Spooker
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Grass Eaters 3 | 82 | Prisoner Transfer II
🕑 Added 2025-05-02 15:47:01 +0000 UTCDistrict 203, Znos-4-B
POV: Plodvi, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Six Whiskers)
“They’re not answering.” Plodvi looked at the elderly Sprabr next to him with pleading and desperation in his eyes.
“Then you should probably stop calling them on the open channel on your radio,” he advised. “They’ve either been killed, or…”
“What do we do?”
“That depends,” Sprabr considered. “Depends on what happened to them. If they’ve been captured, they’ll talk. In that case, you’re dead, or worse. If not, and if you run, you may be able to escape and blend back into whatever unit you came from. And when the State Security agents come around asking questions, you better have a good alibi for where you’ve been. Given that they still need to hand me over to the predators intact, they might not… ask me too many questions about you. Hopefully. For both your sake and mine.”
“That’s it? That’s all the options that an eleven whiskers of the Dominion Navy can come up with?! Just… give up and run?”
“They never trained me to start—”
Plodvi almost shouted at him. “Forget your training! What would you do?”
Sprabr shrugged. “What would I do? I’m going to sit here and wait in this safehouse of yours until they come recapture me. And then, they’ll hand me back to the Great Predators. As they planned. Everything on schedule.”
“I meant what would you do if you were in my position?!”
“Probably throw myself into that river behind the house,” Sprabr said nonchalantly. “That’ll be a better fate than what awaits you when State Security finds you.”
“Anything else? Other than just telling me to give up like you have?! Like old prey waiting to die?”
Stung, Sprabr looked like he actually considered the problem for a moment.
“Well?” Plodvi prompted.
“Hm… how far is the reach of your radio?”
“It’s standard Marine issue. We stole it from a—”
“That’s far enough. You can try calling the Great Predators. They have all kinds of spy drones and communication relays all over the Znos system, in orbit right now, from when they invaded. See if they’ll help you out of this hole that you and your friends dug for yourselves.”
“What can they even do?!”
“I have no idea. But from all my time fighting against them, I’ve learned that every estimation we’ve ever had of them… was an underestimation.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hersh’s voice came out of the radio speaker only a few minutes after he was asked by name. “Plodvi, is it?”
“Yes, human. The last time we talked, you mentioned an offer for rewards in return for defection. Is it still available?”
“Sure. What are you looking for? Actually, we’ve set up a nice little scheme that’ll allow us to put some credits into a long-term securities account in your name through a shell entity on Titan. You know what they say about compound interest? It’s the most powerful force—”
“My friends and I are trapped here. I need you to help get us out of here!”
The human paused for a moment. “What is the nature of—”
Plodvi answered, “They’re actively looking for me right now because I’ve just rescued one of the high-ranking Navy officers they held in custody.”
There was silence on the other end for a minute. “Which high-ranking Navy officer did you… rescue?”
Plodvi hesitated, but decided he had no other options. He answered after a moment, “Eleven Whiskers Sprabr.”
Unexpectedly, the human didn’t seem surprised on his end at all. “That’s what I figured. We’ve been getting a lot of calls about that, people on our end thinking it’s our handiwork. And for once, it actually was not us and…”
“We rescued him from one of State Security’s convoys.”
“Yeah… good job with that, but he was supposed to be on his way to us. So… we’re going to need him back wherever you found him so your government can deliver him to us for trial. Frankly, I don’t really care what happens to him after we debrief him, but our leaders love their little victories. The Atlas Times already has a three word frontpage pre-written for this occasion: WE GOT HIM. It’ll be a real hassle for us—”
“You can have him if you help my friends.”
“Your friends? Ah. The duo of low-ranking Navy technicians intercepted by State Security goons in the district near you, I’m guessing?”
“Yes! Do you know what happened to them?” Plodvi asked urgently.
The predator didn’t bother to mince words. “One shot dead. There’s an injured survivor: they are transporting her to one of their interrogation facilities right now.”
No! Not Rirkhni!
Plodvi stared at his radio in shock for a moment.
“Still there, Six Whiskers?”
He hesitated for a moment, and said slowly, “You can have Sprabr back, if you get my friend out of there.”
There was quiet on the other end of the radio for a minute.
Sprabr snorted from next to him. “They’re trying to decide whether to go through the trouble of helping you, or to simply give up your location to State Security so they can come get me back right now.”
Plodvi ignored the morbid analysis.
The radio buzzed again. “We can help your friend out, ideally before she snitches on you. Or we can make sure she doesn’t talk at all. Hobbsia, she calls herself, right?”
“Yes, that’s her.”
“Well, you’re in luck. We can give you a hand there… But you work for us now.”
“Anything you want.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Special Unit Zero Base 3, Znos-4-B
POV: “Hobbsia”, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Four Whiskers)
“Ahh!!!!!”
“Who else were you working with, apostate?” The interrogator leaned closer, his sharp face and fast-moving eyes illuminated by the harsh ceiling light. His unmarked Special Unit Zero uniform was perfectly pressed despite the messy nature of his work.
“I— I won’t… tell you anything.” Hobbsia’s voice cracked, her throat raw from screaming. The white fur on her neck was matted with sweat and blood, and drool ran down both of her cheeks.
“That’s what you all say.” The interrogator looked at Hobbsia with a confident smirk. He adjusted a small dial on his datapad, and a small tingle of electric shock ran through her ears. Her one good paw struggled futilely against the plastic restraint.
“Tsk tsk,” he admonished, shaking his head as he tightened the cuffs incrementally. “Last chance— well, last chance before this next one. Give me names. Just a name will do.”
“You are an abomination. Your eggs will shatter and rot—”
“Wrong answer.” He activated a button on his datapad once more.
Hobbsia’s ears flattened against her head as a fresh course of pain poured in. She knew logically that it was only a few seconds, just enough to dangle her on the edge of consciousness, but it kept coming for what felt like hours.
“Just... kill me,” she said, panting hard as the bout paused. She tried to keep the image of Rirkhni in her head as she resisted the increasing pain and her slipping will.
“Don’t worry. That will come last,” the interrogator replied. He laid out a series of implements arranged on a small metal tray beside him. After a moment of inspection, he selected a thin, needle-like device and held it up to the dim light. “We just need the names of everyone else responsible for this little plot before that.”
The interrogator pressed the new device against the base of Hobbsia’s ear, just hard enough to dimple the skin without breaking it. “Just their names. And then it’ll be over.” He traced the device down to her throat, where her pulse visibly raced.
Beep beep.
Frowning, the guard glanced at his datapad. He sighed in annoyance as he read.
“Ah. It’s my meal time.”
He set down his devices with visible reluctance. “New efficiency protocols from our research division. Apparently, we interrogate better after ration time.” He stood, straightening his uniform. “We’ll continue this conversation shortly. Don’t go anywhere.” He winked, collected his items into a tray, then got up to walk out of the room. The lock clicked as the door closed behind him.
Hobbsia looked up from the table she was slumped on. Her uninjured front paw was restrained to a solid metal bar with plastic cuffs. Other than that, there wasn’t much in the room. Even the walls were padded, and given what they’d been doing to her all morning, she had a pretty good idea why.
Beep beep.
She was contemplating ways to goad the interrogator into killing her faster when the datapad left by the guard on the table made the noise again.
A mechanical voice came out of the datapad’s speaker. “We don’t have much time,” it said.
“Hm? Hello?” she asked.
“You are Hobbsia, right?”
“What? Oh. Yes.”
“Oh, good. She gave me the right number. Would have been rather awkward otherwise.”
“Who are you?” she asked, then realizing how loud she was, asked in a softer voice. “Who are you?”
“Your fairy godmother. Now, do you want to play twenty questions with me, or do you want to get out of here? I’m not stuck in a state-sanctioned torture chamber, so I’m okay with both options, really. But you have a choice to make and—”
“How do I get out of here?” Hobbsia asked.
“I’m looping the camera in your room so they don’t know what you’re up to.”
She instinctively looked up at the camera. It didn’t seem any different from a minute ago, but she supposed she didn’t know what it would look like when it was hijacked anyway.
“Alright, enough gawking at me,” the datapad said. “First, you need to get your good right paw out of those restraints.”
“Yeah, I know that! But how?”
The voice made a mechanical sigh. “It’s just plastic zip-ties. Chew.”
“Chew?”
“Yes, chew with your big ugly, front teeth. It looks thin enough from the camera here. You have about… thirty minutes.”
Hobbsia began applying her buck teeth to the plastic. “I can’t…”
“Chew. A little harder, please. Like your life depends on it. Because it kind of does.”
She began sawing at the restraint with all her jaw strength, and sure enough, the tiny locking mechanism on the plastic material began to soften and deform after a couple minutes. With some painful pulling and fur scraping, she finally managed to wriggle her good paw free of the device.
“Okay, good,” the voice from the datapad said. “Because the other option would have been telling you to break your only good paw, and everything after that would have been much harder.”
“Nice to avoid that,” she said, studying the datapad screen for irregularities. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary on it.
“Now, put me in your uniform pocket,” the datapad speaker said.
She did as it instructed. “Done. Anything else?”
“Don’t get cocky. That was the easy part. Next, pick up the large binder folder from the table.”
It was the binder that the guard had been using to record notes while interrogating her. Other than some useless papers and her mugshot in it, there wasn’t anything notable about it.
“What is this for?”
“Close it up. The spine is hard — use that as a weapon.”
She did as the voice asked and swung the binder around in the air a couple times. It didn’t feel like a very effective melee weapon. “Are you… sure?”
“Well, I considered several other options. The chairs are bolted to the ground in a way that doesn’t allow them to be removed without significant noise and effort, and that’s not even considering the situation with your paw. The singular light bulb attached to the ceiling can be unscrewed and broken for its sharp glass, but that requires some element of luck. And trying to do that, in the dark, with one paw — yeah, that’s a disaster waiting to happen. Finally, you’ll need the datapad that carries my voice intact. That doesn’t leave much else. You got any other ideas?”
“No.”
“Of course not. The binder it is, then.”
“Alright,” she said skeptically. “What’s next?”
“You wait.”
“Wait? Shouldn’t I try to pick the lock or something? I read in a book—”
“Do you know how to pick a State Security Z-32F door lock without any tools?”
“…”
“Well?” her datapad prompted.
“No. But maybe you can teach me—”
“No, just wait. You’ll be doing a lot of that today anyway.”
“For how long?”
“For your interrogator to finish lunch.”
“Then what?”
“Then, you kill him when he comes through the door. What else?”
“He’s a— he’s Special Unit Zero! Bred and trained for combat. He’s like… twice as big and strong as me. How am I supposed to kill him?!”
“Element of surprise. And use that binder. Tool usage is one of the defining marks of a civilized creature,” the voice in her pocket reminded her helpfully.
“Tool usage is… Great. Just great… any— any tips?” Hobbsia asked as she practiced her binder swing a couple more times.
Swoosh. Swoosh.
“Tips? Aim for the neck. You guys have fragile necks.”
“You guys? Are you… a Great Predator?”
“A human? No. But close enough guess.”
“What do I call you?”
“You can call me Gary.”
Swoosh. Swoosh.
“Okay… Gary. Thanks for getting me out of here. Or trying, I guess,” she said as she continued to wave her new weapon around. “I just don’t know if this is going to work. This is a flimsy—”
“Your swing is fine. Just don’t miss. And save your energy for now.”
“Great. Aim for the neck and don’t miss. You’ve been a lot of help, Gary.”
“Unfortunately, they’ve locked you in what appears to be the only room in the entire facility without an electronic lock,” Gary complained. “Not much I can do for you in there.”
“Facility? Where am I, by the way?”
“Heh. Don’t worry too much about that for now. One hop at a time.”
Hobbsia just sat and waited for a few minutes, wondering if these were going to be her last few minutes. Given what awaited her if her attempt failed, she supposed she didn’t mind that too much. That calmed her down a bit.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Alright, Hobbsia, go stand up behind the door now,” Gary said after what seemed like forever.
She stood up anxiously and did as Gary instructed. “Stand here?”
“A little to the right. You don’t want the door to hit you when it opens… A few steps back… There, good. Now, close your eyes.”
“Close my eyes?”
“Do it now.”
Gary seemed serious, so she hastily closed her eyes.
“What now?” Hobbsia whispered.
“Use your ears,” Gary whispered back from her pocket. “When the door opens, open your eyes and kill him.”
“But why are my eyes closed now?”
“You’ll see. Shhhh.”
She waited in silence, even breathing as quietly as she could. Thirty seconds later, the lock jiggled with the sound of the keys, and the door opened with a creak. She heard her guard walk in. “Are you ready to talk now— Hm… where did you—”
Click.
The lights in the room switched off as the door shut itself behind him.
She opened her eyes as they did, and her dilated pupils near-instantly adjusted to the darkened, window-less room, lit only by a dim ray seeping through the gap between the entrance door and its frame.
Her adversary in the dark, on the other paw, was not quite so prepared. For a split second, he froze in his tracks, evidently unsure how to react. Blinded in the dark. But his special training and breeding kicked in almost instantly. He fumbled for the doorknob, trying to get it open again… to no avail; the door had locked itself as soon as it closed.
Thwack.
Hobbsia’s swing missed, smacking the guard’s right cheek. He yelped in pain and grabbed at her in the dark, catching nothing but thin air.
Thwack.
The fear hormones coursing through her veins did their job, and Hobbsia’s second attempt hit his neck squarely where she intended, harder than she’d ever swung anything in her life. The guard collapsed with a gurgle, hitting his head against the wall on his way down.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
She didn’t take any chances. And he’d been interrogating her all morning, so it made her feel a little better.
Gary’s voice called out questioningly from her pocket. “Are you sure he’s dead? I think—”
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
Gary seemed to sigh in relief as she pummeled the unmoving figure on the ground with her bare paws as the lights in the room switched back on. “Good. Had to be sure, or the whole plan falls apart. And thank the Prophecy for your—”
Thwack. Stomp. Stomp.
“Okay, I think he’s out. Let’s— uh—”
Stomp. Stomp.
She stood back up, catching her breath as she steadied herself against the wall. “Whew. You were saying?”
“Thank the Prophecy for your psychopathic breeding; most other species would be whining about how bad they feel about—
Hobbsia was utterly confused. “Why would I feel bad about killing the guy who’s been torturing me all morning?”
“Never mind… Grab his keys and take his uniform,” Gary instructed.
“What? Huh?”
Gary sighed. “This technique is called impersonation. Acting. You are going to pretend to be—”
“No, that was what I thought you’re planning. But he’s way bigger than me. His uniform wouldn’t be a good fit!”
“Hm… that is unfortunate. I didn’t think of that. But that’s the best I’ve got for now. Unless you’ve got years of Dominion commando or infiltrator training that wasn’t in your career file?” Gary asked in a mildly hopeful voice. “That was a pretty good swing.”
She ignored the rambling from the datapad but did as he suggested anyway. The guard’s uniform was bigger than her barely post-hatchling size; she was able to wrap it on her with some difficulty.
“That’s— that’s like close enough, right?” Gary asked when she stood back up, posing in front of the room’s security camera. Even through the translated voice, she could tell there was some uncertainty in it.
“No way! They’ll be able to tell,” she said, picking at the swathes of wrinkles in the oversized costume.
“You’d be surprised. Most people see what they expect to see. But… just in case… do you know how to shoot that gun?”
“What gun… oh,” she said as she discovered the small personal weapon holstered around the belt she’d just put on.
“Yes, that gun.”
She plucked it out of the holster and gave it a twirl. “I was trained to shoot a rifle as part of my Navy training.”
“Did they teach you how to deactivate the safety?”
“The… oh, heh, the safety.” After a couple tries, she managed to flick off the lever blocking the trigger, activating the weapon. “Point and shoot. How hard can this be?”
There was another audible sigh from the datapad. “We’ll try to avoid having to do that, then.”
“Now what?”
“Now, you wait some more, for the inner perimeter shift change.”
“Inner perimeter? Shift change?”
“You know… sometimes I long for the good old days when you guys were just dumb Buns who knew how to quietly follow orders, and I didn’t have to repeat all my instructions twice.”
“You’ve done this before?” Hobbsia asked curiously in spite of her predicament. “Many times?”
“Rarely. And not for a well-guarded State Security base like this one. But don’t worry, I’m sure we can figure this out together.”
“Great,” she muttered under her breath. Hobbsia asked after a while, “Since we’re just waiting now… why are you helping me, Gary?”
Gary seemed to hesitate for a second, but replied, “Your— your friend Plodvi wants you back. He called us. And we do need Sprabr back on that prisoner transfer.”
She sighed in relief. “Well… at least now I know you’re not an elaborate State Security scheme to interrogate me about my compatriots.”
“Goodie, you’re a paranoid one. Oh, and for a little bit of motivation, if you fail to escape and get recaptured, we’re going to have to blow up that whole base you’re in so they can’t figure out our methods.”
“And you call me paranoid?!”
“Takes one to know one.”
She shrugged. “Fair enough, I guess.”
Comments
Spooker
The follow-instructions-on-radio-rescue trope, like that Jason Bourne scene at Waterloo. With something slightly different as seen in the next chapter.
Valdis Trautmanis
I'm sure I've seen this trope somewhere before, still a good one 👍
EclipseDragon96
Let the mission impossible begin
