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Grass Eaters 3 | 86 | One in Twelve II
🕑 Added 2025-05-12 15:47:01 +0000 UTCZNS 0025, Snashch (25,000 Ls)
POV: Vzglibro, Znosian Dominion State Security (Position: Messenger)
“We are in this system under orders from Znos-4,” Vzglibro explained on the radio, for the fourth time. As a specially bred State Security messenger, she was supposed to have been gifted with extraordinary patience… But even genetic engineering had its limits. “We have a special message to deliver to your State Security Governor.”
“We no longer recognize the authority of the Znos-4 State Security Office,” the brusque reply came back from the remote radio operator.
“Excuse— excuse me?” Vzglibro asked. “What do you mean by that?!”
“Exactly as I said it. What are you, a defective moron hatched by predator abominations?”
“Who are you? Who am I talking to?!” an outraged Vzglibro asked. “I’ll have your whiskers right now!”
Warning. Warning. Warning.
“Officer, their orbital defense batteries have locked us on fire control radar!” her shuttle captain warned.
“Cease your disrespectful behavior right now!” Vzglibro howled into the headset. “It is beginning to border on schismatic!”
“Officer Vzglibro, what is the punishment for disrespecting a State Security messenger?” the radio operator asked her in a grating tone.
“Death, of course! And a bloodline pruning if the disrespect warrants it, as yours has!” she snarled back.
In response, he yawed. He actually yawned.
Outrageous.
“And what is the punishment for schism?” he continued in the same lazy tone.
“Death and pruning!”
“That was what I figured,” the radio operator sighed, as if in… satisfaction to her reply. “Since it’s all the same to you, hm… I guess I’d rather get the most bang for my buck.”
“The most bang…” The implications of what he said dawned on Vzglibro. “You— you— It is not the same to me at all! You will be cleansed from—”
“Goodbye, abomination.”
Missiles incoming. Missile approaching. Brace for evasive maneuvers.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dominion State Security HQ, Znos-4
POV: Svatken, Znosian Dominion State Security (Position: Director)
Svatken shut down the feed of increasingly antagonistic reports on her datapad as her attendant notified her of her visitor.
“Enter,” she said, keeping her face neutral as Khesol shuffled over to the stool in front of her.
“Director.”
“Status report, Khesol,” she said woodenly.
“The rot in the Dominion goes further than I initially reported. I take full responsibility for my negligence and underestimation. Four more systems have become non-responsive to communications and orders this morning. For two of them, we are still confirming whether they are cases of predator-related communication interference or—”
“How many?” Svatken asked in a quiet tone, her rage simmering beneath it. “How many in total?”
“Up to— up to one hundred and fifty systems, of varying levels of non-compliance. We are still trying to reach another twenty to confirm.”
“A hundred and fifty systems in schism,” she repeated.
Khesol swallowed hard at the usage of that word. “Yes, Director. Some of the systems do appear willing to reach some kind of compromise with us on the culling order—”
“Compromise?” Svatken asked, injecting venom into the word.
“Director, this morning, the system governors for a couple dozen of them have jointly communicated a set of conditions in which—”
“Conditions?!” Svatken spat out. “For us! Anything else? Next thing you’ll be telling me there are these schismatics in Znos!”
“There are— there are— Director, there are some Servants of the Prophecy in Znos— there has been some minor… very minor… resistance to the cull order on Znos-4.”
Her office was quiet for a minute, save for the sporadic sound of regularly scheduled executions in the courtyard outside.
Svatken began, “Minor resistance… how?”
“Our monitoring agents reported that some of the bred-illiterate laborers on Znos-4 have begun wearing ribbons of non-standard colors over their work uniform. Orange-stained ribbons, for the— for the color of hatchling pool nutrient paste.”
“Orange… ribbons?”
“Yes, Director. And some in our mining camps on Znos-8 are now wearing pink… We theorized that there was a miscommunication among the disorganized apostates, or perhaps they couldn’t find the right colors— Anyway, we managed to capture one of the wearers alive, and she said— she said the wearing of colored ribbons… it is in solidarity with the defective hatchlings we are culling.”
“Solidarity.”
“Yes, Director. That was the word she used.”
“That’s a predator word,” Svatken pointed out. Needlessly, perhaps, but she did.
“Yes, Director.”
“Colored ribbons. Ridiculous!” Svatken scoffed after a moment. “Was this taken care of by local enforcers?”
“Yes, Director. Standing orders are now kill on sight.”
“Good. That should calm things down a bit. What about the Grand Fleet? Are they still on their way?”
“Yes, Ten Whiskers Telnokt last reported in yesterday. There was some… disturbing news. There are some reports from fallen Grantor… Some of our officers who are awaiting evacuation there… they’ve reported there are now Znosians— there are now Znosians fighting in mixed units, shoulder-to-shoulder with the predators. And they are testing the ceasefire there, one escalating incident after another to goad us into a false move.”
“The Great Predators. This is their doing. No doubt about it. They must have done all this. They are the ones who tainted those schismatics.”
“Yes, Director. But we don’t have the ships to strike back at them. Not with our Grand Fleet still on its way back to Znos from Grantor. Not with the new ships still under construction at their shipyards. And there is a matter of the schismatic systems that are now threatening to close their orbital space—”
“Instead of attacking us directly, the predators are using our own people to attack us,” Svatken said, seething hard.
“That… appears to be so.”
“Another thing we will make them pay for… eventually.”
Neither of them made a sound for another minute as Svatken stared into her blank datapad.
“Director?” Khesol asked gently. “What do we do? About the apostates and— and schismatics who are refusing the cull order? And the demands from the system governors who have refused?”
Svatken slowly looked up at her. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
Khesol hesitated a long moment but eventually nodded. “Yes, Director.”
The only response allowed by the Dominion. By the Prophecy.
“Exterminate them. All of them. Znos-4 or anywhere else. And the schismatic systems, burn them all.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Republic Senate Complex, Luna
POV: Amelia Waters, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Fleet Admiral)
“Operative Hersh, one last question: regarding the Office of Naval Intelligence reports of anomalous movements in every Znosian system, from Znos to the border systems. Is that related to any— any of what you guys are doing out there?”
“Senator Seimur, as you may be aware, special activities projects conducted by the Reconnaissance Office are not covered by the Intelligence Accountability Act. The TRO is not required to brief the Senate Intelligence Committee on—”
“Ex—excuse me? Are you out of your fucking mind—”
“Knock it off, Hersh.” Amelia, sat next to him, rolled her eyes as a low murmur of discontent swept through the Senate committee dais. “Just get it over with.”
Technically, the TRO was not directly under her jurisdiction either, but the Navy was. And as the sole provider of heavy-lift capability past Charon, the Navy could certainly make things difficult for their entirely legal operations in the Dominion.
Hersh knew which side his bread was buttered on, or at least the thin ice he was already testing. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, looking up at the Senators with a placating expression. “I’ll happily answer any questions relating to the… anomalous naval movements, but some members on this committee have not been read in on the… specific program.”
“Which program is this?” Seimur asked flatly.
“Evergreen Dwarf.”
Seimur consulted with his tablet for a minute, then looked up. “I have Evergreen Dwarf clearance.” He looked around the committee. “Who here doesn’t have Evergreen Dwarf?”
“I don’t have it. I’ll excuse myself,” another Senator said. A few of the other Senators packed their tablets and got up to leave.
“We still on for lunch?”
“Meet you in the lobby.”
The room waited patiently while the less-cleared Senators filed out.
As the doors closed, Seimur wagged a finger down at Hersh. “These explanations better be good. Explain yourself. What did you guys do?”
“Yes, Senator… Before the repeal of the Prime Directive, the TRO generated a series of war plans that anticipated the eventuality of a potential war with the Znosians. Over time, some were rejected, others were rendered irrelevant, and a few are being carried out. Evergreen Dwarf was one of these plans. It was authorized about two years ago, and we began allocating resources for its execution as soon as its planning was finalized.”
Seimur narrowed his eyes. “Who authorized this… plan?”
“You did. It and several other programs like the were provided for as part of the annual Republic Defense Act—”
“Ah. Carry on.”
Hersh continued without breaking pace. “Evergreen Dwarf’s original purpose was the destabilization of the Znosian Dominion, but even before its fruition, it has already been highly successful in generating actionable intelligence for the Republic Navy for over a year.”
Seimur switched his gaze to Amelia. “You guys knew about this?”
“For some months now,” Amelia replied. “Since… I conducted an internal review of all our ongoing activities.”
“Internal review?”
“The illegal chemical weapons scandal from the TRO prompted us—”
“Right, right,” Seimur said hurriedly. Before the Battle of Sol, Seimur rarely missed a chance to stick it to what he saw as the overreach of “the defense establishment in Atlas”, but he’d gotten suspiciously quiet about all that after the construction of a new Raytech manufacturing plant in his district last year. That was a move that was both politically savvy on Raytech’s part and a natural necessity given the expansive new requirements of the Republic Navy. It was always possible that the war coming home changed the senator’s mind as it did many Republic voters’, but Amelia had a general policy of keeping all possible root causes in mind when assessing these matters. “And what is the nature of this… destabilization program?”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
8 months ago
“Amelia, you can’t shut that program down.”
Amelia pointed an accusatory finger back at Hersh. “The hell I can’t! You should be glad you’re not going to prison with your friend Kara! If I find any shred of evidence, anything, that you’d actually helped her with her insane little side project over on Datsot—”
He held up a hand appeasingly. “Relax, Amelia, this is— this is nothing like that! None of us knew anything about that—”
She rolled her eyes. “Save your poor acting skills for the Senate accountability hearings. Give me one good reason. Evergreen bullshit. Who names their program like that?!”
Hersh’s face turned more serious. “That program generated over sixty percent of the high priority targets for the Znos and Grantor campaigns. It’s the highest intelligence yield program in the history of the TRO.”
“That… somehow makes me less confident about the targets you’ve been feeding us. Seriously… a quarter of a trillion credits into this black hole, not to mention whatever you’re siphoning from our black budget funds. Do you know how many more Alligator-class destroyers I can buy with that money? You have to give me something other than six confiscated, illegal nerve gas formulations and the locations of a few Znosian weapons factories.”
“It’s… complicated—”
“What… does… this… program… do?”
“We feed their kids.”
Amelia sighed. “Okay, I’m just going to go through it and start cutting projects line-by-line if you don’t start answering my questions.”
“No, no. I’m answering you! That’s what the program does.”
“You what?!”
“We feed their kids.”
Amelia looked at him dumbly for a good half-minute. “You… feed their kids?” she said when she managed to find her voice again.
“Their kids— their hatchlings. We feed them.”
“With what? Poison? Lead?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. We feed them with— I don’t know, the stuff they normally eat. Jello. Nutrient paste. Whatever.”
Amelia struggled to think of an angle. “This is— this is like one of your old developing district loansharking schemes? What do you… like… blackmail them after you feed them?”
“No, no strings attached. We just feed them.”
“Is this your idea of a joke—”
“No— no— I can explain. Please, give me a minute. Are you aware of how Znosian hatchling development occurs?”
She crossed her arms. “Enlighten me.”
“For the first few months of a Znosian’s life, they’re hatched into these shared breeding pools where they’re consistently drip-fed nutrients that are critical for their growth. During this time, they carefully control the amount of nutrient intake for each hatchling. And as you can imagine, if you don’t have enough to eat, you grow up with impaired brain development. With me so far?”
“Yeah, that… makes sense.”
“All Znosians grow up with varying levels of impaired brain development.”
“What?!”
Hersh shrugged. “It’s on purpose. They grow them dumb and compliant on purpose. As it turns out, unlike humans, the part they use for critical thinking is the last bit that’s developed in the Znosian brain, and that’s not-so-useful for their authorities. They limit their hatchling’s nutrients when they’re just growing in their hatchling pools, and when they’ve got just enough, they take them out of the pool and throw them into a classroom so they can become a productive, hard-working laborer for the state.”
“That… doesn’t sound ideal. What about innovation… and surely there are benefits to little Buns who can think like we do—”
“Well, yeah. We know that, because we survived as a species. And we learned ways to deal with scoundrels and extra thinkers. But the Buns, when they set up their system, they seriously thought that too many people doing too much thinking would lead to their downfall. There would be dissent, and social unrest, and civil wars.” Hersh grinned. “I really hope they were right about that, or we’d have wasted a whole lot of good food for nothing.”
“So you— so you— so you…” Amelia stuttered.
“We fed them. Well, not all of them. That would be too obvious. Their original formula is rationed such that no Bun was supposed to grow up with the part of the brain that thinks for itself, but about one in a thousand of them actually has a genetic mutation that overcomes the limitations and becomes nice and smart and dangerous anyway.”
“A mutation? One in a thousand?”
“More or less. Like… drought-resistant crops.” Hersh frowned. “That’s how it was explained to me, anyway. I’m a spy, not a biochemical engineer. The short version is: we turned the tap on for about one in twelve of them, and now they get a steady diet of sufficient nutrients… Last I checked, there is no rule of war against feeding your enemies’ children properly.”
“How very altruistic and humanitarian of you… Wait, but why didn’t they notice it? Using more nutrients, changing things for the whole Dominion… Even if you were careful, surely someone would notice before it got bad enough to affect their whole empire?”
Hersh nodded. “They did. Thousands of Znosians noticed. Many thousands. Possibly even millions.”
Amelia narrowed her eyes. “Then again, why didn’t they figure it out— Aren’t they an accountability focused species of paranoid—”
“Well… you know…”
She understood before he answered. “Of. Fucking. Course.”
“Unfortunate tragedies. Heart attacks. Vehicle accidents. Building fires. Some were simply discredited. Others were discretely added to their to-prune lists. And you guys are helping with some during your raids into their territory… all legitimate targets, I assure you! As it turns out, their hierarchical nature meant that there weren’t that many points of failure needed to slow down the flow of information to make it useless. But even with all that, it was a lot of hard work on our part. Really, hacking all the hatchling pool machines was the easy bit. Nothing a few modified digital intelligences can’t handle on their own. The coverup, on the other hand—”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “Yes, where your real TRO expertise and passion lies, of course. At least that explains where all the money’s gone—”
Hersh continued proudly, as if he hadn’t heard her. “They have these State Security computers that have tripwires for when alarming statistics show up. Some of them are numbers that we simply altered or fudged. Others, we had to do a little more. For example, we had hard limits and quotas on the number of high level State Security operatives we could assassinate in suspicious circumstances. Kill too many and we’d trip the limits. But we figured out ways to expand those limits from time to time by helping on the other end.”
“Wait. Help? On the other end?”
“Yeah, by making sure the irrelevant ones don’t die. The number one killer of younger State Security operatives is workplace accidents. So we helped them funnel some resources from various construction projects to workplace safety improvements.”
“Workplace. Safety. Improvements.”
“Yeah, like hard hats. Railings for long drops. Redesigned workflows. Stuff like that. And then, for the older ones, our mission digital intelligences cured their more lethal diseases, especially the ones that they deem too resource-intensive to bother. You know what the public health officials say: prevention is the best cure. So, we started a mass vaccination program on a few less-developed colonial worlds where—”
“You spent a quarter trillion credits. Of Republic taxpayer money. On curing Znosian diseases.”
“Not all of it. And the actual cures were like three seconds of Panoptes computing time combined. The delivery and logistics, and covering up those deliveries, that was significantly more expensive. And the more Znosians we saved, the more we could kill without tripping the automated alarms.”
“Okay. Stop.” Amelia held up a hand. “Have you ever considered… what’s going to happen if the Buns simply adapt to the influx of smart people and become stronger than ever? Am I going to find my people fighting entire fleets of competent, smart Buns you fed in a year or two?”
“Blowback. Sure, that is technically a possibility. If they roll with it. If they find a way to accommodate one in twelve of their new hatchlings being thinking, productive individuals.” Hersh shrugged. “But that’s not who they are. That… is in their nature. Not of Znosians, but of the Dominion. A hypothetical Znosian Dominion that tolerates the proliferation of outliers and smart, critical thinkers among its people… they wouldn’t be the interstellar empire that wiped out and gobbled up six hundred habitable star systems. They would be a minor curiosity, a peaceful prey species coexisting in the galactic sea of other apex predators, living side-by-side in total harmony…”
“Yeah, yeah. You better hope that if it doesn’t work out, the Buns catch you before I do. And when they figure it out, and I just know they will, whatever else you’re planning…”
“Oh, we’re a few steps ahead of that. We’ve got an entire mission intelligence basically handling job placement and trying to get our guys into positions of power. And sure, it’s a matter of time before one of them finds out. But even then, it won’t be so easy to stop us. They’ll need to destroy and re-manufacture all their hatchling pool equipment across the entire Dominion, and when they do, we’ve got a fun little surprise waiting for them too.” Hersh giggled a little, then covered up his mouth. “Ahem. Anyway, in the meantime, we’ve already gotten a ton of intelligence from the smart hatchlings that are all grown up now. Not all of them are amenable to our propaganda; that’s the nature of critical thinking: you don’t get to control what they think. But I like to think we put up a pretty good case on its merits.”
“Alright. Screw it. We’re all doomed if this doesn’t work out anyway…” Amelia closed her eyes for a long minute, just trying to get the nightmare scenarios that could arise out of her head. She breathed a long sigh of resignation as she glanced back down at her tablet. “Next program on the list. Is that— are you trying to crossbreed Bun prisoners with… human volunteers? Holy unethical—”
“What?” Hersh frowned as he turned the tablet around. “Oh… hehe. Yeah, no, that one was only in the proposal stage. That’s a cover for one of our older genetic experimentation programs. Hehe. No, you can remove that one from next year’s budget request.”
Comments
Spooker
Ah, first one was wrong. I've fixed it.
DeWhit
Hey, I don’t mean to be that guy, but I couldn’t help but notice there are two “One in Twelve II” chapters…aside from that though another great chapter!
jrharper42
I finally caught up with this story after pausing around chapter 30. The situation for the buns seems to have deteriorated rather quickly lmao. At this point, humanity needs to give Svatken a medal. She must be their most reliable asset - can always be counted on to do the wrong thing at the wrong time.
