Empire of Decay: Scavengers

This story concept was suggested by MasterM

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Certain pieces of jargon and units of measurements have been translated into proper human and Earth-based terms, for the benefit of this file’s superior human readerbase.

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Tan-2-43’s scanner said the supply package was nearby. Tan-2-43 said it was only a few metres away.

Tan-2-43 had been saying it was only a few metres away for hours now.

Mok-1-21 knew it wasn’t her fault. The scanner was old and outdated, and bringing it out into the dust storms of Dallis-5 wasn’t helping matters. That or the microparticles of iron and other magnetic material in the air were scrambling it’s sensors. Still, if she heard “only a few metres East” or “a couple metres to the North” one more time, she was going to retch.

Mok-1-21 paused at scrabbling in the dirt and rock for a moment, adjusting her goggles and peering out into the horizon. Already, she could see the rumbling dust clouds surging forth, threatening to swallow the already dim sunlight this moon received. Along with anything else that happened to be in it’s path.

“Maybe we should turn back.” Tan-2-43 was staring at the coming storm herself. Her voice was tinny and distant coming through her derelict mask and air-filter “If we get caught in that, we’ll get sanded down to nothing.”

“If we come back empty-handed, we’ll waste away to nothing in the base.” Mok-1-21 returned, more spiteful than she intended, frustrated with her longtime scavenging partner. “We don’t have enough rations for the eight of us to survive the month. And the gap between supply drops has been getting larger and larger. We need this drop.”

“But what if it doesn’t even have food?” Tan-2-43 asked, exasperated.

Then we’re all dead either way. Mok-1-21 rued bitterly, vocalizing the thought with a disgusted grunt.

As if on cue, with them discussing food and rations, Mok-1-21’s stomach rumbled, and she felt the fatigue in her limbs. She had already consumed two-thirds of her daily ration allotment before departing from base, and her body knew the remaining third would not sate her nor sustain her. While the two years of scavenging and on the run from the humans had always been difficult, the last few months had been particularly brutal, marked by dwindling supplies and food. Her hard-earned muscles were eating themselves alive, her once immaculate warrior physique now wasted away and threatening to leave her a pile of skin and bones. Her fellow sisters in the cell were in much the same boat.

As they went back to wandering through the dust, red-tinged air of Dallis-5, bitter memories swirled in Mok-1-21’s head. Of her life before. Of all of their lives before. She was created and raised in the greatest city in the galaxy - Virdalis, capital of the Dranza Empire - where her and her clutch-mates were trained and educated as stalwart soldiers of their great empire, wielding their holy mission of freeing the galaxy from the tyranny of the male sex. The life of a soldier was hard, too, with Mok-1-21 and her forty-seven cloned sisters knowing both the high of victory and the sting of defeat, but there was purpose in the hardship.

The life of a survivor had no purpose. No glory. No nothing. And she had no one else to blame but the humans and their twisted designs.

Mok-1-21 had fought across the Dranza system, alongside her clutch-mates and various other clutches, battalions, and legions of her sisters, to fend off the human incursion. They failed at most every battle. In fact, her Mok-1 clutch became infamous for losing battle after battle, yet having all forty-eight Mok clones survive. Command seemingly wanted to put them in more dangerous situations, to test them and their “luck”, but the human’s push to the homeworld Zandra was relentless, and soon the Mok-1 and all other remaining clutches were reassigned to homeguard.

The invasion was a nightmare. Weeks of fighting street to street and building to building, as humans unleashed endless waves of their converted **** soldiers. The Dranza had the finest military in all the Core Galaxy, yet their technology and training and resolve was worthless before the mass of a billion **** shocktroopers that humanity threw at them.

This was where the Mok-1’s luck ran out, as 1-21 saw her sisters defeated, killed, or worse, captured. In the dying days of the invasion, when Mok-1-21 saw actual humans take the field in their high-tech Seraph power-suits, she knew it was over. She and her remaining sisters fled from the city, and then the planet, trying to find some place to hide and regroup, as humanity swarmed her home and **** her people.

Two years. Two years of running and hiding. Where she was once a proud member of a full clutch of forty-eight, now she was in a hidden cell of height. One of many scattered across Dallis and it’s moons. Or, that’s what she believed. She had no idea how many cells there were in their little network. There was at least one other, somewhere, better off than her cell was, seeing as how they were the source of their supplies. But was that it? Sixteen Dranza fighting against the dark will of the human Federation?

Hell, it hardly mattered. Even if there were a thousand cells like hers, eight-thousand Dranza could not win a shadow war against the billions of humans across the stars. Not to mention their impossibly numerous army of slaves. Was this the end? Was it hopeless? Despair like this often kept her awake at night, but this was the first time she felt it when on duty. Even for a soldier like her, the joy of duty had lost it’s luster…

Eventually, almost a half hour later, Mok-1-21 and Tan-2-43 found the supply crate. They dug it out of it’s impact crater and loaded it onto the anti-grav dolly. Months ago, Mok-1-21 could have effortlessly carried the heavy load of cargo back to base by herself. Now, she needed Tan-2-43’s assistance just to get it up onto the dolly.

The two were left panting and winded by the effort, wheezing through their derelict air filters. Dust and particulate were whirling around them, the wind picking up. They had little time left.

“Doubletime, soldier.” Mok-1-21 said, as the two grabbed the handle of their cart and began to push it back the way they came. “If we’re out an hour longer, we’ll get swept up in that. And they’ll need scanners to find our bones beneath the dust.” As if she was an officer and they were a military operation. At the very least, Mok-1-21 was confident she was older than her cellmate.

To her credit, Tan-2-43 did not argue. They silently jogged back through the wasteland, pushing the cargo ahead. Just the prospect of being out of this storm and getting some morsel of food was enough to shake off their fatigue and hunger, making a good pace. It took them an hour to find the blasted crate, but they would make better time on the return trip, seeing as how they weren’t stopping every five minutes to blindly dig in the dirt.

Their pace was not sustainable, though, both due to their deteriorating bodies and the nature of the path back to their base. From the highlands of Dallis-5, Mok-1-21 and Tan-2-43 descended down a steep path and into a canyon slough, winding themselves and the dolly through the twisting, narrow path, flanked by high cliff walls on both sides.

She would never openly admit it, but this portion of the journey always made Mok-1-21 nervous. All of her hardwired military programming told her this was the perfect spot for an ambush, even if Mok-1-21 rarely ever seen a burrowing skatt on this blasted wasteland, let alone a -

“I’m just saying, Rainsong, we’ve been scouting this rock for weeks and we haven’t seen a single scale from one of those fucking Greeny skanks!”

“Yeah, well, we found lifesigns when scanning this moon and command wants us to look. So, the faster we find these wayward Dranza, the faster we can get out of here.”

The conversing voices caused both Mok-1-21 and Tan-2-43 to freeze in their tracks, even pausing their breathing. Terrified that any movement would give away their position, Mok-1-21 craned her head upward to find two figures directly atop them. Humans, fully clad in armour and military gear, covered head to toe, idly chatting away while their prey was literally under their noses.

“Bah! ‘Lifesigns’. Probably nothing more than one of those giant mole-bears we saw on the last moon.” The first one, the complainer, complained. They were the shorter of the two. Maybe six-feet, or a touch over. They were lackadaisical to lethality, Mok-1-21 noted. On patrol, but not even wielding their weapon. What she wouldn’t give to have her old TK99 plasmacaster right now…

“And have you seen any mole-bears since we got here? This rock is barren, save for what the ships detected. Something is out here, and we need to confirm it.” The other soldier returned. They was more disciplined, their rifle at the ready, helmeted head constantly scanning the horizon. They were taller, too. Seven feet. An equal in height to Mok-1-21 and her cellmates. Such variance amongst the humans baffled her. Dranza were bred for the purpose of the Empire, they all looked like warriors. Humans heavily dabbled in genetic engineering, too, yet she had seen such startling differences in body forms of their soldiers. Illogical. Vexing.

Further frustrating, was that they continued to babble while rooted in place. As long as they were right above them, neither Dranza could afford to move. At this rate, the humans would natter on for so long, the storm would threaten to swallow all four of them.

“Hey, so… you know on my last assignment, I apprehended a live, free Dranza. Totally hadn’t been touched by the NOXET at all.” The complainer drawled.

“Really?” The sentinel replied, sounding bored, still playing lookout. “I wasn’t part of the invasion ****. I’ve been to Zandra, but never seen a pre-converted Dranza before.”

“Disgusting Scalies, I tell you. Reptile, so no tits, obviously, but their cunts have shrivelled away to nothing from disuse. Thank Gaia for the geneforges or they would be unfuckable slop. Hey - you hear about the one governor who tried to fuck an unconverted Dranza? Her hole was so small and tight that-”

“He broke his dick off. Yeah, yeah. Wasn’t funny the first time I heard it, Ramirez…”

“And what’s with their names? I think the one I nabbed was… like Vol-6-30 or something like that? What the fuck is that? That’s not a name, it’s a serial number!”

“You need to read your mission reports. Or basic history. Most Dranza are cloned in batches of forty-eight. ‘Vol’ is the name of the batch’s base geneseed; ‘6’ means she from the sixth Vol batch; and that ‘30’ means she’s the thirtieth of forty-eight.”

“Again - a serial number! When we finally get some shore leave, I’m gonna hire a Scaly whore and have her thank me for freeing her worthless race from being mass-produced on an assembly line.”

Mok-1-21 let the various barbs and insults to her people strike her, seething in silent rage. If only she had her strength, she could scale up the wall in minutes. If only she had her plasmacaster or novamatter knife. At the very least, she could take one of them down with her. Avenge her people for the insults they have been made to bear.

But she had none of those things. Her cell had none of those things. Humanity had stripped the greatness of the Dranza empire away from it and it’s people, taking away the strength and dignity of the individual along with it. So, all Mok-1-21 had was the pride of a failed empire and a dying race, a cold comfort whether alone or before an enemy.

After a lull in the conversation second soldier turned away, looking towards the direction of the impact crater. “Storm looks bad, though. I think we need to radio in and return to base.”

“Finally! Music to my ears!”

Between their full body gear covering their forms and distorting their voices, the sex of the two soldiers was completely unknown, but Mok-1-21 immediately assumed them to be stupid, brutish males. She was dreading to be discovered by such ogres, primal instincts imaging the horrible things they would do to her and Tan-2-43. She had seen it before. Ritualized **** and humiliation of the spoils of war. Mok-1-21 felt ill imagining such a horrible fate for herself. She would sooner slit her throat with her claws than be captured by such scum.

“Mok-1-21… what do we do?” Tan-2-43 whispered to her, her voice harsh and grating. Mok-1-21 wanted to slash her throat out for such idiocy.

The humans had just announced they were departing and so you went ahead and opened your fat mouth to jeopardize our position?

Mok-1-21 bared her teeth in silent, seething rage at her witless partner, anger abetting her fears for the moment, even if her heart wriggled it’s way into her throat sac.

“Hey, did you hear something?” The complainer asked, their insipid question throwing cold water on Mok-1-21’s righteous fury. She tore her eyes from her partner to look back up, while also praying she could make herself too small to notice in the moment.

The complainer was haplessly looking about, left and right, but never down into the canyon. But the sentinel was looking directly downward, visored eyes meeting with Mok-1-21’s. The sentinel’s entire face was covered with a mask and filter, just like Mok-1-21’s, but she could swear the human soldier was smiling at her.

Then, to the shock of Mok-1-21, the human said. “Oh, that’s just me, thinking aloud. About how any Dranza we do find out here are fighting a hopeless war. Doomed to failure, just like their empire. That they’d be better off surrendering without a fighter.” The complainer gawked, utterly befuddled, before the sentinel ordered a retreat.

The two humans quickly disappeared beyond the lip of the canyon. Mok-1-21 remembered she had to breathe. What was that? They had them dead to rights! What twisted game were the humans playing here?

Tan-2-43 looked as if she were about to ask the same questions, only for Mok-1-21 to wheel about on her, raging flaring, as she seized her partner by the throat. “Back to base. Now! If you trip and fall, I’m leaving you behind!”

With a roaring storm on their feet, the two Dranza hoofed it back home. Tan-2-43 did not so much as stumble once.