The Nature of Predators

Memory Transcription Subject: Taylor Trench, Human Colonist

Date [standardized human time]: February 5, 2161

After a rather long voyage cooped up on the spaceship, it felt strange to disembark on the Sapient Coalition’s center of operations. Gress and I had signed plea bargains to help with negotiating the peace, instead of facing charges for our mishaps during the war. The precedent of roping in war criminals—and that’s what I was—to fix their mistakes went back to Captain Sovlin, that rotten bastard. I gripped the Krev’s paw tightly, since I knew both his displeasure at being far from home and his paranoia over the Consortium’s intentions. Peace talks between General Radai and fucking robot Elias Meier were well above my paygrade. Cala hadn’t offered any insights into whether the KC had called a truce, or whether the second wave of our attack could be stopped from afar.

Entire gaggles of diplomatic staff congregated in the docking bay, watching us with curiosity. I could feel most eyes on me, rather than my herbivorous counterpart with the actual empire behind the attack; these prey creatures were curious about the predator that’d succumbed to instincts and aided violence. A group of gray avians were staring at me with particular judgment, like they wanted to burn me with a flamethrower. That was…the Duerten, who were part of that second wave of the drone assault. I gave them a sheepish smile, then realized I’d forgotten that expression was a snarl to herbivore eyes. All I had to do was walk on past this crowd, and make it to my scheduled meeting with the Sivkit ambassador.

“Hey, we’re sorry that we attacked your expedition, but we’re still not leaving your homeworld; ninety percent of the Tellus colonists stayed.” This sucks, though surely we can make some kind of arrangement to keep our city—maybe the Krev can cook up a nice one for them too. Offer that bunker knowledge a gift…yeah. We’ll see.

“I’ve never seen this place in person. They do take public tours, though it’s a long way to go just to see this station,” Cala remarked. “The diplomats live here, and each species has their own section—with entertainment and local customs. You could take a spin around the galaxy, visiting each compartment.”

I shot her a withering look. “What would we find in the Krakotl section? A big red button that drops antimatter bombs on predators?”

“Music seems more likely, Taylor. I don’t care much for my people, but I bet their karaoke bars rock; we have that tradition in common. Ours have human songs by now, I’d imagine.”

Gress perked up. “What’s karaoke?”

“Where people sing popular songs in horribly off-key voices,” I commented.

“I have to see humans doing this—especially you, my love. Earth is going to get so much Krev tourism; I heard your immigration page crashed, when Avor was given internet access.” The scaly alien was all but skipping with giddiness, and waved to the nearby UN diplomats. “Some Terrans are even happy that we find them cute!”

“You know that everyone on the station is watching us, right?”

“Let them watch. I don’t know how anyone can see you hum a song that’s stuck in your head and not want to snatch you up. That’s what you think about, not blood and death!”

“I didn’t even want that dumb Smigli pop song in my head! It just wouldn’t leave.”

“That’s why it’s adorable,” the Krev gushed, giving me happy claws. “You can’t help yourself!”

“I see the Terrans are getting a taste of their own medicine,” a voice said, as a Venlil approached our group. “Governor Laisa. It seems they’ve finally met a species that can match their cuteness reaction. Are you familiar with ‘cute aggression?’”

“Their aggression is cute,” Gress agreed. “It’s just a natural part of primates, there’s nothing wrong with it! That boisterous energy as they wrestle, or laugh around in a tickle fit…”

“Skalgans play fight too, at least until the Federation had their say-so in our temperament—but that’s not what I’m referring to. ‘Cute aggression’ is a term for when humans are so overloaded by feelings of cuteness that their brain starts suggesting aggressive acts just to tone itself down. Like squeezing, pinching, or even biting said cute thing. How’s that for predator instincts?”

I squinted at the Venlil. These aren’t the fearful people, about to faint at the sight of us, that we remembered. “You don’t seem bothered by this fact.”

The Krev gasped. “So it’s true?!”

“Well, uh, sometimes I see cute things and I want to…boop the snoot, y’know…”

“‘If not friend, why friend-shaped?’” Cala snickered. “I’ve heard multiple humans say that line, usually about massive predators that could bite them in half. The cuteness reaction in their brains is way out of control.”

Governor Laisa flicked an ear. “I imagine some humans are happy that the Krev find them as cute as they find all of the other species. To answer your question, Mr. Trench, it amuses me to watch grown adults, supposedly from a vicious race of apex predators, melt at the sight of us. Your reaction to us has been mystifying from the start—and not what was expected.”

“What was expected was that we’d eat every last volunteer and make Venlil kebabs,” I sighed.

“Please. Real predators don’t make ‘kebabs’; they eat the flesh straight from the bone. Skewers count as silverware.”

“My mistake, Governor Laisa. Of course, we the wild predators of the woods, do not have glorified toothpicks.”

The Venlil laughed. “Then on that note, welcome back to the wilds. You should’ve never been chased away and rejected. I’m here to help, and I won’t cast judgment. ”

“Thank you. Even after everything, my people never forgot what the Venlil did for us. We always worried what had become of you.”

“Still your best friends all these years later. Why don’t I show you to the Sivkit ambassador? I must caution you, he’s a bit unhinged. Loxsel is a lot. You might want me to join you for backup.”

“I’d appreciate the assist, Governor. I’m not exactly a diplomat.”

She chuckled. “Neither is Loxsel.”

“Well, if Laisa is with you, then I suppose I don’t need to join you,” Cala ventured.

“This was your idea!” I wagged a finger at the blue avian. “We need a united front, so you’re not getting out of this.”

“That’d mean you’re on the same team as a Krakotl.”

“Let’s not get carried away. Same team is an exaggeration. It’s more like…in the same room.”

“If you told me I’d see Taylor having a cordial conversation and occupying the same general facility as a Krakotl two months ago, I would’ve laughed in your face,” Gress remarked.

“Are you joining this united front, Krev?” Laisa asked with a playful tail swish, as she began stalking off down the hall.

“I’ll help where I can. I know as much as Taylor, if not more, about Tellus and the Sivkit bunker intel. I’m curious to see what the Fed-brained part of the galaxy thinks of as unhinged.”

“Watch who you call Fed-brained. I’ll have you know I lived in a human refugee camp back in your year 2136.”

“So did I, and it wasn’t by choice,” I grumbled.

The Venlil pinned her long, silky ears back, as if to suggest sympathy. I walked the first space station built by human hands that I’d seen in my lifetime, and wondered at the tangible evidence of the prosperity that Earth had enjoyed in our absence. Along the tranquil-colored walls were large portraits with plaques, many with Terran diplomats flashing canine teeth and standing side-by-side with aliens. That was the toughest pill for most of the Tellish to swallow—how cozy we were with the xenos after everything they’d done. The herbivores that I knew would’ve screamed at the binocular eyes staring at the camera, seeming to “watch” them from the wall. We were untouchable monsters to every species, and now, they didn’t care about our appearance!

Those SC diplomats didn’t scream at the sight of me. There were a lot of stares back in the hangar, but it was almost morbid curiosity—like when a serial killer is brought to a courthouse for a media circus trial, in those old movies I’d watch. If someone like that existed on Tellus, Hathaway would’ve had them drawn and quartered.

We turned down a corridor labeled “Guest Quarters,” which checked out since the Sivkits weren’t an SC member; they wouldn’t have their own wing and permanent diplomats. I could feel the nerves kicking in, as I spotted a white-furred quadruped sitting on a couch in a meeting room. Taylor Trench couldn’t fuck things up for Tellus again…but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to kiss up to this nutcase, if it smoothed everything over? The Sivkit ambassador turned his head toward us in slow motion and picked a broom up. Loxsel stomped toward us with surprising speed, swatting the cleaning instrument at me. I stumbled backward in confusion. Was the prey animal shooing me away?

“Off my planet!” Loxsel hissed in a demonic voice. “Aforetime, Sivkits ensconced Tinsas, before it was stolen—innocent prey plucked afield by the spine-breakers! Now, you besotted beasts crawled into your dolven burrows in the gloaming hours of our history! Hew my flesh to bits as you would any cattle, for I am heedless of the danger I court to contest your claim.”

“Our…claim?” I hid behind Gress, and looked to Cala—a Peacekeeper meant to guard me—for aid. “We didn’t know Tellus was Tinsas when we settled it. We’re not claiming anything; we just have roots there, and thought we could make an agreement where no one gets shafted. Maybe you’d be kind enough to let us keep our city, when you move back?”

“I asseverate that no noisome human toenails shall touch Tinsas’ sand! We cannot share a planet with creatures who see us as provender, and slaughtered us not a year prior for daring to approach; who’ll lurk in nethermost caverns and conspire. You defile our world. To put it in terms you shall grasp, we don’t want you there.”

“Now there’s the Feddies I remember. Your kind haven’t changed a bit.”

“What Taylor said. How dare you speak about humans like that?” Gress interjected, ripping the broom out of Loxsel’s grasp and snapping it in half again the hard scales on his leg. “The Sivkits haven’t lived on Tinsas for a long time. No one is making Taylor’s people let you reclaim your heritage. That’s Krev space, and we’re no more wild about you lunatics being in our backyard than you are humans! We don’t want you there.”

Governor Laisa cleared her throat. “Enough! Does anyone here want more people to die over this? It’s complicated, and there’s no perfect solution, but two peoples have lived on this planet. Two species believed it to be theirs and suffered on that soil because of the Federation.”

“They are predators!” Loxsel wailed, prompting a groan and an eye roll from me. “We just want humans away from us. Isolation…”

“Planets are big. You had no part of Tinsas before that, and after this, you’d have whatever you wanted but that one stretch of land. You can isolate the Tellish in their single city; there’s only a few thousand of them, aside from the babies. Now that they don’t need to repopulate, some arrangement could be made with the foster families to go elsewhere. The United Nations might retake custody of the children anyway.”

“I’m loth to suffer any of their presence on Tinsas. Why can’t the humans go back to their own planet?! Retaining control of our home is to torment us, woe!”

“Tellus…Tinsas…it means a lot to the ark ship colonists. We suffered so much to stay there, and the Krev built it up into something nice that was ours,” I answered, attempting to be diplomatic in spite of the Sivkit’s verbal slap to the face. “We already left Earth for no reason at all. Go back now and our whole lives were wasted. I know there’s nothing for me here.”

Gress blinked in surprise. “You…don’t want to go home? But you were devastated by what the Federation had taken from you, and wished you could’ve seen Earth. That’s your whole culture.”

“He’s no more familiar with Earth’s culture than I am Nishtal’s. Taylor doesn’t know his species at all, and he’d be an outsider on his own world,” Cala commented. “Tellus is the only place that gets him. The devil he knows.”

I shook my head in disgust. “Why do you have to be the one that understands?”

“Because I know how scary it is to be in a strange place with your world turned upside-down, even if it’s better than where you were before.”

The Venlil governor sighed. “The Krakotl has a point. I’ve heard your story, Loxsel. You must’ve been frightened once, when you were captured by those rogue Farsul or sent off to a predator disease facility. Maybe when the Grand Herd was ‘sacrificing’ you by sending you to humanity as an ambassador.”

“I almost believed in the forever-walkers’ docility, but they were behind the attacks. It’s a ruse!” Loxsel yowled. “Taylor is negotiating just to beguile us again. Every time we attempt diplomacy with humans, it ends in violence perpetrated against us!”

“How can it be a ruse? This forever-walker has had his mind read by multiple sources, including the Krev, who are unaffiliated with the UN altogether. You can see the concrete proof that the ark colonists were just terrified and trying to avoid extinction: anything violent was borne of hate and fear. The suffering they endured is all there! The fact that humans have feelings, just like you, is plain as day.”

Cala trilled in agreement. “The United Nations proper has been nothing but docile, as you pointed out. If this was what they wanted, it’d be stupid to throw away thousands of their ships to stop attacks they hoped would succeed. The Krakotl, for all of my people’s past mistakes, know who saved us.”

“I’m sorry that we attacked your fleet, Loxsel. We thought the Federation found us, and were going to finish us off,” I sighed. “Is there anything I can do that’d make it worth it to you to…consider letting us stay?”

The Sivkit stiffened, whiskers twitching. “Anything?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Something tells me you shouldn’t have said that,” Laisa murmured.

I narrowed my eyes, as the Sivkit scurried over to a bag on the floor and pulled out a tablet. All I could hear was those exact words about us being predators, and not being able to stomach us near them. As maniacal as this prey sapient was, he was expressing the views of his government…and himself. It stung to hear those words thrown in my face, thinking back on how we were forced to flee our home because no species wanted us around; even the Venlil could barely speak to us. I remembered my fear of hearing this response, when I lifted my mask to show my face to Gress. The shame I’d felt of my binocular eyes, and my certainty that the Krev would despise us—that they would believe that we “defiled” Tellus with our mere presence.

I’m not sure we can take sharing a world with that mentality. It hits too close to home. There were so many days that I wished I could’ve been born as any other species, even as hare-brained as they all were. They got to live full, proper lives…their existence was accepted.

Loxsel had switched on a translation app, before passing me what looked like an excerpt from a play. “Read this. I necessitate your best performance of absolute despair, then a wrathful outburst of anger and domination!”

“…why are you asking me to read theater?” I questioned. “Don’t get me wrong, Gress and I love stageplay—”

“You love stageplay? Why didn’t you lead with that?!”

The Krev peered over my shoulder. “I can’t read it in Taylor’s language, but I met my ex-wife in improv classes; I loved them, though it reminds me now how my life fell apart. I wish I’d made a life in theater. There was hardly a starring role I tried out for that I didn’t get. I think I could’ve been an actor—I came alive under the spotlights!”

“Hmph. The translation algorithm doesn’t have the Krev language yet, so why don’t I read Daxfrin’s lines to you, and you’ll write them down in your words?”

Gress gave me a look for a go-ahead, and I offered a nod. The Krev allowed Loxsel to whisper in his ears, jotting out the lines in his tongue; the Sivkit seemed to have them memorized, and didn’t need to glance at the tablet. He did return to me, panning out to the full scene—and asking me to play the role of the character Daxfrin was talking to. There were stage directions in the full scene, which I assumed he’d given to my alien friend. The Grand Herd’s nutcase ambassador seemed skeptical about our abilities, but gave the cue to start the scene. Governor Laisa and Cala seemed entirely confused about what was playing out before them, but watched with intrigue.

“Why am I unquiet? You have wellnigh wrested my soul from my being!” Gress pranced across the area, throwing his arms into the air; his voice rose with the exclamation, raw desperation booming throughout the chamber. His eyes were wild as he hunched over and drew breathy gasps, before flicking an accusatory claw in my direction. “I am but cattle to you, and I have been…so blind. I demand a reply straightway. Your taciturn manner is thenceforward unacceptable!”

The Krev’s voice had dipped to a fraught, wobbling whisper as he said he was but cattle; he’d donned the lost look he spotted when he got lost in a flashback. The intensity flipped right back up like a switch when he demanded my response, and stomped up inches from my face. It was adorable to see Gress in action, dialing up the perfect expressions and channeling a man on the edge. Loxsel looked enraptured, leaning forward with eyes that were downright in love. The Sivkit better not swoon too much for my green-scaled partner—Gress was mine. I peeked down at the tablet to find my line, marveling how the Krev barely needed to give his a second glance.

“Cattle might have purpose to an Arxur. You have none to me,” I responded in a low voice, baring my teeth with malice.

Gress grabbed my shirt, pressing me against the wall with surprising force. “Confound it! You spit on my great dolor—and I so abhor your very essence! Curses, curses upon you! A thousand curses!”

The Krev swung at my chin, grazing it with the back of his paw; the fact that it was quick and close enough to touch probably sold the punch. For my part, I snapped my head back like I’d been shot and melted against the wall. Gress wheeled around with a lash of his tail, shooting one resentful look over his shoulder. I broke character at how dramatic he looked, and laughed at his ever-serious scowl. Loxsel broke into enthusiastic whistles of delight, and sprinted over to “Daxfrin.” The Sivkit’s ears were perked straight up, a dreamy contentedness on his face.

“I found my Daxfrin!” Loxsel celebrated in a voice that’d climbed an octave. “You both play those characters like that in a performance of my favorite drama, and I’ll agree to let the Tellish stay; I won’t give the Grand Herd a choice!”

I squinted at the Sivkit. “Really? Are you serious?”

“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. Do we have a deal? I must, I MUST!”

“Uh…yeah, I think so. Gress, will you do that?”

The Krev’s tongue flitted out in thought. “I’d love to, and if it helps humans—”

“Yes, it helps humans; you agreed, this is a binding contract!” Loxsel interjected, spinning his plumed tail in circles like it was a helicopter rotor. “We must start rehearsing daily, yes…and the United Nations must give me a venue to perform. I need the rest of a cast…”

“I’m sure the Terrans can give you a troupe of actors to fill out your cast, if that’s your…conditions for peace,” Laisa said in disbelief.

“Excellent, it’s settled! The Grand Herd will be…fine. It’s not like Tinsas can get more defiled, after you lived there for two decades. Just keep the tablet and read the script.”

The Sivkit bolted from the room, while the four of us stared at each other in disbelief. I hadn’t thought I’d be fixing Tellus’ mess by agreeing to act in a play with Gress, especially when Loxsel had said I was a violent predator that he didn’t want around. Now, the ambassador wanted me to rehearse a stage performance daily? Laisa was more than correct about him being unhinged, but I supposed it was a small price to be permitted to keep our residence on Tinsas. The question was more if the rest of the Grand Herd would lay down their grievances over the laughable bargain we’d just secured with their playwright envoy.