whiskers,” she said, pointing at the sound the predators were making downstairs. “And we don’t have an hour.”
“Maybe the predators won’t find us?” he said hopefully, gesturing at the dark shadow they were hiding in.
“I wouldn’t bet both my ears on that,” she said, settling deeper into the dark shadow.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Do you want to hear a story?” Sprabr asked a few minutes later. “While we wait for— for rescue.”
She checked her surroundings again — there was nothing else they could be doing anyway. “Sure.”
Sprabr took a deep breath and started, “There once was a fruit tree that loved a young kit. Every day, the young kit would go to the tree. He would play with her leaves, climb the tree, eat her fruits, and—”
She interrupted him, “The tree is female?”
“It’s a parable. A fictional story meant to teach something or illustrate a point.”
“Fictional story?”
“Yes, it describes imagined events; it’s not real. Now, can I continue?”
“Sure,” she said skeptically.
“The tree. The young kit. The kit would play with the tree and eat her fruits. And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade. This made the tree very happy. But time went by, and the kit grew older. He stopped visiting the tree as much, which made her sad. One time he visited the tree, she said to the kit—”
“The tree talks?” she asked with a mildly horrified expression on her face.
“It’s fictional.”
“Right, it’s fake,” she muttered.
“The tree tells the kit it should visit more. But he says to the tree, I’m not a kit anymore; I’m grown up now. He tells the tree that he’s now a farmer, and he needs to tend to his crops to meet quotas. He can’t play around with the tree all day like he used to. So she says, take my fruits and you can add them to your stockpile, and that should count towards your quota. He climbs the tree, gathers her fruits, and carries them away. He comes back to visit and collect her fruits every harvest season. And the tree is happy whenever he does. After a while, the tree notices that the visits have become less frequent, and when the male visits, it is for a shorter time each time.”
“Why?”
“Because the tree is getting older and producing fewer fruits,” he answered, glad that she was at least somewhat engaging with the story—
“Don’t older fruit trees make more fruit?”
“Don’t— I don’t know. I’m not a caretaker for fruit trees. I’ve never even seen one of those before. Do you want me to finish the story?”
“Fine, keep going.”
“The tree is sad, and she asks the male what more she could give him. As he grows older, the tree provides him with more and more of herself. Her branches for him to build furniture. Bits of her bark and leaves for medicine. And eventually, as he grows old and has his own kits, she allows him to cut down her trunk to build a house to provide for his growing clan. The tree is happy to give, but when the now-elderly male visits, she becomes sad. She tells him, I’m sorry, kit, but I have nothing left to provide you; my fruits are gone, I have no more leaves to provide you with a shade, and there are no more branches or trunk on me left for you to build with: I am just an old stump now. The elderly male replies, I have no teeth left to eat fruit, and I am very tired; I don’t need much: all I need now is a quiet place to rest. The tree straightens up with the last of her strength. She says, an old stump is good for resting; come, kit, sit down, and rest. He sits down on her stump. And she is happy.”
There was a moment of quiet as Zdurbu waited for him to continue. When he did not, she asked, “Is that it?”
“Yes, that is the end of the story. What do you think of it?”
She thought for a moment, then answered with her own question, “What am I supposed to think about the story?”
He cocked his head. “It’s up to you. What do you think?”
Zdurbu frowned. “What do I think? If the tree was a real, living, thinking being in the story, then this was an unequal relationship between the two. The kit — the male — he only takes and takes and takes. And the tree only gives. This is unfair.”
“But the tree is happy to provide,” he countered.
“Then the tree is stupid, probably because it is a tree, and deserves to be exploited. What— what is the purpose of the story?”
Sprabr shrugged. “I don’t know. I used to think it was simply describing the relationship between a wild animal and her kit. But now, it reminds me of something else.”
“What?”
He sighed. “I have been in service of the Dominion Navy for almost— almost three decades now. The only reason I haven’t been recycled yet is because I still provide immense value to it. With my knowledge, my experience… But when the Dominion comes to me, and it asks me for my final sacrifice—”
“You are happy to give it, like the tree?”
He shook his head. “No. The opposite. I don’t want to die. I’m scared to die. I have already given everything— almost everything to the Dominion. Why should I give more? How could it demand more from me now? How?!”
“Death in service of the Dominion is a blessing,” she admonished. “With your record, you’d rejoin the Prophecy with full honors.”
Sprabr sighed again and shook his head. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
“Believe what?” Zdurbu asked. She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not one of those crazy rebirth believers, are you? And even if you are, your sacrifice would—”
“The Prophecy. It’s not real. There is nothing after death. You just… stop existing. That’s it.”
She gaped at him.
Sprabr continued, “In fact, I’m pretty certain the Prophecy is a State Security invention, the way it’s taught and enforced.”
She only stared.
“You’re a smart cookie, Five Whiskers. Surely you’ve suspected.”
Zdurbu said nothing for a few more heartbeats. She could only reply, “That— that is apostasy.”
He didn’t bother to deny it. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
“The very thought of it: it is a betrayal.”
“Am I wrong?”
For a while, there was no sound but the shouting predators beneath them as they searched through the shops.
Eventually, she replied, “No, perhaps not wrong. There is a chance. But it doesn’t matter.”
It was his turn to be mildly confused. “It doesn’t matter?”
She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. Because even if you are right, there is a finite downside to believing the Prophecy anyway; but if you are wrong, the downside to not believing in it is infinite. In other words, if the Prophecy is real and you act like it is not, you’ve lost out on everything, but if the Prophecy is not real and you act like it is, you’ve only lost out on a relatively small amount of… whatever it is you think you’ve given up to the Dominion. Finite cost. For potential infinite reward. Therefore, the most logical course of action is to believe it.”
“That’s— that’s a clear fallacy.”
“How so?”
Sprabr thought quietly for a minute. “Okay. Imagine we are in a desert, and you have a canteen of water. And I ask you for the water.”
Zdurbu dug into her utility pouch. “Do you need my water?” she asked.
“No, no,” he interrupted her with an annoyed paw on her shoulder. “It’s a hypothetical.”
“Another hypothetical.”
Sprabr nodded. “Yes, just… imagine it. Imagine we are both thirsty, and I ask you for your water.”
“I would give my water up, as your needs are more important than mine, Eleven Whiskers. Your life is worth more than mine.”
Sprabr sighed in impatience. “Okay, imagine a slightly different hypothetical. You are in the desert with a predator, and you are both thirsty. And the predator asks you for your water.”
She shook her head vehemently. “I would not give my water to a predator. No way. I would rather pour it all on the ground and thirst to death with it than—”
“Yes, yes. But imagine if this predator tells you: Zdurbu, I have a device that can copy water molecules, and if you give me your canteen of water, I will pay you back a hundred times in water.”
“Then, it is obviously lying.”
“What would you say is the probability that the predator is lying?” Sprabr asked.
“100%.”
“Surely nothing in life is 100%.”
“Fine. But the chance is very high. It’s a predator, to start with. So… 99.9% chance, at least.”
“So, if the predator says it will pay you back a thousand times in water, it would be a fair trade?”
“A thousand times…” She did the calculation in her head. “But— hmmm… well… the chance that the predator is lying is realistically higher than the 99.9% I stated.”
“What if the predator offers to pay you back a million times? A billion times? A trillion times? A quadrillion trillion times? There is some large number that would surely make it a worthy trade, right? What if the predator offers you infinite water in return? What if it offers you an entire habitable planet? What if it offers you infinite reward? It offers you all the rewards of the Prophecy. You are only giving up a canteen of water to it after all. As you put it… finite cost, for potential infinite reward,” Sprabr concluded.
“I would— no, because— hang on— that can’t be right…”
Zdurbu was lost in thought for a few minutes, just sitting there whispering numbers under her breathe.
“It’s not actually a math problem…” he started to explain. “It relies on a mistaken understanding of very large and small numbers.”
She waved off his clarification. “I know, I know. I’m just thinking. Give me a minute.”
She continued her murmuring for another minute before she conceded, “Maybe it is as you say. Maybe it is a fallacy. But what else is there to life but service to the Prophecy? Meaningless survival? Hedonistic joy? Existence for its own sake? Nothing?”
“Why not? For any of those, why not?” Sprabr countered.
“I— I don’t know, Eleven Whiskers. Live our whole lives in fear of the unknown instead? There is comfort in the certainty of the Prophecy.”
“It brings comfort, yes. But that doesn’t make it correct, does it?” he asked.
“No, it doesn’t.” After a while, Zdurbu asked, “That story about the tree. And your canteen example. They are both from the predators, aren’t they?”
“How could you tell?” Sprabr asked.
“Because… the story is like some of the older stories in the Prophecy, some that we’ve gotten rid of that— that probably came from them. I’ve seen some of them… from an outlier raid.”
Sprabr nodded and confirmed, “They are from the Great Predators. The story… it’s one some of them tell their young kits.”
“Sounds like predator propaganda,” she said automatically.
“It is explicitly predator propaganda. That doesn’t make it a bad story.”
She gave a noncommittal grunt. “How did you come upon it?”
“They send these to our ships on the FTL radio. Much more interesting to listen to than the annoying whining and pleading the other predators used to send us. We used to laugh at the part where they send us cries for help from—”
“Wait…. shhhh!” Zdurbu hissed suddenly.
The sounds of the searching predators got louder, and Sprabr could hear their paw steps coming up onto the second floor. As he watched, their long shadows appeared into view of the store he was in. Two of them walked into it, the flashlights on their weapons swiveling around, illuminating everything in the dark until…
They saw him, huddling in the dark corner. They looked at him with their hungry gazes. He threw up his empty paws in resignation.
He could see them fumbling excitedly for their radios. “We’ve found them! They’re—”
Bang. Bang.
Zdurbu popped up from the shadows next to them, quickly dispatching both with two accurate shots from her sidearm. As they collapsed dead to the ground, Sprabr noted dryly to himself that at least all that costly State Security operator training she got didn’t go to waste.
She rummaged through their corpses and picked up a rifle and some ammunition from the dead body. Stolen weapons. Familiar-looking ones. Znosian Marine standard issue. Two of many that his Marines had lost over the past few months.
As Sprabr stared at the predators’ bodies, Zdurbu grabbed his arms. “They’ll have heard the shots. We have to move. Now.”
He followed Zdurbu through the second floor of the mall, hopping past several more stores. There was a bookstore, a toy store, and finally she led them into an empty room with a few overturned tables splayed across the floor. The duo made their way to the backroom of the store. It was a small room with white-tiled floors and an odd metal door that had a head-sized rectangular window cut into it.
“What is this horrible-smelling place?” he asked unsettled as his fur bristled subconsciously.
“Used to be one of their food stores, it looks like,” she replied, gesturing at some alien lettering on the wall with a paw. The poster also showed revolting pictures of the flesh the predators served and ate before the pacification. “No time for your disgust and outrage. Get in the flesh locker.”
“The flesh locker?”
“Yes, get in,” she said, shoving him into the cool room. It smelled like blood everywhere.
“What’s the plan? Surely they’ll come by and check—”
She handed him her sidearm, grip first. “You’ve been trained to use this, I presume?”
“Decades ago. You keep it. I’m sure you’re a better shooter than me by far.”
She shook her head and gestured to the reclaimed Marine rifle she slung around her armor. “I have this. The sidearm is for yourself. Whatever you believe follows life, death must be preferable to torture for information.”
“Oh. I thought you were going to do that for me.”
“I’m going to go buy you some more time,” Zdurbu said, as she began to close the heavy metal door, grunting with effort even as her Marine armor assisted her. “There’s always a chance they don’t find you before the rescue team comes—”
“Wait!”
“What?” she asked.
“Take my armor,” he said as he hit the quick release button on his own Marine armor. It popped opened with a hiss, and he stepped out of it. The armor clattered to the floor in a heap of metal.
She looked at it in confusion. “Don’t get sentimental on me. Mine’s custom made for my bloodline and size. I won’t fit in your—”
He pointed to the armor. “Can you carry this on your back?”
“Oh, I thought you meant— Carry that?” she asked. “Sure, my suit has enough battery left, but why? It’ll just slow me down.”
“You plan to draw them away from me because I am more valuable to the Dominion than you are. They’re more likely to follow you if they see you carrying my armor in the distance,” he explained logically.
Zdurbu thought for a second, then picked up and slung the heavy suit onto her shoulders, the heavy-duty motors on her own armor slightly groaning under the new weight. “Good point. And good thinking. Maybe you will do that rebirth thing as a Dominion Marine in your next life. Or, maybe not, since, you know…”
He shrugged and stood watching as she stepped back and finished closing the thick flesh locker door.
She saluted him through the small window in the heavy door. “Whatever it is — good luck, Sprabr.”
Comments
M
Because they show that they can be something beyond what State Security allows.
M
I think he's very intrigued by the "Great Predator's" culture by now. He begins to see the Dominion for what it is and he wants more from life than to die as a cog in a killing machine.
51sydney
I always got the vibe sprabr was gonna defect. Wonder if it's actually gonna happen. Him admitting he doesn't actually believe in the prophecy is definitely a step in that direction.
M
He's gonna give up as soon as she's gone, isn't he?
Spooker
Bun's first philosophy lesson.
Introspective_NPC
awesome breakdown of pascals mugging, reminds me of how i try to explain it as a TA
J
Why am I almost rooting for the bunny rabbits here?
