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Grass Eaters | 58 | Great Predators
🕑 Added 2024-05-15 16:47:01 +0000 UTCZN 2228
The cursed predator appeared back on the screen, baring her fangs.
“I see you have decided to talk again, Ten Whiskers Ditvish. Tell me, how did it feel? To helplessly watch your own crews die, unable to stop it from coming? Maybe you will come out of this with a better appreciation of how our people feel when you invade and ravage our planets. Or maybe not. Maybe we will go for your flagship next and see if we can find another, more cooperative fleet commander in your fleet. Wait, hold a second please, Grass Eater.”
Grionc looked off screen for a moment before reappearing, now holding a stack of papers with alien script on them, waving them at the screen. “Ah. Thank you very much, Gamma Leader. Here we go: your fleet succession charts. I know you people are big on these things given how poorly your ships conduct themselves when they lack instructions from above.” She began to read from the charts. “Hmm… Nine Whiskers Vnirkh… nope we captured him in Gruccud space yesterday. How about Eight Whiskers Skvanu? Wait no, he is on the 2228 with you. Eight Whiskers Ktunstvis? Eight Whiskers Ktunstvis from Squadron 8? Is there a Ktunstvis on the call? We have a once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity for you—”
“You have made your point, Fleet Commander,” Ditvish glared at her warily. “We will negotiate terms in good faith.”
“Terms? There are no terms, and we are not haggling over a slab of jerky at the market. You and your ships will surrender unconditionally into our custody, and we promise to treat you better than your superiors would. First, you will place your crews in unarmed shuttles—”
“We will not trust you Lesser Predators and your lies. Your promises are worth—” Ditvish started.
“We have not lied to you since the start of these… conversations.”
“More lies. You claim to have taken Gruccud space. I know for a fact that is impossible,” he countered. “I was just talking to them before we… blinked out from the last system. You could not have taken Gruccud and gotten here so quickly. I have seen the jump range specifications on your blink drives; they are worse than ours, even with your recent… upgrades.”
“Yes, you are right,” Grionc admitted nonchalantly. “I am not there next to you. I am talking to you through FTL radio. But Gruccud space has indeed been completely taken. Do you want to see the video evidence? I can have it sent over too.”
“More fabrications,” Ditvish snorted. “I have learned better than to trust video and easily faked sensor data. And another obvious lie from you savages: there are no FTL communications allowed through this region of space. Your cowardly hiding ships are clearly blocking them.”
She beamed. “Impressive. You figured that out too. I will let you in on a secret since you aren’t getting out of here. We can selectively allow connections. Your transmissions can’t get through, but ours can. How is that for new upgrades?”
“Prove it.”
Grionc seemed… almost excited. “No problem. In fact, I have been authorized to allow you to connect to Gruccud Ground Command. You can speak to them yourself right now if you want.”
Ditvish looked over to Skvanu, who gave him a positive gesture.
Miraculously, the connection established, and a dusty Znosian figure in dark green fatigues materialized on the screen. Judging based on the solid concrete and low lighting behind her, Ditvish judged they were in an underground bunker.
“Gruccud Ground Command, this is Ten Whiskers Ditvish on the 2228. Report your status.”
“Ten Whiskers Ditvish? Thank the Prophecy! This is Eight Whiskers Slezhbej, I’m the new head of Gruccud Ground. We have been cut from outside FTL communication for two days. According to his last transmission, Nine Whiskers Vnirkh said that our Gruccud Fleet was completely lost, and we are on our own. Since then, the Lesser Predators have launched an all-out assault on our planetary forces in three theaters. With their total orbital control, they are rolling us back with the help of the rebelling locals, but we will make their Marines bleed for every meter of Znosian soil they take. How soon can you take your fleet to Gruccud, Ten Whiskers? Judging by the deteriorating situation, we can hold out for two more months, maybe three if we must—”
“Listen very carefully, Eight Whiskers Slezhbej, my fleet has been trapped by Lesser Predators. I need your help getting the message out. I will send you my coordinates. Tell the Navy to send its best reconnaissance and detection equipment with any rescue fleet, and blink drive technicians—”
“Hello? Hello? Are you still on the line, Ten Whiskers? I apologize but you cut out after addressing my name. It is likely the poor connection on my end. I take full responsibility for that. The Lesser Predators have been bombing our communication centers. I don’t know when they learned to do that, but it has been very inconvenient—”
“I said. My fleet has been trapped. I will send you—” Ditvish tried to say.
“Hello? Sorry. You cut out again… Can you say again?”
“My fleet has been trapped. I can send you my coordinates. Did you catch that?” Ditvish desperately repeated.
“What was that about your fleet? The cursed FTL radio broke again. Six Whiskers! Get over here and clean up the connection! This stupid machine—”
The connection cut out, replaced by the unamused face of the Lesser Predator fleet commander.
“Now, that… was not very good faith of you, Ten Whiskers,” Grionc accused. “Using our proof of authenticity to try to gain a strategic advantage over us. Not very good faith at all. It’s a good thing that our thinking machines filtered it all out.”
“Filters?” Ditvish snarled, slashing his paw at the screen. “And I thought your people didn’t believe in thinking machines.”
She made a nonchalant gesture with a paw. “Ah, you know, existential war of survival and all that. Anyway, your time is up, and I very much did not appreciate your delaying tactics and your attempt at subterfuge. I hope you enjoy this coming lesson as much as I will. See you in another hour.”
“Wait!” he yelled at the screen, but the transmission was terminated from the other end.
Ditvish looked at the visibly fearful faces of his subordinates, and speculated hopefully, “Maybe they only have a few of those new missiles. That could explain why they are bothering to demand our submission… to save on precious resources.”
---
If there was a limited supply of their new missiles, the enemy did not show any signs of it. Squadrons 14 and 16 disappeared off their radars forever shortly after.
There were no lifepods.
---
“Maybe you have learned your lesson, Ten Whiskers,” Grionc said patiently, “Or perhaps not. Really, I can’t tell which I prefer at the moment, but if you have a shred of empathy in your psychotic heart, the twenty thousand or so spacer lives you just threw away in the last couple hours should give you nightmares for the rest of your stinking life. However long that might be. Are you prepared to surrender unconditionally now?”
Ditvish looked every bit as defeated as he knew he was. “I am prepared to disarm my fleet for the duration of these negotiations, as a gesture of good faith.”
Grionc burst out laughing. “Bwahahaha. Negotiations! Disarm the fleet as a gesture of good faith! That’s a good one. You know, Grass Eater, for a species that is biologically incapable of humor, you can be funny sometimes… Let’s get serious, it doesn’t matter much to me if your fleet is armed or not. As you might have noticed, none of your weapons have done anything useful today. And do not think me stupid or naïve; I was alive during those ‘negotiations’ between your people and the Granti. We may not be grassthirsty like you, but we are not giving you a chance to pull those tricks again.”
Feeling as broken inside as the ships he’d just thrown away for nothing, Ditvish sighed and asked, “What do you want then, predator?”
Grionc smiled thinly at him. “It’s very simple. You will immediately place all your crew members into unarmed shuttles or your hibernation pods, I don’t care which. They will move away from the ships to a separation of at least one thousand kilometers. Then, we will blink in our Marines to board your ships and capture them. If there is anyone left aboard the ships, your surrender will be considered a Grass Eater trick. We will consider the surrender invalidated, and we will use your shuttles and pods as target practice. If there is any sign of a trap on the ships, a locked door, a loose grenade, your surrender will be considered a Grass Eater trick. If there is any sabotage, a broken console, or even an attempt to wipe your thinking machine databases, your surrender will be considered a Grass Eater trick. If there is a single misplaced cleaning drone, your surrender—”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it. It will be considered a Grass Eater trick. Give me sixteen minutes to discuss the logistics over with my officers.”
“You have eight. If I don’t start seeing those shuttles and pods, we will be forced to teach you another lesson, and I would hate — just… hate — to have to do that, Ten Whiskers.”
---
Znos
1 month later
“Shall I close the Ditvish file then?” Fstrofcho asked dutifully. “Now that our investigation has fully concluded and been proven correct.”
“No,” Svatken said slowly. “Something is wrong.”
“Wrong?” the attendant asked, confused. “But your predictions were validated. Zero Whiskers Ditvish did attempt to start a schism by illicitly gathering supplies and ships; he killed his own subordinates who found out about them, and some others feigned death to get out of our sights. And after his schism plot was exposed and he was convicted of apostasy last week, Ditvish defected to the Lesser Predators with his entire fleet. Even their newest propaganda is showing it now. Navy leaders are taking responsibility for their dereliction in duty on not seeing his betrayal earlier. And for losing Datsot, Gruccud, and the nine transit systems between them. Everyone is praising your foresight, and your promotion to Director came through.”
“It’s too clean. Everything was just tied up too cleanly. Something about this feels wrong.”
“Too clean?”
“Fstrofcho, one thing I learned as a Xenobiologist is that nothing that deals with live creatures is ever clean. When you find a corpse, the blood is pooled in a perfect circle around their body, they have drawn the name of their killer with their own blood, and then you visit the supposed killer to find that they too are dead… something is wrong. I can’t tell you what is off here, but something about this just feels very wrong indeed.”
“What should we do about it?” her attendant asked.
“What I… we… are going to do, attendant, is we are going to re-trace all the steps we took. Bring up all the evidence, from the drone footage to that intercepted message and the video we have of that hidden ship depot. And I want us to go through all the recorded footage we have of the relationships between each of the players involved, including the ones involving the supposedly dead Seven Whiskers Ktotssu, who we still have not yet found. And we are going to dig more into our own Navy and our sources among the Lesser Predators; this defection of his… it must have been planned in advance, and I bet someone outside of his fleet must know something.”
“Yes, Director.”
“Take a break for now. It will be a long night again.”
“Yes, Director. Should I prepare and deliver the five whiskers prisoner from the brig to your quarters again?”
Svatken smiled in appreciation. “Indeed. After all, that is why I granted him immunity from the hearings.”
“That was very generous of you. Anything else?” he asked without a hint of moral judgement.
“Ah yes, there was something else the ten whiskers said before he defected. Perhaps he revealed something he shouldn’t… I need you to pull up my old theses about the Great Predators and any other relevant information you can find. I want the xenobiology, not the theology.”
The attendant seemed surprised, but only briefly. “Your papers from when you were a professor at the Shlirurk Institute?”
“The very ones. And make sure to get the ones I wrote about a hypothetical species of hybrid predators.”
---
Black Site Deimos
The disgraced fleet master ignored his throbbing headache as he stared at the tall alien creature who pulled up a chair in front of his table.
The new ship upgrades.
The devilish tactics.
The omniscient intelligence.
The tight secrecy.
Everything.
His migraines went away, and everything clicked into place. Everything.
They are real.
The Great Predators.
The Great Predators are real.
“Great Predators, huh?” the ugly beast chittered in perfectly translated Znosian, narrowing its forward-facing eyes and revealing its sharp, sinister-looking canines. “I suppose that’s a little better than what one of your subordinates kept calling me.”
Huh? Did it just—
“Now, Ten Whiskers Ditvish… may I call you that? Good. I just want you to visualize the planet of Grantor in that big, intelligent brain of yours. Beautiful planet, isn’t it? What about its system and orbital defenses? Good, good. Yes… those fleet deployments and patrol patterns… mmm… right. What about its perimeter systems and—”
Then, the predator sighed.
“There’s no need for that mental image, Ten Whiskers… and I can assure you that my mother does not look anything like that.”
Comments
Gregoire Brougher
i think the biggest benefit is with divtish being blamed for this, it will take the znosians much longer to realise that the humans are helping the malgeir
jrharper42
Looks like they captured most of the fleet as well as their combat computers, in addition to a good portion of the theater's command staff. It will be interesting to see how humanity exploits this in book 2.
James wagner
if you can read someone's mind - DON'T LET THEM KNOW - you get more information that way ;)
