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Grass Eaters 3 | 22 | Battle Planning I
🕑 Added 2024-12-13 16:47:00 +0000 UTCTRNS Crete, Quistqueu (12,000 Ls)
POV: Carla Bauernschmidt, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Rear Admiral)
“Admiral, Resistance One sent a message requesting a— a strategy meeting with you,” Lieutenant Beth Woods announced from the electronic warfare station.
“The Ace of Clubs? Is this some kind of trick?” Carla asked.
“We can always shoot her out of the vacuum and say it was an accident later,” Beth joked.
“Cover it up? Why? They’ll build a big, glorious statue for us back in Sol if we take full credit… What does she want now?”
“She’s not being very specific in her request,” Beth said, reading off her screen.
Carla tilted her head. “Okay, so what does the bug that ODT installed on their ship a couple months back say she wants?”
“Officially, to discuss what to do when we arrive in Prinoe,” Beth said, gesturing to the frontline system occupied by a swathe of red on the battle map.
“Unofficially?”
Beth smiled. “They’re here to feel out just how much we plan to actually support them when we unleash them into Bun territory like a pack of wild Malgeir.”
“Touché,” said newly promoted Alpha Leader and Carla’s executive officer Speinfoent, chuckling dryly.
Carla turned to look at him. “So, XO, what do you think we should do?”
“Is one of the options blowing—”
“Other than that.”
Speinfoent thought for a moment. “Whatever we do, we shouldn’t let the Ace land her shuttle in our hangar bay. They could be carrying explosives. Or worse.”
Carla tilted her head. “Yeah, that’s worth avoiding.”
“Or come into railgun range, for that matter. I think we send a shuttle of Marines to board her and bring her on board. That’ll put her on notice too. Let her know we’re keeping watch on her. So she knows her place here.”
Carla gave him an affirmative gesture. “Not bad. What about when she gets on board?”
“We should— I don’t know… What’s your government’s policy on military cooperation with them now?” he asked as he scratched his head with a paw.
“Good question.”
After a few heartbeats, he asked, “Wait, that’s it? Just good question? No answer?”
Carla shrugged. “I don’t think— things are still a bit hectic back in Atlas from the Battle of Sol. We have officially recognized their non-exclusive authority in Sirius and a to-be-determined Bun system under the Treaty of Hano, and we’re no longer at war, but… we’re not allies or anything. I don’t think we’ve been issued any additional directions beyond that. So it’s up to us.”
Speinfoent tilted his head. “But they will fight the Grass Eaters?”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Last I heard, some of them over there weighed the possibility of owning their own planet of billions of Buns. Makes their fantasies of ruling over a few million colonists out in the Red Zone look downright realistic, but I’m not going to tell them what they can or can’t daydream about. And there’s just one thing stopping them: the Bun Navy from here to there. So yeah, they’ll probably fight.”
Speinfoent asked cautiously, “We’re not… actually letting them do that, are we? Letting them rule over the Buns if they manage to take one of their planets.”
Carla shook her head. “Not our problem. We’ll wish them good luck figuring out how to invade a whole entire habitable planet with a few thousand irregular scumbags and no supplies while we continue on our mission.”
“Wait. What if… they actually succeed? I don’t— I don’t see how they could, but…”
Carla shot him a wink. “See, XO? Now you’re thinking like a paranoid Grass Eater. I knew all that expensive Staff College training we gave you didn’t go to waste.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Sophie Garnier, Saturnian Resistance Navy (Ace of Clubs)
The Ace of Clubs sized up the squad of armored Marines blocking her way, their leader with his arms crossed. Shorter than her at just 1.4 meters tall, these Malgeir Marines looked a lot less cuddly or harmless than the two officers her people had captured and held as prisoners in the basement back in the Free Zone Liberation War.
The way they were gripping their weapons coolly… and they looked way too comfortable in what looked like custom-tailored Republic Marine Mark V armor. She couldn’t spot their combat robots, but she had no doubt they were hiding somewhere in their shuttle, with their own weapons aimed squarely at her vitals.
“Where’s your owner?” she snapped at them. “Don’t you know who we are?”
“You are the Ace of Clubs,” the gravelly voice of their squad leader filtered through his translator module. “But you could be the Head High Councilor himself, and you would still not be allowed onto our shuttle with your weapons.”
“That’s not how this works. We are humans, not rabid animals. I am coming to your owners’ ship under a flag of truce. Like civilized people. That’s a gesture of good faith, and you are obligated to reciprocate. I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” the Ace said, sneering at him. “Why don’t you get someone who knows what they’re doing on the phone and—”
The Malgeir squad leader slowly detached his suit radio, switched it to speaker mode, and dialed its volume to full. He said into it deliberately, “Admiral, our guests are claiming special diplomatic privileges, and they are refusing to relinquish their firearms. What would you like us to do?”
Carla’s voice came back in the radio speaker, loud enough for the entire hangar bay to hear. “High Pack Leader Baedarsust, the guest rules for my ship are clear: no weapons. If anyone tries to sneak any on board the shuttle, shoot them until they stop moving. Understood?”
“Understood, Admiral.” Baedarsust looked back at the Ace, a slow grin forming on his face. “Should we get started, or do you have more… requests for additional accommodation?”
The Ace thought about resisting for a moment, but quickly dismissed the fantasy. She needed the Reps.
For now.
She gritted her teeth and made a gesture to her people to stand down. She unslung her carbine and carefully brought it to the hangar floor, and her posse did the same. “Satisfied?” she asked as she released it and stood back up to her full height.
“No power armor either,” Baedarsust said simply.
She hit the quick release on her armor, stepping out of it. She took a few steps and stretched her arms. As she stepped forward towards the shuttle, the Malgeir squad leader put his paw in front of her, signaling her to halt.
“Your sidearms. And your knife.”
Rolling her eyes, the Ace undid the holster on her hip, placing it carefully on the floor as well, the pile of items growing. Another gun strapped to the front of her vest. The magazines. Then, the tactical knife in her belt. “You want to search me for plastic explosives too?” she scoffed.
He didn’t even blink as he produced a familiar-looking portable spaceport scanner, waving it all around her. “Yes. Take off your footwear too.”
“This is ridiculous,” she grumbled as she complied. “Hundreds of light years from Sol and still under the boot of the paranoid Reps!”
“Paranoid… that’s what I thought at first,” Baedarsust said he took a perfunctory sniff inside the Ace’s boots as his scanner searched her thoroughly. “But a few months of raids and patrols in the Red Zone, and I’m beginning to see why you Terrans do things the way you do.”
The scanner beeped and its indicator lights turned green. Baedarsust sniffed her collar a few times before stepping back with a satisfied grunt, then gestured her towards the shuttle as she put her combat boots back on. “Stand over there while we check your people.”
Her aide, Felix, was next. Pausing only to remove a small box-cutter he’d “accidentally” forgot about in his belt, the Malgeir squad cleared him quickly too.
They moved onto her alien pet advisor, Eight Whiskers Krizvum. Once a proud Znosian Navy spacer, he’d been reduced to a quivering shell of his former proud self after a mild dose of Resistance re-education. The Ace saw a couple of the Malgeir Marines lean forward as the Znosian stepped up to be inspected.
“A Grass Eater,” Baedarsust mumbled curiously. “Eight Whiskers too.”
Hearing him, the Ace smiled coldly, “Your owners aren’t the only ones who got new pets. And Krissy here isn’t the only one we have.”
“How did you manage to… domesticate them?”
“That’s a Resistance Navy trade secret,” she smiled smugly.
“Suit yourself,” he shrugged, and a few moments of scanning later, he nodded, “The Grass Eater is clear too.”
The three of them were herded into the Malgeir shuttle. She could tell it was obviously designed by humans with barely a glance. The minimalist interiors took their design cues from familiar Raytech assault shuttles, and the service panels had instruction writing in five human languages beneath the alien language in bold. But the layout was heavily adapted for the aliens’ physiology. Operable switches and controls were at a much lower height than would be comfortable for a human. Screens showed interfaces with oddly contrasting colors. And the emergency suit holders in its passenger bay would never fit an average human adult.
The Ace of Clubs wrinkled her nose at the tiny EVA suits. “We’d never fit in those,” she said, pointing at the one next to her designated jump seat.
“Yeah,” Baedarsust agreed. “Probably not.”
“You don’t have emergency suits for us?! Is this a joke?”
He shrugged. “It’s a short ride. We’re only a few minutes out from the ship anyway.”
“And we’d be dead in seconds in a decompression accident!” she challenged.
“You better hope we don’t get into one of those then,” he answered unsympathetically, gesturing her into her seat impatiently as he fastened his seat restraints.
Sighing, the Ace strapped herself in, noting that even the settings on the belts were just a bit tighter than she was used to. A few minutes later, the familiar whine of the inertial compensators got louder as the ship started to burn towards their destination.
Shifting in her seat, the Ace caught the attention of one of the other Malgeir sitting across the aisle from her. “You’ve got a name, pet?”
“I’m Head Pack Leader Spommu,” she replied, eyeing the Ace with suspicion. “Why?”
“Spoon?”
“Spommu,” she corrected.
The Ace leaned back into her seat as if she didn’t hear it. “You know, Spoon, you’re not the first of your kind we’ve met.”
“You’ve seen another Malgeir? In battle?” Spommu asked. “In the Red Zone?”
“Not exactly,” the Ace grinned. “Prisoners.”
She noticed Spommu’s grip on her weapon tighten slightly. “I’ve heard about that too.”
“You know… it’s fascinating how much of what we know about how we work… it all applies to aliens too. At a base level, you respond not that differently to the same incentives we do: pleasure, pain—”
“Is that how you managed to get the Grass Eater to follow your orders?” Spommu asked, nodding towards Krizvum huddled miserably in his jump seat.
“Something like that. At the end of the day, they’re just little psychos. We humans have those as well, you know?”
Spommu snorted, staring straight at the Ace. “That much is plainly obvious.”
The Ace ignored the jab. “Now, your people, on the other hand, are far more interesting. Empathy, you have that as well, in large doses too. We can simply threaten one of you, and the others will happily comply. Them…” she said, pointing to the Znosian. “When we threaten one of them, that doesn’t work at all. The rest tend to just repeat: their lives—”
“Their lives were forfeited to the Prophecy the day they left the hatchling pools,” Spommu snorted. “Yeah, we’ve heard that one before.”
The Ace nodded. “Yeah, I guess that’s why they were beating you guys so badly out there that you need our help, huh? On top of your people being so bad at this.”
“Bad at this?”
“This. Combat. War.”
Spommu sat back in thought for a moment, and smirked at the Ace. “You know, you’re not the first of your kind we’ve met either.”
It was the Ace’s turn to be confused. “Yeah? Obviously? Your human owners. The Reps.”
“No, not humans. Resistance Ace. You’re not the first Resistance Ace we’ve met in person,” Spommu replied smugly.
“Huh?”
“The Ace of Diamonds. Our squad was the one that captured her towards the end of the campaign. In fact, I was the one who shot her,” she grinned.
“Riiiiiight. Did you now?” the Ace asked sarcastically.
“Bzzzzzzzzzzzzt,” Spommu sounded with her mouth, mimicking the electrified Ace of Diamonds in her memory by shaking her paws. “I got her good.”
The Ace of Clubs stared at the Malgeir blankly for a few heartbeats. Then, she began to chuckle. Her chuckle turned into a howl. “Bzzzzzzt?” she echoed, coughing with laughter. “That’s how you got her?!”
“Yup, stun gun. Lucky she didn’t have her suicide vest on.”
The Ace managed to stop her cackling long enough to ask, “Did she piss herself before she passed out?”
Spommu shook her ears. “Nope, she held it all together. We even got to read her the basic rights thing. Then, she tried to grab my gun on the shuttle and we had to stun her again. That was fun.”
“I knew that old bean counter had a little fight in her,” the Ace said, letting off a small giggle.
“And we helped get the other one too. The Ace of Hearts,” Spommu said proudly. She mimicked the old woman’s hunch this time.
“No shit,” the Ace gaped at her.
“It’s true,” Spommu insisted. “Aren’t they getting their amnesties soon? You can ask them yourself.”
The Ace eyed her skeptically. “I’ll do that.”
Spommu said proudly, “Before we were rotated out, the Crete had a pool going and we were the consensus pick for the most likely squad they were going to send in to get you when we would eventually find where you were hiding on Titan.”
The Ace of Clubs winked at her. “I think you’d have found me a harder challenge than those two, Spoon.”
“Wanna find out?” Spommu shot a sly smile back, opening her mouth to reveal her full set of sharp canines. “Name a time and place. I’ll get out of this armor to make it fair.”
The alien was a couple heads shorter than her, but… the Ace’s expression tightened as she looked at the thick muscles hinted at under the Malgeir Marines’ armor and heavy fur hides. And the sharp claws. Their reaction times must be decent too, judging by the way their eyes moved. “Nah. Claws are cheating. We’re civilized humans, not animals.” She tapped her temple. “If we were competing, this is how we’d beat you: superior tactics and thinking with our brains.”
“Nothing Lemming Squad can’t handle,” Spommu taunted confidently.
She leaned back into her uncomfortable jump seat. “Lemmings, huh? You guys got any real combat experience? Not counting arresting seniors who can barely walk if not for modern prosthetics.”
Spommu shrugged. “We also boarded a ship full of Grass Eaters right before the Battle of Sol.”
“Oh yeah, huh. I think I heard something about that on Rep propaganda channels. Big alien ship?”
“Yup, capital ships are our specialty.”
“One of their capital ships, huh?” the Ace asked, leaning in and her brain switching to tactical mode immediately. Now, this was a new enemy she was curious about. “How did that compare with one of the missile destroyers we captured?”
“A Znosian battlecruiser? About thrice as big? I think? It had a full Marine complement.”
“And how many alien defenders is that?”
“About a thousand, but only a couple hundred Marines who got suited up in time for us. That was much easier than one of those orbital stations controlled by your people over Titan though,” Spommu admitted.
“A whole battlecruiser? Much easier?!”
Spommu grinned. “Yeah. Because we didn’t have to fight paranoid, crafty humans. And unrestricted rules of engagement with our Marvins. Far more straightforward than the Red Zone, all things considered.”
The Ace matched her feral grin. “You know what, Spoon? Maybe you guys aren’t so bad after all.”
Comments
AnAbsoluteVillain
Buylet green is 🐰. 😭
Nicolae
don't you mean how to turn it into a meat farm?
Nicolae
oops to much classified data leaked.
TheArchivist
Ohhh nooo, our Ace is getting free information, hook line and sinker…unless that’s part of the TRN’s plan
M
Spoonish*^^
Spooker
Yeah, that'll come up soonish.
xxm1rvxx
I love your world building and writing style , keep it up man. Can’t wait to read the chapters where the war advances, I keep wondering what’s going on in the diplomatic front? Has been any overtures by the buns ?
AnAbsoluteVillain
Cringe, they like each other. I can't ship Spoon and Sophie. I'm team Krissy ❤️ Sophy. Buns love a dommy mommy to tell them what to do. A little bit of pleasure and just enough pain. Ok maybe a lot of pain. Also I'm rooting for the Resistance (are they still resistance?) to show the Republic how to conquer a bun planet.
