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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/BainWrites on 2024-12-03 19:16:11+00:00.
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“This must be a war crime.”
Major Sumaya Franklin looked down at the document she had been handed, the proposal lying on her desk, causing a confused grimace to form on her lips. Such proposals weren't anything new in Sumaya’s job: much of her time was spent sitting in this office, day after day, looking over and approving some of the many thousands of requests a military might make. New initiatives, upgrades, weapons: everything a modern galactic army needed.
This suggestion that had been placed on her desk was different. It was the kind of thing that potential future people might make damming documentaries about, an idea that seemed crazy and somehow… Heretical
“We checked with the lawyers, Ma’am. They stated the complete opposite, that since they are all legal Terran citizens, that denying such a request might fall foul of several equality laws.”
Niall O’connor spoke up as he stood opposite to the Major, a simple professional tone to his voice as he watched her thumb through the document he'd written, proofread, and then provided her. He'd created many such documents during his career, as the military had many problems, and his job was to create problem solvers. To put the right pieces together and create a tool that dealt with the niggling issues the rest of the military couldn’t.
If he was being honest, this was one of the weirder ones he’d put together. It wasn’t even his idea: the people referenced in the document had been the ones to suggest this new covert operations squad, Niall had just put together the feasibility study and done some of the legwork to get the paperwork. He could feel a little sympathy for Sumaya, as everyone he’d shown the proposal to had fallen squarely into one of two camps: ‘This is awesome’, or ‘This won’t end well’.
The Major had nothing against uplifts. As soon as they were technologically able, humanity had uplifted their animal companions into sapience, bringing their lifelong friends to the stars and beyond, granting them increased dexterity and intelligence through extensive genetic modification. The vast majority of these now Terran citizens were once dogs or cats, with a lesser smattering of parrots, hamsters, rabbits or other common pets. Sumaya didn’t mind those, they were good people. Even the exotic uplifts were mostly fine, the result of a few crazy people who had decided to uplift their pet racoon or alligator. She could still understand those to some extent. These uplifts however…
“I know it’s not the politically correct thing to say, but why were these uplifts even created? Out of every animal on God’s green Earth, someone chose these species.”
“Most people would get offended by that, although having spoken with the members of the group myself, they’d be inclined to agree.”
The individuals Niall had spoken to were just as strange as their creation, each one fully aware of the reputation they held, almost taking it with pride, the bad boys of the Terran people, a sign that sometimes the Terran chaos went a little too far.
“Look at this one: Legion. Never mind why they were uplifted, I want to know how. Doesn’t the uplift process require a minimum amount of… brainpower to work with?”
“The how is complicated. Something about a biological communal mind, taking advantage of their lack of individuality to form a consciousness in large groups. Makes them functionally immortal as long as their egg batches are never destroyed. As for the ‘why’...”
Niall paused for a moment, reading from his own notes on the group.
“Legion’s creator was a Dr. Fyodor Dmitrev. After he uplifted the first one, his given reason during the press conference was, and I quote: ‘Because I’m the smartest person alive you bitches, I can do what I want’. He then went on a three-hour-long drunken profanity filled rant for the rest of the press event. Ended up creating five of the uplifts in total, until one of his creations killed him.”
Legion wasn’t the only one of the proposed group that had an ‘interesting’ upbringing, all of them did. Nobody who would uplift these animals would be considered normal, or even stable. Frankly it was a miracle any of the uplifts ended up even slightly functional in the end considering their creation.
“That tracks with what I’d expect.”
Sumaya continued skimming through the document, feeling a pit of despair in her stomach as she continued to read. No matter their apprehension of this supposed project, she couldn’t argue that it wasn’t going to be effective. Each of them were already in the Terran military, each with a long list of accolades and successful missions under their belt. Besides the obvious negative PR, there was no good reason to say no, and no good reason to potentially alienate current highly effective military assets.
“Can we at least change the name?” Sumaya finally said, shaking her head. “It really sends the wrong message.”
Niall gave a chuckle at that, shaking his head in response.
“That was one of their hard lines, they see it as a badge of honour, who they are, what they are. They’re strangely protective of how people see them.”
Sumaya resisted the urge to sigh, instead weighing up the pros and cons of keeping this group of highly effective soldiers happy, and the reputation hit should it become known that she signed off on something like this. Visions of various headlines ran through her mind “Major Franklin signs off warcrime committing death squad” and “Major Franklin: Racist refuses to let uplifts fight for our nation.”. It only took a few moments for the pros to outweigh the cons. Realistically, nobody in the long term would care as long as the group maintained their professionalism, and this wasn’t even the craziest thing approved in the Terran military this week.
“Fine. I give my approval for ‘The Bastard Squad’”.
—-----------------------
Raxl didn’t like guarding things. Raxl didn’t like a great number of things, mostly anything that didn’t involve fighting or eating. She was a Hagorthian, a giant species of reddish brown lizard that had evolved the aggressive trait of never stopping their growth, fuelling a biological desire to continually fight and eat in order to sustain this never ending requirement for resources. Hagorthian culture was filled with a constant obligation to prove your own strength through fighting, the species having travelled the stars conquering planets, demanding those they enslaved to provide worthy challenges and food sources.
Many external researchers had speculated on how the Hagorthians had even managed to build a civilization able to create FTL travel, a few noting the species seemed to take great leaps forward whenever they were led by the very, very few born with exceptional intelligence. None of those had appeared for quite some time, however, as recently in the last 100 years they had allied themselves with 4 other slaving species, calling themselves the Estorian Empire. This empire had unsurprisingly found themselves in a wide spanning war against the slaver hating Terrans and their allies.
Raxl gave an absent-minded growl as she stood in place, weapon in hand, trying to at least pretend that she was keeping a look-out for any potential threats. The machine behind her glowed and did… something. She wasn’t sure what exactly, the annoying bird who had handed it over to them said something about blocking waves, quantum entanglement, and a bunch of other words far too long for her liking. Raxl also didn’t like long words, nothing in her life was complicated enough for any word larger than eight letters, and that was only if you included the apostrophe in the word fightin’.
The Lelzoil were also one of the members of the Estorian Empire, the brightly coloured xenophobic avians the complete opposite to the Hagorthians, focusing on the power of intelligence and extracting knowledge from the universe at any cost. As much as Raxl would have been more than happy to grab the annoying talking weak bird and bite it in half, supposedly they had a solution for the even more annoying Terran problem.
Raxl both loved and hated the Terrans. On the one hand, the strange primates were always a good fight. Sure they were small, but then what species wasn’t when compared with the Hagorthians? No matter their size, they always had a fight in them, the willingness to go head-to-head in combat when required. Killing a Terran was never an easy thing: it was a honourable and proud thing.
Raxl was covered in an assortment of trophies from her nearly 140 years of fighting, teeth and bones strung together into bracelets, fangs and claws showing every major kill she’d ever successfully accomplished. There were the fangs of her first mentor, the jawbone of the first Juiral she ever hunted, and of course, nestled on the side of her hip, was the primate skull of a Terran she’d bested in combat. From before the war, back when less savoury and adrenaline seeking Terrans would visit Hagorthian space to engage in the many acts of ritualized combat that existed.
Which was the real problem: While they fought well, Terrans didn’t do war correctly. They hid behind automated drones to do their warfare, focusing on losing as few people as possible instead of the glor...
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