[GE] Lor - Chapter 1

LOR

2.

Lor awoke with a start, panting. It took a moment for the echoes of shrieking violence from her dreams to fade back into her memory, another moment for her to remember exactly where she was. Lor woke most days to the sounds of screams in her head. By her best calculation, Lor thought she must be around eight or nine years old. For too much of her young life she’d been running from the overwhelming shrieks of violence. The echoes never seemed to stop chasing her.

Calm down, she told herself, you’re not there anymore. You don’t have to think about them anymore. Lor shoved the memories trying to surface further back into her mind. She forced herself to pause, breathe, and listen to her surroundings. Lor could hear only the endless drip drip drip of moisture echoing from distant metal caverns. That sound was her only companion in this place.

Lor had been hiding for 27 days now, squeezing into maintenance pipes and through busted cracks in the walls of the abandoned sections of this factory world. She was hungry. It was four days now since she had found some freeze-dried food scraps and almost two days since she’d had any water. She was tired, in a bored kind of way. Most of the time she sat very still, feeling around for her hunters’ approach. Lor could sense them far before they could detect her so she was able to stay well out of their way. Still, their creeping persistence was unnerving. A few times Lor thought she had lost the hunters, or they had given up, but both times they had reappeared and had come a little too close for comfort while she dozed off.

She wasn’t exactly sure what was following her. Lor had sensed them arrive at the Grey operations base shortly after she had landed on this planet. She had never felt a presence like these two hunters before. They were both unfamiliar, in every sense of the word. Their Ka was subtle, shifting, focused, but powerful. Their energy seemed to sizzle even at a distance. That made it easy for her to stay far away from them in this maze of a factory they found themselves in. Lost in a maze that spread across the entire expanse of the planet, Lor was at least thankful for all the places to hide. She didn’t like to think what the hunters might do should they catch up to her.

A third – something – had joined her two hunters shortly after they had arrived on this planet. It seemed to be what kept them on her trail, bringing the other two along as it found each of her hiding spots. This one seemed calm, passive, sad. Its Ka was firm, strong and slow, unthreatening. Lor wondered what it might be that was helping her pursuers.

There were still active sectors of the factory, but much of the abandoned space Lor crept through seemed to have been damaged in a great battle long ago and left to decay rather than attempt to be repaired. She stayed well away from the factory planet’s active zones. She did not really want to witness what happened here.

She knew, of course, what kind of factory she was going to when the evac pod brought her here. This dark and desolate place she found herself in was a cloning, genetic modification, and repair facility stretching over the surface of the entire planet. Well, other than the blacked-out sections, that is. A pet production plant: here they made humans, or almost-humans. These pets were a lasting craze throughout the Raticant empire. Nothing displayed a truly upstanding Grey’s class and power like a unique and odd assortment of genetically modified human pets.

She knew this because the evac pod had briefed her on their landing destination on the way, and because she had plenty of time to spy on the Greys who worked here after she arrived. From a short distance away, she could sense everything that happened in their base – every thought. Most of the Greys working at the station loved to watch the Raticant entertainment streams. News programming, virtual gaming, sport gambling, reality surveillance streams from Earth – they couldn’t get enough of it! Almost as soon as each worker was done with their tasks or guard shifts for the day, she felt them retreat to their quarters and let themselves go to the VR machine that replaced most of their bed space, their minds becoming both excited and vegetated by the empire’s scheduled programming. And all of it was constantly interrupted by the various industries of Raticant culture vying for a sale.

The pet clone companies were the worst. She could recite each one of their ad scripts currently running in this sector of subspace by now. All of them gloating about having the most rare and unique models, even some that will custom gene mix with whatever creature “you, the deserving Grey, fancy might look good reinvented as a humanoid. Can’t decide? Go with the classic half-dog model, the perfect addition to your rising Grey family house collection.”

No, Lor thought more than once since she landed here, I don’t need to see them herding around some half-dog people; whatever a “dog” is.

Lor learned a lot about the Greys before her hunters had arrived, during the few days of surveillance she spent creeping in the dark beyond their base. She soon realized Greys had very complex minds and simple emotions. This was the first time she had ever come in contact with a Grey, so for the first time she noticed the contrast: humans, she realized, appeared to have very ordinary minds and wildly complex emotions compared to these creatures.

She was only able to detect from the Greys a very small spectrum of feelings. When they were on the job: intense focus or boredom. When they were in their VR: amusement, pleasure. All other times they were asleep or calmly at a meal. At first it disturbed her, but after a few days of feeling them go about their tiny lives as interstellar factory workers, she realized they were just…different.

Lor pondered their strange thought patterns while she crept slowly down one twisted, broken passage after another. Occasionally she had to jump down a level, through collapsed holes that made the way impassable. Sometimes she had to climb higher into the factory system. She liked going up rather than down. When she went down, she could smell more rot, felt more movement out in the forgotten spaces. When she went up sometimes, she could feel cool drafts of air, as if the sky was beckoning to her, keep coming up. Lor was dying to feel what open sky was like, she had never been under one before. Her entire life up until this point she had been trapped on a dead starship, encased in metal shutting out the cold void of space.

Lor tried to guess what must have been done in the strange chambers she discovered along the way of her dark trek through the broken factory wilds. There seemed to be tanks and cages, some gigantic, others she would be cramped inside. There were vast machines, only identifiable to Lor as intricate patterns of metal clinging together, ready for action, waiting for purpose. Most seemed damaged, fractured and rendered lifeless – monolithic ghosts haunting crumpled caverns.

Lor had to move through several enclosures, all obviously meant to synthesize some type of natural environment, temporary homes to the creatures the factory created. She did her best to avoid the ones containing water for some kind of marine life. She didn’t think she could swim; she had never had the opportunity to try. Many of the cages were busted open and, where this was the case, life spilled out into the sterile mess of metal framework beyond. This was what made these broken sections of factory wild. Lor could only guess what might have happened here to have done such damage.

Out in the distance, she could hear little cries from the escapees that populated these swaths of mechanical desolation. Some were screams of pain, others were threats of violence. To Lor’s ears, they echoed from far away, a symphonic cacophony of distress. Lor did her best to shut the sounds out of her mind.

Lor picked her way through a dusty and mostly empty warehouse, except for what might have been a giant conveyor belt turned on its side in one corner of the vast space. She felt a crack in the wall underneath a broken section of the belt and moved toward it, all the while wondering what among the stars could be following her so persistently through this labyrinth of a factory.

---

“I think it’s lying to us,” said Mr. Xerxes to Mr. Attila, gesturing with one weak, grey finger at the Rothen ahead of them.

Mr. Attila squinted one eye thoughtfully back at him, a questioning expression for a Grey.

“Yes, it knows we will kill it painfully if it does not find us that girl. We’ve been very clear on the subject, Mr. Attila. I don’t know how we could have been clearer,” said Mr. Xerxes glancing at the oozing laser-whip lashes across the Rothen’s powerful back. Blood seeped out of more than a few gashes that cut through the Rothen’s thick fur.

Mr. Attila squinted both eyes at the Rothen in response.

“Yes, I suppose we could whip it again, but perhaps we should find a more creative solution wouldn’t you say?”

Mr. Attila, as usual, whether he agreed or not, would not say. Mr. Xerxes was quite used to this, however, and continued on as usual, knowing exactly what Mr. Attila would have said anyway.

“We could remove a limb. I know how you like pulling apart a Rothen, Mr. Attila. We certainly could. But here is what I propose, a bit craftier solution to our current quandary if you will, and a bit more subtle. We will let it escape. We’re miles and miles from any active sections. Certainly, this Rothen will not know where to go. It will have only one choice. It must have guessed by now we’re chasing a live human, that’s why it’s leading us in circles. It cannot know she’s an…organic. But still, these creatures do love each other so. They’re still loyal even after all of these centuries apart. It will go and try and help this girl. And we will follow. What do you say?”

Mr. Attila blinked both eyes, a calm resolve on its face.

Mr. Xerxes and Mr. Attila were low-level bounty hunters in the grand scheme of things. They were currently on a mission rounding up escaped clones and possible true-humans throughout Grey systems, or at least that’s all their current corporate benefactors needed to know. Still, in Raticant culture, hunters who caught humans and were good at it, were respected. And Mr. Xerxes and Mr. Attila were very good at it. For years they had hunted down the escaped pets of other greater houses; the more modified, the more fun to catch, they said. Or Mr. Xerxes did at least. But now, finally, was their chance. This wasn’t a factory-made clone, this was a real one, an organic. And with a truly undamaged Ka they said! Mr. Xerxes and Mr. Attila were very excited. Big game! This is what they had been waiting for all these years!

Both ordinary looking Greys, Mr. Xerxes and Mr. Attila each dressed in functional form-fitting space suits in varying shades of black. There was very little to tell them apart, except for what seemed to be a scar gouged into the side of Mr. Attila’s grey head. Both were ordinary looking Greys but to the sensitive, like Lor, there was something very obviously off about them. Something about the way they moved, something about their Ka wasn’t natural.

Mr. Xerxes and Mr. Attila both thought it extremely amusing that they named themselves after celebrity conquerors from the Earth stream for their Human-hunting business. In all the years of their hunting, no other Grey had ever actually heard Mr. Attila say his name, so it could very well have been Mr. Xerxes who gave it to him in the first place, but Mr. Attila seemed amused enough by it as well. Fearsome conquerors were their favorite type of Human. So self-important, so adorable, so inconsequential. Watching those barbaric Earthly wars – now centuries ago – was their favorite VR pastime when they were stuck aboard their ship.

Mr. Xerxes continued to discuss it among themselves as they slowly followed their Rothen guide, and they quickly agreed on a plan.

“Now remember, Mr. Attila,” chided Mr. Xerxes, “when it runs only injure it a little. I know how you like to get carried away. We need it to be alive to be able to find this girl, so just slow it down a little.”

Again, Mr. Attila assured Mr. Xerxes of his behavior with a calm blink of his eyes.

---

Naya was barely out of her weaning years when she was separated from her mother and put into a different work group to eventually be brought here, this cavern maze of a derelict factory. She had considered the day when they tore her away, the last time she saw her mother’s pleading eyes, the worst day of her life. That was, up until the day the two Greys came to their camp and selected her to be their guide.

Naya could barely understand them. Find, they would say. Then a holo-image of a little girl. This little girl was unique, she looked untampered with, her genes unedited. Not only that, Naya could feel her out there, her Ka brighter than any she had ever felt before.

Naya didn’t know why the hunters wanted this Human but knew it couldn’t be good. She had never met a real one, but she knew along with all of her species that Humans were the Rothen’s greatest allies, their most treasured friends among the stars. Even after their long separation, that bond had not broken. I must find this girl, thought Naya, she could be a real Human. But first I have to lose these two; Tilla and the talky one. Naya glanced back at the Greys following her.

All Greys had bulbous heads that made Naya wonder how they could ever balance all day long on those tiny bodies, supported by their spindly, weak limbs. They had long, four-fingered hands, short legs that gave a spidery cunning to their countenance, and enormous, distrusting black eyes set below foreheads that dominated most of their skulls. Tiny pursed lips hid narrow, sharp teeth, and two nostril holes made a nose that barely protruded from their little faces. They were weak, untrusting little creatures.

They didn’t seem particularly intelligent to her. Naya knew they were talking about her, but she couldn’t quite understand what they were saying, or what he was saying, the one who seemed to do the talking for both. She was trying not to lead them too close to the girl, but also to keep them on the move somewhere. This was a dangerous section.

Naya had heard tell of escaped mistakes out in the wild sections of the factory. Things that had been out there surviving since the great attack and the ruin of most of the planet almost a hundred years ago. She had heard stories of them, and seen a few skeletons in the areas her work group had scavenged, she did not want to see what was living out there.

Rothen are a sensible species. Slow to react but fearsome when roused. Naya had seen one of her mother’s nest-brothers rip a Grey in half once. It happened because the Greys were trying to take one of the troop’s young. Not that it mattered in the end. The Greys killed her nest-uncle and took the young one anyway.

The Rothen were herded and carefully monitored by the Greys at all times. The Greys forced Rothen into separate living troops, often one male with a few females and their young. They didn’t want multiple full-grown males in the same troop for the fear of working together in rebellion. Full-grown males were often separated or killed when they became too big to control. For generations, the Greys tried separating the Rothen entirely but, like most Source creatures, they truly needed to be grouped together for survival. Separating a Rothen to live in solitude was the cruelest thing the Greys could do. Their energy seemed to deplete without companions around and many went insane. The Greys only sent the most uncontrollable Rothen down into salt mines to die alone, toiling in the dark.

The small troops they allowed to live together were just enough for the Rothen to survive a somewhat normal lifespan. Somewhat normal for the life of hard labor they were subjected to, that is.

Naya had been afraid of the Greys for as long as she could remember. Yet when her nest-uncle was killed, she realized – the Greys are more afraid of us. It didn’t make sense to Naya. Why should Rothen want to harm anything? Yes, as a young she was three times the size of any Grey she’d seen, but Rothen were not violent creatures. The impulse to hurt wasn’t natural to those who felt the pain of their victims as if it was their own.

Naya didn’t like feeling the Greys’ fear. When she was young, she had wished they could be friends. But she had seen many things by the time her mother explained why Greys could never be friends to the Rothen. Humans, war, enslavement – all thousands of years in the past. It was a bit much for Naya to understand, until she felt the pain. It was all around, all the time, in her troop and nest-brothers and sisters, in the Greys, in the creatures skittering about in the darkness around them. She could understand the fear when she remembered the pain they all lived in constantly.

The Greys told the Rothen troop their whole lives it was the Humans who were at fault. The Humans had started the war, the genocide, had lost that war and, to save their own species, had sold the Rothen into slavery. Throughout the galaxy, Rothen labored in enslavement to the Raticacy. All because of their “best friends,” the Humans. So much pain, caused by these Humans.

As a young, she had wished she would never meet a Human, despite her mother’s insistence that the Greys whispered lies. Now she was hunting one with the Greys and, Naya wondered, how could these Humans be worse than the pair that whipped at her back?

The Source protect me, she thought, and wished she was with her mother somewhere very far away.

As they walked down a dark tunnel, debris littering the floor and crumpled piping jutting from the cracked walls, suddenly something fell from the ceiling and began to skitter away. It barely made it an inch before Mr. Attila blasted it with his laser. The creature writhed on the ground right beside a dark looking hole, untellable how deep, and screeched, its pain a sensory assault on Naya’s mind, amplified by its screams.

Naya strode forward and could see the creature clearly. She supposed it was some part Human as most of these escaped rejects seemed to be, but she could not see what part that might be. It had big eyes, was covered in fur, had two little wings on its back, and it was skinny – like it hadn’t eaten in a long, long time. There was terror in its eyes and Naya’s senses were inflicted with its suffering.

Naya reached out an arm, placed her hand on the creature and channeled Source energy into it. Immediately, the creature looked at her with new eyes, and felt assuaged.

“Stop that!”

Naya felt the Greys whip her back. The creature seemed to have received enough energy and sprang up to the ceiling. It climbed up through a gap in the twisted piping and was gone. Mr. Attila fired another shot at it but missed.

Naya felt anger from the Greys behind her. Hot anger. Uh-oh. Then Naya felt the hot whip on her back to accompany the barrage of fury.

The talky one lashed and lashed and Naya fell to her arms and legs, trying to cover her face from his whip. As she tried to stand up, Mr. Attila took a step forward, kicked her square in the chest out over the dark hole, and shot at her with his laser as she fell.

---

Lor Ship Logs

Entry Subject: Species – Grey

The Greys’ mother planet is called Gora. A solitary planet orbiting a dim white dwarf star, with a thin atmosphere and barren desert landscape frequented by powerful dust storm hurricanes, Gora seems an unlikely place for intelligent life to have evolved, much less flourished.

Grey culture, like their planet, is devoid of color. Work, consume, sleep, repeat. The most enjoyment the Greys seem to get out of life is in achievement in their chosen profession, bringing recognition back to their Thought Clan. All honor goes back to the Thought Clan.

Grey Clans are constantly squabbling for more power over each other. High technology is their main outsource, and corporate espionage is the norm as each Clan attempts to get a leg up via murder, sabotaging research, etc. Each Clan desires to control the frontlines of innovation, and they are willing to kill for that advantage.

Greys were the first to find the Space Flexers, which is what allowed them to be the first to achieve long distance space travel. Greys were the first to find planet Rien and contact the Humans and Rothen there. For thousands of years, they seemed friends to Humans and Rothen.

Eventually, a new race came through the Space Flexers. The Greys were secretly contacted by the Rac'Soreth, or Vaemprs. Together they staged an invasion, launching an assault that would overthrow the Human and Rothen empire.

Greys manufactured the feral Virus that caused Human society to tear itself apart. Since then, Greys have taken it upon themselves to be the wardens of Humanity's punishment. Not only that, they seem to delight in the abuse of their captives. In the 70,000 years since Greys gained dominion over Humanity their culture has warped to revolve entirely around their relationship as masters to the once mighty Human species.

Grey dignitaries flaunt their wealth by amassing collections of Human clone hybrids, exotic pets and decor for their colony estates. They pit Humans against each other in gladiator matches, hunt them in closed pens for sport, use them for pleasure and terminate them once done. Humans have become nothing but property to the Greys, status symbols and puppets of fashion.

Earth, the Greys’ prison for Humanity, is constantly surveilled. Footage of Human folly and suffering on the planet is broadcast for entertainment to all Grey controlled systems. They manipulate events – causing illnesses, war, genocide – and have their fingers in every facet of Earth’s society. The entirety of Grey culture, across star systems, raptly follows the contrived devastation on Earth like a soap opera.

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