POV: Bertel, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Five Whiskers)

  “Unidentified Grass Eater rotorcraft, this is the New Granti Air Force. You have breached our airspace, in violation of the Armistice of Znos. Turn around and return to your base immediately, or you will be eaten.”

  She thought she detected a hint of condescension as the enemy pilot uttered the word rotorcraft. Apparently the Dominion Marines was not the only service in the galaxy where there was a rivalry between those who flew and those who avoided the ground…

  Korchaj activated his microphone as he stuttered into it. “Predator, this is Six Whiskers— Six Whiskers Korchaj. We are— we can’t fly back. They’ll kill us if we go back! We are— we are giving up. We are defects. Please don’t make us go back.”

  There was a moment of silence in the radio, then the pilot’s voice came back. It sighed. “Ah, one of you defectors. That explains those inbound Fox-3s, I guess.”

  “There are others like us?” Korchaj asked.

  “None that have flown, as far as I know,” the predator replied. “Please hold while I get instructions from my superiors.”

  Bertel and Korchaj took a wordless glance at each other.

  Bertel found her voice first. “Defects?” she hissed at him. “We’re no defects.”

  “Would you rather go back there and die?”

  “Our lives were forfeited—”

  “Oh, get out of your deep burrow!” he shouted back. “You knew exactly what you were doing when you took off with me!”

  “No, I was— I was just following your orders. As I was trained and bred to do!”

  “And not the State Security officers’ orders when they ordered us to land?” he sneered.

  “That was— the— the order was illogical! It’s different! I follow the— I follow correct orders. Logical orders.”

  “Then I order you to shut up and fly as I say.”

  “You— you— you.” She was about to object when another set of warnings popped up on the radar.

  Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Bertel yelped as she prepared to bank the Skyfang. “I knew they were going to just shoot us and then serve us up for dinner!”

  “No, look,” Korchaj pressed his paw against her dashboard — completely against regulation — pointing urgently at the signals. “That’s from behind us!”

  And he was right. Unlike the signature indicating the enemy fixed-wing above her, this one was from behind her. The air defense battery. Again.

  The predator’s voice came over the radio again, and this time it was accompanied by a blinking light on her dash that showed it was now talking on the open channel. “Grass Eater air defense base, this is the New Granti Air Force. Your fire control radar is locked onto an aircraft inside our airspace, in violation of the Armistice of Znos. Cease your aggression immediately, or you will be eaten.”

  The cold voice of the State Security officer replied, “Slow Predator, this is Officer Novoriv. I am in charge of this base. We have a fugitive who has stolen Dominion property. Under the terms of our treaty, you must return them immediately—”

  “Hold on. You are State Security?” the predator pilot asked, its voice clipped.

  “Yes. I am in charge here. Despite the armistice, we still have jurisdiction over our own people—”

  “Grantor City station? That State Security?” it asked again, and this time, even Bertel could detect the dripping hostility in its voice.

  Novoriv didn’t seem to notice it though. Or perhaps she was merely used to the predator enmity. She replied again, “Yes. That was my post before the armistice. Now, I am in charge of tracking down apostates. Why do you ask?”

  “Hold one moment. I’m asking permission from my superiors to blow you up.”

  Novoriv took no time to express her outrage. “Excuse me?! That would be against the agreement our peoples made! Surely your superior would be more rational than— than someone like you who is bred to operate flying machines.”

  The predator didn’t mince words. “You people liquidated half his clan too, so we’ll see about that.”

  “Probably deserved it,” Novoriv muttered into the radio.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing, abomination.”

  For about half a minute, there was nothing in the cockpit but the fwup-fwup-fwup sound that the rotors made as the Skyfang limped closer to its destination.

  Then, the radar warning detector lit up again.

  Beep-beep-beep-beep.

  Korchaj squinted at the sensor display. “Surely they can’t be thinking of shooting at—”

  Beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

  Bertel and Korchaj looked at her screen in horror as two new incoming missiles appeared.

  The predator pilot’s voice came back right at this moment. “So, I’ve got good news for both of you Grass Eaters. The helo can— wait just a minute! I thought I told you to hold while I called my superiors for permission!”

  Novoriv shouted defiantly into her radio. “My life was forfeited the day I left the hatchling pools! Die, apostate, die!”

  Even as Bertel maneuvered to avoid the missiles coming for her, a quick glance at her radar showed that the vector on the Light Skyfang radar had changed drastically. The hypersonic turbojet above them quickly accelerated to a full six times the speed of sound in the Grantor atmosphere, its sonic booms echoing to them a few moments later.

  In her peripheral vision, the two missiles tracking her were simultaneously lit up by a bright flare; their rocket motors sputtered, then they fell to the ground uselessly. Even while she was still dully processing this development, her radar tracked several more outgoing projectiles from the predator F-98, then… tracers stabbing into the sky from the air defense battery as their own defensive autocannons struggled to engage the incoming hypersonic munitions.

  When the pilot’s voice came back on the radio, it was nonchalant, but there was a hint of satisfaction behind it. “Well, it looks like I’ve got good news for one of you. Grass Eater defectors in the Skyfang, your temporary asylum request has been approved. As for the State Security idiot, thanks for obliging. Say hello to my mate and cubs for me.”

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  The shockwave of the massive explosions behind her rattled the rotorcraft as they passed. Bertel didn’t know what bombs the predator jet was carrying, but she was entirely familiar with the nature of the secondary explosions near the air defense base’s munition storage warehouse that quickly followed.

  The predator pilot continued on the radio as if it was just another day at the office, “Grass Eater helo, an escort squadron will be with you shortly. You will follow them to our airbase, located six kilometers from your fifteen degrees. Don’t get one of your cute ideas, or you get to find out if my anti-missile laser defenses work against light rotorcraft if I override the safety settings…”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Bertel wanted to contradict it, tell it that she was supposed to be flying to the Great Predator base they’d originally set out for. But she took one look back at the Dominion air defense base in flames and decided to swallow that complaint.

  Her landing was rough. The difficulty with not having a functional tail rotor was that the Light Skyfang would spin uncontrollably without its counter-rotation at slow speeds, and rotorcraft were generally not supposed to land with any lateral speed. Bertel settled for roughly half of cruising speed as she touched down on the smooth tarmac; the impact broke the reinforced skids that were supposed to cushion her fall and scraped the paint on the bottom of the Skyfang.

  It wouldn’t have made her training instructors proud, but they probably wouldn’t have forced her to redo the full course with that result either. After all, she’d preserved the equipment, mostly. The Light Skyfang was in a decent enough condition that it could probably be put back into service with some simple maintenance… not that it was relevant in this case.

  She walked away from it alive, and that was about as good as she’d hoped for.

  The Slow Predators separated her from Korchaj immediately, put a hood on her, and ferried her from one vehicle to another. Even if she was trying to maintain her bearings, she’d have lost track of her location and direction about five car rides in. Then, when she thought they were simply enjoying the activity, they pulled her into a building, down some stairs into a cooler, damper area, and then removed the hood.

  It was a dark room with a single light bulb above her. She rubbed her eyes as she opened them, cautiously examining her surroundings. She was seated into a chair, opposite the largest brown Slow Predator she’d ever seen.

  “Hello, Five Whiskers… Bertel. A Skyfang pilot, that’s a new one,” it said.

  “I’m not a pilot…” she began to explain to the large alien.

  It looked down at its datapad. “Could have fooled me. Landing one of your helos without a tail rotor? My people tell me that’s one of the more complicated things you can do with one of your flying machines.”

  “It is, but—” Then, Bertel looked around. “What is this place?”

  “Oh, pay no attention to the decor,” it said dismissively. “We have a… limited budget. We just use this facility for processing new people.”

  Processing new people?

  As she wondered what game this predator was playing, there was a ear-splitting scream through the thin plaster walls. “Ahhhhhhhhhh! Noooooooo! Waaaaaaahhhhh!”

  Bertel whimpered in fear. “Please. I will tell you what you need to know. I came here voluntarily with Six Whiskers Korchaj. Please, there is no need to—”

  The predator across from her laughed heartily as it slapped the table. “Bahahaha, no, pay no attention to my friend Icterael. He is watching lunar-gravity baseball, and I imagine his team just gave up another run to the other team. They have never made the playoffs in all sixteen years of their history, and this year they are in the world series because of the two Malgeir players they recently recruited to be part of their outfielder squad. Very talented, but inexperienced. They will likely lose, but they do have a bright future ahead of them once they get their…”

  Bertel didn’t understand any of that. “Um. What?”

  “Don’t worry, Five Whiskers, he is not screaming from physical pain, but from the far worse pain of watching your favorite sports team lose an important game. Relax. We are not in the inefficient business of applying pain to get answers to questions. No, for more complicated cases, we have… other measures.”

  “So… you’re not going to torture me?”

  “Bahaha. Of course not. We don’t do that. Here, I know you must be thirsty. Have some fruit juice.” The predator produced a flask of orange-colored liquid and poured it into a cup in front of her. “Delicious stuff, even if it has no nutritional value for us.”

  Bertel accepted it suspiciously and raised it to her snout. It smelled… sour, but it was definitely fruit. She took an experimental sip. Then another. And then another. The remainder of the cup was drained in three seconds.

  “Another?”

  She wiped her whiskers clean as she reached her cup out. “Yes… please.”

  It poured her another cup generously and called out behind her. “And let’s get something to eat here for the pilot. She must be hungry.”

  At the large predator’s mention of eating, her whiskers trembled. “I— I—”

  “Ah, thank you very much, Colonel,” the predator said as its subordinate sauntered in and placed a plate on the table in front of her.

  She looked up in shock. Its subordinate was not a Slow Predator. It wasn’t any predator at all. It was a he, and he was a Znosian. Old enough to be working, and young enough that she could almost mistake him for a hatchling. “You— you—”

  “You want some roasted carrots too, General Insunt?” the Znosian asked.

  “Yes, please. And can you make sure to— you know— can you cook it in…” Insunt grinned sheepishly.

  “In your disgusting meat oil?” His subordinate made a disgusted face at him and then chuckled. “Fine, fine. We just got a shipment of that Terran tallow you like last week…”

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  Insunt looked down at the still-bewildered Bertel and gestured to her plate. “Well? Aren’t you going to eat your dinner?”

  She pointed at the back of the colonel. “But… he— he…”

  Insunt winked at her. “Ah, Colonel Spirst. Yes, I understand your confusion. He is a very odd individual, but we keep him around because he is such an amazing cook,” he continued with amusement on his face. “His roasted baby carrots are delicious. If you’re not hungry…”

  She looked back down at the plate of vegetables as she took a sniff. “This… isn’t flesh,” she stated, as if seeking confirmation from the predator.

  “Nope. Not flesh. Roots. Delicious carrots, grown right here on Grantor.” Insunt waved his arms around him. “We are a mixed unit, so we all eat at least some grass.”

  “Mixed… unit?” she asked as she started nibbling on one of the roots. She didn’t nibble for very long though. Pretty soon she was inhaling as large chunks of it as she safely could.

  “Yes, a fully integrated mixed unit.” Insunt beamed. “We have Granti, Malgeir, Terran, and Znosian troops. All volunteers.”

  “Volunteers? What’s that?”

  “It’s a— well, you don’t have that concept, but it means we have the choice to not be here.”

  Bertel processed it for a moment. “So you can— you can choose to quit and go home right now?”

  Insunt frowned. “Well, no— not exactly, we’ve all made commitments— what I meant is that at one point, we all had the choice to not be here, and we didn’t take it.”

  “Huh.” She didn’t make any more comments about that, but that was more because she was snout-deep in the delicious plate, not because of her lack of opinion.

  “And we want you to join us.”

  Bertel almost dropped the last carrot of the plate in her paw. “What?!”

  “We’ll need a pilot. You are a pilot. We want you to join us.”

  “For— for what?”

  “For our unit. Combat pilot, you know…” Insunt waved his paw around.

  “Combat?! But there is a ceasefire between our peoples.”

  “For after it ends, of course, and hehe— maybe a little before too.” Insunt grinned slyly. “And after the fighting starts up again, well, from some rumors I’ve heard from my friends, your people are probably going to do something extremely funny. And we’re helping make sure that when it happens, the right people are going to be in the right places so they can do the right things.”

  “Right people? Right things?”

  “You’ll see what I mean when it kicks off, Five Whiskers. Don’t worry too much about it now.”

  “I— I can’t help you fight against my own people.” Bertel said, licking her whiskers as she finished her plate. “It’s— I just can’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for one… it’s just… not done. Our people do not quarrel amongst ourselves like your people do. Znosians don’t fight Znosians. It’s just not something that’s done!”

  “Ah, interesting. Don’t worry, Five Whiskers Bertel, we won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

  Bertel nodded after a while, trying to keep the look of suspicion off her face.

  Insunt clapped his paws together. “But first… now that you’re no longer starving, why don’t I show you the next generation helo-drone we’ve just received from Datsot?”

  “The what?”

  Insunt produced a headset and slid it across the table to her. “Here, put this on. The screen there, that goes in front of your eyes. Good. Hold onto your ears.”

  The screen lit up, and she gasped.

  She instinctively knew what it was; despite the alien layout of the helmet mounted display, its interface looked every bit like her old Skyfang. With the monochromatic green numbers written in standard Znosian, it took her only a couple heartbeats to understand exactly what each of the indicators were saying: altitude, air speed, azimuth… It was… just familiar.

  Bertel glanced around in every direction, noting the way the display’s field of view followed her neck realistically. She heard the rhythmic roar of the engines as its blades spun above her. And out the cockpit glass, she could see that it was cruising at combat speed through a desert valley, barren mountain ranges on each side of her. It didn’t look like anywhere on Grantor-3, but then again, she’d only been to two cities on the whole planet.

  Wherever it was, it looked as good as the real thing.

  She felt the predator put something — control sticks, she realized immediately — into her paws. Text appeared in the middle of the screen in crisply rendered Znosian characters:

  Training Lesson: Shock and Awe

  With a single deft press on her claw — it indicated exactly what she should do — the weapon pylons deployed with a barely audible whirr, and she counted no less than forty-eight anti-armor guided missiles in the four pods extending out from the internal munition bay under the helo. With another flick of her paw, her vision switched to the under-belly sensor pods, displaying the world around her with a thermal false-color overlay.

  She fiddled with the controls as the instructions suggested for another few seconds, then noticed the pitch change of the blades above her. From her own experience, she knew even without looking at the instruments that the collective had just been raised. Sure enough, the aircraft began to ascend, and as the tip of its rotors crested over the tall hill to its front, a wide array of armored vehicles — lined up neatly in two columns on a highway — came into view.

  Her interface went into overdrive. Dozens of red rectangular boxes materialized, each with markings above them advising suggested priorities and auxiliary data about the targets.

  The simulation paused.

  Objective: Neutralize the enemy armored battalion in their staging area.

  Tip of the day: you can maximize the effectiveness of your 70mm rockets by utilizing smart-attack mode to allow their onboard intelligences to determine the best flight profile for each target.

  Your high score for this scenario is: 0.

  Would you like to get started, Bertel?

  She prepared to mash the button that would begin the mission, and then almost jumped out of her ears when Insunt lightly tapped her shoulder from behind her. “So, pilot… Why don’t I leave you here to get a feel for the job? I’ll be back in… say, half an hour. And if you’re not interested, hey, I’m sure we can find you a desk position upstairs like your friend Korchaj, right?”