The Nature of Predators - Becoming a Predator (1/10) (Patreon)

Becoming a Predator

By Dana Scappiel

Published in 2160 - #1 Coalition Times Bestseller

Curator’s note: When looking back at literature written about the Battle of Earth and the Federation War, common trends reflect the changing attitudes and understanding of how humanity was viewed. With the prevalence of emerging technology, many fiction writers adopted the memory transcription formatting to parallel their works to actual historical documents. This piece is viewed by scholars as a metaphor for how Federation species discovered that they were predators themselves, beyond its fantasy roots, and is a fixture in new-age literature curricula for that reason.

Memory transcription subject: Narlem, Krakotl Exterminator Fleet Comms Technician

Date [standardized human time]: October 17, 2136

The asteroid trap the predators attempted to spring on us was dastardly, but we had forged ahead. Every member of the bridge could see their infested world on the viewport, with a meager helping of Terran vessels standing in our way. I must admit, with success almost in our beaks, I was gloating. My feathers had puffed out with pride back when we set sail, and that saunter hadn’t left my step as Captain Kalsim executed a brilliant plan. When I returned to Nishtal and flaunted my accomplishments, it would be an exhilarating day.

These bloodlusting humans were mere inconveniences in our way, to be eliminated like the primitive scum they were. Everything our command said was about it being a matter of time before they followed in the Arxur’s footsteps, tantalized by the possibility of turning us into cattle. My father happened to be a military officer on another ship, who’d given me the inside scoop on Kalsim’s teachings. I remembered the first time he’d taken me under his wing, and explained how predators operated in unrestrained detail. I was eight. Some others viewed me as too young to have learned such horrific truths, but I was keen to be a resilient child; I enlisted in the service the next day to fight the grays.

The Arxur were terrifying on my first few missions, and even after twenty years in the military, that feeling never gets easier. My dad made sure I watched his briefings, feeling how unnatural those forward-facing eyes were. The curse of Maltos.

From the Federation’s past observance of Earth, these humans were every bit as cruel; predators geared each action of theirs toward generating the most suffering possible. They delighted in violence as if it somehow gave their lives worth, created a society that existed to broadcast their nightmarish behavior, and were incapable of sentimentalism like decent races indulged in. Images of those simians reflected the face of pure evil, creatures that calculated their enslavement and eventual food conversion of the galaxy’s natives. I shuddered to imagine what it would be like to live with such instincts, offering silent gratitude to Inatala for granting me the civilized temperament of a prey species.

Captain Struella folded her wings behind her back. “Listen up, crew! We’re in the clear. After taking out those weak Venlil ships, we can end the greatest threat to our future in its nest. Weapons, use the density information to find us a city target. I want to destroy as many predators as possible.”

The first officer, a Drezjin expat named Alnajo, flapped his near translucent wings. “Ma’am, I can correlate the scans to an outdated map we have here in our database. The name of the predator settlement with the most residents in our locale appears to be ‘Houston.’”

“Excellent work, XO! Watch the viewport, my beloved crew; I’m so proud of how we’ve stood up to these…abominations, who think with their stomachs and have terrorized us along this journey. This will be the greatest triumph in the history of the Krakotl Alliance. It will be something you tell your grandkids about. We’ll be heroes in a few minutes.”

I was delighted at the prospect of making my father proud, but I had my own motives too; the image of the unmasked human at Aafa’s governance hall had lodged itself in my brain, filling me with hatred and disgust. It would elate me to rub it in their maws how we hadn’t fallen for their deception, and how there was nothing that they could do to save their kind from being wiped from existence, as they should’ve been hundreds of years ago. The real story to tell my grandkids would be how I’d taunted one of those beasts, forcing it to watch as we cleansed their crude dwellings from Earth. My attention drifted to a sensors readout, and I could see a disabled Terran fighter in close proximity to us.

Perhaps it would’ve been more appropriate to inform weapons about the craft, and have them direct plasma in its direction to end its life, but I wanted to see the look on its awful face when it realized how little power it had. This predator would understand the life that monsters just like it, carrying the baseness coded into its genes, had made us live. This was how I could defy the fear and horror that its form instilled in my mind. How would it react, knowing that the miserable lives of its entire race were drawing to a close? Our victory tasted sweet in my beak, but I wanted it to be sweeter.

I summoned my utmost courage, extending a hail to the disabled predator craft. If my father saw the log of this conversation, that I was strong enough to look these new hunters in the eye and describe how I abhorred their existence, it might be a way to reach his expectations. Even if it weren’t enough to stand out through my own achievements, it would be satisfying to mock any attempts by the beast at deception. I hoped that the human would respond to my communication offer, rather than be too domineering to bother talking to prey at all.

There’s no doubt those creatures look down on us in their minds, but it thinks it’s smarter than us. Maybe it’ll believe it can dissuade me with words.

I risked a glance around the bridge, but the rest of the crew were transfixed by the viewport. Our first bomb would be lobbed at the lair of Houston, completing our mission with ease against their inferior technology; that exceeded any advantage that cruelty and demonic thoughts granted them. Nobody was paying any attention to me with our goal in sight. I tilted my beak to give off a cocky air, sensing in my gut that the Terran wouldn’t be able to resist a manipulation attempt. Sure enough, my screen flashed with an incoming video feed, defiling my screen with the image of a teary-eyed predator. What a pathetic attempt at deception.

“Is this call a negotiation offer? We’d be willing to surrender, I’m sure,” the beast croaked, in a grating voice that assaulted my ears. “I’ll do whatever I can to facilitate a deal that doesn’t mean…this. I know you hate us, but you have to see we’re not like the Arxur! That’s why you’re reaching out, right?”

My heart pumped blood with fury, as every instinct told me I was in mortal peril. No matter how much I had prepared myself for a chat with a human, this had every combination of features that appeared on monsters in nightmares. When it started speaking, fear chemicals swam in my blood, making me feel queasy and constricting my throat. The nerves in my body felt supercharged, with unending waves of chills provoked by its hideous eyes. I was tempted to tell the weapons station to kill it out of panic, since that would irrevocably end its ability to linger on my screen. However, I remembered how much I wanted to see it suffer.

After reining in my composure, I decided to humor the beast, just as it played us. “We have plenty of t-time. What’s your name, predator?”

“I…Gavin McLean. Can I ask your name?” it sighed.

“It’s Narlem. You’ll remember that name soon enough.”

“If you can stop them from killing us, I’ll sing your name from the rooftops. We all will. I’d give anything for a drop of mercy. You have no idea what it’s been like for us, since first contact…nobody’s even tried to understand us. Thank you for, I don’t know, talking to us. I’m begging you to give me some hope that I’ll see my family again.”

“Tell me about your f-family.”

“I…I didn’t strike it right in my first marriage, but I got my beautiful son, Benjamin, out of it. He lives with his mother; I used to have him on weekends before I enlisted. My second wife is a smart, delightful pediatric doctor, and she has given me two daughters, Jessica and Kaitlin, that are the light of my world. I would give my life to protect them, Narlem. Please.”

I recoiled, hearing my name in its growled utterances. “Oh, I love listening to you beg. I can’t go on even p-pretending to humor you. Give up, you slavering wretch. Your life is forfeit, and it’ll all be for nothing. I want you to watch as we wipe out every wicked seed that you, or any other predator, proliferated.”

Gavin narrowed its eyes, baring its teeth in a visceral gesture. “How dare you! You hailed me just to…laugh at me, as my world dies. How can you live with…such goddamn cruelty? You’re heartless motherfuckers, the lot of you. There’s a special place in hell for you in particular, drumstick.”

“Glad we b-both decided to drop the act, predator. Cruelty begets cruelty, and you’ve got your just fruits for the evil in your past. I know exactly what you humans are, and you’re not getting one iota of sympathy from me or anyone else.”

“You have no clue what the fuck we are.”

“It’s very simple. Killers who live to hunt, conquer, and toy with lesser beings. You drink blood and eat flesh. I’m glad that we’ll never see your kind in the stars again. You should be grateful too, to be rid of your cursed, wicked desires…better to be dead than a hunter like you, right? I know I’d think so.”

Gavin’s harsh barks were translated as laughter, which seemed crazed even for a predator. “Oh, go fuck yourself. With my dying breath, I curse you, Narlem. I hope you pay for every word you just said.”

“Just as I expected. You’re wishing for my death, standard fare for a predator’s one-track mind.”

“I don’t want you off the hook that easy. To whatever deity or higher power exists in this universe, make this merciless fool learn his lesson. Let him see what it really is to be human, and walk a mile in our shoes.”

Gavin’s voice became charged with manic intensity, before he disconnected the hail. The way it had uttered those final words stuck in my mind, and shivers ran up my spine. It was messing with my head, despite its plea to the universe being utter nonsense. I blinked several times, trying to focus on the blue sphere on the viewport. The weapons station had locked in the coordinates, while Captain Struella waited with giddy eyes. This was the moment we made history, and the garbled growls of a vicious beast weren’t going to ruin my recollection of this momentous occasion.

I trained my gaze on the viewport, as Struella gave the orders to fire on Houston. The predator had given a pitiful speech about its pups, but I knew it only cared for them as a way to pass along its cruelty and ensure its lineage’s dominance. Humans were dreadful monsters, and that was all there was to it. When the orange light flickered on the continent, striking true on its target, I was grateful. The bridge was in a celebratory mood, but I was just relieved that a few million of those things were gone. The conversation with Gavin had sapped me of my energy; I’d already been running on stimulants, after we were mobbed and forced to stay awake for days.

“Captain?” I asked. “Something tells me we won’t be needing the comms station to talk to them. Permission to take my leave.”

Struella waved a dismissive wing. “I believe we have everything under control. The predators have lost orbital supremacy, and their numbers are crumbling; we’ll be vacating the system soon. So, yes, you’re dismissed, Narlem. Get some shut-eye.”

I tossed my beak with gratitude, eager to push the face of the predator further back into my memory. It was a short glide down the stairwell to the living quarters, where I retired onto my bed with a grateful sigh. Once I’d shaken off the trauma of looking at that thing, it would be a hilarious story to recount to my father; a Terran so desperate that it tried to invoke some fear of mystic powers. I leaned my skull into the pillow, and folded a wing over my chest to get comfortable. The darkness felt wonderful to my burning eyes. By the time I woke up tomorrow, we’d never hear about humanity again.

---

The bed felt wonderfully soft and warm, leaving me unwilling to open my eyes. Despite having gotten sorely needed rest, my body felt like it weighed much more than before; that contributed to a severe amount of lethargy. The act of breathing was a strange sensation, clueing me that something was very wrong. It was like my chest had been flattened into a board, and the feathers were plucked away everywhere but my crown. My wingtips and my talons seemed far away from my center of mass, like they’d been jammed onto concrete poles. Attempts to curl my talons and normalize the feelings led to unnatural movements. The absence of my backward toe was notable, whereas it felt like I had extra appendages on front.

Confused in my half-waking state, I prompted the massive spindles detaching my talons to move, along with flexing the thin poles that should’ve been my wings. The stimuli I received from the moving limbs was alarming. I didn’t understand it, but I could swear they folded in half like a portable perch. My eyes snapped open with alarm, and the visual input brought too much light for the quarters on my ship. That made it evident that everything was very wrong. It felt like I was almost blind, lacking the majority of my vision; the unfamiliar room seemed to be in a sharper resolution, but certain violets were just…missing. I could only see what was directly in front of me.

Panic washed over me, as flailing movements occurred on instinct. I tried to open my beak to shriek, then noticed that my beak wasn’t there. All I could feel was a flat slit in meaty flesh, with what seemed like stones lodged inside. My tongue glided across these hard objects wedged in my mouth, first investigating how they were planted within odd gums: teeth? In horrified denial, I tried to map out the bottoms of these chewing instruments. Four of the bony bits jutted out past the flatter ones, curving into the dagger-like shape of canines. My breathing was shaky, as I raised my limbs in front of my tunnel vision.

Hands. Human hands.

The beastly vocal cords tucked within my throat complied with my desire to scream, belting out a shrill note at the top of my lungs. There was no other exclamation that could represent how horrified I was to have awoken trapped in a vile shell.

Next

A/N - A new series begins! Narlem, a Krakotl comms technician on the extermination fleet, hails a disabled human ship to gloat about the impending bombing of Houston; in the name of making his esteemed military father proud, Narlem rubs Gavin's face in his children's impending death. The UN pilot is outraged by the stunt, as well as the claims that our narrator knows what humanity is ("bloodthirsty, cruel killers"), and curses Narlem to know what it is to be human.

The Krakotl is in for a shock when he wakes up from his slumber, to find that come to fruition. How do you expect Narlem to react to his new circumstances? What other biological cues do you expect him to find odd or predatory?