The definitions of Execution

Note: Image associated is from Ironage.media, specifically their prompt, 'The Eremite'

Sgt. Daniel Geoffries eyed his wrist pad as he led Theta squad through the temple. There was only one alien bio signature present. However, the problem he'd spotted was that it was the strongest one encountered in the whole war. Yet, here he was, still breathing under his own authourity, and Theta had not betrayed itself. They should have been dead eight floors down; even an Eremit half as strong wouldn't let them this close, not while awake. And from the activity his pad saw, it was awake and praying.

Maybe R&D had finally figured out the lining for their armour, or perhaps the hypnosis training had worked for once. He didn't know. A line from an old-Earth poem passed through his mind. "Ours is not to reason why, Ours is but to do and die". He felt... something shift, and his eyes darted to the pad. The alien had stopped praying. Worse, it was moving now. Sgt. Geoffries signed Theta to halt and hunker down, eight men doing their best to silently find cover, eight rifles quietly switching from safe to full-auto.

For a long moment in that hallway, his own heartbeat was all he could hear, the breaths of his men slowly filtering in as he accepted that he'd live or die in the next few seconds. That outcome wasn't his to control, not truly anyway. He eyed his pad again. It was coming closer, and that couldn't be right. Was the activity the pad monitored, the wavelengths it watched for, spelling something?

D O N T S H O O T. Over and over, DON TSHO OT, with erratic spaces until Geoffries read the message, and immediately it became perfect English, "Don't shoot". Neither the hypnosis nor the suit were protecting anyone. This Eremit simply hadn't killed them yet. Why?

Xslyckane approached the human squad slowly. He knew the one in charge had seen his message and could feel the confusion in him as he realized that the team wasn't protected by any of the rituals or electronics they'd developed over three or four human lifetimes. And he could feel the hatred of his fellows. One in particular burned brighter than the rest. Xslyckane wondered what of his had been lost and how he could say what he wished to before that one killed him. He decided to risk speaking in the human tongue, stopping himself before entering the hallway that bristled with death. "Speak I may die I before?"

He knew it was phrased wrong when he felt the leader's confusion, not purely at hearing its own language but also rearranging the words in his mind.

Geoffries replied, rifle still trained down the hall, "You want to speak?" He could sense his team's eyes on him. Not one Eremit had ever spoken anything since the war's outbreak. The day when what had been a perfectly peaceful contact between Man and Alien devolved into a bloodbath as humans were twisted into living weapons against each other.

"Yes. Speak before I die. Apologise. Explain." Xslyckane answered, the leader's thoughts passing through his mind as he tried to learn as much English as he could—not to excuse the war, but to explain what had happened.

"Sergeant, are we seriously considering this?" The one who hates spoke quietly. Xslyckane wouldn't have heard it if he hadn't watched the Sergeant's mind.

"Corporal, the enemy appears to be surrendering. We don't have standing orders for this scenario, and we're under radio silence unless we want to bring more of them here, so it's my decision." Geoffries weighed the risks in his mind. The Eremit wasn't making any distress signal that the pad had seen, not that it needed to bring reinforcements. It could kill Theta without even moving, just by wishing it so. And it hadn't. Further, if it understood the words it used, it wasn't asking for its life. Just an opportunity to speak. "Step to where we can see you. Hands out. You will not approach. Is that clear?"

"Yes." Xslyckane stepped into view its hands in prayer as eight rifles snapped to his center mass, and eight minds resisted the trained instinct to shoot him down on sight. Before Geoffries could give the scaly, robed Eremit any orders, it spoke, in now precise English, copying Geoffries' accent, "Thank you, Sergeant. My people, made a grave mistake. I made a grave mistake, one hundred years ago. We, do not understand a difference between thought and action. Since our ascension, there has been no difference for, millennia. Your diplomats, on that day, had brought one like yourself, a warrior."

The one who hates' anger flared at the mention of that, and Xslyckane realized it was fuelled by shame. Shame of an ancestor. "Related to you? It is you who must kill me then. Your" Xslyckane pointed at Corporal Matthews, "elder, he was thinking of how to kill us. I didn't understand what he was. Why he would think it, or that he could think it without acting on it. I turned his thoughts against the other diplomats and ignorantly forced him to kill them. I started this. I killed my people. Please, I should die for it."

Sgt. Geoffries ensured his pad had correctly recorded the Eremit's words. Cpl. Matthews had levelled his rifle at the alien's head, waiting for the order to kill him. But Geoffries had a question. "Can you not order your people to stop fighting? We could end this war with this information."

"Too many have died. We raised our children to think you were going to kill us all. They saw you were winning. Chose to die at their own hands. Even if you don't finish the job, we will die out." Xslyckane knelt down, seemingly choosing to pray again, as the pad resumed plotting the alien's brainwaves.

"Perhaps. If you live, something of you can live on that isn't our guesses and maybe wouldn't be tainted by the memory of this war." Geoffries tried to keep the Eremit alive, loath for an entire species to die out for one individual's decision.

"Are my words not enough?" Xslyckane asked, breaking its prayer.

"They're in a human tongue and sound like a human's voice. Would you believe it?" Cpl. Matthews spoke, lowering his weapon as he realized the Sgt. wouldn't order the Eremit's death.

"No." Xslyckane agreed with the great-grandson of the General whose thoughts, coupled with Eremit ignorance of human physiology, had begun this war

"Then it seems you might be able to right some of your wrong, not merely pay for it with your life and your species." Corporal Matthews helped the alien to its feet again, even as his thoughts lingered on killing it in vengeance, before he, to Xslyckane's surprise, dismissed them from his mind.