Grass Eaters 2 | 3 | Familiarization

Shuttle Oathkeeper-32, Malgeiru (2,000 Ls)

POV: Eupprio, Malgeir (Civilian)

Eupprio more closely observed the platoon of Terrans bantering with each other as the shuttle headed into blink. All of them were wearing matching sets of bulky armor and keeping their helmets within arm’s reach, even within the hulls of their shuttle. A couple of them had their translators off, speaking in a smooth-flowing alien language. In the corner, one of them was feeding herself from a bag of delicious-smelling treats, the scent wafting through the cabin and teasing Eupprio's senses.

She noticed their leader was staring at her with both of her forward-facing eyes. “Enjoying the circus, Pupper?” she asked.

“Just not used to seeing so many aliens in one place,” Eupprio replied, flashing a warm smile back at her. “We have some Granti where I’m from, a couple of Schpriss at my company. But never so many in one place.”

“Better get used to it quick then,” the squad leader chuckled. “Not a whole lot of non-Terrans in Sol yet.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard.”

The Terran hurried to explain. “Not because we aren’t a welcoming bunch—”

“No, no. I get it. The war,” Eupprio said, her shrug rippling through her fur. “What are your names?”

The Terran woman grinned and tapped the chest of her armor where something was written in Terran script. “Naser. Aida Naser.” She gestured towards the man beside her, “And this is Abe.”

“Nice to meet you, Eupprio,” Abe said, holding out his hand for her paw to shake, a ritual that she’d been briefed on before and performed effortlessly with grace.

Eupprio pointed a claw at the distinctive orange-black circular insignia adorning the Terran's shoulder. “That’s a new one to me. Never seen that one before.”

“Ah, you’re probably used to the Republic flag insignia. We’re not part of the Navy or the Marines,” Aida said. “We are—”

“Mercs,” Abe interrupted her, grinning unabashed. “Space mercenaries.”

Aida shot him a playful, chiding wag of her finger. “What did I tell you? We don’t use that word here in front of guests.” She turned to face Eupprio. “We’re contractors. Private security consultants. The outfit we belong to is called Interstellar Enterprises, but everyone just calls us Black Hole Sun,” Aida said, pointing at the insignia on her shoulder.

“I’m sure there’s a fun story behind that,” Eupprio commented politely.

“Nah,” Abe said, his smile fading. “The opposite of fun. That was the original name of the outfit. A few of our guys went postal and shot up a civvie station in the Red Zone. Killed a bunch of innocent people. That was bad for business, so the higher ups changed our names. Nobody’s fooled though.”

Eupprio struggled to keep the fur on the back of her spine from rising. “This… do you know the people—”

“The guys who went nuts? Nah, that was like twenty years ago. One of them killed himself and the rest are all in prison for life now,” Aida reassured her. “I promise we’re not them. We’re a pretty big outfit: twice as many people deployed in the Saturn Red Zone as the Terran Marines do.”

She forcibly eased the tension from her shoulders and asked, “Why is that?”

Aida shrugged casually. “Republic doesn’t like it when Marines die on the frontpage news, but the situation there isn’t going to stabilize itself, so they put us in instead. We do pretty much the same job. Most of us are ex-Marines anyway. Except Abe, he was a fancy Navy pilot. Pay is better than the service though.”

Abe interjected, “Pay is better. Hours are better. Big fat bonuses. You can get in and out whenever you want.”

“Yeah, but if shit goes down,” Aida said, “We’re the ones getting shot at first and blamed if it goes bad. At least it hasn’t been so bad the last couple years with the planet alignment the way they are. So… you know, pros and cons.”

“Fascinating,” Fleguipu remarked from besides Eupprio. “You really would go to war for mere credits?”

“We don’t make those decisions, ma’am,” Aida replied, then chuckled. “We merely profit from them.”

“And there's an old Terran saying,” Abe added with a sly grin, “If you're good at something, never do it for free.”

Eupprio’s curiosity shifted to the bulky firearm attached to Aida’s hip. “What about equipment? Who pays for that?”

“Taxpayers, usually. The fun jobs are cost-plus contracts, so we just tally up our loadout and charge it to the Republic,” Aida said, deftly unholstering her sidearm. “You like mine? Latest model Hyperion-30, EVA-rated.”

With practiced ease, she ejected the magazine, double-checked its emptiness, directed the barrel floorward, and squeezed the trigger, eliciting a dry click. Safeing the weapon, she offered it to Eupprio, grip first.

Eupprio’s eyes went wide, gingerly cradling the cold weapon in her paws. It was heavier and more stable than its sleep design implied. “I’ve never used something like this before. How does it work?”

“How does it work?” Aida echoed. “Point and shoot. Here, I’ll show you. If flyboy Abe here can learn to use one, anyone can.”

Abe threw her a dirty look and a hostile-looking gesture.

Aida leaned in to Eupprio, pointing at the base of the weapon. “That’s the grip. Try to wrap your hands— paws around that.”

Eupprio grappled with the unfamiliar shape of the firearm which was evidently not designed for her physiology. After some fiddling, she managed to secure a grip, albeit an awkward one.

“Alright, good, keep your trigger… claw out of this hole before you want to fire,” Aida instructed. “Now, point it straight in front of you.”

Eupprio aimed the barrel at the row of Terrans on the other side of the shuttle, closing one of her eyes like she’d seen in movies before.

“Nah, keep both your eyes open. Now, on the side of the gun, there’s the safety. Flip it up with your claw.”

She fumbled around the side of the weapon with her second claw until she found the switch. She applied pressure to it until it clicked audibly. She blinked in surprise as a holographic interface snapped up in front of her face. Blue outlines encapsulated each of the Terran contractors across the shuttle cargo bay, save for one, framed in an alarming shade of red.

“Red means dead. When you pull the trigger, the gun finds the target you’re aiming at, guides the barrel towards it with the built-in inertial compensator, and blows their brains out. Or it snaps to whichever body part is exposed, if they’re in cover. Or the thinnest part of the cover, if nothing is exposed.”

Eupprio hastily moved her claw away from the trigger assembly. “That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s about it. Nothing complicated about it. There’s also an option to select multiple targets and fire in automatic, but don’t worry, you probably won’t ever need to use one of these. If you do, both us and whoever is trying to kill you have done our jobs very, very poorly.”

Fleguipu looked at it interestedly. “How much would it cost to buy one of these off you? We’ve got some Republic credits.”

“Nah, tempting as it is. No weapons for you Puppers,” Aida replied, sighing a mix of temptation and duty. “They might take you shooting on Mars if you ask, but you’re not allowed to take one of these out of Sol. So don’t try to visit a gift shop on the way out, either.”

“They’ll know?” Fleguipu asked, sounding slightly disappointed.

Eupprio knew what her friend was doing and she approved of the quick-thinking. Something like this would probably sell for quite a bit back in the Federation. Or maybe she was planning to have the engineers in the company’s new arms design division try to copy it—

“They always know.”

---

Raytech — Olympus Campus, Mars

POV: Martina Wright, Terran (Civilian)

Martina Wright, high-level executive at Raytech Corporation, held the artificial smile on her face until the representative for the shady “security services corporation” exited her office and the door closed. She knew they were a shell company fronting for one of those Titan smuggler gangs, but hell, they had credits and she had mid-21st century “mining radars” to sell. At least they weren’t the terrorism-inclined Saturnian Resistance Navy; those sanctions on them were airtight.

“What next, toaster?” she asked into thin air, glancing to look towards the answer from her corneal implant at the bottom edge of her vision.

Meeting in 28 minutes: CSMC R&D.

Ceres Ship Manufacturing Corporation, Research and Development division. They were big on acronyms on Ceres, not so big on subtlety.

Martina frowned. “They’re still having trouble with the experimental EW profiles we sent over last week?”

No. They integrated those successfully on Monday. This meeting, they have two items on the agenda. First, they plan to make you a personal offer.

“A personal offer, huh? How much are they offering to pay me to switch teams this time?”

Not enough.

“Too bad. Any chance I can leverage that into a raise?”

Slim but yes. About the same odds as being struck by lightning in the atmosphere of Jupiter.

“That’s… not too bad, right? File it with the board. Maybe they’ll—”

Done. Pay raise request rejected by board assistant.

“Darn, too bad. What about—”

Four additional paid vacation days approved and added to your calendar.

“Cool, I want to go see him on leave—”

Coordinating with his scheduler program… done. Tickets booked.

“Nice. You said that was the first thing. What else did CSMC want to talk about?”

Iris Engine Joint Project. They seem to have hit a wall on one of their sub-projects.

“What’s wrong?”

Unclear. Our sources suggest they’re having issues with Znosian computers.

“What? Didn’t we agree to just rip the Bunny trash out of those ships and put our own in?”

Yes. I can see no rational reason why they would be having these issues.

She thought for a moment, then smiled in understanding. “Ah, they’re trying to reverse engineer and clone the Znosian combat algorithms, aren’t they?”

That is… a possibility I ignored. The tactical and strategic capabilities of Znosian combat algorithms are… unsophisticated. Very. Unsophisticated.

Martina thought she detected a generous helping of contempt in the pauses in her implant’s output.

She smiled, “Relax, tin can, we’re not replacing your digital friends at Atlas Command just yet. They’re probably just trying to emulate it in our own programs so they can better model Bunny behavior in battle planning.”

That… may work.

“See? Another reason they have us smarty-pants humans running things. What would CSMC need from us?”

Manuals. Navy reconnaissance footage. Access to Malgeir fleet black box data.

“Fine, we’ll get those to them. The last one might take a couple weeks… Converting currency is such a bitch, and their officials only take their funny money for bribes.”

Actually, there might be an easier way: one of our local contractors may have access.

“Which one?”

Eupprio Tech, Fifth Fleet sensors upgrade project. CEO is on her way to Sol. ETA about six days.

“Convenient. Is she as uh… flexible with ethics as the other Puppers we work with on these things?”

More so than usual.

“Excellent. Schedule the meeting.”

I have a question: why are we helping CSMC with this project? Can we not simply—

“Sure, we can just try to beat them to it. I’m sure the engineers down at R&D made a dump of those computers before the Navy made us hand them over to the other companies to take a swing at it too. But it’s a lot of work to invest and I’m not sure I believe in the concept. Non-deterministic, doesn’t account for their high-level commanders who ignore the algorithms, and we’ve already got a pretty good model ourselves from observing them. Revealed behavior versus theoretical behavior, I think our computers win every time.”

So you do admit it was a bad idea that I correctly discarded.

“Ah, but see… Just because we shouldn’t do it doesn’t mean we can’t make a little money off CSMC’s hubris. And who knows, maybe they do find a breakthrough early. They do have a lot of modeling experience over there.”

Fine. Agreed.

“Well?”

Aligned intent with their assistant. Agreed to data exchange. Meeting objectives accomplished. Meeting cancellation request processed. Next meeting… 3.5 hours.

“Sweet,” Martina grinned, kicking off her shoes and settling into her office couch for a power nap. “Wake me up in an hour or if the office catches fire.”

Wait. One more thing: there is the matter of payment for our help with CSMC.

She opened her eyes in slight annoyance. “Calculate the value and piggyback it onto… whichever one of our contracts needs it for the tax credit… thing. Whatever. Work it out with their assistant.”

Already done.

“Nobody likes a show-off, toaster.”

Have a good nap, inefficient meatbag.