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Grass Eaters 3 | 29 | Annoyed at Small Things
🕑 Added 2024-12-30 16:47:00 +0000 UTCRepublic Spacer Training Center, McMurdo (2,400 Ls)
POV: Durnio, Malgeir Federation Navy (Rank: Delta Leader)
“Fire! Active fire in midsection hallway Two-Bravo! Fire! Fire! Fire!”
“That’s all of you!” Durnio screamed at his group of wide-eyed spacer cadets. “Get your vacuum gear on now! Let’s go! Let’s go! Move it!”
The group consisted of 40 freshly recruited Malgeir spacers. Half of them had some years of experience in the Federation Navy. The other half were straight out of boot camp. Or what passed for it in the Federation, anyway.
All of them were equally unprepared.
They fumbled to get the EVA closets open. A scant few of them managed to unfold their issued gear correctly, and he saw at least one of them skimming the instruction pictures printed on the gear.
“Hurry up! Hurry!” Durnio yelled unnecessarily to lend to the simulated stress. “Get it on now!”
It took the best of them two minutes to put on their EVA suit. The average was just over three.
“Four minutes and twenty seconds,” he said, staring at his stopwatch as the last, embarrassed spacer cadet struggled to secure his tail into his suit. “That’s how long before we can begin pumping atmosphere out of this module. The whole section would have burnt to a crisp by now… or, more likely, they’d seal this off and suck the air out before you finish putting on your suit to save the rest of the ship.”
He glared at the youthful cadets lined up in front of him. Several of them hadn’t even properly secured their air lines. One of them was trying to scratch an itch on his snout through the EVA visor.
Another raised her paw in question.
He turned to face her. “Question, Pack Member?”
“Yes, Delta Leader, I have a question. What is the baseline?”
Durnio’s face lit up with a bright smile. “Good question, Pack Member! The Republic Navy qualification standard is thirty seconds, twenty for combat ships. And that’s for every member of the pack. Think they’ll allow us an exception on account of your extra long tail?”
She mumbled something unintelligible.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear that, Pack Member!”
“No, Delta Leader!”
“Excellent! That’s what I thought. Now strip it down, place your suits back in the locker in a neatly folded fashion, and let’s try this again. Let’s shoot for only burning half the module down this time.”
The pack shouted in unison, “Yes, Delta Leader!”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
“How goes the cadet herding?” Maurice greeted Durnio as the Malgeir joined his table in the mess hall.
“It’s… going. We’re doing vacuum drills today,” he said, sitting down and biting hungrily into his burger.
“Ah, I remember those,” Maurice said with a nostalgic smile. “What’s your group at?”
“We got it down to a minute flat at the end of the day.”
Maurice gave him a look of mild approval. “Not bad… not bad at all.”
“Sure… if they were going to be flying cargo ships,” Durnio sighed. “But this group is going to a combat command. The new ship.”
“Ah, the new Alligator-classes. Same for me, probably.”
“Alligator-class?” Durnio asked in confusion. “I thought they were going to be called it something else.”
“Yeah, there’s some online poll going on,” Maurice dismissed it casually with a wave. “But that’s the official name. The spacer crew can call it whatever it wants, and the scuttlebutt is they’re calling it the alligator, because of all the bumps on the top where the missiles come out.”
“Ah, I see,” he replied, even though he didn’t see it at all. “What do they have you doing these days?”
“Hah. Just lounging around, training more of your Marines for when we need to take Grantor.”
Durnio’s eyes widened. “Grantor?!”
“Yep. Tens of millions of Buns down there. We gotta retake it somehow.”
“I sort of assumed you were just going to send combat robots in until it falls.”
“We are going to send robots. And your Marines.” Maurice shrugged. “There are enough Buns for everyone to kill. And they’re not going to wait until we scale up robotic production to be able to replace all your millions of Marines one-to-one. Every day we wait is another day the Buns get to keep the planet.”
“I guess. What are you drilling them on now?”
“It’s crazy,” Maurice said animatedly, gesturing emphatically with his hands. “Apparently you guys have these tin cans that you send people into atmosphere with—”
“Oh yeah, the drop pods?” Durnio said casually as he picked up a fry.
Maurice looked at him with a side-eye. “Yeah, totally nuts.”
“What’s wrong with them? They’re fast.”
“They’re incredibly dangerous! What if they malfunction?! What if they don’t drop in the right place?!” Maurice asked. “Fire a thruster half a second later, you’re in the wrong city! Five seconds, wrong continent! It’s a recipe for disaster!”
“But it’s— it’s war. We all have to take risks.”
“Not these unnecessary ones. Anyway… I think we’ve decided we’re going to put our combat robots in those instead, and your Marines will come down in shuttles after they clear the airspace. We’re training them to use real re-entry shuttles instead of those death traps.”
“What about you guys? Are you Grass Eaters just going to train our Marines to do all the hard work for you?” Durnio teased.
Maurice grinned at him. “Pretty much. That’s what pets are for, after all.”
Durnio wagged a claw at him in mock admonishment. “Careful, you’re not supposed to say that about us anymore. If I report you to your Office of—”
“Oh no! Not more alien cultural awareness online training!”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
In the early days of the Terran Republic, after the “unification” of humanity, a retired Marine general and a Navy admiral found themselves sharing war stories at the counter of a quiet bar. The bartender, catching snippets of their dialogue, leaned in. After introducing himself and some small talk, he posed a question to them, “What does it take to conquer a midsized rogue district? Say, like you did North Korea.”
The Marine general leaned back with a confident smile. “Just two divisions,” he replied.
“Only two divisions?” the bartender echoed, eyebrows raised.
“That’s right,” said the general as he nodded vigorously. “Forty thousand of our elite combat drones working alongside their well-trained Marine operators. The new Model-18s are perfectly suited for the harsh realities of war — far superior to human infantry in frontline combat. Fully autonomous operations, networked all-spectrum dominance, sub-millisecond killchain, all that jazz. One division to secure the cities, and another to clean up the country-side.”
The Navy admiral spoke up as she shook her head. “Hah. Two full divisions? Typical Marine overkill. We’d need even less,” she said smugly. “We’d just need two squadrons of ships.”
“Only two squadrons?!” the bartender asked, turning to her.
“Indeed,” the admiral said proudly. “Republic Navy warships are unmatched in firepower, mobility, and situational awareness. One squadron to neutralize their surface-to-orbit defense network, another to systematically reduce their ground troops from orbit until they plead for mercy.”
Just then, a scoff came from a nearby stool. A man leaned over out of the dark corner. “Two squadrons?” he snorted dismissively.
Curious, the bartender glanced over. “And who might you be?”
“I work for a defense logistics firm on Luna,” the man replied nonchalantly.
The admiral’s eyes narrowed as she recognized the man. “He’s TRO,” she said, with equal distaste and unease.
“TRO?” the bartender repeated. “What’s that?”
“Terran Reconnaissance Office,” the admiral explained. “Spies, saboteurs, and swine.”
“And what might you need to conquer a rogue district?”
The man took a slow sip of his drink. “Two.”
“Two what?”
“Two people.”
“Two people?!” the bartender said, astonished. “Who?”
“One to take out the Supreme Leader, and one to take their place.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Naval Station Europa, Europa (100 km)
POV: “Hersh”, Terran Reconnaissance Office
“You’ve changed color,” Ditvish observed.
“Changed color?” Hersh asked and looked down at his arms. “Ah, the tan. It’s our skin’s natural reaction to exposure to sunlight. Or starlight.”
“Don’t you have medications to fix that?”
“Sunscreen? Eh, I just get used to it. We asked your people if we could agree to only fight at night, but I think they said no.”
Ditvish humored him with a snort and eye roll.
“And I see you’ve done a lot more reading while I was gone,” Hersh remarked dryly at the former fleet master’s shelf. He glanced at some of the titles. Most of it was fiction, but there was a diverse mix of biographies and autobiographies in there. Some were famous generals and admirals in Earth’s history. And at least one from an old movie star.
“There is nothing else to do here,” Ditvish complained.
Hersh turned back and sat down at the table. “What about the board games?” He flipped a switch on the table, and a holographic chess set appeared on its surface. “Fancy some chess?”
“Bah, I know that one. Some of your commissars tried to teach it to me.”
“And?”
“It is a far poorer simulation of warfare than it purports to be. Symmetry?! It is… uninteresting to me.”
“What about Diplomacy?”
“Pointless predator notions— oh, you mean the board game? I tried it once with a few of your Marines.”
“And?”
“They cheated.”
“That’s kind of the point of that game, no?”
“No, they read my mind.”
“We don’t just give random Marines access to our mind reader technology.”
“I’m not sure how,” Ditvish said, slightly flustered as he recalled the memory. “But they always knew somehow!”
“Maybe you are simply bad at lying. Have you considered that?”
“No. Your games are stupid. I refuse to play any more of them.”
“Fair enough.” Hersh dismissed the table’s holographic device. “We can just talk about you instead, if you want?”
“Talk about me? What is there to talk about? You’ve already extracted everything of intelligence value from my mind.”
“For one, what are your personal goals?”
“My personal goals?”
“If you get out of here, what would you want to do?” Hersh elaborated.
He stared at the human in disbelief. “If I get out of here?!”
“Well, yeah. When we win this war, you’re probably going to get out of here, right? What will you do then?”
“When you win this war?” he repeated, then muttered again, “When you win this war…”
Hersh remained silent.
“I guess that is not an impossibility,” Ditvish admitted after a minute.
“Right, and if the war ends, we’d let you go. We’re not going to just let you sit here and eat our free food forever. So what are you going to do then?”
“That is an absurd hypothetical.”
“Humor me.”
Ditvish thought for a moment. “I suppose if you let me go, I’d report to my overdue assignment of responsibility hearing. I guess State Security will find me at fault for abandoning the Prophecy, on top of whatever charges they already imposed on me before I surrendered, and then they’d shoot me.”
“Okay, say they don’t do that. What would you want to do? Become a farmer?” Hersh pointed at his bookshelf. “Maybe a librarian? A writer?”
“That is another absurd hypothetical.”
“Humor me again.”
“Perhaps they will put me in charge of another fleet, and we will invade another species. Perhaps another species easier than yours to conquer.” Ditvish paused and shook his head. “No. That is completely nonsensical. They would never trust me enough to allow me to command again. This line of questioning is pointless for both of us.”
Hersh shrugged. “Alright then. Suit yourself.”
“What about you?” Ditvish asked.
He blinked in surprise at the reversal. “Huh?”
“What about you, Hersh? What are you going to do when this war ends? I understand your people— how do they put it in that book— ah, when the war ends, you beat your swords into plowshares. What is your plowshare?”
Hersh studied the former fleet master for a moment. “I… I don’t know. I’ve been in the service since I was eighteen. This job is what I’m good at. I’d need to think about it for a bit.”
“Aha!” Ditvish looked at him with mild triumph. “So it is not just me who can’t easily answer the question to your satisfaction. Your species — at least some of you — you gravitate towards what you call mindless violence. Just as much as you accuse us of doing it.”
Hersh thought for a moment before answering, “I want to go back to being annoyed by small things.”
It was Ditvish’s turn to be confused. “Annoyed by small things?”
“My mother was in the Navy, in the ODT. She fought pirates and terrorist groups in our Red Zone for twenty years. Day in and day out. Those were violent times. The Republic did some terrible things to the people in the Red Zone. And the people there — they gave it back as good as they got. She was in the midst of it all. Hostage rescue. Intelligence gathering. Assassinations. Even went undercover once. It was… brutal.”
“So your mother was doing the job you are doing now?”
“Things are better today in the Red Zone. The war’s over. We’ve got tech startups on Mimas now. It’s not even the frontier anymore. The frontier has moved. Even during this last campaign…”
“But if things were still as bad as they were when your—”
“Yes. Then, I’d be doing what she did too, probably.” Hersh shrugged. “When she was forty, my mom stopped. Just couldn’t do it anymore. Our implants and biotechnology were not as good back then. She stopped being combat effective — couldn’t keep up with the young operators with their brand-new bodies and lightning reflexes, so they put her in a desk job. And she had us. So when her enlistment was up, she took early retirement and went back to school.”
“Retraining?” Ditvish asked. “We have that too. For those few who are worthy of the resource investment.”
“Kind of. Went back to college on the Navy’s dime. And she didn’t fit in. All the students… they were just kids. None of them understood what she did in the Red Zone. Some of them even opposed it and told her that to her face.” He shook his head ruefully as he recalled. “They were kids. They complained about having to wake up at eight for morning lectures. And what was she going to tell them? That — back in the ODT, in the Red Zone — she had to wake up every day at five to triple-check their equipment in case one of the local technicians sabotaged their air tanks? That sometimes she was in combat condition for weeks on end, relying only on the combat stimulants in her bloodstream to keep her awake? That she woke up twice a night — every night without fail — because of nightmares she had? My mom couldn’t tell them that. She just didn’t fit in with the other students.”
“What did she end up doing?” Ditvish asked curiously.
“She adapted. Because that’s what humans do. We adapt. My mom was no different. She saw a doctor. Several doctors. The nightmares went away, mostly. And one day, a few years later, she was standing in line at a coffee shop for her coffee. They spelled her name wrong on her cup. And she found herself being annoyed at it so much she almost complained.”
“Spelling your name wrong… is that a major error worthy of severe punishment in your culture?”
Hersh smiled at the memory. “No, it is inconsequential; the most inconsequential of mistakes. And she got annoyed. Just like anyone normal would have been. Just like any of her young classmates would. She didn’t think about people shooting at her. She didn’t worry about anything else. She was simply… annoyed that they spelled her name wrong on a disposable paper cup. That was the moment when my mom realized the war was over for her.”
“Ah. So that is what you meant when you said: you want to be annoyed at the small things.”
“Yes, when this war is over. You?”
Ditvish shook his head. “Like I said, the war will never end for me. I was bred for it. That is the sole purpose of my life. Without one, I would be recycled. My bloodline would be kept in storage until needed. And the resources spent on me would be repurposed for something more constructive.”
“What if that were not the case? What if you could choose? What if you could choose to be something other than a ten whiskers of the Navy?”
“I don’t know, Hersh,” Ditvish said quietly, uncertainty creeping into his voice. “I don’t even know what my options would be.”
“Plenty of wisdom in those books you’ve been reading to answer that question,” Hersh said as he began packing his tablet. “Just something for you to think about until I come by next time.”
As Hersh stood up to leave, Ditvish looked up at him, his alien expression near-unreadable. “I suppose— I suppose I would like to be annoyed at small things too.”
Comments
EclipseDragon96
I guess they're still weak to being influenced by other cultures.
AnAbsoluteVillain
A man stands up in the corner: "I can do it with no people!" The bartender gasps. “And how might you to conquer a rogue district?” The liberal smirks: "Thoughts and prayers!"
Will Howland
This is one of the most poignant parts of this story. I too wish to be annoyed by the small things. To be relieved of the responsibilities of the big and important things and to harassed by the inane and stupidly small things.
M
In the end, we'll beat the Znosians by changing them just a tiny bit into small, fluffy versions of ourselves.
TheArchivist
Ahh man, this last exchange with Ditvish and Hersh is just icing on the cake Incredible stuff
