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The Nature of Predators 120
🕑 Added 2023-05-26 11:00:03 +0000 UTCMemory transcription subject: Captain Sovlin, United Nations Fleet Command
Date [standardized human time]: January 15, 2137
The predators’ war strategy hinged around hitting the two Federation founders where it hurt. The Kolshians always offer severe resistance, as they proved they could hold their own against the masters of killing, after all. During my therapy sessions, one topic discussed was the reality that the Commonwealth could’ve intervened on the cradle. They’d possessed the technology and the numbers to smack an Arxur raid down like it was nothing; instead, they’d watched as the Gojids were pushed to the precipice of extinction.
Had I known about Nikonus’ apathetic view of our woes, back when Cilany and I visited Aafa, I would’ve gutted him with my claws then. The Kolshians would be the more satisfying of the founding duo to combat; I could envision the smug look on their chief’s face. However, on an objective level, it was clear-cut which conspirator was the easiest to undermine. The Farsul States were the brains of the empire, and their worlds were ripe for the taking.
The Farsul and the Kolshians disagreed on the handling of humanity’s survival, with the States contributing to the ill-fated extermination fleet. Their ships were known for being damage-sponges, a more prey-like and displayable attribute than their conspiratorial counterparts. The Farsul elders, like their Ambassador Darq, made a grave error of judgment at the summit on humanity; tipped off about their genocide participation by Earth, the Arxur moved in on their homeworld, Talsk. The grays’ raid nearly succeeded, and was warded off with substantial losses.
I’m sure Talsk has rebuilt its forces, just as Earth has replaced their army. Still, they’ve been weakened by the war, while the Kolshians have been waiting in the wings.
Cilany listened astutely, as I told her via FTL call-link what I was authorized to disclose. “So let me get this straight. You’re going to drop into Talsk’s inner orbit within minutes, and land solely to access the Galactic Archives?”
“That’s correct,” I answered. “Humanity can’t afford to spare troops on an occupation. They don’t bomb civilians either. The goal is to trap the Farsul within their own world, and cut them off from the galaxy.”
“And they’re pulling any crew with training in ground combat from the starship? Including you and your human pals.”
“Crewing the ships was equally as difficult as building them, Cilly. Logistically, we don’t want more mouths to feed up here, and we also need men for every battleground and occupation across the galaxy. Sillis, Fahl, Mileau, ground defenses. If you can hold a gun and keep your wits, you’re part of the landing party.”
Tyler referred to it as being a utility player in a game called baseball, which involved smacking a stone with a metal club. I didn’t grasp what he was on about, and I didn’t dare to ask. That human was rather unapologetic with his predatory hobbies.
Cilany pressed her toes to her head. “So you’re cobbling together the ‘nonessentials' from your ship, and they’re all heading planetside during an orbital battle? That’s suicide.”
“The predators have a distraction planned. The Farsul ships should be…concerned with other events. I’ll be fine. We’ve got a plan.”
A plan that involves de-orbiting a lunar body, and fits in with the general picture of Terran psychosis. A normal day in the United Nations’ service.
“Thanks for the non-answer,” the Harchen reporter grumbled. “I thought we were friends, Sovlin! Give me something. Like…why was there satellite footage of naval armaments being loaded on to Terran carriers, which we know from subspace trails were heading Federation-bound?”
That was the other deranged part of the mission, which was anything but a routine landing. The Terrans noticed a patch of Talsk’s ocean was unreadable by standard sensors, during stealth recon. Intelligence coupled this with communications between Archives staff, discussing “shipping exercises.” Like any normal species, the primates drew the conclusion that the Farsul were hiding incriminating information underwater…and based their mission parameters on this assumption.
Did the United Nations believe that habitats under the ocean were possible? If the humans weren’t grasping at straws on this one, I’d be beyond impressed with their deductive skills. At this point, I didn’t think their insanity was up for debate. Cilany wasn’t going to hear intel that was damaging to their species’ reasoning skills from me.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know about the boats,” she pressed. “What good do those do in an orbital clash? Are you landing by water ship?”
I jabbed a sharp claw at the camera. “If you wanted to know that, you’d be here with us. They’d sign off on it, undoubtedly. Believe it or not, humans send reporters with their troops into war zones.”
“I’ve heard of them. ‘War correspondents,’ covering conflict from the front lines, armed only with a camera. I’m willing to take risks for a scoop, but that’s lunacy! I, as a non-human, like to gather my stories in areas without active firefights.”
“These FTL comms saved your ass then. You’d be out of the loop for weeks. I’ll keep you informed of the results when the mission is complete.”
“I won’t push you more, for now. Whatever you find in the Archives, I want to be the first to know.”
“I’ll see what I can do. So long.”
My eyes turned to the triangular shuttle waiting in the hangar bay. I was aware the Terrans had a myriad of new contraptions, but this design seemed foolhardy to me. A narrow, aerodynamic vehicle was optimal for atmospheric travel. Thankfully, I didn’t have to pilot this craft; while it was made to transport crew, it was self-flying.
Samantha and Carlos had saved me a seat, while Tyler and Onso manned what was considered the back-up pilot and co-pilot’s chairs. What I’d been told at the briefing was that we would descend to sea level, before transferring to a submarine. My immediate inquiry was if the humans had ever seen a Gojid swim, but they just laughed. The amusement was followed by a patronizing smile, and a response of “That won’t be necessary.”
I swear, if the plan is for me to ride on Carlos’ back and no one is telling me, I’m gonna claw some binocular eyes out.
“Hello, Onso.” I recalled Dr. Bahri’s advice to be kinder to the primitive in my inner dialogue, rather than regarding him only by his innate ignorance. “You ready?”
The Yotul flicked his reddish ears. “I mentioned on shore leave that I wanted to break Farsul skulls. They have their paws in every pot, every mind in the Federation. I’m sure as shit ready to fight them.”
“I’ll be honest, I’m a little nervous. Land creatures don’t belong…sinking into the ocean. I mean, this submersible ship does not float. How do we get back up?”
“Same as flying. Air currents versus water currents. You trust human tech or you don’t.”
“I’m more comfortable in space too, but it’s good the navy is finally going to get a cut of the action. Humanity needs to win on every terrain and theater of war,” Carlos growled.
“My comments about the space era aged like milk,” Samantha griped. “I called a sailor friend of John…of my husband’s ‘obsolete’, and now they’re airdropping warboats. Just my luck; I’ll never hear the end of it if they get a single kill.”
I gently tapped her hand with my paw. “It might be good for you to reconnect with some of your old friends.”
“Spare me the ‘Kumbaya’ therapy shit. I mean, good for you, but you don’t need to proselytize.”
Tyler cleared his throat. “Let’s keep it professional, people. We’re pulling a stealth jump behind each of Talsk’s four moons, but we can’t get closer than that. Entering real space any second.”
“As if you’re professional,” Onso snorted.
“Remind me how many game controllers you’ve broken? We’re so close to kicking these Feddies in the backside, and I want—no, I need to get this perfect. Are all of you ready?”
“I’d like to live to see the Federation fall,” Sam sighed. “Ready, sir.”
“And I’d like to live to see galactic peace,” Carlos countered. “Ready here too, sir.”
Before I could offer up my own assent, Tyler raised a hand for silence. The shuttle’s digitized replica of the main viewport depicted the shadow of a moon, and a small handful of human carriers snuck through other gravitational hiding spots as well. Launching too soon or too late would result in our demise. We had to wait for the distraction to draw the Farsul’s attention; I had no idea how humans planned to move the smallest lunar satellite.
The fact that we got this close, under their nose, shows the lasting consequences of the Arxur attack. The Farsul’s barebones defenses aren’t equipped to catch us in their net; their outposts, with key scanners, were picked apart too.
The enemy would be alerted to our presence, once the predators made their move to disturb the smallest moon. The target body lagged a short ways behind our satellite haven’s orbit, which meant our carrier could watch the show. Human military affairs always intrigued me, from how they conjured the impossible with every battle. There was “thinking outside the box”, and then there was ignoring the box’s existence altogether. Rules and conventional wisdom didn’t apply to them.
Our viewport plucked stills of box-shaped human craft. In real time, they were blurs that accelerated from behind the target moon’s shadow; that energy expenditure definitely caught the Farsul’s eyes. The objects had been gaining momentum within subspace, and exited warp at a mind-boggling pace. These were evident drones, though they were unlike the Terrans’ conventional battle technology. I squinted in confusion, as the lead cubical craft blazed toward the deformed rock without slowing.
The first impact caused a geyser of debris to erupt from the moon, while the drone was obliterated. There appeared to be a slight slowing of the lunar body’s orbit, though it was fractional. It was insanity to think they could redirect a celestial object’s momentum. The humans were undeterred, however, and launched more of the peculiar boxes into the moon.
“Reverent Protector,” I murmured. “They’re chipping away at its momentum. Throwing ships at it…”
“Until it changes course.” Carlos released a shrill noise by blowing air through his teeth, which made me flinch. “It’s simple kinetic impact. I remember we used this same tech to deflect an asteroid from Earth back in 2129.”
Onso flicked his ears. “It’s like shifting a boulder that’s already rolling downhill. It’s got a shit ton of momentum, but you collide enough objects, with enough force, and you could theoretically change where it’s rolling to.”
“So this was a brute-force planetary defense system, that you weaponized because you’re predators. Carry on, I guess,” I huffed.
Panicked Farsul ships rushed toward the moon, but they, understandably, were not prepared to stop murderous monkeys from dislodging a massive satellite. The United Nations chipped away at the orbital momentum, deflection by deflection, until the speeding rock had visibly changed its arc. Talsk’s gravity won out in the absence of a blistering orbital velocity, and the mile-wide rock began to careen toward the planet.
Tyler took that as our cue to launch the triangular shuttle, which was prepped for this moment, away from our carrier. The Farsul vessels concentrated fire on their falling moon, and struggled to simultaneously fend off Terran warships which harassed them on approach. To top it off, our big guns were within orbital range, but the predators were using precision strikes against bases rather than antimatter city hits.
There was no way for the enemy to watch for surface-bound transports, with all of the chaos preoccupying them. I wasn’t surprised that no craft moved to intercept us, and that the ride down to Talsk’s surface looked to be seamless. The idea of descending below the ocean still left me riddled with unease; my spines were bristling, and it wasn’t from the humans’ eyes.
“Your crazy plan worked.” I tried to focus on the Farsul missiles fruitlessly impacting their own moon, rather than the blue patches enlarging before us. “I’d love to have ears inside the enemy ships. They don’t even know what hit them.”
“Ah, yes. Doesn’t it suck when your moon becomes a meteor with a few love taps?” Sam snickered.
Tyler allowed himself an amused snort. “Yeah, I hate when that happens. Really ruins your day.”
We breached the atmosphere in graceful flight, with flaming resistance enveloping our ship outside. The battle overhead receded into the background; it wasn’t our job to spectate the Farsul moon’s fate. Our shuttle’s autopilot had everything under control, throttling through the outer bands of a foreign world. It slowed our pace to a manageable glide, once the sparkling ocean grew nearer. Water stretched as far as the eye could see, even from hundreds of meters up.
There was nowhere to land that I could make out, and the ropes and parachutes at the rear of the aircraft pushed a suggestion into my brain. What if the plan was for us to jump or rappel from the aircraft, onto a submarine’s hull? Where were the submersibles anyways…had their airdrop not preceded us as planned? My claws wrapped around the harness tighter; everything that could go wrong was at the forefront of my mind.
We’re slowing down, but not fast enough! Something must be off with the computer. We’re going to slam belly-first into the water, not hover.
The humans weren’t panicking, so I tried to convince myself that those thoughts were my fear speaking. However, the choppiness of the waves was visible, and I saw no way to stop in time…at least, not without an inertial dampener failure and the death of us all. My remaining spines were trying to escape from my back; I was almost ready to scream to brace for impact. A mechanism shifted in the shuttle’s belly, and it was then that I suspected we were gliding for a landing.
We touched the surface of the water, but instead of sinking, we bobbed gently like a leaf. Our supports splashed the water, and slowed, while balancing atop the waves like it was nothing. I breathed an uneasy sigh of relief, grateful that I had kept my mouth shut amid the humans’ composure. The predators always had wild plans, like plunking an airworthy craft into desolate seas. We were out of the proverbial burrows.
Then, without warning, the floats gave out, dropping all support from the triangular craft. Primal terror gnawed at my heart, as our ship started to sink.
A/N - Part 120! We see what Sovlin is up to, and I don't think it's what anyone expected. The UN is going about the Farsul, with their authentic historical data; their distraction to sneak troops in involves de-orbiting a mile-across moon, which will be a...bad day on the ground. (This scene was inspired by DART, NASA's recently successful asteroid deflection test!)
Are the Farsul really hiding the real archives below the ocean? We'll have to see what Sovlin and his team uncover...after he figures out why their seaplane is sinking. Hopefully, my naval enthusiasts enjoy finally see some aquatic action and tech being shown to aliens; I think this is pretty much a new one for HFY!
As always, thank you for reading and supporting!
