Primary memory transcription subject: Zeleveya of Tarn, base security chief, Venlil Trade Commision.
Date [standardized human time]: July 13, 2136
Location: Venlil Prime, capitol landing field operations zone.
The bolt hit home in the hive soldier’s exposed neck, sending it staggering back a pace as one of its manipulator limbs came up to rub against the small wound. “I’m afraid that that isn’t a large enough dose,” the hive soldier said, “traitor. Pods CR-13 and EVS-08, kill them.”
Two of the Exterminators began to step forward, their weapons drawn and the pilot lights of their flamethrowers ignited, but they hesitated as Kalne hurriedly stepped in between the two groups with her arms outstretched.
“Have you all taken leave of your senses‽” the striped venlil said shouted in a furious tone as she looked at both of the teams of exterminators. “We gain nothing by fighting each other. Think for a moment, please. The humans have an alliance with our leadership, and they want to fight the arxur right now. They are primitives in comparison to the Federation, so we can control them, control their tech levels. They can help us but only so long as we remain united. If any one of the federation’s parties attack them then we all become an enemy to them, so please stop fighting because Jalnak has a point. We are organizing each other with the same methods that they will use to sort us!”
Everyone stopped for a moment, as her words sank in, and Kalne turned to look towards the Hive soldier. “We aren’t arbiters,” she said urgently. “We are public servants, just like the governor. So please stand down.”
Then one of the hive soldiers arms swept out to catch Kalne by the throat, hauling the venlil up off of her feet as the spiked ridges along its forearm ripped into her suit. “No,” the soldier intoned. “It is the sacred duty of the Hives exterminators to destroy the predator, the tainted, and the collaborators. Clearly you are a lost cause.” Its graspers began to tighten as the venlil gasped – both in need of air and from fear and pain as a slight trickle of orange blood seeped out onto the pristine silver of her uniform.
Then a shot rang out, and the soldier’s wrist exploded in a mass of gore, the shot barely missing Kalne’s face as she collapsed to the ground in a crumpled – but still breathing – heap. Across the room, Rejio lowered his smoking plasma rifle. “Pile on,” the aging venlil yelled as he readied the next shot, and all hell broke loose.
The first person to move was one of the stampede controllers from Kalne's pod, taking his collapsed barricade in both hands and jumping onto the back of the hive soldier to lock it around the front of the insectoid alien’s throat and pull back. This was immediately followed by Jalnak and another member of the second pod, as they both took aim with tranquilizer guns and each sank three shots in the hive soldier’s center of mass. Then the hive soldier moved.
The exterminator on its back was the first to fall, being thrown free and silenced with a swift stomp. Then the hive soldier turned and began advancing on a pair, one venlil being the tranquilizer-toting member of pod CR-13, and the other a zurulian who was carrying a paralyzing shock cannon, which they opened fire with but to little avail
Jalnak turned to Zeleveya as the battle continued, pulling her to her feet. “Kalne’s suit is compromised,” he hissed rapidly. “If we’re to stand a chance then we need her to safety so that the flamers can be brought into play. You get her out, I’ll provide covering fire if the bugsy bastard gets any ideas.” Then there was a scream as the hive soldier smashed the shock cannon to pieces and decapitated the zurulian’s companion with a sweep of its talons, and Jalnak rapidly shoved Zeleveya. “Go,” he roared, as he began to open fire at the hive soldier, targeting the upper left limb that held the Exterminator’s flamer.
Zeleveya scrambled across the room, the floor now slick with venlil blood as she raced to Kalne’s side. The venlil was practically unconscious, but it was only a short distance to where Rejio and a trio of flamethrower-carrying venlil were hauling open the large sliding gate that was one of the remnants of the time when the administrative building was just a simple loading bay. Everything was blurred by stress and panic, but she did catch the hardened Exterminator shouting something about them needing more space to maneuver and so she pulled Kalne towards the amber sunlight that was filtering through the exit.
Jalnak and another pair of exterminators fell back behind Zeleveya, one of them keeping the hive soldier back with the barricade pole that he had picked up off of the ground, while the last one clutched an ammo pouch with markings to signify that it contained tranquilizers.
Then they were all outside, and as the Hive soldier raised its flamer to open fire on Zeleveya and Kalne, three other plumes of blood-orange flame pushed back. The insect fell back, the sound of its vocoder drowning away to a staticy snarl as it gnashed its mandibles together. For a moment they seemed to be winning, as even Kalne began to wake up and help Zeleveya move away from the growing inferno. For a moment, until the hive warrior spoke.
“I am not so easily felled, Tainted,” the warrior screeched, its silhouette rising amidst the flames. “I will not rest until you predator collaborators are purged from this universe!” And then it began to charge. The monstrous alien burst through the flames, all three remaining arms outstretched towards Zeleveya and stained with green and orange blood of the Exterminators who had already fallen to it.
The creature reached out towards her, but it never finished closing the distance as Rejio lunged in the way. The two lower claws impaled him through the gut while the upper arm dug into his shoulder. Rejio screamed in pain for a moment as the hive warrior pushed him back, until his feet found purchase on the tarmac and he forced the towering alien to a stop.
“The duty of an Exterminator is to protect lives,” Rejio intoned with a wet cough, his tone wracked with pain as he seized hold of the hive warrior and brought his rifle up in line with the alien’s head. “You run counter to that. You are a threat to herd cohesion. You refused to be detained so now we are left with no choice.” And the aging venlil pulled the trigger, sending a bolt of plasma twisting through the hive warrior’s carapace and skull, killing it instantly.
For a moment everything was still, right up until the hive warrior began to fall back and Rejio released an agonized howl as the claws twisted in the wounds running through his torso.
In a flash, Kalne and Zeleveya were by his side, as a trio of other exterminators seized the hive warrior in order to hold it in place. Zeleveya felt bile rise in her throat as gore and viscera dripped down to splatter along her pelt, but she pushed back against it as Kalne shoved Rejio’s rifle into her hands. “Narrow the aperture, low power burst and sever the limbs that are impaling him,” Kalne said quickly. “I’ll remove the claw and then we need to move Rejio back inside. There should be a bench somewhere that we can situate him on.”
Zeleveya nodded, before she quickly located the controls for the rifle and severed the pincers at the wrist joint in two quick bursts. The other exterminators immediately dumped the hive warrior to the ground, two of them took hold of Rejio as well, and the four venlil began to move the semi-conscious form of their leader back into the building. Zeleveya was quick to take the lead on that, guiding them to a small waiting room next to where the battle had begun and where they could set Rejio down on a low bench that stuck out from the wall.
“We can’t treat his wounds with those spikes in him,” Kalne was quick to declare as she set out a medical kit by the exterminator captain’s feet. “We need to remove them, seal him up, and then get him to a hospital. I’m anticipating a full system flush and multiple surgeries will be necessary, so someone needs to get immediate transportation. I mean, we’re on a landing field, how difficult can that be⸮”
Then a hand grabbed onto Kalne, shocking her into silence as she looked down to see Rejio shaking his head.
“It’s no use,” Rejio hissed out with a pained grimace. “Remove them and I bleed out in moments, and even if you manage to somehow prevent that then I’ll likely die of septic shock within a few days.” The patch-coated venlil grabbed a hold of Zeleveya’s arm. “Bring Jalnak over here. There’s something I need him especially to hear, along with everybody else.”
Zeleveya nodded, before she and the two exterminators quickly moved back to the door. Upon exiting, the two headed over to where Tamak and Larka were burning the hive warrior’s body in accordance with the standard procedure, while Zeleveya headed along the wall to where Jalnak sat as be repeatedly disassembled and reassembled his pistol, a despondent expression on his face. “Too small of a dose,” the Exterminator muttered with a sudden snarl as he slammed the pressure chambers back into place. “One wrong moment, couldn’t penetrate to the carotid. Not a big enough dose. Five lost and for what?”
Zeleveya bowed her head as a feeling of shame swept through her. Five dead for her to live. To save the venlil that he hated. But she quickly pushed the thoughts aside and gently placed a hand on Jalnak’s shoulder. “Rejio wants to tell you something,” she whispered. “I don’t think that he has much time left, might want to go out on his own terms.”
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Jalnak scowled for a moment as he followed Zeleveya’s gaze to his pistol, but eventually he nodded and rose to his feet to follow her over to where the Exterminators were gathering around where Rejio sat. Even Tamak and Larka had come over, abandoning the half-incinerated body of the hive warrior where it lay. As they gathered around, Rejio gave a flick of his tail to Kalne and Tamak, and the two quickly helped heave him up into a sitting position.
“So,” Rejio began in a shaky voice, “we all know about Predator Disease, the more studious of us recognize it as a blanket term for conditions that make a herd member dangerous to their compatriots or unable to integrate with the herd. An outcast whose presence actively disrupts the functions of the group. We are told, we are taught that those with predator disease lack empathy, and that is what makes them a danger to the herd. But I would like to let everyone here in on a little secret that I’ve carried through the years. I lack empathy, and I suspect that so do many of our colleagues. By our dogma I am nothing but a threat to the herd, but by observation one can easily see that I am a protector of it.
“There is another characteristic that is perhaps more impactful than empathy, a trait that the humans – from what we have seen of their ambassadors – have in spades. Compassion.” for a moment Rejio broke off in a fit of coughing, before he looked at Jalnak. “The tests for Predator Disease are flawed and easily misled,” the old exterminator said urgently. “I understood what they meant and dug my own claws into my hand while flinching in a falsified display of fear. But what I was shown still affected me, only in a far more poignant way. I found that what I took away from those visions of suffering was a desire to make sure that nobody I knew would suffer that. And now at the end I do not know if I succeeded or failed.”
“You saved lives,” Jalnak said quietly. “Taint or no taint, you were the one to step in and help me temper my rage. You kept me from becoming like my brother.”
Rejio nodded. “But you had the strength to accept that. Jalnak, you have been a very selfish individual, lacking in empathy just as much as me.” the younger venlil bloomed in shame, the skin under his fur becoming like sunbaked terracotta in color, before Rejio spoke again. “Lacking in empathy but not in compassion. The weak become their demons when faced with adversity. The strong take their demons and twist them to their side. After your training you saw the deeds of your brother lurking within everyone who had Predator Disease. You tempered your flaws, but now I need you to temper them further for when the humans arrive.”
The group of venlil nodded in understanding, before Zeleveya reached out and grabbed hold of Rejio’s hand. “What is it that you want us to learn,” she asked softly. Rejio’s ears twitched towards her in response.
“That our understanding of predator disease is flawed,” Rejio responded. “Like with you, people accuse you by your mannerisms, unaware that mentally you are the same as them. It is merely mannerisms that you picked up from being born among the Gojids. With what we call predator disease there are the people who are dangerous, there are the ones who are simply different and desire understanding, and there are the ones with the potential to be more – the ones who are like us. Us and the humans.”
At that declaration Zeleveya’s mind immediately filled in the blanks in Rejio’s weakened rambling. “You mean that they have the same strength as yourself and Jalnak,” she said in realization. “To achieve spaceflight, we need cooperation, massive infrastructure. Impossible work for a single individual. It means that they all tamed their demons. The flaws inherent in predators, aggression and competition, we see a machine and know that it accomplishes more than the sum of its parts do. So the predator’s hunger is twisted towards accomplishment and advancement rather than their base desires. But there’s something else, isn’t there?”
Rejio nodded. “One final thought from a dying man,” he wheezed out. “We, the federation, our society is structured towards stability and permanence. We shun and lock away those who are different – the ones we define as having predator disease. The grays are structured towards chaos and impermanence. There is always the next hunt, otherwise they will starve. The humans are neither. They are unfathomable from our perspective, but did not have a hunt if they tamed their world enough to support the industries necessary for spaceflight. They are an impossibility, and the greatest fear of all is the unknown. We fear the darkness of the cave, even when it may hold shelter from the storm.”
Everyone understood that fact – that though they may fear humans the predators carried a key to lasting peace – but they were simple observations and not the final orders that the Exterminator captain had led them to expect. Kalne was the first to voice the thought. “So what do you want us to do?”
The order was simple. Make the unknown known, dispel the fear in the dark, and understand the humans. If nothing else, then they would be familiar enough to avoid being frozen by fear if violence did break out. And after that, there was only one thing left to do. Rejio wanted to take the painless way out, instructing Jalnak to give him a lethal amount of the tranquilizers, which would send him into a painless sleep that he would never wake up from.
But Jalnak couldn’t follow that order. Instead, Tamak took up the syringe, as he revealed himself to be much like Rejio and Jalnak, lacking in empathy but having other factors that led her on a path that let him blend in so seamlessly. In his case, he didn’t feel much in terms of compassion, but was instead driven by what he described as basic sympathy and a compulsive urge to be in action at all times. For Tamak, taking action was always the easy choice, no matter the impact that it might have upon him.
As for Zeleveya, she simply could not watch. The security officer turned herself away from the grim work of death, and fled from the building. She couldn’t stay there, Zeleveya realized as she felt her stomach turn and collapsed sideways to rest against a raised planter bed situated beside the door. It used to be her favorite spot to sit while on breaks, but now the entire place which had been a home to her had become suffocating. The once comforting texture of the packed dirt of the planter bed was changed into the cloying heat of the deep ground. The bottom of a grave.
The venlil hauled herself to her feet and fled, tears rolling down her face as she tried to escape the no doubt judgemental stares of the others, not even caring as her feet trod through the ash and oily viceria that had been the Hive Soldier less than a quarter-claw ago.
It was too much. Zeleveya felt like she was stuck within the trap of an Exterminator, stuck under the judging stares of the review board for Predator Disease. Trapped. Alone. Defenseless.
She needed to leave.
She needed to get away.
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Kalne found her after a quarter-claw had passed, the Exterminator managing to catch Zeleveya as the security officer forced her way out through the doors of the administrative offices on the landing field.
“Zeleveya?”
The venlil blinked in surprise as she became more aware of her surroundings. “Kalne?” Zeleveya tilted her head slightly as her tail coiled in a questioning stance. “What are you doing here?”
The Exterminator reached out to rest a paw on Zeleveya’s shoulder. “I came to report what happened,” she said softly, “although I would assume that given your, well… nevermind. What are you doing here Zeleveya?”
“I…”
Zeleveya hesitated, trying to make sense of the blur that the past moments had been. It was a futile effort, and she numbly shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said helplessly, as her tone began to turn frantic. “Kalne, I can’t recall what I did back in there. What did I do‽ I can’t go back in and ask, or they’ll finally have an excuse to say that I have predator disease and lock me up, hand me over to the Gojid doctors… Kalne, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to–”
Any of Zeleveya’s further words were cut off as Kalne immediately wrapped one of her arms tightly around Zeleveya’s middle and let their tails entwine, twin actions that forced Zeleveya into stillness. “I’ll figure it out,” Kalne said quickly. “Don’t let yourself worry Zeleveya⸮? You just stay here and I’ll handle this for you.”
Zeleveya nodded silently, before letting go as Kalne opened the door of the offices and marched over to speak to one of the two venlil working the front desk. Zeleveya couldn’t hear what was being said, but as she watched from her post waiting by the door the venlil saw Kalne almost seem to tighten inward on herself as the venlil seemed to recount what had happened.
Zeleveya felt her paws twitch as she felt an urge to return the comfort that she had been given moments before, but she forced herself to be still. Kalne said that she was going to figure out what was going on, and for that Zeleveya would have to follow her instructions.
After a little while, Kalne’s posture loosened up slightly as the Exterminator leaned one arm against the desk while gesturing vaguely in Zeleveya’s direction with the other. There was a brief exchange, and then she saw Kalne abruptly stiffen before she turned and headed back to the door, breezing past Zeleveya.
“Kalne,” Zeleveya began, but the other venlil shook her head sharply.
“We gain some distance first, Zeleveya!” the Exterminator said firmly. “There’s a lot of survival tactics that you need to figure out.”
Zeleveya nodded, before she fell into step beside the striped venlil. Soon, they reached one of the outbuildings, and the Exterminator turned to face her.
“So,” Zeleveya said softly, “what did they say?”
“That you resigned,” Kalne said harshly as she grabbed hold of Zeleveya. “I get why, but, you know, why? This job isn’t a prestigious one. It’s a backup choice. What are you going to do now, Zeleveya of Tarn?”
Zeleveya hummed briefly as she thought, as she tried to put together why she had made that choice. Eventually, the former security officer spoke. “I can’t stay here, not where Rejio died to save my life, where you nearly faced your end – and what choice would you have made if I hadn’t returned your flirting earlier?”
“This isn’t on you,” Kalne protested. “I would still–”
“Stop.” Zeleveya turned away. “No matter your decision, I’m the one who opened my dumb mouth. It is on me. I think… I think that I’ll follow Rejio’s instructions, and go to meet the humans.”
Kalne’s tail began to sweep slowly to the side as her vice-like grip on Zeleveya’s arm vanished to be replaced by a hand around her shoulder as the other venlil twitched her ears in a laugh. “Count me in.”