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Week of Literature: The Next Generation
6 years ago
Commended by EndMaster on 10/8/2017 6:43:20 AM
First prompt. Might've gotten a little long so odds are low anyone will actually read it but eh. I had fun.
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Game of Grohms
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Agent Lannister shifted uncomfortably on the too-small bench and stole a glance at the time display on his uni-comm. He and the officers with him were the only ones present to carry such devices. Ubiquitous in every day life anywhere civilization was to be found, yet the Kirthians found the open use and display of personal devices...not rude exactly, but rather tacky and gauche. Just another annoyingly backwards thing about their society, and not one he was in a mood to pay any mind to right now.
Something in the field below caused cheers to erupt from the thousands crowding the stands, and he sighed and refocused his attention on the sports activity he was supposed to be watching. Rustle Up, or Roundup was the closest translation in his own language. The name invoked imagery of Wild West holostories he used to play in between stars, and indeed, with a collection of less exotic animals the activities taking place on the game field might have fit right into those.
Three groups of Kirthians were clustered loosely at opposite corners of a triangular field. Each group contained riders on three different types of mounts, the numbers differing and apparently chosen according to the group’s specific strategy. The sturdy nelgans, which reminded him of stubby reptilian camels. The leaping komerengs, like black-furred rhinoceros-headed goats. And the gliding zelestopes, a thoroughly ridiculous animal he could only compare to a giant axolotl with webbed, overgrown arms.
Lannister kept finding himself mentally categorizing them as the Terran animals they most reminded him of, though in training they said you weren’t supposed to do that. Assumptions regarding alien life could lead to dangerous misconceptions. The Kirthians themselves looked deceptively human, if short and slender with a few extra patches of hair, but they had evolved from burrowing rodents. They weren’t nearly as physically imposing as other races he’d dealt with (though he’d wager those thick black claws could scratch as well as dig...) but certainly had proved to share the maddening habit of their ancestors of getting absolutely everywhere and into everything, especially where they were wanted the least.
Still, it was hard to stop the mind from leaping to the familiar. The agitated animals milling in the center of the field, the karmi-ha, what were they but featherless, beakless green ostriches? And finally, the grohms. Those, like the zelestopes, had taken him a bit of mental reaching to place. They were, he finally decided, plodding grey and orange megasloths, perhaps with some bear mixed in.
The role of the karmi-ha herd was to be rounded up and driven through gates at each corner of the field. No Kirthian was allowed to strike at or unseat another, or physically force an animal to enter a gate. The point of it all seemed to be to showcase skill at herding them exactly where the players wanted them to go.
The number captured at the end of the game was the main factor in determining the winner, though style seemed to matter for scoring as well, in a way he wasn’t quite clear on. The grohms, as far as he could tell, like the various obstacles placed between rounds, just served to be large, grumpy, and in the way.
As for the mounted animals, the nelgans were the rank and file foot soldiers. They were tough and not easily pushed aside or spooked, but relatively slow compared to the others. The komerengs however easily leapt over the defensive lines of those hump-backed beasts, and darted back and forth across the field at will. They seemed half wild, however, and would just as soon try to throw a rider as follow an order. The Kirthians on their backs were adorned in the gaudiest displays of feathers, iridescent lizard skins and body paint he’d ever seen, all that mock-primitiveness the species adored. The more jumping and dramatic dashing they did, the louder the cheers from the crowd.
The zelestopes were controlled primarily by the only Kirthian racial group he could easily identify, given that they tended to be smaller, blonder, and fuzzier. Presumably the reasoning was that the pale blobby lizards could glide about more easily with a lighter rider. Their primary purpose seemed to be to harry and distract the opposing teams by buzzing overhead, emitting shrill chirps. The animals, like the Kirthians themselves to a lesser degree, seemed to have an instinctual reaction to potential enemies flying overhead. Kirthian settlements even today were built primarily underground.
Of course the centuries of bombardment and near total destruction of the race’s homeworld on the other side of the galaxy by warring aliens all those years ago might also be a factor in that last bit.
His translator’s son tapped him on the shoulder and gestured at a doorway that had appeared on one side of the field. “They’re about to start the second round,” he said, in strongly accented but passable English. Wait, no, the voice was wrong...this one was the daughter. Casual wear for both sexes was the same loose sleeveless tunic and...skorts or something of undyed plant fiber, and at a glance the physical differences he was used to looking for just weren’t there.
Lannister nodded and gave a strained smile, forcing himself to look like he wasn’t impatient to just get this over with and finish his task. What was either an elder or an official with their hair dyed white came out flanked by some younger Kirthians the agent had been informed were his daughters, all dressed in ceremonial whatevers as they went around passing out ribbons or bracelets or something to players in each group. He checked a sigh, glancing over his officers who were in various stages of boredom as well, some having given up all pretense of paying attention and fiddling with their uni-comms. Somehow the Kirthians he could see around him were all paying rapt attention to it all; the ones not occupied fussing with the passels of offspring they seemed to carry around with them wherever they went.
That was another of many minor annoyances he’d had to get used to...constantly tripping over their brats. This was a starship, for God’s sake.
And one he couldn’t wait to get off of. Lannister refocused his attention now, not on the excruciatingly slow ceremony still taking place, but on one of the komereng riders in the lefthand corner. His name was Pari’karut, though Lannister and the others referred to him as Parakeet in private. He was certainly wearing enough feathers and eye-searing green and yellow to fit the nickname today, anyway. After the activities in the field ceased, Lannister job would be to take him into custody and transport him to the nearest Federation planet to stand trial for piracy and theft.
This had all been an agreement reached after months of negotiation, but as Parakeet held considerable celebrity status among the Kirthians in addition to (or perhaps because of) his last two years spent gutting Federation cargo ships, it had been deemed politically prudent to let him play in this final game, apparently some much-anticipated annual tournament millions of their people would be watching across the stars.
It was largely a symbolic gesture anyhow. Looking around, Lannister found it probable that at least a third of the males and plenty of the females present today had taken part in some manner of piracy.
That was always the problem with the Kirthians; you wanted to feel sorry for them. Driven from their all but destroyed planet, escaping on tens of thousands of scrapmetal starships which at that point in their development they wouldn’t even have had without salvaged technology from the aliens that had made their planet a battleground. They traveled for over a century through what was considered one of the most dangerous and still barely charted segment of the galaxy, facing threats that might have led to their extinction. And to combat that, they didn’t build better warships, they didn’t seek out allies; instead they combined and modified their ships into massive garden-cities and planted colonies everywhere they found a planet able to support them and their livestock and crops.
Also, they stole shit.
All well and good. Inspirational, even, like the stuff you make sappy holostories out of, when they were the underdogs overcoming odds in other parts of the galaxy. Here though, the Federation was in control, a benevolent guiding hand keeping things peaceful and orderly on the thousands of populated worlds they oversaw.
One would have thought the Kirthians would have been overjoyed with the comfortable planet they were assigned to settle and make their own, and at living by Federation laws designed to keep them happy and protect them. But Lannister had learned already that obstinacy and doing things their own way seemed to be the traits they’d built their entire society around. They seemed to want nothing to do with aliens and nothing more than to blithely ignore everyone around them while they did their own thing. Diplomatic outreach had been frustrating, to say the least. The Kirthians seemed to be under the delusion they were perfectly happy the way they were and that alien cultures had nothing to offer them.
*****
The game had already progressed quite a ways while he let his mind wander, and now approached the end of the round. One more to go. Parakeet had won some oohs and ahhs actually vaulting his braying komereng on and off the back of a disgruntled grohm and into a pack of karmi-ha the opposing team had been trying to round up.
After the round was called and the players dispersed to prepare for the next, the pirate actually made his way up into the stands wto chat a bit, smiling a lot and seeming to try and make himself pleasant to his soon to be captors.
“I have a small gift for you, Agent Lannister,” he said, in surprisingly good English.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“No, no, I insist.” At a gesture Parakeet was handed three small books from a couple of younger Kirthians he’d had tagging along behind him, hardly more children, and at their expectant looks Lannister smiled his strained smile again and accepted the trifles.
Thumbing briefly through them, he saw that though care had obviously been taken to make them aesthetically pleasing in the ancient style, the words and images were printed, in English, on flexible sheets of tough, waterproof plastic, instead of the old method of pressed plant fibres the species generally used in gifting such things. Whether this was some subtle insult or a nod to the human preference for practicality, it was beyond his knowledge of the culture.
“Well thank you,” he said, without a great deal of enthusiasm. “And what are these for?”
“I thought they were appropriate for a visitor to our city-ship. The first is a volume of the Sacred Traditions. Page 82, paragraph 2, tells the tale of the very first game of Rustle Up, which I think will be relevant here.”
Lannister’s translator straightened up and said something in the Kirthian language, which Parakeet only shrugged at, flashing her a quick smile. “The other two talk a great deal about the flora and fauna that grows here, and the foods and materials we make from them. There’s also a section on early architecture and tools. There’s a village in the Central Garden built in the old way, and in fact, many of our colonist prefer to settle planets in this manner to.”
“Yes, I’ve seen that. Makes it all more difficult to detect, when the planet is in someone else’s territory, eh?”
The athlete only grinned a bit at that, before continuing. “Anyhow, after the game perhaps you’ll find these of interest. The pemayo orchards are in full bloom this time of year, perhaps you should--”
“We’re not here to sightsee,” Lannister interrupted. “We’ll be taking you aboard our ship and leaving just as soon as this last round end. I have a great deal of other work to attend to elsewhere, once this whole situation is dealt with.”
Parakeet’s pleasant expression never faltered. He nodded and shrugged. “Ah, that’s fine then, I understand. Still, please keep the books, there may come a time when you’re not so busy, and they may be of value to you.”
At a summons by another player, he excused himself and left. Lannister tucked the books into his satchel. He had little interest in their contents, but physical books were a novelty and he told himself he’d try to remember to look them up later to see if they’d have any value to a collector.
“Think he’ll try anything?” one of his officers asked.
“They’re reckless and not very civilized, but not very inclined to violence, either,” Lannister answered with a shrug. “We’ve been assured that if he doesn’t cooperate, he at least won’t have any help. We’re just too powerful, and they’re still a bunch of ragtag refugees with fairly primitive weapons and warp technology, when you get down to it. Can’t defy Federation law and expect not to have retaliation. I think they’re finally starting to see that.”
They both watched the pirate make his way down to the field and disappear into a door that appeared on his approach. The illusion of a sunny day at a planetside park was very effective. The subtle tells that might be present in a too-perfect Federation holoscene weren’t immediately visible. The generators and controls were well-concealed for the sake of aesthetics, and while the sky was projected, the grass in the field was real, as was the animal shit and most of the rocks and flora encircling it all as well.
Thankfully there seemed to be no tedious ribbon-giving ceremony for the final round, and the players had no sooner assembled on the field than the game began. There was Parakeet down there in his distinctive bright yellow and green, mounted on his komereng again. Lannister settled in and prepared to be bored.
*****
At some point, when checking in on Parakeet’s activities, it occurred to Lannister that his playstyle had changed quite a bit. All the daring stunts, flashy leaping and darting around had ceased, and the athlete simply trotted his mount casually along the edges of the field.
Not that he was exactly an expert on how the game below was played, but Parakeet almost seemed to not even be participating now. As though oblivious to the frantic bleating and braying going on toward the center of the field, he actually stopped, directly in front of the section of the stands Lannister and his men were in, and started waving and blowing kisses.
“What the hell is he doing?” Lannister said, switching his uni-comm to binocular mode and leaning forward to squint at the rider through the screen. He scrutinized him a long moment. Then, “Wait...shit!” Leaping from his seat, he began to force his way through the crowd, shouting for his bewildered officers to follow. Even the bulkiest Kirthians were slight enough to be bulldozed through, and their only real difficulty was in not tripping over toddlers or anyone they might manage to badly hurt.
Then, he was right on the game field, stumbling over a patch of churned ground but managing to keep the rider in the bright green and yellow in sight even with all the dust the panicked animals were kicking up. As Lannister gained on him he leapt off the komereng, scrabbled for a set of controls concealed among the rocks and then disappeared through the door that appeared.
Lannister reached it just as the illusion reset itself, but was able to find the latch with a minimum amount of fumbling and flung the door open to reveal a long corridor, his target fleeing down it.
“Stop right there! On authority of the Federation!”
The Kirthian showed no signs of obeying, but the head start he had wasn’t much, and the human’s much longer legs quickly ate up the distance. “Got you!” he cried, grabbing the fleeing alien and shoving him hard against the wall, knocking his ridiculous feathered hat arrangement to the ground. “Where is he?”
His officers caught up to them, panting, but their confused questions ceased as they realized what he’d already seen. This wasn’t Parakeet. Hell, this wasn’t even a male, he realized, as his prisoner shouted to someone out of sight. “They’re here! Run!”
There were scuffling and scraping noises around the corner and with another curse, Lannister released the female and went to give chase, the others close behind.
He caught sight of Parakeet--the real one--fleeing through a doorway just ahead and wasted no time in following. Once through it, he was faced with an intersection.
“Sorry Agent, changed my mind!” came Parakeet’s boast from the lefthand side, making his decision of which direction to take rather easy.
The Kirthian slapped a hidden panel on the wall as he ran on ahead and from nowhere a herd of grunting nelgans poured out from a new revealed entrance. Lannister pushed and shoved his way through them, reaching another fork in the hall. Parakeet was out of sight now, but the unhappy komerengs milling around made it obvious which way he’d gone. They flattened their ears and tossed their heads, snorting indignantly as he forced his way past.
Suddenly one of the officers behind him gave a cry of warning, and the agent turned to come face to foreleg with one of the massive grohms. Where it had come from, he had no idea, but it effectively separated him from the others.
“Dammit...sit tight, and whatever you do don’t piss that thing off! I’ll go on ahead and capture him alone. He can’t run forever!”
Whirling, the sight of a wall of shaggy grey and orange fur revealed that another had somehow been let into the narrow hall on the other side of him. Now he was trapped between two of the animals. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Gritting his teeth and reminding himself these were domesticated grazing animals, he attempted to squeeze his way against the wall and work his way past it. With a snort, the grohm scraped its enormous claws on the ground and started to change position, forcing him to scramble back to where he had been and putting him face to...testicles and then face to buttocks and back as it sat heavily on the ground, blocking the hallway completely.
“Come on! Move!” he yelled. The grohm gave a deep grunt and began scratching at its neck with a hind leg.
“Lannister? You okay?” one of his officers yelled. “We’ve got two pinning us in over here! We could try our stun guns but I’m not sure they’d do much to anything to something that size...”
He started to answer, when there was a rumble and a sound of screeching metal, and the ship rocked hard enough to knock him off his feet. Scrambling up again, he instinctively drew his weapon and checked all around, though there was nothing to see but the two animals cramming the hallway full.
“What was that? An explosion?” His first thought had been that they must be under attack, but what outside force could rock a ship of this size so violently, and surely Parakeet or any accomplices wouldn’t be insane enough to deliberately start blowing things up on a spacecraft, even one of this size.
He and the others were still trapped, but called out a few times, hoping to attract the attention of any other Kirthians nearby. But no answer came except for some bleating from the other released animals nearby. The corridor was eerily empty...no one even seemed to be checking up on the source of the explosion.
Another rumble rattled the hallway, and Lannister grabbed at the wall to keep himself upright. This one hadn’t been as dramatic as the other, but something worrisome was still definitely happening nearby.
The minutes ticked by.
****
Finally, just as he was starting to seriously consider seeing what a stun blast to the ass would do to get the grohm in front of him moving, the ship was jolted a third time, bashing him against the wall and then throwing him to the floor again. When he stood and verified that he was fine and no one else was hurt, he saw a light had appeared ahead. The animal in front of him raised its head to sniff the air a few times, and with a groan heaved itself to its feet to start shuffling toward it. The one behind him and the second one pinning in his men on the other side, both apparently females, started following, and all of them didn’t have any choice but to move along at the same pace.
Nearing the light, he could soon see it was a doorway, with a green field beyond. Was this the game field again? Lannister had gotten disoriented enough during the chase that he wasn’t exactly sure.
Stumbling down a ramp, he shielded his eyes from the light and peered around. The komerengs and nelgans he’d had to push through were flooding out down another ramp, but the field was otherwise empty, with a pale pink sky with wispy clouds overhead and mountains projected in the distance. As they took in their surroundings, the doorways vanished. Quickly turning, he patted all around what felt like a smooth metal wall but couldn’t find a way to open or reveal it again. Exchanging uncertain looks with the others, as a group they started making their way across the field.
“Keep an eye out for holo controls,” he said, scanning the unkempt grass and then reaching out to feel a twisty reddish tree to verify it was real. Wherever they were, it obviously wasn’t the game field. Probably one of the many gardens that dotted the city-ship, but his main concern now was revealing the exits.
“Attention. Ship begining takeoff procedure. Please stand clear. Attention. Ship will launch in 45 seconds. Please stand clear. Attention. Ship will launch in 40 seconds. Please stand clear. Attention. Ship will--”
Lannister saw his own dumbfounded expression mirrored in the faces of his officers, but as the countdown continued it dawned on him what had happened. “Everybody get clear! Run!”
They started racing across the field just as there was a rumble and an explosion that scorched the trees and grass, the cargo ship’s projective camouflage melting away as it lifted into the sky. He recognized it as Federation-built, though the cloaking device was all Kirthian, naturally.
“What the--what the hell just happened?” one of the officers asked.
“We’re idiots,” Lannister answered, a sick feeling settling into his stomach as he tapped away at his uni-comm, only to find the long range signaler jammed. “We let him lead us right onto that ship, then got herded right back off it. All that shaking was from it undocking, entering warpspace, and the last big was was a landing.”
“So what, that means we’re...stuck here?”
Lannister didn’t answer, looking grimly around. So far they were able to breathe the air, so that was a start. The planet had to be in fairly close range of the city-ship, considering the short length of time they’d traveled. But with space being, sort of big, ‘fairly close’ was relative enough to not be much comfort for half a dozen men standing in a lightly wooded field. All the flora seemed Kirthian, he noted, as a few stray neglan wandered back up and started to browse on twigs.
There was a bell-like tone from his satchel. Frowning, he pulled out the source of it, the Sacred Traditions book given him by Parakeet. A familiar face appeared on the blank page just inside the cover.
“Hello again, Agent Lannister!” Parakeet said with a grin.
“You son of a--”
“This is a pre-recorded message, just so you know. It’ll be a few months before any signals can get in or out of this system. Also, just making it clear I am acting on my own with the help of a few friends, and we’re not in anyway receiving aid from our leaders or the ship’s crew or any elders and blah blah all of that. Hey, so anyway! I suppose it’s a good thing you didn’t really show any interest in the books I gave you, or you may have accidentally triggered it ahead of time, and whoops, so much for my plans. Or..heh, maybe you did figure it our or stop me somehow and I’m sitting in a cell right now. That’ll be embarrassing, so hopefully not. Hopefully you don’t notice right away that my stand in is actually a woman, and of a completely different race either, or I won’t have time to set up. I had other volunteers that didn’t have those problems, but, I wanted to give you a better chance. Important to keep things fair, you know?”
“Anyway, you should consider yourself on a long vacation, in a lovely planet-sized garden. All the early and mid-stage Kirth-a-planting is in, the seeds have had years to grow, and I have personally left you some of my best animals. And as for my earlier gift, you WILL find the books useful now, I believe, if you’re one of those humans who’ve never even been camping before.”
“Oh, and that story in the Sacred Traditions? The first Rustle Up game was hosted by one of our ancient heroes, to distract the leaders of a powerful empire while he broke a friend out of prison. In the process, they robbed the emperor blind.” A pause for effect. “Your ship looked very nice, by the way. We don’t have weapons that impressive on any of ours. I’ll have to have a friend pick it up and bring it out to meet me.” Parakeet’s delighted grin had yet to leave his face. “Anyway, good story, yes? I won’t spoil the details...you’ll have plenty of time to read it and all the others for yourself. But I wonder what you’d have thought of it, if you’d bothered to read it?”
