The Nature of Predators

Memory Transcription Subject: Tassi, Bissem Alien Liaison

Date [standardized human time]: December 22, 2160

This Sapient Coalition meeting had me concerned, and not just because our trial period had technically expired without a vote on us staying, or due to the fleet bearing down on the disorganized defense of Aafa. Ambassador Loxsel had opted to accompany the Bissem delegation, as a “citizen of Ivrana,” which meant he’d be on site during our diplomatic proceedings. Knowing full well that Kaisal wasn’t ready for him, I’d been steering the deranged Sivkit to agree to pass notes, under the guise that the Arxur refused to converse with prey. The playwright grazer wouldn’t be content with that for long, so I’d agreed to his request to join us at the third and final battle. I hoped it’d distract him from prostrating before the Collective leader, and offering his species up as cattle. Reformed or not, could we really trust the grays to say no to that?

Zalk, ever the standoffish Bissem, was none too pleased that Loxsel was supposed to sit with us, and had let the funny bunny run off to badger the humans. The Tseia had a smug look on his face, accentuated by the way he let his headfeathers fall close to his eyes. I thought his celebration was premature, since I had no doubt that the Sivkit ambassador would catch up to us soon. It was no secret where Ivrana’s delegation was seated, and the Terrans would happily point him here. However, even Ivrana’s migratory isolationists recognized that we needed to keep the wandering herbivores around long enough to finish our fleet.

“Not adopting an Osir child, Zalk?” Naltor prodded. “A few thousand delivered on Ivrana, just today; really here, back from the dead. I know you want a little one to point out the stars too, and tell them, ‘They did this.’”

Zalk turned his back to the Selmer. “You think I would adopt an alien? Tassi’s scheming has brought way too many of these off-world freaks to our soil. Allies doesn’t mean they all have to fucking move in.”

“It’s about charity, and come on. You have to feel bad for the Osirs, suffering the same fate as Alsh’s bombed wastelands,” I offered diplomatically. “When we reached out offering to take a few, I thought the Tseia would be quite sympathetic. They lost everything, probably hated for being carnivores like us.”

“That’s dandy, but it’s not our problem. Ultimately, we do have to look out for ourselves; for Ivrana. You and your Zurulian pals have lost sight of that. And honestly, can you picture me as a father?”

“An absent one? Sure,” General Naltor poked.

I swatted the Selmer with the back of a flipper. “That’s too far! Your snide comments toward him can’t cross a line. I know you don’t trust the Tseia, but you don’t have to say something like that.”

“All I was saying is he’s much too dedicated to the military; he’d be too restless to ever stay at home. Paranoia and distrust are as much a part of Zalk as his headfeathers, and he knows it.”

“Ivrana won’t be our world any more, if you move in any more aliens! Just when the Tseia have flipped the script in the war, gaining power, you want a hostile takeover from Nelmin—the site of the last war! Look at what the Sivkits have done, tearing through half of the continent’s greenery. I’m sounding the alarm; they cannot stay.”

“I thought you’d have more of an affinity for Sivkits, since you share their migratory habits,” I prompted.

“Tassi, we migrate to a few cultural sites, without exhausting the land’s resources and discarding them! Sivkits are a blight. Not to mention they put an unhinged menace in the ambassadorial role. I much prefer the Arxur, who just gave us ships and don’t enact any stupid shit on us; even now, they’ve gone to defend Aafa, while the SC sits on their heels!”

“Our alliance with the Arxur has gone places, but we can’t forget what they’ve done. The Sivkit friendship is progressing too, and we’re stronger to show for it. It’s not like we were using Nelmin. Besides, Loxsel isn’t that bad; just theatrical.”

“You nithings collogue about me, and would just as lief pilfer my entrails! Peccant compeers who flaunt my outstretched paw, to whisper how froward I am. I should return to my garth, so you can contemn me in privacy,” Loxsel wailed, before tumbling down the stairs to the bottom of our box.

Despite knowing how committed the Sivkit was to method acting, I was worried by how uncontrolled the fall looked; he’d be the sort of actor willing to risk breaking his neck for a bit. It was then that I noticed Loxsel was wearing some sort of white garment over his midsection, which had the telltale sleeves of the Terrans’ shirts. This one had multiple straps adhered to the lengthy arm coverings, cinched around his spine as if to restrain him. The Sivkit tasted the blood dripping from his nose, otherwise fine, and his eyes gleamed with wicked delight. He flopped around awkwardly to stand, and found his way into a seat. It didn’t look the least bit comfortable. After thinking for a moment, I realized he’d fallen because he was walking bipedally in that attire, which his spine was not intended for.

“What are you wearing?” I hissed.

“Ah, this!” Loxsel tried to pull his arms apart, and elbowed a nearby Naltor in the process. The Selmer’s eyes shot daggers at the Sivkit. “Can you bethink yourself of my human friend, who played Daxfrin in my play?”

“The one you punched? I remember him. Do you even know his real name?”

“His name is irrelevant drivel, but the point is he was among the guards here today, not at the Paltan base! He knows I did not blench to strike a predator or lend him my obeisance. So rather than gainsay my truths and telling me not to misdoubt his pacifism, Daxfrin brought me into the secret of their pelts. This is a straitjacket, used by humans until they learn not to assault others! It’s part of their fashion. He didn’t want me to bebother the SC, as a Sivkit runagate that has fire!”

“The fuck is he saying?” Zalk grumbled.

“My heart is a comet, blazing a trail even amid your trammels. This tryst cannot abide my liberty, so I must don this raiment. Bissem turnkeys, giving land as a weregild—waylaying me from an audience with the Arxur!”

“Shut the fuck up, Loxsel. Nobody wants to hear your insane…just sit down, and be quiet! Some of us are serious about governing, and have actual concerns. I could be out looking for who attacked Ivrana, but I’ll never know stuck babysitting you and Tassi!”

“The Starlight Incident? I know who did it. That was the Farsul.”

I jumped in, not wanting Loxsel’s half-baked ramblings to have consequences for our Talsk refugees. “You’re just saying that because you don’t like the Farsul, for what they did to you. I understand that, but you can’t make accusations that aren’t true like that.”

“My unsullied heart would never lie! No, it’s true; the Farsul are behind it! I’ll speak plainly, since these brigands know little more language than the profane and the smashing of prey skulls! Hear me, hear me—who do you think the Sivkits got the location of our homeworld from? The Farsul know many things, verily so!”

Naltor pointed his beak at Loxsel. “Explain when you went to the Farsul, and what this has to do with the Starlight Incident. You couldn’t have gotten to Talsk undetected.”

“No, no, not those Farsul! The ignoramuses I’m encircled by…during the early days, there were debates about two things. How much history to preserve, when it came to the Federation’s mistakes, and whether to abide by omnivorous species. Some, the ones you found at the Archives, who won the helm of the actual government, believed that any records that could point to their past misdeeds—say, burning a whole planet—should be hidden. They left our entire sector, and…erased the exact location from their records.”

“Is this story going somewhere?” Zalk grunted.

“Yes! My stories go many places! There was another group of Farsul archivists that did not want to leave this sector for all eternity. They remained active in secret across the Orion Arm, and tried to destroy omnivorous and predator species before the main Farsul could find them. They have a base of operations, hiding and ready to pour forth. There’s a reason the Federation expanded so hurriedly! Their own brethren, working against them.”

Although Loxsel was not a credible source, I was taken aback by his claims. “You’re saying these splinter Farsul attacked us and maybe the Osirs?”

“Yes to you. I don’t know about the Osirs. The staging…not like them.”

“I applaud your wild imagination, Loxsel, but the ships that hit Ivrana were crewed by Gojids. Not clandestine Farsul.”

“They don’t do their own dirty work. They believe they are the true Federation, and tell others as much. They recruit many species to their cause, and the Gojids are one of the easier converts. Great Protector faith, strong exterminators: they attacked Earth as the first! Get a scout ship and give it to them, they get a little overzealous to kill the next Arxur. That’s how you have the Starlight Incident.”

“Do you have any proof of this tale?” Zalk’s eyes glowed with feisty wrath, having zero patience for being toyed with on this matter. I hoped Loxsel wasn’t spinning a yarn, for his sake. “The death of millions of Tseia will not be the subject of your meandering jokes.”

“Proof? I found Tinsas! Who do you think told me? The Farsul captured me years ago, when I was running away from a facility. Lots of Sivkit plays to read—wilderness theater, stuff the mainstream ones destroyed. I escaped, mind you, but only actually tried to do that after I ran out of plays to read. They let me go while laughing. Said I was a madman, nobody would believe me. Nobody, oh, woe is Loxsel!”

“So your own people don’t believe this ludicrous tale.”

“They didn’t believe me. I pestered them for years, and after dozens of predator disease accusations, I finally got them to look into Tinsas. They went to the Farsul base themselves, and saw its existence with their own eyes. That’s how I became the ambassador that bargained with the forever walkers to get our home back!”

“Why the fuck did the Grand Herd not deign to tell us or humanity any of this?” Naltor spat. “If this has any basis in truth, you knew who the ghost exterminators were all along. Humanity should…stop them! How do you know we aren’t fighting the Farsul zealots?”

“Because they wouldn’t besiege Talsk, regardless of their differences, and they don’t fight open wars. As for the bald primates, why should we expect them to handle these Farsul? They haven’t even been able to take Tinsas like we asked!”

I wasn’t sure what to make of Loxsel’s claim, but if the Sivkit Grand Herd had supposedly sought out this Farsul base and sourced Tinsas’ location from him…Zalk was not going to like the ghost exterminators still being out there. It would explain who funded lone ships to attack carnivores, without any record able to be uncovered by the SC’s investigation; there was no paper trail or resources diverted to these vessels’ constructions because it wasn’t done from within Federation territory. Naltor whispered to the Tseia not to raise our concerns now, given that Onso was mid-recap of the rod strategy that’d been rehashed a third time. With the Carnivore Alliance in full swing, we needed to keep an eye on how Kaisal’s ships performed; only afterward could we decide who to beseech for help in going after our bombers.

It’s hard to believe that Loxsel, of all people, knew the answer; that’s exactly what General Jones wanted us to discover, about how the Sivkits got their homeworld’s location. I wonder if the funny bunny was told it, or learned it from one of those old plays he read. Does it even make a difference?

“We’ll deal with you later,” Naltor spat. “You should’ve told us much sooner, Loxsel.”

The Sivkit scoffed. “I should’ve extricated more oranges as payment before telling you anything. This was propounded as charity, mainly because I need to reacquire more of the ancient plays to study with Tassi, not just the few I stole!”

“Not another word, or I will give you to a facility.”

I kicked the Selmer. “That’s too far, again. What has gotten into you? You’re prickly and irreverent with your snapbacks, but not usually cruel.”

General Naltor leaned against the railing, tension hardening his facial features. “It’s a lot different—less of a fun convention of military tactics—with us sending a few hundred of the newly-built Sivkit and Bissem ships to Aafa. We’re trying to grow our strength, and we could get fucked up the cloaca as much as the Krakotl’s new ships. To make it better, the people we’re supposed to defend Ivrana against are rogue Farsul. Why did we do the idealistic thing, helping the Kolshians when half the fucking SC bowed out?”

“Because we don’t want to see more senseless genocides. Us reporting to the humans’ calls for joint military defense makes them more likely to respond to ours. You know that.”

“I guess so, Tassi. I hope these ships are as resilient as we think, and that we don’t regret camping out with the SC’s formation instead of the Arxur Collective.”

“The SC aren’t happy about the Arxur being here. It’s probably a reason why many species didn’t send ships. Forty thousand of Kaisal’s ships are more than they would’ve gotten from the SC, and they’ll have much more…enthusiasm. They have a lot to prove.”

“They’re not the only ones. Nobody here will shed a tear if their ships fall, if ours succumb, or if Aafa itself is lost. That’s the reality.”

“The Zurulians would care.”

Naltor sighed. “I stand corrected. Let’s just hope this goes well, or I might pluck my feathers enough to be as bald as that nerd Dustin.”

There was a significant fighting force, with fifty thousand human, Yotul, and Venlil ships having relocated from Nishtal to Aafa; combined with the vessels that were already watching the Kolshian system, the big three had contributed seventy-five thousand drones to the defense. We’d seen what their forces were capable of when the entire SC rallied around them, adding their own strengths and numbers so that the primates and marsupials could run wild. While Onso’s words had bludgeoned some sense into the assembly, about the importance of stopping the attack before it turned toward one of our worlds, it hadn’t eased the bitterness toward the Kolshians. There were more than the few thousand combined vessels that showed up at Talsk, but the count was still only in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand.

That was with half of the Sapient Coalition refusing to show up at all, while the others may have participated because it was convenient after their dominant performance at Nishtal. Notable absences were the Mazics, who had never forgiven the attack on Khoa, and the Dossur repair vessels, who saw this as comeuppance for the months-long occupation of Mileau. Duerten Ambassador Korajan had offered to send ships to join the enemy assault; while he cackled like it was a joke, the facetious quip suggested ample hatred for Aafa. Two decades prior, the gray avians had wanted the world glassed for the shadow caste’s crimes against Kalqua, and the humans had barely kept them at bay. There was no indication that their people had forgiven the Kolshians at all.

“A hundred and thirty thousand of ours versus their standard hundred-fifty charge. That enemy count has been whittled down by a few thousand by the rods. We’re at a slight numerical disadvantage, but with the fortifications, superior technology, and home field advantage, I’d say we have a fighting chance,” Onso commented. “The moment of truth is how the Arxur hold up without an ambush on their side. That said, the scales are much more even than Talsk. It’s not quite Nishtal, but we had a margin for error there.”

Krakotl Ambassador Kelsel, much more light-hearted today than at the prior battle, gestured toward the screen. “After getting attacked, we couldn’t leave Nishtal undefended. Our ships may not have been the strongest, but we’re happy to support the SC with what can reasonably be given. It’s hard to believe our four thousand ships are almost a third of what the rest of you sent here.”

“It’s not hard to believe at all,” Naltor grumbled under his breath, too soft to be picked up outside of our box. “We sent more than some full members.”

While I remembered the earlier response to the Gojid representative, about each species’ data being transmitted to their generals, it was disconcerting to have no eyes on the Bissem fleet. All we had was a sweeping overview of the battlefield, as the Arxur stood defiant as far out as Caato; the ships carrying the massive sword-in-eye-socket banner had a death wish, in my view. The SC had pressed further out in their defensive position, not wanting the Collective to get run over, though they were ready to fall back at a moment’s notice. The exploding, magnetic barricades were primed, and perfect for the unique conditions found in the medium of space. Mines attracted straight to the enemy’s hull: their rousing success at Nishtal made the humans want to use them to start with a bang.

Some civilians were relocated to Aafa’s colonies, even though most of the dozens of settler worlds haven’t been occupied for years. Unwilling to keep watch over a sprawling empire, most of the Kolshians were relocated to a homeworld that became much more cramped. Only close-by colonies like Caato, which had to be rebuilt, remained active to deal with the overflow.

Naltor pulled up his own feed on a holopad, staring at the Bissem vessels’ progress live. Zalk diverted his attention to our movements as well. We’d tacked on our rendition of the harpoon railguns at the end of production, after seeing the humans and Yotul deploy them; it had proved a savvy addition. Though it was perhaps blasphemous, we’d combined elements of the enemy’s shielding with the SC’s defensive arsenal; we wanted our fleet kitted out with the full toolset. Liquid armor, magnetic and traditional shields, dust guns, and particle beams. I’d heard the Terrans “jack of all trades, master of none” saying, but spreading these tools throughout individual ships wasn’t our aim. We had the full package.

The Tseia’s sophisticated quantum computers, apparently derived from crashed rogue Farsul ships that developed away from the Orion Arm…had allowed us to have drones with sufficient decision-making power. Their directives bid them to glide in alongside the Technocracy, a gesture of our support for them. The Arxur were cresting toward the magnet barricades, threatening to leap over them and obstruct their angle. At the last second, after hearing the Terrans bark at them, Kaisal’s fleet turned back; the grays possessing drones must be a source of discomfort for the SC. There was no way to know for certain what their orders were, and if they’d fall in line. The magnets flipped on as the enemy line drew close enough, by the rocky backdrop of Caato.

The silent crackles of explosions, from ticking time-bombs that latched onto their targets, began the skirmish. Six figures of ships sat on each side, as the first scattering of debris lined the vast stars. Plasma and invisible particle beams were fired off in quantities that could only be digested by a quantum computer. Our drones were keeping up with the Yotul, as they cleared a path for Venlil scrappers. However, even hyper-aggressive ramming techniques weren’t enough to satiate Kaisal’s need for glory. The Collective brought forth their classic twin railguns, but with a new twist—one fired plasma, while the other used kinetics. Puncturing the hulls was easier said than done, but pumping out bullets at a blinding pace opened some chinks in the armor.

The Venlil scrappers poked into the chaos, as the enemy leaned heavily into particle beams; the Arxur did appear to have magnetic shielding, though that wasn’t foolproof. It could take only so much of a beating before the invisible ray cut through, and ripped hulls apart like a gutted fish. The Skalgans rammed a few hostiles with their detachable point; skewering a few bellies took the focus off the grays for a moment. The Collective seemed programmed for unthinking aggression, and continued hounding the enemies. They began succumbing more quickly as multiple foes ganged up on single ships, tearing through magnetic shielding much faster. The reptilians were not faring well.

Bissems, however, were getting good licks in from afar; harpoons, paired with using our own particle beams, let us connect our first few kills. General Naltor was watching with satisfaction, and I stole a peek at Ambassador Loxsel. The threat of a facility had rendered the Sivkit unusually quiet, but I noticed how delighted he looked by the carnage. Thousands fell on both sides; he seemed to cheer, as our vantage point drone was snuffed out by a missile it failed to dodge. The enemy had gone overboard with homing explosives, trying to force the Venlil and Arxur to backpedal. Mini-missile salvos tried to intercept warheads en route, or dealt small cuts to the enemy. The UN fired off their own surface-to-space projectiles from Caato, cluttering the scene even further.

Perhaps the humans didn’t move the point of engagement forward because of the Arxur, if they always planned to launch munitions from Caato. Or perhaps these were supposed to be a delaying or wounding tactic, but they were forced into a full clash instead.

Both sides’ beaks were bloodied, though the Sapient Coalition had the ultimate advantage of further defenses by Aafa. The outlook was optimistic, if we could keep up the pressure. I wished the Dossur were present, to restock munitions such as the magnetic barricades. The result could’ve been much more certain had all of our allies shown up just one more time. It was as this thought crossed my mind that a sudden horde of new ships blinked onto our screen, an unexpected arrival that left every representative scrambling for answers.