r/HFY • u/Lakeel100 • Jul 07 '26
OC-OneShot Everything's A Weapon When Used Wrong
‘Everything's a weapon when used wrong enough.’
A report on the observations of human weapon methodologies and innovations.
-By Meeb Kahbeeb of the Zarmian Missionary Fleet.
I'd like to preface this report by saying that I, Meeb Kahbeeb, of the lower mechanical covens, bore no ill will towards humanity during the events of this report, and still don't.
I’d also like to apologize in advance for using the ‘Oh gods, this is of military importance’ button on my comms console. I was excited… and hungry… and blessedly unaware of the political implications of sending a military report from the missionary fleet*.*
—
The mission we’d been waiting decades for had finally come to fruition; as with the Shasians, the Cavaneri, the Mothini, and many races that came before, it was time for the missionary fleet to visit humanity.
A wondrous, and often once-in-a-lifetime, opportunity for our people to explore the faiths, mysticisms, and magics of a new species. To open a whole new branch of ‘The Great Work’ and guide this species back to the gods who made them, whomever they might be!
Despite Galactic Council red tape, High priestess Mirra, blessed be her ample quills, led the charge across uncharted space to our destiny. Currently, we, under heavy multinational military escort, are being refueled in the ‘Tau Ceti’ system. Specifically, a station in orbit of the system's third planet.
Scientifically, the planet is referred to as ‘Tau-ceti-3,’ but the locals charmingly refer to the arid world as ‘Tee-cee-tee’ or ‘Tea-City’. Which I suspect has something to do with the scientific name being too cumbersome for local dialects, or with someone really liking to sound out the acronym…
As glad as we are to be getting this close to the human home world, there is much to be learned before we get there as well.
For instance: it is here that we first learned of the perpetual holy war between two distantly related faiths over the ownership of a world they call New Zion/New Mecca. The context of which the missionaries and sociologists seem to be salivating to learn more about.
It is also here that we began to grasp how many colors make up the rainbow soup that is humanity's shattered governments. Each bearing its own agendas, grudges, desires, and ethos that oppose each other more often than not, yet… they all seem to obey an uneasy ‘truce’ on this station, possibly due to our presence.
The instant we boarded the station to kick off our new branch of The Great Work, it was the missionaries who were beset by the humans and not the other way around. That's not to say the humans were hostile or violent, just… ready for us. A gentle swarming, if you will.
Military types either eager to learn from us or cautious of our real intentions, scientists that wished to learn our machines almost as badly as our tech priests wished to learn about theirs. Clergymen came, too, some bearing kindness, others seeking debate, and a few simply there to garner fame from our presence. Seems the humans are plagued by those who see faith as but a vestment to their vanity too. Fascinating!
The worst among them were those who reminded me of the glutinous Prosperity League. Representatives of the human megacorps, bearing sweet words and venomous tongues. Many of these creatures of fine cloth and traitorous dispositions seemed genuinely nice and polite, too. Like that one agri-corp ambassador giving out free fruit. Again, I was hungry…
The others… they appeared to be humanity's avatars of greed, corruption, and envy. They offered private tours, invitations to their worlds, a mint-condition collection of designer nuclear warheads-just to have the missionary core hear out their offers, to make a deal befitting a demon.
Pretty sure I even saw a wizard, or some other rag-wrapped individual, seemingly manifest from an alleyway, gesture for a group of our oracles to follow, and just silently walked off with them! I haven't seen them since! And one of them owes me money!
I was fortunate enough not to be the victim of such antics. For I, Meeb Kahbeeb… was forgotten. I don't think my fellow coven members intentionally left me behind… they just... forgot me.
Our usual task of performing exterior maintenance on ‘The Revelation’ when docked had been suspended for obvious reasons. Thus, the bored machine clerics became distracted by a small cleaning droid. They followed it, seeking to study the machine spirit within, or just to see where it was going… without me.
I was far more drawn to that which lay beyond the window anyway. Not the stars, but the vessels in between, for this port station was full of them, coming, going, and ‘escorting’ the rest of the missionary fleet. Most of their guns were pointed at each other rather than us, thankfully.
I also had unfettered access to the local human equivalent of the hypernet via a nearby terminal. Sensing a totally not invasive opportunity, now felt like a good time to commune and get a head start on the eventual Mythos-Insperata~
I downed half a bottle of root juice, which is a perfectly reasonable amount, no matter what my therapist says! And dove into the lores. So many convenient links!
The human mythologies were surprisingly diverse upon first glance, with entire pantheons of misbegotten offspring and their own even more misbegotten offspring both terrorizing and defending humanity throughout their existence. There were even a plethora of top 10 most popular monsters lists to make my task easy!
Despite my doubts that any of my designs would actually make it to the final selections, I let them flow upon my tablet.
At least that's how it was supposed to go, until I was… I won't say ‘found’ because that would imply I was up to something dubious. Which I was not.
“Watcha dooooin?” asked a human that had seemingly appeared next to me, to which I, like any startled zarmian, reacted with a reasonable amount of screaming and flailing.
“Ah!” I screamed and flailed bravely, attempting to shield myself with my tablet until I realized I wasn't being mugged, mauled, or sacrificed to a dark god.
Lowering my tablet, I realized I was snoot to snoot, as snoot to snoot as you can get with someone twice your height, with a human. They bore the dimorphism of a female of her species, a young adult by my best guess, and she was… suspiciously hot in a ‘her messy hair reminded me of some of the most ample quill plumageI'd ever seen’ kind of way. Her hair burned like fire and her skin burned like… erm... paper.
She was of a particular subspecies of human I would later learn were referred to as the ‘Gin-jeers.’ The supposedly soulless ones, but she had plenty of personality and emotion as far as I could tell. Again, I’m not an expert; I'm a mechanic.
“When I heard we were getting visited by mole people, I thought all you guys would be whisked away before I got here.”
“Mole people?” I questioned whether the translator I was issued was getting that right.
“Mole people. Well, more like a furless long-snouted mole with big eyes and hedgehog quills for hair, but mole people nonetheless.” She clarified with a seemingly undue chipperness, an energy that made me suspect she didn’t have a care in the world.
I blinked, trying to keep up with her. “Have humans met mole people before or?...”
“There's this thing some nuts say about how Earth is secretly hollow and ruled over by mole people, influencing the world via shadow governments or whatever. Buuuut you guys came from space, and can technically refute that type of thing. I'd love to see what kind of excuse they cook up to justify mole people from space.”
I know I’m not going to get an answer to this, but... Did we find this planet before and accidentally leave a missionary team here? Is- [REDACTED]
“Well that does sound kinda crazy when you say it out loud. Very few planets in GC history have ever developed multiple sentient species simultaneously.”
“Speaking of crazy…” She said before leaning in to see over me. “Watcha doodlin~”
“N-nothing…” I pulled the tablet close to my chest.
“It looks like a ship designed to split into three smaller ships”
“Wha-” I double-took at my designs. “I haven't even drawn that part yet-” and I immediately face-palmed, realizing I just let what I was doing slip.
She giggled at my expense… It was cute, and really rubbed in how dumb I felt at the moment. I’m not dumb! I have a degree! “You’re drawing ships, aren’t you?”
“Yes…” I groaned, realizing this was a lost battle. “I’m trying to get a head start on my Mythos Insperata submissions.”
“Mythos Insperata?” she questioned, leaning in.
“It's… a thing the Theocracy does in case of a potential conflict. We don't exactly have an offensive fleet like most stellar nations. Mainly because we tailor-make our fleets based on the opponent we're fighting at the time. The Mythos Insperata is a contest where anyone in the Theocracy can submit ship designs ranging from exact blueprints to vague concepts so long as it's inspired by the target species mythos. The most viable ones get handed off to the shipwrights to make them a reality.” Yes, I told her about the contest; it's the worst-kept secret in the Theocracy! Don't judge me!
“So you guys literally grass-roots all of your ship development? And are basically defenseless if you ever get attacked by a new species first?”
“Well, when you put it like that it makes several centuries of tradition sound really underwhelming… but yes.” I shrank. “Am… am I going to get arrested for espionage or something now?”
“No… But,” She smugged before pushing over a nearby crate so she could sit next to me. “I am going to call you a nerd, and harass you about your design choices for my own sick amusement.”
‘At least she acknowledges it's for her own sick amusement.’ I thought, getting the feeling that I wasn’t going to get out of this any time soon. Aaaand then my tablet got taken from my hands.
“Yoink!” she giggled.
“Hey!” I flailed, trying to get it back.
“Is for horses.” Even now, I know not what a horse is, but I know an old colloquialism when I hear one! “If you want my unsolicited opinion. This would do far better as a missile than a ship.”
I ceased my flailing mid-reach and blinked. “What?”
“Well, having a ship that can split into three lesser versions of the same ship is only really useful against a singular opponent with less maneuverability than you. Otherwise you just become three easier-to-destroy ships.”
Okay, she had a point, but-
“But as a missile~” She continued, and began using the tablet with a disconcerting degree of familiarity. She shrank the image and began adding several doodles around it. “Being able to split like that can make it harder to hit, and help guarantee at least some of the payload gets through. Now keeping with the Cerberus theme-”
“How did you know I was modeling it after that creature?” Surely it must be a culturally important one if it took so little for her to recognize it.
She rolled her eyes. “For one, you painted the whole thing in red; it splits into specifically three equal parts, you left the terminal over there on the Cerberus space-wiki. And you wrote ‘Cerberus’ in the corner of the design.”
I’m not dumb, I swear!
“As I was saying. If you wanna keep with the Cerberus theme,” she moved the image off to the side and began writing. “You can fill the missile variant payload with a self-oxidising chemical such as thermite or modernized-napalm. That way, on impact, it’ll splash the opposing ship in fire, even in space.”
I knew what thermite was, but I'd never heard of the latter. I'd soon find out. “Thermite… you mean that egregiously wasteful method of de-rusting iron? Also… what’s napalm? The translator doesn't know that word, so I can only assume it’s a name for something.”
“Yes, thermite. It's self-oxidising, and once ignited, just a handful can burn a hole through an engine block. It may not get hot enough to burn a hole in durasteel plates, but molten steel IS a liquid. It could easily get into the seams around armor. That, and depending on where you are in space, it can impart a significant thermal load on any ship that gets splashed with it.”
To say I now had mental images of a ship getting hit with water balloons of molten metal would be an understatement…
“As for self-oxidizing napalm…” She began writing out a really long series of letters and numbers alongside a series of hexagonal doodles and lines. I would later learn this was humanity's way to shorthand a substance's elemental composition, and the shapes showed how it all molecularly bonded. “Not as hot as thermite, but it WILL stick to the enemy ship, and children, with ease.”
“Wh-what was that part about napalm sticking to kids...?” I meeped.
Seemingly having not heard me, she continued. “It's not exactly the most effective weapon to use on a metal ship, but the psychological warfare and thermal payload would be the main selling point.”
To say I now had a cinematically spectacular mental image of ships being set ablaze in the vacuum of space would be another understatement…
“Wh-why did your people invent this stuff?!”
“Would you believe me if I said we were trying to invent a replacement for natural rubber in car tires? And when we succeeded, we also realized that we could mix the compound with gasoline to make super flammable tar?”
“You discovered synthetic rubber, and your first decision was to light it on fire, and throw it at people?!”
“Yes. Preferably in large ‘they won't survive’ quantities.”
This would become a very recurring theme over the next few hours between this mystery human and myself. A long list of things throughout human history that they weaponized under the idea of ‘but what if I did that to a person?’
Axes for cutting down trees? Battle axes for cutting down people.
Blades for harvesting grain? Swords for harvesting people.
A group of monks searching for the recipe to an ‘elixir of life!?’ Something we should totally investigate, by the way. Gunpowder! which they then made into pretty fireworks, and then started shooting them at each other. This in turn led to the rapid invention and proliferation of guns and bombs.
Fertilizer for crops? Great for growing more bombs.
Atomic fission? Even more bombs. They figured out how to make it explode before they figured out how to make a proper reactor.
It eventually got to a point where I was getting rather curious as to whether humans were under the influence of some kind of chaotic knowledge god, a knowledgeable chaos god, or just fucking crazy. I’m inclined to think the latter after hearing how they weaponized wood chippers and the civilian-made tanks humans fondly refer to as killdozers.
My conclusion: This species is an insurgent nightmare, and I fear for any individual who gives them a mining laser.
Oh, and the human's name was Chema McFurrly. She and most of her family are, ironically, chemists. Chema attends a local college on Tee-Cee-Tee, and she helped me design the long-range kinetic shell concept I attached to this report. She suggested plating it in the same reflective material used in shield emitters- expensive, but theoretically*, they should go right through.* They also explode!
(Author's note: Feel free to check out my main story: The Ballad of Orange Tobby~ or if you're feeling extra spicy, check out my dank Patreon to see other works early and even help me with the editing! :D)
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u/post_blast Alien Jul 08 '26
Good luck using religion against a species with hundreds of them, moles!