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Grass Eaters 3 | 104 | Pax Galactica I
🕑 Added 2025-06-23 15:47:01 +0000 UTC7 years after Armistice
V-Z Day
“Quick! Quick! Get in here!”
“Did you get everything I requested on the list?” Krelnos demanded.
“Just… get in here off the streets, officer!”
“Fine. Fine,” Krelnos huffed as she allowed the shorter Znosian to lead her into his burrow. It was a cozy home. Utilitarian.
He closed and locked the door behind her and sighed in relief. “They have eyes and ears everywhere, Officer Krelnos.”
Krelnos rolled her eyes. “Officer Gluknitz, I have been doing this for a long time. Just because I was mostly bred to do administrative tasks doesn’t mean I don’t understand how this works.”
And that had been her job a long time ago. It felt like a lifetime ago. She was the administrative State Security governor for Grantor City until the planet fell to schismatics. She was given explicit orders not to evacuate, to fight to the very end.
Krelnos tried. She really did. But the predators found her. One stun grenade to her hideout burrow, and bang. Next thing she knew, she woke up in an offworld interrogation facility run by Terrans.
That saved her life. If she’d been captured by some rank-and-file Granti Underground cell fighter, she’d have been eaten for sure. Instead, her captors just asked her a bunch of questions, determined that she was worthless to them (that was almost worse than if they’d endlessly tortured her), and then unceremoniously deported her from their territory. They dumped her, and a few thousands of her fellow prisoners, at the edge of a border system. Then, they wiped their hands clean and left before a Dominion Navy patrol arrived to retrieve and debrief them.
That was how former Grantor Security Station chief Krelnos made her way back to the Dominion. She immediately reported for duty, as she was required to do, and somehow — either nobody told Director Svatken she was back or she had something more important to deal with — she wasn’t immediately recycled. Krelnos worked as an aide to a planetary governor, and using her influence there, she slowly made her way back to Znos, until an administrative position opened up for her on a major fuel depot over Znos-6.
Then, the schismatics came.
One moment, there was a schism attempt in the outer system, within the mining colonies on the surface of Znos-9. The next, there were enemy ships in the home system. They blitzed their way through. After the enemy fleet arrived in system, all FTL radio traffic in the system was jammed, partially by the Dominion and partially the schismatics. By the time full communication in the system was restored two weeks later, the home world had fallen.
Znos-4. The home planet of the Znosian people. Taken. Taken in two weeks. The fighting wasn’t over immediately. A planet didn’t just fall. The full planetary invasion and cleanup took months more. And there were still holdout troops hiding in underground burrows in Znos-4-B and parts of Znos-7. But with the schismatic fleet over the planet, it was a matter of time. After Znos fell, the other Dominion star systems fell like dominoes. It took another year and a half, but their fates had been sealed when the squadrons from the last Grand Fleet were broken or joined the Free Znosian Navy at Znos-9.
When they were done, the schismatics came to everyone with an offer: amnesty. Anyone who took full responsibility for their crimes under the Dominion could be eligible for absolution. There were various levels of punishment for this assignment of responsibility, but in general, they insisted that bloodline pruning was off the table. All they needed to do was pledge to serve their new Free Znosian States, so that the species could begin to heal from the terrible schism. Or so they said.
Krelnos took the amnesty. Or at least she pretended to.
She told them what they wanted to hear. That she did terrible things in the name of Dominion State Security. That she was taught a false lie. That she was misguided. That she was not political; she merely did her duty in a complex system where the crimes were abstracted from her decisions. That she was now a changed person, ready to work with the new administration for a brighter future for the Znosian people, blah blah blah…
Whether they believed her, they processed her crimes, directed her to continue to serve in her managerial position on Znos-6, and considered her file closed.
But they didn’t know her. They didn’t know what was inside her mind. They couldn’t.
Krelnos was still loyal.
Like many others in the Dominion, she believed in what it was doing before the schismatics came and ruined it all. She found others who believed in the same thing, like Officer Gluknitz. And many others. The schismatics would one day be defeated, and the Dominion would rise again.
That day… was today.
She looked at the slightly dimwitted former political officer (he was now ostensibly an armory inspector), trying to keep the contempt from her face as he droned on about how much work he had to do just to procure the few items she wanted.
“Do you have my package or not, Gluknitz?”
He almost looked offended. “Of course, Officer Krelnos! Like I said, it wasn’t easy, hiding it all from—”
“Good. We must act swiftly. This is a period of instability and transition. We have maximum flexibility. If we can show the people the treachery of the schismatics, we will initiate a popular and potent uprising against them.”
Gluknitz nodded eagerly as he scratched his nose. “What’s our plan? The traitors are going up into orbit, even as we speak. Once they return, they will announce the news.”
“Yes. They will announce it to everyone once they return to the ground. In their hideous new capital. We will travel there. And at the moment they reveal their ultimate treachery to our people, that is when we will strike.”
“Ah, that is why you needed me to get you the explosives and rifles,” he said, looking down at his paws.
Krelnos tried not to roll her eyes. Gluknitz was slow on the uptake, but at least he got there. “Yes. Are you ready to leave? Come on! We only have a few hours to scout for a good position for our fighters.”
“Yes. There is just one more question I have.”
She sighed in impatience. “What is it?”
“How many fighters have you gathered?”
“Thirty. Just our combat cell. But once we get the uprising started, more will join. When we kill the planetary governors as the broadcast is ongoing, our people will see. And they will realize the truth, the weakness of their so-called free society and—” Krelnos stared at Gluknitz, who was looking intently down at his paws once more. “What’s wrong, Gluknitz?”
“No— nothing.”
“Wait. What’s that on your paw?” Krelnos asked, alarmed, as she saw his eyes flutter down to his paws yet again.
His eyes refused to meet hers. “Oh, sometimes I just write things down on my paws, just so I don’t forget— Hey! No!”
She snatched his right paw and examined the scribbles on it.
Ask how many fighters, who else, what time.
“What is this?” Krelnos demanded, her heart skipping a beat. “Who told you to write this on—”
“That… would be me,” a voice appeared from behind her as she felt a pair of meaty predator paws grip her shoulders.
“Waaaaah!”
Thump.
Krelnos fainted.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
When she came to, Krelnos was sat at a desk, opposite of two larger predators.
Humans. Two of them. One male, one female. They didn’t even bother to put restraints on her.
“Who are you, and what are you barbarians doing in our territory?!” she asked as she wiped the drool off her snout.
The female one smiled. “To accept your people’s unconditional surrender, of course. Or did you forget? Big day today. It’s the ceremony. Your leaders are going up to the TRNS Ganymede with Admiral Bauernschmidt to sign the Znosian Instruments of Surrender to the Coalition.”
“Traitors to the species! The schismatics!” she hissed. “Their eggs will shatter and rot! As will yours!”
“Hey, you’re one to talk about schism,” the male said, pointing an accusing finger at her. “Your civil war’s over. If you try to start something now, you’d be the ones trying to start a new schism, wouldn’t you?”
“The schism is not over,” Krelnos replied coldly. “It will never be over as long as people like me live. As long as people like me remember the old Dominion, they will never know the meaning of—”
“Ah, that’s— I wouldn’t tempt my friend Kara here,” he replied, chuckling. “Political assassination on foreign soil is against the conditions of her parole.”
“Very funny, John.” Kara dry laughed in a manner that suggested she did not find it very humorous at all. She tapped her temple with a finger. “You think the implant tracker they put in here can stop me? I’ve got Gary on my side.”
John rolled his eyes and turned back to Krelnos with a kind expression on his face. “So… what do you say? Why don’t we walk that back a little? Maybe calibrate our confidence a bit. I mean… you took the general amnesty. Clearly, you value your own life somewhat. Why don’t you join Gluknitz here? We even have some nice treats for you if you will just cooperate a little—”
Crunch. Crunch.
Gluknitz was sitting opposite of her, eagerly chomping down on a bowl of carrots. His reward for his betrayal, evidently. Krelnos hopped up to lunge at him.
“Ah, ah.” Kara stopped her, forcing her back into her seat with a light shove on her shoulder. “No fighting over food in this household. You’ll get your own if you behave.”
“Collaborator!” she swore venomously. “You’ll get yours one day!”
John made a pacifying gesture. Or at least what he evidently thought was a pacifying gesture. “Come on now, Krelnos. There’s no need to be like that. See some sense. The war’s over. Your Dominion lost. It’s done. Now, it’s time for all of us to just move on and—”
“No.” Krelnos shook her head insistently. “And it is not just me. It is many of us. We all know in our hearts that the Dominion will rise again. It lives on in us. Your people can’t take that from us!”
“Not even if—”
“Never!” She thumped her foot for emphasis. “Never! I’ll never work for schismatics and abominations!”
John looked at her for a few moments, then, as if sensing her seriousness, he looked deflated as he sat back in his chair. “Never? Maybe,” he muttered. “I guess we’ll see.”
Kara glanced at Gluknitz, who was finishing the last of his carrots. “Gluknitz, the adults are going to talk now. Why don’t you be a good boy and make yourself scarce for a couple of hours?”
Gluknitz looked up at the humans dumbly. “But… this is my burrow!” he protested.
They both turned to give him their full attentions with their front-facing eyes.
He swallowed hard. “Actually, I— I just remembered… I do have some business to take care of at the— at the office.” He stuffed the last few sticks of carrots in his snout and stood up to leave.
The predators waited until he exited the burrow.
“Now what?” Krelnos asked. She taunted, “You going to torture me to find out who my cell is? You going to use your neural interrogation thing? We’re onto your tricks now. We know what you guys do. We’ve taken measures!”
John sighed. “You know… you are right. Some of your people are… not fully content with the way things have gone. Your civil war’s over, and most of you accept that. But unconditional surrender to us? To aliens? Predator aliens? That’s a hard pill for many to swallow. But… your leaders agreed. Not unanimously, at first. There was dissent. But in the end, they agreed. This war’s gone on long enough, and it is corrosive. Your new Free Znosian States can’t survive long if it simply slotted into place where the Dominion was and kept the war against us going. It would become the very evil it sought to replace.”
“Dissent. That’s not what your propaganda says,” Krelnos spat. “They said the schismatics, the so-called leaders of the Free Znosian States… they agreed unanimously. I knew it! Another lie from them.”
“It wasn’t a lie. I said, at first, it was not unanimous. At least two of the council of twelve were dissenters. A couple didn’t quite want to unconditionally surrender to our coalition. Wanted to find some… negotiated settlement. Unacceptable for our peoples, of course. We won’t accept anything less than total capitulation; we can’t.”
“And what? You changed their minds? By giving them your stupid little speeches? With your threats? Impossible.”
“Right. It is hard to change hearts and minds,” John replied as he unpacked something from his bag under the table, a device of some sort. “Of an entire civilization, it’s like you said: impossible. Or… near impossible. Of one or two contiguous collections of neurons, well, that’s more a… manageable technical problem now, isn’t it?”
“What? And what is that?” Krelnos asked as he lowered a headset-looking device over her ears. “Stop! Don’t bother with your stupid technological abominations and just torture me for secrets like normal, civilized creatures!”
“That’s where you’re mistaken, Bun. We’re not looking for information,” Kara said. She firmly held Krelnos down from behind as the much smaller Znosian struggled feebly against her predator strength. The operative whispered in her ear, “Enjoy the ride, Administrator Krelnos.”
Snick.
Krelnos felt sharp needles poke into her skull. She screamed in pain, and then she blacked out again.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
The cell of holdout operatives was relieved to see Krelnos finally return to the hideout, a rifle slung over her shoulders and dragging a large, black duffel bag tucked under her armpits.
“Krelnos, you’re back! Thank the Prophecy!”
“Wow, you got the stuff. That Gluknitz idiot actually came through for us. I thought for sure he was just—”
“Krelnos?”
“Are you okay, Krelnos? Your head— It’s— Did you get injured?”
Thud. Ka-chunk.
“Krelnos? Um. Krelnos, what are you doing?”
“Wait—”
Rat-at-at-at-at.
“Stop! No!”
“Krelnos! It’s us!”
Brrrrrrrrrrrrt.
“It’s me, Krelnos! We’re—”
“Get back! There’s something wrong with her!”
“She’s gone crazy—”
Bang. Rat-at-at-at-at.
“The door’s locked! She’s locked the door—”
Rat-at-at-at-at. Bang. Bang.
“The window— Go through—”
Ka-boooooooooooooooooom.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Carla
Admiral Carla Bauernschmidt oversaw the end of the war, hosting over five hundred Znosian planetary and system governors on board her ship as they signed the Treaty of Znos, seven years after the civil war began.
At the start of the war, there were a little over six hundred habitable star systems in the Dominion, but a few years of schism had cut that number by a few dozen. The official tally was 540, and it wasn’t like the rest were all in great shape either. Entire swathes of star systems were laid waste. Some sectors that were teeming with life were now near barren, the survivors struggling to survive on planets with collapsed logistics networks and widespread famine. Bountiful agricultural planets were converted to the purpose of war; their ecosystems collapsed, their atmospheres polluted with black smoke from factories now churning out munitions and guns.
With the treaty, the predator civilizations confirmed with the Free Znosian States much of what had already been done.
With the stroke of a pen, the Dominion was officially over. The Office of State Security was abolished. The ash heaps of history got a little taller. The Znosians collectively agreed to move to some kind of snout-counting, representative hybrid government similar to the Federation and the Republic, where the rights of all residents would be respected.
The centralized restrictions on outlier breeding were abolished. Due to economic considerations and the need to rebuild from the devastating civil war, most Znosian systems eventually went from the outlier ratio of one-to-twelve… to one-to-four… to one-to-one… to eventually realizing that there weren’t that many downsides to simply feeding all their hatchlings enough nutrients so they weren’t born artificially dumb.
Despite some initial fears of chaos, no new schisms started as a result of this uncontrolled proliferation of critical thinking individuals.
However, regime changes did happen more frequently. Once every five years, to be exact: scheduled federal elections. The results were not always desirable for everyone, and often they left everyone dissatisfied, but the Znosian species learned to simply live with the differences amongst themselves. Just as everyone else did.
It didn’t have the weight of thousands of years of Znosian tradition behind it, but it seemed to work out. Everyone was happier and more prosperous than before.
Those portions of the treaty were mostly describing the new structure of Znosian society, reassuring their neighbors that they were a changed species. That they would never walk the path of destruction they were on just seven short years ago.
The other, more substantial portion of the Treaty of Znos was the unconditional surrender to the Coalition.
There were some fears that some star systems would not abide by the decision, that they would resist when the Coalition Navy ships showed up to their system, but those proved to be overblown. Except for a few outlying incidents, the disarmament went through as smoothly as could be expected.
Znosian systems were thoroughly demilitarized, though a few squadrons and many Marine units were converted to law enforcement so as to not introduce a sudden influx of unemployed warriors into the population. The career of professional law enforcement saw a boom. After all, with the rise of the concept of personal property and markets, the Znosians had to deal with widespread property and financial crimes for the first time in their history. But they had plenty of solid examples to copy from, just as their new class of criminals did.
War criminals were prosecuted on an individual basis where evidence could be found. A new generation of Republic prosecutors made their names taking Znosian leaders to the Tribunal. It was known that many slipped through the cracks, and vigilante justice became disturbingly popular, but a real effort to prosecute those responsible for grave crimes conducted during the war was made.
Reparations were paid.
Actual reparations.
In some cases, it was funds, resources, or shared territory. In others, it was genuine expressions of guilt and remorse. And in a few of those cases, it was merely symbolic, but symbols mattered, especially to victims.
The Znosians built a monument. A peace memorial. Out of decommissioned warships, they would melt down their battle armor and use the enduring materials to create a long road. A path fashioned of metal bricks. On each brick was engraved the name and paw print of a victim of the Dominion, whatever species they were. Many billions of them. The monument was anticipated to take at least decades to build and route through every major city on the main continent of Znos-4 and still have plenty of length to spare. The construction and maintenance cost for such a project was something that could only be spared by a civilization of hundreds of planets.
This did not bring the victims back to life, but it ensured that they would be remembered, and it gave those who remembered them a place to go. A place where they could point their claws to and say: yes, there was a horrible crime committed against my people, here are the people who died, and let us work together to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
When the new president of the Free Znosian States travelled to Grantor on a state visit, they took her to one of their own special memorials at her request. It was one of the work camps outside Grantor City, one of many where Granti people had been massacred and worked to death by State Security. She was there to lay a wreath at the site of some of the worst Znosian atrocities.
At the solemn monument, overcome with grief at the abyss of her people’s history, the newly elected madam president fell to her knees and paws and wept. For a crime she did not personally commit. What thousands of pages of diplomatic language and official communiques of regret could not convey, the publicized video of her spontaneous gesture of humility… it made things better. It became possible for Granti politicians to end their speeches without vowing the total destruction of the Znosian people.
Some wounds were harder to heal than others, but no one wanted another interstellar war. In the vast expanse of space, abundant in resources and opportunity, there never was a rational, logical justification for starting one in the first place.
When she retired from military service, Carla became a diplomat: Ambassador of the Terran Republic in the Free Znosian States. There was a lot to do, and it wasn’t a particularly glamorous job. In particular, the food on Znos-4 was terrible, but things gradually improved as more and more imports from the predator systems made their way in.
Some Znosians even tried meat. Synthetics, of course. It wasn’t nutritious or particularly healthy for them, but the concept of food for enjoyment was taking hold everywhere, and the new outlier Znosians refused to be left behind in that department.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Lemmings
Lemming Squad became the most decorated unit in Federation history. Before the war ended, they were deployed to at least six other contested planets, never once failing to achieve their difficult objectives. Their highly successful tactics were studied extensively by Malgeir and human officers back on Charon.
After the war, Baedarsust became a tactical instructor at the new Federation Marine Special Warfare school in Malgeiru, training a new generation of Malgeir operators using his experience from the Red Zone campaign and the war with the Znosians.
With his recommendation, Spommu became a firearms instructor at the same school. When Malgeir worlds were eventually included in the 2128 Olympics Games (with some controversial restrictions), she coached the Malgeiru Olympics Shooting Team. In their debut, they surprised sports pundits with a gold in skeet shooting and medals in other events.
Quaullast went private sector, becoming a special advisor for Raytech’s robotics development program for an obscene salary offer. The project he worked on, codenamed MRVN, became the next generation infantry drone of the Federation Marines.
After Frumers retired from the Marines, he became a taste tester and celebrity promoter for a Terran corporation that manufactured alien-based confections on Titan. A few years later, using his experience there and the money from his military benefits (not to mention his extensive, untaxed poker winnings), he started a specialty ice-cream restaurant in downtown Malgeirgam. The business became wildly successful, and Frumers expanded it to a chain with twelve other locations on Malgeiru before he was bought out by Eupprio two years later.
On its board of directors as part of the purchase deal, Frumers managed to convince Fleguipu to rebrand Eupprio Alien Foods to Lemmings Ice Cream. The ice cream restaurant empire rapidly expanded to over a hundred thousand locations — official and franchises included — across the Federation. It became the largest, most iconic chain in the known galaxy, and its logo — a cute, stylized lemming licking the signature five-scoop strawberry cone — was polled to be the second most recognized symbol by all school-age Malgeir cubs.
The squad held regular annual reunions. One year, Frumers surprised the squad when he showed up with “Slurp” and a squad of his Bun friends. After the war, Sjulzulp successfully applied for resident status in the Federation and became an employee of Lemmings Ice Cream. He was instrumental in its eventual expansion into Znosian territory after the war.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sprabr
Sprabr refused to defect to the Free Znosian Navy, and he remained a prisoner for the duration of the war. He declined to cooperate with Republic intelligence, and his (Terran) lawyers sued to stop the Republic’s unrestricted use of brain reading devices. Controversially, the Republic Supreme Court agreed with his case, citing declassified Republic Navy documents as evidence that the remaining value of the intelligence in his brain did not outweigh his rights as a person. They created the first legal balancing test for mind reading against alien prisoners of war.
After the Znosian surrender, Sprabr was tried and found guilty of over ten billion counts of war crimes and crimes of aggression. Two of the twelve members of his jury were Znosian refugees, one was Malgeir, and his conviction was upheld by three separate courts during appeals.
After six years behind bars and due to his declining health, he was granted limited, conditional release by the President of the Republic to live out the rest of his elderly life at a monitored medical facility on Europa.
He took up various hobbies — painting, stamp collecting, writing — but found nothing that really suited him until he discovered a group of history buffs online who shared his interest in medieval Znosian melee combat. Due to his release conditions, he was denied permission to join a historical re-enactment event on Mars by his monitors, but they allowed him to give a small speech and watch the event from a livestream.
Sprabr granted no interviews to outside journalists until a year before he succumbed to a malignant tailbone cancerous cell growth that baffled even Republic medical specialists.
In that only interview before his death, he allowed a professor of history from Europa University to record his perspective of events regarding the last days of the Znosian Wars. Historian reviewers of the interview agreed he was probably truthful regarding most of his interactions with Znosian State Security, including the planning for the Invasion of Sol, but some cautioned the way Sprabr coincidentally painted himself in the most naïve, favorable light possible should be read in context of the ample evidence presented at his war crimes trials and the other, more reliable accounts of the events.
In accordance with Sprabr’s final wishes, his remains were treated the same as if he were still a Dominion Navy spacer: recycled.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Plodvi & Hobbsia
Plodvi and Hobbsia joined the civil war after they individually made their way to the newly defected Grand Fleet.
They were stationed on separate ships. Due to his Navy experience, Plodvi was placed in a frontline squadron. In the first year, he saw two battles: one was a victory, and the other was a stalemate. He earned a medal for pulling an unconscious seven whiskers out of a burning life support module seconds before it was depressurized to save the ship. After that, he requested a transfer to a reserve squadron. He was officially in combat for less than thirty minutes, and that was more than enough for a lifetime.
Hobbsia participated in three space battles. She didn’t do anything overtly heroic, just kept the computers running while they calculated missile trajectories and such. Important work, but nothing that got her any additional accolades.
Two out of three of the TRO’s strategic computers assessed that their substantial investment into her freedom ended up being a slight net waste of resources, but “Gary” stood by the original decision to help her escape.
After the war, Plodvi and Hobbsia both went into local politics. They were both elected representatives of their districts: Plodvi twice, Hobbsia thrice; both without significant opposition each time.
Hobbsia sought funding, unsuccessfully, for an official kill squad that would hunt down and exterminate Znosian State Security operatives, many of whom either ended up escaping into predator territory as refugees or went into hiding among the general population. In the new democracy, saner heads prevailed. As she aged, she moderated her views and learned to forgive.
Hobbsia went back to the rural road, right before the bridge, to the place where the one she loved fell. She had never used that word while she was with him, but when she learned of it later — truly understood it rather than something she secretly read from intercepted enemy propaganda — it was the only word that fit how she felt about him. And it fit just fine.
She erected a memorial site at the side of the rural road, a black stone carved with a simple inscription:
Here lies Rirkhni.
The price of freedom is high, and he paid for mine.
Rirkhni died here, a free Znosian, fighting for a better galaxy for his hatchlings.
His hatchlings are free. And for as long as you fight for it, yours will be too.
A local school informally took over responsibility for the site. Every week, a misbehaving student hatchling would be volunteered to go clean up the weeds around the stone and polish the memorial.
Years passed.
As more knew of it, more and more pilgrims — mostly Znosians, but not all — came to place flowers at the foot of the memorial. The government of Znos-4-B declared it a planetary heritage site and took over its maintenance. Eventually, more like Rirkhni were discovered. Many more. Some were those who fell in battle during the civil war. Other were victims of Dominion State Security. Their remains — those that could be found — were re-interred next to his. Their names and tributes were carved in hundreds of tall black stones erected next to his, each eventually being filled with thousands of names.
Rirkhni State Cemetery became the official final resting place for Znosians who willingly gave their lives for the cause of freedom.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Skhork
Skhork’s brain was “demilitarized” after the war.
Under increasing Senate scrutiny for their activities during the war, the TRO decided against a cover-up (in this case) and admitted to what they did to him in a closed session. It wasn’t — strictly speaking — illegal at the time, but it might have looked bad enough to the public that they deactivated the implants in his head and paid him a small sum of money to make him go away quietly.
A lawyer took most of the compensation. But Skhork had enough left over to emigrate to Datsot and settle down in a modest cottage. He wasn’t sure why he went back there, but it felt like the only place he could go. Some of the memories there on Datsot were painful, but through hard work with a local predator therapist, the nightmares came less often.
One day, he was tending to his garden when a group of mostly Malgeir visitors — with a single Granti — knocked on his fence.
“May I help you?” he called out to them.
“You don’t mind if we come in, right?” the Granti asked, apparently as their leader. Without waiting for his approval, she opened the gate and led the squad of them into his garden.
“Sure,” he said warily as he gestured them into his residence. “Who are you? I take— I’m sorry, I’m not very good with your faces. Do I know you from somewhere?”
They entered his cottage and sat down at his dinner table, and the Granti replied as she took off her coat, “My original name’s not important, but some of you call me the Hawk.”
He’d heard that nickname before. On the news. Which was never a good thing when there were six predators all sitting in your dining room, staring intently at him.
Skhork sighed in resignation as he pulled into his chair and slouched into it. “You guys are from the Judgement Faction.”
The Judgement Faction was a group of predator vigilantes, mostly veterans of the war. They operated outside the law. And by judgement, they meant revenge. These people hunted down former members of the Dominion military and State Security anywhere in the galaxy where they could go. Often violently. Skhork knew that at least two other Znosian migrants in the districts near him had already been lynched and killed by these predators.
“Good. So you know who we are,” the Hawk smiled thinly at him as she casually unholstered and placed a handgun on the dinner table in front of her. Skhork had figured out what that facial expression meant years ago, but this particular smile was very much not endearing like the ones he’d become used to. “And you… well, our documentation is incomplete, but we know you fought in the war. Six Whiskers?”
He knew he was dead the moment they stepped into his garden — even without weapons, any of the predators here could pin him down with a paw tied behind their backs. He saw no reason to lie. Taking a deep breath, he recited his rank and position. “Six Whiskers Skhork. Former Dominion Marines. Longclaw Platoon Commander.”
“You participated in the Second Battle of Datsot?”
“I did.”
“You remained behind when the siege was repelled. As a holdout, you attacked a fusion plant, a hydroelectric dam, and the interplanetary shipping spaceport in Priunt?”
“Yes. Yes, I did all that.”
“You killed thousands of our people, including our Marines and our civilians alike without distinction?”
“Yes. Mostly civilians.”
“Right. Do you have anything else to say in defense of yourself before we render judgement?”
Skhork took a deep breath and sighed again. He shook his head. “No. I deserve this. I have killed many of your people. Thousands. It was… not right. The war is over, and I regret all that now, but I can’t take back my crimes. I can’t make the people I killed— they can’t come back to life. And forgiveness… despite what my therapist says, the people I need forgiveness from cannot grant it to me: they are dead, by my paw or by my order. If— if I were in their place, I would not forgive me either.”
The Hawk stared at him for another few moments. “Fair enough. And the balls on you to come back here… You are braver than most of your people, Six Whiskers, I’ll give you that.”
He shrugged. “I am guiltier than most.”
“Just out of curiosity…” The Hawk leaned in. “What happened after your attack on Priunt Spaceport? From all appearances, it failed miserably, but our paper trail for your crimes ends there.”
“Do you intend to find others who served with me? To kill them as well? And to end their bloodlines? I hear that is what you do.”
The Granti ringleader did not flinch. “All Znosian war criminals will eventually be judged and punished according to their crimes.”
“And if I do not tell you, you would torture me for that information? For their names and where they live? Even if I don’t know?”
The Hawk narrowed her eyes. “Torture? So what? Your people have done way worse to ours.”
“We have, but more killing and more senseless violence will not bring you peace,” Skhork replied, looking at her with a tinge of pity.
“That is exactly where you are wrong, Six Whiskers Skhork,” the Hawk said, her unsettling smile deepening. “You Grass Eaters do not feel peace with revenge. But we are not you. We are aliens, remember? I feel an immense amount of peace whenever I pass judgement on one of you…”
Skhork didn’t press her. “Perhaps that could be true. I am not a xenopsychologist.”
She leaned back in the chair. “Besides, I think we will not need to torture you for information. In my experience, most criminals like you are relieved that you have someone to tell your stories to before we execute our judgement. Would you like to confess? To ease yourself of the burden and shame of your sins, Six Whiskers? We will record it, and it will go on our website if it is interesting enough.” She gestured at one of her people to take out his datapad to start recording.
He tilted his head. “I suspect some people will not… allow you to publish this information. There is some… sensitive data about—”
“You let us worry about that, Grass Eater.”
“Fair enough.”
“Good. Now, tell us… what happened at that spaceport attack?”
He swallowed. And he began to talk. “When we attacked the facility, we had plans for everything. It was all arranged well in advance, timed from start to finish. As we broke through the gates, we heard a series of mortar tubes. I tracked the incoming artillery rounds on my radar — there must have been a dozen of them, but they did not explode. I thought they were duds, but a few minutes later…”
Skhork told them everything. And he discovered she was right: everything did feel better inside after he did.
Comments
Bayliner1980
Do keep in mind that grass eaters has like over 300 chapters, 3 releasing a week. The story has to end somewhere. You don't have to love the ending but you kept coming back for 300 chapters because the writing is that good.
Just Some Grass
To be honest, it just feels lacking. The lack of a climatic battle for Znos just makes the epilogue feel unworthy.
