With a gasp, Kaede awoke, trying desperately to believe that she had been dreaming. She was lying on a hard table in the center of a small cell without any other facilities except for a drain on the floor, which she dreaded was going to be her toilet. A cold collar was around her neck, and she had been redressed into some sort of skintight jumpsuit, but she was otherwise untouched. As her heartbeat sped up, a light on her collar began to blink, and soon there was a Poslushi in the cell with her.
Up close, the creatures weren't very intimidating. They were shorter than the average human, and the placement of their eyes at the sides of their heads indicated that they were descended from prey animals. Still, the Poslushi was dressed in an additional metal layer alongside its hard exoskeleton, and the rifle in their hands meant that Kaede wasn't planning on immediately trying anything.
The Poslushi held up a small device towards Kaede, and spoke in a language of chitters and clicks that she knew she simply could not reproduce.
"Come with me." the device translated. Kaede put her hands up defensively, allowing the Poslushi to click the end of a wire into her collar and begin pulling her along, leading her out of the cell and to God knows where.
"Where am I?" Kaede asked. The device translated for the alien, and they looked back at her, huffing out a certain smell that she could only assume meant anger or frustration.
"No speaking." the Poslushi kept one hand near a baton at its belt to make a statement. The alien led her through winding corridors, across catwalks overlooking large enclosures, and finally into an empty room, nothing inside except a seat that was slightly too small for her.
"Sit." Kaede obeyed, and the creature quickly strapped her down and left the room. Kaede didn't know what these things were planning with her, but she hadn't the slightest clue how their architecture or security protocols worked, and thus wouldn't even be able to navigate the obviously massive structure she was in, let alone escape. Hell, she didn't even know if she was on a planet or not.
Then, a larger Poslushi entered the room and stood off to the side. Wordlessly, they began to examine Kaede, feeling her muscles and drawing back her lips to check her teeth. It struck Kaede that she was being appraised like an animal. Apparently satisfied, the Poslushi entered some information into a device it was carrying, then started talking.
"Hello, human. I am Scythe of the Healer Caste. Do you know why you are here today?" the Poslushi asked.
"I don't know, but I assume I've been captured." Kaede said matter-of-factly, trying to forget the circumstances of her capture.
"Indeed you have been, human. However, this isn't precisely why you're here. What you're here for, for now at least, is an examination."
"An examination?"
"We haven't fully come to terms with how your species operates, so you'll be enlightening us on this today. Now, I believe that showing respect to the less-civilized amongst us is a virtue, so I'm going to be asking you politely to answer my questions honestly and to the best of your ability. Do you understand?" Kaede tried to ignore the backhanded insult this carried.
"Yes."
"Good. First question: what is your name and title?"
"Kaede Suzuki, Colonel within the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces."
"And is the title of Colonel a caste designation of some kind? The JGSDF your brood?"
"What? No, it's not a caste. It's a rank."
"So you're saying your species does not form castes?"
"Of course we don't." Kaede was partially lying, but she would rather do so than explain the entirety of human social class dynamics and reveal potentially compromising information to the enemy.
"Fascinating." Scythe scribbled something on his device.
"What is your biological gender?"
"Female."
"And where, precisely, do you hail from?"
"Uhm... Japan?"
"Is Japan a subunit of another nation?"
"No, it's its own country."
"But you were operating under a commander not from your region."
"CAST is... well, it's complicated. I work for Japan, but I work for CAST too."
Scythe didn't seem to like this idea. "Are both of those entities aware of and consenting to your duplicity?"
"I mean, yeah."
"You truly are a stranger people than we anticipated. Now, regarding your name. Which is your familial name?"
"Suzuki."
"So Kaede is your given name?"
"Yes."
They went on like this for a while. Kaede ran around Scythe, giving token information that she carefully picked to remain mostly truthful while not particularly useful. With the big questions answered, Scythe moved on to the smaller ones.
"We've noticed a few trends among your species. Is the wearing of longer fur by human females a cultural or biological phenomenon?"
"It's cultural."
"Does your species have an established time of year when mating is possible?"
"No."
"You're unlike many of the mammalians we see, then."
Then, Scythe dropped a bombshell of a question. "What is your species' opinion on the concept of neural control?""I'm sorry, what?"
"Neural control. The act of reshaping one's thoughts to better align with your own."
A pit formed in Kaede's stomach. "That's horrible. You're robbing someone of their free will and forcing them to--what? Work for the rest of their lives?""The Combine would disagree with such an assessment. Neural control is just a tool to ensure harmony among species via the suppression of the baser instincts and the cultivation of healthy, society-driven actions and habits."
"You're just muzzling any unhappiness with your regime!"
"That's your opinion, not your species'. Now, I'm going to give you a choice. We can continue with these sessions. However, I can assure you that I will not be as polite going forward. Or, I can give you this." Scythe retrieved a flat glass mask from his backpack. Pressing a button on the side, the inside began to flash with a pattern of pacifying lights and shapes. Even from this distance, it was alluring.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"I will place this upon you, and you will be sent to an Improvement Center. Just two weeks, two short weeks of reformative labor, and you will be a full, harmonious member of Poslushi society, ready to reap the full benefits of our citizenship once you have come to see the error of your ways. That sounds good, doesn't it?"
Kaede had to exert a disturbing amount of conscious effort to not succumb to the flashing colors before her, to not put the mask on herself. Prying her gaze away, she retorted.
"That sounds like hell on Earth."
Scythe seemed disappointed as he deactivated the mask and put it away. "We'll be back here at this time tomorrow. I hope you know that you haven't averted your penitence, only postponed it. Don't worry, Kaede; you, like so many others, will come to love our little utopia."
---
The buzz of the UH-190's twin rotors filled Darren's ears as it descended towards the largest city on the planet. Darren held on tight to a handle mounted on the wall and looked out at his destination. The buildings were squat and densely packed, reminiscent of old photos Darren once saw of cities in the former Soviet Union after its fall, or of Russia just before the Siberian Commission took over in the Third World War. The lights were dimmer and flickered heavily, and Darren could just barely make out the outlines of little vehicles coursing the streets.
Apparently, these aliens weren't as advanced as everyone thought. Sure, they could break someone's mind at a whim, construct vessels several times larger than the upper bounds of human engineering, and make use of advanced, reliable, man-portable energy weapons, but other than that, they were basically on par with humanity. Yep. Definitely.
The Dark Sparrow's rotors quieted to a hum and the helicopter slowed down until it was just barely moving over the metropolis. Then, the side doors opened and the lights in the cabin turned bright green.
Wordlessly, Darren leapt from the helicopter and plummeted towards the city center. The wind howled past his helmet for a terrifying few seconds, and then the jetpack on his back activated, little rockets slowing his fall until he landed safely on a rooftop overlooking the square. Pavlov landed behind him and the two rushed to the edge of the building to peer down.
As it turned out, the vehicles he had seen earlier were entirely military. Twelve-foot, six-legged machines tracked around the square, carrying squads of soldiers from what few military installations remained after the initial bombardments. Darren only saw a civilian on occasion, and all of them walked quickly, heads down, trying not to attract attention. At one point, he even laid eyes on a twenty-foot bipedal fighting machine, a massive beam rifle in hand.
Then, the radio in his suit crackled. "Recon Squad Sierra-4, all units are in position. Green-light to proceed to objective."
"Affirm." Darren replied, looking at Pavlov suggestively. A wicked grin spread across Pavlov's face and he nodded, pulling the pin on a frag grenade as he pulled it from his belt. Darren did the same, the two of them dropping their bombs simultaneously.
Eight explosions rocked the square, blowing the crew off a nearby walker and shredding the Poslushi on the ground. As the survivors fell to the ground, debilitated by the noise, the two dropped from their rooftop, landing alongside six others in a plume of rocket exhaust. "Go, go, go!" Darren shouted, sprinting for one end of the square, where the building believed to be the planet's center of administration was located.
Another man shouldered a missile launcher and fired it as he ran, blowing the building's main gate from its hinges as Darren and Pavlov ran in as pointmen. Immediately, they were greeted by a squad of Poslushi standing a little behind the door, unscathed by its detonation. They were wearing some sort of protective headgear, which was probably why the blasts hadn't taken them out. However, human weaponry had one thing on Poslushi energy weapons: beams could only hit one person at a time. Four-gauge buckshot didn't have that problem.
Darren and Pavlov fired two shots each from their autoshotguns, blowing bits of Poslushi across the corridor in a spray of white blood. Their bodies didn't even have time to hit the floor before more shots rang out elsewhere in the facility as the other teams assaulted all known entrances. The two rushed in, followed by five other operators and one man in a powered exoskeleton, holding an M2HB like a rifle. Curiously, the building's security systems seemed to have already been tripped, an event that he was told would take up to a minute to happen.
Methodically, yet blazingly quickly, the team cleared the various rooms of the building, finding nobody in its southern wing, but plenty of corpses. Some were found slumped at their workstations. Some were still clutching weapons and yet more seemed to have been running away from whatever assailant they were facing. All of them died violently, speckled with gunshot and stab wounds.
Darren put one hand to his ear. "We're not the first ones to get here. Keep on the lookout; they might still be in the building." he said over the radio. A few seconds later, the three other team leaders radioed back with acknowledgements.
As they proceeded towards the center of the building, the lack of contacts became more and more unnerving. Aside from the perimeter guards, there didn't seem to be a soul on the grounds. Then, they found the center office, and it was a massacre.
Dozens upon dozens of corpses formed a carpet on the floor, killed, apparently, by the explosive whose partially-melted shell was found just before them. Behind them, the office's doors had been forced and were hanging just barely on their hinges. Darren took a breath, collecting himself after the harrowing sight, and entered.
A single twenty-foot Poslushi female took up most of the chamber, her abdomen swollen and translucent, filled with what appeared to be baseball-sized eggs. Her body was far taller and slimmer than the average for her species, and her eyes showed a far more malevolent gleam. She howled impotently and strained to come closer, to eviscerate Darren and his team, but the weight of her clutch was apparently too much for her, and she eventually stopped trying to move and settled back down, eyeing Darren with utter hostility and undoubtedly intending to tear him apart if he came within arm's reach.
"Hey, Hardwell! There's a hatch." Pavlov exclaimed, gesturing to a small, ajar opening in the floor that led to a ramp going downward. "Watch my six and don't get too close to that thing." Darren ordered the rest of the team as he followed Pavlov down.
Below the complex lay a massive warehouse shrouded in darkness. Racks upon racks of weaponry, armor, and masks were stacked into the distance, but apparently the Poslushi had been taken too off guard by whatever took them out to make any use of them. "Hey, Command? We might need a pickup team on this one. Seems like there's too much stuff here for just us." he said.
"You're being tracked to below the building. Are our sensors correct?" Command radioed back.
"Yes, sir. There's some sort of armory down here, maybe in case the natives revolt. We've got masks and enough guns to outfit a regiment."
"Roger that." the radio shut down and Darren flicked on his underbarrel flashlight, pointing it down the rows of storage stands. However, he scarcely had made it through the first one before someone grabbed him from behind, one hand covering his mouth. Darren didn't think, just slipped his KABAR from it's sheath and stabbed behind him blindly, the blade finding flesh. His assailant grunted loudly and let go, Darren spinning on his heel to find... nothing.
Then, a trickle of red made its way down that nothing, outlining a human leg before collecting in a pool on the ground. "What the..." Darren uttered. Then, he heard the hiss of a gun leaving a holster. Even then, he was faster.
KAPOW!
Then, he was staring at a body, gas-masked and clad in all black. On their shoulder, spattered with blood, was a patch bearing the red flag of the People's Republic.
Then, another shot rang out, and Darren fell too, his leg suddenly ablaze with pain. Blood drip-drip-dripping from his wound, he realized that the Poslushi at the doors hadn't been posted to keep anyone out as he faded into unconsciousness.
They were keeping the Chinese in.
---
Their great battle-barges came in the middle of the night, their entrance preceded by a barrage of explosives and kinetic impactors that all but obliterated the defenses of quaint Qato, and a storm of orbital insertion capsules carrying commandoes that quickly assassinated or captured every major figure on the planet. So much destruction and death, all dealt to this little world, where everything was supposed to be safe. Qato was a lesser paradise world in the galactic backwaters. Nothing happened here.
Illick held her lamb close to her chest as the gunfire raged on outside their hut. The last of the Poslushi military forces in the town were holed up in an Adjudicator Hall just across from her building, and the fwoosh of flame-spitters discharging showed that the invaders didn't care about taking prisoners.
Eventually, the fighting degraded to an occasional shot, and then ceased entirely. Illick risked glancing out of her window to see the Hall burnt to cinders, the pale-faced invaders patrolling the ruins for any signs of life. She didn't duck down fast enough, as one of them saw her and stormed towards the little home. Pounding on the door, they demanded entry. Quivering, Illick opened up to find herself dwarfed by a faceless human, their head hidden behind some sort of helmet. They pushed Illick aside and rushed into her house, tearing the place apart.
"Hey! Get out of my home!" Illick cried plaintively as the human plundered her domicile. The human turned back and shouted something in their native language, cowing the Ovinis into submission. Then, when they were apparently satisfied, they stormed back out, pushing Illick a little too hard as she tried to stop them. She tipped backwards and couldn't catch herself, splitting her head open on the road as she hit it. The human paid no mind to the screaming infant still clutched in her paws as he left for his unit. There would be a lot more of those in the next few days anyways.