The Nature of Predators

Memory Transcription Subject: Tassi, Bissem Alien Liaison

Date [standardized human time]: September 26, 2160

Instead of getting into the meat of the engagement, Onso prattled on about boring minutiae; analyzing and comparing engine capabilities, along with his best guess at their design, and AI pathing algorithms. While I was certain that warship design said a lot about a species, it was hardly my favorite subject; the Bissem generals would be much more eager to study the finer details. I was almost relieved to see a call request from Ambassador Loxsel, despite the fact we didn’t have a literature session planned today. It was an excuse to step away from the hostile atmosphere in this forum, and the eruption I knew was coming when the SC reached the part where the Arxur arrived.

As I stepped out into the hallway to check whether Loxsel, and perhaps by extension Ivrana, had an issue, my mind wandered once more to the theory of the original Tinsas inhabitants being behind these attacks. I also knew the next step in forging our alliance would be getting the Sivkits to agree to partner with the Arxur—no small task. I thought Bissems had been making a surprising amount of progress with the Grand Herd, getting them to collaborate on shipbuilding rather than hiding away on Nelmin. This was all while the Tseia were pushing back two nations, and waging massive naval contests on our homeworld. If we could pacify our warring states, that’d likely put the alien refugees at more ease about the safety of living on our planet.

There is so much going on, and the Sivkits are at the heart of it all. We want them on our side. I don’t want to use Loxsel, though; he might be in dire need of medication, but I think at his core, he’s quite lonely. It’d play well with the SC to win over the Grand Herd, and I’m not going to do it by convincing the “funny bunny” that predators definitely can’t be trusted.

Still, there was a certain way that things needed to be framed to persuade Loxsel of anything. I recoiled as the Sivkit appeared on screen, with a pile of hundreds of orange fruits lying on the floor behind him. The ambassador’s muzzle was colored orange, and my mood shifted to consternation as I saw his signature manic look.

“Despair, carnivore, for you—you can never sample the portentous citrus! I bid the forever-walking beasts avaunt if they do not furnish these offerings upon me betimes! All they make me swear in exchange is to be calm as I dispraise their pitiful stage efforts,” Loxsel rambled, swinging his forepaws over his head triumphantly. “Inspiration has flowered in my bosom, eftsoons sampling the fruity orts. I want more. I’ll SING for more, merrymaking at my execution for but a meager bite! Bid me to sing now, Tassi, for I have found the tree of salvation!”

I gawked at the Sivkit. “What? Whoa, please don’t sing; just back up. Are you saying you made the humans at the Paltan base give you offerings of these…fruits? This is why you called me during an SC meeting?!”

“Fruits? Mandarin oranges. The plant has a name! The loathly beasts and I are getting along now; they think me a lurdan, but I am no sciolist, maugre my species! I overleap their impudence, so the oranges may overbrim. You, my compeer, must aggrandize the Herd, and bring the oranges far and wide—gramercy, you must groak Sivkits in our finest communion! You must; we’ll give you any guerdon!”

“Loxsel, you’ve gotten worse. I told you to use less ‘play words’ in conversation, and I swear you’ve ratcheted it up instead! You’re growing less understandable by the minute.”

“I’m glad you noticed!”

I narrowed my eyes at the Sivkit. “You are doing it on purpose.”

“Obviously. It’s strenuous to improve upon perfection, but I am poetic; I want to be BURIED as Loxsel the Poetic, for that is I. Don’t be purblind, Tassi; you are my protege. You’ve been imbued with great purpose: to bring me oranges today, and to bedazzle with your utterances later! You must embrace my mantle—your words must have striking power, beyond that of the average quidnuncs.”

I sighed. “I doubt anyone can emulate your speaking style, Loxsel. It’s…singular.”

“Don’t be a slubberdegullion. You can do it. Start with dramatic interjections…move your flippers more. Master the art of placing your beak inches from others’ faces, practice some swooning, and yell at yourself in the mirror before you retire at night. Very simple exercises; you’ll be on your way in no time!”

“I’m not going to—”

“Yes, you are. This is not a discussion. By the way, do you want to hear my poem to oranges?”

“No, I don’t. What is it you want, Loxsel?”

The Sivkit cleared his throat. “Import oranges from Earth to Ivrana, so the Grand Herd can know their glory! You have my permission to give the simians anything—earnestly anything! I wrote up a requisition request. Could you forward it on behalf of the Sivkits, and bring the shipments to your shores?”

I was so flabbergasted that the ambassador had called me…about importing human fruit to Ivrana, that I just blankly went along with it. “Okay. We can pass this request of yours to Earth. What did you write, exactly?”

Loxsel cleared his throat, seeming to read off of cue cards by the camera. Did he have those for other lines he spewed? “O gaolers of the Sivkit survivors, hear my orison for a mote of this rapturous fruit. Verily, this sapid, comestible wonder is a meed for our oppression, languishing in the Bissems’ cattle pens! Earth’s paradoxical delights know no bourn, as I hold this fardel of oranges in my paws; shrive me, for sampling their cursed fruits. Citrus vouchsafed by these primate wastrels, and replenished daily withal. Amain they ferry the orange aliment; treasures that must be secured for the behoof of the Grand Herd!”

“That’s your requisition request?! Is that just the poem I didn’t want to hear? And are you making up words?”

“Yes, yes, and no. I only ever made up one word: bellynigh. It means ‘about to be eaten,’ like you’re soon to be in a beast’s stomach! I ensure that it appears at least once in all of my plays, because it’s my legacy. All of my hopes and dreams ride on that word joining the lexicon!”

“Loxsel, why don’t you let me vocalize your request for oranges for you: in normal words?”

“No! Sivkits can speak for ourselves; use our words. My words! Do not muzzle me so cruelly!”

He’ll never know if I don’t use his unintelligible poem. Just say what he wants to hear, so you can escape this call.

“You’re right, Loxsel. It’s your request, so I’ll use your words,” I agreed.

The Sivkit’s ears perked straight up. “Excellent! Now recite them back to me, so I can ascertain that you’ve committed them to memory…and coach your delivery!”

“Absolutely not. Goodbye, Loxsel.”

I disconnected from the call, and turned off my holopad as the Sivkit immediately tried to redial my contact. Despite how much I’d been dreading the rest of the Sapient Coalition proceedings, it was now a relief to return to the halls alongside Zalk and Naltor. Loxsel had a way of striking the fear of Hirs into everyone he encountered. My timing seemed impeccable, with the delegation having progressed to the moment where the human-Yotul line met the rival drones in combat. Scattered hit-and-run tactics and defense stations (complete with missiles and lasers) had whittled down the enemy numbers by a few more thousand; it hadn’t been the fortified beatdown that we received by Tinsas. The SC were outgunned, with only stray assets left in Talsk’s system to ward off the worst.

The stations being used in the Farsul’s defense were originally designed to keep a watchful eye on them, ensuring that the natives didn’t pull any stunts or mount an escapade. Onso was discussing how lasers were ineffectual against liquid armor, similar to the particle beams; heat dissipation rendered several variants of weapons obsolete, at least unless that layer of protection was burned away faster than it could be replenished. The hostiles crested into the system, still boasting a ship count six digits strong. The SC drones anticipated an initial volley of particle beams coming their way, and had magnetic shielding up to neutralize them. Evenly matched foes locked into a dogfight—except the enemy had numbers and were feathers away from the planet.

That visual of the Kessler cage on Talsk is staggering, with just how many tiny pieces of rock were encircling it. Billions of fragments forming a cage for the people below, blocking them from the stars. What if the SC turned on us, and did that to Ivrana?

“Simulations up to this point weren’t looking to be in our favor, but a tactical retreat would do more harm than good,” Onso stated. “We needed to engage them, and learn more about them. You can’t make an antidote without studying the disease you’re targeting. Military intelligence has learned a great deal, albeit not enough about their motives and endgame.”

The Iftali ambassador piped up. “It seems plain to me that they wish to destroy the Federation. All we need to do is communicate that we aren’t them.”

“That’s our assumption, yes, but we don’t know that they’ll lay down their arms just because the conspiracy has fallen. One of my conclusions from this fight is that we must acquire intelligence on who we’re up against. I’ll discuss this more, but after finishing our analysis. For now, we’ll look at the final line of defense; another one of humanity’s toys that have been reinvented for the stars. Mines.”

Our foes had wisened up to the idea that invisible hazards might be waiting in front of them, so their munitions swept across their flight path—brute forcing their way forward. The onboard AI clearly could identify patterns, and extrapolate them to predict our future actions. However, the humans’ cleverness was hiding the mines among select rocks in the Kessler Cage. As the enemy pressed into orbital range, they found themselves riddled with shrapnel and explosive damage…and those billions of rocks were too many to clear with any expediency. The best fortification of all was the one meant to keep the Farsul occupants in.

UN ships kept back to avoid debris flying in all directions, and had set up physical barricades to park their vessels behind. The Yotul, meanwhile, were deploying clouds of smoke to obscure sensors and visual targeting. Onso excitedly explained how they wanted the hostiles to have to guess where their vessels were; Technocracy ships were equipped with external sensors, from in-system and allied feedback, to guide their targeting with precision. Missiles zipped through the smoke, blowing up by the mysterious assailants’ noses. Hostile drones took a flurry of losses, with mines ripping open their bellies and explosives barreling through the offensive line. Over ten thousand foe indicators blinked off the sensors readout in an instant! It was the significant punch we’d been trying to score since Tinsas.

However, the enemy wouldn’t just sit back and let their ships be cut down unchallenged. Their weaponry revved to life, firing a few antimatter bombs brought for Talsk into the Kessler Cage. The city-leveling explosions striking anywhere near the SC vessels would pack a devastating blow, and a collision with something was virtually inevitable with billions of rocks entombing the world. Supersonic fragments hurtled through UN barricades and vessels alike, crumpling whatever metal they touched. Thousands of our own craft were felled like trees harvested from a forest. The antimatter blast disintegrated any ship unlucky enough to be caught in its direct wake, but the planet remained unharmed. Some of the Kessler debris careened into the atmosphere, yet that would burn up long before it struck the ground.

“I’d like to linger on the defensive efficacy of the Kessler Cage. While I doubt we’d want to lock ourselves in our homeworld, it got in the way of a great many bombs—and of the enemy drones flying closer. It might’ve saved the Farsul planet, more than the Arxur’s arrival,” the Yotul remarked. “The Technocracy believes that we should capitalize on this idea, and perhaps invest in a similar, ubiquitous planetary defense for our worlds: making them more resistant to orbital bombardment. Like Talsk.”

The Krakotl ambassador looked displeased. “Your idea to defend Nishtal, and any other SC planets that might come under fire, is to deploy Kessler Cages?”

“It’s to deploy some kind of cage that can be retracted, or moved at will. Take the idea of this useful technology from Talsk, and turn it into something less…immutable. It’s like the barriers we place in front of ships, to get in the way of fire, just on a planetary scale. It could be useful.”

Secretary-General Kuemper tilted her head in thought. “Being able to lock down Earth if it came under attack; I do like the idea of an extra layer of defense, quite literally. Engineering megastructures would take a long time, however. We couldn’t build it in time to meet immediate attacks from these opponents.”

“Of course, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start buffing our defenses at once. Who knows how long this war could rage on, assuming the two sides remain deadlocked. At any rate, as we all are aware, not even the Kessler Cage was a perfect defense.”

My heart felt a bit heavy, as a series of coordinated enemy missiles struck the debris field in quick succession. These munitions tore a gash in the Kessler Cage, paving the way for antimatter bombs to sail in. The United Nations’ spaceships pivoted, attempted to shoot the next warheads, and diced up several with particle beams. However, the hostile drones zeroed in on human vessels that were focused on stopping the bombs, bombarding them with enough ordnance to decimate a truckload of spaceships. A few explosives bound for Talsk slipped through the net, with respective UN craft being taken out before they could counter them. One mushroom cloud appeared on Onso’s recreation; then another, and several more after that.

The final tally of bombs that hit in this first breach was fourteen. Even with evacuations having occurred, there were still billions staying on the planet below; the death toll must be in the tens of millions, at a conservative estimate. Numbers were still coming in from Talsk, so that wasn’t something we’d locked down with certainty. The SC fleet’s focus was being pulled in too many directions. They were outgunned, and with not enough tricks up their sleeve. The outlook had been bleak and hopeless, with the simulated odds falling to near zero as the numerical imbalance grew. That was the moment when forty-five thousand warp signatures appeared on Onso’s feed, slipping through the channel only the Sapient Coalition knew about.

“It appears the Arxur Collective expedition made a detour from their course to Apep. Their newly-minted vessels came into the fray with guns blazing, and tore into the enemy from behind.” Onso heaved a weary sigh, pinning his ears back. “This came as a shock to all of us, though we couldn’t afford to turn away their help. The Technocracy had fought alongside them before, and the ambush; our foes didn’t know what hit them. Forty-five thousand guns, firing in harmony, as the Arxur banner was dragged into battle!”

The Thafki ambassador bared his teeth. “You almost sound excited, Yotul.”

“It saved our asses. Assuming you want a strategic review, that’s self-evident. If our allies won’t risk their own ships, then how can you complain that it’s the grays putting their hides on the line? It benefits everyone. No, the real issue is that someone here leaked the FTL backdoor to them, because how else would they know? That group should come forward.”

“It was us.” Before the Thafki could point at my people, General Naltor stood up calmly. The Selmer must’ve had ice in his veins, with how leisurely that declaration was; no wonder his subspecies was suited to arctic climates. “Since Bissems were accused of contacting the Arxur anyway, we decided to reach out to them. They were already loose, so we tried to turn their army toward a good purpose.”

“A good purpose? The Arxur? Are you fucking joking?! And you did it behind all of our backs; we should’ve never let you join us!”

“With all due respect to the Thafki, Talsk is alive because of us. Bissems have to do the best with what we have, because we’re no more welcome here than humans were in the Federation. My people agree with the Zurulians on saving lives; we only want to help whoever we can. Today, we saw Farsul, Arxur, and SC members working together—and that was because of us. The galaxy can heal through moments like these.”

On Onso’s display, Arxur vessels ravaged through hostile forces, while the United Nations decided to confound the situation with their own aggression. As Talsk was still smoldering from freshly-detonated bombs, the humans enacted a strategy I believed was planned for their final stand. They began ramming paths anywhere with a clear shot out of the Kessler Cage, straight into hostiles that had bombs primed or were trying to pivot toward the Arxur. Kaisal’s fleet was eager to get up close, with kinetics and plasma raking over hostile lines. The simple tag teaming turned the tide with decisiveness, ambushing our opponents in a way they hadn’t predicted. Like old friends who still remembered each other’s ways, the Yotul popped off a slew of plasma beams, mini-missiles, and nanodrones.

Everything was flying at the attackers in one single moment, terminating tens of thousands in the blink of an eye; as casualties piled up, the effect only quickened. Our alliance was unrelenting, hurling every bit of weaponry that we had. Our defensive line had been reduced to about half of their original numbers, but with the Arxur boosting their count—we already had the numerical advantage. Naltor was correct that Talsk was only alive because we’d wrangled Arxur aid; I was proud of that fact, realizing how much worse the death toll could’ve been. The planet likely wouldn’t exist at all, without our meddling.

Chauson, the Zurulian ambassador, stood with uncertainty. “That was a bold decision, General Naltor.”

“The results speak for themselves. A complete turnaround, and it also gives all of you a chance to see the Arxur’s capabilities. We believe it’s better that they’re on our side, and that we keep their vengeance on behalf of the Osirs very…focused,” Naltor responded. “Bissems will always have an open-door policy for anyone who’ll speak to us, and for anyone who needs our aid. As rescue efforts begin, we would like to take Farsul refugees: any of Talsk’s residents displaced by these attacks. We’re sending aid ships now. Despite all of Ivrana’s problems, we won’t turn a blind eye to any sapients’ suffering.”

“I couldn’t have said it better. The Zurulian hospital ships were waiting outside of the system, and have already arrived to rescue Farsul. We can spread word of the program on Talsk, and transport refugees to Ivrana immediately. Colia will chip in to take in those in need as well.”

“Perhaps we can partner with the Zurulians on altruistic efforts,” Naltor commented shrewdly, seeming to have acquired a new target for his alliance of misfits. “Whatever hatred SC members hold, and for valid reasons or not, we won’t be a party to that. It’s not who Bissems are.”

“Well, there were millions of Farsul lives at stake; it’s a positive sign that the Bissems are sympathetic to the victims.” Onso looked perplexed that we’d outed our ties to the Arxur, but hastily attempted to cover for us—perhaps believing this was part of the plan to lobby for their lifted quarantine. “Since the stakes are so high, and the grays’ aid harvested victory from the fields of defeat, we can’t turn away a free infusion of ships. Put Arxur hulls on the line instead of ours; I, for one, like it.”

The Yotul gestured toward the end of the simulation, as the Arxur made easy pickings of the last enemies. Kaisal stomached a few losses, but the Collective’s strategy didn’t align with the measured tactics of the SC; the drones hadn’t been ready for reckless abandon and an ambush. Talsk had a few scars to show from the engagement, but standing with the reptilians, we’d won comfortably. I could see the human delegation had already given in on accepting Arxur aid, and were figuring out how to save face politically. The reluctance and dread in their binocular eyes said it all.

“The Collective have saved worlds before. We can always take another look at this after the war, when we have the luxury of being able to jail them without endangering lives,” Kuemper ventured. “We need anything with a warp core fighting on our side. This isn’t the time to be dealing with them.”

Onso flicked an ear in agreement. “The entire Orion Arm is in danger, so our interests are aligned, if only for self-preservation. Talsk had many lessons, but it does bode well for planets where we can send more vessels to their defense. It also showed that this war could easily become a stalemate, and perhaps that’ll force our enemy to the bargaining table. The reality is that we need information on who we’re fighting to know how to contact them. However, they won’t let us get close enough out in the open.”

“What are you saying? Speak plainly,” the Dossur representative chittered.

“I’m saying our first priority is to observe. Intelligence is going through the wreckage to study their ships—anything we can glean of their language, coding, and weaponry. We need to send a stealth ship into enemy territory to find a manned vessel, and attempt to capture them via a boarding party. Since they won’t talk to us, we kick in the front door and see exactly who we’re dealing with.”

“I agree. SC military operatives can park a ship outside of frequented systems, and wait for an isolated vessel to pass by,” Kuemper commented. “Assuming they glassed Apep, it might be a way to get more intel on the Osirs. They’ll be here by Christmas.”

“Then it’s settled. It’ll be like exposing the Kolshian-Farsul conspiracy together, all over again. Our strategy going forward must be to know our enemy, not run on hypotheticals. We must make logical decisions that give us the best odds of survival. And on that somber note, I believe this meeting is adjourned.”

A flurry of thoughts raced through my head, as General Naltor shot me a sly glance. All in all, news of our involvement with the Arxur had gone over without too much backlash, and the Zurulians had teamed up to bring Farsul refugees to our homeworld. That last plan had gone even better than we hoped for, and granted us a potential new ally: one that would look at us fondly for our charitable optics. However, I found myself unsettled by the idea of what this Sapient Coalition stealth foray might uncover about our enemies. As much as I wanted to agree with Kuemper’s idea of it never being too late to stop talking, I wasn’t sure if it was possible to go back, with the Sivkit wanderers and now millions of Farsul civilians having succumbed to our mysterious foes.

We might learn very soon whether the original Sivkits of Tinsas were behind these Federation-targeted attacks.