a while ago I started a series of sketches trying to design NoP aliens as if they were actual, y’know, “conventional” aliens - ie, with evident material culture, worn tech and clothes, and so forth. This is the first batch
Finally got around to finalizing the fanart design for the human special-operations assault rig (as opposed to max stealth rig), as demonstrated by Damien from Hellion Squad by Itsunos_Vision
Scorch Directive AU is by u/Scrappyvamp, I’m just fanarting all over the place
State-mandated venlil partners are just inferior to Arxur waifu
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Location: Mars, Tharsis City [Standardized Terran Time] May 28th, 2137
The small observation windows that line the arrivals zone of the Keres Spaceport allow me only a glimpse of Riyadh as it stands docked at one of the port’s landing pads.
But a glimpse is enough.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how big the Armada troop deployer ships can get, especially when you’re cooped inside their narrow innards.
What I can see of the three hundred meters-long skyscraper is a portion of the hull closer to the bow; a hump bristling with radars and long-range hyperspace sensors. I can watch how shadows form the dark pits of torpedo launch tubes under the harsh, atmosphere-less sunlight.
There’s no grace in Riyadh or its ilk. The Arxurian bones are all but buried beneath human pragmatism. It's built like a butcher’s cleaver, meant to cut the soft underbelly of the Federation. The haphazard jumble of armor, weapons systems and cargo holds reflects the duress and desperation from which the Marauder-class deployers have been built on our first lunar wharfs.
Still it is a monument to the tenacity of engineers that took the discarded junk Dominion threw to them and created viable battleships.
Riyadh doesn’t need to look deadly. It simply needs to be so. To disgorge a swarm of landers while fending off attacking ships with a massive spinal railgun hidden deep within its core or rain nuclear death from orbit. Aesthetics sacrificed to a higher and pure purpose - war.
As my eyes trace its plasma-scorched contours, my heart skips a beat.
This ship had been my home for many years. It had seen all of me, grand failures and small victories, my best and worst.
It witnessed new scars etch into my skin, the blooming of my love, and a planet broken into cinder and ash.
And heart is where the home is.
It’s not the ship that I’m here for, though. I’m here for all those that come streaming out from the arrival gates, dragging their duffel bags, laughing or gawking around, tail-thumping and chattering.
The 6th Recon Company - the ”Scythes”. My “Scythes”.
The mass of troopers quickly fills up the otherwise sleepy waiting zone. I stand up, stretch out to see every man and woman, human and Arxur, all decked out in uniforms that no longer carry Betterment insignia or patches.
At first the familiar faces offer me relief. It doesn't last long.
Our collective maw has lost quite a few fangs. Sure, some might’ve stayed on the ship for whatever reason or are in recovery from wounds sustained in combat, but my gut knows that those that I don’t see anymore are dead. And why wouldn't they be? The preyshits got more competent. Got more exorigs now, more ships. Where we’ve beaten them, they return… to get slaughtered yet continue to push back.
This has always been a war for survival. Only fools forget that.
In the lead of the troops leaving for shore, I spot Arzosh, Neza - our Arxur combat medic, Nguyen, Zatniss, my old-time gunbuggy driver Lasserda and many many others. My heart swells despite the ache of grief.
I pull a wide grin so that overhead lights will catch off my fangs and draw their attention.
“Damn, look at those lard tails and bods”, I drawl mockingly. “You sure you’re returning from war and not a buffet?”
The response is peals of laugher and hisses.
“We’re reapers, so who’s to deny us a harvest!” marksman Milo Sanchez growls pridefully and the others join in, roaring and ululating to the bewilderment and unease of a few civilians around.
“Commander!” I feel someone grab me and then smother me in a spiky arxurian hug. Despite the pinpricks, I relax in that hold, for a second basking in the comfort of human - alien, ah but who cares - contact.
Neza rushes to pull my shirt up to look at the scar, mumbling something about irresponsible cloacaheads. Troopers swarm around me, a kaleidoscope of smiles and greetings. Some of the fresher faces, the Hunter-Initiates, keep a respectable distance away, yet still undeniably curious.
I’ll get to know them, but later.
For a blink-brief moment, like a moth fluttering by a gaslamp, I feel the warm glow of happiness light up inside me. Pull people into embraces, shake hands, human and scaled ones, have tail-tips slap my back - and act as the Hunter-Ascendant I once was.
The shame of my weakness from the *Prophet’s Talon” finally relents its iron grasp on my guts. Back then, the thought of how utterly alone and forsaken almost had me accept an inglorious death, but…
I was wrong. Surrounded by people that seem genuinely glad to see me, to touch me and talk to me, I understand just how wrong I was.
I have a family. Maybe not the one I wished I had, and maybe circumstances had scattered us, weakened the bond, but… I’ve a family nonetheless.
Home is where the heart is.
I throw the weight of the past years off my shoulders and take my place among the best people this forsaken universe has to offer.
Music pounds in my ears so hard I can barely hear my own thoughts.
A cloud of cigar smoke eats into my eyes and a rancid mix of sweat, scented scale wax and cheap cologne clogs my poor, abused nostrils.
In the mist generated by a fog machine dark figures move sinuously to a savage rhythm, casting neon reflections off their sweat-slicked bodies and wet scales.
Worn-out piping drips water on the undulating crowd - the only rain Mars can offer.
If you’re United Dominion military visiting Tharsis, you can’t avoid stopping by the “Slaughterhouse”. Those who turned this Martian city into the Armada’s anchor point, knew that between training, briefings and re-arming, the troops needed a way to blow some steam off.
Soon after opening its doors, “Slaughterhouse” gained infamy as the place to get the hardest designer drugs, premium escorts and even Fed flesh, something purportedly kept out of the Sol system… but, as rumors had it, available here for the right price - and if you’re the right person.
Whatever the case is, now a hundred or so Arxur and atrox are squeezed in a cave carved out in Mars’s very heart; drinking, dancing and trying to forget about the war beyond these rocks.
The bar-counter, just like the rest of the cantina, is crowded to the point of bursting at the seams. Riyadh came carrying not just the 6th Recon, but also the 8th “Piranhas” Mechanized Infantry and the III Engineering corps, many of whom were granted leave privileges.
To my right, a shapely dark-skinned beauty had all but put her ample backside on my shoulder. Decked in a t-shirt emblazoned with a cartoonish piranha biting a Kolshian in two, she perches on the counter with a bottle of beer and laughs. I catch myself longing to know what about.
If we could continue such a close encounter somewhere more private…-
Arzosh’s tail-tip politely prods my thigh. Ah, did I fall out of the conversation again?
Listening to the “Scythes’” recent exploits was exhilarating and made me proud to no end, but soon the stories began to blur into one endless raid report. Or maybe it was the vodka doing its thing.
“So what do you think of the new decree”, I ask, faintly remembering that we began talking about the Armada-wide order prohibiting “impromptu field rations”. Or, simply put, the ban on eating enemy combatants and the abolishment of Provider Packs. “How did the troops take it?”
The Arxur’s pupils collapse into slits, and he leans in, picking at the large, scarred-over dent on the tip of his snout as he always did when he got excited.
“It’s… Remember how we were sent into combat howling with hunger, yes? With stomachs glued to our spines? The things we’d do, Senior Hunter?”
I trace my claw over the shot glass and nod affirmatively.
“I wouldn’t forget even if I wanted to.”
Hunger. Hatred. Fear. Fury. The recon company would come down on a planet like a horde of ravenous beasts to sniff out the weakest spots.
Lean and incredibly mean. The tactic ensured that doing our jobs - finding Fed emplacements, foreposts and providing counterintelligence ops go the Armada - also meant finding sustenance. Lighter logistics… food obtained on the go.
Great motivation in the eyes of Abidence. It just didn’t facilitate peak combat performance.
“Abidence said it’s because we’d be sharp. Focused on the mission, in a hunter’s trance. I’ve heard it since childhood…” Arzosh shakes his great armored head and his underjaw skin flaps in a gesture that oozes a bitter amusement. “Anyway, this supply raid on Untal hit different. We got meals worthy of highbloods before deployment, asssh! Choice cuts from your terran cattle, no vat slop. Backpack stuffed with rations. We even got supplements dropped from orbit mid-raid!”
“Honestly sounds amazing.”
“What’s truly amazing”, the Arxur articulates every word with a snap of his jaws, claws closing over his cup of a “hard”, over-fermented bloodtea. “Is how casualties dropped. I reviewed post-mission data…. We lost four men. Two of which got caught on a mine, not even in an active firefight. Four! Over the whole campaign! When previously we considered ourselves lucky if we lost two squads!”
I bite my lip hard enough that I taste iron in my mouth. So that’s the difference, huh.
It’s something I always suspected… no, something I always knew. But like many other things, I shoved this knowledge under the floorboards of my consciousness.
“Of course… because everyone was well-fed and not forced to scavenge for a bite mid-battle,” I say quietly, but with enough infrasound to my growl that Arzosh still picks up the frustration. “Everyone had the energy to do their best… to look out for each other.”
“It makes my stomach turn inside out. To think how many have died because of those stars-cursed Dogmas. Terrans, Arxur…”, he trails off with a sad hiss.
Arzosh was always one of the least delusional ones. Perceptive, sensible - a keen empath buried inside the body of a living tank. Which was why I promoted him, and… liked the leader now standing before me. At least there my judgement is correct.
The Arxurian pride is still there, running hot behind his red scleras, but now it’s tempered with experience and humility.
He suddenly kicks his head up, teeth barred, and slaps his knees so with such a hard and loud that the bartender nearby jumps
”Hhsshah, but enough of that! When I got the memo that you’re on Mars and that we’re coming in for re-armament, I knew it was the perfect opportunity!”
“Huh? What for?”
“You’ll see right away, Senior Hunter.”
Squeezed from all sides by other humans and space-crocs, Arzosh squirms on his seat and with effort wrangles his tail over his. Opening a carry pack that's strapped near the base of his tail, he takes out something wrapped in crinkled brown paper, along with a Terran-style letter envelope.
Pushing a thumb-claw into the seam of the envelope, he slices it open and shakes a small, impossibly blue object onto his palm.
A feather.
He scoops it by the stem and holds it between the thumb and foreclaw - delicately, like they were not instruments of brutal evisceration, but surgical pincers.
“A little souvenir for my commander”, he hisses reverently, handing it over. “Please, take it.”
I do as told.
The feather is an electric shade of blue, with purple and green hues shifting. Something of an eye deco is formed at the tip - a mimic from pre-sapient times meant to fool a potential predator so they’d grab the feather, and not gouge a Krakotl’s real eye.
Well, thousands of years later, it obviously didn’t help.
“This is…?”
“Plucked from the plumage of a bigshot Feddie captain. Patrols tracked an Exterminator ship burn outbound from Nishtal into a neighboring system, and, since we were nearby, Riyadh was sent for the hunt. Ssshah, we fried their drive then boarded… you know how it is with the tinfoil cowards. Just to make sure.”
Against the pulsing neon lights, the feather looks almost alive. I suppress the urge to crumple it in my fist.
Fucking Jones made me miss all the fun. Krakotls and their homeworld… Everyone on Terra remembers who headed the Extermination Fleet in 2099. And will never forget.
Rumors circulated that Generalissimus Meier and Prophet-Descendant Giznel were both for issuing a second Scorch Directive on the birdbrains’ homeworld, but something went awry - perhaps, the expedited plans for the eventual coup.
Not that it helped the genocidal turkeys. The planet got hit harder than the Cradle. No wonder they call it the “Razing of Nishtal”.
Whole population centers were ground to dust by conventional orbital bombardment. The surface wasn't glassed, but the orders issued for the ground clean-up forces were even harsher than those at the Cradle. All resistance broken.
After all, the Cradle was occupied and its industrial capacity made to serve the United Dominion. Nishtal, on the other hand, didn't receive such a high honor. It and its closer colonies were left to rot in ruins.
However, it would’ve been incorrect to call it pure vengeance. Therein lied the Command’s strategic genius - the devastated world became a yoke around the Federation’s neck. It leaked refugees, it drained resources in futile attempts to send relief, it tied up their logistics in the sector - all to keep the embers of life aglow. The sheer number of dead and wounded clogged up the system. Which, without the Zurulians began to readily collapse, along with the Krakotl’s decimated industry, energy and agriculture.
Nishtal became a domino piece, knocked over to start a chain reaction.
”Exterminator ship, huh?”
“They’ve kicked up some activity in the Krakotl sector, pushing back on our smaller ops. Tried commerce raiding on our supply freighters - not to truly disrupt anything, bless the cruel stars, but the nipping hurt”, Arzosh points a claw at the feather in my hand. “This one was reknown for those raids… some scute-brains started calling it and its captain the “Ghost of Nishtal” or something stupid like that, because nobody managed to land a hit-…“
“Until we did”, Neza remarks from the side, coming to grab a tray with like five glasses of blood-tea and human alcohol. “Go “Scythes”!”
“When Senior Hunter Tawil got it in Riyadh’s targeting system, it was good as dead”, Arzosh’s tail slams into the ground boastfully. “I was in the bridge breaching party myself - got the fucker right in my claws!”
“Arz, you’re gutting me with every word…” I groan.
Not being around for the Krakotl campaign is something I’ll never forgive Jones for. No doubt Sazha feels the same. Sure, we did good with helping many high-ranking Arxur defect to the Collective, but… but I could’ve died a happier man there, in that heart of alien darkness, hand around the enemy’s throat. Doing what I was made for, what I believed to be right.
Without remorse, without regret.
“Anyway, how was it? Did you take your sweet time with this… “Ghost”?”
Before Arzosh could answer, Lasserda, overhearing us, makes a show of sucking on his claws, complete with obscene noises. He’d often double his driver duty as the field cook and never forgot to remind eveyone about it.
“Finger-lickin’ good, commander!”
I nod in approval, savoring a passing thought of how the Exterminator met its grisly end, and put the feather away into the envelope. Then nod towards the larger object.
“Don’t tell me it’s a dried Sivkit Exterminator head or something, Tharsis Customs would pack me behind bars if I try to leave with it.”
“No. It's… shah… Essil’s”, the Arxur says as he starts unwrapping his “gift”.
My swig of vodka turns to a lump of razowire in my throat.
The cracks in my heart ache, mirroring those in the object that Arzosh delicately grips in his claws.
“I rescued it right before the Inquisitor’s thugs came to clear his bunk. It’s precious.”
The mug. The icchi mug the Essil had cherished, the artifact of Old Wriss his family had passed through generations despite their “defectiveness”.
“It is.” I take it just as carefully, fingertips tracing the special red glue that kept the ceramic pieces together, from the little figurine on top of the handle to the chipped lip of the mug.
“We are not a people known for [sentimentality]”, Arzosh remarks as he also hands over the paper wrapping to me. “But I think he would’ve wanted you of all Terrans to have it. He found in you - and in “Scythes” - what hadn’t, perhaps, on Wriss, being a [defective]. He loved everything Terran. And I believe it was largely due to you, Senior Hunter.”
“No. It was all him”, I reject the notion. “He’s just a rare breed of person, Arxur or Terran. Got that core inside. No matter how bad it got, he’d never stay knocked down. I…”
I can feel my throat close off dangerously.
“I’ll make sure to preserve it and then… pass it to a deserving Arxur. It’s not for me to keep. Iy should be on Wriss in the end.”
Arzosh nods. I mean what I say. So little left of their pre-Betterment culture left than even such pieces like this were a treasure. Maybe Sazha’s future hatchlings would enjoy it? The thought brings a small smile to my face, so before the Arxur notices it, I change the subject.
“So, what are the loose tongues flicking about?”
Before Arzosh could answer, a huge fist punches me in the shoulder with a force that, hadn’t it been Mars, would leave a bruise.
Nguyen, my ever-reliable “heavy”, lands on a nearby seat with a grin that would charm an automated howitzer and orders some fruit-based nonsense. In the strobing light, the news scars on his scalp stand out like some tribal bodypaint.
“Feds rolled out some shiny new toys, that’s the big talk”, his infrared growl cuts under the music. “All the rage since Thaba.”
“Really?”
“Really. Some walker-type exo for the squids. Yeah, we got land-squids before GTA-23.”
I choke on my drink. Kolshians, deciding to touch the dirty soil with their privileged blue-blood tentacles? That’s new. That’s…
Nguyen’s narrow face tightens and his dark eyes shift about conspiratorily for a second before he leans towards me and shoves a holopad under my nose.
The device promptly builds a flat rectangle of a video in the air and I peer, intrigued.
In the beginning it’s hard to understand what’s going on. The footage is captured from a power-armor’s helmet camera, since I can see the barrel of a standard infantry Venator rifle bob up and down as its owner crawls through some rubble.
Everything around him - or her - is blanketed in thick anti-IR smoke, the camera’s AI struggling to pick out enemy thermals.
There’s no sound, only image, and the point of view suddenly drops to the ground level - the trooper crawls. Between the gusts of smoke and the skeletal remains of demolished buildings, I can discern something strange: tall, tripodal figures stalking in the distance and long streams of liquid fire shooting off them to flood the ground below with flame.
The camera shakes as its owner tries to find cover behind a half-demolished wall. With the trooper’s head likely whipping about I catch a sight of his less-fortunate comrades. A human and two Arxur, reduced to nothing but charred husks. The dead trooper’s armor is almost solid-black from the caked-on soot and still smoking, the breastplate and stomach armor looking as if they boiled up and burst at multiple points, the leaking innards becoming a thin greyish film over that burnt horror. The Arxur… the Arxur are just melted, tar-like skeletons smeared over concrete.
Everything I’ve eaten over the day comes up to my throat. I’ve never seen even a heavy flamer do that! What in fucking hell?!
The footage cuts. A next segment begins to play, same helmet-mounted angle, but here the trooper must be standing on some weird kind of exosuit.
Its front is shaped like a cylindrical pod, smooth and covered in fediscript, which in turn is nestled into a skeletal rig, with three bird-like legs at the bottom and a pair of thick, flexible manipulators spawning from its mid-section. The back and top of the exo bristle with camera lenses and sensor spikes.
The pod is semi-open, the hatch cracked just a bit for light to seep from its inside. A large hand in an articulated clawed gauntlet grips at the edge. Pries it open.
Bulging Kolshian eyes look up from within the exo’s driver-nest. Its frog-like pupils pulse, contracting and expanding as it tries to focus on the terran before it, probably half-blind after being torn away from the exo’s HUD and exposed to daylight. Then, a pair of tentacle-like arms shoot up to grab at the trooper, but one is caught in the man’s grip and promptly ripped off, splattering everything in blood.
The next moment, an armored boot comes into view, pistoning down on the Kolshian’s skull-less head. The latter presses into the headrest… resists… deforms. One of the eyes squishes out, spilling cerulean ichor into the exosuit’s tight interior mechanics. The boot descends again, right as the squid tries to scream.
Again.
And again.
I run my tongue over my teeth involuntarily, regretting for a second the decree we just discussed.
Kolshian flesh is among the best-tasting when raw, and after the conspiracy with Giznel came to light just less than a month ago, no one feels more deserving to receive such a treatment.
Calamari on the menu, huh.
“Shoulder-mounted railgun, wrist-mounted nozzles for some new type of napalm”, Nguyen taps the screen once, and the holographic projection collapses, leaving me with a growing cold void in the chest. “Oh, “best” part? The tanks for that stuff are armored. A pal from “Piranhas” over there told me that it deflected a twelve-mil. They quickly figured what’s up and switched to heavy rails, but… it’s not like there’s one in every squad.”
“Wriss is worried too. We are pressed to develop our own sealed armor if stuff like this becomes persistent on the ground”, Arzosh sighs with a rumble. “Helmets, gauntlets… No more thrill of biting prey!”
”If squids actually decided to throw in their combat troops, that’s good, no?” I muse outloud. “Symptom of the fed-filth finally crumbling? I mean, they’ve scraped the Gojid colonies cleans by now, Krakotls got their shit smashed in at Nishtal… They got the Tilfish Hives, yes? Then, Takkans…”
“Good, if so”, Nguyen leans back, scratching at the implants on his neck. “I hadn’t seen family in half a year.”
“War’s far from over.” Lasserda interjects.
“Ten years, though! Ten years and their most heavily fortified worlds are still intact… and they’re even pushing back!”
I listen to the vent. I could’ve said something about incremental progress - I do believe it to be true - but with Essil’s mug now tucked into my sling-bag, I can’t muster myself to do it.
This progress had cost so many lives already that hopeful hurrah-ing feels blasphemous.
“To the fallen!” I say instead, cutting the chatter. The music still crashes down, but we all hear it and the mood shifts, turning us into an island of solemnity for a few seconds.
The Scythes around me raise their glasses.
“To the fallen!”
We chat and drink into the night. At a point, that “Piranha’s” Hunter-Gunner, Zoe, does end in my lap.
I run my hands against her back, feeling for the hard, yet still feminine lines, while her claws nick and prick the assortment of scars on my arms and neck.
“Senior Hunter Abaurre, huh… so why do they call you Dril?” she cocks her head.
I yawn so that the motion exposes my teeth fully - and her eyes widen in surprise.
“Short for “Mandril”. Like the ape from Terra.”
“Jesus Christ…” Zoe’s hand moves from my jaw to probe a fang-point, her own teeth teasing her lower lip mischievously. “How many feddies did you chomp with these?”
Before I can answer, I sweep my gaze across the mass of people further down the bar and dancefloor and… glimpse a shadow standing still and watching me. It’s there and gone the next heartbeat, but I don’t need to see who that is to know.
“Enough. More than enough”, I say in a tone so cold it chills even me.
My hands go limp and the moment is lost. Zoe is hurt, I can see, but no matter how I wish to wake up with a warm body beside me to know that I’m not dead yet, I… can’t.
I’m not a traitor.
“I need to go.”
Tharsis City’s T-ube train hisses and expels vapor as it comes to a halt on the station, all dark brushed steel against the deep ochre of the tunnel’s rock.
Mars is easier on my bones than Earth. The unwanted memories from the Hades Correctional Facility unfortunately remain a dark and heavy part of me… But overall, a lot less pain exists between me and Mars than between me and Terra. That’s why I appreciate the stuffy cold air of its tunnel-boulevards; the constant background hum of air pumps; and the peculiar mix of languages that you pick up whenever you tune your ear to the conversations around.
I raise my eyes at the screens above. “Denham’s Dentifrice Tooth Treatment - for the whitest and healthiest fangs!” The whitening solution ad screams colors and noise in my face.
Well, the frontier capitalism is part of the charm too.
Twenty minutes of a ride later I’m at my home branch - a spiderweb of tunnels housing the cheaper, comfort-class apartments. I walk out into the wide street-tunnel and get immediately swallowed by a small crowd of pedestrians, enjoying the experience of dissolving among the lanky and tall Martian atrox.
The hidden speakers above call for the mandatory daily exercise break (a necessity for public health when the gravity is just a third of Terra’s) and I set foot to my condo tunnel, dutifully playing the role of an average civilian.
As if life is normal. As if - my hand clings to the door’s biometric lock - as if it’s Mira waiting for me on the other side, just like we dreamed together.
But instead, a tomb breathes stale air in my face when the door finally opens.
The momentary illusion… delusion, falls apart.
This isn’t my home either.
A home, as far as I understand, is a place one not only wants, but needs to return to, in order to be safe and happy. Whole. As I breathe in the damp air, dust saturated by absence, I realize it’s nothing of the sort.
It’s not Riyadh. Not my and Mira’s tiny officer’s capsule on “Black Bane”.
The apartment's AI flicks the lights on and starts to warm the space up. As it is, this flat never been more than a temporary base to wait between missions or deployments.
A kitchenette occupies one end of the main room, separated from the living space with a rolling glass wall. The longer wall, right across the entrance, is dominated by a huge smart-panel that now shows blooming fields of Terra. This illusion of a window into a summer fools nobody and I ask the system to change it to a no less fake, but more appropriate view into Tharsis City, its domes’ lights and chasms.
I did try to make the place more homely. Blankets, a rug, even a collection of posters - movies and shows that kept me company throughout my time at Arctic Base One and in Fayium, and even on the strikeship.
A bit of weakness again, but this time harmless… that being the desire to just escape from it all. Cold, hunger, the future.
There’s a poster of “Fed-Struction”, one of this first “revenge-sploitations” released in 2112. “Scales of Fury”, a hit with the Arxur which even someone like Zatniss watched due to its charismatic Inquisitor lead. “Fang and Claw”, of course, the introduction of many a space murder-lizard to buddy cop comedy… “Avengers: War of the 7 Realms” which I pressed the whole Tracker Pack to watch during leave when it released, and which earned me a couple weeks of relentless bullying due to how bad it turned out to be.
Below the posters there’s a shelf, and as I approach, I begin to unwrap what Arzosh had given me.
I wouldn’t call them trophies, the things on the shelf. Some, like a stripped-down Yulpa horn, indisputably are trophies. Or, say, Jazhif’s tliskis, the dried blood splatter dulling its metal sheen as it rests against the wall.
However, other things are simply mementos. A dried alien flower from the Cradle. The “Baboons” patch. A frame with a medal nestled within - one which all soldiers that made it home from Grenelka, got awarded with. Trash, but at least a reminder of the trip to hell. Oh, and there’s that horrid little drawing Kezef made.
Mira… Mira’s cross earring that she once left on the pillow and which I pocketed and then forgot to give back.
I reverently place the mug on the shelf. Twirl the Krakotl feather between the claws, admiring the shimmering colors.
It’s daunting to think how many Feds died in this war already. Millions. Most of them vaporized; left to rot into nothing on the planets they defended or occupied; or even consumed. No graves. No memorials. Nothing left of them to remember. And at times, nobody left to remember them.
But here, something remains of this “Ghost of Nishtal”.
“Ironic that I’m the keeper of it”, I think as I drop the feather into the mug.
Then step back and lower myself into the couch.
The blood-red cracks on the mug look like seeping blood which the little bird-like sculpture perched on the handle, drinks. Essil. My gaze falls upon the blade and I once again feel how the force of the strike on Ruzha’s neck echoes into my hand. Feel the bone and flesh yield. Ruzha.
The apartment is very quiet. Thoughts slosh around my skull loudly in this silence. Slosh-slosh-slosh. Memories. Last words gurgled through a mouthful of blood. Pleas. Screams.
I get to my feet.
There should be a noodle bar somewhere on the level. Chased by a sudden urge, I storm out of the apartment, slamming the door behind me and leaving the tomb once again wanting for its living corpse occupant.
Busy with post-coup fallout, Director Jones doesn’t bother to step foot on Mars, so the meeting in StratCom’s office on Phobos is held mano a mano - just me and General Voronin.
Well, unless you count the bottle of pre-Battle of Earth cognac sitting on the table as a third participant in this extremely uncomfortable conversation.
“This Kyrish VI - it’s one of those “experimental” colonies, right?”, I squint at the holographic map built between us. “Eternal friendship, holding hands with ex-Feds and all that? Why’d… why can’t you just send me back to work in the Wrissan Domain?”
Voronin’s stare is full of incredulous disappointment.
“Maybe because Jazhif was a popular Betterment zealot and now the remnants of Abidence would like to serve your head or whatever else on a silver platter - after what you’ve done to him. You should stay away from Arxur for the present moment, Colonel.”
“Isn’t it your job to hunt them down?” My voice drips with enough to marinate a Takkan. “Alright. Then… then give me back the “Scythes” or - or let me retire!”
The Milint brass smiles thinly and painedly, like I’ve told him an unfunny joke.
It is. Retirement is bluff on my part.
“To do what exactly, Abaurre? Take up gardening on Mars?”, all the weight of his disdain lands on the word “what”. “Retire, ah tyzh suka… I don’t want to be informed that you’ve been found with a new ventilation hole in your head and a bottle of cheap booze nearby. Nope, you haven’t recompensed all the costs sunk into you yet.”
Underneath the table, claws dig uncomfortably into the meat of my palms as I clench fists in frustration.
“You do realize that I’m incompatible with this idea? You… you need a. Peacekeeper Corps. Or the Provisionals! The preyfuckers, fedkissers, whatever - those who half the time are just banging the damn aliens, and call it “opening a constructive dialogue”! Do I…”
I lean over the table, and point a claw to my face.
“Do I look like someone ready to “open a dialogue” with a fucking Gojid, General?”
To his credit, Voronin seems unphased, and, ignoring me looming over him, taps something on his terminal.
“That’s exactly why we need you on Kyrish”, the holographic map zooms out to show the system in question, almost on the brink of an ominous purple haze creeping from the “north”, and the General purses his lips in an acerbic grimace. “I’m well aware that the Provisional Corps are… well, to put it diplomatically - for the sake of our beloved Generalissimus, for whom it’s a pet project - are an asspain. But seeing that the Federation counteroffensive is now on the doorstep of these worlds, we need someone like you to reign in the chaos.”
It’s my turn compose my face into a condescending smirk.
“So you don’t trust the former pre-… Feds either.”
“Don’t get full of yourself, Colonel. Milintel trusts no one at all.”
“Well the “intel” part of Milintel is limping here, General. You really expect me to deal with these… fucking ‘roos, the rabbit-deers now, venlil?” The last word drips off my lips with the aftertaste of bismuth.
“Why not?” Voronin retorts, unphased.
“Why not? Oh, maybe because I hate them?” I narrow my eyes as anger creeps to overcome me. “I spent almost a decade killing them. Shoving their half-dead carcasses into crates. Eating them. It’s absurd. You have an army of symps down there…”
I point to the floor, to where the imagined Terra from the vantage point of Phobos, is.
“All full of compassion to their fellow sapients.”
The moment I spit that out, I regret how venomous I sound. How… artifically angry my words are compared to the numbness I actually feel. That girl from a few days ago - Onyx, wasn’t it? - comes to my mind, and her asking what I would feel if was shown this “compassion”.
What gave her the idea that I’d even accept it?
“Where’d you get the idea that this case requires sympathizing with our new “citizens?”? It can cloud clear thinking - and we need some of that now. And besides, haven’t you ordered relocation of Federation POWs on the “Talon”, Abaurre? That wasn’t compassion?”
“It was a fluke. A lapse in judgement, if you will”, I growl. “I lost a couple of litres of blood and wouldn’t tell a feddie apart from my own ass”.
Voronin shrugs and gets up to pour himself a drink from the bottle and into a small pear-like vessel - in spin gravity you can’t just splash it into a glass. He sips the cognac slowly, and beneath his measured words and mild manners, I can see a dry wit directed at me. Little devils dance in his eyes when he figures that I’m calculating the price of the drink.
He sees me a brute. A hammer that he’s going to work over some stubborn nails, and no matter what breaks in the process, it would be equally amusing.
A hammer cannot say “no”, because what will it do otherwise, try to ladel soup or sew a dress? For all my whims and drama here, Voronin knows exactly what I am.
“In any case, this posting isn’t because we need another silver-tongued diplomat. We cannot let the colony suffer an uprising, muting or anything of the sort”, he swirls the drink around. “The Nevok Imperator - I’m sure you’ve at least heard of him - wants to see how the Imperium’s corporate entities can integrate with our management approaches. Your predecessor… fumbled with being too soft on such issues.”
Of course. Of course they’d fumble. What was it, tolerance to some feddie stepping out of their lane or something worse? Fraterinzation… I stop myself before truly depraved thoughts enter my mind.
“That means, any suspected anti-Dominion activity has to be shut down with prejudice, and in such a manner that the garrison personnel complies. Doveryai, no proveryai, ah, right? You surely can do it, Abaurre? Put the fear of God into… what’d you call them? “Rabbit-deers”?”
I work my jaw to object, but when he puts it like that, I’ve no ammunition for a solid argument, and, glaring a bit more, just proforma, finally nod.
Voronin offers me a fatherly grin for the trouble.
“We’re counting on you, son.”
It’s just as insincere as my silent - and reluctant - compliance.
I rush into the StratCom office’s WC with uncaring force.
The clerk that was drying his hands jumps in surprise when he notices me, and almost hits the ceiling in the low gravity. It takes only a second of us crossing eyes for him to read the situation and make his hasty escape.
Yes, run. That’s the spirit we need now!
Finally alone, if not to count the fury consuming me, I open up the nearest tap and splash water in my face. Cold against hot skin, it does exactly nothing to calm me.
I grip the sink’s edges, squeezing down like it’s someone’s throat. It’s all I want to do now, despite my left hand seizing up once again with a lingering shake.
Preferably, it’s Voronin’s throat. Or no, wait, Jones’s. It must be her idea, the General is just a harbinger.
But then, she’d just certainly like it. I spit in disgust.
”Fucking pissant shit!”
Babysit Feds? Hold their accursed paws? Watch out for conspiracies as the preyshit fleets creep closer? Didn’t I do everything Milintel wanted? Eleven high-ranking converts to the the Collective, the seizing of Prophet’s Talon, and it’s still not enough? I’m still hooked to their schemes, as if they enjoy toying with me just because they can?
My teeth, already not fitting all that well into my mouth, quickly bare as I snarl at my own reflection in the mirror.
The jerk-ass had the nerve to act all paternally towards me! I’m a grown fucking man, and my actual father is dead! Who the fuck he thinks…
With a hoarse bellow, overcome with just a singular, overpowering pulse of sheer hatred, I wrench the porcelain sink out and throw it to the side.
However, instead of a dramatic shattering, Phobos’ low spin-gravity only sends the piece of bathroom equipment to lamely and slowly careen off into one of the urinals, instead of flying into it full-force.
The two ceramic vessels clank anticlimactically as the sink bounces back and then finally comes to rest on the floor - in one piece, instead of a dozen shards. The broken pipe immediately bursts with a lazy fountain, in a second drenching me in cold water, but quickly dies out.
A head pops into the bathroom for a second, sees me standing there wet and with the pipe sticking out of the wall and, correctly assessing the situation, retreats.
For a few moments I can’t do anything but breath and flex my claws, waiting for this wave of contempt to pass.
Alright… alright.
Think, Luka. The Milintel’s lot believe they still have me by the balls. With both the threat of the tribunal from years ago and the idea that without being a part of the Armada I’d blow my brains out because I don’t know what to do with myself. Not that they’re completely wrong on that part - just wrong on the radical solution.
So, I’m propped to be a boogeyman for the so-called “ex-Feds”, some sort of a stick to complement the sugar which the rest of the Provisional Corps on that colony is supposed to be.
A grenade faulty enough to invoke plausible deniability should anything go wrong.
A fall guy.
But they’ll see how mistaken they are. I’m not just a butcher, not just a tool to be discarded when it becomes blunt. I’m done being a tool, a simply weapon.
I’ll have the fleabags march around singing “Terra Invicta” and eating their disgusting “strayu” out of my hand in no time.
This colony, this stupid project will prosper, even if against its own will. I’ll make it exemplary…
I look at my reflection in the mirror - water’s dripping down my face, soaking the collar of my uniform, pupils awash in pale fire… But I’m still me. Two-and-a-half meters of United Dominion authority made flesh, fang and claw.
I’m a Senior Hunter, coming to command over five hundred combat-read atrox, goddamit. This is a promotion, that’s what it is.
As I wring water out of my tie, determination sets in. Cursed stars, I can even mold the colony into my own domain.
And if not, well…
a bit of shitcomic spurned by the discussion of skalgans making a difference in u/Scrappyvamp’s Scorch Directive AU
don’t take seriously
Been listening to some argent metal lately, all that spiking testosterone gotta go somewhere
Scorch Directive AU by u/Scrappyvamp, fanart time!
The story is developing…
A/N: we are so fucking back!
Location: Terra, North American Perimeter Authority, Los Angeles
[Standardized Terran Time] May 24th 2137
“Issri is regaining breathing room at the front of the Run, and now the Wrissan Lightning is 1,2 seconds ahead… Marquez is behind, but with three laps to go it will be damn difficult to catch up! Ashuth and Ogura overtake Vikram in quick succession, who drops to seven place. Oh! Ogura seems to be having some technical issues with his bike!”
Kezef looks away from the track and back at me, eyes shining behind the strip of polarized glass that circles her head.
“Oh Luka, this is so exhilarating! So… fun! Are you having fun?” she hisses right into my face to overpower the cacophony of the hoverbikes’ jets and the cheering crowd.
I nod with a smile, but in reality I’m thirsty and hungry and sweating bullets. Thanks to years spent on starships, I can take the heat and the scorching Californian sun, but the humidity is too much. We’re sitting at the bottom of a giant crater, the Sunset Boulevard Arena - one of the many left from the Glassing of Los Angeles - an the shadow from its rim had run away from our bleachers an hour ago, robbing us of any respite.
At least we’re not squished by the crowd against protective barriers several rows below, where the basic tickets would place you.
Hah, no, I wouldn’t cheap out like that. In honor of Kezef’s visit I wanted her to have the best experience of the Black Run’s quarter-final race, and splurged on the bleachers. The air here is fresher, nobody is violating your personal space and the crowd is a bit more sophisticated than those down at the bottom.
I adjust my sunglasses.
Fun? It doesn’t matter. It matters only if Kezef is having any.
As for me, I'd rather be anywhere else. Unexpectedly, the howling of a few dozen hoverbikes set me on edge - to a point where I wanted to crawl in some hole and not leave till it ended.
The sound was chilling and right as the race began, it placed me back in the battlefield, where the Federation close-support gunships would swoop above us. The shoddy one-seaters, piloted primarily by Krakotl or Harchen, tended to swarm in huge flocks whenever the feddies mounted an offensive, so when you heard that screech you better had your drones up in the air or hid somewhere under cover.
I know the hoverbikes aren’t gunships, but the body doesn’t - and locks up in anxious anticipation every time the racers pass by our sector.
Hopefully, Kezef doesn’t notice.
It’s all for her. When I was forced into taking a leave following my hospital release, I used it as an opportunity to get my friend to Terra, knowing how much she likes it here. On her side, Kezef got the sanctions put on her by Abidence recently lifted, and so it seemed as if fate itself had arranged this trip.
“Issri is amazing. Best Black Run racer of the generation, the Lightning of Wriss! Look, Luka! There she is!” her hisses overflowing with adoration, Kezef pokes a claw down on the track below, where a black-clad speck is stubbornly leading the way. “Look, she’s outmaneuver hom!”
I shift my gaze to one of the huge holo projections above the crater. The camera drone that’s tailing Issri shows her hugging the wingless machine tightly, her oblong helmeted head almost melding together with the hoverbike’s fairing.
“Go Issri!”, I try to inject enthusiasm into my voice and even pump my fist. “To infinity and beyond!”
Amazingly, the majority-human audience around us is really into it. There’s a few Arxur around, from what I can see. A couple of males - compared to Kezef’s lithe, asphalt-grey compact body they seem like a whole other species - openly oggle my friend.
She doesn’t notice, however, wholly engrossed in the race. A subtle, yet unmistakable expression of joy colors her snout.
As the final lap approaches, I breathe in deeply and try to ground myself. To try and feel one with the crowd. In the moment.
The Black Run this year is held in celebration of the United Dominion’s rebirth. The moods are high… to bad that I can’t fully share them, anxiety clawing at my healed stomach wound with habitual pain.
Yes, Betterment and Abidence had been cast down and fractured, but our bigger enemy didn’t waste a second in trying to capitalize on the brief confusion and disarray within the United Dominion’s chain of command.
Were it not for Generalissimus Meier's and Chief-Hunter Isif’s bold plan to surgically remove Betterment’s key figures and nodes of power in one synchronous strike, we’d probably not be here: racing, dining and celebrating something. Instead, we’d be clawing at each other's throats in a civil war that would see both Terra and Wriss drown in blood.
Too bad that the brief lapse in focus was enough for the Federation to mount a counteroffensive. Colony after colony, moon and planet after another, our former victories are being contested - and nobody really wants to admit that it’s happening.
Command, of course, placates us. Assures that it’s just a small spike of enemy success. That we hold the initiative as steadfast as ever and it's an expected lull in operations after so much rapid gains had been made right up to Talsk’s doorstep-…
“She won!” Kezef suddenly hisses in my ear loud enough to rupture eardrums and clings to me as her excitement boils over, the emotional upswell too much even for the usually reserved Arxur. Her claw tips hook into my t-shirt and nick skin, but I cherish it. “Issri’s first, Luka!”
The arena erupts in cheer and howls of victory. Kezef bobs up and down beside me, bellowing out something about “Arxur excellence”.
Their hoverbikes parked right on the strip, the racers dismount and walk towards the awards podium in the center of the track, the deepest point of the crater. Aerial drones move to position to unfurl a trio of flags - the United Dominion and its two subjects, the Terran Protectorate and Wrissan Domain.
“She is amazing”, Kezef utters breathlessly. “So… how do you say it, [badass]?”
“Badass it is. She’s a former combat pilot, I’d bet.”
Kezef’s ear flaps twitch from surprise and her vibrantly verdant eyes narrow in suspicion.
“And you’d be right! Are you secretly a fan?”
”Maybe, maybe.” I answer with a chuckle.
Down at the podium the leather-bound Arxur racer takes her helmet off and steps onto the winners pedestal. Step springy, full of confidence, tail flowing like a great grey ribbon. The helmet reveals a thin feminine snout and pale amber eyes, all repeated and magnified via the huge holo projections all throughout the arena.
Kezef hisses in rapturous adoration, and the crowd once again releases a thousands-throat strong bellow of approval when Issri raises her arm above her head - the left gripping the wrist of the right hand, and the latter folded into a fist.
The sign of the Collective. Of the Prophet-Ascendant Isif.
Of victory.
In this moment, I remember that the bomb that made this crater had vaporized hundreds of thousands of people instantly.
I shudder, swallow a lungful of the soupy hot air. The humidity is clear sign that a storm is gathering, even if the sky is washed spotless blue. But the darkness is there, the pressure is building, and if one listens, they’d hear the first cracks of thunder in the distance.
I draw Kezef closer by the hem of her shirt.
Whenever that storm comes, I'll be ready.
The activists are a small group of fifty or less, all pressed to the side of the road by a parked police car and a couple of cops. The latter couldn’t look more bored if they wanted to, and I get it: this pathetic collection of atrox specimens wouldn’t have scared even a Venlil.
They set the picket as a trap - right in a narrow passage leading from the aren’s main gateway and to the parking lot, flanked by a road on one side and construction site on the other. There was no way to go, but through them.
I steal a glance at the protesters.
“Runts”, that’s what a Betterment adept would brand them as. One could mistake them for fossils, with their filed-down claws and round-shouldered postures. Figures. Who else would care for the Wrissan cattle while half of Earth is still in ruins and millions left to rot in unmarked graves?
Still, as we pass along, I put myself between Kezef and the small picket. They may be the chaff of our civilization’s wheat, but they’re still atrox. Just as capable of violence as the rest of us.
The symps hurl some choice words at passerbies, earning hisses and insults in return.
“What are they protesting, Luka?” Kezef asks quietly as she pulls her tail tigth to her legs.
Guilt and shame stab through my gut This is bad. Too similar to Krokodilopolis. Fucking symps… Shit, should’ve stayed at the Sequoia National Park, but Kezef is a fan of Issri’s, and I thought-…
My upper lip curls, scar tissue tugging on my cheek as I’m unable to hide my chagrin.
“Cattle. Betterment forced cattle farming to contijue despite the vailability of our Terran livestock and lab-meat. And since Betterment’s no more… they demand Wriss pulls a stop on that shit in a matter of days and weeks…”
“Hm-m?”
“Lots of fed cattle are still being held and not freed from Wrissan facilities. Some humans don’t like it.”
“Oh-sssh. I know. It’s a problem… I see. Terrans are very empathetic.”
“That’s not empathy”, I snort. “Self-righteousness? Maybe. Truly Empathetic ones would be with the Provisional Corps there, in the Domain. Helping to sort out the mess, not add to it”, I wave towards the protesters dismissively.
I myself have never been to a cattle farm or really seen what goes on there. Only the tears of those who I-... I imagined it was just an upscaled version of the strikeships cattle decks. A well-oiled machine for breaking down personhood into nutrients and waste. For making more of them. more tears, more misery, more begging… The saliva in my mouth turns pungent and my heart races momentarily, so I cut the thought short.
Everyone thinks they know of the horrors going on there, but only few are aware of the fact that a big chunk of said “cattle” isn’t sapient anymore. First-generation captives usually got bred, not eaten - and their offspring were raised as actual animals.
No language, no culture, nothing to make them people.
And what do you even do with such non-sapients? Even if their ancestry could be traced to any living relatives on Dominion-controlled former Federation worlds, I highly doubted that those could care for their… feral counterparts. Or that they could ever be rehabilitated. For fuck’s sake, whole lines of Tilfish got selected for maximum egg output, and that trait stuck! Release them to live as free citizens, then what? The Orion’s arm would get overrun in a couple years, whole planets stripped of life!
Perhaps, the more merciful option would be to just…
“Fucking murderer! Look, that huge one - anyone wanna bet it’s an Armada trooper?! Hey, how many innocent kids you ate, motherfucker?”
My head snaps to the source of the insults. The protester calling me out stands right in the front row. Bald, broad-shouldered compared to the rest of his skulking kin… and so very young. You’d expect someone like that to have entered the mandatory Armada service already, but here he is, heckling people instead of hauling ass to the bootcamp on Phobos.
Maggot.
I quicken my pace, keeping Kezef off to the side of me. Just a few more steps and they’d be behind us.
“Can’t even look me in the face, you big coward! Go on, run away asshole!”
I turn on my heel. Coward?!
“Ah, look, he’s ang-re-e-e-e! What’s up scarecrow, gonna spew some shit that shoving kids in cannibal farms keeps us here on Earth safe while you were busy tongue-polishing reptilian overlord cloacas, huh? Oooh, I feel so sa-a-afe, no scary space birds to burn me, look at me, I’m sho-ooo-o sh-cared!”
The American’s mocking tone nails me to the ground.
So that’s how it is? Just thirty years pass, and the Glassing is now merely a mishap? The war - merely an adventure many parsecs away and not a fight for our existence? That losing it won’t have this little blunt-fang shit turned to ash like billions before him?!
The sharpest words are dancing on the tip of my tongue as I stare him down. Too bad that anything I can say will sound small, insignificant and weak compared to the overpowering sense of injustice that hits me like a punch in the gut.
The pressure in my head and heart that I’ve been feeling ever since I’ve stepped foot back on Terra, turns my vision red and narrow.
I don’t speak. Just snarl, as if we’re back in Crimson Retribution and some Arxur Hunter-Initiate cut in the line for Soylent Fed before me.
Claws flexing, I take a step towards the flimsy barrier. The symp’s face drains of all color and bravado as the shit-fog in his brain gets finally pierced by terror and the understanding who he pissed off.
What will follow…
“Luka, friend, no. Please, [not worth it]. ”
Right. Kezef. Kezef.
Body slackening, I let myself be tugged back by a firm claw and in a twisted mirror way see that a tiny atrox woman puts a delicate hand on that worm’s shoulder and shakes her head chidingly. Her piercing-studdeed face is stern yet sad, and her eyes shift worryingly from my face to my readied claws.
I feel sick. What was I going to do? Disembowel him?!
No. This is not Krokodilopolis. They just bark. They won’t do anything. Kezef’s not in danger.
I exhale and turn away, heading for the food trucks. God. Fucking symps.
Good news - Kezef seems to enjoy her snack.
It’s a gyros, designed specifically for Arxur and their poor ability to digest carbohydrates - the pita shell is made from crispy cheese that’s stuffed with sliced rotisserie meats. A bundle of fatty goodness that’s purportedly become a signature for “Bigsby’s Grill” alongside their “Meat Matroyshka”, which, whatever it is, sounds too intimidating a dish even for me.
I don’t remember who had recommended this Arxur-owned chain, but when I saw the food truck at the farther end of the Arena’s parking lot, I recognized the name and gambled on it.
Seems like it paid off, if Kezef’s green eyes, glinting with delight, are anything to go by.
She doesn’t chew, since Arxur lack teeth cut for such a task, but, as is the custom in polite Wrissan society, she tears off small chunks of the gyros in a facsimile of slow eating.
As I bite into my own greasy cheeseburger, flavor rushes into my mouth like a tsunami of pure carnal pleasure. It tears down any concious thought, leaving only base impulses that I gladly give into.
I have tasty food. I’m safe. I’ll be sated, for once.
I make an effort to not just scarf it down out of military habit, like it’s a ration that you need to get in fast before you’re called up for duty.
If there’s a single good thing about being back to Terra, it’s food. On Mars it’s all mushroom and krill-based crap. Plastic veggies from the hydroponic farms and dried cricket snacks.
Hah, even Sazha wouldn’t try calling this burger “monkey slop” that’s beneath a “true hunter”.
It’s beef, glorious, glorious beef. There’s no strange coppery aftertaste like when eating processed Gojid. No weird tingling sensation that Krakotl flesh leaves in the mouth. None of the dozen little things which you ignore because you’re so damn hungry all the fucking time.
And yet some part of me screams in the back of my head that this meal is incomplete. That it’s not earned. That the lack of Fed flesh means I hadn’t fought for this food and thus, don’t deserve it.
No, no, no, no, not eating fucking sapients is good, what the fuck is wrong with you?!
“So, you’re going to tell me what’s up? You’ve been rather cryptic over the chat”, I pick up the strand of the conversation we had before hunger got the best of us, trying to claw back from the darker thoughts.
Kezef puts the gyros down, and her tongue flicks out, sliding over the tip of her snout and, to my envy, neatly collecting all the juices that coated her lips. A hum of content escapes her.
“Some good things. Even saying them feels dangerous that they don’t play out as well as they should, but… apparently the Inquisitor that was collecting evidence against me for the last couple of cycles, was suspended from the case.”
“Makes sense now that Abidence had been formally dissolved.”
“Exactly! That allows me and my family to breathe. It’s…” she exhales through her nose loudly as she gathers her thoughts and words. “It’s unpleasant to live with a blade permanently raised over your neck. To feel that I’m safe now feels… good.”
“That's great. You’ve no idea how I was relieved to hear that Keltriss wasn’t too shaken by the fallout of the Prophet’s disgrace”.
The Arxur nods gracefully, and tears another chunk of the oversized pita.
“It wasn’t - the guards didn’t even interfere when the Collective’s order came to stand down! Though, the colony’s always been a notorious nest for [defectives]. Intellectual labour requires that of us. Oh, oh! And remember that special project I mentioned?”
“How could I forget.” I don’t tell her that her messages at times kept me sane. So naturally I remembered… well, everything. “Got progress on that?”
Kezef beams. The edges of her narrow maw slide all the way up to the tiny triangular ears in the widest smile as she bubbles up with pride.
“Well, our team got the tail-slap for it. My team. We’re building a lingua-cultural database of Yotul!”
“The annexed Fed kangaroos?!” I nearly choke on my drink from surprise. “What does Wriss want to do with them?”
Arxur aren’t known for taking a lot of interest in Feds aside from things that help kill and harvest them more efficiently. But behind the chair’s back, Kezef’s tail positively wags with excitement that she can’t hide, and so it must be true.
“I don’t know how well you know this, Luka, but the Yotul were in the midst of a cultural wipeout by the Federation. The Kolshians and Farsul were doing to them the exact thing they attempted to do to us… according to the Betterment annals, at least. So no, with Betterment, out of the picture, Chief Hunter Isif… Prophet-Ascendant, that is… he wants to see what we lost during those years. Bring back history, culture and traditions that were erased when our ancestors made this deplorable pact.”
“Yeah? How’s pre-Dominion Wriss tied to Yotul?”
“Studying Yotul, how their culture was suppressed and warped, is going to help a lot, actuallu! At least that’s what the Chief Researcher of our team thinks. There have to be similarities to the Feds’ method.”
I can’t help but be infected by her enthusiasm, even though the notion that Arxur are collaborating with the Yotul sounds rather wild to my ears. Giznel’s corpse had barely gone cold, and they’re already stretching a claw to these space ‘roos? They never seemed too trustworthy to me…
“Sounds like a grand undertaking”, I say diplomatically.
“I knew, I knew you would understand! Rude for me to doubt you, sssh-k. The Federation didn’t influence you Terrans, but they did destroy much of your world, so, in a way, it’s similar? They tried to destroy the predatory aspects of Wrissan culture as well, both the Bloc’s and Charter’s, our nations before the, um…”, she takes a sip of her bloodtea. “Before the first contact.”
“They did.”
So much so that I don’t even know the language of my father well.
“Kh-ss, imagine, Narzhus even got a few Yotul to help us! They’ll arrive next month.”
“Prey? On Keltriss?” This time I cannot contain my surprise and yelp outloud.
She smacks her tail on the ground dismissively.
“‘Prey’? By the ancestors, you sometimes sound more like an Arxur, than a Terran, friend Luka. Grow yourself a tail and some scutes, you’d fit right in some brood…”
I lower my eyes. Unbeknownst to her, the joke jabs into a still open wound, one of the very few remaining. Brood, huh. Family. At one point, that’s all I ever dreamed about… and now don’t even bother to. But it’s not like Kezef needs to know that.
So what if I’d fit with them? Is that a bad thing?
“Didn’t your own leader say that the segregation of “prey” and “predator” is no longer correct? So, with this project we’re doing what the United Dominion wants, first among the first, then!” she declares with a chuff and licks her chops again.
“Well, it sounds like the Wordweaver has her claws full”, I say warmly. “My congratulations.”
Kezef scratches behind her vestigal ear flap, then looks up at me with a renewed, fiery determination in her eyes.
“What about friend Luka?”, her words carry a hissing pressure, a knifepoint stabbing my way. “How are things for him?”
Ah, there it goes. Talking about me.
It’s a topic better left buried, and I take my sweet time to pick out bits of burger out of my teeth with a pinky finger’s claw. It gives an appearance that I consider her words. Hides the glaring emptiness behind them.
“I’m still formally a special envoy to the Wrissan military. Promoted to Colonel… Erm, Senior Hunter. Things are…”, I twirl my fingers to emphasize the vague quality of my current position. “In flux.”
“And beyond that?”
“Beyond that? Hm. I’m here with an old friend, having this long overdue vacation, eating tasty food. I um… got into some holopad games, those are fun. Even rank high in a few”, I manage to force out a lopsided grin.
That’s one shameful bit of truth. I really did get into all those mind-numbing puzzle games, perhaps for the sole reason they were mind-numbing. During some nights thinking became too painful, and I vowed to keep away from the stims.
Perhaps I hold my smile just a bit too long, since Kezef doesn’t reciprocate it, and instead, shuffles closer to me on the bench until we touch shoulders.
Once more I notice how she is such a delicate thing - how Arxur can be incredibly diverse in their stature and appearance. Nothing about her is as dangerous as is expected with her species. The scales on her throat and arms that poke from under her Godzilla-print shirt are smooth and flat, the scute-covered ridges on her forehead looking more like pebbles, than rose thorns. There’s a softness about her that’s… disarming.
“You’ve changed, Luka”, she says a couple of probing tongue flicks later. The translator picks up concern - even worry - out of the guttural clicks.
“Did I?”
“Kss-sh. Obviously, much time passed. I just didn’t expect that would be so… jarring.”
I chuckle, throwing my head back to break off the eye contact as the conversation becomes awkward.
Jarring, huh. That’s what’s fighting through almost a dozen feddie planets does to a sucker.
“For the better, I hope?”
“No.”
It’s nice to know that even as a Wordweaver, Kezef can be as laconic and direct like the other Arxur I know, completely breaking my lame attempt at humor.
“Really?”
“Back in the embassy you looked like a person that could be happy. Now, however… No.”
I nod, unable to object. This is why I enjoy Arxur company - they are less theatrical about what they think or feel. Their volatile history and harsh society left them despising the time waste that is pointless melodrama.
“Maybe it’s because I… well, I discovered a lot about myself. And took a good look at these discoveries.”
“I guess they weren’t pleasant?” She cocks her head to the side inquisitively.
“No, they were not.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
Cuts right to the chase. I rub my neck to alleviate the discomfort.
“I… don’t know? See - ah, no way of going around it nicely… all I know is how to kill”, my gaze shifts away from her and to the other sun-flooded tables, at the people chatting and eating peacefully. “I know how to kill, how to torture. How to give commands to others to kill and torture. How to plan - you guessed right, for more killing.”
I look over my claws, the pale scars running over my hands and arms.
“Can’t even claim that I’m the best at that.”
Pupils seizing into thin slits, Kezef lets out a sympathetic whine and a light tap of her tail against my calf. In human terms that would be a whole monologue about how an Arxur understands and shares emotions with you.
It’s all the more valuable this way.
“And now, after years of that being the norm, all of this?” I jab my hand towards the parking lot, the food trucks, the birds picking up crumbs and a family packing up into a large car. “Honestly, I don’t feel it’s even real.”
Her snout dips in thought, then she reaches in a paper baggie that lies between us and throws a meat chip into her maw, chewing and nodding along.
“I understand. When the news of the Prophet-Descendant’s death hit our facility, I felt so strange. Wr-r-ong. You get so used to living under a constant threat that when it’s no more, you’re lost.”
“Lost. Yeah. Something like that.”
“I felt like I don’t know what to do without Abidence watching over my shoulder, ready to pounce at any mistake. Now I could anything I want, but it seemed almost pointless”, another chip disappears in her maw, but she doesn’t stray her eyes off me. “Research seemed pointless. I spent a lot of time watching the hovercraft races. It’s Issri that inspired me and thrashed me out of that mindset.”
“You know, even at times when I thought I lost everything, I had vengeance, at least…”, I admit as I work through that bit of fried potatoes, trying to sate a hunger that I know well cannot be sated. “But recently it feels like even that barrel had been scraped down to the bottom. After Grenelka…”
I trail off. Yes. After Grenelka. Before that, every death I incurred, directly or not, was an edifice to those that I’ve lost. To humanity. That’s how I did my part. Some in the Armada infantry even came to call me the Grim Reaper - openly, like that would’ve flatter me.
It did.
But seeing a whole planet turned into a graveyard, feeling the exhilaration of it, made the death of singular Gojids and Tilfish trivial and insignificant. Petty even. Their individual suffering stained, not cleansed me.
Mira died alongside Grenelka, too.
I look up at Kezef.
“If I don’t have vengeance, what do I have?”
She doesn’t answer at first. Studies me, tail gently swaying under the bench.
Right. Not the best question to ask of a member of a species which made revenge the core of their whole civilization. Kezef had never been a combatant, so she doesn’t-…
“I don’t know, friend Luka. I still don’t know what humans find important or worth living. You’re all different. Like us. Maybe you just didn’t search hard enough?”
“Pfah!”
I prepare to go on a whole diatribe about “humans”, when I notice that Kezef is looking past my shoulder, her snout wrinkled from either curiosity or worry. I turn around as well - only to come face to face with two Arxur that walked over to our table while we were chatting.
The pair that approached us could easily pass for some Betterment highblood stock.
Tall, scales jet-black, and skin pulled taught over their massive necks and arms. But even then Betterment Arxur never look so… confident. So assured of their physical power.
I've seen Arxur like that just a few times: our Tracker-Healer Neza and the heavy weapons specialist in the gimp squad that we ran across a few times, including a joint operation on Grenelka - the Hellions. Raz, was it? - had been huge and evidently well-fed. His whole demeanor lacked that undercurrent streak of nervous meanness you come to associate with an Arxur. On the contrary, he exuded confidence. A true one at that, since the fuckgator not only eventually flinged with Neza, but tried to see what’s what under Sazha’s fatigues - and lived, putting even my reputation to shame.
Kezef stares at the newcomers with the most dumbfounded expression I’ve ever seen on an Arxur: lower jaw slightly agape, tongue tip dangling and her eyebrow ridges so pulled back from the nose that I can even see a bit of her eyes’ black sclera.
What do they want with us? I hope we didn’t somehow step on the wrong person’s tail…
“We, sh-huh, we are terribly sorry, friends, but we have seen you back at the race, and…” The larger Arxur stammers, his tail sweeping the floor like a broom while the other looks constipated - or trying to turn invisible. “Just to make sure first, we’re not intruding on anything of the… romantic sort?”
“Romantic”? Do Arxur even have such a word, such a concept… Oh. Oh wait. My translator isn’t working!
“I… no?”
“Aha, perfect! Pleased to me you then, I’m Vizzick and his is Vozhir. We’re-…”
A scaly hand sticks for me to shake it, and I automatically take it. Arxur don’t shake hands!
“You’re Terra-born”, I finish for him and, without further words, make space on the bench so the two huge lizardmen can sit down. “You’re speaking in English. Silly me.”
The bigger one’s - Vizzick’s - lips pull back in facsimile of a human grin. Vozhir studies the ground. Shy Arxur, now I’ve seen it all. Well, then, introductions are in order!
“This is Kezef, of the Gurthaszh line. Right, Kezef?”
I turn back only to find her holding her snout in her paws, flustered beyond belief. What’s with this pandemic of shyness?
“R-right.” she stammers with a long and twitchy tongue flick that pushes between her fingers. “G-Gurthaszh-zh.”
“From Wriss, yeah? And you, sir?”
“Just a guy. A friend”
“You’re Armada, right?”
Fucking t-shirt... I sigh and nod.
”Yes.”
“That’s cool. Isn’t it cool, Vozhir?” Vizzick’s tail lashes the other one in the midsection, and he doesn’t protest. Sibling bullying… Now I see why Sazha behaved that way with me, and for a second I feel so grateful to her for giving me such an experience. Such warmth, however miniscule it was. “This Terran was or is killing Fed filth! Do you, sir?”
Sir again. They’re American, then. American Arxur, cursed stars - as Sazha would say - you couldn’t get a more annoying and dangerous mix.
“Yeah. I did.”
“Gnarly! Me and my brother, we never have been to Wriss, which sucks… So mad rad to meet a true Wrissan Arxur here like that. [We see you emerge], Kezef. And you, sir Terran.”
Arxur, aside from palescales, don’t really blush, but I can easily imagine Kezef completely flood with crimson under her scales as she finally removes her hands from her snout and squeaks:
“Your Arxuri is horrible”.
“Well, we hadn’t much practice. Parents tried to speak Terran at home - out of respect for our new home.”
“Kezef is a Wordweaver and uh, Senior Researcher-Initiate,” I declare and stare at Vizzick sternly, feeling mighty fatherly for a moment. “You two?”
The bigger Arxur blinks in stupefaction for a moment, but quickly realizes that we’ve entered the “boasting about oneself” part of a conversation. He snaps his jaws loudly:
“I’m studying in Nairobi Polytech, actually. Flew over to see the Black Run and visit family. This scute-brain, though? Clung to my tail like a blood-leech.”
“Not true…” Vozhir finally tears his eyes away from the ground, growling with disdain. “I’m going to be a pilot. I enrolled in-…”
“Say, Kezef, how was the race?” The older brother unceremoniously cuts him off. “Issri did show those primates how to handle speed… oh, no offence, sir!”
“None taken”, I chuckle. “Kezef here is a big fan, actually.”
“Luka!”
“What? Own it”, I say and give her a light pat on the shoulder. “No shame there. Issri’s one of ours, a combat pilot - just like you want to be, right, Vozhir?”
I, of course, understand what’s going on. Courtship. Arxur society is very particular about it. Among highbloods, for example, you go as far as to purchase suitable suitors to compete for an arranged marriage, something Sazha was dreaming about. Among the lower castes it’s more human-like, but still much more formal.
Back in the Wrissan domain, Kezef wouldn’t ever have such prospective mates line at her door. But here? Terra has terran rules.
She deserves it, and even more.
As much as observing inexperienced lizards try and hook up fascinates me, I leave them and cross over to the farthest table, where I earlier spotted the protester girl.
She sits perched on the bench, munching on a wrap, but the moment she sees me approach, tenses like a hunted bird to dart away at any second.
I raise my hands in a pacifying gesture and before she can protest or flee, throw my leg over the opposite bench, straddling it instead of trying to fit at the table.
“Without your high horse you seem rather… small”, I remark.
“My wh-…”, her mousy face cycles through surprise all the way to suspicion. “Oh. What do you want?”
“Wanted to thank you for restraining your friend.”
It’s funny that I don’t really know what compels me to strike this conversation. Did the judgement sting me so? Do I want to prove her and her ilk wrong? Well, we’re here now.
“Ah-hh. Yeah. It could’ve gotten ugly otherwise”, her shoulders relax a bit once she realizes I’m not here to tear her to ribbons.
“It would.”
Face scrunched up in a little scowl, she obviously debates on whether to escape this awkward situation or indulge her curiosity. Dark-red hair fall on her left shoulder as she props her chin with both hands, the wrap forgotten and now fought over by a flock of sparrows. She scrutinizes me for a couple blinks.
“Not that he was wrong.”
“Huh?”
“That’s why you came, to argue about what Liam said? Well, he’s not wrong!” She huffs indignantly. “It’s an atrocity that children are in those farms. Adults, too. In general, innocents, suffering just for what… collateral?”
Oh, the talk of innocents. I killed the person I last heard it from.
“I don’t know. Don’t really want to argue”, I really don’t know what I want and tap my claws on the crumb-covered table. “I just… See, people begged for the Extermination Fleet to turn around. Begged the Feds, for the sake of said innocents. Little bit late for that argument, don’t you think?”
“No, because those’re not the people in Arxur cages today. Fed military, not civilians, bombed Earth.”
“The civilians cheered. I saw the holos.”
“Because they thought they vanquished monsters?” She shoo’s the birds away. “And, considering everything… were they entirely wrong?”
Instead of replying, I study her, wondering how it is to grow up like a “normal” person. Mira had the same butterfly-winged frail optimism beating under her skin that made me want to do nothing, but protect it. Protect her.
I failed.
It’s a miracle we still have people like them, after four decades of… this.
Fear now abandoned, she holds my gaze in turn, perhaps too intrigued by this encounter. She’s still a bit nervous, but… I feel that there’s something to her, some “core” holding her up. And it's not the one I'm used to.
“In any case, “Open Hearts” is against collective punishment. Otherwise it would never end, right? And the Feds would never forgive us once the war is over. That’s what we protest - blindness and cruelty. Liam was just… ok, he was being an asshole.”
Never end, hm. Incorrect. There was a way to end it definitely.
The Scorch Directive.
Thanks to it, no yulpa would ever come to exact their revenge on us like we did to them.
Annihilate everyone. Adult, elder… Kill even their future.Turn it all to baked sand and ash. For a moment I’m back on Grenelka, the muzzle flash snapping illuminated stills of terrified yulpa snouts as bursts of controlled fire cut through the dark, cut into civilians.
Ghosts can haunt, but ghosts can’t harm.
“Don’t be naive. The Federation would never forgive us”, I look to the side, then to the “wall” of the arena. It’s a titanic splash of molten rock that had been kicked up as an antimatter bomb exploded right off the ground and then rapidly cooled. “Have you ever seen a Feddie in the flesh? They are filled with terror and hate. Try breaking through an instinct that’s been fortified by propaganda a few centuries in the making.”
“Maybe, but if we broke the cycle, showed a bit of goodwill, as a society, that would maybe patch up something? Kickstart an uh, chain reaction of goodwill? Sympathy?”
“Why should it be us?” I snap back harshly and with belated regret expect her to recoil - but she doesn’t.
“Didn’t you say it? For them it’s an instinct, an impossible effort. Not for us, then? We’re better, right?”
For a second, I notice a guarded smile flitter on the girl’s face, but as I don’t smile in return, somber wrinkles form around her eyes and on her forehead.
“I don’t know, ok? I can only do whatever I can, however small. And you came to talk, didn’t you? So there’s something to it.” She leans in and squints at me. “You’re an Armada soldier, yeah?”
“Yep.”
“So what do you think?”
I always thought it was wrong, what Betterment did with the cattle farms.
Not because of what it meant for the cattle as I cared little about them - but for us. For the Arxur.
Being the conduit of so much suffering is… unhealthy for a civilization. On Prophet’s Talon, the realization of the scope of pain I’ve ushered into the universe, nearly killed me. Paralyzed, sapped of will, made me almost walk out of an airlock. But what if it happened on the scale of a whole United Dominion? If everyone realized what we did and are doing, collectively?
There’d be no Arxur to save us again.
“I follow orders. I give orders”, I half-close my eyes to evade her focused stare. Not too keen on exposing my innards to a stranger in a parking lot of a racing arena. “And hope they’re the right ones.”
“Yes, I guess that’s what soldiers do. But a drop of compassion could go a long way, wouldn’t you agree? It wouldn’t cost anything, but perhaps, it could contribute to change”, she implores heatedly. “That’s what we want people to think about.”
An acerbic chuckle tears through my fangs, making the activist girl flinch. Sunlight catches on the piercings in her brow - a reminder that the world isn’t just soldiers and victims, but mainly, just common folk. Beyond my will, my resentment fades.
“Compassion… How quaint. Where has it been my whole life?” I mutter, barely noticing that her expression too had softened.
“I get that out there” she waves a hand in the hypothetical direction of the ongoing war. “It might be hard. But how will the cycle end if nobody stops? ‘Cause if it doesn’t end or break, it means that this war, your war, my friends’ war, even my war, is meaningless. All of our sacrifices would be in vain, if those that come after us are forced to fight yet another, mmm, war for survival… when Feds will come for revenge.”
“If there’s anyone strong left to come for it”.
She claps her hand on the table with a clear challenge in her eyes, that inner courage ripping through.
“No! Someone’s got to say “enough”!”
Perhaps, I think, and many years ago I thought I could be such a person. But life puts its corrections to dreams and plans.
“Hrrm. I guess it’s good we have people to think about it. Have a nice day…?
“Onyx.” she says after a moment’s hesitation.
“Alright. Have a good day, Onyx.”
I start walking away, but don’t take even three steps when she calls out to me.
“What would you do, if you were shown any?”
“Shown what?”
“Compassion? Say, if someone… opened that cattle cage for you, would you still hate them?”
I raise an eyebrow. What a strange question!
“I’m not in a cattle cage”, I sneer coldly. “What sort of-…”
Before I can give the girl a piece of my mind on that, however, my holopad starts to vibrate on my thigh holder.
Hissing in irritation, I pull it out and swipe to unlock.
Secure LoC channel established. Confirm connection?
Oh shit.
Jones.
A quick, first-pass concept design for Arxur armor/outfit, primarily for Hellion Squad and Thawed Directive fics of the Scorch Directive AU
when you need your lizards extra tacticool and aura-farming
following u/slug-tastic’s interesting post, I figured that my main gripe with the design was the relatively normal reptile anthro bod for those crazy eyes. and a few other biological hang-ups
so, I did my own quick run for that, check it out
what it says on the tin
part of this series
want to know your opinion, I worked really hard on this
Babe, wake up, u/Quinn_The_Fox dropped a new badass AU - Red Renaissance - for all arxur-human shenanigan lovers!
Paying my tribute to the new exciting fanfic!
Decided to make a krakotl OC.
Meet Chaya (she/her), a zesty Krakotl girl that’s very into Earthen music from the 90s. She loves the scene era, nu-metal and punk, and dreams to one day join a human screamo band, which she believes can let her screech talents soar. Her other passion is predator (as in carnivore), men - even going as far as pining for Arxur, not just humans.
She’s a bit vain and a bit catty, but still has a huge heart (for a krakotl ofc).
plz show Chaya some love!
Codename Fluffers McFuzzkins
spoiling some upcoming stuff in fic
Scorch Directive AU is by u/Scrappyvamp
Balance of Vengeance is mine
it sadly do be like that
A bit of art of my best Arxur waifu character, Kezef, from upcoming chapter of Balance of Vengeance, my Scorch Directive AU fic.