Challenge #03051-H128: The Little and Fierce

Actual quote from an actual three-year-old: “Children fight the bad guys! I sharp him with my little teeth!” – Anon Guest

[AN: I did briefly play with the idea of this being a Pib line, thank you for wondering]

The universe is a big place. There’s plenty of areas that haven’t heard about the inherent dangers of Deathworlders in general and Humans in particular. Therefore, it’s understandable that the same mistake can happen in several different places during several different time periods. It’s things like this, including deep time colonies, that only serve to magnify the legends going around about them.

Well. The legends amongst the survivors, anyway. Those who escape to tell their tale make sure that the terror transmits just as effectively as the warning. Deathworlders are dangerous. Humans are even more dangerous than that. Some still insist on learning this for themselves.

Conqueror Harak had the perfect plan. “It’s only a small colony of hairless mammals,” they said, demonstrating a near fatal lack of talent for accurate threat assessment. “Once we hold their supremely vulnerable young hostage, the rest of them will fall into line and give us whatever we want.” This has gone on record as possibly the universe’s worst known idiotic plan and to this day, anything of the ilk is referred to as Pulling a Harak.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #03049-H126: To Find a Good Teacher

They worked hard to find out who this person was. The one who could not be harmed, the one who never needed a weapon, they WERE a weapon. And once the person was found, the seeker, and their siblings, went to them and said, politely. “Please, teach us, we wish to be your students.”

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02669-g112-the-immortal-master – Fighting Fit

Fel was a long time in finding hir. The Immortal Master didn’t advertise and, in fact, preferred to stay out of public notice. There’s something about being notorious as the best martial artist in the known universe that makes idiots want to try and beat them. Therefore, Master Twii tended to be both nomadic, and a lover of going incognito. However, a mighty need fuels inspired desperation. Those desperate enough will do whatever they can to get what they need.

Fel’s people were already nomadic, so they knew a nomad’s needs. They especially knew how to stay under the radar and avoid notice by keeping to the lower-security accommodations. Eating the less prestigious food. It was entirely possible for one cogniscent being to travel the breadth of known space on little or no money. That said, there were some things a Master like Twii could not live without.

Everyone has their little habits, for peace of mind, for sanity, for indulgence. It didn’t matter the reason, only that they were constants in the stream of days. Such as, Master Twii enjoyed quiet contemplation with significant Nae'hyn populations, Jasmine clear tea, and large gardens. That, paired with “incidents” involving bold, brash people with an action-consequence disconnect, pointed out a path of movement, and potential places that Master Twii could move to.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #03048-H125: They Don’t Need Weapons

Anything can be a weapon if you’re reckless enough – Anon Guest

[AN: For the unlimited version of this, check the collected works of Jackie Chan]

Humans. The aggressive warrior race who will go to any extreme to protect and enrich their pack. Any single one of them is capable of creating a phenomenal amount of destructive chaos on their enemy. When no weapons are available, they will create their own. Often in an instant. A fact not lost on anyone who’s tried to go in against them with a mind to cause trouble.

Humans are well capable of making their own trouble. Those who give it to them are in for a world of hurt. The thieves of the trade routes thought that picking on lone transiteers with no obvious weaponry would land them an easy score. They were abominably wrong.

It should have been a swift hijack. Board the ship, incapacitate the pilot, and take any valuable cargo before running off to safety. They got as far as step one before they discovered some interesting facts that the rest of the Alliance had yet to learn the hard way.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #03047-H124: Free Time

“Human, you don’t need to sleep every night outside of my door. This station is quite safe.”

The human, looking upon the galactic while they sat upright in a chair, their lifesuit programmed to hold them in that position even if they fell fast asleep. “Two weeks ago my mother and I were dying dereggers. You saved us, I will protect you.” – Anon Guest

Humans, among many other qualities, are illogical. Those rescued from Deregger space have the worst logic. It’s not their fault, they were never taught logical thinking to begin with. What they’re used to is an overwhelming conglomerate where profit is the only motive and the individual doesn’t matter unless that individual also has billions of dollars.

Human Jef and hir mother had been trying to sneak out in the air vents of Transiteer Gorx’s shipping vessel. When Gorx found them, they had been setting off the hold alerts because safety protocols insisted that there were air-breathing lifeforms of sufficient mass in the hold. They had been starving, sick, weak, and terrified of the Havenworlder who found them. Their livesuits barely living up to the name.

Gorx had done what any decent cogniscent would have done. Ze took them into the habitable zone, amped up the life support, sent out a low-urgency distress call, and done what ze could to help their general health until more supplies could arrive by special courier. Both Human Jef and Human Bea had been so astonished by simple things like essential nutrition and free medical care that they swore fealty to Gorx thereafter.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #03046-H123: To Win at a Loss

They are a good lucker, but a scoundrel. True they could be quite kind, benevolent even, but they loved breaking the rules and getting into mischief. They’d been kicked out of more casinos than they cared to count, and had been escorted from stations more than a few times for bilking people for their time via gambling. After all, it’s hard to catch a lucker at such antics if you don’t know they’re a lucker!

Then they met a bad lucker whose bad luck was almost the exact polar opposite of their good. The two, oddly enough, became fast friends. The good luck began to struggle, but the bad luck didn’t get into so much trouble, either. – Lucky

Nice does not always mean good. Good does therefore not always mean nice. Consider the paradox of sailing through life with minimal consequences. Any gamble comes out as a win, any chance is not really that chancy. It’s really easy for those without consequences to become… well… horrible. When life treats you and your actions as gold, there is therefore nothing wrong with anything you do.

It’s easy to be worse than a scoundrel when one is a Good Lucker working the assorted casinos and gambling dens of the Edge Territories. Elin knew this and she kept to a strict set of rules: Leave when unwelcome, never break the bank, be generous, and be kind to those who have less luck. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t afford it. One of her lesser-known rules was, Always target the assholes, because those folks were in desperate need of a kharmic realignment.

She had a yacht, which contained all the possible luxuries that didn’t oppress anyone else, enough Time to keep herself comfortable for more than one lifetime. She had any number of bedmates to entertain, an enviable lifestyle, and a will that would help out all the bad-luckers whose only company would ever be their cats. Those poor sods needed all the help they could get. And, in a way, they were her people. There but for the grace of the Powers…

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #03045-H122: Medicinal Purposes Only

Stranded Human: Does this look infected to you?

Stranded Alien: It looks…abnormal?

Stranded Human: Yeah…I don’t think treating this can wait for rescue…

Stranded Alien: (starting to panic a little) How do we treat it????

Stranded Human: We start by collecting some of those plants that were too toxic for me to eat…. – Anon Guest

“The ones we have to handle with gloves, or the ones that we need a livesuit to go near?”

“The ones we have to handle with gloves. We shouldn’t ever try to mess with the other kind,” clarified Human Gia. “That stuff’s all kill and no cure. Also, advance warning, the whole process is going to get nasty.”

Companion Lyl tisked, “This is Deathworlder nonsense. Of course it’s going to get nasty.” Ze got on hir very special gloves and dialed up the imagery. “These ones, yes?”

“Yeah, those are the ones. There’s going to be the kind of processes that can’t get anywhere near anything we use for making food.”

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #03044-H121: Unclean! Unclean!

Militant vegans, for years after she managed to escape their world, attempt to kidnap Harro, and later their children, and their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to “pay for crimes against their world”. Each time they try, they’re stopped rather firmly and placed into prison. Good thing Harro, and their family, are quite fierce about self-defense and have a lot of defenders. The militant vegans, within their cells, and the ones from their homeworlds, both refuse to accept their “heros” have committed crimes and are prison for it, and that each kidnap attempt is going to wind each kidnapper into the prisons as well. It’s hard to rehab those with such closed minds.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02970-h047-the-lifelong-argument – DaniAndShali

Usually, when these things happen, the polity they belong to declares their actions to be that of a “lone wolf” with or without any other adjectives. However, Plabari does not believe in wolves, canids, or other carnivores. Therefore, their turn of phrase is “wild ungulate”. Not that they have many of those in their polity either. They went extinct for some reason after the wild lands were all turned to croplands that were protected from unwanted herbivores.

Never let it be said that a Plabari can draw a line between “cause” and “effect”. That would spoil everything that they’ve been working for. If they encounter no proof that a fully vegan lifestyle is not possible for all living things, then they can’t have an existential crisis. And for those who would defy the clean and pure way of life? The only answer is death.

Thusly, Plabari Jens has gone out to become a wild ungulate and strike a blow for justice. The offending filthy carnivore, Harro Silentfoot was no longer able to be found, then one of her descendants would do. They could still be found. Jens picked the nearest one and took the shortest possible path to where they lived. It was quite a shock to discover that the Cogniscent Rights Committee intercepted her “for questioning.”

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #03043-H120: It’s Pronounced Ee-Mew

A tour group of several havenworlders, other galactics, and a few deathworlders were visiting an Emu farm and getting to pet the birds which were quite happily pecking pellets from open hands, visiting the young chicks, and seeing the hatchery. Then the humans grin, as a galactic mentions how gentle these birds are, and the humans tell of the Emu War, where these birds actually defeated the humans who want to war with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War – DaniAndShali

[AN: Gotta love final tallies like “Losses: 10K rounds, Dignity”]

Seeing birds like these, it was easy to believe that dinosaurs still existed. In a way, they did. They were just called ‘birds’ now. These ones were both impressive and tame. Their bulk was mostly in their legs and abdomens, and the rest of them were either lanky or covered in limp, stringy feathers.

Havenworlders could offer them food, and would not get harmed in the process. Then, they would learn that these gawky, unlikely beasts with brains no bigger than a walnut had once won a war against the Humans they shared a planet with. It had started, as most Deathworlder things did, with a war. A big one, with plenty of returning population that needed housing and occupation unrelated to killing people.

In those times, they needed food, and Australia had plenty of land worth farming. All went well until a drought forced the Emus to seek out greener pastures… like the crops growing under Human care. Military minds implemented military solutions and things went bad from worse.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #03042-H119: Galactics Bearing Gifts

To make it easier for dereggers to escape oppression, several galactic traders begin to offer to build trading ports on deregger places that “will guarantee a great profit for the leadership” because the leaders won’t have to pay for building the facility, and part of the fees the trading groups agree to pay for maintaining the places as well. Odd, though, the “security”, while seeming to do their job, sure love to slack off! – Lessons

The CRC had a loophole that helped immensely in helping oppressed Dereggers escape their tyrannical corporate overlords. So long as those overlords turned a profit per unit, they didn’t actually give a crap about what happened to their human resources. Thus, the CEO’s never questioned why the Galactics offered to build Alliance Standard Trading Stations in their space for free and then leased staff from the polities at an inflated price. It was a sweetheart deal and everyone knew the one about gift horses and mouths.

Fortunately for their citizens, they’ve forgotten about the one about Greeks and gifts. As the astute may have already guessed, all the stations the Alliance installed were Trojan Horses of the best kind. Instead of smuggling soldiers in, they were smuggling the trapped out. It will be quite some years before they realise this.

Indentured Servant 24601404 kept his head down and stayed out of trouble. When the CEOs told him to get in the shuttle, he got in the shuttle. Crammed in like the zardeens of legend with his fellow indentured. Standing room only. Please wait your turn to breathe. Don’t ask questions, do what you’re told, and pray you don’t break a rule you’ve never heard of. Believe, implicitly, that if you keep your head down and work until you drop, that your ship will come in and you’ll finally make it as one of the big shots.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #03041-H118: Tactile Therapy

The ship’s human is a former deregger still recovering from the horrors they endured. They often awakened in the middle of the night shaking and afraid. The companion liaison decided to do something about it and got the human a gift. A weighted blanket, and a soft, cuddly, comfort item that they, even though they were an adult, could cling to when they started to get lost in their own head. This fierce protector that helped the ship, and was an incredibly brilliant engineer, sometimes needed another’s protection after all. – DaniAndShali

[AN: Weighted blankets are fine for sleeping under, but not that great for hauling around. I know this because I’ve had to carry a few. Also, fun fact: The weighted part and the outside cover can and should be separable, so I’m working with that feature]

Fact: Deregger expatriates are the most broken of the available Ships’ Humans. Fact: They are also the most protective and wary. Fact: Those who have been hurt… are the kindest. All of these were true for Human Shel.

According to the records, Shel chose her name after rescue. She was one of the many rescues who didn’t have a name, or recognition as a person, until the Galactics tore her away from the only home she knew. She arrived with the kind of eyes that had seen too much and went too wide in horror, and would never open in any other way again. That look had faded somewhat with safety and therapy, but it remained even so.

Companion Gorx roomed with her, because of the night terrors, the nightmares, and the fact that Shel was just… better with someone on call at all hours. Someone there for her. As a licensed Human Therapist, Gorx had studied the sundry mental injuries of Humanity and was trying an assortment of things to help her Human out.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)