Spooker
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Grass Eaters | 16 | Coup
🕑 Added 2024-03-05 00:18:37 +0000 UTCMNS Oengro
Fleet Commander Grionc stared at the ships on the sensor screen and wondered how they got here.
The corrupt Home Fleet had imprisoned Speinfoent, and now they had another warrant and were coming for her as well. The two boarding vessels off the starboard of the Oengro made that clear.
Who did they think they were?!
She didn’t think of herself as the galaxy’s gift to the Malgeir, but she was certainly better than anyone else they had in the middle of an existential war.
Especially any of the imbeciles from Home Fleet… who were part of the reason they were losing this war in the first place!
She contemplated her options. Put herself at the mercy of the Fleet Commander of Home Fleet, or…
Or what? Fight back?
The tactician in her couldn’t help but dispassionately analyze the problem from a purely military standpoint. Her Sixth Fleet was ready and would have the element of surprise. Most of the Home Fleet was still moored and wouldn’t be able to get their engines up and running for hours. And she would take the spacers who she fought alongside against the bottom feeders in Home Fleet any day of the week!
For Malgeir’s sake, this Home Fleet was the same ragtag bunch of idiots who sold their Marines’ service rifles and showed up at Malgeirgam with black-painted broomsticks for the annual Victory Parade last year!
The only problem was… they did have a lot of tonnage.
Their two groupings near Malgeiru were the biggest problem. Both had several times more ships than she did. She could get to one, but not both before they get some of their engines up, and splitting up her own fleet puts her at the risk of being defeated in detail.
But it seemed likely to her that whichever grouping they got to first would be easy prey. And they would have a… more than even chance against the other.
I can do this, she realized. There really was nothing else to stop her from defeating and destroying much of Home Fleet, sending her Marines to take the capital and Defense Ministry. And then, she’d be in charge! The reforms she would make — the changes to the Defense Ministry —she could re-energize the whole war effort!
Oh sure, there might be some civilian unrest. The civilian-run government and the High Council would not be happy about it, but they didn’t have ships or Marines.
They’ll get over it. They’d have to.
Nothing like this had happened in centuries. For hundreds of years, the Malgeir military had been kept in a state of disrepair. There were no wars to fight, and no enemies to justify its purpose, so there were no popular fleet commanders to follow. And confidence in the democratically elected authorities had never fallen this low.
Her fleet was different. Sixth Fleet was a new predator, created by the necessity of war and hardened by its years of experience: successes, failures, and all. They were willing to follow her to many of their deaths, as they had repeatedly demonstrated in the past. For the first time in a long while — living memory, at least; centuries, possibly — the Malgeir Federation Navy had produced someone who could even launch a coup against the state itself.
Coup. Usurpation. Insurrection. What outdated words, what crude methods!
But whatever system she put in place afterward would surely be more effective than the broken system that produced the decrepit Defense Ministry.
I could really do it.
As she prepared to give the order, she heard the haughty voices of the boarding vessel captain giving orders through the communications station. “Oengro, Oengro, do you copy? Oengro, you need to open two docking bays for our boarding parties. Oengro? They’re not responding. I think their radio is broken. Oengro?”
She’d have to destroy them to prevent them from alerting the Home Fleet in orbit. To give her a head start.
It would be the logical thing to do to maximize our chances and reduce our casualties.
She’d have to take dozens of lives, for no reason other than following the orders of a corrupt idiot.
Then, thousands. Countless thousands. No, not countless, she told herself. She had to be specific. There would be hundreds of thousands of dead spacers in Home Fleet. Tens of thousands in her own fleet as well, probably. Not to mention the Marines and the defenders on the ground they’d have to get through. Their blood would end up on her already filthy, blood-stained paws.
Hundreds of ships would be lost. Hundreds of ships that the Malgeir would need in its inevitable defense of the home world.
Or, as the cowards in Home Fleet would have it, for its evacuation. All that for nothing more than a pointless disagreement in leadership.
She took a physical step backwards, as if stepping away from a metaphorical cliff, and shook her ears.
Better to lose one Malgeir than many.
Grionc looked at her crew in sorrow. This was injustice, but she would not have so many of her people lose their lives and their Federation lose the war for it.
“No.”
“What?” Vastae looked at her incredulously. “Commander, all the other captains and crews in the fleet: we are all with you. We are ready to go.”
“No. We can’t do this, Vastae. We are already in the middle of a war, one which we are not winning. We can’t fight an internal war with ourselves too. Look out the window, Vastae. Right there. Malgeiru, our capital. Our home planet. The cradle of our civilization! The origin of our history and our people! We don’t protect it by slaughtering thousands of innocent spacers in Home Fleet. We can’t betray our very oaths—”
Vastae refused to shift his gaze from her face. “Fleet Commander, we fight for you. We swore our oaths to the Federation. And to the citizens we are ultimately beholden to. Not the corrupt officials in the Defense Ministry. Certainly not the morons in Home Fleet.”
“I understand, Vastae. I do. It really is not fair,” Grionc replied. “But… I refuse to be the downfall of our people. Allow the boarding ships to dock and place me in restraints in preparation for transport. Then, follow the instructions of your next fleet commander. Save as many of our people as you can and make the Grass Eaters pay for every one of us they take. These are my orders… and my personal wishes. Please… will you follow them?”
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Atlas, Luna
S.83920 Republic Defense Authorization Act 2123
Status: Voting in Progress (0-0-0)
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Malgeirgam, Malgeiru
Speinfoent woke up in his cell to some commotion outside.
Two guards came in, escorting another prisoner. They opened the door to his cell, shoved the figure in, locked the door, and left.
“Fleet Commander!” he shouted in recognition through the light trickling in from the bottom of the door.
He saw Grionc half-grinned in the low light. “Speinfoent, I am glad to see you are alright. I was so worried about you when that lawyer told us what happened at the spaceport.”
“What?” Speinfoent asked, aghast. “But how did they get you? What are the charges?”
“Treason, I suppose. They haven’t exactly read me my rights yet.”
“They tried to get me to sign a confession saying you ordered me to break into the Archives and steal documents, but I refused! It’s full of falsehoods. I never signed it. Someone else must have talked! I don’t know how—”
“Oh, Speinfoent. That’s just one excuse. I’m sure they found or made up another. Maybe they even forged your signature. Such things are not difficult as long as they pay the right people to look away. One way or another, they were going to take me down,” Grionc said as she calmly sat down on the straw mat, crossing her rear paws.
Speinfoent explained what he’d heard from Pincrio. “They said they were going to replace you with the Home Fleet Commander’s nephew because he wanted your job.”
“Yeah, I figured it was something stupid like that,” Grionc snorted. She had only met the snotty little creature once or twice, and what she’d seen did not impress her. “Only Home Fleet’s best and brightest can come up with something this monumentally foolish.”
“What are we going to do?” Speinfoent asked righteously. “We can’t let them do this to you!”
“Nothing, for now. We wait,” Grionc said. Then, she stared straight at the camera overlooking the cell. Deliberately and loudly, she talked into it, “It won’t take them long to realize they still need competent commanders to fight this war, and no rank nor medal will help them when the Grass Eaters come knocking.”
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Schpriss Prime High Orbit
Malgeir Ambassador to the Schpriss Niblui sat on the bridge of the diplomatic transport ship Pesmod and looked down at the busy world below her. Its background color was mostly the bright red of its native foliage but centuries of Schprissian construction had covered up the planet surface almost entirely with artificial structures. Schpriss Prime was a true ecumenopolis, a world city, an impressive multi-generational project of the alien species that was her mission as ambassador.
It was not technically an alliance, as their leaders would carefully remind her when she applied too much pressure, but a friendship. Yes, the Malgeir Federation and the Schpriss Confederacy were on friendly terms, trading and migrating between each other in peace for centuries — as all predator civilizations did. But there was no alliance or mutual defense treaty between the two, and they had made it clear that there would be none now that the Malgeir were engulfed in war.
Like most other sapient species, the Schpriss were a peaceful species with no desire for conflict. They saw what the Malgeir did for the Granti… and the price they paid for it. Their Confederacy leaders were in no hurry to repeat their fate.
However, Niblui knew their pacifism and neutrality would mean nothing when the Znosians were done with the Malgeir; they would come here for the Schpriss next, regardless of whether or not they helped. Unfortunately, knowing this and convincing Schprissian leaders of this were two different tasks entirely. Nowadays, she spent most her days pleading with them for any scrap of resources they could spare.
At the ripe Malgeir age of fifty, she’d spent two-thirds of her working life building up a cordial relationship between the Malgeir and the Schpriss in peace, and then the last third trying to stop it from falling apart as Malgeir civilians and leaders began to resent their apathic neighbors for doing almost nothing as the war progressed.
She glanced over to look at one of their orbital spaceyards with her tired orange eyes, seeing where six shiny new military ships were in various stages of construction. The Confederacy’s Navy clearly felt the pressure of the war on their border, and they had been building as many ships as they could. They were simply unwilling to lend or grant them to their neighbors for their existential struggle. At the back of the yard, two heavy transport ships were being prepared for transport.
Those two were her crowning achievements on this trip: she had managed to lead a grassroots donation drive throughout Schpriss City, gathering enough local credits and political support from private citizens to get the Confederacy to part with merely two of their heavy transport vessels. Which was less than a tenth in tonnage of what the Malgeir leadership requested from them. On top of that, they were no combat ships, which the Navy kept asking for.
At least they would go towards replacing some of the Malgeir’s supply line losses. Until the next successful Grass Eater raid, anyway.
Next to her was Captain Pliont. Even older than her at fifty-eight, he’d been a spacer his entire life. His mostly black fur (not brown like Niblui’s) marked his ancestry as coming from a lower-class family, but he never felt it as an impediment to his former career in the Malgeir Navy. He retired early at forty-eight during a round of Navy budget cuts, right before the Granti-Znosian war started. The fall of Grantor compelled him to join back up, but without enough combat ships and at his age, he was enlisted into the civilian state services as the captain of a diplomacy ship instead.
The Pesmod was not an impressive military ship. Boasting only four light point defense guns as her armaments and inefficient drives, Pliont was no less proud of his meager command. As he often said to Niblui, he might not be young enough to be on the frontlines killing Grass Eaters, but he would do his best for the Malgeir Federation. For now, that meant ferrying around the Ambassador to wherever she needed to go. Her contribution was partially his contribution, and she did not let him forget it either. Despite her elite upbringing which no doubt contributed to her career and coveted posting in Schpriss, she treated him as an equal. And unlike some other dignitaries, she knew her place as a polite guest on his bridge.
The Ambassador watched as the Schpriss completed their loading of the Malgeir’s two new heavy transports. With a final check, they prepared the ships for departure.
She pivoted to face the Pesmod’s captain, noting the subtle patches of wear and tear on his uniform. “Is our escort ready?”
The captain saluted, a small smirk on his lips. “Yes, Ambassador. The Seuvommae’s cargo hold is stuffed, and so is ours. Though, we did have a small hiccup: we couldn’t find some of our spacers who probably had one too many drinks in Schpriss City.” He rolled his eyes theatrically. “But it’s all good now. The Schpriss have graciously agreed to host our wayward crew. We’ll scoop them up on our next visit.”
She nodded, her lips curving into an amused smile. “Typical spacers. No matter where you go in the fleet, some things never change.”
He chuckled, leaning in conspiratorially. “Back in my day, they would have tied the offenders to the engineering deck and whipped them until they learned their lesson.”
Niblui’s eyes widened with feigned shock. “Did they really?”
He winked. “Nah. But we’d make them cough up a solid twenty credits for the trouble they caused.” He made a money gesture with his paws, eyebrows dancing.
She laughed, shaking her ears. “That sounds more like it.”
“Time is money, Ambassador,” he quipped, playfully miming an old-timey solicitor counting coins.
Switching gears, she asked, “Speaking of time, how long will the trip back to Malgeiru be?”
The captain took a quick peek at his console, numbers and data streaming across. “About twenty days. Then another two days from the Malgeiru system limit to the surface. Got any big plans?”
“Other than reporting to the High Council? Not really. We’ll probably come right back here and see if we can try another one of their colony planets closer to our border. Surely some of the Schpriss there must be feeling the heat.”
He raised an eyebrow, suggesting, “Or maybe they truly think what is happening to us will never happen to them?”
Niblui’s gaze was distant. “Maybe. And I hope they never have to learn their lesson.” Taking a deep breath, she added, “I’ll head to my suite to catch some rest. And leave you to your commanding duties.”
He nodded respectfully. “Yes, Ambassador. Thank you, and let me know if you need anything.”
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Atlas, Luna
S.83920 Republic Defense Authorization Act 2123
Status: Passed into Law (236-60-4)
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TRNS Mississippi
“We have their vector. And we have the authorization. Captain, warm up the package. Commander, go get the ODT and the minister ready for insertion.”
