Spooker
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Grass Eaters 3 | 53 | White Flag II
🕑 Added 2025-02-24 16:47:01 +0000 UTCDominion Navy Central Command, Znos-4-C
POV: Dvibof, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Six Whiskers)
“Central Command to ZNS 3420. Central Command to ZNS 3420. Report in.”
There was some scratching from the speaker as the other end of the FTL radio activated.
“ZNS 3420 reporting in,” the other end of the call replied, her face showing up on the screen two seconds later.
“This is Six Whiskers Dvibof of Dominion Naval Command. Identify yourself.”
“Yes, Six Whiskers Dvibof. I am radio operator Four Whiskers Talnenglom.”
Dvibof input the identifying information into his console, and sure enough, the slightly dated picture that showed up on screen did indeed look like the live feed of Four Whiskers Talnenglom.
For an additional layer of security, some high-ranking officers have additional authentication response-code pairs. A four whiskers wasn’t nearly important enough to have one of those, but for regular status reports, the newer procedure required an additional identifying question.
He queried the computer for her security questions. A small list of them popped up on the screen.
“Four Whiskers Talnenglom, which Dominion sector were you hatched in?”
There was a brief moment of hesitation as she recalled the answer, and right when he thought she wasn’t going to be able to answer, she replied, “I was hatched in Sector 45 on Plirtki-3.”
He checked the answer against the database. It was correct.
Dvibof nodded. “Authenticated. Report the status of your ship and sector of responsibility.”
“Yes, Six Whiskers. We’ve had no direct predator sightings, but there have been four sensory ghosts in the past day.”
“Only four?” he asked.
That was a fairly regular number of false positives for a habitable system. The new radar ships they had were sensitive, and they still had trouble differentiating between orbital trash and potential enemies. The Dominion Navy compensated for that by following up on every lead they could as a matter of procedure. Inefficient, but necessary.
“Yes, four,” she replied. “We have thoroughly investigated the radar readings. None of them appear likely to be the enemy.”
“Excellent, Four Whiskers. Any other updates?”
“No, Six Whiskers Dvibof. That is all.”
“Good. Keep an eye out for additional anomalies, especially because your fleet is so close to where they were sighted last.”
“Yes, Six Whiskers.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
TRNS Crete, Vdrajma (12,000 Ls)
POV: Carla Bauernschmidt, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Rear Admiral)
“Relax, Seven Whiskers. I’m not here to extract the secret control codes for the Znos system defense fleet out of you,” Carla joked at the stiff Khluti sitting in front of her.
“That is ridiculous, and you know it,” Khluti replied derisively. “There are no secret control codes for our fleets. And if there were, I would not know it.”
“Right, that would be State Security,” Carla said. “Don’t worry. I am uninterested in all that. I just want to know more about your people.”
“Why?” Khluti asked suspiciously.
Carla shrugged. “Consider it more of my irrational predator curiosity. One day, our peoples might have peace between us. And if such a day could come, wouldn’t it be unfortunate if all we knew about each other was how best to kill each other?”
“Peace between us?” Khluti stared at her. “Peace?! Your people must be truly deranged.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. I hear your superiors at State Security have been negotiating with our leaders, after all. There is always a chance.”
“That your leaders might make such a basic blunder?” Khluti shook her head. “That seems extremely unlikely.”
“From your perspective, maybe. XO?”
Speinfoent appeared with a plate of three scoops of strawberry ice cream in his paw. He licked his snout absentmindedly, and seemingly reluctantly, he placed it on the table in front of the Znosian captive.
“What is this?” Khluti asked, leaning closer to sniff at the cool sensation emanating from the dessert. “No flesh?”
“Ice cream. Dairy and gluten-free,” Carla confirmed. “Think of it like a trade.”
Khluti leaned back reluctantly and shook her head. “A trade of food for state secrets? I think not.”
“No, not secrets. Nothing important,” Carla insisted. “Just random trivia to satisfy my personal curiosity. If you don’t want to answer, that’s up to you.”
“Whatever. Ask what you want. I’ll never tell you information that could help your fleet subjugate us.”
“Fair enough.” Carla tilted her head as Khluti dug into it without extra prompting. “Questions of curiosity only, as promised. Last time, we were talking about your friend — the radio operator — on the ZNS 8830.”
“Four Whiskers Brarkh.”
“Exactly, him. You said he grew up around the same place as you?”
“Same hatchling school back on Znos-4. He was always a quiet one with few words, which is characteristic of his bloodline of radio operators and weather reporters…”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dominion State Security HQ, Znos-4
POV: Sprabr, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Eleven Whiskers)
“Please… let me in,” Sprabr half-begged the attendant diligently guarding Svatken’s office door with cool indifference. “There is something urgent I need to report directly to the director.”
Fstrofcho’s expression wasn’t so much hostile as it was… boredom. “You have not made an appointment ahead of time, Eleven Whiskers. You may only meet with the director with an approved appointment. Those are the rules.”
“Tell me, Fstrofcho, how many people have ever come by and demanded to be let into her office?!” Sprabr asked. “This must be a rare exception!”
“That is a matter of State Security, Eleven Whiskers.”
“Surely the uniqueness of this situation demands a different set of rules.”
“There are no special exceptions for anyone, under any circumstances, Eleven Whiskers.”
“Fine! I’ll wait here until she is finished with her current meeting!”
“That is… not against the rules,” Fstrofcho replied after a minute of checking his console. Which, of course he had to check… as such an emergency was unprecedented!
Sighing, Sprabr sat down at the stool outside her door to wait.
It was an uncomfortable stool; he was almost sure that was intentional.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
It took Svatken just over two hours to finish her current business.
The exterior door opened without ceremony, and as he craned his neck in curiosity to see who else had an appointment at this hour, two burly-looking State Security Unit Zeroes in full Marine armor entered the lobby.
Fstrofcho gave them both a nod, and the office door opened to admit them.
Sprabr began to protest. “Wait, why do they get to—”
They pushed him aside without a glance and marched into Svatken’s office.
“Not you,” Fstrofcho warned with a claw as Sprabr contemplated following them in.
With a sigh, he sat back down.
“Ma’am?” he heard one of the guards ask inside the office after a minute.
“Your service weapon, Four Whiskers,” her silky voice came through.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Click.
“Anything else to report today, administrator?”
“No— nothing additional to report, Director,” a different female replied in a trembling voice.
“That is what I assumed. Excellent. Thank you for your Service to the Prophecy, Administrator.”
Bang.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
In the enclosed space, his ears rang from the gunshots even outside the door. He glanced over with concern at Fstrofcho who was unperturbedly busy with something on his console with a headset tightly wrapped around his ears.
“Ma’am?” the guard was asking as Sprabr’s ears recovered from the ringing.
“The recycling center for this idiot, if you don’t mind.”
As he contemplated whether to come back another time — preferably when she’d be in a better mood, he heard Svatken stop the guards with a whistle. “Wait one. Hold on, my attendant sent me a message saying that a certain annoying eleven whiskers has been waiting outside this whole time. Stick around. Perhaps I can save you two an additional trip.”
She raised her voice, as if he hadn’t heard everything she just said. “Eleven Whiskers, come on in.”
Sprabr slowly strode into her office. There was a middle-aged administrator splattered across Svatken’s office floor. He didn’t recognize her face — possibly due to the gaping bullet hole in the middle of it with blood still gushing out, but suddenly he had a rough idea why Svatken had that odd-looking drain installed in the center of her office floor.
He reached a respectful distance from her desk and bowed as low as his elderly spine allowed him to, careful to keep his eyes off the smoking gun cradled in her paws.
“Director,” he addressed her nervously.
“Welcome to my office again, Eleven Whiskers. How may we better serve the Prophecy today?” she asked sweetly.
“I have a— I have a matter of— uh— utmost urgency to discuss with you that is— that is relevant to the security of the Dominion state,” he stuttered.
“Oh,” she replied lightly, waving the gun in her paw around the office. “Yes! The security of the Dominion state. That is indeed what we do around here. It would appear you’ve come to the right place. Please, Eleven Whiskers, take a seat!”
He cautiously took a seat at the stool in front of her desk.
“Now, who are you reporting today?”
“No— no one.”
“Ah. You are here to take full responsibility for something then? The loss of one of our fleets, perhaps?”
“No— not at this moment, Director.”
“No? Are you sure? Hm… that’s too bad. What is it then?”
With that, her genial smile seemed a lot less… benign.
“I have uh— analyzed…” Sprabr began to report distractingly.
“You have what? Speak up, Eleven Whiskers,” she ordered. “It is very important that you make yourself heard clearly.”
“Yes, Director.”
“After all, ambiguity when reporting is a crime,” Svatken continued, almost like a teacher would correct a hatchling’s uncivilized behavior. She indicated at the still body on the floor next to him with the barrel of her gun. “As one of my least competent underlings has learned recently.”
In any other circumstances, he would have pointed out the contradiction about how dead people couldn’t learn, but this somehow didn’t seem like the right time for that line of conversation. “She— she—” he stuttered, trying to find the right words for his question.
Svatken understood his question. “Ah, I know what you want to know. How do I know she was incompetent, right?”
“I would never question your judgement on these matters, Director,” he hurried to reply.
“It is a new system we have implemented to evaluate and improve subordinate performance,” Svatken continued. “It is called… stack ranking.”
Sprabr had never heard of such a thing. “Stack ranking?”
“Yes, all managers rank their subordinates using performance metrics and allocate them into five buckets of— anyway, the important thing is, once they’re in these buckets, it’s simple for us to determine who are the worst performing ones from the top-down, and…” She gestured to the body again with her gun. “It has proven to be an effective system at identifying poor performers in real-time, and you can expect to see it being rolled out in the Dominion Navy as soon as we work through the logistics.”
Sprabr tilted his head. “That seems… efficient. I congratulate the Design Bureau for another addition—”
“Oh, they didn’t invent this.”
“No? Then who is responsible—”
“The Great Predators. Of course, the simplicity of the concept didn’t escape me, so the defects at the Design Bureau who failed to invent this in the first place — well, you know which bucket those idiots belong to.”
For a brief moment, Sprabr considered bringing up the possibility that this was another predator trick, but then the saner part of his brain decided that this wasn’t a burrow he wanted to die in.
Svatken looked straight at him. “So… you said you were reporting something important?”
“Yes— yes, Director. I have analyzed several… Great Predator attacks near our Dominion interior. They were blowing up our ships, destroying our shipyards and critical infrastructure, and disrupting our supply lines. But these activities appeared to have stopped four weeks ago.”
“I was made aware of that, yes. The last one was a cluster of… ships we lost near Vdrajma,” Svatken said, bringing the information up on her own datapad. “What about it? Surely you can’t be looking to take credit for stopping the predator attacks.”
“Director, I don’t believe they’re done.”
“Yes, Eleven Whiskers,” she broke into another patronizing smile at him. “We are also aware of that. Our Digital Guides have come to a similar conclusion. They are not done. They are likely going back home to get resupplied and rearmed for another run at us. Except next time they come into our territory, we will be far more ready for them. And the time after that, we will likely begin to inflict losses on them. By the fourth invasion, we will begin to control the tempo of engagement. And if they continue after that, they will — as you would put it — culminate.”
Sprabr dared to shake his head. “I don’t believe they’re going home, Director. Judging by the volume estimates in the intelligence report prepared by State Security, the large cargo carrier they’ve brought along into our territory has enough munitions to keep their campaign going at the current pace for another five times over. And they have those troop carrier of theirs, the one they call the Crete-class. They might be carrying anything for all we know.”
“Or… you may consider the possibility that we have managed to stop them, with a brilliant new tactic from my new prodigy,” Svatken said.
“Brilliant new tactic?” he asked, confused.
“You’ve been out of the loop, Eleven Whiskers, but be assured, we are not the helpless prey our enemies think us. Nor as powerless as — it appears — you seem to think we are. Yes, we have devised new methods to deal with their campaign of targeted destruction deep in our territory. One that you didn’t even consider.”
The last part combined with the condescending smile on Svatken’s face rang an alarm bell in the back of his head, but Sprabr knew when to be humble, or at least feign it. “Naturally, Director. The immense breadth of talent and experience available to the Prophecy from all across the Dominion is impossible to match with my personal contributions. What is— may I inquire as to the nature of our new tactic? Just for my own… self-improvement.”
“Of course,” Svatken said, her voice magnanimous. “Self-improvement is the duty of all Servants of the Prophecy. Based on testimony from the Great Predators we’ve captured, we have found a novel way to delay their ships and impose additional logistics costs on their fleet. Are you aware that the Great Predator Navy operates under a series of unintuitive rules?”
He nodded. “Yes, they are similar to some of our Digital Guide heuristics.”
“Not quite. These are overarching constraints on their military operations. They would not consider breaking these even if severe inefficiencies are incurred as a result.”
“Fascinating,” Sprabr said. “What uh— what is the nature of these constraints?”
Svatken’s grin widened. “They do not deny surrenders.”
Sprabr thought for a couple seconds and nodded. “Ah, I see. Feigned surrenders. It has worked sporadically in previous campaigns against other predators. It makes sense that the same tactic might prove to be effective—”
Svatken shook her head vigorously. “No, no. Feigning surrender voids their constraints. The Great Predators have ways to counter that. As far as we can tell, their published surrender procedures are surprisingly airtight and — unfortunately — they appear to be designed to minimize their own casualties against fake surrenders. Our new tactic involves genuine surrenders.”
Sprabr tried to substitute the concern in his voice with enthusiasm. “Genuine— genuine surrenders, Director?”
“Indeed,” she nodded with equal eagerness. “We replaced our patrol ships in the sectors near the latest predator sightings with older ships at the end of their maintenance cycle — the ones with inexperienced crews. We staffed those ships with as many low quality spacers as we can, and their captains are ordered to sabotage their ships and give up as soon as they encounter any sign of the enemy. Since the Great Predators are obligated to take them prisoner, this creates unanticipated strain on their own supply and operational schedule. And even if they did come with ample supplies, it will at least further delay their timeline and give us additional time to build a new fleet to counter them.”
Sprabr was utterly speechless.
Svatken mistook his silence and the disbelieving expression on his face for admiring awe. She continued smugly, “That… is probably why we haven’t had another predator ship sighting in our territory for weeks. They must be overloaded with responsibility right now, or they have realized that we’ve discovered the loophole in their system and have pulled back to reassess their strategy. Either way, they are likely no longer combat effective. That’s the beauty of this trick; even if they torture our people and realize what we are doing, they can’t stop it.”
“Is— is— has another Dominion Navy commander vetted this tactic for soundness and detriments?” Sprabr asked in desperation.
“Vet?” she asked simply, arching her brows. “Vet? Vet my tactics?”
“Just— just for validation,” he added hurriedly. “Your approach is beyond reproach, of course, but explaining these to another Navy commander might… develop an additional layer of… responsibility that could only increase everyone’s confidence in the security of our state.”
“Oh,” she said. “I will consider that possibility.”
“Great,” he said, sighing internally in relief.
Perhaps someone else could make her see some reason and—
“No,” Svatken said, interrupting his train of thought.
“I’m sorry?”
“I have just considered that possibility now.”
“And?” he prompted hopefully.
“And I have decided against it. It is unnecessary to… validate a strategy that we already know works.”
His shoulder slumped. “Oh.”
“Anything else to report, Eleven Whiskers?” she asked, looking down at the gun still in her paws as if considering something deeper, or something more primal.
“No— no, I guess not.”
“Excellent. Good day, Eleven Whiskers.”
“Thank you for your Service to the Prophecy, Director,” he said, bowing low as he took his leave, his eyes averting the dead administrator whose blood had pooled and crusted all over Svatken’s office floor.
“Oh, one more thing, Eleven Whiskers,” she called out behind him as he fled the office. “Don’t forget to make an appointment next time!”
It was only five minutes after he left — as he eyed the trio of not-so-subtle State Security operatives tailing him back to his den — when Sprabr realized that he hadn’t managed to tell the director a fraction of what he was there to.
Oh well. Maybe next time.
Comments
Vincent Sloan
It's already got them bypassing security questions for the low ranked crew
M
I see why the Republic chose Svatken to lead her people^^
Marsharbour
The great predator psyops hard at work I see.
EclipseDragon96
That new method surely isn't going to backfire...
