How to murder Aliens

Last updated on July 8, 2025

By Sandra

1

First: identify the right time. The purple hiota plants come into flower, just before the Cull, which was a good time, because the Akkers -sorry, that’s what we call them on account of the noise they make eating, Akk, Akk, Akk – lick the nectar and it makes them high. All the guards do it, although forbidden, because more prisoners escaped then than any other time of the solar. Some guards take so much they wander off into the jungle and die there, probably as happy as lice in a dormitory.  

Two: pick your alien wisely and cautiously. The most obvious targets were the guards of course, but that had been tried many times, and the escapees were quickly recaptured. Of course they were. Guards were missed almost immediately, no matter how dopey some of them were – unless they were hiota high. And once recaptured, the prisoners were made an example of.

And by example, I mean a hideous, protracted and grisly death of course. I still have nightmares about Filma’s screams. Especially when they pulled her spine out. Not pleasant. But not as bad as when they sucked the meat off. A few of us brought up our food then. Not me of course. You don’t survive here if you aren’t strong, plus I’ve seen many spine rippings in my time.

I digress.

Maybe you’re thinking I sound a bit inhuman myself at this point? I assure you I am fully human, one hundred percent, which again, I can claim as a point of pride. I was born in captivity, sure, but I am of an age before they started the whole genetic clusters thing. Some of the newer ones are, more edible, lets say. Bred for a higher fat content in the muscle.

I found a book once. Yes, they let us access the old library, of course they do. They’ve worked out that entertainment keeps the food quiet. Anyway, there was a book on the old world, and the humans there, they ate a sort of four-legged mammal, that seemed to be popular. One country bred this ‘cattle’ to have fat in the meat. Marbling they called it. Well, same thing here. So, Akkers like to eat the Clusters: fatty muscle. But they gave them other attributes too, hence the ‘cluster’: They made them stupider and slower too – another great way to turn humans into docile creatures.

Those of us too wiry and strong aren’t often on the menu, so I make sure I keep busy, often on the crop rotations, sometimes I work in the factories; Yeah, we make stuff. They don’t care as long as we’re happy and don’t escape. I think stress makes us taste bad, because they let us do almost anything.  We ferment grapes and grains for booze. We make stuff, you name it:  scooters, clothes, plates, rugs and plant pots to hair wash and antibiotics, just like any human society in history. No weapons obviously. They even give us medicines and labs to make ‘em. I reckon they figure humans can look after humans more easily. And I do it all; anything to keep on my feet and stay gristly.

We don’t know much about the Akkers, but I reckon they have got religion. How would I know? I don’t of course, but there’s the Cull. Every solar, same time, thousands of us are taken, like the Christmas turkeys from the histories.  A whole fleet of cargo ships coming over the horizon, and a whole load of shivering humans herded in; off they go, never seen again.

Stay gristly is my motto.

You can spot the Clusters; they’re usually sleeping, and you could kick him or slap ‘em and all they’d do look at you stupid and doze off again. 

I tell you, that gives me the creeps; the clusters are like the old zombie films. Half dead already.

Where was I? So, the thing is, we have to grow crops, for us to stay alive. And the Akkers encourage it. Just like stress affects our taste, I reckon we taste different depending on what foods we eat, see? Like the stinkers. We don’t mix with them, no one does, ‘cos as the name implies, they stink. Woo. Now that turns my stomach worse than spines. It’s the fish, see? They feed them on a diet of one hundred percent fish, or if not that then it’s like the seaweeds and such. Reckon it makes them taste ‘ocean-y’ or something, I don’t know. I had a fish once, it was ok, but we don’t get them much, cos the stinkers eat most of them. Anyway, the stinkers are way out at the edge of the island, kilometres away from us. Can still smell them if the wind is in the wrong direction though.

So, crops: we grow for our food and a few checkens, for meat. Funny old birds, from the original ships. Akkers don’t seem to like checkens, or can’t be bothered with the small size. It’d be like us eating an apple. Plus, they don’t like feathers.

What they love most is a plump, juicy Cluster. Soon, all this farm will be Clusters and then the humans will devolve (de-volve, is opposite to e-volve, I got that from reading too) to be like the checkens, just brainless lumps, scratching for food. Although I reckon Clusters are too stupid to do the chores, so maybe they’ll be some of us left for that.

I do a lot of reading in my spare time. And we do get spare time. For a start they love us breeding. I reckon pures, like me should fetch a higher price. Since the Clusters came along, and they just grow us up in the manufactories -pump ‘em out, fatten ‘em up and eat ‘em, Cluster style – there’s getting more Clusters on their plates (if they use ‘em) and less pures like me. So, irony of ironies, they still like a pure now and then.

Mostly everyone fucks like crazy in their spare time, especially at first. Why not? It’s fun and there’s extra rations for babies, so everyone tries to get them out. You get a cut as the sire, not as much as the mare, but that’s fair, she does the heavy growing. Still a mare can only do one a year or so, but I can sire as many as I want. I worked my balls off when I was younger and had fun doing it. Spent it on moonshine and rations, ‘til I saw where I was headed. Getting fatter and getting closer to the old cargo ships to the abattoir? No. Thank. You.

Once you’ve done the fucking years, and your brain clears a bit, you do start wondering – what else? That’s another reason I reckon they made the clusters. They know thinking is dangerous.

I’ve done a lot of thinking, but I’m not one to brag and be a loudmouth. I’m not like some of the philosophers, going round, spouting out their thoughts to everyone. Uprisings! Revolutions! Now, in my opinion, that’s where book learning just doesn’t relate to common sense. They’re found out. The Akkers don’t speak to us, but anyone who thinks they don’t know what we’re doing is stu-pid. They know the ones stirring trouble. And those philosophers all take an early cargo ship to the big abattoir in the sky.

No, I’ve got my people, and we all know when to shut up. It’s always the quiet ones.

I know I’m never going anywhere. There is no ‘anywhere’, off this island, far as we know. Sure, there’s rumours and whatnot, of a promised land out there someplace. Sure; Yawn. That’s for dummies. This whole planet is probably filled with Akkers, living their lives; eating, drinking, breeding, going to work, who knows? I’ve read the human histories: there’s always a promised land and seldom anyone ever gets there.  And you’ve only got to go to the central plaza here- everyone that’s ever tried to escape has had the spine ripping experience, the dried blood stains are there to remind us, and I don’t know, somehow that’s just not for me.

So – I stick to my work, crops, factories, and so on. I keep my head down as I do it and ponder the meaning- of -life- shit. I read. Some of the stuff on the library – it’s like make believe. Even the real histories. I dream of all that. All we’ve lost. I’ve thought of what I could do, stuck here in a prison farm, wating for my trip. Makes a body think.

We’d seen the Cull a few lunars ago and another lot were loaded on, mostly Clusters, shuffling into the ships bays and off they went. Life settled back to normal for another lunar year. Noone was more surprised than me when they started getting sick. The guards – well, yes, I hoped, but I didn’t jump to conclusions, I just thought someone’s trying an escape. It won’t work; it won’t last.

It was the regular cargo ships that gave me hope. That made me think it might just be working. That was a sight to see. Coming in low, as usual, but one started to wobble, and a few of us saw the glorious sight, as it crashed into another. It was the best fireworks I’ve seen other than the histories.

The others landed, but they didn’t open straight away. A couple of guards still healthy enough got across the landing zone, and eventually the door opened and some Akkers staggered out. Boy, they were a strange colour though. The normal mottled grey skin a fiery red. I’m not an expert but those Akkers looked sick.

—

2

Of course, that was the beginning of the end of the Akkers.

Brilliant at what they did. You’ve got to give them credit, even as we hated them.

I mean look around you now. Look at the cities they built, the monuments, the art. That’s always my biggest regret, if you ask me. We could have been allies. They were intelligent, gifted, and cultured. What a waste.

They made only one fatal mistake, but a big one: You don’t pass over control of your supply chain to the animals inside it.

Read human history. Its right there, food supply chains. The bigger and more global, the easier to exploit. Of course I’m making it sound easy. It wasn’t. And I didn’t do it alone. I chose my friends carefully, or it wouldn’t have worked. Those prepared to put in the time, and it was solar’s worth of research, research, and more research. Experimentation and data collection. Experiments? Yeah, experiments. Of course, the guards were the lab rats. I do have a little smile when I think of how many poisons they tried, before we perfected it. The Akkers helped with all that imbibing the hiota flowers – an excellent cover as illnesses were put down to that. We built up quite the knowledge of Akker physiology thanks to a few ‘missing’ guards too.  Now, a poison is only as good as its delivery system of course. The histories show us that – like The Cordowain ship disaster: a whole battleship destroyed by a single terrorist releasing grain toxin through the shower system, or Tulkraic city, or…well I could go on and you get the idea.

Of course, my delivery system was the poor Clusters, whose sacrifice we must never forget. Bred for food, minds stunted, they were our salvation. We needed a slow acting toxic agent, for delivery via the Clusters and a few gene edits to the hormones they secreted into their juicy muscle fibres, was enough. That and a small retrovirus engineered for Akker physiology. It took time, but time we had.

From the Biography. How to Murder Aliens A history of liberation.

Finlay Marshal.