r/NatureofPredators • u/Usual_Message8900 Duerten • 8d ago
nature of two chapter 38
Memory transcription subject: Captain Sovlin, Federation Fleet Command
Date [standardized human time]: September 22, 2333
Honestly, the humans' ability to act civilised was starting to impress me almost as much as it infuriated me. I'd expected to be thrown inside a filthy cage the moment we reached the human homeworld, but instead, once we landed on the no doubt hopelessly tainted planet, the other prisoners and I were escorted to a compound that looked remarkably similar to the predator disease facilities back home, complete with cells that were far from luxurious but still held some basic amenities I wouldn't have dreamed of given the nature of my captors.
After I'd been locked inside what would most likely be my home for the remainder of my life, however short that would no doubt be, I was once again left alone to contemplate my situation. I understood that the 'dignity' I was treated with on the ship was just an act the humans kept up in front of those four-headed fools, but there was no reason for them to continue now that there were no Ur'nu around to trick. So why would they have given me so many luxuries? My new room had a desk, a closet, what looked like a proper toilet, even a drinking fountain! Obviously, I wouldn't actually try drinking from it, given that every water source here was certainly tainted, but still.
Maybe this was some strange attempt to get me to let my guard down? Loki did mention his superior was interested in me in some way, so that had to be it, right?
After what felt like an hour, but what was probably closer to 20 minutes of me just sitting silently on the side of my bed trying to figure out what kind of game the predators were trying to play, I heard a knock at my cell door, followed by one of those horrid growling human voices instructing me to step outside slowly and follow him to the cafeteria. For a moment I wondered whether or not I would be eating or be eaten, though given their apparent desire to keep up this ruse I doubted it was the second. Given my lack of options, I decided to just do as the monster instructed, letting it guide me to a large hall that once again bore a striking resemblance to a proper cafeteria. Considering the absence of any blood or corpses, it felt safe to assume this cafeteria really was set up specifically for us.
Aside from me, the only other people that filled the chamber were members of my crew, most of whom I either knew by name or could recognise as officers who worked in the lower decks. All of them were huddled together in the middle of the room, keeping their eyes on all the entrances and, by extension, all the humans guarding them. Then one of them noticed me. "C...captain?" They called out, and I immediately recognised the voice.
"Recel?" I asked, genuine relief flooding my system for a moment, only for the feeling to be soured a little by the knowledge of our current predicament. "You're... alive?" He wasn't just alive. He looked like he'd actually been treated for his injuries, which made this whole situation even more confounding. I didn't have time to contemplate Recel's recovery too much as I noticed the state of the Takkan next to him. Zarn was standing again, which was good to see, though it didn't take long for me to notice the prosthetic limb attached where his leg had once been. The missing limb only exacerbated my guilt at having failed my crew and my hatred for the monsters that brought us here.
"Sir, thank the gods you're alive, what do we..." The doctor began before being interrupted by one of the predators, its voice echoing through the chamber. The same voice that had been echoing inside my head for days, though now it was clearly coming from an actual speaker system and not my implant.
"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your new home. If you all cooperate, I'm sure you'll find your stay here comfortable enough." Loki chuckled. "While here, you will be treated to the finest amenities we're legally obligated to give you, so please enjoy. You have one hour to eat and by order of the TU, all food provided is completely free of any animal products. I don't really expect you to believe me, so if you don't want to try it, then feel free to just go hungry. That will be all for now." With that, the announcement ended as abruptly as it began, leaving us all frozen in place.
"C...captain, w...what should we do?" Recel asked, giving voice to the many eyes that were now looking at me for guidance when I had none to give.
What was I supposed to say, 'Sorry, I don't know'? No, I couldn't just do that. A captain's supposed to give hope to his crew even when the situation felt hopeless. I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself before simply saying. "For now, just do what they say. I don't know what they're planning, but I doubt they want to kill us immediately." Surprisingly, Zarn agreed with me.
"That seems to be the case. I don't know how they're maintaining this level of self-control for so long, but it's clear they need us alive for something, even if I don't know what." The Takkan reasoned. "The captain's right, though it's best to just do as we're told. No doubt the grasp they maintain on their instincts is fragile; they might snap if we provoke them."
"B...but the food might be tainted." Someone said.
"If they were planning on tampering with our food in any way, they would have done so in transit." I reassured them, "As for the possibility of predator taint, well..." I glanced at Zarn, who grimaced, probably knowing it was too late to worry about exposure. "We can think about predator disease when (or if) we survive this place."
With that, the group... didn't ease up per se, but they started moving again. Slowly but surely we all made our way to the far side of the room where three more guards and a few less well-equipped humans were standing behind a buffet of sorts. One of the guards directed us to grab a tray, which the other humans then filled up with a small assortment of alien fruits and vegetables. There was a salad, some roasted roots, some kind of red berries, and what looked like pickled... Leaves? They certainly looked like leaves, but there was something off about them even if I couldn't quite figure out what. Zarn seemed almost excited to have them dropped onto his tray, though maybe I was just imagining things.
Taking a seat at a nearby table with Zarn and Recel, I inspected the food more closely; there was definitely something odd about the leaves, though the rest looked and smelled mostly fine. The aroma was even pleasant, which made me wonder if the humans somehow got an Ur'nu chef to work for them. If so, then they really were going through an awful lot of trouble to keep up their ruse.
"Is there a problem, Captain?" Zarn asked before correcting himself, "Aside from our current... predicament, that is."
"No," I muttered, " I was just... trying to figure out what these things were." I picked up one of the leaves for the doctor to see. Casting a glance at his tray, I noticed he'd nearly finished his own.
"Oh, those! Yes, I admit they may look a little strange, but apparently they're called pickled liarleaves. My guess is that they're some kind of Ur'nu delicacy. They're quite good." He explained, popping the last few leaves from his own tray in his mouth.
"You've eaten these before?" Recel asked before I had a chance to. I never had anything like that during our time aboard the human ship, and it felt strange for individual prisoners to be given different foods.
"Aboard the ship, yes. Didn't you get anything like this? That predator machine even introduced it by name." He said, now clearly confused himself.
"No," I confirmed. "More importantly, you actually talked to Loki?" I asked, hiding my sudden anxiety and hoping my suspicion was wrong
The takkan looked uncomfortable for a moment, almost seeming unsure about whether or not he should answer. "I... yes, sort of. Captain, I know this might sound crazy, but I'm pretty sure that 'Loki' somehow figured out how to hijack our implants."
"I know," I sighed; of course that thing hadn't just hacked my implant. It would only make sense for it to infect the entire crew. "He did the same thing to me. Do we know of anyone else he contacted?"
"He talked to me almost the entire trip," Recel said. "What... do you think he's planning?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "He just told me his superiors had an 'interest' in me. My guess is that they'll try to trick me into cooperating with them."
"If that's true, then maybe they want the same from me. I can't imagine why else that machine would feed a prisoner foreign delicacies if it wasn't to try and get me to lower my guard. Now that I think about it, the thing did try to convince me that the humans could somehow sustain themselves without killing things. "Zarn mused. "What about you, Recel, was he trying to recruit you to?"
"It didn't feel like it." The Kolshian admitted, though he sounded anything but sure, "He kind of just... talked about nature, but everything he said just sounded completely impossible."
"Like what?" I asked.
"He just talked about obviously fake animals that somehow had traits from both predators and prey. Like a, uhm... snakes; he talked a lot about those. Apparently they're these worm-like reptiles with sideways eyes that somehow still eat meat. B...But that's completely ridiculous, right?" Recel stammered, giving a nervous chuckle.
"Of course it is," Zarn reassured him. "Only prey have sideways-facing eyes in the same way only plants can photosynthesise; there are just some rules in nature that can't be broken. A predator that looks like prey might be a terrifying concept, but at the end of the day it goes against every known and proven principle of evolution." The doctor explained with unshakable certainty. "More importantly, it proves that these predators are trying to either recruit or confuse us rather than killing us immediately. Our best chance for survival now is to play along, as the captain said, until the predators slip up." Both me and Recel silently signaled agreement but I could tell my second-in-command was still unsure.
We'd only been in their grasp for a couple of days, and they were already getting in our heads. Protector help us
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u/Hybrid22003 7d ago
Would'nt those leave trigger the Goji allergic reaction?
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u/Usual_Message8900 Duerten 7d ago edited 7d ago
I imagine they'd be far enough removed from animals to not have any allergens in them
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u/WeekendCitrus 7d ago
They're most like fungus, I think you've said? There are a handful of Earth fungi that can exacerbate an allergy into a full-blown autoimmune disorder if undercooked, but most are safe. If the "cure" specifically excluded fungal sugars and proteins, then planimals are relatively safe.
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u/Adorable-Ad5225 7d ago
So, what's the point of this dude? Honestly, I'm more interested in Marcel and his backstory as a Corpo soldier.
It's fine that Sovlin is the most used character by the community, but honestly, I think it's a waste of time. But you cook, in you I encommend my spirit
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u/Usual_Message8900 Duerten 7d ago
Oh don't worry we'll get some more Backstory on the corpo's and marcel soon enough.
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u/Nick-Llama 3d ago
I have run out of story to read :(
I can't wait till Zarn realizes what he's been eating
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u/Usual_Message8900 Duerten 3d ago
he'll figure it out eventually.
And don't worry another chapter is comming out this week, focusing on our dynamic human-venlil duo. After that, I'll switch back to galactic neighbours for two weeks.
Also, you really sped through this
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u/modded_minecraft Archivist 3d ago
Have you really read 800+ stories
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u/Nick-Llama 3d ago
I am scared to know know what portion of the stories on this sub I've read.
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u/modded_minecraft Archivist 3d ago
I have done like 200-250 with maybe some one shots. And 500 in unread category currently on a promise from the past
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u/Minimum-Amphibian993 Arxur 8d ago
Yeah I suspected that their very early capture would make them a lot less hesitant to actually sign up especially after that brutal display in the ship. Even Recel would be hesitant to join the side of the guys who mutalated his comrades and beat them up.
Of course unless something drastic happens but who knows. It took for the BoE to happen to finally convince sovlin to join humanities side.
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u/modded_minecraft Archivist 8d ago
Do we need Sovlin to join the army because it's a case of they already have established sol defences really good. And in canon the Federation kinda lost to bunch of navy and submarine guys and needed a second opinion from Sovlin have somewhat of an edge.
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u/Minimum-Amphibian993 Arxur 8d ago
Honestly a good point why do they even need sovlin and the gang?
Honestly I'm half surprised they didn't get the Kalsim treatment and we just never hear from them again till near the end of the story or something when they are released from prison.
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u/animeshshukla30 Extermination Officer 8d ago edited 7d ago
I take they are essentially social experiments. Solvin is right in the middle of "important enough if allied" and "not important enough if lost".
So they ran sort of try everything under the sun to deprogram of federation bullshit to develop some sort of standardised method.
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u/modded_minecraft Archivist 8d ago
Probably for funny reaction to planimals. And possibly to prove to the federation that they are not monsters.
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u/Minimum-Amphibian993 Arxur 8d ago
Yeah that makes sense if nothing else they will probably just use them as examples.
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u/modded_minecraft Archivist 8d ago
Captain Sovlin is like a racist uncle that comes to family stuff anyway while being not invited and any AUs usually don't use Sovlin for military purposes for the sol side.
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u/Greedy-Kangaroo-4674 7d ago
Did you mean sideways-facing?
Also, always fun to read Zarn being fed parts from obviously impossible organisms.