The Nature of Predators

Memory Transcription Subject: Taylor Trench, Human Colonist

Date [standardized human time]: December 22, 2160

Chills ran down my spine, just letting my mind run loose with the possibility that there were other survivors; there was no reasonable doubt that the war was a mistake, a senseless conflict, if humanity was on the other side too. We’d had zero chance of survival at the Battle of Earth, yet here they were: a Krakotl standing alongside a Terran, both sporting the garb of the United Nations. With all of the grief I’d felt for my homeworld, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were so many questions I wanted to enunciate, but a blankness filled me. All of the fight and adrenaline left my body in a single breath. I didn’t bother to rise from my knees, while the soldiers surrounded me. The aliens didn’t seem afraid of my predator eyes at all, even when they drew close; I thought they’d never let go of that phobia.

“The people we’ve been fighting the whole time are humans. Aw, dammit all,” Arjun grumbled.

I can agree with that. What does this even mean for me? I’ve wasted my life, and what do I do now: go home? Leave what we just built…and Gress…

Tears rolled down my cheeks, burning like acid. “Did Earth survive?”

“Yes. Give me that.” Arjun’s hand curled around the grenade, as my fingers slipped off of it. He reinserted the pin, but squeezed the lever nonetheless and dropped it into some sort of explosive container. “Cuff him. Someone check the bodies, see if any are alive. Name and rank?”

“Taylor Trench…Tellus militia.” I curled my lip at the stupid blue bird, as she chained my wrists together. “D-don’t have a rank since I left the…proper military.”

“Okay. Are we getting this sent back to the SC, Cala? They need to see this.”

The Krakotl nodded. “We are.”

“Good. I have a solid guess who Trench is, and we’ll check our records of who left there, but I want to hear him say it. How and when did you end up off of Earth?”

“October 2136, sir,” I stammered, feeling shock and rage at the cosmic irony of this all. “Before the attack. Ark Ship 3.”

“Okay. How the fuck did a few thousand humans starting from nothing get a fleet like this?”

“We…met t-the Krev. Other aliens. They have…wait.” A lightbulb flickered on in my brain, as I remember my fears about the aliens changing us into something unrecognizable. “Fucking prove that the Federation didn’t change you, like they did to the Sivkits. They’d never abide us being predators.”

“Back up. We ask the questions first,” Cala cawed, in a voice that stirred my intrinsic hatred for her kind. “You know about the Sivkits?”

“You know what was done to the Sivkits?! The Federation hid it all, and destroyed their homeworld.”

“We know everything the Farsul did. We found their record-keeping, but how could you know that, if you’re saying you didn’t even know Earth survived?”

“We f-found Sivkit bunkers. We only very recently realized we, um, settled their homeworld. Your turn. Prove they didn’t fucking change you! I won’t help those Federation pricks.”

Arjun picked up a stick of our beef jerky from the counter, unpeeled it, and bit down hard, staring at me as he chewed. He arched an eyebrow, as if asking whether I was satisfied; the herbivore squadmates didn’t flinch or act horrified at all, despite how monstrous they’d once made our diet out to be. The truly jaw-dropping moment was when the Krakotl snatched the rest from his grip, and shoved it down her beak. Since when did those extermination-happy birds who hated us for our culinary tastes consume predator food as well? I didn’t know what kind of Feddie Cala was, but I couldn’t deny that none of these prey animals acted like they were zombified by the founders. It seemed as if my species had emboldened them, and made them into actual people somehow, as opposed to the feckless cowards they’d been before.

How could we have convinced them to accept us? I still don’t know what the fuck happened, but…heavens, I hated them all so much. We thought aliens would never give us a chance, hid our faces, and all this time, it sounds like these people were living their lives! Normal and…happy! Why did I deserve to be excluded from that?

Arjun snapped his fingers, as I hung my head and wept with uncontrollable self-pity. “We’re not done with you. Do you have any idea the resources we’ve had to pull because of what you did? The clusterfuck that we’ll face when our allies find out it was humans launching a massive attack?”

“I’m sorry,” I gasped out. Allies. We have actual allies. “I—we—didn’t know. We were scared, and we didn’t want anyone to find us. They’d finish the job! You have to understand.”

“Tell me who the Krev are, and what that has to do with getting the ships like I asked you.”

“Green scaly mammals who think humans are…adorable, because they keep primates for pets?”

Arjun’s face was priceless. “I’m sorry, what?!”

“Yeah, the Feds killing humans was like someone gassing puppies. The Krev were upset. They have, uh, lots of ships and some allies. They heard the Federation’s broadcasts a century ago and tried to keep away from them, avoiding detection up until they met us. Their whole society was built on hiding from those monsters. It’s a long story, but they wanted to protect us and eliminate the Feds.”

“Okay, well there’s no sign of these aliens tagging along; I see only humans here. Is there anyone else on this ship?”

“Yes. The c-captain—”

“She just surrendered to our people. It seems she had a change of heart when she saw Arjun through some helmet camera,” Cala interrupted.

“Okay. And there’s…Gress. He’s a Krev; promise you won’t hurt him. I don’t care what you do to me.”

“As long as he doesn’t shoot at us, sure.”

“Y-yeah. Right. I threw him behind this bulkhead to save him. Let me signal to him?”

Arjun turned me around, holding onto my elbow. “Be my guest.”

I peered through the cylinder peephole, enough to see a despondent Gress curled into a ball. He thought I was dead, didn’t he? The Krev should’ve gone to hide, but it seemed as if his will had been sucked out of him. I related to the feeling, especially since he was the only reason I wasn’t totally breaking down. The United Nations’ soldier buddies were ready to lift their guns at a moment’s notice, so I knew I couldn’t have Gress appear threatening. He would surrender just like I had when he learned the truth; I imagined he’d be horrified to learn that the Consortium had been fighting the hairless primates. Right now, I had no idea what to feel either, but the realization that everything we’d done for the past few decades was useless: that would kick the scaly aliens in the groin too.

Shit, they’re already moving in to cut the electrical wiring beside the bulkhead. I have to ensure Gress doesn’t do anything stupid, like he did with Mafani.

I tapped the glass, and noticed a manic Gress swivel his handgun toward me like lightning; his eyes were wild and erratic. The Krev withdrew when he saw me, unmasked; he was shaking with relief that I was alive. Hindered by handcuffs, I tried to gesture to lower his gun, wishing he could hear words through the soundproof barrier. He looked confused at my sudden change of heart to surrender, and seemed to cue in on my distraught, barely-holding-myself together look. The grimace on his face was a skeptical one, as he tried to ask silent questions that I couldn’t explain without him seeing for himself. I did my best pleading expression, out of desperation. Gress couldn’t resist melty human eyes, so that might disarm him. The bulkhead began to unfurl, and I took the opportunity to shout at him.

“They are human! Stand down,” I barked in a hoarse voice.

The Krev’s nose wrinkled with further distrust, but the gun clattered reluctantly to the ground. His face took on an expression of shock as he saw Arjun herding me, along with a xeno contingent. The soldiers shouted at my beloved alien, who had turned his searching gaze toward me. I gave him a helpless shrug, asking all of the same questions with my erratic pupil movements. We’d shared the false belief of humanity’s extinction, and I wasn’t sure what this meant for our future. How did a society move on from structuring their entire existence around an erroneous idea? The Consortium’s entire policy had centered around hiding from the Federation, yet somehow, my own species had evaded their conversion process.

“No!” Gress whimpered, looking queasy and devastated at the mutilated corpses of the humans we’d been laughing with before all of this. I couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty not to be lying with them, after how much I’d ruined in this war; it should be me, executed for my wrongdoings. “I don’t want to see injuries like this. It’s…like the kits. So much blood. I don’t want to see it!”

“Look away, Gress.” I bit my cheek, forcing myself not to spiral into self-hatred at this moment. It would’ve hurt the Krev if I died; I’d seen how hopelessly he sobbed, and that wasn’t what I wanted for him. “We can’t do anything for them. We just have to figure out what’s going on. Stay strong, for our people.”

I didn’t know if it was too late to make peace, but the only thing keeping me sane was the idea I could try to make this right—allaying my mistakes. Had we crossed a line too great to forgive in attacking the Sivkits? After hearing about everything that was done to the Sivkit species, it was comforting to hear that Arjun was aware of the Federation’s crimes; their ideology was more hideous than even what we knew of when we left Earth. Given that the United Nations had acquired the Farsul’s records, they likely had accrued a lot more dirt on those bastards than we did. Maybe the preyfolk had broken free of what they were turned into. We could’ve known this much sooner if we accepted the hail, during that first incursion into our system.

Earth lives. None of us dared to dream or hope that. How much we must’ve missed out on, being able to extend our hands in true friendship.

“Are you with the Federation?” Gress blurted, as Arjun cuffed the dazed Krev.

The translator must’ve interfaced with my own, because the human seemed to understand. “No. The Federation collapsed twenty-three years ago, after losing the war to us. Humanity took over as one of the most politically and militarily powerful entities, ruling a new body called the Sapient Coalition.”

“You defeated the Federation? How?! You, the puffy-faced, adorable primate people…”

Cala trilled with laughter. “He thinks you’re adorable, Arjun. They talk about you like the internet talks about kittens. Who’s a cute little monke—”

“No. Shut up,” Arjun hissed, an unamused scowl on his face. “Is this how Krev handle all diplomatic first contacts?”

“Sorry. I’m not a diplomat. Just a professional human enjoyer, and uh…I thought of you as precious and lovable lifeforms that need protecting. But it’s true, you were only a new species. I can’t believe that we spent a hundred fucking years hiding from and preparing to face them, and you beat them as a new species inside a year. That’s just…pathetic of us, if we could’ve taken them. How the fuck did you manage it?”

“We gathered enough allies to defeat them, not just by convincing the galaxy that we were a good people, but also by exposing their lies and genoc—”

“Allies. The Arxur? Is that why they worked with you at Talsk; those monsters saved Earth?” I shrieked.

Cala tilted her head. “You drew the right conclusion, somehow, but your reasoning is off. Earth did survive because the Arxur came to bail out their fellow predators. They helped now, against you at Talsk, because they supplanted their government, after it came out Betterment colluded with the Feddies to starve them.”

“The grays got put in isolation by the SC for their crimes, but they grow…impatient,” Arjun sighed. “Their new leadership thought they could prove to us that they’re reformed by saving the Farsul. There’s a whole eugenics thing they did on their own people, but the Arxur weren’t always cartoonish monsters. Jury’s still out on whether they can be allowed into normal society.”

“You’re asking whether the people-eating monsters can be…that’s absurd!” Gress spat, staring at his claws the way he did during his worst flashbacks. “None of the enemies we thought we were fighting even exist anymore. You fixed it, and we…”

Cala parted her beak. “It’s not too late to seek peace. There have to be consequences for attacking civilians, but there doesn’t have to be any more bloodshed. There’s no reason for our sides to fight a war of extinction, and this at least gives an explanation for what you did. I’d know a thing or two about mitigating circumstances. You can help yourselves by helping us.”

“That’s right,” Arjun interjected, ambling up to the cargo elevator. “So keep talking. What are you transporting?”

“C-children,” I managed, which caused a darkness to flash across the human’s face.

“You’re fucking traffickers?!” His hands tightened around my vest, pushing me into the elevator with a newfound rage.

“What? No! I would never.” I shifted so my shoulder was touching Gress, as a squad of soldiers loaded into the lift. The platform began to lower before I could think how to explain our mission. “You know how we thought we were, um, a near-extinct species?”

Arjun bared his teeth, as the elevator lowered down into the cargo bay. “Get to the point.”

“We might’ve had the Krev and their allies grow millions of human babies in artificial wombs to replenish our numbers, and might’ve promised to let some xeno friends raise them for us?”

“Might?” Cala echoed.

“…yeah. About that.”

I stared with waiting eyes in the general direction, since the sight of our cargo would speak for itself. A stupefied Arjun, along with the rest of the Peacekeeper squad, gawked as the platform landed. His hands relinquished their death grip on my vest, instead flying to his head in horror. Covering the entire area from wall-to-wall were ectogenesis pods with human babies inside, who were due to be delivered to alien families on Tellus. While I’d thought repopulating our species was wonderful mere hours ago, now I wasn’t sure what would become of them. Would we leave them here with their alien adoptive families, since the rest of humanity was far away? Should the ark colonists also leave Tellus abandoned, regardless of what the Krev had done to build it up? I didn’t know if I could just go home, after living on this world for so long…

What even am I? An angry man who felt cheated out of a happy existence, and deluded himself into thinking he was protecting his species and the people he cares about. Arjun thinks this is stupid and inconvenient, like everything we did. We’re a loose end.

“Call the UN!” Arjun shook his head, unable to deal with what he was seeing. “This is…not what we expected at all.”

Cala fluttered her wings. “It’s being streamed back to the SC live. They’re seeing what we see.”

“Get someone on the line. They have a truckload of human babies; what do you even do with that?! We need the brass to tell us what the fuck to do about this, now.”

“Let’s keep our cools. They’ll be in touch when they make a decision, and there’s no need to rattle their cage. For now, we follow our orders. Take these two in, and secure this vessel.”

“We should contact our government first! Fix our comms, and let the captain send just a short video message,” Gress pleaded. “They need to know they’re fighting humans, because they don’t want to war with you. If we don’t contact them, they’ll send ships looking for us in a few hours.”

Arjun scoffed. “Not so fast. We’ve tried to talk to you for months! You wouldn’t pick up the phone. I don’t trust your government one bit, because I don’t know a thing about them.”

“Our government does suck, and some people are really gonna think they suck extra now, but they definitely don’t want to fight humans. The Consortium has tried to help rebuild the little they thought you have.”

“I don’t know who we’re dealing with, and what they’re capable of. We found a world that appeared to be orbitally bombarded, killing civilians and wiping out an entire civilization. It was staged to look like they killed themselves.” He turned a holopad around, showing us an image taken of sapient skeletal remains. “Do you happen to know anything about this species?”

I squinted at a decaying canid skull shape, with the unmistakable three tails. “Oh, the Jaslips? The Esquo Massacre?”

Gress winced. “Yeah, they’re not dead. They were just…moved, for being too close to the Federation as, uh, carnivores. The Consortium thought it was necessary to relocate them before they were discovered, and not all of them went before…well, you saw. A morally questionable decision that Jaslips don’t all like, and that I personally don’t like, but they’re very much alive.”

“Yeah. We served with a Jaslip named Quana. She doesn’t like the Krev or the Reskets—the nine-foot-tall birds that run the Consortium military, because of course they do.”

“These Reskets are the ones who attacked us?” Cala cued in on this side tangent, as Arjun had returned to staring with abject horror.

“Not fair to pin it on them. The Reskets have the top commanders and made the plans, but the whole Consortium authorized it. It was supposed to be a decapitation strike on the Federation.”

“We figured out that much. I can’t say I’d cry any tears for Nishtal, but trust me, the Krakotl have been kicked down enough.”

Gress’ thin tongue flitted out of his mouth. “Your people attacked Taylor. He fled his home when he was nine years old, and that’s all you have to say?! That the Krakotl—not humanity—have been kicked down enough?”

The blue avian sighed. “I am sorry. And I’m happy that, though the Terrans got knocked down, they picked themselves back up: stronger. There’s things I’ll tell you about my, um, people’s part in that, but not now. I’m sure this is all a shock, but you should be very proud of what humanity overcame. My opinion is that you should be allowed to tell your settlers that much. That’s reason to hope, and to believe we can all move past this.”

“Move past this? This is a fiasco of epic proportions. After all that work to save the Osirs, it was for what?” Arjun huffed.

“Osirs?” I echoed.

“When we found that dead Jaslip world, let’s say we…might have tried to resurrect millions of them with artificial births as well.”

Gress blinked in shock, like a glass of water had been thrown in his face. “You what?! There’s millions of babies on both sides—”

“Of species that aren’t actually staring down extinction,” I finished, numbly pronouncing the words without comprehending them.

Arjun issued a flustered breath. “Yep. God knows what happens to them now. Who knows what happens to any of us now? Humans launching a revenge attack for Earth is going to burn some goodwill with those who see it as ruthless vengeance—”

“—and humans defeating the Federation twenty-three years ago, as a novel species, will make the Jaslips want to torch the Consortium. Though I’d be a lot less sad to see them do it than I think you’d feel over your government being taken down,” Gress growled.

“What a mess. Taylor, if you really want to help sort any of this out, you’re going to walk quietly back to the ship and state your agreement to a memory scan. We want to know everything you’ve done and know, and it’s hard to explain how the device mind reads, but this technology lets us see what’s in your head.”

I nodded. “The Consortium does brain scans. I understand. Gress and I will cooperate however we can. Trust me, this isn’t what we thought we were fighting for. He knows a lot, and you can see how much he cares for us.”

“We don’t have the neural data to interpret Gress’ scans, but obviously we are quite familiar with the human mind. I guess the one silver lining is our brain scans will work right away; we can have all of the answers today. I hope that’ll put this ridiculous war to bed.”

“I do too. I just want to…exist.”

After being reunited with my people, who were the very enemy we’d been trying to destroy in a war, I wasn’t sure what it meant to be loyal to humanity anymore. Nothing was certain for the Krev Consortium going forward, and I had to find a way to cope with the bedrock of my life going up in smoke. Maybe being a prisoner of war was exactly where I deserved to be.