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Grass Eaters 3 | 75 | Armistice II
🕑 Added 2025-04-16 15:47:02 +0000 UTCMarine Logistics Base 32 (Grantor City), Grantor-3
POV: Bertel, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Five Whiskers)
“You looking for me?”
Bertel squinted at the source of the voice across the open hangar. It was a short, rough-looking fellow with grease on his uniform, tightening something near the tail rotor of his Light Skyfang. She approached him, shouting over the mechanical din, “Are you Five Whiskers… Krasht?”
He shot her a grin, pointing a claw at the insignia and nametag on his uniform. “That’s me. And I assume you’re my new gunner.”
Bertel nodded. “Yup.”
“Any experience with one of these before?” Krasht slapped the sky-colored hull of his machine.
She made a wave gesture with her paw. “Not exactly one of these. I was a Skyfang gunner for about two years.”
“Aha, one of the heavies, we call them,” he said, nodding knowingly. “See much combat?”
“A bit. I was in Prunei for a while before I transferred here.”
“Prunei? Where’s that?”
“It’s…” Bertel started, then frowned. “I’m not sure. It’s far from here. Another continent. It’s… one of their district capitals.”
“Ah,” Krasht nodded again. “One of those. Lots of fighting? Surface threat?”
“Towards the end, yeah. Once the locals got their paws on the launchers… they had to send us new trainers for the new threat environment.”
“Well, things are a bit different here in Grantor City.”
“Different? How so?” Bertel asked.
Krasht guffawed. “Where do you think your instructors learned from? This is Grantor City. This is where they tried the new stuff on us. Remember the hunter-killer drones?”
“The hunter-killer drones?”
“The flying machines,” he clarified. “We use their word for it, because we are technically flying machines too.”
“Ah. We never got the hunter-killer teams back in Prunei.” Nonetheless, she’d heard of the tactic. After Znosian aviation learned to fly low to avoid their pawheld launchers, the Underground would launch these cheap, higher-flying reconnaissance aircraft that would spot Skyfangs for their teams on the ground. And there would be a team of operatives waiting on a rooftop as you flew over them, with their launchers ready. “Got lucky, I suppose.”
“Lucky,” he repeated in agreement. “We lost an entire wing to one of those before we figured it out.”
“Figure it out? What do you do?”
“When we see them launch one of those drones? We land.”
“Ah.”
“Not very useful for the troops we’re supposed to support, but…”
She nodded. “Not much we can do. Not with their Great Predator weapons…”
“But we shouldn’t have to worry about that,” Krasht added hurriedly. “With the armistice in effect and all.”
“Right.”
“Anyway… the job’s supposed to be uneventful now,” Krasht continued. “The predators aren’t supposed to shoot at us anymore.”
Bertel noticed the qualifier. “Supposed to.”
“Generally— generally they don’t… But sometimes, they break the rules. It’s small violations, usually. A rogue unit or two will take potshots at one of our convoys.”
“What are we supposed to do when that happens?”
“The rogue units are mostly just a few individual Slow Predators. They don’t have launchers and big guns. They just like to harass our stragglers. Usually, we show up over the convoy in our Skyfang, and they’ll go away.”
Bertel asked, “And if they don’t?”
“They have so far.”
“And if they don’t?” she repeated her question.
“They’re not supposed to.”
“Great,” Bertel muttered. “We just have to rely on unruly predators to follow rules.”
“Hey, whiskers up,” Krasht said cheerfully. “We won’t have to worry about that. In fact, if they ever shoot one of those rockets at us, you won’t have to worry about anything ever again.”
Bertel looked at the thin glass cockpit windows of the Light Skyfang and couldn’t find a reason to disagree. Unlike the ballistic windshield of her previous aircraft, these were likely not even rated to stop real bullets. Instead of anti-armor rockets on the side pylons, the only defense it boasted was a singular 20mm chain gun mounted under her nose. And the tail rotor looked flimsy enough, like it was about to fall off any second now.
She peered into the interior of the two-seater cockpit, where the pilot and gunner seats were set side-by-side, and she immediately noticed a foreign device haphazardly attached to the instrument panel. “What in the Prophecy is that?!”
“What?” Krasht stretched his neck into his side of the cockpit, his eyes following her claw. “Oh, the locator unit. Yeah, that’s a new one we added a couple weeks ago.”
“A non-regulation instrument?” Bertel asked in horror.
“Yeah. It’s an orbital positioning system unit. You know how our orbital positioning systems aren’t working anymore?”
Bertel nodded. “Sure… I heard the predator fleet upstairs trashed our satellites and stations.”
“You heard right. Took out or jammed them once they took our orbits. Anyway, apparently they launched their own replacement. For their troops.”
“So… that device…”
“Yeah, it’s one of theirs. Works pretty well too, as far as I can tell. See?” Krasht reached a claw into the cockpit, clicking a button on the alien device to turn it on.
“But— but—” Bertel stuttered. “That’s enemy equipment!”
“Not anymore,” Krasht said, grinning at her.
She squinted at the markings on the screen. To add to her surprise, the text on the display showed up… in Znosian. “It’s… in our language!” she exclaimed.
Krasht grunted the affirmative as he flipped through the settings with the buttons on the side. “Yeah, they’ve got like three hundred predator languages on here. And Znosian. No idea why, but I’m not complaining.”
“How did you even get your paws on one of those?!”
“Traded one of the predators for it.”
“Trade?!”
“Yup,” he jerked his head towards one of the other officers tending to another of the Light Skyfangs. “Our aviation wing commander went to one of their checkpoints downtown and exchanged one of their supply officials for a batch of them.”
“Exchange?! For what?”
“Not sure.” Krasht shrugged. “Some of our old equipment we won’t be evacuating, I’m guessing.”
“But— but—” Bertel was having a hard time wrapping her head around the concept. “This is enemy equipment!”
“Yeah. But it works. And ours doesn’t.”
“What if— what if they have some kind of tracker on it? What if they use it to track us?!”
“Of course they track us with it. But they already know where we all are. They have the orbits, remember?”
“Right,” she said skeptically. “But it’s— it’s still their equipment! We’re using predator equipment!”
He sighed. “That it is. And… whatever the risks of using it are, it’s better than not having one and getting lost on this Prophecy-forsaken planet teeming with predators, isn’t it?”
She couldn’t argue with that logic.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bertel forgot whatever complaints she had about the non-standard equipment on the Light Skyfang the minute its rotors spun up and they left the ground.
She’d missed this.
Being in the air just… felt right. She was bred for this. Technically she was bred to operate a more powerful Skyfang, but she wasn’t in the mood to complain.
As the aircraft cleared a short hill to reveal the predator city, Bertel examined its nightscape through her night vision goggles. She harumphed. Something was off. She’d seen the city before, but… it didn’t look quite like this.
“The lights!” she blurted out. Electricity had been restored in the parts of the city that the Underground controlled. Other than in a few sections, most of the buildings were now lit by their internal lighting, and hundreds of ground vehicles crawled its streets.
“Yup, they got rid of their curfew,” Krasht explained. “You know how they are… they work during the day and not-work during the night.”
“It’s— it looks…” Bertel struggled to find the word.
“Wasteful?” he suggested. “Too bright?”
She shook her head to herself. “No, just— just… different.”
“Well, at least they’re draining their own electric power plants and not ours for their wasteful—”
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Interrupting him, the radar warning receiver gave off a rapid series of alarm noises as their threat sensor screens lit up with dozens of icons.
“SAMs! Threats! Many surface threats!” Bertel screamed into her headset as she searched frantically on her optics. “Twelve! They’re on our—”
“Relax. Relax,” Krasht replied in a calm monotone through the urgent sirens. He reached a paw over his head to silence the threat board. “It’s just their surface-to-air radar sites in downtown.”
“What?! Surface-to-air—”
“Yeah, their new Great Predator radars. Don’t worry. They do this all the time. Lock their radars onto us to screw with us,” he said confidently. He reached a claw over her shoulder to point at one of the buildings on the edge of the city. “You see that tall one? About six kilometers from us.”
Forcing herself to take deep breaths, she followed his claw to the skyscraper he indicated through her optics. “That one?”
“That very one. Look on top.”
She zoomed in. Sure enough, there was a small radar dish on the roof, and upon closer inspection, there was a small group of four or five predators gathered near it on the white-hot thermals. Bertel could barely believe her eyes. “They’re— they’re…”
“Yup. They’re greeting us,” Krasht commented dryly as a couple of the predators repeatedly waved their paws while facing the Light Skyfang. “Just having a good old time on that roof.”
Bertel stared at the dancing predators, dumbfounded at the brazen display.
He continued, “I know what you’re thinking, but we can’t shoot at them. Those are our directives. And even if we were allowed to, it wouldn’t make a difference.”
“Why?”
“That’s just the radar site,” he said. “Their actual launchers are somewhere else in the city. Not to mention the pawheld ones. If we do anything, they’ll blow us out of the sky before our shots land.”
“I… see. And they aren’t going to shoot at us either?”
“Well, not the launchers. Haven’t been shot at by one of those so far. Not yet, at least.”
“That’s utterly reassuring.”
The Light Skyfang snaked its way through the neighborhoods at the edge of the city, a couple kilometers above one of the convoys sent out by the logistics base. Just as Bertel was about to get bored, the voice of the wing commander addressed their radios, “Red Tail to Quick-2, are you there? Quick-2!”
Bertel operated the slightly unfamiliar radio controls. “Quick-2 here, Red Tail. Ready for your directives.”
“Quick-2, one of our returning convoys took some fire at the northern edge of the city, about twelve kilometers from your location. One of their trucks has broken down and they’re taking some sporadic rifle shots from rogue predators in a building near them. I’ve sent the coordinates to you.”
“Understood. We’re on our way now,” Bertel replied after a quick nod from Krasht. “We can get eyes on in… a couple minutes.”
“Quick-2, I know you’re new to our wing, so… remember that you are operating under our revised directives of engagement.”
“Yes, Six Whiskers. I’ve reviewed the new procedures.”
The no-nonsense commander replied, “Good. No firing on the locals unless you’re actively being fired upon, and absolutely no shooting at their non-combatants.”
She’d heard that one of the Longclaw units had done exactly that a couple weeks ago: shoot at an apartment building full of predators after taking fire from a rogue unit, collapsing the poorly constructed residence with a single plasma shell. Bertel didn’t see the problem; as far as she could tell, the five whiskers who commanded the Longclaw deserved a promotion for effective pest extermination, not an assignment-of-responsibility hearing.
But the predators disagreed, and they threatened to level the entire Longclaw base from orbit if the Dominion didn’t hand over the entire crew. The base commander eventually caved in to the demand, handing over the five individuals identified by the predators.
Bertel hoped they didn’t suffer long before they were eaten.
She had no intention of suffering the same fate. “Yes, Red Tail. We will follow the new rules. Our lives were forfeited to the Prophecy the day we left the hatchling pools.”
“Good. Red Tail out.”
Bertel looked to her pilot. “What in the Prophecy are we supposed to do when we can’t even shoot at the predators?”
“Relax,” Krasht waved a free paw dismissively. “It’s probably just one of their rogue units taking potshots at our convoy again. We show up over them, fire a few warning shots, and they’ll go away.”
“Warning shots?” Bertel asked at the confusing combination of words.
“Yeah, a few shots into the ground near them. Warning. But with shots.”
“What an odd concept.”
“You’ll see. They’ll get the message. They usually do.”
A few minutes later, the approximate position of the convoy showed up on her optic. One of the trucks had broken down, and a group of Marines were huddled behind it, peppered by gunfire from a nearby building. One of the armed trucks in the convoy next to it was shooting back at the windows — even if a little reluctantly.
Bertel dialed the radio to the units on the ground in the developing firefight. “This is your air support. What’s going on down there?”
“We’re taking fire from that… building,” came the surprisingly calm voice from the ground as a new mark appeared in her head’s up display. “At least a squad of them, and one of them is… accurate with their weapon. I have two injured Marines that need evacuation.”
She examined the building on her head’s up display. She muttered to Krasht. “Is that— what kind of building is that?”
He glanced at it. “Mixed-use predator residence is my guess.”
Bertel squinted at the display and sighed. “So I need authorization from the six whiskers to fire on it?”
“Hang on, let me try something,” Krasht said as he pushed on his control stick.
“What are you—” she stopped herself and held onto her pawholds as the aircraft tilted violently forward towards the firefight. The Light Skyfang screamed down at the occupied building.
“A distraction, at least,” he grunted as he pulled back at the last second. He flipped a button on his dash, jettisoning a cloud of bright flares. As they pulled away from the firefight, Bertel noticed on her screen that the fire had indeed slackened somewhat after the stunt, combined with the increasing volume of return fire from their own ground units.
Half a minute later, the armed occupants of the residential building apparently decided they had enough for the night. The door in the back of the building opened, and a stream of them poured out.
Bertel tracked their glowing heat signatures on her gun camera as they fled. “Can you line them up—”
“No. Let them go.”
“What? But they’ve left the building and the rules don’t say—”
“The rules don’t say a lot of things.” Krasht shook his head next to her. “What they don’t say… is that we continue to breathe and fly at the pleasure of the predators on this planet. And these guys might be nobody. Or one of them might be the mate of someone important.”
“Bah, predator sentimentality.”
“It is what it is.”
“So, we… live and let live? That’s… what we do now?”
“For now,” Krasht sighed. “One day, we’ll be back on this planet with our fleet. And then we’ll see what they and their rules have to say against the might of the new Dominion Grand Fleet.”
“Alright,” Bertel replied, keeping her skepticism to herself.
“Get on the radio and tell the guys down there to clear a landing spot for me to evacuate their wounded.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
One of the differences between Skyfang and Light Skyfang operations was that Skyfang crews were required to review gun camera footage after each flight. Light Skyfangs were easier to maintain and went on more frequent missions. But the heavies had plenty of downtime between each flight, so crews were able to debrief properly. Which was why they were required to do the reviews and Light Skyfang crews were not.
Bertel did it anyway. Habit and bred instincts, she supposed.
She pulled up the footage, going through it minute-by-minute, from start to finish. She noted each of the details on her flight log, from the radar sites they encountered at the start, to the convoy ambush they broke up at the end.
And as she idly browsed through the final seconds of the engagement, she noticed something odd. She paused the footage, rewinding and replaying the few footage frames she had of the enemy assailants before they fled behind the residential building. She frowned to herself, wondering just what was so… unsettling about it.
She replayed it again. And again.
On the fifth replay, she finally figured it out.
What in the Prophecy…
The enemies. The ones who had shot at her people.
They weren’t running away from the fight.
They were hopping.
Comments
Samuel Carroll
What a twist!
M
Viva la resistance!
Ark
They're battlefield players, MY GOD!
Spooker
This is on Grantor-3, so it'd be the... original experimental results.
EclipseDragon96
Is the the FZN(Free Znos Navy) or are they the batch of hatchlings that got stolen away?
