Primary memory transcription subject: Zeleveya of Tarn, base security chief, Venlil Trade Commission.
Date [standardized human time]: July 13, 2136
Location: Venlil Prime, capitol landing field operations zone.
Life went on, despite all of the chaos of the prior day. First contact with empathetic predators, splitting away from the Federation, despite it all life went on. Zeleveya just had a bit more work on her hands, what with her accursed curiosity and the security breaches of the occasional offworlder trying to steal a shuttle. At least some more Exterminators had been stationed at the site. They were much more controlled than the pod that she normally worked with, and that let her keep Rejio’s pod close for the sake of conversation.
While Tamak and the fourth member of pod LC-38 – a female named Larka – both weren’t much for talking, Rejio and Jalnak made for excellent conversationalists. Along with that, Rejio’s comments were rather insightful for navigating how humanity evidently differed from the arxur, and so it made for much more lighthearted work that Zeleveya found herself undertaking as she manned the security feeds for the landing field. If only they didn’t keep on getting interrupted by wannabe pilots.
And case in point, one of the alarms sounded and Zeleveya looked up from her datapad long enough to catch a glimpse of a krakotl soaring across one of the loading bays while a large hulking figure – maybe a mazic or one of the Hive’s worker drones that had showed up with that Exterminator chief that had been sent to Dawn Creek a few years ago – stood by the crumpled remains of a door near the edge of the camera’s feed. With a sigh, the venlil set down the presentation that she was reading and switched to another one of the communication channels from the rest of Rejio’s pod that was stationed one floor up on a balcony.
“Pod ES-16, please be advised that there is a security breach in sector three,” Zeleveya reported in a dull tone. “One krakotl, a larger alien and…” she hesitated to glance back at the video feed, but there weren’t any more figures appearing, but the larger form was now clearly a mazic. “Huh. Nobody else is there. Small group for this claw, but it could be a distraction. Priority is the Krakotl, as it won’t be possible to catch them once they get through the loading bay.”
Then she clicked the comms channel back to Jalnak and his two companions. “Jalnak, you should have line of sight on the Mazic,” she said quickly. “It is not a member of the Hive species, so you are allowed to take any shot that is available. Today isn’t the day that you get a reprimand for putting a hole in a major carapace plate.”
“Understood,” Jalnak’s voice responded. “Taint or not, I will afford that you know protocols like you know this facility.”
“Yeah yeah, like the back of my hand,” Zeleveya retorted as she heard a loud thud over the open channel and saw the mazic jerk sideways a few seconds later. “And you got a direct hit,” she said, her bickering tone shifting slightly towards one that was impressed. “Good work with that tranquilizer rifle. That hit towards the upper left shoulder, close to the spine so if I can remember my anatomy classes that should carry the serum up into the Mazic’s brain and he is out like a light.𝄽”
As Zeleveya switched the primary feed to the camera overlooking Jalnak’s position, she saw his face morph into a look of pride for a moment, as the Exterminator gave a nod of satisfaction. “Yeah, for a Mazic that is on the move, the closest vein to the spot that I hit would be the primary blood supply to the brain. He won't be waking up for nearly a paw. That should have been a very difficult shot, but this rifle made it child’s play!” Jalnak’s tone was one of pride as he looked down and briefly fiddled with the dart cartridge on the top of the rifle. “This thing is just as precise at long range as my pistol can be close up. Shame that the ammunition is in so much shorter supply.”
Ah yes, that. Zeleveya knew from his harping on about how their weapons were superior to human ballistics that the projectiles were essentially ‘works of art,’ to quote the trigger-happy Exterminator. “Yeah,” she said after a while. “It is a shame. Sixteen uses over the last claw. Are you out, or did it come with a round already in the chamber?”
“I still have one but I didn’t count that,” Jalnak replied. “It’s only a half dose meant to make a large target dizzy. Not enough if we need to incapacitate another Mazic.”
“Alright then, get your bum downstairs to the break room,” Zeleveya said before glancing at the clock. “It’s the end of the claw, so we can all take a break. What were we talking about before feathers and fat so rudely interrupted us?”
“Painkillers,” Rejio inserted from his position by the door. “You were discussing how humans are able to bypass their limits and a theory that they might have soldiers who dose themselves up on painkillers before battle. Honestly, I haven’t the faintest clue how the two of you have remained civil. This last half of a claw is almost a record.”
Jalnak made a humming noise as Zeleveya glanced at him on the camera, noting that he still hadn’t moved from his position. “Yeah,” the exterminator said after a moment of recollection. “I mean, they can push their muscles so far that their bones run the risk of breaking. If they can do that in periods of stress without their other limits removed, then just how fearsome are they without the limitation of pain‽”
Zeleveya picked up her tablet and glanced at the presentation on it. “Well, according to the presentation on humanity by Haysi, which she titled ‘pure evil,’ humans already have natural painkillers in their adrenaline, but unlike us when we are under anesthetics, humans don’t become more lucid and calm. Instead, they become unhinged and even more dangerous. One case found in a manuscript fragment displayed a human that couldn’t feel pain and became completely psychotic without regard for any injuries that they might sustain, even speaking with an arrow through its neck. However, it is also noted that this is complicated, as humans apparently navigate their world by pain, so the full loss of pain could cause them to lose the ability to know where they are moving. Barbaric, but a somewhat efficient system that could lead to a lower fear response; if their claim of evolving from prey animals is true.”
There was a blurring movement on the monitor as Jalnak nodded his understanding and pulled that ever-present tranquilizer pistol from his holster to examine it. “I reckon that things might be a bit complicated,” he said at last. “I mean, your limb falls asleep and you can’t do much with it, can’t put weight on your leg if you can’t feel your foot, even my armament is a cocktail of anesthetics alongside sedatives. Like with any medicinal substance that has potential for weaponization – which the humans apparently excel at – it’s all a matter of dose in the end. Personally, I wonder how your response might differ if we completely turned off your sense of pain. I’d give ten seconds before you go feral and we’d have to turn you off entirely.＠”
Zeleveya was about to let herself retort to the lure that the Exterminator had let out, when another alarm abruptly went off, a signal from the main gate. With a sigh, the venlil quickly switched to the relevant camera feed and she was quickly surprised by a set of familiar markings on the lead Exterminator’s uniform. Kalne. For a moment, Zeleveya hesitated before glancing over at Rejio and beckoning for him to come close. “Kalne’s here,” she said as the two of them looked closely at the security feed. “Her pod is accompanied by a Hive warrior and another pod labeled EVS-08. Do you know what that is?”
“Venue guards,” Rejio said shortly. “They are teams of prestige Exterminators in charge of keeping watch with embassies and protecting officials outside of cities. If I remember correctly the first ten pods are dedicated to the governor and other high officials.”
Zeleveya nodded briefly, before coiling her tail into a gesture of ambivalence. “Very well then,” she said as she created an open channel that Jalnak and his companions could listen in on. “Shall we find out why they’re here⸮” It couldn’t be more boring than the work that she had done that day, after all. Rejio needed in agreement, and Zeleveya keyed the communication line for the front gate.
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“Hello, how are you doing on this fine day Kalne,” Zeleveya said brightly as the venlil on the other side of the security feed shrugged off her helmet and picked up the phone by the gate, causing the echo of the speaker to disappear halfway through the sentence.
“Zeleveya!!” Kalne responded excitedly. “I’m here on somewhat official business. The Hive exterminator behind me wants to talk to all exterminators or security personnel who either came into contact with or were involved with the predator ambassadors last paw.”
Zeleveya nodded. “Understood,” she said quickly. “I’ve got Rejio here with me and Jalnak on another line. Just wait while I send someone to let you in and then head for operations building seven. First floor on the east side there’s an old loading door with a waiting room entrance next to it. We’ll meet you there.”
“Thanks Zeleveya,” Kalne said warmly, as the security officer briefly looked away to send a radio ping along Jalnak’s line, and after a grumbled ‘I know, I’m on it,’ the Exterminator was hustling down to the front gate.
“Well, Jalnak is on his way to let you in; he should know all of the protocol for the process,” Zeleveya declared for Kalne to hear, before she leaned back from the microphone to look at Rejio for a moment. “Hey Rejio, could you send someone up to relieve me and then gather up Tamak and Larka?”
Rejio gave a quick nod of understanding, before he left and she was alone. All that she needed to do for the next few moments was wait. And of course, that would mean boredom. Ah well, Zeleveya was getting tired of the conversation dynamic that she had been having with Jalnak, and she quickly decided to get a bit of payback for Kalne’s flirting with her the day prior.
“So, Kalne,” Zeleveya said conversationally, “you mentioned exchanging gossip over some algae blooms yesterday, and it is getting pretty boring around here so do you have an opening for that? Maybe we can also talk about the humans and what info we’ve found. I mean, pretty much all of the stuff I found is limited to a mere five years of their history, isn’t that weird⸮”
Kalne’s reaction was little more than a stuttering wheeze as what parts of her face that Zeleveya could see bloomed visibly, the Exterminator completely flustered by the combination of non-sequitur and flirting that Zeleveya had dumped onto her plate. “I– maybe.𝄽”
Zeleveya chuckled at the Exterminator’s reaction. “Okay,” she said after she let the other venlil recover her senses. “That started out somewhat as petty revenge and stress relief, but your reaction was simply adorable.”
“I am not adorable!”
Zeleveya’s ears twitched as she suppressed further laughter. As cute as Kalne’s reaction was, her voice was a bit too aggressive for it to be nothing more than desperate denial. “Okay,” she said eventually. “Maybe one date in order to determine if me thinking that you’re cute is going to become an issue.”
“... I could tolerate such an issue,” Kalne said eventually. “At least you’re only saying it in jest. Let’s deal with this, and then maybe two paws from now on the rest claw?”
“Works with me,” Zeleveya responded. It was as good an idea to use her time for as any, after all. Zeleveya had definitely not anticipated the amount of stress that she would be dealing with due to the wannabe lawbreakers trying to steal ships in response to Tarva closing down the borders. Twenty of them in the first paw and if she wanted that kind of stress then she’d just join the space corps and harness her anger issues towards killing Arxur.
But, Zeleveya noted as she heard the next security officer knock on the door, that was no longer her problem. “The other security officer’s arrived,” she said to Kalne as she set the camera feeds back to their normal cycle on the main monitor. “I’ll see you downstairs in a moment.”
* * *
It only took a few minutes before everyone was assembled in the sizable waiting room. Zeleveya stood by the rear wall, accompanied by Rejio and his pod, while kalne and her pod – three venlil and a Zurulian (the zurulian carried a shock cannon, one of the venlil had a tranquilizer gun much like Jalnak’s, and the last two were unarmed and instead carried stampede barricades folded up into thick poles) – stood towards the left. The other pod was near the Hive soldier, and after a few moments of silence it stepped forward and spoke.
“The governor has the Taint,” the Hive soldier said, the words a mechanical monotone that emanated from a vocoder just underneath its mandibles that were emitting squeaks and clicks in a way that was nigh-unintelligible to an unpracticed ear. “She has been subverted by predators and must be removed for the safety of the herd. You all were witnesses of Tarva’s mistakes, or the terror that they have caused. Together we can easily gain an audience, depose her and the rest of her predator-tainted supporters, and declare martial law in time to organize a defense before the vile humans return.”
Well, Zeleveya thought to herself, that went downhill quickly. Just take a jump off of the slippery slope then. Everyone looked at the Hive soldier with what seemed like obvious reluctance to her eyes, but nobody spoke up. Instead, it would evidently fall to her.
“Technically speaking the Venlil Republic is no longer part of the Galactic Federation,” Zeleveya said as she stepped forward. Her words bought some time as her mind quickly flashed back to what Rejio had told her about the particular Hive soldier that she was looking at, and then from there to all of the laws and protocols that she had memorized in her free time. It only took the venlil a few moments to find an opening, and she jumped on it before the towering insect could formulate a retort. “As a member of the Exterminator corps assigned to Venlil Prime you fall under the authority of General Kam. Members of the Exterminator’s union hold no judicial authority following the Tarlim lawsuit designated legal case XJ-7 in Dawn Creek, so your actions would be high treason, officer.”
The Hive soldier turned to look at her, before it briefly clicked its mandibles and that mechanical voice issued forward once more. “Zeleveya of Tarn, immigrant from the Gojid colony world designated Frontier-G7. You have numerous accusations of Predator Disease on your record.”
Zelevey glared at the hive soldier. “Those are unfounded and were dismissed,” she replied snippily.
“Unfounded, but they show that you are a threat to herd cohesion. You will stand down or be detained for subversive actions against the stability of the Venlil Republic.” As the Hive soldier said those words, it brought the heavy flamethrower that had been hanging by its right side to rest in two of its arms across its chest in an implicit threat. They could do things the easy way, or Zeleveya could resist and potentially wind up dead. She let out a sigh and stealthily thumbed on her comms unit to record and broadcast on the internal security channel, separate from the normal emergency frequencies that the Exterminators had access to.
“You are attempting to orchestrate a coup,” Zeleveya said firmly as she moved to stand directly in front of the Hive soldier. “That action would most definitely destabilize the Venlil republic and leave us at the mercy of the humans by destroying whatever arrangement Governor Tarva made with them, so if you think that I’m just going to sit by and let you, then you’ve got another thing–”
Then the insect swept out one of its claws in a wide sweeping strike, which cut off whatever Zeleveya was about to say and sent her flying through across the room until her back slammed into the wall. As the venlil fell to the ground and her vision went hazy, the venlil saw a glimpse of the Hive soldier pointing a claw in her direction.
“Exterminator pod LC-38, you will either detain or put down that aberrant and then you shall fall in,” the towering insectoid said in the emotionless monotone of its vocoder. “Do you understand?”
The Exterminators glanced at each other for a long moment, before Jalnak heaved a sigh and turned towards Zeleveya. Fear shot through her heart before giving way to an eerie calm as he unholstered that tranquilizer gun of his and began combining two of the ampules together to create a much higher, more lethal, dose. At the very least it wouldn’t hurt.
“You know, most of the venlil will follow Governor Tarva,” Jalnak said conversationally as he worked, briefly placing one of his feet above Zeleveya’s own to forestall any attempt to escape. “As far as the Federation will be concerned every venlil in the Venlil Republic might as well be considered a traitor. So what was the human saying that was going around the data net a few years back?” The venlil Exterminator tilted his head to the side, a motion that the Hive soldier subconsciously mimicked. “In for a penny, in for a pound?”
Then, in a flash of movement the Exterminator swapped his pistol from one hand to the other, raised it towards the Hive soldier as he simultaneously moved to shelter Zeleveya’s form, and fired.