POV: Sprabr, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Zero Whiskers)

  Sprabr shifted his hind legs uncomfortably, allowing the heavy steel manacles on them to jingle as he did. He looked around the cramped prisoner transfer vehicle. Other than the two State Security guards watching his every move, there was just Six Whiskers Dvibof, chained up in the seat right across from him.

  “You ever been out of Znos?” he asked Dvibof casually.

  Dvibof shook his head.

  “Hey! Be quiet!” one of the guards shouted at him over the noise of the moving vehicle. “You aren’t allowed to talk to each other!”

  Sprabr looked over, giving her insignia a quick glance. “You guys are Special Unit Zero, huh?”

  The guard hesitated, as if wondering whether the rules about prisoners applied to when they talked to her. After a few seconds, she answered, “Yeah. Why?”

  “Do you know a Zdurbu?” Sprabr asked.

  The guard arched an eyebrow. “Zdurbu? I know at least three people named Zdurbu.”

  “Five Whiskers Zdurbu. She’s former Special Unit Zero. Got a dark red mark back here,” he recalled, pointing behind his ear.

  “Ah, Zdurbu from Zishskish. Yes, we were trained in the same class. She was a four whiskers when we last met on Gruccud. Why? Do you know her too?”

  “You could say that. Small galaxy, huh?”

  “What— what happened to her?”

  “She served honorably. She died protecting me on Grantor,” he said, letting off a light sigh.

  The guard looked somewhat disappointed. “Oh. Our lives were forfeited to the Prophecy—”

  “Do you ever get tired of saying that?”

  “Excuse me, I’m praying!” The guard glared at him for a moment before resuming. “Our lives were forfeited to the Prophecy the day we left the hatchling pools.”

  “Okay, now that you’re done. Would you answer the question?” Sprabr asked impatiently.

  “I don’t have to answer your rude questions, prisoner.”

  “Do you even know what you fight for?”

  “Yes, for the security of the Dominion State. Don’t you? Oh, right, I almost forgot, you are an apostate,” the guard taunted.

  “Even before that, our oaths were different from yours in State Security,” Sprabr recalled. “In the Navy, our oaths are for the defense of the Znosian species. Of course, that difference has not had practical relevance for centuries now, but…”

  “You broke them anyway. That is why you are a zero whiskers and an apostate.”

  “Perhaps we did. Or perhaps not,” Sprabr mused.

  “And now you will be eaten by predators.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps not,” he repeated as he looked out the barred windows of the vehicle at the spaceport in the distance. “I think they said they’ll put us on trial after you hand us over. For crimes committed during war, whatever that meant.”

  “Predator justice,” she scoffed as she looked away. “What a joke. I’ve never given my rations a trial before…”

  Sprabr declined to tell her that he’d read in their propaganda that they didn’t execute or eat prisoners. It was probably disinformation, but whatever his fate in the paws of the enemy was, it was undoubtedly already better than what State Security had planned for him. “And you think the Dominion will do better without me? Without the hundreds of high-ranking officers you’re now transferring to the Great Predators?”

  “Yes,” the guard sneered. “Just look up. Where’s Znos-4-C? How well did you and your cadre of incompetent and traitorous—”

  Baaaaaaaaaang.

  A loud explosion rattled Sprabr’s skull. A shower of sparks covered the front of the vehicle. For a second, Sprabr was back in a falling transport flyer on Grantor. A glance at the front cabin through the viewport, and all he saw was fur, blood, and brains splattered across the glass. One of his guards saw the same thing, and she stood up reaching for the handle of the door separating the two cabins, as if trying to get to the front to regain control of the vehicle…

  There was a jolt. He felt a sharp pain in his neck, and he lost consciousness.

  Sprabr woke up to the smell of burning electric components and a head-splitting ringing in his right ear. In his dim vision, his guards were splayed all around him in unnatural positions. He looked over to Dvibof, groaning and writhing in his seat, evidently still alive somehow. In the back of the head, he realized that the tightly secured seat restraints they’d both been placed in had saved their lives, but he was more concerned with the visible fire that had started in the front of the vehicle.

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

  A loud noise filled the rear of the vehicle accompanied by a bright spark.

  Plasma cutter, he realized a second before the spark reached the lock, cutting it away in an instant.

  The door flung open, revealing a trio in white coverings over their faces. They wore no visible weapons, but he was not fooled.

  “Who are you…” he tried to ask. What came out instead was an unintelligible string of mumbles. The effort of speaking was too much for his concussed head to handle, and he blacked out again.

  The next time he woke up, he was in the back of another moving vehicle, this one with its windows also covered by black cloth. He noticed with a small degree of relief that Dvibof was next to him, still with the prisoner restraints he had.

  “What the— who are you?” he asked as he regained the power of speech.

  One of them said something, but his head was obviously still not up for the task of interpreting speech.

  They said something else, and he lost consciousness again.

  POV: Plodvi, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Six Whiskers)

  “By the Prophecy, what have we done?!”

  “A successful mission!” Hobbsia exclaimed happily.

  “He’s— he’s…” Rirkhni stuttered as he stared at the peeled away jumpsuit of the unconscious prisoner to reveal a Dominion Navy uniform and insignia below. “That’s… nine, ten, eleven… That’s eleven whiskers.”

  “Beginner’s luck!” Hobbsia declared. “If this keeps up, I might end up believing in the Prophecy again.”

  “That’s eleven whiskers… Eleven Whiskers Sprabr,” Rirkhni whispered.

  “Unless you know another eleven whiskers in the entire Dominion Navy?” Hobbsia asked cheerily. “Or judging by his condition, former eleven—”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Eleven Whiskers Sprabr,” he repeated. “We’ve got Eleven Whiskers Sprabr.”

  “Well, technically they’re stripping all his whiskers—”

  “What are we going to do?” Rirkhni asked, his face scrunched up in horror. “This isn’t just some random officer that we thought we were going to get! This is the former commander of the entire Dominion Navy. They’re going to be after us! Where do we go?!”

  Plodvi kept his eyes on the road as he drove. “Back to the safe location, then scatter, then new location. Exactly as we planned.”

  “We didn’t plan for this!” Rirkhni objected. “This— this is so far beyond what we planned for!”

  “We adapt. That’s what we do. That’s who we are, adapters,” Plodvi insisted firmly. “We knew there was serious risk when we committed to this mission. There’s no turning back now.”

  POV: Sprabr, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Zero Whiskers)

  Sprabr woke up again, and this time the vehicle only had the driver in it. The other occupants had gone, as had Dvibof.

  “Where am I?” he asked out loud. “Who are you?”

  “Ah, you’re awake again,” the driver replied. “We are driving as far away from the scene of the crime as possible.”

  “That answered neither of the questions I asked,” Sprabr said.

  There was no reply from the driver’s seat.

  Sprabr spoke up again a few seconds later. “I recognize your breeding from your ears. You’re from a Navy spacer bloodline. Life support or reactor control, if I had to guess. Which unit are you from?”

  “I guess— I guess it wouldn’t make a difference either way. I am Plodvi,” he replied. “And you’re welcome for the rescue, Eleven Whiskers.”

  “Rescue?”

  “Yeah, from the prisoner transport. You and the other guy… you were going to be transported to the predators to be executed or something, right?”

  “Dvibof? Where is he?” Sprabr asked, looking around. “And your compatriots?”

  “Another vehicle,” Plodvi answered after a while. “We split up to minimize risk in case of capture.”

  “Not bad thinking,” Sprabr said. “Who’s behind this operation? I know you’re not with the predators, obviously. Do you work for one of the other officers being handed over to the predators?”

  “No. We don’t work for the Navy any more. The Dominion Navy at least.”

  “Any more? Dominion Navy? What are you?”

  “We’re the… Free Znosian Navy,” Plodvi explained.

  “The— the free…” Sprabr stuttered in confusion.

  “The Znosian species have been governed under the claws of the oppressive and corrupt State Security for far too long. We are going to free the Znosian species from the wasteful abomination that is…”

  Plodvi stopped talking, as if realizing just how lame his well-rehearsed pitch sounded. For a moment, the vehicle was silent but for the sound of its engines.

  “And what’s your grand plan? To rescue a few of us Navy officers and see if we can help you with your insane ideas?” Sprabr asked after a while.

  “Well, yeah.”

  Sprabr scratched his whiskers in confusion. “So what’s next?”

  “What? Next?”

  “Next. After you take me.”

  “Yeah, about that… This was our first operation. We were kind of hoping you could help us with that.”

  “To help you—” Sprabr stopped talking. He chuckled softly. Then, more loudly as he realized what the general outlines of their plan were, until he laughed so hard he began to cough.

  “What’s so funny?” Plodvi asked, stealing a glance back at the disgraced Navy master from the driver seat.

  “What made you think a few Navy officers marked for death can overturn a system that has stood strong for thousands of years?”

  “Well, you— you— you’ve been trained for war.”

  “Yes,” Sprabr said with amusement in his voice. “For war. Real war. Space war. For space combat, with big ships and missiles. Not… this. You think they taught us anything about how to overthrow them?!”

  “No— no, but we figured at least you’d be one of us.”

  “One of you?”

  “You know? Like us. People who think on their own.”

  “That I am, but I can’t help you. No one can. What your plan is… it’s hopeless. I know nothing about how to— how to start an insurgency. If you’re serious about this, the best you can hope for is what the predators are already doing.”

  “Well…”

  “You’ve already talked to them, haven’t you?”

  “They offered to help, but we’d be defectors. Helping them, not— not— fighting for our own freedom. On our own! That’s what we want.”

  Sprabr sighed. “Our species— in some ways, State Security has turned us into a war machine. In others, we’ve been completely defanged, incapable of resistance to their rule. There will be no internal rebellion. We are no longer capable of that on our own. We gave that up thousands of years ago.”

  “But this State Security: it is— it is irresponsible. What it does… to us, to everyone. It is a crime.”

  Sprabr swallowed hard, then sighed. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “So help us destroy them!”

  “I… don’t know how.”

  Plodvi was silent for a moment. Then, he slowed the vehicle to a stop at the side of the road. Utterly deflated, he looked back at Sprabr with something liquid in his eyes. “We have to try, right? That’s why we got you out! At least we tried!” He sniffed twice.

  “And it was a good attempt,” Sprabr said gently. “Smart target, officers marked for death, who would have no reason not to join you. Well-executed operation, quick and decisive strike. And you’ve got your getaway, splitting up Dvibof and me into two separate transports to minimize— wait a second.”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Dvibof was embedded with a State Security transmitter before we were loaded for transport. You did remove that, right?”

  Plodvi turned around to stare directly at him. “What?!”

  “Oh, huh. I guess not. Like I said, there’s a million things none of us know to do to resist State Security, things that they know because of institutional—”

  Plodvi turned his entire body to face Sprabr in panic. “Why in the Prophecy would there be a transmitter on him?!”

  Sprabr shrugged. “State Security thinks they can track the prisoners as they get processed by the Great Predators to collect more intelligence on them. Didn’t put one on me, because that’d be too obvious. But they put one of those in his ear. I doubt the predators would have fallen for that, but they had to try, right?”

  Plodvi didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “And you did bring a radio to contact your compatriots, right?” Sprabr asked softly. “To warn them about what’s coming their way?”

  POV: Rirkhni, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Four Whiskers)

  “Where are we going?” Rirkhni asked nervously. “Are we lost?”

  There weren’t many other vehicles on the rural road. Normally, that would have made an easier drive, but it was unsettling given what they’d just done and the cargo they had in the back of the truck.

  “No, we haven’t reached the long bridge where we have to turn left. Just keep driving,” Hobbsia explained patiently as she held up the paper map in the dim light. They’d abandoned their stolen datapads and digital devices a few kilometers back to prevent them from being tracked, one of the lessons they’d learned from the predator stories. There would be a fresh radio waiting for them in the next safehouse.

  “I still can’t believe it…”

  “That we got Sprabr?”

  “That we’re doing this at all… but yes, also that we got the former commander of the entire Dominion Navy!”

  “Yeah, they’ll be looking for him. But we just need to get out of here and lay low for a while.”

  Rirkhni grunted noncommittally, but continued to drive.

  The landscape outside was a blur of shadowed trees and flickering headlights. They passed an occasional farmhouse, its windows dark. The only sound inside the truck was the low hum of the engine and the light moaning of the rescued officer in the back. They were nearing the bridge now, he could tell. Even the air smelled like water.

  As the vehicle crested over another hill, the long bridge came into view.

  “See? I told you we weren’t lost.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. So once we cross, we just need to take a left at the—”

  Bang.

  The loud noise punctuated the night; they heard and saw the impact before the shot. The front vehicle hood was covered in a shower of sparks. The engines sputtered for a second, then died. The vehicle rolled to a stop in the middle of the road.

  “What the—”

  A loud stern voice announced with a bullhorn from somewhere they couldn’t even see, “This is Dominion State Security. You in the vehicle, you are under arrest. Get out of the vehicle now!”

  There was a moment of pandemonium in the driver cabin as the two rebels scrambled for options.

  “What do we do?” Rirkhni asked in panic.

  “I don’t know,” Hobbsia said. “How did they find us?!”

  Crack.

  A second shot hit the windshield, shattering the safety glass into spiderwebs.

  “Get out of the vehicle now!” the bullhorn ordered.

  The two of them kicked opened their doors and hastily rolled out of the disabled vehicle. A bright spotlight filled Rirkhni’s vision from about a hundred meters up the road. For a moment, two armored figures silhouetted the lights.

  As he glanced over at her, Rirkhni saw Hobbsia tuck a rifle under her jacket as she exited, one of the ones they’d taken from the guards killed during their rescue earlier. His eyes widened as he instantly saw what she was planning.

  Just two of them.

  She can take them.

  “Hey, hey! Over here!” He stood up tall, hopping up and down, waving his arms and shouting towards the approaching armored figures, desperately hoping that’d draw their attention.

  And as he did, she raised her rifle in the corner of his vision.

  Bang.

  Even as he waved, he felt Hobbsia fall next to him. Rirkhni looked down. She was clutching a missing paw in shock, blood spurting out of a stump. She collapsed into the gravel road next to him.

  “No!” he shouted in rage and despair.

  Bang.

  Something hit his chest like a hammer, and he collapsed to the ground like a sack of fruit.

  Hobbsia cried and shouted from the ground next to him, “Rirkhni! Rirkhni!”

  Rirkhni sputtered and coughed. He tasted blood as it came out of his nose in a stream. “Hobbsia. I’m sorry… I tried.”

  “No, Rirkhni, no!”

  There was a tightness in his chest. Then, he couldn’t feel his lower body, and then his arms. “I can’t feel…”

  “Not like this!” Hobbsia sobbed next to him. “No…”

  “It’s okay, Hobbsia. It’ll be… okay.”

  Despite the numbness, he felt a warm presence as the injured Hobbsia crawled up next to him. He moaned, “I tried… for you… and that is enough for me… Our lives are forfeited…”

  “This is my fault… Mine!” Hobbsia cried uncontrollably.

  Rirkhni gurgled blood as his vision faded. “Oh, Hobbsia… Our lives are forfeited… for the day our hatchlings… may all be free.”

  He closed his exhausted eyes. For a split second, Rirkhni saw the future they both dreamt of. A smile crept up onto his face, and then he saw nothing at all.