Spooker
patreon
Grass Eaters 3 | 25 | Make Them Bleed
🕑 Added 2024-12-20 16:47:01 +0000 UTCSRNS My Other Ship, Prinoe (400 Ls)
POV: Sophie Garnier, Saturnian Resistance Navy (Ace of Clubs)
“They’re taking forever, aren’t they?” the Ace commented as the exodus of enemy ships from the planet continued. As she watched, hundreds of shuttles ferried troops from the surface into the massive holds of the enemy cargo ships.
Felix glanced at the battlemap absentmindedly. “Even with their admittedly impressive logistics, it takes a while to evacuate a few million troops. The Reps say they’re stacking their Marines in their cargo in layers like sardines.”
“There must be a trick somewhere,” she said as she paced the bridge restlessly. “It can’t be this easy.”
Felix shrugged. “They seem to be trying their best. They’re hurrying so much that there have already been several shuttle accidents and a near-collision around one of the large transports.”
“Anyone we can blow up for violating one of the agreements?”
“We can’t see inside their shuttle hangars, but based on the drone and satellite footage of the equipment they’re dragging into them, they are mostly sticking to the guidelines and restrictions we set.”
“Hm… too bad.”
“At least we’re saving on munitions,” Felix offered.
The Ace rolled her eyes. “Bah. Cheap Pigeons, and now that we have our own munition fabs, we can make copies.”
“Do you want— want us to keep a closer eye on the enemy shuttles?”
She smiled, baring her teeth. “Yes, anything they do that gives us an excuse. After all, our crews need their target practice.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
“What?! The deal was to allow them only one week for evacuations!” the Ace fumed at the image of Carla on the screen. “It’s been more than one week!”
Carla explained patiently, “Seeing that they are fully complying with the terms in good faith and going as fast as they can, there is no harm in extending the deadline by twenty-four hours. If they need more time then, we’ll give them further 24-hour extensions as we see fit as long as they are still evacuating their men. Until we see them showing signs of slacking, that is.”
“That’s some real care-bear idiocy only a Rep can think of. I’m not giving them that!”
“Too bad,” Carla said. “I’ve already taken the liberty of communicating the deadline extension to the Bun fluffle commander myself.”
“Damn, if only you had your fleet here and not us,” the Ace taunted, “you’d be able to enforce your stupid rules.”
“Damn, if only I didn’t embed the Sonora near your task force ready to pound the bridge of your personal ship to bits if you try to blow up this deal,” Carla smiled back thinly.
“Go screw yourself, Rep! You said we could fight the way we want to!”
“Yes, but there are rules and one of the rules is… you don’t get to shoot at ships we promised safe passage to. You heard the Bun admiral in Grantor; they’re watching to see what we do here.”
“Who cares what the aliens think about us?! We’re all just— just abominations and savage predators to them anyway!”
“If you can think just beyond tomorrow,” Carla continued unperturbed by her outburst, “you’ll see that this will make your job much easier the next time. As you can see from the number of troops they are moving, it would have taken us months — if not years — to dig them all out of the planet if we’d gone in the hard way.”
“And if you can think just beyond the day after tomorrow,” the Ace countered, “you’ll see that this will make our job much harder… when these people get to retreat into the next system or wherever they’re going and fight us another day.”
“Perhaps.” Carla shrugged. “But a deal’s a deal. I’d have thought you still have a little of that old school Red Zone pirate honor in you, but I guess I’ll have to settle for fear of death.”
The implication that she was afraid for her life rankled the Ace more than the slight against her honor. “The deal was one week! Not an hour more!”
“Whatever. Your bloodlust is at the bottom of my list of priorities. We’re allowing them to leave. If you want to shoot something, there will be plenty of them to shoot at in the next few systems we go through.”
“If you don’t let them leave for free there too!” the Ace yelled at the screen, but Carla had already terminated the connection.
“Ace?” Felix asked.
“Hold fire,” she snarled. “But get the Strategy Cell downstairs to devise countermeasures for the next time the Reps pull something like this. If they want to leash a tiger, they better be ready to get bitten.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dominion State Security HQ, Znos-4
POV: Svatken, Znosian Dominion State Security (Position: Director)
“Administrator Krelnos, have you been briefed on the latest updates out of Prinoe?” Svatken asked expectantly on the video screen.
Krelnos nodded. She’d done her homework, of course. “Yes, Director. The loss of another near-pacified planet to the Great Predators. A tragedy for the Dominion and the Prophecy.”
“Tragedy?” Svatken asked, eyes flashing dangerously. “Tragedy implies that events can be outside our direct control. No, this is not just a tragedy.”
“I understand your meaning, Director. Has anyone taken responsibility for the loss yet?”
“No, but we are investigating some candidates. If you have any information on this… well, I know you would not hesitate to report it promptly.”
Krelnos nodded vigorously. After a moment of hesitation, she asked, “Perhaps I could elucidate my… preliminary hypothesis?”
Svatken looked at her screen sharply. “A hypothesis? On the loss of Prinoe?”
“Indeed, Director. Or rather… a more comprehensive— a unifying theory that explains the recent… losses of the Dominion.”
“Unifying theory?” Svatken brushed her whiskers. “Intriguing. What is it?”
“Yes, Director. Please allow me to start from the beginning.” Krelnos took a deep breath. “First, we discover a new predator species on the fringes of Lesser Predator space. One of our fleets loses various ships to them; the responsibility for these events is murky, but no one alive takes responsibility. Some elements of the Navy take rumors of their presence somewhat seriously and prepare some measures to combat them; this is completely ineffective, and we eventually lose the entire Datsot invasion fleet. This fleet — it was commanded by Zero Whiskers Ditvish, who defected to the enemy. This defection was verified by data we later obtained from the Lesser Predators.”
“Yes,” Svatken said, almost fidgeting. She was getting less and less confident about her initial accounting of that sequence of events by the day. “But the circumstances of that defection are still— I would not rely on it to draw specific conclusions.”
Krelnos nodded and continued, “Second, we capture a few Lesser Predator officers who had knowledge of the Great Predators and we corroborated information from our spies in their ranks on Malgeirgam. Most were lower ranking and only gave us what their rumor mills had, but given our assumptions of the worst, we actually came close to deriving the true nature of the threat. Based on this and the numerous countermeasures we devised against the predators’ trickery, we launched an invasion against their home system. Somehow, despite all calculated and reasonable odds, this invasion fails. The Navy officer in charge of the planning and execution was ultimately Eleven Whiskers Sprabr. Not only was he opposed to the invasion from the first place — both a suspicious act and a potential motive — he stayed behind in Grantor, allowing a subordinate to execute the attack of the primary fleet. This implies that perhaps he knew the invasion would fail; perhaps he had a paw in it. And of course, I don’t need to remind you of the prior relationship between him and the disgraced apostate Ditvish.”
Svatken wavered. “That is a lot of circumstantial evidence. But it could very well also be coincidence. There are at least two alternate hypotheses I’ve considered that would fit this chain of events too.”
“The third and final piece of evidence comes from the enemy themselves,” Krelnos explained. “The update from Prinoe. Director, did you review the transcript of the conversation between Nine Whiskers Fskokh and the enemy ships?”
“Yes, what of it?”
“Before the Great Predators revealed their true faces, we were talking to Znosians. Real Znosians.”
“Yes, possibly,” Svatken confirmed, as if absentmindedly. “They’re… captured spacers who abandoned the Prophecy. Possible apostates. This is not new; it happens in war. Servants of the Prophecy get captured from time to time. We have not yet begun investigation on their personal responsibilities, but it is not a high priority: their fates in the predators’ hands will likely be worse than death anyway.”
“Director, I believe the conversation revealed new information that may be pertinent to the security of the state,” Krelnos insisted.
“Huh?”
“In my experience, Servants of the Prophecy who have been captured by the enemy take a long road to apostasy. These spacers in question… they are merely months in the predators’ grasp, and they already behave like willing predator livestock. The ships they are flying — they can’t be easy for the predators to operate, given their size and unfamiliarity with us. That they are willing to rely on our own people to pilot them… it suggests a level of control of our people beyond what is normal. Furthermore, they referred to themselves as the Free Znosian Navy…” Krelnos sat back, as if letting her words hang in the air.
Svatken was paying full attention now. “Are you suggesting that these events are all connected to this supposed Free Znosian Navy, and that there is a rogue element within the Dominion that have been working together since before the loss of the Datsot invasion fleet?”
“It would— it could fit all the evidence.”
“But… despite all that, I must admit that I still have some personal doubts about the original conviction of Zero Whiskers Ditvish…” Svatken said, hesitant again. “The foundations of this line of thinking are not solid.”
“Where do these doubts come from?” Krelnos asked. “Or rather, whom?”
Svatken didn’t answer. She’d always been suspicious of how that episode unfolded, even if she was so confident at first, but what had originally flipped her on it…
“Was it the Eleven Whiskers too?” Krelnos prompted.
Svatken didn’t reply again, just staring at her console, trying to form a coherent flow out of the jumble of events that were now swirling in her head.
Krelnos saw the opening and seized it. “Put another way: what if we’re wrong about this? At best, we have an Eleven Whiskers who readily admits he is utterly incapable of stopping the predators anyway. At worst…”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Svatken stared at the fleet master on her console screen with part fascination and part disgust. “It is disturbing how little you feel the need to take responsibility for, as a supposedly loyal Servant of the Prophecy.”
“I can’t take full responsibility for a correct course of action,” Sprabr said, his expression defiant. “Was I wrong to order the evacuation of Prinoe?”
“Were you?” Svatken shot back, seething.
“There was— is… no strategic reason to hold onto the star system at the cost of its defense fluffle of three squadrons, not to mention the four hundred Marine divisions we had garrisoning the planet. And the escape of those ships is now giving us even more data on the predators.”
“Not the predators. Those were not their ships.”
“No, they were not,” Sprabr admitted. “They were ours. At least now we know the fates of three of our many Grand Fleet squadrons.”
“Do we even know that those ships they captured are still functional?” Svatken asked.
“They appeared to move as well as ours should. Perhaps a little slower, but that was also possibly a ruse. What we do know beyond doubt is that they can launch those dangerous munitions they have, the Pigeons. After all, they were able to retrofit Lesser Predator ships to fire them; there is no reason that our captured ships would not.”
Svatken harumphed. “We should still have fought. Made them bleed. Somehow.”
“It would have been… wasteful for Nine Whiskers Fskokh to try to fight to the end.”
“Even so… what next? They roll into Cretae and we give that up? Then Crissoel? We just give up and go every time they roll into one of our systems with an overwhelming force? Allow them to cut our supply lines to Grantor?”
Sprabr sighed. “That is what it meant to lose the bulk of our Grand Fleet and have our reserves be bottled up here waiting for the predators to attack. If you’ll allow us to begin preparations for a full withdrawal, we can perhaps draw enough forces—”
Svatken interrupted him. “You will hold Grantor for as long as I deem it necessary.” She paused for a moment before continuing, “But you don’t have to worry about Cretae anymore.”
“No?” Sprabr asked, surprised.
“No. Based on our latest… personnel workload analysis, it appears that you are busy with your work on Grantor and unsuited for additional responsibility. Therefore, I am hereby limiting the scope of your concern to the Grand Fleet’s mobile reserves at Grantor and the defense of its immediate perimeter systems.”
“I am being relieved from overall responsibility? Now?!” he exclaimed.
“That is correct, Eleven Whiskers. We are reducing your area of responsibility so you can focus on your primary task of defending Grantor.”
He looked as if he was about to protest on her screen, but after a moment of agitation, he settled back into his chair. “Who is replacing me?”
Svatken shrugged nonchalantly. “I don’t know yet. I am sure we can find a fleet commander who is willing to fight to protect Dominion space.”
“Willing to fight?” he echoed, horror dawning on his expression. “To pointlessly sacrifice our ships and troops against overwhelming forces they know they cannot beat?!”
“Now, now, Eleven Whiskers. You may no longer be responsible for the defense of those sectors, but defeatism is still a serious crime.”
“But if you don’t even have a candidate in mind—”
Svatken sniffed the air twice before replying haughtily, “Eleven Whiskers, this is not a discussion. The Prophecy will provide. Given your track record against the predators so far, I am sure we can find someone just as worthy of this responsibility as you, if not more. After all, the Dominion has no shortage of loyal Servants, does it?”
She didn’t bother to wait for his response before cutting off the transmission.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
ZNS 1858, Cretae (22,000 Ls)
POV: Fskokh, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Nine Whiskers)
“Yes, Director Svatken, I take full responsibility for the retreat and the actions I took that led to its necessity,” Fskokh said, bowing his head so low he could kiss his knees.
“Good.”
“Good?” he asked puzzled as he raised his head to look her in the eye.
Svatken nodded coldly. “Good. At least you understand your place.”
“Director?”
“With the addition of your ships from Prinoe, what is your total ready strength in Cretae now?” she asked.
“Twelve combat squadrons, ma’am,” he replied automatically. “I also have a special squadron of the… electronic warfare ships from Grantor. The Marine troop ships have been evacuated back into pacified Dominion territory, so our supply ships are dedicated to the combat squadrons.”
“And you will fight?”
“Ma’am?” he asked, puzzled. “We await your directive.”
“Excellent. Here is your new directive: hold Cretae. When the predators come, you fight. You will not negotiate a truce with them. You will not hop one step backwards. And you will not radio anyone else for instructions. And if anyone other than me gives you any instructions contrary to mine, you ignore them. Is that understood?”
“Yes, ma’am. Our lives were forfeited to the Prophecy the day we left the hatchling pools!”
“Good. Now, I am about to tell you something that only twelve people in the entire galaxy fully know. You will be the thirteenth.”
“Ma’am?”
“If this state secret leaks from you, you will be labeled an apostate and your entire bloodline pruned. Is what I am saying clear, Nine Whiskers?”
Fskokh straightened up and put his paw over his heart. “Yes, Director. I would die before I betray the secrets of the Dominion.”
“Good. Get out your one-time order pad and decrypt this sequence I’m about to transmit to your ship…”
Comments
G Sharp
Svatken single handedly losing the war because she’s a huge idiot. Love to see it
AnAbsoluteVillain
Svatken is no Oracle. Tragic really for if she was she would know the thirteenth must be no Znosian.
