NOP: The Rejects of Sillis (15)

Hiatus? I don't even know the meaning of the word!

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The Nature of Predators Universe was originally created by u/SpacePaladin15.

Chapter Fifteen: Raksim Fails at Manipulation

Memory Transcription Subject: Raksim

Date [standardized human time]: October 31st, 2136

I slowly drummed my claws against my beak, immersed in thought. Just when I thought Isaac’s winning streak had come to an end, he’d secured victory with nothing but the deft application of a stun baton. Even more impressively, he’d won through strategy rather than luck. He manufactured a moment of panic, causing his enemy to make a mistake, and used it to stage an ambush.

However, considering the baffled looks on Captain Andrews’ and the other lieutenants' faces, Isaac’s tactics were far from conventional.
Huang’s eyes were fixed on the monitor that displayed Isaac’s helmet camera like she was witnessing a vehicle accident. “He’s fuckin’ insane,” she said to herself. 

“Yes. Yes, he is,” I replied with a small amount of pride leaking into my tone.

A new voice broke into the conversation–Rainach’s. “Why the fuck do you look so happy, Turkey? Your soldiers just failed to complete a simple room-clearing operation three times in a row!”

The Colonel lounged in a swivel chair far behind us, where he could trouble the simulation technicians by asking them to constantly flip between whose helmet camera was being displayed on the screen in front of him.

I traversed over chairs, desks, and computers–startling several people on the way–until I was standing on the backrest of the seat next to him. “My soldiers showed incredible improvement over the course of just three engagements! And in the last exercise, my soldiers didn’t suffer a single casualty until my Lieutenant joined the fight!” 

“They still lost,” Rainach said with an insufferably smug air about him.

I hissed and snapped my beak at him.

Captain Andrews rushed over and pushed my rolling chair perch away from the Colonel. She turned me and fixed me with a harsh, wide-eyed stare. The same look a mother gives a misbehaving child when she can’t yell at them in public. She put on a more pleasant face and turned back to Rainach. “I have to give Yankovic credit, though. He gets quite… personal when it comes to his platoon’s training.”
It was an obvious attempt to direct Rainach’s attention away from me, but the simpleton fell for it anyway. 

“He was in New York when the bombs fell. It’s not surprising that he’d be so eager to take the fight to the Federation, but I’ll never understand why he insists on wasting his time training and fighting alongside these xenos. They’re clearly the weakest link in his unit.”

He pointed to one of the screens. The helmet cam it was connected to belonged to a member of Third Platoon–a private. Like everyone else, she was practicing room-clearing, and was the pointwoman for this specific operation. She turned suddenly into a room, finding Vil on the far side of a desk pointing a rifle at her. Both combatants froze. The venlil trembled with fear, barely able to raise her rifle, much less bring herself to shoot. The private was still for an unnaturally long time for a trained soldier, as if she was giving her opponent the smallest opportunity to retaliate. The moment passed as quickly as it came, the private fired, and Vil collapsed to the floor. The helmet cam’s wearer went on to clear the rest of the room with her squad and left, but not before casting a sympathetic glance back at Vil. On several other screens, similar scenarios played out with the other non-human members of Second Platoon.     

“They need improvement. That's certainly true.” The admission pained me, especially because it had to be said in front of Rainach.

“If these xenos are even capable of improvement,” the Colonel sneered. 

Several of the simulation technicians rolled their eyes; Huang made a masturbatory gesture in front of her chest where Rainach couldn’t see, much to the amusement of Lieutenant Jackson; and Captain Andrews let out a near-silent contemptuous sigh before exiting the control tower. 

I gave the two lieutenants a sidelong glance before following her. My feathers puffed out as the crisp morning air washed over me and steam began curling out of my nostrils. I found the Captain not far from the door, leaning on the railing of the narrow walkway that encircled the tower.

“Can you believe they put him in charge of an alien-integrated unit?!” she asked while vigorously rubbing her forehead.

“Yes,” I said as I hopped onto the railing next to her. “I have seen depths of incompetence you can’t even fathom.”

A small laugh escaped her. “I think the army would surprise even you.”

Both our heads snapped to an eruption of gunfire from the mockup structure below us. Two different groups of automatic weapons chattered back and forth at each other, occasionally punctuated by the comparatively puny pops of a smaller caliber weapon. The exchange continued for several [minutes] until one side gained clear superiority. Several heavily muffled voices barked back and forth at each other. Then, one of the structure’s fake wooden windows burst open, and Isaac came hurtling through. He fell onto his hands and knees, then quickly got to his feet and dashed to the other side of the building, where the gunfight continued. It was only after another [minute] that the shooting stopped. A chorus of celebratory Russian below indicated that Isaac and his OPFOR team were not the victors.
“Captain?”

Andrews raised an eyebrow.

I took a deep breath and adjusted my feet slightly. Initiating the conversation as the easy part. Now I had to coax out information–what actually I wanted. “I understand that you and Isaac dated at one point. What have you possibly seen in him for that to happen?”

Andrews broke into a smile. “He may seem like a confident and highly proficient commander right now, but, outside a military context, he's a complete dork.”

“And you find social ineptitude charming?”

She shrugged.

“Baffling. How did you meet in the first place if he was so awkward?”

The Captain’s shoulders drew up slightly and she pinned her elbows to her sides. “I was dared by my friends to ask one of the weird kids out on a date. I chose Yankovic.”

“Were they your friends or arxur? They seem to share a similar interest in cruelty.” 

She shifted her gaze downward toward the Lieutenant we were speaking of. He was lecturing his soldiers outside before beginning the next exercise. 

“I know. They’re not my friends anymore,” Andrews said. She swallowed hard before speaking again. “When I finally mustered up enough courage to ask him in between classes, he told me he knew about my friend’s dare and to go away. He didn’t phrase that last part as nicely as I put it.”

“I can easily imagine his actual choice of words,” I said with a chuckle.

“I’m sure you can. I felt so bad, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I made him a real offer to go on a date whenever and wherever he wanted.” A small smile pulled at her lips. “He took me to dinner and a vintage movie theater. Turns out, he’s kinda a sweetheart when you get to know him.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

For a brief moment, we turned our attention back to Isaac as he led his training cadre to a new structure and disappeared inside.
“Y’know, I’ve been wondering about you, too,” Andrews said, still looking down at the training yard.

“Ask away.”

“What exactly was your job before you ended up on Earth?”
“I was a Colonial Exterminator. My job was to prepare worlds for colonization by cleansing them, the primary duty of which was killing troublesome wildlife. If the arxur happened to raid a planet we were working on, it was our duty to fight them—that was what I found most enjoyable. Later, I trained exterminators to do the same as part of the Kaltis Initiative.” 

“What’s that?”

“It was a program to make use of predator disease patients rather than letting them waste taxpayer money receiving ‘treatment.’” I growled that last word with pure contempt. 

“That’s–”

Cruel? Unjust? Predatory? Of course it was! The Federation cares very little for the lives of PD patients, but anything is better than living in those facilities! And even though we were meant to be expendable, we survived–over and over again–taught our exterminators to do the same, and killed more arxur than the incompetent colonial security personnel could ever hope to!”

The Captain stepped away from me and gently lowered the claws I was unknowingly baring toward her. “I think you should ask a question now.”

I took a deep breath and smoothed my feathers. “Of course. “If Isaac was such a ‘sweetheart,’ why did you two separate?”

She was strangely silent for a moment before answering. “Because he wanted something I couldn’t provide.

I cocked my head. “Are you referring to children?”

Andrews' face turned a deep shade red. “No! No, of course not! We were still in high school! I mean physical intimacy in general. As it turns out, I don’t feel physical attraction toward anyone. I didn’t figure it out until partway through me and Isaac’s relationship, and I was so nervous to tell him because he was head over heels for me, and I waited so long to tell him and ended up hurting him even more…” She went silent, fidgeting with her hands as she looked down at the training area.

This was the furthest I’d gotten in any of our conversations. If she were to close herself off now, all the previous niceties would have been for nothing, and any further information about Isaac would slip through my claws.

“And yet you two are on good terms,” I reassured her.

“Yeah…” She brightened up a little. “He was incredibly understanding when I told him.”

“That seems unlike him. Aren’t you asking me questions as well?”

“Did you have anyone special?” Andrews asked after a moment of thought.

“No. I’ve never met anyone who’s captured my interest.” I drummed my claws on my beak. “I thought that was because I was so focused on my work, but it seems we may have something in common.” 

“What about family?”

“My parents died in an arxur raid, and the family I had left put me in a facility and forgot about me. I have no love for them.”

“Oh.” She hissed through her teeth. “Friends?”

“I had two. Larso and Kala.”

“How did you meet them?”

“I met them on my first deployment to a colony world. They recognized that I was young and inexperienced, so they cared for me and taught me what they knew. We’ve been surviving and working together ever since.”

“Are they the ones that helped you found the Kaltis Initiative?”

“They are, but that didn’t come until later in our careers–after a particularly heroic episode of ours.”

Andrews leaned closer, eager to learn more. 

“If you must know, we evacuated a group of civilians through a heavily forested canyon. The arxur gave chase, and we lit both ends of the canyon on fire–once the civilians were out of course. The arxur panicked like venlil,” I said with no small amount of malice, “and trampled each other trying to find an escape that didn’t exist. When the smoke cleared, a thousand civilians had stories to tell, and hundreds of arxur were dead. It was too much for the colonial authorities to ignore, especially when news spread back to Nishtal. They honored us with ceremonies and interviews, but before they could ship us to another colony to disappear, Kala used her fame and political acumen to lobby for a program that allowed PD patients like us to redeem ourselves through service in distant colonies.”

“And that became the Kaltis Initiative?”

I nodded. “Yes, but only after years of advocacy and political maneuvering.”

“Were the exterminators you trained able to leave after a certain amount of time served?”

“Of course not, but we could live and have friends–some of my exterminators even started families together. We couldn’t do that in the facilities. There we could only expect drugs and torture–day after day–until they killed us or released us as broken people.” 
“Have you been able to contact your friends?” 

“I haven’t tried–for their sake. In the Federation, we’re nothing more than criminals now.”

“I see.” Andrew clutched her hands together and shifted uncomfortably. “It’s your turn now.”

 I picked at my own talons, trying to seem casually interested. By my estimation, I had finally built enough rapport to ask a question I actually cared about. And a great deal could be obtained from her response. “Did you ever meet Isaac’s parents?” 

The Captain narrowed her eyes. “You're just trying to learn about Isaac, aren’t you?”

I blinked several times, slightly taken aback by her keen observation. “Perhaps I am.”

“If you wanted to know more about Isaac, I told you already you need to ask him yourself. Instead, you tried to socially manipulate me into giving you the information?”

“Yes,” I answered plainly. “Have you forgotten what he’s like?”

“He’s–” She huffed and tapped a closed fist against the railing.

“He’s more reasonable than you think!”

“I would love for you to prove me wrong.”

A subtle smirk played across her face. “You can prove yourself wrong.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You agreed with Rainach that your platoon needs improvement, right? Especially with the non-human members. And you used to train exterminators to fight arxur, so you must have something in mind that can help them.”

“Perhaps I do.”

“Then just go up and ask if you can help them!”

With a dismissive wave of my wing, I turned to jump off the control tower.

“I mean it! It may not seem like it with how hot-headed he is, but he has a soft spot for his soldiers, especially for Vil. If you could explain to him that you want to help them, he might be more receptive.” 

I inhaled deeply and sighed, ejecting little plumes of vapor from my nostrils. “Fine. If you truly believe that, I will try. But if it fails, you have to tell me everything I want to know about Isaac.” I held out my talons for her to shake.

Andrews readily took them in her hand. “Deal.”

With that, I sprang from the tower, unfurled my wings, and glided until I came sliding to a stop next to the single-story building where I last saw the Lieutenant. Gunfire broke out from within the building as I approached, but Isaac’s handgun was not among the cacophony. As I entered, I had to step over several unfortunate OPFOR personnel and a few Russians who were laying on the floor. I was met with confused looks and tilting heads from the two rear guards, but I swiftly moved past them and fell into step with the squad leader.

“Where’s the Lieutenant?” I asked.

“We’re still looking for him,” Tiel whispered behind him.

“You haven’t found him yet?”

“He is sneaky little shit,” the squad leader whispered.

I followed along with the squad as they cleared rooms one by one, doing my best to stay out of the crossfire when they countered opposition. In the end, the whole building was cleared without Isaac being found, leaving us scratching our heads in a plywood mockup of a kitchen.

Tiel and the Russians immediately and wordlessly spread themselves out, slowly and methodically rechecking the building for any hiding stops they may have missed.

I scanned my surroundings, doing my part to help with the search. It occurred to me that whoever built the mockup we were in went through the trouble of including cabinets above and under the fake countertop. 

“Stop moving,” I ordered. “Hold your breaths.”

The Russians only stared at me.

“Just do it.”

They complied in spite of their confusion.

I listened intently and swiveled my head to pick up sound from every direction. The Russians succumbed one by one to the burning in their lungs. It was only after the last few broke that I heard it–a small puff of air from the cabinet under the sink. 

I pointed a claw in its direction.

Tiel trained his gun on the spot. The rest of the squad followed suit, surrounding it and leaving no escape. 

The venlil kept one hand on his rifle as he threw the cabinet open, revealing a rather angry look Lieutenant Yankovic.

“Why are you interrupting my training?!” he shouted.

“Are you training these men, or just amusing yourself?”

“Both! What the fuck do you want?!”

“I would like to do some special training with Vil. I will need Temujin and Fyodorov as assistants.”

Isaac laughed. “Fuck no!”

I sighed. “Sir, she is…” I chose my words carefully. “Underperforming. Because of a lack of confidence, I believe.” 

“How are you going to correct that? By bullying her until she has another breakdown?”

“Sir, over my years as an exterminator, I’ve developed ways to break the learned helplessness the Federation instills in its citizens–”

“I already said no!” Isaac barked as he got out of the cabinet and stood.

“Sir, what would happen if she had a breakdown while on deployment or, much worse, in combat?”

The Lieutenant paused and stared at me for a long moment.

“I’ve seen conditions similar to hers among my exterminators. If I wasn’t able to train it out of them, they wouldn't last long.” 

Isaac’s jaw tightened and he forcefully sighed through his nose.

“What exactly are you going to do to her?”

“I am going to put her in difficult situations and force her to act in spite of her fear. With enough practice doing so, she may be able to fight through her breakdowns.”

Isaac leaned down to my level. “I’ll let you do this, but if you fuck her up even more, I’ll pluck you and roast you like a rotisserie.”
I had already made one bet today. I may as well make one I knew I could win. “My training has never failed before. I accept your terms, sir.”

Isaac put his hand in my claws and we shook on it. 

As soon as Isaac let go of me, he raised his gun and shot Tiel in the chest. He was able to drop two more men before gunfire erupted all around me and he was riddled with imaginary bullets. As I walked out, the Lieutenant laid spasming on the floor, surrounded by jeering and taunting Russians. I had no doubt he was going to make them pay for his loss in the next exercise.

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