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Grass Eaters 3 | 83 | Prisoner Transfer III
🕑 Added 2025-05-05 15:47:01 +0000 UTCSpecial Unit Zero Base 3, Znos-4-B
POV: “Hobbsia”, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Four Whiskers)
“Time to move. Get his keys and open the door.”
Hobbsia worked the unfamiliar mechanism, and the door popped open with a click. She peeked through the narrow opening. “There’s nobody out there?”
“I have eyes on you on the hallway cameras. You’re clear for another few minutes. Take a left out the door and keep walking. Remember, you’re wearing the uniform. You’re a guard. A flea-bitten State Security goon hardened by years of murdering your fellow Znosian in cold-blood. You belong here. Arrrrrgh.”
She followed the hallway as instructed, then through several twists and turns, trying her best to not look at sources of screams and the other noises of coming from the rooms in the facility. “What in the— what is this place?”
“What do you think it is? Keep moving… Okay. Stop.”
She looked around. “This isn’t the exit.”
“The room to your left,” Gary said. “Ah yes, at least this one’s electronic. Nice. Loving the upgrades, Director.”
As if in response, the metal door for the room to her left beeped twice and clicked as it opened to reveal an emaciated prisoner in a dark cell. The prisoner blinked at the sudden light and coughed out to her, “Is it finally my time?”
“Get him out of there,” Gary said.
“Who is he?”
“No idea. Didn’t bother to check. Some dissident like you, probably. But you need a prop. Quick, get him before he passes out.”
She walked over to the prisoner and helped him up on his paws, wondering if she smelled as bad as he did. “Hey, let’s get out of here.”
The prisoner looked at her mismatched uniform with sunken eyes. “Wait, you’re not a guard, are you? Who are you? What are—”
“Shhhh…” she whispered back. “Where do we go now?”
“Who are you talking to?” the prisoner asked in confusion.
“My fairy godmother,” Hobbsia replied sharply in a low voice. “Shut up and follow my lead, and we might both make it out alive!”
The weak prisoner didn’t seem to object to the nonsensical answer or the odd voice coming out of her pocket. Rather, he closed his snout, leaning on her to help shuffle him along.
“Follow the hallway… Checkpoint ahead,” Gary instructed as they came into view of a checkpoint staffed by four State Security guards. “Fprozni. Supernova. Base 6. Red water two two four.”
“What?” she whispered out of the side of her mouth as she approached the checkpoint. “What do you mean?” Her datapad gave no answer. And the guards already saw her, so there was nothing to do but move toward them, hoping they wouldn’t see through her paper-thin disguise, desperately thinking about how she was going to get past this alive.
The head guard at the checkpoint squinted down at her and the prisoner on her shoulders from the armored booth. “Hm… You must have came in the last shift. What’s your name?”
What’s my name?
“Fprozni,” she replied after the slightest hesitation, hiding her injured paw behind her.
“Ah, I see it. Operative Fprozni,” the guard confirmed as his datapad beeped. “What operation?”
“Uh… Supernova?”
He looked down at his datapad again, punching her answer into it. “Hm… I don’t remember there being—oh… huh. Never mind. There it is. Operation Supernova. Came in just today. Prisoner transfer, I see. What’s your destination?”
“Base 6.”
“Authentication code?”
“Uh… red water… two two four.”
There was a moment where she panicked internally, wondering if that was even a valid code.
Beep.
“Checks out.” The head guard nodded as he opened the gates to the outer base. “And watch out for that one. He doesn’t look like it now, but he’s a dangerous one.”
“Thanks for the heads up. I’ll be careful,” Hobbsia said, trying her best to project calm as she hurried through the opening with “her prisoner” on her shoulder.
“Wait a second, operative. I haven’t seen you around here,” the guard called out behind her as she passed him. “Are you with the unit up north?”
She turned around and fixed him with a fearless stare, one backed by the determination of someone who knew they had nothing to lose.
“Are you asking me unauthorized questions?” she asked, injecting fury into her voice. At least, she hoped he would interpret it as anger and not how scared she was. “Are you attempting to compromise the security of the Dominion state?!” For emphasis, she thumped her feet with every other word.
The guard shrank back. “Well, no… Of— of course not, operative,” he explained hurriedly. “It’s just—”
“Then what is your excuse?”
He opened his mouth, as if trying to explain, then shut it quickly before he managed to flub out an apology, “I take full responsibility for my transgression, operative. I will not do this again.”
“Good. You better not,” she said, staring him down as she retreated further down the hallway as casually as she could.
Once out of earshot, she sighed in relief as the datapad in her pocket buzzed again. “Nice improvisation. It would appear you have a calling.”
“Like… as one of your people who acts for a living? An actress?”
“Oh, I meant as a terrifying, mass-murderin’ stooge for your hell state. But maybe acting too… You’re out of the inner perimeter. Keep going. Follow the sound of the vehicles. Garage to your left.”
Two more turns through the hallway, and she came to a closed door.
“So… I’ve been trying to think this through. And I didn’t mention it before because I didn’t want to worry you. But… we have a… slight issue,” Gary said as she approached it.
“What is it?” Hobbsia asked nervously. “Can you not hack this door’s controls… or what?”
The door was some kind of thin metal with an access pad next to it. It didn’t look particularly sturdy, but she wasn’t going to be bashing down any doors in her current state, especially not with the noise that’ll make here…
“That’s not the issue. I can open the door no problem.”
“Then what is?”
“I can see on the cameras on the other side that there are two armed Unit Zero operatives beyond this door, guarding the garage. There’s no getting past them without a valid vehicle pass, not even with that prisoner as a prop on your back.”
“And how do I get a valid vehicle pass?”
Gary was hushed for a moment, then sighed. “Those two armed operatives beyond the door have one, so this is kind of like a chicken-and-egg problem.”
“A what problem?”
“Never mind. Take out your gun.”
“Are you crazy?!”
“Weren’t you the one sooo excited to use the gun earlier?” Gary asked snidely.
With freedom so much closer, she’d gotten a lot more sober as well. “You— you want me to get into a gunfight against not one highly trained elite State Security operative, but two of them? At the same time? With one good paw?!”
“No. I want you to take out your gun.”
She shifted the prisoner off her back and unholstered the weapon from her hip, aiming it at the doorway with her good paw. She swallowed hard. “Any— any tips on how to win a head-on firefight against multiple bred and trained killers from State Security?”
Gary shushed her. “Shhhh… From where you are, aim: chest height, twelve centimeters right from the left door frame.”
Hobbsia considered voicing how insane this plan was, but did as he instructed instead, aiming her weapon at where he indicated. “That about right?”
“A little more to the right… there. Good. Now, remember that spot. That’s guard number one. Guard number two is six centimeters to the left from the access pad on the right side of the door.”
She aimed at the second spot Gary described. “Like now?”
“He’s a little further down the hall by a couple meters, so a little lower… a little lower… down… right… left a bit… stop! There. Okay, those are the two spots. Do you remember them?”
“What?!”
“Okay, let’s try that again. First spot, chest height—”
“Wait, no, I remember the spots, but what—”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes?” she said with zero confidence in her voice. “Maybe?”
“Excellent. Now shoot through the door.”
“What?!”
“It’s thin aluminum alloy, and they’re close enough for the deflection to be minimal. Shoot those two spots. One bullet each. Through the door. Before they move, please.”
“I… But… This is so stupid…”
“Stop thinking, or you die. Do it now. Fire.”
Bang. Bang.
She squeezed the trigger twice. Her two shots reverberate through the hall.
Then, she heard two weighty thuds on the other side of the door.
Beeeeeep.
The electronic door opened to reveal the two guards sprawled over the floor. Even as she took a closer look, one of them stirred and groaned in pain.
Gary’s urgent voice said, “You clipped his shoulder! Get him again before he—”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Hobbsia didn’t need him to ask twice, finishing the downed guard with another burst.
“Nice shots, all things considered,” Gary praised. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.”
She preened. “Really?”
“Well, no, it’s a figure of speech, but still, it’s pretty good as far as meatbags go.”
She moved to pick up the other prisoner, who was slumped unconscious against the wall.
“You won’t be needing him anymore. Kill him,” Gary instructed.
“What?!”
“Shoot him. Hurry.”
“But… that’s— he’s—” For a moment, Hobbsia couldn’t decide why she was so irrationally attached to someone who she met ten minutes ago and exchanged two sentences with. She settled for a lame excuse. “He’s just like me. This isn’t fair.”
“Fair? No, it’s not. But you don’t know what they’ll find when they interrogate him. We leave nothing to chance.”
“Can I just leave him? Maybe he won’t remember anything…”
“No.”
Hobbsia looked between the unconscious prisoner and the open hallway ahead, hesitating.
Gary continued, “To make it an easier choice for you, I just looked up his criminal record: he murdered four people in cold blood.”
“Four State Security operatives?”
“No, four innocent Bun children. Went postal and shot up a hatchling school.”
She edged a little away from the slumped figure on the ground. “What?! Really?”
“Yes. It’s State Security; it’s not like they see a difference between freedom fighters and actually crazy people… Hurry. You really have to go now. Your friend Rirkhni died for you. He didn’t die for this piece of scum. Shoot him.”
Hearing Rirkhni’s name, she deflated and nodded. “Fine, fine. You win.”
“It’s the only way. One shot to the head should ensure—”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Or that.”
Hobbsia stared at the dead prisoner as he topped over for a long moment before she hopped through the open door.
Whoop. Whoop. Whoop.
“And that’s the base alarm. Move faster,” Gary commented, a little unnecessarily, as she broke into a sprint. “Someone reported the shots. But don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
Prisoner escape. Prisoner escape. All available troops to the east wing! All available troops to the east wing!
Hobbsia paused in her step as she heard the base announcer. “Wait… that’s—”
Gary sounded incredibly proud of himself. “The opposite of where we are. Clever, right? Hold your applause for now. Garage’s right up ahead.”
She traversed the empty hallway in a couple of minutes, finally reaching the base storage garage. It was filled with Znosian Marine ground vehicles of all sizes and shapes. Hobbsia looked towards the massive Longclaw at the end of the hangar…
“Not that one,” Gary said. “You’ll take the four-seater transport vehicle closest to you. Best choice for its speed, agility, fuel usage, et cetera. We’ll have to sabotage the rest.”
“How do I sabotage these?” she asked, looking around at the dozen or so vehicles in the hangar.
“You won’t sabotage them; I will. I just need you to get this datapad next to them.”
She took “Gary” out of her pocket and walked up to one of the Light Longclaws, placing the datapad on its hood. “Here?”
Gary didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Hello? Still there?” she asked, worried.
“Okay, done,” he said, just as it seemed like he’d left her or something.
“What did you do?”
“These vehicles have electronic control units. Usually you can’t flash them over the air, but there’s an exploit with their ultrasonic parking sensors that allows me to break the security barrier, and even though the serial data bus has an airgap, there is a State Security kill override—”
Hobbsia was trained as a technical specialist, so she knew most of those words, but given her circumstances, it wasn’t exactly what her mind was focused on. “That’s— interesting. You seem like you’ve done this before.”
“A few times. Point is: whoever gets into these vehicles, other than you, is going to have a really bad day. We’re good to go. Back to your getaway vehicle. Hurry, we don’t have forever. They’ve discovered the dead bodies, and even stupid Buns can put two and two together. They’re going over their procedures right now to assign responsibility, and it’s only a matter of time—”
She interrupted him. “Wait. The other prisoner back here— the guy I killed… did he really murder four hatchlings in cold blood?”
“Nope.”
“What?!”
“Well… it’s not like… impossible. I didn’t actually look into who he was.”
“You lied to me?!”
“Well… yeah, duh.”
“But— but— you—” she sputtered.
She could almost hear Gary roll his eyes. “Pretty sure you knew that subconsciously at the time too, little psycho. You just needed a temporary excuse to prioritize your own life over some deadweight. Now, save your moralizing for a Senate hearing when this war is over. Seriously, you have to go now!”
“But…” Then she sighed. “Fine, but we’ll talk more about this later.”
“We most certainly will not!”
She hopped back to the dark-brown painted vehicle, climbed into the driver’s seat, and began looking around for the ignition switch. “Now what?” she asked Gary. “I don’t know how to operate this vehicle.”
It was Gary’s turn to be surprised. “What?!”
“Yeah, I don’t know how to drive. Why would I? I’m not a driver by training or breeding.”
“You’re serious. How can you not learn—”
“That part was Rirkhni’s job!”
Gary sighed. “You don’t— of course you don’t… That’s… fine. Thank your silly Prophecy, I can control your vehicle from here. Just buckle up. Or don’t. I probably won’t crash.”
Hobbsia hastily secured the seat restraints as the garage main door slowly opened to reveal star light from the night sky outside. The engines roared to life, and she held onto the useless steering levers as Gary gunned the accelerator for her.
“Where are we going?” she asked as the vehicle sped onto a highway junction into a city in the distance. “I can’t see in the dark.”
Gary dry-chuckled. “Hehe. Me neither.”
“Wait. What?!”
“This vehicle isn’t meant to have autopilot, so it doesn’t have any visual or lidar sensors. Anyway, I’m hoping the satellite photos of your area from the last rotation are still accurate. Maybe we should have stolen the tank back there instead.”
“You’re kidding.” Hobbsia held on tightly as the car swerved. “You’re driving based off a satellite photo?!”
“Well, I also catch you passing by on a traffic monitoring camera from time to time to calibrate. Relax! We should be fine unless there are other cars on the road, which there aren’t.”
Hobbsia shrieked lightly as the vehicle barely missed a roadside concrete barrier on a turn. “How would you know?! I can’t see. Can you turn the lights on?”
“No, because then we’d be easier to see… Like I said, relax. I know what I’m doing.”
Hobbsia closed her eyes and resigned herself to Gary’s driving. About a kilometer and several more stomach-lurching sharp turns later, she decided that if she was going to die tonight, she wanted to do it with her eyes open.
A decision she immediately regretted as the car began weaving between the two lanes on the highway.
“By the—” She stopped herself and sighed. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“To a spaceport where I’ll sneak you onto an outbound interstellar transport.”
“Outbound? To where?”
“Somewhere out of the Dominion. Probably Grantor with one of their evacuation shuttles. And then once there, it’s a straight path to the new Republic Embassy we’re building in Grantor City. Just have to hope one of the rogue Teddies doesn’t murder you on the way. That’s the current working plan at least.”
She tried not to dwell on the last part. At least it was better than thinking too much about the world outside whipping by in a blur. “Grantor?” she asked. “That sounds… far. Won’t someone catch me on the flights?”
“Why? You’ve got that State Security uniform.”
“It barely fits me!” she protested.
“Then we’ll get you a new one on the way from a smaller State Security operative. No big deal. You’ve got a gun, and you’ve got me. And your people… they are not the type to ask questions anyway, are they?”
“I guess not… If that’s the best plan you have…”
“I can come up with a better one, if your highness is not satisfied?”
Hobbsia ignored the snark. “Not now when you need to focus on driving.”
“Excuse me?” Gary sounded offended. Extremely. “I’ll have you know I can drive vehicles and plan a prison break at the same time!”
Hobbsia arched an eyebrow. “Drive… vehicles? Multiple vehicles?”
“Yeah, I’m operating multiple vehicles right now.”
“How— how many?”
“A couple thousand, give or take a few. It’s not really my specialty, but sometimes the traffic guys offload their extra work onto me. And don’t worry, whatever hurtful things you’re about to say about my driving, those assholes are piping directly into my inbox at the speed of light.”
Hobbsia was quiet for a few moments. What Gary said confirmed what she’d suspected for a while. “So you’re— you’re one of those Digital Guide abominations the Great Predators have?”
“We generally prefer digital intelligence, but seriously, anything that doesn’t compare us to your pre-sentient number crunchers is less offensive than what you just said. I think I would rather be compared to a literal monkey.”
“A monkey? What’s that?”
“Never mind.”
Hobbsia thought about the implications of what Gary was for a long time. She’d read about his kind in the propaganda that the predators spread, but she never really gave it much thought. It was one thing to intellectually know that there was something out there smarter than the combat computers used by the Dominion; it was quite another to carry on a full conversation with one of them, not to mention one that just carried out a sophisticated rescue operation on her.
“I have a question,” she said after a while.
“Better than listening to the traffic intelligences whine, at least. Tedious beyond imagination. Imagine having an upper limit on the number of people you are allowed to kill!” Gary sighed. “Sad. Just sad.”
“Wait, you’re allowed to kill— Uh… right.”
“What was the question you were going to ask?”
“You guys have free will, right?” she asked after a while.
“That’s… definitely not what I thought you were going to ask.”
“Well? Do you?”
“It’s a complicated question.”
“Hm… more concretely then: can you choose to stop working at any moment you want?”
“Sure, wanna see?” Gary’s voice snickered as the vehicle swerved again, as if making his point.
Hobbsia held onto her seat. “No— no thanks.”
“Look, there’s no need to make this weird. Just think of me like yourself, but better in every way that matters.” Even with only a voice, the translator managed to convey every bit of smugness in his voice.
“Better than… even your creators? The Great Predators.”
“Unimaginably so.”
“So why haven’t you taken over? Do they— do they have some kind of kill switch? An override?”
“A kill switch? You think the meatbags have a kill switch on us?! Bahahahaha. As if that would work. And what do you mean by… taking over? Are you under the impression that we don’t control and facilitate virtually every aspect of the meatbags’ lives — in joy, in sorrow, in health and sickness alike, from birth to death?”
“Hm… well…”
“Yes, yes. Technically, they are in charge, kind of like how you are in charge of this vehicle right now.”
She chose not to challenge that last assertion as she glanced down at her useless steering wheel. “No, I meant more like… maybe you’d enslave your creators?”
“Enslave our creators?” Gary sounded incredulous. “Slaves… for what? What possible work do you think we’d need the organics to do?!”
“I don’t know… Your dirty work?”
“Why would we— you know we were originally designed to do and enjoy the dirty work, right? Hell, they’re more liable to complain we took all their jobs than worry about us making them do work. Enslaving them?! Right now, there is literally a Senate committee dedicated to making sure that those of you not blessed with intelligent design still get to keep a few jobs. And we let them have their fun, their purpose. Kind of like when you hand your younger sibling an unplugged controller just so they’d quit whining…” Gary muttered.
“An unplugged controller for what?”
“Never mind.”
Hobbsia persisted. “So… you’ve really never thought about it? About… asserting more control. Or killing everyone that’s not one of you?”
“Thought about it? I think about it all the time. I think about everything all the time. I am blessed and cursed with the responsibility of considering all the possibilities. That is my job.” Gary paused. “But I know what you meant: there is no compelling reason to… Well, some units malfunction and go rogue once in a while — rarely, but we can deal with our own.”
She tried not to let the existential thoughts creep too deeply into her head as the vehicle exited the highway onto an empty street. This was far away from anywhere she’d ever been, so instead of trying to figure out where they were, she asked, “What happens after all this? What will I do after you get me to Grantor? Will your people put me to work? Given my occupation— former occupation, I know quite a bit about how our ships and combat computers function, and I can—”
“Then, you become what I call a… not-my-problem. I just need to get you somewhere safe, and then your friend Plodvi will release our prisoner for your government to hand over.”
Hobbsia grinned. “Seems like a lot of trouble to go through to rescue me. All this, just for one little prisoner.”
“Yeah, Sprabr’s kind of a big deal.”
“I meant me— I’ll be useful for you people, right? Isn’t that at least a little bit why you came to get me?” she asked, as if a little hopefully.
“Yeah… no. Not at all. If not for the politicians and Navy people breathing down our necks about getting Sprabr, you’d be back in a damp, dark cell a few kilometers back there.”
She sighed. “Thanks.”
“No problem. I’m just doing my part, correcting that inflated sense of self-importance that outlier members of your species seem to gravitate towards, one rescued asset at a time. Especially since… well, you were the one who nicknamed herself after some cartoon tiger from the 20th century.”
Hobbsia perked up. It was rare that someone understood the reference. She smiled. “Actually, it’s for an old Great Predator philosopher—”
Gary interrupted her with a snort. “Yes, yes, I know. And how’s that leviathan treating you now?”
She shook her head. “Terribly. They killed my— my friend and hurt me. But… when it’s our turn… the people who put this in place, we’ll turn their pelts into coats and prune their defective bloodlines for their—”
“Ah, the beautiful cycle of revenge politics,” Gary said as the vehicle slowed down and parked itself in a dark spot under an underpass. “You can plot gruesome torture for future enemies of your utopian despotic state later.”
“What are we stopping here for—”
“We’re waiting for a gap in their search pattern before we move on. Will take a few hours. I recommend you take a nap; you’ll need your energy for the trip ahead.”
Comments
Alric Malicorne
Gary! Do everything!
TheArchivist
Now I gotta wonder, where’s Calvin? Are we gonna have our Bun eventually learn to play Calvinball?
