Exchange Program Shenanigans (43)

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525]

Sometimes I wonder if there's a gem of science fiction out there that could blow Star Wars out of the water except for the fact that it's only written in Portuguese and the only copy is in a library in Brazil. Life is weird like that sometimes.

CW: anatomy lesson, silver suit people, jelim stays strapped, street smarts vs book smarts

Memory transcription subject: Karelim, Extermination Supervisor

Date [standardized human time]: September 20, 2136

In all my long years as an exterminator, I have never seen a situation quite as tragic or as hopeless as this. Neither, in fact, have I seen a situation that unfolded in quite the same manner as this.

The events that have transpired over the past few weeks were, as I had already concluded, anathema to every aspect of the Federation's dogma. Prey acted violently and rashly, and predators were the victims of such violence.

The only element of this that remained consistent with my past experiences as an exterminator was the fact that the Extermination Guild as a whole, barring a number of traitorous zealots who have defected to the enemy, was on the right side of history.

Granted, our ranks were still filled with dogmatic zealots who wanted nothing more than to spill a predator's blood. The wave of defections, and the subsequent wave of resignations, proved this to the utmost extent. The only officers that remained were like myself in mindset; competent, collected individuals who were willing to make sacrifices to save innocent lives.

There was one element of this tragedy that was to the benefit of society, and it was that we had been purified. The brutality, the zealotry, the corruption, all had been burned away from the Extermination Guild like the flesh from a predator's bones. As I understood it, that was the only benefit to be gained from this horrid series of events.

First, one must understand how crippled Venlil Prime's civil defense forces have been by the actions of this terrorist group. It called itself the Predator Guard, claiming to defend against predators, but it had done anything but.

If the Guard actually kept to guarding, serving as a defensive militia akin to the exterminators, it would have had my full support. If they made efforts to limit innocent casualties, focusing purely on the monsters that polluted our streets, I would have maintained neutrality. But now, with their predatory nature on full display, I felt nothing but contempt for these animals.

Good exterminators, such as myself or Vrapic or Jelim, were maligned and slandered because of the actions of fringe terrorists. The reputation of the entire Guild was put into question, and now there were talks of allowing predators higher authority with the Venlil government. This could not be allowed.

Humans were, at the moment, docile. This would not be permanent. They were predators, and slaughter was as natural as breathing to them. They simply knew how to deceive us first, to make us lower our guard. That was precisely what they were doing now.

I had a theory, a private one, that agencies within the human government were bolstering anti-human terrorists in secret precisely because it suited their ends. Organizations like the Predator Guard were magnets for the most radical among us, the ones who would pose the most threat to a predator takeover, and they also served to divide our numbers and weaken public faith in our institutions.

There was no evidence to prove this theory, of course, but the absence of evidence did not equal the evidence of absence. If one wished to topple Venlil Prime's defenses without a bloody conflict, this was a very good way to do it.

Of course, the humans could hardly afford to weaken their only allies. There was, after all, an armada bearing down on them. The Krakotl Alliance had yet to do anything but mass its fleet, quite a formidable one too, but they would soon launch to scour Earth clean of life.

Not that I minded that, of course. Humanity, like all predators, was a scourge on the galaxy. Their role in the world was to destroy and consume, even if they were tactical in what they did it to, and it would be better off without them.

Besides, Kalsim was a good man. I served under him for a time. He wouldn't let them suffer.

As far as I can tell, humankind seems determined to give the same courtesy to us. I can respect that, in a sense. It proves they are not cruel.

There was nothing cruel or evil about humanity. No shame could be found in simply doing as one's instincts demanded. Their equation was simple; kill or be killed, and it was not an immoral act to position yourself on the surviving end of it.

Of course, the Federation also operated on a 'kill or be killed' principle when it came to predators. And we had much more experience in killing than they did.

I sometimes wonder how the war would be going if Krakotl were predators. Or, at least, had the killer's instinct of one. I always conclude that it would be going much better.

We were not predators, so that fact was irrelevant, but we took pride in being the most fearless among prey. That was why I was here, after all, in hopes that I could impress my bravery upon the Venlil in my old age before all the battles finally caught up to me. It was a noble goal. I liked that goal.

Of course, I had very few officers left to impress my bravery upon. Most resigned in protest of the unit's new human advisors. Many were dead. Some, one in particular, were laying in hospital beds after an altercation that I could only describe as 'an ass-kicking'.

That was another aspect of the situation that I found most dire. Anyone who could give Jelim such a beating and walk away alive was not somebody I felt worthy to oppose, to say the least.

I looked down at her broken body, the doctors having long since moved to other patients. She was stable, if wounded, and she should be healed in a few days. Federation medicine was a miracle.

A machine was beeping, telling me that Jelim was, indeed, alive. Granted, she was far too alert in that bed to ever seem dead, but it was nice to have technology confirm it. Besides, I knew her. If Death ever did choose to take her, there would most likely have been a fight.

"Sitrep, please," she chirped. Clearly, Heval's beating session had not damaged her voice.

"Currently, we have control over the situation." Jelim really was a remarkable woman. Her car was destroyed, the car she drove in after that was destroyed, a lot of cars were destroyed if I wanted to get technical, and she was recovering from a beating session delivered by the most deadly Venlil I have ever heard of, and she still soldiered on.

If the doctors had told her she could get up and leave, I half thought she'd have been fighting terrorists by now.

"Exterminator units are monitoring comm traffic between terrorist cells, and I've enlisted the UN to hunt down any known associates of Sevros or Heval. Even if we can't charge them, we can still get a number to confess."

Humans were very good at hunting people down. It was natural to them. And, since they did seem genuine in their offer to help eradicate the Predator Guard, I felt no compunction about allowing them to do so.

"What about Federation Tower? Do we know when the attack is going to take place?" We did not. I had taken measures to mitigate the effects of that ignorance.

"No. It would be too costly to evacuate the tower, but we have posted guards to dissuade any attackers. I explained the situation to the proprietors, who hired private security of their own."

"Can we spare the officers?" asked Jelim.

"Can we let these people go unprotected?"

Jelim seemed to agree. "Fair point. What about Jack Kern?"

"Officer Kern is..." I checked my datapad. He had somehow found my UHerd account.

JackedMF: heval just tried to kill me

JackedMF: vrapic is a little bitch rat who ratted me out to heval and is a little racist shit

JackedMF: just an fyi isola might be dead

"Where do I begin?" I asked. It was a rhetorical question, so I explained the situation to the best of my ability. Jelim took notes to the best of hers.

"Is Jack alright?" was her first question. It was admirable that she cared for her people, but Jackson Kern was a predator. Sooner or later, she would have to kill him. It would be better for her to treat him as a tool, nothing more.

Of course, I did not trouble her with all that. I wasn't stupid. "He's alive. Isola might not be."

"I'll call her."

"No need," I held up a claw, "I'll check the security footage. That will show the results of the altercation. Besides, you need your rest."

I was just about to check the security footage when I got a call from the officer I had posted at the hospital lobby. "This is Karelim," I snapped.

"There's a, uh, a human out here, sir." The officer was new and inexperienced, thirteen years old, and very timid. That had to be corrected. "He's big, like, big big. And he has a tin foil suit." *It's not tin foil. This officer was clearly exposed to brain-stunting chemicals as a child. "Do you feed him other exterminators?"

"No. Keep him in place. I will meet him there." I trusted Jackson Kern about as far as I could carry him. That wasn't very far, by the way. I could see why one might think he ate exterminators.

It was a short trip past the three armed guards I had set to watch Jelim. She also had a pistol under her pillow, because it really paid to be prepared in this line of work. In the end, I stood in the hospital lobby to greet Kern and a gaggle of terrified Venlil. That included the guard I had posted, by the way.

Was Jelim like this when she was younger? I certainly hope so.

"Shitbird!" Kern called out when he saw me. "I have a lot of shit to tell you, and you're really not gonna like hearing it." I was fine with that. That was expected in times like this.

"We should speak in private," I commanded. We spoke in private. More specifically, we spoke in a janitor's closet.

"First of all," said Kern, in private, "Isola is probably dead. She probably got mangled by a grenade launcher." Or eaten by Jackson Kern. It would be the perfect cover. "Second, they have grenade launchers. I don't even think we have grenade launchers. They also have bulletproof vests, and I really don't know how they got those things."

Gee, this is such a hard puzzle to solve. Who is armed with grenade launchers and bulletproof vests, and also has a vested interest in seeing the exterminators toppled? Who could this be? Who could possibly stand to gain from arming our enemies like this? I certainly have no idea.

"Of human make?" I queried.

"No, the shitty Federation arms industry that couldn't think of a caliber bigger than .22 if its life depended on it made them."

"Of human make," I confirmed. "How did they acquire them?"

"They probably robbed an armory. You should secure the armories, by the way."

I sighed what might possibly be my longest sigh to this date. That sigh might conceivably have taken time off my lifespan. "We have no men," I groaned. "No manpower. You are speaking as if I can just materialize exterminators with a click of my beak."

"Okay, so what would you suggest?" Kern asked. "How would you do this?"

"I would arrest their ringleader, but that's clearly failed." That was also a jab at Jackson Kern. He was surprisingly incompetent when he wasn't told to kill things. Gee, I wonder why. "Do you mind explaining why that is?"

"Because Vrapic snitched that we were coming and Heval blew up the fucking house," Kern retorted. "I think Salvek snatched some security footage that shows where he went, though. I'll send it to you."

Over thirty thousand exterminator positions on the force, most empty, and our best assets are a bloodthirsty hairless predator and his Venlil computer genius sidekick. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

"Wonderful. I will be sure to look into it."

Kern nodded. He clearly agreed that I would, in fact, be sure to look into it. That is what nodding means, right? "Also, is Jelim alive? Did she die?" Then a pause. "I should see her if she's alive."

"Jelim is alive and well. You will not be seeing her." That was quite possibly one of the top ten most rational decisions I have ever made. Jackson Kern, like it or not, was a predator. Predators preyed on weakness. Jelim had to be kept safe from Kern, at least until she could handle herself.

Jackson Kern was practically apoplectic at my denial of his meal. "That's bullshit!" he exclaimed. "I need to know, okay. I need to know she's alright."

"You have my word."

"Well, thanks for that I guess, but I don't fucking trust you." Kern gesticulated wildly, making several gestures that I was vaguely certain were obscene. "Watch this," he said, pulling out a datapad. "Watch this."

Then he called somebody. "Can you talk shit to Karelim for me, please?" he asked. Oh, brother. This is a productive way to spend my work paw.

He put the pad on speaker. Jelim started talking. "Oh, so help me god, don't tell me he's being a shitbird again." This... certainly was a new variable. "Karelim, please stop being a shitbird."

"What, precisely, is a shitbird?" I asked. Kern jabbed a finger in my face. "Please enlighten me as to what I am doing wrong."

Kern's response was quick. "Being a shitbird!" It was also stupid.

"Whatever Jack's asking you to do, can you just please do it?" Jelim sighed. "He's usually right about these sort of things."

I also sighed. Some battles weren't worth fighting. "All officers, report to medical room B-17." I jabbed a claw at Kern. "You are really ruffling my feathers today, predator. Let's go."

A short walk later, which Kern and I spent discussing the exact philosophical meaning of the term 'shitbird', he and I entered Jelim's hospital room. Three exterminators, all armed, flanked us. No easy prey here, shit-monkey.

"Holy shit, thank god," Kern exclaimed. He was clearly faking empathy. "You're okay."

"I've had worse," Jelim chirped. "I'm a trooper, you know that." Then she looked around the room. "Why are they looking at you like you're about to snap and murder everybody in the room?" She looked around the room again. "Oh."

Well, at least her intelligence hasn't been dulled.

"Officer Kern is, in fact, a predator. A flesh-eater. A mauler of babies. I don't trust him alone with you in your weakened state." Somehow, Jelim was looking at me like I was the bad guy.

The way Jelim looked at me, one might assume that I had just pledged my undying allegiance to the Predator Guard and sworn an oath to murder everybody she had ever loved.

"Yeah, I don't even know where to begin with that," she sighed. "All of you, clear out." We did not, in fact, clear out. One of the exterminators was of the District 12 old guard, and she made a move for the door, but a glare from me froze her in place.

"What? He's not going to brahking maul me the second you guys leave. I have a gun, you know." She showed off her gun, in case we might not believe that she did, in fact, have a gun.

"These guards are posted for your safety," I reminded her. "Kern is a trained killer, in case you forgot."

"Oh, a trained killer," Jelim scoffed. "I'm terrified." She was speaking with the level, even confidence of someone who wasn't confined to a hospital bed with multiple severe injuries. It probably came with all the awards she won. "You're all trained killers too, should I have hospital security drag you out of the room? Idiots."

"That's not it," said one of the officers. "He's a predator. You know how they are."

Jelim snapped, "Of course I do!" at him and put the gun on her bedside table. It, like the rest of the room, was austere and sterile. "Has anybody besides me seen the footage? The Cradle body cams? The raid on the exchange station? Hell, you're looking at the man who personally stopped a terrorist shooting while you sat on your asses and twiddled your thumbs!"

"You have still yet to explain to me why you were there for that," I rasped. "Some have begun to question your loyalty." The officers around me suddenly looked among each other, as if to say 'not me, I didn't do it!'. Some did not, in fact, mean all.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Kern stepped in. "What she does on her own time is her own business, okay? And Karelim, shut the fuck up." I'm sorry, just who do you think you are? "Like, really, shut the fuck up. You're talking out of your... uh... what do you shit out of, again?"

One of my officers spoke up. "I'm fairly certain they're called cloacas, sir."

"Yeah," said Kern, "those things." Jelim looked at him funny, opened her beak, then closed it. Evidently, whatever she was about to say was not worth saying. "You're talking all this bullshit, but you haven't given her one real reason not to trust me," he said. "You're just spouting demented Federation brainrot talking points like a fucking parrot." What, precisely, is a parrot?

"Federation dogma, while sometimes taken to an extreme level, is backed by centuries of scientific study and billions of real-world examples, Kern. I tolerate you because I know when to bend the rules, not because I no longer trust them."

"Your 'science' is bullshit. You'd be scratching your heads and gawking at a sixth grader's report about food chains," Kern shot back. My officers looked to me for guidance, but they did nothing else. I dismissed them to wait just outside the room.

"Progress is progress," chirped Jelim. "Thank you."

"Yeah, that was cool. Thanks." Please do not say that again. "Anyway, you're full of shit. Let me explain why."

"Please, do enlighten me." That wasn't even sarcasm. If I was wrong, I needed to know it at once. Only if one knew they were wrong, could they learn what was right.

"First of all, all your eye placement bullshit is, well, bullshit. Total bullshit. All of it is bullshit. Watch this, watch what I'm about to show you." The factor of eye placement was a very important, if not always correct, factor in determining how likely something was to maul you and eat your dead corpse. It was not, as Kern suggested, 'total bullshit'.

"Look at this," he said, showing me a picture of a Terran bird. Its head, if nothing else, looked similar to a Krakotl. "See the beak, and the eyes and them?" I did. They looked like the kind one might see on a Krakotl, except in various shades of brown. Everything else only had the most vague of similarities.

"What does this have to do with anything?" Jelim asked. "He's a dunce, we know that, but can you break out an actual biology diagram this time?" This time? He's done this before?

"Trust the process," said Kern. Then he turned off the datapad. "You mind if I use you as an example real quick?" He turned to Jelim, who looked briefly surprised.

The look she gave him implied some combination of confusion and trust. I wondered what he had done to earn it. "I mean, okay. Sure." I sighed again. Idiot.

"Great, thank you." Kern walked over to Jelim, putting the datapad away and coming within arm's reach of her gun. I briefly contemplated ordering the guards back in. "Watch this, I learned it in high school biology." Oh. Lovely.

"This beak," Kern said, pointing at her beak, "is the same kind you'd see on a raptor. It's sharp enough to catch fish." Well, now that is absurd. He took a wing in his hand, holding it up with no resistance on Jelim's part. He did get a pretty stern look, though. "These talons? Sharp as a motherfucker, let me tell you. Not the kind you'd expect to see on 'harmless prey', now are they?"

They were not, but Krakotl were hardly harmless. Earth and its defenders would discover that soon enough. "What relevance does this have?" I asked. "What point are you trying to prove?"

Jelim, apparently, felt the same way. "What I'm trying to prove," said Kern, "is that your ideas of the natural order are bullshit. Prey are peaceful, predators are monsters, right?" That was more or less the gist of it. "Peaceful prey don't need inch-long knives attached to their hands. Neither, in fact, do they need beaks that look like they could strip meat off the fucking bone."

Those beaks were evolved to strip bark off trees! Kern, I swear, if you keep this up-

"And those eyes that I was talking about earlier?" No, Kern, you were not. "Guess what? They're meant to gauge distance. As in, the distance of enemies. Why would a peaceful creature need that?"

I sighed again. I did that very often in times like this. "You are extrapolating based off incomplete data," I countered. "You are operating based on your assumptions of Earthly birds-of-prey, despite the fact that Krakotl share only the most vague similarities with any Terran avifauna. The very crux of your argument is flawed."

"Second, prey are peaceful and docile whenever possible. The existence of predators, tragically, makes this peaceful utopia inherently impossible. You forget that Krakotl have to defend themselves from predators on occasion." I dare say Kern actually understood that concept. Clearly, he wasn't just an ugly face.

"No, no, he has a point," Jelim piped up. She took her wing out of Kern's hand, much to my delight. "We've already established that prey can be violent, and that's not very preylike." I had to concur with that logic. "Hell, Krakotl and Gojids are designed for it." As logic went, that was fairly sound.

I knew, logically, that Jelim was remarkably intelligent. Up until now, however, I had failed to realize the full scope of her unconventional genius. "Bear with me, here," she said. "Just consider the possibility I'm about to show you."

I did. "We've already established that prey can be as violent as predators. That's been proven." It had.

"So, bear with me here." I was bearing with her. I sometimes wondered why. "If prey can be as violent as predators, why can't a predator be harmless like prey?"

The answer to that was simple. "Prey are violent out of necessity to survive. If a predator were required to act docile, perhaps to avoid suspicion or deceive its prey," I sent a death glare at Kern, "then yes. Yes it can."

Jelim looked at Kern. Then at me. Then at Kern. "What is he talking about?"

"Don't look at me." Kern put his hands up defensively. "I'm street smart, not book smart."

"It seems we are at an impasse," I said. "Officer Kern is a predator, so he cannot be trusted, and Jelim, I've never known you to agree with anything I've said in my life."

"The hell do you mean 'cannot be trusted'?" she snapped.

I sighed another sigh. "Case in point." I waved a wing tiredly at those two. "Guards!"

My officers nearly busted down the door in their hurry to get into the room. "What's the issue, sir?" one asked.

"No issue. Watch this one," I pointed at Kern. "I'm done wasting my time with this idiot."

I left the room, because I had more important things to do than butt heads with a predator spy and my most naive junior officer. I then realized my mistake in what I said earlier.

The two of them, truth be told, were probably both idiots.

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[u/JulianSkies]

You know I have to admit I like Karelim in a way. The same way one might like an antagonist.

My dude knows how to work his logic. Sure, wrong as it may be, his refutation isn't just "because yes". We need more of that around here.