Grass Eaters 2 | 64 | Ghost Fleet VI

ZNS 2239, Saturn (6 Ls)

POV: Tvadnek, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Nine Whiskers)

Negotiations? Now?

Servants of the Prophecy were not above using trickery and playing predators’ disunity and greed against each other. Intrigued at the opportunity and recalling his briefings about the internal political strife of the Great Predators, Tvadnek ordered, “Put them on the screen.”

The revolting image of one of the Great Predators showed up on his screen. It showed all its teeth at him. Tvadnek was unfazed at the predatory threat display. “What do you want, abomination?”

The creature on his screen recoiled in mock horror. “Wow, that’s rude, Mr. Bunny No-Manners. And not very diplomatic of you. Barely one sentence in, and you guys have confirmed you are exactly what the Reps say you are.”

“I don’t care about your internal politics, predator,” Tvadnek snapped. “What is your rank, and what do you want to negotiate about?”

“No rank,” the creature said, pointing at its dirty clothing. If that ugly rag it was wrapped in could be called clothing. “Oh-ho-ho. Look, no uniform. I’m what the Reps call a civvie — until it’s convenient for me, of course. We did participate in hostilities — oops — but hey, none of us signed no Geneva Conventions, which don’t even apply to you even if we—”

Tvadnek ignored the insane rambling. “Is your entire species as boring as you are, or are you just a defective specimen? Get to the point!”

The predator showed even more of its teeth at the insult. “No problem, my friend. We can be direct. We’re just calling because we have a couple thousand of your people ejected from your squadron of ships who wandered into the wrong neighborhood. So… you’re going to want to listen to me very carefully or something terrible might happen to our new guests.”

“Their lives were forfeited to the Prophecy the day they left the hatchling pools,” Tvadnek recited defiantly.

“Huh. Apparently, your brainwashing is worse than the Republic education system. All your people repeat that crap,” the predator commented. “So… you aren’t interested in getting them back?”

Tvadnek thought quickly, and his eyes lit up. This idiotic specimen seemed gullible enough… “No, no, I’m interested. We’ll allow you to live if you give our people back. That is what you want, right?”

The creature opened its mouth and began to make a repeated hyuk-ing sound. Tvadnek was once again glad for his training and experience in deciphering predator body language. This one was near-universal.

Predator laughter.

“No deal, alien meanie. We’re interested in your ships. You see… after we beat you guys here, we’re getting out of here and getting our own star system. We want three of your squadrons, just as a prize so we can have our own real Navy. Nothing fancy. Just three squadrons. Thirty-six interstellar ships. Leave them aside for us, and we’ll give your people back. Isn’t that a fair deal?”

“That is not even remotely a reasonable deal,” Tvadnek complained.

“Sorry, but I can’t go any lower than that, my friend.”

“I am not your friend.”

“Then you don’t get the friends and family discount.”

“Stop wasting my time, then.” Tvadnek sighed. “How many ships is it without the… discount?”

“It’s also three squadrons, but your crews might be missing a few things when they get back. So… what do you say, mister?”

Tvadnek imitated its laughing sound in mocking. “Hyuk hyuk hyuk! No! Stupid predator! We will not give up our ships! If you do not give our people back, we will find you—”

“You drive a hard bargain, bunny rabbit, but I’m afraid I can’t budge on the price of admission. If you don’t want to pay, you have to get out of here. The Free Zone is ours… until we beat you and get our own star system anyway. Those are the rules.”

Tvadnek pretended to think for a second before he replied. He had plenty of hard-earned experience dealing with predator threats and their pitiful attempts at blackmail from his time at war against the Slow Predators and the Lesser Predators. “No, and whatever you do to our prisoners, we will do the same to your people. Unlike your people, we do not have your—”

“Ah, ah, ah. Wait a minute. Thank you for reminding me, mister. Somehow— somehow I knew you might need a liiiiiiiitle bit of persuading,” the predator said, flashing its teeth at him again. It made a paw— hand signal towards one of its compatriots off-screen. “Good thing I brought some props here for a quick demonstration.”

On the screen, they wheeled in one of his captains, an immobilized eight whiskers, tied up by all her limbs on a metal pole, screaming and spitting at the predators. “Get away from me! Let me go! May your eggs rot—”

Crunch.

Her angry cursing was broken off by one of the predators casually snapping her right arm-bone with a sickening noise.

She screamed in pain.

As Tvadnek seethed, the predator grabbed a handful of the Znosian officer’s uniform to read her insignia over the screeching. “Eight lines, I assume for… eight whiskers? I do like your ranking system. Much less confusing than the Reps. Really makes it convenient for us when sorting. Hey, Charlize, come give me a hand.”

Another predator came onscreen wheeling a tray of some kind. Off it, it grabbed a small container of some kind of dark-colored viscous liquid and began pouring it all over the screeching eight whiskers.

Seemingly aware of her fate, the eight whiskers dropped her brave façade, praying as she cried, “My eternal gratitude to… sob… the Prophecy for this insignificant life of service. May It prevail through the will of others, and may the service of Its faithful and… sob… and worthy Servants bring about Its coming. For Its glorious purpose, our lives were… sob… forfeited to the Prophecy the day— yowwwwwwwww!”

Hissssssssssss.

Tvadnek watched in horror as they quickly undressed and then dangled his subordinate over a metal grill with a roaring fire burning under it. Without ceremony, they set the eight whiskers straight down on the metal grill, the flesh on her back sizzling as she shrieked and sobbed in agony. One of the predators excitedly pressed her down even harder on the hot metal, further increasing the hissing on the grill and the poor captain’s screams. It took almost three minutes for her to finally lose consciousness from the excruciating torture and to stop making sounds, her chest still and her flesh now smoking a different color on the metal grill.

After another few minutes, the cursed predator came back onto the screen, holding a set of small but sharp-looking metallic utensils. To the continued revulsion of the 2239 bridge crew, it excitedly… cut two chunks out of the unevenly cooked flesh on her back, peeled off the fur and skin in one swift go, then crammed the remainder in between two pieces of… porous, ground particles and what looked like… pieces of red and green vegetation?

It stuffed the contraption featuring the flesh of their former captain into its ugly predator snout and began to chew, seemingly in complete enjoyment at the irrational atrocity it just committed in front of the now-silent 2239 bridge.

“Not too bad,” it commented nonchalantly as it winked at the screen. “Tastes just like chicken. Chicken burger. Hey, I think I might be the first human in history to taste Znosian. Yo, Charlize, I bet we could make a killing just breeding and selling these guys for meat. There’s just— there’s a little something off about the taste though.”

A higher pitch voice filtered in from off-screen, “Yeah. I think you’re supposed to skin and dress it before you cook it on the grill, idiot.”

“Well, how am I supposed to know?! We don’t get a whole lot of fresh game around here. Does anyone know how— never mind. This is just fine.” Finishing what it held in its hands, the abomination licked its lips and then fingers to get the remaining pieces of flesh into its hideous maw, careful not to miss anything.

The psychotic look of enjoyment on its face…

Tvadnek had been briefed on the predators’ new ruses. Their proficiency with faking radio transmissions. Videos, even.

There was no faking this. No way.

As one of its senior commanders, Nine Whiskers Tvadnek had been in the Znosian Dominion Navy for more than a decade. He had seen death. He had seen war. He had seen atrocities, participating in some of them himself. He had seen the camps in which his people put captive predators to work and then to death.

He had not seen this before.

Not like this.

In the worst horrors of this war, in those camps, the Lesser Predators and Slow Predators were sometimes so desperately hungry they’d be willing to kill and eat guards or each other for food. But it was usually the dead, and it was never something they actually enjoyed doing. Never.

Nine Whiskers Tvadnek was a borderline outlier, an almost-independently-thinking Znosian. Despite what State Security propaganda insisted, he knew that the predators always understood that there was something wrong… something deeply indecent about killing and eating another live, intelligent creature. The innate empathy and restrictive morality he’d come to expect from them…

He looked back at the monster on the screen.

There was none of that here. Not a shred of it.

The realization triggered something unpleasant — something primitive — within him: fear of predators. He had been taught that State Security had successfully bred that useless instinct out of the entire species many centuries ago. And as he looked into the nightmare on the camera, he knew in his heart that had been another one of their many lies.

Hurrrrrrrr-blaaaaaaaaargh.

Tvadnek’s subordinates didn’t manage to keep the decorum and professionalism he did. Two of his junior officers hurled the contents of their stomachs onto the bridge floor. And from the smell, one of the navigation officers appeared to have soiled herself. She excused herself as she left the bridge to go clean up.

The predator tore one of his former subordinate’s leg off from her corpse with another disgusting snap. After peeling off some of the fur still stuck to the skin, it paused to look back at the camera, staring straight into Tvadnek’s eyes as it bit into what was still alive minutes ago with its sharp canines. In between its bites, the sinister creature gestured to one of its people next to it with the half-eaten leg bone of his former captain. “Bring the next one up, and send the rabbit roast down to the kitchen. We’re eating good the next couple weeks.”

They rolled out and “prepared” one of his battlegroup’s tied-up six whiskers computer officers in full view of the camera — this one now crying, begging for his life… or at least a less painful death.

No such luck.

Snap. Crunch. Hissssssssssss.

The predator continued its death stare into the camera without blinking as the ear-splitting screams continued in the grotesque video behind him. “Let me make one thing very clear, asshole. In case you didn’t understand, this was a message for you. We are not the Reps. We are not the puppies or teddy bears you kick around for sport. As you said, you wanna do the same to our prisoners when we’re done here? Go right on ahead. Don’t let me stop you.”

Tvadnek said nothing, only stared emptily into the screen. It was taking all of his training and breeding to keep his whiskers from trembling.

“No? What’s the matter? Oh, what’s that you say? No appetite? Not so hungry any more? Did my poor wittle wabbits have too much to eat for bwunch?” The savage predator stared unblinkingly into the screen with both of its forward-facing eyes as its mouth formed an angry snarl. “Nothing? Then get the fuck out of our Free Zone… Vive la Résistance!”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Atlas Naval Command, Luna

POV: Amelia Waters, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Fleet Admiral)

“What in the…”

“Holy shit…”

“That’s— that’s— What the fuck?”

Amelia tried her best to ignore the gasps and murmurs in the command room and sighed. “Who is that nutjob?”

Samantha shrugged. “Some psycho in one of their independent Resistance cells, I guess. We didn’t have a file on him; we do now. This— is this against— against the rules?”

“Yes! Of course! And I don’t care if they say laws of war don’t apply to the aliens!” Amelia exclaimed. “The Buns might do this to any of our people they might capture later! I don’t want to give them any ideas! And… if we had any chance of getting any of them to willingly surrender before we wipe them to the last, we can forget that now…”

“Not like we can call up the terrorists and tell them to stop doing this. Tigers changing stripes and all. The Ace of Clubs will probably laugh in your face if you complain to her about this.”

“How many Bun prisoners do they actually have?” Amelia asked, exasperated.

“They picked up all the ejected lifepods — every single one. I’ve never seen them follow those rules of war so diligently. He was probably exaggerating a bit to the Buns, but yeah, at least a thousand of the Znosian spacers… maybe more,” Samantha said as she counted on her screen.

“Are— are they still broadcasting this— this snuff film?”

“Yup, to all the Bun ships in the Red Zone,” Samantha replied. “The video feed is still live. And uh… hm… there’s more.”

“More?” Amelia asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.

“Yeah… apparently, a couple other Resistance cells near them decided they wanted to be movie stars too. They’re doing essentially the same thing, except one of them is organizing some kind of macabre gameshow for the captives. I think one of the streams out of Titan is probably a fake generated video; not because they’re above doing this, but because we’re pretty sure they didn’t get to any of the life pods…”

“And the Buns? They’re just letting it all play?”

“The Resistance cells have a hopper relay intelligence program going, one of those that gave us so much trouble finding them. The Buns are shooting up random rocks in the Saturnian rings from afar, but they’re never going to find these cretins. Should we… get our offensive mission intelligence to trace and shut them down?”

Amelia could only shake her head speechlessly.

“And I think it’s working,” Samantha remarked in surprise as her head turned to glance at the latest report. “At least two of their squadron leaders— they’re holding back and requesting clarification — excuses. Nine Whiskers Tvadnek is screaming at them on the radio. His own squadron is— it’s blundering right along into the Ace’s trap. And the parasite fighters are coasting in with the distraction… I think— I think they might actually have it.”

“Alright, that’s enough. And no, that is a line we are not crossing. Not today. Not any day. Those idiots out there deserve each other. I’m done worrying about the Red Zone. How is the Martian defense doing?”

“Znosian Battlegroup Dwarf is arriving in the Samar Defense Zone in two hours. Peacekeeper Squadron 8 is ready for tasking.”

“Twenty-four enemy squadrons, eh?”

“Yes, Admiral. Under a Nine Whiskers Vdrojert.”

“Has Logistics Command completed the evacuation of Deimos and Phobos?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Time to open the fifth seal of Revelations.”

“The… souls crying out from under the altar?” Samantha asked with a confused expression as she checked her tablet.

“The souls… what? No. The silence in heaven thing.”

“Oh, I think that’s the… seventh seal.”

“Close enough.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Meta

Geneva Convention III (1949), Article 13:

Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention. In particular, no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind…