Chapter 204: (The War) (1/2)

Mo'onmoo sat down at the desk and stared at the computer. He was the Fifth Most High of Strategic Intelligence Division. It was his job to come up with a strategy to defeat any threat to the Lanaktallan people and the Unified Civilized Species. For millions of years it was just deciding either what military forces to move where or where to give ground and let the enemy choke on the fat of the UCS.

This enemy though, this one was different.

How do you defeat an enemy that has known defeat but has never been beaten? he asked himself, staring at the computer.

He had spent the last almost most two years in the Outer Rim and the Outer Sphere, visiting neo-sapient, uncivilized, and near-civilized systems. He had learned much about the Terrans, in all their infinite variety as well as their allies.

He had perfected keeping his eyes wide open and just staring with his mouth slightly open and nodding along when someone spoke. True, it made beings think he was mentally defective, but it allowed him to wander around, pick stuff up and look at it, mess with things that if he had showed much intelligence he would have invoked suspicion upon himself.

He snerked slightly remembering when he'd grabbed a datapad from a Terran soldier. It had stickers of flowers on it so he'd jammed the datapad in his mouth and then started running in circles in front of the Terran chewing on the datapad while his datalink carefully downloaded its unsecure contents. The Terran's comrades had all pointed and laughed and actually cheered him on rather than the member of the caste 'buddarbar' as he flailed around like a colt. He had spent the next month 'sneaking' up on the buddarbar and grabbing stuff from him, jamming it in his mouth, and running away. Datapads, food, his hat, paperwork plas-sheets, his boots. He had stolen a pack of 'crayons' from a Terran Marine and would draw on the buddarbar's personal possessions and then stand there looking proud of himself. The buddarbar would gently chide him and shoo him out the Terran's room.

That was when Mo'onmoo had learned of the power of standing outside the Terran's door and crying like a little child.

The big shocker was just how reluctant the Terran had been to leave Mo'onmoo alone when the Terran had been reassigned.

If he was honest with himself, it was the best time he had had in over three hundred years.

It helped that Mo'onmoo was slightly smaller than most Lanaktallan. He also had the marks on his head from a sledding accident a long time ago. Most of the Terrans had been very nice to him, assuming that he had suffered a traumatic brain injury.

Mo'onmoo shook his head thinking about all the times in the last two years that Terrans had attempted to get him to see a doctor and have 'that old TBI looked at' by professionals.

Mo'onmoo stared at his computer on his desk, staring at the blank cursor.

The Terran came bringing something that Mo'onmoo could find no record of. No previous encounter and disarmament of the greatest threat the Terrans possessed.

Kindness.

It was more than that. It was genuine. A human that sat down next to you and offered you part of his ration bar didn't want anything in return. He would not come back years later to demand you give him something. He'd just pop off part of the ration bar and hand it over.

There was some patronizing in it, but it was almost accidental and quite often Mo'onmoo had heard Terrans call out one another for 'acting like a dick' toward other beings.

The kindness and generosity was genuine. A real thing that had immense power that they were almost unaware of. Worse, their superiority in so many fields was almost offhand to them. Like they expected everyone else to be just like them and if a being wasn't they would hold their hand out and ask if the being needed help standing up.

Terrans had taught him to read the Terran language. Patiently, several different beings. Taught him to speak their language as best they could.

Sighing, a habit he'd picked up from the Terrans, Mo'onmoo just put one finger on the tactile pointer pad and moved the pointer around the screen. He caught himself letting his mouth hang open and opening his eyes wide and started laughing.

Warning, may be habit forming, but who cares? Everyone's got bad habits, don't think you're better than everyone else, Mo'onmoo thought to himself. He laughed again.

The Terran kindness spurred everything they did. They defended all of those worlds, brought in the most savage and feral of themselves to fight the Devourers face to face on a dozen worlds, for no other reason then they felt they should. No other reason. They felt obligated for reasons that they tried to claim were 'maintaining relations' or 'upholding treaty expectations and obligations' or 'that much death is horrific' but when it came down to it, they did it, they put themselves in harms way and even died, because they were kind.

Which didn't help him.

He was supposed to figure out a strategy to beat the Terrans. Every other Most High had simply stared at star maps and technological estimations and comparisons and force levels and put together the same strategies that had worked on every other race.

But Mo'onmoo knew that wasn't going to work. None of the other Most Highs had interacted with humans at all.

He had. At one point he'd followed around a Two Star General, a Major General, who was in charge of the legendary First Cavalry Division. At one point he'd stolen the General's hat and trotted around and imitated the General's body language and telling Terran soldiers to do things like ”Police Call that bush!” and ”Get those flowers dress right dress” and ”rake up all those leaves, carry them across the street, and spread them out uniformly around each ground vehicle” and ”Report immediately to JAG for your mandatory fun day debriefing” and other nonsensical orders like a child would give. The Terran soldiers had not reacted with anger but had rather found it entirely amusing. At one point a Major had told a Captain ”Sir, the General is here to see you” and led Mo'onmoo into the office.

The Terran General had been amused by it and hadn't even bothered trying to get back his hat. Mo'onmoo had it in his satchel at that moment.

That kindness, that ease with the universe, completely was at odds with their ferocity in combat.

But Mo'onmoo knew it was part of it. That one was tied to the other.

He just had to put it into words.

Sighing again he leaned back slightly in the cradle he was relaxing in and stared again at the blinking cursor for the document.

How could he explain to his fellow Most Highs what he had experienced? What he had seen?

He had seen a Terran soldier, not one of the big warborgs, but a barely augmented human sprint out into the street to scoop up a small animal that had wandered onto the road. Cradling it gently before carrying over to some trees and setting it up on a branch. The Terran had dodged traffic to grab it, almost been run over by a tank.

Mo'onmoo knew what that meant. One of his fellow Lanaktallan would have ignored it. He had ignored things like that during his life.

But it also meant that a Terran would, without hesitation or thought, sprint into danger to save those weaker than them. Which meant other species children.

The other Most Highs couldn't figure out why so many uncivilized or neo-sapient species seemed to throw their lots in with the humans within weeks of meeting them, or why the Terrans would devote hundreds of thousands of troops to defend the planet of a species they had just met.

Because it is who they are. He typed.

He stared at it.

That explained everyone. From the ferocity in battle, to the unflinching resolve he'd seen, to their gentleness and kindness.

He underlined that single sentence.

How do you defeat a foe like that? he thought to himself.

He had examined their culture for nearly two months before he had gone forth to find them. During the Great Precursor Incursion two years ago. He found an insane hodgepodge of half-remembered truths, obvious lies, and kernals of truth here and there.

A species culture told you how to defeat them, showed you their weaknesses and their strengths. Their artwork, song, architecture, social and culture forms, all showed their militaristic side.

Mo'onmoo stared at the screen and typed again.

Humans and war are both chaos incarnate.