“So Ki I am nearly done down here,” Firi said over the holo-video feed as she stomped through the snow in her heavy boots, checking the perimeter turrets around the new base camp, “Also remind me why we didn’t wear armour down here for first contact?”
“Because it would have been too intimidating,” the hologram of Ki replied, “We were both there, we called out the danger rating of the planet but Seinu insisted,” his hologram waved his bionic hand, “How is the non-lethal anti-predator system looking?”
“Not bad,” Firi grumbled, “We should have had this thing installed to start with, I have linked the bio-scanners you built based on our orbital scans to the the non-lethal turrets to drive the predators away from basecamp but we are going to need to get an Ifelse node down here so we can refine those scans they aren’t going to be as effective as I would like based on just orbital scans.”
“I’ll go talk to Taran,” Ki said, “When you get back are we going to resume looking at these drones?”
“After a nap,” Firi said with a heavy sigh, clomping along in her armour, “Let me finish this inspection, sending you data now for cross-check.”
She stopped by the next turret and crouched down to examine it, a simple device, a tripod of white metal holding a simple crystal array, barrel and electronic emitters in a level four aerogel shell. It didn’t fire anything lethal but produced an electronic tone and fired a series of pulses that created a field of disruption that would in theory be uncomfortable to the local predators. As long as the scans they had of the local fauna were accurate.
“It reads good to me,” Ki said, “But I am not an expert on weapons systems, but I can tell you the control board here in the security centre says yes and Ifelse says yes too.”
“Normally I’d have swapped places” Firi said seriously, “You installing the actual mechanical systems whilst I verified the targeting scanners would make more sense but I wasn’t about to expose you to probable danger, I’ve had to drive off at least four of those flying things.”
“I appreciate your concern Firi,” Ki grumbled, “But I could have dealt with a few animals, I’d have worn my armour.”
“No,” Firi said firmly, “I know you’d have been fine bro but you are still recovering and it’s my job, I am in charge of security so I go into danger first, now you have one of the drones we captured with you right? What do you see?”
“You’re just distracting me,” Ki grumbled, “It’s ok you can just say I am not good enough for the job.”
Firi stopped and stared at the hologram over-laid before her armoured body, “Ki stop,” she said firmly, “You are more than capable for this job, you’d have done it faster then me for sure. I am down here because these animals are no joke, they are stealth hunters, it’s a miracle one of them attacked a bunny and not Selenu or Seinu, my armour is combat rated and until the base-camp is secure I am not risking anyone else.”
The obdurate, frustrated expression on his face faded and Ki nodded, “K… I’m sorry.”
“The only reason Seinu is down here is because he is staying inside the medical tent and someone needs to monitor the equipment operating on the bunny. Selenu and Chantelle are back up there with you on the ship, once the perimetre is secure you can all start coming down here, it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with being safe.”
He nodded and ran his bionic hand over his crest, smoothing his feathers, “Ok, let me take a look at this drone.”
“Excellent, tell me what you see,” Firi encouraged her new brother, “I didn’t have time for a good look before this emergency kicked off.”
“Ok, are you secure enough for a camera feed from my visor?”
“Sure,” Firi cancelled the hologram and accepted the video feed, projecting it off to one side of her armour so as not to obscure the HUD inside her helmet, she knelt down by the next turret and started to check it was up and running, “Show me what we have got.”
“Ok opening the cover now… huh interesting,” Ki chirped and Firi cast glances at the video feed as she saw him poking inside the drone. He’d got the outer cover off in seconds. From the looks of it he had removed the avali fingers on his bionic hand and inserted a series of tools, pinchers and manipulators for delicate mechanical work. As Firi continued to work he started to talk, almost giving her a running commentary as he examined the inside of the mysterious drone.
“These are old but simple tech, I’ve got two different types here, the drone we recovered from orbit and a couple of ones from the surface, the one I am looking at now is a surface drone… huh… what the fuck!”
Ki snorted in disgust, “Firi this is… ugh!!”
“What is it Ki?” Firi shut the panel on the turret she was working on, heavy, armoured fingers having to move slowly to clip the panel into place, “What is it?”
“Ok, Firi you are smart, look at my camera feed, what do you see?”
Peering at the live video as she clomped through the snow toward the next turret she looked over the interior of the drone, “Ok I can see a hover motivator to keep them off the ground, compression fan for pushing them along, solar regenerator and battery system and an antenna for sending and receiving signals.”
“Sending signals,” Ki grumbled and reached into the drone, the manipulators on his hand whirred and ripped out a piece of circuitry around the antenna and pulled out a flat blue circuit board hidden beneath. It had several black processors and resistors like the rest of the drone, entirely made from antique Earth tech.”
“What is that?”
“This is an expansion slot, it’s old Earth computer tech, you build the basic system then slot one of these in to determine what you need. I built something similar once on a job my pack got. These systems are cheap and easy to build, this is a counter card, with a built-in low resolution image processor tied to this very fancy looking camera up front. It’s a piece of trash, so cheap, it snaps a photo of something, counts how many objects of a certain pre-loaded shape are visible in the photo then sends that number, the transmitter attached to this card means the antenna can send but not receive.”
“I was expecting more,” Firi frowned, staring at the video feed, “Are you seriously telling me these smaller surface drones have one job, count something then transmit those results to orbit?”
“Yeah,” Ki said in disgust, “This is way too creepy sis, when I built a system like this before it was for some Farmers on a colony world counting their Flagnarks and Tralongs, you know checking that none of their cattle was being stolen or killed out on the prairie.”
“It’s a cattle counting system, what ca…. ugh fuck no! They aren't, are they?” Firi stopped by the next turret and kicked it to knock off the snow covering it, “I can’t think of any good reason why an alien species would be counting cattle on this planet, there is nothing down here to count!
“Maybe something about the local fauna?”
“In a planet that’s as deadly as this, where the only people who came before were either conquerors or died gruesomely?”, Firi’s voice pitch went up a bit, making her sound angrier. No, I’m sure that isn’t the case. Maybe they wanted to count bunnies?”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions yet,” Ki said, “You may be right, but I am going to get Taran to hack us into one of these computers and find out exactly what they are counting.”
“Good call,” Firi said, “Let’s confirm what we suspect, then… then we can discuss as a pack what to do about this.”
“Firi!” Ki said, sounding deadly serious for a moment. “If these drones are counting a sapient species like they were cattle we have to blow them all up right away! It’s the absolute minimum we should do here.”
The yellow Avali shook her head, replying now in an unusually calm tone that rivalled her new brother’s. “Usually yes I’d be the first person to suggest we blow them up and you know it. But if the owner of these drones is who I suspect we do not want to give them any more ammunition to use against us. So we won’t blow them up, they would just replace them and cause everyone a big legal problem. I've got a better idea that will fuck with them and they won’t be able to prove we did anything.”
“I’m listening,” Ki said now curious, he sounded honestly surprised the plan wasn’t, ‘blow them all up,’ “What’s the plan?”
“Not over the com, just to be sure. But first we confirm what we suspect, go grab Taran and the orbital drone and find out what they are counting and if you can who they are sending the info to, I’ll be done with the turrets in about an hour.”
“Ok Firi, see you soon,” Ki’s camera feed and comm line closed and Firi hurried on toward the next turret. She’d finish securing Seinu’s base camp and then go see what the boys had discovered. She was pretty sure she knew the answer, but despite what everyone believed she didn’t always solve every problem with grenades (even if that was the most fun way to do it); sometimes you had to be sneaky to cause the most disruption.
The base-camp was pretty much complete. Besides the medical tent where the injured Rayen was recovering, several more Avali tents had been built. Bright white, orange and yellow nano-fibre structures; sleeping, storage, crystal generator, computer cover and an office/work space tent. Aerogel light crystals had been attached to the top of each tent-pole so at night the whole encampment gave off a soft orange glow. The whole encampment was ringed by a safety net of non-lethal turrets to keep predators out up to a half a kilometre radius.
It had been a couple of days since the disastrous first contact and Seinu had been restricting access to the surface on Firi’s advice. Beyond Firi he’d been keeping everyone else up on the Odyssey though he had relented and allowed them to use the teleporter. The camp now had a teleporter beacon flag set up to allow Ifelse to lock onto people in need of beaming back up. The shuttle was still parked nearby, it might be useful for surveying, with the news on what the local drone population was doing Seinu didn’t feel comfortable unleashing even more drones onto the planet, it felt wrong to copy what they suspected the Horkers were doing.
His “office” space was an open sided awning, four tent poles and a canvas roof that was open to the elements on three sides. The fourth side was taken up by the entrance to one of the tents where he had stored his equipment, crystalline computer server and other gear. He wanted to be visible to the bunnies but Firi insisted with the prolific dangers of the planet’s natural predators he at least not be entirely exposed even with the anti-predator defence grid.
Seinu had kept the outside space simple, a series of bright orange and yellow rugs on the ground. A beanbag for him to lounge on and a floating table upon which rested a computer interface. He was currently preparing to dictate his notes on Bunny biology to the system; due to the unfortunate incident with Rayen they had been able to build up a comprehensive biographical picture of bunny physiology.
“Start recording,” Seinu said softly and his computer system registered the command and opened a new audio file.
“As can be seen in greater detail in the files from our medical drones, the Vampire Bunny Species' biological makeup is quite impressive. They are suitably adapted to the cold of their home planet with a bipedal structure; though during moments of high stress or a need for speed they will escape by running on all fours"
Seinu lay back on his beanbag and stared at the roof of his awning, "Their hands are covered in thick fluff with short fingers. At first glance one would assume they would not have fine motor control. But despite this they have an incredibly dextrous gripping system assisted by their small claws but more importantly the rough gripping surface of their paw pads."
"Their feet are mostly covered in fur and depending on lineage can have matching pads on their feet or smooth, fur covered soles; it seems to be a genetic difference expressed through random selection during gestation. Paw pads on the feet or not they all have an evolved sense attuned to vibrations transmitted through the ground. The bunny species have developed several of these extra sensory additions to aid them in detecting approaching predators. The primary sense appears to be scent based supplemented by a combination of hearing, sight and vibrations. According to the medical programs in our infirmary this leaves them fine tuned to detect predators whilst foraging but also leaves them living in a world of hair trigger alertness, ready to react to outside stimuli at a moments notice."
Seinu paused to try and imagine what that must be like, walking through the world with your mind and body programmed to go into flight mode at the drop of a hat. Avali were the apex predators on Avalon. Life as a prey species must be so different but he'd get to experiencing that when it was time.
"Vampire Bunnies have tetrachromatic vision,” he said as he resumed his recording, “It is a whole order of magnitude better than, say, the average Human. With a rod and cone structure that allows them to see a wider range of colour. It puts Avali vision to shame but may be of interest to our medical packs specialising in visual augments for possible development options."
Seinu lifted his visor and peered out from beneath the awning at the dim white and grey tones of the planet. It looked drab and quiet; only the odd sandstone outcropping caught the eye as a splash of yellow that his vision set to "standard Avali" could see. Heck even augmented by his visor it was still dim and dark, his body was set to Avali standard visual processing right now. To maintain his Avali thought patterns his body of living nanite-slime replicated Avali brain functionality and that sadly meant he got crappy Avali eyesight along with the amazing teeth and feathers.
"Apparently this planet is very beautiful to bunny eyes. Another physiological thing to note is that the Vampire Bunny digestive system is similar to other bipedal aliens, attuned to a herbivore and insectivore diet; they will eat fruit, berries, small insects, leaves, lichens, mushrooms and other fungi. Technically when you consider their digestive system and the internal makeup of their organ placements they are more akin to giant fluffy bugs then mammalian or avians. They could, if starving, resort to hematophagia as a survival mechanism. This would be a supplementary cause for their original name, but not the reason why they received it: Based on our observations, apparently the humans who discovered this world witnessed the bunnies devouring the local Cinati fruit. They engulf the fruit in their jaws and suck the juice out of them, and this leaves their muzzles and neck ruffs stained with its distinctive red juice. This coupled with their prominent set of large fangs used to pierce the skin of tough fruit landed them with the name Vampire Bunny. They themselves refer to other bunnies simply as “friend” in their own language.”
Seinu paused to think over that last sentence, it was a nice thing to imagine a species whose name for themselves and other sapient species was just "friend." But it also left them vulnerable, innocent and naive to the greater universe in a way the Horkers had clearly abused.
"Speaking of their fangs and drinking blood," Seinu resumed dictating, "This, as mentioned, would be done only in the case of very dire emergencies. Bunnies generally eat well; there is no documented evidence of any alien ever seeing a bunny drink blood in this manner to survive, even among their former slaver's records, but this was confirmed by the bunnies themselves when asked.”
“That being said, at the same time, tasting blood is part of a local ritual involving the "nibbling of friends", whereby the bunny samples a small (and i mean really small) amount of their new friends blood to aid in cementing their scent and other identifying traits into the bunnies memories. Their sense of smell is highly developed, in working with Thiln the bunny contact I made and from medical scans performed by the medical drones they have a sense of smell that far out-strips Avali. After running a comparison on the Nexus the closest similarity I can give is that their sense of smell is on par with that of an Earth animal called a dog.”
Seinu glanced down as his hearing picked up a very subtle sound, ears triangulating its position as just behind a crate stored outside his office awning. He smiled to himself but left the hidden bunny for now and resumed speaking.
"Lastly I need to mention bunny hearing. Whilst not sporting as extensive a range as Avali and our quadraphonic hearing the bunnies still possess an extremely sophisticated auditory array which feeds into their general predator detection suite. Their ears hang low to just below shoulder height and are stiff, generally remaining in that position and not moving. But after a story told to me by Thiln of legends of "tall ears being easy to catch and eat" I ran a genetic comparison through the infirmary database and found a recessive gene for tall, upright ears during genome mapping that has actually been rendered inert and overwhelmed by evolutionary principles. Quite simply, all the bunnies with upright ears got eaten by predators and they've bred the gene into total recession. It is no longer possible to activate it through natural selection and has been relegated to the status of junk DNA."
Seinu's ears shifted as he detected another footstep, this time he placed the bunny just to his left behind the pot with a thermal crystal in it. He leant further back in his beanbag and closed his eyes before resuming speaking.
"Finally, after extensive genome mapping and examination of their metabolism we placed their natural life span at about 125-130 standard galactic years. With access to Avali level medical technology and medicines we could revise their life span to about 260-270. However, due to the vast array of predators on this world and the natural inclination for a body to slow down as it ages, the amount of Vampire Bunnies reaching the end of their natural lifespan is scarily low. Their society lacks any form of agriculture; foraging is the primary method of food gathering, and that is the highest source of mortality, as doing that is where they’re at the weakest. Based on stories told by Sher and Thiln I have run a projection through our AI Ifelse and the mortality rates are unnervingly high. Our current prediction based on empirical population modelling is a mortality rate of 75% across the age range of three years to the start of adolescence at sixteen years. Even across the "prime" adult age range mortality is still around 30% simply due to predation and once a bunny starts to slow down from age around the seventy to eighty year mark mortality rates jump back up to 60%.”
Seinu let his left arm drop and placed his hand atop the pom-pom on Thiln's hat in welcome and he felt the the vampire bunny freeze in place and let out a startled chirp, “This initial projection of mortality rates will need refining as we build a more complete picture of current population levels during our stay. For now this ends my summary or Vampire Bunny biology, for further detail see the full medical report attached to this summary, end recording."
Turning gently onto his side Seinu looked down at Thiln who was crouched beside his beanbag, peeking up in surprise at the Avali's hand atop his hat. Seinu tried not to smile, he had learnt that seeing an Avali mouth full of predator fangs was not reassuring to the bunny.
"Hello," he trilled in “Bunny Song,” the name that their language had been given. "That was very nearly successful, but I'm afraid I heard you."
"How?" Thiln pouted, "I was sure as you were twittering in your language you'd not be able to hear me. I know you can't smell me."
It had become something of a challenge over the past four or five days for the bunny to try and sneak up on Seinu. The Avali however had so far caught him every time with his hearing and his natural ability to multitask.
"I have very good hearing, but hello Thiln," Seinu sat up and smiled, "I'm glad you're here; Rayen is awake and it would be good for her to have a bunny visitor.” he held up his hands and looked at his feathers, “I also did as I said I would and checked… if you'd still like to nibble me to help you learn to recognize my scent it's safe for you to do so."
Thiln clambered onto the bean bag and up onto Seinu's lap, the bunny was slowly learning to relax around Seinu and had little if any sense of personal space around his new friend. He sniffed the Avali, pressing his nose against Seinu's feathers, he then drew back and smiled, pushing his hat back, "You saved Rayen from a Shadow-Wing, you have proven you are a friend… I want to know you, the rest of my foraging party are curious but they’re all too scared to come near your igloos, they are hiding back in the bushes. If I can say that I’ve nibbled one of you it’ll help me convince them you are safe and Friends and they can come see Rayen too and then they can help me convince our Elder you are safe and Friends."
"It isn't the Avali way and I should warn you my blood is different from other Avali but you may do so."
Thiln chirped and took hold of Seinu's arm, "One quick bite, I only need like a drop, a single lick for the bonding of friendship."
Thiln then wrapped his jaws around the Avali's wrist and sank his fangs into his flesh. Seinu barely felt it, it was gentler than any needle, that's all the ritual called for as Thiln had explained it. He'd sink his fangs in then lick up the first drops that welled up, recording Seinu's scent and making them friends.
So Seinu wasn't expecting to see Thiln's eyes widen in delight and for the bunny to make a gulping motion. It was so odd to feel someone drinking his "blood" so the Avali just sat there frozen, maybe he'd misinterpreted Thiln's explanation of the ritual.
Not that Seinu had blood, just nanite infused goo lurking beneath the feathers on the surface of his slime body. He'd had to call his Doctor pack on Avalon about this but they assured him it would be harmless to anyone who drank it. They'd even taught him how to use his medical monitoring system to program its consistency, part of its composition and even its flavour. Seinu had picked Cinati fruit but underlying this flavouring was he'd been assured the unchangeable scent and taste of the essence of Seinu. He had also instructed it to scan the bunny and reconstituted itself into something he could digest full of nutrients and vitamins.
Thiln sheepishly let Seinu's wrist go and wiped his mouth. The tiny fang puncture marks sealed closed and Seinu smiled nervously.
"Sorry… did I make myself too tasty? Avali blood is usually awful, I tried to be helpful and made myself taste like one of those big fruits."
Thiln was blushing furiously, hiding behind his hat, but as Seinu spoke he peered out from behind his hat, "W…what? You made yourself taste good on purpose?"
Seinu nodded and Thiln pulled his hat straight and chirped, "That was… too tasty! Sorry… please don't tell anyone I did that… that's so embarrassing… but it is done, I know you now," Thiln chirped again and plaffed a paw against Seinu's snout in a motion of remonstrance, as if they had been friends for decades, "Don't do that again… you are for always my friend, I know you…. But friends aren't meant to taste like fruit!"
"Sorry, I just thought it'd help if I didn't taste awful, that won't interfere with you knowing my scent?"
"Oh no," Thiln giggled, "I know your scent and taste now… now that we are friends can we see Rayen?"
"Of course," Seinu let the bunny climb off his lap and stood up, "Let's head to the medical tent and…” he stopped as Firi came around the corner and into the tent, she was wearing her full armour suit but had retracted the helmet.
“Seinu I have finished… checking….” she stopped and stared at Thiln then pointed, “How are you in here!”
“What did she say?” Thiln asked nervously as he hid behind Seinu and peeked around him, “Is she angry? Does she want to eat me?”
“No,” Seinu soothed, rubbing the bunnies head, “She wants to know how you got in here?”
“Oh, I just walked in, you said the magic no-predator machines wouldn’t harm bunnies.”
Seinu translated this to Firi and her frown deepened, “Well yes, that’s true,” she said, “But I just walked the perimeter, there are no foot-prints and none of the turrets registered them passing. I can believe they snuck in, the sensor coverage isn’t perfect but there is no way he crossed the snow out here and didn’t leave tracks.”
Seinu translated the Avali’s query and Thiln perked up and relaxed, “Ooooh that’s simple,” Thiln hopped outside and walked back and forth in the snow just outside the tent. He did indeed leave foot-prints but as he walked his thick fluffy brush of a tail swished back and forth erasing them as he went.
“See, we don’t leave tracks, we aren’t stupid,” he stopped and swished his tail back and forth, “We learn from a young age to never leave tracks, we do it without thinking after a while. Predators could follow us if we did.”
“Huh,” Firi said, “That… I never noticed that before.”
“I didn’t either,” Seinu chirped, “Something else for me to record,” he turned to Thiln and spoke in bunny, “Thank you for showing us that, shall we go see Rayen now?”
Thiln nodded and Seinu thanked his sister for the perimeter defences before leading the way across the camp toward the field hospital.
Placing his armoured hands on his hips Ki watched the two wyvern shaped drones at work. S4-R4B and P1-SC3S were pretty impressive, especially here in the zero-g environment outside the ship. They used their wings and the small gas-jets built into the tip of each wing-spar to manoeuvre, drifting through the void with ease, the aerogel covering the end of each tail opening up to reveal various tools and pieces of equipment. They also used their long, powerful legs and dextrous taloned feet to hold and manipulate materials as they worked.
“They are very impressive,” Ki said, his voice being transmitted to Firi and Taran’s suits as the pair of Avali floated around the drones, “Why are they shaped like that? No one ever did explain.”
“Oh,” Firi laughed, “The tech I used to create my babies originally comes from an alien species called the Natatostra, they look like this. In their own language and translated into ours they are wyverns so wyvern drones.”
Firi practically beamed in pride, Ki could tell how happy she was with her drones even with her entirely wrapped up inside her space-armour. There were vocal cues coming over the radio, the way she moved and held herself. Ki was slowly but surely learning the personal habits and sounds the pack made. Firi was also still proving to be a challenge, she drove him up the wall sometimes and yet at others she was his closest confidant, especially when he was having a bad time, it was such a contrast.
He still had some doubts deep inside about joining them, but the long conversations with the therapist pack who had arrived from Avalon were helping. He would never really recover all the way from losing his birth pack but it was working, the others were becoming more and more familiar to him every day. Like now he was spending time with Firi and Taran whilst they worked on this project together, he didn’t really need to be here but part of him wanted the company and to see his design put into practice. The therapy pack encouraged him to spend time with different members of the pack every day and to relax and let himself slot into pack activities. It was working, his hopefully soon to be adopted siblings were including him in their planning and group activities and he was joining in.
“I love their design,” Firi chirped, “They are versatile, big, strong and easy to programme and the production unit can produce as many as I need out of basic ingredients we have in stock for our own fabricators.”
“And Taran, you built the operating system that runs them?” Ki asked as he fired the jets in his suit to drift around the device they were building.
“Yup,” Taran smiled, drifting around and becoming quite animated, waving his arms around as he explained, “They come out of the pod with a clean slate, so I built a semi-sentient software suite that links with Ifelse and the Odyssey’s systems.”
Ki drifted closer to his new brother and peered past him at P1, “They are really good, it still surprises me how much you know about computing systems.”
“I love computers,” Taran exclaimed, closing his fingers around Ki’s suited arm and turning him to face the device they were building, “Now this… this was a challenge! I had to learn a whole new programming language and build our little fix in that so it can interface with the target drones operating system.”
“And that’s not a very advanced system?” Ki said, “It’s such cheap trash, it’s obsolete even by Human standards and their computer tech is so basic.”
“Oh hell yeah it is,” Taran chuckled, “But also super fascinating to see; it appears to have been cobbled together from ancient Earth hardware standards and operating using an ancient Earth code language called C. It’s so old and trash and a hodgepodge of nonsense I could have spliced our way through it with the most basic tools from Avali OS.”
“But we aren’t using Avali OS for this?” Ki asked as he leant his helmet against Taran’s shoulder and watched the drones building and latching components together.
“Yup, I had to call a few friends of mine who work with ancient systems, Kalani from Sawi’s pack plus a friend of Seinu’s who is a savant at ancient operating systems.” Taran chuckled, “This device we are building will make it look like a natural fault developed with their drone controller systems, the Horkers do not have the technical expertise to prove this was us.”
“And that’s why we are building this outside of the ship?” Ki asked as he reached out to catch a fragment of circuit board as it drifted out of the flurry of activity around the drones. One of them, S4, drifted over and took the circuit board back in the pinchers attached to its tail then drifted back to the half assembled device.
“Yup,” Firi chuckled, “This way it should blend in with the other drone control systems that manage the flock of drones across the planet,” Ki could well imagine the grin she was sporting behind her helmet, “We are going to fuck them and Seinu has changed his tune, he was all “no we shouldn’t interfere” but he literally just got this sanctioned by Special Operations so it’s all unofficially official.”
Ki perked up at that, which still felt weird, his ears could actually move, shifting inside his helmet, the actuators adjusting to compensate as if he didn’t have a helmet on at all, he’d never owned a space suit that could mimic natural Avali ear movements, “Do we know why?”
“As far as I can tell once I confirmed the drones are counting bunnies like a farmer would count their cattle animals and sending their results to the Horker homeworld he changed his mind,” Taran said.
“Not straight away though,” Firi said, “He was angry about the counting but said we shouldn’t mess with the drones to avoid causing a diplomatic incident. Then he met one of the Bunny elders, Thiln was able to convince her to come up to the surface and meet Seinu. He spent a few hours talking to her then according to Selenu locked himself in his tent. She said he was listening to a song for about an hour, the same thing on repeat again and again and then he came and told me to ahead and fuck with the Horker drones and that he’d got the Director to agree to the plan.”
“It was quite the U-turn,” Taran said, “He even got special operations to review my code to make sure we hadn’t missed anything.”
“Good on him,” Ki chirped, “When we are done here we should go check if he is ok?”
“Good idea,” Taran agreed, “Let’s see if we can help S4 and P1 and get this ready to go then go pile on him, slime-bro probably needs all the hugs.”
“Onwards,” Firi chirped and launched herself toward her drones, which Ki realised was probably going to slow things down. She was a bit too enthusiastic for zero-g construction but oh well he’d move along behind her and try to keep them on track.
Sher was humming to himself as he tuned his acoustic guitar by hand. As nice as his new Avali guitar was for live performances the yellow and white vampire bunny still liked to break out his traditional instruments whilst song making or just vibing. He had just got it to sound how he wanted and was strumming his way through an old earth ballard when the Iron’s AI pinged his visor.
Incoming Video Message
Sender: Seinu Trail
Sher paused mid-lick and moved his eyes behind his visor, focussing on the accept message icon. He’d long lost his awe for Avali tech but it still amazed him how the HUD inside his visor could track his eye movements and register button presses purely based on where he was looking and for how long. The video downloaded, streaming out of the ship’s systems and into his visor. Sher didn't play it back inset into his visor screen however, he ordered the Iron's AI to play it on the wall monitor. Leaning back in his beanbag, idly strumming his guitar, plucking the strings he waited for it to begin.
The screen lit up and showed an open-sided Avali tent and in the background mountains Sher recognized. It was the mountain range that was west of the lands his people lived in. From the look of it though he was someway north of Sher’s village. The large blocks of sandy coloured stone poking up out of the snow were unfamiliar but he’d heard tales of the yellow rocks to the north even if he had never seen them himself. What he did recognize was the Cinati trees in the background, those were a universal constant all over his homeworld and sitting in a chair in the centre of the frame was Seinu. His silver Avali friend had been met by accident whilst stuck in an elevator on Warfaisser Station and they had bonded over that shared experience and stayed in contact since. It helped that he was known by some of Rowi's pack too and had worked with them in the past. Sher wasn't the best at making new friends, he was shy around strangers but he was slowly starting to warm up to his new Avali friend.
Sher had heard that the Illuminate was sending an Avali pack to the Land and he’d been surprised when he was told it was the Trail pack. He hadn’t been expecting a message from the surface of his home-world but it made sense, Seinu would be at work after all so why would he go back to his ship to record a message, Avali tech made that unnecessary.
“Hello Sher,” the Avali chirped in Avali core, “Sorry to drop this message on you so soon. I know you’ve not had time to reply to my last video but I had to send you this…”
He paused and turned to look across the snow field behind, he turned back to the camera and lifted his visor. His dark eyes stared into the camera, he then dropped into flawless bunny-song. His pronunciation was perfect, just like Sawi’s and the emotional content of his next few sentences was raw and pure in a way Avali core couldn’t quite convey to someone who had grown up speaking in the Song of the Friends.
“I listened to it again Sher… I loaded up the recording my visor made at the UMF, Cattle… I know what it means now… I can understand and… and I am going to make sure everyone knows Sher… I still have months of research time here but I have included the most important video I’ve made with this message.”
Sher glanced at the data line and there was indeed another video message with this one, “We didn’t know… and I know it wasn’t our fault but still I wish we had known and could have stopped it. Now we know I am going to make sure everyone in Avali space knows. I am already working with the Illuminate press office to make sure when this all goes out live it is as a serial not just a boring report filed in the depths of the nexus… this is going to go out prime time to every Avali pack.”
Sher was curious, the Avali was so emotionally charged, his words where reverberating and from the way his feathers were fluffing up he was really worked up and as he spoke he leant forward, “And I am going to fuck them… I can’t tell you what we are up to but show the attached .jpeg file to Rowi, if he can’t solve it Taran says to call Kalani and show it to him.”
Seinu shivered and lowered his visor back into place, “Watch the other video and I hope… I hope we can still be friends, if you hate it let me know and we can discuss other options. You’re letting the universe know in your own way well this is mine and I hope… I hope you approve.”
The video ended, the image of Seinu dissolving into a white screen with the orange Illuminate logo in the centre. Sher ordered his visor to turn off the holographic screen before his eyes and play the second video, his curiosity was piqued. He wanted to see whatever this was without his visor in the way and in flawless high definition the video came to life showing Seinu and two vampire bunnies wearing yellow and purple hats. One of them was old, she had to be the oldest bunny Sher had ever seen.
The younger bunny was about the same age as Sher’s father and he was fussing around the elder bunny until she plaffed her hands on his snout and grumbled, “Stop fussing, go help the others with Rayen.”
“You shouldn’t be outside like this mother,” the younger male complained, “It isn’t safe…”
“These star creatures saved Rayen from a Shadow-Wing, I think for the first time in decades I am safe above ground, now go…”
The younger bunny glared suspiciously at Seinu then scampered off and the elderly matron sighed and leant back on the cushion she was lying on and spent a moment admiring the mountains. She then turned to the Avali and considered him.
“It is nice to be above ground… I am too old and slow to risk it, a predator would grab me in seconds. I stay underground and look after the little ones and the village cares for me but it is nice to see the trees and the sun, thank you Seinu.”
The way she sang his name was slow, halting as if she was unfamiliar with the alien name but the Avali didn’t seem to mind, “I thank you for agreeing to come speak to me and I promise we will make sure you get home safely.”
Seinu was speaking in Bunny Song, but there were Avali core subtitles and an option to change the audio to Avali. Sher left it in bunny but he was impressed at the time that had gone into making those options available, that wasn't a quick thing to do even with Avali translation tech.
“Well when young Thiln told us that star creatures had saved Rayen and were not here to eat us I didn’t believe him. But then he told us that you were trustworthy, to the point he had nibbled you and that you were asking questions about the…”
At this point the elderly bunny sang a word that Sher knew too well. Anyone trying to translate that word would lose all the emotional context, the horror, the revulsion and utter terror that tune evoked in the soul of every vampire bunny. And that was sad, because the words spat out by the translator sounded silly and unimportant:
“Extremely horrible not friends from space”
It was one of these words where context was required to understand how charged it was.
After that, the old bunny turned to look at Seinu and carefully, slowly pulled off her hat and turned it back and forth in her hands. “I’m the oldest bunny in our village… I am the only one who remembers them in person… to the others they are… history, legend, story and still they terrify us.”
She turned ancient eyes to the Avali, “This hat was my mother’s… I was only little… so small, maybe two hundred days old. We were out foraging when one of their hunting parties arrived, they could track us, find us no matter how well we hid they had… ways.”
She went silent for a moment, then wiped her eyes, clearing away the tears that sparkled at the corner of them, “Mother hid me in a hollow, buried me under the snow and told me to stay then ran away. She didn’t get far… They caught the whole foraging party. Growling and hissing in their awful language, they locked most of the foraging party in cages, I couldn’t see but I could hear, I’d been taught to fear the cages, the traps, the metal containers.”
She turned back to Seinu and stared, “We had no defence against them… their knives and swords, their cutting blades and flensing knives. Our natural defences are to run, to hide, to scamper and if something does grab us then and only then would we bite.”
She shuddered, “I remember the stench of them, and their hard skin. Our fangs were no use against them, even if we had the chance to bite them it didn’t help.”
She shivered and wrapped her arms around her knees, eyes lost in the dim past as she re-lived ancient memories. “They didn’t just capture us though. Sometimes they’d load us alive into their ships, fly us off to the stars and we’d never be seen again. Other times… like this time when they caught my mother they would kill them there and then.”
She looked at Seinu then turned to the camera, “This time they were not collecting us as living cattle, they wanted us dead, I guess sometimes it was easier for them to transport meat. They started to kill them, mother… everyone and they didn’t do it quickly. They did everything they could to keep them alive and make them scream.”
She was crying now, bright tears trailing down her cheeks at the memory as she hugged the hat, “It’s in our lore that they loved to make us scream, tales told to scare the young ones. But it is true… that wasn’t the first time I’d ever heard a group of those brutes killing one of us. They delighted in the sounds we made, they made no attempt to learn our language, didn’t understand the words they made us shriek and scream. Usually it was us begging and pleading for any understanding or reason why they were doing this to us. But they never answered us, just did all they could to make us scream louder as they butchered us for transport.”
Seinu’s eyes went wide and he dropped the small Avali device he was holding. His ears had drooped, all four of them wilting as he listened to her story. She went on to explain more about the Horkers, how they hunted Bunnies, how they raided villages that back then weren’t hidden underground, smashed eggs, killed old or young alike they didn’t care. She’d lived through it; the tail end of the Horker’s occupation of the planet and she saw or heard atrocities that made Seinu start crying as she spoke.
“We had to hide, deeper than before. They were able to find us, so we had to find places where they couldn’t follow us. So we started finding underground caves and settling there. I don’t know how many of us survived, but that’s the only thing we could do. Some groups had to abandon everything and walk for days trying to find deep caves where they could hide. Many perished during our escape, as predators would have an easier time of it to catch one of us while we were in a group. In the end, it worked. We found the place we’re living in now, with entrances way too small or inaccessible for the bastards. We’ve heard some groups made small buildings with ice in the entrance to their caves with doors too small for the normal predator population, but in our case we just found good hard to use entrances, and that’s where we set up our village.
It worked in the long run. One day they left without any warning or explanation why. The brute’s flew away in their flying machines, and those bunnies who remained spread out, walking away from the old villages, the loss, the bones allowed to be forgotten under the snow. They never knew why; they blessed the Land for driving them away and restoring balance to nature, and tried to build new villages.
“They are still watching,” Seinu whispered when the old matron fell silent, “The camera drones that roam the planet are theirs. We think they left because they’d hunted you nearly to extinction.”
The old bunny sat up, “So they’ll be back?”
“Yes,” Seinu whispered, a sadness in his voice, “But I promise you we will find some way to stop them, I promise. That is why we are here. To make sure your story is heard and that you never ever go through something like this again.”
“Thank you,” She whispered, “But I am tired…” she pulled her hat back on, “I would like to go see Rayen please, the miracle bunny who survived a Shadow-Wing.”
“Of course,” Seinu stood up and moved to help the older bunny out of her cushions and the video ended. Sher wiped his eyes and then turned his visor on and loaded the image Seinu had sent. It was a garbled mess of colour and strange lines, it was nonsense to him so Sher stored it to show Rowi later and just sat for a bit, strumming the chorus chord from Cattle on his guitar. The Avali were officially going to tell the story of the Vampire Bunnies… he wasn’t sure how to feel about this. He wanted to tell the universe, the band had been telling them through their song and performance.
But this… this was good but also a lot to process. Seinu had clearly gone and re-listened to Cattle after speaking to the matron. Now that the Avali could speak Bunny Song, the screaming voices in the backing track would make sense to him. The screaming, pleading, desperate shrieks of bunnies to their murderers echoing in song, the same tales Sher had heard since he was a child. The exact same story the old bunny had just told Seinu on the video.
Sher hopped to his feet, “Never…” he brought his paws down on the guitar, stopping the song. He had a reply to record to Seinu but first he’d see if Rowi could make sense of this image file. “Motherfuckers, never ever a-fucking-gain!”