[dogscoff]

On the edge of a broken crater, two suited figures waited outside a tiny, grey building. Eventually a doorway slid silently open, and the pair collapsed into it and were swallowed by the closing aperture. Mexa'renath'xe removed his helmet and took a deep breath. The air in his suit had been getting stale for the Last hour or so, and it seemed impossible that he should still be alive. His next instinct was to help his daughter, who lay unconscious on the floor beside him. He removed her helmet with trembling fingers and felt a crippling wave of emotion as he heard a stuttering breath from her. Then he slid down the wall of the airlock and passed out.

When he awoke, it took him several seconds to remember where he was. Eventually his cybernetics kicked in, rushing hormones and drugs through his system to bring him as close to alertness as possible. His daughter was still motionless. Xiati cybernetic improvements could only do so much, and he feared she was beyond any kind of help now. Her breathing was barely detectable, and he knew that under the suit she was missing an arm, casually torn off and eaten by one of those monsters. He tried to block out the flood of memories triggered by that thought, but he could not. He knew he would be terrorised by those memories for the rest of his life, but he took comfort in the knowledge that the rest of his life would not be long. The horror, the trauma of those Last few months had taken their toll, and even if help came, even if he somehow survived this and got back to Xiati space, he had nothing left to live for.

His family had been caged and kept like cattle in their own home, with nothing to do but wait as the KanesS brood who now inhabitted his house had picked them off, not one by one but piece by piece, limb by limb. Those who looked weakest and most vulnerable had been selected first, and every valiant attempt to defend his offspring had simply moved him closer to the end of the list. Every time he tried- and failed- to prevent the monsters from taking another one of his precious children, he knew that the inscrutable aliens granted him an extra few days of agonising life with which to witness their cruelty. His mate had simply given in, choosing death over torture, and had laid impassively and barely protesting even as they tore meat from her. Mexa'renath'xe had been envious, he had longed for death, and yet he had somehow never been able to submit to it. He had fought them whenever they came, and had even caught and killed a few of the younger ones with his bare hands. The adult KanesS hadn't seemed particularly upset about this, they had simply retreated, knowing that in the end, he would be too weak to resist.

Eventually, after an uncountable number of days or weeks or months, only he and his eldest daughter remained, she with a rough tourniquet about the bloody stump of her left shoulder. It was then that the fighting had started. Another group of KanesS had burst into the house and all hell had broken loose. Maybe they had come to rescue them; maybe some of these creatures were outraged at the behaviour of their fellows, but he doubted it. There could be no compassion, no mercy in those creatures.

Somehow, in the confusion the cage had been upturned and broken open, and he had managed to guide his daughter out of the house, avoiding the rioting that had suddenly sprung up around them. They had made their way to one of the dome's airlocks, where a few Xiati suits still hung. From there they had trekked for days over terrain that would have been impossible in anything but this moon's low gravity to an abandoned mining survey outpost. He had hoped against hope that there would be some method of escape here, driven himself on with the prospect of survival, but even as he conducted his fruitless search for food, water or transport, he realised now that he didn't want any of those things. All he really wanted was to die in peace, and to deny the filthy KanesS his flesh. However, he had a job to do first. This outpost had some communications equipment, and Mexa'renath'xe knew enough about it to send a message home. The atrocities committed on Pruli VIa would not go untold.

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A tight phalanx of sinewy shapes appeared on the crest of the hill, their weapons reflecting not only the thin starlight that glittered beyond the transparent dome overhead, but the blazing fires of the buildings below. The troops poured down the hillside, the dusty rock unfamiliar beneath their ice-bred bellies. With their tails holding their lance-like firearms parallel to the ground, the serpentine soldiers looked for all the world like the striped shadows of their own guns, until one of them gave the order to halt and raised herself to her full height, coldly surveying the scene below. It was anarchy. Heaps of writhing, serpentine bodies slashed randomly at one another with razor teeth, tearing lumps of flesh from friend and foe alike, each one possessed by a consuming blood-lust. Others stood alone or in tight family clusters, defending their torched homes from all comers with guns, blades and bared teeth.

The leader of the infantry unit bit at her immediate subordinate's face, drawing blood for no reason other than to register her distaste for the disorder laid out before her. "Open fire." She yelled, and death spat indiscriminately into the warring crowd below. Many fights spontaneously ended in confused panic as the crowd dispersed, scattering for cover. Others were too overcome with their frenzy to think of survival and were shredded as aggressors and victims alike were seared and torn by the disciplined gunfire from the hillside. Within a minute it was over, and a bloody, steaming peace closed the latest chapter in the grisly history of Pruli VIa.

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Kleesh threw the reports aside and twitched her tail in irritation. With hindsight, it had been inevitable. There had only been a limited number of Xiati survivors and homes up for grabs in the newly-conquered colony, but that hadn't stopped thousands of hopefuls from making their own way out there to try to take some of it for themselves. Access to the official colonisation starliners had been strictly controlled, of course, but an alarming number of private craft had taken the initiative and were ferrying KanesS from system to system by the million, leading to scenes like this one on the ex-Xiati outpost.

And it wasn't just the starliner industry that had gotten out of control. Ever since Captain Shreekep's bucaneering adventures in that same system, a wealth of privately owned boarding vessels had taken to the stars with hopes of chancing upon a similar opportunity for profit and fresh meat. Most of them were clueless aristocrats or unrealistic entrepreneurs with only only the faintest understanding of running a spacecraft. Only one ship other than Shreekep's had yet managed to capture a Xiati craft, and most of the others had wandered so far from home in the search for prey they had run out of supplies and had to limp home on emergency power. A whole industry was springing up for supply vessels to come and bale them out before they became victims themselves, since the kind of enterprising pirates that flew these ships had no qualms about killing and their own kind.
Other raiders had started targetting Cue Cappan ships, resulting in all kinds of deliciously difficult situations for Shrikeesh's diplomatic office. Any satisfaction that his brought Kleesh, however, was outweighed by the problems this anarchy was causing for her. Quite apart from the costly and embarrassing piracy on her own ships, back on the homeworld, certain hysterical, liberal sections of the population- namely those that were now fanatically opposed to cannibalism and had long ago ad condemned Kleesh for the revival of the old ways on the colonies- had latched onto the chaos emerging in the colonies and their anti-colonial movements were gathering momentum. There had been several messy demonstrations and acts of violent protest there already, and it was just a matter of time before things got out of control. It had caused her no small amount of embarrassment with her royal parents, so she knew she had to act. A plan was formulating behind her cool eyes, and she allowed herself a small writhe of pleasure at the possibilities it opened up.

[ June 29, 2004, 15:02: Message edited by: dogscoff ]