Categories
They are Smol Stories

They are Smol – and it’s a Smol World: Chapter 1

WE ARE BACK TO SHITPOSTING AND LIGHT-HEARTED HIGH ADVENTURE, Y’ALL!

The alarm clock – or what we would call an alarm clock – went off at 6AM, it’s gentle waterfall and rustling wind tone getting louder and louder as time marched inexorably forward.

The blanket den did not stir.

The alarm clock – what we might still call an alarm clock – began to vibrate somewhat insistently, the nightstand that it was placed on rattling irritatingly.

The blanket den did not stir.

The alarm clock – what we might generously call an alarm clock, but what is rapidly becoming more of a nuisance to snooze-button hitters everywhere – began to turn on the lights in the boy’s room. Deep, moss-green walls were illuminated slowly, the lights embedded in the ceiling and intersections of walls going from a warm, soft glow to a bright, brilliant daylight. The room was somewhat tidy – or as tidy as could be expected from the youngest son, with only a few articles of clothing and college schoolwork littered about the floor. A faux window began to “open”, the viewscreen sliding the wall away to show the vista-of-the-day. Today it was from the POV of a drone on some pristine cliffs somewhere, their height and depth seeming to split the planetoid in two.

The blanket den mumbled some muffled protest, and huffed.

The alarm clock – what we will now firmly call an evil invention and a trespass of the Geneva convention – slowly lifted the bowl like den-bed, inexorably tilting it to rest at 120 degrees. As it did so, Ngruzren-of-Arzgr unceremoniously tumbled out of his bed in steps; first his legs, then his hips and torso, then finally everything but his head, which went by the rules of “if I’m still in the bed then it counts.”

However, at this point he was most unfortunately awake.

Grumbling, he stood up – still blanketed, of course, its’ heavy weight comforting him as he shuffled to the alarm clock, resting his unkempt paw ontop of the cruel device. After a few seconds the cacophony of annoyances stopped with a happy beep; the bed retracted into the floor and was covered, sitting flush with the rest of the ground. Ngruzren tossed his blankets into the recessed bin, smiling sleepily as he heard them thunk into the scrubber. Eyes squinted, ears back, he trudged into his own, personal bathroom – one of the few benefits of being a male, after all – and began his daily grooming ritual, slowly coming to consciousness as the brush bar worked out stray knots, errant dead hair and flaky skin cells.

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr cracked open his Navy Blue eyes, pupils shrinking as they were invaded by the sharp bathroom light. He sighed as he looked himself over; Dusty-blue fur, gray underbelly, deep blue eyes, boring boring boring. He winced as the brushbar traveled over his back, snagging on a couple unkempt knots of fur – usually he just lightly brushed over the spots that his clothing covered, but, for some reason today he felt he should just be a little more thorough. After the second snagged pass-through of the brush, he thought better of it, gave it a lazy once-over smoothdown with the flat back of the brush bar, and set to work on his teeth.

Ahh, yes. His teeth. Ngruzren-of-Arzgr grumbled as he opened his mouth, finding the few errant teeth that had grown loose overnight, and pushing them back into his gums. With that same delicate-but-firm touch, he ran his padded finger hopefully over a single large gap in his jaw; no toothbuds today. With an irritated flick of his ear he pulled open a drawer and brought out the box.

He hated the box, or more specifically, what was inside it. With a click of a latch the lid popped open, his prosthetic gleaming up at him, fresh and perfect from a sonic scrubbing. He picked up the device and ran his finger lightly underneath it, where it would sit on the gums; the teeth above rippled just slightly – just enough so that nobody looking would know that he suffered from Gaptooth… they would write off his slight lisp as just being natural. He opened his jaw wide and glared angrily into the mirror as he set the damned contraption onto his lower jaw, wiggling it back and forth to get the micro-servos to activate. With a firm pinch of his gums the device turned on, for a lack of a better word, and he ran his tongue on the inside of his jaw to test the seal.

“{Ba. Ra. Fa. Sa. Ka. Da. Br. Dr. Kr. Lr.}” He intoned, the device moving just a microsecond too late with every syllable. He stared at himself as he closed the lid on the box. “{Fihve more yearsh. Ugh.}” He rolled his toothline, gnashing the prosthetic in his jaws. “{Five more years. Five more years and then you’re going to throw this shade-damned bracer into the sun.}”

Dzgranra-of-Arzgr was an accomplished homemaker. He had married young – well, relatively young, given his people lived at or just past a thousand years old – and had somewhere along the lines of 3 dozen pups between his three wives. His first few were the most hectic; no book, holo-seminar, retreat or clan denmeet can actually prepare you for having a screaming, howling little ball of terror that can disappear into the vents and behind furniture and under vehicles and doesn’t mind chewing on the insulation or hunting and devouring your collection of shoes.

After his eighth – which also happened to be his second son – he finally fell into a rhythm. Burrowers in bed by 6, Leapers by 8, family time with the Mrs’s from 10 onwards.

This was, of course, how he ended up with more and more pups. After his 23rd, he said “fuck it, they’ll live” and started running on autopilot as long as nothing was actively on fire, making a very concerning sound, or was an indicator of massive structural damage to the home. When news of this transformation in parenting hit his Father, Uncles, Grandfathers and Granduncles they nodded to each other sagely, and counted him as one of their own.

Dzgranra-of-Arzgr was busily flipping pitchercakes in the trough of boiling oil with his left hand, his right errantly mincing a few of the finished breakfast treats into a steaming pile of mush for his smallest children. With his left leg he scooted an errant ball away from the still-warm stove, his right leg having fallen victim to two of his youngest daughters who had latched onto it once they woke up and refused to let go, 30 minutes later. Suddenly there was a loud bang somewhere from the play-room, and a sharp howl of pain.

No pause beforehand. No warble of the throat. More surprise than actual injury – “{Grenzg, get your daughters please-}” Dzgranra called out from the kitchen, a few more of his older daughters (who really should know better) errantly stampeding into the dining-den by way of the most inefficient and most obstructive route – as children are often want to do.

“{Why are they my daughters when there’s an issue?}” Grenzgranr-of-Drezr said, smirking as she stood triumphantly in one of the doorways, a few pups under each arm. “{And how did you even know that they were my daughters anyway?}”

“{Because they take after their mother-}”

“{Hah!}”

“{Now sit them down, I almost have the second batch done. It’s your day to walk my leapies to school-}”

“{I know, I know-}” Grenzgranr-of-Drezr said, rolling her shoulders as her daughters considered a prison break. “{Shall I gather everyone else up?}”

“{Mmm.}” Dzgranra said noncommittally. “{Has Rzkrenz gotten the boy?}”

“{No, I think she’s loading the shuttle.}”

“{Well, you know how kids are at their last molting – if he sleeps in again-}”

There was a sharp cry from a few of the younger children – this one of joy, and some tired, resigned murmurs reverberating from the stairwell. As if on cue, Ngruzren-of-Arzgr slowly tromped into the kitchen, a few of his very small (and not so small) sisters latched onto his legs, arms, or scrambling onto his back – not caring in the world that their sharp claws were all but shredding his clothing.

“{I got myself, Dad.}” Ngruzren-of-Arzgr said in a slightly exasperated voice as his little sisters cackled and howled with the glee and excitement that only those who have no responsibilities can enjoy. “{Need help?}”

“{Awww, come here my baby boy~}” Dzgranra cooed, momentarily leaving the stove to half-hug his last, and youngest son, making sure to keep his food-flecked paws away from his body. “{You look fantastic today!}”

Ngruzren stared flatly at his father, who beamed nothing but support and pride back at him. One of his little sisters took this opportunity to full-mouth bite his side, which caused him to grunt – breaking the moment.

“{Oi, no biting – Nk-Grenz?}”

“{Why is it always MY daughters?}” Grenzgranr-of-Drezr growled, plucking a few of the offenders off of her pack-son and tucking the squirming, protesting beasts under her arm. “{It’s not like you were perfect at that age either!}”

“{All my sons were absolutely perfect at every age, because they take after their father.}”

Grenzgranr-of-Drezr inhaled sharply as if to rebut the statement, but at the last moment thought better of it. Spinning on her heels, she hauled the 5 or 6 little tyrants into the dining-den. “{Well, what about Zni-Kzdzgrar?}”

“{Government business. Again.}” Dzgranra said in that dad-isn’t-yelling-but-wants-to-be-heard voice, Ngruzren silently standing next to him by the stove to help with breakfast preparations. Forming an assembly line, they got to work: as each still-steaming pitchercake came out of the hot oil, father handed it over to son, who dipped it in a bowl of an edible, congealing fat-wax blend, then placing them on a cooling rack to dry.

“{Mom’s working too hard.}” Ngruzren stated, matter-of-factly. “{It’s been three weeks of leaving before the pups wake and coming home after they’re put to bed.}”

“{I know, my little sweetmeat.}” Dzgranra sighed, dipping his paw into a bowl of mince and forming another cake before dropping it into the oil trough. “{She won’t even tell me what’s going on, but whatever it is it’s important. I just have to tell myself that.}”

“{Do you think so though?}”

Dzgranra hummed a bit to himself, then looked at his son with a …somewhat disturbing twinkle in his eye. “{Well. I don’t smell another man on her, and with how she wakes me up around midnight for-}”

“{AAAAAAAAAA THANK YOU DAD.}”

Dzgranra chuckled, tossing a few more of the fried breakfast lumps to his son. “{You say that now, but you’re almost through your last child-molt. I know you’ve already gone through your first couple of seasons-}”

“{DAD. NOW?}”

“{Mmm, captive audience. Look, all I’m saying is, just keep your eyes open and your nose to the ground, ok? Girls are already noticing you, and you need to be aware-}”

“{DAD.}”

“{I just don’t want you running off-}”

“{DAD. PLEASE. I’m not going to leap into an unmarked shuttlecraft because they promised me sweets and adventure.}”

“{IT WORKED FOR US-}” Grenzgranr-of-Drezr called out from the dining-den, the mass of children starting to behave with the promise of food on the way.

“{To be fair, it was a very luxurious interior. Real leather and everything.}” Dzgranra said, nodding slightly.

“{Dad, pleeeeease~}”

“{Oh all right, alright. What’s got your tail in a twist this morning anyway?}”

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr rolled his jaw a slight moment before answering, and his father immediately cut him off. “{You have to wait until you finish growing, son.}”

“{I’m within a few centimeters of being done! My jaw is basically as big as it’s gonna get-}”

“{You still have to wait.}”

“{Daaad. Come on, I just go to the clinic, we get a sequence done, I’m fine with surgery-}”

“{And they’ll tell you what I’m telling you now, boy! You still have to wait if you don’t want to risk a permanent lisp.}”

Ngruzren growled, and his father matched his growl in sympathy. “{I don’t… like it, Dad.}”

“{I know, son, I know. And I don’t know why you got it – that disease has been out of our family for 4 generations. But it’s not permanent like in the ancient days, and nobody knows you have a prosthetic.}”

“{Trilly knows.}”

“{Trilly knows because you told her, son.}” Dzgranra said, gently bumping shoulders with his child. “{Nobody knows – especially no girls.}”

“{Dad.}”

“{I mean, that is why you care so much, right? Is it the Drezndz pack you have your eye on? You could do worse than union-backed silver miners-}”

“{DAD.}”

“[Number 488, done. And …this should be in triplicate.]”

“{Done, and we have the originals archived.}” Kzdzgrar-of-Rzndzre responded, running down the checklist for the 15th time. “{Permits to build?}”

The Karnakian city planner flicked through something only her HUD could see before nodding. “[Yes. Four freshwater sources, well within the defensive grid of the city, easy hookups to all amenities. We lose the Grand park, but, it puts them right in the center.]”

“{I don’t think they’ll take all of it-}”

“[Not for a few generations at least.]” Mused the Jornissian treasurer, as he ticked off a couple things on his list. “[Which means they’ll most likely be building from the outside, in.]”

“{Fine, fine. So it’s us and Volshak-prime?}”

“[Yep, but only by dint of them being the system capital. They don’t have the space to offer without a massive public works project, and their city grid is too restrictive. We were blessed to have the city surround a park so large-]”

“{Yeah. I’m going to miss it, though.}”

“[GENERATIONS.]” the Treasurer emphasized, his deep-throated rumbling hum seeming to rattle the table itself. “[It’s not like we’re losing it tomorrow, and think of the economic gain!]”

“{Yeah, yeah. ‘Welcome to the first mixed tiny-chomper colony’ – come buy a souvenir vest, stay a while~}”

“[You say that, but the [humans] are going to be a boon to us; not just in increased tourism and trade, but also in general industry as well. It’s a full colony, which includes cultural artefacts!]” the Karnakian trilled, wiggling with slight excitement. “[The new perspectives could give us whole entire cottage industries that we would be the founding city of! This could change our planet for millenia-]”

“{We still have to win the bid.}” Kzdzgrar-of-Rzndzre growled, scratching tiredly at her muzzle.

“[Erm. Well, yes. I’ve resubmitted it-]”

“[49? Times?]” The Jornissian chuckled, throwing out a guess.

“[37, thankyouverymuch.]”

“{Mmm. All we can do is wait.}”

The three city administrators looked at each other for a few moments, before a slight twinge of worry crept back into the room.

“{Mmmmmaybe we just doublecheck-}”

“[Yeah! Ok, so item -]”

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 21

[A/N: Hey y’all! Just in case you’re not on the Discord yet – Amph is in the middle of his college Capstone course, and the one class – just the one he told me about – is an additional 20hrs/wk of work. big yikes. So TS is moving to a twice-per month schedule, but the chapters are longer!
In fact, here’s a new, long chapter right now!]

Darren sat, calm, collected, and quiet, waiting for whatever came next. A particularly morbid and darkly humored part of him was hoping for execution by death-ray, considering how much everything hurt. There wasn’t a mirror in the interrogation room with him, but he didn’t need one to know he looked like death warmed over. He wasn’t sure how many days it had been since his space-adventure-romp had started, but it had been pretty much a miserable experience from the moment he left the side of the highway in Ohio. Between the abuse by Cas, the abuse by alien thugs, the abuse by law enforcement, and the abuse by  presumably different law enforcement that was probably analogous to the FBI, he was having a decidedly bad time.

So, he leaned back in his metal chair, let his eyes wander across the featureless, slate gray cell he’d been thrown in, and tried to decide if bum-rushing the next person to open the door was the right call or not. He’d actually had pretty good luck with using brute force to solve his problems recently.

The minutes continued to drag on, and he tapped his foot idly, but stopped when a lance of pain shot through his knee. As he massaged the joint, the imperative to “use your words” imparted by his mother seemed to have been soundly bad advice. Every time he’d tried talking he was either electrocuted, shot, or bludgeoned. He wasn’t really sure he could blame his mother for that though, as it had certainly helped him get along while he was on earth. Maybe it was time he come up with different adages and sage advice now that he was an extra-solar cowboy.

He chuckled, and grinned to himself, but stopped when the swollen mess that was the right side of his face began to throb slightly harder from the exertion. Solar cowboy, maybe, but definitely not in a state to be throwing punches. For the third time. If he was being honest with himself the entire thing in the cargo bay was just sort of a gut response. There was a deafening sound, then a brilliant light . . . frankly he had to admit he’d just panicked and lashed out as best he could.

One of the wall panels slid away, revealing that it wasn’t a wall panel, it was actually a door. He temporarily revisited his plan to try and rush the first one in the room, but abandoned it quickly as a tall, female shark-humanoid with a tail appeared. If he’d bothered to look away, he’d be doing a double take, as he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. He’d seen the body armor of the people who dropped him in this little isolation room, and it looked like a futuristic, modular, composite body armor. Flexible, light, and durable, but still designed with a sense of economy and austerity. He wasn’t a military genius or anything, it just looked . . . like it was high-tech and good-stuff.

This was decidedly none of those things. This was snug, sleek, shiny, and bordering on sensuous with a militant theme. It might have started life as a military uniform, but had acquired just a little too much gloss to be leather, and so many buckles and belts had been added to it one could easily construe that the tailor responsible had a fetish for them. By whatever gods one prayed to in space, the hat was possibly the worst part. It was an absurdity of it’s own. She was wearing a peaked cap so shiny it hurt to look at in the pale light of the room, and as he squinted to get a better view he found what appeared to be a gold shark-maw embossed in relief on both sides of the headband. A miniature trench coat was draped around her shoulders, clearly too small to be buttoned shut around her not insubstantial bust, but still long enough to be disrupted and flapped about by her the movements of her tail.

He’d been mentally preparing himself for interrogation, judgment, execution, even one particularly silly idea where they pressed him into service as some kind of royal marine, but this . . . he was left nearly speechless. Nearly.

A barely restrained snort escaped his lips, followed by faint muttering, “One riding crop away from a gestapo-dominatrix shark . . . absolutely have to be fucking with me here.” He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, gritting his teeth against the distinct discomfort of doing so.

“What did you just call me?” Her tone was indignant, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

———————— 5 Minutes Earlier ————————

Amonna had finally dug up the file on the “Human” that had made so much trouble in the hangar bay. The paperwork hadn’t been completed because of . . . well because there had been no one alive to finish it, but the drafts recovered from a department workstation by the salvage and burial team had painted an ugly picture in broad strokes. “Technically Sentient,” violent offender, likes to sleep and intimidate witnesses- that last part had been deleted, but was still recovered by the data forensics AI.

He was a tough customer, no doubt. He lived through the destruction of the station, had shown a willingness to kill at the drop of a hat. Her boots clicked quietly and steadily, the echo bouncing down the long, desolate corridors. That steady tempo dropped to silence as she reached the cursory medical report. His skeleton was some kind of exotic meta-material, made of a calcium ion lattice and filled with vascular elements.  If she ever fractured a bone in her own cartilaginous skeleton, it would take years to heal naturally, if it ever did at all. His bones? She could see the remodeling from where the KP weapon strikes had caused micro-fractures. His body had grown stronger in the places he’d been shot.

She could see where his soft tissue had been damaged, ruptured blood vessels hemorrhaging internally . . . specialized elements in his blood had blocked the damaged vessels off, sealed them, and prepped them for healing. Her eyes practically bulged out of her head. “Nine seconds!?She read the file aloud. It had taken nine seconds for his internal wounds to begin to clot. A secondary, open circulatory system was recapturing the lost vitae and filtering of bacterial contaminants . . . useful, if it had been an open wound. She could see where he’d sustained additional injuries to the head and face. Fractures in the skull, a concussion, damage to his brain from repeated KP impacts to his cranium. His teeth had all been removed . . . and put back in with some kind of adhesive . . . that his body was currently digesting.

She looked up from the file in her hands to the door of the interrogation room. She wondered briefly if she wanted to walk into a room with a creature like this. She’d always had the advantage of a predatory heritage. Claws. Self replenishing serrated teeth. Fast-twitch muscle fibers evolutionarily cultivated for delivering a single, killing blow. These things had always been enough to cow every prisoner she’d interviewed into compliance, or at the very least kept them from trying to start a fight. Hell, she’d had the same problem in a few relationships as well. Amonna scanned the document one more time, noting everything from its auxiliary blood supply organ to the shear thickening ballistic impact gel cushion around its brain. She very much doubted that this thing was afraid of her, or afraid of anything really. She remembered it’s cold expression, and intense eyes leering at her from the armored ridges of its orbital sockets. It made her shiver.

It was strange, how much he was her antithesis. Incredibly durable terminator to her glass-cannon physiology. There was no doubt he was a predator, but his lack of jaw muscle development indicated that it hadn’t been the primary means of delivering a killing blow for some time now, if it ever had been. She ran a finger absently along the powerful masseter muscles of her own mandible, a stark contrast to his. Her skeleton, flexible but durable, would buckle permanently under the weight one of his slender upper limbs could bear. The gravity well this thing developed in to necessitate such a power to weight ratio must have been staggering when compared to the near weightless history of her aquatic origins.

She was caught somewhere between wonder and fear, as she stared a thousand yards through the doorway before her.

She was intelligent. It was dumb. She was amphibious. It was terrestrial. She ate a limited diet of amino rich protein substances. It ate . . . everything. She was female. It was male.

She shook her head sharply, side to side, as if trying to dislodge the thought from the space between her ears, before taking a deep breath. “You’ve got this. Your security detail is watching via the camera feeds, he’s been badly injured three different times now, and even he can see that resisting is useless now.” She adjusted her hat, set it at what she thought was a more aggressive, more authoritative angle, and keyed the pad to open the door to this prisoner “Darren.”

The several centimeter thick detention door slid open with a soft hiss of pneumatics, and she stepped through into the uncomfortably bright cell. She successfully stifled an involuntary squeak of surprise as his eyes bored into hers from below a split and bloodied brow. It didn’t flinch as she took a position opposite it, looming above it by a good two feet, which only confirmed her suspicions that this creature would be immune to any kind of threat or intimidation.

One riding crop away from a gestapo-dominatrix shark . . . absolutely have to be fucking with me here.It’s translator weakly coughed out something that vaguely resembled that, but her military grade equipment had translated his words in a flash, and contextualized their meaning in her subconscious.

A riding crop was clearly a goad used to drive beasts of burden. The gestapo, judging by contextual clues, was assumed to be some kind of policing body, assumed derogatory term based on inflection. It struggled with the term “dominatrix” and found no equivalent term. As best it could approximate, a dominatrix was a was “dominant female sex-worker” but elaborated that there was a complex cultural undertone that could not be conveyed effectively without further explanation or procession.

“What did you just call me?” Amonna was flabbergasted, and more than a little offended. She put her hands on her hips, and scowled at him. She’d been ready for . . . well she’d been ready to be attacked physically, not verbally. He called her a whore! As the intense scowl formed on her face, much to her hastily concealed surprise, a look of embarrassment formed on his.

“I . . . ah . . . I meant . . . whew boy.” Darren coughed into his hand, split knuckled still glistening with clotted blood. “Err, I didn’t think that’d get translated . . . or if it did I thought you’d get the idiot-ified version that everyone else got.” She glared at him as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “The, you know, translator-” he tapped the polymer collar he’d been fitted with, “-kinda sucks. Usually doesn’t spit out more than a few words loosely resembling what I said. Sorry.”

Her brow furrowed more, and he looked away, sheepishly. Externally, she was harsh, pitiless, and focused. Internally, she was dizzy with the realization that he was capable of being shamed. Shame was a complex emotion, only felt by highly social and intelligent species. A violation of the social norm had occurred by him, and she had called him out on it.

She tried to keep her gaze steady on him, unflinching and stern to hide the fact that she needed a few moments to completely rethink her approach to this interrogation.

He was clearly intelligent, so that had been either a carefully cultivated lie, or simply a lack of accurate assessment. Given the reliability of AI in her recent career, she was more inclined to believe the latter than the former. She had just shamed him into momentary submission, which still seemed far fetched even as she watched him squirm in his seat. That shame meant that he interpreted her as existing within the boundaries of his social peers, not predators or prey. He had just called her some kind of sex worker, but that didn’t accurately translate as simply a prostitute, so that meant that her state of . . .

Her brain crashed a little. Sex worker. Peer. Shame.

The pack hunting terminator beast with a bulletproof living-stone skeleton and a healing factor considered her a peer. A peer that would be considered for sexual partnership.

Darren spoke up again, hesitantly, while Amonna’s brain struggled to come to grips with the implications she’d lined up for herself.

“Hey, I’m . . . well I guess I’m sorry about calling you the gestapo. That’s . . . it’s just your outfit is a little . . . well it looks like . . .” Darren coughed awkwardly in his hand. “It just looks like you see Nazi’s wearing in movies and stuff, and you’re arresting me and all, I know it was a shitty thing to say. I mean, I get that it’s probably some kind of space-cop thing but my life hasn’t exactly been going so great recently and I’m a little . . .” He rambled off a bit, aimlessly, before sighing heavily. “You’re just trying to do your job, and I’m probably some kind of illegal alien. In . . . in space. Let’s just get the interview or interrogation or whatever you want to call this over with.” Physically, he was looking away from the shark-morph’s intense gaze. Mentally, he was trying not to think about whether or not this was affecting the ‘death ray execution behind the chemical shed’ odds. “Umm, so, yeah sorry about that.” He mumbled, while pointedly examining the ceiling.

Amonna’s eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms across her chest, subtly accentuating her newfound “interrogation assets.” At least, she hoped that it was her chest, and not something weird like her nostril diameter. Maybe small, watertight nostrils were incredibly sensuous for this species, she had no way of knowing if the secondary sexual characteristics her culture found desirable were the same as the ones his culture found desirable. With considerable distress in regard to her ego, she realized that it was entirely possible this creature before her was attracted to her more masculine characteristics, such as height and muscle mass.

Amonna blinked as his words sank in. “Wait, gestapo?” Her tone was quizzical, and there was a moments delay as his translator struggled to bridge the linguistic gap between the two of them. “Oh, no, that was accurate. I am leading a secret police investigation into the destruction of Waystation LS-49.”

They both blinked in surprise, as clearly the communication issues weren’t entirely cleared up by the translator. “Gestapo is fine. Well, not fine, but you’ve actually got quite a few reasons to be upset with the entire situation, and a disparaging comment about your treatment at the hands of law enforcement isn’t entirely unwarranted. Although, if you’d complied, you could have avoided most of your misfortune.” Amonna instructed him sharply, hoping to play her way into a “friendly” posture with this human, Darren.

She shifted slightly, tracking his gaze . . . and found that it was flickering between her chest, tail, face, and waist with frequency that she rather hopefully meant her approach to information extraction was working.

Truth be told, Darren was trying to figure out which part of her gear held the death ray that was going to be used to kill him, now that he was certain he was going to be exterminated by a Nazi Space Shark.

“So Darren, was it?” She tried to turn on the charm. Something she’d never . . . ever had to do before.

To Darren’s ears, her words were laced with something like a salacious venom. He didn’t know what a cat toying with a trapped bird sounded like, but he had the eminent feeling that before this was all said and done she might just be chewing his head off and batting his body around the porch as a way to amuse herself. He swallowed hard. “Yes. Y-yes ma’am.” He clarified.

Amonna watched as his pupils shrank sharply. That was, again, a characteristic of focus and sexual attraction in Zylach! A good sign, in her mind. She wondered, hoped really, that maybe there was some kind of convergent evolution in place that would allow her to exploit his body language intuitively. He was using honorifics, no less. Clearly, utilizing whatever sway she held over this brutish creature by means of her appearance was the ideal path forward. She smiled, in an earnest display of happiness. “Well Darren, I just have a few questions about who you are, where you came from, what you were doing on Waystation LS-49, and we can wrap this up and move on to more pleasant things, yes?” She hoped he was clever enough to pick up on the inflection cue she’d placed on “pleasant,” but not so clever to as to really think through the implications of that.

Darren, struggling not to recoil as she bared her rows of serrated teeth at him, set his jaw firmly and nodded, even though it hurt to do both. He was going to give her all of the detail he could muster, because the way she said “pleasantgave him the willies, and he was hoping it would buy him time. To do what, he wasn’t certain, but he’d tell her everything she wanted to know and more.

Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything to hide to begin with.

—————————— Several Hours Later ——————————

Amonna had come to three significant conclusions.

One: The human had nothing to do with the destruction of Waystation LS-49, knowingly or otherwise.

Two: The C.A.S.I.I. unit they had down in the fabrication shop was very, very dangerous, and the true threat out of everything.

Three: Contrary to everything the human had suggested, their society was matriarchal. Why else would there be all the subtle fear signals mixed in with the clear interest he was showing?

She swam another lap in her over-sized sleep-tank, enjoying the cool feeling of the briny water across her gills and through her throat. It helped to clear her mind, and focus more clearly on how to effectively utilize this information. She’d moved the human to a more spacious and comfortable berth, adjacent to her own. An entirely appropriate and innocuous decision that was made with no regard to his apparent interest in her. It was simply a matter of security and convenience. The vessel was more than a kilometer long . . . what if she had followup questions around, say, dinnertime? She could conveniently ask him questions while they both consumed dinner. It would lower his guard, and might even trigger some of the basic pack-bonding that was so common in social predators like him. And like herself.

In regards to the C.A.S.I.I. unit, she’d placed it under a tight watch and physically separated the processing core from the zero-point power supply. The technicians in engineering had been having a field day with the thing, claiming that it was utilizing some exotic, never before discovered system architecture that completely subverted normal thinking on how AI should be constructed. The Chief of Engineering had a very colorful analogy for describing it. The discussion had been long and tedious, but she understood the frantic intensity of his final summary.

“An AI is like a storm. Conventional architecture demands that we build a shell around the storm to keep it contained and flowing in directions we can handle. The . . . monstrosity . . . that is this AI architecture, was built in inside out. Conventionally, we watch the outer edge of the storm to catch the outputs of quantum functions, but here the observable boundary exists in the heart of the storm. We cannot see the storms heart, nor can we see its edge, we can only receive outputs to inputs we’re not sure how it’s taking measure of or passing back to us. This system exists as an impossibility that we shouldn’t be able to observe, as if the entire device is being forcibly held in a state of superposition. This requires either the perfect knowledge of a god, or such a profound understanding of quantum mechanics that I can only think the designer was born of a quantum realm, not from one of conventional physics. The fact that this exists violates several well accepted laws as it is!”

It had all seemed rather alarmist and unprofessional to her, and the fact that she had to order him at gunpoint not to destroy the device didn’t help any. They eventually settled on a compromise. Disassembly and quarantine. When the universe didn’t unfold like he threatened it would if they took the power supply out, she decided it was safe enough to just leave unplugged.

She let out a watery sigh in her aquatic habitat as her wrist computer beeped softly. An incoming message, encrypted, and for her eyes only.

She paused, sinking to the bottom of the tank slowly as she read it.

Coryphaeus Distress Signal detected, faint but functional security codes transmitted. Suspect damaged transceiver, as two way communication seems impossible at present. Requesting permission to move to conduct rescue operations, given absence of standing orders. -Admiral Chase

A literal bubble of amusement escaped her lips as she grinned. She’d almost forgotten the petty jabs of the Admiral. Having to request permission for something like this must have chafed her pride. Amonna didn’t hesitate to authorize the expedition though, there was no way she was going to let her own pride stand in the way of saving lives.

“Permission granted Admiral.”

Categories
Stories They are Smol

They are Smol: The Invasion of Earth – Epilogue pt. 2

First Contact – Well, the FIRST first contact – was a momentous occasion for multiple reasons: Mankind learned we’re not alone in the universe, we learned how far behind we are in terms of technology, and at least in one possibly possessed Australian’s case, learned how to flip a Karnakian onto it’s back and check her plumage.

…that came out wrong.

Point is, is that the riots, existential ennui, the … war, the surrounding mass panic and helter-skelter nature of humanity was on display – and basically to be expected, sure, but it was somehow… right to do. After all, you only get invaded by aliens once, right? So some people reveled in the boogalooening, some people took off innawoods, and a few just wished for everyone to be quiet because they finally had a few days off after working 15 days straight. Mankind got it out of their system, a new normal started to settle in, and life continued. Life was hard, but it continued; although our new ‘guests were apologetic benefactors, the damage had been done. With a wary eye, mankind accepted gifts from the stars, and suffered the growth pangs for it.

Then the Dorarizin showed up.

There was a second initial wave of mass panic – Were they friends? Enemies? Was Earth going to host a war between two alien empires? Were they here to enslave? Did we now have two masters to serve – wild, rampant speculation was the order of the day. Another round of mass panic, another round of riots, of curfew and of martial law. The dust settled, more Karnakian bodies were buried, and we learned that our new NEW guests were also kind, egalitarian benefactors.

The fact that they kidnapped the heads of state was a minor speedbump, really; after terse negotiations, a couple of feisty kicks to the jewels (or where they should’ve been, at least) and a few days of naptime President Carter, along with European Union Chancellor Viksburg, Oceania Defense Pact Minister Gopi, and Chinese Extended Economic Cooperative Zone Administrator Zheng were allowed off the landing craft – but only if they came back before curfew and had an escort the entire time they were gone.

All in all, a successful Second First Contact. A New NEW normal settled in as Mankind tried to understand interstellar power dynamics, learn about their new visitors, and generally get used to the fact that not only was life everywhere in the cosmos, but that they were going to rapidly be acquainted with it.

Then the Jornissians showed up.

Now, of course, by this time not only were the Jornissian Governate aware of the discovery of the new species, but they were also briefed on what exactly happened. There was a grand closed-door debate between representatives on what response should be given, and some of the more hawkish voices won out: Freedom, especially that of an innocent people, must be preserved at all costs. So, the Jornissians assembled their own Armada of Equals and set off for the Human homeworld.

Eight months after the Dorarizin “checked in” on their Karnakian Allies, a Jornissian first-contact fleet de-warped around Earth, it’s ships spreading across the southern horizon in a display of might, culture, scientific advancement and reach.

In response, a few trashcans were ceremoniously lit on fire and kicked over before being put out.

 

Negotiation/Visitation Site 1, Vik, Iceland. +1y4M after First Contact or +1,000,000,000 years in politician.

-+-+-+-

President Carter groaned softly as he flopped in the fold-out metal chair. He hadn’t shaved in a month, and his disheveled and unclean beard had grown from a sleek black to a spotty white. His hair remained an auburn brown, but that was mainly due to the hair dye he had started to use; whether he kept his natural color or was now pure-gray, he didn’t know and honestly didn’t care at this point.

There were more of the bastards.

Now granted, the Spacewolves weren’t so bad; apparently humans triggered their deeply-ingrained instincts and provoked a natural protection response. Considering the myriad other instincts that could have been triggered, everyone involved agreed this was an alright thing to happen and there were no hard feelings and everyone involved is a fine upstanding person but could we please go home it’s been 2 weeks now and you talk in your sleep. It had taken roughly a month for scientists and doctors on both sides to start to figure out what was going on, and by then the instinct had lessened to the point that negotiations could happen…

Administrator Zheng’s forehead dropped onto the table with an unceremonious thud, startling him wide awake once more. At one point that would’ve made everyone laugh, but now…

There were more of the bastards.

So nobody got any sleep. Nobody was going home for the holidays, nobody was going on leave, nobody got to do anything other than be a proper little puppet for the power structures back home, desperately putting out fires, maintaining order and oppressing cults, if you could believe it. Pulling double-shifts was expected, and combat sleep was the only type of sleep anyone got. Caffeine and Nicotine were provided freely, and in some more unscrupulous units, stronger stimulants still. New data was always pouring in; final body counts, infrastructure damage, paradigm-wakes from the new technology – all of it had to be compiled, condensed, and used as leverage for negotiating. The irony of once-advanced nations going to hyper-advanced alien species and learning they were basically all back on the barter system was…

It would be funny if there weren’t more of the bastards.

“Mr. President?” Senator Armstrong said, poking his head into the smaller, cramped tent. “They’ll be landing in 15 minutes.”

“Mmm.”

Senator Armstrong frowned, and waded through the trash-floor to his leaders’ desk. MRE-wrappers, instant-noodles, cans of red bull and ginseng and beer crunching under the large man’s feet. “Mr. President, you need to be present when the new visitors land.”

“Mmnot gonna.”

“Steven-”

“Why do we even have a Vice President if he’s not going to do anything!”

“Sir, he’s running basically the entire continent in your absence.”

“Trade him.”

“No, Mr. President. Come on.” Sen. Armstrong said, scooting the President’s chair back and lifting him under his arms. “You have to go-”

President Carter went limp in his grip.

“Goddamnit Steven.”

President Carter was propped up.

I don’t mean that in a “he was a puppet on a string, beholden to greater masters” kind of way, but in a literal “he was so exhausted he basically was using his interns as a wall to lean on” way. He had been up for a solid 36 hours preparing for this event, and it had run him ragged; after the Spacedogs and Spacedinosaurs shared information about the new species, nobody got any sleep.

They were giant snakes. Giant, angry-looking snakes.

Everyone prepared as much as they could be bothered to; special forces took their familiar positions up in the hills and houses, weaponry was pointed to the landing site to wipe it off the map, the coffee maker was replaced with the deluxe espresso one that nobody knew how to work but everyone agreed looked very impressive and helped project an air of ‘we’re competent and know what we’re doing’. The various flags of the new and old territories were marched in, soldiers and honor guard standing at perfect attention, and before them all were a group of negotiators, scientists, doctors and four very exhausted leaders.

If Carter was more awake and aware – well, aware without the extreme abuse of stimulants – he would’ve appreciated the unique architecture and design of the drop ship that landed not a few dozen yards away, it’s curves and lines like nothing he’d ever seen. He would’ve admired the heraldry riveted to it’s sides, and the inscriptions on the ship itself. He would have, if it weren’t for the predominant thought of ‘Good God, let’s just get this over with.’ That currently dominated his every moment.

Then the snakes ‘marched’ out.

Carter’s exhausted brain didn’t really register how they moved; it looked like a sentient braid, or a hydra, as each body followed the other in perfect sync, how no tail trod on the other, how they all moved as a single unit. For a brief moment he thought they were all one being, but they split off once off-ramp taking ceremonial positions known only to them. After a few moments the Space-snake Ambassador and his retinue slithered down the ramp, it’s fierce eyes immediately locking onto his own.

Neither of them blinked, as the one moved towards the other. The snake, because it couldn’t – not really – and the human, because his hindbrain was currently debating if another bump of amphetamines would allow him to escape, or if embracing the sweet release of death was worth it at this point.

“[WE GREET YOU IN PEACE, LEADERS. I AM THE AMBASSADOR.]”

“F-figured that.” Carter mumbled as the giant snake finished hiss-screaming and leaned back, staring down furiously at the human. It’s neck flared out, and it seemed to roll and pop it’s jaw in a way that was just wrong.

Carter’s hind brain processed the beast before it and just accepted death with a slight mental shrug.

Speaker-Ambassador Hrrprsnk’krespk smiled as he eyed up the primitive alien.

It was a cold part of their homeworld, granted – only one sun and a tilted orbit would do that, and from what data they had shared with the rest of the Senate the planets’ climate changed regularly enough that not only was it predictable, but welcomed by the local inhabitants. That didn’t mean it was comfortable, mind you, but a little cold never hurt anyone and grew thick scales. But as Hrrprsnk’krespk took in the local leader he noticed a couple things immediately; First, that they were very tiny – which refuted a couple ‘you must be X large to be sentient’ academic arguments back home – and second, they seemed to absolutely radiate heat.

The Spiritual Stargazers were more… cool-blooded, somewhat; they generated some heat, but still needed ambient temperatures to be comfortable. Clutchmate Seekers were warm, sure, but it was trapped under all that fur, and even if you bunked with one there was no guarantee that it would keep you comfortable – by Harsak-who-Devours-the-Dead, it was easier and less fuss to put a couple heating packs under an emergency blanket and use that instead.

But these small aliens were basically radiating heat like it was going out of style. He welcomed their warmth to his thermo-receptors, slowly waking to the various heat signatures around him. It was cool for his people, certainly, but these locals probably didn’t even notice the temperature.

Fascinating.

“<I understand that there has been much turmoil in recent times among your peoples, and for that we apologize on behalf of the rest of the Intergalactic Senate.>”

“[WHEN DAY IS DARK. ALWAYS REMEMBER HAPPY DAY.]”

“<Yes, it is good to be resilient. Our people are here to support yours in every way we can; do not hesitate to reach out to us. The path of Liberty is a rough one which wears on all treads uneavenly, but throughout time…>”

President Carter somehow found himself getting more and more exhausted by the moment. First contacts were one thing, the end of civilization was another thing entirely, but what he absolutely did not expect was to stand before an alien politician and hear it stump speech at him.

It just wouldn’t stop.

Now granted, at this point the translators that had been gifted by their other benefactors had gone through multiple revisions, but everyone was aware it was a game of telephone and that translations were going to be imperfect for quite some time moving forward. The fact that the translators were external and did not mask the native speech was not lost on the Human delegations, and it wasn’t unheard of for negotiations to start only for one side to uncontrollably flinch at the sound of the others’ opening comments. The birdsong-like roaring of the Spacedinos was nothing like the backfiring bone chainsaw of the Spacewolves – each one was it’s own fresh hell to listen to.

But this?

“[MANY BADS HAVE TO BE STOPPED. MANY GOODS MUST BE MADE. WE HELP GOODS AND STOP BADS. DO NOT STEP ON-]”

It was if a white noise machine was cranked up to eleven, implanted it into a purring tiger and then taped that to a busted steam pipe. It wasn’t so much as a speech as it was just noise, and aggressive noise at that. As the alien politician got more and more into his (probably) rousing speech, he twisted and gyrated in intricate and unfortunate shapes and always, always kept his unblinking eyes fixed on Stevens’. It demanded his rapt, complete attention, and that was something that the overflow of fear inside of the President was more than happy to give… for a while.

After all, he’s only human. He’s been up for 37 hours, his adrenal glands were shot, his knees were weak and arms heavy, and he’s only human. Sometimes, man by sheer force of will can overcome his body and achieve astounding things not thought physically possible. Sometimes, the human body wins and the mind is forced to shut down, retreat within itself and let time and chance wash over it.

Against his will and good judgment, President Carter’s eyes screwed shut in exhaustion. The sudden prolonged darkness was enough to trick his brain into thinking everyone and everything had gone away and it might as well take a break because if it couldn’t see the problems, they didn’t exist. Imperceptibly, President Carter tipped forward, losing balance as he fell asleep on his feet.

Thankfully for everyone involved, Speaker-Ambassador Hrrprsnk’krespk was there to catch him. Before President Carter hit the ground he was greeted with cool scales and a firm grip, his unconscious body quickly rolled into the Speaker-Ambassador’s own extremely-long torso. Nobody moved for a few moments as they processed exactly what just happened, and a few human guards half-heartedly raised their weapons slightly.

“[IT IS FINE. WE ARE FINE. HOW ARE YOU?]”

European Union Chancellor Viksburg yawned fiercely, scratching his side quite unceremoniously. “Well… can’t say I don’t envy him. Could you let him up, though? We’ve got another caffeine epipen we could use to-”

“[NO. IT IS FINE.]”

Chancellor Viksburg sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “God… again?”

“[THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.]”

“No, just.” Viksburg waved his hand around a bit. “Nothing. Why won’t you release him?”

“[HE IS FINE.]”

“. . .right, let’s just give him a little tug-”

Speaker-Ambassador Hrrprsnk’krespks’ body instinctualy tightened a bit, the dead-to-the-world President of the New American Empire slowly disappearing in his coils, causing everyone to freeze. “[IS FINE.]”

The equally-exhausted Chancellor of the European Union stared up at the Ambassador for a few moments, internally weighing something in his mind, before giving a physical shrug. “Fine, fuck it. Make space.”

“[WHAT.]”

And so the President of the New American Empire was joined by the Chancellor of the Expanded European Union, The Oceania Defense Pact Minister, and the Administrator of the Chinese Extended Economic Cooperative Zone, all of whom were far too tired for any more nonsense and who finally got a full and uninterrupted 12 hours of sleep.

“——”

He floated up from a shock his mind couldn’t fathom, from pain and confusion and primal fear-

“——— – – ——.”

He floated up from a black pit, the oppressive weight pressing down on his chest slowly getting easier and easier to lift. He inhaled, dimly aware that a mask was on his face.

“Hey. Hey – Hey.”

Someone was saying something… but it was hard to concentrate. They were words, he knew them, but that wasn’t important. He inhaled again, deeper, and the fog cleared far enough from his mind for him to think for a moment. ‘Something… about a park. His wife’s dog. About a movie? Was he in a movie?

“Good Morning, Hank. I’m Dr. Pratchett. I need you to breathe deep, ok? Breathe deep for me.”

It sounded like a good idea, so he did so.

“Alright. Keep doing that – can you breathe deep for me one more time?”

He did so, and his eyes opened. He was staring at a tiled drop ceiling, something that wouldn’t look out of place at any school, office complex –

– he finally heard the beeps.

Hospital.

“Hnnnnnnnnnnlfh.”

“Hey hey hey hey-” He felt hands on his shoulders, pushing him back into the tilted bed. “None of that, no movement. You’re still recovering.”

Hank turned to look at a doctor – a normal doctor. Nurse? Doctor. Somewhere after 40 with mocha-colored skin and no discernible accent, he seemed absolutely normal and absolutely out of place.

“Haaanlinen. Haaa?”

“Try words.”

“Mmmmmmipsh.” His dog? He clenched his fists. Why… why would he talk about his fucking dog

“Mipsy is still at-large and considered armed-”

No!

No, he wasn’t in a movie! He was… there were aliens, he wasn’t dreaming it! There were aliens and police and then he fell an-

Hank lurched forward, his oxygen-starved brain finally running on 3 out of 4 cylinders.

His arms were ripped off. He felt his warmth pour out, the cold ice take his chest. The pain – oh God the pain – the movement, the fear-

“No no no NO – NURSE! HE’S HAVING A PANIC ATTACK AGAIN-”

Hank violently thrashed against the nurse – doctor – it didn’t matter who, there were too many of them and they were holding him down and he needed to get out he needed to-

It started to get hard to breathe again. That weight was back… it was enough. He wasn’t so much tired as just… shut off. He knew he was attacked; he knew oblivion again.

“[HE BETTER.]”

Special Operations Combat Doctor Pratchett, to his credit, flinched only slightly as the translator kicked in. They were by no means in a traditional hospital; more like a purpose-built facsimile floating high above Atlanta in a ship far beyond his – or any other Humans’ – comprehension. Various species came and went in the background, but always this one stayed. Always it looked through the one-way screen, always it stood vigil.

“A little. No cardiac arrest this time.”

The alien growl-trilled something to itself that the translator either didn’t bother to pick up, or couldn’t. Pratchett knew guilt when he saw it – species barriers be damned – and sighed, resting his hands on the small of his back. “Look… you’re not the only one. There are others-”

“[NO.]”

“Mmm. T-Talk to them, sometime. I will let you know if his condition changes; we’ll try to rouse him in a few hours-”

“[NO. I WILL NOT FAIL AGAIN.]”

Dr. Pratchett stared at the alien, and the alien stared back. After a few moments the good doctor collected himself, gave a slight nod of his head, and left Aq’rel’a to stand vigil. Mr. Hill was getting better – each time, a little closer, a few less problems, a little stronger. One day soon, he would be able to wake up and prosper.

When that day came, she was there.

When that day came, she was there to apologize, and he was there to forgive.

 

Site 5 was unlike most anything else on the planet; it was an impromptu library of culture, of words, of history and of science, all bent towards one singular goal:

Figuring out what the FUCK that thing just said.

Site 5 was also multiple different locations working simultaneously in concert, but all of them were colloquially known as “Site 5”. The Site 5 in question for the English Language was a re-purposed High School Gymnasium, bleachers ordered into neat rows and columns of English literature, the history of the english language, the etymology and mutations thereof…

Sitting in the middle of this perfect storm of literature were dozens of Etymologists, Sociologists and other Scientists, with their corresponding alien counterparts taking up the rest of the Gym floor. It wasn’t so much that they had so many resources to bring in to build their side of the translator matrix that they needed the floor; merely, they just needed that much space to spread out and the bleachers were fine and yes we’re comfortable up here far away from you, thankyouverymuch.

“[WE CALL YOU LOCALS. CHANGE LOCALS.]”

“Name of place?” Dr. Welst said, going through the checklist to whittle down what the alien meant.

“[NO.]” The giant werewolf rumbled. “[LOCALS ON WORLD. LOCALS OFF WORLD. LOCALS HERE. LOCALS THERE.]”

“Name of us?” She clarified, pointing to herself and then to one of her colleagues.

“[YES. LOCALS NAME.]”

“One. Human. Two or more. Humans. All. Humanity.” Dr. Welst began, rattling off in the most simple and basic way she knew how the various definition and tenses of her species’ name.

“B—. ?r$r—gBh.?”

“[Alright, did you catch that?]” Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren subvocalized, communicating with the real team high in orbit on a senate ship. Her HUD flashed a confirmation, and she waited in attentive boredom as the little alien made happy-sounding mouthsounds at her. A private ping blinked in her sight, and she opened up the notification-

 

== CHAT ENABLED ==

+) [PRIVATE CHATROOM 347.#$.5436.-G JOINED]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [What’s going on?]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [Just. My team’s having a field day over these things.]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [They’re not a thing, they’re a proud and noble race.]

= = =

Zgrnuzh-of-Regren rolled her eyes at the fierce defense, typing out a dismissive gesture in chat.

= = =

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [Seriously. Come on- just look at them. Nobility aside, this is borderline ridiculous.]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [+REDACTED VIA CONTENT FILTER+]. [Granted.]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [I’m still not over them being… just, them. Like.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [Yeah!]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [Right? I wouldn’t believe it unless I was here.]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [So what’s the plan? We’re having… a lot of debate on our end as to what name to assign their people.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [Same. Should we go for a placeholder until the top brass figures it out?]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [Yes. As long as it’s respectful.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [Dull your claws already, sheesh.]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [Look, I’m just saying they’ve suffered enough injustices already, and so the least we could do is introduce them in a way that-]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [Stooooop. Doing so is only going to have them carry this forward for millenia. It’s better to name them based on what they are than what’s happened to them-]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [But the two are the same! History can’t be separated from the species that creates it, and-]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [Warm cuddles.]

= = =

Zgrnuzh-of-Regren physically turned to look at her Forever-Free-Trail-Maker comrade, tilting her head slightly.

= = =

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [What.]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [Warm cuddles. Our Ambassador-Speaker was apparently used as a nest for their Leaders. They radiate heat, and didn’t want to leave. They are Warm and the cuddle, and it was a historic moment.]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [Fear-shit.]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [Mmm. Serious. Ask for file RE#55*NJ-7.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [Ok if that’s the case then all bets are off. They have the tiniest of teeth and are so happy to chomp them at us – so, tiny-chomper.]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [This is dumb and you’re dumb and I hate both of you and I’m going to-]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [Hold on.]

== CHAT PAUSED ==

 

Zgrnuzh-of-Regren prepared herself, and cleared her throat – which, for some reason, caused all of the little locals to jump.

“{We want to see if you’re ok with this name}”

“[WE WISH TO SEE IF NAME IS GOOD.]”

“Ok.”

“[OK]” Zgrnuzh-of-Regren’s translator kicked back to her.

“{Tiny Chomper.}” Zgrnuzh-of-Regren said, enunciating each syllable clearly and slowly. If she was remembering correctly, they had translated both of those words before, so there should be no confusion-

“[HUMAN.]” The translator matrix helpfully spat out, in the locals’ native language.

“Yes.”

“[YES.]” Zgrnuzh-of-Regrens’ translator confirmed.

Zgrnuzh-of-Regren blinked, taken aback slightly. She had prepared to backpedal, as translation errors happened all the time, so this little discrepancy could be explained away, but… but was it ok? Were they ok being called Tiny-chompers?!

“{Is that good? You want to be called tiny chompers?}”

“[IS GOOD. YOU NAME HUMAN.]”

“Yes.”

“[YES.]” The local research leader said, nodding to her colleagues and responding with a bright, wide smile.

 

== CHAT ENABLED ==

.

.

.

+) [MISSED HISTORY. SHOW? Y/N]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [No. No. No. No. No. No. No.]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [LOOK AT THEM THIS IS SO PRECIOUS OH MY GOD]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [No. No. No. No. No.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [I can’t believe they’re actually ok with this.]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [No. No. No. No. I just. No. No.]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [OK OK OK MY TURN-]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [NO.]

+) [Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan][DISCONNECTED FROM CHAT][TEMPORARY][VOLUNTARY]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [We are going to hell for this.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [Maybe. Maybe this was meant to be? Aren’t you into predestination and whatnot?]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [See, I know we’re going to hell for this because you’re willingly engaging me in a theological debate to drag me off-course.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [They SAID they were ok with it. It’s both historically accurate and who they are, so it checks both boxes-]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [Just because you’re technically correct doesn’t mean that you’re properly correct.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean.]

+) [Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan][REJOINED CHAT]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [WARM CUDDLES WARM CUDDLES WARM CUDDLES WARM CUDDLES-]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [NO WAY.]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [SO HAPPY AT THE NAME THEY WIGGLED WARM CUDDLES WARM CUDDLES-]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [I can’t BELIEVE you two right now! They are little, and innocent, and they need protecting from so much, most of all people like you.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [So is that it? Is that the name?]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [What, little needs protecting?]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [I like it!]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [NO. I will be better than you both!]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT-]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [NO. STOP TEMPTING ME.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT-]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [. . .]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT-]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [DO IT DO-]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [DO IT DO IT-]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [DO-]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [DO IT DO I-]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [DO IT DO IT -]

+) [Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’][DISCONNECTED FROM CHAT][TEMPORARY][VOLUNTARY]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [Here we go here we go here we go-]

[Translator Technician Shrrsn’aasan]: [No way is he going to do it is he actually going to-]

+) [Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’][REJOINED CHAT]

[Translator Technician Rre’Qeuai’rr’’]: [I hate you both.]

[Translator Technician Zgrnuzh-of-Regren]: [HE DID IT THE ABSOLUTE INSANE BOY DID IT-]

Categories
Stories They are Smol

They are Smol: The Invasion of Earth – Epilogue 1

Vik, Iceland. +They stopped caring, After First Contact

-+-+-+-

High President Carter sighed as yet another intern just…. Didn’t show up.

It wasn’t that interns dodging their daily duties was anything new, per se – the youth had been slacking since there were youth and things to do. It was more that this intern was part of his delegation to meet the new species that had just appeared in orbit a few days ago and triggered another wave of panic, paranoia, and brutal global crackdowns. When they finally broadcast the whole “Oh God please stop we’re not doing anything relax” message, mankind learned a few things:

(1) What had happened to them was absolutely not how First Contact was supposed to go

(2) There are more of the xeno bastards

(3) We should probably accept their offer of unconditional alliance

(4) What do you mean there are more that aren’t here yet

(5) OH GOD NO MORE SHIPS PLEASE-

So the few remaining now nigh-unstoppable superpowers of Earth got together and tried to figure out where negotiations would happen. Every country naturally said “Not in my backyard” and so, well. Iceland was voluntold that it would hold negotiations because (1) it’s basically in the middle of nowhere that’s still easily-reachable, (2) it’s still large enough to wage a limited and desperate land war if necessary and (3) what were they going to do in retaliation, not sell herring at us? Aggressively win Eurovision? Please.

And so Iceland finally came to terms with the fact that more military might and expendable lives were going to be put on it’s soil than in anywhere or at any other time in history, and subsequently voluntold the small, southernmost city… eer. Town. Hamlet? Collection of buildings the locals called “Vik” that it really should dress in their Sunday best and be prepared for guests.

The entire town shrugged, got in their fishing boats and set sail to the Faroe Islands.

So that chain of events led to High President Carter sighing in another windswept kevlar tent, tightly holding his cup of cold-war era coffee as he spoke through a translator to European Union Chancellor Viksburg, Oceania Defense Pact Minister Gopi, and Chinese Extended Economic Cooperative Zone Administrator Zheng.

“…and still no word from the Russians?”

The Chancellor shrugged and shook his head. “No. From what we can tell they’re acting as if it’s a totally headless government. We know there’s someone pulling the strings, but they’re so underground and through so many layers of smoke and mirrors that…”

“It’s impossible. We’re still months into, ah, questioning their embassy representatives, but we’ve got no luck.” The slightly overweight Adminsitrator said, rocking slightly in his fold-out chair. “Either they died, which our visitors refute, or their ambassadors weren’t kept in the loop to contingency plans.”

“None of this matters.” The Minister said, making a chopping motion with his hand. “We can embargo their people, or take their lands if necessary to find them. Right now, we have more pressing concerns.”

“Mmm.” Carter grunted, taking a sip of bitter, strong coffee. “The Latin Coalition still hasn’t finalized… anything, and I don’t think the African Union is going to join us, so it’s just us for today.”

“Yes. Just about 70% of Humanity. I think we’ll be ok.” Minister Gopi said, smirking.

“Still.” Viksburg sighed, straightening his leg with a slightly sickening pop. “It would be better to show a unified front, and not doing so doesn’t help project coherency to our new guests.”

“I think we can be given a pass, what with the civil wars and shenanigans going on.”

“Regardless, we should pr-”

There was a hail from a separate tent that was echoed by multiple others; although Humanity was becoming more interdependent on each other, there was still absolutely no way in hell that the various factions trusted each other.

That would be madness.

So instead, There was a single main welcoming and negotiating tent, and then linked to that were separate staging areas for each new Empire’s various soldiers, intelligence officers, communications technicians, interns, and various other people who stood around the coffee machine and justified their existence. Each tent was connected to various mobile staging trucks with various radar and long-range communication and identification equipment, and each one of those had apparently picked something up at the same time.

Their new visitors were arriving.

There was the subsequent flurry of activity from each Empire’s subordinates – anti-aircraft defenses kicked online and began active tracking, honor guard lined up in impressive formation, special operations soldiers buried themselves into the surrounding area – and the leaders all shared a look with each other…

…and did absolutely jack shit.

“So what are you thinking, Mr. President?”

“Trial by combat. You, Administrator?”

“Hmm. Tribute, of course. Why destroy when you can farm?”

“Aah, of course.”

There was a supersonic rumble of jets – both human and decidedly not, as the new alien dropship was enveloped by Terran atmosphere, rapidly burning off speed as it’s escorts began a lazy, high overwatch.

“Whelp. Kick ‘em in the balls if they take me out.” President Carter said, slamming back the rest of his coffee.

Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul stretched in the cramped compartment, clicking her teeth in anxious frustration; This was no place for a princess of the Emperor!

Well. “Princess”. She was definitely in line for The Throne-at-The-Center-of-All-Things, but it wasn’t an immediate ascension; More like… well. If there were a few unfortunate accidents and a couple dozen abdications and if her Aunt Gruazng would just go explore the unknown reaches for another 500 years then maybe. But she knew her position within the family and she knew that position is why she was there; after Fleet Operation Dust and Echoes all the policy wonks got together and decided to send their own Armada to this new alien species’ home system, heavy in culture and science ships and much much lighter in naval armaments than their Eternal-All-Lights-Within comrades. Of course a Royal Representative needed to be there, and she was trained in negotiation, cultural appreciation, etiquette…

…she was also expendable. Granted, her life would be paid for dearly, and there was an almost zero percent chance that any of the locals would try anything, given their unique… physiology and current technological level, but.

But.

But there were Eternal-All-Lights-Within dead. There was a near-zero percent chance that their AI missed, that turned out to be true. This home world did burn.

So.

So here she was. Standing shoulder to shoulder with other various ambassadors, attendees, waiting-staff, and a handful of honor guard, all stuffed into an admittedly spacious and luxurious dropship that would have allowed for room to move had it also not been stuffed with various trinkets, sweet-meats, bolts of cloth, art… To be honest, she was used to being pampered, and having anyone other than her accustomed waitstaff in the same ship sector as her was enough to put a frown on her face. The fact that she had to share it with cargo was downright demeaning! So what if they wanted “a single target to escort in case of emergencies and to reduce groundside anxiety”, they were a star-spanning empire, Damnit! They could’ve afforded a couple more ships!

Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul inhaled deeply, and exhaled, idly reaching up to adjust her recently-fabricated translation collar. This home world did burn.

‘{Pull in your temper}’ she said to herself, rolling her shoulders. ‘{This is a momentous occasion and you’re Blessed by the Hunt-of-Good-Lands to have been chosen among your siblings to go.}’ She straightened up just as her Dropship bled that last bit of speed, landing on the soft alien soil so delicately that only the all-clear from her Pilot’s communicator gave any indication that they had ended their journey, let alone broke through atmosphere from the heavens. The ramp extended, the door slid open, and gentle alien sunlight bathed the interior of her ship.

And so her Honor Guard marched out, and she and her retainers followed.

“Good God.”

“Don’t you mean Good Dog?” Carter quipped as the brightly armored, slightly-larger-than-polar-bear sized …well, wolves? Bears? Gorilla-dogs? Exited the ornately-decorated ship, marching in perfect formation down the ramp and to either side. Carter knew enough from his time in the military to know honor guard when he saw them, and there was a 50-50 shot that the weapons they held weren’t loaded.

They probably carried the ammunition on them somewhere, though.

His own – and that of his colleagues – quickly snapped to attention, flags and standards waving gently in the cool breeze. He idly scanned the line, seeing the same steely-eyed yet bewildered look on everyone’s faces.

‘Welcome to my world’ he said to himself, grinning as he stood up as the Officially-looking Official disembarked. “Anyone mind if America takes the honors?”

“Go ahead, Gweilo. I’ll wait here.”

“Suit yourself, Zheng.” Charter said, adding in an over-exaggerated nonchalant shrug. “Can’t get much worse at this point, and nobody’s giving me hazard pay.”

And with that, High President Carter of the New American Empire marched forward in greeting.

“{How in the world do they balance?}”

Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul turned her head slightly to her attendant’s outburst, making a mental note to discipline her later. “{That is inappropriate.}” Gew-Zgranzre whispered, keeping her eye on the local leader as he… essentially wobbled towards them. “{But not totally incorrect.}”

“{Apologies, Ma’am.}”

“{Mmm.}” Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul acknowledged, plastering on the slightly bemused but totally uninterested mask of the elite, mentally slipping into practiced and drilled forms of etiquette. Feet placed just so, arms bent just so, bracelets of heraldry extended to show lineage and birthright – she posed herself slightly, delicately, dipping her head in a greeting of equals. Mostly equals. Ok, she might have still had some knots in her fur over being shipped with the fucking cargo, but, it would be wrong for her to take it out on these innocent and relatively tiny-

“?H—z ppbt **.-@#—%r GUH.?”

“Welcome to Earth. Care for some coffee?”

“{Okay, seriously-}” Gwe-Zgranzre said, blinking as the tiny local flashed his tiny teeth at her in… greeting? She turned to look at her Banner attendant, who was doing his absolute damndest to not start laughing.

“? ##A ** …. W@@@s—** b-BU r*^^*^?”

Holy shi- eer, wow. That’s a sound right out of my nightmares.”

Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul inhaled deeply, letting the cool air calm her down. She took in notes of alien flora, of the spray of their water, of the scent of her comrades and the burn of the engines.

It grounded her, and she smiled to herself. ‘{Your new translator, you fool.}’ she chided, and reached up to flick on the slim collar, the external devices’ speakers popping on as the local bravely drew closer.

“{Greetings, locals of Earth.}”

“[GREETINGS PEOPLE.]” Her translator boomed, and she gave another small dip of her head at the leader within arm’s reach.

“Seriously, why are your lips wiggli-is THAT YOUR TEETH?!”

“[VERIFICATION. I SEE YOUR TEETH.]” The local said, leaning back and staring intently at her mouth. Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul thought to herself for a moment and gave a mental shrug – customs were customs, and who was she to judge? She passively opened her mouth and performed a gum check, moving her upper-outer, upper-inner and bottom-middle row of teeth one after the other, from left to right, before loudly rippling them back in the opposite direction. She sheer surprise of her ability – teeth use must be important to them – impressed the ambassador so much he started to fall backwards.

Started to. Quickly and delicately she reached forward, loosely wrapping her arm around the torso of the alien and holding him steady. She had… seen the footage, and knew how to better act.

As was expected of someone of her station and breeding, to another.

“JESUS GOD, WHY.”

“[FIRST FATHER. EXPLAIN.]” Her translator helpfully chirped, causing the local to again do a full-body flinch. She tried to stand up, to make sure the ambassador wasn’t hurt – or would be hurt, and breathed deeply to center herself. She took in the same notes of alien flora, of the spray of their water, of the scent of her comrades and the burn of the engines, of a newborn pup.

Wait.

Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul furrowed her brow and inhaled again. Flora. Water. Pack. Need. An Emptiness that needs to be made whole. Wrongness.

No.

“{Please, forgive me. Are you alright?}”

“[APOLOGY. YOU ARE UNINJURED?]” Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul stood up the Ambassador, resting her hand on his side in a comforting manner. The local grabbed her much larger arm with his smaller hands, grounding himself.

“Ye-yes. Yes. Thank you.”

“[YES.]”

“{Good. I’m glad.}”

“[GOOD.]” Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul said, smiling gently at the little one before her. He stood up fully, adjusting his clothing before pulling away –

-ah. No.

Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul gently tugged him back towards her, adjusting his torso covering slightly; it had folded in on itself, and was terribly wrinkled, which really wouldn’t do. The Ambassador nodded his thanks, and stepped backwards –

-ah. No.

Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul gently but insistently tugged him back towards her. Although she was with her Honor Guard, and various house Attendants, it wouldn’t do for him to fall over again, especially when she was responsible – somehow – for the first time. No, she should make sure he was properly grounded… a chair, perhaps? Something to lounge on? She couldn’t just leave him alone, even though she trusted these people with her life-

“Thank you, um. May I… introduce you to my people? Perhaps, my wife as well?”

“[THANK YOU. WE MAKE INTRODUCTIONS TO MY PEOPLE AND MY HEAD WIFE.]”

Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul furrowed her brow again. A head wife? Already? Sure, she was no stranger to political marriages, but no, this was too early.

No.

Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul very purposefully unclenched her hand, letting the ambassador’s clothing go, and he took a few quick steps backwards away from her. By the empty sky, what had gotten into her?! She was The representative for Her Empire, Her People, HER FAMILY-

She gently and insistently reached forward towards her family, grabbing only empty air.

-ah. No. No. He’s… this thing was not an abandoned pup. It was not her kin, it was not her people. It was not part of her empire, it was not part of her pack, it was not from her litter, it was not, it was not, it was not.

It was not being a very obedient child.

Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul darted forward, wrapping the abandoned alien boy in her arms gently but forcefully. She inhaled deeply in reflex; Flora. Water. Pack. Need. Wrongness. So much wrongness, and she would set it right. Gwe-Zgranzre-of-Ngrul looked down at her new charge, smiling warmly as the alien went completely limp, draping over in her arms.

That was ok. He was not being a very obedient child, but he just needed to be loved-

Sighing to herself, she picked up the abandoned Ambassador and cradled him, turning to walk back up the ramp.

“THE BALLS, ZHENG. GO FOR THE BALLS.”

“[MALE GENITALS. PAY ATTENTION TO THEM.]” he called out to no one in particular, his petulance continuing as he was taken into the ship. As the minutes dragged on, He was joined along with a couple dozen of his other abandoned brothers and sisters, wrapped in warm cloth and protected in the center of their ship.

So much wrongness, but they would be set right.

BOOKER sighed in the cumbersome HAZMAT suit, using his approved tungsten-aluminum procurement device – AKA “the pokey stick” – to sift through some of the less reactive rubble in Piedmont Park. After the global ceasefire he and everyone else from the CDC were basically carted over here to figure out what the fuck is going to kill us all.

So far, the deadliest thing they could find were shards of aluminum from a damaged ship, a couple abandoned MREs, a few alien nuts – which were taken to a blacksite hangar, along with roughly 15 tons of dirt that they rested on – and some scattered alien tech.

“Having fun over there?” MISTY said, chuckling deeply. “Come on, we’ve got another 5 minutes and then we disrobe.”

“Yeah, but fuck this suit, man. They could’ve at least given us the airpump ones-”

“Closed system, friend.” MISTY smiled, his voice heavily muffled. “Now, let’s just finish sweeping this grid and-”

There was a noise.

Usually, this is no point of concern, but when you’re at the site of an alien ship with scattered xeno technology about, this was a point of concern. With a simple arm gesture, both men pointed in a direction and made a sign with their hands.

Roughly an entire company’s worth of weapons were pointed in that vague direction.

“What the fuck was that?” BOOKER said, scanning the area.

“Dunno, sounded like-”

MISTY never finished his sentence as out of a fucking trashcan leapt a small, dirty, feral-looking-

“Is that a DOG?” BOOKER exclaimed, laughing. “Oh my FUCKING GOD, that’s a dog!”

The two men laughed for a moment, waving down the surrounding military as the animal bounded off, obviously very distraught at spending the past few days stuck in a trashca-

-the animal stopped, and started to devour something on the ground.

“Wait. WAIT. What’s that it’s eating? It’-”

BOOKER began to run forward as the small dog ate something decidedly not terran. Other ABC agencies – the FBI, ATF, NSA, CIA – began running as well, realizing the situation. It looked up at the sprinting HAZMAT suit, opened it’s mouth and borked.

The miniature shield drone that was lodged in it’s throat took the subvoalization rush of air as a command, and ejected a small amount of energy at an appreciable enough speed to knock BOOKER right on his ass.

Everyone froze in place, save for the ATF Agents, who rose to fight their greatest battle.

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 20

Amonna had been amazed by the size of Waystation LS-49 when she first arrived. With a nearly 60 meter high ceiling, the bulk transport she had arrived in almost seemed small in the cavernous space. As she looked out over “Auxiliary Hanger 2,” that sense of starry eyed wonder she had felt as a younger, more naive girl returned. The “Indomitable Explorer” looked almost like a forgotten toy left on the floor rather than a warship retrofitted for survey work. The security team that had set up a cordon around it looked like insects, not heavily armed and armored soldiers.

She took a deep breath, and tried to ignore the stabbing pain in her neck as she closed her eyes. It was easy to think of them all as toys from this elevated, distant, and secure observation deck, but this was far from a game. Three teams stacked up on the craft, two at the cargo door, and one under the “wing” of the vessel. She couldn’t make it out precisely, but she knew they were planting breaching explosives. They’d been trying to cut their way in with plasma torches for several minutes, but whatever meta-alloy the craft was made of seemed extremely resistant to heat. Drastic measures were needed, so a mixture of cryo-treatment and breaching explosives were being used.

The security chief swore that he had attempted a diplomatic resolution to the situation, but Amonna wasn’t terribly convinced. In the end though, it was a matter of picking her battles. She’d been very clear that she needed them for interrogation . . . and a healthy show of force might not be the worst way to start that process off, after all. She would tolerate the over-exuberance of her subordinates for now, if only because they weren’t disruptive enough to warrant censure.

She saw the flash, heard the muffled crack of high explosives, and watched 12 troopers pour into the little puffs of smoke made by their dynamic entry. A trio of them bounced back out, as if they’d run head long into a brick wall, and suddenly the fight was on. Too far away to catch the specifics, she watched as five little black motes struggled against one particularly large specimen. She leaned forward, gripping the hand railing of the observation deck with a white knuckled intensity.

. . . It can’t be you . . . can it?”

Her voice was low, and incredulous, but she knew without a doubt that it was.

“Arch-Judge?” One of her honor guard stepped forward, tone uncharacteristically inquisitive. “Could you please repeat your order more clearly?”

Amonna shook her head, face still bearing an expression of disbelief. “Get down to that ship. They’re going to need backup.” They snapped into motion without hesitation, a dozen sets of boots pounding out of the steel and glass chamber. “I need them alive!” She shouted after them as they disappeared down the corridor, shock turning to ire as she whirled back around to watch the battle in miniature unfold. They seemed to be afraid to draw any closer, but unwilling to back away and use their other weapons. She let out several choice oaths, furious with her own lack of foresight. “Of course you’d survive . . .”

If she’d warned them, maybe they could have used electro-convulsive devices, or maybe some kind of gas to debilitate the creature, but as it stood their less than lethal batons were probably like nothing more than toys to him.

She watched a particularly brave trooper rush him, and be sent flying for his hubris.

A frustrated snort escaped her, and she could only hope that her “Honor Guard” were skilled enough to bring a neat resolution to the unfolding disaster before her. She watched as he seized one trooper, and hurled them bodily into another of her officers scrambling to get away.

Cringing, she murmured under her breath “ . . . I’d settle for an ugly resolution at this point.”

——————————

Darren was breathing hard, and swinging harder. He’d managed to wrestle a baton from one of the black armored goons sent in to beat him, and he’d paid back their aggression with a fair bit of interest. He didn’t know how the others were faring inside the ship, but he had bigger concerns at the moment. A few warning swipes with the baton, cracked and chipped from the force of his blows, was enough to drive the military styled thugs back a few paces. A few of them had been put out of commission already, either by his fists or a hearty kick, but he could still see that he was surrounded. Outnumbered but not out-fought, he concluded. He was damn tired of getting randomly attacked by aliens. Without much time to dedicate to the thought, he decided that the galaxy was a lot more hostile than it had been made out to be on TV.

There was a crunching sound as he stepped into some of the shattered ceramic armor that had “fallen off” his attackers, and his head snapped side to side in a feral manner, like a cornered animal. The six or so black armored aliens backed off slightly, pulling their downed comrades with them to a safer distance behind hastily erected barricades.

For a moment, it almost seemed like they were giving up, and a brief flicker of hope ran through him. He took time to try and catch his breath, re-orient himself, and spent a few free seconds to try and think of a way out of this mess.

Then he saw the backup.

A dozen figures, in bulkier armor, carrying big guns. Maybe special forces, maybe SWAT, maybe just bigger meaner dudes, but he could read the writing on the wall. He braced himself, guard up and baton ready, for the lot of them to charge him.

Surprisingly, they didn’t. In fact, all but one of them held back while a single, particularly bold individual began to remove his helmet.

Darren had expected something exotic, strange, or downright disturbing. He expected huge eyes, or spines instead of hair, or maybe some kind of compound eyes, but what greeted him was far more disturbing to him.

It looked like a child. Not . . . not quite a child, but boyish. The stature was like that of a teenager, or maybe just a fairly small framed guy. It was bearing a crew cut and a firmly set expression, like any soldier might appear, but the almond shaped eyes, faint hint of freckles, and slight features were really what was putting him on his back foot. “What the . . .” were the only words he managed to mumble out before it threw its helmet at him.

Throw was really the wrong word for it, even. It was almost like a playful toss. A gentle lob, pitched underhand, like it was a game and he was supposed to catch it. Without thinking, he let go of the baton to catch the blackish, grayish ceramic armor piece, raising his arms in the process. The motion of this . . . childish alien was quick, and he almost missed it, but as he felt something strike him in the gut, he realized with a sudden surge of anger he’d been tricked. With a slight flourish, this new adversary had pulled something from it’s pocket and hit him in the gut with it from 15 paces. He could feel thin, sinewy coils wrapping around his abdomen, cinching down tight with a mechanical whirring sound.

“Fu-” was all he managed to gasp before he was hit with a surge of electricity, making his diaphragm spasm. It felt like he was drowning, like the air was too thick for him to breathe as his entire body went rigid. The current lasted what felt like minutes, his every muscle bursting in a burning pain as they cramped violently from the hammer-blow of current. There was a moment that their eyes met, and while he was struggling to remain conscious, Darren couldn’t really come to terms with such a youthful face twisted into such an expression of raw loathing.

A haymaker to the jaw ended his struggle, and dropped him to the deck with a dull thud, ending the several minute long standoff in as brutal a fashion as it had started.

——————————

Amonna was quite pleased with the performance of her “Honor Guard.” Not to put too fine a point on it, she was almost impressed with the speed they had resolved the situation. They had taken an uncontrolled disaster and almost instantly brought it to a neat, non-lethal end. The “Human,” as the medic on duty had identified it, was secure and largely uninjured. She wasn’t terribly surprised to find it uninjured, even though it had taken a blow that would have left either the Centaurian or Kontosian passengers permanently brain damaged. There was the question of minor damage to its central nervous system, but the medic had told her there was some kind of multi-layered fluid cushion protecting the human’s brain. It just tended to “re-boot” when struck too hard, and that gave the security team time to restrain it.

She’d instructed it kept under a ridiculous level of sedation until she had the chance to fully review the file she’d been given on its physiology, but from what she had skimmed the thing was a tank. Blended muscle fiber motor units, redundant blood filtration organs, hyperactive scar-tissue formation. Just from the cliff notes she could tell the thing was a low-tech apex predator.

She didn’t know how well she’d be able to interview an attack dog, but she’d give it a try.

Later.

As a last resort, in case she couldn’t get anything useful out of the others.

She leaned back in her chair, eyes wandering over the seemingly ever growing spread of classified documents, reports, interviews, and images she had on her desk. She snagged the Research Institute charter for the Indomitable Explorer, and scanned through it quickly. Registered to Tilantrius Zepp Warzapp the Third and Zarniac the Lesser, it appeared to be a legitimate survey operation. She had interviewed the two of them, and her initial suspicion was that this “Zarniac” character was coercing Tilantrius. Last images of Zarniac were of a healthy, if slightly haggard Centaurian, not the maimed, steely eyed, tight lipped navigator she had in a cell seven decks below her. Still, their stories checked out. He really had been badly injured in the hangar incident, and then again while making his escape from Waystation LS-49. A flicker of pity ran through her, and sense of morose kinship. She sighed, and continued on reading the interview transcript. Their account of events on the station matched her own, and the story of coming back to rescue the Human, apparently named “Duh-Rehn,” also sparked a chord of compassion in her. The Centaurians were a good sort, she decided. They’d been put through the wringer, and she believed them when they said they had done their best to comply with the conflicting commands they were given in the arrest process. The Kontosian on the other hand . . .

She’d grilled him for an hour, solid. When he stonewalled her, she had gotten “extra-curricular” with her interrogation methods. It had only taken a copy of her “Unlimited Mandate” in resolving the Waystation LS-49 issue to get him talking.

It had started, at least for him, innocently enough. He’d kill time between maintenance tickets by messaging random individuals on the q-net. Typically reserved for fairly high level communication, his engineering access let him utilize the most powerful FTL communications tech in the galaxy as a chat-room. That alone warranted maybe a negative quarterly performance review, it was who he began talking to that interested her. Chrysophylax, the little half cyborg red lizard she had entrusted the C.A.S.I.I. unit to, had been talking to some very dangerous sorts. While he confessed to picking up all kinds of dangerous skills, like how to build Class 2 energy weapons and modify AI cores, he swore up and down that he wasn’t responsible for what had happened on LS-49. There was a single user that had started messaging him consistently. At first he was terrified it was one of his co-workers, because they always seemed to know when he was busy and when he was free, but after figuring out what node they were logging into the galaxy wide system from, Chryso had concluded that they were just some kind of network penetration expert killing time at work too. A little more pressure, and he was telling Amonna everything they’d ever talked about.

This . . . character, only ever identifying themselves as “Seed_544” had been more than happy to talk everything from AI blue-box mechanics to firewall subversion techniques with Cryso. At least, according to him. It was always with the same casual air of superiority, and they always seemed to have some secret trick or insight he’d never heard of before. Chryso had always assumed they were either an AI killing unused processor cycles, or some kind of savant that didn’t know how to turn that part of their brain off, but they had been deeply, deeply intelligent. When they started offering solutions to some of his day to day problems, little subroutines he could install to keep unreliable systems working, or self-repair protocols to keep his workbench free, he’d seized them gladly and with both hands.

While rambling his occasional, almost aimless confessions continued to roll on and Amonna began to draw a much clearer picture of things. She suspected that “Seed_544” was not just some AI or savant, but a collection of individuals who had gotten close to Chrysophylax with the intention of infiltrating the station’s subroutines. They leveraged this unfettered access to take systematic control of the Drone officers in the FSOS department. She didn’t know how they managed to do it, but it seemed the only logical conclusion. The only thing that really kept her guessing was how Verdock was involved. He was clearly complicit and aided in this takeover, but she didn’t know how he was compromised. Maybe blackmail?

She put down the interrogation transcript, running her fingers through her hair just to busy them.

She’d expected problems with the C.A.S.I.I. unit. After what she’d seen, what she’d heard in Chryso’s workshop on the station, she knew whatever had been done to that little Social AI was bad. What she hadn’t expected was the amount of damage the core had suffered from overclocking. There was no way it was going to last more than another few years before its processors were completely burnt out. All of that didn’t hold a candle to the interview though.

The AI was non-responsive, as if it was in undergoing a system-safety reboot, but the entire thing was burning hot to the touch, clearly running at almost 90% processor output. It took a team of engineers to cobble together some way to begin diagnostics, and hopefully open a line of communication with the badly damaged and modified AI. While just about every single element was either encrypted or so radically restructured in terms of code that fixing it would prove to be a week long affair, they did manage to establish at least a rudimentary means of communication via command line inputs. They put 3 questions to it at Amonna’s behest.

“What was the Dolorous Star Massacre, what happened to Cygnus X-1, and the who are Cult of the Unfinished?”

The processor utilization was pegged at 100, and it took an emergency cooling unit to keep the thing from overloading entirely before they received a curt, and cryptic reply.

My birth. My death. And my children. But not necessarily in that order.”