Memory Transcription Subject: Benwen, Nevok Intern
Date [standardized human time]: January 26, 2137
I’d heard of things like riots, and especially stampedes, but from inside the relative safety of a PD Facility, I’d been largely exempt from ever having to experience one. So, against my better judgment, I asked. “Tippen, what… what exactly is a stampede, and why would a media blackout cause one?”
Tippen rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Arxur taking over a Federation planet is already cause for panic. Cutting the proverbial phone lines afterwards? That immediately reads as ‘there is no escape’. Anyone who’s already anxious about the Arxur doing whatever they want with us, that anxiety’s about to hit a breaking point.” He took another sip of his tea. “People are gonna freak the fuck out, probably do something stupid.”
It didn’t escape my notice that he’d dodged the question about stampedes. “But the Arxur aren’t doing anything!” I protested.
Tippen shook his head. “But they could do anything to us at anytime, and there’s fuck all we could do at this point to stop them.” He held a paw to his mouth, thinking. “Maybe if we killed all the planetside Arxur and evacuated the entire colony before their fleet returned…”
“Please don’t,” said Zillis quietly, as she shifted where her hand was resting on her rifle.
“I’m still disarmed,” muttered Tippen. “And you’re not. You can pretty much do whatever you want to me. See how that circles back?”
Zillis silently approached Tippen, who froze in a panic. Zillis reached out a single clawed hand towards the self-admittedly helpless prey creature… and tousled the fur on his head. “Benwen’s fur is softer,” she mumbled, as she slinked back to her original position.
I tried not to laugh, but it was difficult. “I haven’t been conditioning lately, whatever…” Tippen muttered. “Plus he’s just a big fuckin’ kit, of course he’s still soft…”
“I’m twenty, I just don’t have a lot of life experience,” I said, frowning.
Tippen snorted. “A big. Fuckin’. Kit,” the old grumpus repeated.
“I’m only a little older than that,” Zillis said softly.
“Great, I’ll get you both some blocks to play with,” Tippen said.
“We’re doing movies, actually,” I said, excitedly. “Got any recommendations?”
Tippen rolled his eyes. “There was this old human movie for children about a big green grumpus from the swamp that nobody would leave alone…”
I glanced at Zillis, who shrugged. She seemed amenable. “Alright, send me the link, then. Thanks!”
Tippen flicked an ear in agreement, but otherwise froze up again. “You two? Together?”
I grinned. “Yup! Having a fun little night in. Why?” Tippen eyed up Zillis with suspicion. “We’re gonna split for a bit and meet up again after dinner,” I explained. I didn’t want to cast aspersions on Zillis, but I think I knew what Tippen was worrying about.
Tippen nodded. “It’s about dinner time now, actually,” he said. “Zillis, why don’t you head on out. I wanna grab a bite with my kinsman.”
I tilted my head in confusion. “Kinsman?”
Tippen finished his tea. “Aye. Debbin and I are kin, and if you’re his ward, then that makes us kin as well. Break bread with me.”
“Okay?” I said, not quite following. It sounded like a tradition, but at the end of the day, I guess I liked bread? Most herbivores did. “You know where to meet me?” I asked Zillis.
Zillis nodded. She eyed up Tippen with suspicion right back, and turned to go. She paused for a brief moment at the doorway, taking solace in the fact that Tippen’s sidearm was still in pieces by the exit, then left.
“I should probably clean that up,” I said, gathering the pieces. I wasn’t sure if giving Tippen his gun back was a good idea, but I was also mostly sure that Zillis, Jodi, and maybe even Sifal or Debbin would take turns turning Tippen inside-out if he tried to hurt me. Hopefully, he was sobered up enough now not to test that.
I handed the gun bits back to Tippen, who methodically put them back together while I watched. “You got that?” he asked.
I tilted my head in confusion, but nodded.
“Good,” he said, holstering the sidearm… and handing the whole thing to me.
My eyes went wide. “Whoa, hang on, I don’t know how to use a gun!”
Tippen snorted. “Point it at whatever you want to die, and squeeze the trigger. It’s loud and jolts a bit, so try to steady yourself and not flinch. Be brave. I’ll show you the rest if you survive the night.”
“I’m not shooting my friend!” I said in horror.
“Your friend is an Arxur,” said Tippen. “All it takes is one moment when her hunger gets the better of her.”
“She’s not going to hurt me!” I insisted.
“I hope you’re right,” said the older man, “but nobody ever died from having a backup plan.”
The gun felt cold and bitter in my paws…
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Memory Transcription Subject: Deputy Security Director Garruga, Seaglass Mineral Concern
Date [standardized human time]: January 26, 2137
“So Tika,” I said slowly, barely moving a muscle. “My boss has just informed me that you are, in fact, an escaped mental patient.”
The Zurulian padding around the countertop froze abruptly, one paw still in the air. “I was misdiagnosed,” Tika said at last.
The bound Arxur, the alleged surgeon, started laughing.
“But you were diagnosed by an expert to have Predator Disease,” I said with an unblinking stare. There was a shining ember of fury in my heart, burning bright, burning my soul, calling on me in the voice of the divine to burn her, too. Through sheer force of will, I kept my head as clear as I could. The Arxur were another matter entirely, but for lesser threats like PD and smaller hunters? My career got set back years the last time I fired off half-cocked. I had to resist the call of the cleansing flames. Questions first, shoot later.
“Garruga…” Tika began, sighing. “Look, in principle, you understand that the pursuit of scientific truth requires questioning things, right? You have to ask how things work, and you have to ask if your existing theories describe the universe better than new ones?”
I nodded slowly, shaking with rage only subtly, and silently noted that she’d dodged the question for the moment.
“One of the diagnostic criteria for Predator Disease is excessively questioning the diagnostic criteria for Predator Disease.” Tika tousled her own fur in frustration. “That’s like being found guilty of hiring a defense attorney! Can you imagine being jailed for the crime of arguing that you shouldn’t be in jail? It’s circular reasoning, and it’s absurd.”
Kitzz was smirking. Of course he’d find joy in any evidence we were as beneath him as he seemed to think. I ignored him, even as the purifying fires hungered for impure fuel.
“And the worst part is,” Tika said, her voice getting heated, “they ignore the evidence! If I told people I could flap my paws and fly, that would be crazy talk, certainly, if and only if I couldn’t demonstrate it on command!” She grabbed the sheaf of papers, the report printed out from the brain scan test, and swatted the countertop with it forcefully. “I was committed for arguing that the Arxur might be people. And I just proved it! Get me another Arxur, and I’ll prove it again!”
“And that was the only thing wrong with you?” I said firmly, but the flames were wavering with uncertainty. “Heresy, for lack of a better word?” The Federation generally respected freedom of religion. Heresy was distasteful, but it wasn’t, strictly speaking, illegal. Not on its own. But if her beliefs were verifiable…
“That’s all,” said Tika. “No other issues. I was bounced around between various PD Facilities because none of them knew what to do with me. It is, after all, impossible to solve a problem that does not exist. Instead, doctor after doctor found themselves nodding along to my arguments, which worried the Facility Administrators greatly. That, I suspect, was the core issue: it is politically problematic, within the Federation, to think of the Arxur as people. Our leaders simply cannot allow that idea to spread.” She gestured at the two Arxur in the room, neither of whom were attacking us. For now. “Until, of course, we suddenly find ourselves in an unprecedented scenario where treating the Arxur with the dignity and respect of personhood becomes downright necessary to our long-term survival.”
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
I sighed. I had my duty. The herd must be protected. Life must be cherished and cultivated. Those living perversions of the natural order called “predators” must be exterminated. In all my years, those duties were one and the same. Here and now, today, Tika made the case that those duties were finally at odds. And I couldn't see a way to tell her she was wrong.
The fires flickered, and with a tiny wisp of smoke, burned out. I truly didn’t know what to do with this information. Light was dark and up was down, but Tika had the receipts. Was I supposed to just rebuild my understanding of the world from scratch now? “I think I need to mull this over more,” I said sullenly.
Kitzz cleared his throat. The surgeon had no empathy for others, not even his own kind, but he had the intellect and cunning to see the patterns even in unfamiliar social puzzles. The results were often the same as empathy, in the end. “I’d, uh, like to invoke my intrinsic personhood, vis a vis not being strapped to a Prophet-forsaken bed.”
Kloviss, of all people, groaned. “Depends. Are you going to bite someone again?”
“I didn’t bite anyone!” Kitzz protested.
“Okay,” said Kloviss. “Are you going to attempt to bite someone again?”
Kitzz frowned, and considered the question.
“No hurting the prey physically until and unless the Commander says otherwise,” Kloviss repeated. “Are we clear.”
Kitzz sighed long enough that I briefly feared he’d fully deflate like a balloon. “Fine. Sir. Eugh. Can we go somewhere else after this? The broth was interesting enough while I was waking up from a morphine nap, but I need some real food if I’m not getting any live prey out of this.”
Kloviss started undoing the straps. “We’re working on the live prey thing,” he said as he worked. “Just can’t do talking and thinking prey anymore. Bad for business. Gonna see if we can get some literal animals off the humans, not just the… flesh thingies for the bioreactor.”
“Tissue samples,” Kitzz said, as he rolled his eyes. “Sounds neat. Maybe my legs will work again in time to chase down one of them.”
Kloviss groaned. “Please tell me I don’t need to carry you all the way back to the hab facility.”
Kitzz shrugged, briefly, now that his shoulders were free, but his newly-released arms were mostly preoccupied with various itches he hadn’t been able to scratch previously. “Maybe they got a cart somewhere?” he offered.
Doctor Wylla stared at the two of them incredulously. “I mean, we have a wheelchair you can borrow. It’s quite literally there to be used by patients with mobility issues.”
Kitzz stared back at Wylla, uncomprehendingly. “The fuck is a wheelchair?”
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Memory Transcription Subject: Lieutenant Kloviss, Arxur Medical Orderly, Seaglass Mineral Concern
Date [standardized human time]: January 26, 2137
A wheelchair, it turned out, was a highly specialized tool for the exact task I had in front of me: moving around a person who couldn’t walk on their own. That was always nice, having the right tool for the job. Still, very odd that the Federation had a tool for such a highly-specific purpose. I’d been on raids before. I’d seen prey fleeing the battlefield in sheer terror, trampling each other, leaving their wounded for dead. Stampede, I think they called it. That idiotic display of fear and weakness came up a lot in Betterment propaganda… but it also had led me to believe that, for every species, those who couldn't keep up got left behind. Strange to find out that, in times of relative peace, that wasn’t the case.
Kitzz and I rolled into the hab facility in slightly longer than ten minutes. Annoying prick kept acting like I was a servant carting around his regal palanquin, and I had to threaten to leave him in a ditch before he stopped. The wheelchair had a feeble motor so the user could maneuver around a bit on their own, so I left him to his own devices inside the hab facility once I'd finished pushing him across the long overland journey. Happy to be rid of him for the night. Kitzz was exhausting, but so was everyone else to a lesser extent. I just wanted to eat something in perfect silence and maybe get back to my book for a bit before I went to sleep.
“Eyes up, Lieutenant,” said Lieutenant Commander Laza, in lockstep next to a somewhat exhausted-looking Commander Sifal.
I swore internally. “Yes, ma’am?”
“You got to stay at the medical bay with the prey all day?” Sifal asked.
“I did,” I said simply. I didn’t want to give the Commander more words than I had to. She was oddly deft at twisting your words against you when the mood suited her. Or her own words, apparently? Her voice was coming through the translator chip. It sounded like she'd been practicing one of the Terran languages…
“You don't say,” said Sifal. “Okay--”
Laza cut in at this point, glancing at Sifal with a baffled expression. “Would you care to join us at the officer’s table? We’d like to debrief you.”
We were seated in short order. As a First Lieutenant, it was uncommon, but hardly unheard of, for me to eat at the captain’s table. We weren’t on a ship, so there was no captain, but you got the idea. The rankless runt was a noteworthy divergence from protocol, though.
“This is Zillis,” said Sifal, back in our common tongue, introducing her. “She’s shown some promise as a gunship pilot, and as a liaison with the prey. Handled pretty much anything I’ve thrown at her, honestly, especially the unprecedented.”
“Impressive,” I said. Zillis shrank a bit in her seat, clearly unused to praise. As for me, I was already thinking about food. All the video clips Tika had shown me of ungulates getting tortured had put me off the idea of beef or lamb for a bit. I felt a bit like poultry today instead. Maybe a turkey?
Bah. No, tired as I was, I needed to focus up and pay attention to the others at the table. Officers had to play politics, from time to time, to survive. I really would have rather been alone, but barring that, I briefly tried to find solace in eating dinner with three women, all rising stars within the Rebellion. No rush to find someone, with the war going on, but I did have a social obligation to continue my bloodline at some point.
Sifal wasn’t unattractive, but she was a bit reedy and bookish for my tastes. Clever and reliable, certainly, but a bit of an oddball at times. She also stared too much when she spoke to you. Still, she always sounded so… engaged. She had a task in front of her, and she was in hot pursuit. Goal-oriented and experimental. It was a pleasant change of pace from the typical fury and rigidity of most officers.
Her second, Laza, was more my type. Robust, to use a word. Looked like she knew her way around a fight. Bit of a hardass, to hear the rumors, but she had this quiet, curious side to her. Probably why she was so open to tagging along after Sifal as the Commander charged on ahead, breaking things and traditions apart. Following along in Sifal's wake gave Laza a great vantage point to study the wreckage. Buuuuut Laza was barely looking at me. Everyone looked at me. Fuck, I think even Kitzz and Tika had been ogling me. A welcome relief, but an odd one, that Laza wasn’t constantly eyeing me up.
Zillis… was tiny, had terrible posture, had a visible lack of self-confidence, and was flushed red and borderline salivating as she stared at me.
We all notified the guy on kitchen duty what we wanted, and began talking while he fetched it for us. “So, what did we all learn today?” asked Sifal, forcing herself to sit prim and upright and barely succeeding. Exhausted. That was the word. I think I said I was tired earlier. I meant exhausted. Burnt out, even. I didn't want to sleep, I just wanted to stop using my head for a few lousy minutes. And underneath her slipping mask, Sifal looked like she felt the same. “I spent most of my day troubleshooting operational inefficiencies,” Sifal continued. “Mostly paperwork, but I also found some data suggesting that the colony's kelp farming efforts might have their yields improved by incorporating fishery management as a polyculture. That'll be nice, getting to incorporate some fresh local seafood into our rations. How about you, Zillis?”
Zillis coughed, and began mumbling into her water cup. Quite the opposite of Sifal’s eerie overabundance of eye contact, Zillis seemed too scared to look any of us in the eyes at all. My bare chest, sure, but not my eyes. Maybe I needed to start wearing armor, or at least a lab coat or something…
“Zillis,” Sifal chided gently, “you are relaying important information to your commanding officer. Please, speak with precision and intention.” I tried not to raise an eyebrow at that. That was a highly peculiar amount of coddling for active duty personnel. Most of us didn't even treat our own hatchlings with that gentle of a hand.
Zillis cleared her throat. She still spoke softly, and her voice wavered a bit in fear or nerves, but I could at least understand her now. “Media blackout protocols on Federation worlds are activated by one button push, which reroutes communications past censors. They seem more concerned about mass panic and riots.”
Sifal sat upright, alarmed. “Shit. How bad, you think?”
Zillis ducked her head, sheepishly. “The security director himself panicked and waved a gun at me. There are only a couple prey who aren't afraid right now.”
“Seen a couple on my end,” said Sifal. “Debbin, and this one Letian named Vivy. I'll be visiting her tavern later tonight with Jodi, a Yotul. Oh, and that one Takkan forewoman from the mines. Forgot her name already, but she's more creepy than scared. What about you two?”
“Debbin and Benwen,” mumbled Zillis.
“Oh!” said Sifal, excitedly. “Glad to hear the kit really came around. What about you, Kloviss?”
I shrugged, and tried not to glance at the door to see if my food was ready. “Tika is fearless,” I said. “She seems to be bringing Garruga and Doctor Wylla around.”
“Right!” Sifal said. “I keep forgetting. The prey are far more social than we are. Insular, too. We can't underestimate the value of having local operatives working for us, speaking on our behalf.”
I blinked. Prey collaborators vouching for us? Arxur didn't do that. Humans did that. We barely thought of the prey as people, and Betterment loyalists didn't even do that. Recruiting locals sounded like a tacit admission that we were fully adopting some variant of the human diplomatic playbook over our own. I wasn't opposed, necessarily, but that was an astonishingly open statement where it'd only been hinted at piecemeal before.
At the end of the day, how many of us, in our heart of hearts, wished we'd had the luxury of being born human? I wondered idly. And knowing Sifal's love for big unorthodox ideas…
“We're building our own Earth here, aren't we,” I muttered. Everyone's eyes went wide, including my own. Fuck, I didn't mean to say that out loud!
Sifal just smiled. “Keep quiet about it, won't you? The others, they need to be eased into it, I suspect.”
I nodded. Being looped in on a conspiracy was nice. I would have settled for not being executed, frankly, so anything more than that was a bonus.
“So how was your day, Kloviss?” Sifal asked.
I sighed with relief as our food came. I'd heard tell of bigger, but turkey was the biggest bird the humans had had readily on offer. Pre-plucked, headless, guts and all. Glorious. Sifal and Laza were enjoying slabs from two different large fish, one pinkish orange and one dark red, the innards salted and served on the side, and Zillis was hungrily eyeing up a large mammalian haunch and a bowl of liver.
“I made bone broth in a prototype pressure cooker that needs a better release valve,” I said quickly. The faster I told my story, the faster I got to start eating. “I got a job working in med bay as an orderly. Absent goats or chickens, learning the care and maintenance of Federation herbivores is the best I can do right now to practice animal husbandry. Oh, and Doctor Tika ran something called an Empathy Test on me, which I passed. She was very excited about it, and used it at length as a rhetorical tool to convince her fellow prey of our good intentions.”
The whole table was staring at me again. Zillis, with her mouth half-open around a femur, was frozen mostly because she didn't understand why Sifal and Laza had just stopped abruptly.
Sifal started to grin with delight, though. “The prey can just straight-up test for empathy!? Ohoho, Kloviss, buddy, this puts a lot of schemes back in play that I'd previously put on the backburner due to time constraints. Tell me everything.”
I stared at my as-yet untouched turkey and tried not to whimper.
