The Nature of Predators 2-34 (Patreon)

Memory Transcription Subject: Tassi, Bissem Alien Liaison

Date [standardized human time]: June 29, 2160

Ambassador Loxsel had mentioned that the Sivkits wished to see humanity’s progress, as he phrased it, staking their claim to further-off thrones. With a fleet beelining its way from Paltan space toward the site of the incident, the theatrical Sivkit had graced us with his virtual presence. The entire Sapient Coalition was watching, uncertain how our ships would stack up against theirs. The humans would attempt to hail the unknown hostiles through their drones, from the border base, but I somehow doubted our new enemies would pick up. The research vessels had long since ducked away from the front lines, replaced by top-notch attack drones rushing toward an open class.

Gunning down civilian ships was easy, as Naltor put it to me. The weaponry did take them out with startling efficacy, but they hadn’t picked a target that could fight back. Onso had facilitated another meeting with Kaisal, and Zalk’s secure tech lines proved invaluable to setting up a back channel, cutting out the Yotul middleman. I found myself on edge, worried that our schemes would be discovered. Kaisal promised the Arxur were heading into the fray, as soon as news of the dead carnivores was leaked to him. It might’ve gotten Bissems a gift-wrapped fleet, but I was worried about complicating a situation that was already perilous.

“Now that they’re rushing off to war, and trying to save the Osirs, there’ll be no time to save Ivrana or look for the ghost exterminators,” Zalk complained. “We have to do this ourselves.”

The Osirs were the human’s chosen name for the extinct quadrupeds, crafted after a myth that had appalled several SC representatives. It was named after a god who’d been chopped into pieces by his brother, and brought back to life when the bits of his body were sewn together. Even I wasn’t sure I liked that analogy, but the Terrans found it fitting. They were trying to stitch the carnivores back together with pieces of genetic data; it was easier to obtain viable samples with the Osirs than other extinct races. They could be the race that led the way for others—researchers were hopeful to create a synthetic embryo for them within a few weeks, and start its development in an artificial womb.

I heaved a sigh. “The humans haven’t paused their work on our ecosystem, or the outreach with our diplomats to start peace talks. Between a global war at home and whoever killed the Osirs and the Sivkit expedition, are ghost exterminators really the biggest threat?”

“Of course they are,” the Tseia hissed. “They’re the ones who attacked us. We have no answers, but they’ll go to the ends of the galaxy for these Sivkits and Osirs!”

General Naltor narrowed his eyes. “Settle down, Zalk. Both tasks deserve attention, and with the magnitude of power needed to wipe out a spacefaring species…this is extremely worrying. We can’t expect them to care about us, if we don’t address their concerns. The Paltans are in immediate danger.”

“Which is why we need to keep them on the defensive, so they don’t wind up in our territory. You think they’ll spare Ivrana if they get that far? They already wiped out one carnivore race,” I spat.

“It doesn’t change that we’re on our own, Tassi!” The Tseia tugged at his headfeathers. “We have to figure out ways to be useful, to get anything from anyone.”

“That doesn’t have to be solely military. Be team players; offer aid and a safe haven to any who need it. That’d buy goodwill, so maybe one day, more than people-eating carnivores will back us.”

“What are you all whispering about?” Dustin’s voice made me jump, and the xenobiologist seemed to notice that his presence startled us all. I wondered what he would think if he knew we’d been skulking around to meet Kaisal, and drag the Collective into this to gain a fleet; somehow, I doubted he’d approve. “I haven’t said anything, but you lot have been acting strange ever since your visit to Leirn. What did the Yotul drag you into? It was strange how soon they flipped their tune on your SC bid.”

Naltor scowled. “You’re the one who tried to get us in touch with them to change our minds. We can do some things on our own.”

“Of course you can. I just…thought we were in this together, and would be more open with each other.”

“Dustin, you get regular memory scans. We can’t tell you anything we don’t want leaking to the galaxy, even if we do trust you to keep it in confidence aside from that,” I said, thinking quickly.

I never confronted him, but I don’t understand why he withheld so much about the Arxur. Dustin could say that it’s publicly available info…still, his version of events was much less flattering.

The human scientist frowned, but seemed to give in. “You have a point. I just wish I could help more. It’s hard to give advice when you’re being iced out.”

“You’re not being iced out, so much as the Yotul don’t want the Terran government involved,” Naltor offered a half-truth. “We can’t afford to have them turn on us. It doesn’t have to affect our friendship. We’ve been through some real shit together, nerd.”

“Yeah. We have, haven’t we? Now, we’re witnessing a new interstellar war. I know I’m supposed to provide reassurance, but that scares me a little. All hell’s broken loose since we met Bissems.”

“We feel the same about everything we learned about you; everything’s gone to shit. If you don’t beat these cloacabeaks today, then we’re doubly fucked.”

“Cloacabeak. You adopted my word?” Zalk gasped.

“Shut up, wanderbird. It’s time to see what the white and fluffy ball of drama has to say…and how the battle goes.”

Loxsel had finally moved close to the screen, after making a show of checking that his viewport was completely shuttered and his door was locked. Secretary-General Kuemper looked like she’d swallowed sawdust, as the Sivkit finally unmuted; she was worried what the character of an ambassador would have to say. On an adjacent screen, an alternating feed from the drone formation showed that they’d been booted from subspace. If the aggressors were still in the area, that would prove this system was of enough importance to defend. We’d find out whether they’d confront our inbound fleet soon; should they choose not to meet us, we’d get a read on the planet the Grand Herd had been bound for.

“Hello from c-captivity—for I am a free man in name only! The fateful day of your r-rampage has arrived. Prowl the fields where millions died!” Loxsel screeched. Wasn't it hundreds of thousands? “Salivate at what might have been. May your s-savage hunger carry you to victory!”

Kuemper managed to keep a straight face. “I hope we’ll get a proper assessment of the enemy capabilities, or better yet, contact them to understand why they attacked you. I also hope that the UN has been treating you well.”

“I am well-fed. Fattened for the s-slaughter! You should not talk to them, predator…yet you admire their b-butchery. You seek their massacre techniques for yourself. Generations of scrumptious bites gone, p-puffed out of existence. Don’t you savor to play with your food—the taste, excoriating their flesh?”

“Loxsel, we don’t consider Sivkits to be food. We’re here to lend a hand, like you asked us to. We’d like to have diplomatic relations with the Grand Herd, but we can’t manage that without a shred of…normalcy in what you say to us.”

“Then just kill them all. Whatever r-ruse you project toward these servile prey, your instincts howl for blood. Brethren of mine, slain by their craven debauchery, entrails scattered. We want these abominations off this world, and your almighty claws can deliver it!”

The Secretary-General’s pupils snapped toward him. “Why are you so set on this world in particular? Wouldn’t it be wiser for the Grand Herd to avoid this…craven debauchery by choosing another planet? It’s not like this one is brimming with vegetation; our long-range scans suggest it’s mostly desert.”

“You wouldn’t understand. All that matters to hunters is w-what lines your voracious stomach, and ruling over as much terrain as possible. We have purpose. We want what’s ours, yet is now blighted by vermin. It could not be b-bloodless, no! Despair at the infestation. I lament…what was snatched, wrenched from our pastures! It is an insult to have to turn to foul, rancorous b-beasts like you.”

“You came to us. You didn’t have to,” Kuemper hissed. “You insult us—”

“I am showering you with praises, odes to your c-cruelty! I apologize if I insulted you; I’ll step it up!”

“What does stepping it up look like?” Onso snickered from the crowd. “Go on, show us!”

“Rapacious m-menaces of Sol, ingesting war and death with insatiable appetite. Flayers of children, crushers of hope, terrors that flattened the cradle!”

“That wasn’t them. The humans fought to save us, and then rebuilt our home from scratch,” the Gojid Prime Minister interjected.

“The cradle was flattened, and that’s the part that matters! Where was I? Ahem. Unhallowed ones who stole the Arxur’s cattle for yourselves, who had Duerten minions perform the shadow caste’s execution…who broke our spines!”

Kuemper smacked her forehead. “We definitely didn’t do that. We could fix them even, if you stopped shunning us.”

“By fix, do you mean removing the bone altogether? Paralyzing us so it’s not a problem? I’m not so ‘Sivkit-brained’ to not see through your word lures!”

“If that’s what you truly think of us, then never mind. Humanity doesn’t want to be seen as monsters, and you hold us in such low regard. Why don’t we observe the battle in silence?”

“Yes, predator master! I won’t dare to raise my voice or interrupt your war cries again.”

Loxsel placed a paw on the top and bottom of his muzzle, as if manually holding it shut. The human leader’s exasperation was on full display, adding color to an otherwise tense and sober moment. Having been booted from FTL transit on the system’s fringes, the drones dispensed ammo on the disruptors to ensure they wouldn’t impede backup; that allowed them to tunnel slightly closer, before planet-based gravity distortions interrupted their progress again. Ship signatures appeared, warping in behind the UN armada from the direction they came. More automated foes crawled out of the woodwork throughout the system, thousands upon thousands of them waiting. There were also a colossal amount of hostiles marching out from the desert world.

Attempts to hail the foreign faction went unanswered; the Terrans even flashed blinking lights from the hull, in case traditional communications weren’t working for some reason. Our enemies zipped toward the SC fleet, this time not hiding that their guns were primed for the kill. While prepping for combat, our force spared a few resources toward scouring the system for signals, and trying to crack their encryption. Running their language through a translator matrix could help us gather intel—perhaps learning more about the attacks on the Sivkits and the Osirs. However, there was nothing of use we could pick up, besides the standard background radiation and our internal signals.

Why are these people so hostile to us, so adamant about driving anyone out of this system without any communication attempts?

It was evident that these murderous aliens had been expecting our return, judging by the uptick in ships stationed here. They started off by slinging particle beams, but the Terran spacecraft on the frontlines were generating strong magnetic fields—which could separate the charged rays. General Naltor was taking notes about the SC’s capabilities, just as he had during the general strategy briefing. It was a test of hurling offensive weapons at one another, and seeing if they could be parried or deflected. The enemy had numbers, having anchored themselves deeply to this system. Ambassador Loxsel should lose whatever attachment he had to this world in a hurry.

Our own particle beams weren’t countered by plasma or magnetic shielding, rather being absorbed by what appeared to be a layer of liquid armor; our weapons’ power fizzled within the water, as the simple medium scattered their heat. The battle of engineering appeared to be a stalemate so far, with each party finding a unique counter.

“Only predators could c-create such dastardly weapons!” Loxsel brayed, paws flying away from his snout. “They dreamed up the same base horrors as you. This is hunter against hunter, a contest of t-trickery. How primal…this can’t be my life! I want out!”

Kuemper raised a hand. “These aliens are clever, Loxsel. They figured out their own way to oppose our particle beams, but we have other weapons. The question is really who has the best weapon.”

“Bring out the antimatter! Launch them at the planet and hope it falls from the heavens like rain!”

“That is not how we operate, even if they did with the Osirs. If they somehow aren’t behind the Osirs’ deaths, then that’s not the signal we want to send about our terms of engagement.”

“Do you kill your prey by being boring? Because I’m about to…drop DEAD! Dead, I say!”

“You do that,” Onso heckled from the audience. “In silence.”

Kuemper’s comment about whoever would deliver the weapon that turned the tide rang true; someone needed to score major blows. These enemies must have the force to at least whittle us down with their superior numbers. In any other system, throwing twenty thousand SC drones would be enough to overrun the place, but this region of space was fortified to the teeth. As we crested to closer distances, each side tested the other’s ionic shields and armor with plasma, and point-defenses against mini-missiles. The deciding factor was indeed that home advantage, the terrain being familiar to our foes. The asteroid belt—and I mean all of it—came to life, with tens of thousands of giant rocks chucked at us with slingshots.

“Hey! That’s our move,” Dustin protested, as the SC drones reacted to the barrage of space rocks flying in all directions. “Maybe humans aren’t the craziest ones out there.”

Zalk gave him a perplexed glance. “The hostiles threw a plurality of their asteroid belt at you, and that’s your reaction?”

“What do you want me to say? That we probably don’t have enough explosive firepower, or time, to break them all up?”

“I see your drones desperately firing away from the ships, and weaving all about to avoid space rocks. How am I supposed to believe you can protect the Tseia when you are getting rolled?”

The human’s lips curved down. “There’s always a bigger fish, Zalk. They’re formidable…but we’ve ended bigger fish before, with a lot less at our disposal.”

“While I appreciate an attempt at a relatable metaphor, I wouldn’t go comparing yourself to fish. On Ivrana, all fish get eaten by us,” Naltor quipped.

“Fine. There’s always a bigger Bissem—and I’m looking right at him.”

“Half-feathered nerd.”

I looked toward the screen with worried eyes. “Is now the time for jokes and banter?”

“Gallows humor, Tassi,” Dustin sighed. “Beats doomspiraling, doesn’t it?”

I couldn’t help but to “doomspiral,” as the enemy seized our automatons’ moment of weakness. Our formation was scattered across all three axes, but each feed showed them under a similar asteroid siege. Recognizing that the Terran-led craft were on the back foot, the hostiles made use of their greater numbers at last; they hurled themselves at our front lines—ramming tactics that piled onto the existing debris barreling down on us. Our drones were being beaten into submission, flinging antimatter missiles at asteroid and foe alike.

The SC dispatched their nanodrones to attack by a thousand cuts, but dust guns smited these with equally small particles. Larger ships’ shielding could burn them in a heartbeat, yet the tiniest vessels struggled to reckon with them. Clearly, our enemies had a rotating arsenal for every situation. Asteroids crashed over the paltry physical shields, rendering them ineffective in blocking incoming fire. The humans looked a bit disheartened, seeing that the hostiles had an answer for every punch they threw.

Not hesitating to bring all of their friends to the party, space stations nestled within the asteroid belt revved to life. The enemy dumped warheads in our faces as well, just as our casualties were teetering on the edge of a catastrophic count. The Sapient Coalition was getting hit with everything under the ice shelf, all at once. I wasn’t even sure our nemeses had shown their entire hand, but they didn’t need to. Feeds across the drone fleet were going dead, limiting the rapidly alternating angles. Lights blinked out on the space map’s display feed.

The humans aren’t going to be able to avenge the Sivkits or the Osirs today. This is a swift, devastating loss. We can’t take them on their own turf…and I’m not sure we could, even outside of their territory!

Kinetics, lasers, particle beams, missiles, and asteroids vanquished SC vessels one by one, despite their last gasp of resistance. For all of Dustin’s gallows humor, I could see the human was internally doomspiraling—fearing a war on the scale of the one they put to bed twenty-three years ago. Ambassador Loxsel flopped to the floor as the last feed went dead, amid a sea of debris that marked all that was left of our fleet. The Sapient Coalition had some hard questions to ask themselves, about how they could stand up to an enemy on this level…and to consider whether it was worth it to engage at all.

A/N - 34! The Osirs are a “new” named species…or just the SC’s name for the Jaslips, who they’re working on bringing back, much like the KC’s program to rebirth humanity. Tassi, Naltor, and Zalk are looking for ways to prove the Bissems’ value to the SC, while Loxsel appears to spectate the adventure to Tellus’ space—full of dramatic statements and demanding humans kill the enemy. The drone on drone action shows that the two sides have counters for each other’s weaponry, though the KC’s numbers and terrain advantage prove decisive.

What are your thoughts on the results of the first real battle of the war, and how it bodes for the SC’s chances after seeing how they stack up? What do you think of resurrected Jaslips in the SC…and of our Sivkit ambassador’s act?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting!