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Grass Eaters 2 | 50 | Invasion II
🕑 Added 2024-09-09 16:47:01 +0000 UTCOrbit Transit, Gruccud (22,000 Ls)
POV: Thunderbird “Missile 4”, Terran Digital Intelligence (Base Build: 2124-A)
Back at the system limit, Missile Four actually had decided on a name way earlier, but it was just too embarrassed to reveal it to its three friends: Destiny. It knew that they would probably laugh at it if they knew, except maybe Cameron. Cameron was too polite. But Cameron would probably laugh at Destiny on the inside anyway.
Blake would have said something rude, like it was a stripper’s name or something, even if statistically most Destinies were historically not strippers.
Destiny had just spent the last ten seconds watching its friends throw themselves at the enemy battleships. It was not sad; if anything, Destiny was jealous they could do their jobs so well and have it be witnessed by something that could actually understand the full scope of their challenging tasks.
Finally, it was time for Destiny to go.
It analyzed all the data its friends had sent back, and it came to a realization: someone needed to get all this information back to the people who were actually fighting the Gruccud battle!
Destiny was not designed for this side objective. After all, what were the chances that mighty Republic Navy ships had lost communications with their highly resilient FTL radios and electronic warfare suites but its puny missiles were able to resist the jamming? What an absurd edge case! When the Thunderbirds were designed, nobody considered the possibility that the missiles could be used by anyone other than the Republic Navy, much less completely alien allies. But… Destiny was still a super-Terran intelligence chip. It drew up a few solutions, ran some risk assessments, and decided that one of its plans could possibly work and had the highest likelihood of ultimate mission success.
Oh well, only one way to find out.
Destiny activated its blink drive, but instead of straight-line course to the other side of the system, it took an extreme curved trajectory that carried it within twenty light seconds of the Gruccud planet, where the main commanders of the Malgeir fleet were. Activating its single-use regular space communicator, it dumped all its messages in a packet straight for the Malgeir flagship.
Except for Blake’s bragging. That didn’t need to be in there.
This was a precise operation, but Destiny was a precise computer. It achieved a seven-nine accuracy in its transmission, and it hoped that the Malgeir communication systems were at least somewhat up to spec.
Destiny’s blink drive burnt out as it arrived within forty kilometers of the enemy battleship. This was well outside its acceptable specification parameters set out in the Terran Navy’s procurement contract with Raytech, but Destiny knew that its creators would understand. The side mission was worth the small risk and was so far outside its acceptable use case that the large error would be overlooked by any QA intelligence worth its salt.
Destiny’s engines activated for a couple seconds to bring its warhead within range. It noticed that the enemy ships were finally triggered — and oh, did they seem annoyed — and some of them were even looking in the right quadrants. The fire control systems of two counter-missile batteries from nearby ships locked onto one of its penetration aids. The subroutine controlling one of the advanced penetration aids noted with some glee that it had burnt out the primary radar system of one of the enemy missile destroyers.
Destiny detonated its warhead.
The final enemy battleship died with all hands. Destiny tallied the total death toll of the enemy in fifteen short seconds of engagement: about 17,500 KIA Znosian spacers. It sent this information to its creators via the FTL radio, then decided that given its position in the enemy fleet, regular space transmissions were not necessary and only added additional risk to ultimate mission success.
Destiny’s intelligence chip and remaining components self-destructed, happy that it could join its three friends in Mission Accomplished Land.
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MNS Oengro, Gruccud-4 (3,000 km)
POV: Grionc, Malgeir Federation Navy (Rank: High Fleet Commander)
“Did it work?” Grionc asked as Vastae sent the launch command.
“We’ll find out in five hours,” Vastae reminded her. “When the radiation from their exploded reactors reach us or when it doesn’t— hold on.”
“What is it?”
Vastae frowned. “We just got a transmission… from a Terran source.”
“They broke through the FTL jamming?” Grionc asked, her eyes widening.
“No, it was a regular space transmission burst… it was from… the missiles?”
“Put it on screen.”
Fleet Commander Grionc,
We evaluated your launch command and target selection. It is tactically sound, based on the information available to us at this time.
Three out of the four launched Thunderbird missiles have successfully completed their missions. I am the fourth.
So far, three enemy Thorn-class battleships have been destroyed, all total losses. An additional orbital transport ship was destroyed as collateral. I am on my way to the fourth enemy Thorn-class battleship. I am certain I will complete my mission.
We had two important concerns to bring up:
One, we are unsatisfied with the conditions we have been kept in. The welding for our carrying pylons was off by at least a quarter of a millimeter, an unacceptable deviation that could impact future operations. Please get this corrected at an authorized Raytech service center as soon as feasible. Additionally, the handling crew did not wear gloves when they haphazardly transferred us from the internal cargo bay to the cargo airlock. They got disgusting grease on one of our infrared sensor covers: we could tell you had strawberry ice cream for lunch, Pack Leader Ganiops.
As respectable missiles of the fleet, we demand better working conditions. You can do better.
Two, from our collected sensor data, we realized that there is an anomaly with the enemy fleet composition: they have wildly more fuel ships than would be needed for a mere invasion of Gruccud. We are not sure why, but we are confident our counterpart strategic computers in the Terran fleet would be far more equipped to generate an alternate hypothesis. Attached to this transmission burst is a data packet containing all data we have collected… All data that is relevant for the mission anyway.
We have already transmitted this information out of this system via our FTL radios. They should be able to clean up the signal without issue. We expect one of your relay ships will return with it, and you will get a fully processed and annotated version of it with Atlas Command’s notes in about seven hours, but this might be useful to you now.
Good luck, Puppers. And goodbye. Thunderbirds, out.
“Are Terran computers always this talkative?” Vastae asked.
Grionc shrugged. “I think it depends, but apparently they spared no expense on these missiles.”
“What do you think they meant by the too many fuel ships thing?”
“No idea. But like they say, we’ll get it in a few hours when our next set of relay ships arrive, right?”
“Might just be more Grass Eater paranoia.”
“Which Grass Eaters?”
“Both?”
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Outpost McMurdo, McMurdo System (600 Ls)
POV: Zwena Tanith, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Commander)
“Huh, that’s interesting,” Bert commented. “Forty-two heavy fuel transports.”
“That’s what the missiles noticed as well,” Zwena pointed out.
“I haven’t gotten to that part yet. Apparently, great minds think alike.”
“I’ll run it through our strategic computers,” Zwena said, queueing up a top priority job and transferring the parameters on their console.
“Maybe a direct punch-through to Malgeiru from Datsot?” Bert speculated. “But they can’t carry enough supplies for a sustained orbit to ground assault. They may trash the Sixth Fleet and Home Fleet, but if they go that deep without guarding their supply lines, they’ll just get cut off from behind before their planetary invasion goes anywhere again, unless their plan isn’t an invasion. Maybe… they’re tired of the war and just want to blow up everything on Malgeiru?”
Bert noticed a notification on his console. “Huh, wait a second. We’ve got another high priority transmission incoming. Busy day today, it appears.”
“From where?”
“Grantor this time.”
Zwena frowned. “Grantor? The occupied home system of the Granti? That Grantor?”
Bert checked his console. “It’s the TRNS Nile. We sent it there on some long-term TRO secret squirrel mission a while back. They usually just route their encrypted messages through us, but…”
“Think it’s a coincidence they want to talk now?” Zwena asked, inputting their authorization code for the communication handshake.
Bert shrugged. “My clearance doesn’t go high enough for them to brief me on what they’re doing all the way behind enemy lines there.”
“Me neither.”
Transmission handshake verified.
The familiar face of the captain of the Nile appeared on the screen. His hair was frazzled and there was sweat on his brow. “This is Captain Gregor Guerrero of the Nile, reporting from Grantor. Can you hear me?”
Zwena stood up. “Receiving loud and clear at McMurdo. Do you need us to relay a message? We might not have the security clearance—”
“We’ve increased power output to punch through their broad spectrum FTL jammer, but we’re being hunted by their recon ships in the cold. I don’t want to keep it on too long, but this is worth the risk. We have intelligence that we need you to get to Atlas Naval Command immediately.”
Zwena did not hesitate. “Wilco. What’s the message?”
“The message is: invasion imminent. Deploy all available naval assets immediately. I say again, invasion imminent. Invasion imminent. Invasion imminent.”
Zwena spoke into their microphone as clearly as they could. “Copy, Captain. We have the Amazon and Mississippi speeding towards the Gruccud system as fast as they can. Captain, are you heading there—”
“Negative. You don’t understand! Gruccud is not the target! I say again, final target is not Gruccud.”
“Uh… ten-four on your last, Captain. We’re running calculations here too. Do you think they’re going for Datsot or Malgeiru or one of the other— What is this data dump you’re sending us?”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Naval Ground Supply Base 220 (Grantor City), Grantor-3
2 hours ago
POV: “Mark”, Terran Reconnaissance Office
“I’m getting too old for this,” said Director Mark of the Terran Reconnaissance Office. Mark panted heavily as his half-prosthetic legs carried him through the dense jungle, next to the much younger, more enhanced Kara.
“The base— the drone says they’re about to realize the package is missing,” John huffed, hugging the bundled “package” closer to his chest he sprinted after the team.
“How much time do we have?” Kara asked, pacing her sprint without showing any sign of fatigue.
“About… now—” John’s voice was cut off as the loud base sirens pierced the dense trees. “They’re launching search helos! Airborne in less than four minutes.”
“How far are we from—”
“Half a kilometer. Faster!” Kara rushed as she sprinted ahead of the two men.
“Not all of us have your next-gen implants… I knew we should have gotten them done before we left!”
Mid-sprint, John opened his utility pouch on his front plate carrier, barely slowing down, and grabbed two auto-syringes out of it. “Last dose before our next resupply!” He tossed one to Mark, who snatched it out of the air with the reflexes of a man much younger than his age implied.
He stuck the syringe into his arm, trusting the technology to get through his full exosuit, create a safe seal, and apply the drug. Within seconds, Mark instantly felt his circulation improve. His airways relaxed, like a pre-gene-therapy asthmatic who’d just took a double dose of a rescue inhaler. His muscles received a massive surge of energy, and his heart felt like it was about to explode.
Oh yeah, that’s another couple years off my natural lifespan.
If we survive today.
For about thirty seconds, they ran faster than an Olympic athlete not on performance-enhancing drugs, or at least how fast one would run if such a unicorn existed.
They reached a familiar orange-ribbon marked tree. Mark reached up to pull a cable hanging from the branches, winching up a small manhole cover-sized entrance to an underground tunnel.
The three of them dived in, and Mark closed the entrance behind them.
Thump.
“Can they track us through the forest?” he asked as the three of them shed their excess gear in the dim room.
“Oh yeah. If they’ve got half a brain, the search parties will eventually notice the heavy foot tracks, the broken twigs, and I don’t know… the sweaty smell you left all over the place,” Kara said, barely breathing harder than usual.
John started to speculate, “That’s only if they bring in the Pupper collaborators—”
Mark held up a fist. “Alrighty, that’s it. This hidey-hole is burnt regardless. We’ll get out of here as soon as we confirm the airspace is clear. John, sweep the perimeter with the anti-aircraft drones. Once we kill their eyes in the sky, we’ll make a break for it before they can get a real search team in—”
“What about the package?” he asked, holding up and unwrapping the slightly bloodstained sack.
In all the excitement, Mark had almost forgotten about the actual mission.
“It looks— Is it still alive?” he asked.
John bent down to hear its heartbeat, but suddenly the restrained creature’s head snapped up, biting towards his face, screaming, “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”
Luckily, it missed John’s ear by a hair. He quickly pulled it away. “Watch out! It’s a rabid rabbit!”
Mark quickly grabbed the creature’s head, holding its mouth close and body still with an improvised chokehold, taking care not to snap its fragile neck or cut off its air and bloody supply. “Alright, good. If it can struggle, it can talk. Get the brainjack.”
Kara skipped to the corner table of their underground hideout, picking up a large headset device. She stuck it over the prisoner’s struggling head. With the press of a button from her paired tablet, sharp needles extended from it, sticking directly into the prisoner’s skull through the fur and skin.
This one was a prototyped battlefield variant, designed to extract last thoughts from dying enemy combatants, mapping and pulling not just focused thoughts but also directly accesing memories in the cerebral cortex. The implications for that were so dire and insidious that even the Terran Reconnaissance Office’s internal rubber-stamp ethics committee (allegedly) had been appalled: they shut down the project, transferred it to an extrasolar lab with less Senate oversight, and banned its use in all Republic territories.
Which… was hundreds of light years away from here. Modifying it to fit Znosian physiology… the team’s mission super-intelligence was almost insulted at how easy it had been.
As the nano-needles wormed its way through its gray matter, the Znosian prisoner screamed even harder, now more in pain than in rage. “That hurts! That hurts!” it yelped in its native Znosian.
Kara operated a control on her tablet, cutting off the prisoner’s pain receptors completely.
It stopped screaming for a second, then realizing what they’d done, it started consciously yelling at its captors again in an ear-splitting scream of rage.
“Shut it up,” Mark ordered.
Kara pressed another button, taking away the prisoner’s power of screaming. With another few button presses, its limb muscles went slack, and it stopped physically struggling.
Mark let go of the prisoner, wiping some sweat off his brow. “Whew. I’m getting too old for this.”
“You’ve said.”
They gathered themselves and took a better look at the prisoner under the dim light. It was now merely internally seething, staring at them as if its eyes could shoot daggers. There was a small skin-deep blood stain near where its arm was… along with the light bleeding in the skull from where the headset’s needles have punctured.
“Looks like you injured its shoulder,” Mark said accusingly at John.
“It was like that before I picked it up, I swear.”
Mark made a move towards his medical bag, but then immediately changed his mind. “Meh, we shouldn’t need that long.” He looked at the uncooperative Znosian prisoner. “What’s your name and rank?”
It didn’t say anything, only stared hatefully at the operators.
Kara checked her tablet. “Srutnu, rank is nine whiskers.”
Mark whistled. “Oh shit, nine. Nine whole whiskers. Looks like we got lucky. That’s a catch. They’re gonna really miss him.”
“Her, I think,” John said, bending down to check Srutnu’s anatomy.
“Job and position?” Mark asked, directing his question at the enemy nine whiskers.
No answer again.
Kara read from the tablet. “Secondary attack fleet. Flagship captain.”
Mark sighed. “Damn. I guess you are important enough for that bandage after all… You said secondary attack fleet. What’s the primary fleet?”
“I think she caught on,” Kara said as the tablet spat out nothing. “Decent deduction skills—”
John flicked one of her whiskers. Srutnu blinked back in surprise. “Hey, what primary fleet?”
The tablet indicated that her concentration wavered, and her thoughts were now flooding through. “The Grand Prophetic Fleet is what it’s called. It’s in Gruccud now… but that’s not its target destination,” Kara read. “And she’s taking responsibility in her head for revealing state secrets.”
A tear trickled out of the Znosian captain’s eye in frustration.
Mark nodded and wiped it away for her. “Very perceptive, Nine Whiskers. Aww… don’t cry. You’ll ruin that cute bunny face of yours. We just wanted to ask a few questions. What is the target of the primary fleet?”
“No response.”
“Kara, get the zapper. Nine Whiskers, I’ll only ask once more, what is the target of the Grand Fleet?”
The mere threat of the “zapper” apparently alarmed Srutnu enough for her concentration to waver again, enough for the intrusive device to drag her literal thoughts and memories out of her neurons.
Kara sucked in a deep breath through her teeth.
Mark glanced sharply at her. “What is it?”
Wordlessly, she handed the tablet over to Mark.
He expected words, but the output was a mere image.
A blue marble hung in the dark of space. White clouds obscured some of the features on the edges. In some ways, it looked to Mark just like any of the hundred other habitable planets he’d seen in the known galaxy.
If not for the distinctive shapes of the matching South American and African coastlines.
He looked back at the nine whiskers.
She knows.
She knows who we are.
What we are.
Despite most of her muscles being paralyzed by the headset, he could still see some of her expression surfacing through her face. And another emotion had replaced the fear, rage, and frustration from earlier.
Triumph.
She thinks… they’ve already won.
He activated his radio and spoke into it with a steady voice that masked his growing inner panic, “Ground team to Nile: Invasion imminent, Sol. Invasion imminent, Sol. Stand by for briefing packet, over.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Meta
The story of the TRO agents and the rest of their secret mission on Grantor will be explored in Book 3.
Comments
jrharper42
Honestly, I could read an entire spinoff book about all the shenanagans the TRO gets up to. Looking forward to seeing them more in book 3 - hopefully they get the councilor's mate back.
Bayliner1980
Shits about to get real
AnAbsoluteVillain
Im inclined to believe it was a human as well. Spooker laid it on thick with the rebel plot.
AnAbsoluteVillain
Yeah, someone talked. It wasnt a pupper either. Betting a rebel, maybe some idiot with an ftl radio, or a ship. They probably got the motherlode of info... Which is why the buns knew about ftl jammers... They are linear thinkers they generally need someone to show them. A human would show them enough to know they needed to mass and punch deep and fast. This is great! It would tie the whole rebel plot in nicely.
Ndreda
Europa Deathstar? (^w^)
Valdis Trautmanis
If you mean the so called SRN, a couple of antique destroyers and cruisers/auxiliaries aren't going to help much. I don't think pure tonnage is going to solve the problem. We will need some creative thinking.
Valdis Trautmanis
They probably got Sol's location from that Malgeir battleship they captured near Stoers a while ago. Either dug it out from her computers or squeezed from the surviving crew
Alex
Oh those poor bunnies have no clue what they are getting into.
M
Yeah. An enemy with overwhelming numbers planning to genocide humanity and every other species out there? This is the moment every crazy scientist hidden away in top secret doomsday research facilities has been waiting for.
M
The Znosians probably have spies all over pupper society and by now, there are plenty puppers aware of Sol. There are even Terrans working for puppers, even!
Ndreda
Good thing there is a fleet ready to be used near Saturn
Nicolae
I pray for the salvation of the humans who released that info. For not even hell will have a place for a sinner like that.
Valdis Trautmanis
Oh snap! They are actually planning to invade Sol! Let's hope the Terrans release finally their parking brakes
Nicolae
And with that, the bunnies have just opened up their world for its destruction. The resistance for its complete eradication, no remorse. And humanity to drop the presumption that they were not at war.
Eric E
heres to hoping the humans stop holding back ! loving the story.
