The Nature of Predators - Wild West (8/11)

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Memory Transcription Subject: Nilrie, Takkan Smuggler

Date [standardized human time]: April 7, 1851

Before I’d had more than a few seconds to brainstorm how to save my friend, I heard more hoofsteps rushing up the hillside: two sets of them, if I’d deciphered the stimuli correctly. Panic settled back in, unsure how I’d stop more bandits from finishing Blake off. I rushed to scoop up the pistol, though my arms quivered. My mind was racing at a million light-years per hour. The only way to get the human proper treatment would be to take him into the future, wait for the Federation to find me, and most likely try to convince Zurulian doctors that this wounded beast wasn’t too dangerous to awaken and treat. How would I even transport the binocular-eyed sharpshooter to a cryopod?

My legs trotted up the hill, hoping to get the first shot. I relaxed the firearm when I recognized the female human, riding in her puffy garment. Cornelia might be able to help Blake, and she’d have motive to, since I believed she cared for her husband. My suspicions flared back up when I spotted the second rider; it was Preacher Collins, who’d been riding with Marlow…and thought I was a demon. Had the religious leader convinced even Sheriff Donovan’s spouse that I needed to be killed? My inclination was to crawl back into the ditch and hide, but Cornelia had already seen me.

I don’t have a choice but to try to get her help, if I’m going to save Blake. He’s lost so much blood.

“Where is Blake?” she shrieked at me, voice firm and commanding.

I pointed with my tail into the ditch, and watched the human’s expression change. Her binocular eyes widened with horror, before she leapt off of her mount. I watched Cornelia kneel by Blake, and her hands turned red as she desperately tried to allay his wound. Tears rolled down her face, as she murmured a series of denials. I kept Preacher Collins in my periphery, not trusting the religious figure despite the fact it hadn’t taken aggressive action yet. The second predator dismounted, removing its brimmed hat as it saw the fallen bodies. I couldn’t tell if it was removing the headgear to make scavenging easier.

Cornelia drew a shuddering breath. “What happened, Nilrie?”

“I’m s-sorry,” I choked out. “Marlow…he w-wanted to stop Marlow.”

“There’s so much blood. We have to do something!”

“We?” I echoed. “Why are you riding with that b-beast? It tried to kill me; it rode with the bandit that shot Blake.”

“Be nice, for crying out loud. This isn’t the time. Both of you were afraid of each other, but that’s all a misunderstanding.”

Preacher Collins cleared its throat. “I never meant for anybody to get hurt. Marlow was just…using God’s righteous name to help himself.”

I studied it skeptically. “I t-thought you called me a demon.”

“Cornelia reminded me that God created the heavens and the earth. To say, of those two, that only the earth could have life, would be to place limitations on the Almighty. We have a duty, as keepers of the faith, to show His love and compassion. I…seek to better understand His creation.”

“Then help me c-carry Blake near the river. I have a machine that can, um, p-put him in stasis. I d-don’t know another way to save him.”

Cornelia parroted the strange word “stasis,” then seemed to choose to trust me, hurriedly trying to lift her husband’s shoulders. The religious teacher looked nervous as we each lifted Blake’s body, perhaps disquieted by the proximity to me. Collins was able to shoulder most of the weight once we reached its horse, and hoisted Sheriff Donovan onto the saddle. It climbed up behind the reins, waiting for guidance. A still-sniffling Cornelia boosted me onto her horse, and begged for me to point the way. It was an easy enough path to retrace, and an extremely short ride by horseback. The preacher, with my wounded ally slung across his horse, tailed us; it couldn’t have been easy to keep Bullseye Blake from sliding off.

I scampered to the cryopod, punching in the startup sequence. The sheriff’s skin had turned pallid, as the stain on his chest pelt continued to grow. There was no time to waste on explaining beforehand, so I screamed for him to be put in the pod. I fixed the autoinjector straps in desperation, feeling the weak pulse beneath my paws; it had to be quick enough. Feeling a spark of determination, I sealed the cryopod. Preacher Collins flung itself backward as a mechanism sealed the stasis chamber’s lid, and ice began to coat the glass case. The untrustworthy predator looked…petrified. Maybe Cornelia was right about us having the same feelings for each other.

I need Cornelia’s permission to go through with this plan, but I had to rush Blake into the cryopod for it to even be an option. He was fading fast. I can pull him out if she doesn’t like the explanation…but I have to persuade her of the truth. He will die without this last-ditch effort.

“What is that?” Collins hissed, an accusation glowing in his pupils. “What have you done?”

I raised my paws over my head, wishing I could disappear from beneath that binocular-eyed stare. “I’m g-going to tell you everything, but we couldn’t stall…or he’d d-die. I don’t want him to die. This is a, um, cryopod. It preserves living beings indefinitely by being really cold, until they’re unfrozen. That’ll be w-when someone finds them and can undo it…probably d-decades or centuries in the future. His life w-won’t ebb away until then.”

Cornelia knitted her eyebrows together. “My husband won’t bleed out until he’s released, you’re saying. It’s just stopping the progression, and taking him out of his own time. Am I understanding you?! What good does that do, Nilrie?! I thought you could help!”

“This is the…only h-hope. I’m saying there’s medicine that could save him, but it hasn’t been invented on this world yet. It’s like how…what I was planning to do with this in the first place. T-there was a sick girl, back on my home. I was going to freeze her…until one day where doctors will have a treatment. If time isn’t an issue, there can be a treatment for anything.”

Not like humans would invent healing aids, but I expect Federation exterminators to dig us out, as they’re cleansing the planet. I don’t have to specify.

Cornelia seemed to be grasping my argument though, so I didn’t want to explain that her kind were of a lesser empathetic intelligence than the rest of the galaxy. The female human walked up to the cryopod’s lid, pressing a hand against her husband’s container. Yet again, I felt a pang of guilt, imagining the predators taken down for the threat they posed. Their belief that it was their divine right to expand as far as possible…it was obvious that it was necessary. They were cruel and violent. Yet I couldn’t imagine how Blake would feel, with not just his wife gone, but his entire species. Wouldn’t it devastate him, to fail to protect his entire race?

The sheriff’s gentle wife continued staring at the cryopod, a deep mourning in her eyes. “If this is the only way to g-give him a chance to survive, then do it. I don’t want to lose him.”

“You should go with him.” The words fell out of my mouth, despite knowing it’d abandon me in this primitive, perilous backwater. “He loves you. You should be together, to brave your n-new reality. Things will have c-changed a lot.”

“Hold on. Going hundreds of years into the future? Our children’s forebears will exceed their lifespan,” Collins huffed. “That’s not natural.”

I pinned my ears back. “Nothing built by people is natural. Not the guns, the things you use to control your horse, or the mines you use with the g-gold. You created that. W-we created a…way to pause life, not exceed it.”

“If it’s Blake’s time, he’ll s-still part ways from us. The Lord is in control,” Cornelia whispered. “You believe that, don’t you, Preacher? We can’t escape His plan for us. Maybe this is part of His plan.”

Preacher Collins’ eyes were smoldering, enough to burn a hole in front of him. “I don’t wish for your husband to die, but I also don’t want to test God.”

“Saving the people you love cannot be a sin. What were you going to do with these cryopods, Nilrie? Before Blake was injured.”

“I…w-was going to get in one. It’s not safe for me on this world, Cornelia. But g-giving him a second chance, it’s the least I can do,” I answered. “I’ll make sure you both are kept safe in the pods. I’ll find a place where you won’t be found for a long time, like Blake would’ve done for me.”

The female human hesitated for a long time, waging an internal war with herself. She stood with reddened eyes, wiping away tears. The predator strolled toward the empty cryopod, but made no motions to get into it. She patted the chamber with a hand, and leveled her forward-facing gaze on me. I shuffled forward, not understanding what she wanted of me. Did she want me to test it out, to prove to her that it was safe?

“I need to stay here, with my children. They can’t have both of their parents disappear and forsake them. I want to see them grow up, have their own kids…and I want to live out my days in the town Blake loved,” she choked out, in a voice that sounded pained. “Giving the love of my life a chance to stay alive is enough. You go with him, Nilrie. You’re the one who needs to leave for your own survival.”

I tilted my head at the beast. “Are you sure?”

“I…I am. Blake was brave enough to help protect you, and now, it’s my turn. You will die with the likes of Marlow looking to exploit you. We both know that, so it was selfless of you to offer your spot.”

“Yes. It was,” Preacher Collins agreed. “There’s no greater love than to lay down one’s life for another.”

Conflicted emotions tugged at my heart, as I debated whether to warn them what the Federation might think of them. What good would it do, to give them that needless worry? At best, nobody would believe them; at worst, it could lead these creatures to be ready to war, like the Arxur, against my own people. Laying down my life for Blake was one thing, but I couldn’t sacrifice hundreds of innocent species to save violent predators. I flung my arms around Cornelia, whispering emotional thank yous to the human. Her tears dripped onto my shoulder, before we broke apart. I laid back into the box, passing along instructions for how to prep the box. My next step was to begin fastening the adjusters to myself.

Blake trusted Cornelia, but do I trust Collins enough to hide our cryopods and not to turn on us? If we’re woken up by humans in a few decades, or worse, outed to more bandits…

I passed my holopad to the preacher, hesitating. “You s-should destroy this, once I’m asleep. Like Blake said, it’ll bring out the worst in humans. That does mean I won’t be able to talk to anyone who…finds me.”

“I’ll see that it’s buried and never found,” Collins grunted.

“Good. I need you both to move the cryopods somewhere they won’t be stumbled across either, or this has all been for nothing.”

Cornelia wiped at her eyes. “Would they work underwater? I don’t want you to drown…”

“I see no reason why they wouldn’t. They’re completely sealed and self-contained. We won’t need to breathe until we’re brought back up.”

“Okay. Then the preacher and I will move the pods into the Willamette River. It’s…deep enough, I reckon.”

“It’s as good of a plan as any. Thank you.”

She nodded. “Just tell Blake I love him. And…take care of him, Nilrie. I figure you’ll know much more about this future than he or I would.”

The sheriff’s wife sealed me in after I clasped the last strap, and tapped the final icon on the glowing display. The next time I woke up, hopefully I could board a transport shuttle back to Marna…unless it was destroyed in an Arxur raid between now and then, but there was no reason to be so fatalist. Shit, it wasn’t impossible that nobody would ever find us, and I’d wake up trapped without oxygen at the bottom of a river, when the pod inevitably malfunctioned. It could be Blake’s fate too. That would be a horrible way to die, but it wasn’t what I needed to think about. I tried to spend the final few seconds thinking of how to plead for the human’s life, and to believe that this plan would work out. In what would be an instant to me, I would know whether the two predators would keep our existence a secret.

I hated having my life in the hands of primitive, flesh-eating monsters. An unspeakable cold permeated my brain, and the gears turning in my skull ground to a halt.

---

The icicles receded from within my body, returning me to the waking world. I fought through an all-encompassing grogginess, and waited for feeling to return to my limbs. My vision gradually came back into focus, illuminating more than the swath of this world’s cerulean sky. I opened my mouth to thank my savior and plead for Blake’s life, only to realize that binocular eyes were peering down at me. The ones responsible for pulling me out of the water were human, which meant I had all of the same problems as before. Horror tightened my throat and made me snap upright. I would’ve believed Preacher Collins had sold me out if not for the stark differences between these beasts and the primitives I’d met.

These humans were noticeably cleaner than the locals I’d met before, and also were sporting wearable technology; they invented computers?! That must’ve taken millennia for a species as savage as them, unless they created it for the purpose of building war weapons. My eyes continued to stare at the holopad clipped on the beast’s hip, which didn’t deviate that much from the ones we had back in the Federation. This predator needed to have been clever enough to operate the cryopod’s interface on its own, and it also seemed to have used machinery attached to vehicles to haul me out of the river. Maybe it could understand what I was, but was that a good thing, to be at these aliens’ disposal? I couldn’t even speak to them without my own holopad.

The only comfort I had was seeing another cryopod next to mine, lid still coated in ice. Blake had made it as well, so I needed to communicate with his fellow hunters about his injury. I wasn’t convinced they’d have medicine enough to help, but at this point, there was no choice but to rely on a far-fetched hope. My rescuer continued to stare directly at me, while warriors, who were toting massive guns and wearing baby blue head casings, watched from behind it. No…had I been uncovered by a military outfit who were angry about a territorial invasion? Even if I could communicate with them, the fact they might be advanced enough to understand Federation technology was worrying; I could wind up pushing them into the stars!

“Hi.” The human leaning over me didn’t seem confused about what I was, or fearful in the way Collins and Blake had been. “I’m Matteo Bernardi. You can call me Matt.”

“Matt,” I echoed, showing that I understood. It pointed a finger toward me, arching its thick eye fur. “N-Nilrie.”

“Nilrie. That’s a nice name. I…have some questions for you about just how you wound up here.”

“I k-know you can’t understand what I’m saying, but I’m sorry! Please don’t h-hurt me.”

Matteo took a step back, raising its palms. “Nobody wants to harm you. I can see by your facial injuries someone did, and I’m sorry for that, but you’re among friends here. We’re merely concerned about aliens visiting our planet…much earlier than we thought. It’s a security risk.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “You…have a translator.”

“Right under the ear. Look, we’ll take it slow, and have someone patch you up. How about I ask a question, then you ask a question? It can be a two-way street.”

“Just help Blake, please. Do…you have antibiotics? You can’t b-bloodlet him, he’s lost a lot of blood. He was shot, so I…”

“Blake is your friend?” Matteo echoed, and remembering how I communicated with the sheriff, I nodded in the affirmative. “That’s not my question, just to be clear. For what it’s worth, we definitely haven’t believed in bodily ‘humors’ or considered bloodletting a reasonable practice, in a long time. I think that gives me a ballpark for how far back you must’ve landed…”

“I need assurance that you h-have real medicine. I find it hard to believe from a species l-like you.”

The predator’s brown eyes darkened. “We’re highly social, empathetic creatures. It’s not so far-fetched that we can take care of one another and work to better our lives.”

“Of c-course not, er, Blake just told me about ‘mesmerism’ and ‘bloodletting.’ He d-didn’t know about transplants or germ theory…m-maybe you do, um, but that’s what I know about your medicine. It seemed to hurt more than it helped.”

“Yes, you’re right on that account, and it’s understandable to have concerns if that’s what you’ve seen. I’ll have Blake’s cryopod transported to a hospital, so that he’ll be woken up right where he needs to be: in the trauma center with specialists, transfusions, and any supplies at the ready. No time will be wasted when he’s revived. Does that put your mind at ease?”

I didn’t trust predator physicians, but was scared of offending Matteo. “Yes. T-thanks.”

“Sure.” The human mentioned something to a peacekeeper about getting air transport, clueing me in that they now had flying vehicles. “So, with that aside, I’d like to ask a first, simple question. What galactic rotational year was it back in the Federation, when you arrived here?”

“You…k-know about the Federation. I should’ve figured, if your translator worked on my language.” What happened to my people, if humans have engaged with them? How did the galactic community react to this species? “Did they give you this tech? C-could you coexist with them after all?”

“Answer my question, and I’ll answer yours. I’ll tell you how long it’s been as a bonus.”

“Y-year 19,003. It’s calculated in fractions of the galactic rotational period, so, um—”

Matteo’s eyes widened. “We know. My conversion calculator puts that at…that was more than 250 of our years ago. In your time, it’s rotational year 19,226.”

“That’s it?! But your kind was…”

“Only a few decades away from phenomenal progress and advancement. It was only a century away—a little more, but still—from our first space flight. We learn quickly.”

That is deeply worrying. They developed space travel in such a short time, from not having any vehicles or electricity; Blake called my ship a fire kite! What did they do when they reached the stars? Did “Manifest Destiny” spur them to ascend into the heavens?

Matteo crossed its arms, studying me. “To give you your answers, the Federation gave us nothing; most of them wouldn’t tolerate our existence, after we discovered FTL and contacted them. We were forced into a war for our lives, after they mercilessly bombarded our planet from orbit. The Federation no longer exists as an entity, Nilrie.”

“You k-killed the entire Federation?!” I screamed, feeling the physical pain from my snout vanish beneath a world of hurt. “What did you do to Marna? What happened to the Takkans?!”

“We didn’t kill any species. We subdued both the Federation and the Arxur, and some parties have joined the union we lead, called the Sapient Coalition. Takkans stood with us as allies from the start, and I’d say we ushered in an era of unparalleled peace under our banner.”

“M-manifest Destiny. You claimed our worlds. You…conquered everyone.” They’ve turned us into slave states, or maybe we’re just doing their bidding like Bourbon did for Blake. The humans dominated any other sapients in their path. “A galaxy r-ruled by predators. Just kill me! I won’t s-serve you.”

Matteo sighed. “We are people, not predators: with the concern you showed for your human friend, I hoped you saw that we’re not unfeeling bloodhounds. The Sapient Coalition’s primary principle is equality, and our friends are most definitely not our servants. You’re free to return home to Marna. We’ve notified the Takkan embassy of the…situation.” 

“My people have an embassy?” My mind ached from that preposterous claim, remembering how even Blake warned about the greed and the terrible things humans could do. “W-what do they need that for?”

“Diplomacy. If you don’t believe we’re capable of goodwill and compassion, feel free to ask any of the sapient herbivores who live as citizens of the SC. The truth of humanity is that there’s no greater friend, and no worse enemy.”

My thoughts continued to war with each other in my head, as I weighed the options. If I accepted Matteo’s claims at face value, the humans considered Takkans to be friends and equals…and my people could somehow stomach their brutal, carcass-loving ways. It was nearly impossible to believe that an entire race of hunters could restrain their instincts, when they found it so irresistible to take as much as they could; they believed that was their divine reason for existence. Still, Matt had no reason to lie, and I needed his cooperation to save my gunslinging ally. It was refreshing not to have to explain basic science to a predator, though another part of me missed seeing the intrigue in Blake’s eyes. What would he think of what his world had become? The “no greater friend” line rang true when I thought about the sheriff, and the lengths he went through to protect me.

There isn’t much left to go back to on Marna, hundreds of years in the future. I have to help Blake explore his changed world; I promised Cornelia I’d look after him.

“I believe you have feelings and m-morals, because of Blake,” I offered. “Please let me visit him, Matt. I want to be there when he wakes up.”

The human exchanged a glance with the soldiers. “We can arrange that. We should have you fixed up as well. I just have one final question. These cryopods seem to have been reported as stolen from a Venlil research facility, during the rotational year you mentioned as your time of origin. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“No. But I’m sure whoever took them was trying to give them to someone in need.”

Understanding flickered in Matteo’s pupils; the beast was sharp enough to catch the implication. My host gestured with a hand to the arriving aircraft, where several bipeds were hoisting Blake’s pod into its belly. Deciding I had no choice but to trust predator engineering, I accepted the invitation. My feet clambered onto the shuttle, feeling the hum of the engines that would carry us to the hospital. I placed a paw atop the lid that entombed Sheriff Donovan, and found myself hoping that the trauma center would put enough effort into saving the wounded lawman. There was nothing for me in this future but to see that he got a second chance at life.

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A/N - Part 8! Cornelia and Preacher Collins have teamed up, with Blake’s life convincing the religious teacher that our alien friend wasn’t a terror to be feared; she also listens as Nilrie explains his last ditch plan to save Blake via cryopod storage, and agrees with it if it’s the only way her husband lives. Our Takkan offers his spot to Cornelia, though she eventually rejects the idea. With the cryopods hidden in the river, our narrator is shocked when it’s humans—now much more advanced—who pull him out.

What do you think Blake will think if he does wake up now in the future? Did Nilrie show that deep down, he’s warmed to humans, and his cowboy friend? What will Nilrie do with the Federation, and his old life, far in the past? 

As always, thank you for reading and supporting!