The Nature of Predators 2-92

Memory Transcription Subject: Taylor Trench, Human Colonist

Date [standardized human time]: March 18, 2161

Gress and I had transcripts in the Krev Consortium’s database. Were there versions of ourselves among the robot army, living in a glossy, falsified reality or trapped as puppets on a string? My life had been miserable enough without reckoning with the idea that somewhere out there, a Taylor existed who never even got my slight glimmers of happiness and growth. There would be a me who was reset from knowing that Earth had survived and that he’d found someone who loved him, warts and all. There was an instance—perhaps more than one—of myself who truly existed only to suffer.

I saw how that knowledge had driven Gress mad, especially once he considered that everyone he loved or cared about in any capacity could be in the same predicament. Could I handle someone who was him down to every memory and mannerism being placed through simulated pain, and leave them to such a fate? The only way to stay sane was to affirm that it wasn’t the real Gress or Taylor, just an imitation to mess with us. If they could procure infinite robots to toy with us, then we had to be prepared. Nothing could distract us from saving the real Lecca, and destroying the impostors pressed to the KC’s eternal service.

What gives me assurance is that the actual Taylor, Gress, and Lecca won’t exist anymore; we’ll be overrun if we don’t end this all. Who has the right to create a person based on my private thoughts, my fucking brain?!

“It’ll be ok. You couldn’t reach her because they took down the comms—and they’d be surveilling her anyway. Any Krev device isn’t worth shit.” I sucked in a deep breath, as our rescue shuttle continued to lurch toward the upper atmosphere of Avor. I still remembered the first time I’d seen the vista of this planet. “Of course, we’re going to Nevi’s home first. How do we find Lecca, if she’s not there? We should have a plan.”

Gress grabbed my shirt collar, pulling me toward him with an intense look in his eyes. “The plan is we stay until we find her, dammit! We check school, the supermarket, run through the streets: I’m not leaving without my daughter.”

“The UN are going to rescue as many people as we can,” Cala jumped in, trying to soothe the Krev. “How would you know if she got on a different rescue shuttle though? Lecca should have a father, since she had a good one; Taylor can tell you what it meant to have two loving parents back in his life. Lecca would want you to stay safe.”

“What if I left without her? What if we’re not quick enough? I can’t live with that.”

I carefully lifted his claws out of my fabric, biting my lip. “None of this is your fault. You’ve seen what blaming yourself can do through your lure and my own. Living with the guilt of my failures made me miserable. You told me I deserved better, and your words mean enough to me that I believed you. I’m telling you the same thing now.”

“Fault isn’t the point, Taylor. It’s about the outcome—and I saw this one coming, months ago. I saw it and couldn’t convince anyone; couldn’t convince you! That’s my real failure, when I could’ve stopped this from ever happening. The Consortium signed a treaty with the UN on my watch.”

“What the Consortium did is crazy, so it sounds crazy when you say it. Nobody could’ve sold the truth to the SC without proof. It’s telling how discerning you are to be able to read them. I knew you were under a lot of stress, and goodness gracious, I know how that clouds my judgment. You’re stronger and more tenacious. I should’ve trusted you to be better than me.”

Cala raised her beak with indignance. “Enough already! What matters is that we’re better than them; I don’t care who’s better than who, when we’ve all mucked it up in one way or another. We’re getting the civvies out before we drop any bombs. Plenty of time, you hear?”

“Heard and disagreed with,” Gress muttered, sounding like a madman. “The humans—the kind, gentle, adorable primates—oh, they’ll wait alright. The Consortium won’t waste any time. When you shut down their little army with an EMP and hacktivism, the drones are proofed. The ‘defenses’ all around Avor, that crazy Cage that insulates our home, it can be turned around. They’ll do your work for you. Rescue us at your own peril.”

As much as I wanted to argue with Gress, experience had taught me to believe there was some validity to his forecast. The Cage sealed around Avor, but cyberweapons demolished their defenses and made it easy for humanity’s guns to punch a spaceship-sized hole in the shellworld barricade. I stared at the fires within the atmosphere of an orbital ring, and watched as UN shuttles diverted to lift civilians off of there; those would be the easiest rescues. I could see green bodies flocking to our ships before they’d even touched down.

My binocular eyes peered closer at the scene around me, trying to turn the dial up on my logical deduction. I wanted to see what the Consortium’s plan was to exterminate their own people in a hurry; I was searching for proof to validate Gress’ beliefs, because I knew his ability to see through the noise and confusion exceeded my own. I trusted his judgment. As a hostage negotiator, he’d honed his senses of other beings’ true intentions to save lives. If anyone could make the right calls for Lecca’s security, it was him.

The orbital protections would be present on every world, and could be remote controlled; it’d be a solid plan. The Cage is shut, and that’s their last line of defense. How could we see the Krev attempting to weaponize it against their own people?

It was by looking at sensors—just as I’d been taught in Radai’s military bridge training—that I saw what shutting The Cage was meant to do to the surface. While it could provide artificial sunlight and temperature regulation when sealed, to preserve the populace, the Krev weren’t worried about the flesh-and-blood beings they wanted to preserve. The temperature on Avor had plummeted to the point where it was meant to freeze out the people, forcing any survivors to hole up underground. I had to assume, for Gress’ sake, that Lecca was down there.

If they went deep enough to escape the unsurvivable frigidness, that meant the robot army holed up below—which the UN intended to bury—might be insulated from any digital attacks. The populace was being pushed into the synthetic legion’s authoritarian grasp.

“Spacesuit armor on! Temperatures are continuing to plummet below, and it’s getting to spacewalk levels of freezing way the fuck too fast!” our squad leader announced, shortly after my realization struck. His words sounded so human that it was difficult to believe I was following a Venlil into battle. “Power grids got cut by them. I don’t feel optimistic about finding too many survivors up top.”

Gress wept at that news, coming worryingly close to shoving the sharp points of his claws into his eyes. “Lecca…”

“They had a small stretch of time to get to safety,” I soothed the Krev. “We’ll look for her. There could be some people who found ways to make it, gathering around a heat source that they got online, er…there could be some civilians alive on the surface.”

As if to refute my argument, the Krev drones wheeled away from the UN fleet sauntering in; just like Gress predicted, the military craft began deploying antimatter bombs against their own populace in gratuitous quantities. Nothing was left up to chance in ensuring that Avor’s surface was a fatal wasteland. Any orbital rings still standing were obliterated, hurling shrapnel all around the globe and cutting rescue efforts short. The Krev didn’t want any people to get off-world, which was just spiteful. They could still have their fucking robot slave empire if they just let the real people go and dipped, no fighting required. 

“No!” Gress screamed, as I tried and failed to console him with a touch. 

I could feel horror enveloping me, watching how heartless these bastards truly were. All we got was a few ships off the rings. My God.

Cala’s eyes glowed with sympathy. “Every time I’ve seen a glassing, I hope it’s my last one. The fact that I’ve seen and been a party to so many haunts me. I’m sorry that Avor is the latest addition.”

The Venlil squad leader’s nose twitched. “Well, shit. Now there definitely is no point looking for survivors surface-side. Avor’s one cold, lifeless rock, and what a damn waste it is. We need to insert our asses underground and hurry, before we get buried like we meant to do to them! All that might stop more bombs pelting down is that they’d be burying their fucking robots, if they bring the roof down on our heads!”

“They’ll have to fight us the old-fashioned way,” I murmured, reaching for my rifle instinctively. “Lecca could be underground, Gress. We’ll look for her. Saving everyone we can is the best, the only chance we have that she might live, okay? Don’t give up!”

Gress hugged me, until I pried him off to force us to don our spacesuits. “It’s hopeless, Taylor. We’re too late, and there’s no telling what waits down there. I have to go, but you don’t. Just let me save you like I couldn’t save her! You should turn back, and go live the life you want with your human family, who are still very much alive. I do wish for you to have what you want, away from me.” 

“All I want is to keep you safe, so that’s not called abandoning you or putting distance between us. The life I long for is with us all together. I can’t bear to see you hurting and losing yourself, because you’re the man, the hero, the companion, the father I adore. I want this galaxy not to be so fucking unfair to people like us; I want to make this right for you. It’s time we got some mercy from on high for a change.” 

“I agree, but I know better than to expect anything to go well. In or out of the Consortium, it’s all just infinite darkness.”

I steadied myself, knowing that the predators of Terra were going to face this menace head on. I was one of them. “Then we’ll be the light. Someone has to be.”

The Sapient Coalition, spearheaded by humanity and our eldest allies, pressed with hunger toward the hostile drones who’d assaulted Avor. However, the enemy had already dispensed thousands of warheads from orbital range without any delays, with devastating effect. The Consortium could contest our forces now with their full attention, and the damage would be done. There was no stopping what’d been unleashed before we had a chance. My fists clenched with fury, blinded by a burning rage at the thought that they’d tried to wipe Gress’ family away. It boiled my blood that they’d hurt the alien I loved.

I remembered the agony and heartbreak I’d felt, when I believed Earth had been glassed. I intended to avenge this atrocity for Gress if I could do nothing else! I was turning to wrath and vengeance one more time, only not for myself this go-round. Humanity’s best hope of victory was that our cyberweapons could access their remote-control backdoors, which they’d used to steer that fleet back in our space away from Radai’s orders to attack the Remnants. That mechanism was believed to be deep underground, with the robotic legion lurking in the depths. 

Deploying the United Nations cyberweapon of last resort on foot might let it shut the Consortium’s ships everywhere down, if we could get close enough to their center of operations. This went beyond just praying that Lecca was alive, and that we could ferry her to safety. I didn’t know what was happening to other worlds at this moment, but the enemy had shown they had no regard for life. It was my singular goal to succeed in ensuring that these monsters couldn’t hurt any planet like this ever again.

A/N - 92! Taylor and Gress ride in to try to save Lecca, which has nearly pushed our favorite Krev to a total breakdown, but Gressy is spot on predicting that the SC holding off the bombs will only make the KC do it for them; the Cage has also been used to seal off all sunlight from the planet and make it a freezing wasteland. Any survivors would be deep underground, where the conspiracy and their robots are most likely hiding, and where human soldiers will need to scramble to find an access point to override Krev remote control of their fleet.

Do you think that Lecca was able to get to a bunker, or will Taylor and Gress’ search come up empty-handed? What resistance and quirky stuff do you expect them to encounter below the surface? What does the Krev species’ future look like, with an uninhabitable planet and many dead on the rings and the ground?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting!