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Grass Eaters 3 | 42 | Total War II
🕑 Added 2025-01-29 16:47:00 +0000 UTCTRNS Crete, Zhulnu-4 (2 Ls)
POV: Carla Bauernschmidt, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Rear Admiral)
Even with his limited knowledge of Znosian facial expressions, Speinfoent could feel the inexorable smugness exuding from the State Security administrator even as he crowed, “You shall get nothing out of us. Nothing. As you deserve as abominations! Your ships will fall apart. Your people will rot. And we will burn your homeworld and nests…”
Carla let him run his rant out before she stepped into the camera. “Attention, planetary authorities on Zhulnu-4. This is Rear Admiral Carla Bauernschmidt of the Republic Navy. Our objectives in orbit are now complete. We have placed your planetary surface under fire control. We have designated six thousand military and military-industrial areas on the surface as targets for demolition. We will send you the coordinates, to allow you twenty-four hours to evacuate them. Beyond that, any loss of life incurred from the execution of this operation will be your responsibility.”
“Your threat is an empty gesture this time, barbarian. Even with your hiding technology, our telescopes can see your big ships burning into orbit. We know you did not bring enough troops with you to capture and strip our surface facilities for parts. This planet is property of the Dominion. Not some disgusting flesh farm for your people to harvest!”
“Not quite, but you’re not entirely wrong about one thing. We do not intend to capture your planet, merely to put your ability to make war against us out of commission. However those facilities get destroyed — by your hand or ours — it makes no difference to me.”
Vrazmist’s expression transformed from gloating to red rage in a split second as the message sank in. “Predator deceit! You baited me into destroying our own orbital infrastructure! This is another—”
Carla snorted. “No, Governor. You did that all by yourself. The blood of those millions of dead Buns is on your own dirty paws. Now, you have twenty-four hours to decide how many more of your own people will need to die before you see sense.”
“You… scum. Your species will pay for this absolute waste of resources and for your heretical worship of entropy!”
“That may be your interpretation of events, Governor. But I am honoring our obligations under our rules of war. We will transmit to your office the coordinates of the surface sites we intend to hit, and we will give you enough time to get your people out of there before we rain orbital fire down on them. As a point of notice, we are also transmitting to you the evacuation notices for areas surrounding our target sites, to reduce loss of life in case of targeting failure. You are advised to immediately—”
“We will not do your dirty work for you!” the incandescent governor screamed into the screen. “If you want our surface munition factories, come and get them!”
This time, it was he who cut the transmission off.
Carla looked over at Speinfoent at his station. “XO, have we transmitted those coordinates to him?”
“Yes, ma’am. But they did not acknowledge receipt.”
“Send it again,” she ordered.
Speinfoent queued the order, then looked up. “What if they refuse to evacuate those areas? Again?”
Carla didn’t hesitate. “That is up to them. The targets have been pre-vetted by our legal intelligences, and we have given them sufficient warning to evacuate. However many personnel they have down there working in those missile factories — their military value far outweighs whatever obligations we have towards them and our own principles of proportionality.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Speinfoent said. “Perhaps we should transmit the message to the sites independently? Maybe their people down there will be… more reasonable?”
She nodded and her eyes softened. “Do as you suggested, XO. And if they still do not evacuate after the deadline has passed… have the batteries time the strikes to hit them during their night shifts when the least number of people are working there, if possible.”
He gave the orders through the terminal. His subordinates needed no additional micromanagement. They’d done this before, and they knew what to do.
Speinfoent stared back at the main screen, still showing the pieces of orbital stations breaking apart, some of them now tumbling towards the atmosphere. There were so many pieces that if not for Panoptes cataloguing every single one in real time, they’d become a hazard to the drones now conducting basic salvage operations in their wrecks. “Why are they like this, Carla? We told them what we’d do. We gave them a warning. And now…”
She gave him a short squeeze on his shoulder. “Because… Speinfoent… some creatures… the only language they truly understand is violence. And when that is all they understand, all we can do… is show them just how fluent we are in their own tongue.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
ZNS 1687, Znos-4-C (40,000 km)
POV: Plodvi, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Six Whiskers)
It took Plodvi another few days to work up the courage. For his curiosity to overcome his trepidation. To even consider the problem.
How was one supposed to go about asking about these things?
Hello, are you the two apostates I heard spouting off blasphemy near the vents?
Can you share some of your predator propaganda with me?
May I borrow your datapad for a few days? Why? No reason, I just need to look at something on it.
If they reported him to his supervisor… Plodvi was in no hurry to get found out as a defect and recycled. It would be such a shame if he had spent over a year of his life hiding his thoughts and then… risk losing it all over an unforced error like this.
Instead, Plodvi decided on a less risky plan: he fiddled with the air conditioning of the server room next to the life support module.
Well… technically, this is sabotage. On a warship. During a war.
All he did was loosen and temporarily take out a couple of exposed wires that powered the temperature regulator in the room and looped the monitoring data connection so the problem couldn’t be discovered remotely… He was pretty sure that it didn’t materially affect the operational efficiency of the ship, but there was no question that if the full extent of his actions was discovered, this minor apostasy would be enough to get him shot, no questions asked.
Plodvi had a long, carefully crafted plan. When the people in the server room discovered that the room was hotter than normal, he would have to take full responsibility for it. He would personally show up to diagnose the issue. He’d pretend to inspect their vents, look at their AC units, check their computers… etc. Use that as an excuse to scope things out. And then he would tell them the procedure dictated he search the problem elsewhere, go undo his… sabotage… in the life support room, and then he’d claim there was nothing, check the room again, give them another excuse…
All of which instantly escaped his mind the moment they opened the access door to admit him.
“Life support maintenance?” The officer in front of him tapped her paw impatiently on the door frame.
For a second, Plodvi was lost in his planning. He gazed at her slack-jawed and managed to mumble, “huh?”
“Are you Six Whiskers Plodvi?” she asked impatiently. “Here to take responsibility for our operational anomaly?”
He focused and checked the stripes on her uniform as he remembered his script. “Yes, Seven Whiskers.” He dipped his head slightly in respect. “I am Six Whiskers Plodvi. I take full responsibility for the suboptimal temperature in your server room. I am here to diagnose the issue.”
“Harumph.” She looked him up and down and muttered, “Aren’t you a little young to be a six whiskers? I didn’t know they let hatchlings graduate this early. No wonder we’ve got all these issues now…”
Plodvi was not a good judge of character yet, but what he saw did not impress him. The seven whiskers officer herself looked at least ten years old, and from the pale skin under her slightly overgrown — and barely regulation — fur and the oily smell emanating from her body, she must have spent most of those years in this server room. He suppressed his annoyance as he tried to act with the contrition he was supposed to be feeling at the moment. “Yes, Seven Whiskers. I take full responsibility.”
“Have you even worked on a room like this before?” she asked, gesturing to the rows upon rows of servers humming on their racks.
“Yes, Seven Whiskers.”
“Outside of your training simulators?” she added.
“No, Seven Whiskers. This is my first time in this room,” he answered honestly.
“Figures,” she snorted. “One very important thing you need to know right now is our servers are calibrated precisely for the correct room temperature. Every degree the room is out of spec, for every hour, their assured lifespan decreases by several weeks. Do you have any idea how costly it would be to the Dominion if we don’t get this problem fixed right now?”
“Very costly?” he guessed.
“It’s worth more than your entire bloodline,” she declared.
“Yes, Seven Whiskers.”
“Good. Perhaps that will motivate you to work faster, now that I have properly impressed upon you the urgency of the problem,” she said slowly to him as if teaching a difficult concept to a bred-illiterate.
Plodvi once again controlled his urge to roll his eyes. “Yes, Seven Whiskers. I will get on the problem right away. May I see the temperature regulation sensors near your vents?”
The seven whiskers sighed, as if detecting something in his tone that wasn’t quite reverent enough for her. “I manage the room, not the gadgets in it. I don’t know anything about your sensors. My technician, Four Whiskers Rirkhni, will answer your questions.” She pointed to a subordinate technician busy in the corner.
He nodded his appreciation for her direction and headed to the technician. Rirkhni was buried in a heap of heavy wires traced between two racks and his datapad. As Plodvi approached, he didn’t look up as he continued to tap commands into his datapad. Plodvi paused and gave the wiry technician another minute.
After a few moments of tinkering, Rirkhni sighed and looked up. “Another failing unit… What do you need… Six Whiskers?”
Plodvi gestured at the vents. “Is this because of the air conditioning problem?”
Rirkhni shook his head. “No, Six Whiskers. This is probably due to excess vibration in the rack due to an installation defect from a previous technician. It was not discovered in time, and now we must collectively take full responsibility for the issue.”
Plodvi sighed in mild relief. “Alright, well, I am just here to diagnose issues with your air conditioning.”
“Yes, the temperature issue. What do you need from us?” the technician asked. “Isn’t that data all routed to your department?”
“I need a more comprehensive historical record of all your vent sensor data,” Plodvi replied as he quickly improvised.
Rirkhni narrowed his eyes. “More comprehensive historical record?”
“Yes, the older data. To see when the problem arose so we can corroborate the timing with our logs. Some of the information is stored in our central life support systems, but troubleshooting from the source is more reliable,” Plodvi lied.
“Ah. So you need full access to our internal computer systems,” Rirkhni said.
“Yes.”
Rirkhni looked at him sharply for a moment, then shrugged nonchalantly. “Of course, Six Whiskers.” He swiped on his datapad for a few moments, and Plodvi’s own device alerted him that he’d been given administrative access to the server room’s operations.
“Anything else, or can I get back to my work?” Rirkhni asked, slight impatience creeping into his voice.
“This should suffice for now, Four Whiskers,” Plodvi mumbled as he began to examine the information rolling onto his datapad. He watched Rirkhni return to his prior work and then began to browse through the contents he’d just got access to.
Maintenance…
Status monitoring…
Data backups…
Personnel…
Communication logs…
Wait, go back. Communication logs.
Plodvi focused on reading the entries from the FTL radio. The incoming transcripts had two different levels of security. A sparse few of the highly secret messages were encoded using the Navy’s new protocols, and these could not be decoded by anyone other than the intended recipients — high level commanders, usually — with a physical device.
The remaining incoming transmissions were encrypted using Dominion Navy Standard 46, which were decrypted by the communications section and stored in the ship’s server room. Their contents were mostly mundane: planetary weather reports, orbital traffic status, pacification campaign progress reports, promotions, responsibility hearing results…etc. A few messages contained slightly more interesting information like suspected predator ship sightings — he idly skimmed through those.
But the most dangerous pieces of information — meticulously marked, categorized, and summarized by the responsible FTL communication officers — were the open transmissions from the predators. He scrolled through pages and pages of carefully indexed reports regarding the propaganda that the Great Predators were now blasting into their FTL radios.
Plodvi quickly scanned through everything from the descriptions of degenerate predator art to their instructional books, a few titles he even recognized from back when he was a hatchling at school. He was surprised at just how much content the predators had produced and were just allowing to be propagated to their enemy…
Matched only by his surprise that several of the entries showed that they had been copied out of the system.
Plodvi frowned.
Whoever was copying the information out of the system clearly knew what they were doing, but they inevitably left traces all over the system. Files were unceremoniously deleted. Logs were missing entire chunks of their content. Enough to fool an unsuspecting Digital Guide, but not a breathing, thinking creature like him. And with his full access, Plodvi could clearly see exactly when and where the interesting predator propaganda entries were being accessed. With a few quick matches to the people who were on duty at the time, he could narrow it down to find out exactly who the people talking near the vents were…
As his datapad ran the program, a shadow loomed over him. He looked up.
The four whiskers. Rirkhni.
“What are you doing with the radio logs, Six Whiskers?” Rirkhni asked, staring. And his body language was not friendly. “I thought you needed the life support, and I just got notified you were accessing a lot of—”
“N—nothing,” Plodvi stuttered. “Just looking through—”
His datapad chose this time to complete its last analysis, beeping twice to notify him of the program completion. Rirkhni’s gaze flitted down to his screen.
At the names listed.
Rirkhni’s name was at the very top.
The four whiskers sighed as he took a paw step towards Plodvi.
Plodvi took a step back. “Wait, I can explain— I didn’t mean to—”
He heard a soft rustle behind him.
Thump.
Plodvi felt a painful jolt to the back of his head and immediately lost his balance. Then, all he felt was the smooth, cold tiles of the server room floor against his ears before he lost consciousness.
Comments
Krzychu0304
The Plodvi thread is really cool... But I have the same complaint as usual; The Terran Navy's operational model contains elements that are ostentatiously inefficient. They deliberately delay the time of the bombardment, which on the one hand extends the duration of the operation by increasing the number of things that can go wrong, on the other hand it reduces the effectiveness of the bombardment by giving the buns time to evacuate qualified personnel (which is very expensive even for Znosians, especially scientific research staff) and allows for securing the most valuable elements of the plants (this is not even about large and expensive industrial machines, but R&D and production technology offices).
M
Welcome to the local branch of the Free Znosian Navy!
DeWhit
Welp, hopefully nothing too bad happens to plodvi, I’m invested in his story now 😅
