[there] [is] [whispers] [between] [the] [stars]

Falmo'o opened his eyes to get a look around before moving at all. His rear eyes were almost glued shut by blood and his side right eye was blurry, but it was good enough to see that the ceiling was pristine.

The lights were flashing, though, and he could hear voices. It took him a minute to realize it was humans talking, with the strange accent like Tanyee.

"What do you mean you've lost contact with the Imperium? How the hell does hypercom 'lost contact'? I was just talking to them a minute ago!" all a welter of different voices.

"EVERYONE SHUT UP!" a male roared out and the power behind the voice made a headache surge being Falmo'o's eyes, like a hot spike of pain through his brain.

"Is it the Mantids? Oh, God, it can't be the Mantids, can it? Fuck the Mantids, let them come. Look, get the goddamn coms working you stupid bastard. This is why you don't trust a man with anything past hitting someone in the face with a chainsword. First we start hearing those whispers now this? I was talking to Imperium Command. Get the comms back up." - more babbling.

"I SAID SHUT THE FUCK UP!" the male roared out again.

The pain made Falmo'o groan in the sudden shocked silence.

"Shh, did anyone hear that?" a female's voice asked.

The lights flickered and someone made a noise of distress and fear.

"Shut. Up." was hissed at the person.

Falmo'o scrabbled to get up.

"It's over there," someone, it sounded like Taynee said, her voice full of anxiety.

There was the sound of capacitors charging as Falmo'o hacked and spit out a wad of clotted blood on the polished durachrome floor.

"It's behind the holocore," someone said loudly in the silence.

Falmo'o managed to stand up slowly. He began moving out from behind the big computer bank he had been laying behind. His hooves clacked on the durachrome flooring.

"Shh," someone whispered.

"Get ready..."

"Everyone keep your eyes out..."

He came around the edge, turning his upper torso and facing the humans.

They were all wearing the same kind of jumpsuit, just different colors. Falmo'o could see Tanyee slightly behind the gathered up humans. More of them that Falmo'o had ever seen before. Male and females, some of them massive like that Combine Marine he'd met. All of them without armor. Only the big ones carrying weapons that he wasn't familiair with.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? KILL IT! HOLY SHIT IT'S DROOLING BLOOD! WHAT? WHAT? JESUS CHROMIUM CHRIST!" were all the yells. The sheer rage and fear rolling off of them made his head ache with sharp pain.

"Tanyee, Briggs, Dorden," Falmo'o gurgled, opening his side and rear eyes again.

"JESUS CHRIST! LOOK AT IT!"

Falmo'o reached toward them, clopping around the computer all the way.

"What is it? What the fuck?" some of them yells.

"Help me, humans, help me," Falmo'o said, coughing up more blood.

One of the big male ones stepped forward, lowering the weapon. Two of the females stepped forward, both lifting flamers.

"No, wait, don't," Falmo'o got out raising his four hands.

The male opened fire, the heavy slugs tearing Falmo'o apart, even as the females bathed him in flame so hot it felt cold.

-----------------------

Falmo'o coughed, getting blood again. He groaned, getting to his feet with the clattering of hooves as he heaved himself up. The air was thick and it was hard to breathe, smelling of smoke, hot metal, seared lubricants, and burning insulation. Every breath seared his lungs, stabbing pains deep in the abdomen. Those red pulsing lights had extended from the wall and were putting out the spinning strobes of red.

Looking around Falmo'o spotted a breathing tank and mask, sitting with three others, inside an alcove that had just opened up. Clattering over to it he pulled the tank out, slung the strap over his shoulder, then put the mask on the end of his nose. He hit the button and breathed in gratefully. By the fourth breath the pain had eased up and Falmo'o looked around.

He was in Docking Arm Three. That much was obvious from the stencils on the walls.

Three, three, which one was three? Falmo'o wondered to himself, moving forward. He could remember that three of the docking arms were damaged and badly, three had ships on them, two were still usable but empty.

He put the thought out of his mind and trotted toward the direction, according to the stencils, of the Main Hub. Whatever had happened to this arm, he didn't want to mess around with it.

Everything about Terrans was terrifying, deadly, and horrible.

One of the blast doors was held up by a heavy duty durasteel jack, the pole bent slightly and vibrating, but still holding. Falmo'o ducked underneath the door, ignoring the way it groaned, and kept moving. The smoke had gotten thicker, streaming into the direction of the docking ring at the far end of the docking arm.

When he got the Main Hub he turned around and looked down the hallway of the docking arm. Smoke was streaming through, not too quickly, but still streaming, which meant a hull breach.

Falmo'o may have been an experienced Covert Action Specialist, but he was still a fully trained engineer.

The station leaking was bad.

Next to the main blast door was a lever that read "manual override" as well as a pistol in a holster hanging from a strap.

Written in Lanaktallan was: Turn and fire fast on your right.

Falmo'o grabbed out the weapon, a Terran weapon of unknown design, turning to his write at his waist even as he threw his lower abdomen to the left.

Most High Vu'urtunkoo was hit four times by the pistol before Falmo'o let off the trigger. The Most High had a neural whip in his hands that had been wrapped with Terran durachrome to attach a chainsword blade to it. The Most High had been pulling back to strike Falmo'o with it when the weapon hit.

"Traitor," Vu'urtunkoo spit out. He coughed up blood. "You reek of humans."

"You reek of failure," Falmo'o replied. He level the pistol and pulled the trigger, ignoring the slightly painful recoil.

The bullet hit Vu'urtunkoo in the face, splitting open his head and showering his brains behind the Lanaktallan.

A large crab, the size of two fists put together, slid from out of Vu'urtunkoo's mouth, the back of its shell shattered, and fell on the durachrome floor even as the Lanaktallan's body slumped.

"Traitor," the crab squeaked as Falmo'o stepped forward and stepped on it, crushing it with the crackle of chitin.

Falmo'o looked around and saw the airlock. He dragged Vu'urtunkoo over to it, then went back and got the crab too because why not? He cycled the airlock, watching Vu'urtunkoo freeze and tumble out into space, falling toward the black blot in the sky that was the neutron star.

The whispering started again, making Falmo'o stagger back, putting his upper two hands over his ears. If anything, the whispers got louder.

"Stop, no, get out of my head," Falmo'o whined. He staggered to the side, slapping the button to close the airlock.

The whispers slowly decreased until he couldn't hear them.

They hadn't been voices, just sibilant sounds, no cadence, no real rhythm, just multiple slow steady hisses overlapping one another.

Falmo'o reminded himself he was a Executor Covert Action Specialist, a being who excelled at sabotaging the Neo-Sapient and Near-Civilized species to set back their progress without ever being caught. Not even other Lanaktallan were privy to his knowledge.

The station was in terrible shape, with smoke in the air, the floors sticky with old blood, lubricants, spilled fluids only partially dried, and gore. The wall panels showed hits by mass reactive shells, neural bolts, plasma rounds, chainsword glances, and more. Many of the ceiling panels hung down, exposing the important conduits. Some were damaged, others were intact, and still other parts were missing completely. Some of the ceiling panels, or even the wall panels, were on the floor. A few of them were mostly covered by the grime, appearing as just bumps in the floor.

Passing by one of the inoperative grav-lifts Falmo'o could hear the siren for the Mat-Trans going off, meaning that the system was being used.

Mat-Trans causes brain damage. We figured that out, but too late for a lot of us, Tanyee's voice rang in his head. We were already killing each other though, so it didn't really matter.

Falmo'o heard a steady clanking coming from around the rounded corridor and looked around.

OBSERVATION BAY 12 was on one door and Falmo'o tried the door. It opened and he hurried inside after a quick look to make sure there wasn't anything lurking or an open window. He ducked down, barely peering over the edge of the window, looking between two of the slats.

Sleek black armor spattered with drying blood and gore, a 'blaze rifle' in one hand, a chainsword in the other. It had the number 93723 on the upper arm and on the chest, and the Combine five pointed star with a star at each point. It had the rifle held at ready and was looking around it, keeping a watch on the flanks.

Deserters. He remembered that. Deserters from some world called Anthill, where the Combine had been fighting the Mantids for nearly five years.

Am I near Mantid space? he wondered. Nobody was sure where the station was that he'd talked to. He knew it was important, but nobody knew where the station was. A black-project, part of Overproject Whisper, whatever that was, where even the people who worked at the station didn't know where it was.

Could it have been research for the Terran-Mantid War? Falmo'o asked himself. What am I saying? Of course it was weapon research. Everything the Terrans do is weapon research. Even figuring out where they are going to sleep is weapon research, Falmo'o snorted.

He knew, without remembering why, that there was no way that humans would give up at the 10% line, the 15% line, the 20% line. He knew you had to kill almost all of them and even then the survivors would secretly plot revenge.

They were a joke on a cosmic scale.

He made a low noise of anxiety and put his face in his hands.

For over a hundred million years his people had done what they wanted to whatever or whoever they wanted. Had gentled them through genetic warfare, and nobody had known. They'd defeated everything, from the Mantid Autonomous War Machines to their own AWM's to everything they'd ever faced.

They had even slowly but surely altered the genetics of the Devourers through tailored biomass genetic recombination.

Now a cosmic joke was going to destroy his people because his people were unable to comprehend the joke being played on them. The universe freely gave up its secrets to the Terrans, if only the Terrans approached the problem with enough aggression and energy.

Falmo'o began to weep.

Any other species would have committed suicide on a species-wide scale if they had endured half of what the Terrans had. Would have given into despair and just given up.

Instead the Terrans fought furiously, screamed louder, hit harder and more often, bit and clawed and punched and kicked and screamed.

The Lanaktallan were doomed.

Not as a species. Falmo'o knew that the humans would let some live.

But the Lanaktallan civilization, over a hundred million years of civilization and culture, would be ripped from the universe and ground into dust by enraged primates who would never stop coming, never stop rebuilding, rearming, and returning.

The Lanaktallan did not view genetic or biological attacks to be a declaration of war. It was just the Lanaktallan demonstrating their superiority and proving that they were the dominant and thus righteous species in the universe.

The Terrans viewed genetic or biological attacks as a declaration of something more than war. A declaration of Total War, in which no weapon was forbidden, no tactic was disallowed, in which nothing was too far.

The Lanaktallan did not view as exterminating the entire population of a planet and destroying all signs of civilization to be an act of war. It was an act of conservation.

To the Terrans, it meant that they would burn entire planets in retaliation. It meant that they would exterminate civlians,

If the other side brings fists, you bring a knife, if they bring a knife, bring a gun, if they bring a gun, bring friends with guns, went through his mind. Tanyee's voice explaining how humans made war.

He slowly calmed down.

He was Falmo'o. He had clawed his way up from the orphanage to one of the Most High Executor Agent positions.

you are small and insignificant and have no value beyond protien

Falmo'o shook his head.

"No. I am Falmo'o."

names have no meanings in the dark you are naught but food

"No, I am Lanaktallan, and we gentle all for the good of all."

you are nothing more than protein and blind sheepdogs shepherding rotting carrion

Falmo'o opened his mouth to answer and stopped.

Wait. I've heard that before. Where have I heard...

Females screaming interrupted his thoughts. He peeked out the window and saw Taynee, wearing a jumpsuit that the sleeves and legs were torn off, fighting with Taynee, who was naked except for a blue headband. Both had knives, were rolling around on the floor, stabbing at one another.

After a long moment one managed to gash open the throat of the other. The naked one straddled the dying one, catching the blood in her hands and rubbing it into her hairless skin, ignoring the deep puncture wounds in her own torso. She kept licking her fingers and the other one gurgled its life away.

After a moment she patted down the pockets, finding what she was looking for. The box with the 'smokes' in it. She lit one, leaning back so she was laying on the corpse's legs.

Two inhalation, a final exhalation, and the naked on went limp.

Falmo'o slowly snuck out of the room, planning on moving on. He'd taken two steps when he heard it.

"Well, well, well, look who it is," the voice was mocking, sing-song, and cruel.

Falmo'o turned to stare. Both of the Terran females were standing up, knives in their hands, blood coated them. As he watched the one in the jumpsuit wiggled and slid out of it, so they were both standing there, naked, coated in blood. One took a drag from the smoke, then handed it to the other so she could inhale smoke. They exhaled together.

"That's a lot of meat," one giggled.

"Taynee, it's me, Falmo'o," he tried.

They laughed as they ran at him. He managed to fire four times, but the shots had no effect beyond spraying blood and making them flinch.

They fell on him with knives.

Before he died, he felt them geld him.

--------------------

Falmo'o jerked awake in his cradle.

He flinched slightly from the smell of cigarette smoke.

"Bad one?" Taynee asked.

He looked over. She was sitting on her cot, a smoke between her fingers and a rivet gun in her hand.

Falmo'o nodded, picking up the paint stick.

Eleven.