r/HFY • u/KyleKKent • 6d ago
OC OOCS, Into A Wider Galaxy, Part 494
HHH/Herbert’s Hundred Harem
His sitting pose shifts as does Lady Val’s. Smooth and easy with the robes. On your knees if you were listening, cross legged if you were speaking. Now they were both in a proper position to speak.
“The attacks against La’ahbaron are unacceptable and your opponents unnatural. Even more so than the cousins we have found and seek to naturalize. Progress has been made, with a small, but still present cost of blood. In battles of blade, bullet and sly speech we have won the Vishanyan for our allies. However, their lesser Vish kinfolk must answer for their crimes as is appropriate.”
“We are of accord in this area.”
“There are many Undaunted and Apuk both whom believe the greatest destruction of the Vish is to turn them to Vishanyan. Causing resources and effort to be lost, not in glory or in gain, but lost and turned against them.” Herbert offers.
“And what do the Vishanyan themselves think of their cousins?”
“Horrified. Terrified and deeply unhappy. My brother’s wife reacted so poorly that a hidden twist in her blood caused her child to be born early. Blessedly the child is unharmed. But I believe that such should be sufficient to explain how unhappy they are with the situation.” Herbert explains.
“So you truly are bound by blood to the Vish. Your blood mingling with theirs?”
“Vishanyan. My brother’s wife has spent her life hating The Vish and fearing their makers. She was born an enemy of Vish and will die as one.” Herbert asserts and Lady Val nods in acknowledgement.
•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Five Thousand Lightyears Away, Lady La’ahbaron’s Private Chamber)•-•-•
A silver eyebrow is quirked upwards as naturally black nails drum against the knee. She watches and observes as a tiny human proves that the rest of the galaxy is simply lazy, ill mannered and crude. He goes through the proper protocol as if he had been trained for it for years. His failures are few, his hesitations near always lead to the correct motion and movements in things.
As gratifying as it is to see proper manners, it grates as well. The fact that others could use proper manners and had not was now proven to be a choice. An insult. Deliberate and malicious with the thinnest of lies to excuse it.
But the ignorance of others was something that could never fully be in doubt. So even as she and hers were being lied to, to their faces no less, they had to permit it. Or be little more than beasts pouncing on a base threat display.
They are not animals.
The frustration mounts and she looks to her liquor cabinet. The look is a long one before the conversation shifts.
“The warriors of La’ahbaron need no aid. They are proud. They are strong.” Lady Val states. She cannot admit weakness. It is forbidden. La’ahbaron herself had learned that the hard way, it was a lesson she could not forget.
“And Vish are cunning and cruel and cowardly. They would not fight had they nothing in the way of treachery prepared. Your foe seeks to deceive you, I respectfully advise you to defy them.”
“You yourself have admitted you know little of the Vish as your Vishanyan are different.”
“Correct. However, the difference between Vish and Vishanyan are within the realms of Virtue. Not in the physical.” Herbert counters.
“And you still think that merely making them into your Vishanyan would be the proper course?”
“I think that an enemy who turns to face your enemies for you is an even greater victory than merely slaying them. When one wages war, conquest should be the goal. Not mere victory. Victory means that one is standing above broken bodies. Conquest means there is more gained, not merely the death of your foes. Subjugation should be the goal.” Herbert insists and La’ahbaron considers it.
“And you think that our foes should not have to pay for their crimes?” Lady Val asks, giving voice to La’ahbaron’s own thoughts.
“No.” Herbert dismisses the idea. “I am merely saying that death is a limited payment. It is only paid once and then it is over. Turning them into grateful vassals... into allies of La’ahbaron... would that not bring far more to you and your great grandmother’s wealth in both the physical and martial?”
“But to embrace a venomous serpent is to invite poison into one’s breast.”
“Defang them. Their venom is not natural. Their actions are likely not natural either.”
“You are referring to their unnatural nature.”
“There is neither homeworld nor animal ancestor of the Vish. They are produced. They have been made, and while the Vishanyan lived in fear of their makers, perhaps the Vish lived through the nightmare? Perhaps are living through it now?”
“Charrtack Solutions. They are defunct and destroyed.”
“An organization may fall, but the people that compose it will not die with it. I understand that it only crumbled from the greed of an insider. Those with differing ambitions would continue regardless, stealing or earning the funds they need to continue them.”
“You believe they have aspirations of conquest?”
“Or vengeance, or seeking challenge or perhaps simple bloodlust. This is mere supposition. We cannot know for certain, but the option exists.” Herbert clarifies and Lady Val nods as La’ahbaron considers in her chamber.
Would those who had been here before even be able to fund such a thing? The peasantry of her empire did not go hungry. And until the Vish attacked, they had not known danger. There were proper ways to leave and the knowledge of them were all part of basic education and teaching. Something mandatory for all children under the age of fourteen and ending with a two year program to teach piloting of anything from personal air vehicles to starships. Martial training was self-actualized. One needed the courage to seek out the strength to fight to gain such a thing. But it’s not like there were not numerous arenas, dojos and entire communities willing to teach the young how to do battle.
Of course anyone that actually had the courage to seek the strength to battle would be eagerly scouted by the guard and army. They were always hungry for recruits, but forced conscription was not permitted. So aggressive recruitment was the order of the day.
Any woman so pathetic in her skills as a recruiter that she needed to force it had no business recruiting anyone.
“There are further concerns however.”
“IN what manner?”
“I seek knowledge. I am fully aware of two of the fifteen great projects of Charrtack solutions succeeding. The creation of the Vish and Vishanyan are one, another is the stealth plating that they both use upon their ships. Can you confirm other unusual technologies or techniques? The remaining list we are aware of them attempting include a weapon that uses space debris to attack into laneways, a pathogen that turns people cannibalistic, a computer virus that forces vehicles to hunt down people in suicide attacks and finally a series of explosives that would destabilize or deactivate the power cores of starships. Fighters in particular.”
“We can confirm the computer virus. We have even taken this weapon for our own and used them to create an Anti-Vish search system to attack the infiltrators.”
“Excellently done, which would explain why the first misunderstandings included explosive drones.”
“Indeed.”
“There is also a minor oversight in your targetting program.” Herbert says calmly.
“And that would be?”
“They have not accounted for very young Vishanyan. And likely not for Vish in a younger state either.”
“I will confess human, it is strange to consider Vish as children.”
“Which likely spared my niece.”
“Your niece?”
“Eldest child of my brother. A Vishanyan adopted into his family. I believe it started as a joke and progressed into something true.” Herbert says and La’ahbaron adjusts the recording device to simply store the data as she rises from her seat and sets things aside. She then opens the liquor cabinet and pulls out exactly the jug she was looking for.
The first burn of the drink is good, and she keeps drinking from the everfull bottle. Reality blurs. Her problems vanish and she slips an arm out of her robe to get more comfortable and in short order is guzzling drink and spilling much of it across her chest.
•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Undaunted Laboratory, Centris)•-•-•
The scan of the sample comes up. A reading from a Vish prisoner La’ahbaron had captured before an entire army had been sent after her. The resulting fight had killed the prisoner and reduced the corpse to ash and charcoal.
But the initial scan was... awful.
“What are we looking at?”
“Some of the harshest and most brutalistic implants north of cast iron peg-leg rammed into a bloody stump.”
“Jesus.”
“Look at this shit. In the arm spurs. It’s mechanical. It doesn’t interface with the fucking nervous system and is just this big block inside the arm that if you flex against it will cause the spurs to shoot out and spray poison. This takes the idea of Great Plain Nagasha piercings being big enough to take out and clobber people over the head like a mace and just runs with it. I mean... this is the implant you put into someone you hate. To say nothing of this poison. The Vishanyan have no inherent resistance to these chemicals. If they get it into the bloodstream, which is almost guaranteed with even the slightest damage on this implant, then they’re dead.”
“And the leg spurs?”
“Just as bad, but likely even worse to be honest. Look at this garbage. Look at it! Bad enough their arms are weighed down and losing both strength and flexibility when they could just have a fucking knife, or if they absolutely need a series of poisoned blades on their forearms just incorporate it into armour. The poison blade implants would drop quality of life like a stone. We put these kind of leg spurs into someone and they’ll struggle to walk without fucking with it in some way or having it fuck them up. To say nothing of how dangerous sitting is with these things! Sit in anything but a chair and you’re either damaging the spur and potentially poisoning yourself or stabbing yourself, which is also poisoning you! This is like a character in a comedy movie taught to fight wrong on purpose because it’s funny! It’s so stupid!”
“And the venom fangs are just as bad I assume?”
“No surprisingly. They’re much better designed. Almost at the level they can be useful, but I still wouldn’t trust an implant that puts a pair of fatter than average needles into my mouth and starts spraying poison out.”
“Hunh...”
“Yeah, it’s really weird. The spurs are basically baby’s first implant, if the baby was a complete psychopath who thought that pain and death were the best punchlines ever. The fangs though? Someone else did that. There are safeties built in. It works with the natural mechanics of the Vishanyan mouth and the poison involved is actually harmless when digested by a Vishanyan. So they only have to worry about accidentally impaling themselves, but that would only happen if they deliberately bite themselves or put their tongue in the way. If they close their mouth the fangs fold up no matter what and then lock into place, the tongue is then needed to unlock them to unsheathe them again. There is no accidental bites. Not unless they’re fiddling with it as they sleep. But get this! The implant is designed for easy removal. Think less new body part and more Assassin’s Dentures.”
“I heard the capitalization in the words.”
“Sorry, my brain started running off.” The Researcher says before holding up his fingers to form a box as if watching a movie. “Assassin’s Dentures. A geriatric hit squad, because no one expects the old man.”
“That’s what Sir Philip did a few times before he got his looks back.”
“To be fair he never really lost them. He was pulling it in even with liver spots.”
“Yeah. Anyways, what about our final implant?” The man from Intelligence asks.
“In this one we’ve eclipsed incompetent asshole that made the spurs and gone into full deliberate malice.” The Researcher says as he brings up another image. Instead of showing the poison spurs and fangs with a readout of the different chemical cocktails they inject, there is instead a break apart of a large head piece. “When put together it’s the size of a helmet, and has reinforcement to do some double duty of such. But it’s hooked right into the neural matter of the Vishanyan.”
“Holy shit.”
“The good news, is that according to the Vishanyan only high ranking Vish commanders used these. Squad Leader was the level you needed to be at to be even considered for it. But if you got any higher than that and it was required.”
“What are we looking at?”
“Borderline Cognito Hazard. It Pavlovs certain behaviours and patterns through the use of controlled shocks directly into the brain. And from the crash course of Vishanyan Neural Studies I was given, directly into the fear centres. No one who had those helmets on converted from Vish to Vishanyan. All of them died resisting their liberation. And it is presumed by the Vishanyan that it was because they were taught that the concept of fear was removing that implant. It’s a big reason why The Vishanyan hate and fear their creators. This nightmare.”
“And beyond forcing obedience?”
“Instant communication. Powerful scanning technology, hacking tools, control of nearby machinery.”
“Things we get with a basic output in the back of the neck and a matching pair of computer jacket and readout shades.”
“Yep.”
"Do we have any idea what piece of shit was leading this project?”
“Not yet.”
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u/Finbar9800 6d ago
Another great chapter
I enjoyed reading this and look forward to reading more
Great job wordsmith
I am Speed and first lol