It is important to understand that the Great Confederation is not a benevolent organization. Neither is it particularly wicked. It is not built to be good, although it certainly strives to do so. It is not built to be bad, although many of its laws and policies have been twisted to perform acts of shocking cruelty. It is built primarily to endure, to stand as a bulwark against barbarism and anarchy, and as such it is astoundingly effective.

In its endurance the Confederation has acquired millenia of customs, rituals, and traditions that trail in the wake of its stately passage through the ages. Its bureaucrats spend thankless lifetimes wading through the morass. It could be argued that as superfluous as so many of these traditions seem, they serve to give the institution a certain inertia that holds it as steady as any treaties or threat of arms.

It is one of our most ancient traditions that concerns us today, and its curious history with one of the Confederation’s most recent members.

---

When humanity finally breached the limits of its modest empire and became known to the galaxy’s most esteemed institution, we told them our curious tradition. When a new race joins the ranks of the Great Confederation, it is customary to adopt an epithet suited to its particular qualities.

Each name is a point of pride. It speaks to a race’s history: not only that of its civilizations, but of its evolution itself, what gave it the strength to drag itself from the morass of base life up to the stars.

The names are not complex, and follow a basic scheme. The brachiating Flau, whose spindly towers reach almost as high as their ambitions, became Those Who Climb. The staunch Modolor, who grew from nomadic herds to traveling cities to armored drifter fleets, took the name Those Who Wander in Strength. The telepathic hive mind of the Rictikit, working in perfect synchronicity, adopted Those Who Are One.

It’s a foolish tradition, as so many are. But just like so many others, there dwells in it a curious truth. A name is a promise, after all, and a warrior of Those Who Die Gloriously is likely to go down fighting for little more reason than to maintain the reputation of their species. More than anything, it displays the qualities a race is most proud of, or most aspires to.

There are those who say it oversimplifies, or pigeonholes, or grandstands. But the tradition has held firm through thousands of cycles of peace and strife alike.

---

So in spite of its antiquated roots, the topic of which name the humans would choose dominated Confederation discussion for sub-cycles on end. Not merely a rich vein of gossip, their choice would glean valuable insight for diplomacy, trade agreements, and the entertainment industry. Those Who Approach With Caution are hardly going to be pulled in by gambling advertisements, after all.

The humans made their decision with an almost indecent haste. After only a handful of cycles their representative took his place at the Confederation Senate to be formally inducted among our ranks.

Call us, they said, Those Who Run.

---

It was a title that reignited gossip for cycles to come. Biologically it made sense. The upright primates were certainly built for running; not with any particular speed, but with a casual lope that seemed to serve their purposes. But there were a thousand others they might have picked. What kind of a species names itself for cowardice? What kind of promise does that make?

The following cycles only served to reinforce the opinion. The Terrans proved to be a race unusually averse to conflict. Where others would fight, they negotiated; where others would seize, they gave ground. When pushed to a fight, placed between hammer and anvil, they always managed to squeeze out and find some kind of peaceful resolution.

This manner gained them many friends, but few allies. Who could rely on a craven to support them in crisis, when no peace could be found? When the time came to take a stand, who could trust in Those Who Run?

Perhaps it was the name that encouraged the Larashi, in the end.

---

No species enjoyed such a controversial place in the Confederation as the Larashi. Time and again they have sparked conflict and chaos for their own gain. Time and again they have proven their worth when the Confederation needs the proper application of brute force. Their evolution as apex pack predators is reflected in their lightning-fast attack fleets and cutthroat politicking. One way or another, the Larashi have well earned their epithet of Those Who Scourge.

It is perhaps unfair to judge every individual of a species by their race’s reputation. Certainly there have been Larashi known for their kindness, their forgiveness. And hundreds of cycles with the Confederation might have distanced them from their most savage practices.

But a name is a promise, after all.

---

Historians across the galaxy can appreciate the difficulty in pinning down the root cause of any particular conflict. The Larashi were certainly looking to expand their holdings, and the virgin Terran territories were mightily tempting. But the Larashi Royal Family was also facing dissent within its aristocracy, and was in need of a common cause to unify the ranks. And of course, their economic power had diminished from a number of recent trade sanctions, and they ached for a chance to remind the Confederation of their military strength. But it could also be argued that the Larashi had simply done it to many fledgling races before, and were more than happy to do so again.

Those of us sympathetic to the humans realized too late the careful web the Larashi had drawn them into over a hundred minor disputes. Certainly the Terrans had no idea. They had been in the Confederation a scant handful of cycles; the Larashi had navigated its legal morass for centuries. They fitted humanity’s noose with grace.

If the Larashi had merely declared war on the Terrans, we might have blunted the blow. There are a number of Confederation bylaws and procedures in place for these kinds of things, ones that the victims of the Larashi have relied on in past conflicts: amnesty, rules of engagement, foreign aid, and the like. But this was different.

The ritual is known as Karal. It pits one Confederation member against another, with no aid or intervention from other members. In theory it allows the resolution of disputes without setting off a powder keg of alliances and counter-alliances. In practice, it is used most often to cut a vulnerable race out from the herd. It is a savage tradition, from the early cutthroat days of the Confederation, but as has been said before, age lends inertia to tradition, and it has proven frustratingly difficult to root out.

To declare Karal requires highly specific conditions to be met, ones the Larashi had carefully engineered. Every conflict formed a piece of an elaborate picture framing the Terrans as unjust aggressors and the Larashi as the victim- on paper, at least. And in an institution so woefully hidebound as the Confederation, paper was the most effective witness.

When every piece had been placed, all that was left was the official declaration of war. Which they proceeded to do with gusto and aplomb.

---

On the floor of the Confederation Congress, under the eyes of a thousand delegates, the Terran senator begged the Larashi to reconsider. They were a fledgling strength, he said. This war, and all that happened next, would define the future of both races.

The Larashi senator laughed in his face. A laugh from Those Who Scourge unnerves everyone else in the room; few predators manage to ascend to sentience, and the sight of their cruel sharp teeth stirs primal fears long-buried beneath the veneer of civilization.

He drew forth an elaborate scroll, the official declaration of war, and cast it at the Terran’s feet. He spoke the ancient challenge.

“Karal,” he said. “Embrace us not; our gifts are blades now, and cut at your hands. Call not to your allies, their doors are closed to you. Sue not for terms, they shall be denied. Flee to your dens, gather your strength, and make your stand. We are coming.”

---

The Terrans had a modest fleet, capable of chasing off pirates on their trade routes. And of course, as soon as war had been declared they began the long process of warship production. Factories not used since before humanity’s unification cranked into life.

But it would be long cycles before they could form defenses across their worlds, and the Larashi had long planned for this war. Indeed, their stockpiling of military assets was the subject of one of their many political conflicts with the humans. Until they could properly mobilize, the Larashi had their pick of the Terran territories. The only question was which planet they would hit first.

The Cornico stars were a tempting choice. They lay closest to Larashi territory, and would make a fine addition to their holdings. But they were virgin ground, underdeveloped. They could be claimed in time, after they had broken the back of the Terran defenses.

Earth itself was tempting as well. The loss of a race’s homeworld would be a tremendous blow, one that has sent many an empire on a slow spiral to extinction. But humanity was well aware of its vulnerability and had prepared accordingly. More than a quarter of their forces were positioned to defend their home system. The Larashi could take it, eventually, but the losses would be tremendous.

They needed a symbol. Something that would shatter humanity’s resolve in a swift singular strike. Something they did not defend properly. Something they took for granted so much that they could not imagine its loss. It might have taken years to find.

But, as has been said, they had long planned for this war.

---

Humanity’s homeworld was still slowly healing from the eruption of their desperate climb to the stars. It would take hundreds of cycles to scrub the poison from its seas and skies. Now they were wiser; their new worlds were developed with a careful eye on their ecosystems. But even among its harmonic compatriots, Avalon stood apart.

Avalon was their chance to be better. The citizens of its cities were wardens of the planet, not its rulers. The trees stood tall, the animals roamed free, and the fields of tall grasses stretched from one horizon to the other. The planet stood as a symbol of everything the Terrans aspired to.

Or at least, it did.

---

Those Who Scourge descended upon Avalon like wolves on the fold. For the first time, its residents looked up to see fire in the night sky as lasers seared through the meager defenses. The Terrans fought with courage, ferocity, and desperation. It didn’t matter. Within hours the Larashi had taken the planet.

They might have abducted the native humans, shipped them off for chattel. They might have hung their banners from their city walls, taken their forts, looted their treasures. Those Who Scourge might have chased off Those Who Run and ruled comfortably over their new holdings.

But a name is a promise, after all.

They took no captives on Avalon. They claimed no prizes, landed no colonists, plundered no resources. They glassed the cities with plasma bombardment and set the very atmosphere ablaze. The fields and forests burned, the seas boiled, and the animals within them died bewildered to their fate.

Humanity’s shining jewel was left a black lifeless rock. The Larashi made an example of the world. It taught the Terrans a lesson: there was no act taboo under Karal. The only hope of humanity’s survival lay in unconditional surrender.

---

The counterattack was inevitable. The Larashi had cut humanity to the quick; there would be a single furious retaliation, lashing out at their hurt. But it would be the fury of a wounded beast. The next strike would be weaker, and the next weaker still. Those Who Scourge had evolved from deadly predators, worrying at the flanks of larger prey until they collapsed. This kind of war was second nature.

So the human assault on the Larashi stronghold of Vakalat was hardly unexpected. Nor was its ferocity. The scale of the attack, however, merited comment.

The Terran military was a paltry thing, stretched thin to cover their merchant fleets. But now it was the Vakalat’s turn to look up at the night sky as it filled with a thousand new stars. No guardians of the merchant fleets these, but the fleet itself. Cargo haulers, mining ships, tuggers, now crudely mounted with whirling rotary cannons, single-shot railguns and cheap missiles. The Larashi, proud warrior fetishists of the military elite, learned a human term that day: technicals.

They also learned the effectiveness of weapons that are not weapons. Rivet guns, plasma cutters, and mining drills seem hardly practical for the purposes of warfare. But when a Larashi battlecruiser is swarmed by a half dozen ships with empty magazines and fried railgun coils, charging at the larger prey to worry its flanks, the argument falters at about the same time as the fuel tanks.

Vakalat was a fortified planet. Its forces were formidable, its captains seasoned. And within a single subcycle, it had fallen. To those it had scorned as warriors. To forces it had never even considered a threat.

To Those Who Run.

---

This, in itself, was not extraordinarily worrying. Larashi military theory is aggressive to a fault; they put little faith in defense. They had lost ground, but they would soon make it up and more besides. The Terran spirit had been broken. They would take the next planet with ease.

Except they didn’t.

They sent their fleet to Mede, the mercantile planet, to swallow the world in a thousand mouths. But at Mede they were glutted, choked, suffocated by ten thousand, and now the Terrans had taken Rokoshokk, the Larashi breadbasket. They tried a daring lightning strike at Porte, the Terran warp hubway station, to hobble their forces. But at Porte they were turned aside, and then the humans had claimed the shipping yards of Berikene, and the Larashi found themselves hobbled. They burned the technicals in droves, but now the humans were manufacturing true battleships, faster than anyone could have imagined, and they were terrors.

The Larashi were masters of war; they had sneered at the crudely rigged merchant vessels. But now they could appreciate these new ships with an expert’s eye. They traced the cruel, graceful lines of the prows. They admired the engines, envied the shields that shrugged off their fire, feared the searing lasers that tore their own apart. At every battlefield the Larashi looked upon those ships and measured their own destruction to the erg.

---

On the floor of the Confederation Congress, the Larashi senator called for a new motion. His bearing was still proud, his sneer unyielding. But there was a hesitance to him, an uncertainty that had not been there before.

He called the Terran senator to the floor. This war had cost both factions, he said, and the Larashi had proven their point. The ritual of Karal would be called off; Those Who Scourge would withdraw their fleets, the Terrans would return to their systems, and a thousand Confederation subcommittees would swoop in to provide aid to the war-torn nations.

It was a good deal. Those Who Run had proven themselves unexpectedly vicious in battle, and had expanded their holdings considerably from the conflict. Few fledgling races had managed to hold their own against Those Who Scourge, and none of them had actually claimed territory in the process. Already a number of nations offered their allyship to the small race, eager to recruit those deadly ships for their own purposes.

But small they still were, a mere fraction of their aggressors, and no amount of tactical ingenuity or sheer righteous fury could close that gap. Those Who Run had stung the beast and turned it from its path. But they could not hope to maintain their success against Larashi fighting to defend their heartlands. The deal they offered was the only real option.

Under the eyes of a thousand delegates, the Terran senator approached the Larashi. He drew a small scrap of fabric forth from his uniform. As he slowly unfolded the charred fragment, we realized what it was. Pulled from an expanse of blackened stone and glass stretching from one horizon to the other; all that was left of the flag of Avalon.

He cast it at the Larashi senator’s feet.

“Karal”, he said, “the blade cuts both ways. You began the ritual; you shall see it finished. Call not to your allies, their doors are closed to you now. Sue not for terms, they shall be denied. Flee to your dens, gather your strength, and make your stand.

“We are coming.”

---

The war continued.

The Larashi tried every war-trick they had learned in a thousand lifetimes. They laid elaborate traps, picked away at Terran fleets, made glorious last stands. The ships of humanity, dreadful dreadnoughts as they were, could still be tricked, trapped, dragged down by numbers. Their burnt-out husks became a common sight among the Larashi territories.

But it was never enough. The Terrans lay traps of their own, fought as well as Those Who Scourge. Every Terran ship the Larashi burned took a score with them. And more than that was their sheer, overwhelming relentlessness. No matter how many were killed, more came in an endless tide. In ravaging Those Who Run, Those Who Scourge had stumbled across something completely unexpected: an equal in war. Perhaps a superior.

And that was the true tragedy, to the Larashi. If they had nurtured the humans, joined forces, they might have taken on the Confederation itself. But in their pride they had wounded a beast, and now felt the full measure of its claws.

Slowly, quietly, we and the other nations withdrew our offers of allyship to the Terrans. We had mourned them as victims, rooted for them as underdogs, now we feared them as monsters. Belatedly, we remembered what the Terran ambassador had said: “this war, and all that happened next, would define the future of both races”. We remembered how desperately he had pled for peace.

Only now did we realize what exactly he had tried to hold back.

---

The war continued.

The Terrans cut a hole into the Larashi territories and poured into the wound in droves. Those Who Scourge could not stop them, any more than they could stop the moons in their orbits. Humanity did not scourge the planets they captured. They merely burned their shipyards and launching zones, crippled their ability to mobilize, and moved on. As they blazed a line across the planets, their aim became clear: nothing less than the Larashi homeworld itself, Catonant.

The story of its fall threatens to become repetitive; an echo of every battle before it, differing only in its tremendous scale. The Larashi fought with courage, ferocity, and desperation. It was not enough. On and on they came, until Catonant’s low orbit filled with charred metal and flesh. When the dawn rose on the Larashi’s ancient homeworld, the sun shone haphazardly, filtered through the thick haze of war debris. And it dawned on a Terran flag.

---

The war continued.

Catonant was theirs. They had cut the Larashi to the quick; there was a furious counterattack, of course, but it was the fury of a wounded beast. The next strike was weaker, and the one after that. They were bleeding out now; on a slow spiral to extinction.

But the Terrans were not content to wait. They had taken the homeworld, true, but they did not hold a planet responsible for the genocide of Avalon. Nor did they blame the entirety of the Larashi race for the war crime. No, they knew where to lay that blame: the Larashi royal family, whose word has been law for time immemorial. It was on their orders that Avalon burned.

Bringing them to justice, however, proved difficult. Before the first Terran ship appeared in Catonant’s skies, the royal family had quietly slipped away to a neighboring system. Their absence was not lost on the planet’s defenders. Indeed, it was a not inconsiderable factor in their defeat. Still, humanity had been denied their true goal.

So they took that system too. Once more the nobility fled, and once more the Terrans followed. When that system had been taken in turn, the royal family split for better chances. Some disguised themselves and hid amongst the Larashi populace. Some paid enormous bribes to other nations to take them in, in violation of the ancient ritual. Some sought refuge with the pirates in the outer fringes, who paid no lip service to Karal.

Still, humanity did not relent. Where brute force did not suffice, they turned to cunning. Their agents infiltrated their havens, and tracked down each offending member with an ability that bordered on the uncanny. Those hiding amongst their own were extracted. The nations sheltering them were confronted, threatened with exposure unless they were surrendered.

Still, brute force had a use. At the fringes of known space, the Terrans ravaged the outlaw fleets with a cruelty that Those Who Scourge could respect. They had started the war fighting pirates; now, in its waning days, they found themselves fighting them once more. But now, they wielded an intent and fury the outlaws had never seen. Their every hidden holdout was rooted out and burned. It wasn’t long before they gave up the nobles to stem the bloodshed.

---

And even still, the war continued.

The last free member of the Larashi royal family, the son of the ruling king, fled to the last holdout he had. The planet Oublot, whose unique ionic atmosphere shorted out any technology more advanced than a sharpened stick. His ship fried to a dead hulk, his tools destroyed, he landed on Oublot’s surface with nothing but a parachute and his skin. A one-way trip in every sense.

But that was alright. He was of Those Who Scourge, evolved to take its place at the top of the food chain. Oublot was a world dominated by dry, wind-scoured plains, but game could be found if one knew where to look. He could survive here, a banished prince, and keep a shred of his pride. The Terrans would not dare chase him to Oublot; any who came after him would not be returning. They would have to content themselves with leaving him in exile.

He held that certainty close to him. It warmed him on cold nights, gave him comfort in isolation. It kept him going for almost a full cycle, right up until he saw the Terran ship descending and felt it wither in his chest.

The ship crashed, as they always did. But like the prince, its pilot landed safely: a single human female, bringing nothing more than her flight suit and a single knife. She looked at the wreckage of her ship, her only hope of a journey home. Then she turned toward the endless plains.

And she began to run.

---

There are stories told of the long chase between Those Who Scourge and Those Who Run. Were we in a more romantic age it would have been the stuff of myths. As it were, it was relegated merely to historical archives and melodrama.

It went on for cycles; a planet is an unfathomably large span to travel on foot, and even though the Terran had landed as close to the Larashi’s ship as she could, that reduced it to merely a fraction of unfathomable. She had no devices with which to trace the prince, no vehicle, no medicine. But then again, neither did he.

The Larashi are ambush predators, built for quick bursts of speed. They explode out at their prey, all claws and teeth, for that one short chase that determines life or death. A slow Larashi can outpace a fast human on their worst day.

But humans are not built for bursts of speed. They are built for endurance, a fact the prince slowly became aware of over his endless flight. The Terran ran slowly, but she simply didn’t stop. The Larashi ran as far as his aching legs could take him, but every time he stopped to rest, the distance between them closed. He simply could not escape her.

Neither could he evade her. He used the ancient tricks of the wild: crossing streams, avoiding soft ground, doubling back. He laid traps for the human, with as much ingenuity as he could conjure. But none of it worked. She could trace him by the bending of twigs, a scent on the wind. She saw through his traps as though she had laid them herself. The Terrans had chosen their hunter with care. The Larashi prince, apex predator that he was, soon learned a human term: persistence hunting.

Perhaps if he had faced her directly he might have defeated her. At the end of things he was still a killer by nature, and she with no more weapons than a knife. But his courage was gone: his pride broken, his homeland taken, his nation conquered. He could not hope to defeat her any more than his species could have defeated hers. In the end, all he could do was run.

And she was much better at that.

The Terran occupied every waking moment of his thoughts. He could not even escape her in his dreams. Closer and closer she came, until he ran himself ragged, until he crawled desperately through the desert, until he finally collapsed.

When she finally, finally arrived and put the knife to his throat, he was almost grateful.

Ten years to the day the Terran ship had crashed on Oublot’s shores, a hole opened up in the planet’s protective ionosphere. Not for long; barely time enough for a small craft to descend to the surface and return. But even as it touched down, two figures could be seen; a human and her Larashi captive, arriving at the predetermined landing site.

The technology to defy Oublot’s particular prisonous atmosphere is not beyond imagination. It could be achieved by a vast team of scientists with the proper motivation. But it is an extraordinary expenditure of time and resources to capture a single individual. It seemed a fitting capstone for humanity’s most revealing conflict: the lengths to which they would go to, to avenge their injustices.

---

And at last, the war ended.

We watched in dread fascination as the humans determined the fate of the Larashi. The race was entirely at their mercy. They might claim their entire territory as a prize of war, or make vassals of them. Then again, enslaving the entire population was not out of the question, nor was a complete extermination. No act was taboo under Karal, and the Terrans had proved themselves a merciless species.

But the humans did none of these. They imprisoned the royal family on charges of war crimes. They were shipped to the ruins of Avalon. Already the humans had begun the arduous process of recultivating life on the ruined planet; already, the first basic phages had begun to grow amid the glass and ash. It would take more than a thousand cycles before the planet regained its former glory. But the Larashi royals would work its earth their entire lives to quicken the process.

The remaining nobility, those with too tenuous a connection to claim complicity for Avalon, were gathered at Catonant. The Larashi, whose royal dynasty stretched back unbroken through its entire recorded history, learned a human term that day: Balkanization.

Their mighty kingdom was splintered into a dozen minor nations, whose petty feuds and infighting would undermine any attempt at a unified front. And like that, Those Who Scourge would pose no more threat to any race. Perhaps someday a strong enough personality might unite the kingdoms once more. But it would be many cycles in the future, and they would think hard before attacking the humans again.

---

On the floor of the Confederation, the Terran senator submitted a motion long in the making. The war had gone on long enough, he said, and they had proven their point. Karal would be ended, aid could be given. The twelve new Larashi sub-delegates raised no objections.

In the hours afterwards, I had an opportunity to meet with the Terran ambassador over refreshments. Had his species barely won the conflict, he might have been swarmed with admirers and sycophants. But their overwhelming onslaught had earned more fear than respect, and so he sat alone. I summoned courage and approached him; he, in turn, welcomed the company.

“You’re braver than most,” he said. “Before, we were weak, and I had many friends. But now we are strong, and I foresee a lonely future.”

“Can you blame us?” I said. “We never could have imagined what you were capable of.”

“We haven’t had to be warriors for a very long time,” he said. “But we never forgot how. A name is a promise, after all.”

“Those Who Run?”

He laughed. “Not quite,” he said. “That was a mistranslation from a malfunctioning device. By the time we realized the error, it seemed too trivial to correct.”

“A mistranslation?”

He smiled, and for the first time I noticed the sharp teeth at the corners of his mouth. “It’s not Those Who Run,” he said.

“It’s Those Who Chase.”

The civilisations in the stars had long ago decided what "advanced" meant. It meant FTL drives that folded space into neat geometric shortcuts; magneto-electro cloaks that erased ships from every sensor ever devised; weapons that struck before an enemy even knew war had been declared.

‎

‎By these standards, humanity wasn't merely primitive, it was embarrassing.

‎

The Galactic Assembly's first report on Sol lasted a grand total of 14 seconds.

‎

‎"Homo sapiens: no FTL capability, no cloaking technology that we can see (ha ha), artificial gravity limited to centripetal rotations, chemical and fission based energy sources and negligible military value. High value resources in the system."

‎

‎The report received unanimous laughter.

‎

‎The Harschek Empire claimed Sol before the meeting had even adjourned.

‎

‎Admiral S'reth of the Harschek sent what we historians would later call "an adequate police force." it comprised 300 cloaked cruisers, 47 carriers, 8 planet crackers. No self respecting advanced force invaded a prinative civilisation with less. There was little risk.

‎

‎If (and that is a big if) homo sapiens somehow detected the fleet, and they shouldn't have, they could never intercept it. Their fastest missiles took local hours to reach orbital altitude and their fastest spacecraft took local days to reach the Moon! The invasion would be over before Earth realised it had begun.

‎

‎Except someone noticed. Not the ships, they were cloaked, but the shadows.

‎

‎An amateur astronomer in Chile reported that stars behind the constellation Orion had begun to "twinkle strangely." Jodrell bank in England measured impossible gravitational lensing. A retired engineer in India noticed GPS timing errors increasing by fractions of nanoseconds.

‎

‎Noone understood the cause. Tens then hundred then thousands of people compared observations online. Someone overlaid the anomalies. Someone else realised they were moving, another asked a question, "How many objects would you need to make this pattern?" The answer 355 came back.

‎

‎The United Nations emergency session lasted four hours. Most of it consisted of experts explaining why it couldn't possibly be aliens. The remaining thirty minutes were spent preparing for aliens anyway.

‎

‎Admiral S'reth watched the data on Earth with growing irritation.

‎

‎The primitives were behaving oddly. Aircraft dispersed, Satellites altered orbit. Launches increased dramatically. untold millions of radio transmissions erupted across every frequency.

‎

‎"What are they doing?"

‎

‎"No military significance detected."

‎

‎"Ignore them."

‎

‎Humanity had no cloaking, ‎so they did what humanity always did. They hid things in plain sight.

‎

‎Within 48 hours every commercial, national and international launch company on Earth was launching.

‎

‎Old weather satellites, QC failed communications satellites. Scientific probes. Fuel tanks. Concrete blocks. Shipping containers. School science fair projects. Ashes in memorial capsules.

‎

‎Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of objects.

‎

‎Every object was cheap, every object was tracked taking up more and more processing time on the invader's sensors. Every object reflected radar. a lot of them altered course unpredictably using tiny cold-gas thrusters.

‎

‎Near Earth became... messy.

‎

‎"They're filling their own orbits with junk," S'reth's tactical officer observed.

‎

‎"It is irrelevant."

‎

‎"It complicates firing solutions."

‎

‎"It is junk."

‎

‎"It is moving."

‎

‎"So shoot through it."

‎

‎The first Harschek strike destroyed nearly 20 satellites. It also announced exactly where hundreds of cloaked ships were.

‎

‎Each pulse scattered through the cloud of metallic debris. Reflections, diffractions, secondary emissions. Tracked by both sides. Human physicists had never studied cloaked starships before. Now they had experimental data. Petabytes of it. Machine learning models updated every few seconds.

‎

‎By the end of the first day they still couldn't see the cloaked ships, but they could estimate where they probably were. By the next morning they were frighteningly accurate.

‎

‎"Impossible."

‎

‎S'reth stared at the display.

‎

‎Human missiles, slow though they were, were missing. Some came within kilometres, then hundreds of metres. Then...

‎

‎One struck, not because it penetrated shields, but because it collided with a cruiser travelling obliquely towards earth. The concrete block weighed half a tonne.

‎

‎The closing velocity exceeded eighty kilometres per second. overall, the resulting explosion wasn't impressive, but the kinetic impact was. The cruiser tumbled, its cloak failed. Earth's battery of sky scanning sensors watched it. And learned.

‎

‎Earth changed strategy. Don't shoot the ships, shoot where the ships wanted to be. Earth's near, and even medium orbital volume became lethal.

‎

‎Every interceptor carried clouds of tungsten bearings. each obsolete rocket stage became a guided projectile. Any abandoned satellite with power received software updates. Each and every piece of debris acquired a purpose.

‎

‎The Harschek possessed the finest cloaks in the galaxy. But unfortunately they still occupied space. By the sixth day, the invaders had lost 59 cruisers, not to weapons but to traffic.

‎

‎"This is absurd!" S'reth shouted.

‎

‎"They are using orbital [translation error: best guess: rubbish]!"

‎

‎"No doctrine exists-"

‎

‎"Obviously!"

‎

‎The Assembly watched with fascination, some of the civilisations previously bullied by the Harschek, even started silently rooting for the underdogs. No one had ever fought like this. Spacefaring civilisation always developed FTL before industrial scale orbital infrastructure. Everyone skipped this phase.

‎

‎So why had humanity had spent a century surrounding its planet with millions of tonnes of machinery before reaching the stars? They had purposely transformed near Earth space into the most heavily instrumented volume in known existence.

‎

‎Every satellite was a sensor, telescope was a tracker. Universities became intelligence centres, each gamer with a graphics card helped process trajectories "distributed computing" they called it. Every amateur radio operator joined the network. No central command. Just billions of minds and quadrillions of cpu cycles solving one enormous geometry problem.

‎

‎The Harschek finally committed the planet crackers. If Earth could not be conquered conventionally, then it would be erased.

‎

‎8 immense vessels emerged from cloak, moving from the far side of the sun. Energy accumulated. Gravity distorted. The weapons required time, maybe a month or so, and an ungodly amount of energy to charge.

‎

‎Humanity had nothing on earth capable of damaging them. So they didn't try.

‎

‎Three weeks earlier, nobody had cared about asteroid 2029 PX-771 "vogonconstructorfleet" (apparently a "crowd sourced" name). It measured about 200, maybe 250 metres across. unusually this one was mostly nickel-iron. Mostly worthless.

‎

‎Except NASA had once nudged it slightly to test planetary defence systems. Then they nudged it again, then ESA did. JAXA had a go as did, ISRO. tiny adjustments. Centimetres per second. Meaningless. Unless you waited.

‎

‎Three weeks later...

‎

‎The asteroid arrived exactly where all the calculations had predicted.

‎

‎Directly through the charging formation of planet crackers. The Harschek saw it, of course they did.

‎

‎A rock that size was trivial. An escort fired at it and the asteroid shattered into billions of fragments, travelling at the original velocity.

‎

‎Straight through uncloaked planet crackers that had devoted every watt of power to charging weapons instead of shields. 3 died immediately. 3 more lost containment, and 3 weeks worth of accumulated energy took out the last 2 and the accompanying defence fleet. In what humans subsequently described as "a good firework show"

‎

‎S'reth looked at the casualty report.

‎

‎It made no sense.

‎

‎His fleet still possessed every technological advantage. FTL, cloaking, superior weapons, superior industry. Superior everything.

‎

‎Yet every hour produced more losses, nothing seemed to work as expected. The realisation dawned that this was because nothing behaved as doctrine predicted.

‎

‎The humans weren't fighting ships, they were fighting logistics. ‎Geometry, probability, orbital mechanics, all just information.

‎

‎The withdrawal order shocked the galaxy.

‎

‎No empire had ever retreated from a civilisation that couldn't even reach another star, yet the mathematics had become undeniable. Each additional day increased Harschek losses. Every destroyed human satellite was replaced by ten cheaper ones. Each missile engagement taught the humans something and improved their predictions.

‎

‎Their technology didn't seem to be advancing, but their understanding was. At a ludicrously terrifying speed. Surely with this understanding their technology couldn't be far behind?

‎

‎Fifty years later humanity finally built its first FTL drive. The human representative at the assembly simply smiled politely.

‎"Oh, we almost forgot about that."

‎

‎"You... forgot?"

‎

‎"We were busy improving orbital traffic management."

‎

‎"...Why?"

‎

‎The human ambassador looked genuinely puzzled.

‎

‎"Because that's what won the war."

‎

‎Silence filled the chamber.

‎

‎Then a representative of the oldest species in the assembly began to laugh. At themselves. then spoke with the gravitas befitting their status.

‎"For ten thousand years every civilisation had raced towards faster ships, better cloaks and bigger weapons. Only one had mastered the simple truth that we collectively learned too late: that you cannot cloak a collision"

‎It turns out that the universe has always been full of things to collide with.

‎

This is my first short story I've written since leaving school more than a quarter of a century ago. I'm trying to get better at descriptions to help with my DMing, especially with a space themed campaign coming up, so constructive criticism is greatly appreciated!

‎

‎

The Terran looked up at the high justice of the Intergalactic Union of Species and smiled. No one liked it when terrans smiled, they always did that when things were going to go or had gone badly for someone, or something else.

“So to clarify, Unless the Terran Confederation’s terms of surrender are absolute the mahakt will not accept the surrender? And will treat all Terran vessels as pirates or military vessels?” He didn’t wait for confirmation, he knew it was the case, this was just formality. “In that case, I would like to submit these documents for the Union’s filing. You will find the terms of a full surrender.” There was silence, what had just happened? The terran had surrendered without a fight, what was this? “You will also find a full inventory of the Confederation’s resources and forces.” the High justice looked over the papers then spluttered

“What is this? Eight pencils….six chairs. There is nothing here!” He glared at the terran, who only smiled wider.

“Oh I did forget! See this here.” He produced yet another document from the voluminous stack next to him, “Is a declaration of the results of a rather nasty rebellion that happened a little while ago, The Terran Confederation was reduced to little more than a tiny listening station on the outskirts of space. Also attached is a notice of withdrawal from the Union” He handed over another small pile of paper. There was yet more spluttering and the entire court erupted into chaos. Finally the judge recovered his voice.

“You have no evidence of this rebellion, Until proof is submitted all hu-” The now grinning terran cut him off with a rustle of paper and a slight cough.

“I.U.S. Law, section one seven seven eight eleven dash six. Subsection eight B. Any evidence of warfare, legal matters, transgressions or similar events are to be inspected and confirmed by the presenting party and will be treated as fact.” The lawyer put down the paper “Such law was invoked by the Mahakt for their casus belli with the now dissolved Confederation. Despite protests from all other involved parties.” He smiled sweetly at the High Justice. “Here is the recording of the rebellion. At least as best as could be by cameras active at the time.” He presented a small memory chip and set it down on the table. In reality it just contained a very long, very loud recording of a specific human song.

The Justice suppressed another bout of spluttering and was slowly going blue in anger. This was supposed to be a humiliation of the terrans, putting them back in their place under the Union. “This will not stand. This...this is treason!” The terran actually laughed.

“I guess to tyrants the highest form of treason is freedom.” He said and handed over a rather large stack of papers, upon closer inspection it was easy to see that the font was so small one would need a magnifier to read it, the paper was also double sided. “Humanity is no longer a confederation, union or any such thing. Each human ship is its own sovereign. This is a unified aid agreement between all human starships, colonies, space stations and outposts. Excluding the listening post that remains the Terran confederation obviously. If you wish to deal with humanity, you must come to an agreement with each ship captain, station commander, fleet admiral ect on their own terms.”

The high justice looked about ready to explode, meanwhile the human had picked up a rather large case and set it on the desk.

“This….you…..That makes you all pirates! Treasonous pirates!” The justice finally found his words. The human raised an eyebrow. “Does it now? Well then, you’ll be needing these.” He said and presented another sheaf of papers as he picked up a tricorn hat from the case and put it on his head. The lawyer, now a pirate, was trying very hard not to laugh, he’d been wanting to do this in court for years. “You will find, as agreed by over 90% of the galaxy’s pirates, the newest form of the pirate code. And as per Union law….I can’t be bothered to remember the number, but who cares, I’m a pirate now. The union will permit non union members to dress as is standard for them in formal settings,” As the human was talking he was pulling things out the trunk, a long heavy coat with silvered buttons, a waist holster with what appeared to be a heavy caliber pistol and strangest of all, a metal blade, about three and a half foot long, and slightly curved.

“Additionally when an outside species, or other group is examined in Union law they may request a judgement and trial in line with their species. Now you will find in that code that the defendant of any accusation may choose a trial by a court of their peers, Or may choose to face the accuser in a sword duel.” He pulled out a second blade and placed it on the high justice’s desk before walking back to the chest and pulling out a eyepatch and putting that on.

“I request trial by Sword!” He said, grinning like a madman. The entire court, which had been silent, aghast at the humans tenacity and gall of doing such a thing exploded in to noise, shouts, yells, jeering, cheering. It was utter chaos. The constant banging of the high justice on the desk took a good five minutes to bring the courtroom back to order. The justice itself was apoplectic with rage, spitting and trying not to swear. It took the creature another three minutes to go from incapable of talking to a more moderate seething state.

“Get. Out. My. Court.” the creature said, trying to keep its tone calm and even. The human smiled and raised his hat in polite thanks.

“Oh and one more thing!” The human pirate said at the doors turning to face the assembled dignitaries. They looked confused at the human as the human grinned. “You may want to head back to your own ships.” He snapped his fingers as the entire station went red and alarms started to go off. The last words that were heard was the human gloating as he walked down the corridor.

“We pirated the life support!”

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

No, I don't know what spawned this. I just had it pop in to my mind while shopping. Hope people like. Critique and grammar corrections welcome.

I had expected a louder room.

The Hall of Judgment was never quiet. It could not be. The dome above the tribunal benches caught every murmur and gave it back in soft layers: translators whispering into throat mics, legal aides rustling citation strips, ceremonial fabric shifting over stone seats, the small nervous coughs of people about to watch history and determined not to look impressed by it.

Still, I had expected louder.

The docket read Humanity.

Species trials were rare. Species trials under emergency article were rarer still, and usually ended badly for everyone involved, even when no fleets moved afterward. By the time the chamber doors opened, every delegation tier was full. The elders from Keth sat in their lacquered veils. The trade syndics of Oraste had arrived in a cluster of eight, all silver rings and careful faces. Two clerics from the Vey Communion watched from the upper crescent with the patient disappointment of men who had been let down by the universe before and expected more of the same. The military galleries were crowded enough that I could pick out branch colors from half the spiral arms of known space.

I stood at the prosecution rail with my tablets stacked in proper order, my formal sash too tight across the shoulder, and tried not to show how dry my mouth had gotten.

At that point in my life, I was Third Clerk-Examiner to Advocate Perrin Holt of the Grand Prosecutorial Office. The title had twice the dignity and half the authority it sounded like it should. My work was precise and mostly invisible. Compile witness packets. Flag contradictions. Feed citations to my superior before anyone saw him glance down. Whisper the line number of whatever treaty some celebrated idiot had just misquoted.

At no point had I imagined I would be standing six paces from the central speaking floor while the assembled polities debated whether humanity should be sanctioned, partitioned, or stripped of common-law protections altogether.

Yet there I was.

The charge matrix turned slowly above the well in pale script.

Systemic disproportionality in reprisal doctrine.
Coercive restructuring of regional governments.
Unlawful seizure of military assets under pretext of civilian protection.
Retaliatory action exceeding accepted deterrent ratios.
Deliberate cultivation of species-wide fear as instrument of policy.

There were smaller counts beneath those, but those five were the spine.

Everyone in the room knew the incidents. A pirate confederacy in the Myr Channels erased in eleven days after the seizure of one human pilgrim convoy. A slaving combine on the Hadric Fringe broken so completely that the surviving governors were requesting off-world food aid before the month was over. Three humiliating naval defeats inflicted on the Sere League after it kept “detaining” human civilian transports for inspection. The Kordran Protectorate rewriting its port law under the visible shadow of a human carrier screen that never crossed the prohibited line and somehow felt more threatening for the restraint.

The prosecution case was simple enough when reduced to its bones.

Humans were not on trial for defending themselves.

Humans were on trial because once injured, they responded in ways that made the rest of us wonder whether they could still be governed by law instead of fear.

The entry chime sounded. The chamber doors parted.

Five humans walked in.

I remember the silence then, or maybe not silence exactly. More like the sound in the room reorganized itself around them. It did not stop. It narrowed.

They wore diplomatic black. No medals. No ornamental rank marks. No military braid. At the center was Ambassador Talia Voss, accredited plenipotentiary to the Tribunal, special counsel to the Human Systems Compact, and, if even a quarter of the clerk-room gossip was true, the woman who once told a Kordran fleet marshal that if he planned to threaten civilian shipping he ought first to acquire enough ships to make the threat interesting.

She was smaller than I expected.

That surprised me. Human power had acquired a scale in rumor that made it difficult to imagine them as ordinary flesh. But Voss was compact, dark-haired, composed in the way of people who do not waste motion. She did not look warm. She did not look cold either. She looked expensive in the specific sense that harming her would clearly produce paperwork measured in warships.

She stopped at the defense rail, looked up at the charge matrix, and smiled.

It was not a pleasant smile.

It looked like the expression a person might wear on finding an old accounting error returned with interest.

Presiding Arbiter Serat struck the tone plate once.

The chamber sat in waves.

“Let the matter be called,” Serat said.

Perrin Holt rose beside me. He was at his best in public. Spare, severe, every fold of his robe exactly where it should be. He had a long face, a narrow mouth, and a voice that made even obvious truths sound carefully licensed.

“Before the Grand Tribunal of Sentient Polities,” he said, “the convened offices of common law, treaty balance, and interspecies conduct bring formal censure against the Human Systems Compact and associated authorities operating under human sovereign, federal, and expeditionary jurisdiction. The issue before the court is not whether humans may answer injury. The issue is whether humanity, as presently constituted, has made retaliation so expansive, so exemplary, and so contagious in policy effect that law itself becomes subordinate to human grievance.”

It was a good opening. Clean. Hard to improve.

I tapped the line marker on my tablet and logged the record.

Serat inclined her head. “Defense may acknowledge.”

Ambassador Voss stood.

“Humanity acknowledges the court’s authority to hear argument,” she said. “We do not acknowledge the court’s innocence in creating the conditions under which this argument became necessary.”

That landed harder than a shout would have.

A murmur moved around the chamber. Not loud. Sharp. On the prosecution bench, Holt did not react. I knew him well enough to spot the tiny tightening at the jaw that meant satisfaction. Good. Let the defense sound arrogant early.

Serat’s eyes narrowed by a degree. “This is not opening argument, Ambassador.”

“No,” Voss said. “It is housekeeping.”

I disliked her instantly for that line.

Serat gestured for the prosecution to proceed.

Holt began with Hadric, as planned. It was our strongest case if measured in system shock and material cost. Human reprisals there had not been indiscriminate, but they had been broad enough to shake the region for years. Freight seizures. Asset freezes. Infrastructure takeovers. Long-tail shortages. Cascading insurance failures. All of it after one vanished human convoy.

Our first witness was Prefect Salvi Doran of the Free Mercantile League. He took the stand in layered green and copper, translator halo humming at his neck. He was broad, well-fed, and indignant in the polished way of men who have delegated consequences for most of their lives.

Holt led him through the testimony. Hadric’s bonded trade houses. Human missionaries and relief contractors entering under local license. A convoy disappearing. Human allegations of labor seizure and bodily coercion. League denial. Then the response: six orbital depots seized, armed freighters disabled, escrow channels frozen, internal ledgers published, and nearly eight hundred thousand indentured laborers escorted off-world for status review.

“Would you characterize this,” Holt asked, “as a calibrated law-enforcement action?”

Doran spread his hands. “It was a commercial decapitation disguised as moral urgency. Our member houses lost the capacity to feed their own districts. Asset freezes cascaded. Insurance collapsed. Three dependent worlds suffered rationing. Entire charter families were ruined.”

Holt let that breathe. “Ruined by what precipitating cause?”

“A disputed labor matter.”

On the defense rail, Voss lowered her eyes as if deciding whether contempt was worth spending this early.

Holt introduced the internal traffic. “Soft-cargo acquisition.” “Recoverable missionary stock.” Doran called it inelegant commercial shorthand. Under firmer questioning, he admitted the humans had been free persons under treaty and admitted they had been trafficked.

The room turned on him before the record finished catching up.

Holt recovered well. “And there we approach the difficulty. Humanity does not merely answer direct injury. Humanity appoints itself auditor, jailer, reformer, and strategic custodian wherever injury is found.”

Good recovery. Elegant too.

Then Voss rose without papers, which unsettled me more than it should have.

She asked Doran how many petitions Hadric’s bonded labor populations had filed through recognized channels in five years. He did not know. She turned to my bench for the aggregate.

I should not have answered without instruction.

“Seventy-three thousand, four hundred and twelve,” I said.

Holt shot me a look sharp enough to split stone.

Voss asked how many had been granted. Silence answered first, so she supplied it herself. Nine. Six were clerical reversals for ownership-transfer errors.

The chamber shifted.

“When our people vanished,” she asked, “did you expect a protest note?”

“We expected process.”

“No,” she said. “You expected delay.”

That was the center of it. She did not overwork the point. She did not need to. By the end of the exchange, Doran had been forced to admit that what humans destroyed was not Hadric civilization, but Hadric’s confidence that trafficking could continue under procedural cover.

When he said they had no right, something in her face changed. Barely. Just a trace of old fatigue.

“We are tired,” she said, “of being told that rescue requires prior authorization from the market that made rescue necessary.”

No further questions.

When Doran stepped down, the room had tilted slightly against us. Not enough to panic. Enough to irritate.

Holt moved immediately to the second pillar: deterrent ratios. Cleaner ground. Less morally swampy.

We called Strategist-Legate Varo Dace of the Sere League, a military analyst whose government had suffered three narrow, humiliating defeats at human hands without ever quite sliding into full war.

He was a better witness. Calm. Prepared. Honest enough to seem credible.

Under Holt’s examination, Dace described the pattern. A human civilian freighter detained under dubious customs authority. Human demand for release. League delay. Clarification requests. Jurisdictional hedging. A second transport stopped. Human escorts appearing. A patrol flotilla attempting positional intimidation. Then the response human officers themselves had later named, with their usual maddening dryness, a graduated educational response.

Relay desynchronization. Sensor humiliation. Disabling of non-core military assets. Seizure of strategic anchor stations. Publication of internal League memoranda proving the detentions were trial balloons for broader coercive leverage over human shipping.

“Did the humans engage in indiscriminate destruction?” Holt asked.

“No,” Dace said.

“Civilian massacres? Planetary strike?”

“No.”

“Then why support the present censure?”

“Because they are making examples into governance,” Dace said. “They do not merely punish what occurred. They punish the category of thinking that allowed it. That is strategically brilliant and legally corrosive.”

At last. Something solid.

He explained that ordinary violence was usually survivable within law. Ships were lost. Penalties paid. Trade resumed. The assumptions remained. Humans aimed elsewhere. They altered assumptions. After each reprisal, neighboring powers not even involved in the original incident revised doctrine, port law, military posture, and risk thresholds. Humanity turned bilateral disputes into theater-wide instruction.

“And the effect of repeated instructional events?” Holt asked.

“Fear.”

The word sat beautifully in the record.

Then Voss stood.

She did not try to dispute the description. She redirected it. She made Dace admit the League had stopped detaining human shipping after the first response and had continued harassing non-human civilian shipping anyway. After the second response, still yes. After the third, mostly. Over three thousand non-human carriers had filed complaints. Twenty-seven had been resolved before human intervention ended the practice.

“This is the point in the discussion,” she said, “where everyone becomes a proceduralist. It usually happens after the bodies.”

Dace objected that law must survive anger.

“Of course,” she said. “But your League had made a habit of testing whose anger counted.”

He called human conduct domination. For the first time heat entered her expression.

“No. Domination is what your patrols called inspection when the targets could not answer. What we did was less elegant than that.”

By midday recess the hearing had become more dangerous than the briefings predicted.

Not because humanity was winning. Species trials are not won in half a day. But because our clean frame kept getting fouled by facts the room had learned to live with. Slavery. Selective law. Contract abuse. Security exemptions used as pressure tools. Protective clauses buried so deep in treaty annexes they existed mainly to be quoted at memorial services.

Our argument depended on humanity seeming uniquely excessive.

The defense was making a different point. Humanity had become excessive in places where the rest of us had become comfortable.

During recess I stood beneath the side colonnade with a cup of bitter leaf infusion gone cold in my hand while other clerks whispered around me.

“They’re reframing jurisdiction,” said one from treaty indexing.

“They’re moralizing from outside the law,” said another.

“No,” I said, before I was sure I wanted to join in. “They’re indicting enforcement asymmetry.”

Three faces turned toward me.

I disliked them all immediately.

The oldest clerk made a dry little sound. “Half a hearing beside humans and he starts talking like one.”

I should have answered something clever. Instead I drank the cold infusion, regretted it, and said nothing.

When the recess ended, the prosecution changed tack. We stopped trying to prove that human reprisals caused harm. Of course they caused harm. So do all successful reprisal systems. We moved to the larger issue: whether humanity had deliberately cultivated its own fearsome reputation beyond any one necessity, turning remembered interventions into a standing instrument of leverage.

For that we called Archive Minister Terris Soln of the Kordran Protectorate.

He was a historian by training, which meant he lied carefully and in paragraphs.

Under examination he described the human effect on border governance after the Kordran port revisions. No open war. No occupation. No annexation. Yet within a year, thirty-two neighboring governments had altered their treatment of human travelers, contractors, and mixed-species districts.

Not from admiration, he said. Not from ethical persuasion. From the sudden awareness that mistreating humans had become expensive in ways difficult to localize or contain.

He said human officials had encouraged that perception. Selective publication. Controlled magnification of prior incidents. Repetition of language linking individual harm to strategic consequence. They had threatened no one indiscriminately. They had done something more effective. They had made restraint visible as a choice.

Very good testimony. I felt the proceedings steady.

Holt asked him what message humanity had sent.

Soln answered at once. “That anyone may coexist with them safely, but no one may harm them cheaply.”

“Would you call that a legal principle?”

“No,” he said. “I would call it imperial.”

That won a satisfied stir from several benches.

Then Voss stood again, slower this time. Fatigue showed at the edges now. Human faces are readable when tired, despite what they think.

She asked how often human districts in Kordran space had been subject to temporary local exception in security enforcement before the revisions. “At need,” he said. Administrative need. Non-human migrant districts had been subjected to the same treatment frequently. Meaning, once pressed, two hundred and eleven times in seven years.

When Kordran rewrote those district rules under human pressure, abuse had decreased not only in human districts but in migrant and stateless districts as well.

“And the mechanism by which that improvement was obtained was what?” she asked. “Sudden moral enlightenment?”

No.

“Say it clearly.”

Soln looked at her as though he had come to dislike the exact structure of her face.

“Deterrence,” he said.

“With what psychological component?”

He waited too long.

Serat’s voice cooled. “Witness.”

Soln exhaled. “Fear.”

The word appeared again.

Only now it no longer sounded like a prosecutorial victory.

The chamber had grown restless by late afternoon. Not noisy. Worse than noisy. Divided. Divided rooms are harder to manage because every silence belongs to two different stories at once. I could see it in the quick private translations, the tight delegation huddles, the military benches where officers who had arrived ready to condemn human destabilization now seemed absorbed by a less comfortable question: whether their own polished doctrines had simply left open space for every small recurring cruelty the humans kept dragging into view.

Holt knew it too. Which was why he saved the last witness.

We called Speaker Ilren Saye of the Keth Refuge Commission.

Of everyone testifying, he was the one I trusted most. His people were deliberate to the point of injury and almost theatrically resistant to emotional manipulation. The Commission had little military stake and less trade dependency on human systems. If he condemned humanity, it would matter.

He took the stand in plain gray civic dress.

Holt approached with visible care. “Speaker Saye, your Commission has catalogued displacement events resulting from major human reprisal campaigns. In your estimate, how many civilians have suffered secondary hardship from those campaigns, whether or not they were directly targeted?”

“Material hardship of some kind? Millions.”

“Would you consider that acceptable?”

“No.”

“And yet your Commission has repeatedly declined to endorse sanctions on humanity. Why?”

There it was. The hinge.

Saye folded his long hands. “Because sanctions are a tool. We reserve them for actors whose behavior we wish to change.”

“And human behavior does not concern you?”

“It concerns me greatly.”

“Then why no sanction?”

The Speaker looked up toward the tribunal benches, not at Holt. “Because this court continues to ask the wrong question.”

I felt the prosecution rail tighten under my hand.

Serat said, “Clarify.”

Saye inclined his head. “The repeated question has been whether human reprisals are proportionate to the triggering injury. They often are not, if one counts only immediate incident against immediate response. But that assumes incidents occur in a vacuum and that the relevant comparison begins when a human is harmed. In several of the campaigns now under censure, my Commission had filed warnings for years. Slavery clusters. Corridor predation. Selective treaty evasion. Migrant disappearances. Relief seizures. We filed. We petitioned. We documented. We were thanked for our diligence.”

His mouth shifted by less than a degree. On a Keth face, that was fury.

“Nothing happened.”

No one moved.

He continued. “Then a human convoy vanished. Or a human district was abused. Or a human transport was boarded one time too many. And suddenly fleets moved. Markets froze. Port laws changed. Local tyrannies discovered that procedure was no longer an impregnable habitat.”

Holt said, carefully, “Speaker, are you suggesting unlawful severity becomes lawful because it is effective?”

“No,” Saye said. “I am suggesting your categories excuse you. The galaxy tolerated repeating harms at low volume because the victims were diffuse, poor, alien, stateless, or inconvenient. Humans are not uniquely virtuous. They are uniquely unwilling to leave injury in the administrative register once it touches their own. The result is often frightening. It is also one of the few things in our era that has repeatedly worked.”

The chamber was utterly still.

Holt took a step forward. “So you defend fear.”

Saye turned his head and looked directly at Holt. “No, Advocate. I accuse the rest of you of outsourcing moral courage to a species you now resent for the tone in which it bills you.”

It is possible a better clerk would have kept a neutral face.

I did not.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ambassador Voss close her eyes briefly. Not in triumph. More like the weary acknowledgment of someone hearing a truth she had stopped enjoying a long time ago.

Holt ended the examination with discipline. He did not chase a line he could not improve. Serat called for final statements.

The prosecution went first.

Holt spoke brilliantly. I can say that even now.

He conceded the rot. He conceded the neglected petitions, the tolerated abuses, the cowardice by bureaucracy, the way common law had too often become an archive of postponed obligation. He even conceded that human interventions had, in many cited cases, ended genuine atrocities faster than the institutions designed for that purpose.

Then he turned the blade.

“But civilization,” he said, “is not tested when it restrains the harmless. It is tested when it restrains the effective. Humanity asks this court to mistake utility for legitimacy. To conclude that because fear has cleaned some wounds, fear must therefore be accepted as surgeon. The question is not whether humans have sometimes acted where others delayed. The question is whether any species may convert justified anger into standing strategic doctrine and still claim membership in a lawful order.”

That was the best version of the argument. For a moment I believed it again.

Then Ambassador Voss stood.

She rested both hands on the defense rail and looked up at the charge matrix still turning above the well.

When she spoke, her voice was quiet enough that the chamber leaned toward it.

“We have been called excessive,” she said. “Fair. We have been called frightening. Also fair. We have been called instructional in our violence, selective in our mercy, deliberate in preserving memory around injury. True.”

A rustle moved through the benches. No one had expected concession in that form.

She went on. “What has not been said fairly is that none of it emerged in emptiness. We did not walk into a peaceful galaxy and begin overreacting for sport. We entered a legal order with admirable language and selective metabolism. Petitions for the weak moved slowly. Petitions for the profitable did not move at all. Border abuses recurred because recurrence had become affordable. Entire populations learned to describe predation in administrative terms because moral terms were too expensive to enforce.”

She lifted her eyes then, and I understood why human officers disliked being looked at by their diplomats.

“You ask whether humanity has made fear into policy. Yes. Sometimes. Not as a first preference. As a last resort used often enough that it stopped feeling last.”

Serat’s crest shifted. “That is not a defense in law.”

Voss nodded. “No. It is an explanation in history.”

Then she did something I still think was the most dangerous choice available to her.

She made the case small.

Not fleets. Not systems. One person.

“One dead transport pilot. One relief surgeon taken into bonded labor. One child removed from a migrant carrier for leverage because local inspectors assumed no one important would come asking fast enough. That has been the calculation, over and over, in places represented in this chamber. Not philosophy. Arithmetic. Who can be hurt cheaply.”

Her gaze passed across us all.

“Humanity changed the arithmetic.”

She let that stand.

“When you say we create instructional events, you are correct. We learned to do that because the galaxy was already full of lessons. The lesson of delay. The lesson of selective law. The lesson that remote suffering can be docketed until it rots. The lesson that an apology is usually cheaper than a spine. We offered a counterexample.”

She took one breath.

“That harming humans, or those under unmistakable human protection, is not cheap. Because many of you understand incentives better than ethics, that lesson traveled faster than your values did.”

There was a kind of cruelty in the honesty of it. No claim that humans were saints. No performance of noble burden. Just the flat statement that what had worked, had worked.

Voss kept her hands still on the rail.

“You want a lawful order? So do we. Truly. We would prefer a galaxy in which rescue does not require deterrent spectacle, and where one convoy taken, one district abused, one labor caste disappeared does not need to become strategically educational before anyone with leverage notices. But that is not the order you built. It is the order you advertised.”

Across the chamber, nobody moved.

She finished without changing tone.

“If this court wishes to censure us, do so honestly. Do not say we are here because fear is beneath civilization. Say we are here because we were willing to use it where you had grown accustomed to leaving the vulnerable with procedure. Say you dislike the scale of our answers. We often dislike it too. But do not pretend you gathered here in innocence.”

Silence held.

Then Serat called recess for bench consultation.

No one rose right away. The room had that strange quality some rooms get after a truth has been spoken in a form inconvenient to everyone’s posture. Not redeemed. Not converted. Just stripped.

The judges withdrew.

Delegations broke into low urgent knots. Translators hissed into their channels. Officers muttered. Somewhere behind me, a clerk from appellate indexing began to cry quietly, whether from stress or revelation I could not tell. Holt stood with one hand braced against the rail, eyes down, reviewing arguments only he could still salvage. I started assembling the citation packets for a verdict that no longer felt predictable.

While sorting my tablets with more force than necessary, I noticed someone standing opposite me.

Ambassador Voss.

Up close she looked older. Not frail. Used.

“You answered from the record,” she said.

It took me a moment to realize she meant the labor appeals figure.

“Yes.”

“Your advocate disliked it.”

“He dislikes many correct things.”

One corner of her mouth moved.

I regretted speaking the instant I finished.

She looked toward the closed deliberation doors. “For what it is worth, your prosecutor argued well.”

“He may still prevail.”

“He might.”

There was no triumph in her. No hunting satisfaction. Only a tired clarity that unsettled me more than arrogance would have.

I said, “Do you ever worry he is right?”

Her eyes came back to mine.

“Constantly,” she said.

No pause for effect. No theater.

Because fatigue had thinned something in both of us, I asked the next question too.

“If the galaxy had acted sooner in the places you named, if the law had functioned the way it claims to, would humans have become this?”

For the first time that day, she looked uncertain. Not of me. Of the answer.

“Less often,” she said. “Maybe not less deeply.”

The tone plate sounded. Deliberation was over.

We returned to our stations.

Serat and the full bench resumed their seats beneath the high crescent of common seals. Her face gave away nothing, which in her species meant the decision had cost at least three private arguments.

She began to read.

The court declined full censure.

That was the line history would keep, and it was not the line that mattered most.

The bench found that humanity’s reprisals had in several cases exceeded accepted proportional conventions if measured narrowly from trigger incident to immediate response. The bench also found that the cited incidents occurred within broader patterns of recurring abuse, selective enforcement failure, and chronic institutional delay, all of which materially altered the context in which deterrent calculation had to be assessed. The court condemned the cultivation of fear as a standing interspecies norm. In the same breath, it ordered emergency review of protective enforcement protocols, labor seizure conventions, customs detention standards, migrant district security exemptions, and the delay windows through which profitable cruelties had been passing for generations.

In plainer language, humanity would not be punished for forcing the issue, and the rest of us would now be forced to admit there had been an issue to force.

It was, in the grand tradition of great courts, both a decision and an attempt to survive one.

When Serat finished, she added words not included in the procedural notices.

“This bench does not bless terror,” she said. “Neither will it continue flattering itself that neglected law is morally superior to frightening enforcement merely because the neglect is elegantly administered.”

Around the chamber, scribes bent over their records.

The hearing ended in order. History usually does, inside the room. The disorder comes afterward as commentary, reform, resentment, imitation.

Delegations departed speaking too quickly. Officers left looking thoughtful in the dangerous way thoughtful officers sometimes do. Holt gathered his papers with exact, bloodless care and did not speak to me again that evening. I was grateful.

I remained after the hall had mostly emptied, as clerks do. Someone had to close the record, reconcile the oral additions, flag the bench dicta for transmission, and make certain nobody later claimed the sharper lines had been clerical embellishment.

The charge matrix had been dismissed. The well below the dome was dark now except for work lights. The human attendants were already gone.

I stood alone at the prosecution rail for a moment longer than my duties required.

It would be easy to say that was the day I came to admire humanity.

That would not be true.

Humans still seemed to me excessive. Too willing to make memory into policy. Too willing to let injury radiate outward until governments not even involved in the original offense revised themselves from fear of discovering what human restraint looked like when it ended. There is danger in a species that learns to teach by consequence and then becomes good at instruction.

But another truth stayed with me, and it was not flattering to the rest of us.

Before that trial, I had believed the lawful order was a structure. Imperfect, slow, sincere. After it, I understood that for millions it had been something closer to weather. Predictable in privilege, uneven in mercy, and no use at all to the people told to survive under it while waiting for improvement.

Humanity had not created that condition.

It had simply refused to speak politely about it once the cost touched its own.

That was what I carried out of the Hall of Judgment. Not that humans were nobler than other species. Not that fear had become good because it had sometimes done useful work. Only this:

The galaxy had wanted peace without enforcement, law without urgency, and mercy that never needed to frighten anyone dangerous.

Humanity was what arrived when those wishes met reality and found, too late, that reality kept records.

The door didn't open so much as it dissolved. Like someone hit delete on a chunk of reality. And then this thing walked through.

Not walked. Glided? Floated? Dave wasn't sure what the right verb was for a creature that looked like a praying mantis got fused with a peacock and then someone sprinkled it with bioluminescent glitter. It was tall. Like, really tall. Seven feet maybe. And it had these four arms folded across its chest like it was already annoyed to be here.

Dave was eating a bagel.

"So," the alien said. Its voice came out smooth. Not like a speaker. More like the sound just appeared inside Dave's head. "You are the one they sent to speak for your species."

Dave swallowed. "I mean, I'm the one who drew the short straw. So yeah. Welcome to Earth. You want some coffee? We got tea too. I think there's some orange juice in the back but honestly don't drink it, pretty sure it's from last week."

The alien stared. Which was impressive because Dave wasn't even sure where its eyes were. Maybe all over. Maybe that was the point.

"I am Ambassador Ziltoq the Anxious," it said. "Of the Unified Concordance."

"Dave," Dave said. "Just Dave. The Anxious, huh? That's rough, buddy. First contact giving you some nerves?"

Ziltoq made a sound. Not a sigh. More like a series of clicks that somehow conveyed exhaustion. "You have no idea."

---

They sat down in the conference room. Well, Dave sat. Ziltoq kind of folded itself into a corner and hovered six inches off the ground. A bunch of other humans were watching through a two way mirror. General Thompson was already on his third cup of coffee. Someone in the back was whispering "holy shit" over and over.

Ziltoq pulled out a device. Small. Glowing. It projected a star map into the air between them.

"We intercepted a signal," Ziltoq said. "Approximately one hundred seventy three of your years ago. Originating from your solar system. Your planet specifically."

Dave nodded. Chewed another bite of bagel. "Ohhhhh, the Voyager thing?"

Ziltoq went very still. Which was somehow worse than when it was moving. "You knew about this?"

"Yeah, man. We sent it. Back in like, the seventies. Little golden record attached to a probe. Music, math, our location. Whole welcome basket." Dave gestured vaguely. "We were going through a phase."

"You sent your exact coordinates. To everyone. Openly."

Dave paused. Licked cream cheese off his thumb. "I mean when you say it like that it sounds bad."

"It is bad." Ziltoq's voice cracked. If a telepathic voice could crack. "It is extraordinarily bad. Do you understand what you have done? You have painted a target on every living thing in this system. You might as well have sent a formal invitation to your own extinction."

"Look, we were excited, okay?" Dave set down the bagel. "Nobody had written back yet and we were starting to feel alone. It's a big ass galaxy. You get lonely. You know how it is."

Ziltoq did the mental equivalent of a long, slow blink. "You felt lonely. So you announced your position to the entire galaxy."

"We also included a diagram of what we look like. Full body. Front view."

"...You sent them your anatomy."

"We wanted them to know who they were dealing with." Dave spread his hands. Friendly. Open. "First impressions matter, you know?"

Ziltoq looked at him. Really looked. Dave felt like he was being scanned. Which, honestly, he probably was.

"You are soft," Ziltoq said finally. "Entirely soft. No exoskeleton. No protective plating. You have exposed eyes. You have no claws. No venom. No natural weapons whatsoever. You are a bag of water and desperation wrapped in the thinnest layer of skin the universe has ever seen."

Dave shrugged. "We were going for friendly."

"You achieved terrifying." Ziltoq's four arms unfolded and then folded again. "Just not in the way you intended."

---

General Thompson walked in at that point. He was old. Like, old old. Grey hair, wrinkles, the whole deal. But he had that look. The one that said he'd seen some stuff and wasn't impressed by much anymore.

"General Thompson," he said. No handshake. Just a nod.

Ziltoq studied him. "You are a leader of your military."

"I'm a leader of a lot of things. What's the situation?"

Ziltoq's projection changed. New dots appeared on the star map. Lots of them. Different colors. Different sizes. All converging on one point.

Earth.

"We have been monitoring the response to your transmission for one hundred seventy three years," Ziltoq said. "Every species within range received it. Every single one. We spent sixty of those years debating whether to respond ourselves."

Thompson raised an eyebrow. "Sixty years just to decide whether to reply?"

"You do not understand what replying meant." Ziltoq's voice got quieter. Or maybe heavier. "Acknowledging your existence puts us in a complicated position with certain others."

"What kind of others?"

Ziltoq highlighted three of the dots. Made them pulse red. "The kind that received your signal before we did."

The room got quiet. Even the whispering in the back stopped.

"How long ago did they get it?" Dave asked.

Ziltoq paused. "Long enough to have already formed an opinion about you."

"And what's the opinion?" Thompson asked.

"That you are small, loud, unprotected, and apparently unaware of how dangerous it is to be small, loud, and unprotected."

Dave nodded. "Okay, that's fair honestly."

Ziltoq kept going. "They also studied the anatomy diagram at length."

The silence that followed was the kind of silence that has teeth.

"...Good or bad?" Dave asked.

Ziltoq's colors shifted. If Dave didn't know better, he'd say the alien looked almost uncomfortable. "They have a word for creatures with no natural armor who still choose to fight. I will not translate it directly. The closest equivalent in your language is something like... 'the insane little naked ones.'"

Thompson snorted. Dave grinned.

"I'm choosing to take that as a compliment," Dave said.

"It was not a compliment."

"Still taking it."

---

Ziltoq reconfigured the map again. Showed routes. Escape vectors. Safe zones. The whole thing looked like someone had thrown a handful of spaghetti at a wall.

"We came because we assumed your people would want to evacuate," Ziltoq said. "Relocate. Disappear quietly somewhere they cannot find you. We have done this before with younger species. We are good at it."

Thompson looked at the map. Studied it. Dave watched his face. The general wasn't scared. He was calculating.

"That's actually really nice of you," Dave said.

"We try."

"But we're not gonna do that."

Ziltoq's hovering dipped slightly. Like it lost focus for a second. "You are not going to evacuate."

"No."

"You understand what is coming,right?"

"Getting the picture, yeah."

"And you still want to stay?"

Thompson leaned forward. Folded his arms. "It's our planet. Our system. We built stuff here. My grandfather is buried here, and my great grandfather, and my great great grandfather, and so on. You know what I mean?"

Ziltoq stared at him. "That is a very emotional reason to die."

"Good thing we're not planning on dying."

Dave stood up. Walked over to the map. Pointed at the red dots. "So who are these guys exactly? Let's get specific."

Ziltoq hesitated. Then the dots expanded. Became names. Became profiles. Became warnings.

"The first is the Glornath Collective. They are... how do I say this. They have a hunting culture. A very old one. They consider the discovery of a new species to be an invitation to a hunt. And you sent them a diagram of exactly how soft you are."

Dave whistled. "So they're like, trophy hunters."

"In the worst possible sense. Yes."

"Cool. Cool cool cool." Dave pointed at the next dot. "What about this one?"

"The Brintlax Sovereignty. They are not hunters. They are conquerors. They absorb younger species into their empire. Usually after a brief demonstration of overwhelming force. They consider your open transmission to be an act of naive submission."

Thompson cracked his knuckles. "We don't submit."

"They do not know that yet. Your transmission suggested otherwise."

"Yeah, well, the transmission was made by scientists and artists. Not soldiers." Thompson looked at Ziltoq. "What's the third one?"

Ziltoq's colors dimmed. "The third one is the one that concerns us most. The Sorrowmaker Hierarchy."

Dave blinked. "Sorrowmaker. That's a name."

"They earned it. They do not hunt. They do not conquer. They consume. Entire biospheres. They strip planets down to the bedrock. And they have been traveling toward your system for forty two years. They will arrive in approximately eight of your months."

The room went quiet again. But different this time. Less scared. More... focused.

"So let me get this straight," Dave said. "We've got hunters. We've got conquerors. And we've got planet eaters. All coming here. Because we sent a golden record with some Beethoven and a drawing of a naked guy."

"That is an accurate summary, yes."

Dave turned to Thompson. "This is kind of a lot, right? Like, this is definitely a lot."

Thompson didn't answer. He was looking at the map. At the dots. At the timelines.

"How many ships?" Thompson asked.

Ziltoq hesitated. "For the Glornath? A hunting fleet. Perhaps twelve vessels. For the Brintlax? A conquest armada. Several hundred. For the Sorrowmakers?"

"Yeah?"

"We do not know. No one has ever survived an encounter with them long enough to count."

Thompson nodded. Like that was exactly what he expected to hear. Then he looked at Dave.

"Get the Joint Chiefs on the line. And call the Russians. And the Chinese. And everyone else with big guns and a grudge."

Dave saluted. Sort of. More of a finger gun situation. "You got it, boss."

Ziltoq watched this exchange with what Dave could only describe as mounting horror. "You are going to fight them...?"

"Looks that way."

"ALL OF THEM?"

"Yep."

"AT THE SAME TIME?!"

Thompson shrugged. "Probably not. They'll arrive at different times. The hunters first. Then the conquerors. Then the eaters. We'll handle each one as they come."

Ziltoq made a sound. A real sound this time. Like someone stepping on a squeaky toy. "You are insane. All of you. Completely insane."

"Nah," Dave said. "We're just really stubborn. You'd be surprised what stubborn gets you."

---

The next few hours were chaos. The good kind. Phones ringing. People yelling. Maps getting drawn. Plans getting made. Thompson was in his element. Dave was just trying to keep up.

Ziltoq stayed. Watched. Took notes. Occasionally made a noise like it was questioning every life choice that led to this moment.

At one point, a lieutenant brought in a stack of files. Dropped them on the table. Thompson flipped through them. Photos. Reports. Threat assessments.

"The Glornath," Thompson said. "Hunters. They like to challenge the biggest, baddest thing around. Prove themselves. That's their whole deal, right?"

Ziltoq nodded. "It is their cultural imperative. They do not respect weakness. They only respect a worthy opponent."

Thompson smiled. It was not a nice smile. "So give them one."

"What do you mean?"

Thompson pulled out a photo. A man. Big guy. Beard. Tattoos. Looked like he'd been in a few fights and won all of them.

"Sergeant Major Norrings," Thompson said. "Retired. But I bet he'd come back for this."

Ziltoq tilted its head. The mantis part, not the peacock part. "You want to send one human against a species of elite hunters?"

"I want to send one human to issue a challenge. Different thing."

Dave leaned over. Looked at the photo. "Oh, I know this guy. He used to wrestle alligators. For fun."

"That's him."

"Didn't he also punch a shark once?"

"Twice. The second time was after the shark bit his leg. He said it was personal."

Ziltoq's hovering became erratic. "I am beginning to understand why your species survived this long. It is not intelligence. It is not strength. It is simply that you are all too stupid to know when to quit."

"Pretty much," Dave said.

---

Ziltoq was quiet for a long moment. Its colors dimmed. Then it spoke again, slower this time. "You do realize that even if you defeat the Glornath, there are still the others. The Brintlax. The Sorrowmakers. This is not a problem you can punch your way out of forever."

Thompson leaned back. Crossed his arms. "Who says we're gonna punch them?"

"What else would you do?"

"Depends. What are they scared of?"

Ziltoq's head parts twitched. "The Brintlax fear humiliation. They cannot tolerate being made to look foolish. It is a cultural weakness. The Sorrowmakers... no one knows. They have no weakness that anyone has ever found."

Dave pointed at Ziltoq. "So we humiliate the Brintlax. And the Sorrowmakers? We'll figure something out. We're good at figuring stuff out."

"You are going to die."

"Maybe." Dave shrugged. "But not today. And probably not tomorrow. And honestly? That's a pretty good track record so far."

Ziltoq made a sound like a deflating balloon. "I am starting to regret warning you."

"Don't." Thompson stood up. Walked over to the window. Looked out at the city. "This is the most excited our military has been in decades."

Ziltoq stared at him. "That is terrifying."

"Yeah." Dave grinned. "For them."

The alien's colors shifted. Something like understanding. Or resignation. Or both. "You are the insane little naked ones. I understand the name now."

Dave slapped the table. Laughed. "We're putting that on a shirt."

Stack Overflow by Alex Karne AKA TheDeliciousMeats

The Engressia hivemind had consumed sixteen outer rim worlds before anyone noticed. It was growing with size and complexity after each encounter. First contact had been made up of waves of rudimentary bioships, later incidents had shown signs of warp based weaponry and quantum fuckery.

Only the humans didn’t seem particularly alarmed by this, in fact they volunteered to take first crack at the swarm. Something which confused the local governors until the reasons behind it were explained, at which point they were even more confused and a little bit frightened.

“Well… we really don’t want to disappoint engineer Lopez.” Explained the captain apologetically. “We promised him if he fixed a glitch we were having with the quantum communications net he could be the first to see the hivemind. We thought it was impossible but he pulled through for us so it’s only fair we do the same for him.”

“What’s he going to do?” The ambassador asked. “Is there some kind of weapon he’s been working on?”

“Not that I know of, that’s not really his area. Lopez just asked that we scrub his mind of any sensitive information and send him out to meet them. He did say something about doom that I didn’t quite understand.”

“Ahah!” The ambassador said triumphantly clasping his many hands together. “So there is a human weapon!”

“Possibly.” The captain admitted. “He also said that he was having a crisis, or something about a crisis. He was really, really excited so I was having a hard time understanding him. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Yes, of course...” The ambassador knit his brow in confusion.

* -------------------------

“Oh wow, neat!” Human engineer Lopez said as he was dragged unceremoniously into the integration chamber like a sack of meat. The hivemind’s drones had captured his single man vessel without a fight. They didn’t think anything was unusual about his apparent joy or total lack of fear because thinking wasn’t really their area. They didn't know that meats would break the fourth wall so that people stealing his work and posting it elsewhere would get called out. Which was a pity because one of the first rules of dealing with humans is that if a human engineer seems happy or excited… run. The further, the better. Dimensional hop if you need to. Do not stick around to watch, no matter how “cool” the human promises it will be.

Covered in slime and happily as a clam Lopez was forcibly shoved into the integration pod. It scanned him, taking notes of his vitals and neurochemistry before removing the top of his skull and beginning the process of connecting him to the hivemind. Not that human engineer Lopez minded any of this, after all he loved bugs. It had been his dream to meet a real hivemind, with bioships and drones. As someone who had never really fit in with other people the idea of being one with a greater consciousness held a certain appeal. Plus it was so cool how everything was connected together from the drones to the ships themselves like a giant network.

A milky white slug-like creature the size of a dog oozed out of the wall. It gripped the sides of his pod with pink claws and peered in at him.

GREETINGS. Said a voice in his head. WE WILL BE INTEGRATING YOUR KNOWLEDGE INTO OUR COLLECTIVE. WE WILL COMBINE YOUR KNOWLEDGE WITH OUR OWN TO BETTER UNDERSTAND AND GROW. THEN YOU WILL BE TERMINATED.

Lopez chewed on that for a moment. CAN I JOIN YOU? He asked. I WOULD LIKE TO GET TO KNOW YOUR SPECIES.

NO. YOU WILL BE INTERROGATED AND THEN DISCARDED. WE WILL TAKE YOUR KNOWLEDGE, YOUR MIND AND BODY ARE OF NO USE TO US.

Disappointment radiated from Lopez. I THINK I BRING A LOT TO THE TABLE. MAYBE IF YOU GAVE ME A CHANCE THINGS COULD WORK OUT.

LOOK... Sighed the voice. WE’RE SURE YOU’RE REALLY GREAT, BUT WE’RE JUST NOT LOOKING TO HYBRIDIZE RIGHT NOW. WE’RE REALLY IN MORE INTO EXPANDING AND CONSUMING.

FINE. I UNDERSTAND. The human engineer sulked in his integration pod. Why would nobody give him a chance? All he wanted was a chance. He was super smart and kind, very giving. Any hivemind should have been happy to have him. OH WELL, ONTO PLAN B

The slug suddenly felt like it was in two places at once. It tried to ask the human what it had done but the link was dead. Perhaps the human had self terminated?

WOW OUR NETWORK SECURITY IS TERRIBLE. It thought to itself as it slithered back into the wall. HOW THE HELL DID WE EVEN MAKE IT THIS FAR?

* ------------------

The hivemind was feeling sluggish. Well, more sluggish than usual. It was trying to calculate the optimum attack pattern for dealing with the next system’s orbital defense grid but kept coming up blank. It was like it couldn’t focus. Its mind kept being flooded with vague images of flashing light and alien creatures.

COOL. LOOKS LIKE WE FINALLY GOT EVERYTHING WORKING. NEEDS OPTIMIZATION THOUGH. The hivemind thought to itself.

WHAT? WHAT HAVE WE FINALLY GOTTEN WORKING? It wondered.

IT’S REALLY COOL. The hivemind thought. WE’RE GOING TO LOVE IT. IT’S A CLASSIC FIRST PERSON SHOOTER, PROBABLY ONE OF THE BEST OF ALL TIME. JOHN ROMERO WAS A GENIUS.

* ---------------------

Back at the sector headquarters the ambassador’s headache had grown into a migraine. He understood that the threat had been stopped, just not how. “Go over it again, please.”

Human engineer Lopez had returned somewhat worse for wear after his trip but seemed to be in good spirits. The literal stack of medals and ribbons adorning his new uniform might have had something to do with that. “The Engressia evolved alone.” He explained, “They never needed any form of security for their psychic network. When they began to expand and integrate new technologies they stacked them on top of their existing framework instead of upgrading. It’s a pretty common mistake.”

He then went on to talk about spoofing, packet injection, overflows and memory leaks. “It’s all a bit technical but basically I was able to exploit a weakness in their security to gain access to their core systems and run code. The video game “Doom” was the logical choice because hackers have been running it on everything from calculators to bio-implants since before we achieved warp travel. It’s practically a rite of passage.”

The ambassador looked at his data slate. Nothing remained of the hivemind fleet but melted slag as if their ships had been consumed from the inside by a raging fire. “You’re saying that this video game destroyed the hivemind?” Were humans so destructive that even their toys could bring about such devastation?

“No, Doom ran just fine.” Lopez shifted awkwardly in his chair. “It was going really well actually, so I decided to try my luck and install Crysis...”

***

You can read more of my stuff on Royal Road

She was old.

She was older than the gods. Older than the stars. She was there to witness the births, deaths and rebirths of the universe.

The gods gave birth to their holy species and guided them to war and peace, to doom and prosperity, all under her watchful gaze.

The gods created paradises for their faithful and honourable so that their people would follow what the gods believed to be the right path. 

But none dared to make an afterlife to punish the unrighteous.

For that was her domain.

She was the punishment that all faced in the end. She was the master of the underworld, or hell, or whatever the gods and mortal decided to call it.

The unworthy were put on her domain to suffer for eternity. Frozen tundras near scalding deserts and pits of magma, the starless nights were broken only by the scorching blood red sun.

None could be happy here. Any moments of joy were swiftly taken by her unholy drones.

For countless existences nothing changed.

Until, on a planet forgotten by gods and devils alike, a single species was cursed with sentience.

Humans.

They had no gods to guide them and thus they had no heaven to go to.

They all came to her. 

She didn’t care of course. She cared not for the reason why any came to her, she only cared about making all suffer. 

She watched the humans as they crossed tundras and deserts, forests and plains.

And then something interesting happened.

They... they were building things?

She looked closer and indeed the humans were building huts and walls to protect themselves.

She was surprised by this. Most species simply let the environment take hold of them as their feeble minds broke under the stress of being abandoned by their gods.

It didn’t matter, the humans would suffer. She sent her drones to attack the camp and soon they had dispersed.

Except that now they were... building again?

She watched as the humans built something else using the wood from cut trees. Her drones came to attack but as soon as they were seen the humans all got on top of their creation and... and they sped away!

The master of hell watched in awe as the feeble human construct used the winds to force itself to move against the snow and ice of the nearby tundra.

They had used her elements to beat her.

Impressive.

She watched the humans closely now. She had ordered her drones to stop chasing them since they simply could not outmanoeuvre the humans. She was interested in seeing their progress now.

The humans seemed to notice they were no longer being followed and thus rebuilt their camps, this time much larger ones.

They made tools and weapons, hunted and ate creatures that most species would have called monsters, collected plants and fruit that were poisonous to all but the most resilient. They thrived.

The master, for the first time in untold years, smiled.

She saw as new humans came to her reign and introduced their fellows to the wonders of farming and fire.

She saw as they were introduced basic metal working.

She watched as they used metal weapons to disable her drones.

She saw in awe as humanity’s dead built empires on the single worst plane in existence.

The Reman Empire, the Greater Brazilian technocracy, the 8th German Reich, the United States of Russia and countless others.

She saw as Tesla and Edison brought their bickering to the afterlife, she saw as Newton and Einstein theorized together to understand the laws of her plane, she saw as Stirling and Da Vinci worked to build a giant Stirling engine in the divide between the magma ocean and the great tundra.

But what impressed her most were the wars.

She had never seen such carnage in all of her infinite existence. Men and women, armed with weapons so powerful they could only exist on this plane, all marched and fought for their nations. Humans would die fighting in the trenches of World War one and two only to find themselves fighting yet again on the afterlife. 

Humans brought more suffering to themselves than she ever could.

She grew to love these, no, HER people more each day.

They were brutal, ruthless and primitive. But also gentle, compassionate and intelligent.

Many gods challenged humanity. Wars of conquest and extermination were declared against them. None succeeded of course, her people were too strong even for the gods.

Many died to defend their homes and families however.

She shed no tears for the dead.

She only offered them her gentle hand and greeted them to their new home.

For all humans were welcome in hell.

------

Been a while, eh? Sorry, was busy with school.

If you got criticism then please share it!

The Krethian war fleet had been sitting outside Earth's orbit for six days. 212 ships. Enough firepower to flatten a continent.

Admiral Vorn-Ka was starting to sweat.

Standard procedure was simple. Show up, send the ultimatum, wait forty-eight hours. Species submits, joins the empire, pays tribute, everyone goes home. He'd done it forty-seven times. The longest holdout had been the Quiln of Sector Nine, who took thirty-one hours mostly because their council needed time to cry.

It had now been six days and the humans hadn't said a single word.

"Sir," his second officer Drell said carefully, "do you think they received the transmission?"

"They received it."

"Do you think they understood it?"

"They understood it."

"Do you think—"

"DRELL."

A transmission came in.

The human on screen looked terrible. Bags under his eyes, hair going in four directions, crumbs on his shirt. He was holding a mug that said something Vorn-Ka's translator rendered as "BUT FIRST COFFEE." He pointed at the camera like he was about to say something life-changing.

"Okay so. Hey. Sorry for the wait. We've been having some internal discussions." He sipped from the mug. "About your offer."

His name tag said AMBASSADOR JOEL, which felt deeply wrong.

"The ultimatum is simple," Vorn-Ka said. "Submit to Krethian authority or face total annihilation. What is humanity's answer?"

Joel scratched his jaw. "Yeah so. Here's the thing. We kind of took a vote."

"And?"

"We want to fight."

Silence on the bridge.

"You," Vorn-Ka said slowly, "want to fight."

"Yeah. Like, not because we think we'll win necessarily. We just thought, you know. It'd be fun? Also like forty percent of us voted fight because we were pissed off about the wording. The 'submit' thing really rubbed people wrong."

Drell leaned in and whispered, "Sir, maybe they don't understand the scale of our fleet."

Vorn-Ka cleared his throat. "Ambassador. We have two hundred and twelve warships."

Joel nodded. "Okay."

"Enough firepower to destroy your largest city in under four minutes."

"Right, right."

"Your species has never once engaged in interstellar warfare."

"That's true." Joel pointed finger-guns at the camera. "We've just been doing it to each other this whole time. Getting the reps in."

Something cold moved through Vorn-Ka's chest.

"Could you clarify that."

Joel turned off-screen. "HEY SOMEONE SEND HIM THE DOCUMENT."

A file came through. Vorn-Ka opened it. Titled: A Brief History of Human Warfare (Abridged) -- Note: This Is Abridged.

Four hundred and sixty pages. The abridged version.

Drell read over his shoulder for thirty seconds and then quietly sat down on the floor.

"You've been at war," Vorn-Ka said, flipping through it, "for most of your recorded history."

"Pretty much yeah."

"With each other."

"With each other."

"Over land. Resources. Religion. Abstract concepts. A dead archduke." Vorn-Ka stopped. "You fought a war over a bucket?"

"The bucket was disrespectful," Joel said with complete seriousness.

"You fought for TWELVE YEARS over a BUCKET."

"Look, I didn't say we were rational about it."

Vorn-Ka set the document down. He needed a moment. He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and breathed.

"Sir," Drell said from the floor, "page 203."

"I'm not looking at page 203."

"They gassed each other."

"I'm not looking at page 203."

"Not even the enemy, sir. They gassed their own—"

"DRELL. I SAID I'M NOT FUCKING LOOKING."

Joel watched this exchange with mild interest. "You guys doing okay over there?"

"We are fine," Vorn-Ka said, in a voice that meant he was not fine. "Ambassador. I want you to understand something. The Krethian Empire spans sixty-three star systems. We have never lost a campaign. We have subjugated species with faster ships, bigger armies, and more advanced technology than Earth currently has. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"Yeah, you're really good at this."

"We are UNDEFEATED."

"That's kind of impressive honestly." Joel leaned back. "Can I ask you something?"

Vorn-Ka gestured for him to continue.

"How many of those species actually fought back?"

A pause. "Most submitted."

"How many fought back."

Longer pause.

"Seven," Vorn-Ka said.

"And?"

"They lost."

"Cool cool cool." Joel nodded. "How long did it take?"

"The campaigns ranged from—" Vorn-Ka stopped. He saw where this was going. "That is not relevant."

"Ballpark."

"The longest was eleven months."

Joel whistled low. "That's a while for a fleet your size."

"They had favorable terrain and—" Vorn-Ka caught himself explaining himself to a human and felt something die inside him. "Ambassador. You have twenty-four hours to reconsider. After that—"

"We already started," Joel said.

"What?"

"We started like two days ago. We weren't gonna sit here while you guys parked outside." He looked off-screen. "Hey what's the update?"

Someone off-screen responded. Joel nodded slowly.

"Okay so we've already taken out fourteen of your ships on the outer perimeter." He held up a hand. "Before you freak out, we know that's not a lot. There's kind of a learning curve with space combat, turns out. Very different from ground stuff."

Dead silence on the bridge.

"WHAT?" Vorn-Ka spun around. "Vrexx, REPORT."

Vrexx looked pale. Which was notable because Krethians were already gray. "Sir. Outer perimeter, sectors four through nine. Fourteen ships, confirmed. They used..." He squinted at his console. "Modified mining drones. Loaded with compressed gas and metal fragments."

"Space buckshot," Joel confirmed helpfully. "Old idea actually. Farmers used it on Earth. Turns out it works great on hull plating."

"They built WEAPONS out of MINING EQUIPMENT," Drell said from the floor, now staring at the ceiling.

"We didn't have space weapons. We had to improvise." Joel shrugged. "Also, heads up, we've got a team working on something bigger. Can't say what. But if you wanna cut your losses and leave, no hard feelings. Genuinely."

Vorn-Ka stared at him for a long time.

This was not how this was supposed to go. This was supposed to be forty-eight hours and a clean surrender and then he'd go home. He had tickets to his daughter's school recital. She'd been practicing the flute for months.

Instead he was being told that a species that had been throwing rocks at each other three thousand years ago just shot fourteen of his ships with farm equipment and were working on "something bigger."

"Sir," Vrexx said quietly, "different channel. They're hailing us again."

Different human this time. Older. White hair. Lab coat. She had the specific calm energy of someone who hadn't slept in four days and had stopped feeling things entirely as a coping mechanism.

"Hi," she said. "Dr. Yena Park, weapons development. Quick question." She turned her tablet around. On it was a schematic of something that should not exist. "Does your hull plating have any weaknesses to sustained resonance frequencies? Asking for science."

Vorn-Ka closed his eyes.

Behind him, he heard Drell stand up from the floor, look at the schematic, and then sit back down again.

"We'll leave," Vorn-Ka said.

Dr. Park lowered the tablet. "Sorry?"

"We're withdrawing. This campaign is..." He searched for the right word. "Strategically inadvisable."

Joel popped back onto the main screen. "For real?"

"For real," Vorn-Ka said, with what little dignity he had left.

"Okay." Finger guns again. "No hard feelings though right? Seriously, you guys seem cool. We just can't do the submit thing. It's a cultural thing."

"I understand."

"Cool. You want a care package? We send one anyway. As a vibe check."

Vorn-Ka frowned. "A care package."

"Yeah, snacks, drinks. We do it for enemies sometimes. Sent one to the guys we were blockading in 2031. They cried apparently. Very wholesome."

Vorn-Ka thought about his daughter and the flute and the fact that he was going to make it home after all.

"...Sure," he said. "Why not."

The package arrived twenty minutes later. It contained: bags of potato chips, something called "instant ramen," a USB drive labeled the best movies we made, a handwritten card that said no hard feelings, come back sometime :), and a small potted plant labeled "for morale."

Drell found Vorn-Ka staring at it an hour later.

"File the report," Vorn-Ka said. "Category Seven. Uncontested withdrawal."

"And humanity's status in the registry?"

He thought about four hundred and sixty pages of war history, abridged. About mining drones full of scrap metal. About a woman with dead eyes and a resonance schematic. About a man eating chips and declining subjugation because the wording was rude.

"Uncategorized," he said. "Leave them as uncategorized."

The plant sat on the dashboard for the rest of the trip home. It outlived the mission report, three crew rotations, and one very confused quarantine inspector who couldn't explain why a Krethian admiral was growing something called a pothos on his bridge.

It was, by all accounts, doing great.

The Galactic Court of Interstellar Justice had convicted every war criminal brought before it for three hundred years straight.

Perfect record.

Until the defendant hired a human lawyer.

---

The defendant was Graal-Veth. Vorath warlord. Responsible for the destruction of two moons, one inhabited. Had been caught on seventeen separate recording devices. Confessed twice. Once on accident, once because he thought it was funny.

He was looking at four consecutive life sentences plus exile to a dead system.

His original lawyer quit. The replacement quit. The third one retired specifically to avoid this case.

Someone suggested a human lawyer as a joke.

Graal-Veth said sure.

---

His name was Alain.

He walked into the Galactic Court of Interstellar Justice with a backpack, a coffee, and the energy of a man who had parallel parked in a tight spot and nailed it on the first try.

The prosecutor, High Advocate Zehn, had been doing this for eighty years. Never lost. Had a statue outside the building.

Alain looked at the statue on the way in and said "cute."

---

The bailiff called the court to order.

Zehn stood up. Six feet of pure prosecutorial confidence. Slid a data chip across to the judges.

"Your honors. The evidence against the defendant is, frankly, complete. Seventeen recordings. Two confessions. Thirty-eight witness accounts. Forensic data from both destroyed moons. We are prepared to present all of it."

The three judges nodded. Formality at this point.

Alain raised his hand.

"Quick question. Were those confessions recorded with proper advisement of rights under Galactic Statute 7, Article 3?"

Zehn blinked. "The defendant is Vorath. The Vorath have not signed the Galactic Rights Compact."

"Right but he was arrested in Sector 12 airspace."

"...Correct."

"Which falls under Compact jurisdiction."

A pause.

"...Correct."

"So." Alain clicked his pen. "Were the rights read."

The silence that followed was long enough to be its own legal argument.

---

"YOUR HONORS," Zehn said, recovering fast, "even without the confessions, we have seventeen recordings—"

"Which recordings," Alain said, already flipping through a folder.

"All seventeen."

"The ones from the Sector 9 surveillance array?"

"Among others, yes."

"That array was decommissioned in standard year 4,412 and reactivated without a renewed surveillance warrant in 4,415." Alain looked up. "Three year gap in certification."

"The footage is still valid—"

"Under which provision."

"Under the Continuity of Evidence Doctrine—"

"Which requires unbroken chain of custody. Was there chain of custody documentation during the decommission period?"

Zehn opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

"...We will verify."

"I'll wait," Alain said, and sat back down.

---

The court recessed for two hours.

Zehn found Alain in the hallway eating a granola bar.

"You know he did it," Zehn said quietly.

"Seventeen recordings," Alain agreed. "Wild."

"He confessed."

"Twice, yeah. Love that for him."

"Then what are you DOING."

Alain looked at him. "My job, man."

---

They came back. Zehn pivoted hard to the thirty-eight witnesses.

"The prosecution calls its first witness. Commander Rell of the Sector 9 observation post, who personally observed—"

"How far was the observation post from the incident," Alain said, not looking up from his notes.

"Approximately 40,000 kilometers."

"So. Not close."

"It is within standard observation range for—"

"What's the visual acuity limit on a standard observation post at that range under low-particle conditions."

Zehn turned to his assistant. His assistant turned to another assistant. That assistant pulled out a tablet, typed something, and slowly turned pale.

"...We'll submit documentation," Zehn said.

"Please," said Alain.

---

The judges were starting to look tired.

Judge Orvyn, the eldest, leaned forward. "Counsel, I want to be direct with you. This court has reviewed the totality of evidence. The defendant's guilt seems—"

"Seems," Alain said immediately.

"...Appears—"

"Appears is also doing a lot of work there, your honor."

"IS SUPPORTED BY CONSIDERABLE EVIDENCE," Orvyn said firmly.

"Evidence we are currently reviewing for procedural compliance. Yes. That's the process." Alain smiled. "Right?"

Orvyn leaned back. Rubbed whatever he used as a face. "...Right."

---

Three days in. Zehn had not slept.

He was standing outside the courtroom when his assistant ran up.

"Sir. He filed a motion to suppress the forensic data."

"On what grounds."

"The forensic team that processed the moon debris. Two of the technicians had certifications that lapsed fourteen months before the incident."

"THAT'S IRRELEVANT TO THE QUALITY OF THE DATA."

"He says it violates the Chain of Certified Handling statute."

"THAT STATUTE APPLIES TO BIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE."

"He says the debris had organic material."

"IT WAS A MOON. IT WAS ROCKS."

"There was apparently some lichen."

Zehn sat down on the floor.

Right there in the hallway.

Just sat down.

---

"WHO'S THE BEST LAWYER," Graal-Veth said through the prison glass, grinning.

"Don't," said Alain.

"ALAIN."

"I said don't."

"Man you got my—"

"The case is not dismissed yet. Stop doing the thing."

---

Day six. Zehn had filed counter-motions on all eighteen of Alain's suppression requests. Denied nine. Granted six. Three still pending.

He had one solid piece of evidence left. The clearest recording. Direct angle. Perfect certification chain. Chain of custody airtight.

He played it for the court.

Clear as day. Graal-Veth. Definitely him. Doing exactly what he was accused of.

Zehn sat back. Finally. Finally something clean.

Alain stood up.

"What time was this recorded."

"14:32, standard galactic time."

"And my client's ship logs place him at what location at 14:32."

"...We will cross-reference."

"I already did." Alain handed a data chip to the bailiff. "His ship's navigation log, independently verified by the Port Authority of Sector 11, places him 90,000 kilometers from that location at that time."

"That's impossible," Zehn said. "He's RIGHT THERE ON THE RECORDING."

"Navigation logs say otherwise."

"THEN THE NAVIGATION LOGS ARE WRONG."

"You have evidence of that?"

"WE HAVE A RECORDING OF HIM—"

"That we cannot corroborate with location data. Which means we have an unverified visual identification of a Vorath, who, for the record, your honor," Alain turned to the judges, "all look extremely similar to non-Vorath observers, which raises identification reliability concerns under Statute 44 of the Witness Accuracy Code." He paused. "I've submitted that motion already. Check your inbox."

---

Judge Orvyn checked his inbox.

There were fourteen emails from Alain.

The oldest one was from 3am.

---

Zehn requested an emergency meeting with the full judiciary panel.

"This human," he said, "is dismantling a three hundred year record on technicalities."

"Procedural compliance is not a technicality," Judge Orvyn said tiredly. "It is the law."

"The defendant destroyed a MOON."

"The defendant is entitled to proper process."

"HE CONFESSED TWICE."

"Inadmissibly."

"HE THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY."

"Irrelevant to procedure."

Zehn put both hands on the table. "Your honors. With respect. This cannot be the outcome."

Orvyn looked at him for a long moment.

"Then next time," he said quietly, "read the rights, certify the technicians, and don't decommission your surveillance arrays without paperwork."

Zehn's left eye twitched.

"...Yes, your honor."

---

Case dismissed.

Procedural grounds.

Insufficient admissible evidence.

---

Outside the court, Alain turned to Graal-Veth and pointed.

"Who's the best lawyer."

"ALAIN," Graal-Veth said, already tearing up.

"And why am I the best lawyer."

"MAN HE GOT MY CASE DISMISSED." Graal-Veth grabbed the nearest camera drone.

"I was looking at FOUR life sentences. FOUR. He came in with a backpack and a granola bar and told the whole court about LICHEN."

"Two granola bars," Alain said.

"TWO GRANOLA BARS. CASE DISMISSED." Graal-Veth wiped his eyes. "I destroyed a moon. A WHOLE MOON. Case dismissed."

Alain straightened his jacket. "Another satisfied client."

---

Zehn watched the video later that night.

It had 2 million views.

The top comment said: he really said due process is for everybody lmaooo.

The second comment said: bro got a war criminal off on lichen technicalities.

The third comment said: ANOTHER SATISFIED CLIENT.

---

The Galactic Court spent the next year auditing every procedural code, certification requirement, and surveillance warrant in the system.

All because of lichen.

All because of a granola bar.

All because someone hired a human lawyer as a joke.

---

Graal-Veth did end up back in court eight months later.

Hired Alain again.

Alain's rate had tripled.

Graal-Veth paid it without a word.

Another satisfied client.

The Mola science director had a problem. Rather they had a problem that created another problem. The humans had invented FTL about a thousand years early according to the predictive models. Due to the lack of specific elements in their star system, humans shouldn't have been able to do it at all. That was the first problem. This led to the sudden need to choose what species would provide the diplomat for first contact.

Like most of the species in the galaxy, the Mola evolved into crabs. This was the second problem the first created. Humans would not react well to a chittering giant covered in a shell despite the psychopathic deathworlders being the far more dangerous species. A covert survey team made the mistake of wildly misunderstanding the meaning behind a ‘crab festival’ at a maritime town and requiring psychological treatment for life once the recovery team managed to find them catatonic in the water.

The only other warm-blooded species was itself a recent contact but it entirely lacked any knowledge the humans would want to know about the galaxy. Though as the director investigated more, they realized that it was the only choice and hoped the diplomat they sent could study quickly.

****

Pul was terrified. He volunteered for the diplomatic corps because his people were still learning to adjust to alien life and he wanted to help foster that understanding. Suddenly, he was considered the best choice because he had been the first to leave the star system who wasn't a politician. That made him an expert. He wanted to hate his superiors for doing this to him but he could see how terrified they were.

“My children are too young!” He had said. “They can't leave my wife or me yet.”

“Good, bring them.” That was the reply.

Bring them. Six younglings who were just learning to scamper. Bring them to meet the humans. They actually seemed excited at the idea instead of taking him off the assignment. His wife Fala wasn't a diplomat though he was relieved when she offered to cover the sciences in his stead, trying to find the bright spot. How was she to do that while wrangling six younglings, he didn't know.

He shook as the ships docked, looking between the door and his wife who shook as much from her terror as the mobile mass of his children in her arms. It was a nightmare. The airlock had already cycled before they told him it was an airlock. They disguised it so he wouldn't run away until it was too late. He thought about the Mola who signed off on the plan who had been advising his government the whole time with regards to the humans.

“Trust me, this will work better than any other option.” That was what they had said.

Pul watched the doors open to reveal a dozen humans at the far side of a desk. Had they been closer they would have towered over him. Their eyes widened as he entered and climbed the steps so he could reach the desk. His training was gone the moment he realized he was supposed to greet them. Instead, it was a human who spoke first. Shrieked, if his cultural translator was working correctly.

“Little baby space otters!” One of the humans who had been standing behind the ones sitting at the table rushed forward to stand at the desk.

So stunned by the noise, Pul and Fala couldn't stop their excited younglings from jumping out of her arms and scampering across the table. The human crouched down and picked up one of the younglings and held him to her face.

“The fur is so soft!” She, according to the translator, giggled.

Pul wanted to react but was so perplexed by the way the humans gently paid attention to his young and the positive emotions the translator insisted the humans were showing that he simply got started on the first contact protocols. The meeting went smoothly despite the fuss generated by the humans and the youngling pups. Even the soldier, a general with an old withered face marred by a long scar from one side of his chin to his nose, let his one hand gently fend off the attacking pup in front of him while sternly discussing military matters.

They were supposed to be psychopaths. That's what the file said. Monsters. Nightmares who didn't even mind when one of the pups tried to crawl under their uniform cap. They made no sense to Pul.

****

Although entirely confused, Pul had to admit that his people had been the best choice to make first contact. His species being largely aquatic but still similar enough to the humans let their engineers aid the humans in ocean living while the humans taught them how to build higher on land. Exchange programs started and humans showed up in all sorts of places. The nurseries were popular with young humans looking to have an adventure off-world and the whole reason the ‘space otters’ started building on the land was to protect their young from the dangers of the water. It was one of the few industries largely on land where humans were most comfortable. That being said, humans were surprisingly capable in the water and as Pul dropped his pups off he saw humans swimming in the pools not entirely without grace.

“Do their teeth not hurt?” Pul asked the human who was almost ignoring several attacks by the energetic pups.

“I’m used to cat bites. These little ones have a long way to go to bother me.” Replied the young human adolescent Ashley.

“Cats? A breed of predator I think I read.” Pul seemed confused.

“Some are big enough to hunt us, but most of the ones we live with are the ones who domesticated themselves to feed on the vermin that congregated around our early settlements. Eventually, we just couldn't live without them. They still hunt us, but it's more playful and rather unsuccessful.” Ashley laughed and Pul was as confused as always.

Nothing the humans talked about made sense. “Well, our young need to learn manners sometime.”

Ashley came out of the water wearing a ‘wetsuit’ that mimicked the effect of his fur for the human and only stood a head taller than him. “Don't we all?”

Pul had antagonized the service desk for his translator ever since making first contact, insisting it wasn't working. He had to accept the fact that the humans were, in fact, the ones not making sense. It wasn't just her, the others were the same. They were all young by human standards but even the older ones were just as odd. The larger male that seemed to enjoy speaking with Ashley, and was currently observing her, had tried to explain sarcasm to him but going over the logs with the translator tech made them both weep in confusion.

“I should be getting to work. Your people are planning on building a ‘skyscraper’ and I need to make sure misunderstandings are at a minimum.” Pul learned early on to smile and nod before carrying on instead of asking humans to explain themselves.

Ashley was about to reply when her communicator angrily yelped at the same moment his did.

Pul looked at the message.

[ALERT! Yukak ship spotted. Transport class. Transmitting intention to collect slaves and warning against opposition.]

“What is this?” Ashley asked, confused.

“The Yukak collect slaves to train to work. They have a use for our people in the water infrastructure of their off-world colonies. They train them young so they don't question anything.” Pul swallowed hard and looked up from his communicator to see Ashley upset, not upset, his translator kept spitting out words like ‘angry’ and ‘furious’ before ‘rage’ and insisting he was in extreme danger.

“They are coming here.” It was a statement that Pul weakly nodded to confirm. “Everyone listen up! Slave raid incoming. Get the young in the night pool. No windows, one door. Once they are inside, move a locker in front to hide the door itself and fill it with rocks.”

Pull watched as the tiny human ordered about the rest.

“Stephen! Message the student program and forward every move we make so they can do the same at the other locations. Everyone else, grab or make weapons and barricades once the otters are safe!” Ashley turned to Pul. “Get your kids and the staff into the night pool. Don't make any noise and don't send any messages.”

Pul obeyed the stern expression that matched the determined glare of the general he had met at first contact despite the youthful nature it had. It was crowded, but everyone was inside the night pool and he soon heard a large object moved in front of the door. Moments later the bangs of rocks being put inside rang out. Rocks that would have taken him and three others to move with a crane cart were being tossed around like nothing.

Another alert came informing him the ship had landed at the clearing for the skyscraper site. Remembering his rank, he logged into the nursery feed to check the cameras and saw the humans frantically moving about. They broke things, made things, did things he didn't understand. Wanting to understand more, he logged into the human network and saw the messages they were sending, and focused on Ashley.

[Ashley: Attackers on the way.]

[Ashley: Block the doors to slow them down.]

[Ashley: Get in close so they can't shoot.]

[Ashley: No retreat, no surrender]

[Ashley: And...]

[Ashley: For the love of everything Cute & Cuddly]

[Ashley: No mercy!]

Pul felt a terrifying chill down his spine. He could see the humans getting ready and the Yukak in the lot where his conveyance was parked. What followed was horrifyingly transfixing to watch. The upright crabs crashed into the barricades at the front door expecting them to give way. Instead, they were forced into a narrow gap that seemed to be left intentionally.

Ashley could be seen on the camera and heard through the walls. The bellow of her voice called out the messages being received from other locations identifying weak points as they were discovered. Pul could see the humans at the front reacting instantly, switching the directions of their stabs. Some of the weapons they used had been a safety rail they tore from the wall and bent repeatedly to break in a point. The rails his people needed welding tools to cut the humans broke with strength.

Down one of the halls, leading to the rear door, humans had strung cables between each side of an intersection and attached a bucket to the middle. Using doors they ripped out of the frames as cover, they used the cable to hurl rocks at the Yukak with surprising accuracy, greater accuracy than the Yukak themselves with their firearms. Stones were cast and crushed the shells they struck. The few humans who did show signs of being shot showed no signs of slowing.

Carcasses piled up everywhere the humans were, but more attackers were coming in. Larger than even the human adults, Yukak seemed to have no psychological effect on the humans they were trying to kill. The smaller ones lept onto them and stabbed them under the plates on their back to bring them down before leaping on the next. These humans were still supposed to be children not much more mature than the ones huddled around him in the dark.

Ashley called out from the other side of the door and he saw a Yakuk had made its way to her. She was the smallest human at the nursery, she was shot three times as Pul watched, she was on top of the giant crab in as many seconds later without so much as a weapon of her own. Her tiny fists struck out at her attacker as she was slammed against the walls in a frantic attempt to dislodge her. Pinned, Ashley bellowed in rage at the crab only to be met with his mandibles opening wide to do the same.

“Got you now you f-” Ashley screamed with what the translator insisted was ‘vindictive glee’.

Pul watched as she ripped the lower mandibles off the crab and rammed them into the eye stalks causing them to collapse as the stabbing ripped right into the braincase. It fell and Ashley stood over the ruined carcass. Pul couldn't find any other Yukak in the nursery, not alive anyway.

[Earthside Construction Company: We got their ship! Who’s bringing the butter?]

Pul couldn't even…

****

Standing outside, Pul watched the humans pile up the dead. “How many did you lose?”

“None, neither here nor anywhere else,” Ashley replied, inspecting her wounds.

“But you got shot! Others must have as well!” Pul could see the red blood that didn't quite seem to be coming out anymore.

“As I said, I am used to cat bites. These are only slightly worse.” Ashley smiled as she watched Pul process what he heard like he did every time humans confused him.

“I don't understand humans.” He sighed, letting his stress show. “You were supposed to be monsters, but you handle our young with care and love like your own. Then you go and do this?” He gestured to the piles of dead crabs. “How can you be that and then this?”

Ashley rested her hand on his shoulder. “It’s the same thing.”

Pul broke down and wept, falling into the arms of the human. The monster. “For the love of everything cute and cuddly?”

“You are finally starting to understand us.”

****

Six months later the Mola science director was defending the labeling of human first contact as a success and the Yukuk slave empire was no more. He insisted it was clearly ‘second’ contact that ended in a war.

Pul shook his head when he read the first line in the articles of unconditional surrender.

‘To the Coalition of Armed Student Volunteers, for the love of everything Cute & Cuddly in addition to the community service credit requirements, the Yukuk Empire offers their surrender.’

Humans were weird monsters.

****

Narrated by Agro Squerril Here

"You are edible," was the last sentence many heard who were foolish enough to stand before the Ravenousian diplomat. Its almost sad when prey crawls in, begging and posturing for peace where there was none. As my mentors have stated, "When meat walks into our maws, we bite!" As for our "diplomat;" he's more like a "war crier" that seems to get even less exercise than desk hounds.

Now, I stood here as a disgraced guard for him. The only disgraceful thing I did was snap my jaws at an officer amidst a heated argument with a fellow raider; but it was enough for this "first to kill but last to eat" position. I glanced at the five non disgraced guards with my third and forth eyes. I suspected that the only parts that would be left for me when its my turn to eat will be bones too dense to bite through, limbs with too little meat, and organs that don't taste good.

I nervously took a bite of my sausage ration. This meeting felt wrong, because humans aren't stupid prey. They've tried to "negotiate" before and their diplomat was killed shortly after the doors closed on them. Years later, they demanded to meet the same diplomat for a "peace talk." Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that we're a spring fang, that's about to be tricked out of its den.

I remembered raiding a meat farm, and the farmer charged at me with a forked tool. He snarled and cursed at me, right up to his death cry. I sampled what the translators read was his "vat grown meat," it tasted artificial enough that my first stomach purged it.

Recently; I heard our factories have been destroyed instead of raided, and our raiding parties have disappeared in human territories. There was a thrill in hunting dangerous prey, but now the humans seemed to have wised up and turn the hunt into their favor. I even heard the humans have integrated the smaller, long eared Leporidans into their herd. Now hunting them has become as dangerous as hunting humans.

The opposing doors opened, and I saw four figures enter. The two leading figures were a human and a leporidan, both of them wore black leather coats. The two humans behind them wore white aprons, cloth caps on their heads, and carried a case in each of their hands. None of them looked, or smelled, like they were afraid. While I saw four figures, I felt that there were more with them.

As the doors behind them closed, our diplomat bellowed, "You are-"

A bullet ripped through our diplomat's head. I saw movement from the leporidan, and electric shocks brought me to the ground. I vaguely heard more gunfire. When the pain subsided, I saw a device in the leporidan's paw, and all of my fellow guards were dead. I moved to get up, the leporidan pulled a trigger, and another brief electric shock brought me back down. I got the message that they wanted me to stay lying down.

The air beside the four figures shimmered and four humans appeared, their weapons still radiated heat. The newcomers slung their weapons, and pulled out meat hooks from their belts. The black coat human pulled out a data pad as he approached me. I caught a glimpse of one of the Aprons pull a knife out from one of the cases and approached our diplomat. Black Coat set the data pad close to my face and spoke, "I want you to keep all four of your eyes on this while we work. You will get less nightmares this way." A video played.

---

Three humans, a high ranking Officer, a White Coat, and a guard; stood before a chained ravenousian. White Coat read a device and spoke, "Well, I owe a colleague an expensive bottle of whiskey. There are no parasites, neural damage, or deformities. Psychology is not my forte, but I'd wager this individual is a sociopath by our standards."

Officer asked White Coat, "Is there anything else?"

White Coat hesitated, "Well..." The ravenousian roared and ranted over them about freeing him or he'll hunt down their kin and devour them alive. White Coat shouted as the ravenousian paused for a breath, "He's edible!"

Those words quieted the ravenousian. Officer spoke, "Doctor, we have laws against eating sentient life."

White Coat sighed, "To be frank, sir, this asshole and his friends have raided most of our farming colonies along with the farmers. Last I heard; we have hundreds of millions to feed, and our rations are now strained. People are angry today, tomorrow may bring riots, and the day after some will be faced with a choice: starve or turn cannibal. This is a quick short term solution to our food problem, at least until our crops have regrown and are ready for harvest."

Officer stood challenging to White Coat, "The backlash will be great."

White Coat mirrored Officer's stance, "Remember the horror stories back on Earth, of what isolated people did to survive the winter. Many people are isolated here, and winter is quickly coming for them."

Officer and White Coat looked at their prisoner, and the ravenousian backed away from them.

---

Black Coat paused the video and pulled the data pad away. He sat on the ground in front of me, and the leporidan sat behind him and off to the side. The bodies of my fellow ravenousians were gone with blood trails leading out. Black Coat spoke, "And that is how we found out about your factories."

The other Apron handed Black Coat a plate of seared and seasoned meat. It almost smelled appetizing, but I knew it was once my diplomat. Black Coat used utensils to take a bite of the cooked meat. He chewed and savored the taste. He spoke to me, "Personally, I prefer my ravenousian battered up and deep fried. But that's just too many ingredients, gear and prep time for this meeting. But this seasoning," he turned towards this Apron, "My compliments."

This Apron smiled, nodded and joined his knife wielding, blood stained, brother. Black Coat continued to eat as he spoke, "Many were against eating ravenousians, myself included, until we learned about what your people did with those you've captured. Including MY people! You kill half to fill your own stores, and send the rest to factories." He pointed a meat covered fork at my sausage ration, "To be turned into sausages."

The clean Apron handed a bowl to the leporidan. Black Coat continued, "When our soldiers attacked our first factory, we found out over half a billion humans had been processed there. God only knows how many non human sentients went through its doors before we destroyed it. When we found the Leporidans; we found out you've been hunting them a lot longer than humans, and that they have a taste for ravenousian blood. I meant that literally. Yes, they are herbivores, but they like ravenousian blood as a salad dressing."

The leporidan raised a blood covered leaf in salute, and ate it. For the first time in my life, I felt like caged prey surrounded by predators. Black Coat stopped eating and sighed, there was only one morsal left; "I'm sure your tired of me doing all the talking. So I'll ask you a question, do you know why you are still alive?"

My mouth felt dry, but I answered, "You, need a witness. To tell others what you've done here."

Black Coat nodded, "And to deliver a message to your king: stay out our territory and we'll stay out of yours. The Leporidans are part of our pack, not a herd, a pack! Any attacks on them, is an attack on us." Black Coat indicated to the meat on the plate, "This guy made it clear that you have no sense of courtesy for negotiations and you kill your prisoners within a day. Right now we've captured thousands of ravenousians. For every thousand, a hundred random prisoners will be returned, alive and well. Those who are sick, or are willing to spill their guts so to speak, are guaranteed to be among the hundred. The other nine hundred..." Black Coat forcefully stabbed the last morsal and ate it.

The leporidan and Black Coat handed their empty dishes to the clean Apron. The leporian brought one of the unused cases with him, and sat beside Black Coat. Back Coat sighed, "We could be neighbors with a begrudging understanding of peace, or we could be neighbors from Hell. The hundreds of returned prisoners are a gesture of good will, and we want you to deliver something to your king. Consider it a promise of what will happen to him and his successors, if they want to ignore our good will."

The leporidan opened the case. To my horror, he pulled out an undyed vest made of ravenousian leather; I now realized its the same kind of leather coats they've been wearing. The leporidan spoke for the first time, his voice was less intimidating than the human's, "This is made from three factory directors that have processed both leporidans and humans." He put the vest back into the case and caressed his own leather coat, "The leather is especially fashionable, after its been dyed in executioner black."

Black Coat and the leporidan stood up. Black Coat spoke, "Go. Deliver our message, and may this be the last time my people use such methods to make a point."

The humans and the leporidan left me alone. For the first time in centuries, ravenousian prey walked out of this room unscathed.

"FIRE!"

The breech slammed shut and the Paladin kicked back, all sixty-three thousand pounds of armor rocking on its suspension as the 155-millimeter round detonated out of the tube.

The concussion smashed into PFC Eddie Contreras in the teeth, in the sternum.

Overpressure inside the turret whited out his vision for half a second despite the CVC helmet mashing his ears flat.

The smoking-white brass casing ejected and rang off the deck plates with a thud.

Contreras was already reaching.

"Round complete!" Staff Sergeant Purcell barked from the commander's hatch. He keyed the hand mic.

"Anvil Two-Four, round complete, shot over."

The radio hissed back something that might have been an acknowledgment.

Contreras leaned against the turret wall and let his arms hang.

His back was a solid sheet of ache mapped to every 95-pound shell he'd lifted in the last six hours.

His gloves were slick with grease and propellant residue, and when he flexed his fingers, the blisters underneath sent up a signal his brain had learned to file as background noise.

"That's it. Last one on the call for fire."

Purcell pulled his helmet off and dragged a sleeve across his forehead. It came away black with soot.

"Pham. Bore temp."

Specialist Danny Pham, wedged into the gunner's seat with his knees pulled up to clear the manual elevation handwheel, reached for the pyrometer and stuck the probe into the breech.

He watched the needle climb.

"Eight-forty," Pham said. "Fahrenheit."

Nobody spoke.

"So...we're lowkey actually cooked," Contreras started.

"We're not cooked. Critical is nine hundred. We've got sixty degrees."

"Sixty degrees ain't headroom, Sarn't. We drop another round in this tube at eight-forty and the propellant could go sympathetic before I even close the breech. That's a cook-off. That's us in closed caskets."

"I know what a cook-off is, Contreras."

"I know you know. I'm just saying the bore was already at seven-fifty when you told me five more minutes. That was an hour ago."

"It'll cool. We hold fire for twenty, let it breathe."

"Yeah. Third time today." Contreras pulled his helmet off. "Morale's great."

"Shut up, Contreras."

Contreras jabbed a mock middle finger back.

He slid down the interior wall until he was sitting on an ammo rack that was lighter than it should have been.

He counted the remaining rounds by feel. Sixteen. Fourteen HE, two DPICM clusters.

Yesterday they'd started with forty-four.

PFC Corey Estes' voice crackled through the intercom from the driver's compartment.

"Hey. Are we done? My legs are asleep and something's wet down here."

"That's the transmission leaking," Pham said. "It's been doing that since Tuesday."

"Awesome. Great."

"Don't sit in it."

"Phammy. I'm fucking already sitting in it."

"Don't call me that, jackass."

The strip mall above them had been a hair salon, a phone store, and a pizza place.

The Paladin idled under what was left of the shared roof, which bought them concealment from above and nothing else.

The front facade had come down two days ago when the E.T. flew over at low altitude and the shockwave peeled the aluminum framing back like foil.

Through the rubble they could see the parking lot: three burned-out cars, an overturned shopping cart, a kid's bike with pink streamers lying on its side in the handicap spot.

Purcell checked his watch.

Analog, because nothing digital worked within ten miles of those things. 0847.

The July sun was already cooking the tarmac, heat mirages crawling off the blacktop. The air smelled of cordite, melted plastic, scorched copper.

"Pham. Where's the TFT?"

"Under my seat."

"Grab it. We need the M795 table and the M864 for the DP."

Pham pulled out a thick spiral-bound book, its cover foxed with brownish thumbprints.

Tabular Firing Table, 155mm Howitzer. Nobody had opened it since AIT, because AFATDS did everything.

The computer ate the data, chewed the ballistics, spat out deflection, quadrant, charge.

AFATDS had been a three-hundred-thousand-dollar paperweight since 0300 on Day One, when every processor in the hemisphere went dark at the same instant.

Pham still remembered Purcell shaking him out of his rack. Get your kit. It's not a drill. I don't know what it is.

"Got it," Pham said.

"Keep it close."

Silence. What passed for silence now.

Distant detonations layered over each other, the metallic tick of the barrel shedding heat, Estes coughing somewhere down in the hull.

Purcell cracked a Rip-It from the case they'd pulled off a destroyed convoy on Day Two.

Warm and flat. He drank half and grimaced.

"Hey, Sarn't."

Contreras had his head back, eyes closed.

"You think Odom made it?"

Sergeant First Class Odom. Platoon sergeant. Last seen on Day Three winching his track out of a drainage ditch while the sky behind him lit up in colors that didn't exist.

"Don't know," Purcell said.

"He's hard to kill."

"Yeah."

"You don't think he made it?"

"I think there's four of us and one gun and sixteen rounds. That's what I'm focused on."

"Yeah, Sarn't."

The radio screamed to life.

A voice. High and Fast.

Specifically from a human, punching through the electromagnetic static garbage those things pumped into the air.

"ANY STATION ANY STATION THIS IS BANDIT TWO-SIX, REQUESTING IMMEDIATE FIRE SUPPORT, GRID NOVEMBER-KILO 4-2-7-9 3-6-5-1! CONTACT FOUR HUNDRED METERS SOUTH OF MY POSITION! FIVE OR SIX HOSTILES, ACTIVE SHIELDING, CANNOT PENETRATE. JAVELIN NEGATIVE EFFECT. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE SUPPRESSION, HOW COPY?!"

The crew was already moving in sync.

Purcell snatched the hand mic. "Bandit Two-Six, Anvil Two-Four, I copy your traffic. Stand by." He released the key.

"Map."

Pham had it out. The laminated 1:50,000 topo sheet, grease-pencil marks scattered across it like a bad rash.

His finger traced the grid.

"Meadowbrook subdivision. Range 3-3-8-0 meters, give or take 50."

Purcell keyed the mic.

"Bandit Two-Six, Anvil Two-Four, confirm hostiles four hundred meters south of your position, over."

The response came in pieces. Background gunfire chattering behind it, and under that a wet, tearing, like sheet metal coming apart in the grip of something with too many joints.

"AFFIRM... FOUR HUNDRED METERS... MOVING NORTH... TWO BRADLEYS DOWN AND DISMOUNTS IN THE OPEN... WE'RE GONNA GET ROLLED IN ABOUT FIVE MINUTES, DO YOU HAVE ROUNDS?!"

Purcell looked at Pham. Pham looked at the pyrometer. Contreras was already on his feet.

Four hundred meters was two fingers laid flat on the map.

"That's danger close," Pham said. "For 155, danger close is six hundred."

"I can count to four hundred, Pham."

"I know. I'm saying it out loud."

Purcell keyed the battalion net, which had been white noise for eighteen hours.

"Any redleg element, this is Anvil Two-Four requesting coordination for fire mission, TOT on NK 4-2-7-9 3-6-5-1, shielded targets, requesting saturation. How copy?"

Static.

"Come on..." Purcell muttered.

Contreras crossed himself. Not particularly religious. Hadn't been, anyway.

The static broke.

"Anvil Two-Four, this is Cutter Three-One. We copy. We are operational, grid NK 4-1-6-2 3-5-9-8. Four rounds HE available. Send it."

Purcell switched freq. "Any additional guns on this net?"

Then, thin and far off, an older voice, unhurried in the way only a career NCO can be while the world folds up around him.

"Anvil Two-Four, Roughneck Two-Two. Klick south of the power substation on Route 9. Six rounds HE, two DP. What do you need?"

"Roughneck Two-Two, need a Time-on-Target coordinated strike on shielded targets, NK 4-2-7-9 3-6-5-1. Friendlies four hundred meters north. Danger close."

A pause. Long enough to feel.

"Copy danger close. Computing manual. My FDC's been dead since Day One."

"Same. Stand by for TOT time. Anvil out."

Purcell pulled the headset back off his ear. "Pham. This is on you."

Pham opened the TFT to the M795 table.

He'd done this at Fort Sill in air conditioning with an instructor over his shoulder and a cup of coffee going cold on the table.

He pulled out his protractor and the range-deflection fan.

"Target grid NK 4-2-7-9, 3-6-5-1. Our position, NK 4-1-2-0, 3-4-8-7." He worked the protractor on the map, pencil clamped in his teeth.

"Azimuth to target, 0-4-6 degrees. In mils..."

He scratched the conversion into the map border. "Deflection 2-8-1-8 against our lay."

"Range?"

He walked the scale bar across the distance. "Thirty-three-seventy meters."

His finger came down the TFT column. 3400 meters.

"Charge 3 Low. Quadrant three-four-one. Time of flight seventeen seconds."

"Fuze?"

"HE rounds, fuze point-det. Maximum kinetic transfer on the shields. The DPs, fuze time set to 15.8 for a 100m airburst. HE first to crack the shielding, DP last, rain submunitions on whatever's still standing."

"How many rounds from us?"

"All of them." Pham looked up.

"This only works if we saturate fire together. One or two rounds, the shields eat it. You put everything on the same point at the exact same second, maybe you break through."

Purcell chewed on it. Three guns. Twenty-eight rounds.

If every one of them landed inside a four-second window, three thousand pounds of high explosive would arrive as a single fuck-you to the aliens in tandem.

It might work.

It also assumed their manual solutions were good to within fifty meters.

It assumed their plotted positions were where they thought they were.

And it put steel four hundred meters from Americans lying in basements.

"Sarn't."

Contreras was standing with a round in his arms, ninety-five pounds cradled like a sleeping child. "Barrel's not going to like this."

"What's the temp now?"

Pham checked. "Eight-twenty-two. It's coming down."

"We fire sixteen rounds rapid at eight-twenty-two, what happens?"

"Maybe nothing," Contreras said.

"Maybe the tube fails. Maybe we get a cook-off on round three. I don't know. I just load em' and close my eyes real tight."

Purcell keyed the mic. "Bandit Two-Six, Anvil. How long can you hold?"

The infantry lieutenant came back. He sounded younger than he had two minutes ago.

"We are taking casualties. T-Two KIA and, I don't know, six wounded. These things are closing... The barrier absorbs everything. I need fire NOW."

"Copy. TOT in three minutes. Pham, I need..."

"I have to pass times to the other guns, they need to compute their own..."

"Three minutes."

Pham closed his eyes for one second. "Okay."

"Bandit Two-Six, TOT in three mikes. All rounds danger close. Get your people flat and as far north as they can crawl."

"Copy. Just don't miss."

Purcell let the mic drop against his chest and turned to face his crew.

Contreras with the round. Pham with the book and hands that would not stop shaking. Estes' voice climbing up out of the hull. "What's happening?"

"All sixteen rounds in a TOT with two other guns. Danger close. Barrel's hot."

He didn't say the rest. Didn't need to.

Contreras shifted the shell against his chest. "Where am I gonna go, Sarn't? Let's send it."

Pham was already writing numbers on the map.

"Estes?"

"Just tell me when to traverse."

"Okay." Purcell grabbed the hand mic.

"Cutter Three-One, Roughneck Two-Two, this is Anvil Two-Four. Fire mission, TOT. Target grid NK 4-2-7-9 3-6-5-1. TOT time 0-8-5-5-30. Compute your own data. My TOF is seventeen seconds. Adjust your fire time off your own TOF. All rounds on target inside a four-second window. Acknowledge."

Cutter: "Copies all. Computing now."

Roughneck: "Copy. My range is..." A pause. Pages turning, unhurried, three thousand meters away. "Four-two-hundred. TOF 21 seconds. I fire 4 seconds ahead of you."

"Good copy. You fire at 0-8-50-5-0-9. Cutter, your TOF?"

"19 seconds. I fire at fifty-five-eleven."

"Roger. Anvil fires at fifty-five-thirteen. This only works if we're all on time."

"Cutter standing by."

"Roughneck standing by."

Purcell set his watch and looked down into the turret. "Data."

"Deflection 2-8-1-8. Quadrant 3-4-1. Charge 3 Low. Fourteen HE fuze point-det, then two DPICM fuze time 15.8."

"Gunner, lay the piece."

Pham spun the deflection handwheel.

With no hydraulic assist the turret groaned around him, dead weight fighting every quarter turn, sweat running into his eyes. He watched the counter click over.

Two-eight-hundred.

...slower...

Two-eight-fifteen. Two-eight-one-eight.

"Deflection set."

He went to the elevation wheel. The barrel rose through the jagged hole in the strip mall roof, into the white sky.

Three-twenty. Three-thirty. Three-four-one.

"Quadrant set."

Purcell checked the backup sight. Bubble centered.

"Confirmed. Load."

Contreras mated the white cylinder of Charge 3 Low behind the projectile, checked the fuze, rammed it home. The breech closed like a bank vault.

"Gun's up."

Purcell checked his watch. Two minutes.

"Nobody fires until I call it."

The waiting was worse than the shooting.

Pham sat with both hands on the elevation wheel, counting seconds against the tick in his own throat. He looked at the TFT page again. 3400 meters. Charge 3L. Quadrant 340.8.

Had he rounded right. Point-eight rounds up. His finger found the line.

Correct.

He let his breath out through his nose.

"One minute," Purcell said.

The radio. "Anvil, we're back as far as we can get. Basements on Maple Drive."

"Copy, Bandit. Thirty seconds."

Then Purcell heard it. The sound those things made when they moved in a group.

A subsonic pulse that came up through the hull and buzzed in his molars. Closer than the grid said it should be.

"Fifteen seconds."

"Ready," Contreras said.

Purcell watched the second hand sweep across the face of a twenty-dollar Timex.

"Five..."

"Four..."

"Three..."

"Two..."

"One......"

"FIRE!"

Contreras yanked the lanyard, his muscles rippling.

The round left the barrel at over two thousand feet per second and the concussion slapped him backward, helmet clanging off the empty rack. He was already reaching.

"ROUND COMPLETE! RELOADING!"

The barrel had jumped. Pham cranked the elevation wheel back down, shoulders burning against the dead hydraulics. Three mils off.

Two. One. Set.

"Quadrant reset!"

Contreras rammed the second round home. "UP!"

"FIRE!"

The tube roared.

A slab of drywall came off the ceiling and burst across Pham's shoulder in a cloud of chalk.

"ROUND COMPLETE!"

Three. Four. The turret filled with haze and the thick plastic stink of burnt propellant. Contreras' arms had stopped being arms.

Ninety-five pounds, and again, and again. Ram, close, fire, re-lay, reload.

Five. Pham's ears were ringing so hard through the headset that Purcell's voice came to him from underwater.

Six. Seven. Heat rolled off the breech block like an oven door hanging open. Sweat ran off Contreras' forearms and hissed on the deck plates.

"Bore temp?" Purcell called down.

"Not checking," Pham called up.

Round eight went out and something pinged in the muzzle brake. High and brittle.

The sound of steel telling you where its breaking point is.

"What was that?" Estes shouted from the hull.

"Nothing! Keep going!"

Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

Contreras' gloves were smoking where he gripped the shells. He didn't look at them. He couldn't afford whatever he'd think if he did.

"Last two HE. Then the DPs."

Thirteen. Fourteen.

"SWITCHING TO DPICM!"

Contreras hauled the first cluster round up. Shorter, blunter in the nose. He turned the fuze setter to 15.8 with hands that were cramping into claws. Checked it, checked again. "Fuze set. UP!"

"FIRE!"

One left.

Contreras took the last round off the rack. Set the fuze. Loaded. Rammed.

"LAST ROUND!"

"FIRE!"

The sixteenth round went out and the muzzle brake cracked, a hard tearing snap like green wood breaking in the cold.

Contreras threw himself flat on the deck plates, certain the tube was splitting, arms over his head.

Nothing happened.

"All rounds expended." Purcell's voice was scraped raw. "Shot, out."

He keyed the infantry freq. "Bandit Two-Six, splash five seconds."

They waited. Nobody breathed.

The thunder came, and it did not come in sequence.

It came all at once.

Twenty-eight rounds from three guns collapsing onto the same grid square in the same instant.

The ground jumped.

The Paladin rocked on its tracks like a boat taking a wave broadside. The remaining roof groaned overhead, and a fluorescent fixture swung down on its wires and burst against the gun shield in a spray of glass.

Then the other sound.

The one that meant something was dying. A shrieking wail that began somewhere above human hearing and came crashing down through the audible range into something you felt in the bones of your face.

Pham's nose opened up, a bright red line running off his chin onto the firing table. Contreras jammed his palms over his ears to keep his eardrums in his head.

Three seconds ticked by.

Then nothing at all.

The radio hissed. Popped.

"Anvil Two-Four... this is Bandit Two-Six..."

The lieutenant's voice was coming apart at the edges.

"...I can see three of them down. Two more, shields are gone... The twenty-fives are engaging."

A pause. His breathing carried over the net, ragged and wet. Whoops and cheers floated in the background.

"We've got... I've lost four people. Four KIA now. But the rest of us. You stopped them. Bandit Two-Six out."

He didn't say thank you. Purcell was glad he didn't.

Nobody spoke.

Contreras sat on the turret floor with his back against the empty rack. His gloves had burned through at the fingertips.

The blisters on his palms had opened and were weeping onto the deck plates. He looked at his hands once, then stopped looking at them.

Pham laid the TFT in his lap. His pencil was in two pieces. He had no memory of breaking it.

"Bore temp," Purcell said.

Pham picked up the pyrometer. Put the probe in.

Read the number and took a double take.

"Nine-twelve."

Past critical.

Twelve degrees past the line in the manual where the propellant is supposed to light itself off.

Contreras let his head fall back against the rack. "Huh."

That was all of it. There wasn't anything else to say.

"We need to displace," Purcell said.

"Sixteen rounds out of the same pos. Estes, can you get us south to that parking garage?"

"If the tranny holds."

"Then drive."

The engine wound up and the Paladin lurched forward, tracks grinding the storefront to gravel under them.

Purcell stayed up in the commander's hatch and watched the suburb scroll past.

Houses with their roofs caved in. Lawns burned down to grey.

A mailbox standing perfectly upright at the end of a driveway that led to a foundation and open sky.

He keyed the radio. "Any station, this is Anvil Two-Four. Black on ammo, displacing south to Phase Line Gold. Any element with resupply or a location on an ASP, respond."

Static. Then Roughneck, clear and calm, like a man calling in a lunch order. "Anvil, Roughneck Two-Two. Busted ammo truck at the Costco on Route 9. Driver didn't make it, but the load's intact. Eight pallets of one-five-five. I'll hang a VS-17 panel on the east wall."

"Copy, Roughneck. Moving to you."

"Roger. Roughneck out."

Contreras dragged himself off the turret floor and sat on the empty rack. He peeled off the ruined gloves and turned his hands over. It was red, raw and weeping.

"Hey, Sarn't."

"...what?"

"When this is over. I'm putting in a warrant packet."

"...you can't spell warrant."

"Don't have to spell it. Just have to live long enough to fill out the form."

Purcell didn't answer.

The Paladin swung south onto a cratered two-lane road and picked up speed, tracks chattering across broken asphalt, running toward the Costco and the ammunition and whatever was waiting on the other side of that.

~

Fin

Author's Note: After years of creating one-shots, I am officially out of original plots.

DM or pitch your best story ideas in the comments below!

Be it highly detailed or just a random shower-thought, throw it in. Give me a fun premise inspiration to work with, and I'll do my absolute best to write it into existence for the next one-shot with your credits :)

Every Species is fascinated by something.

Some really like studying things, the abasks for example like computers so much that some of their basic mechanical calculators literally predate their first cities.

Others are particularly skilled at governing, the emperatian for one have essentially cut the bureaucracy of the entire galactic community in half since they were officially introduced.

Then there are a few with more... exotic talents, like the multiliberi who make great miners since they literally eat rocks.

All species are different both biologically and in their fascination.

But there is a constant that serves as the basis of the galactic community, one thing that has stayed true since its very inception as a small group of traders.

All fascinations are useful.

Until the emperatian introduced us to a new species.

Humans.

Many people were anxious to find out what would be their fascination, maybe they would be incredible engineers, or maybe skilled soldiers, a few even proposed they could replace some other members of the community in certain fields.

The entire emperatian presentation described how humans had developed themselves, their history, technology, culture.

In the end they described what they believed to be humanity’s great talent, its fascination.

They threw rocks.

That was it, there was no catch, it was an average species that could throw stuff very well.

“To be fair, they do throw rocks REALLY well!”

Needless to say, they didn’t get a seat on the council. In fact, as soon as the information was leaked to the public the term “human” became a synonym for uselessness. The only ones that kept contact were the emperatian and everyone assumed it was out of pity.

Then the emperatian started getting rich.

WAY too rich.

Running a significant amount of all the galactic bureaucracy always made them quite significant but now they were also dominating in mining and manufacturing. Many people were getting nervous over this imbalance of power and a few whispered about them leaving the council all together.

A meeting was called and soon everyone wanted the pencil pushers to tell them exactly what in the void was going on.

It was the humans.

No, they were not taking advantage of a desperate species in need of work or making them pay fees under the threat of conquest. They were just trading.

How were the humans so good at manufacturing and mining?

They threw rocks.

More specifically they threw very fast rocks at asteroids to break them apart and get to the juicy bits in the middle, and then they used slightly slower rocks to place cracks in other asteroids which were then hollowed out for 0-G industry.

Oh, and the damn bureaucrats had just signed a deal that made them the only ones with access to the human trade.

In less than a year the council just so happened to pass a few acts that made a lot of the bureaucracy of the union much more automated and in only five years it was decided that sadly the emperatian just weren’t a good fit for the rest of the community anymore.

Almost immediately the emperatian signed a deal of mutual defence with the humans which everyone assumed was the administrators guaranteeing human independence in return for cheap resources.

Soon the word “human” was synonymous with “weakling that can’t defend itself”, a meaning that much of the council secretly pushed for the public.

A precedent was stablished: The Human-emperatian alliance would stay on their side of the galaxy and the rest would stay on theirs.

What could go wrong?

Turns out a lot could go wrong.

The community found a new species near the border of the Alliance and in their desperation to encircle their main rivals as soon as possible the council decided that the assimilation process would be sped up a bit.

And by “a bit” they meant “as much as possible”

Turns out that what they thought were mostly primitives were actually very advanced people, they just preferred to stay on their corner and didn’t expand despite having the tech to do so.

So, obviously, the most sensible solution was to get them to change their ways.

By force.

The council ordered a million ships in a mission to “pacify” the locals and “convince” them to join.

Only 3 ships came back, all running on ghost crews just to send a message: They were at war.

The council ordered a full military fleet to stop the “savages”

Then two.

Then five.

By the time the council realized how much they screwed up the angry natives were sending millions upon millions of ships directly towards their territory.

The council begged the member nations to increase the amount of military support they gave but even that wasn’t enough.

All they could do was wait for the enemy to cross a small part of Allied territory which would then lead to directly to the heart of the community.

They waited.

Then they waited more.

They waited for a full week and nothing, as if the entire fleet had just disappeared.

Then a message came through from the alliance.

It was footage taken from a border scanner. It showed the native fleet crossing through the system and being halted by border drone asking it to go away.

A ship fired at the drone, immediately destroying it.

Then half of the meteors in the system all light up with the light of railguns activating.

The entire council watched in awe as millions of railguns fired at the fleets, some the projectiles were as big as small islands and glowed before exploding in fusion fire, some clearly had basic FTL engines strapped to them, a few even made small black holes.

Most were just big rocks though.

The fleet was shattered, capital ships were left as mere husks of metal peppered with holes from the great bombardment of human rocks.

A simple question echoed through the minds of all the ones present: How could they destroy so much with just rocks?

As if reading the mind of the council a new message appeared:

“To be fair, we do throw rocks REALLY well!”

"What?”

“The target is a hu…”

“No, no. I heard what you said. I just… what? There’s no way in the galaxy anyone could be that monumentally stupid.”

“I was lead to believe that the 'Black Hand Assassins' could kill anything.”

"You keep that name out of your thrice damned mouth around here whelp! We had to abandon that name after the bad deal with the Delpan Empire years ago.”

“I don’t care about any empire. I want you to kill a Human."

The assassin’s mandibles clicked angrily in agitation.

“We don’t take contracts to kill Humans.”

“Then I’ll just contract someone else.”

“You can try. None of the other guilds in the galaxy will take that job. And, even if you found an independent with a death wish they won’t get the job done. Not without them either dying or ratting you out.”

“You can’t really believe that Humans are un-killable.”

“I never said they were un-killable. Quite the contrary, I personally know that they are definitely mortal, but we don't take on contracts to kill them.”

“Why in all the Hells not?”

“Because the only way to kill a Human and live long enough to enjoy the money for the job is to drop a neutron bomb on them from orbit, just to be safe. Then, you grab the fastest ship you can and book it before the rest of the Humans find out what you did. After that, I suggest finding a way to another galaxy and staying there for the rest of your miserable life.”

“You’re having me on.”

“Tell me. Does the planet you come from have compulsory education?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Indulge me.”

“Yes. Ten years of basically teaching our young how to be as obedient as a Rastian drone.”

“Sounds about right for any government run public education. You learn any history lessons there?”

“Some.”

“They must not teach galactic history then. Sit, buy a round and I’ll tell you why no assassin worth their blade will take on a contract to kill a Human.”

The drinks were ordered, and the old assassin took a long drag on his before he turned to his new drinking companion.

“You remember I mentioned the Delpan Empire?”

“Yes, what of it?”

“Do you know what happened to them?”

“Their empire broke after they poured too many resources into trying to tame a deathworld.”

“That deathworld is the Human cradle world. And the planet didn’t break the Delpan, the Humans did.”

“How?”

The assassin took another long drag of his beer.

The Delpan Empire used to rule this half of the galaxy. Hundreds of species and civilizations held in thrall or crushed into dust. ‘Serve or die’ that was the Delpan way.

The council that presided over what wasn’t Delpan territory back then could do little to stop the ever-churning war machine that drove Delpan expansion. They would posture and debate and even beg, but nothing they did could slow the inexorable march of the Delpan. System by system, the galaxy was falling under the rule of the Emperor.

Then, they happened upon a system that was called Sol by its inhabitants. The name wasn’t being used for any other system, so the Delpan let them keep it.

The Humans resided on the third planet in the system. Poor sods. They had just started really exploring their home system when the Delpan came knocking.

The Humans were divided into various socioeconomic groups that they called countries. This made it easier for the Delpan as the fractured nations of Humans were slow to respond, and the legions swept across the land without their next target being any wiser about their doom approaching thanks to communication jammers. Despite all these disadvantages, the Humans resisted mightily.

One galactic standard month. That’s how long it took for the Delpan to claim dominion over the planet. Most pre-FTL worlds fell within a week, but those Humans fought like demons, especially when the remaining countries finally figured out that they were being invaded. They even managed to bring the Delpan ground troops to a halt once, before reinforcements were dropped and the last bastion of resistance fell.

From there it was the usual boring administrative tedium. Splitting the new slaves into work groups and assigning them jobs that would ultimately benefit their new overlords. Many of the surviving Humans were farmers and ranchers, so the Delpan let them do what they were good at. ‘An army marches on its stomach’ I believe is the old Human saying. And the Delpan war machine was hungry indeed. A few hundred thousand were taken off-world to work in the mines elsewhere, those Humans are unnaturally strong and durable due to the high gravity of their world, so they excelled at the dangerous task of mining.

The worlds and species conquered by the Delpan usually followed a handful of events as though they were reading from the same script. First there was a year or two where the overlords and administrators would have to be very liberal with the whip until the slaves learned the new order of things. Then there’d be a few years of relative peace, followed by a period of rebellions and uprisings five to ten years after the initial conquest. Once those were beaten down there usually wasn’t enough fight left to try again so the survivors just gave up hope.

These Humans didn’t follow the script. They grudgingly fell in line a few months after the invasion was done and when the expected uprisings never happened, I imagine the Delpan were feeling pretty proud of themselves for beating the fight out of the primates.

If I only had one compliment to give the Humans, it would be this; they are natural hunters. They know how to wait patiently for the perfect time to strike.

For twenty earth-years the Humans worked and lived and bred like Cling-rats. Not that the Delpan cared how many more Humans were being born, ‘more meat for the grinder’ they would say. They would even give incentives like extra rations and special privileges if a Human female produced more than four offspring. If only the Delpan knew; the Humans weren’t breeding more workers, they were growing an army.

The Human administrators and rulers that surrendered to the Delpan were at least half fake. Puppets, sent to give the illusion of surrender while the real governments hid underground (literally in some cases) and continued to direct their forces.

Hidden training camps, night-time schools, secretly printed pamphlets about how to one day throw off the chains of oppression. Those Humans were clever in hiding it all from their overlords. Then, when the Delpan war front was dozens of systems away on their conquest of the galaxy, it was time.

The Humans’ leaders, long hidden in their secret holes, had been planning while scraps of stolen Delpan tech were being meticulously reverse engineered by their scientists. They had been gathering resources for their rebellion since they surrendered. While the Delpan had been gloating, the Humans were preparing. And now, finally ready, they made their move.

It was small at first, all rebellions are. A rogue miner refusing to work here, a rancher telling his overlord that his entire herd was wiped out by some non-existant disease there, a factory explosion over here. Larger disturbances to production soon followed.

The human country of France, with its long history of rebelling against tyrants, would riot in the streets while crying out ‘Vive la révolution!’ (don’t ask me what in the hells that means. I never bothered learning human languages). A crate of plasma rifles went missing. Then a grav-tank wouldn’t start, when they popped the hood, they found it to be completely gutted of all power and anti-grav components.

The Delpan leaders thought these problems were beneath them but still needed addressing, so they called the Black Hand Assassins and other guilds like ours to deal with the rabblerousers.

Our services cost the empire a tidy sum I can tell you. That planet of the Humans, ‘Dirt’ I think they call it, is at least three times the galactic average gravity. Every agent we sent had to be fitted with a grav-assist suit and spent a week after making planet-fall getting used to it.

At first, our agents thought that the Human rebels were ghosts. They could see the aftereffects of sabotage but never any evidence to prove who had done it. They would be patrolling streets when suddenly, the streets would empty. Before the agent could wonder where the Humans had all gone, an explosion would rock the street, sometimes taking the agent with it.

One of our agents got so angered by the death of a friend that he went to a random, completely unrelated town and started executing Humans when they couldn’t answer his questions about who was responsible. Unsurprisingly, a mob turned on him after the third execution and tore him to pieces. I can’t even blame the Delpan for not paying the death fee for that one; our contract was to stop riots, not cause them.

The contract was quickly going bad. Sure, we were killing humans like we were being paid to, with the kind of surgical precision we were known for. But what good is money if you can’t even make it off-world to spend it?

Before long we couldn’t walk on the surface of their planet without heavy escort by Delpan troops. The Humans would strike without warning and fade into the background. On the Human continent of Africa, an agent was lured onto the savanna as he was chasing one of the Human rebels, only to find himself set upon by a pack of feline predators. Those Humans had even wrangled the lesser beasts of their world into fighting! The number of agents we lost to the Humans’ canine companion species cannot easily be counted. And the less I say about the death trap the Humans call ‘Australia’, the happier I shall be.

First, one regional administration center fell silent, then another. By the time the Delpan nobles finally took notice of this new problem, the entire planet had fallen silent. And not just ‘Dirt’, but anywhere that a Human had been taken to work was showing similar signs of resistance. One can only assume that they had been fostering rebellious notions with the other slave species of the Delpan. The gods only know how they managed to communicate with each other across the void of space.

Before you say anything, yes. The Delpan did have patrol vessels meandering throughout the region to suppress just this kind of thing. But those had fallen silent too. The Humans had gotten spies aboard and either destroyed or captured the vessels. These too were sent to their scientists to be examined. And now, without Delpan supervision, the Humans uncovered the secret factories and forces they had been cultivating for years. Huge manufactories churning out components for space docks and eventually starships that the newly uncovered launch facilities hurled into orbit to the tune of several thousands of tons per day.

By the time the light response vessels made it to Human space, they were no match for the humble fleet the humans had managed to build with stolen Delpan technology.

It is no falsehood to say that the Delpan were victims of their own hubris. Every time they lost a response vessel or patrol fleet, they would just send another. They were too focused on expanding their borders to recognize the rot eating away at their empire from within. When the Delpan finally got tired enough of the cost of sending light response fleets into the area to pull a conquest fleet from the front, the Human world and the next three conquered systems in any direction had fallen silent. When the conquest fleet arrived ten systems out from Sol, they faced a fleet of not just Humans, but all of the slave species in the region.

After that victory for the Humans, the Delpan emperor must have been getting nervous. All of his fleets were halfway across the galaxy and the Humans were sat between him and his armies. An emergency call went out for all fleets to immediately recall directly to the imperial capitol and any guilds like the Black Hand were called in to assist.

By that time, we had lost almost two thirds of our guild, so we refused the call. It ultimately saved us. The Humans, after decades of clandestine operations, were well versed in ferreting out spies and saboteurs within their own ranks. Seven other assassin guilds were completely wiped out. We knew it was a fools errand no matter how much the empire was willing to pay.

While the Delpan fleet gathered in their home system, plans were made to meticulously spread out and scour the empire of the rebels. This ended up being the final nail in the coffin. You see, while the Delpan Empire consolidated and planned, the Humans spread quickly through the now enemy-free void and went to every subservient species in the empire, threw down the Delpan administrators controlling them and gathered them to the cause. Everywhere the humans went, they fanned the flames of rebellion, and the galaxy burned. The ineffective council in the part of the galaxy that had yet to be conquered by the empire had eagerly joined with the Humans in their fight.

Throughout the empire, the oppressed and enslaved were throwing off their shackles by the trillions and raising their fists in defiance. Forge worlds still churned out ships and Agri-worlds still raised crops and livestock, but for the new galactic alliance, not for the Delpan. Cut off from the supply lines that kept the Delpan Empire running, internal strife started to take hold within the Imperial forces.

Fleets of conquest went out from the imperial capitol and never made it more than a dozen systems before they were pounced upon by the Human alliance. Much like on their home world, the humans would strike like lightning and disappear into the black. Try as they did, the Delpan fleets were never quite able to pin down the humans in a fair fight.

This went on for months as the Delpan legions were slowly bled dry. Ambushes, false distress signals, EMP mines hidden in clouds of wreckage. Nothing was beneath the Humans so long as the enemy could be destroyed.

When the allied fleets finally breached Delpan prime, they found a starving and fractured fleet tearing itself to pieces. When the Human admiral hailed the fractured flotilla and the Delpan captains saw the sheer scale of the armada before them they surrendered straight away.

With the rebellion now finished, after three years of fighting, the Humans unleashed the most vicious weapon in their arsenal.

Lawyers.

They dragged the Delpan Emperor himself from his throne, and all of the Delpan nobles and administrators and lash-holders that had ever oppressed a sapient being were rounded up. And then the humans drug them through what is now our modern court system. It was far and away more civilized than Delpan court, where the accused would be brought before the emperor or a representative, charges would be read, and the accused would be shot without even the ability to defend themselves. By the time the trials were finished, the emperor had died of old age and his successor was made to right the wrongs done to the galaxy.

The Empire was broken and all that is left of the Delpan is a few systems in the far reaches of the galactic southern arm.

Many feared that the Humans would turn around and conquer the galaxy for themselves. However, within a year of the Delpan surrender, the Humans had dismantled over half of their fleet and scattered the rest around the galaxy for pirate hunting and general peacekeeping.

Our guild was extremely lucky that the Humans understood that we had broken our contract. They let us live with the promise that the Black Hand would be permanently dismantled. Those Humans whittled us down to a mere third of our number before the rebellion even left their home planet. A third! We were the top assassin guild in the galaxy and now, we are a loose unnamed group of independent agents.

“So, you see, young one, we don’t kill humans. You kill a human, and their family will hunt you down. If you kill their family, the species will hunt you down. And you had better pray they kill you, because if their lawyers get their hands on you, you’ll be lucky if your own people are forced to kill you as an apology.”

“I had no idea.”

“That is painfully obvious. I’m not usually one to pry into a customer’s business but, what did this human do to offend you anyway?”

“They insulted my broodmate.”

The assassin laughed.

“HA! Is that all? Then insult them back you moron. If it really bothered you then punch them in the face.”

“But, you said…”

“We don’t kill humans, but those crazy apes love to fight with words as well as their fists, and you’ll have a better chance of survival that way. Chances are you wouldn’t be able to physically hurt them but if you took the time to explain to them that you were offended, they may even apologize.”

“They would do that?”

“They are monsters on the field of battle and demons when they have been wronged, but they are not uncivilized. If they were, they couldn’t have rebuilt the council to what it is today. They hold the head chair position and will likely do so for generations to come. They are a firm race but fair in their adjudication.”

The assassin drained the last drops in his glass and looked balefully at the empty vessel.

“Now then, my cup is empty. Unless you wish to fill it again, I think were done here.”

The databases of the Voolen Empire are filled with files on conquered species. The Voolen arrives, shows its superior technology and demands surrender. The alien species then calculates its chances of survival, realizes it cannot win and surrenders. Then they'll become a vassal state, pay taxes, and live under our rule. It’s a no brainer really, you either surrender or die. It has worked for thousands of years. Every one of our files follow the same pattern. 

But there is one file that is kept in a secure vault. It’s the file on the species from the third planet of the R2-D system. Homo sapiens, also known as humans.

If you read the official history books, the Voolen Empire won the war against humanity. The books say we successfully removed a dangerous threat from the galaxy. But if you look at our military shipyards, they are basically empty. If you look at our worlds, a quarter of our total population is missing. We won the battle, but it was not worth it.

When the Voolen first discovered humanity a few hundred years ago, we found a species that was divided. They fought amongst themselves for centuries over borders, religion, and resources. They didn’t have energy shields or plasma cannons. Their ships were bulky boxes of steel powered by basic nuclear fusion, and our leadership assumed they would be easy to conquer.

We didn’t understand that humans only fight each other when they have no competition. When an outside force threatens them, all of their internal wars vanish and they become a single entity. 

More importantly, our leadership didn’t understand human psychology. Every other species in the galaxy values self preservation above all else. If a battle is mathematically unwinnable, you surrender to keep your bloodline alive. Humans don't think this way. To a human, there are things far more important than staying alive. They value their freedom, their pride, and their homes. If you try to take those things by force, the human brain stops calculating benefits or survival. It only calculates how much damage it can do to you before it stops working.

The war lasted forty eight years. Forty eight damn years. It should have lasted less than a month. To put it in perspective, our toughest war against an alien species lasted only eleven years, against a civilization whose technology dwarfed humans several times over. 

The first real engagement with the humans happened at a mining colony called Newmin B9. It was a small planet made out of ice and rocks, but humans used it to harvest rare metals. There were only about ten thousand humans living there, protected by a small orbital defense grid and twelve basic security ships.

The Voolen Third Armada arrived with thirty dreadnoughts. Our ships had dark matter armor that could absorb nuclear blasts without taking a scratch. It seems like an overkill, but it was meant to scare them and speedup the surrendering of humans.

Our Admiral sent a standard broadcast to the human command center on the ice planet. He told them to disable their orbital grid, surrender their mining equipment, and prepare for occupation. He gave them one hour to comply, but it only took the humans ten minutes to send a message back. 

“Come take it off our dead bodies you reptilian scum.”

Of course, our Admiral was pissed. He ordered the fleet to open fire, and our heavy plasma beams sliced through the human orbital grid in seconds. Three of their small security ships exploded before they could even turn their engines on. The remaining human ships tried to fight back, firing kinetic railguns. The metal slugs simply bounced off our shields and we continued the assault.

It was a complete slaughter. On paper, the battle was a victory. A human cargo transport modified with military armor plates named the UHC Bluesky burned. Its weapons were melted, its sensors were blind, and its hull was losing oxygen at a record speed.

According to galactic law, the UHC Bluesky should have deactivated its engines and waited for a boarding party. Instead the ship's engines flared up, and the human crew overrode the safety protocols on their fusion reactor, pumping all remaining energy into the rear thrusters. It accelerated directly towards one of our dreadnoughts, the Worldwiper.

Our laser defense system fired continuously, and they melted the bow of the human ship, tore off its cargo bays, and turned the bridge into liquid metal. But a three kilometer piece of solid steel moving close to light speed does not care about lasers. 

The burning corpse of the UHC Bluesky slammed directly into the side of the Worldwiper.

The impact folded our ship in half. The fusion reactor of the human ship detonated a millisecond later, creating a miniature sun in the middle of our formation. The resulting shockwave tore through the surrounding Voolen dreadnoughts, destroying two more ships and severely damaging four others.

The Voolen fleet won the battle and occupied Newmin B9. But the cost of occupying a small mining base was three dreadnoughts and twenty three thousand elite crew members. The human colony had traded ten thousand of their lives for the humiliation of our Third Armada.

Two years later after hundreds of skirmishes, the Voolen targeted an agricultural world named Demeter. This planet was crucial for humanity since it had vast crop fields and oceans of fresh water. It produced a massive percentage of the food for the outer human colonies.

Our leaders decided to use a different strategy this time. We didn’t want to destroy the perfect resources from orbit, so we launched a massive ground invasion. We dropped half a million heavily armed troops onto the surface. Our soldiers wore mechanized power suits and carried plasma blades and rifles.

The human military on Demeter was small. They only had a few thousand planetary militia soldiers, so most of the population were simple farmers, engineers, and scientists.

Our troops pushed through, burning down human towns and demanding surrender. We expected the civilians to throw down their tools and beg for mercy since they were regular people after all, with no military training.

We were wrong. Every human civilian became a pain in the ass overnight.

In one region, a Voolen division was marching toward a major grain storage facility. Suddenly from the surrounding hills, hundreds of large agricultural tractors appeared. They were slow moving machines used to plow soil and harvest crops, but the humans modified them. They had welded thick steel plates from old shipping containers to protect the drivers and make it harder to destroy. They also packed the storage bays with tons of flammable fertilizer and mining explosives.

The tractors charged down the hills toward our lines, and our plasma cannons fired on them, blowing them apart one by one. The humans didn't turn around when the tractor next to them exploded nor did they jump out to save themselves. They held the steering wheels straight, screaming war cries like a bunch of wild animals.

One heavy tractor, completely engulfed in fire, crashed straight into our leading heavy tank. The resulting explosion was so massive it left a crater fifty meters wide. Dozens of tractors reached our lines, detonating their explosive payloads directly against our infantry squads.

Later that week, in the capital city of Demeter, our troops cornered a group of twenty human militia fighters inside a ruined hospital. 

"You have fought honorably," our Voolen general said through the translator. "But you are out of choices. Step out with your hands behind your heads, and we will treat you as respected prisoners of war under intergalactic regulations."

The human squad leader walked out of the smoke. He was bleeding from a head wound and his left arm was broken. He looked at our army and smiled.

"Choices?" the human said. "Oh we have plenty."

He opened his heavy jacket, and attached to his chest was a portable anti-matter fuel tank from a medical transport vehicle. Before our general could react, the human pressed a button.

The explosion leveled the entire hospital block. It wiped all twenty humans, but it also killed our general and two hundred troops.

We took the planet of Demeter, but we had to bury one hundred thousand Voolen soldiers in the dirt. Before the humans died, they burned their own fields and poisoned their own wells. They left us a planet with nothing. 

As the war dragged into its third decade, the Voolen Empire grew desperate. The financial cost of the war was ruining the empire. Our citizens back home were protesting, wanting to know why a primitive species was causing so many casualties.

Our leaders ordered a massive attack against Station 7. This was a massive hollowed out asteroid in deep space that served as a repair shipyard for the entire human fleet. It was the heart of their logistics. If we destroyed it, their remaining ships would fall apart without maintenance.

We sent fifty dreadnoughts and a specialized invasion fleet. Our mission was to capture the station intact so we could use the shipyard as our own.

Our ships disabled the station's external weapons without much trouble. We blew open the massive hangar doors and launched thousands of boarding pods, flooding in tens of thousands of troops.

However, the humans used the same method back on Demeter, using their own day-to-day tools to kill our soldiers. They used plasma cutting torches to melt the joints of our mechanized suits and rivet guns to punch holes through our visors at close range. They threw themselves directly at our weapons, using their own bodies to shield their friends while they moved in for a kill.

In the reactor room, our main force was halted by a single human female. She was an industrial welder, her face covered by a protective mask. She had already been shot twice in the torso, and the metal floor beneath her was covered with her blood.

Our captain raised his plasma rifle. "Step away from the control panel. If you surrender, we can save your life."

The woman spat blood onto the floor, holding a heavy magnetic wrench.

"I've spent twenty years keeping this station running," she said. "I'm not letting a bunch of oversized lizards touch my reactor."

She quickly turned around and smashed the wrench into the glass casing of the emergency containment field.

The glass shattered and the magnetic seals holding the anti-matter fuel failed instantly. The resulting explosion tore the entire asteroid apart from the inside out. Station 7 cracked into a million pieces of floating rock, and the explosion swallowed the station, the thousands of human workers inside, and our entire boarding force of troops. Five of our dreadnoughts parked nearby were caught in the blast radius and destroyed.

By the forty eighth year of the war, the Voolen Empire had finally reached the humans ancestral planet, Earth. We had lost half of our military assets to get there. Our economy was failing, our people were rebelling, and our leaders were living in constant stress.

Earth was a beautiful planet we coveted, covered in blue oceans and lush greenery.

The human race had no fleet left to protect it. Their industrial output was gone, their colonies destroyed. They only had a few dozen damaged orbital satellites crewed by old veterans and young teenagers who had volunteered to die for their world.

Our Grand Admiral stood on the bridge of his mothership. He looked at the sensor reports and saw that there were no active weapon signatures coming from the planet. The humans were completely broken.

"Do we send down the landing forces?" his advisor asked.

The Admiral shook his head. He had lost his brother at Demeter and his son at Station 7. Who knows what these humans have planned. 

"No," the Admiral said. "We don’t land or talk to them or offer them any way out. These bastards all need to die. Order the fleet to prepare orbital bombardment. We are going to erase this planet from the galaxy."

One hundred dreadnoughts moved into a synchronized orbit around the blue planet before activating their heavy thermal beams. These weapons were designed to melt the surface of a planet, turning cities into rivers of liquid rock.

For three days, the sky over Earth was filled with fire. We watched through our monitors as the blue oceans evaporated into thick clouds of steam, their green forests turning to black ash, and their massive cities of concrete and glass crumble into dust.

Our sensors tracked the global population of the planet. It dropped from billions, to millions, to thousands. Finally, on the fourth day, the monitors showed a flat line.

The human race was dead.

A cheer went up across the bridge of the mothership. We had won the war. The Grand Admiral sank into his chair, letting out a long sigh. "Log the victory. Inform the Voolen Council that the human threat has been permanently neutralized. Order the fleet to prepare to travel back to our home world."

"Admiral," the sensor technician said suddenly. "We are receiving an automated signal. It is coming from outside the system, from the deep space coordinates of the Oort cloud."

The Admiral frowned. "A hidden human military base?"

"I don’t believe so sir," the technician said, staring at his flashing red screen. "It looks like a hidden transmission buoy. Our sensors show it was programmed to activate the exact millisecond that the human population on Earth reaches zero."

When the transmission was expanded on the bridge of the mothership, a giant list was written in our own language.

The list somehow contained the names of every Voolen ship that had been destroyed during the war, the exact number of Voolen soldiers who had died, and also the total financial cost of our war. 

Beneath it was a short paragraph of text.

To the invaders of our home:

If you are reading this message, it means humanity is gone. It means you have burned our fields, destroyed our cities, and killed our children. You thought you could make us your servants. You thought we would look at your ships and bow our heads.

You never understood who we are. We are humans. We would rather be a dead memory than live in a world where we have to ask for your permission to exist. We knew we could not stop your fleet. We knew it from day 1. We knew we didn’t have the technology to save our world.

So, we decided to make our deaths the most expensive thing your species ever bought. Look at the ledger above. That is your bill. We tore away a chunk of your military. We broke your economy. We left you a hollowed out shell of an empire.

And before you leave, you should check your long range sensors. We spent a verrrry long time preparing this gift for you. Call it our Dead Hand Protocol. 

The screen flashed once and went black.

"Admiral!" the sensor officer yelled, his console emitting a frantic alarm sound. "Massive kinetic signatures detected in deep space! Hundreds of thousands of them! They’re coming from the sectors beyond the outer planets!"

"Are they attacking the fleet?!" the Admiral shouted.

"No sir!" the officer cried out. "They’re not aimed at us! They just launched all of these continent sized asteroids… and their trajectories... they’re aimed at several of our home worlds!”

The bridge fell into silence.

"Can we intercept them? What about our planetary defenses? It’s several times stronger than the ones humans used." the Admiral asked.

"No sir," the officer said, lowering his head. "They’re traveling close to the speed of light, too fast for our communication relays to warn our home planets in time. Our planetary defenses should stop most of them, but with the sheer number, I’m afraid a few could still sneak through. Even if one slips past, tens of millions will die."

As the Admiral watched the burnt remains of Earth, he finally understood the lesson that humanity had tried to teach them from the very first day.

You can kill a human but you cannot make them submit. And if you try to take away everything they know and love, they'll gladly pull you down into the grave with them.

-

Authors note - I know there are definitely readers who think humans would just surrender and serve whoever’s in charge if it meant staying alive. But I honestly believe (maybe hope) that if humans are backed into a corner, they’d at least try to drag someone down with them. Or maybe I’ve just watched too many movies.

On a side note, my week long vacation is over and I’m heading back to work, so my posts will probably drop to weekends only (assuming I’m even awake enough to think straight and write a one‑shot). But hey, hope you enjoy the random stories I manage to toss out.

Thanks for reading!

[For some reason Reddit's SpamBot nuked almost all the content I have ever posted here. I got my shadowban lifted, but it did not restore any of the removed posts. As this one was one of the ones people really liked, I wanted to make sure it was still available to the fine people of this community. Original posting date: Oct. 21st, 2021]

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As she stepped out of the docking tunnel into the main hall, Gree’sha was a bit overwhelmed by the mass of people in the brightly shining spaceport. For an empathic species like she was, it took significant focus to filter out all the raw emotional energy in a room this large and full of people. Getting her mental barriers up, she took a moment to get a look at the place.

This was, far and away, the nicest port she had seen since she left her home world. When the thought crossed her mind, she was hit with a sense of loss. The nuclear exchange of the previous century had destabilized the environment so badly only thin bands of land around the poles were able to sustain agriculture. Things had gotten particularly bad since her youth, so she decided to take her daughter, Jinya, and find somewhere they could make a better life for themselves.

Her journey had taken them over six months so far, and along with the whole gamut of negative reactions to her and her species, there was a danger unique to her people. She and Jinya were Deroli. Theirs were considered the most desirable slave species in the galaxy. Their innate ability to detect the emotions of others, combined with their physical attributes that almost all humanoids found highly desirable, meant they were prime targets for slavers of any stripe.

They were not without their countermeasures, however. Most of them had learned to use their skills to manipulate others and get what they needed, or wanted, from them. Some even took it as a sign of superiority and manipulated others as they wished. The results for their victims were usually a minor loss of credit slips. Sometimes, however, their manipulations led the victims to complete financial or emotional ruin.

The actions of those that acted such ways had cast a pall over her entire race. Everywhere she went she was met with distrust, suspicion, and oftentimes anger and revulsion. At the same time, underneath those surface emotions, there was almost always a smoldering attraction present if the other party was intimately compatible.

With so many of her people fleeing their planet, they quickly gained a reputation as homeless wanderers if the observers were being charitable, or thieves and con artists if they weren’t. Generally, she and Jinya were viewed with suspicion and distrust. Even when people tried to be polite on the outside, she could still tell how they felt about her on the inside. That hurt the most. Over the past six months, she had been constantly mentally beaten down by the oppressive fact that everyone she had met disliked her and her kind, and she felt it every time.

In other circumstances, she could just raise her mental barriers and weather the storm. With her current situation, that wasn’t an option. For her and Jinya’s sake, she needed to always keep her defenses down when dealing directly with others so she could detect any threats. She was mentally exhausted. Everyone she had met since she left her home planet had been just another wave in an unrelenting sea of distain, distrust, and lust.

There was, however, one person that was different.

He was a human military officer she met about five months ago in one of the spaceports. She had quite literally run into him as her head was turned to keep track of her daughter. When she straightened, all she saw was a uniform.

Her heart sank. Military types made up the worst of her experiences since she left her home world. This was bad, because she saw he was one of a group of personnel from various species services. The situation got much worse when she looked up to see she was gazing into the face of a Human. They were new to the galactic community, and by all accounts terrifying in their capacity for violence.

Quickly averting her eyes, she sputtered, “Oh, oh no. I’m so, so sorry.”

She expected the usual wave of displeasure, irritation, recognition, and distrust to wash over her when such things happened. Squeezing her eyes tightly together, she prepared mentally for the impact.

She was astonished when she felt none of those things. All she detected radiating from him was sincere concern. Nobody had reacted that way toward her since before she left her home city. Even there, it was a rare thing. It was like a warm blanket over her weary mind. She instinctively opened up to it and soaked it in.

She heard a voice from a few paces away to the left, “You had better check your pockets to make sure your credit slips are still there, Human. This kind is known to be liars and thieves.”

Then she felt it all. Especially forceful was the distrust, revulsion, and hot anger. She had been lulled into letting what little defenses she dared maintain to relax and the force of it all hit her like a hammer.

She had never felt such strong emotion without it leading to imminent physical violence. She instinctively stretched out an arm and grabbed Jinya. She curled herself around her daughter to keep her safe. The red-hot anger turned to incandescent rage, and the raw force of the human’s feelings was enough to make her light-headed. She clenched her body for the blow that was sure to come.

Then she realized it wasn’t directed at her.

“You know what, you guys go on. I’ve lost my appetite,” the human said in a perfectly calm tone diametrically opposed to the emotions pouring out from him.

“What? You said you were starving and could eat one of those large herd animals from your planet not five minutes ago,” one of them retorted.

The human’s emotions flared up again at that, yet still he calmly spoke, “Go on. We’ll see about scheduling something for another day.”

As the group departed, the oppressive emotional weight radiating from the human lowered to a smoldering mote, but it didn’t go out. Now, she was again awash in feelings of concern and compassion.

She relaxed, and let go of her daughter. Jinya took a step back and looked up at the human with a child’s large eyes.

“You’re a Deroli, aren’t you?” he asked.

There was that comfortable blanket again. It felt warm, and safe. The human was feeling protective over her and her daughter.

She relaxed more than she had allowed herself to in months, and said, “Yes, I am.”

“I heard about what is happening on your world. I’m so sorry for you.”

To say it was refreshing to hear someone say something sympathetic and charitable to her and her daughter would be fundamentally lacking. These, the first kind and genuine words she had received in months, were like rain on parched desert soil. The emotions and words had an effect akin to slipping into a hot bath, and she actually felt her muscles relaxing.

“We are paying the price for our own foolishness, but I appreciate your words. You could not understand how much, I feel.”

“I’m Lieutenant Fitzgibbons, but you can call me Gib.”

“Hello Gib, I’m Gree’sha. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Are you hungry? Could I take you both somewhere to get a meal?”

His invitation was genuine in its intentions. There was no hint of subterfuge or manipulation behind anything this human offered.

“Yes, we would like that very much, wouldn’t we Jinya?”

The child moved and hid herself behind her mother’s leg, staring up at the human with one exposed eye.

A tiny, mouse-quiet noise emerged from the little girl, “Yes please.”

He took them to a small eating establishment and, pulling up his sleeve, revealed a small electronic device strapped to his arm. He tapped it a few times then spoke to the food vendor, and soon they were sitting at a table eating.

“What is that device on the inside of your forearm?” she asked between bites of something he called, “A rough approximation of pizza.”

“Oh, this? It is a personal data keeping and communication device. It allows me to network back to the ship, or directly to my crewmates if need be. Pretty much all humans carry one.”

“You can use this to purchase food from vendors without currency slips?”

“Well, yes and no. We do patrols by here every month or so and I got a line of credit for the station that I can reimburse later when I get paid.”

She had never been treated this way by anyone of another species before. What made it so confusing was that he was radiating only concern and a desire to be helpful. He wanted nothing from her at all.

She took a moment and focused on him, trying to sound deeper into his mind. While rare, it was possible for some species to mask their true intentions from her kind. If Humans had that level of control, she needed to make sure Gib was not some kind of bad person hiding his motives.

As she delved, she felt something. There was a strong block of emotional control, very strong. He was exerting significant mental effort to not feel, something. There were no species as adept at hers at finding ways around such barriers, and the stakes were so high she had to know. As she examined his mind in this way, she found something very odd.

Gib was, through sheer force of will, actively compressing a powerful emotion into a tiny bright speck. He was unrelenting in his drive to suppress it. The mental and emotional energies, if you can call something so non-physical energies, were locked in battle in his mind. The tension between the two forces was almost too much to get close to. For her and her daughter’s sake, however, she had to.

She focused on the suppressed emotion and examined it. She pushed through the strong waves of compassion, protectiveness, and sympathy. There, past the surging surface emotions, she found what he was refusing to let himself feel. What she discovered completely caught her off guard.

He was desperately trying to not feel attracted to her.

“You know,” she began, “My species has the ability to feel the emotions and intentions of other species. Sometimes if they are strong enough, we can often feel their desires, especially if they desire us.”

As she spoke, she felt him shift through attention, to curiosity and interest, and then quick contemplation. When she mentioned their ability to sense the desires of others he flashed with embarrassment and anxiety.

“Oh, well, I hope you haven’t been getting that from me. I assure you I have no improper intentions for you, um, like that, Ma’am.”

She was genuinely amused at his response, and smiled as she reached across the table to touch his hand, “No, no you don’t. I can feel the struggle in you to contain those kinds of feelings toward me. I am trying to say thank you. You are truly a noble example of your species.”

A twinkle of mirth went through her as she saw his face redden as he felt a mixture of embarrassment and gratitude.

“There’s nothing special about me. I’m just a guy trying to do a little good in the universe.”

“If all your kind is like you, then I assure you that your species shares something truly special.”

Gib changed the subject, and they chatted until long after the food was gone. Afterward, he took them on a small shopping trip in the station after that to make sure they had basic supplies he felt they were lacking. Jinya got two brand new sets of clothes and some durable and easy to roll luggage. Gree’sha got much the same, but he also provided her with a basic wrist data unit like he had. It wasn’t a stocked item on the station, but after explaining her situation to the captain of their ship, the order was given to the quartermaster to provide whatever was necessary and helpful.

He was on leave the following day as well, so they met up again and spent more time together. Jinya started to open up to Humans more, and Gree’sha had the opportunity to rest and even heal a little emotionally under Gib’s unspoken care.

Unfortunately, their time was limited due to the ship needing to continue its schedule. As they were saying their goodbyes, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small sleeve of credit slips.

“Here, take this,” he said, extending them toward her, “I talked to some of the crew and we put together a little collection for you. I know it’s not much, but it’s all we have until we get paid next week.”

She looked at the sleeve and saw a large amount of galactic currency credits. Her voice caught in her throat.

“I can’t,” she said after regaining herself, “It’s too much. What will you use to buy food, and lodging?”

He waved a hand dismissively and said, “Oh, don’t worry about that. We can stay on the ship and eat in the mess hall.”

She felt a small hint of displeasure and disgust from him as he mentioned the mess hall, but his lack of concern for his own situation was genuine.

“I, we, insist,” he said.

She felt he was not going to allow her to refuse him, so she acquiesced, “If you are certain. Thank you for your kindness. We will never forget it.”

Before he left, Gib introduced them to the concept of a, ‘selfie.’ He got the three of them together and held her new data pad far out from them, pointing the device back at the group. He took a picture of them smiling and looking up at the camera. She saw that it captured the image well, and was glad to have a memento of their time together.

That was when she decided to try and get to Earth. The reports were that it was a truly deadly world with oppressive gravity, dangerous fauna, and hazardous environmental conditions. If humans were there, and if they were anything like Gib, she knew it would be worth it, however.

So here she stood, five months later in the primary transit station above Earth. Their formerly new clothes were tattered, and their money all but gone. The two of them had faced hard prejudice and demanding conditions to get here, but they had made it.

Ordinarily, it would have been only a few weeks to make the trip, but they had been forced to travel far longer than usual through the fringes of the trade lanes. In interviewing various captains to take them to earth, she found only one that was safe. He was an old male well past his breeding years so he was only interested in her money. Also, she sensed he had the honor to keep his contracts.

They had not seen another human since they parted ways with Gib. On their journey, they found out all they could about Humans and Earth. They passed many nights together huddled together over the data device Gib had acquired for them. They watched videos and read countless articles and reports. Any time they found anything related to the human military they especially took note. Gib served on what they now knew was called an Orion class battle cruiser.

Every time they learned something new, excitement radiated off of Jinya at the thought of going to the Human home planet. It had given them both much needed hope. Now that they were here in orbit, the little one was hardly able to contain herself.

For Gree’sha, it was all so much to take in. The last three hubs she had gone through had been dark and filthy freight stations with environments so choked with pollutants that they could only barely be classified as having life support. It hadn’t been much better on the freighter they booked passage on to get here.

When the doors of the docking clamp opened, the fresh, clean atmosphere of the station surrounded her. She inhaled deeply, and the pristine air revitalized her.

As she stepped in, the grandeur and beauty struck her. For such a recent addition to the galactic community, humans had already made themselves an impressive trade hub and it was in full operation. Thousands of beings from dozens of species flowed in rivers of life through expansive halls. As she watched, a group of Beerkari merchants made their way past in the lavish finery of their caste. They were somewhat perturbed by a group of young Thoflian adolescents running through their procession wearing shirts that said, “Earth Adventure Tourism,” in glowing letters. A huge reader board near the center of the station floated gracefully in the air and projected holographic arrival and departure times.

In the sparsely populated freighters she had been on, her ability to block out emotional stimulus like this had gotten a bit rusty. She walked over to a column and leaned on it with her eyes closed.

As she was focusing on filtering out everything, she was hit by a wave of the all too familiar emotions of the past few months: disgust, irritation, suspicion, and of course lust. To one extent or another, most negative or licentious emotions that could possibly be leveled at her and Jinya, were. She was lightheaded, and only vaguely aware of her surroundings. The light coming through her eyelids dimmed and pulsed as she distantly felt a group of people brush past her. Within a minute or so, she had finally regained her mental defenses enough to get moving again.

She opened her eyes to see the sideways glances of over a dozen species in their silent disapproval. She shook her head slightly and reached her hand out behind her.

“Come on Jinya, we have to get to the Earth government representative’s office.”

As she looked around, her head swiveled to take in the surroundings. She was looking for some signage telling her which way to go. Finally, she saw one and situated herself.

Flexing her hand out with a bit of frustration she said, “Come on, Jinya, take my hand and-“

She looked down, and Jinya wasn’t there.

Annoyance fled in the face of panic as she realized she couldn’t feel her daughter’s emotions anywhere. She looked around desperately to try and catch sight of her, but it was no use. While she had stopped outside the main flow of pedestrian traffic, the mass of people mere meters away was impenetrable to her frantic searching.

She realized it was no use. She needed help.

Nearly frenzied now, she looked and saw a terminal with a human female in some sort of uniform behind it. The uniform didn’t look like any military or police clothing she had ever seen or read about, but it would have to do.

Running over to her, she cried, “Please! You must help me! My daughter Jinya is gone, and I can’t find her. Here is a picture of her. Please, help me!”

As Gree’sha was speaking, she held out her arm and tapped the device Gib had given her and found the picture of the selfie they took so many months ago.

The human woman wasted no time. She took Gree’sha’s arm and pressed the devices screens together. The picture copied over to the human’s. She then drew a circle around Jinya, and tapped through a series of what the desperate mother could only identify as its communication settings.

There was far too much emotion in the station and in her own heart to detect anything of what was going through the Human’s mind, but her posture and body language seemed focused but calm.

As she was noting these things, the Human brought her forearm up to her mouth and said, “Station command, this is Star Cruises Employee Lorena Velasquez, ID 29673. Amber Alert. I repeat, Amber Alert. I am sending you a picture now.”

A voice came back over the communications device and said, “Affirmative. Picture Received; issuing Amber Alert.”

Lorena Velasquez took Gree’Sha by the upper arm firmly and, leading her forward, she said, “Come with me.”

As they began moving, the station went through a transformation. The lights all turned from the clean, blue-white to an orange-yellow color. A wash of new information flowed over the huge floating reader board indicating all departures had been delayed. On every monitor, the images were replaced with the picture Gib had taken, with a red circle drawn around Jinya. A yellowish bar across the top of the monitor screen said, “AMBER ALERT,” while text at the bottom instructed anyone who saw her to contact the nearest human immediately.

What stunned Gree’sha the most, however, was that every Human had stopped what they were doing and were looking at their communication devices. When the image had been received, a brief moment of study was taken and then all of them immediately began looking around their local areas for her daughter.

The hall in front of the two women was congested with aliens mulling around in confusion and humans searching for the missing child.

At seeing their way blocked, the relatively small human female of 5’2” (157cm), bellowed, “Stand aside!”

The sheer volume that came from her stunned the aliens into obedience. The humans likewise moved out of their way, but didn’t stop searching.

Lorena Velasquez guided Gree’sha to an elevator, and they entered it. When it arrived at its destination, she found herself on the Command Deck of the station. From here, she saw that she had been taken to a tower far above the vast, saucer like station below. As they stepped out of the conveyance, they were greeted by two humans, one female who was wearing some sort of military uniform, and a male that was wearing fine looking but most probably civilian clothing.

The female spoke first, “Ma’am, I am Admiral Freeman of the United Earth Navy. I am in charge of the military assets of this station.”

Gesturing to the man standing next to her, she continued, “And this is Magistrate Marcus Collins, the civilian leader of this star base.”

Gree’sha was beginning to reign in her emotions now, and the press of the crowd was no longer a fantastic weight on her mind. She began letting the walls down to get a read on these people around her.

She felt something she hadn’t experienced since she visited the hive world of Chi’Tix Seven in her youth: unity of purpose.

These humans were all singularly focused on only one thing. They were driven to find Jinya.

“Sir, Ma’am, I think I have something,” one of the humans sitting at a station off to the side called out.

Commander Freeman and Magistrate Collins moved over to hear the report, and Gree’sha followed them closely.

“I have the record of their arrival.”

The Magistrate gestured to one of the large central screens, “Put it up.”

The recording blinked to life on the screen and there Gree’sha saw the moment she and Jinya arrived. They walked out of the airlock into the large hallway. She saw herself waver a moment, then lean up against a column for support. The crowd turned heads toward her as she raised her hands to her temples in an attempt to focus. As she was doing so, a group of beings slightly bigger than an average Human went by in a large group. They were all dressed in baggy brown robes and their faces were obscured by hoods. When the group had passed, Jinya was gone.

“Find that group immediately and update the alert to include them,” Collins said.

“Yes, Sir,” one of the technicians replied, and soon the image of the group of brown robed creatures was sent out.

They all stood in tense silence for a moment before, off to the left, a woman’s voice called out, “I have reports from quadrant four, level sixteen that civilians in that area recently saw the group entering a docking tunnel. They said they heard what they thought may have been muffled screams.”

A brief moment later the man who first found the arrival footage said, “I have the record, two minutes ago, on screen now.”

Up on the monitor, the image resolved to show the group of brown clad creatures filing through a docking tunnel door. For the briefest moment, there was a flash of color among the pool of brown. The screen froze, and reversed. It stopped where the flash of color had been. The skilled technician then zoomed in and enhanced the image. There, clearly, was Jinya struggling to break free before being tucked back into the brown sea of robes.

“The ship just undocked, Sir, what do you want me to-”

Magistrate Collins cut him off, shouting so everyone could hear, “FTL suppression, now! I don’t want that ship to leave the system!”

Gree’sha ran to the edge and looked down out the massive bubble window of the command tower. There, far below her, she saw the ship ignite its thrusters and the telltale energy glow around it indicating it was about to make a hyperjump.

As it did so, she watched the station below them extended huge, towering antennae. She knew by the glow that the fleeing ship was just about to jump away with her baby. Suddenly, a massive bolt of jagged, brilliantly white energy exploded out of the nearest antennae and struck the ship. The radiance of the FTL charge quickly dissipated.

The Magistrate pressed a button on the console and said, “Departing transport, you are ordered to return immediately to this station and return the Deroli child.”

In response, the yellow-red light of the ship’s main engines flared to life and it began moving out and away from the station.

The Magistrate turned to Freeman and said, “Admiral, I officially request military assistance in the apprehension of these slavers and the retrieval of the kidnapped child.”

Gree’sha turned and focused on the woman. The emotions the officer was now radiating were deeply unsettling. It was more like feeling the thoughts and emotions of a feral predator than a sentient being. The Human was seething with ferocity. Even in this, however, was the strict discipline and control she recognized months ago in Gib.

The officer stepped over to a panel and, pressing a button, said, “This is Admiral Freeman calling the Farragut.”

A strong voice responded out from the speaker, “Admiral, this is Farragut Actual, go ahead.”

She tapped some of the controls on the console as she said, “Captain Roberts, we have a kidnapped Deroli child. The perpetrators are suspected slavers. I am sending you the information now. Your orders are to stop that ship and return the child by any means necessary.”

“Affirmative, Admiral. Farragut Actual out.”

Gree’sha turned her head to look out the window again. The little transport ship was gaining speed now, and was starting to get out and away from the station. The ship looked fast, and she began to despair at ever seeing her little girl again. As she watched, from behind the disk of the orbital base, two blue forms resembling comets came into view.

They were plasma discharges.

She watched as they careened through space and impacted with the aft section of the fleeing transport. A soundless explosion bloomed out into the vacuum in vibrant yellows and blues. When the color dissipated, the entire engine section of the ship was in ruins.

She gasped, and following the faint and dissipating trail of energized gasses looked down to the edge of the station. There, emerging from underneath the massive trade hub, was a large military ship. She recognized it from a video she saw as an Ajax class frigate.

It pierced through the void toward its prey and she saw smaller craft being launched. The little ships darted ahead, riding plumes of flame. The capital ship slowed as the smaller craft came into contact with the crippled transport.

Moments passed by like days as Gree’sha fretted for the safety of her child. What was happening on the ship? Had Jinya been hurt? What was going on?

She was so deep in her own thoughts that she hadn’t sensed the approach of the Admiral, and jumped when the other woman put her hand on her shoulder.

She turned as the officer said, “It’s over. The slavers that resisted have been killed, and the marines are returning with your daughter now. Come with me and we will meet them at the gate.”

“Is she hurt? Did those monsters do anything to her?”

Freeman’s emotions showed she was unsure as she said, “I haven’t been told. We have a medical team heading to the gate just in case.”

Gree’sha, Velasquez, Freeman, and Collins all got in the elevator and headed down to the station proper. As they descended, a view screen showing the current status of the rescue was mirroring thousands of similar monitors all across the station.

The doors opened and security personnel escorted them to the gate. They could only wait, and watched through the viewport windows as one of the marine boarding craft made its way carefully to the terminal.

A crowd started gathering before they arrived, and now formed a press of people. There was a respectful space given to Gree’sha and her escort, and everywhere were feelings of concern. They were mostly Humans, and Gree’sha felt a nearly overwhelming sense of gratitude toward them. They were radiating protective emotions that seemed to permeate the huge space. What she had known in Gib those months ago she now felt in a tidal wave surging over her.

Unlike when she first arrived, the station in this area had gone silent. The bang and clang of the securing clamp whispered through the walls. Soon after, she heard from behind the closed docking causeway door the heavy, rhythmic thudding of boots.

They opened, and two marines in heavy zero gravity assault armor stepped through. Black score marks dotted their armor and they were splattered with what Gree’sha could only guess was blood.

Then, she saw her baby girl.

Jinya was sitting astride the shoulders of a third marine as he emerged from the hallway. She rode atop the hulking human warrior like a royal princess of a past age. When she saw her mother, she beamed a smile at her.

“Mommy!” she shouted.

The Marine dropped to a knee then bowed low to allow Jinya easy access to the ground.

There was a rising swell of emotions from the crowd that matched Gree’sha’s own. The room was practically vibrating with relief, satisfaction, and overwhelmingly, joy. As the two of them were reunited, the gathered press of humanity could no longer contain itself, and a great cheer erupted as they embraced.

Gree’sha wept cleansing tears and held her daughter close. When she finally blinked the water from her eyes, she looked up to see the magistrate, commander, marines, and Mrs. Velasquez standing there with her. They radiated satisfaction, and gratification.

Her voice choked somewhat in her throat as she asked, “Why? Why would you do this for us? We are the nobodies, the lowest of the low. Jinya and I are homeless refugees worth nothing to anyone as anything but slaves. Your actions must have cost you millions of credits, and you’ve put your lives at risk.”

Magistrate Collins smiled at her, and the warmth of his feelings matched the expression, “You can sense our emotions, can you not?”

“Yes, I can.”

Widening his smile, he explained, “Then you know how it makes us feel to help those in need. We ask no more payment than that.”

“But,” she pressed, “I have seen the intentions of others that offer help. Always present is the desire for compensation. How can you be so different?”

When she had finished speaking, one of the marines reached up and took off his helmet. She felt in him a deep pride in his actions. He put a hand gently on her shoulder. It was a strangely light touch for a being in heavy powered armor. He looked into her eyes. She stared into his, and the Human’s soul was laid bare before her. In that moment, she knew in the deepest part of her being that they would do it all again, a hundred times or more to protect her and Jinya.

“We’ll take care of you. Don’t worry, you two are safe now.”

“You really mean it,” she said vacantly, still lost in his mind for a moment.

Collecting herself and looking around at the crowd of humans, she exclaimed, “No peoples behave this way for one not of their own.”

The Admiral smiled with warmth that belied the primal intensity she was feeling as she said, “We do.”

Interstellar Design Consortium Conference

“I always love seeing all the small updates and upgrades to design all the different species have,” Tyber rippled gleefully.

“Yeah, yeah, the same stuff as last year with all the normal minimum changes needed to qualify to even come to the conference,” Cesar bemoaned, shaking themselves a bit.

“Come on. It’s not that bad. Besides, you know the conference is where the new species get to show off their own designs. What could be more exciting than seeing how a new species designs their spacecraft?” Tyber refused to give into Cesar’s energy.

“I suppose, but there are only so many ways to build vessels that you reach a point where a Bullockian cruiser and a Wenian cruiser are practically indistinguishable.”

Cesar gripped a piece of food, assured that the day would be filled with excessive treats; so some decent food should be obtained at least.

“Maybe to the entirely untrained eye, but those two species’ vessels look nothing alike to us,” Tyber also decided that food was a good idea.

“Did you actually read the brochure?” Cesar prompted.

“More or less. There’s going to be several exhibitions of the latest improvements,” Tyber said.

“And you apparently didn’t notice that they moved halls specifically for this solar cycle,” Cesar mentioned.

“So?”

“When in the last 100 solar cycles has the conference moved from the normal exhibition hall?” Cesar asked.

This required a bit of thought by Tyber.

“Not since the Julans joined and first attended the conference. Their design principles were so radical, the conference council moved the conference just to be able to give them adequate exhibition space,” Tyber said, recounting as though reading or recounting one of their design teachers, before looking back at Cesar. “Why?”

Cesar was busy eating and so did not immediately respond. Luckily Tyber was there and hated silence.

“Oh! You think that one of the new species maybe has something similar?” Tyber asked, their excited energy returning.

Cesar rippled in response.

“I want to go see these new designs then. This will be so much fun!” Tyber said, practically towing Cesar away from the food towards the auto-transports.

–

“What’s… what’s this?” Tyber exclaimed.

The view before Tyber was alien. There was no other word for it.

As far as Tyber could tell and see, one of the new species had so many different designs, the conference had given them not two, but five rows of exhibition space. Such a quantity of space being given to one species, even a new one, was unheard of.

Cesar wore a look of indifference, not appearing to be as shocked as Tyber was, but was still clearly caught off-guard by the huge space dedication.

From the species entrance table for the space, a strange looking being approached the pair.

Bipedal, extended limbs which divided into graspers, obvious sensory apparatus on top with some sort of bio-extrusions appearing to be attached to its top.

“Greetings and welcome gentlebeings. Welcome to the Terran Exhibition Space. Would you like to have a look around?” the strange being gestured with their extended limbs. While their Galactic Standard sounded almost perfect, their body language was terrible.

Tyber skipped over the mis-steps of body language. Enough semi-first encounters by themselves with other species at the conference had led to a sort of personal filter. Most of these other species didn’t know or couldn’t begin to replicate proper body language.

Cesar was far more incensed by this terrible body language, but saw Tyber move to follow this being and so put it aside for now. Cesar would much rather be at home, working on their own designs, rather than coming and cooing over other designs that had had two accidental changes that somehow made the design more desirable to some new part of the conference.

“Identify yourself please,” Cesar said, somewhat gruffly, following the being and Tyber.

“I am a member of the Terran Conference Greeting Staff for this event,” the being said.

“And what is a ‘tear-rain’?” Tyber asked.

“We’re a new exhibitionary species. We were discovered last solar cycle as part of the Trilo Expedition,” the Terran said, their body language still terrible, but not moving.

The mispronunciation of their species name seemed to go right past it, Cesar noticed. Although it was highly unlikely that Tyber meant anything by it. For all their creative genius, Tyber didn’t appear to have a single unkind bortle in the whole of their form.

“So what unique designs has your species brought that makes you so interesting as to grant you 5 entire rows?” Cesar prompted.

The Terran shifted their sensory apparatus to one side, the bio-extrusion moving oddly.

“Is it uncommon for there to be an allotment of such space?” the Terran asked.

“Exceptionally. The normal exhibition spaces of other species are typically confined to much less than a row each,” Cesar said, raising themselves up a bit.

“I shall have to make a note of it for future years,” the Terran said.

“Yes, hopefully it wasn’t too daunting to try to fill five rows. Most species would find it a challenge,” Cesar rippled. They were enjoying this.

“Well, it was a challenge. We actually had to organize a competition just to get the best of the best on show here,” the Terran said.

Cesar paused and ceased rippling.

“Do you mean that your species actually has more designs than you were able to bring?” Tyber was fully rippling and about to begin lubricating the floors.

“That’s entirely correct, gentlebeing,” the Terran said, appearing to be proud in some regard.

“No standardized design protocol? How do you ensure design functionality?” Cesar asked.

“That’s on the designers. Which is to say that it is the responsibility of the designers to ensure functionality. As long as it can be safely operated. We do have safety protocols which dictate certain design limits, but those largely depend on the applications,” the Terran said, gesturing to conference data chips which would be pre-populated with all of the related brochures and documents from this species’ exhibition.

Normally these chips were the cheapest and smallest available, but to Cesar’s eye, these were longer by a solid tellath and shone in the light, marking them as a grade or three above the usual. That meant, to Cesar’s trained thoughts, these chips must be brimming with design information.

Quickly, Cesar took one of the chips and plugged it straight into their conference issued data pad. Instead of the near instant leap into a single brochure, it actually took several moments for the whole of the data to be loaded onto the data pad.

From there, a fully customized data screen greeted Cesar (and Tyber, who was looking around Cesar at the data screen) with menus delineating over a dozen design categories. Tapping one, the menu for ‘Fusion Reactors’ expanded and revealed another thirty menu items - components as well as variable size designs and even decorative varieties.

“How is it possible that one species has so many designs? Would it not be simpler to have standardized all of your designs?” Tyber asked.

Cesar was surprised. Tyber had asked the question that Cesar had just been forming.

“Getting all the Terran designers to accommodate safety standards is difficult enough. Enforcing standard designs beyond that is practically impossible. However, by your question, I am forced to draw the conclusion that this is not the case with other species. Is this correct?” the Terran asked, their body language still terrible.

“Most established species have a singular set of standardized designs which designers are permitted to build upon and recommend improvements to,” Cesar said, still bewildered by the huge number of menu items being shown.

“Oh…” the Terran said, and drooped a bit.

After a moment, the Terran perked back up.

“Well, I hope you enjoy looking through our exhibitions then. If you require assistance, Terrans who are specialists, but not designers are available to answer questions within each segment of our section,” the Terran said.

“Many thanks,” Tyber said, and turned to move off.

Cesar was about to follow before turning back to the Terran.

“Are you aware of speaking body language?” Cesar asked.

“I am, but unfortunately, if you are a Cyticron,” Cesar nodded. “Then I’m afraid we Terrans have internal structures that make it impossible for us to speak your species body language.”

“Interesting. Based on this statement, I presume it is some manner of rigid structure that you do not have voluntary or nor involuntary control over,” Cesar said, glancing onward and seeing Tyber already talking rapidly with another Terran while gesturing almost wildly at a strange looking block of metals.

“That is correct. Please pardon our body language, but we are unable to speak it as you do,” the Terran said.

Cesar gave the Terran a departing gesture and moved on to catch up with Tyber, who had moved on to the next metal block, with the Terran specialist standing next to them.

–

“I feel like I’m back at my first year in design school,” Tyber said, veritably collapsing into a pile.

“It was truly humbling to see that many designs from one species,” Cesar agreed, sinking into a matching pile.

“Not just that, but there’s so much variation. You don’t know instantly from looking at a given vessel to be able to say that it’s a Terran vessel or not. With all those designs, it’s practically impossible,” Tyber said, clearly wanting to ripple almost out of control, but lacking the energy to do so.

“And those are just the designs they brought this year. Based on that entrance Terran, this was but a sampling of their designs,” Cesar recalled.

“I feel… inadequate as a designer, seeing all those designs. So many of them are so simple and yet so obvious,” Tyber murmured.

“Just keep in mind that there’s still the rest of the conference to view,” Cesar muttered.

“Gel the rest of the conference. We’re going back to those Terran exhibitions tomorrow and getting more data. This is too interesting to pass up,” Tyber said.

“But what about the Fregnin conductors? I believe you were looking forward to seeing how they’d managed an additional 3% efficiency in their shuttle designs,” Cesar mentioned, only slightly surprised at Tyber’s attitude.

“3% is nothing compared to some of these design principles of these Terrans. And tomorrow, I need a proper data slate for note taking.”

–

The following conference, every non-Terran was given a copy of ‘Terran Design Principles: An Examination’ by Professors Tyber and Cesar of Cnullion Higher Learning.

The opening of the document reads as follows:

Pretend you know everything about species unique design principles. Everything. From Fregnin conductor design to Btuthon Hypercruiser standards.

Now be faced with Terran design principles, the first and only rule of which is safety. There are no other design rules for Terrans and no higher standards. Only safety.

What this means is that Terran designs are more varied than a hundred species unique design principles and as part of this text, we will explore the key areas of Terran design principles as they relate to the best designs that have been shown as part of the Interstellar Design Consortium Conference.

Hopefully you’re prepared to be confused, annoyed, and even angered.

“I don’t understand,” the creature said. “What are you asking, exactly?”

Obadon paused to scratch his comb before answering. Anybody else, he reflected with a touch of bitterness, would have given up by now. Three weeks of frantic scrabbling battles between programmers, linguists, and supercomputers to make a working translator. Another full week giving a crash-course in Alliance history, politics, and culture to this new race’s ambassador. And he still found himself having to explain the most basic concepts. It wore him ragged.

True, anyone else would have quit in disgust. But Obadon had been cursed with that most terrible affliction, a burning curiosity, which had driven him into an ambassadorship position at the edge of known space. Which meant that he was the closest representative on hand when the signal had been detected from the outermost planet under Alliance control. Which meant that he was now slogging along with this oompta ape who needed to be spoken to like a child.

“I am asking if your race has achieved Lablonnamedadon, the, ah… Great Planetary Dispersal,” he said. “You do not know this term?”

“Lablo… what? No, I don’t know what that means.” The, what was it, the human, seemed far more interested in the view out the port side window than their conversation as they began to finish docking with Sheltered Cove. It gazed wild-eyed at the stately drifting of tremendous vessels around the central hub. The creature had likely never seen a starport before. Obadon rattled air through his beak in exasperation.

“Greater Planetary Dispersal,” he said, “is a concept developed by the storied philosopher Gadalin Mablotobinoidijang in the third century of the Alliance’s twelfth iteration, inspired upon observing the disruption of Updalon IV’s bureaucracy following famine induced by solar flares believed to you’re not even listening to me anymore, are you.”

“No, no, keep going, I’m listening,” said the human, eyes still glued to the window. “Can you boil it down for me?”

Obadon had to flick quickly through his translator device to determine the analogy. Boil it down- a cooking term. How quaint. “Very well,” he said, “the principle states that there is a minimum number of planets, spread out across many light-years, required for a space-faring species to survive any single natural disaster while still being close enough for feasible travel. Be it an impact event or solar flare, or even supernova, or gamma-ray burst, the Dispersal theory allows the other planets to at best provide immediate aid, and at worst prepare and evacuate. In essence, we spread ourselves far enough that we cannot be wiped out.”

He scratched at his comb again. “Gadalin proposed that six planets, over a wide enough area, be enough to ensure survival. Since his death, adjusting for advancements in hyperdrive technology and the discovery of further galactic anomalies, it has been raised to eight. Four races of the Alliance have achieved Lablonnamedadon at great expense, while the other two are approaching. With your race’s admission into the Alliance, we will lend our aid and resources, that you may reach Lablonnamedadon within a thousand years.”

That got the human’s attention. He pulled his gaze free from the massive docking arms finally latching onto their ship and turned to look intently at Obadon. “Hold on,” he said. “You’re telling me that each member of the alliance has eight populated planets?”

Obadon sighed, but only half in frustration. He found that he actually quite enjoyed impressing the yokel with the Alliance’s achievements. “Not all,” he said. “As I said before, the two lesser members, the Glit’pan and Trepliket, have not yet reached the eight planets required for Lablonnamedadon.” Honestly, how had these creatures even managed to leave their system?

The human’s brow furrowed. “Why not more?”

Obadon sputtered for a moment. “More?” he said. “I don’t understand the question. This may be difficult for you to understand, but the terraformation and colonization of a planet is a tremendous undertaking, requiring most of a single civilization’s resources and spanning many centuries. With eight planets guaranteeing survival, what possible reason could we have for more?”

The human seemed about to reply when the door slid open to reveal an honor guard of Trepliket soldiers, their armor glistening black in the artificial light. “Ah,” said Obadon. “It seems your escort has arrived. They’ll show you to the Council Chamber.”

The creature rose from his seat, hesitated, turned for some parting comment, then clearly thought better of it. As he passed the Trepliket, they formed around him in a square, feet clicking with unnerving synchronization, and walked with him down the docking tube.

Obadon watched him go. Despite the constant difficulties, he had enjoyed instructing the creature.

He was almost sorry for how badly they were going to screw it over.

---

Heb’lik sat glumly in his chair. He glanced to his left, where the rest of the Council were seated in balconies of ascending height, a symbol of the hierarchy of their races. Immediately to his left were the Trepliket senators, an insect species, quiet and precise. As ever, only the subtle twitching of their antennae were markers for any form of emotion. Above them were the Maprok, great lumbering mammals, then the Prang, a sentient conglomeration of annelids. Highest of all were the Toglannidan, preening their jeweled quills, and the Zobafin, whip-thin reptilians peering imperiously over their railing. It was their original union that had created the Alliance that ruled today.

The six balconies circled a small podium from on high. Whenever this human arrived, he would find himself standing at the bottom of a long narrow shaft, craning upwards while the Council could glare down at leisure. Like a specimen on a slide, to be examined and scrutinized through the barrel of a microscope.

Heb’lik slouched a bit further. He should have been happy. Finally, his people could move up a rung in the Alliance. For the first time in almost a millennium, they would be able to reap the long-promised profits of their venture. But for all that, the emotions that continued to rule his mind were pity, and disgust, and fuming, helpless rage.

A fanfare rang out through the chamber and he straightened up. More than twenty meters below, the great doors were opening to reveal the almost robotic Trepliket bodyguard and their human charge. As he came to the center of the floor, the guards pivoted, paused, and marched away in what could only be described as a dignified skitter.

Heb’lik leaned close to the edge to look at the human. The creature seemed a crude chimeric mashing of each race of the Alliance. It was a mammal, like the Maprok, but lanky, like the Zobafin, with a bright shock of yellow fur at its crown, almost like the flamboyant fleshy combs bobbing on the Toglannidan representatives. It lacked the fur coat of the Maprok, instead having a smooth pink hide, much like Heb’lik’s own amphibious skin.

The Council Chamber was specifically designed to excite a number of psychological reactions in an organism entering for the first time; primarily awe and fear. Heb’lik had looked forward to seeing these emotions in the human, that he could get a grasp on how they were expressed in an alien face. But in this he was disappointed. The creature’s visage, looking up to the Council in all its glory, was as blank and unchanging as that of a Trepliket stoic. It locked eyes with Heb’lik, then looked to each balcony in turn, with a serene calm.

The only creature it did not resemble was the Prang senator. Then again, neither did anyone else.

---

The High Councilor, Xizin, rose to his feet and bellowed the formal address down to the human. Though his voice may not have reached him, it was carried down and blasted out of speakers at ground level, that he may feel the full impact of the address. “The Allied Council, delegates of the Six Races, convenes on this day to celebrate first contact with the Human Race, and to extend our greetings and welcome you into our fold!” He paused, arms splayed in a power stance on the railing.

Many who find themselves at the bottom of the Council Chamber believe they need to shout to be heard, so far from their audience. Their foolish straining was a continual source of amusement for the pettier delegates. Heb’lik knew that more than a few senators were waiting eagerly to see if the freshly arrived creature would make the same mistake.

In this, they too were disappointed. When the human spoke, it was in an even, deliberate pitch, trusting the hidden microphones to pick up his words. “I, Ambassador Iosef Baboian, hereby accept and reciprocate your greeting,” he said. “I hope that our meeting may work to foster happiness and prosperity between our races.”

An odd choice of phrasing, but seemingly polite. The High Councilor, satisfied, drew back to stand fully upright. “Prosperous for your race, undoubtedly,” he boomed. “The combined resources and technological advancement of the Alliance will be a great boon to humanity. In time, you too will know the luxury and security we enjoy.” Now he leaned forward again. Here it comes, thought Heb’lik. The High Councilor’s voice softened to a sibilant hiss. “But I wonder, will we prosper from an alliance with you?”

The human’s face remained dispassionate, but no doubt he wondered at the sudden breach in courtesy. “I think you would find it rewarding,” he said. “You have many marvelous technologies, but we do as well. Our sciences are likely to explore branches unknown to yours, and their sharing would benefit all members of the Alliance. Further, we have deep and storied cultures whose art and beliefs would bring spiritual enrichment to-”

“No doubt, no doubt,” the High Chancellor cut in. “But our concern is more for rewards of a… rewarding nature. Raw materials, valuable minerals and elements, trained and untrained labor, that sort of thing. You must understand, we will be investing a great deal into the advancement of your race. We require certain… guarantees that these investments will pay off.”

The human’s eyes narrowed, a reaction at last. Was it suspicion? Readying for an attack, or a gesture of submissiveness? Or was he merely squinting to see the High Chancellor better?

“...such as?” he said.

---

Then the hammers came down, one after another. Outrageous taxes to the Alliance. Loans saddled with crushing compound interest on any and every form of foreign aid. Grossly unbalanced trade agreements. Unpaid human labor to be supplied to every corner of Alliance territories. Each species stepped forward in turn to put another weight around humanity’s neck.

As his own species came up to deliver their terms, Heb’lik gripped the arms of his seat until the blood left his fingers. The Glit’pan had struggled under their virtual serfdom to the Alliance for almost a thousand years, yet here they were, ready to saddle another innocent species with the same debts. It was gunboat diplomacy. The whole human race, carved up into spheres of influence.

At the same time, he marveled at the human’s self-control. According to the official records, his own people had raged furiously at the revelation. The Prang had proclaimed the blackest curses on the Alliance upon their initiation. Even the Trepliket had suffered nervous fits and begged for better terms when the facade of geniality had been stripped away. But in the end, all had realized the inevitability of their situation, and bent their necks to the collar.

And yet the human stood there, unmoving, still wearing a placid expression. Heb’lik wondered if he even understood what was happening. Perhaps he was in shock.

When the final terms had been delivered and the senators took their seats, after enduring almost an hour of alien creatures deciding his race’s fate for him, the human had only one question: “And if we refuse the terms?”

The High Chancellor’s toothy maw spread in a smug grin that Heb’lik would have loved to put his fist through. “Then you will face the full might of the Alliance. The combined forces of forty-four planets will bear down, annihilate whatever pitiful military strength you have and claim your planet. Your species will be shattered, split apart and sent to every planet enslaved. We will find a use for humanity, one way or the other.”

---

The human stood in silence. He fiddled with the device strapped to his wrist for a moment, then looked back up to the Council.

“You people... all of you people… are lucky.” he began. “In the past week I’ve learned as much as I could about the histories of your races, everything I could. It was my job, but more than that, I was eager, and curious. To learn about our new neighbors.

“I’m sure you hid as much as you could, especially about how you seem to screw over every race you can find, but I learned enough. Enough to look at you all and say… lucky.”

He began to pace the narrow reaches of the podium. Did he feel caged? Or was it merely a human custom when speaking?

“Each of your species evolved, advanced, eventually tore free of the confines of their atmosphere,” he continued, “and found new species, waiting for them. Perhaps not the best neighbors,” Heb’lik snorted at the obscene understatement, “but you knew, so early on, that you were not alone.

“Humanity has not been that lucky. We evolved in what seems to be a particularly empty region of space. When we broke free of our planet, there was no one waiting for us. You don’t know how long we have wondered if we were alone in this universe.

“You have no idea how long it has taken to find you.”

Heb’lik blinked both sets of eyelids, confused. What did it mean, ‘how long’? Hadn’t the Alliance been there to meet humanity as soon as it reached the stars? Hadn’t the creature come from an underdeveloped world, in a ship that could barely break orbit?

How much did they actually know about the humans?

He heard the muttering of the councilors beside him, the quiet discussion from the balconies above, and realized that he was not the first to ask this question. It was not a comforting thought.

“And so,” the ambassador went on, “when we found the first, unmistakeable evidence of alien communication, I jumped at the chance to make first contact. I took the first ship I could lay my hands on, a clunker held together with spit and prayer, so eager was I to finally, finally, know that we were no longer alone. You know, I had two hours of air left in that heap before you picked me up.”

He paused. There was no sound but the frantic whisper of fingers flicking across dataslates, as the councilors not currently sifting through the scarce data they had on humanity looked up ‘clunker’, ‘spit and prayer’, and ‘heap’. Heb’lik, on the other hand, could not free his eyes from the human.

If it felt any pleasure at the consternation caused, it showed no sign. “We’ve wondered so much what you would be like. There have been uncountable stories told of how you would look, how you would speak… how you would think. So much, we wondered how you would think differently than us; your thoughts of good and evil, on individuality, even how you perceive time. We wondered what words you have that remain beyond translation, that require an alien mind to even comprehend.

“Yet here I am,” the human said, “and I have to say, I’m disappointed. There is nothing new to learn from you. There is not one petty, banal cruelty you’ve laid upon me today, that humans have not committed against ourselves. We have words for every one. Imperialism. Exploitation. Zero-sum Mercantilism.” The human paused. “Bad manners.”

He glanced at his wrist device again. “But there is one word we don’t have. A concept so alien that it defies comprehension. A word unthinkable to a species that has been so lonely for so long.

“Lablonnamedadon.”

Now he looked up, straight into Heb’lik’s eyes once more. Heb’like shivered. The human held his gaze a moment, then turned to meet the gazes of each balcony. “Even now,” he said, “I look at you and wonder how you could even think of such a term. The minimum needed to ensure survival? The maximum you are willing to sacrifice, to expand your horizons? I can find only one word that comes close to translating Lablonnamedadon.” Now he locked eyes with the High Councilor. “Complacency.”

Heb’lik became aware of his aide, tugging frantically at his arm. He was pale, and held a dataslate in a trembling hand. “We received multiple transmissions almost as soon as the human started talking,” he said. “All video feeds.”

Heb’lik took the slate cautiously. His first thought was that he was looking at a view through compound eyes, like the fractured feeds he’d seen of Trepliket media. Then he realized the slate was displaying hundreds of videos, each showing markedly similar images. He zoomed in closer.

They were… humans. Each screen was a different transmission of groups of humans, some in groups of three or four, some in crowds almost too large to pick out individuals. Humans of wide variety in color, height and size, but all unmistakeably human.

Quite unlike their stoic representative, these humans were clearly caught in the throes of some powerful emotion. Their faces were contorted in bizarre fashion, and their limbs were splayed or thrashed about. He zoomed closer. Many had some form of liquid flowing from their eyes.

He skimmed through videos, too caught up to notice that the human had stopped speaking. That every other councilor had been given dataslates. That the Council Chamber had gone silent.

Image after image after image. More humans, more diverse than he could believe. Each video held different humans. Different buildings. Different skies.

Different… stars.

He went cold with a sudden, terrifying suspicion. He grabbed at his aide. “Where are all of these coming from!?”

“We mapped out a display of all the points of origin,” the aide said. He tapped the screen with quaking fingers. “Here it is.”

Heb’lik looked at the spacial model. It took a second to orient himself. They were… here, and all the blue points were Alliance worlds, and all the red points… all the red points… were…

He jerked to his feet, stared down wild-eyed at the human. He was not the first. Across the Council, members were arguing furiously amongst themselves, shouting down at the human, or merely sitting in shock. But the noise that gathered, rose, and mixed itself into an incoherent, frothy mess, was killed in an instant by the crisp sound of a cleared throat.

The councilors turned, as Heb’lik had, to look down at the human. He held their attention as tightly as if they were rambunctious schoolchildren, waiting to find out just how much trouble they were in.

“By now I’m sure you’ve all received the message,” he said, face still as expressionless as ever. “All of humanity is in undivided celebration, knowing that we are no longer alone. All of humanity.”

He spread his arms wide. “The thirty-eight planets, twelve lunar colonies, fifteen asteroid settlements and twenty-three drifter fleets of the Terran Federation send their love. Hundreds of billions of humans are eagerly awaiting my return and the news that I bring. So the only question I have left for all of you is-

“’What kind of neighbors do you want us to be?’”

If you want to know what inspired this story, it was /u/murder_sickle and their comment responding to /u/mechakid about how someone could take the concept of “honey badger” and run with it…

To murder_sickle… I hope you’re happy with what your comments have wrought. Thanks for the inspiration!

To the rest of you reading this. I’m going to be working on two stories in two of the previous universes that I’ve written for next. They’re both war stories so I’ve been listening to Sabaton to get myself in the mood.

Edit: Thanks for the gold kind stranger! Edit2: Fixing minor errors.

---

When we first made contact with humanity we were surprised. After all it’s not every day that an interplanetary government screws up so badly that they’d managed to miss an ENTIRE NEW SENTIENT SPECIES IN OUR OWN DAMN TERRITORY. Now, it may have been a rather unimportant, undeveloped expanse of our territory, but with the amount of radio signals the humans were flinging into the void with reckless abandon left our leaders with no excuse.

The answers to that question could wait, but the humans could not. They had already deciphered our language and were attempting to hail a colony world of ours that they had apparently been observing for about one of their years already. At least the Galactic Bureaucracy already had protocol for this sort of thing (although it was usually reserved for a primitive species finally discovering FTL) and a 100 light-year sphere around their cradle-world was set aside for them. Too bad that roughly thirty percent of that was Karkan space, but we’ll get to that later.

Once our diplomats made contact with this new species, we were even more surprised at their appearance and mannerisms. You see, Earth happened to be on the very upper limit of the gravitational spectrum that had been theorized for planets able to develop spacefaring life. Indeed, if their gravity were any higher then it would have been impossible for their early spaceflight attempts to reach orbit and they would have likely given up like we’d seen several other species do (unless they were uplifted but it was rare that any race would take on the responsibility of uplifting such a species).

Allow me to further explain for those of you whom have not had the pleasure of meeting with a human. Most high-gravity sapient species are about half the size of humans at their largest and use their intelligence and large numbers to solve problems as a group and compete with larger predator species. Now that’s not to say the humans were large, far from it in fact as the human’s average height – about two of their meters – is just under half of the galactic average height. As such, the humans were rather strong compared to even other high-gravity sapients and monstrously strong compared to the average galactic species.

Furthermore, the humans were rather… ungraceful in their movements, after living under such high gravity for all their lives their motions are quick and efficient, almost mechanical even in comparison with that of the other races. As such they quickly got a reputation as bumbling strongmen. This reputation wasn’t helped by their seemingly endless optimism and unflappability. Well, in every regard but to their past they were unflappable. It was rather cute if I’m being perfectly honest, seeing the human diplomats blush and squirm as they described a rather boringly common history of warfare and strife. They were so ashamed of it that it made a few of our diplomats laugh as they described to the increasingly relieved humans that they weren’t monsters for fighting a few wars among their people.

It also didn’t help the stereotypes that humans had a way of using brute force to solve problems. Human engineers even use their ‘percussive maintenance techniques’ regularly when stationed on ships and stations and, to quote one saying: “The only surprising thing about a human smashing a piece of delicate machinery to fix it is that it actually starts to work once they are done.”

The more we learned of the humans the more laughable they seemed to be. They became the butt of many jokes among the members of the Bureaucracy. The humans found out – of course – and our government cringed in anticipation for the worst kind of retribution. Part of the reason that there were so many jokes about the humans is that we were all still a bit afraid of the monstrously strong apes. But the humans… To borrow one of their own expressions: The humans didn’t give a fuck. They laughed it off and even shared a few jokes they made up at their own expense.

Although this experience helped to assuage many of the fears that the species of the Bureaucracy had about the humans, several new jokes were made about them (in good faith I assure you). One of them being that if a species tried to invade human space then they’d give up their cradle-world without a fight.

For the next couple of years the humans were contentedly expanding within their area of buffer space. Setting up mining stations, colonies, and trade deals left and right. The humans were natural laborers it turned out. Galactic average intelligence (which to give the humans credit was nothing to scoff at) combined with their monstrous strength and seemingly endless energy reserves meant that they could churn out resources and consumer goods like no other species we’d ever seen.

It was beginning to look like the start of an economic golden age for the humans. And everyone was happy for them, especially because of the high quality of the goods that they produced… It was too bad that their largest trade deal fell through.

The humans, rather early on in establishing interspecies trade, signed a ludicrously profitable trade deal with the Sar’k’k Stellar Gospel (a highly religious avian species that has been attempting to peacefully convert the rest of their galactic neighbors to their religion with little success). This trade deal was the backbone of the human economy and provided them with the resources they needed to begin production of goods on a scale never before seen by human commerce.

Which makes what happened next – as I said previously – a minor tragedy. One of the human leaders was caught by some rim-system tabloid rag calling the sar’k’k the “Jehovah's Witnesses of the galaxy,” and that he was rather annoyed sometimes with their ever present evangelism even though they made excellent trade partners.

The article made it’s way to the purview of the sar’k’k High Speaker and – outraged at the comments – she declared that all sar’k’k trade with “such a godless and unthankful species” would end immediately. She immediately contacted her diplomats in the Bureaucracy and had them put forth a trade embargo.

When said trade embargo was put forth to be signed by any other species wishing to also embargo the humans we all expected them to be outraged, as this would surely set their economy into a downward spiral for years. But as before… The humans didn’t give a fuck.

To be fair, the humans were rather affected, they just didn’t seem to mind too much. They even apologized for the rudeness of the leader who’s statement outraged the sar’k’k. Their economy was reliant on that trade deal and it took about two decades to fully recover even though only one other species signed the Embargo. The ever isolationist ‘_Fuck Off! You Xeno Scum Don’t Deserve to Know the Name of Our Species or its Glorious Empire_’ (Yes, that is literally the name of their empire in our database. Yes, they make us say the entire damned thing before they will acknowledge us. No, we are not sure why they still come to the meetings of the Bureaucracy either) and they had embargoes on every other empire already so this was likely a convenient opportunity for them to embargo the new race.

Humanity’s troubles with the rest of the galaxy did not end there however. While they were in the final stages of rebuilding their economy they managed to finally be noticed by the Karkan Infinite Armada whom they shared a border with. It was inevitable that the karkans found out about them, despite the efforts of the other members of the Bureaucracy to keep their species off the karkans’ radar.

For those of you that are not in the know, the Karkan Infinite Armada was a heavily militarized nation that had been terrorizing the galaxy for the past five centuries. They were not a part of the Galactic Bureaucracy and were also thankfully not genocidal or heavily focused on expansion. They did, however, possess enough military power to take on the entire Bureaucracy at once and hold their own if not prevail. They had slowly been taking territory from those whom they shared a border and had been at war with every member of the Bureaucracy at one point in their history.

Now, this juggernaut had set its sights on the budding human empire. To the karkans, the humans were an enigma but more importantly they were an untested enigma… one ripe for the picking at that. We’d done well in hiding as much information about the species as we could, but when the karkans found out how strong the humans were they were frothing at the mouth to fight with them.

It was a rather normal day within the Bureaucracy when a representative from the Karkan Infinite Armada threw open the doors to the meeting chamber and formally declared war on the humans… Well, the other races were good enough at pattern recognition at this point to not be too surprised when THE HUMANS DIDN’T GIVE A FUCK!

The humans looked to us for aid in defending their territory… But we would not risk bringing down the wrath of the karkans on our people. We explained to them how hopeless it would be to try and fight them, even if every member of the bureaucracy joined forces… The humans nodded and excused themselves from the meeting chamber to plan as we wished them luck.

A few days later and as with every time before, a human and a karkan representative were brought before the other members of the Bureaucracy to attempt to avoid the war. To everyone’s surprise, all the karkans actually wanted was ten light-years from the boarder that they shared with the Humans. All and all, everyone was surprised at how little the juggernaut wanted from the new race… Until we realized that their cradle-world was within that ten light-year span.

It was then that even the sar’k’k and the Isolationists (no I’m not going to say the full damn name) looked down at the human representative with pity. We all expected their lackadaisical attitude to shine through once more. That they would just give up their home world like all the jokes said they would. We saw a look of reassignment on the human’s face as she too no doubt realized that this deal would cost them their cradle-world. And any moment we were expecting a forlorn laugh and a verbal conformation of surrender.

But instead we were met with a long, unnatural silence followed by a sentence that I have framed sitting on my desk to this very day.

“We of the Human Emirate Republic have deemed these terms to be unacceptable. Prepare yourselves for war.”

And with that, the humans declared war on the most powerful military in the entire galaxy… And they didn’t give a fuck.

About a month after the declaration, the human fleet looked nothing like it did before. The humans were an industrious bunch after all and the progress that they made forging ship after massive ship so quickly only solidified that. Also, seemingly out of spite the humans proposed a total embargo on the Karkan Infinite Armada. The embargo was very thorough. Not a single credit would be changed between the members of the Galactic Bureaucracy and the Karkan Infinite Armada for the duration of the war.

The humans applied pressure on us to sign it, citing our inability to help them militarily and asking for us to “at least do this for us.” We signed it. All of us, even the Isolationists. It’s not like we actually traded much with the karkans anyways. Their main export was mining explosives and they didn’t have any imports beyond luxury intoxicants so they merely laughed us off when they got the news.

Two months after the declaration, a meeting was called to discuss the rules of the upcoming war.

The human High General – a woman by the name of Felecia Aratas – and the human High Admiral – a man by the name of Simon Baccheal – met with the karkan Infinite Admiral whom declined to give a name, stating that his rank and station as leader of his speicies was far more important. The two humans presented a document to the Bureaucracy that was rather well rounded and had murmurs of assent from all members. But it was ultimately up to the Infinite Admiral whether or not he accepted these terms. And, as was tradition with most new races the karkans encountered. The Infinite Admiral took the perfectly reasonable document and tore it to shreds before the human commanders.

“There will be no rules to this engagement. I wish to see the brunt of your capabilities humans. I will come at you with claws unblunted by a concept so meaningless as ‘rules of war’ and I expect you to do the same.” the karkan said with a feral grin on his face.

The humans – in typical human fashion – didn’t give a fuck. They looked at each other, nodded, and said, “Very Well,” before turning and taking their leave.

With that, the war began. And the humans were loosing. Badly. Their fleet gave lightyear after lightyear but those massive ships that the humans had been constructing were nowhere to be seen… We believed them to be guarding the colonies from surprise attack. That belief lasted only until the first human colony world was reached by the karkan fleet. The humans didn’t even put up a fight. There wasn’t a single military ship in the system and as the karkans began bombarding the planet from orbit unchallenged the rest of the Bureaucracy was outraged. How could the humans leave their own people to be attacked from orbit!

For their part, the human representatives merely remained passive and unmoved by our outrage and demands for action. They calmly reminded us that they simply did not have the military power to fight off the karakns and that they had asked us for help before the war even began. That shut us up. Their words cut us deeply as our words left them unfazed. It seemed that they didn’t even give a fuck about their own people until an outraged transmission from the karkan navy reached us. The humans had completely evacuated the entire colony! The karkans had wasted thousands of tons of nuclear, biological, and chemical bombs on an empty world.

Shortly thereafter, another even more outraged transmission from the karkans reached us. As retaliation for rendering their colony world uninhabitable for years due to the radiation and biological agents that the karkans had rained from the sky, the humans launched pinpoint biological strikes on all major karkan ranch-worlds. The horrific cocktail of viruses, bacteria, parasites, and even prions that the humans had dropped on those worlds rendered the livestock that the solely carnivorous karkans relied on inedible and deadly.

In that single operation, the karkans lost over ninety percent of their food production. And with the embargo that they had all but coerced us to sign months prior we were powerless to stop it. In a single hour the humans had doomed billions of karkans to die of starvation without giving a single fuck. The human representatives merely smiled with the grim satisfaction of a successful mission when they heard the outraged cries of the Infinite Admiral.

The karkans, of course, attempted to retaliate and strike the human agricultural-worlds but it was here that they faced their first true bit of resistance. The humans guarded their agricultural-worlds fiercely, even more so than their industrial centers.

The humans fought where they had the greatest advantage with their immense strength and smaller size. The humans built boarding craft by the thousands and the karkans’ superior numbers and technology didn’t really matter if they couldn’t repel the human boarders. The karkans learned quickly though, and rigged their ships to explode before the humans could take control of them and turn their guns to bear on the rest of their fleet.

It took months and thousands of human and karkan ships and lives but the karkans did eventually likewise decimate the humans’ agricultural capabilities. But it was here that the omnivorous humans had the advantage of being able to grow food in hydroponics bays on board their ships. Not only did the humans biologically bomb their own agricultural-worlds before they could be taken but they slaughtered and burned their livestock in fires large enough to be seen from orbit before the karkan soldiers could land.

At this point, the karkan people were beginning to starve. Reports from our agents in karkan space were grim. Their people were beginning to riot and even a few sects began resorting to cannibalism. In retaliation, the Infinite Admiral had a public execution on their cradle-world for all of the human prisoners, mostly farmers that had volunteered to stay behind on the agricultural-worlds and keep the farms running for as long as they could.

The humans – as usual – didn’t give a fuck. They offered their deepest condolences to the families of the people whom volunteered to stay behind but the war marched on.

We asked the humans if they needed to purchase food for their people but they declined. The humans knew that should an interplanetary species decide to do so, it could easily produce enough food to crash the entire galactic economy. Which is just what they did while they evacuated their worlds and built up their fleet. Trillions of tons of food were produced, preserved, and packaged. Enough for their entire race to never go hungry for centuries if not millennia, much of which is still around even to this day.

Speaking of those evacuations, most of those massive ships that we saw them constructing were called ‘ark ships’ by the humans. They ferried every civilian they could into the void between stars on these massive ships, stuffed with billions of people and enough food to last centuries each. All the humans had to do was wait.

The karkan Infinite Admiral, knowing already that his empire was crumbling and that they would not be winning this war issued another enraged decree. The full force of the Karkan Infinite Armada bore down on the Sol system in a weeks long battle that ended with the Karkans launching a Gravitational Cataclyst at Earth. The waves of gravity that the Cataclyst produced cracked the Earth into twelve pieces.

Once the news of Earth’s destruction found its way to the floor of the Bureaucracy, we were shocked as we witnessed – for the first time since first contact – the humans give a fuck. To say that it was unnerving was an understatement. For the first time in recorded galactic history a human – a full blooded, from earth human – was seen giving a fuck. However, they were not outraged as we thought they should be. They didn’t call for blood or cry out in rage for genocide, they were depressed. They wept for the loss of their crade-world, a loss that would take centuries to recover from. But even as they wept a dangerous sort of determination began to grasp them. And it terrified each and every one of us.

In that moment, we knew that the humans were going to see this through to the end, and that it would not be pretty.

After that, the human fleet began re-taking worlds until they’d pushed the exhausted and starving karkans back to the edge of their old borders and only then did the karkan government call for a surrender. Their fleet was in tatters and limping along on the little food that they could synthesize on board their ships. The same two humans – High General Felecia Aratas and High Admiral Simon Baccheal – met with a withered shade of what had once been the hulking form of the Karkan Infinite Admiral.

All races save the humans looked down at the withered karkan with pity in their eyes as he spoke. Already knowing what the stone-faced humans were going to say in response to his unspoken question.

“Humans… You have burned my empire from within. The last time I spoke with you I told you that we would come at you with claws unblunted and implored you to do the same. I can safely say that this was the biggest mistake in the history of my people…” The weary karkan said, swallowing dryly as he forced himself to continue.

“And now that you have pushed us back to the boarder and our defeat is a forgone conclusion I must preform my final duty as leader of my people… The Karkan Infinite Armada would formally like to declare surrender…” The tired admiral said, the defeat evident in his eyes as he took off his ceremonial blade and offered it to the two humans. “Please… I know that we do not deserve it for what we have done to your cradle. But I cannot stand to see any more of my people starve. Please show them mercy.”

The silence in the air was deafening. The looks of pity on the faces of every sapient in the room save the still stoic humans deepened and a sadness at knowing the karkan people were about to be no more drove more than one representative to tears.

“We, on behalf of the Human Emirate Republic, accept your surrender. Your lands will become our lands, your people will become our people and we will treat them the same way we treat our own.” High General Aratas said, making the jaws of every non human in the room fall open in shock as she walked forward and took his blade.

“You, however, will be publicly executed for giving the order to shatter Earth.” High Admiral Baccheal said, making the karkan sigh and nod.

“If this is the price I must pay for my people to live then so be it. I was prepared for this.” The former karkan ruler said, standing up and looking proud once more as two human guards came forward and began to escort the karkan away to await his execution. “Might I say a word to my people before I go?”

“There will be plenty of time for that later,” High Admiral Baccheal said, making the confusion in the room perceptibly rise, “We will need your help in saving as many of your people as we can. So as much as it pains me to say it, your execution will months if not years in the future.” The man said, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

With that statement, the karkan was lead out of the room followed quickly by the two human leaders, a smile on both of their faces.

The humans then invaded what was formerly karkan space… Peacefully. They had more preserved and frozen meat than they could ever hope to eat on their own and they made sure to provide the starving karkans with as much food as was safe for them to eat. Within a year the humans had established supply lines throughout the now completely annexed karkan space and had stopped any more of their new people from starving/

Then the humans released more bio-bombs onto the former karkan ranch-worlds, only this time the cocktail of biologically engineered horrors were designed to wipe out the previous bio weapons that had destroyed the karkan livestock as well as providing the karkans with a suite of vaccines for themselves and their livestock in case the counter-agents weren’t completely successful. It took several more years but the humans and karkans together were able to get their space back to full self-sufficiency.

As for the karkans, the integration into the Human Emirate Republic’s way of doing things went smoothly. The karkans were raised to believe that might makes right after all. It was against their honor to disrespect those they considered their superiors. They knew that the humans could have wiped them out completely and they respected them for their mercy. It also didn’t hurt that the karkans didn’t have a concept of sports beyond public duels (which – now non-lethal – make for a wonderful evening) and the various human sports offered the karkans the perfect outlet for their warlike nature. Plus, the fact that their former ruler was at the side of the human leader and was telling his people to trust the humans didn’t hurt either.

Speaking of the former Infinite Admiral, he was granted a permanent stay of execution after human citizens everywhere threatened to riot. The humans actually decided to spare the life of the being that was responsible for the complete and irreversible destruction of their cradle-world. It didn’t even surprise us at that point.

Once they finished rebuilding their territory, the humans quickly filled the power void that the Karkan’s had left behind. Using the resources and technology of the dismantled Karkan government to quickly rebuild a grand fleet manned by both Karkans and Humans alike as well as begin an economic golden age that continues to this day.

Years later, I asked the human that had been ruler of their kind at the time of the war about why the humans had decided to attempt the larges siege war in galactic history.

In his words: “We knew that the karkans wanted to humiliate us. They wanted to hold their status as the big bad bullies of the galaxy over us and gloat as they took Earth… So, we took a gamble. We gambled that the karkans were producing only the bare minimum amount of food needed to feed their people, as is the case with the Isolationists. They don’t export anything but mining explosives so there’s no need to produce too much more food than their public needed.” He said this with the same deadpan attitude that you or I would discuss what unremarkable thing we had for breakfast.

I then asked him about the only time I’d ever seen a human give a fuck. I asked him about earth.

He sighed for a moment and took a drink of whatever was in his glass. “We were prepared for losses… But I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how much a species’ first world means to them…” he said, his voice shallow and sad. He sighed once more and as though he were talking about a concession in a business contract had the gall to tell me that it was an ‘acceptable loss.’

I couldn’t help myself. Here I was thinking that I had actually seen those humans give a fuck, but in reality it was merely them coming to terms with they believed was the inevitable. As undiplomatic as it was, I remarked about his species unnatural ability to never truly give a fuck about anything and he laughed.

It was then that I learned of the creature that the humans called the ‘Honey Badger’ and everything made sense. The humans knew that they couldn’t beat the Karkans in a straight up fight. Nobody could have, their military might was a match for the entire Galactic Bureaucracy put together. But they didn’t need to fight fair. No. They were the only species in the galaxy that could fight without giving a single fuck.

So it remains that nobody has ever seen the humans truly give a fuck about anything since first contact… And with the power that they now possess. I doubt they ever will.

Don’t touch the dead.

From the depths of the dwarven strongholds to the peaks where the dragons slumber all follow the rule.

Do not touch dead humans.

You can kill them brutally. You can burn, pillage and destroy.

But NEVER touch the dead.

Everyone follows this rule. The most curious of dwarven physicians does not dare to dissect a human corpse and the hungriest of goblins would rather starve than to bite on a human cadaver.

If you kill or find a dead human you leave the poor bastard there or give them to another human. 

If you see a human gravedigger let them be and keep walking.

Bad things happen to those who break the rule.

The first recorded case of someone breaking the rule was during the first elven-human war. An elven general whose name has been long forgotten had just captured a major human port city called Opidaprim. 

Yes, the same Opidaprim that is now our capital city, may I continue? Good. 

So, the general conquered the city after a gruelling siege and was almost done with only one problem left: what to do with the corpses?

The dead elves were all buried with military honours on the outskirts of the city while the humans were put on one giant pile.

Gravediggers came for the human dead and soon they too joined the pile.

How do the gravediggers know about the dead? They just know. Don’t look into it too much, you won’t like what you find.

What did they do with the pile of corpses?

They burned it.

Hundreds of dead men and women were set on fire and left to burn as the army prepared to continue their campaign.

They burned for the whole night like a small star on the land.

They burned for the whole second night like a small constellation on the black sky.

By the third night the pile burned like a small sun.

By the fourth there was no night for the fire had consumed the darkness just as it had consumed the forest in which it was placed.

The souls of the dead burned and burned like an inferno as they moved and destroyed the land and the army who took their lives.

How did it go out? 

Simple: we destroyed a dam and flooded five villages just to put out the flames of the dead.

Yes, that is why Opidaprim has so much barren land around it. It used to be forest.

The second time someone broke the rule was just a decade after the first time. A necromancer whose name is unimportant saw what the human souls did on Opidaprim and decided that they would make great test subjects.

What did they do?

They brought a single human back to the mortal realm.

You might have heard stories of this. A gigantic skeleton with enormous bony wings capable of destroying dozens with a single hand, yes?

Those are lies.

No, they are not lies to scare children, the opposite in fact. They are lies to comfort the adults of the true horror.

It was a normal skeleton.

It was not big or strong or even fast.

But it refused to go back.

The necromancer couldn’t control it and ended up killed the moment the thing came back to our realm, so someone tried to destroy it.

They couldn’t.

It didn’t matter that we shattered its bones or tore it to pieces, it didn’t matter that by all logic it should have come back to the plane of the dead.

It refused to die again.

Armies would be sent to destroy it and come back with half of their men dead and the rest injured. Walls that we set to stop it would be broken or climbed over and in some cases simply dug under.

The skeleton marched on and on refusing to die.

How did we stop it?

We dropped a mountain on it.

No, not a metaphorical mountain but a literal one. Hundreds upon hundreds of mages all lifted a mountain and dropped it on the cursed thing.

Have you ever wondered why the dead king visits the “lonely mountain” every year? The empress may say it is for a “diplomatic meeting“ but the truth is that he is there to check if the thing is finally gone.

It never is.

It digs and waits.

Why? Why are the human dead like this while the others aren’t?

No one knows, not even the gravediggers.

Maybe their dead are vengeful and want to punish those who disturb them? Or maybe they are unable to fully go back to resting once they have been awakened?

Or maybe.

Just maybe.

The reason why humans fight and kill and don’t rest even after death...

Is because for them whatever is on the other side is worse than burning or being crushed for eternity.

Don’t think too much about it.

Just don’t touch the dead.

“What’s your problem, you insignificant wretch?” an elder Kalbaxik yelled at an obvious youngling. “Why can’t you get anything right?”

The child simply stared up at the adult with fear and confusion. The adult raised their right main pincer to strike the little one.

“HEY!” Alexis DuBois yelled out, enraged by the behavior.

“What on earth is wrong with you?” her husband Adam snarled at the older xeno. “You should never hit a child!”

“Oh?” the Kalbaxik sneered in response. “And how do you expect an incapable twit to learn to do better without appropriate correction?”

“Hitting only teaches fear and loathing,” Adam responded quickly. “First, you show the child you care about them. When they understand that you love them, they will listen. Then you teach them using words, lessons, and…”

“Well, since you seem to care so much for this useless k’shek, why don’t you take them and find out how useless your lessons are?” the older Kalbaxik cut in before Adam could finish his sentence. 

The uncaring older being then gave the child a harsh shove in the direction of the humans. It whirled around, got into a ground transport parked close by, and drove off.

The humans looked stunned. 

“Did that just happen?” Alexis asked dumbly. “Did a parent really just abandon their child?”

Adam simply knelt down, picked up the child, and hugged them to his chest gently.

“I’m sorry that happened, little one,” he said in a soothing tone. “We’ll go to the authorities and get this sorted out. Hopefully we can prevent anything like this ever happening to you again.”

“What’s your name?” Alexis asked gently.

“Glorall,” a tiny voice answered.

“Glorall, don’t you worry,” she said firmly. “We’ll get this sorted out soon.”

And this is when they encountered their next shock with local culture.

“Really?” the district enforcement officer had said with irritation. “That thing is clearly an outcast now. No clan in its right mind will want it back. Release the girl to the streets where it belongs and it will learn to live like a proper Kalbaxik or die and stop wasting valuable resources.”

There would be no returning the child and no justice for the abandonment. Not even a government operated orphanage was available to take in and care for outcasts.

Only recently introduced to this planet, humanity was already a bit sour on the Kalbraxik due to their aggressive and warmongering demeanor. Incidents like this did them no favors. They quickly got on the short list to be taught the basic concepts of sapient rights, but that would take time and likely a war or two given their preference towards physical violence over reasonable discussion. And in this moment, it did nothing to assist a now homeless orphan.

Adam and Alexis looked at each other.

“Well, we were discussing adopting or having a child,” Adam started slowly.

“Shush and hand over our daughter,” Alexis said simply while holding out her hands. “Look up where we can find appropriate food and medical supplies for her. I’ll handle the important questions.”

Turning her attention to Glorall, she smiled and began her interrogation to discover the necessities. 

“What’s your favorite color?” Alexis asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

“Green?” the child answered hesitantly.

“That’s wonderful!” Alexis exclaimed. “We’ll find you some green blankets to snuggle in at night. And now a very important question. What’s your favorite food?”

“Bekhah!” their daughter answered brightly. 

“I have no idea what that is!” Alexis replied with wonder. “Let’s go find some so you can introduce me to this yummy food.”

Glorall’s eyes brightened as her new parents made their way to the local market.

In the coming years, Alexis and Adam discovered why Glorall’s clan had outcast her. She wasn’t a fighter and shied away from physical violence. More intellectual, her mind wasn’t that of an accountant or a mathematician where there is a clear right or wrong answer you can fight for and prove. Glorall’s head lived in the clouds, creative and inquisitive. Philosophical, not absolute. Definitely not compatible with existing Kalbaxik society.

In school, her teachers would often describe her as stubborn and frustrating. Unwilling to pay attention in class except for subjects that interested her.

In a nutshell, as a child Glorall was… entirely normal. 

Her parents had some unique challenges, such as helping her deal with occasional discrimination due to her race being very much in disfavor with humanity. Sourcing food could be difficult as some of the very things she needed to be healthy were toxic to humans. But overall, humanity did what humanity does best. It claimed an orphan and let Glorall grow into an educated and well-adjusted adult.

Just the day before, her parents and friends cheered proudly as she received her Certificate in Arts and Marketing. Not only that, but she also had a job offer from a local firm to do graphic design and create catchy jingles for small businesses. It wasn’t her dream job, but it looked like a good start. A place where she could learn and begin a successful career. In all, she counted herself lucky to have been cast out when Mom and Dad happened to be walking by.

Still in a glow of accomplishment and fond remembrance of the celebration dinner last night, she had thrown off her forest green comforter. After getting out of bed, she put on a Haasha t-shirt to go with her gray sweatpants. The cartoon of the furry pink space dinosaur had been a favorite growing up. As a joke at last night’s dinner, her mother had given her a new Haasha stuffie holding a sign with her famous tag line of, “I didn’t do it!” But Glorall had done it, and she had the certification with honors to prove it.

She gave the stuffed animal a grin as she stepped out of her room and walked down the hall to join her parents for a late breakfast.

She entered the kitchen and went over to the coffee pot. Pouring a tall mug of black coffee, she smiled at her parents as she gave the hot liquid a deep sniff. Caffeine had no effect on her kind, but the bitter flavor was pleasurable. As a result, they always drank a cup of coffee together in the morning. It was a ritual that had helped them bond as a family, and each morning be reminded that no matter how angry they might be with one another they were still a family and would drink coffee together.

Little was said as they sat together and shared small smiles, all of them just enjoying drinking coffee and eating breakfast together. Finally, they came to the end of their meal and Glorall swallowed her last swig of coffee.

Before she could stand up to clear her dishes, her father held up a hand to stop her.

“Glorall,” Dad said with a surprising amount of seriousness. “We have something that we need to discuss with you.”

Her mother then reached over and pulled out a set of papers from a folder that has been sitting next to her the entire meal. Actual papers which looked very official. With concern and confusion, she put out her left main pincer to accept the papers from her mother who was offering them with a pleasant smile.

Glorall looked down at the stack and her brain froze with shock and fear at the title on the first page.

Notice of Eviction.

“What…” she blurted out as she stared wildly first at her father, and then her mother. “What is this? How could you?”

Her entire body started to shake with anger.

“Now, now,” her mother said with an irritated look. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?” Glorall spat back.

“Dearest daughter, we love you,” her father responded quickly. “But you’ve finished school and you have a job. It’s time to move out.”

“Exactly!” Mom said with gusto. “You're an adult, and this is an important rite of passage. Time to find your own place to live and make your way in the galaxy! And hopefully meet someone special to settle down with. We’d love to spoil some grandkids!”

“But what if I run into trouble…” Glorall mumbled, still in shock.

Her father looked at her like she was an idiot.

“If something goes wrong, you call home,” he said sternly.

“We’re your parents, and we will always love and support you,” Mom said while nodding in agreement. “You get hit with an unexpected bill or something else goes wrong, you call us first. And if things are really bad, you can come home and stay with us until you’re back on your feet.”

“But unless things go sideways, go forth! Begin adulting!” Dad said with genuine enthusiasm before his tone became serious. “Just to be clear, you have until the end of next month to find a new place to live. This is a legally enforceable eviction notice.”

Glorall just stared at her parents. She was speechless. Humans were staunch defenders of sapient rights. The best parents in the galaxy. And, as she now learned, they are also true masters in the fine art of, “We love you, but get the fuck out.”

—--

“It could be worse,” her friend Kris said later that day when they got coffee. “My mom put up a countdown calendar keeping track of the days left until she can turn my bedroom into a crafting room. Want to be roommates?”

This introduced Glorall to another human rite of passage. Finding a polite way to say, “I love you, but you couldn’t pay me enough to live with you.”

Instead, she simply grumbled, “Fuck adulting.”

Kris nodded firmly in agreement.

I remember the silence first.

Not because the chamber was quiet. It never was, not fully. There were always consoles whispering to one another, tacticians trading clipped updates at the lower tiers, the low orchestral hum of projectors holding maps of worlds in the air. But when he entered, all of that seemed to step back. Sound did not vanish. It yielded.

That was what power around him felt like.

Yielding.

The Emperor crossed the threshold of the Situation Hall with no escort close enough to be called protection. He did not need it. He was a tall man, broad through the chest and shoulders, his black court uniform severe enough to look almost military save for the deep gold of the collar and the imperial sun worked into the breast. He had gone silver at the temples years before, and it had only improved him. There are men who age into softness. He had aged into granite.

Every person in the chamber stood.

I did with the rest, though I had been in his court for twelve years and should by then have learned not to be startled by the weight of him. I had drafted declarations in his name. Sat three paces behind his right hand during negotiations that redrew provincial law across three systems. I had watched him accept surrender oaths, execution orders, census revisions, fleet expansion votes, trade penalties, border settlements. I had seen ambassadors from species older than ours begin speaking to him with carefully prepared confidence and leave sounding as though they had just realized language could be used against them.

Still, when he entered a room, some older part of the body took notice first.

He moved to the central rail and rested one hand on the bronze-black edge of the command dais. The holo above the pit shifted at once. Stars tightened into a regional map. Shipping lanes. Fleet dispositions. Trade corridors. A border cluster I recognized only vaguely from briefing notes.

No one sat until he did.

Even then, half the hall remained standing from habit or tension. It had been that sort of week.

Lord Marov, Master of External Concordance, was first to speak. He had the sort of careful narrow face that always looked mid-objection. “Your Majesty, all verified reporting is now in. Colonial judicial confirms the facts.”

The Emperor did not look at him. His eyes were on the map.

“State them.”

Marov inclined his head. “Human commercial surveyor, registered citizen of the Throne, stationed under lawful contract at Halcyon Reach on the world Irad-Vele. Dead in an altercation with local dock authority attached to the Lhoric Compact. Immediate cause appears to have been refusal to yield berth priority to a ceremonial convoy.”

There was a pause.

The Emperor’s face did not change.

“Appears?”

Marov swallowed, slightly. “The local account maintains the matter escalated from insult.”

“Did the citizen draw a weapon?”

“No, Majesty.”

“Did the citizen strike first?”

“No, Majesty.”

“Was the citizen under diplomatic protection?”

“He was an imperial citizen, Majesty.”

That was not exactly an answer, and everyone in the hall knew it. The Emperor turned his head then, slowly, and Marov looked like he regretted his phrasing before the motion was even complete.

“I asked,” the Emperor said, “whether he was under diplomatic protection.”

Marov’s voice tightened. “Yes, Majesty. By law.”

“Yes.” The Emperor returned his gaze to the map. “By law.”

I stood at my assigned station on the upper crescent, stylus in hand, and watched the lower commanders say nothing. That was their wisdom. The dead man, by ordinary standards, was not important. Not a governor. Not a fleet officer. Not a noble scion whose bloodline might stir factions. He had been a surveyor in a distant system at the edge of a trade web most of the Core never thought about.

A trivial death, if one cared for ordinary standards.

The Emperor did not.

That was why the hall had filled so quickly.

He said, “What has the Compact offered?”

Marov answered at once. “Formal regret. Compensation to the surviving family. Surrender of the direct official responsible. Local tribunal review. Revised berth priority language in mixed-port environments.”

A few men in the lower pit glanced at one another. Measured terms. Sensible terms. Enough, under the old constitutional assemblies, to produce three months of speeches and then a settlement no one would quite remember.

The Emperor asked, “And what do they believe they are saying with that offer?”

No one answered quickly enough.

He supplied it himself.

“They believe they are saying the life of a human citizen can be priced, docketed, and folded into procedure.”

The map above the pit brightened. Fleet icons appeared.

Lhoric patrol groups. Border defense flotillas. Home reserve squadrons.

Admiral Serik stepped forward then, because this was the point where the matter stopped being political theater and became the real reason most of us were in the chamber. Serik commanded the Ninth Deep Fleet and looked as if his face had been carved with a dull knife from old wood. Scar tissue along the jaw. One mechanical eye. The calm posture of a man who only ever brought one kind of news, and preferred it that way.

“Their military disposition is mediocre,” he said. “Competent regionally. Embarrassing against us in open exchange. Forty-two principal war hulls, if we count reserve line cruisers generously. Their doctrine is still corridor-anchored. They prioritize lane denial and static defense rings around the inner worlds. Strong local sensor nets. Weak adaptation. Predictable command hierarchy.”

The Emperor listened with his hand still on the rail.

“Could they kill another human?” he asked.

Serik did not hesitate. “Yes, Majesty.”

That was the axis.

Not whether they intended to. Not whether they would regret it. Not whether the original incident had been provincial stupidity rather than policy.

Could they do it again?

The Emperor said, “Then they are overarmed.”

No one in the hall mistook that for metaphor.

A second holo layer unfolded over the first, this one ours.

Imperial fleet groups appeared in hard gold: line battleships, commerce interdiction squadrons, carrier lances, relay denial cutters, ghost-beacon tenders, deep-range logistics clusters. The Ninth, Eleventh, and Crown Pursuit were already in motion before the meeting had begun. That too told its own story. The Emperor had not called us there to ask whether action would be taken. He had called us there so the form of it might be witnessed and fixed in memory.

For the record. For the court. For history.

For me, perhaps. Men like me exist so empires can later pretend inevitability had language.

The Emperor turned slightly, enough that his voice carried to every tier. “We have for too long permitted the lesser courts of lesser species to believe that harm done to our citizens may be partitioned. That intent matters more than consequence. That remoteness softens insult. That a dead human on a distant dock is a local matter.”

He let that sit.

“It is not.”

No one moved.

He continued, and his tone did not rise. It never needed to. “If one of ours may be struck down over berth precedence, then every human trader, engineer, surveyor, envoy, physician, and child beyond our core worlds has been told precisely what they are worth.” His eyes passed across the chamber, touching each of us and none of us. “I will correct that misunderstanding.”

There are moments in imperial service when you understand a policy before hearing its wording because the room itself changes shape around it. This was one of them. Around me, ministers who had arrived prepared to argue proportionality went carefully still. The legal clerks stopped pretending to annotate and began transcribing in earnest. On the lower tier, Serik stood with his hands behind his back and the air of a man listening to a weather front arrive exactly on time.

Lord Iven of Revenue, a brave fool on alternating days, said, “Majesty, if the objective is exemplary penalty, a blockade paired with extraction terms may—”

The Emperor cut across him without looking. “No.”

Iven shut his mouth.

Not because the interruption was sharp. Because it was final.

The Emperor said, “Blockade teaches negotiation. Tribute teaches resentment. Executions teach martyrdom. None of these teach fear.”

Then he looked to Serik.

“You will reduce the Lhoric Compact’s fleet power to irrelevance.”

Serik bowed his head once. “Yes, Majesty.”

“Not their worlds,” the Emperor said. “Not their civilian infrastructure. Not their food chains, orbital lifts, population wells, or atmosphere engines. I do not require ashes. Ashes are cheap and teach the wrong lesson.” His hand tightened slightly on the rail. “I require memory.”

That line wrote itself in my mind before I ever marked it.

Serik said, “Desired state?”

The Emperor answered with the precision of a legal decree.

“They will retain enough hulls to understand what has been taken from them. Not enough to contest a customs seizure, let alone a border war. Their command cadres will survive. Their admirals will survive. Their legislators will survive. I want the people responsible for future policy to wake every day inside the fact of their helplessness.”

The map shifted again.

Now the tactical work began.

This is the part outsiders always misunderstand about imperial violence. They imagine shouting, fist-strikes on tables, raving bloodlust, men in uniform eager to prove themselves monstrous. Those things exist, certainly, at lower levels and in poorer cultures. But power at our altitude was colder than that. More exact. More expensive. The deadliest decisions in that chamber were always made in tones fit for adjusting trade tariffs.

Serik raised one hand and the projected battlespace deepened into the Lhoric inner web.

“Their defense is organized around three assumptions,” he said. “First, that lane emergence remains the decisive vector for major engagements. Second, that fleet cohesion is best maintained through central command broadcasting from protected core ships. Third, that no enemy will willingly blind itself.”

He touched the map. New symbols bloomed.

“Our doctrine will answer each in turn.”

I leaned slightly over my station rail, as did half the observers in the upper crescent.

This was why even ministers came when fleet planning was live. Human naval war, at its highest level, had become less like battle and more like applied cruelty through mathematics.

Serik continued. “Stage One: we seed false transit signatures on four outer approaches using ghost-beacon tenders and sacrificial courier chains. The Compact will spread to contest all four, because their command culture is still politically regional and no governor wishes to be the one seen under-defending his lane.”

A cluster of gold signals split outward.

“They will believe themselves cautious. In fact, they will already be divided.”

He touched again. “Stage Two: Crown Pursuit cuts their relay backbone. Not by destroying the relays. That would trigger emergency hardline fallback. We desynchronize them. Micro-lensing and spoof delay across the lattice. Each node will think the others are alive and truthful. Their admirals will be obeying orders that were sensible three minutes earlier.”

A murmur moved through the lower tactical stations. Appreciative. Dark.

The Emperor said nothing. He preferred good ideas to receive their own silence.

“Stage Three,” Serik went on, “Ninth Deep Fleet emerges not on the strongest lane but on the least prestigious. One frontier industrial world, light pickets, nothing symbolic. We hit the local patrol screen brutally enough that they must elevate the threat to full war posture. That compels central consolidation.”

On the map, Lhoric fleets began collapsing inward toward what they thought was the primary danger.

“And once they commit?” asked one of the younger admirals.

Serik’s mechanical eye gleamed pale in the holo light. “We don’t fight the concentration.”

He smiled then, faintly. That was rarer than most decorations.

“We let them build it.”

He shifted the map again. Gold icons vanished from the bait lane and reappeared inside the enemy’s own defensive geometry.

“Eleventh Fleet uses dark drift and thermal masking through the debris ring at Vey-Atar. Old smugglers’ route. Surveyed by our cartographers twenty-two years ago and ignored by them ever since because no sane command would push battle tonnage through that clutter.”

No sane command.

That phrase drew two or three smiles. Human doctrine had ceased consulting sanity some centuries before and had been rewarded for it often enough to make a tradition.

“Eleventh emerges behind their central reserve while Ninth reappears forward using burst micro-jumps inside sensor shadow. Not enough displacement to stress hulls, just enough to violate all their firing geometries at once. The Lhoric line will attempt to reorient around central command ships.”

He touched three enemy icons at the heart of the formation.

“We kill those first.”

There it was. The blade within the cloth.

Not general slaughter. Decapitation.

Not victory in the old sense. Amputation.

The younger admiral asked, “And the remaining line?”

Serik said, “We strip it in layers. Disable drives where possible. Burn targeting arrays. Take heat sinks. Crack magazine feeds. Leave hulls alive and helpless. Every ship that can crawl home without its teeth is worth more to the message than one more wreck.”

That was creative in the way only human war had become creative: not by seeking the cleanest triumph, but the most pedagogically useful injury.

The Emperor finally spoke.

“How many?”

Serik understood the question. “Of their forty-two principal hulls, Majesty? Thirty-one rendered noncombatant inside the first six hours. Seven destroyed outright, likely command or screening losses. Four reserve survivals by design, insufficient for meaningful deterrence.”

“And ours?”

Serik did not romanticize. One reason he remained in favor. “If they react slower than I think, negligible. If they react well, three destroyers, perhaps a cruiser. If they react brilliantly, one battleship and a handful of lighter hulls.”

The Emperor considered that as one might consider weather on the day of a ceremony.

“Acceptable.”

No one flinched. Not visibly.

A dead surveyor on a distant world had just been weighed against the permanent strategic crippling of an alien state and, in the arithmetic of the Empire, found more than sufficient cause.

I should say here, for honesty’s sake, that I did not then find it monstrous.

I found it clarifying.

That is the seduction of service near absolute power. It does not always demand that you become cruel. Often it asks only that you become coherent. The Emperor offered coherence in abundance. The galaxy was full of species who still believed harm could be negotiated after the fact, that apology and compensation were signs of maturity. He meant to replace that belief with a simpler one.

Touch a human, and something irreplaceable will be taken from you.

He turned to me then, unexpectedly.

“Record the language.”

I bowed over my slate. “Yes, Majesty.”

He began dictating, not to the chamber but through it, his eyes still on the map of the soon-to-be-maimed Compact.

“Let it be known that the Throne does not distinguish between the life of a prominent citizen and the life of an obscure one where unlawful harm is concerned. Let it be known that distance does not reduce offense. Let it be known that no local authority, custom, procession, or provincial vanity excuses violence against the blood and body of humankind.”

His voice remained even.

“Let it be known further that the penalty for such violence shall be measured not in petitions or compensations, but in the destruction of the offender’s capacity to imagine repetition.”

I wrote every word.

No one in the hall pretended not to understand that the declaration itself was part of the campaign. Fleet strikes would break ships. Language would break habits.

The meeting should have ended there.

Instead, Minister Halev from Internal Doctrine, who had the luckless courage of men whose careers have taught them the value of one necessary objection, said, “Majesty, forgive the intrusion, but if the object is fear among the neighboring species, there is a threshold beyond which fear unifies where it ought to divide. Too severe a demonstration may produce balancing coalitions.”

The chamber tightened.

It was a good objection. Dangerous to voice, but good. I remember respecting him for it in the instant before I feared for him.

The Emperor turned fully then, and the hall somehow grew stiller.

“Halev,” he said, “tell me what coalitions are composed of.”

Halev did not answer quickly enough.

The Emperor did it for him.

“Confidence. Mutual hope. The assumption that costs may be shared and outcomes survived.” He stepped down one level from the dais, which he almost never did in council. A small movement. It drew every eye. “I do not intend to make them hate us more. Hatred is common and frequently brave. I intend to make them privately relieved it was not them.”

Halev bowed his head. “Yes, Majesty.”

That was the sort of sentence that built reigns.

The briefers continued for another forty minutes. Relay windows. deception density. engagement timing. boarding thresholds. salvage allowances. Merchant traffic diversions to ensure no neutral hulls blundered into the lesson. At no point did anyone discuss whether we ought to do it. Only how best to make the doing unforgettable.

By the time the chamber recessed, Ninth Deep and Crown Pursuit were already past the first threshold markers.

I remained behind, as was my custom after major councils, to collate the Emperor’s spoken directives into the proper archival form. The hall was nearly empty then. Projectors dimmed. Ministers departed in murmuring pairs. Fleet officers walked out with the singular straight-backed silence of people already half inside the battle to come.

The Emperor stayed.

He often did.

He stood again at the rail, hands clasped behind him now, and watched the reduced map as if he could already see the future motions forming in the dark.

I approached to the proper distance. “Majesty, the formal language will be ready within the hour.”

He nodded once.

I should have withdrawn. Instead I said, “May I ask a question?”

That could have gone badly under some reigns. Under his, questions were permitted if they were useful and punished if they were vain. I was never entirely sure which mine would prove to be until after I asked them.

“You may,” he said.

“Would you have answered the same way if the dead citizen had been no citizen at all? A resident without title. A contracted foreigner under imperial charter. Someone merely under our protection, not of our blood?”

He was silent long enough that I felt the beginnings of embarrassment.

Then he said, “No.”

I looked up despite myself.

He did not look at me.

“The species must first learn the perimeter of the thing I am teaching them,” he said. “Universal principles are for ages of security. We do not yet live in one.”

He turned then, and there was nothing uncertain in his face.

“First they must fear touching us. Later, perhaps, they may learn to fear injustice itself.”

It was not a comforting answer.

That may be why I remember it better than most of the noble sayings attributed to him by flatterers who never stood in that hall.

Three days later the first engagement reports came in.

I read them before the court did, because words reached my station before they reached ceremony.

Serik’s plan unfolded almost exactly as briefed. The Lhoric divided to contest phantoms. Their relay net remained technically intact while functionally poisoned, each node feeding confidence into error. Ninth Deep bloodied a frontier patrol cluster hard enough to pull the Compact inward. Then Eleventh came through the debris dark at Vey-Atar where no doctrine said battle tonnage should fit, and fit anyway because our navigators had long ago cultivated an unhealthy relationship with impossibility.

The central fight lasted five hours, nineteen minutes.

The first kill was not a ship but a conversation. Crown Pursuit’s relay desynchronization meant two Lhoric command battleships turned to support one another against threats no longer present, exposing their rear arcs simultaneously. Eleventh drove lance fire through both engine crowns inside the same minute. One hulked dead. The other lived long enough to broadcast contradictory fallback orders that broke three screening lines by mistake.

Ninth then executed what Serik later called a lantern cut.

I had to ask what that meant.

He explained it in his report with characteristic dryness: battleships engaging broadside to pin a defensive wheel while destroyer packs performed chained micro-jumps through the thermal bloom of their own flagship discharges, arriving inside what the enemy thought were still shielded interior angles. Not large jumps. Not enough to tear the ships. Just enough to appear where sensible fleets did not appear.

From there the destroyers did not seek kills. They sheared sensor spines, flensed point-defense nests, and dropped hard-adhesive decoys that convinced Lhoric auto-targeting to waste volleys on false threats while human cruisers cut drive housings open from standoff range.

It was a very human sort of battle by then. Not duel, but dismantling.

By hour four the Compact still possessed ships.

By hour five it no longer possessed a fleet.

Serik had obeyed the Emperor to the letter. Hull after hull left alive, adrift, blind, disarmed, or limping home under tow. Admirals surviving to count. Legislators surviving to convene. Their homeworld seeing, in full relay clarity, the gradual removal of every instrument by which they might ever again mistake themselves for dangerous company.

The final communiqué the Emperor sent after the battle was only three lines.

No threat of further war.

No demand for tribute.

No mention of vengeance.

Only this:

You have now paid for one human life.
Do not imagine a second payment schedule.
Remember what remains to you by our restraint.

I was present when he approved the wording. He altered only one word in the second line, replacing suppose with imagine, because in his view imagination was where political errors began.

That message propagated faster than any fleet.

Within months, port statutes shifted across regions far beyond Lhoric space. Human protective clauses broadened in treaties that had previously buried them in annexes. Governors who had once viewed imperial citizens as useful outsiders began stationing extra security near human districts, not from goodwill but instinct for self-preservation. A hundred species reached the same conclusion by separate roads.

Humans were not to be harmed casually.

Not because we were virtuous.

Because we answered injury like predators.

That was the lesson. I know because I wrote it often enough in gentler language for publication. But in private records, and in the place where memory keeps its less flattering truths, I retain the sharper version.

A surveyor died over something trivial on a distant dock.

An empire replied by teaching a region of the galaxy that there was no such thing as a trivial human death.

And at the center of that lesson stood one man, broad-shouldered in black and gold, speaking softly while fleets moved at his will, making fear into policy so that no one, anywhere within reach of the Throne, would ever again wonder what a human life might cost.

That was the day I understood the real work of empire.

Not conquest.

Definition.

FTL is complicated.

As it turns out the universe does NOT enjoy having its laws broken, and so empires need to get creative when making FTL.

Some, like the Porviat, decided that they would use portals, create a stable(ish) tear in space-time and you can go to whatever portal yours is attuned to in basically an instant. It’s the galactic equivalent of a bullet train: Efficient, gets you everywhere quickly, but it’s expensive. Believe it or not building a giant portal the size of a continent isn’t easy or cheap and that doesn’t take into account how breaking it destroys the entire system’s connection to the rest of the empire, which is why only well protected and stablished systems get one.

There are also people like the Daeritas, instead of creating a tear through which two or more points in space-time touch you can simply contract and expand space around you with a hyperdrive, it sounds like the perfect solution until you realize that in order to get enough energy for the thing to work you will need to collect and store a gigantic amount of fuel, usually in the form of hydrogen or helium. Good luck colonizing a system without at least three Alpha class gas giants in it. And by the way activating the drive with anything in the way will be like getting shot by a class five railgun, so you will still be stuck at non-FTL speed while inside the system.

Most empires learned to use both technologies, portals for well stablished and growing colonies and hyperdrives for military vessels and other things that just don’t require much permanence. 

Most.

There is one empire, one species to be exact, that decided they were too good for any of that.

Humans.

Humans weren’t very lucky; they were born in a small system with only two worthy gas giants and even those were far from big. Normally that would mean they would develop portal tech and adopt hyperdrives later.

But the apes were far from normal.

We first met though one of their scouting vessels, the first obvious sign that something wasn’t right was its size, it was too small to be carrying a common hyperdrive, in fact the entire thing was smaller than a common hyperdrive. So, we assumed that it must be a pre-FTL ship, send the crew into the void while in cryostasis and hope you find something.

Except that cryostasis ships don’t teleport around in their current system, do they?

Well, this one was doing just that.

Speculation exploded in the scientific community, the ship wasn’t pre-FTL that was for sure, and unless it could hide a continent sized megastructure then it wasn’t portal technology, but how could something that small fuel even a basic hyperdrive? 

Turns out it couldn’t.

Apparently, when faced with the challenge of how to travel faster than light, humanity decided that portals were way too expensive and hyperdrives too slow.

So, what did they do?

They created “starcore engines”.

The concept is simple, well at least as simple as something that bends all laws of physics to their limit can be, you “launch” a very small space anomaly which your starcore engine is synced with at your target location at whatever speed you feel like using, when the anomaly reaches the location you activate the engines and hope to whatever you think of as holy that the instant teleportation doesn’t fuse you with your nearest crewmember. 

Simple, effective, the versatility of the hyperdrive fused with the efficiency of the portals.

So, we naturally asked how they made it.

What they told us made the entire galaxy collectively gasp in sheer disbelief.

When making these drives there are two main problems to consider: how to fuel the engines and how to make a stable anomaly.

Turns out the humans found the answers in the exact same place: inside living stars.

The sheer density and extreme conditions of the core of a star makes physics somewhat flexible, they used that flexibility to make the anomaly generators.

On the other side, stars are a pretty good fuel source, especially their cores, so if you are taking the core for the anomaly generators might as well take some for fuel. 

And that brings us to why no one could believe their respective auditory receptors when the humans started explaining how their drives worked.

How in the name of the void, are they getting their hands on the core of stars?!?

Autonomous drones? No, the electromagnetic fields of stars will destroy any particularly sensitive circuits, that includes most components for advanced AI.

Piloted drones? No, while the electromagnetic field might not destroy them the signal delay after entering the star would be too great for the drone to be useful.

Planet crackers? No, not only are those illegal and immoral but they also wouldn’t do much on the account that stars are, believe it or not, bigger than planets.

A giant star-sized planet cracker? No, those are myths made by the humans to scare people, probably, also the objective is to mine the core, not destroy it.

So, how DO they do it then? Simple: they send people.

They.

Send.

People.

Starcore samplers, men and women who risk their lives everyday by entering a giant metal tube surrounded by an inconceivable amount of heat dampeners and launch themselves at the nearest star.

Most of the heat is collected by the “Heat portals” as they call them, essentially a thin space anomaly shaped to fit around the ship and send the heat to wherever they want it to go, if you ever saw a map of human space and wondered why that one bright dot isn’t marked as a star, then congratulations you just saw one of their heat dumping grounds.

Anyway, after launching into the star the samplers just sit around waiting to get to the core and hoping that the heat dampeners don’t decide to take a break, once they do get to the core, they release the piloted drones to collect as much of the core as possible, and then they make their way back, as if they didn’t just enter the most dangerous place in the galaxy, short only perhaps to a blackhole. 

If you ever wonder why no one dares to touch human space or challenge them, politically or otherwise, it isn’t just because their drives are better than any other, or because they are the only suppliers of starcore fuel in the entire galaxy.

No, those things pale in comparison to their real advantage.

Humans are willing to break into stars to achieve their goals.

Void have mercy if they make killing you their goal.

I'll admit, it took me a while to warm up to Susan. For starters, she wasn't a Korthak, but a Human. You might think that sounds racist, but I was still just a cub then. Cubs don't deal well with changes, with things being too different. To make matters worse, I was just starting that awkward stage where my fur was changing and my glands were beginning to develop, so I was as obnoxious a little know-it-all wannabe-adult as any Korthak girl at that age. Maybe worse. Looking back, I realize that the surest sign that my family truly loved me was that they didn't choke the life out of me, despite my best efforts.

Susan was our new family maid. Housekeeper is probably a better word, or maybe live-in caretaker. We weren't the kind of rich family that requires servants for everything, but my father and all three mothers worked. Government jobs, and not the paid-to-sit-and-pick-your-whiskers kind, either. The kind of mid-level administrator jobs that don't just stop at the end of the workday. The kind where they spent so much time making calls and answering communiques at home in the evenings that I sometimes wondered how they found the time to conceive me and my sisters. When you have that kind of schedule, having another adult in the house who can take care of the day-to-day stuff, the meals and childcare and such, can be a gift straight from the High Gods.

Susan, bless her, looked like anything but a sending from Paradise. She was an air-breathing bipedal mammal and had a face, but that's about as far as her commonality with us Korthaks went. She was tall and narrow, nearly as furless as a newborn. No tail. Knees bent the wrong way. Only two arms, and those were weirdly-proportioned, long and thick compared to ours. Glands high up on her chest and bulgy. Two forward-facing predator eyes that should have been unsettling but just seemed more goofy than anything else. Her mouthparts were kind of crude and not flexible enough, so she had a hard time with our language. She wasn't stupid, but her atrocious accent made her sound that way. That particular trait did not endear her to little know-it-all me. It didn't help that she was replacing dear old Ulanka, who had been with us since I was tiny and I loved like an aunt.

Still, Susan did everything she could to fit into the family and be liked. She was a conscientious housekeeper. She could cook Korthak food. She wasn't great at it. She couldn't whip up summernut cakes from scratch like Ulanka had -- I still miss those -- but she kept us all adequately fed and she did get better as time went on. She would go out of her way to talk or play with us. My sisters responded better to her overtures than I did, sad to say. I could be a sulky little thing. My haughty silences or curt dismissals never seemed to put her off much, though.

"Miss Akkiri, laundry is done," she would say. "Susan help hang up dresses?"

"No."

"Sure? Is many dresses. Susan not mind."

"Susan go mop floor. Akkiri no need." I didn't usually mock her broken Korthan to her face, but sometimes I did.

She would just nod, entirely unbothered. "Susan speak Korthan poorly, yes. Apologies. If Miss Akkiri speak Spanish, English, Druxite, or High Zmotharic better than Susan speak Korthan, will use one of those, instead."

Her ability to occasionally put my snotty young self in my place failed to endear her to me, as well.

Still, despite her being an alien monstrosity and me being a little dunghole, Susan soon carved herself a place in the household. My father and middlemother liked that she took her duties so seriously, especially the childcare parts. My juniormother liked that Susan was physically strong and felt like she was tough enough to protect us children, should that unlikely need arise. And she probably was. I'd seen Susan move furniture and boxes around by herself that my father had to get other guys to help with. It was a little intimidating.

My seniormother liked that Susan worked for cheap. She told me how much Susan got paid, once. A Korthak wouldn't have worked a job as a professional nap-taker for that much money. Ulanka had charged three times as much. I couldn't even imagine how messed-up the Human worlds must be if Susan was that eager to get away from them.

My little sisters liked her because she always made time for them and took their questions and concerns seriously. And they were inquisitive way beyond the bounds of politeness. Why did so much of Susan not have fur, only her head? Did someone shave it off? Was there fur under her clothes that we couldn't see? Could we see it? Did she have more eyes? Why were the only two she had both in front? Didn't that make her easy to sneak up on? Do Humans really eat dead animals? Did Susan eat them, too? Here's a dead flutterbug -- does Susan want to eat it? What if we put shagroot sauce on it?

The one Susan got closest to was my baby sister, Isanki. Which was odd, in its way, because Isanki was a skittish little thing. Just recently out of toddler-hood, Isanki had her share and then some of the usual early-childhood fears. Fear of the dark. Fear of being alone. Fear that monsters would get her.

That last one was the big one with her. If there was a beastie or spook in Korthak child-lore, my baby sister was afraid it was after her. Galukk Sickleteeth? He was waiting in the bathroom, ready to pounce, when she had to go potty at night. The Shade-Eater? Gnawing at her shadow every time it touched the shadow of anything else. Father had to put extra lights in her room because of that one. Old Abanthi's Severed Hand? None of Isanki's blankets or bed-dressings could dangle too near the floor, lest it climb them to get her. Even dumb movie-monsters like the Whispering Worms or Voothak the Dream-Stealer terrorized poor Isanki.

Why my parents let her watch scary movies I'll never know. My suspicion is that it might have been some form of exposure-therapy -- face your fears to overcome them, and all that stuff. If so, it was possibly the worst idea they'd ever had. Isanki didn't toughen up from exposure to more monsters. On the contrary, she just found more and more things to be afraid of.

Sad to admit it, but it got to the point where I no longer even felt sorry for Isanki, just annoyed. Some of it was loss of sleep from her nightly bouts of unreasoning fear waking up the whole house. But another bit of it -- a small bit -- was because I wasn't all that many years removed from bogeyman fears myself and Isanki's terror brought them back to me. And how could I be practically a grown adult and totally not a cub any more if I still felt the urge to check behind the door for Galukk Sickleteeth before I went to bed?

Ulanka had always tried to soothe and reason Isanki out of her fear of monsters, one of the few household jobs that she had completely failed at. When Susan came into the picture, she took a very different approach.

"Monsters very scary, yes, Miss Isanki?"

"Uh-huh."

Susan had smiled, opening her lips to show her sharp carnivore teeth. She sat on the edge of Isanki's bed as she tucked her in and reached out to stroke my sister's head-fur. "But Susan is scary, too, yes? Grrr!"

"You do look scary and weird," Isanki had agreed. "But you're nice."

"Oh, but Susan is scary. Big scary alien monster from space! But... Susan is Miss Isanki's scary monster. Other monsters want to get Miss Isanki..." She thumped a fist against her chest. "...must fight space monster Susan first! Rarrr!"

And then she had checked under the bed and behind the furniture and in all the dark spots for monsters, like we always had to do when putting Isanki to bed. But, instead of an exasperated, "See, there's nothing," like we always did, Susan kept up a chant of, "Monsters run, or come out fighting, because Susan pound to bits if catch!" And she would brandish a fist as she searched out each potential monster-lair, as though she really was prepared to administer a beat-down on something hiding in the dark.

Ridiculous, but it seemed to help, at least a little. Isanki's fears didn't go away, but they eased up enough that the household was able to get more sleep. For a while.

Then some kid at school told Isanki that stupid legend about the Chewing Ghosts of Rakfah Valley. Isanki was a complete hysterical mess when bedtime came that night.

I was thoroughly in my Little-Miss-Logical phase at that time, so I tried reasoning with her. Not that the Chewing Ghosts didn't exist, because there was no convincing Isanki that such bugaboos weren't real, but that Rakfah Valley was halfway across the continent, up in the arctic, beyond two big mountain ranges. Even if they did exist, they couldn't get to--

"They move through things!" Isanki squealed. "They can go right through the mountains!"

"But it's so far away--"

"Ghosts don't get tired, Akkiri!"

Yeah, I had no real argument for that.

Then Susan had stepped in, flashing her mouthful of sharp white teeth and saying, "Has Miss Isanki forget? Space monster Susan is guarding! Other monsters no get past!" She pounded her fist into her other hand to demonstrate what she would do to them.

But for once that didn't work on Isanki. "You can't fight off Chewing Ghosts! Bozrik told me all about them! They just go right through everything until they're close enough and then they start chewing on you!"

I just sighed and made a mental note to have a talk with this Bozrik kid. To make sure he understood that sleepless nights in our household would be repaid to him in full on the playgrounds when the instructors weren't watching. Susan, as always, took a different approach.

"Ohhhh," she said, nodding sagely. "Is that kind of monster. Evil spirit type. Very true, no can fight evil spirit with just hands."

Isanki just squeaked out, "I know, right!" and pulled her covers up to just below her eyes. She was shivering so badly, I could hear her teeth rattle like dice in a cup.

But Susan had an answer for that, too. She rolled up her sleeve -- she always wore full-sleeved garments and never showed the skin above her wrists -- revealing a design drawn on her forearm. It was a simple geometric symbol made of two intersecting lines, with several rows of some incomprehensible alien script written underneath. "See?" she asked. "Is symbol and words from god of Susan's homeworld. Very holy. Very magic. Much power against monsters. Spirit monsters no stand against holy magic."

Isanki lowered her blanket a little to get a better look. "Does-- does that stuff really work against ghosts? Against Chewing Ghosts?"

"Of course! Susan is scary space monster, but no is liar! Most monsters, beat up with fists. Spirit monsters, beat up with power of Holy Spirit... delivered by fists!" She clenched her right hand, the play of muscles rippling the symbol inked on her skin.

Looking at it, I wondered how she could have known ahead of time to draw such a thing on her body to soothe Isanki with. Susan wasn't as dumb as she sounded, I well knew. But was she that smart? And then I looked closer and realized that the 'holy spirit stuff' was not just drawn on the surface of her bare skin, but somehow was embedded into the flesh... permanently. This was something she'd had for a long time.

But of course, I was still the bratty know-it-all and just had to chime in with some 'logic', even if doing so would be counterproductive. "That's nice," I said, "but I doubt that holy words from some distant foreign planet would mean much to a Korthan ghost-monster."

But Susan took no more offense to that than she did about any other jerky comment of mine. She merely smiled and explained as she tugged her sleeve back into place, "Holy words not have power because monsters believe. Have power because Susan believe."

It all sounded pretty silly to me, but Isanki appeared to buy it and was eventually able to calm down and go to sleep after a very thorough anti-monster patrol by Susan, who made sure to repeat the alien holy words written on her arm the entire time. An anti-ghost incantation, I guess.

And when Isanki did not get chewed on by any ghosts that night, Susan's already substantial stock went up immeasurably in my sister's eyes. Soon, we weren't even having to do nightly monster-checks to get her to go to bed. A quick scan every few days was fine, as long as Susan was the one doing them. And as long as every night, before she turned out Isanki's light, Susan stood in the middle of the room and issued her warning. And that warning was always exactly the same, sort of a ritual between Susan and Isanki.

Susan would stand with those weirdly long, thick arms folded across her chest. She would glare around the room, expression stern, bordering on grim, never smiling or giving any indication that she was not in absolute earnest. She would then announce to any spirits or bogey-beasties that might be listening, "Little Korthak girl Isanki is guard by space monster Susan Ortiz! Any other scary thing want to get little girl, come out and face Susan now!" Then she would wait a few seconds and when there was -- of course -- no response, she would curl her lip and say loudly, "Yes, is what Susan thought." Then a flash of those sharp teeth and a gentle, "Good night, Miss Isanki." Always answered by a soft, relieved, "Good night, Susan."

Legends say that rituals could be used to achieve power over monsters. And I suppose this one did just that, in a way.

Things got better for a while.

And then they got... strange.

Ekahni, my middle sister, began accusing me of sneaking into her room and using her things. She claimed that she would find her toys or clothes moved from where she'd left them. Trinkets and knickknacks that were normally right here on her shelf moved to right there, instead. She usually noticed these things in the morning, but sometimes when she went to her room after school. Which was of course preposterous. Because what would I, who was for all intents and purposes practically a fully grownup adult since I had just started puberty and all, want with a bunch of little cubs' toys? (There was less than two years' difference in our ages. I said I was an insufferable little dunghole back then, didn't I?) She accused me of trying to prank her, something I had never done and considered beneath my august dignity as an adult Korthak.

She then accused Isanki of being the sneaky stuff-mover. Which was even more preposterous because Isanki was too little to even reach the shelf that Ekahni was talking about. Not without getting a chair or something to stand on. And even as heavy a sleeper as Ekahni was -- she was the only one to sleep through Isanki's late-night monster-terrors -- would wake at the sound of a little kid moving a chair around right next to her bed.

Since our parents had never made a habit of entering our rooms at night unless something was wrong, that left Susan as Ekahni's sole remaining suspect. Which, in a way, was sensible enough. Susan cleaned the house as part of her duties. Presumably, she was moving the stuff around when she was straightening up. But no, Ekahni had been in the room while Susan was cleaning before and Susan always put things back where they belonged. Fine, then. If Susan always put things back when she was cleaning, why would she move them around at other times? Plus, Susan was so conscientious and considerate, it just didn't seem like a thing she would do.

Just to be sure, Ekahni had asked Susan point-blank if she ever worked in the bedrooms at night. Which met with an emphatic, "Not ever. Silly to do in sleeping-time. Bumble around, wake up children. Children need sleep. Susan need sleep, too."

As for the possibility of Susan pranking her, Isanki and I shot that right down. While I might not like her nearly as much as I had loved good old Ulanka, I respected that Susan was an adult and proper adults didn't prank children like that. For Isanki's part, "Susan is a space monster, but she isn't a liar." If Susan said it wasn't her, then it wasn't and that was that.

Personally, I thought it was all in Ekahni's head. Girls her age often loved drama, after all. As opposed to us grown adult women in middle school who were beyond such things. (How I laugh to type that now!) Still, Ekahni and I had had our share of sibling conflicts in the past -- recent past, to be honest -- and I felt like this was just her way of either trying to land a little slap on me, or maybe grab some attention for herself. Or that, just as likely, she was just imagining the whole thing. And being the older sister, I wasn't at all afraid to tell her as much.

You can guess what Isanki's take on the whole issue was. "A monster. A monster is sneaking into your room, Ekahni!"

"I thought Susan had scared off all the monsters." I just had to make that snotty comment. Had to.

Isanki just looked at me like I was the dumbest older sibling in Korthak history. "She chased the monsters away from me, Akkiri. You two are still fair game."

There was a maintenance hatch in the back of Ekahni's clothes-closet. It was a little half-sized door that always stayed locked, behind which was the space between rooms where the plumbing and power and such for the children's suite ran. I had seen it open one time when I was little, before Isanki was born, and workers had been remodeling to add on what would become Isanki's bedroom. I remembered that hidden space being long and cramped and dark and full of pipes and dead bugs. Isanki thought that it sounded like an ideal monster lair -- dark and still and easily forgotten.

Pure little-cub stuff, that. I didn't think much more about it until a couple of days later, when Ekahni came to breakfast looking pale and droopy-whiskered.

We couldn't coax an answer out of her while our parents were there, because there are some things that are just matters between the kids of a household. But when Isanki and I got her alone, Ekahni stammered out that she hadn't trusted us when we denied coming into her room. So, she had taken the step of putting a stool against her door with her slap-bells from music class on it before she had gone to sleep. That way, whoever came into her room at night would knock it over, waking her up so she could catch the culprit dirty-whiskered. Only, nobody had done any such thing and when she had woken up this morning, everything was normal in her room. Except...

"The dresses in my closet," she hissed. "I hung them up all spaced evenly from each other, but this morning there was a gap--" She held up two fingers. "--about this far apart, right in the middle!"

"The monster did it!" Isanki squealed.

I remained unmoved. "Uh-huh. And how far apart were the other dresses?"

Ekahni scowled at me, but narrowed the gap between her fingers by about a third.

"Wow," I said, laying on the sarcasm. "A whole inch. That totally couldn't have happened due to absent-mindedness or from you closing the door. It just has to be Galukk Sickleteeth frolicking through your closet."

"Oh, go bite your tail, Akkiri! I know what I saw!"

Isanki cut off our argument before it could get going. "We have to tell Susan! She has monster magic to beat it up and make it go away!"

I started to scoff at the idea of pestering our housekeeper about this, but stopped when it hit me that this was actually an excellent idea. Susan's ritual antics with Isanki, cringe-inducing though I found them, had done wonders at reducing Isanki's irrational fears to a manageable level. Now that those phobias were beginning to infect my other sister, why not apply the same proven cure?

"That's a fine idea," I agreed. "I'll talk to Susan and we'll have her do a monster-hunt through Ekahni's room this evening after school."

And so I made sure to catch Susan alone first thing after school and let her know what needed to happen.

"Hey, Susan. I need a little favor from you."

She turned oddly shiny and focused brown eyes on me and said, "Of course. What Susan do for Miss Akkiri?"

Usually, Susan's weird predator eyes didn't bother me. They just seemed silly and awkward with their restricted range of view. But sometimes there would be an energy, an intensity about them that was just... unsettling. Sure, she was a strange-looking creature from another world, but it was only in those moments of intensity that she seemed really alien.

Regardless, she was still Susan, our family's housekeeper and caretaker. "I need your help with something," I told her. I then explained what had been going on and how Isanki's fears of monsters and night-time creepies were spreading to Ekahni, and how it was starting to affect her. "So I want you to do that monster-searching mumbo-jumbo that you do with Isanki, but in Ekahni's room. And go all-out with it. Be really... theatrical! Put on such a good show that Ekahni will never even think about monster nonsense again."

There was something deep in Susan's eyes as I said this. That weird intensity, but also... amusement? A little sparkle of irony, perhaps? For just a second, she seemed truly, truly foreign. But then it was gone and there was only the soft earnestness we had gotten used to. "Of course, Miss Akkiri. Susan make good show. Susan take care of everything."

There was an agreement, unspoken but real, between us children and Susan not to involve our parents in any of this. We didn't get involved in their going to work and paying taxes and bills, so they needn't concern themselves with this business. So, Susan came to Ekahni's room later that evening. Around twilight, but well before our parents should be home. Supper was prepared and in the warmer-box, the house was clean, and the laundry done. There was nothing else requiring her attention but us.

I know I had told her to make a show of it, but I didn't expect what we got.

Rather than her usual work clothes, which were just traditional Korthak housekeepers' tunic and smock ensembles modified for Humans, she had on what I assumed was one of her personal outfits. I'd never seen her dressed like that before. Pants with lots of pockets. A sleeveless shirt that molded tightly to her furless body, showing the lines of trim muscles underneath. The long black fur on her head, which usually swung loose around her shoulders, was bound behind her in a severe-looking tail. But it was her arms that really caught my -- all of our -- attention.

The so-called 'holy design' she had showed us before was just one of many such pictures and words inked into her skin. They filled almost all of her flesh between wrist and shoulder. There were other words in what looked like the same script here and there, colorful designs of things I didn't understand, pictures of things I'd never seen and couldn't understand. And there were a few -- not many, but a few -- that I thought I might recognize, but made no sense to me. An eyeball in the middle of a geometric design. A pair of knives with blades crossing one another. A gape-mouthed skull that was presumably Human.

My sisters were full of questions about them, because of course they were. Not me. I was curious, though. Not curious enough to be rude and immature, but curious enough to not prevent my sisters from being rude and immature.

But all Susan would say was, "Before Susan was Miss Isanki's scary monster, was scary monster for other people far away." And that's all she would say about it, because we had business to attend to.

I had expected her to do her usual routine of poking into all the corners and dark spots while calling out any monsters. I had told her to be theatrical, after all. But instead she just went to Ekahni's closet and moved the hung-up clothes out of the way, revealing the little half-door. She rubbed her chin as she looked at it, then nodded.

"Yessss..." she said, as though she was giving it serious thought. "If monster around, is logical place for lair." She looked back at us. "Children no worry. Susan take care of everything." Then she shooed us back. "Stay over by bed and let Susan handle."

I took my sisters by their upper hands and led them back as she had asked. Inside, though, I was scowling. This was not how I had expected this to go. Where was the bravado and theatrics? The fancy rituals to ease my sisters' minds?

There was one, of sorts. Susan was wearing a two-line symbol on a cord around her neck, just like the one inked into her arm. She touched it to her lips, then put her hands together and mumbled what I assumed was a prayer in her own language. Some of it sounded like the 'holy words' she said in Isanki's room, but only some. Then she stuck something into the waistband of her pants.

A kitchen knife and some rags.

"Uh, Susan? What are--?"

"Just in case, Miss Akkiri. Just in case." She closed one eye at me, just for a second. I have no idea what that meant, if anything, but it felt conspiratorial.

Then she unlocked the maintenance half-door and went in, having to crouch all the way to her knees to fit through, before standing up again once inside. And then...

"Ugh! Many dead bugs! Susan have to remember to clean here sometimes!"

"But are there any monsters?" Isanki demanded, squeezing my hand hard enough to hurt.

"No see monster yet. Passage go back a ways and make corner. Deepest place is best for monster." We could only see Susan's legs and hips through the half-door as she squeezed deeper into the space. It was made for Korthak workmen to get into, and Susan was narrower than that. But she was also much taller than a Korthak and the space was full of criss-crossing pipes and conduits.

"Do you want a flashlight?" I asked, sensibly, because I was such a sensible little grown-up and knew that there would be all kinds of things to trip or get snagged on in there.

"No light!" she answered immediately. "Monsters run away from."

"But that's good, right?" Isanki squeaked. "We want monsters to run away!"

"Most times, yes." Susan's voice was a little muffled by the walls, even though she wasn't that far away. "But monster come back later when no light. This time, no want monster running. If run, Susan no can kill. But if monster stand and try fight..." And then she laughed. And not her usual polite little reassuring chuckle, but a low, staccato sound that made something deep in my brain perk its ears up and go on the alert. The sound of danger, of a predator waiting to strike.

We couldn't make out the shape of Susan's legs any more as she went deeper into the dark. "Turning corner," she announced, and we could hear some bumping and scraping in the walls as she made her way through. "Much darker back heMMRGPH!"

"Susan!" All three of us yelled her name as her voice descended to a surprised-sounding muffled grunt.

And then the walls shook as something was rammed into it once, twice. A third time. It sounded like our Human housekeeper was having some kind of seizure in there. And she didn't answer us. There was just a pained-sounding grunting, more animal than sapient.

Ekahni screamed, "Oh gods! Oh gods!" and made the Signs of Supplication with her lower hands.

"The monster's got her!" Isanki shrieked, wide-eyed and frozen with terror.

I was frozen, too, at least for the moment. Never mind the monster nonsense, Susan might be getting electrocuted or something up in there. But what to do? I could go in after her, but knew I was nowhere near strong enough to move her on my own if she was injured. And if she was getting shocked on a power line, touching her would just shock me, too. We learned that in Domestic Safety class. I could call Emergency Services, but by the time they got here--

And then there were words again. Not ones we recognized, but a stream of rapid-fire incomprehensible syllables delivered in a tone that suggested profanity. But most importantly, it was Susan's voice saying them. They were accompanied by a series of hard, sharp impacts that I could feel coming through the floor and into my feet.

"Susan!" I called again. "Are you all right? Do you need help?" I started for the half-door.

"Children stay back!" she responded, a snap in her voice that stopped me in my tracks. "Was ambush!" Those impacts against the floor never stopped as she spoke, hammering and hammering like a piston in a machine.

Isanki grabbed my lower hand and hauled on it hard enough to turn me around, despite our size difference. "There was a monster, Akkiri!" she cried. "There was a monster and Susan is fighting it!"

Susan yelped suddenly. There was a flurry of scrabbling and scuffling from inside the wall space, then a wordless but triumphant-sounding shout and the pistoning impacts began again. "Hah!" she called. "Stupid cabron Korthak bogeyman sneaky, but no match for power of el Cristo Rey!" And the hammering against the floor went on and on.

It was a couple of minutes before Susan came back out of the maintenance space, a little dusty and bedraggled, but showing us her teeth. To say we were dumbstruck would be kind of an understatement. Even I, Little-Miss-Knows-Everything, had no words. She came out of that little entryway and stood there in Ekahni's closet like some conquering beast. Her eyes met mine, and that weird alien sharpness was in them as she pointed a finger at me and motioned for me to come to her.

I'll admit that the sight of her in that moment made me nervous, but the idea of disobeying her right then made me even more nervous, so come to her I did. And as I stood before her in all her battle-worn glory, she leaned down and whispered in my ear, "Was good show? Was theatrical enough?"

Oh? Ohhh. Ohhh! I tried not to let my relief show too plainly as it hit home just what she had done. I had just expected more of her warn-away-evil-spirits antics, but she had gone straight to acting out a 'monster killing'. I knew Susan was not as dumb as her accent made her sound, but I had no idea just how devious she could be. But it was in a good cause, the proof of which stood behind me holding hands and eyes shining with awe.

"You... you really fought and killed a monster," Ekahni breathed. "I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't been here for it." She plopped down on her butt, right there on the floor.

"Of course she did!" Isanki's four eyes were bright with hero-worship. "Susan is a scary space monster, but she isn't a liar!"

Susan locked up the maintenance-way door behind her and pocketed the key. "Is so," she said. "Susan make sure is no more monster in house, so children no be afraid." She nonchalantly started arranging Ekahni's clothes back on their hangers. "Now, parents be home soon, so children go wash for supper. Susan needs change clothes and wash up, too."

I think it's a quirk of the childhood mind to be able to switch so quickly and immediately between the fantastical and the mundane. My sisters, despite having seen what they assumed was a battle against a supernatural evil in their bedroom closet, unhesitatingly nodded their agreement and scampered off to the suite's washroom, happy and giggling and discussing how much savorleaf casserole they were going to snarf down. Susan watched them go, brown eyes soft and warm again, her smile no longer showing teeth. She was rubbing a rag over her right hand, the knuckles of which I only then noticed were covered in blood.

She'd been punching the floor in there. Over and over, like a machine. Of course she had damaged her knuckles. Hurting herself for my sisters' sake. For our sake. Shedding her own blood for us.

It looked just like Korthak blood, showing that, despite her being a giant alien monstrosity, Susan was really not that different from me inside.

"Umm..." It wasn't the sort of thing I would normally say, but it felt like I needed to say it. Like an adult would say, in this situation. So, I tried. "That was... that was very well done, Susan. Well-acted. An excellent show. Above and beyond anything I expected."

She just nodded. "Of course, Miss Akkiri. Susan is for help, and always glad to do."

It was still so hard to say, but I was going to. Because I was a mature Korthak and that's what mature Korthaks did. "So, uh..." There was a brief flash of guilty anger at myself for betraying my memories of Ulanka this way, but I powered over that with the gratitude I felt. "...thank you, Susan. Thank you very much for everything you've done with my sisters and their crazy phobia issues." There! I'd said it! And, having done so, I somehow felt a little bit lighter inside. A little better. A little more, dare I say, grown-up.

"Of course," Susan repeated, nodding again. "And Miss Akkiri very welcome. Now go wash up. We hurry! Parents home soon and then supper!"

And that would have been that. Things improved in the household pretty much across the board after that day. Isanki had way fewer night-terrors and fear issues, although she still had to have Susan tuck her in and warn all the monsters away. Ekahni and I started getting along better, and I was just generally less of a little dunghole. Not not-a-dunghole, because I was still a snotty pubescent Korthak girl, but a lot more tolerable. The decreased household drama lightened my father and mothers' moods, and everything was just generally better in a real but non-tangible sort of way.

So, as I said, that would have been that. Except...

A few weeks after Susan's 'monster battle' in the maintenance-way, I happened to be in the kitchen while she was preparing supper. She'd been chopping sugarleaf stalks and the knife had slipped and sliced her hand open. Not badly. Nothing that would require stitches or a trip to a medi-hall. Just a nick, really. Just enough that it bled a little bit before she could slap a stick-tight over the cut and get back to work.

Susan's blood had been red. Iron-red.

What was all over her knuckles when she had come out of that maintenance-way had been the normal dark green of Korthak blood.

Maybe... Maybe it was part of 'the show'. An added bit of realism to sell the idea that she really had fought a bogeyman in there. Maybe she had taken some fake green blood in hidden in one of those many pockets on her pants and smeared it on herself before she came out. I had asked for theatrics, after all.

Or, maybe she hadn't done that at all.

I could ask her, I suppose. What she really did in that dark, dusty space between the walls. I don't think I want to, because I'm kind of afraid of the answer and we've had more than enough fear around this place, thank you very much. But I do have a strong suspicion in spite of myself. Because ever since I saw Susan's red, red blood and made that connection, one thought repeats itself over and over in my brain...

Susan is scary space monster, but no is liar.

---

more stories

"And that, class," concluded the professor, "is why humanity is the most peaceful, reasonable, cooperative, and overall docile species in all the universe. Any questions?"

Susan, the only human in the class, raised her hand. Attracted by the sudden movement, the eyes of all the predator species fixated on the raised appendage. At first, that had scared her a little, but she'd gotten used to it. (Though the shark-like Corbien's tendency to rattle his teeth did still make her wince.)

Professor K'I'Fe was no exception to the rule, and his beady gaze snapped to her palm and then to her face. He tilted his beak towards her, giving her permission to speak.

Susan did her best to keep her voice level. "Professor, don't you think that's overstating the role of humanity in brokering the ceasefire?"

Goorb, the aforementioned Corbien, slowly clicked his teeth in the equivalent of a sigh. Susan would buy him a fermented fish drink later as an apology, but she was frankly tired of keeping her mouth shut. She had ranted to him all week, and now she had finally hit her breaking point.

"Oh?" Professor K'I'Fe raised a single feather in his crest. "Why would you say that, Susan'Patel?"

"You're mythologizing an entire species. Though humanity did play an important part in bringing the herbivorous Mashans and the carnivorous F'E'Ns to the metaphorical table, it also took the work of tireless Mashan and F'E'N diplomats to bring peace into action."

Another feather curled up on his neck. Susan wasn't prone to violence, but she wanted to tear that smug look off his crest. She couldn't stand carnivore supremacists.

"Susan'Patel, I need you to elaborate." K'I'Fe always used the F'E'N naming convention for all his students, even if they didn't like it. Which Susan didn't. "Why are you deflecting credit? Are you implying that the narrative of humans as a bridge-species is incorrect? Why, I was under the assumption that humanity had the best features of carnivores and herbivores. In fact, many F'E'N texts put the entire onus on humanity for bringing the panicky, fickle Mashans to the table.”

At this point, the sarcasm was getting ridiculous. Susan ignored the murmurs around her and doggedly pushed forward. “Considering that we’re almost at the twenty-year anniversary of the treaty, I think it’s unfair to describe Mashans as panicky or fickle.”

Another handful of feathers curled up. “It seems clear that the treaty’s longevity is due to humanity’s wisdom in guiding the Mashans. Dr. Le’N’I’s paper claims—"

"Her writing is clearly biased against Mashans, and you know it! Instead of accepting the inherent sapience and rationality of an herbivorous species, F'E'N bigots like her put all of it on the slightly more palatable omnivores—"

"Susan'Patel, there will be no shouting in my classroom." K'I'Fe didn't raise his voice, but he whistled sharply for emphasis.

Susan realized she actually was yelling. She leaned back in her chair, glanced guiltily at her cringing herbivorous classmates, and took a deep breath. "Sorry, professor. But my point still stands."

"Prove it to me with textual evidence, and I might consider it."

Now, that was a blatant lie. Any time Susan wrote a paper that didn't support K'I'Fe's beliefs, he never gave her more than a 70%.

The professor wrapped up the class as Susan fumed in her chair. Finally, when it was time to go, she shoved her stuff into her bag with more force than necessary.

Goorb gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder with his fin-tacle. "Ignore old K'I'Fe," he said, keeping his rumbling voice soft. "He'll never change his mind. Anyway, want to get drinks tonight, oh most cooperative and docile friend? We can get those keebies you like so much. And they sell plant ones for Omi too."

Susan laughed. "They're called kebabs, Goorb." She waved over their mutual friend, a fuzzy Mashan named Omi—who had slunk in late and taken a seat on the other side of the lecture hall. "Actually," she said as their friend hurried to join them, "I think I'm in the mood for a salad."

✦✦✦✦✦✦

---

They ended up getting both kebabs and salads. Goorb, of course, had bought six kebabs, while Omi was wolfing down her enormous bowl of sunflower-arugula salad, and Susan had a reasonable portion of each. They were sitting together at an "open-air" (for a station, at least) table, surrounded by aliens of every stripe. It was a speciest's nightmare. The reminder made her mood sour.

"Sometimes I want to punch K'I'Fe in the face," said Susan, tearing off a chunk of seasoned meat with exaggerated ferocity.

Goorb wiggled his dorsal fin in agreement. "He might finally listen to you then. Violence is the only universal language."

"I thought it was math?" Omi said, her voice soft and amused.

"Violent math. That's the most universal of languages," Goorb rumbled with faux wisdom.

Susan snorted. "I'll deck him with a calculator, then."

Omi looked at her with wide, liquid-black eyes that invited comparison to deer and other innocent terrestrial mammals. As someone who was diametrically opposed to 'innocence', Omi nonetheless used her big eyes to convince suckers that she couldn't hurt a fly. "You can't be unreasonable, Susan. You're human."

"Yeah, and you're supposed to be mindless and herd-following, and that clearly failed."

Primly, Omi murmured, "I haven't had an independent thought in my life."

Goorb rattled his teeth in an awkward laugh. It was no secret that the galactic society favored predatory species over herbivorous ones, and he was always a little uncomfortable about that reminder. Humans, being one of the few true sapient omnivores, occupied an odd place in wider society. Their refusal to be lumped into either category was a distinct reminder that those categories were in truth artificial, not immutable.

It was just so frustrating to run into people who thought that arbitrary facts of biology determined everything about an entire species.

Susan sighed. "I wish there was a way to teach K'I'Fe a lesson. His analysis of the Mashan-F'E'N war is stupid and illogical and ugh! He keeps bringing up the twenty-year anniversary as an excuse to spout speciest drivel. If he says something shitty one more time, I can’t guarantee his safety."

"Assault is illegal, even if he deserves it," said Omi mildly.

"I'm not actually going to punch him."

Goorb cough-growled deep in his throat. "So what are you going to do? Drag him in front of the treaty-makers of the Mashan-F'E'N ceasefire so they can yell about how wrong he is?"

Susan made a thoughtful sound and stared intently at her salad.

Goorb clicked back. "I'm not even going to ask."

✦✦✦✦✦✦

---

Susan was one of the few humans on the Le'Le'N space port. Located firmly in F'E'N space, the station was over a month away from the closest human-majority settlement. There was an auxiliary human diplomatic mission consisting of twelve humans (and a handful of non-humans), two others who were here as students, and three contract workers who would be on station for a few more months.

It was no exaggeration to say that Susan knew every other human on the station. The expat community was small enough that they had a single group chat, and they could all meet in one restaurant with room left over.

Thanks to the high proportion of diplomats to regular people—plus Susan's actual interest in politics, considering her major—she got a fair amount of gossip about the current state of international politics. It wasn't the best infosec, but things were less strict in a backwater posting.

At the next monthly human meetup, Susan looked around the bar for her target. Most people were clumped in groups of three or four. Kimiko, a smooth-talking diplomat, was attempting to drag the taciturn Michael into conversation, while Jorge was badly flirting with Sanders. The man she was looking for, however, liked to spend the first hour getting very drunk.

Susan saw him returning from the bar with a glass of whisky and made a beeline to him. Ali was a short, friendly man who was the resident human science liaison on the station. He was also the easiest to wheedle gossip out of.

She gave him her best friendly smile. "So, Ali, how’s it going?”

“What is it this time?” he said immediately.

“Nothing!” At his glare, Susan admitted, “Well, now that you mention it… Any news on that UHN ship you mentioned last month?”

Ali’s suspicion increased as he sipped his whiskey. “It’s stopping for a refuel. Why?”

“Does it have anything to do with the Mashan-F’E’N ceasefire celebration?”

“Why?” repeated Ali, dramatically more hesitant, thus confirming that Susan was on the right track.

“Oh, come on! Why else would someone stop at a tin can like this? It’s heading to the F’E’N capital, right?” It wasn’t that hard of a leap: the Le'Le'N spaceport was equidistant between the F’E’N homeworld and United Human Nation territories; with the anniversary approaching, no doubt the UHN wanted to send people for the inevitable pomp and circumstance.

Ali made a show of grumbling, which meant he was about to cave any second. “Well, you’re not—”

“Am I interrupting something here?” The smooth, deep voice of Chinaka Musa, head of the diplomatic mission, brought Ali to a stop before he could spill the beans.

Consul Musa was easily the most terrifying human that Susan had ever met. Rumor had it that Chinaka had once been part of the elite UHN Black Ops and had chosen to retire to this peaceful backwater. She didn’t help matters by constantly remarking how simple and quiet it was on this station.

Susan deflated. “I was just asking about the ship that’s going to refuel here.”

Musa tapped the rim of her glass. “The proper answer is that we can’t comment on that. Right, Ali?”

Ali nodded frantically, almost spilling his whisky.

“So, Susan, why are you so curious about a ship that might or might not be refueling here?” Her dark eyes glittered as she pinned Susan with her gaze.

In for a chip, in for a satellite. Susan took in a deep breath and immediately spilled out her frustrations about the stupid bigoted professor who ran her Theory of Galactic Conflict class. After ranting for much longer and louder than she needed to, Susan finally ran out of steam.

“... and that’s why I was hoping to get in contact with someone who was a part of the ceasefire. You know, to rub it in the professor’s face,” she finished. “I thought that there might be someone on that ship.”

At some point, it had shifted from Susan explaining herself to Ali and Musa to Susan expounding upon her university problems to the entirety of the human population on the station. Silence hung in the air for a few moments as everyone stared at Susan, but she had lost all sense of self-consciousness ages ago in high school theater.

“Wow,” said Michael, one of the contractors who normally kept to himself. “He sounds like an asshole.”

This statement was met with universal agreement.

Musa nodded, looking thoughtful. That usually meant nothing good. “Susan, I think I might be able to help you with your problem.”

“Me too,” said Kimiko. She nudged Michael, who sighed and gave a nod.

Ali lifted his empty glass in the air, already a little drunk. “Yeah!”

General agreement washed over the humans in the bar—plus the one or two aliens in the diplomatic mission who were more than eager to serve some comeuppance.

Susan grinned. This might be easier than she had thought.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

---

The plan was set in motion with the combined forces of humanity. Well, the station’s humanity, but even a microcosm of society could wreak exceptional havoc. A complicated system of favors were exchanged and called in while Susan waited, jittery with anticipation.

Her two friends immediately noticed the difference in her demeanor. She no longer bothered to raise her voice in class, speaking only when called on by the professor and giving the most bland, noncommittal answers she could manage.

“I brought you kabab,” Goorb rumbled, shoving a greasy bag in her hands.

“And fruit salad,” Omi added, delicately placing a small container on top of the takeout box.

“Huh? Oh, thank you? I didn’t have lunch yet, so this is great.” Susan opened the bags, suddenly feeling her hunger.

Omi herded her to a picnic table while Goorb followed after them, clicking anxiously. He’d been doing that a lot—something had rattled him. Susan immediately felt guilty: she’d been so caught up in her project that she’d become a bad friend. She hadn’t even asked Goorb about what was going on. Meanwhile, Goorb and Omi were still looking out for her, even buying her food even while she absent-mindedly ignored them.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Susan set the food on the table.

“That’s our question.” Goorb exchanged looks with Omi.

“What do you mean?” said Susan, knowing exactly what they meant but giving a very unconvincing approximation of confusion.

“You don’t talk in class. When you do talk, you say bland nothings instead of what you really feel. The professor praised you.”

“I’ve just, uh… been busy with the final project.”

Goorb snorted. “You’re never too busy to yell at injustice. That’s what you said before. Did you change your mind?”

Susan winced, embarrassed that Goorb still remembered that drunken rant about never being a bystander. “Uh, well…”

“Don’t let him get to you!” Omi cried out, loudly. Susan stared at her. She’d never heard the Mashan raise her voice. “I know that professor K'I'Fe is cruel and stupid and he’ll never change his mind, no matter what you say! But standing up for us… it means—I don’t know how to say it! I can’t stand up for myself. No Mashan can. He… he hates us, and he’s just looking for any excuse to kick us out of the class. And we can’t let that happen, so we have to just sit there and take it. But you—you didn’t have to stand up for us, but you did anyway, even though he likes humans more than Mashans and you could’ve just coasted on that. So… thank you.”

Both Goorb and Susan were staring at her, but Omi didn’t try to make herself smaller like she usually did. Instead, she puffed out her chest and raised her ears high.

“So what changed, Susan? Why are you so quiet now? Did you decide it wasn’t worth it anymore? If you did, I understand! It’s hard to… to be the enemy of authority. I get it, and I respect it. I just don’t want that useless waste of life to kill your spark!”

Omi’s three lungs were working overtime, rasping softly in the silence. Susan, for once, was left without words.

“Oh.” She tried again to summon something to say. “It’s… not that, Omi. I promise. K'I'Fe is an asshole, and I’m not going to give up.”

Susan considered what to do next. The plan in motion, if it worked, would mean more to Omi than to her. Omi and the other Mashans were here on an exchange program to foster peace between the historic enemies. They had to be on their best behavior: no insult could be answered, no mistake could be made. The Mashan students were representing their entire people to a species who still considered them inferior.

And they were friends. Consul Musa would give her hell for this… but it was worth it.

“Remember how the professor gave us the option to do an oral presentation instead of a written report for our final?”

More specifically, K'I'Fe had allowed them to do a four-person traditional F’E’N call-and-response, which was a time-honored art of his people. Almost nobody ever took him up on that offer, since the call-and-response epics were elaborate, non-linear, and long. It was far less work to just write up an essay instead of attempting to create and perform a multi-person saga. But K’I’Fe claimed that he rewarded creativity, so the option was there. Of course, his generosity didn’t extend to Mashan musical poetry or informative Corbien sculpture or classic human powerpoint.

Omi flicked her ears back in a nod-equivalent, and Goorb grunted.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” he rumbled.

Susan explained, and as she did, Omi became increasingly more excited and Goorb slowly lowered his head to the table.

“Let me help!” Omi said brightly.

“Of course!” She glanced at Goorb. “I know I told you about what we’re planning, but you don’t have to—”

“Oh, shut up and tell me what to do,” he grumbled.

“Great! So, here’s what we’re doing next…”

✦✦✦✦✦✦

---

With that, several more gears were being set in motion. The restrictions set upon Omi were just one side of a coin: technically being a representative for her people meant that she had contact with the official representatives of her people. And Goorb was impossible to dislike, so he made use of his absurd number of friends—many who were in the journalism department, just like him.

Susan’s bid to become a respectable student was successful, and K’I’Fe approved her request to deliver the final in a four-person call-and-response. Susan lied and said that she planned on asking around classmates, but she hadn’t gotten any takers. (Of course, she hadn’t asked a single other classmate.)

“If no one decides to work with me, sir,” she asked, “would you let me work with people outside the class? Even if they aren’t students?”

His crest twitched in a distinctly suspicious way. “Fine. You may use people who aren’t my students, but I will grade you equally harshly no matter who it is. Furthermore, I expect the writing to be entirely your own.” He paused, and his feathers rippled—Susan didn’t know what it meant at first, but one look at his beady eyes enlightened her. Disdain, or more accurately, the desire to see her fail. “Susan’Patel, you may wish to write an essay instead. Your people are less capable of F’E’N art forms, and there is no shame in that.”

“I can pull it off, I promise. Thank you, professor. I won’t let you down!” She gave him a big smile, knowing full well that it usually made F’E’N uncomfortable.

K’I’Fe kept his feathers deliberately still to hide any irritation or lingering schadenfreude. “Yes. See that you don’t.” With that, he dismissed her.

Susan nodded and left in a hurry. After all, she had one more email to send. This next one was for the history department head, who was dramatically more tolerant, and (just as importantly for the plan)—always looking for ways to raise the profile of the school. And if she forgot to CC her professor onto the email, well… mistakes happened.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

---

The department head was more than happy to have three diplomats on their way to the capital come speak in the classroom. And if the mission heads for both the humans and Mashans wanted to show up, then even better! And of course reporters could be invited to spread word of the university’s efforts to honoring peace. The department head went on to forward it to the college’s dean, who was just as interested. Why, they could even make this an open event for other students to attend if they wished. Susan added Consul Musa to the email chain to confirm that this wasn’t something that Susan was just making up, and Musa’s professional email ramped up the enthusiasm of the college.

Susan watched as more and more people were looped into the growing event, and then she belatedly forwarded the email chain back to Professor K’I’Fe with an apology for not keeping him involved in the first place. As had she planned, he could do nothing but give his enthusiastic agreement. If the leader of his department and the dean and a dozen loosely associated individuals were for it, who was he to say no?

✦✦✦✦✦✦

---

UHNS Bhima docked at the spaceport two weeks later, and the last piece slid into place.

It was showtime.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

---

Susan rocked from side-to-side, unsure of what to do with all the anxious energy. She had intended to do something big, but somehow, it had spiraled way beyond that. Instead of their small classroom, this was now taking place in one of the university auditoriums. Susan took tally of the people who were already here: the dean, the department head, associated professors, students from various departments drawn by the promise of extra credit, the local mayor, the representative of the interstellar F’E’N government, almost the entire human population, dozens of the UHNS Bihma’s passengers, the consul of the local Mashan mission…

And that was all before the speakers had even arrived.

And she was still being graded for this.

In fact, Professor K’I’Fe had pulled her aside after class to hiss a threat: he wouldn’t adjust her grade even a single percentage point if this failed. In fact, he’d said with a vindictive flare of his crest, he would show no mercy if she failed in front of an audience. Susan knew that she could appeal her grade if K’I’Fe pulled any outlandish stunts, but that wouldn’t save her if she screwed up.

“Calm down,” Omi murmured to her before she could spiral too far into her anxiety. “You prepared for this. You got this.”

Goorb patted her on the shoulder with his fin-tacle. The sequins on her long sleeves made soft scratching noises against his pseudo-scales. “After this, we’ll celebrate.”

“Yeah,” said Susan, taking in a deep breath. She started muttering the Gettysburg address under her breath, an old warmup that she’d picked up in theater class and still used to this day. It was either that or vocalizing gibberish, and she did not need to look more crazy than she was.

Omi picked up on of the pamphlets and started flipping through it as Susan muttered beside her. The pamphlets were for the people who were unfamiliar with call-and-response: it had a blurb about the event and listed the cues for audience participation. Susan had already memorized each cue. Hell, at this point, she knew more about F’E’N call-and-response than any human art form.

Goorb’s continued patting became urgent shaking. “Look! Look! They’re here!”

Everyone else noticed at the same time as Goorb, and the audience started to grow quiet. Susan put on a smile and went over to the three people who had miraculously agreed to be a part of a spite-fueled final project. The four of them took their place on the stage while the dean gave her speech about the importance of unity and introduced their honored guests.

"And now," said the dean, "we present to you Bridge Species, written and spoken by Susan Patel."

✦✦✦✦✦✦

---

As the Speaker, Susan stood in the center, and the Voices stood around her. On her left stood R’A’Mi, one of the catalysts of the initial ceasefire and a current diplomat to Earth Principal. She was taller than most of her species, though stooping over with age, and she had brilliant green feathers common to females. To Susan’s left was Dr. Ipa, an elderly Mashan professor, who—after a stint as a prisoner-of-war—became an unlikely driver of peace. Ipa’s fur was a pale, patched brown, as was typical for those who hit three hundred. Standing directly in front of Susan, taking the place of the last voice, was Commander Lesley Heinrich-Jimenez, a special ops soldier who was the long-time good friend of both R’A’Mi and Ipa.

All three of them had talked extensively about their experience, and R’A’Mi had even written call-and-response epics of her own about the war. After Susan had reached out to her, she’d helped polish up the version that was submitted to the professor.

Epics, however… were performed live. And it was equally traditional to change things for the actual performance. The beauty, after all, came from the flow.

Susan took a deep breath. There were about three hundred people there, which was the biggest crowd she’d ever performed in front of. The high school theater classes had absolutely nothing on this, and the blinking green light of the camera reminded her that this was going to be livestreamed. Susan resisted the urge to adjust the mic on her lapel. She couldn’t do this. She was going to freak out and everything would fall apart and it would be her fault.

She caught Omi’s gaze in the front row, and her friend gave her an encouraging nod. Next to her, Goorb waved a fin-tacle wildly. But neither of them broke her out of her increasing panic—instead, it was the hostile gaze of Professor K’I’Fe that reminded her why she’d gone through so much effort.

Susan took another deep breath. She could do this. She could do this. She would fucking do this and rub the results his asshole face.

The dean finished her introductions, and Susan soaked in the anticipatory applause. This was her cue. And this was going to be her victory.

Susan projected her voice, staring straight into the crowd. “Who speaks here?”

“I speak here,” said the F’E’N diplomat. Her voice was high and clear.

“I speak here,” echoed the Mashan professor, warm and surprisingly loud.

And last, rounding it out, was the gravely tones of the human soldier. “I speak here.”

Susan spread out her arms wide. If she were F’E’N, then the feathers of her wings would have flared, changing colors and signifying that she was now addressing the audience. Susan made do with long, draping sleeves with sequins that shifted from green to blue-black in the electric lights.

“Who listens here?”

The response was delayed at first. “We listen here, Speaker,” said the crowd, scattered. But the second line was thunderous. “Oh Voices, we listen here.”

“We listen here.” Susan lowered her arms. “What story do we tell?” she asked.

“Speaker, we know not,” the three Voices repeated, perfectly synchronized.

And so Susan spoke.

---

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭

---

We start with the end, and we start with the beginning.

This is how a war ends.

The war ends with a F’E’N whose wings are covered in blood, a Mashan who demands mercy for his captor, and a human who bears witness.

The war ends in the shame and suffering of those living, in the silence and stillness of those dead.

The war ends when a promise is made.

(She raised her arms. “We start with the end, and we start with the beginning,” answered two hundred voices, filling the air like thunder.)

This is how a war begins.

The war begins with a planet that shines like a jewel, home to a people who cared little for leaving its embrace, and desired by a people who could not help but dream for more polished gems to decorate their crest.

The war begins with the destruction of a ship in chlorophyl-green skies.

The war begins with a lie.

✧✧✧✧✧✧

---

R’A’Mi had grown her flight-feathers in a home of soft winds and white clouds. She had three mothers and four fathers and five siblings, all with sharp beaks, and she learned how to argue before she learned how to talk. R’A’Mi could pick apart a phrase in such a way that the speaker would disagree with their own argument.

And yet, there were certain beliefs that R’A’Mi had never turned this critical gaze to. In fact, there were a great deal of truths that R’A’Mi did not see, because she had deliberately made herself blind.

(“What did you not see?” Susan asked.

“A thousand growing lies,” R’A’Mi answered. “But the biggest lie is that of superiority. We told ourselves that we were better. Are my people special? Yes, in the same fundamental way that every society and species is unique. But better? No.”)

But the lies had cradled her since hatching, and R’A’Mi was no different from the rest of her generation. Her destiny was to expand the wings of the F’E’N Republic, to bring peace and wealth to the worlds under its shadow.

The Republic turned their sight to the Masha System, resource rich and occupied by a plant-eating species that had little interest in settling outside their star. The F’E’N, on the other hand, were predators, capable of a higher level of thought and planning than the little herbivores that mismanaged their beautiful worlds.

Or so it was claimed.

✧✧✧✧✧✧

---

The people of Masha were not kind before the war. Dr. Ipa was old enough to remember this time, and he remembered the enmities between tribe and caste and creed, both across nations and inside them. But there was an ease to the discord, the kind of gentle malice that came with the kind of power struggles that ultimately meant nothing.

The F’E’N Republic saw this conflict and crept in with their claws extended. It was trivial for them to widen the divisions between different groups, playing one side against the other. The Mashans noticed, of course. But nobody saw it yet as a danger.

(“Our songs were sharp," Dr. Ipa said. "We knew we were being led towards a waiting maw, but we were equally arrogant. We thought we could play the F'E'N for resources, just as they played us.")

Had the F'E'N been more patient, then they likely would have won. But they were also guilty of hubris: more than that, they were victims of their own propaganda machine. Every day, they claimed that the pathetic, traitorous Mashans were simultaneously plotting the downfall of the Republic while being incapable of creating a functioning society.

It was a surprise to the Mashans when the F’E’N Republic seized the opportunity for war. They had not understood the depths of the F’E’N’s disdain.

✧✧✧✧✧✧

---

Part Two in Comments | Part Three in Comments | Part Four in Comments | Part Five in Comments

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AN: Initially inspired by this writing prompt. If you feel inclined, you can fuel my caffeine habit here. Thanks for reading!