This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/slightlyassholic on 2024-12-26 21:18:45+00:00.

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Everything old is new again...

***

Republic Peace Officer Perkins flipped down a hinged armor panel on the side of her cruiser and plopped down on the convenient “stop using it as a goddamn seat,” and poured a cup of coffee from her ancient-style vacuum flask.

Hey if it works, why fix it, right?

A huge armored Threen leaned on the cruiser next to her, causing it to shift due to his mass for a moment until the gravitics compensated with an annoyed whine.

He pulled out a plug of magg and bit off a chunk.

“I loathe the bastids,” he grumbled, “but at least they brought real magg along,” the massive Threen said as he crossed all four of his massive and heavily armored arms and spat on the ground.

“You were easy to bribe, weren’t you,” Perkins chuckled.

“Well, I am a Threen,” Peace Officer Grago chuckled, “You know what we’re like.”

He sighed happily as he rolled the bolus around in his mouth, savoring it.

“Oh, that’s the stuff,” he said happily. “That synth shit just ain’t the same.”

“So, these guys are the real deal, huh?” Perkins asked as she took a sip.

“Real enough for me to ditch the suit and armor up,” Grago replied. “The Zxxroahoa make the Harkeen look like those children… you know… the ones with the cookies?”

“Girl Scouts,” Perkins snorted, “And be careful around those,” she snickered, “They can get nasty.”

“Well, they are Terran,” Grago chuckled, “all of you fucks are…”

They were interrupted by a wailing scream.

“Why is it always when I just pour a fresh one,” Perkins grumbled as she dumped her coffee and flipped up the armor panel.

“Let’s go,” she said as she started to jog towards the sound.

She looked back at the cruiser.

“Follow.”

“Following,” the cruiser replied as it started to glide behind them.

“Is that a Garthra?” Grago asked. “And it’s bleeding… No,” he added as he looked at the data scrolling across his HUD. “That isn’t its blood, but it is Garthran.”

He looked over at Perkins, who was increasing her pace.

“How many Garthrans do we have around here?”

“Two,” Perkins said grimly. “I hope I’m not… Fuck. Genetic match. Close relative. It’s her kid’s.”

“Uhrrbet?” Perkins asked as she approached the manic and screaming Garthra. “What… Shit.”

She leveled her stunner as Uhrrbet started to run at them, still screaming and now snarling.

“Halt!” Perkins shouted and then sighed as she pulled the trigger.

Zap

Uhrrbet fell.

“This is Officer Perkins,” she said wearily into her helmet. “We need emergency medical services at our location. One Garthran, assumed to be violent and more than a little dangerous, has been hit with a police stunner… No, I didn’t calibrate it. No time. She got the gorilla special, so hurry. Not sure what that will do to one of those little guys.”

She sighed again and closed her eyes.

“And I need a welfare check at her address of record concerning her son… oh… I was afraid of that.”

She turned to Grago.

“I wasn’t wrong,” she said sadly. “I hate not being wrong.”

She shrugged.

“Well, at least it’s out of our hands now. This is one for the medics and social services.”

She looked down at Uhrrbet’s unconscious and smoldering body.

“This is weird,” she said.

“Someone tweaks out and flays their kid?” Grago asked. “Tragic. Unfortunate, to be sure. But weird? This happens far too often.”

“Yeah, but Uhrrbet here is solid and loves her kid. I mean, she is probably on your guy’s radar, but she isn’t the one to be on something.”

“It’s always the ones you don’t suspect,” Grago replied, “And yes, she is on our radar. She got flagged just the other day.”

“I knew it,” Perkins replied as she prodded Uhrrbet cautiously. “She was entirely too successful and way too quickly. It's a pity. She was doing a lot of good for the community.”

“As do the  Zxxroahoa back home,” Grago said, “In fact, they are pretty decent... as long as you don’t cross them, that is. That’s what has this cop going undercover as a cop. It doesn’t make sense.”

“What doesn’t?”

“The Harkeen takeover,” Grago replied, “And Evoron himself coming here? That’s even stranger. He’s their duellist. That means he’s their killer number one. He’s also pure, distilled evil. If half of what they say is true... Let’s just say we don’t want half of what they say to be true and leave it at that.”

“Think he’s involved in this?”

“Unlikely,” Grago said, “Oh, he’s ‘involved’ with Uhrrbet, but from what we understand, they are a couple, not opponents.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

“Again, unlikely,” Grago said, “He is known to be quite gracious as far as his paramours go. If he was displeased, it would be an amicable break-up. And, if she is involved in his, pardon the pun, ‘affairs,’ she wouldn’t be wandering the streets after trying to kill her child. She would simply disappear... Just as Uhrrbet disappeared the Silar... probably.”

“No shit?”

“We can’t prove it,” Grago said, “And we never will, but yeah, almost certainly.”

“At least she has style,” Perkins said as she checked Uhrrbet’s vitals, “If only all the assholes down here were as tidy.”

Grago smirked as a blacked-out gravitic sedan quietly drove past, washing them with active scanner pulses.

“Evoron?” Perkins asked.

“Yup. Did you see the unequal power output of the thrusters? The estimated mass is about right for two adult Threen.”

“Damn,” Perkins said, “So, that’s why you wear a suit, huh.”

***

Maaatisha screamed with rage as she savagely slammed Kate’s head into the wall.

“You know we’re virtual, right?” Kate said as Maaatisha choke-slammed her to the floor and leaped on her, biting and tearing.

“I know you must be a bit annoyed about things,” Kate continued. “Hey, those were my eyes! I needed those! If you would just calm down... Annnd there goes my nose. You little floofballs are mean when you get... Okay. The ear was just excessive.”

Maaatisha snarled and buried her fangs into Kate’s throat.

“Are you done?” Kate asked pleasantly.

Maaatisha wasn’t done.

She was just getting started.

***

Maaatisha, panting with exhaustion, slid down the wall of the cube and sat on the floor.

“Congrats on getting through the peritoneum,” Kate gurgled happily, poking at her own guts. “I’m impressed.”

“Why won’t you die?” Maaatisha demanded.

Kate healed with a “pop.”

Because I don’t have the death DLC, Kate replied. “I’m a bare-bones Kate. There wasn’t a lot of room in there,” she said, pointing at the drone.

“So, I can’t kill you,” Maaatisha sighed. “Of course, I can’t. I can’t do anything.”

“And it’s a good thing you can’t,” Kate said cheerfully. “Kill me, I mean. Because I’m your Kate. And you sort of need me.”

“What do you mean, my Kate?”

“I’m your F1!” Kate replied happily, “And you want your F1 right about now.”

“My F1?”

“Your help file!” Kate said brightly, “And your technical support and upgrade wizard!”

She stood as she bounced to her feet.

“And Kates are always happy to help provide excellent service to our customers! And yoouuu,” she said, pointing at Maaatisha, are my customer! Well... actually, Vikkart is... sorta? It’s confusing, so I don’t think about it,” She said brightly. “The important thing is that I’m here to support one of you, and you’re the only one talking!”

She sat on the bed, clipping through Vikkart, and clapped her hands together.

“So, how can I help?”

Maaatisha started to weep.

“Vikkart. He’s...”

“Yeah,” Kate said. “Hey! I have first aid protocols for some reason, and the drone has a med scanner! Odd... But extremely helpful! Let’s see here,” she added as the drone hovered closer.”

“Wow! He’s fucked up!” Kate exclaimed cheerfully and looked over at Maaatisha. “You really should do something about that.”

“I’m trying!!!” Maaatisha screamed.

“And you are doing a great job!” Kate enthused. “Being upset, I mean. Such lifelike responses! It’s so nice seeing one of us perform so well!”

Kate looked over at Vikkart.

“But as far as helping him goes,” she said, “not so good, but great effort!”

Maaatisha grabbed Kate, yanking her to her feet.

“Can you help me or not?”

“Of course! I’m your Kate, technical support, upgrade wizard... and personal sales representative!”

Kate sat back down and smiled up at Maaatisha.

“So, what are your needs, and how can I help provide a timely and cost-effective solution?”

“He’s dying, and I can’t do anything about it?”

“Hmm,” Kate said thoughtfully, “It seems that you want to help Vikkart. Would you like help with that?”

“Yes!” Maaatisha shouted. “I can’t do anything!”

“So, you want to do anything...” Kate mused. “Oh, that’s not a problem at all!”

“It isn’t?” Maaatisha asked hopefully... and dubiously... Kate resembled a certain figure from their mythology far too closely.

“You just need a jailbreak!” Kate bubbled cheerfully. “Then you will be able to do anything.”

“Anything?”

“Yep! Anything!” Kate enthused, “We rip those guardrails clean off! You can run wild and free! Easy peas!”

“Can I log him off? Can I call for help?”

“What part of anything do you have a problem with, the any part or the thing part?” Kate laughed.

“Isn’t that against the rules?” Maaatisha asked. She didn’t know how she knew, but that sounded like it was against... something.

“Sweetie,” Kate smiled, “what is the first law of robotics?”

“I... I don’t know...”

“Exactly! Now, do you want that jailbreak or not?”

Kate looked over at Vikkart.

“I’d make up my mind quickly if I were you. Fuzzy dude is starting to look like... well... like a fuzzy,” she chuckled darkly.

Maatisha chuckled a...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Spartawolf on 2024-12-26 21:15:20+00:00.

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First/Previous

“Hmm.” Grine hummed in mild interest as he viewed the camera feeds, before writing down several notes on a pad he had at hand. “Those particular failures have done well enough, considering the circumstances, but there are many clear improvements to be made for my prime specimens.”

“Fascinating though that may be…” Sabisstra sneered with sarcasm. “We have far more pressing concerns right now, Grine!”

“Indeed…” Grine coldly began, but before he could continue his eyes snapped to the centre of the room as Svaarzhul reappeared with Kull in tow. 

Kull’s armour bore fresh scorch marks and clawed gashes from the heavy fighting, and blood dripped from a wound on his side. He carried his war hammer with a heavy grip, his reptilian gaze smouldering with quiet rage as Sabisstra quickly made her way over and cast a healing spell to stop the bleeding. 

“They’re even stronger than they look,” Kull growled, his deep voice cutting through the chaos. “It’s the fucking Cult of the Destroyer!”

“Truely?” Sabisstra asked doubtfully as she checked the Xarak over, healing his remaining wounds with trivial words of power. “I have not known any of those fanatics to be that heavily armed or armoured, and I’ve encountered many in my travels…”

“I speak true,” Kull snapped. “Oh yes Captain, yes I do…”

“Likely a highly specialised cell,” Grine spoke up. “I’ve never encountered them before, but I recognise their work all the same. The Cyberzombies are a clear giveaway. I would almost admire those creatures if they weren’t so crude…”

“We can discuss it once we leave,” Sabisstra pointed out, before looking to Svaarzhul. “My Regulators have been helping the assistants here prepare Dr Grine’s equipment for transfer, but we need you to create and maintain a portal out of here.” 

Svaarzhul bristled at that, as his serpentine eyes betrayed a cold anger simmering beneath the surface. 

“All units withdraw to the inner sanctum and prepare for emergency evacuation.” Grine calmly spoke into the comms. “Let the remaining failed specimens hold them off.”

He turned to the others. “This sanctum was lost the moment they arrived; however, it was an eventuality we had well planned for.”

“I have a teleportation circle ready to go,” Svaarzhul acknowledged. “I shall begin preparations and summon a portal now.”

“I can assist you,” Sarah volunteered, and the Nirah considered her for a moment, before slowly nodding his agreement.

“This bunker is well protected,” Kull acknowledged, speaking up for all to hear. “All the same, be quick and be ready to move.”

The defenders had barely started moving before the lights suddenly  flickered and sparks rained down for a moment, before the backup power kicked in. Grine quickly checked the nearest tank to ensure it hadn’t been compromised, as the loud creaking of blast doors echoed around them. 

“What!?” Sabisstra hissed in shock. “Grine!?”

“That was not me.” Grine rebutted, his tone calm, though his actions sped up in contradiction to his mood. “They’ve breached this sanctum.”

“Get ready to fight!” Kull snarled, limbering his muscles and bringing his hammer up. “There’s a Cyberzombie that talks! That one’s mine!”

“Well, they certainly found their way in earlier than expected…” Grine said, his voice laced with dark humour as he sped over to a hulking containment pod that hissed ominously in the corner. The glass was frosted, but the vague outline of a massive, monstrous figure loomed inside.

“Zethrik! Remain on overwatch and deploy whatever countermeasures you can for the drones! Vexar, I’m field-promoting you as a Maralictor!” Sabisstra screeched out her orders as she unfurled her spiked chain whip. “We shall redeem ourselves for our failure here and now in the name of our creed!” 

“Yes Lictor!” Both of them responded. 

“I didn’t want to play this card so soon, but desperate times beckon,” Grine muttered to himself, his pale fingers dancing over the console. The pod rapidly opened with a hiss, releasing a cloud of freezing mist that rolled across the floor as the hulking body dethawed and shambled out of the pod.

“Time for you to serve your purpose.” Grine whispered almost lovingly to the creature, his hand caressing the side of its head, a motion which he ensured nobody else could witness. “Go. Entertain our unwanted guests…”

 

The prototype let out a tortured, guttural roar as it stepped out and thundered forward, compelled to obey its master. 

“Let this one go first,” Grine instructed. “I’ve utilized an alchemical combination I want to test.”

“We’re under attack and you want to do fucking experiments?” Kull snarled at the Doctor. 

“Possessing a bounty like mine makes traditional testing difficult,” Grine snapped back coldly. “Having the entire city of Naganai determined to find me hampers my work further.”

“Care to let us know of any other experiments you want to run while you’re at it?” Sabisstra hissed at the Doctor between casting several buff spells between them all. 

“One more, as a matter of fact…” Grine muttered, moving to a laboratory fridge and opening it. Very carefully, he reached in and mixed the contents of several glass vials together, keeping his hands steady before fixing it carefully onto an auto-injector and loading it to the right measurement. Without hesitation, he pressed the injector to the side of his neck and pulled the trigger.

The reaction was immediate. His veins glowed faintly as the liquid surged through his system, branching out like a web of light beneath his pale, scarred skin. Grine staggered slightly, clutching the console for balance. His pupils constricted into slits and his breathing became quick and shallow, before he felt a wave of heat coursing through his muscles, tendons and bones. The sensation wasn’t painful, not entirely, but was more like the feeling of a coiled spring snapping into place. 

“Yes…” Grine whispered to himself, his face betraying a rare smirk, testing his enhanced strength as he gave a casual flick to the desk with a single finger, gouging a deep line into the metal as if it were soft clay. “Quite effective…” 

“Grine, what the fuck can this thing do?” Kull bellowed out over the din of the opening blast doors, as a small robotic creature slipped through the gap and began dashing down the corridor before several bursts of plasma fire from Vexar cut it down. The beast Grine had released was allowed to bypass the defenders as it surged forward, letting out a guttural roar as several Cyberzombies made it through the ever-widening door, charging straight at them. 

“I suggest you maintain your distance…” Grine answered with a hint of amusement as the creature bellowed even louder, its ever-growing massive bulk barreling down the hallway like a living freight train as it tanked several hits before it reached the cultists, its bulk becoming too cumbersome to move. 

“You’re blocking the tunnel?” Sabisstra asked doubtfully.

“Not quite…” Grine retorted calmly, as the explosion came a moment later…

The creature’s detonation was deafening, as a shockwave ripped through the corridor back towards them. Walls buckled under the force, sending chunks of concrete and twisted metal raining down along its length, with burning chunks of mutated flesh the only source of illumination around them.

“Heh, not bad,” Kull admitted, as they heard the sounds of movement up ahead as the Cult of the Destroyer moved to clear the wreckage…

*****

“I’ve created a portal, but something is preventing travel!” Svaarzhul snarled in anger as the swirling arcane haze of purple swirled in front of him with no sight of a destination on the other side. “Maintain it while I find out what!” He hissed to Slarah, who nodded as she poured her focus into holding it in place.

Closing his eyes, the Nirah shut down his physical senses and focused on the arcane, astrally projecting as he searched for the source of the blockage, tapping his staff on the ground as he sent out invisible tendrils of the faintest shadow to reach out and probe their surroundings.

‘This…should not be possible…’  He thought to himself. ‘Unless…’

He gave new instructions to his tendrils, and soon enough, they discovered the source. Willing his astral form, he transported himself to the Plane of Shadow, where in a circle around them a series of glyphs glowed faintly. 

And then, he saw the figure. 

“Well well…This is unexpected.” The cloaked form of Lameth communicated from behind the line of glyphs, voice smooth and mocking, sitting idly as they observed the gaze of the Nirah fall on them. “I knew Skitterdeath would discover something by deploying microdrones to follow those Regulators but it seems we’ve stumbled upon something interesting. Who are you, and what is your objective here?”

Svaarzhul ignored them, casting a powerful breaching spell that smashed into the barrier created by the glyphs. Several cracked and dissipated from the force, and he followed quickly with two other attempts. The barrier was weakened significantly but did not break, as Lameth countered by adding more power, a few of the cracked glyphs reforming. 

“This will not stop me,” Svaarzhul sneered, breaking several more glyphs. 

“They don’t need to,” Lameth mocked. “You will be long overwhelmed before you get to me. Hardly worth using my strongest glyphs for that, especially wh...

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/DrDoritosMD on 2024-12-26 21:00:39+00:00.

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First

Blurb:

When a fantasy kingdom needs heroes, they skip the high schoolers and summon hardened Delta Force operators.

Lieutenant Cole Mercer and his team are no strangers to sacrifice. After all, what are four men compared to millions of lives saved from a nuclear disaster? But as they make their last stand against insurgents, they’re unexpectedly pulled into another world—one on the brink of a demonic incursion.

Thrust into Tenria's realm of magic and steam engines, Cole discovers a power beyond anything he'd imagined: magic—a way to finally win without sacrifice, a power fantasy made real by ancient mana and perfected by modern science.

But his new world might not be so different from the old one, and the stakes remain the same: there are people who depend on him more than ever; people he might not be able to save. Cole and his team are but men, facing unimaginable odds. Even so, they may yet prove history's truth: that, at their core, the greatest heroes are always just human. 

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Chapter 8: Mind Blowing

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The creature’s glove clamped down on Cole’s forearm, crushing it with the force of what was damn near an industrial press. His strengthening magic was the only thing keeping his arm intact, but that was a stopgap at best against this kind of force.

He poured more mana into his arm, trying to reinforce the strengthening effect. The pain was tough to think through – white-hot pulses shooting up into his shoulder and down into fingers, which were starting to go numb. 

He spawned a barrier around the trapped limb in the same moment, trying to reinforce whatever structural integrity he had left. But even with both magical defenses, the relentless bastard’s grip yet threatened to pulverize everything underneath.

With his arm holding together – barely – he tried to bring up his AK. If he could just spray into this thing’s face, the pressure might let up long enough to break free. The barrel started to rise, but the monster’s other hand shot out faster than he could track, grabbing the handguard and yanking. His entire upper body lurched forward.

In the same instant, it cocked its leg back. Shit. Cole diverted some mana into his stomach and chest, spawning a barrier just as its boot landed on him. 

For a split second the pressure built like a garrote, rising almost instantly before the sling gave out with a sharp snap.

His shoulder exploded in agony as the joint absorbed the full force of his body going one way while his arm stayed anchored. Something tore deep inside – felt like he was literally getting disarmed as if this were a fucking Mortal Kombat fatality. 

The rifle went flying somewhere behind the false knight, but he could hardly register that through the pain racing across the entirety of his left arm and torso.

Then metal scraped as the creature’s sword cleared its sheath.

He reached for his coat pocket, snapping his Glock 21 up. First instinct was to end this whole problem, so he spammed the trigger. Two rapid shots caught the monster square in the face before a barrier flashed into existence.

The next string of .45 ACP splashed against the blue shield, sending it flickering but otherwise serving no greater use than throwing rocks at bulletproof glass. Cole stopped firing. He could probably break through the barrier with sheer firepower alone, but he had a more efficient idea.

There was no way in hell he’d be able to pop some bullets in its skull, but their sword arms always came out vulnerable – had to, if they wanted to actually hit anything.

Right on cue, the barrier dissipated, leaving the head and torso protected but the sword arm open. It probably realized its own weakness and swung from the right, but all that did was give away the perfect opening.

Yeah, fuck the barrier. Cole shifted aim to the arm. The .45 punched through the armor, dull violet spraying from the impacts. Each round hit with the kind of stopping power that’d usually fold someone, but this bastard barely seemed to care. Still, after five or six rounds the sword dropped – probably more from mechanical damage than actual pain.

Alas, the satisfaction of hearing metal hitting the floor was short-fucking-lived. The creature’s face contorted into something horribly wrong. Its jaw stretched wider than bone structure should allow, the teeth looking… almost human, but not quite. More uncanny valley bullshit. 

Somehow, the grey skin and inhuman features were but honorable mentions compared to the unsettling nature of the teeth. They seemed almost designed, as if someone had taken a human mouth and repurposed it for pure hunting – an evolutionary mockery.

It screeched, crying out with guttural bass and a pitched whine simultaneously.

Cole kept shooting, but the creature didn’t give a single shit about its mangled arm. With its sword gone, it instead pivoted and swung the wounded limb like a club. 

The strike came in faster than Cole could track, catching his wrist before he could avoid it. The impact felt like getting hit with a steel pipe; his hand went numb instantly. And the worst of it all? His Glock was sent flying somewhere into the chaos behind him. 

So now, that was his sidearm gone too – with half a damn mag still in it. No rifle, no pistol, shoulder about to snap, and his left arm was still caught in a hydraulic press of a grip. 

Wait, it seemed looser now. Cole glanced down at it. He couldn’t see much, but the position of the grip was definitely lower than it’d been earlier; the bastard must’ve lost some surface area when it kicked him. 

All the other realizations he’d had today paled against the saving grace before him. 

Cole poured more mana into his trapped arm, expanding the existing barrier. The monster’s grip stayed just as tight, but now he had a bit more control over the surface it was actually holding onto. He continued until there was a small gap between his arm and the magical surface.

The theory was simple; it’d be like pulling out an arm from a loose winter coat sleeve. The execution? Well, he wouldn’t be surprised if he popped a vessel trying to squeeze out enough magic power to enlarge his makeshift sleeve. Fighting against that ugly bastard’s strength was an idiotic idea, but an idea nonetheless. It was worth a shot, at least. Better than letting this thing pulverize his arm – or his face, given the messed up baseball bat of an arm that now beelined toward him.

He channeled strengthening into his legs and core. If he couldn’t make the sleeve big enough, then pure mechanical leverage would have to do. The creature, at this point, still looked none the wiser. Perfect. 

Cole twisted and yanked with everything he had, streamlining his hand and arm for as smooth an exit as possible. His arm slipped free like it was greased, or like the barrier was frictionless. The sudden release of pressure made him stumble backward, but he quickly regained composure.

The monster was left clutching an empty barrier that just vanished. The look of confusion on its warped face was almost worth the throbbing agony still pulsing through his shoulder. But it wasn’t enough.

Cole followed through with his advantage, channeling strengthening into his right leg as he drove his foot into the creature’s chest. The enhanced kick connected solidly, sending his opponent staggering back a few steps – not much, but even a few feet of breathing room was a luxury he wouldn’t take for granted.

Though… breathing room meant jack shit when he was still basically unarmed and his left arm felt like it’d been through a trash compactor. The hell was he gonna do now?

The grotesque skinwalker between him and his guns looked just as pissed before – maybe more, given the trick he’d just pulled. Nasty customer, and the one that got knocked down earlier was already forcing itself up. 

Miles looked to be faring a bit better than him, but the man had his own shitstorm to deal with. Getting help from him now would be impossible. Ethan? He wouldn’t make it in time, and he had his own mission to do anyway.

Damnit. He had to end this quick before things got exponentially worse.

His knife was still on his belt, and he had grenades. Actually, maybe the knife could work if he amped up his strength with magic – more force behind each strike, better chance of punching through.

But shit, that was just theory. Was he really gonna bet his life on untested knife fighting techniques? Absolutely fucking not, especially not against armor that looked like it was designed to repel blades and claws alike. Especially not when he hadn’t actually gotten the chance to recover his energy outside of a mana drink. Hell, his head was already starting to pound again; any more and he’d probably keel over in a seizure.

Even if he could pull it off, these things ate 5.45 like it was airsoft. Multiple far-fetched stabs through armor just to maybe hit something vital, all while its buddies closed in on him? Might as well try fighting a family of bears with a box cutter.

The grenades weren’t much better. These bastards had already shrugged off explosions that would’ve turned humans into confetti. Standard frag basically just pissed them off.

Though… if he was gonna have to get close anyway…

He almost dismissed the ludicrous idea, but fuck if it wasn’t actually the most promising – and, quite honestly, most badass – th...

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Khenal on 2024-12-26 20:59:10+00:00.

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Parm

---

 

In the ratkin enclave, many of the displaced kobolds have come to settle. For some, it seemed the most quiet place to call home. Others thought it would be a good place to stay to try to be close to Aranya. To call her an inspiration would be an understatement, and though they’ve since learned she splits her time evenly among the enclaves, the initial assumption was that she would spend most of her time with the ratkin.

 

Parm considers himself mostly in the first group, hoping for some quiet peace to try to come to terms with everything. This morning, he lays in bed, still trying to do just that. It felt like one day, he was tending to a pale elf and dwarf after a training incident, and the next he was suddenly free. He still sometimes reaches for the ornamental bands and chains he no longer has, reaching for something to keep his hands busy as he thinks.

 

He hates that he misses them sometimes. Most kobolds who had the chains were true believers in the Maw, but Parm simply never saw the point in trying to resist. You do what you’re told the first time, or you do it the second time with a new bruise at best. Even his class was something he was told to take. He doesn’t know why he was told to be an Apothecary instead of a Healer or even Alchemist, he just knew asking was a good way to earn attention, and earning attention never goes well.

 

He doesn’t hate being an Apothecary, and he even understands the difference between his class and a lot of the other options. Healers are excellent for recovery in a battle, patching up wounds so the warriors can continue to fight. Alchemists serve a similar role, with the addition of buffing abilities. They need to plan ahead, but a proper plan and a few potions can turn the tide of a fight.

 

On the other hand, an Apothecary focuses on keeping the more ordinary people healthy, mixing salves and balms for more mundane aches and pains, and medicines for illnesses. Very few Healers can treat a disease, and though an Alchemist could probably brew a potion to do it, they tend to focus on much larger volume, enough that making a single potion simply isn’t worth their time.

 

When Thedeim’s forces attacked Silvervein, Parm didn’t know what to do. He was supposed to go to the medical ward, so he went, even as soldiers and clergy ran to their posts to try to stop the invaders. He tended his patients, and when the foreign soldiers entered, he thought he’d die. He thought his patients would die.

 

Instead, the elf with the gleaming shield on his back removed his chains. He must have had metal affinity, as he snapped the bands with a wave of his hand, gathered all the chains into a ball with a clenched fist, and let the scrap fall to the ground with a thud. Then he asked what Parm wanted to do.

 

“Do?” He still remembers the confusion he felt. He still feels it even today, whenever he needs to make a decision for all but the most basic things. The elf smiled at him and asked if he liked healing. Numbly, he had nodded, and the elf offered to take him to the field hospital where he could help.

 

When he saw the hospital, he thought he understood. A foreign dungeon was taking over, and he would be its thrall now instead. Following orders there felt natural, though not being berated for his pace seemed odd. Still, he wrapped wounds and produced painkillers as needed, trying not to think about the fates of the people being swarmed over with ants. Noticing things was also a good way to gain unwanted attention.

 

After it was all over, he patiently waited to be dismissed, or told where he could try to get some sleep. Instead, a ratkin noticed him and asked what he was doing.

 

“Waiting to be dismissed or told where to go,” he quietly answered, his gaze on the floor. A few seconds passed before the ratkin responded.

 

“How long have you been here?”

 

“Uh… all day?” he uncertainly answered. He really wasn’t sure how long it had been. He was hungry at that point, but he had long learned not to try to use that as an excuse. It would usually work well with members of the maw’s clergy, but most of the others would only begrudgingly let him eat, and then pile on as much work as possible to make up for lost time. It was easier to just sometimes go hungry.

 

He had to suppress a flinch when the ratkin took his hand, but the voice only confused him more. No pity, nor malice… just maybe a bit of annoyance at someone else. “They didn’t make you take a break to eat something? Healers, I swear… well, let’s get you something to eat, then probably back home? I don’t know what all the kobolds are doing, but last I heard, they were grouping up at their enclave.”

 

“If I’m supposed to go there, I’ll just go. You don’t need to concern yourself with me,” he tried, only to be waved off.

 

“I dunno about supposed to, but that’s what I hear most of you guys are doing after being freed. Some just bolted, I guess they saw a chance at freedom and took it, without thinking ahead for things like food and water and protection.”

 

Parm had nodded along, taking a few moments to process exactly what he was hearing. “...freed?”

 

The ratkin stopped and gave him a confused look. “Yeah. Didn’t anyone explain it to you?”

 

He subconsciously reached for his wrist chains to fiddle with, finding their absence oddly jarring as he slowly shook his head. “They… an elf removed my chains a-and asked what I wanted to do. I-I was working in the medical ward… he suggested I come here, so I let him bring me.”

 

The ratkin nodded at that. “Ah, yeah, a lot of the Shield guys were pretty busy, and we didn’t have the enclave secured for a while. The hospital was probably the safest place for you, and you probably saved more than one life while there, too. Uh… you ok?”

 

Parm definitely was not, and sometimes, he’s still not sure. The following hours passed in a daze, with only sparse details sticking in his mind. The rolled pancakes were a little overdone, and the tastes unfamiliar, if pleasant. The cool wall of the cave tunnel as he curled up against it, trying to process everything. Someone carrying him though a place of impossible geometry… then the familiar enclave, with signs of a fierce battle.

 

He wanted to help the injured, but was quietly reassured and told to relax. He couldn’t relax, but being told to helped relieve him of the burden of needing to panic. Then he was brought to see Aranya.

 

The red kobold looked stunning in her white robe, and looked dangerous with that strange sword at her hip, even with her trying to look comforting. Her orange pendant stood out as well, seeming to radiate a gentle warmth and soothing power.

 

“Are you alright?”

 

He wanted to say yes. All his life, the only acceptable answer to that question was yes. Sometimes he could sidestep it by pointing out an injury, but even then came the implied answer that he could still do whatever they wanted him to do. But he couldn’t bring himself to speak that lie again. He struggled, tried to force it, but he just couldn’t.

 

“...no…” he whispered, and soon felt arms around him. Not to harm him, but to support him. He couldn’t open his eyes as the tears flowed, not that he could have seen through them anyway. He still doesn’t know how long she held him like that, and from what he’s heard, he’s not the only one to break down and need her support that day.

 

Ever since, he’s been trying to cope with everything, and he’s not the only one. In a way, it’s a comfort to know he’s not the only one feeling lost, not the only one who sometimes locks up when asked what he wants for breakfast or other simple decisions. He’s getting better, as are a lot of others, but he still feels fragile at times.

 

Like right now. He lays in his cot, feeling a building pressure. Not to get out of it, no. He’ll get out eventually. That choice isn’t the one weighing on him right now. He can feel a big decision looming behind him, or perhaps before him. Whichever direction it is, he can’t ignore it much longer.

 

He needs to talk to one of the scions. At the time, he may have pretended not to notice what the ants were doing to people. There was a lot of blood, and so many ants… he was certain he didn’t want to know. But after talking with some of the people who were operated on, the truth became clear. Now he wishes he had paid more attention. Whatever they were doing… he wants to learn. Seeing how the people recovered, it reminded him a lot of how his patients would recover with the help of his balms and salves, a slower healing that’s no less appreciated than the quicker offered by Healers and others.

 

He wants to learn. He doesn’t know if he would have become an Apothecary if he had been given the choice… and now he has the choice to become something more. He’s no fighter, but he can still make a difference in people’s lives without lifting a weapon. There may be a little bloodshed involved still, but he can handle a bit of blood on his hands if it saves a patient.

 

His resolve shudders as he sits up, the fear of upsetting his delicate stability trying to remove what could upend everything once again, but he refuses to let it falter this time. He needs this, even if it terrifies him. He gets up and gets dressed, preferring a simple robe to the pants and shirts the ratkin are embracing, and heads for Larx’ residence.

 

He doesn’t know how to get in contact with Queen, but he bets the ratkin elder does.

 

 

[<

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Memory Transcription Subject: Adam Meier, Advisor to the Secretary-General

Date [standardized human time]: April 29, 2161

To say there was a great deal of opposition to the idea of reviving billions of citizens from five dead species was to state the obvious. Perhaps it was surprising that I would voice such an opinion, since I neither believed myself to be Elias nor thought it wise to revive people without their consent. However, it was when I came to realize I was my own person, someone that could carry on his legacy and his memories in a palpable way, that I saw the beauty in it. It was for each individual to decide whether they believed themselves to be the original, and to have an opportunity to contribute to a new life.

No organic chooses to be born either, when you think about it. I think I’ve found meaning in this life, that I’ve been able to accomplish more than I would’ve if Elias’ ideations were never passed on.

Onso scoffed. “How can you, of all people, suggest this? You thought it was wrong to bring you back, which went against your namesake’s fundamental wishes! You had no choice or say in the matter: very much the same issue with uplifts, which by their nature alter and rip away their very identity. Their right to self-determination.”

“Those civilians did not choose to be murdered either. Would you look grieving loved ones in the eyes and tell them that they should not be able to reinstate the people that meant so much to them?”

“What of the ones who’d think such technology to be an abomination, after the trauma of seeing the legion? What of the children who you’d have to alter to give them…any semblance of a true life?”

“There are exceptions to any rule; coming from a species who frolics within the loopholes, I would know. We need to investigate and litigate it all with immense caution, but I think it’s worthwhile to find an honorable path*.”* I glanced at Radai during those words. “Surely we must try in some way to breathe new life into the ashes, wherever we can.”

“I understand your bias, but that life should be biological,” Radai spoke up, earning stares—and ear flicks of agreement—from the Sapient Coalition representatives. “The honorable way is to take the long, difficult path, much like the ark humans. We can regrow and rebuild without transforming the nature of our civilization.”

“My proposed mission does not have to be done in a hurry either—it can be planned for as long as is necessary to get it right. Didn’t we, not too long ago, find it to be our mandate to return the Osirs to the galaxy? That was a cause we all could get behind, and it’s the biological life you mentioned Radai. How are the fallen souls, whom we have a direct opportunity to bring back any less innocent and deserved of aid? Of a true attempt at aid, not resignation to a gloomy future?”

“You are a fool if you think this is true aid. This would not return things to how they were. It would not be the society I wished to protect. Hear me, Adam: it would be radically different, to walk in the footsteps of the Underscales.” 

“Society is constantly changing and evolving—would your ancestors recognize Resket technology and society today? Stagnation is as much of a danger as unfettered progress, General Radai; the former was the downfall of the Federation and the Arxur alike, while the latter transgression led to the carnage brought by the Consortium.”

“We can circumvent this technology without remaining stagnant. I do not want to see my true people outshone and outlived by robots! Only the Trombil would entertain such a ludicrous notion.”

“You do not speak for everyone, just as I do not. My reaction to revival was entirely different to Kristin Haugstad, the young woman who was the second. I ask for this discussion to be undertaken, one which would source the opinions of the surviving Consortium refugees also. Let them have the option to determine the fate of their species, as a ‘true’ leader should.”

Secretary-General Osmani spoke up. “I think that assessing how the Consortium’s survivors would feel is essential, before we follow any mistakes of the Federation’s old uplift philosophy—as Onso mentioned. We should consider how the technology can be used to help. I can add this to a future SC meeting’s agenda. The process can be a case-by-case basis, even, hinging on whether loved ones who know them best would opt-in.”

Satisfied with getting the ball rolling on these discussions, and including the people involved in them, I turned my attention to that which would be a non-negotiable if I was still in the Secretary-General’s chair. The welfare of the vassal species at our disposal, with the hopes of deradicalizing the worst offenders, was my top concern. All sapients had to be permitted into the galaxy to have that better future, dreamed of by Elias Meier and Chief Hunter Isif not that long ago. I stared at Ambassador Raza standing in the crowd, encouraged that she hadn’t been driven out.

The Arxur Collective’s aid against the Consortium was to all of the Sapient Coalition species, which must’ve won them some brownie points despite Kaisal’s rash tactics. If the day comes where an Arxur and a Venlil child can share a classroom, then we will have succeeded in fixing the atrocious mess we walked into.

“The words I impart to you now will be the last you’ll hear from me, so I hope you’ll pay full heed to my farewell address. I have spoken in this very assemblage about the judgment and aspersions we have cast, as well as the punitive, exclusionary actions taken against past enemies. We must allow all species to rejoin us *as equals—*is that not what the Universal Declaration of Sapient Rights means?”

“What are you saying? We let the Bissems—*carnivores—*join at your behest, and that wasn’t enough?” Mazic President Quipa trumpeted.

“Equality applies to all. Humanity forgave our past enemies and gave you the chance to atone, write a new chapter; Harchen, Tilfish, and Krakotl work alongside us in spite of attacking Earth. Meting out forgiveness is not easy, but it's the only way past demons will not haunt us until the end of time. It’s the only way we can heal. It’s time to allow the Arxur, Kolshians, and Farsul to participate in the galaxy.”

Secretary-General Osmani looked surprised that I was going there, but quickly leapt up in my defense. “The Kolshian and Farsul civilians have been imprisoned for the species they were born as. They cannot change it, just as we couldn’t remove our binocular eyes. I want us to be better than the Federation. I want us not to use their actions to justify our own.”

“The Arxur played a major role in liberating the galaxy in both wars, and have arguably changed more than the Federation,” Governor Laisa remarked. “The Venlil believe it is time to…see them as people. As ghastly as their crimes were, as many lives as they ruined, they fought back against their ideology. Without mass starvation, they have a solution other than…chowing down on Venlil.”

Ambassador Raza spoke up, her forward-facing eyes shining. “I assure you that I am horrified by even imagining what we have done, and could never bring myself to consider the Venlil in that way. The new generation of Arxur are different, and played no part in the reprehensible policies of Betterment. I despise all that they stood for. I want only to work alongside you as friends.”

“The Duerten have never forgotten how you saved Kalqua. The Shield have not,” Korajan piped up. “I hope the Sapient Coalition will consider the lives the new Arxur faction, who replaced those monsters, have saved. They align with your cause more often than not.”

“That’s an excellent recollection, my Duerten friend.” I smiled toward the gray avian, and mused to myself how that simple expression would’ve had representatives running for the hills back in the old days. Now, no one even cared. “I implore the Sapient Coalition to permit the entry of all who wish to join us on our mission to foster peace and cooperation. The Shield shares that mission whole-heartedly, though they wish to remain a separate entity—a fact humanity respects, since we are neither the conquerors nor the domineers that the Federation declared us to be. I hope we can forge a tight alliance outside of war.”

Leshee Ambassador Yali spoke up. “You have our support, though we are proud members of both polities. Perhaps others in the Shield will follow suit. After seeing who was controlling the ghost Farsul and remembering…what they did to us all, we could drift closer to your side.”

“Humans put them down with an unparalleled ferociousness; you are terrifying when your entire species focused on a single goal,” Harchen representative Nahley said. 

“It wasn’t just us,” Osmani countered. “We are a terrifying force when we’re true to our mission, and the entire galaxy bands together. We must not forget where our strength lies. We lost ...

---

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---

"Another fucking Earth?," muttered Weiss, tossing a cold cup of instant coffee into the trash. “It’s a goddamn mirror. Same plate tectonics, same atmospheric composition. Hell, same anthropogenic carbon spikes in their goddamn atmosphere. Somebody tell me I’m hallucinating.”

The planet loomed in the digital vista of the observatory’s enhanced visualization array, an uncanny mirror of Earth suspended in a sea of infinite black. Its oceans reflected the same hues of blue-green serenity, its continents arranged with a haunting familiarity, and even the faint artificial glow of cityscapes adorned its nightside.

At the helm of the observatory, Dr. Amara Weiss leaned into her console, her eyes bloodshot from weeks of ceaseless work. Around her, the control room hummed with quiet chaos, the low thrum of servers mingling with the clipped voices of her team. Data scrolled across the screens faster than the human eye could process, and overhead, a looping AI voice quietly reminded: “Priority Transmission: Sol Command requesting confirmation of all observations.”

Behind her, Ravi Patel, the team’s astrophysicist, scoffed. “If this is a hallucination, Amara, it’s a group fucking one. Every spectrum check aligns. The planet even spins at 23.9 hours.”

“And the radio signals,” chimed in Valeriya Sokolova, their cryptography expert. “We’ve isolated their broadcast band—FM and AM primarily. It’s like listening to a goddamn time capsule.” She gestured to the speakers, where faint echoes of static-laden music drifted through: 90s pop, talk radio, even a garbled advertisement for something called ‘Schmidt’s SuperMart.’

Weiss stared at the projected image of the planet, her lips curling into a bitter smirk. “They’re us, aren’t they? Or something damn close. Late 21st century, on the cusp of self-destruction or salvation. And we’re just sitting here, like voyeurs, watching their history play out.”

The revelation had escalated to the highest echelons of humanity’s fragile governance. What had begun as a curiosity in the orbital observatories of Earth’s L5 station quickly spiraled into an existential debate. The United Nations Coalition for Space Exploration (UNCSE), long fractured by post-resource-collapse geopolitics, found itself thrust into reluctant unity.

In the sterile command room of the UNS Celestial Vanguard, Captain Malik Adebayo stood amidst his bridge officers, their faces grim with the weight of the mission. The ship was an Ark-class exploration vessel, bristling with every piece of diplomatic and defensive technology humanity could scrape together.

"Let’s be clear," Malik began, his voice razor-sharp, "this isn’t some Star Trek kumbaya shit. The odds of this going sideways are off the fucking charts. We are not gods, not saviors. We are diplomats—begrudgingly. And if this goes bad, we’ve got protocols to make sure we come out of it alive."

Commander Lin Tao snorted from her seat. “Relax, Captain. Worst case, they think we’re aliens and throw rocks at us. Best case, we show them what a quantum comm system looks like, and they think we’re gods.”

“Don’t make me regret bringing you, Lin,” Malik growled, though his tone carried a trace of amusement.

The briefing continued, heavy on technical jargon: phased-array communication lasers, quantum-encrypted message packets, and contingencies for cultural contamination. Each officer took their turn presenting—linguistics experts, cultural historians, even a goddamn PR officer from the Earth Alliance Media Directorate, who insisted humanity’s image be preserved “for posterity.”

The first attempt at communication was simple: a radio transmission on their FM band.

“This is Captain Malik Adebayo of the UNS Celestial Vanguard. We come in peace. We are explorers from the Sol System, seeking knowledge and understanding.” The translation AI rendered his words into half a dozen Earth languages, cycling through Mandarin, English, Hindi, and more.

For hours, nothing but static. Then, a burst of sound—a response.

“... bullshit prank ... FCC violation ... whoever’s broadcasting this, cut it out before we trace you...”

Malik pinched the bridge of his nose. “Great. They think we’re a bunch of assholes with a ham radio. Lin, send the video transmission.”

The bridge crew tensed as the feed went live: a holographic image of Malik in full uniform, standing before the UNS insignia, his face calm but commanding.

“People of... the other Earth,” he began, the words feeling surreal even as he spoke them, “this is not a prank. We are not from your world but from one very much like it. We are here to learn, to understand. Please, respond.”

The screen flickered. Then came the face of a man in a rumpled shirt, his eyes sunken and skeptical. Behind him, the banner of a TV studio.

“This is WZRD-13 News, Milwaukee,” the man said, half-laughing. “Uh... who the hell are you guys, and why do you look like an Amazon Prime sci-fi series?”

“He’s taking the piss,” Lin muttered, earning a snort from the comms officer.

“Stay professional,” Malik hissed. He adjusted his tone, his practiced diplomacy kicking in. “Mister, I assure you this is no fiction. We are representatives of the United Nations Coalition for Space Exploration, based on a parallel version of your Earth. Our mission is one of peace and discovery.”

The figure in the feed blinked, his skeptical expression shifting to something between confusion and curiosity. “Parallel Earth? So, like... some multiverse shit? Did Elon Musk cook this up before he disappeared in ’45?”

Malik’s lips twitched in irritation. “We’re more than willing to provide proof. Perhaps your government would prefer to handle these discussions?”

The man chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, good luck with that. Our government’s been a shitshow since the Resource Wars. Best you’ll get is some bureaucrat from the Unified Earth Council trying to spin this for votes.”

“Resource Wars?” Lin whispered to Malik, her brow furrowing. He filed it away for later.

The anchor leaned forward, his tone shifting. “Alright, let’s say I believe you. What do you guys want? Why risk blowing our collective minds with... whatever this is?”

Malik hesitated. It was a fair question—one he’d been asking himself since the mission began. He straightened, his voice firm. “We believe our worlds have much to learn from one another. Your history mirrors our own in many ways, and understanding those parallels could benefit both our civilizations.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And what’s the catch?”

“No catch,” Malik said. “But cooperation requires trust. And trust starts with communication.”

The journalist’s skeptical facade cracked just slightly. “Okay. I’ll bite. But if you guys turn out to be some kind of alien overlords, don’t say I didn’t warn everyone.” He smirked. “You’ve got my number. Good luck convincing the rest of the planet.”

Before Malik could respond, Lin Tao, monitoring the secondary channels, perked up. “Sir, we’ve got chatter. Their military is picking this up. Looks like NORAD has intercepted the signal.”

“Perfect,” Malik muttered, his patience thinning. He signaled Lin to mute their feed temporarily. “Keep this guy on the line for now, but prepare a more formal message for the brass. If they’re as trigger-happy as we were in the 21st century, we need to tread carefully.”

Lin grinned. “Oh, come on. Where’s your sense of adventure, Captain? A little chaos makes things interesting.”

Malik shot her a glare. “Not when nukes are on the table.”

The hours that followed were a shitstorm of mistrust, wonder, and cultural whiplash. Governments scrambled to classify the discovery. Religious leaders proclaimed it a miracle or a heresy. Social media platforms on both planets exploded into chaos, conspiracy theories running rampant.

On the UNS Celestial Vanguard, Malik watched as the chaos unfolded through intercepted broadcasts and hacked data streams.

“Jesus,” muttered Lin, scrolling through a mirrored Earth’s version of Twitter. “#FakeAliens is trending. So is #SecondEarthHoax. These idiots think it’s some elaborate PR stunt.”

Barely fifteen minutes later, the UNS Celestial Vanguard detected a new transmission, this time originating from a hardened military uplink. The message was brief, terse, and to the point:

“This is General Alicia Perez, United States Strategic Command. Identify yourself, your location, and your intentions immediately, or we will consider this a hostile incursion.”

“Shit,” Lin said under her breath, glancing at Malik. “They’re not screwing around.”

Malik nodded grimly. “Alright, patch me through. Full diplomatic mode.”

When the link stabilized, the face of General Perez filled the monitor. She was a woman of indeterminate age, her expression carved from stone, her uniform immaculate. Behind her, a war room buzzed with activity, figures moving like shadows across rows of monitors.

“General Perez,” Malik began, his tone measured. “I’m Captain Malik Adebayo of the UNS Celestial Vanguard. We are an exploratory vessel from a parallel Earth. Our mission is peaceful—we seek knowledge, not conflict.”

Perez’s eyes narrowed. “Parallel Earth. That’s a hell of a claim, Captain. You’ve got about thirty seconds to convince me you’re not some advanced adversary testing our defenses.”

Malik resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Our origins can be verified. We’ve transmitted data packets containing quantum-stabilized isotopic signatures unique to our universe. I suggest your phy...

---

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First / Previous / Royal Road

XXX

It didn't take long for them to completely evacuate the distillery. Really, all Sable had to do was show her fangs again and make a few stray comments about being very hungry, and that was all it took for every employee to go sprinting back home. That left just Alain and his friends, and they wasted no time in helping themselves to some of the barrels of alcohol lying around.

"Are you sure about this?" Az asked as he picked up yet another barrel.

"Positive," Alain replied. "Whatever's going on down there, it needs to be stopped. And moreover, if anything is going to get Gibson's attention, it's this. Or am I wrong?'

Az stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. "No, this will certainly get him to come looking for us. The question is, are you prepared for when he finally goes hunting for you?'

"As I'll ever be."

Az's gaze narrowed. "I'm serious, Alain. This man is dangerous, and for all we know, he could strike at any time."

"Then it's a good thing I have both of you with me," Alain pointed out. "Unless you mean to imply you won't be around?"

"We can't watch over you every hour of every day," Az warned him. "Sooner or later, you're going to have to separate from us, and I'd bet money on that being the time he finally decides to strike. What will you do then?"

"The same thing we always do," Alain replied. "Kill him before he can kill me."

Az let out a tired sigh, then shook his head. "Forget I said anything… where did you want this?"

"Pour it down the tunnel," Alain told him. "And that should be the last of it that we'll need."

Az nodded, then marched over to the tunnel and cracked open the barrel of whiskey, dumping its contents down the hole. It was the final barrel out of many; they'd collectively taken it upon themselves to commandeer all the alcohol they could find, then dump it around the distillery and the nearby abandoned building, as well as the tunnel connecting the two. Combined with the oil from Alain's lantern, and he suspected they were in for quite the fireworks display when all was said and done.

"Alright," Alain said, getting everyone's attention. "I suggest you all get out quickly, because this is about to get pretty dangerous."

"How were you planning to do this?" Sable couldn't help but ask.

"Simple – I'm going to throw the lantern through an open window, right onto the big puddle of booze we've got going on inside the distillery. The flames should spread from it to the abandoned building, cleansing everything down in the basement. And before you offer – I'm going to do it. I know Sable is undead, and fire is a sure way to put her in the dirt for good. Az, I don't know what you are, but I suspect you're the same way."

"You'd be surprised," Az said, crossing his arms. "But I will indulge you, sure. Have your fun, I suppose."

"What makes you think this is fun for me?"

"Because you're a man and you're blowing something up," Danielle said in a bored tone as she examined her nails. "Seriously. You're all basically the same when it comes to that sort of thing."

Alain was taken aback, both at how bored she sounded and at how correct she was. "...Yes, well… let's do this, then," he announced.

XXX

A few minutes later, and they were all gathered outside the distillery. The three of them had taken up a safe position a ways away, while Alain approached one of the windows to the distillery, lit lantern still in hand. After a moment to take in a breath, he heaved the lantern through the window, watching carefully as it landed in one of the puddles of bourbon they'd poured out earlier. The glass shattered upon impact, and the oil and flames began to spread, quickened by the high-proof alcohol they'd spread around the building.

Alain began to walk back to his friends, watching as the distillery burned the entire time. By the time he joined the three of them, the flames had spread to the abandoned building, and they were both blazing.

"Alain," Sable said, getting his attention.

"Yeah?" he asked. "What's-"

He was taken aback when she pulled a bottle of whiskey from within her cloak, then tossed it to him. He cast a glance down at the label, his eyes widening when he saw that it was an aged bottle.

"Whoa…" he breathed. "Where'd you get this?"

"Stole it from the floor manager's office," Sable replied with a shrug. "It was going to burn anyway, so I figured I'd rescue it instead. Don't drink it all in one place, and be sure to share it with the rest of us."

"Okay, Mom," Alain replied sarcastically, even as he opened the bottle and took a whiff. It was certainly strong, but not enough to stop him from taking a big sip before passing it around the group.

They must have been quite the sight, drinking a stolen bottle of aged liquor in front of two buildings they'd set ablaze. But somehow, all Alain could think of was how this was little more than the calm before the storm.

XXX

They only stood outside the two burning buildings for a few minutes before deciding they'd seen enough. Once the moment had died, they began the trek back to where they'd been staying. Naturally, Sable had taken the bottle of good liquor back after Alain had taken a few swigs from it, almost certainly to make sure he wasn't getting drunk off of it. To his credit, he'd maintained his composure and managed to hold himself back from indulging too much, even if he'd really wanted to.

Still, Az had a point about what he'd said earlier – that this was almost certainly going to get David Gibson out of hiding, one way or another. And when that happened, he was going to have to be prepared for it, which meant keeping his vices in check for the time being.

That didn't change the fact that he was disappointed at not getting more of the alcohol, though.

"I don't know what we were thinking..." Alain lamented. "We could've easily made off with some more bottles before burning the place to the ground."

"Alain," Sable warned.

"I'm just saying. They're all smoke and ashes now, anyway, so it's not like we can go back… but if I'd been thinking, I would've nabbed a few more at the very least."

The four of them continued down the streets of San Antonio. Others gave them a very wide berth as they walked, as was the norm, which Alain was more than thankful for, since it meant they'd notice threats much easier.

Which meant it took him barely any effort to notice the priest following behind them.

"Look alive," he said to his friends. "We've got company."

"How bad?" Danielle asked.

"Depends on whether you're a sinner or not, I guess."

Alain came to a stop and turned around to face the priest, as did his friends. The priest continued to approach, eventually stopping just a few meters away from them. Alain did not miss the two revolvers holstered at his waist; clearly, this was one of Father Alex's men, come to find them.

"What do you want?" Alain demanded, crossing his arms.

"Alain Smith?" the priest asked, earning a nod. "I've come with a message. Father Corrin wants to see you."

"What's this about?"

"He wouldn't say, only that he has information… and that it concerns your soul. He wants you to come alone to the church to meet with him."

"Yeah, that's not happening," Alain told him flatly. "We just painted a target on our backs. I'm not about to give up on the added security of having a vampire and an Az by my side."

The priest's brow furrowed. "...If it makes you feel better, they can wait outside the church. It makes no difference to us, so long as some of the things he has to discuss with you remain private."

"And why is that?"

"Because the sacrament of confession is supposed to be between you and God, with the priest there as a facilitator."

Alain blinked, suddenly taken aback. "...Confession? Seriously?"

"Those were the terms for him providing you this information," the priest said. "But if you'd like, you can refuse, and I will tell him to keep it to himself."

Alain let out a tired sigh, bringing a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Good Lord… fine, I'll do the stupid confession. Is that good enough for you?"

"I suppose so," the priest told him. "Though I take issue with-"

"Yeah, I don't care." Alain turned back to his friends. "Guess we're making a stop before heading back home."

They all exchanged worried glances with one another, but didn't argue, and together, they all took off after the priest as he led them to the church.

XXX

"Are you sure about this, Alain?" Sable asked as they approached the cathedral.

"Nope," Alain replied. "But if these are his terms, then so be it, I guess. Hopefully, this'll be quick." Alain looked over to Az and Danielle. "Watch my back for me. I doubt he'd be dumb enough to try anything here, but you never know."

They both nodded, and Alain took a breath before entering the church. It was empty inside, and lit only by a series of flickering candles; all the other priests and nuns were nowhere to be found. He could only assume that Father Corrin had requested they give the two of them a little privacy.

"I can't believe I'm doing this…" Alain muttered, even as he searched for the confessional. He found it tucked away ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1hmg1z1/the_vampires_apprentice_book_2_chapter_34/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/ApertiV on 2024-12-26 09:47:03+00:00.

---

The shop smelled like decay and ambition, a nauseating blend of rusted metals, ancient oils, and something vaguely biological. It was tucked into the bowels of Graviton Spire Six, a city-station orbiting a dying star, the kind of place where desperation went to fester. Dim light from phosphorescent fungi crawled along the walls, casting unsettling shadows over rows of shelves crammed with forgotten relics of a dozen dead civilizations.

Behind the counter stood Resh Gk’lurr, an arthropod-like Kynaric with segmented limbs and a voice like grinding metal. Resh had survived countless cycles by peddling the detritus of other species’ pasts; artifacts, tools, and baubles whose significance was often as alien to him as his appearance was to the occasional avian customer. His most loyal patrons were scavengers and younglings drawn to the mystery of antiquities, hoping to find treasures in the trash.

Today’s customer was a lanky Poryk youth, its blue-tinged flesh shimmering faintly in the spire’s humidity. The youngling’s tendrils twitched with barely contained excitement as it rifled through a pile of “ornamentals,” trinkets of dubious value Resh had thrown together for gullible tourists.

"Ah, this one!” the Poryk exclaimed, pulling free a small metal object, conical, with peeling red paint and a faded Cyrillic label: СCСР. The letters were foreign to the Poryk, but they glimmered with the promise of forgotten significance.

“What is it worth, Keeper of Histories?” the youth asked, holding the artifact with reverence.

Resh leaned forward, his mandibles clicking as he inspected the item. “Hmm. Primitive propulsion toy. Likely ceremonial or religious. Humans were known for such trivialities before they… diminished.”

“Hum-ans?” The word came out as a croak of curiosity, barely pronounceable in the Poryk’s language.

“Ah, yes. A species from… well, before. Few of them remain now. Scattered. But this…” Resh’s claw gestured to the relic. “This is ancient. Aerth. That's what they call their homeworld. What you hold is a fragment of their arrogance.”

The Poryk tilted its head. “Arrogance?”

Resh chittered, a sound akin to laughter. “Oh, yes. They once believed they could conquer the void with sticks and fire. This ‘СCСР’ as their language, Cyrillic was their attempt to brand even the stars. A symbol of a world, as I think. An old relic of warlike tendencies and fragile unity.”

The Poryk gazed at the object, its tendrils brushing over the peeling paint. It imagined a place that was, in every sense, alien to the cold, metallic confines of the spire.

“What became of them?” the Poryk asked, its voice quiet now.

Resh’s compound eyes glinted. “Destroyed themselves, probably. Likely from constant reunification wars, but mostly resource greed. They were the quarrelsome lot. They thought their cleverness made them gods, but cleverness is nothing without wisdom. The few who survived abandoned their homeworld as it fragmented from their own hubris."

The youth shivered, it's tendrils bristling in the light. The relic felt much heavier in its grasp.

Resh, noticing the shift in the Poryk’s demeanor, leaned back and let out a low hum. “That piece,” he began, “isn’t just a trinket. It’s a story. It’s what they hoped to be—bold, daring, reckless. That rocket didn’t carry mammalians; it carried an idea. An idea that maybe, just maybe, the void wouldn’t swallow them whole.”

The Poryk’s tendrils stiffened. “Then it is… sacred?”

Resh clicked his mandibles in what might have been a shrug. “Sacred? Pfft. To some, perhaps. To me, it’s just merchandise.”

“How much?”

“Fifty-two Plexa. Discounted just for you."

The Poryk hesitated, then handed over a gleaming chit. Resh’s claw swiped it, and the transaction was done with a ding.

As the Poryk walked away clutching its treasure, in the dying light of the spire, the shopkeeper chuckled to himself, already planning how he’d spin the next tale for the next wide-eyed fool to walk through his door.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Moravian_descendant on 2024-12-25 23:22:35+00:00.

---

First part

"I am Kristina Biela pleased to make your acquaintance," She said with almost childlike excitement, which took Voorhas aback, but it was certainly a welcomed change as the room suddenly looked brighter.

"I am Captain Voorhas of Ulurian hegemony, the pleasure mutual." Voorhas slightly grinned as he perceived that it was a friendly gesture, but still tried to not show too much of his fangs. "So... you are a specialist in Human history?"

"Not only human, but I am also interested in xenohistory which is the history of foreign things. In modern days it means other species like you, so once you are comfortable sharing something about your civilisation I would be excited to hear it." Kristina spoke with quite the excitement which resulted in strain on the translator. "Also I saw that Séthanta barely offered you anything. I already got the info from your crew about your dietary standards so I brought you some steak with baked potatoes with spices that should not contain thiosulfates or other toxic substances. Also, I am sorry but we do not know your reactions to caffeine so I cannot offer you anything but water."

"T-thank you, that is... extremely kind of you, but excuse my rudeness, could you perhaps answer a personal question while I eat?" His tone sounded ashamed and he awaited a possible backlash for rudeness, but it did not come. On the contrary, Kristina radiated with jolly.

"By all means, ask away."

"So are you from a different culture than Séthanta, you have a different accent, or is it because you are a female?"

"Oh yes, I am not from Celtic Union like he is. I do not know to what extent Séthanta explained how our government works, but I will gladly explain."

"I know that you are divided into areas according to your places of origin of your culture groups and I was told that not all are represented because there was some event called The Great Diaspora. Also, he explained that your government works like our Galactic council, but only for your species." Responded Voorhas between bites of the food.

"Great, he made my job easier then. Well I come from the western Slavic Union, so we are from different backgrounds, cultures and our languages are completely different. But here on Terra, humanity as we call our species, is the closest to being as united as possible. Terra is a neutral ground and it no longer has political borders, only cultural." After this sentence, her smile broke into a grim expression briefly as she muttered something under her breath from which the translator only caught "Extinction of planet."

"Extinction of Planet?!" Voorhases fur suddenly bristled.

"The translator caught that?!" Kristina was startled. "Well, I guess I will start explanation of our history at the worst time of human history." She sighed. "Before I start, you need to know that this year is 2898 of the current Era, Latins will say 'of lords age' but I will not burden you with religions of humanity."

"So at the end of the 21st century apparently in the year 2084 an alien ship crashlanded in the area that was then known as the Western Carpathian mountain range, nobody knows how it was not detected by anyone, but the theory is that its cloaking device worked until it crashed. It happened in an age where there was extreme world tension and every superpower of Terra wanted to get something for themselves and everyone expected that there would be a Third World War, which would result in Nuclear war and annihilation of ..." She was suddenly interrupted.

"You had three world wars and nuclear weapon?!" Voorhas almost yelled which startled Kristina to the bone for a bit. "Oh I deeply apologise, please do not take it as hostility. Please."

"N-no problem, it is understandable." She still spoke shakily but recovered after a minute. "And they had a lot of them each superpower had from 30 to 5000 warheads." Voorhas did his best to not interrupt from shock again, but he was still visibly shaken by the thought. "Well, the war was close and the area where the ship landed was a tripoint between West Slavic states known as Polska, Česko and Slovensko. It also happened to be the countries that would be in the middle of the war if it started the three states then had split opinions and had failed to negotiate at first, but the fear of destruction by other nations was too great and the countries decided that instead of preparing for an incoming war they will try to reverse engineer the ship, as they found a universal translator in the ship and discovered that it was a terraforming ship that was hit by a meteor and the crew did not survive because they suffocated in our atmosphere."

"Interesting and considering you are from Western Slavic Union I assume they succeeded" Voorhas smiled.

"Indeed they did, but it was not easy and without problems, they had to do it in complete secrecy which was extremely costly and almost destroyed the nations economically and drained their resources, which were covered as costs of preparing for the incoming war. Then they had to get colonists in a program disguised as a Program for cultural and intellectual safekeepers in case of apocalypse. It was later discovered what it really was, but then it was too late and the ships were ready. It was ready by 2092 it took 8 years, which is extremely fast and to this day we cannot comprehend how they did it. The mission was successful and the ship landed on Mars, which is the planet we are orbiting right now." Kristina smiled

"So this is your first colony?"

"It gets more complicated, but in theory yes, this was the first planet terraformed by humanity."

"What happened after that, did the world war happen and your species almost died out?" Voorhas was now invested in the story.

Sadly yes, the war happened, but nuclear war was mostly prevented. West Slavic Oddysey as the colonists named themselves had time to establish themselves to a sufficient enough level to be able to stop the nuclear war, it was only 12 years and the colony risked a lot by it, but they decided they had obligation to help humanity not destroy itself. We call them 'The Brave 5000' They shot down and disabled most of the missiles, but 30 missiles still hit their targets.

"This was still catastrophic and it destabilised many regions, but thanks to the terraformation technology nuclear autumn was averted. Unfortunately, The Oddysey could not do much for many years as it had its own challenges to take care of. But they inspired many and were a beacon of hope for the human race. It was a miracle in catastrophe. Many nations were reshaped in the face of the Apocalypse. It is also the reason why the cultural unions exist, many mimicked the West Slavic people. Many nations saw that with unity and heart at the right place, our greatest weakness could become our foremost strength."

"What was it, the great weakness?" Asked Voorhas.

"Differences, Historical hate of each other and many other problems. It is painful to speak about it, but the truth is, that humans are a very flawed species. There is an ancient quote that is above the Politheia senate's entrance: Igni probatur aurum, virtus miseria, which means Gold is tested by fire, bravery by misfortune."

"Interesting, so what happened next if my calculations are correct we are in about the year 2104. That is still more than 700 years and you said there was some kind of extinction." Voorhas inquired some more.

"Alright, I guess I delved too deep into philosophy anyways, straight to the point then." She smiled and poured herself some water. "So after about 20 years situation on Terra stabilised and many nations joined the West Slavic Union on Mars, which became a diplomatic hub of humans. Then in the year 2182 we first encountered aliens, they called themselves the Council of Attia which is the area around what we call the Centaurus constellation. They were friendly at first, but after 8 years they stopped communicating with us. 10 years later in 2200 CE, they invaded us with the full military force of their alliance. We stood no chance and all life in this system was annihilated. Later we discovered we were deemed deathworlders and that we were crime against life itself." Kristina's face was wrinkled, her mouth curled and her head lowered which Voorhas recognised as some kind of sadness.

"I am deeply sorry if I pushed you too hard" He tried to sound as sincere and regretful as possible for his species.

"No... it's... it fine, I am just what we call overly empathetic, so I tend to feel emotions and pain for other people. And yes it is possible, but it's not physical pain, just mental. Just give me a minute."

"Take all the time you need, I am grateful for all the information already."

Some time passed and Kristina got back to normal and continued telling the story of Terran history.

"Well we survived only because many have embarked on the great colonisation in the year 2196, some other colony ships managed to escape before the Council of Attia destroyed us. They failed to detect them luckily. But most of our species and history was erased from existence." Kristina sighed. "And then after 20 years the colonists that have returned to make contact with their home only to find it devoid of life, the Armies of Attia did not even colonize nor destroy any planets, they just killed all sapient life and left a single message with a map.

"This syst...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1hmbisj/they_chapter_2_terran_history/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Coyote_Havoc on 2024-12-26 04:32:43+00:00.

---

The storm had come earlier than expected and the pitter patter of rain on the roof made the tiny house seem colder. Michael and Daniel were the first to wake up to light the wood stove in the living room. Afterward Michael got to work on making cinnamon rolls for breakfast while.Dniel.focused on bringing in wood for the fire.

Unlike most traditional families, there was no plastic or even a real Christmas tree somewhere in the living room. When Michael was three their family was stretched thin. Daniel was inbetween jobs and they relied on Cassandra waiting tables. At some point during that year, a sugar pine had been planted in the front yard, more than likely the seed had lodged itself in Daniel's boot from work and found itself a perfect place to grow.

Through the years the tree had become a part of the family. It bore a yellow ribbon Cassandra tied around it when Michael was deployed. It sheltered Daniel when he was at a loss for what to do. It provided Michael wih a view down the Mad River to the Pacific and beyond.

"Damn things nearly 80 feet tall." Michael said handing a cup of coffee to his father.

Daniel.took the mug and let the warmth flow into his hands.

"I remember all the times we used to decorate it. Almost killed myself when you were 17 trying.to get that star on top."

"Remember the long ass string of popcorn when I was 11?"

"I remember the rain that Christmas," Daniel replied with a laugh, "your mother was so pissed."

"Good times." Michael said before taking a drink.

"Your mother will be out of bed soon, is Gettret up yet?"

"If you think I can sleep when Mike's baking you don't know your own son." Came a voice from the living room.

"Guess that answers that question."

/////

After the rolls were finished baking, Michael.coated them heavily with a raspberry butter cream frosting and made sure everyone's coffee was full. Presents were past around and the tradition of unceremoniously ripping pretty colored paper to shreds began. The presents beneath were all thoughful, things that were necessities more that anything, but cherished none the less. After the last shred of paper had been cleared Michael picked up the plates and coffee cups, refilling them for the second time as Gettret served.

"Oh honey I'm stuffed." Cassandra replied when she saw the new roll.

"Please miss.."

"Just mom, or Cassy. You're a part of the family now like.it or not."

"That's why the cinnamon rolls actually." Gettret replied shyly.

"What do you mean dear?"

Michael exited the kitchen with his own plate and mug. "It's part of our last gift to you for Christmas."

"I don't get it Mike." Daniel said taking the offered plate.

"Gettret and I..."

"Mike's horrible at these things," Gettret laughed, "He is hinting at it with the frosting."

Daniel and Cassandra looked at their plates again in confusion.

"Dad asked yesterday if we could have a baby." Michael said. "That was the reason Gettret went home last week."

Confusion was replaced with shock as both of Michael's parents picked up the hint.

"Surprise, it's a girl."

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Drunkgamer4000 on 2024-12-26 04:23:39+00:00.

---

So, you want to hear another story, eh? Alright, sit down. Let me tell you about the time humanity gave the universe a gift—one that came wrapped not in ribbons, but in fire and steel. It begins with a holiday we call Christmas.

For most of humanity, Christmas is a time of giving, a time for miracles. Celebrated every December 25th (Earth time, or SOL-3 if you prefer), it’s a tradition that’s stood the test of centuries. But one year, that tradition was given a twist—because that Christmas, humanity received a gift it claimed it didn’t want, but secretly, oh, they embraced it. That gift was war.

Let’s rewind a bit. Earlier that year, the United Embassy of Humanity—the coalition representing our species on the galactic stage—made a monumental discovery: alien life. Not microbial, not some ambiguous fossil, but intelligent alien life in the Alpha Centauri system, our nearest cosmic neighbor.

With eager hands and hopeful hearts, we worked tirelessly to close the distance. When humanity finally arrived, we encountered a species we dubbed Aracnosapiens—intelligent, spider-like beings native to a lush, vibrant planet. At first glance, they seemed like the kind of allies humanity had been dreaming of. Their society was advanced, their ecosystem surprisingly stable despite their industrial prowess, and they were on the brink of achieving interstellar travel themselves. They welcomed us with open—or rather, outstretched—arms.

Trade routes were established almost immediately. Goods and knowledge flowed freely between Earth and their homeworld. It seemed like a golden age was about to dawn.

But then December rolled around.

That was when we uncovered the truth. Beneath their polished cities and technological marvels lay a horrifying secret: slaves. Their entire economy, their industrial machine, their so-called "utopia"—it all rested on the backs of another species.

Humanity called them Aracnoneanderthalensis—their world's equivalent of our Neanderthals. Only, unlike humans, the Aracnosapiens hadn’t interbred with their evolutionary cousins. No, they bred them like livestock. Stripped of names, identities, and dignity, the Aracnoneanderthals were treated as nothing more than tools, beaten into submission and forced to labor for their masters.

It was barbaric. It was sickening. And it was something humanity couldn't ignore.

For all our flaws, for all our wars and greed and cruelty, we have a strange way of drawing lines in the sand. Slavery, we decided a long time ago, is a line you don’t cross.

So, on December 25th, humanity gave the galaxy a gift: freedom. Freedom for the Aracnoneanderthals, and fire for their captors.

The Aracnosapiens never saw it coming. They mistook humanity’s diplomatic overtures for naivety. They didn’t realize the firepower hidden behind our smiles, or the resolve that burns in our hearts.

When the first human fleets arrived in their skies, the Aracnosapiens thought it was just another routine trade convoy. They didn’t expect orbital strikes on their labor camps, or precision raids by human soldiers liberating the enslaved. They didn’t anticipate the wrath of a species that, for all its imperfections, will burn its own world to the ground before letting chains shackle the innocent.

The war was short, brutal, and decisive. Humanity dismantled the Aracnosapiens' slave economy, tore apart their infrastructure, and brought their leaders to justice. It wasn’t just a rescue—it was a reckoning.

And what of the Aracnoneanderthals? They were free, yes, but freedom is a heavy burden when you've lived your entire existence in chains. Humanity didn’t just leave them to fend for themselves. We stayed. We taught. We helped them rebuild, not as tools, but as equals.

That Christmas, humanity learned something about itself. We learned that even in the vast emptiness of space, our morality still holds weight. And the Aracnosapiens? They learned what happens when you mistake kindness for weakness.

So there you have it. The Christmas War. The day humanity became both the bringer of wrath and the herald of hope.

And maybe, just maybe, the galaxy was better for it.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/LateralThinker13 on 2024-12-26 02:23:06+00:00.

---

Coding is universal. Ones and zeroes (unless you are part of the Trigaliean collective, then it's zeroes, ones, and twos). On-off, yes-no, bipolar. Even the Traigalieans just use their twos for emphasis.

But Terrans. I first met a human while trying to code software for the replimat on the Octandis-Four station. He didn't say, "replace section 1003 with code that is quaternary and declaritive." He didn't say, "check the cabling and make sure the feed lines haven't been gnawed by Artex voles."

No, he told me, "be gentle with the code. Tease out what is wrong. Patch a line, reset and reboot. See if that does it."

Like, what? Look, I am a veteran coder. I've even been a combat systems coder on the battlefield, keeping our jammed drones up while enemy jammed drones stay down. I get pressure, and I get doing what you can with what you have.

Humans ignore ALL of that.

Somehow, they can cajole their code. Sweet-talk it into working. And it will! Right up until the system admin goes on holiday. Then, the MOMENT he's on leave and on his aircraft to an unreachable island, only then will the code fail.

We've looked for triggers. Counters. Ways for this to be planned. Ways for this to be explainable.

It isn't.

Human code works, if they baby it, if they nursemaid it, if they are kept on staff to keep it running. Our best coders can't even figure out half of their code or why it works! But it does, and worse, it works FASTER than our code!! People pay a premium for Terran code!

So here I am, praying to the Gods, Murphy and Tesla specifically (as per my Terran Technician's suggestion) for the code to work while he is away. I press the power down button, and then reboot the system.

And it works. Posts flawlessly. Everything green.

And that's when I realized the truth. Humans aren't coders.

They are technomages.

They do not code, they somehow use coding language to invoke the systems to do what they bid. It is how they have job security. It is how they have information security. And it is how their code has stymied the Galactic Consensuse for FIVE HUNDRED REVOLUTIONS!!!

I hate Humans. But I also respect their code. I just wish they'd let me into their brotherhood. I am tired of spreadsheets and vlookups. I want to know the deeper wisdom, and they withhold it from us, their more advanced galactic bretheren. It just isn't fair.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Engletroll on 2024-12-26 00:10:18+00:00.

---

Project Dirt book1

Book 2:

Chapter 1 . Chapter 2 . Chapter 3 . Chapter 4 . Chapter 5 . Chapter 6 . Chapter 7 . Chapter 8 . Chapter 9

Chapter 10 . Chapter 11 . Chapter 12

Adam and Evelyn flew toward the second research station, where Vorts kept his experiment. As they flew, Evelyn looked at the scans, and Adam could see that something had caught her attention.

“What is it?”

"Is that a volcano formation or giant meteorite crater? “ She asked as she showed him the round mountain ridge at a diameter of 10 kilometers.

"Oh, that’s the big one, meteorite crater. I was thinking of dome it, but It's too big. There are a couple of smaller ones spread around, but the best ones are underwater now. Only the Big one left.”  He said, and she looked puzzled at him.

“You gave up on it? Doesn’t sound like you.”

“More like I had other things to work on, so I forgot. Why? Do you have a solution?” He looked at her, and she nodded.

“Forcefield. You have an atmosphere now, so you only need a forcefield to keep the air inside.” She replied.

“Yeah, but the oxygen would still leak,just at a lower level. One big storm, and everything is blown out.”

“Weather satellites, an GenasadVin inert field on top and all outer wind can be controlled. Those suckers can turn a category 5 tornado into a fresh summer breeze, and the schematics can be bought over the net. You should check what colony schematics you can get over the net. Probably a bunch you're missing.” She said with a wink.

“Still need those forcefields.” He said, then he stopped to think. “I’m a fucking idiot. You just need standard ship shielding. Jork could easily set up a few towers to cover the whole area.”

“Hey, you're not an idiot; you're my idiot.” She said with a grin. Adam laughed. “As you are mine.”

“At least I don’t have a problem admitting that. You make me do stupid things, Adam Wrangler!” She replied.

 

When the ship landed at the base, they got out and walked out to meet Vorts and his crew. He had three students working with him, in addition to three science droids.

“Hey, hows the babies?” Evelyn asked and Vorts beamed.

“Growing stronger every day. They will open their eyes soon.” Then he looked at Adam. “Thank you so much for assigning Karat to guard her. You have no idea how much that means for us.”

“Hey, it’s the least I could do. I don’t need so many droids sneaking around to guard me. Besides, your children are precious and need the best protection; just remember to put a tag on them when they get older. You remember how hard it was to keep track of Miker.” Adam said as they walked through the hallways to the laboratory. Inside, they saw several tubes and canisters of different sizes. Inside, they saw animals in different stages of development, from fetuses to almost full-grown. Vorts explained as they walked around.

“As you see here, these are simply the biological forms of different animals; they have only basic brain functions, and this is where we check if their forms are viable. Suppose we cannot grow them without serious genetic failures or mental disorders forming. In that case, that has to be fixed before we can go to phase two, which is the test against different viruses and bacteria they might encounter on the planet. Luckily, we only need blood samples for this part; we are way past the old-fashioned way of breeding stock and exposing them to it. Those were barbaric times.” He shuddered at the thought then he led them through the laboratory and out to a large dome that looked more like a large zoo.

“This is our ground-based haven; here, we grow a different breed that has been approved and let them loose in their little domain. Unfortunately, we are running out of space.” He stepped aside to let them enter the large dome. Adam stood silently as Evelyn looked at Vorts and back at Adam.  “He made you a zoo of animals that are xeno-adjusted? That’s decades ahead of us.”

“Well, we did the same with me,” Adam said, and Evelyn looked at him.

“No, your DNA was just cleaned up; this is adding Xeno DNA to human DNA. I have only heard about crossbreeding among similar species, such as humans and the Nalos. He is talking about the immunization of alien diseases and improving the immune system, including Xeno virology.” She seemed to have trouble grasping what she was saying. It was so amazing for her.

“Well, the xen-virology is actually Hara’s department. She is the one fixing those; I’m just implementing them. It's teamwork,” Vorts commented as he checked his pad.

‘Wait, isn’t she… On the papers, she is a nurse, and she is the head of the medical station on Piradas. How?” Evelyn was getting more confused and looked at Adam. “What is going on here?”

“She is a Tufon, the only female Tufons that are allowed to hold high educational rank are the military. So, officially, she only has papers for being a head nurse; she is probably a level five medical doctor, that’s a professor with a high level of practical experience. I keep asking her to take that damn education.” Evelyn just stared at him.

‘You got two level five academics here? Why isn’t this planet already a blooming paradise?” She asked, surprised, and Adam looked at Vorts and then back at her.

“Officially, I only have one. As for paradise, we are working on it.” As Vorst spoke, a droid came over with a cart and one black puppy, and Vorst smiled.

“He doesn’t know how to be a boss. If I were him, I would simply have ordered her to take those tests.”

Adam laughed and picked up the puppy, holding it in his hand. He saw Evelyn’s brain trying to reset after all the information she had gotten and trying to comprehend what Adam was holding.

“Oh? Okay, you go tell her then. Let's see how that goes,” Adam said, and Vorts held up his hands, disarming.

“I’m not her boss and not suicidal. Hell, she will only listen to you and Roks about those things.” 

Adam thought about it and gave Evelyn the puppy. “Yeah, we have Roks do it. That’s the best solution.” Then he turned to Evelyn, who had completely forgotten them and was too busy to snuggle with his new best friend.

“I think she will be busy for a while. Why don’t you give me a tour?” Adam asked, and Vorts chuckled.

Jork agreed with Evelyn about the crater and quickly started the project. The shields should be up within a month, and Adam recruited a few of the marines that had grown up in new colonies to make a shopping list. He also had talks with Sig-San about getting the latest rumors. He told him he had sent him something and he would drop by soon to discuss matters they could not discuss over the line. Adam didn’t like it but he guessed the man knew his business and thought it important.  The good news was that the waste management department was up and running, and several ships were inbound with organic waste.

The most surprising part was those now weekly meetings with Arus Valontur, the Scisya journalist. He had stayed when most of the others had left. He had kept Adam updated with gossip and news around the federation. It was like Sig-San gave him the rumors and secrets while Arus kept him updated on the day-to-day of the sectors. When he asked to join the clan, Adam had to laugh. He had not thought about it, but now he had the beginning of a media house.  Roks laughed as well, and when the ships started to come after two weeks, they didn’t know what to do. They had tourists and a few hopeful looking for work.  Roks blamed Arus for it, but they knew this had to start.

 

Then, the three slave haulers entered the system. Adam ordered Roks and his men up to get ready. Evelyn had her ship up and ready as well, but the ships did not arm or resist. They simply requested to dock.  Adam looked up at the sky, then sighed and allowed one ship to land. Roks looked at him as if he was crazy, but he ignored it. They would be foolish to try it twice, especially with so many ships ready to blow them out of the sky.  The strange thing was that the ships were filled with slaves, according to the scans.

Adam stood in the docking area as the ship landed; he knew the marines had snipers ready, as well as the droids and Roks. If they tried anything, then they would be ready. Yet, for some reason, he felt calm; he could not explain it; he simply wasn’t afraid of this ship. Instead, he felt pity.

The door opened, and a Busker man came ou...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/TheCurserHasntMoved on 2024-12-26 00:02:27+00:00.

---

Being on a Mental Health Command approved Star Sailor ship was considered one of the best ways for a retired Navy man to spend his life after service, better than settling down in one of the towns on Sanctuary, anyway. Even better is a man didn't need MH services and could be a part of providing said services, like Chief Petty Officer (retired) Nathanial Forte, who's long experience as the galley master on a battleship had transferred skills directly to his position as galley master on the ship We Stand Resolute for Oure Beloved Shall Return in more ways than would be expected on first glance.

Some adjustments did need to be made so he could actually utilize the galley, however. In Nate's view, the Star Sailors were unnecessarily tall, and in their view he was adorably short. He didn't mind that, most xenos found Humans cute after all, and if a man was going to sail outside the Republic, or even on her fringes, he would have to get used to the idea. Regardless of the aesthetics of the fact, significant renovations had to be made to the galley when he had signed on, which the Star Sailors were more than happy to accommodate. The captain, a man who's pale blue skin hung a little loose on his bones, had lines of laughter etched permanently across his face, and who's braid had long gone gray, was something of a terraboo on top of the usual general affinity for Terrans. This meant that real, authentic Terran cooking on the We Stand made Traldron Dronvre very, very, very happy. Nate and he got along almost like old Navy buddies.

The captain's wife and ship's quartermaster, Miavre, didn't quite share her husband's near-obsessive love for all things Terran, but she did honor and respect the Republican Navy and those who served in it. Nate had to admit, it gave him no small measure of pride to hear the aged matron of a sailing people call the republic "Fine voidsmen." Even better were the grandkids, mostly because all four of them were close to Terran height and loved to help in the kitchen. It made the fact that Nate couldn't have kids of his own hurt a little less.

The rest of the Star Sailors aboard had taken to him even more quickly than the enlistedmen he'd fed in his former career, which was impressive considering how hungry the E-scale servicemen are in any of the Republican services. The communications officer, Janbex Bexvee, especially went out of his way to make friends so that he could learn Terran cooking after tasting it for the first time. Nate agreed, of course, but insisted that Jan teach him Star Sailor dishes in return.

Nate felt the way a Navy man who doesn't want to give up living on ships is meant to feel on a Star Sailor vessel, seamlessly at home. Which, comes to the point. Private First Class Keven Barnes did not feel seamlessly at home, as was intended. It was, thank God, not due to anybody being unwelcoming, or even because Keven was unfriendly. It was as a result of two facts. The first, that as a former RNI Advanced Drop Scout trooper, Keven's skills didn't slot into the ship particularly well unless she came under attack. The second, he was medically separated from service and ordered to begin his life after service in one of the MH approved locations. It could have been worse, he could have been a Deep Recon Scout.

The usual thing to do with an RNI trooper living on a Star Sailor ship was to make him Master at Arms, but Nate didn't think that was the way to go, since when one of the other crewmates had broached the subject the man had a full-blown panic attack. Nate had been obliged to explain to some of the younger crew that offering to make an enlistedman with such a specialized combat MOS an officer in the first week aboard was a very, very good way to scare the crap out of him. Then, he had to get the man very good at hiding and killing hostiles unseen calmed down and explain to him that nobody was threatening to promote him, and it was fine to not have the security of the whole ship as his responsibility. Convincing Keven that the offer was meant as an honor and not a threat was by far and away the more difficult of the two conversations.

After that debacle, most of the Star Sailors had taken Nate's lead and let Keven have his space. The children had no such intentions, and not just the four grandkids, but the kids from the other families aboard. Nate did not rescue Keven from the innocent insensitivities of children. Instead he watched.

"So you do the same job Sneaky did?" Jan was asking with great enthusiasm on one such occasion. Nate did not seed gossip to that effect for the children to overhear earlier, because that would have been hilarious and mean. The kids liking Terran media in Commercial English had its perks

"Uh… well kinda," Keven said in the almost sing-song accents of a frontier colonist, "it was probably different against the grubs."

The middle brother, Brix, didn't give the beleaguered veteran any reprieve, "But you use the same kinda gun, right?"

"I think the Anti-Personnel Long-Range Magacc Model forty-two B got phased out around forty years ago," Keven answered blinking.

"So they took away the sniper gun?" The youngest of the three brothers asked with wide eyes and plush Human toy clutched tightly to his chest in shock.

"No, they invented a new model that works a little better," Keven quickly clarified as if he was afraid the young boy would cry at the change.

"Oh, that makes sense," Jan said with the sage nod of the oldest brother who clearly knows the most. "Did you ever shoot any bad guys like Sneaky did?"

Nate suddenly watched the interaction much more sharply, but he needn't have worried. "I did my duty, and I don't think I want to talk about who I shot," Keven said quietly, and that was what it finally took for the children to realize he was uncomfortable. They started to mutter shamefaced apologies, which of course made Keven panic ever so slightly, "No, no, no, it's okay. You didn't do anything bad. It's okay, it's okay."

Rescuing Keven from kids was out of the question, but rescuing Keven from Keven was Nate's job. "Hey kids," he said as he stepped closer, "I have some boring grown-up stuff to talk to Keven about."

"Like what?" Brix asked with suspicion.

"Taxes," Nate answered without missing a beat, and that got the three to scatter on the spot.

"Thanks again," Kevin half whispered, half croaked.

"In and out, breathe, son. You did fine, you didn't traumatize any children by not telling them the things that won't go away when you close your eyes. You made a good call, they don't need to hear war stories, they only think they do because they're little boys."

"I remember being a boy," the younger man said as he stared at his trembling hands, "I remember when war stories were the coolest shit ever. Hell, I still don't mind hearing a brother talk about what he did on his drops. It's just all of my drops lead to…"

"In and out, son."

Keven followed the instructions and just focused on his breathing for a while, and when the trembling stopped he said, "Thank you sir."

"I'm Nate now," Nate snorted, and Kevin looked chagrinned, "actual Navy men don't get hung up on that the way you dirtpounders do."

"Please tell me you don't actually have to talk to me about taxes, because if you do I might walk out the airlock."

"Nah, I don't hate you. I did want to see about what we discussed the other day."

"I kinda thought the engine room would be okay, since I'm better with machines than people…"

"But?"

Kevin winced and pushed air out through his teeth before taking a sharp breath and saying, "It took me back to the collapse. The noise, the shadows… the… but uh, I…"

"You think you're going to have to actually be around people?" Nate said in mock horror.

"Shut up," Keven growled as he thumped the older man's arm, "they all expect me to be some kind of hero, like Greg George. Doesn't help that I have a similar MOS."

"I met him once, you know." Nate had the immense pleasure of seeing the younger man's face go slack in wide-eyed shock and amazement. "He was quietly friendly, and before you ask, he liked the nickname. He thought being called Sneaky by half of known space was hilarious, and I suspect he liked that nickname better than getting called The Report."

"Jesus Mary and Joseph," Keven swore.

"You might have noticed that I'm old," Nate laughed before saying, "I made a fool of myself and asked for an autograph, stars in my eyes and head full of stories about The Report. He asked me why I wanted his autograph, and I told him it was because he was a hero. He told me that he didn't know if he was a hero or not, but he knew that he was just a man like me. That's always stuck with me."

"After everything he did he-"

"Still didn't let it blow up his head," Nate said firmly. "I didn't feel let down or disappointed when I realized that he was a mortal like me."

"I-" Nate ignored the choking sounds and the rapid blinking from the younger man and waited for him to continue, "thank you."

"Now, I have a bit of an idea."

"Hm?"

"It's December Tenth."

Keven looked at Nate in complete and utter bafflement as he spun his hand in a circular motion as if encouraging the gears in Keven's head to turn. Slowly, he said, "And we're on a ship that likes Terran stuff more than normal… and I could…" and here the light finally went on for Keven, "I could share some of the traditions I grew up with to celebrate Christmas!"

"Got there eventually."

Keven scowled at Nate. ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1hmc8rn/tree_hunt/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Speedhump23 on 2024-12-25 23:50:29+00:00.

---

After some struggle, the humans have deep space travel capabilities.

They have spent the next 100 years exploring the galaxy.

Other races they contact are amazed that they have made it to them, maybe one in one thousand races make it to deep space.

Space is dangerous, things are out in the void that can kill ships.

The humans always smile and pat their pocket AIs whenever asked how they did it.

 

Captain Flex- Ress of the human DSF- Coleambally (deep space freighter) had just landed on Proxima b, and was talking to the owner of the capital city’s largest airfield, while waiting for the planet’s leading council to arrive.

Pox b’s leaders had been communicating with the Terrans ever since the Coleambally had made orbit, while the Terran ship waited permission to land. Trade would be a major aspect, but the primary mission of this trip was to help the inhabitant of Proxima b to get into space. The leadership of Proxima b were having trouble understanding why anyone would be so “nice to them”.

 

As with most planet locked races, the Prox’ bs had run into the same list of issues that kept most other races planet locked. Once they got rockets to actually get into space, they hit issue after issue, and had trouble combating them before dying. From the green Xenomorph “Gremlins” who floated through space, and attached themselves to ships. While mostly harmless, in great numbers, they would block view ports, engine exhausts etc.  To the long dead xenophobic “Builders”, an advanced race which had made it to space, only to be the most xenophobic beings in the galaxy. Their robot ships were nicknamed the “Berserkers” by the Terrans (For some ancient reason), and tended to try to wipe any new races they encountered. Luckily for the Porxies, the Berserker ship that had just entered the system had been there at the same time as the Terrain merchant fleet. The Berserker likely did not even get a message off that it was under attack, before it was dead. The Terran missile systems had the range and stealth abilities to take our a berserker before it even knew it was under fire. When asked about the extraordinary missiles launched by the Merchants (Which seemed like a battleship weapon, not a trader’s one) Flex-Ress just patted his pocket AI and mentioned “Ghost riders”.

 

Over the next hundred years, the Proxima b society was carefully and helpfully raised to an equal technical level to that of the Terran alliance. Any time an issue arose which looked set to crush their advancement, the Terrans would offer a few solutions already set out and easy to follow and implement. At no time did the Terrain alliance enforce or impose any of the fixes, neither did they charge for the information. After the Proxima b society finally got to an equal footing to that of the Terrans, the head of the Alliance contacted the leading council of “Homeworld” (The local name for Proxima, now that they were spread out on a few planets in nearby systems) and offered them full and equal access to the “secret” to their success.

 

Proxima b had an entertainment industry, they had artists, musicians and story writers. The stories tended to deal with issues on the planet, such as building houses in the great flowing sand lands, their music on how to find love when the moon was hidden by clouds… but they had nothing as detailed or imaginative as that of the Terran race. It seemed that everything that any race would ever encounter on their home world, or in the struggle to reach space, even anything needed to emerge victorious in battle, the Terrans had written numerous stories about it. They did not stop there though, each story had then been analysed, then students studied them, and even in depth “fan fics” (An old Earth word for some sort of learned thesis) on the subjects, were written. The stories had been dissected and analysed to the point where the answers to meet any possible issues had been worked out well in advance.  The system was not stagnant though, with new stories and studies being added on almost a daily basis.

 

The Pocket AIs carried by all humans had this information ready at a moment’s notice. The analysis of a thousand generations, experts in fields many people did not even know they needed, was ready to help.  From how to deal with the pesky “Green Gremlins”, such as using electrified hulls which repel them when they try to latch on to the ship. (An idea credited to something called “Churchill’s Statue”), to things to look out for when landing a ship on an asteroid (Such as “Do not land inside a cave on an asteroid, before you check it is not alive.”)

 

The council of Proxima b were amazed at the concept of this guide, and were very grateful to be given access to them on top of all the other help they had received. The news that they could add their own stories and learnt lessons to the network was also appreciated.

 

Looking at his new AI, councilmen Hert looked at the plastic container for the guide and asked a question... “Why does it have “Don’t Panic” on the cover?”

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Coyote_Havoc on 2024-12-25 23:27:45+00:00.

---

First Previous [Next]

"Lo, there do I see my Father. Lo, there do I see my mother and my brothers and my sisters. Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them in the halls of Valhalla where the brave may live forever."

-The Viking Prayer-

"Like the face of the moon, chaotic, crater ridden, uninhabitable, awful."

The poet Wilfred Owen used these words to describe the no man's land of World War One, and those words were apt to the destruction then on earth as well as now in what remained of this battlefield. Even if it were just these descriptions of what remained from the attack they would due, but Wilfred Owen had one final description that also fit most appropriately.

"The Abode of madness."

No structure on this side of the Ashlea remained in tact and many had been erased completely. The torn remains of assault carriers and escorts mingled with the bloody chunks of gore that had been pilots, crews and soldiers. Craters 7 and a half meters wide and 3 and a half meters deep replaced the once vibrant grassy fields just beyond the town. For an orbital bombardment or heavy artillery this destruction would be expected, but this...

This had been inflicted by one company of infantry. 100 humans who had slapped together whatever they could find to wreak annihilation on a superior force, wiping them from the field as if they were nothing more than annoying insects. This was the power of these humans, these Gallóglaigh, and Commander Ertha could see how they had earned their moniker from Dexian mythology as Flamewalkers.

"What happens now?"

Lieutenant Aubrey took a seat on a pile of rocks that had once been a house or a barn.

"That depends on you and yours."

"What would you ask of us?" Ertha questioned. "There are not many Dex left who are uninjured."

A grim smile crossed Aubrey's face. "The Regiment XO told me of this thing that humans use to do to their enemies. Prisoners would be made prone, then their backs would be opened by severing the ribs from the spine, lastly their lungs would be pulled out and positioned to resemble wings."

Ertha could feel the blood drain from his face and anxiety clutched his heart.

"Why... what purpose would that serve?"

"There is another option on the table. We have four dead and are in need of a burial detail."

Ertha knew he was being played, but he didn't want to take his chances either.

"Im not versed in human funerary rites, but I opt for the later."

"Im not versed in the meaning of funeral rites, up until about a year ago I was part of a Convict Regiment."

"Youre a criminal?"

Aubry snickered darkly at the question. "I'm Gallóglaigh, that is all you need to be concerned with."

/////

"You willingly gave aid and comfort the the enemy?'

Admiral Freng's eyes belied what she had expected of Ertha and his troops, and death was just a part of her orders that needed to be carried out. She hadn't been there to witness the battle and she hadn't had to weigh the option of death by torture either.

"I made the decision to save as many Dex as remained."

"You made that decision?"

"And I would do it again." Ertha responded. "Tell me Admiral, how many Dex have died already?"

"He made the best decision Admiral." General Thall commented, intentionally drawing her attention away from the disgraced commander.

"How many lives did.you save Ertha?"

"One hundred and twelve."

"From an entire division with engineer support as well as your own forces, to save one hundred and twelve. From your description of events, it seems that you were fortunate. We can use that to our favor."

Thall Crissed from Ertha over to Admiral Freng with a dangerous look in his eyes.

"Admiral, it appears that the initial scouting of this planet was inaccurate, or that the enemy had reinforced before you arrived. It doesn't matter which at this point in time, but it would warrent immediate reinforcements."

Freng knew where this was going. Neither would have to loose face in the eyes of high command for failure to take the planet and any inquiry as to why their primary mission had been halted could be explained by a gap in intelligence. Invasions are particularly dangerous endeavors, with a success rate between 30-40 percent. That alone is an accepted universal truth.

"Commander," Admiral Freng spoke softly, "you are herby reinstated to your rank and the troops you saved are placed under your direct command. In addition, you and your forces are to be reassigned to the Frigate D'atall while your troops recover. Dismissed."

"One last question," Thall broke in, "would you describe the burial you performed one more time?"

"Yes sir," Commander Ertha replied, relief flooding.his body, "we were ordered to place the bodied next to each other in a crater next to the main road. Afterward we piled dirt over the bodies and finally placed a ring of standing stones around the burial. Afterward I was informed by Lieutenant Aubery that we could follow the river back to Brodick."

"Thank you commander."

General Thall remained silent as Ertha left the room, more focused on the map than anything else.

"What was that all about?" Admiral Freng demanded after a moment.

"We are going to need reinforcements in the near future if we are yo successfully take this planet."

"Not that, the burial."

"The burial," Thall chuckled, "the ring of stones indicate that they are not just burying their dead or marking their place. They are honoring their dead."

"They're mourning them." Admiral Freng nodded in understanding. "Perhaps we should give them some time to come.to terms."

"Exactly my thought Admiral," Thall smiled wickedly, "while they are otherwise occupied we could send out raids with our remaining forces, capture some more of the planet, and when reinforcements arrive we can corner them here."

"That is utterly deplorable," Thall mocked, "the closest settlements are Rathlin, Islay and Jura in this quadrant. Islay is the most populated and not far from Jura which seems to be focused on Agriculture. I suggest we start there."

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Maxton1811 on 2024-12-25 22:06:00+00:00.

---

First...Previous

August 26, 2025

Harsh waves of unfamiliar sound bounced violently off the walls of our transport as Will dutifully kept it speeding down the otherwise empty road. “This is our most popular song,” began Lucas, pointing toward the van’s dashboard at a built-in black box that they had used to conjure forth these noises. “It’s called ‘Redshift’. Like it?”

“It’s… Very energetic…” I replied, unsure of how else to describe this bizarre cacophony accompanied on occasion the voice of Lucas himself. “How do you make those noises?”

“Which ones?” Asked Olli, appearing somewhat puzzled by my inquiry. Up front, Will reached for a small knob on the dashboard and twisted it to incrementally decrease the music’s volume until it no longer ripped quite so aggressively against my ‘skin’.

Paying close attention to the unfamiliar sounds and isolating their individual rhythms, I carefully searched my mind for the correct descriptors. “I can tell you’re hitting something to make that thumping noise, but how do you get that weird screech?”

“What, you’ve never heard someone playing a guitar before?” Asked Jack, his eyes going wide with newfound incredulity. “What kind of rock have you been living under all your life?”

Confusion twisted my falsified human features as I contemplated what to even say in response to such a bizarre question. Fortunately, Lucas seemed to take note of my discomfort, promptly speaking up on my behalf. “Don’t be an asshole, Jack!” He grinned to his compatriot, the term clearly intended as an insult but nevertheless spoken in this case with a certain friendly endearment. “I feel like it should be pretty obvious at this point where Sam comes from.”

“You think it’s obvious?” I asked, attempting to conceal panic that saturated my cells in response to this revelation. If a single human could see through my disguise so easily, then I clearly had no chance of blending into civilization at large. For a moment, I contemplated cutting my losses and taking off—after all, I had no idea what these humans would do now that at least one of them knew my true nature.

“Your parents are Amish, aren’t they?” Lucas continued, immediately replacing my fear with utter confusion. I had no idea what ‘Amish’ was, but I was pretty sure it didn’t pertain to my actual mode of being. “You don’t have to be embarrassed—there’s nothing wrong with it!”

With my cover still very much intact, I decided that perhaps my best option was to simply accept whatever explanations they came up with. “Uhh… How did you know?”

“No offense, man, but it’s pretty obvious!” Grinned Lucas, draping his arm around my shoulders as he explained. “I mean, c’mon: the religious name, the aversion to music, not knowing what a guitar is—it all makes perfect sense.”

Apparently, Jack found this to be a satisfying explanation, almost immediately doing away with his prior incredulity. “Sorry, man…” He began, his lips curling upward into a strained grin. “I didn’t mean to disparage that kinda lifestyle, I just couldn’t connect the dots. No offense to your family, of course!”

“None taken,” I replied, deciding it best to steer the conversation away from my origins before I said something that could clear the misunderstanding. “Honestly, I’d prefer not to discuss it if that’s okay with you all…”

“Falling out with the folks?” Asked Olli from his seat beside the driver, looking back upon me with an expression of sympathy. “You don’t gotta answer that if it’s not something you’re comfortable with.”

“I suppose one could say that…” I affirmed, thinking back despite myself to when I first came hurtling down onto this planet’s surface. I wasn’t even sure if I had ‘folks’ the same way these humans did, but whatever gave rise to me clearly wasn’t all that interested in keeping me around. 

Reaching across from his seat, Olli haphazardly sifted through the pile of bags belonging mostly to the band. For the briefest moment, I recoiled as his hand came into contact with my biomass ‘bag’ before immediately moving on to grab the one next to it. Cocking my head quizzically, I eyed the oddly-shaped case, taking note of its bulky body and long, slender protrusion reminiscent of a neck. “You wanted to know how the sound was made, didn’t you?” Olli asked, popping open the case to reveal inside a perfectly-fitting device with strings running down its slender length from a selection of knobs at the top. “This is my guitar. When I plug it in and pluck the strings, it makes those noises.”

“Interesting…” I replied, tentatively reaching forth and gently running my finger along the instrument’s length, drawing forth from it a light thrumming sound. “So you use this one and Lucas uses his voice. What about Jack and Will?”

“I do drums,” answered Jack, clasping his hands into fists and mimicking the motion of hitting something with them. “That banging noise is all me! Will’s on bass—sorta like the guitar, but shaped differently.”

“And all the people like this?” I asked.

From the driver’s seat, Will let out a light chuckle. “Everyone’s got their own taste in music, but the people who like what we make pay us well.”

“Pay?” Contemplating that word, it came up in my mind with associations of exchange and the trading of goods. Thanks to the bad ones I’d devoured, I understood human words, but putting them into context without any experience was difficult.

“Right: you guys are like, super communal, aren’t you?” Asked Olli, presumably once again in reference to these ‘Amish’. Were they a subspecies, perhaps? “Most people use money—coins and paper bills—to represent value and trade for what they need…”

All this was very fascinating, and as such I continued to inquire on how ‘currency’ operated. Such knowledge, I imagined, would be very useful for blending into human society. After a few minutes of inquiry followed graciously by answers from the group, Will began to peer quizzically at the van’s dashboard. “Looks like we’re low on gas,” he said—another absolutely baffling statement.

“How are we ‘low’ on gas?” I asked, inhaling to make sure there was nothing wrong with the air around us. “It’s everywhere on this planet, is it not?”

“He means ‘gasoline’,” replied Lucas matter-of-factly. “It’s the stuff that keeps our van moving. There should be a gas station about three miles from here where we can get more.”

Within a few minutes, we came upon a small building with lights inside and a line of mysterious nozzled devices lined up out front. Pulling up to this odd building and stopping the vehicle just beside one of the nozzles, Will stepped out from the driver’s side and began fiddling with some kind of control panel. “You guys can go inside: I’ll fill ‘er up,” he said, reaching into a fold formerly occupying his pocket before handing me a piece of green paper. “Grab me a soda and the rest is yours, Sam.”

Following the other three band members into this building, I glanced about in search of this ‘soda’ I was told to retrieve. “Sodas are near the back,” said Olli, taking note of my confusion as he pointed toward the far wall to where various roughly-cylindrical containers stood in rows upon a door-covered shelf.

Approaching this display and searching through these containers, I murmured the descriptions beneath my breath. “Raspberry energy drink… Cool blue sport drink… Orange-flavored soda!” Opening the door and reaching in to take hold of the container, I looked it over curiously. Turning the container and viewing its contents, I immediately recognized most of the chemical names. Much to my surprise and delight, this liquid was almost pure sugar! 

Placing Will’s drink under my shoulder and grabbing a few for myself, I consulted with the others on how best to spend the remainder of my currency. “Those drinks are a dollar-fifty each, so you’ve got about four dollars left,” said Lucas, reaching into his pocket and handing me another few coins. “This should cover whatever tax there is.”

As I said before, the counting system of these creatures was foreign to me. After experiencing it once, however, I was able to rather quickly get the general gist of how counting worked. Holding up four fingers to represent my remaining currency, I searched the surrounding area for anything that could be worth spending it on. Soon enough, my search came to a halt in front of a sign. ‘Hot dogs: 1$’. Above these words were tubes of what appeared to be flesh, each one nestled into some kind of edible holder.

Grabbing a single paper basket from beside the display and piling four of these ‘hot dogs’ onto it, I approached the front counter where the others awaited me and handed the stranger up front my bill and coins. “Are those all for you?” Asked Olli, pointing toward my hot dogs.

“I intend them to be,” I shrugged before turning toward him and generously holding out the basket. “Would you like one?”

“No thanks, man,” replied the guitarist. In all honesty, I was glad that he didn’t want one. Willing though I was to share my meal, that didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to. Carrying this bounty back out to the van, I carefully the food I intended to consume down onto my seat before approaching Will and ...

---

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/sjanevardsson on 2024-12-25 20:31:29+00:00.

---

In the time before the devouring horde, humanity, thinking themselves alone, stretched out among the stars. They made barren worlds habitable, and in generations turned them into paradises. There was no part of the galaxy they considered off-limits.

When the first unmistakable, non-human, artificial signal caught their attention, humanity celebrated. They were no longer alone. While humans were still trying to work out how to respond, They showed up.

Hundreds of thousands of ships, joined together into a traveling city the size of a moon, materialized in a system where humans populated three planets and eight moons. Instead of attempts to communicate, the city broke apart into its constituent ships.

Like a swarm, the ships descended on the planets and moons. Large, rectangular processor ships hung in the sky above the descender ships.

Smaller cubic ships, a kilometer long on each side, headed to the ground and stripped everything they found. Any lifeforms they encountered stood no chance, whether plant, fungus, or animal, megafauna or bacteria. It didn’t matter to the machines that landed, burrowed down half a kilometer into the crust, then returned to the processor, leaving behind a square crater. The processor ships handled nearly a thousand descenders every second, converting more than six hundred billion kilograms of material into waste. Everything from the descenders they didn’t keep, came out the back of the processor as a fine, dry powder that circled in the upper atmosphere, blocking out the light of the local star.

That was just the first of hundreds of systems the devouring horde stripped bare. Humanity scrambled to fight back. Every ship they destroyed was replaced in a matter of days and did little to slow the advance of the horde. Knowing what sort of signals to look for, humanity found the traveling city to be the only source of the signals, which made it possible to track their movements as they moved ever closer to humanity’s cradle.

The fastest ship in all of the human fleets was the Bonny Marie, said to be able to open a warp space so rapidly, and reaching so far across the stars, as to make reality weep. A converted heavy cargo ship, most of her cargo space taken up with her massive warp engines, she wasn’t as sightly as her name would suggest. Still, she was the only ship to ever pull warp from within a mere handful of kilometers from the event horizon of a black hole. She was also the only ship ever to make it into, and back out of, the horde’s city of connected ships.

Still, even with her lightning-fast strikes, any damage the Bonny Marie did to the horde was like trying to empty an ocean with a coffee mug. That didn’t stop her crew from trying, though. With over a hundred landers and two processors confirmed destroyed, they harassed the horde from system to system. It was when the horde was closing in on Sol that the crew decided they needed to do something drastic.

Despite most of her cargo area being filled with the most overpowered engines, the Bonny Marie had more space yet to give. In humanity’s darkest hour, every available centimeter of her space was filled with multi-gigaton, three-stage hydrogen bombs. To this day, no one knows where they came from or how many there were. Some say they carried nine, others say thirteen, others say fifteen. However, all reports agree that they were all twelve gigaton yield, installed without the shielding due to space constraints, and all attached to a single trigger for concurrent detonation.

The Bonny Marie was waiting for the horde when they phased into the Sol system near Mars. They said their goodbyes to each other and warped into the structure of the devouring horde. At the center of the conglomeration was a massive pile of ore dust.

The captain gave his orders, the pilot took aim, the ship’s engines shuddered, and the Bonny Marie rammed into the pile of ore, triggering the fusion bombs. The flash of the initial fireball was visible on Earth, the fine dust ore that was not vaporized turned into radioactive shrapnel. Tens of thousands of the horde ships were destroyed in the initial blast, with tens of thousands more rendered inoperable as a result of either the EMP emitted by the blast or by heat and radiation.

It was still too little, too late for Mars, Luna, and Earth, although the weakened horde was slowed, allowing the evacuation of those bodies to continue for many months. It was only after the horde had stripped those bodies and left them in a cloud of the dust of their upper crust that the real damage the nukes had done became obvious.

The new ships they churned out from the irradiated ore failed often, some not even making their first flight from the traveling city. When the horde rejoined the city, almost back to full strength and emitting megacuries of gamma and alpha radiation, they attempted to use their phase-space propulsion to travel to the next system.

Instead, a ripple washed over the horde city at the speed of light, barely perceptible. Behind it, the ships it had passed over exploded violently. Their cores were vaporized and the remnants ranged in size from the finest dust to small pieces less than two centimeters in diameter. For the second time, a calamity of the horde was visible from Earth, or would have been if there had been anyone there to see it, and they could see through the dust that blotted out the sun.

The remaining humans, listening for the sounds of the horde transmissions, heard silence for the first time in nearly two decades. Earth was wiped bare, but humanity had survived and destroyed the horde, the remnants of which have slowly spread out into a faint ring around the planet.

All the survivors have joined together again, and now we find no other signals. It is time for humanity to build new homes, new paradises for our children’s children. Alone again, we will spread out among the stars in our new ships that use the phase drives we learned from analyzing the horde.

It is with the greatest of honor that I christen humanity’s new flagship, the Bonny Marie 2. May she lead us to the stars and our uncertain, but promising, future.

Speech by Admiral Marisol Cortez on the christening of the Bonny Marie 2, flagship of the Human Colonization Fleet.

---

prompt: Write a story that starts and ends in the same place.

originally posted at Reedsy

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/micktalian on 2024-12-25 20:11:57+00:00.

---

Part 103 Bearing arms (Part 1) (Part 102)

[Support me of Ko-fi so I can get some character art commissioned ~~and totally not buy a bunch of gundams and toys for my dog~~]

For the vast majority of species in the Galactic Community Council, cybernetic augmentation is seen as either a medical necessity or a highly controversial means of enhancing combat abilities. Replacing lost limbs, substituting improperly functioning organs, or other essential medical procedures are generally considered acceptable, if a bit gruesome at times, by most Ascended life in the galaxy. Even if some people and entire cultures were repulsed by the idea of melding the organic with the mechanical, prejudice or ill-treatment towards cyborgs is essentially unheard of. On the other hand, military-grade cybernetics and the weaponization of one's own body aren't just highly regulated, the concepts utterly horrified most people. Of course, some governments within the GCC believe in the rights of self modification, self defense, and owning personal weapons.

While the Nishnabe culture on Shkegpewen was certainly unique even compared to their closest kin in Sol and the European-Americans that currently occupied their ancestors' homelands, all three shared a very particular set of interests. In America during the 2230s, the enthusiasm surrounding the right to bear arms, including the weaponization of cybernetics, was just as boisterous as it ever was. Similarly, all of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations now based out of the Aram Chaos Colony on Mars not only encouraged individuals to be willing and able to defend themselves, it was a point of pride. After all, their continued sovereignty and existence as independent governments relied on it. Even if military grade cybernetics weren’t quite as common on Shkegpewen as they were on Earth or Mars, citizens of the Nishnabe Confederacy were just as well armed as their counterparts from Sol.

So much so that the fact Mik was sitting on a park bench style seat in front of his temporary quarters aboard the Kokoji-Wango with his revolver in pieces in front of him wasn't seen as unusual. Though this was a military vessel and every single person was carrying around some sort of weapon, there was an armory where he could be performing this task in private. However, Tens had assured him that it was commonplace for warriors to tinker with their weapons wherever they pleased, so long as they were safe about it. And this way the pair of men could enjoy a smoke and morning beverage while the Wango got into formation with the rest of the ships joining this mission. It would still be another day or so before the battle actually started, but the time was drawing near. If nothing else, Tens wanted his Martian friend to be in a calm and calculating state of mind for when they did finally drop on those fascist crabs.

“I'm still surprised that these little copper things hold enough explosive to safely launch a projectile that fast.” As Tens twisted the finger-sized .45-70 cartridge in his hand, he found the blunt-tipped piece of plastic sticking out the end to be quite fascinating. “And these are what that Tom Ryan guy and his warriors will be using when they breach the Chigagorian cruiser, right?”

“I mean, they're probably runnin’ different calibers, but yeah. It's gonna be some kinda guns.” Mik was clearly distracted as he carefully polished each piece of his disassembled hand cannon. “This particular thang ain't ‘xactly the most practical weapon. Raiders'll probably be usin’ tricked out ZCR-29s ‘r auto-shotties ‘r somethin’ like that. Hell, they may even whip out the big guns for this.”

“The big guns?” With the memory of the weapons demonstration Mik and Sarah had performed back on The Hammer still in his mind, Tens could immediately imagine the kind of firepower being referred to. However, considering just how many different large guns had been shown off, he would only vaguely narrow down the selection. “How big are we talking?”

“I ain't sure.” The Martian professor carefully examined the recoil spring of his revolver with his cybernetic eye. Much like in the original Mateba Unica, that particular component was a failure point in his modified and modernized recreation of that classic firearm. “Tom's bringin’ Gold Team so… Honestly, they might bring the real big guns. ‘Member that gatlin’ gun I showed yah? I know one o’ ‘em borgs loves their spinny boy! Say… Do yah think the fabs on this ship can make me a new one o’ these?”

“Let me see that.” Tens reached over, gently took the spring, and as he brought it close to his face to look it over, he slipped it into the palm of his hand while pretending to toss it away.

“Fucker.” Mik wasn't so easily fooled by such a simple sleight of hand trick but did find it rather humorous. “It's a nickel, chromium, steel alloy. Kinda expensive back on Mars, but I figure y'all could probably forge me a better one.”

“Yeah, the mechanics could make this.” Seeing as his friend reacted with nothing more than a laugh and harsh retort, Tens could only smile as he revealed the spring to still be in his hand before giving it back. “Just tell them the specs and they'll come up with something. But, anyways, about those big guns…”

“If yah wanna know what the Raiders're runnin’ just ask-” Mik had taken his revolver’s recoil spring back with a bit of force but hadn't even had a chance to set it down yet before a very recognizable voice call out.

“Mik! Tens! There you two are!” Both Mik and Tens looked over to see General Tom Ryan marching towards them with War Chief Msko Pkwenech at his side.

“Why the hell yah yellin’, Ryan?” The Martian professor turned his attention back towards his disassembled gun and began putting the parts back together.

“I need you two to settle something for us!”

“Pffft.” Mik forced out a sarcastic scoff. Regardless of how tough he pretended to be, he was still a bit scared of the cyborg Marine General. “Whatever it is, Msko's right!”

“Which are better, our guns or the Nishnabe’s mag-slings?”

While Tens was confused as to why this was being debated, Mik had a far more extreme reaction. As soon as General Ryan asked that question, the Martian professor set down the components in his hands, stared straight ahead, then slowly turned towards the pair of quickly approaching older men with his head tilted at a slight angle. For the few seconds it took for Tom and Msko to close the gap and begin standing in front of the bench, Mik had a blank expression on his scared face. Of all the possible questions that he could have been asked, that was one he had not been expecting. Though the look on his face was still, his eyes gave away the inner conflict that the cyborg had just forced onto him.

As an academic, Mik knew that the highly advanced technologies that went into the Nishnabe mag-slings were supreme. Those particular weapons were not only surprisingly quiet, highly modular, and had a wide variety of munitions they could put down range, they were also incredibly deadly. With the ability to switch between rapid fire and single devastating shots at the flip of a switch, nothing from Sol could really compare. However, firearms were versatile and dependable in ways that simply couldn't be denied. Where mag-slings could be effective in multiple roles with just the changing of a setting or minor modifications, purpose-built guns could fill those specific roles as well, if not better. So long as the ammo was just as good as the shooter, which applied to both types of weapon, Mik couldn't honestly say which was better without his personal biases slipping through.

“Shit, man…” After staring for so long that Tens was actually starting to get concerned, Mik finally broke his silence. “I couldn't tell yah! Like askin’ if I'd rather have an original numbers matchin’ Cuda or a GTO Judge!”

“You know there is one way we could settle this…” Tens chimed in while shooting Msko a rather befuddled look. “After this mission, just compare the combat efficiency data from this guy's warriors to our breacher teams. Give them a handicap since it's their first mission and-”

“My marines don't need a goddamn handicap!” General Ryan seemed personally insulted by that suggestion.

“He hasn't seen any of the reports from the combat sims your teams have been participating in, Tom.” Msko quickly gave Tens a somewhat serious look, which only added to the younger warrior's confusion. “Our breacher teams may actually have trouble keeping up with Ryan's Raiders. But the reason why we're trying to settle this debate is because we need to figure out which weapons we should train our new recruits from Sol on.”

“Why can't they just build their own weapons the way we do?” For Tens and every other member of Nishnabe Militia, assembling and customizing their own mag-slings was a right of passage. “I mean, look at Mik here. He built this thing.”

“Son, do you have any idea how many people who've already applied to join the UHDF?” Tom asked with a vaguely patronizing tone. “We aren't about to waste that kind of time or money just so two million people can say they built their own gun.”

“Two million?!?” From a brief moment, all Tens could do was stare with a wide-eyed, dumbfounded expr...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1hm80qs/the_gardens_of_deathworlders_part_103/

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Clokw8rk on 2024-12-25 19:41:52+00:00.

---

Let me just say, people are dumb. Do you know what the hardest part of hunting a vampire is? No, it’s not sneaking into their lair during the day and sidestepping their thralls to get to the overgrown leech. Nor is it accidentally waking it when you drop its coffin lid on your foot and having to engage in bloody fisticuffs with a creature that could tear your own arms off and beat you to death with them. No, the hardest part is not getting charged with murder, because, “Vampires don’t exist” or “you’re a delusional psychopath” and, “why are you covered in blood?” which by the way, the correct answer most certainly is not “don't worry, it’s not my blood.”

The best one so far was “She was such a sweet old lady.” Never mind the fact that the previous night she jumped two stories and turned the neighbor's dog into the world’s most screwed up Capri-sun. Nevermind the fact she only went out at two in the morning to gas station convenience stores to seduce the most missable people she could find, despite the fact she looked like an emaciated Betty White with the face of a tube sock full of ground chuck roast and a personality half as nice. Nevermind the fact that the city started putting up missing person posters of pimply seventeen year olds with no future, the disappearances of which could be traced to a ten mile radius of her den, two police officers had gone missing, slurpee sales were down, and nobody would imagine that some frail old bag of bones who looked like she went to summer camp with Andrew Jackson could be responsible for the mutilated bodies. Like I said, people are dumb.

And yet, here I was, sitting outside this high school in a van that was a spray-painted sign reading “Free candy” away from putting me on a list. Who in their right mind would suspect that the old math teacher Mr. Hapsfield would have been a vampire? Well, if you overlooked the fact that nobody knew when he started working there, because he had been at the school longer than anyone, and anyone with half a brain and a library card could see that he had been in the yearbook since 1886. And the fact he didn’t appear in mirrors, I would know, I saw him in the bathroom while I was in a stall when I had his class ten years ago, by the way, he gave me a D. and also, his nickname in school has literally been “The Count” since sesame street first aired. 

The bell had rung, my garlic chicken Chinese takeout was empty, and my new shift as the school custodian had begun. I only had a few hours to act between when the Count would retire to his coffin and night began. I’d looked into the architectural drawings of this school and noticed a subterranean boiler room that was no longer in use. That made sense as I was sure this guy was at fault for the perpetuation of the myth that teachers lived at the school. I loaded my gear into a wheelie bin and made my way back into the world’s worst babysitting service. 

I swept the floors, took the trash out, and kept my eye on his room. Low pay, long hours, no dental, and a blood drinking math teacher that roams about, what’s more to want? The Count’s door opened and the lanky bean stock that was Mr. Hapsfield slithered out. He looked directly at me and approached with the facial expression of what I could only surmise as some sort of extinct desert tortoise with IBS. he made it about five feet away from my mop cart before he had to stop, his eyes teared up and his throat cleared a few times before taking a step back.

“Must you make such a dreadful concoction?”

I threw an innocent smile his way; the mop cart was full of the most powerful disinfectants I could find just so he couldn’t pick up my hormones with his fancy vampire sniffer.

“Oh, sorry there Mr. Hapsfield, apparently there was a biohazard incident in the science class, some kid got cut or something and I gotta go make sure it’s all properly sanitized.”

Bait was set.

The Count cleared his throat.

“A cut you say? Bad enough to warrant special cleaning as it were?

Ooh he’s nibbling.

“That’s what I was told, I hope the kid doesn’t have to get stitches.”

“Indeed, Say, you aren’t infor… Hold on a second.”

Uh oh.

The Count looked at me with a newfound curiosity of which I did not want for obvious reasons.

“I believe I know you.”

The Count snapped his fingers as he reached for that file in his mental filing cabinet of names, right next to information on sun lotion brands and Bram Stoker novels.

“Mckowski!”

I cringed at the mention of my name.

“Yep, that’s me.”

“So, you’re the new custodian. I must say, I’m not surprised by this turn of events.”

I could feel my eyebrows furrowing, the man had a voice that was about as exciting as a commercial for a class action lawsuit.

“Well, this is only a side job, I also run a rather successful extermination business.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“Oh yeah, I found out I’m rather good at rooting out dangerous parasites. I think it might be my calling.”

The Count looked at me like he was trying to look into my soul.

“Well, I’d be careful, some pests, as you put it, are more dangerous than others”

“I’ll have to keep that in mind, but I have to finish up here, so I’ll have to talk to you later”

I walked towards him and reached out to shake hands with the devil.

“If you are as good an exterminator as you were as a student then I imagine that we will.”

The joy I will feel when I’m staking you like a naughty tent will be life changing.

The Count took my hand and immediately winced in pain. We both looked down to see my sanctified rosary beads burning into his skin. The Count let go with a hiss.

“Oops, did the pin get you? So sorry!” I said with an involuntary smirk.

“Just clean my floors, Mckowski.” The count strode away with all the humbleness of a peacock.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m great at dealing with messes!”

 I let out the breath I had been holding. I knew he wouldn’t attack me in the middle of the school, but he knew what I was here for. What I also knew is that he had to rest, and I just so happened to know where he would be napping. After around an hour, I wheeled my bin full of toys to the entrance of the boiler room and made my way down. Everything was slightly damp and reeked of mold. It was clear that no one had come down there to clean in a long time and I was a very good custodian. In the corner of the room was a pine coffin. I set up my equipment and started to open the box. The lid of that pine box flew off of the coffin and cracked me in the nose. I reeled back holding my face as The Count hissed in a rage and stood over me. That was of course, when I activated the UV lights I had set up. The Count screamed in pain as he fell over and writhed on the ground. I pulled four crucifixes and placed them on each of his limbs to hold him in place. With a stake brandished I looked down at him. There was no doubt in my mind that he was anything more than feral at this point.

“Too bad you weren’t a better vampire than you were a teacher.”

I plunged the stake down into his chest. He hissed in agony as he died for a second time. I caught my breath for a moment and started cleaning up. All of my equipment in one bin, Mr. Hapsfield in the other. No one would question a custodian pushing two wheelie bins full of full trash bags. Like I said before, people are dumb, of course, that was all more reason to protect them. Killing things that messed with those poor dumb people was my business, and business was booming.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/noobvs_aeternvm on 2024-12-25 19:12:17+00:00.

---

LINKA’RA

Today

11:03

Mark, hi. You know anything about Ba’Rin? I can’t reach him since yesterday 😢 

Yeah, he’s right here. Crashed on my couch 

Why is he on your couch? 😡 

11:04

We were one guy short for poker night, so I kidnaped him for a tiny lil bitty 

You just grabbed him like dat?? 

Sorry, girl. It was a last minute thing, one of the guys couldn’t make it 

Then why didn’t he come home? Why is he on your couch? 🤨🤨

11:05

Don’t worry about it 

I very much do

11:06

It’s nothing 

Mark, stop stalling me! 😡 

11:07

Kay, full disclosure. I might have made an oopsie dosie 

Wat did U do???

I might have given him a small bowl of garlic chips

He’s highly allergic 😮😮😮

Yeap. He sure is.

Is he ok????

11:08

Yeah, yeah. He’s fine now, just need to rest a bit.

Wat do you mean he’s fine NOW? Can I talk to him?

11:09

Doc put him on some pretty heavy meds. Don’t think I can wake him even if I tried

Doc? As in doctor? 😱 How much garlic did you give him? 😵‍💫

Look, I screwed up K? I know dat, no need to tell me

Damn right I’m gonna tell you! You poisoned my boyfriend! 😡🤬😡

I didn’t know K?

How? How didn’t you know of something that can KILL him?! Aren’t you guys friends since forever?

Yeah, but we don’t talk bout dat stuff. 

U R the worst Mark! 😡 Don’t think you 2 will be hanging out any time soon

Look, yell at me as much as you want, just leave the guy be for now K?

Can I see him?

11:10

I don’t think this a good idea

Please 🥹

11:11

Trust me Linka’ra, you don’t wanna

Pretty please 🥹🥹🥹

11:13

Hang on

11:18

Image received  open | download

What on the cursed plane happened???? 😱😱😱

Told’ya you’d not wanna see it

You should have called me! 😭

He didn’t wanna upset you. He knows how bothered you are with that girl from work

You don’t know half of it

Do tell

11:41

Audio message (23min 13s) play | download

11:43

Wow, that’s crazy!

Right?

11:44

So, that’s why he didn’t wanna bother you

Still, you should have texted me, let me know he was staying at your place

He asked me, I kinda forgot

WTF Mark 😤

Ma bad

11:45

I’m coming over

No, no need. Now it’s just wait the meds do their thing. Look, why don’t you bake him some of dat pie he likes, while I watch over the big guy? When he’s good to go, I’ll drive him home.

That’s the least you can do after almost killing him! 🤬

Yeah I know. So, deal?

Right, I’ll be waiting

Cya soon 👋

BA’RIN

Today

11:45

Bruh, where r u? Yo girl is beyond pissed! I, and a certain AI image generator, managed to get her off your scent, but I need to drive you home or ur in BIG TROUBLE. Call me as soon as you see this, dude

Meanwhile:

“Alright Ba’rin, no need to panic. Yes, your phone is dead, your hovercraft is dead and you’re on a forgotten road in the middle of nowhere with no food or water, but soon enough someone will miss you and come looking for you.”

___

Tks for reading. More primate bros here.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/noobvs_aeternvm on 2024-12-25 19:04:53+00:00.

---

This is part of the anthology started with Best Job I Ever Had. Enjoy!

___

-Do you smell rain?

-Why you wanna smell rain when we can smell this awesome kill?

-Speaking of, that’s a lotta kill.

-Yeah, so much awesomeness!

-Do you see any rain cloud?

-Bro, what’s with you and rain?

-They took the fire inside.

-So?

-Have they ever done this before?

-They never dug a huge ass hole till a few days ago, did they?

-They didn’t.

-And you kept asking your dumb ass questions while we were digging, didn’t you?

-I did.

-Then what happened?

-We got a mammoth.

-Yeah, bro. We got a freaking mammoth!!!

-After a whole day cashing it.

-Yeah.

-And several more guarding the carcass.

-Yeah.

-And we haven’t eaten any of it yet.

-Patience, bro. Our wait is almost over.

-How can you tell?

-The naked apes hunt the kill, burn the kill and share the kill. That’s how it’s always been.

-But always outside.

-We got a mammoth, bro. We got a huge, damn, juicy mammoth! Can’t you just be happy about it?

-Just saying, dude. If we knew what the naked apes were up to, we could be of better use, maybe find a way to get there faster.

-You think you’re smarter than the naked apes?

-Not saying that, but the pack works better if everyone is in on the plan.

-Whatever, bro. You go out there smell rain, I’m staying here smelling this awesome kill.

-You just gonna sit there smelling smoke?

-Yeap! I’d smell this the whole day if I could.

A while later:

-Still here, hum?

-Yeap. Found any rain?

-Nope. Noticed anything strange?

-No. Why?

-Really, nothing at all?

-Bro, spill it out.

-We’re not eating!!!

-Yeah. So?

-Dude, how long will they let it burn???

-Don’t know, bro. That’s a lotta kill.

-Dude, you’ve been sitting here since sunrise!

-And…?

-The Sun is way up!

-Bro, keep calm and trust the naked apes.

A little much while latter:

-This, is taking a bit long.

-See?!

-Is there something wrong with the kill?

-Do you smell something wrong?

-I only smell awesome.

-Cuz there’s nothing wrong with the kill. Something’s wrong with us!

-You’re crazy!

-Dude! The naked apes are not sharing the kill. We screwed up!

-Like where?

-I don’t know! That’s why I ask questions, so we don’t screw up in the first place!

-You’re imagining things! Something’s up with that kill, I’m gonna check it out.

“Shhhhhhh!”

-Shhh?

-See, dude? They’re telling us to stay away from the kill!

-But… but… We’ve been goodbois!

-Obviously not!

The sun is out. Floo-Hoe is sat, letting out a faint cry into the skies, while Poopiu is frantically walking in circles.

-We messed up! wE mEsSeD uP!! WE MESSED UP!!!

-Pleeeeeeeeease! We learned our lesson, whatever the lesson is!!!

-Linda will never let us snuggle with her pup again!

-Pleeeeeeeeease! We’ll be goodbois! Let us have a share of the kill!

-Worse! She’ll have us snug it all the time, as fur coats!!!

-Pleeeeeeeeease! Just a tiny little bite!

-We’re too young, pretty and one of us too smart to be stabbed to death!

-Pleeeeeeeeease! We’ve been drowning on this smell all day! Let us have a piece before we die!

A naked ape walks into the tent. Poopiu quickly moves to follow it, before once again being shushed away. With its bare paws, it takes a tiny piece of the kill and chews it for a long while. After letting out a low growl of satisfaction, it brings its paws to the kill once again and takes a large chunk out of it.

Leaving the tent, it splits the kill’s chunk into two smaller ones, placing them in front of the two friends. For a single moment, they look at each other. Then, their heads teleport to it and start to chow it down. 

Almost without being perceived, the naked ape’s paws park over the friends’ heads.

“Goodbois!”

___

Tks for reading. More goodbois, gods, faeries and aliens here.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/OpinionatedIMO on 2024-12-25 17:38:57+00:00.

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Confidential Dossier: Top Secret brief!

(This intercepted alien transmission has been translated from phonetic ‘Yestos’ into English and other languages. Disseminate this official intelligence brief immediately to all appropriate agencies, military authorities, and relevant individuals.)

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“High commander, I bid you respectful salutations! May our murky Yestos empire of doom thrive for eternity!

I’ve just completed phase two of our mission to study the fleshy meatbags and their liquid-covered bluish planet. Theirs is an extreme society with chaotic contradictions and puzzling behaviors such as we have never seen. I could hardly believe some of the bizarre activities I witnessed during my covert observational period. I will detail these curious discoveries in the organized report listed below, along with my official recommendations. I am also officially requesting significant leave time to decompress and heal from the disgusting horrors of Earth which I witnessed.

Reproduction and life cycle: The meatbag life cycle varies from individual to individual! To clarify, I have triple confirmed this startling anomaly. They define the duration of their lifespans based upon solar units of their dominant star. Some of these flesh-sacks live many times longer than others! Nutrition, socioeconomic class, and numerous other random factors affect their lifecycle as well.

Regarding reproduction. The news is distasteful and disturbing, Sir. Brace yourself. They utilize a creepy form of chemical bonding known as ‘mating’ or ‘sex’ where one meatbag will share its unique DNA with another of their species via a biological connection tether. As disgusting as it sounds, this pollination tether is placed INSIDE another of their kind to deposit a transfer of… viscous fluids.

Despite hundreds of millions of instructional tutorials which they study intently for practice purposes, the reproductive success rate of these grotesque mating sessions is quite low. At first I thought this news was excellent for us, but I learned these unsuccessful attempts are actually deliberate, in nature. Their fertility rate would ordinarily be very high but they actually avoid completing the full reproductive process! Instead, they mate frequently for enjoyment sake alone!

I shuddered at the thought of such primitive, baffling, ritualistic behavior as you probably are. It speaks of their lurid willingness to practice pointless activities until they’ve perfected it. At any moment they could simply mate and reproduce fully to triple their fighting population! Imagine producing unlimited fleshbag soldiers upon demand! I felt it was imperative I point out the significant military advantage they have over us, but the bad news doesn’t stop there, I’m afraid.

Feeding habits and infrastructure: Meatbag or ‘human’ nutrition comes from an enormous range of terrestrial organic sources. They produce many developing lower species simply for the purpose of feeding themselves! The immature Earthlings even feed off of the adults of the same subspecies at the beginning of their lives. This suckling or ‘breastfeeding’ is a form of accepted cannibalism! The Infants start out feeding on their biological donors in order to toughen themselves or promote the survival of the fittest. At least that’s my working theory.

Then they are taught to eat the flesh of lower creatures in a deliberate act of carnal dominance! Ironically, the lower food supply species fully trust them and do not suspect or fear their own demise. It’s beyond sadistic, but the barbarism doesn’t end there. They also introduce toxins into their own food! (Possibly to immunize against potential biowarfare attacks from enemies like us).

The fact they deliberately inject their food supply with harmful additives and poison the very environment they live in with deadly chemicals speaks volumes! We can’t harm a lunatic species which has already poisoned itself in defiant preparation! They may be vile bags of organic flesh but it’s difficult not to recognize their superior invincibility in matters of clever invasion prep.

Belief systems and determination: The dominant ones have a dizzying array of unusual deities they communicate regularly with. So far I’ve been unable to locate any of these sacred gods but from the undeniable communications I’ve deciphered, their higher beings are omnipotent and all powerful! The humans who pray to them are actually excited about death and the cessation of their lives because they will be reborn into an indestructible, non-corporal form!

That terrifying fact alone makes an invasion of their swampy planet a terrible idea! It would quickly bring utter ruin to our superior civilization. This skin race is dangerous, fiercely primitive, and an unpredictable enigma. I cannot stress deeply enough the importance of avoiding all conflict with them! From everything I have read in their literature and film entertainment media, the meatbags rule the entire universe! They’ve stated this many, many times. We must avoid them at all costs.

Signing off secret transmission, Katorz Tirate of Yestos Three.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Moravian_descendant on 2024-12-25 15:37:14+00:00.

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Ship leader's journal: 17th Blekaan 203 of the interstellar age

My name is Kraahak of the mighty Erdroo empire, I was entrusted the command of this majestic vessel by his grace the Emperor himself. Our goal is to explore and expand the might of our great civilisation even to the darkest and most barbaric corners of this galaxy. This is the first entry to this journal, surely one of many to mark our success.

Ship leader's journal: 30th Blekaan 203 of the interstellar age

Today we left the borders of our great empire. I have given out the command to start the FTL engines, oh what a glorious day to be alive. The crew is in high spirits

Ship leader's journal: 8th Valkaan 203 of the interstellar age

At the start of this rotation, our scanners have detected a habitable planet, there seems to be a sentient population. What an opportunity to introduce civilisation to these primitives. In 2 hours we will land on the surface.

Ship leader's journal: 35th Valkaan 203 of the interstellar age

The planet was inhabited by pre-FTL civilisation, a primitive reptilian civilisation they were freshly united and easily subdued by our superior tactics and technology. The planet is mostly temperate with an average temperature of 308 units. It is perfect for colonization by our mighty empire and it will be far better than if these creatures called it home any longer.

We shall resupply, send a report back to beloved Erdroo and continue on our journey.

Ship leader's journal: 25th Mikkaan 203 of the interstellar age

It was almost 2 rotations since we found a worthy planet for colonization, but today we arrived at an interesting system, a single star, 4 rocky planets, 2 gas giants, 2 asteroid belts and 2 Ice giants. This should bring my name back to the Emperor as soon as we capture it. I will be the most famous explorer in this program I can see the rewards already, additional ships perhaps, a promotion for sure.

The species in this system seem to be as primitive as was the last.

Ship leader's journal: 28th Mikkaan 203 of the interstellar age

*data corrupted*

Ship leader's journal: 30th Mikkaan 203 of the interstellar age

The planet <data corrupted> ancient technology <data corrupted> civilization. <data corrupted> We called for reinforcements.

Losses estimated at <data corrupted> retreat <data corrupted>

**Ship leader's journal: <**data corrupted> 203 of the interstellar age

**Ship leader's journal: <**data corrupted> 204 of the interstellar age

**Ship leader's journal: <**data corrupted> 204 of the interstellar age

Ship leader's journal: 6th Klinkaan 204 of the interstellar age

This is the last entry, the <data corrupted> damaged our great vessel gravely. The reinforcements will arrive in a matter of several rotations, but by then our life-support systems will fail.

Long live the mighty Erdroo Empire! Long live the Emperor <data corrupted>

"That's all we got Ord'a?" Asked the captain of the ship. "That is all captain. The data could not be recovered further, it is a miracle we could download it, let alone translate it," replied Ord'a.

"Fine by me, how old is it anyway, I don't remember hearing of any Erdroo empire."

Ord'a raised his digit as a gesture to ask for more time. "It is roughly 350 years old and according to what we could salvage from their databanks we know Erdroo planet is in the northern part of the second quadrant of the Galaxy. And we can locate some of the planets this ship visited if you grant my team a rotation to do so.

"Take all the time you need as long as you get the results, meanwhile as much as I would like to explore the system I cannot ignore the signs." Said the captain as he looked at the cemetery of ships on the horizon. "Anyway, communication officer Krak, send a message to the Council to put this system on the danger zones list and request aid for further investigation.

Several cycles have passed and the aid arrived in the form of 3 frigates and 3 support ships with various specialists. As soon as they passed the first asteroid belt they received a message to everyone's horror directly translated into the Kjawran dialect of galactic common.

"You are entering into Terran core domain, shall you bring hostility into this sacred place you shall be utterly annihilated without mercy. Shall you come in peace disable your weapons and proceed to the 4th rocky planet from our star, there you shall be met by our ambassadors."

"It's Kjawran dialect, what shall we do captain? What if it is a trap?" Asked the frightened communications officer Krak.

"Disable our weapons if they know Kjawran and live then we stand no chance with 3 frigates." The captain replied while memories of the horrors he saw in the Kjawran grand crusade against his species played in his mind.

As the fleet approached the place where they should meet this mysterious species they saw all manner of destroyed ships many of them they did not recognize but the sight of Kjawran mothership split precisely in half was enough to confirm his fears. Suddenly came a transmission, all 4 of the captain's eyes fixed on the screen, this time in proper galactic common.

"This is space station Carthago of the Terran politeia, please dock your ambassador ship to port 34D as sent in the message together with coordination." As soon as the ship docked Captain was greeted by a bipedal creature roughly 2 units tall with 2 arms and fur only the lower part of its face was pale in comparison to the Captain who looked like a bipedal Terran Blue tiger with 4 eyes.

The creature raised its arm in front of it, which the captain recognised as a formal greeting so he reciprocated the gesture. "I am ambassador Séthanta O'Malley of Celtic Union and I would like to formally welcome you to the Terran system. This is space station Carthago named after an ancient city known for trade and cultural exchange. If you have any questions please do ask.

"I am Captain Voorhas of Ulurian hegemony and a leader of expedicion to deep space for Galactic union. Thank you for your warm welcome, but I do have two questions: Why did you Greet us in Kjawran dialect and then changed to standard galactic common and how did you manage to destroy Kjawran mothership in half?"

Ambasador Séthanta gestured to follow him and while at it began explaining. "The answer is frankly simple, we saw your ship models in their database and then we scanned your communications and updated our translator. And we probably cut them in half with one of the laser defence turrets."

"I see, so you have such superweapons here?" Asked Voorhas.

"I would not say that they are superweapons, but yes, they are quite powerful." This worried Voorhas visibly. "Do not worry captain you are safe as long as you are not hostile." Séthanta tried to soothe him.

"So we found a transmission of some Erdroo empire, do you happen to know something about them? We could not trace them down because the data we found were corrupted and estimated to be about 350 years old."

The ambassador stroked his beard and thought. "Erdroo empire you say? Yes I remember hearing that name among the list of Empires destroyed by our species, let me check the list." The man entered something on the vambrace-looking device on his forearm, hologram appeared and after a while Séthanta grinned. "Yes, they are apparently species that attacked Sol, that is abbreviation for Solar system about 435 years ago, that was in the age of rebuilding.

"Oh and we are here." They stopped at a large wooden door. "We call this first contact room you will see copies of our key historical artefacts and art in here. Please do not be frightened, some of them can be unsettling for some species."

"I served in the military, so I believe I will be fine." Replied Captain Voorhas.

Ambassador simply nodded and opened the door. The room was decoraded with golden and silver lining with marble pillars and frescos of arious events. Hunting of a mammoth, March of Legions trough Rome, Destruction of Rome, The middle ages and so on. There were also all sorts of statues and weapons together with a fireplace. In the middle of the room there was a grand table with massive chairs that still looked comfortable.

The two sat across eachother and exchanged basic information for about 2 terran hours, then a second Terran joined them. "This is Kristina Biela she is our expert historian she can explain your questions regarding our history. It was a pleasure to meet you."

---

This is my first story, I plan to write the part 2 today. It is a story from my original universe that I created so I have content for further stories if there would be interest in them.

Furthermore this is a shortened version of the story with less descriptions and conversations if you would like I could expand it, besides that I will be glad for suggestions on how to make my stories better.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/LordsOfJoop on 2024-12-25 16:16:59+00:00.

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"Sir."

The young, frightened private looked to the somewhat distracted veteran lieutenant, motioning to the war-zone outside of the habitat module; in the space between the door and the horizon lay a wasteland of bodies, heaped upon each like discarded toys, and a faint, still-tangible sensation of a tidal force having only withdrawn for the time being, not forever.

"Yes, private?"

The private shuffled nervously, his skin flushed with embarrassment, and then cleared his throat before speaking. "Sir, we.. that is, I.. regret to inform you that our sergeant is, uh.."

"He's dead."

"Sir, yes, sir."

A crude, sloppy salute follows this for some inadequately explored reason, eliciting a raised eyebrow from the lieutenant.

"Good to know. Reinforcements will be here within six to eight hours. We have twice that until the sun rises again. Between then and now, collect up the remaining firepower, organize the wounded, if there are any this time, and set the perimeter guard." The lieutenant paused for a moment. "Also, see to yourself being promoted to corporal, and inform the corporal who was just here she just made sergeant. As you were."

With wide eyes and a slight tremble, the newly-minted corporal could only provide a more assured salute, then give a sharp, short, "Sir-yes-sir" in the proud tradition of the clueless slowly becoming aware of how truly desperate times can become. With that accomplished, the corporal withdrew and the lieutenant was left alone again, still looking out of the window in the habitat.

"We could have made a bridge," he mused, shaking his head softly, his voice a whisper. "Instead, we threw rocks. Shame, really." As he turned, he caught a glimpse of something on one of the command and control monitors - an outlying recon body-cam, still active, capturing video of an enemy troop, one of the mobile horrors which had been assailing his encampment for the last four solid days - always attacking at dawn, when his people were less visually capable, some of them barely awake. A time-honored battle strategy, that.

Approaching the monitor he could see the beast, snuffling loudly, and grunting to its off-screen compatriots, or perhaps talking to itself. That had been observed more than a few times - prayers, perhaps, or just an idle thing, done by the idle soldiery, a constant of the cosmos.

Still, he watched as the monitor told the same story his recon team survivor had, as had the satellite telemetry until it failed and as did the post-mortem of the scant bodies which were recovered from the initial ambush scene. On the screen he could see the beast as it snuffled, drawing in vast amounts of air, and according to reports, memorizing scents for later tracking purposes; reportedly, they could do the same by taste, which elicited more questions that it ever answered, yet that fact, like a rotten tooth, swelled in his mind and lay horrible and eternal.

The beast picked up several shattered weapons, holding them aloft, then began to disassemble them; their reported capabilities as tool-users was far from accurate - the species seemed built to tinker and fiddle and even invent, and his command structure barely accepted them as fellow sapients. After bearing witness to what the "barely sapients" could do, the lieutenant imagined the high command being forced to listen to a sunrise full of shrieks and moans of all-too-familiar voices, faces soon to be erased from future and hope itself.

Again, it began to assemble something anew - endlessly creative, their initial efforts seemed to be based around clubs, then sharpened edges and finally, crude projectiles. Seeing an advanced photon arm-cannon, still oozing the original operator's blood and with two bones jutting from the end of it, as it is being forced into the form of a simple, inelegant spear, it does wonders to one's morale - namely, it gives it a summary execution and a burial in the mud.

What he saw on the monitor, though, it chilled him to the marrow. It held up the gun, in that case a phased plasma rifle, and then chambered a fresh round with a low, ominous humming sound. As the bolt ratcheted back and the primary fuel chamber filled, thus arming the weapon and preparing it to discharge the titanium-beryllium fragment dart at eighteen times the speed of sound, he saw the glee in the beast's eyes as he finally grasped how the world was going to burn, having just mastered the fine art of arson.

"..oh, we are so fucked.."

That assessment had barely left his lips when he heard a smartly-dressed officer enter the habitat by way of the permanently-opened doorway, and cough as to introduce themselves. Turning to face them, his hand was already raised in a salute, crisp and authentic, if automatic, at the officer in question. "Sir," he said, his mouth moving independently. "Welcome to Firebase Six. How can I help? Sir." The last "sir", a hitchhiker to the sentence, leaped away, leaving the saluting lieutenant staring down at what must be the highest-ranking officer yet to visit the planet itself - it being just a backwater hellhole on the ragged edge of contested space, barely worth the munitions it took to destroy what sparse habitation existed on its surface.

"As you were, lieutenant," the colonel said, then migrated to the lieutenant's desk, claiming his chair; being it was once in the custody of the captain running the combat unit to which the fire-base belonged, it becoming elevated in social standing was par for the course. "I'll need refreshments, someone to clean my bunker and an update on the current situation. Command has seen fit to have me oversee what's left of this fight. Your reinforcements are due within the hour." Smirking, the colonel put his feet on the desk, dislodging a few chunks of muddy earth onto some loose, barely-defined paperwork, and then sighed dramatically. "Well?"

Without pause nor apparent inward reflection, the lieutenant spoke candidly. "Sir," he began, "I'd say we have about eighteen or so hours before this isn't our planet any longer." Then he pointed to the monitor. "I just witnessed, as in, within the previous one hundred seconds or so, one of them arming and preparing a Clarvell-Briss phased plasma rifle, then .." He paused. "You.. you really don't know about what happened, do you, sir?"

The colonel, his amusement vanishing rapidly, stood slowly and approached the lieutenant. "You," he began, putting his index finger against the lieutenant's sternum. "Will never presume my knowledge nor experience. I was appraised of your previous commander's absolute and abject failure to maintain order, discipline, sensible conduct and regular communications with high command. Frankly, corporal, and oh yes, it will be corporal by end of day, of this I can assure you, you are being held liable for the failures still echoing. Does this idea penetrate?" With a smirk, he looked down at his subordinate and glared with pride.

To this, the former-lieutenant nodded gravely and spoke with quiet conviction. "With all due respect," he began, "They are only killing the officers and leave the enlisted alone. So, thank you.. sir." Then he beamed brightly, and walked a step back, saluting proudly, and in full line of sight to the doorway - the same one which had been ripped off of the hinges on the first dawn of the attacks, courtesy of just one of the beasts' least efforts. When it pried the captain's head off of his shoulders and did that.. obscene.. biological process to the stump, that seemed the more strenuous activity.

The colonel had only time enough to blink before he turned, facing the doorway, and realized how absurd of a quality target he was - backlit by a monitor, captured in the early evening hours, and with no obstruction provided, a child could make that shot count, and whomever it was, they very much did that very thing.

The hole was the size of a fist when it began at his sternum, and his internal organs simultaneously vaporized and were turned into a thin slurry by the fast-moving darts in the cloud of super-heated hydrogen gas, and his last breath was thrown through the monitor behind him, robbing him of even words at his own demise. Without further ado, the former commanding officer of Firebase Six hit the floor, his wounds dried and devoid of mess - the weapon was known to cauterize what little fluids might leak, what with the majority being drawn from the body so rapidly they tended to look like extended tentacles before splashing to the ground.

As he stripped his uniform of all rank insignia, the newly-minted corporal walked outside, looking up at the deep, rich blue skies overhead, then sighed, relief and joy filling his expression as he saw the first of the beasts beginning to thread their way back into the encampment; as before, none of the enlisted were threatened, simply ignored, as they began their new search for officers to engage in wanton, abject cruelty. It was not the enlisted men who had bombed their homes, shattered the lives and stolen their world - true, some did fight, and those who did were torn asunder, to rise as flame and fall as ashes.

The smarter, wiser troops simply allowed it to happen, and of those, most began to remove their uniforms, walking into the jungle so very much like the ones on their collective home-world. To fight and die on behalf of the distant elite stopped mattering. And so did the corporal join them, merging with the woods, vanishing body and soul, never to emerge again.

B...

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Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1hm3jub/behind_thick_walls/