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Grass Eaters 3 | 46 | Ill Intent
🕑 Added 2025-02-07 16:47:01 +0000 UTCGrantor City Safehouse Romeo, Grantor-3
POV: Skhork, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Six Whiskers)
Skhork didn’t have much time.
Every time the human operators left him alone in their safehouse, they’d ask him what he planned to do to escape. What he was plotting. How he was going to hurt them or get them killed. Questions of that nature, which he was compelled to answer while they grinned at him as if he were a toy. They were a paranoid bunch, these— people, and they’d always ask in case he got a new idea.
But they’d forgotten one question.
And he did get a new idea.
He slowly hopped to near the command center of the safehouse, keeping his thoughts as clear and pure as he could.
I have no ill intent. I am not going to imminently cause danger to the team. I am not going to sabotage any equipment.
As expected, there was no one there. His eyes fixated on the FTL radio they left on the table. He knew it was rigged to brick itself if anyone who was not authorized began to operate or study it. Gingerly, he picked it up in one paw, holding it away from his face, hoping this one wasn’t one of the explosive-rigged models they handed to the Granti that would activate if or when that contingency arose.
I do not intend to use this radio in a malicious way.
Trembling, he turned it on, still keeping his thoughts as neutral as he could.
After a few seconds of just holding it in his paw, he sighed in relief. The humans must have programmed it to allow his usage. Potentially for one of the missions they’d had him do. Or for emergencies.
I am not planning to hurt the war effort of the Terran Republic. I am not planning to reveal their secrets to my people.
He dialed the channel he knew by heart from watching Director Mark do it a dozen times before. He pressed down the talk button, which was a little stiffer than he expected. “Ground team to Nile, ground team to Nile, come in.”
There was a minute of static on the receiver with no response. He had no doubt the predators up in the ship knew exactly what he was, and they were deciding just what to do.
“Ground team to Nile, ground team to Nile, come in. Please?”
A voice replied after another moment of static, “Safehouse Romeo… which one of you is this, and what do you want?”
“I am Six Whiskers Skhork. I came down to the planet with your infiltration team,” he replied, carefully selecting his words to ensure that annoying digital abomination in his brain didn’t shut him down. Not now.
He thought he heard a sigh on the other end. “Ah, you were the guest on my ship. Where is the director, Bun?”
Skhork was compelled to answer truthfully. “I’m not sure. They went out of the safehouse on a mission. Are you Captain Gregor Guerrero?”
“Yes, what do you need? Is there an emergency?” Gregor asked quickly.
“No. But I would like to report a event of responsibility— to report a rule breaking. A breaking of the rules of your Republic.”
Gregor’s voice was clearly irritated. “What— what the hell? Go get the director. You’re not my problem—”
To his surprise, he was allowed to continue to talk. This must have been a contingency. That was good to know: the loyalties of that abomination in his brain was — at least to a certain extent — with the rules of their people and not only the team on the ground. “From my time as a prisoner, I have learned something that should concern you. Your director and his organization used a rule-breaking weapon on me. They used chemicals that are banned in your… Republic on me, to experiment on me in ways that are specifically not allowed by your people.”
Gregor’s reply was one of startled disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about? And where are—”
“I believe you heard correctly, Captain. From my understanding, your people have accountability mechanisms — inferior to ours, obviously, but still quite potent. And I can only report the truth: your Director Mark and his people… they poisoned me with an odorless, invisible gas substance — delivered by artillery shell against my Longclaw unit. Your ship was used to deliver the munitions to the Lesser— to the Malgeir on Datsot. I believe the chemical they used is called…” He carefully pronounced the next simple, alien word, exactly the way he’d heard Kara say it, “sarin.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
TRNS Nile, Grantor-3 (25 Ls)
POV: Gregor Guerrero, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Captain)
“Should I call the director?” his executive officer asked. “Let them know they’ve got a clever Bun screwing around with their radio while he’s home alone.”
“No, wait,” Gregor quieted her with the wave of his hand.
“Captain, we can’t possibly trust that Bun prisoner on—”
“It’s not a matter of trust. The secret squirrels — they did something to him, to his brain, that makes it so he can’t lie or something.”
“Lie to them, sure. But to us?”
“Or lie to us. He can’t deliberately try to sabotage us at all. They did something to him. That’s the only reason I allowed them to take him on board in the first place. And if what he’s saying is true, and they did make us carry their dirty work for them on my ship without telling me…”
She looked skeptical. “He could still be… just mistaken?”
“Why— why would he even know that word? That’s not something that would just… come up in casual conversation.” Gregor stared into the console in front of him in indecision. He looked directly at his console, “Legal intelligence computer, sarin is… what is its legal status?”
The reply came back instantly.
Sarin is classified as a Schedule 1 CWC substance in the Terran Republic.
“What does that mean for us, specifically?” he asked.
Schedule 1 CWC substances are toxic chemicals or precursors with high potential for use as chemical weapons and have no legitimate applications. They are prohibited for possession or manufacture in or near all Republic territories, including non-Republic colonies.
If I become aware of anyone’s possession of this substance, I am required to immediately report them to Atlas Naval Command and the Republic Senate Navy Oversight Committee. You seem to have related but uncertain suspicions. Would you like me to file a report now?
“Hold your horses. For now.” Gregor looked at his executive officer, “The Bun prisoner. He said the— the gas was from an artillery shell that the Nile delivered to Datsot. My ship, he said. Lieutenant Commander, how many total deliveries did we make to Datsot?”
Despite her outward skepticism, she immediately tallied up the data for him on her console. “Four covert deliveries — down the gravity well with deorbiting satellite cover, and then eight less covert shipments once we retook its orbits.”
“Okay, this guy was a holdout right? If it’s in there, it’s going to be one of the later shipments,” Gregor said. “Get the computer to compile the cargo manifests. And pay special attention to who loaded them onboard. Specifically, I want to know about the cargo not loaded by one of our spacers or an automated loader supervised by one of ours.”
“Yes, Captain. And if I might suggest something, if these are TRO cargo, they would most likely be loaded at Luna and not Charon as most of our shipments are.”
“Good thinking. See if there’s anything there…”
“There are four item shipments matching that description,” she said after a few seconds of querying. “And three of them, we inspected manually after they were loaded on board.”
“The last one. What was it listed as?” he asked, an unease spiking in his chest.
“Panther anti-personnel drones, quantity was… 24.”
“Anti-personnel drones?” he asked. “Have the computer estimate the mass of 24 Panther drones, and match that to our records of this cargo shipment’s mass according to its location and placement in the cargo hold. The FTL calculations computer for center of mass doesn’t lie.”
She queried the machine. “There is… a potential discrepancy.”
“Potential?” he asked sharply.
“It’s on the high end of the possible ranges. Off by a couple of standard deviations for quality-controlled ones according to the ship computer.”
Gregor pointed at his console screen. “I want to see the cargo module camera footage for us loading and unloading that exact pallet.”
She buried herself in her console for a minute, then frowned. “Captain, the computer can’t seem to find the footage.”
“Can’t seem to find the footage?” he repeated.
“Yes— yes, sir.”
“Who accessed it last?”
“Unknown. There’s not even a deletion in the audit log. Looks like the cargo bay camera just… stopped recording during that time.”
“I don’t like this, XO,” he said, staring into his console. “I don’t like this one fucking bit.”
“Captain, is this— maybe this is way above our paygrade?”
Gregor gave her a kind look. “XO, I’m going to give you some career advice. My mother is a politician back on Terra, and she told me one thing just before I made captain. One important advice for my career, for life in general.”
“What?”
“If something stinks, it’s because you’re standing in it. It rarely matters who put it there. All you can do at that point is clean it off your shoes before everyone else notices.”
“Gee, your mom’s a real cynic, Captain.”
“I’m serious, XO,” Gregor said. After a moment of silent contemplation, he ordered, “Call home via McMurdo. Get our TRO contact on the line.”
“It’s 3 AM in Atlas…”
“I don’t care if he’s in a fucking Senate briefing. Get him on the phone, now.”
A few minutes later, the face of an irate Hersh materialized on his console screen. “Captain Gregor Guerrero? Something happen down on Grantor?”
“No, Hersh. I’m calling about another matter,” he said brisky. “We’ve got a problem we noticed when we were doing our scheduled cargo log audit.”
“Cargo log audit?! Your people said this was something urgent—”
“The Nile delivered a shipment to Datsot a few months back, and something’s not matching up in our records. This has your people’s fingerprints all over it.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Hersh protested. “What is this?”
“The cargo manifest on our end says it was Panther anti-personnel drone swarm units, but the recorded mass didn’t match up. Actual cargo was too heavy by a few dozen kilos.”
“Are you serious?! You woke me up for—”
“What kind of ship do you think I’m running here, spook? All our records must be settled, or we’re reporting it up the chain to the supplier.”
Hersh sighed in his dimly lit office on Gregor’s screen. “What’s the cargo identification number again?”
Gregor transmitted the dozen or so digits to him on his console. “It was loaded at Naval Station Luna. What the hell was this, Hersh?”
Hersh seemed to frown at his own screen. “You said it was too heavy?”
“Yeah.”
“And it says anti-personnel drones on your cargo manifest?”
“Yeah.”
“Ah, one of our technicians might have made an error,” Hersh replied after a few moments.
“How is that even possible?” Gregor asked in disbelief. “These computers are supposed to be self-correcting and—”
“No computer system is without error. Actually, now that you mention it, I think I remember that shipment now,” Hersh said, cutting him off. “We decided to switch out the item at the last minute. Ah, yes, we gave them anti-armor drones instead. This was for one of the holdout cells we discovered with those Bun tanks. We gave them a little extra boom in that one. You can correct the manifest on your end.”
“Correct the manifest?!”
“Sure, we’ll register the error and get our computers to reconcile it with Atlas Command.”
Gregor kept his skepticism to himself. “And you said these were…”
“Anti-armor drones. The ones we adapted for dealing with the Znosian tanks.”
“Right. Okay, well, thanks for taking care of it for us, I guess,” Gregor said.
“No problem. Anything else?” Hersh asked.
“Nope, good night,” Gregor said as he hung up the call. He looked at his executive officer, gesturing for her to speak.
“Anti-tank drones?” she asked skeptically.
“Yup. That’s what he claims,” he nodded.
“What do you think, captain?”
“I think… that Hersh guy… he’s been dealing with aliens so much he’s forgotten how to lie to his own people. To real humans.”
“Captain? Are you—”
“I can tell,” Gregor seethed. “I asked him what he put on my ship. And that motherfucker lied right to my face. I can just tell, okay?”
“What— what should— what are we going to do?”
“First, find every crew member who was exposed to that Bun prisoner when he was on my ship, and — quietly — have the lab test them for trace nerve gas exposure. Then, have the ship computer get me all its records of the TRO operatives on this trip, including every drop of medicine they gave that Bun and every scoop of vegan ice cream they fed him.”
“Can we trust our own—”
“And when you find out that every shred of data we’re supposed to have were mysteriously wiped clean from our records or spoofed with no traces, call Atlas again. This time, get me Fleet Admiral Amelia Waters. If someone knows how to deal with these assholes…”
Comments
AnAbsoluteVillain
The CORRECT saying for whistleblowers: "Whomever smelt it, dealt it."
DeWhit
It’s cool we finally learn what gas was used way back, and equally horrifying. I can understand why the captain would be upset he was covertly supplying a WMD without even his knowledge…and being lied to his face when asking about it. I’m curious to see where this goes and how this plays into our bun prisoner’s plan
DeWhit
Well no, the TRO gave the malgier the gas without explicitly stating what it was, and pretended to be malgier from the capital. If you go back and read the chapter, you’ll notice the POV character mentions how strange the malgier on screen (disguised human) talks and sounds.
Valdis Trautmanis
That is correct. And the Malgeir don't have laws for using it against the Buns. The Navy actually saved some of the victims of the gas attack and you will find that the gas traces on the Six Whiskers contain contaminants specific to Malgeir production process. And there were anti-armor drones in the shipment. Now carry on, soldier!
TheArchivist
if I remember correctly, the Malgeir independently developed the sarin gas and used it, not the TRO/Navy? They cleaned up their mess after the fact?
