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Grass Eaters 3 | 16 | One Way Trip
🕑 Added 2024-11-29 16:47:01 +0000 UTCGrantor City School for Gifted Hatchlings, Grantor-3
POV: Spisme, Znosian (Teacher)
“Let me get this straight, Slow Predator,” Spisme said in dismay. “You want me to teach these hatchlings wrong on purpose?”
“Not wrong,” Torsad said, shaking her head. “Right from wrong. You just have to teach them the basics. Empathy, compassion, morality.”
“Pointless predator notions,” the hatchling teacher dismissed. “I won’t teach them to be useless.”
“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough,” Torsad bared her mouth full of sharp teeth at the small teacher. “Any of your hatchlings that can’t pass our test of being not-a-psycho will be… as you put it, recycled.”
“But that’s such a waste!” Spisme protested. “What if they would otherwise be perfectly functional members of society? Other than measured by your stupid predator metrics? They would still know how to read, how to write, how to count—”
“Bzzzzzzzzzzz kshkshkshkshkshksh…” The Granti imitated the sound of some mechanical device cheerfully. “Into the shredder they go!”
That’s not even what the recycling machine sounds like, stupid—
Torsad continued, “Unless… they can pass the test of knowing right from wrong. Of being able to see predators as people. But don’t worry, if these ones won’t cut it, we’ll just go get you more at the local hatchling pools until you can get your… curriculum right. So… no pressure, right?”
She glared at the crude Granti resistance leader. “You are asking me to teach what I don’t know!”
“I know, isn’t that wild?” Torsad grinned at her. “You better start learning fast, or we’ll have to go through a lot of hatchlings. But don’t worry, I’ll leave my lieutenant Insunt here if you have any questions. A role model for your cubs, if you will. Good luck, hatchling teacher! For your students’ sake.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Casqui, Granti (Prisoner)
Casqui patiently waited for the Grass Eater Marine to handcuff her to the bus seat in front of her. It was a complex mechanism built on a strong device, designed specifically to be able to hold Granti prisoners like her.
She looked across the aisle, finding an elderly brown male whose fur was falling out in patches. He had an odd-looking birthmark on his face. Or perhaps it was a result of malnutrition and abuse. “They’re really paranoid about us, huh?”
The old Granti looked at her with mild amusement. “Of course. We are dangerous prisoners, are we not?”
“I guess?” she said meekly.
“What’s your name? What did you do?”
“I’m Casqui. I was paid two protein packets to put up a few posters,” Casqui replied.
“Ah. One of those new Underground posters I’ve been seeing around?” he asked.
“Yup, those are the ones,” she admitted. “Defiance or extinction! Don’t go gentle into that good night! Hah, they got really mad about that one.”
“Don’t go gentle…,” he echoed. “Huh.”
“Yeah, then— then one of the collaborators saw me,” Casqui said, deflating. “One of our own people. I can’t believe that’s what got—”
“Hey! Quiet down back there!” one of the Grass Eaters in the front yelled.
Casqui whispered towards the elder prisoner, “Do you know where we’re going? I see they’ve got a whole squad commanded by a seven whiskers escorting us.”
“One-way work camp,” he replied in a low voice. “Outside the city.”
She just sat there for a moment, absorbing the death sentence in shock. It was not easy, even if she knew somewhere in the back of her mind that this was always coming for her one day.
The elderly Granti gave her a sad smile. “Sorry, I thought you knew.”
“But I just— I just put up some posters,” she said, dejected.
“Must have been some good posters, huh?” he whispered.
She didn’t reply for a few minutes. Faced with the certainty of her death, Casqui’s mind simply went blank. Sensing her grief, the old Granti left her alone, allowing her to stew in her own contemplation.
A few minutes later, the bus hit a bump in the road, jarring her out of her thoughts of nothingness.
Casqui sighed. One day at a time. “What about you, elder? How did you get here? What’s your name?”
He nodded at her. “I’m Denspi. I was the mate of a High Councilor. Before the occupation. For that crime, they’ve been using me as practice for their interrogators in training. A one-way work camp? I would have volunteered for this years ago if I knew it was an option.”
She took a second look at him in his decrepit state. “High Councilor’s mate, huh? Where are they now?”
“She was evacuated offworld. So… as far away from Grantor as possible, I hope.”
The traffic on the road was light, and even lighter after the bus left the city limits. As the buildings began to recede behind them, there wasn’t much outside the windows to look at.
“Last time I’m going to see Grantor City, probably,” Casqui remarked as the view turned to empty fields.
“First time leaving the city, cub?”
Casqui shook her head. “No, we had an offworld exchange program when I was nineteen,” she recalled, basking in the pleasant memory. “I was in the Federation for two years. I met this handsome Malgeir fellow at one of their agricultural resort worlds…”
“Good for you,” Denspi chuckled. His voice turned more serious, “I heard from my previous work camp… the Malgeir… they’re doing better now. They beat back the Grass Eaters Navy, captured many of them. For the first time.”
“Are you sure?” Casqui tried not to snort. “Or is that just what they say on their news?”
He shrugged. “Hard to tell, but if they’re doing worse, we’ll find out pretty soon… Anyway, I choose to believe. That was probably where my mate went. It makes my end… bearable.”
The scenery of rural Grantor City passed by in a blur. The city streets were replaced with checkpoints, and once they exited the city proper, it was just abandoned pasture fields for as far as the eye could see. The traffic in the city had mostly been for official business for the occupiers. The roads became sparser and sparser as the bus continued to travel. Until…
“Wait a second,” Casqui said about ten minutes later, pointing out the front window of the bus at a distantly approaching vehicle. Even with the malnutrition, she still had good eyes; above average for a Granti, far above any of the Grass Eaters. She observed, “That’s not one of theirs. That’s a Granti vehicle.”
And there it was, a rare pre-occupation Granti personal vehicle — dark blue — on the road, rapidly approaching the bus from the front. Its size was way too big for a Znosian driver.
Denspi squinted at it from next to her. “Oh yeah, huh.”
A few seconds later, there was some commotion at the front of the bus. Apparently, their Grass Eater Marine escorts noticed it as well.
“Seven Whiskers, that’s not one of our vehicles!” one of them called out loudly as he left his seat.
“Look at its tires. It’s riding low! It must be carrying something in the back!”
“They don’t have a driver in the driver’s seat!”
“Get us out of here!” the seven whiskers shouted at the driver.
The driver tried his best to dodge out of the way, but he didn’t stand a chance. There was a loud jolt and explosion near the front, and Casqui’s vision went black as she heard the shattering of glass and groaning of metal.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Casqui came back to consciousness upside down in her seat. Wiggling around, she managed to orient herself. The bus had overturned onto its side, and there was smoke somewhere in the cabin.
Looking towards the source of the sharp pain in her wrists, she saw that they were both clearly broken. On the plus side, that had gotten her out of her handcuffs, which were dangling uselessly in their slots in front of her.
She looked around. The groans and cries of her fellow prisoners came from all around her, slowly audible through the subsiding tinnitus in her ears.
How long was I out?
Her senses recovered, and as they did, so did her logical thoughts.
I can’t stay here.
She looked towards Denspi’s seat beside her. He was gone.
She looked all around her. There was a sizable hole towards the back of the bus. She crawled towards it. Through the pain of the jagged metal scraping and catching some of her fur, she managed to squeeze through. Casqui landed on the asphalt road with her bare paws. It was hot, but not enough to be too painful to continue. She limped a few paces away from the bus, then noticed shouting behind her.
“Let her go!” someone shouted.
She looked back. Around the overturned bus was a surreal scene. The Granti vehicle that had attacked the bus was a charred mess missing its top half. But that was not the strange part.
Through the active fire still burning the large vehicle’s carcass, she saw the silhouette of a Granti, holding an unarmored, struggling Grass Eater Marine up by its neck. It was wiggling around in their grasp, slashing uselessly at the figure holding it up.
The figure: an elderly, brown Granti.
Recognition.
It was Denspi.
“Let our seven whiskers go!” one of the other Grass Eaters shouted at Denspi.
A mixture of curiosity and horror overrode her desire to escape. She turned back and slowly approached the scene again. As Casqui got a little closer, taking cover near the overturned bus, she saw the whole squad of Grass Eaters — four of them — all with their rifles pointed straight towards Denspi in a small semi-circle around him.
“Let her go, abomination!”
“If you don’t let go, we’ll shoot!”
Denspi had a serious expression on his face, holding his free paw up at the exposed neck of the seven whiskers, his sharp untrimmed claws pointed straight at it. The message was clear.
He mumbled something unintelligible, then his eyes seemed to light up as he spotted Casqui behind the bus.
Denspi winked at her.
What is the crazy elder thinking?
He coughed twice from the smoke and recited loudly in her direction, “Don’t go gentle into that good night.”
What?
Denspi smiled at her and slashed his claw across the seven whiskers’ throat, its blood instantly spurting out in a mist. There was a moment of shocked silence. Then, the rest of the Grass Eater Marines opened fire in unison, stitching a hundred bullet holes into Denspi’s body before he could even drop their squad leader’s dead body to the ground.
Casqui held a paw over her snout in horror, watching as their gunfire slowed to a halt. One of the Grass Eaters ran up to check the bodies of Denspi and their seven whiskers.
It shook its head.
As the Grass Eater turned, it looked up into the sky, shouting… shouting something urgent. She couldn’t hear what it was shouting in the distance.
Casqui followed their gaze. There was a dark spot in the sky. Some kind of native winged predator, perhaps? Then she remembered that the Grass Eaters had exterminated those first when they invaded the planet.
The Grass Eater squad all looked up and quickly opened fire towards it with their rifles, their tracers stabbing into the sky. And as the dark spot got closer, she realized there were multiple of them. A few more seconds, and she saw what they were: flying machines. They made a horribly loud buzzing noise as they got closer. For a second, it seemed like they hung in the air above the squad.
Then, they dove.
In a split second, they reached the Grass Eaters, each one turning into an explosive fireball two lengths above head height. The Grass Eater Marines fell from the showers of deadly shrapnel one-by-one.
Casqui was still frozen there, watching the scene, as a convoy of Granti vehicles rolled up on the road to take her away fifteen minutes later.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Grantor City Safehouse Romeo, Grantor-3
POV: Guinspiu, Granti (Head Councilor)
Mark turned his tablet around towards the Granti High Councilor. “Guinspiu, we have terrible news for you. One of our cells raided a prisoner convoy heading towards a Grass Eater death camp. One of our drones overhead recorded the whole thing. We didn’t realize it at first, but our computer flagged it. Your mate was— Perhaps… perhaps it’s better if you watch it yourself.”
Guinspiu watched the video on his tablet hesitantly. When she saw her mate crawl out of the bus, she put her paw on the screen, as if she could reach out and touch him.
When he smiled on the screen, she smiled back.
“Don’t go gentle into that good night.”
“Oh. Oh Denspi.”
As he was gunned down, she made a quiet keening sound, tapping her paw on the screen to pause the video. She stared at it for a moment, then raised her snout and howled in grief. She held it in the air for half a minute.
Guinspiu wiped the tears out of her eyes with the back of her paw and resumed the video, watching the Terran-printed explosive mini-drones make short work of the Grass Eaters squad.
“How many of the convoy’s prisoners did we recruit for Torsad’s new cell?” she asked.
“High— Guinspiu, we don’t have to talk about that now—”
“How many?” she demanded softly.
“Fifteen. One of them— one of them was the one he was looking towards at the end.”
“Good. Radio Torsad’s fighters: good work. And a hero’s reward for the families of the ones who perished on the bus.”
“Of course, High Councilor. And the fighters recovered his body to be buried on your instruction. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Mark,” she said, putting a heavy paw on his shoulder.
“Is there anything else we can do for you? We can try to find a way to send you back to Malgeirgam with a few—”
“I’m staying. Can you send this video up to the Nile for me?”
“Are you sure, High Councilor?”
“Yes, Mark. I’ve never been surer of anything since I came back to Grantor.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
TRNS Nile, Grantor-3 (6 Ls)
POV: Gregor Guerrero, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Captain)
“They know we’re here, Director,” Gregor said. “Their deployment coverage. The Cliunc must have leaked something… I don’t know what, but they know something about us. There’s something going on, and the way they’re all going around— they’re nervous. Or excited about something. I can feel it in my guts.”
“Yeah,” Mark agreed on his screen. “It seems obvious, but if you look into it, no proof. Just gut feelings. I’m going to go with my gut on this one. One of their Navy VIPs is coming down to the planet. We’re going to hit it and see what we can get from them.”
“Need any help from us?”
“Nah, but once we take this one, they’re going to know something’s up for sure. Do you have your first strike package ready to roll out?”
“Yeah, we’ve found a few squadron leaders, some Marine chiefs. No signs of their overall fleet commander though. We know he’s floating around in the system somewhere, but he’s being a squirrelly one. Something’s not right.”
“Screw it, a few squadron leaders’ better than nothing. I’ll give you the signal when our mission is a go, and you can take them out. I know your crew must be itching to get in on the action.”
“Will do, Director. Good luck down there.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: “Kara”, Terran Reconnaissance Office
John studied the drone-mapped layout of the enemy base on his tablet closely.
“In and out, twenty-minute adventure?” Kara asked.
“I wish,” he snorted. “Were it that simple. Multiple sources say this is an important target from their Navy, seven whiskers or up.”
“A ship captain, you think?”
“Possibly even a squadron leader.”
“Should we use the locals for this?”
“Nah, a bunch of angry resistance fighters versus an actual, trained military force in the open. We’ll just be burning assets for no reason. I think… we keep this light. Just the three of us.”
“That means using a lot of our own equipment before the monthly resupply,” she warned.
“That’s fine. We have plenty of those.”
“And the risk of exposure.”
“Of course. But you know what they say. Our lives were forfeited—”
“Shut the fuck up, John. Show me their new drone defenses again.”
Comments
Spooker
No spoilers but it is intentional.
ColonelCodfish
Interesting development but why would you choose to have a Znosian educator teach values that are completely alien and anathema to them? Wouldn't this role have been better suited for a member of the resistance?
AnAbsoluteVillain
Denspi gave me a big paws reading. I had to smile. Who knew Guinspiu's honey was the subtle master of bear puns. Popping puns and buns with his bear hands. Glad TRO caught that Kodak moment for the resistance. "Dont go quiet into the good night", stirred him right out of hibearnation. Though I wish he could have gotten back to Guinspiu instead of meeting his grizzly end. Probably will Polarize the Granti into action. Really make them maul it over. 🐻🐾🐰😍
Eric E
the joke at the end is such a human joke. i wouldve made the same one probably lol
Alric Malicorne
6 days later : "I WAS NOT IN CONTROL. WE COULD'VE DIED!"
