POV: Krelnos, Znosian Dominion State Security (Position: Administrator)

  Amidst the shock, it took two days for the Znosian Marines to re-organize and put down the worst of the fighting. In the end, her troops had the artillery, the sustained air support, and the long-term organization and logistics needed to pound the local rebel units in fixed positions to dust. Those of them who stood and fought were overwhelmed.

  But most of them did not.

  Unlike the past resistance movements against the Znosian occupation, these Grantor Underground people were disciplined enough to know when not to fight. They melted back into the urban jungles of Grantor City and others. Her Marines carried out reprisals against the locals, to punish them for sheltering the Underground fighters, but both sides knew this was simply obligatory bloodshed at this point.

  The damage they did was permanent though. In one blow, the rebels took out more than five squadrons of the Navy’s ships in orbit and denied the Znosian Marines any hope they could hold out against the incoming enemies with their own wrecked surface-to-orbit batteries. And five squadrons was more ship casualties suffered by the Dominion Navy at Granti paws than they had suffered prior. In over a decade of war.

  By a bunch of primitives who came out of the sewers.

  In State Security’s sober aftermath analysis, the Underground didn’t win everywhere. They didn’t take all the Navy bases they went for. They couldn’t. They weren’t a trained professional force, not like Dominion Marines. Some of their cells broke and ran. Others were captured. And some of the Navy bases held their own against the surprisingly organized enemy.

  But not all of them melted away.

  Many of them stood and fought. And that was the real scary part. One six whiskers armored commander reflected in her responsibility report that her platoon of quick reaction Longclaws arrived at a logistics base under attack with their full complement of fire support options, expecting that the Granti rebels there would be gone when she got there. Instead, they greeted her Longclaws with a barrage of rockets, swatted her air support out of the sky with their imported alien weapons, and when she got on her radio to demand fire support, her artillery battalion was busy complaining that they were taking losses from counter-battery fire from the captured positions.

  Counter-battery fire. Counter. Battery. Fire.

  Who even trained the Slow Predators on using captured Dominion artillery?!

  The answer was, of course, obvious. The officers who allowed the Great Predator infiltrators to come down and wreak havoc on their planet did not escape the full responsibility Krelnos placed on them during their hearings. Her only consolation was that at least those vexing operatives hadn’t been heard from since they took out her special munitions base a couple months ago. Which was bad enough by itself.

  Then, she received the new orders from Znos.

  In a serious and solemn voice, the director ordered that Grantor was to be abandoned. Surrendered. Svatken had given the order herself after verifying her identity. And then Krelnos received the transmission with the special codes. She was expecting a State Security officer who would arrive on Grantor-3 in two weeks with the triple confirmation.

  It was over.

  The terms were simple. The work camps ceased operation. The prisoners were released. Her agency’s role in the official administration of Grantor-3 stopped at midnight, and the Granti’s began exactly one second later. Her people were confined to a list of approved bases and secured locations while they awaited a year-long, orderly evacuation process in pre-arranged phases.

  Like machines winding down at an assembly plant as it closed for the night, the fighting subsided. That was not to say it was completely peaceful. Some of the Underground cells didn’t quite get the message at first, and they continued to launch small scale attacks on her garrisons, but after a while, they mostly followed the examples of those around them.

  Krelnos continued the work she was charged to do. She devoted herself to the path of redemption. It was a long road indeed, but there was a chance she could perform well enough — snatch some deliverance from the pruning she’d condemned her bloodline to. Not that she had anything to lose. None of her peers nor subordinates envied her position, and they were in no hurry to contest it, even if they’d been blessed with ambition as she had. Yesterday, the pacification campaign was the job. Today, they were going to get as many people and as much equipment off the planet as they could, within the restrictions set by the agreement with the predators.

  “I got you the list you requested,” her attendant bowed as he transmitted the information to her datapad.

  She narrowed her eyes. “How many?”

  “Approximately two hundred thousand personnel not accounted for throughout Grantor,” he summarized. “Most of them were likely lost in action in the various outlying sectors…”

  “Two hundred thousand missing?!” Krelnos exclaimed.

  “Administrator… we have over ten million direct combat troops on Grantor, and dozens of millions more in support roles.”

  “But two hundred thousand missing?!”

  He tried to assuage her concern. “By historical record in the Digital Guide, this is an acceptable amount of accountability. We have roughly the same number of missing personnel as after the initial invasion of this planet, and that was during a far less… chaotic time. This is a testament to how much extra effort and resources you’ve put into ensuring that our people must be found.”

  It wasn’t that she cared about the missing people, but she knew that any missing equipment would be more she’d have to take responsibility for, probably a few hours before facing a firing squad. “Still,” Krelnos sighed. “We need to have proper accounting for how much we’ve lost… and recover as much as we can. How did we get this count?”

  “We’ve mostly compiled the names and identification numbers from the security stations throughout Grantor, relying on some numbers from the Navy. The Digital Guide has gone through them, thoroughly.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “What about them? Can we ask them?”

  “Them?”

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  Krelnos nudged her head towards the direction of the door, to outside. “Them. The locals.”

  “Oh. We’ve established some basic channels to ensure transition, and we are… getting some information from them in exchange for other trivial concessions. But it would be… unwise to trust them on matters—”

  “Not trust. I just want to know what happened to our missing people. After all, they are obligated to hand over any of ours they have captured on Grantor, for assignment-of-responsibility hearings, as per the ceasefire treaty.”

  “Yes, Administrator. And they have been handing over some of them. But…”

  She narrowed her eyes again. “But what?”

  “It appears that they are being dishonest in which of our people they have captured,” he replied.

  She snorted this time. “Dishonest? Of course they’re dishonest. They’re predators. You’ve just said we’re not supposed to trust them.”

  “Of course, Administrator, but I believe they are being… exceptionally dishonest on this matter.”

  “How so?”

  “We have several examples that we know for certain they have taken prisoner, through surveillance and recon… But they are claiming no knowledge of them, even when confronted with the information directly. For example, right in our jurisdiction, of the several work camps just outside Grantor City that were raided during their rebellion, we have camera footage showing them making off with many of our workers and fresh hatchlings.”

  “And they are claiming they don’t know what happened to our people?”

  “Yes,” he sighed. “But they could just be intentionally obtuse.”

  “Maybe those prisoners have been summarily executed?” she speculated. “Or interrogated to death?”

  “That is possible,” he admitted. “Their new, unofficial leader is a former Grantor Underground leader by the name of Torsad, and she is known for her brutality against our people. According to our dossier, she led several saboteur missions against our very station as a cell leader.”

  She considered the inner workings of the predator mind for a few more moments, then decided that madness was a step too far, even for her. She shrugged. “Well, the more important thing is the equipment we’ve lost. Make sure to document everything our people had on them when they were taken.” Krelnos mused out loud, “And what could the predators possibly need from a bunch of camp workers and pre-educated hatchlings? Mark them as likely deceased and re-prioritize to focus on the lost equipment unless we get some new leads.”

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

  Five Whiskers Bertel woke up in a makeshift hospital bed with a massive headache and a painful cramp in her neck. She was not surprised. Such a condition was common among aerial crews who were forced to eject from their doomed aircraft. But that knowledge didn’t make it any less excruciating when she tried to move.

  She winced as a sharp pain shot down her spine. “Ow!”

  “It would be unproductive for you to try to get up now,” the medic in her tent said in a bored voice. “You are incapable of combat duty.”

  Bertel rolled her head to the side on her pillow to look at him in annoyance. He looked incredibly young for the six whiskers on his uniform. Perhaps the medical units were experiencing temporary personnel shortages. “Where are we? Where did the other guys go?” She vaguely remembered an air crew retrieval team getting to her downed position before she blacked out.

  “We are in a logistics base on the outskirts of Grantor City. You were in a battle. Do you remember?”

  More memories came back to her in waves. “Yes! The nuclear explosion! Then we got shot down!”

  The medic nodded. “Good for you. Most people who recover their memories eventually make a full recovery.”

  “So I can fly again?”

  “There would be nothing stopping you medically,” he said, brushing his whiskers. “After you recover.”

  She noticed the way he indirectly dodged her question and frowned. “What would stop me?”

  “Well…” He gestured up in the direction of the sky. “The same thing that stopped you the last time.”

  “Ah. The predators and their anti-aircraft weapons.”

  “Yes. I’m only a medic, but from what I hear from my other patients, there are not many of those Skyfangs anymore. And even if there were…” He shrugged. “You would not be allowed to fly under the terms of the treaty.”

  “Treaty?” she asked in confusion.

  “Yes, there is now a temporary treaty between the predators and the Dominion.”

  That didn’t clarify things for her at all. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we’re not supposed to shoot at them if they don’t shoot at us. And we are not supposed to go out of our bases. There is a list of places where we can—”

  “But this is our planet, not theirs!” Bertel protested angrily. “That’s what we fought for! To get rid of the vermin, not to coexist with them!”

  He shook his head in exasperation. “If we’re lucky, we can hope they won’t treat us the way we’ve treated them.”

  Bertel stared at the defeatist medic in disbelief. “What? What happened?”

  “You’ve been out a while, huh?” He glanced at her charts. “Ah, you’ve been out of it since before—”

  “What happened?!” she insisted.

  “It’s over. We are abandoning Grantor.”

  “What?!”

  “They have given us a year to move out. After that… well, I’m sure you know what predators do to prey that get left behind.”

  It took Bertel almost a month to recover from her injuries. She learned that she was important enough to be scheduled to be evacuated from Grantor, in a couple months. Not everyone had a seat with their name on it; most Marines were expected to simply make their own way to a spaceport in the last few months of the evacuation process by themselves. They’d wait in a line as they were taken off the planet one by one.

  At least it was calculated they’d be able to get everyone out.

  “But… we have a bigger problem before that,” the logistics base’s commanding Six Whiskers Korchaj declared. Korchaj was a young one, barely a young adult. One of those first-generation Znosians hatched on Grantor.

  And… probably the last, Bertel reflected.

  “Oh?” she asked. “Bigger problems?”

  “The predators are intercepting our supply convoys. Our last couple were stopped at the checkpoint at the edge of the city by some of the locals, and the supply trucks were mostly looted by a mob before they allowed us through. As a result, a couple of our bases inside the city are running dangerously low on supplies, the most dire shortage being their batteries.”

  Bertel stroked her whiskers. “Aren’t the Slow Predators not supposed to do that under the terms of the treaty?” She referred to the provision of the armistice where the predators were supposed to allow them to ferry supplies to their bases while they prepared for evacuation.

  The six whiskers gestured towards the door with a paw. “Would you like to go tell them that?” Korchaj asked sarcastically. “Maybe you can get one of them to take full responsibility.”

  “I— I guess not.”

  “When I asked our liaison, the Slow Predator feigned ignorance and claimed he wasn’t able to stop the local mob. Apparently, they were simply hungry and mistook our trucks for a food convoy… Regardless of his predator lies, we’ve been given explicit directives not to shoot at the locals under any circumstances. The integrity of the armistice is more important than any of our individual lives, which were forfeited the day we left the hatchling pools…”

  Bertel bowed her head and whispered the mantra.

  “So now we try to send these supply convoys through at night. After the locals get tired and go home.”

  “That seems logical,” Bertel admitted. “Does it work? Why is that a problem?”

  “Under the armistice, we are allowed to send trucks between our bases. Except at night. There is a curfew on us.”

  A curfew on Dominion Marines. How absurd.

  “So we are breaking the rules of the treaty when we send our trucks out at night?”

  Korchaj scratched an ear slyly. “Not… exactly. I’ve consulted our Digital Guide. It says there is also a clause in there about emergencies. We are allowed to break the curfew for emergencies. So… there is some ambiguity there. Our supplies are needed urgently so…”

  Bertel nodded. “I see. But why are you telling me this?”

  He hesitated, but only for a moment. “You are a Skyfang gunner, right?”

  “Yes,” she said, excitement growing. “Are we getting allocated a new one of those?”

  “No. Not a full one. But we do have a Light Skyfang,” he said. “And one of the gunners… well, we have an opening for tonight’s convoy.”

  “I see. I’m somewhat familiar with the interface.”

  Those machines designed to be much lighter than she was used to, with a more limited armament, and they were more glass than metal despite their closer frontline role. But she was itching to get into a cockpit again.

  “Look… we don’t expect any real trouble. We aren’t supposed to be shooting at the predators, and they aren’t supposed to shoot at us. You’d just be there… just in case.”

  Just in case.

  She’d heard that before.

  But somehow, she could almost swear she was excited.