u/ApprehensiveCap6525

Synopsis: Humans are the only omnivorous species in a galaxy of apex-predator carnivores, and our greatest strength is in our numbers. When an alien slave empire discovers how badly we outnumber most intelligent species, they invade Earth, shattering a fragile period of peace and threatening a war that would mean the death of worlds.

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Memory Archive Entry #2

User: Marten Herme, president of the Eurasian Union

Species: Human

Date (human standard): June 24, 2099

Over my few decades of service in the Eurasian government, I had imagined threats to my homeland coming from every enemy under the sun. The democratic socialists of the People's Republic of Luna. The fascists of the American, Chinese and Indian Empires. Even the countries of the African and South American Blocs, if they ever put aside their differences and united as we Europeans had, would pose enough of a combined threat to justify a few war games here and there.

An alien invasion from another star, though? Fuck no. I didn't even know where to begin with that one.

"Play the message again," I told General Robespierre as we sat at our situation table along with the rest of the Eurasian military's best officers. He nodded and opened his laptop to press a few buttons. I looked up, past him and his chair, to the massive screen on the far wall of the situation room.

A horned, menacing, reptilian visage appeared on the screen before us. "People of Earth," she--at least she sounded like a woman--began, looking down at the camera. I think that was intentional. "I am Karija vel Kaldani, subjugator prime of the Draken Matriarchy. Your noblest hour has come."

Karija's scales were dark red, and her eyes were yellow with black, rhombus-shaped irises. Her appearance was alien enough to have no real Earth equivalent, but if I had to pick, I would equate her more closely to a dragon than any real-world lizard. One of the terrible ones, from the old stories. The kind that brought nothing but fire and death.

"Your world has been deemed ripe for harvesting," the draken woman continued in a suave, honeyed voice. Her horns were curved like a goat's, and the room she was in looked opulent to the extreme. "Your cultural and national traditions will be subsumed into our own. Your people will be redirected away from their own petty pursuits and into the greatest endeavor of their lives: serving the Draken Matriarchy. If you prove useful, your species will live on, and your culture will survive insofar as it serves our ends. Any resistance you make will only serve to heighten your discomfort during this period of transition." The transmission ended there.

"Opinions?" I asked my subordinates. Military officers only, since this was clearly a military matter. I mean, maybe the draken were actually a peaceful species and this was all a big cultural misunderstanding, but 'your world has been deemed ripe for harvesting' was hardly the most polite way to make introductions. We had to be prepared for war.

General Richthofen put his hands on the table, fidgeting nervously. "They're definitely going to invade us. Defense strategies?"

"We have the plan for an attack from Luna. Can we adapt that in time?" I looked at Admiral Yevgeny, our astral warfare specialist.

"No, Mr. President," he responded in a thick Northeastern accent. "Our plan for an attack from Luna relies on stopping the invasion in orbit. They don't have the numbers needed to land troops en masse on Eurasian soil. All predictions indicate they'll either-"

"Use mass drivers to destroy our military, then negotiate once we've been humbled from orbit, or offer negotiations first and then bombard us if we don't surrender," I interrupted him. "I read your briefings. They're great. You are a once-in-a-generation mind, Admiral Yevgeny, and I need you to meet this once-in-a-generation crisis. How do we do it?"

"Defend the orbit? We don't," Yevgeny scoffed. "That fleet has, bare minimum, five thousand ships. Each of them bigger than our Eurasian Space Force's three largest vessels combined. I promise you, if they have the ability to send that much matter on a journey between the stars--and arrive at the destination intact, no less--there is nothing we can do. At best, we can go to ground, like the Vietnamese or Bolivians."

I took that last part and stood on it. "Go to ground," I repeated. "We'll do that. Scatter the army. Abandon all bases that aren't hardened against orbital bombardment."

"And the citizenry?" asked another of my officers.

"That is the civilian government's problem," said I. "My problem. Not yours. You people focus on the military defense, and I and my ministers will handle protecting civilian lives and minimizing panic." I looked at my watch. "I have a meeting about that in forty or so minutes."

"Sir, we have thirty hours before the draken ships arrive," Yevgeny reported to me, fiddling with his phone until the big screen in the room showed a tactical map of their battle fleet. "Astrography reports they're splitting into two main forces, one for Earth and another for Luna. A single ship is heading to take the Mars colonies."

"Well, that's good," I told him. "Fewer enemies for you guys to fight. The other powers can keep some of them occupied for a while."

Admiral Yevgeny leaned forward in his chair. "I don't think you're understanding, sir." He pointed at the image of the draken fleet on the screen. "Those guys there? They don't give a damn about Earth or Luna or Eurasia or America or any of that. All five human nations have colonies on Mars, but those draken only sent one ship. What does that say?"

I said nothing, expecting Admiral Yevgeny to fill me in. He promptly did so. The guy liked talking.

"Come on, people!" Yevgeny snapped, his temper flaring at our perceived ineptitude. I could sympathize. "To them, it's human, or non-human. That's it. If they are gonna subjugate us all as one species, why should we not fight them as one?"

The room grew hushed as we considered what this guy was saying. Luna was isolationist to the extreme. They had a network of orbital mass drivers over there specifically made to bombard any Earth superpowers that decided to get uppity with them. And, believe it or not, they were the reasonable ones. They had a democracy, and civil rights, and other such things. I didn't even want to think about the red fascism of the Chinese and Indians, least of all whatever insanity the former United States of America was getting up to. After the Nuclear Exchange of '66 and the purges of democracy-loving politicians of any stripe in '67 and '68, there was kind of no hope left for them.

"Luna won't be hard to agree with," said I. "They're amicable toward us when they don't feel threatened by our might. It's the other three powers that are the problem. I'll see if I can work something out."

"You're kidding me!" General Strohheim exclaimed, slapping the table. "We are literally the only major power on Planet Earth to have a sensible, functioning, first-world democracy in place."

"What about Luna?" Admiral Yevgeny said like an idiot. Kind of surprising, given how smart he usually was. "Oh. Yeah. They're on the moon. My bad."

"Admiral Yevgeny made a good point," I defended my subordinate. "When the conquistadors came to Central America, they were outnumbered a million to one by the Aztec Empire. If the Aztecs had stayed united, they would've crushed Cortez. Instead, the majority of the Spanish Empire's fighters were Aztec subjects who rebelled against the regime." I thought for a moment while I tried to find ways to properly phrase my point.

"Colonialism thrives on disunity." That was about as good a phrasing as any. "Literally every colonial movement throughout history, from the Americans to the British to the Spanish, has exploited the internal divisions of the peoples they conquered," I said forcefully, begging these people to see my idea. "You think these draken won't do that to us?"

I pointed at the draken battle fleet approaching Earth, their plasma tails making them look like meteors on my screen, and understood for the first time how it felt when the ancient Aztecs saw clouds hugging the sea. "If they get their way, Eurasians will leap headlong into the chains of the oppressor just as long as they're helping shackle the Americans as well. This cannot be how we end."

"I understand, sir," said General Richthofen. "If you give us the order to fight alongside those maniacs, I won't like it, but I see the wisdom. Enemy of my enemy." General Strohheim nodded as well, and Admiral Yevgeny was already on board. Hell, he came up with it.

Seeing no other course of action, I stood up and left the room, ordering my officers to work in my absence and come up with strategies for Eurasia's defense with or without the help of any allies. I left them to their duties and made for my own office, ordering my secretary to postpone any appointments I had planned for the next couple of hours. The fate of the entire human race was on the line.

"The American Supreme Leader will be with you in ten minutes," said my secretary, Johannes, standing in the office door. He was a really great man, and a really great woman before that. A really great person, really, and I was really glad to have him on my side.

"Thank you, Johannes." I held up a hand and made a few motions with it, trying to gather my thoughts. I loved this guy. Like a brother, or a son, or something of that nature. I didn't want him to die here if the draken nuked the presidential building. "Listen, if you want to turn in your position, go be with your family... go and do that. I won't judge you."

The fair features of Johannes' face twisted in shock. I think he was appalled. "Mr. President, I would never abandon Eurasia in a time like this. The fact is, I've always admired you, sir. Since day one. And if there's anything I can do to help you defend Eurasia, then, damn it, those draken will have to shoot me at my desk to stop me."

Well, that was a noble enough idea. The fact of the matter was, the draken would probably do that if they ever got the chance, but I wasn't about to let a little thing like 'realism' get in the way of Johannes' ideals. We had too many realists in the world already.

"Well, the idea here is to make sure the draken don't get the chance to shoot you at your desk," I helpfully clarified. "Thank you for your support. Now, sit yourself down and strap in. We're in for a doozy."

Johannes did as he was told and I began mentally preparing myself for a talk with Supreme Leader Kingman. The guy represented all the evil I hated most in man. The Lunese government was reasonable. Better than ours in some ways, like workers' rights. The Chinese and Indians were pragmatists who could be negotiated with to mutual benefit without much issue. They would probably agree to an alliance in this dark hour. The American Empire, though? Supreme Leader Kingman? He was a trouble on the best of days. And this was not the best of days.

I took a few deep breaths to steady my nerves and began looking around the oval-shaped office I was in. The design was a relic of pre-empire America, back when they actually believed in things like 'democracy' and 'civil rights'. The fact that the world's most infamous dictator now sat in exactly such a place made my blood boil.

The office of the Eurasian President was not gilded and decorated, as were those in America and India, nor was it filled with propaganda or histories of the state like those of the leaders of China and Luna. My workspace was spartan, and that was to remind me of one simple fact: No president was ever meant to be a king. Sure, a lot of my predecessors had needed the reminder, but I tried my best to be unlike the corrupt or selfish rulers who had led Eurasia before my time. My country--my species, now--deserved only the best.

I sat and waited in my humble office, myself a humble man, until my call with Supreme Leader Kingman began and I had to devote myself to the very un-humble task of saving the world. "Mr. Kingman," I began, because no Eurasian president in history had deigned to glorify that maniac with his preferred moniker. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

George Kingman was a disgusting parody of a world leader. His office was filled with obscene luxuries, and he himself was obese with success. He had been the one to seize power in 2067, and crushed his opponents with a series of ever-more-draconian laws, playing left against right and poor against rich while increasing his own power all the while. It was still studied in political schools today.

"There's an alien invasion on the horizon," said Kingman, gesticulating with his fingers. "This is a matter of direst consequence to the American Empire. I can spare a few moments to speak with you. What are you here to discuss?"

Well, here it was. Time for me to bite the bullet.

"I was actually thinking of proposing a joint military alliance with you," said I, keeping a neutral face despite all the negative emotions coursing through my body. There was a reason most Eurasian politicians loved to play poker, and gambling wasn't it. "As well as all of the other human nations of the worlds. Can we agree?"

The American supreme leader stroked his chin in contemplation. "You know, I actually received a proposal from the draken," he said in a sly, sinister voice.

My heart sank. Of course the fucking slavers would pick him to be their favorite quisling. Probably promised him a fat helping of slaves to rule over after all of Earth was conquered. "They proposed that I ally myself with them, and equip my armies with draken technology to roll over my enemies in a righteous wave of freedom." Kingman chuckled to himself. "Wouldn't that be a sight?"

"Mr. Kingman, you can't possibly believe the draken will spare you from slavery," I began, mind boggled at how even this tyrant could be so foolish. "They're coming here to subjugate us. All of us. Surely you can-"

Kingman laughed, a sour, hoarse thing that sounded like a dog moaning in agony. "You think I don't know that?" he chuckled, before suddenly growing stern. "I would never sully my conscience by allying myself with a rat from outer space." A surge of relief flooded me at his words. If it was possible to get emotional whiplash, I would've been a chronic victim by now.

Supreme Leader Kingman chuckled to himself for a few more moments while I waited for him to say something more. "I'll have my army ready to meet the draken when they make landfall," he said. "If you hold down Eurasia for long enough, maybe we'll be able to come help you out once we've massacred all the invaders on our end."

I didn't actually think that was a realistic battle plan, but I guess that was for the generals to figure out. "So... the alliance is on?" I asked the man who had once been my most hated enemy. "Our two powers will stand together as one?"

Kingman's answer was to pull out a chalice made from a human skull and tap on it a few times. I shivered. God only knew why he had that. "You'll have your alliance, Mr. President. It's what George here would've wanted." I had to remind myself that this guy was as human as I was, and that the real enemy was up there. "I'll send my generals orders to liaise with yours while you and I work on convincing the other nations to join up. Agreed?"

"Agreed," I agreed, ending the call a moment later. There we had it. A military alliance with the American Empire. The American Empire. Just a day ago, I'd have dismissed anything less than nuclear brinksmanship as an utter impossibility to behold. Some kind of 'peace in our time' bullshit that Neville Chamberlain's ghost would whisper in politicians' ears. And yet, here it was.

"Hell yeah!" I gave a whoop to myself, startling Johannes, and clapped my hands together in sheer glee. "I did it! Fuck you, Kajira, Jakira, Kajra vel... whoever you are!" The name of the draken overlord coming to enslave my planet escaped me at the moment, but the words she had said rung truer than ever. Win or lose, die or live, chains or freedom, we as humans would meet this threat together. As one species. That draken may have been an evil, slaving, colonizing tyrant, but she was right about one thing.

This was humanity's noblest hour.

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Previous Chapter | Next Chapter (coming soon)

Synopsis: Humans are the only omnivorous species in a galaxy of apex-predator carnivores, and our greatest strength is in our numbers. When an alien slave empire discovers how badly we outnumber most intelligent species, they invade Earth, shattering a fragile period of peace and threatening a war that would mean the death of worlds.

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Next Chapter (coming soon)

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Memory Archive Entry #1

User: Jiarani, daughter of Kavles, chief strategos of the Saurian Confederacy

Species: Saurian

Date (human standard): June 19, 2099 -- the 46th anniversary of the end of the Great War

I stood on a lavish balcony at a gala held in my honor, all but mobbed by well-wishers and hopeful suitors, and my thoughts were as black as the night I gazed into. I did not deserve this. I did not deserve to be here. I was not who they expected me to be.

The position of chief strategos had been the Saurian Confederacy's greatest military honor since its inception a hundred years ago. It was a sign of trust above all else, trust that the one wearing the golden pauldrons knew what they were doing, and they would show any enemies of dignity and fairness a swift death by their claws. I couldn't do that. What was worse, I had to confess, in front of my father and everyone I admired, that I couldn't be that person. The Saurian Confederacy had picked the wrong woman.

"Jiarani!" I turned to see my aide, Venari, son of Venari, appear from the crowd in the banquet hall behind me. He was a lean, short, physically diminutive specimen of saurian, barely a hundred and eighty centimeters tall. His scales were green and patterned, and his face was long and narrow even for a saurian. I, by contrast, was the picture of militaristic beauty. I had a sharp and pointed snout, gray scales with blood-blue highlights, and a greater height and size than most saurians. My aide and I couldn't have been more different, but we went together anyway.

Venari was a nobody. His father's greatest claim to fame was that he had kept the family tradition of having a son called Venari--as had his grandfather and his grandfather before him--and mine was on the strategic council that had the final say on all decisions regarding the Confederate state. My mother had been the greatest chief strategos of our era.

I was crushed under the weight of legacy, and I think that's why a no-name like Venari appealed to me more than all the accomplished scions of grand lines that had been presented to me when I finally reached the rank where I was allowed a personal aide. Here was a man unburdened by expectations. No legendary ancestors for him to measure up to. He was building his own legacy, and I envied him for that.

"Long life and noble children," I greeted my trusted aide. "You look good in that uniform." It wasn't the truth. In all honesty, Venari was an ugly man to look at. But he was dependable, brave, and honest in such a way that dismissed all physical concerns, and my confidence in him was part of the reason he had been able to take a stride forward in spite of his physical appearance. Quite frankly, if it were appropriate for a strategos to be romantically coupled with her aide, I'd have made a pass by now. He deserved it.

"Long life and noble children to you, my friend. You look better than I do." Venari showed his palms in a greeting that had marked friendship since prehistoric times, and I followed. In that moment, we were two hunters stalking the deserts of ancient Vraktes, each telling the other 'I carry no weapon, I seek no fight'. Strange, how we saurians could change so much and yet remain the same. "Not to interrupt your... uh... whatever it is you were doing, but your acceptance speech is in two minutes."

I clicked my left sickle claw to signify acknowledgment. Twice the size of the other three claws on each of my raptoresque feet, it was a weapon made for disemboweling prey in the close melee of a fight. We saurians, like every other intelligent species in the universe, were the apex predators of our world. Lethal individual combatants by our very nature but, owing to the tyranny of biology, condemned to being forever small in number compared to our prey. Even the use of meat cloning vats to supplement our cattle farms did not provide us the plethora of nutrients we needed to expand our population beyond a measly few billion.

"Jiarani, you're looking at me like that again," said Venari, clicking his own sickle claws anxiously against the tiled floor. He cared for my health maybe more than I did for his, and it was safe to say my health had not been the greatest lately. "Please don't tell me you're- you know."

"I don't deserve this honor," I told Venari. "I don't. And now I have to go up there and tender my resignation in front of the most legendary men and women in the Confederacy."

"Jiarani, you're a perfectly capable soldier. You defeated the strategic and tactical AIs in every simulation-"

I took two steps closer, clicking my sickle claws an extra time with each step, instinctively intimidating Venari in such a way that I immediately regretted it. It wasn't his fault that I was like this. "Venari, I am the only chief strategos in history to have never won a battle," I said harshly, jabbing him in the chest with a taloned finger. "I haven't even fought a battle. A real one, not this cold-war drakenshit the Confederacy is doing now. How can I be expected to lead the armed forces to victory if the war turns hot again?"

"Don't say that nonsense, you're demeaning yourself. Military glory or no, I think you're the most skilled strategist we have for the modern era of war." It took all my strength not to be angry at my most trusted aide. Venari was loyal as my own hands, and kinder to me than I deserved. The cause of my anger lied within. "The strategic council chose you for a reason, Jiarani. Trust them."

"The strategic council chose me because my father leads the council, and my mother was the greatest strategos to ever live!" I exclaimed, louder than I had meant to. One of the officers just within the balcony doors looked my way in surprise. "I'm a nepotism hire. I'll get people killed. Or worse."

"Jiarani." Venari laid a hand tenderly on my shoulder, pointing with his other one at the banquet hall where I was to give my speech. "Believe in yourself. We'll talk later. Now, get out there and make your parents proud." An icy chill filled my veins, only to be painted over with the solemnity of purpose. This had to be done. It was my duty to the Saurian Confederacy.

I walked quickly to the banquet hall proper and pushed open the doors, eager to shed the weight of this burden. Venari tagged along loyally behind me as we entered the grand, expansive, opulent hall, surrounded on all sides by the best of our species. Officers of the Armed Forces in blood-blue military dress. Politicians of the various decision-making councils. Even the strategic council themselves was seated in a high alcove near the back of the room.

My father, Vanrila, son of Vodode, watched me with pride from his seat at the council table. There was a man who knew the burden of power. I looked up at him with plaintive eyes as I took my place at the banquet hall podium, begging him to understand why I would dishonor my mother so.

He'd always been distant in the wake of Kavles' death. The fact that she had done so gloriously in battle, the mortal wound in her front, was no consolation for him. My last real memories of him were drowned in shame, watching him reject his coward of a daughter and shut himself out from my world. I understood his disgust. But did he really think this was the way to make it right? To force me into a place I was not ready for, and damn the suffering that ensued? As much as I tried to love my father, I had to admit it was no easy thing to do.

The Armed Forces guards at the podium snapped to attention and brought their rifles to flank arms as I stepped up. "Attention! Chief strategos on deck!" one cried, relying on the microphones on the collar of his uniform to project his voice to the speakers at all corners of the room. I was silent for many moments, feeling the weight of all those eyes on me. My father. Venari. And six hundred others.

I couldn't do it. I could not find the words. All I could think about was how distant my father would be tonight, how he'd see this as yet another sign that I was not worthy of my mother's love. Of his. Jiarani, daughter of Kavles the Great and Chief Councilor Vanrila, scion of so much greatness and without any of her own.

The moments I spent as chief strategos were the greatest of my life, even tainted as they were by the knowledge that they could not last. My throat felt dry as I realized what my duty compelled me to do. It was one thing to imagine doing the noble thing, stepping down from a position you were not qualified for, and another to actually do it. My father would be so displeased.

"Say something!" one of my honor guards said, quietly enough that most could not hear. But what could I say?

My voice cracked as I forced something to come out. "I love my Confederacy," I began, heart pounding in my chest. I was on the verge of tears. "I love everything about it. I love our strength, our principles, the way our new sun shines in the mornings and evenings. And I cannot-"

"Chief strategos!"

I looked to see Venari trying to push his way to me through the crowd. He slipped a headlock from one of our age's greatest generals and ran headlong into the waiting arms of two of my honor guards, either one of whom could probably have overpowered three Venaris. They wrestled him to the ground and began to cuff him as I watched. "Chief strategos, it is urgent!"

"Wait!" I cried, stepping forward and snapping out of my stupor. "Release him, you idiots! He's my fucking aide!" The guardsmen nearly tripped over their own tails in their rush to back away, and I helped Venari to his feet. "How urgent?" I asked.

"The fate of the entire fucking galaxy, that's what," said he, leaning close as if to whisper a secret in my ear. "The draken are enslaving another planet. If they secure it--and I cannot stress this enough--if they secure that world, all of us will die."

My claws clicked on the floor as if disemboweling a foe. The Draken Matriarchy was our worst enemy in the Great War, nearly fifty years ago. It was their gamma beams that had scoured our home, Vraktes, until not even the bacteria survived. Hundreds of millions of saurians lay dead at their scaled feet.

A specter of dread fell on the hall as its occupants realized the gravity of the situation. They murmured to each other in hushed tones. Whatever chance I had to resign, I knew it was over as soon as this crisis began. The wheels of Confederate bureaucracy would take days to fully turn. Swift action was needed, and it had fallen to me to take that action whether I wanted to or not. An incompetent leader was better than none.

"Make our ships ready to move out," I ordered the nearest naval officer I saw. Strategos Vakar, son of Kenjik, who I only recognized because he had sent me a mating proposal expressing his utmost affections upon my ascension to chief strategos. He blinked at me, dumbstruck, if only for a moment. "Was I unclear? Move!"

Vakar went about his duties, barking orders at his own inferior officers, and I followed Venari to one of the emergency shuttles they kept here for precisely these situations. It, like all Confederate government ships, was gray and streamlined, with lines of blue to denote its military duties. A shuttle of this grade could shoot its way through a whole squadron of enemy interdictors and its occupants wouldn't suffer so much as a flaky scale. Venari and I boarded it in an instant.

"Give me the details," I demanded as soon as the doors closed. The dampeners on this craft were so good I didn't even feel us move as we presumably took off at top speed. There were no windows, so I had to trust the pilot.

"Fourteen minutes ago, the intelligence services confirmed and verified a report of the highest secrecy originating from a source within Matriarchy high command," said Venari. "They're sending a slaver fleet to a planet called Earth. A primitive world in its late interplanetary era, just inside the far edge of the demilitarized zone. They'll make it submit within days, even with resistance."

"The Draken send a slaver fleet every year or so," I asked, recalling the number from one of my strategy briefings. "They already have the largest labor force and military in the galaxy, and it's not a treaty violation because their slave ships technically aren't military forces, so they're not barred from entering the DMZ. How is one primitive planet worthy of this kind of urgency?"

My words had a harsher tinge to them than I would've liked. I was tense already, and this had just made it worse. I should have never gone to that ceremony. If I had resigned the moment my rank had been given to me, the council would've had the days they needed to go through the appointment process again and pick somebody capable to handle this crisis, but no. I had to have my moment in the sun. Stupid fucking selfish Jiarani.

"How large is the population of the Saurian Confederacy?" Venari asked. It was a stupid question, and it only served to heighten my stress. I dug the claws of my fingers into my uniform until the fabric began to shred. Why could this fool not just get to the point? Why did I not just tell the council I wasn't qualified? Why did the draken have to be so infuriatingly cruel? Ancestors, I wanted to kill something.

"Two and a half billion, counting the flash-clones. Nine hundred million without," I told Verani, not hiding my exasperation. "Why does-"

"And the whole Alliance of Worlds?" he asked again, cutting me off. The answer to that, of course, was thirty billion. Our enemies, the Panspecific Compact, had a combined population of thirty-six billion people, including the draken males and primitive slaves the Draken Matriarchy counted as 'tools' in its internal reports.

"Venari, if you don't cut to the point right now, I will strangle you with your own fucking entrails," I snarled at my aide. He looked taken aback by the severity of the threat, but, in my defense, he did say the fate of the fucking galaxy was on the line. This was not the time to be re-naming established facts. "Relevance. Now."

"Earth has a population of ten billion intelligent beings," Venari stammered out. "Ten billion."

I paused a moment to take in the variables. Ten billion intelligent lives was insane, and on one planet, no less. "Are they tiny?" I asked, finding only one logical explanation for this impossibly large number. "These Earthlings. Tiny pack predators?"

"I'll give you something better." My aide leaned forward. "Earthlings--they call themselves humans--aren't even carnivores at all."

That was a shock. How could they not be carnivores? As far as science theorized, only meat-eaters had access to nutrients of both the quantity and quality needed to support intelligent thought. "Intelligent herbivores? Would they fear us?" I had to know more.

"Our intelligence estimates are limited," Venari explained. "We know next to nothing about these humans. What we do know is this; They are about the size of a draken male, and they are capable of eating any--yes, any--form of nutrients the draken choose to feed them. Meat. Plants. Fungi. Anything." Venari paused while I considered the ramifications of that statement.

If humans really were omnivorous sapients, the strategic implications were even greater than the scientific ones. The Draken Matriarchy would have a labor force numerous enough to build as many war engines as they desired, and their males could be diverted to battle in such numbers as to overrun any defense. Hundreds of millions of soldiers, all armed and geared for war. We'd be doomed.

"How quickly do humans mature?" I asked Venari. The answer was chilling.

"About twice as fast as a saurian, though they live one-third as long," said he. "Still, it doesn't matter. No human will die of old age under draken rule. They'll be working by age ten, reproducing by age twenty, and dead before thirty. Humans are the perfect slave race, Jiarani. The Draken Matriarchy is about to acquire ten billion of them."

I shuddered to even think about it. A Draken Matriarchy of six billion souls was able to field enough ships and armies to shatter the greatest military species of the Alliance of Worlds, back when the Great War yet raged. They burned our Confederate Armada to cinders and razed our home until it was naught but glass. My claws clicked anxiously as I remembered my youth, barely forty, watching in terror as the lances of light glowed on the newsfeeds. I was eighty-six now and the horrors still lingered.

"We have to stop them," I hissed, leaning forward and tensing my legs. "How large is that slave fleet?"

"The largest ever recorded," Venari told me. "Every slave ship they have, plus extra haulers they're refitting on the journey. We'd have to violate the Treaty of Vraktes if we wanted to stop them."

"Damn!" I swore, remembering the demilitarized zone. After the Great War ended, that zone of space was established as a buffer between our two warring factions. Any military incursion into it would be taken as an act of war, and responded to in kind. When I closed my eyes to think, I saw planets burn.

"Jiarani?" Venari asked in concern.

"Give me time," I muttered. "Thank you, Venari. You're better than I deserve. I don't honor you enough."

"You honor me too much," he contradicted me. "Whatever decision you make, I will stand by it. With my life." Emotion swelled in my heart. Joy, from Verani's declaration, mixed with dread at what I knew I had to do.

"There is no decision," said I. "The war is coming whether we like it or not. The only choice to make is whether it happens now, on our terms, or ten years in the future when the draken have the advantage. I choose to strike today."

My body shuddered from the tension I was feeling, sickle claws click-clacking like machine gun fire on the floor of the shuttle. The Saurian Confederacy was going to war. I only wished we could be led by a warrior.

---

Next Chapter (coming soon)

I just take no joy from this place right now. I have a lot of good memories of this place but right now I am not in the proper mindset to write fics or make fanart like I usually do so the right thing to do is to not worry about posting here for a while and try to rediscover the love of creating art for its own sake. As soon as I post this post I will uninstall reddit, go touch grass, and focus on my own life without paying any mind to what goes on here.

I will be back when I will be back.

Synopsis: Just over a year after the end of the Federation War, an ambitious human businessman teams up with a crew of Arxur veterans to illegally smuggle goods in and out of the Arxur Quarantine Zone. Gunfights, space battles, and other shenanigans ensue.

A/N: I unironically think if it weren't for the fear effect fed armies would beat the brakes off arxur dominion armies (not isif government armies tho) just because one side actually has unit cohesion and camaraderie and the other is half starved maniacs who are only fighting because they have no other choice. I don't care how big of a gun you can carry if your army is built around cruelty and machismo rather than actual fighting skill they will crumble like clay when faced with real battle. Dominion arxur are such frauds it's insane and we arxur lovers are so lucky to have Isif to avoid the fraud allegations.

Also we have art of sylara now go check that out

CW: freaky ass arxur babe, actual exploration of realistic post authoritarian societies, this fic's third ever action scene, the power of friendship IS a valid battle tactic

Memory Transcription Subject: Sylara, Smuggling Ship Captain

Date (Standardized Human Time): April 8, 2138

Managing a ship the size of the Little Runt had never been an easy affair, nor had it ever been expected to be. Most Arxur--most people of any species, for that matter--just didn't have what it took to lead a ship and crew.

I had never really had the option to be in command during the days of the Dominion, but before I took charge, I always imagined I would be a different kind of leader than the ones Giznel's regime so commonly favored. I would be ruthless, but not cruel. I would be calculating instead of emotional and rash. I would respect those who respected me, trust those who feared me, and avoid or eliminate those who hated me. That was the mindset.

Believe it or not, that was actually the pinnacle of empathy for the average Arxur during the days of the Dominion. It didn't get much kinder than 'let's be smart evil instead of stupid evil' over there. And even then, stupid evil still kind of dominated.

That was where Markus came in, of course. Not even him, really, but just anybody. Without the introduction of someone who had been raised in a stable, sane society to my life, I would've gone all of my days thinking this was the norm, and I would probably have died in a mutiny the same way most high ranking Arxur officers did. Really, all of us were falling into the same trap. Well, not me. Not anymore. I was not gonna be shackled by Giznel's chains.

I spent the first few hours of our trip through FTL making conversation with the crew. Everything that would've gotten you culled for being defective or seen as weak enough to challenge, well, that wasn't going to stop me any longer, now was it? I even kept a datapad with me to take notes about how I could be a better friend to my subordinates.

Hell, I bragged about it, and the whole time in the back of my mind was the idea that I could still get killed for this in plenty of areas in Arxur space today. Crazy to think about.

I learned a lot about my crew members. For one thing, Dr. Raznas was making progress with his trauma. He'd hesitate to call it good, but, hell, any progress was good progress in my book. The more relevant crew, Vazega and the deckhands, were proving to be a serious crutch for him to lean on. They had even begun sharing a quarters with him to be there to help should he have another nightmare. I was proud.

I swapped a few stories with Vazega and the guys until my batteries ran dry and then I went to Markus Becker on the command deck. There was someone I could never get tired of talking to. Everything I had learned about leadership in the past two weeks, I owed to him, and the way he talked made me absolutely confident that my knowledge of human empathy was just barely scratching the surface.

The command deck's door hissed open and I found my mate in the captain's chair, swiveling around to greet me. "Markus," I nodded to him. He quickly rose from the seat, but I grabbed him and nudged him back into it. "No. Stay there. It suits you." He looked up at me like he had done last night, when I pinned him to the wall during our mating. So this guy liked it when I was rough with him. Interesting.

"That's an interesting choice of outfit, Sylara," he said, gesturing to the pieces of black fabric I had put on my person. I had actually decided to wear this stuff because I thought it might make me more appealing to him. For some reason, humans were conservative like that.

"You like it?" I crooned, backing up a few paces so my mate could really look at all of me.

Markus cocked his head and smiled. "I mean, yes, you look smoking hot right now," he helpfully confirmed. "It's just... isn't that a bit risqué for a ship's captain to wear?"

I gave him an amused hiss. "Markus, I was walking around this ship butt naked just a day ago. The other crew members are confused as to why I'm covering myself up." Then I walked over to him and rubbed my snout on his forehead, openly displaying my affection just because I could. "You have no idea how much of a privilege it is to have you."

Markus' hand roamed up my thigh. His other went to the base of my tail, questing for the sensitive scales at its underside. I had never before had a lover who actually gave a damn about my pleasure, and it didn't take much work on Markus' part to give me the urge to rip all his clothes off and take him then and there. Still, I pulled away. "Not now," I admonished him. "Later, definitely, but not now. I'm here to talk."

Markus pulled away obediently, and I reached into the pocket of my combat vest--one of the old Dominion models, so useless for anything but carrying items--to show him something I had borrowed from Teklala before we made the jump to C-plus.

"You've been reading?" he asked. The 'something' in question was a book by the philosopher Ivana Korshunov, who had lived during a war on Earth much like that on Wriss.

Ivana's country, some non-existent former realm whose name was not important to me, had been governed by a Giznel-esque tyrant who followed the tried and true strategy of blaming the flaws of his incompetent, power-hungry leadership on a foreign out-group, and had anybody who said otherwise disappeared. The general Aleksey Vladimirovich, upon hearing that he was to be one of those disappeared, rose up against him and began a civil war.

Aleksey was rather like Isif, in fact, because he had been selected for assassination because of his secretive loyalty to the ideology called 'democracy'. Apparently, it was treated like defectiveness in that place and time. One of the biggest things that struck me about Ivana's book, The Greatest Chains, was how similar evil people were.

Good could take many forms, at least according to Ivana Korshunov, but evil always came because of selfishness. Dismissing the needs of others as irrelevant was the only thing you had to do to become another Giznel, or whoever the hell that human tyrant had been. I didn't pay too much attention to that stuff. The message of the book was far more interesting to me than its actual plot line.

I explained to Markus what I had read, and what I had gleaned from it thus far, and he smiled and nodded. "Glad to see you're taking an interest in philosophy," said he. "Have you ever heard of the 'Philosopher King' before?" I told him that I had not.

"It was an idea created by a wise man called Plato, way before Korshunov's time," Markus explained. "He dismissed democracy as 'mob rule' and said that the ideal ruler would be a philosopher king; someone with absolute wisdom to always make the right call, absolute authority so that his calls would not be questioned, and, most importantly, love and affection for the people he ruled."

I think I understood that one, even without reading Plato. Absolute authority was a given for any Arxur leader, and even Isif ruled that way. Absolute wisdom was much harder to attain, but I figured reading philosophy had to be the right way of going about it, no? I was getting there. And Markus had already given me enough instruction in the power of love and kindness.

"A philosopher king," I mused. "Like Isif, then."

"Kind of, but not really," Markus corrected me. "The problem with philosopher kings is the fact that they don't actually exist. They're not real. No one man can be trusted with that kind of power, even if he is the savior of two entire civilizations."

"What about you?" I asked him.

Markus looked flustered. He even leaned back in his captain's chair. "I mean, you seem like a perfectly good person to me. You have wisdom and love in equal amounts. I'd trust you to manage all of Wriss."

Markus, humble as he was, couldn't just take that compliment as is, now could he? "No, no, Sylara, I'm... I wouldn't know what I was doing with all that. Hell, I barely know what I'm doing with you, or with the ship, let alone-" Anything he would've said was ripped from his tongue by the violent jolt of an FTL disruptor going off. I lurched. Nausea filled my body. Alert klaxons began to sound.

"We're in real space!"

Markus grabbed a vomit bag from the dispenser and hurled into it while I tried to gather my senses again. I staggered to the weapons chair and brought up our defensive arsenal. Rotary guns, check, torpedo tubes, check, shields, all at full, we are ready.

Markus Becker put away his vomit bag and took his place at the captain's chair. "What the hell is going on?" he asked. Vazega and the deckhands barged into the room as we two got our bearings and I started barking orders for them to take up stations. Markus tried to relinquish the command chair again, so I had to tell him, in no unclear terms, "You are in charge now." He took it well enough.

"Alright, uh, tell me what we see here!" Markus snapped at his crew. "What's going on?"

"We're about two thousand klicks from the target point, captain, but we have a contact on fast approach. It's on sublight thrusters, but its profile shows warship readings." My blood ran cold. "Target lock!" Vazega snapped just as my own weapons screen flashed red. "They're target locking us! Be ready for blood!" I focused the Runt's targeting systems on the enemy ship, only for my lock to sputter in and out. Whoever these guys were, they had some seriously good hardware.

"Arxur or SC?" Markus asked Vazega.

"Arxur vessel. Slaughter-class gunship, by the sensor readings. It's armed with four torpedo tubes, six to ten shipkillers each, and a set of fourteen rotary guns." I ran the numbers on the situation instantly, skills honed by years of experience and knowledge. They were Dominionists, probably, which meant they had come to this farming station for the same reason I had--to take its supplies for their own use. I shuddered to think of what those poor Nevoks would be facing soon if we wouldn't be able to stop them.

"Oh, shit," Markus muttered, eyes darting around the room like a Federation prey-thing. "We gotta go. Turn us around and ready the rear torpedoes."

"No!" I snapped before I had quite realized why I was doing it. "We stand and fight." All eyes were on me now.

"Fight?" Markus sputtered, waving his hands about. "Sylara, that's a military gunship! We can't take them head on!"

Even knowing I had a good reason to stand my ground here, it took me a few seconds to find it. "Yes, that is a military gunship," said I, swiveling in my chair to face my crew. Well, technically Markus' crew now, but still, my point stood. "And it's not one of Isif's government gunships, either, which means it must belong to someone who disagrees with him. Which is more likely, that it's a nice and respectable cargo smuggler like us, or that it's a neo-Dominionist pirate who will torture and kill every man, woman and child on that station?"

I pointed to the farming station on our sensor map, since it was still too far away to point to in person. Two thousand kilometers was one hell of a distance. "I don't know about you, but I never met a smuggler who flies around in a ship like that. Those people are scum. And if we stand back and let this happen, knowing we could have stopped them, we're just as bad as they are. Just as bad as the quarantine enforcers who let all kinds of twisted shit happen just as long as it stays on our side of the line. Are we that bad?"

Nobody said a word. I stood up from my chair and roared at them. "AR**E WE THAT BAD?"

"Fuck no we aren't!" Avriss shouted from her station near the front of the bridge.

"You tell them, Captain Sylara," Klavra concurred.

"I think it's First Officer Sylara, now," the other guy, Savriz, reminded him. "Markus is the captain now." The prospect of a bloodless mutiny--hell, a mutiny where the captain willingly ceded power at that--was enough to provoke a change in Klavra's demeanor, and I think it was a good one.

"Well, shit, then we have one hell of a good guy as our captain," he concluded. "No offense to Sylara, of course. She's all right by me, and all." Then Vazega stood from her chair and made a show of making a head count.

"So we're all in agreement, then? We are?" We were. "Great!" Vazega exclaimed. "Now let's go kill these fucking people!"

Everybody sat back in their stations and got to work. "Arxur vessel, Arxur vessel," Markus jabbered into the com in one last attempt at diplomacy. It did seem decent to try our best to avoid any bloodshed. "This is the cargo vessel Little Runt. You have target locked our ship. Cease target-lock immediately or we will-"

My threat sensors screamed an alert. "Shipkillers!" Eight torpedoes launched from their tubes and aimed straight for us. "Avriss, Klavra, man the forward flak batteries! Savriz, you have the aft guns! Move!"

Vazega pulled the ship into about as daring of an evasive maneuver as our oversized bulk could manage as my three deckhands did their best to shoot down the artillery that was coming our way. My claws played over the torpedo controls as I prepared some retaliation of my own to be dispensed.

"This one's for Wriss, you Isif-damn filth!" Four torpedoes shot from my torpedo tubes and hurtled toward the gunship on our scopes, which responded immediately with its own bursts of defensive fire. The contacts it had sent toward us roared ever closer until, finally, our gunnery scored some kills.

"Yeah!" one of my deckhands shouted as a torpedo vanished from view, though I was so immersed in my own section of the battle could hardly tell which one it was.

"Good shooting, Klavra," Markus gave a compliment in the background. "I'll liaise with that station and let them know we're here to help." A warm feeling went through me at that. Nobody ever said 'we're here to help' under Giznel, and neither did they compliment their comrades on good shooting skills. I imagined the Dominionist captain on his own gunship screaming, berating his crew, demanding to know why his missiles were being shot down just like I had heard so many officers on so many ships do before.

We weren't a smuggling hauler. We weren't even a warship, really. We were a part of civilization's immune system, and this was the disease we were cutting out. I think Ivana Korshunov had spoken about that.

"Good kill!" I called out as another torpedo exploded under the fire of our guns, taking two more with it from the shrapnel it generated. My ordnance, by contrast, was spaced out and in a rotating pattern. The Dominionists' gunners were struggling to hit even one of our bombs. "Good shooting, people! We're doing great!"

One of my own torpedoes went dead as enemy gunnery struck it dead on, but the other three were still coming. I changed their evasive pattern in an instant to stop the enemy from getting used to anything, but then my connection with the torpedoes went dead as a wave of all-spectrum radio flooded my signals. "We're being jammed!" Vazega snapped, to inform the crew members who weren't as aware of the situation as I was.

"Keep your heads up, we're doing fine," Markus said in a calming tone as our guns took out another couple of torpedoes. "I mean, I thought we'd all be Swiss cheese by now, so- OH, SHIT! Brace for impact!"

The missiles we weren't able to shoot down in time, three of them, in fact, slammed hard into our shields and shook the entire ship. "Damage report!" Markus snapped, which was the most captainly order he had given thus far. Maybe I should have stayed in charge. A**ctually, no, scratch that, I should definitely be in charge right now. This man has never commanded a battle in his life.

"Markus, can you leave the chair?" I asked politely, and he got up in an instant. "Thank you. Avriss, get on weapons main!" I got out of my weapons chair and took the captain's seat as Avriss rushed to fill my original spot. "Barricade yourself in our quarters," I told my mate firmly as I strapped myself in to lead the battle. He needed no convincing. "All the rest of you, stay at your stations! We have an enemy to kill, remember?"

Markus left the bridge in a hurry as my three torpedoes hurtled toward their prey. The enemy gunship pulled a daring evasive maneuver, dodging one projectile, and fired burst after burst haphazardly at the other two. There was no training there. These people were amateurs. Still, the sheer volume of firepower they could put out had to count for something, as they shot down another one of my torpedoes just before the third and final one struck home.

"Confirmed hit!" Vazega hissed. The enemy ship quit its evasion and accelerated directly for us, aiming to outrace our third and final on-the-field torpedo rather than shoot it down.

"Avriss, launch everything but one fish! Now!" The torpedo tubes ahead of us shivered as we launched all of our forward torpedoes, then Vazega flipped us around to unload all but one of our aft torpedoes as well.

"I count more incoming!" Avriss snapped. Torpedoes shot from the gunship's tubes on a direct collision course with us, and the acceleration they were already under only added to their velocity. "Klavra, Savriz, get on it! Teach them how a proper predator fights!"

"Yes sir, chief gunner," Klavra snapped as he began firing at the enemy. As far as I was concerned, proper predators fought as a pack.

I directed my ship along a lateral course, aiming to present as many of our defense batteries to the enemy as possible while not making the mistake of meeting them head-on. As powerful as empathy and love were, I kind of doubted they'd match up to the power of high-grade plasma warheads. Even with our probable advantage in crew cohesion, given how incompetent the enemy appeared to be acting, we were still punching well above our weight.

"Keep firing, keep firing!" Avriss snapped as the enemy's torpedoes hurtled closer. Our two gunners worked in tandem, boxing in individual targets with coordinated bursts of fire before taking them out when they had nowhere left to evade. The enemy's gunnery, by contrast, was individualistic and spread out. They didn't cooperate. Why would they? Cooperation was preylike. Defective. And defectiveness was a weakness, no? Venlil shit.

Our torpedoes evaded most of their shots, and only when they got close did the pirate gunners finally begin to rack up kills. I gave a satisfied snarl as one of our fish struck home with a brilliant blue flash. If we had flown a proper warship instead of this cobbled-together gunship wannabe, that pirate would've been space dust by now.

Pack predation at work.

"Good hits, Avriss," I complimented my new chief gunner as another of her torpedoes struck home. Then another after that, in quick succession. The enemy's shields were weaker than ours now, unless they had made significant modifications, and a third torpedo hit was all it took to bring their shields down to zero. "Hell yeah!" I whooped. We still had two fish heading their way. If either one of them struck home, that ship was doomed.

My crew worked like a single organism in those moments of battle. Klavra and Savriz swatted down enemy ordnance as if they were of one mind. Vazega threw the ship into maneuvers without my order, flying where I would've told her to fly and when I would've told her to do it. Even Markus, if he were here, would've found some way to contribute, even if it was only emotional support. Believe it or not, that actually helped a lot in modern war.

Love and trust were the glue that held crews together as sure as welded deck plates held together ships, and here I was seeing what happened when that glue was strong.

Of the dozen or so torpedoes that gunship fired our way, one struck home and splashed against our shields. Only one. Our crew had held off an assault by a ship with three times our firepower and, judging by the way that pirate vessel was screaming away from our two in-play torpedoes, we were winning. We were beating them. It was incredible stuff to see.

"That's the last of the incoming, sir," Avriss happily reported. "Unless they launch a few more fish, all we have to deal with is the gunship itself." I looked at the threat board where our last two torpedoes hurtled toward their prey, which was itself hurtling toward us. There was a lot of hurtling going around, to tell the truth, and I was anxious for this whole battle to end.

"Come on, kill that fucker. Kill that fucker." Bullets streaked from the gunship's aft batteries, blowing one of our torpedoes into space dust. Only one left, now. I needed a backup plan. "Vazega, charge that enemy. Avriss, ready the aft tube. At the last moment, we flip around, and dump our last fish right down its throat!"

My crew did as I had ordered, and the enemy launched its own salvo of torpedoes at us just as its rear guns shot down our last in-play fish. "Aw, damn it!" Savriz moaned.

"Keep your head up," said the other deckhand, Klavra. "We'll teach them what's what. Let's just focus on shooting down those torpedoes." Bursts of kinetic fire roared from our ship. It didn't take long for us to claim our first torpedo kills, but I also knew they wouldn't be enough. It was a simple physics problem. At the rate those torpedoes were approaching, we would not be able to shoot them all down. We would be able to get enough of them that we didn't all die from the impact, hopefully, but the best we could hope for was critical hull damage.

Unless...

"Vazega, can you shunt our reserve power to the shields?"

"I think so?" she asked. "I'm no engineer." *Damn it!* I bit back a curse, careful not to let my sour mood affect my crewmates' fighting. In their experience, an angry captain almost always meant beatings. They had better things to worry about than that.

"I am!" Savriz exclaimed, shooting up his tail. "I've been studying engineering books. I know how to reroute the shields!"

"Then, shit, you go and do it," I told him. "Vazega, can you shoot?"

"I can shoot the wings off a Krakotl at two hundred yards!" Vazega boasted. I told her to take the guns and let Savriz have her console. They hurried to switch places as the battle raged on, both ships roaring toward what could very well be our mutual demise.

"Sylara, you know this will leave us defenseless, right?" Sarviz asked as he plugged wires together at a panel under Vazega's old console, occasionally stopping to look at the console itself. "It'll overcharge the shields for a few seconds, but after that, they'll be done! The matrices will cook, and-"

"I know what it'll do!" I snapped. The torpedoes were just seconds from impact. "On my mark!" I waited. Waited. My heart pounded in my chest. Klavra and Vazega did their best to shoot down the incoming projectiles, but they were coming too hard, too fast, and- "Now!"

Savriz plugged two cables together, and our shields glowed a brilliant white. Torpedo after torpedo blew up harmlessly, and for a few seconds, we were invulnerable. But only for a few seconds. After that, true to Savriz' word, the shields shut down for good. A bright red error message began blinking on my console. I ignored it. We were within striking range.

"Spin us around and fire the aft torpedo, now!" I ordered, forgetting in the stress of battle that Vazega was no longer at her station. I realized only when she began to move, and quickly threw the ship into a maneuver myself, but it was too little and too late. The Little Runt flipped around and launched its fish just as our enemy passed us by, passing within a hundred meters of our hull, and its aft batteries had no trouble shooting down the torpedo that was accelerating away from it now.

"Damn it!" I shouted, slamming the console in a fit of rage. How could it have come to this? I had a purpose. I had love. For once in my life, I had something to fight for other than my own survival, someone to care about other than myself, and now I was just going to die? What the hell had I done all that reading for, if I was just going to get splattered into space dust before I could ever get the chance to use it?

Sylara the hero. Sylara, the philosopher of Wriss, and next to her, Markus Becker the philosopher king. What a fucking joke. My teeth chattered in rage as the torpedo contacts appeared. How the hell had it come to this?

"There's no shame in dying," I told my crew, trying to put on a brave face for them. "We put up a hard fight. Better than I'd have ever expected of us. I'm proud of you all."

"Keep your head up, sir!" Klavra optimistically exclaimed. "We aren't dead yet, are we? Maybe we can still-"

A shrill bark from Vazega split the air. "FTL contact!"

All our sensors began to scream warnings as a massive vessel emerged from sublight space. Long, rounded, armored and armed, and--my heart skipped a beat--painted in the battle livery of Nishtal. It shot down the incoming torpedoes in a matter of seconds and sent the pirate gunship spinning with a single blow from its railgun. A low-strength one, too, by the fact that the pirate ship looked disabled rather than just destroyed. That vessel could have cleaved a gunship that size in two if it so desired.

"Oh, Isif," Avriss murmured as the ship on our scopes launched shuttles to board what had before now been the worst threat to my life I had ever seen ever. It was remarkable how many levels to this fighting stuff they were, and the Ghost of Nishtal was undoubtedly near the top.

"They're hailing us," said Vazega. "The Ghost, not the gunship. Should I put it on screen?"

Well, the good news was, all of us weren't going to die. The bad news was, we were all doomed anyway.

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Synopsis: An alternate-universe fanfic where the Federation and Arxur Dominion are much more badass than they are in canon and humanity must resort to shadow warfare as a way to even the odds.

CW: gun fighting, blood, badass venlil super soldier, MAJOR canon divergence, the federation mooks are actually competent this time

Memory Transcription Subject: Captain Slanek, Venlil Space Corps

Date (Standardized Human Time): November 11, 2136

Skalga was burning.

Our homeland was gone.

Our Federation had failed to protect us.

And yet, we were still here.

I stood uneasily on the bridge of my ship, the inglorious military transport V.R.S. Standard Bearer, watching the sensor screens as we swept the star system we were in for resources. It was strange how quickly priorities could adjust following a tragedy like this. Just days ago, I had been weeping as I watched Dayside City be reduced from orbit. Now, all I cared about was meeting my resource quotas for this sweep, and the absolute annihilation of my home planet had been relegated to a distant corner of my mind.

Water was the order of the day, like always. The Venlil refugee fleet--the huge amalgamation of bulk carriers, pleasure yachts, and literally anything else that could fly that had evacuated tens of millions of people from Skalga before it fell--needed millions of gallons of it per day to keep its population alive and its systems running. Without supply ships like mine, even the tiny fraction of Venlil that had survived the Arxur attack would be doomed to dying in the interstellar void. I felt that burden like a weight on my chest.

A blip on the sensor screen caught my attention. "I think I see something," said my sensors officer, homing in. I told him to elaborate and he did. "It's a distress beacon, sir," he told me. "Venlil make and model, but an older code. Maybe one of the ships we lost in the retreat from Skalga?"

That was a possibility. Governor Tarva herself had been at the rear guard of the evacuation, along with most of the Venlil armada and a boast that she would only leave "when I am dragged off Skalgan soil by force". As diplomatically inept as she had proven to be, I had pride in my governor. She had only ever done what she thought was right. And if this was one of her ships, my fellow Venlil aboard, I had a duty to rescue them.

"Bring the ship about and boost us to duty stations," I ordered. "Security commander!" My security commander, Varlek, stepped up from where she stood at the door to the bridge. "Prepare your troops to board that vessel. Bring medics, because they may have wounded. Understand?"

"Yes, captain Slanek!" Varlek snapped to a salute. She, unlike most of my crew, was a genuine Venlil Space Corps marine, and she had the gene mods to prove it. Though she hadn't taken the controversial Phase Two modification, the Phase One was required for service in most Federation infantry units by the tenth year of the war. The fact that most of my security team did not actually have it only spoke to how strapped for combat personnel the Venlil Space Corps was.

Varlek left the bridge as the rest of my crew continued bringing the ship in to investigate this tracking beacon. What was strange was that the beacon itself was coming from near an... no, wait, it was the asteroid itself. That was wrong. Who the hell put a ship's beacon on an asteroid?

Was it an ambush?

The idea of an ambush in modern warfare seemed ridiculous to me. Not only was it nearly impossible to pull off, what with all the batteries of sensors you could fit onto even one soldier's combat armor these days, but the reward you would gain was... what? A few moments of surprise? Even the very suggestion of using such idiotic tactics was enough to get you expelled from any Federation military then and there, if not institutionalized for Predator Disease.

"Bring the ship to combat stations," I ordered, just in case some Dominion idiot wanted to prove the manuals wrong. "Sensors, give me a close-spectrum sweep on that asteroid there."

Truth be told, I almost wanted it to be Arxur, both for the chance to enact vengeance for Skalga and for the vindication in knowing we were smarter than them. If those fuckers who had destroyed my home wanted to sit there and wait to get shot, rather than doing the smart thing and engaging me head-on, I was going to oblige them. "Weapons officer, be ready with a full spread of torpedoes. Clear?"

"Clear!" snapped my weapons officer, just in time for the sensors report to come in. High quantities of neodymium, tantalum, titanium, carbon... this was a warship. An idiotic warship, too, given their strategy of attack. My ears swiveled in readiness as I gave the order to open fire.

Eight torpedoes shot from their tubes, aiming right for the 'asteroid' that was not a real asteroid. Sure enough, it began unfolding into what I assumed was some kind of combat mode, and my threat sensors tracked incoming fire as its kinetic defenses hurled rounds at the ship-killers we had launched.

They shot down one. Two. Three, even. But the idiot who was in charge of that ship had let us approach too close for his defenses to work properly, and now he was getting a real-time demonstration in the inefficacy of ambush tactics in the form of five high-yield plasma warheads right to his ship's center of mass. "Confirmed kill!" my weapons officer whooped as the enemy asteroid-ship transformed into an expanding cloud of gas. "That was for Skalga!"

I was pleased. Scratch one tango.

Another alert klaxon sounded, jolting me out of the euphoria of victory. My sensors officer alerted me to another contact, this time a hundred ten degrees sternward. A second asteroid-ship was unfolding itself into battle array, revealing all manner of hidden weapons, and accelerating toward us at high speed.

"Son of an Arxur!" I swore, giving the order to bring the ship to a retreat course and pull us away at top speed. We had wasted all eight of our torpedoes on the first enemy craft. Against this second one, unless it happened to be vulnerable to the low-power plasma guns we had for missile defense, we were defenseless. "Pull us away!"

"Captain, I count twelve fast-movers on collision course!" snapped my sensors officer, already relaying targeting data to the weapons crew. Our plasma defenses got to work immediately at shooting those missiles down. "They're not consistent with any known weapons design, sir!"

Neither were the ships. All sensor readings I got from them depicted our enemies as primitive, slow, lumbering craft that lacked the guts to stand up to a Venlil ship of the fleet. I didn't even think they had shields.

Who the hell are these guys?

My missile defenses were able to shoot down ten of the incoming projectiles as they approached, an absurdly high number that only confirmed my earlier suspicions that this was not a new Arxur tactic. Against Dominion-standard shipkillers, we'd have been lucky to shoot down two. Were these pirates, perhaps? That would explain it. But what pirates had access to camouflage like that?

A shrill warning tone split the air as orange lights began to flash. "Impact brace!" bleated my sensors officer. The last two missiles detonated in sequence, the first draining our shields to near nothing, the second finishing off our shields and delivering its payload directly to the hull proper.

Lights switched off. Systems failed and died. In under a second, my bridge went from a hive of activity under combat conditions to being as quiet as a mausoleum. "Damage report!" I snapped as the emergency lighting came on, casting my crew and I in a dim orange glow.

"They used EMPs!" my sensors officer snapped. "The main power is offline. Engineering reports ten minutes before we can restart the reactor, bare minimum. More likely twenty."

I knew this tactic. This was pirate fare. Fire EMP missiles, disable a ship's defenses, then board it with gene-bulked shock troopers and subdue any resisting crew. We'd be fine as long as we complied.

I had no intentions to comply.

"Varlek!" I called my security chief on my uniform's emergency com line. There was no holoprojection, and the audio was shitty, but it was reliable anywhere on the ship and didn't draw from our depleted power reserves. "Expect to be-"

"Yes, yes, I'm aware. Expect to be boarded. My men and I are mustering at the key sectors already. How long until the reactor can start back up?" I told her the number. "We can manage that. Permission to speak freely?"

"Affirmative."

Varlek beeped in confirmation. "Not to sound Predator-Diseased, sir, but I've been itching for a fight ever since we lost Skalga. I say bring them on!" That did sound Predator-Diseased. Very, in fact. The genetic modifications we gave to soldiers had a way of doing that to people--proper prey didn't make good fighters--but to see it displayed so brazenly was cause for concern.

"You're a soldier, Varlek," I assured her, downplaying my worries. "Modded soldiers are expected to be different from normal prey. Just keep it locked down and book an examination appointment when we're back with the fleet." Varlek beeped her affirmative, and I felt the dull thump thump thump of boarding pods slamming home. The battle had begun.

The familiar rush of fear chemicals filled my body as I realized the mortal danger I was in. It was easy to ignore it or fight it down when the enemy was a target on a screen thousands of klicks away, but here? On my ship? A lot of prey would panic and stampede by now, if there was anywhere to stampede to.

We Space Corps officers were trained to channel that fear into a different avenue, the 'fight' response that usually only triggered when a herbivore was backed into a corner with no way out, and use terror as a fuel to keep us sharp in battle. Those of my crew who had taken genetic mods were unburdened by their fear. The rest of us had to make do with mental discipline.

"Do we have any security systems online?" I asked a general question, and received a slew of specific negatives. "Not even shipboard cameras?"

"I can get you cameras, sir, but it'll cost us in battery power. Some of the lights might fail." I considered it. Varlek was gene-modded, so she could see in the dark, but she was the only one in the security team who could. There were flashlights aboard, but I didn't know who had found them or how many there were. Any decision I made was a gamble. I could only hope I made the right call.

"Give me cameras," said I. "Thermal and motion sensors are highest priority. Now." Sensor equipment flicked on throughout the ship. Our vessel was vast, mostly consisting of empty cargo bays with a few corridors and crew sections in between, and we lacked the manpower to garrison it all. Automated defenses were meant to help multiply our numbers in the event of a boarding, but they had all been fried in the EMP. It was up to Varlek and her marines to stop the enemy on their own.

"I count three... four... five boarding pods. Likely three to five troops in each," said my sensors officer, inspecting information feeds as fast as the ship's rebooting systems revealed them to him. I relayed that information to my security team as soon as I received it myself. "Zero visual, I repeat, zero visual on enemy forces."

"Zero visual?" I asked, checking the sensors myself. Sure enough, there was no visual. The only movement my ship's security system could detect was that of my own crew members. That made no sense. "Are the pods goddamn empty?"

I stared at the sensor screen in silence, trying to come up with an epiphany, when gunfire alerts blinked into existence on the screen in front of me. Engagements in the corridors had left two crew members unconscious, and still there was no sign of any shooter. Thankfully, the rest of my people had already made it back to secured areas, but I wasn't about to just sit there and cede most of my ship to the enemy unprotected, even if I had no idea who this enemy was.

I called Varlek over the com line. "They won't have more than thirty troops," I told her, explaining the situation. "If you and your main element sally out, you'll be able to outflank them while they engage the two stationary units. Move now."

Varlek's security team numbered about eighteen: six men guarding the bridge, six more at the engineering deck to defend the reactor, and herself and her five best troops in a third fireteam that could move throughout the ship to provide firepower where needed. They were far from being proper marines, besides Varlek herself of course, but they all had experience with guns and some had even seen action during the fall of Skalga.

"Affirmative," Varlek confirmed my orders, checking her rifle as I watched through the cameras. Even in thermal vision, the differences between her and a natural-born Venlil were readily apparent. Her comrades, as fearsome as they looked with their space-sealed armor and energy rifles, were small and pathetic compared to the warrior woman who commanded them. "My team is on the move. Direct me to the nearest enemy element."

I looked on the cameras to find where that element was, all to no avail. I was still looking in vain when Varlek barked a contact report and retreated back around a corner, two unusual darts sticking out of her chest plate. "Probably tranquilizers," she reported, advancing toward where the shots had come from. "They want us alive."

"We still have no visual on the enemy," I reminded her. "Can you see anything?" Varlek flicked her tail to the negative as her security team took up positions in the corridor where the shots had come from. More darts flew their way and stuck harmlessly into their armor, with still no sign of any shooters.

"Herd damn it!" Varlek swore as her point man jerked back and then dropped, what looked like a massive medical injector buried in his arm. How did that get there? "They can't be invisible!"

Can they?

"Varlek, trigger the fire suppressors, now!" I ordered. Gouts of white foam shot into the corridor she was in, revealing the silhouettes of a half dozen or so armed figures within arm's reach of her team. Another group of figures crouched around the corner, in the corridor she and hers had just walked through, ready to open fire at any moment and trap her and her team in an L-shaped killing box. "Fucking Sohgalik!" I swore as the violence began.

Varlek snapped a leg forward in a knee kick that shattered one of her enemies' armored thighs and bent its leg backwards at an unnatural angle. Another rushed forward with another of the injectors, only for Varlek to meet the charge in Venlil fashion by lowering her head and countercharging. The impact dented both of their helmets, sending fire-suppression foam flying, and Varlek caught the stealth soldier's weapon arm with one paw before putting it in a head lock with the other and throwing it bodily in the path of its advancing comrades.

An industrial-saw roar sounded in the corridor adjacent to Varlek and her men as the fire team that had outflanked her began to open fire, this time with kinetic bullets. Two of Varlek's men died instantly. A bullet hit her in the side. The rest of the fire team swiveled in an instant to return fire on their attackers and Varlek herself was unphased by the wound she had just suffered. She, at least, would put up a strong fight.

"Captain Slanek, the bridge is under attack!" an officer shouted in my ear. Sure enough, my bridge defenders had encountered resistance from invisible soldiers of the same brand as before. One was dead, but the other five were thankfully in cover, awaiting their chance to strike back.

I triggered the fire suppressors in that corridor, then in all parts of the ship, revealing maybe a dozen attackers now fighting to reach the bridge and another unit of twelve advancing toward the engineering deck. Gunfire began immediately. My men, outnumbered as they were, gave a good show of themselves, killing or wounding several of their mysterious attackers as the battle raged on.

I looked back at Varlek's side of the fighting to see all of her comrades dead or incapacitated, four alien combatants advancing down the side corridor with rifles raised, but all but one of her opponents in the main corridor killed by what looked like her bare paws. Even if Varlek was on my side, it was frightening to see the kind of damage a gene-modded soldier like her could inflict on an enemy in close combat.

She and the last alien in her corridor were caught in a death grapple, two of their strange chemical injectors sticking out of her armor, blood gushing from a wound in her thigh, but still she managed to overpower her enemy and slam its tranquilizer injector home into its own arm. It went limp in an instant, and Varlek scooped up her rifle only to find four of its comrades leveling their own guns at her. Their cloaking devices were off, and for the first time, I got a good look at my secretive enemies.

They were mildly Venlil-esque, though with shorter faces than us, and taller than the average Venlil but shorter than Varlek even in their armor. The armor itself was black and blue, with a logo of what looked like a planet map emblazoned in white on the shoulder pads. "Surrender and you will not be harmed," one soldier said, shockingly. These were fellow prey? Their visors looked like they belonged to predators.

"You speak Ventongue?" Varlek gasped, slurring a bit. "How do you..." Even if she still wanted to fight, her body was on the verge of giving out. She stumbled upright, raising her rifle halfway, before collapsing to the deck as still as a stone. Two of the enemies stripped her of weapons and restrained her while the two others watched their backs.

I was about to check on our other defenses when a clatter from a dark corner of the bridge drew my attention. The vent cover had fallen down, and some kind of whirring came from that region that I couldn't discern. It almost looked like something was hovering there-

"Attack drone!" I shouted, heart pounding, diving for cover behind a computer console. Those of my crew who had guns drew them, the rest cowered in fear as the staccato chattering of kinetic fire pierced our ears. I think I saw one laser beam. One. Then everybody who had a gun was dead and the drone buzzed happily to the door controls to begin its work.

I crawled away from the drone, mind consumed by terror, only wanting to get as far as possible from those things on my ship and their mechanical, whirring minion. My paws brushed against a pistol, whose dead owner lay nearby, and I forced myself to entertain the possibility of shooting at someone.

I was terrified. What prey wouldn't be? I wasn't even a real soldier, given how I hadn't been upgraded with even the most basic genetic modifications upon my enlistment in the Space Corps. I was a transport captain, forever relegated to flying supplies from Point A to Point B, and nobody would blame me if I refused to fight and simply surrendered. Nobody would call me a coward.

The door to the bridge hissed open, and a few more bursts of gunfire marked the death of my security team. Heavy footfalls came from the corridor behind me. The gun I was holding felt like it weighed a thousand tons, but I wheeled and raised it anyway. "For the Venlil Republic!"

I fired square in the face of the first enemy to enter the room, flash-boiling away the suppressant foam that coated it and burning a hole right in the center of its head. The rest of its comrades scattered out of sight as it fell, and my courage vanished as soon as it had come. What the hell was I doing? I wasn't a soldier! I dropped the gun in surrender, crying out a plea for mercy. "Please don't kill me!"

"Calm down, calm down." For a moment, I thought I must have been seeing things. The alien I had just shot was getting back up, taking off its flash-melted helmet, and tossing it aside to reveal a mostly hairless face, a head otherwise covered in red fur, and a set of forward-facing, predatory eyes.

My heart rate tripled. What had I done? I had wounded a predator, and worse, embarrassed it in front of its pack? It was going to torture me for this! I got down on my knees and begged forgiveness, though my own life was probably already forfeit, in the hopes of at least allowing the rest of the crew a merciful death.

"Please don't torture them!" I bleated. "I'm the one who shot you! It's me you want!"

"Torture?" the red-furred predator asked, putting up its claws in what was probably a prelude to an attack. "We aren't going to torture anybody. Do you all surrender?" The crew and I clambered over each other to be the first to say 'yes'. "Good," the predator told us. "Lieutenant Kern, is the reactor room secure?"

"Yes, Commander Fraser," another predator, likely a subordinate, said through its helmet speakers. "The whole ship is under our control, and we are ready to depart for... uh... you know where."

"Also good," the red-furred predator, Fraser, said. "Take these prisoners into custody." The one called Kern and three of its comrades slipped forward with manacles to shackle our hands. The bridge crew and I, what few of us were alive, that is, gave no resistance. The fight was over. We had lost. All we could do now was hope that they would eat us quickly rather than keeping us for their cattle farms or, worse, torturing us for Federation secrets.

"As long as you stay compliant, you all have nothing to fear," the predator lied. "My name is Marcel Fraser. I am the commander of this strike team. You. Senior officer aboard." It pointed at me. It took all the strength I had not to pass out from sheer terror. "What's your name?"

"S-S-Slanek," I stuttered, instinctively cowering, and I had been trained to manage my fear. How the hell could Varlek act so brave?

"Slanek." Marcel Fraser looked me up and down to see how much meat was on my bones, and I cursed my proclivity for physical fitness. Everybody knew that muscle made a more appetizing meal for them than fat.

"You and your entire ship are now our prisoners," Marcel Fraser told me. "Food and water will be provided, as well as medical treatment for your wounded, but any needs beyond that, you are in charge of informing us of. As captain of this ship, you're responsible for the welfare of your men. Make no trouble for us, and we'll make none for you. Capiche?"

I had no idea what that word even meant. It was all I could do to muster an honest reply. "W-w-we'll m-make no trouble for you." Marcel Fraser tilted his head up and down and bared his teeth, as if I wasn't terrified enough already. One of my fellow bridge crew fainted.

"Kern, check on that guy," Fraser ordered one of his soldiers. "Anyway, glad we could reach an agreement, Slanek. Prepare your ship and crew for FTL travel. We'll be moving out at once. Inform U.N. command to be ready to interrogate prisoners."

My heart skipped about three beats as I heard the news. Oh, herd. Oh, herd, no. What the hell had I gotten into?

My Other Works | Prologue | he tryna be like scrappyvamp🤣

Hi all, this is a short oneshot set in the AU I promised I would write a while ago. Idk if I want to make it a full series yet so that is why I made it just a oneshot but if you like the idea and want to see an actual series set in this verse leaving a comment and upvoting is the best way to motivate me to write new chapters. Without further adieu, here is my writing:

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Elias Meier PoV

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It has been three years now to the day that would change our world. Three years since the Nightfall of Earth, as they were calling it, officially began. When we shrouded ourselves in shadows out of fear of annihilation, and began a secret war that most of us believed we had no hope to win.

The Odyssey mission, meant to be our first foray into a new age of expansion, peace and prosperity, was instead the only thing that saved us from being thrust unawares into the horror show that was the Milky Way galaxy. Were it not for them finding the carcass of an alien warship, filled with dead soldiers and a treasure trove of information, the proud people of Earth would be no more. The sandy beaches of my homeland would be turned to glass and its forests burned until not even the ash remained intact. That is what we now fight against.

Planetary genocide.

Or, barring that, enslavement at the hands of the Arxur Dominion. Neither is palatable to myself, my comrades, or any human who calls themselves a true defender of humanity. We of the U.N. have vowed to fight against such evils until our last dying breath. But the evil we face, far from being weak or feeble, is overwhelming.

The two factions of this galactic war, the Federation on one side and the Dominion on another, have had centuries to perfect a science that we of Earth have only begun to master. We are the up-and-coming amateurs, and they are the seasoned pros. There's no way our humble world would stand a chance if it came to a fair fight. But, well, that hardly gives us an incentive to fight fair, now does it?

General Jones calls what we do asymmetrical warfare. Commander Fraser calls it black ops. Our alien allies, what few we have, call it absolutely unfamiliar and terrifying to face, and that is exactly what we need to defeat an enemy of the scale we now fight. Earth stands not as a lighthouse of hope in a galaxy of darkness, but as a bunker, a hidden shelter from the forces of tyranny from which our shadow war is waged.

Our foes are stronger, more numerous, and better equipped than we are. They are learning our way of fighting as fast as we learn theirs. Every victory we win is an uphill battle, and we spend the lives of Earth's sons and daughters as if we had more to spare. Too many ships and soldiers have already had to execute what we know as the Nightfall Protocol, a general order to never let the location of Earth be revealed, even at the cost of their own lives. They are heroes, and in a just world, they would be celebrated, their victory guaranteed. But our victory is anything but.

I stand as the Secretary-General of the United Nations not as the man who led this world into a time of friendship, prosperity, and new hope, but as the man who now steers it away from oblivion, or worse, subjugation under a fascist regime until our very humanity itself is cut away. It is my duty as a human being to fight these evils wherever and whenever I can, hide from them when I cannot fight, and run from them when I cannot hide. That is the only path to survival in this universe.

I hope that one day--perhaps I will not see it, but my children or my children's children might--our galaxy will be at peace, and people of every kind can stand in friendship under the sky of free worlds. Until then, however, we humans must endure. We must remain vigilant. And we must, must, must remain hidden.

If we can fight in the shadows and weaken our enemies, we might be able to topple their old system of tyranny and replace it with truth, justice, and the Terran way of life. If we are found, however, and our ships and bases caught in a fair fight, we will die, and the galaxy's last hope at freedom will die with us.

This cannot be an excuse to lose faith. Our forces are winning victory after victory as this war goes on. But our final victory, our survival, even, is far from guaranteed.

Now, feeling the weight of an entire galaxy on my shoulders, all I can do is hope. Hope that our methods of secrecy, shadow warfare, and fanning the flames of our enemies' internal strife are enough to topple them without having to resort to the bloodshed of a conventional war. Hope that General Jones, Commander Fraser, and their troops know what they are doing.

And hope that, even if the road to victory is long and hard, that victory is what waits for us at this war's end, and that the dark night of tyranny will not fall on the people of Earth.

- Elias Meier's prepared speech for the 3rd anniversary of first contact

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Well, there you have it! I actually wrote a work set in this AU a while ago, but I really didn't like the silly and goofy tone it took so I decided to scrap that idea and start again with a more serious tone. It's called Nightfall Protocol, not Happy Fun Sunshine Land Protocol. It was never going to work that kind of way.

Anyway, I think a one shot like this works better for me because if people like it, great, but if people don't like it I haven't committed myself to writing a full series or anything like that. If you're interested in reading more stories set in the Nightfall Protocol verse, upvote me and leave a comment expressing your love. It really goes a long way.

FAQs about The Nightfall Protocol Verse:

- What kind of fanfic will this be?

This is gonna be a gritty, serious NoP AU where the UN is a real underdog, the Feds and Dominion are serious badasses, and our heroes have to fight tooth and nail for every victory they get. The UN's only advantage is that they are experts in black ops asymmetrical warfare while the Feds and Dominion are amateurs in this field, so their war fighting tactics will consist of hit and runs, supply raids, sabotage, and anything and everything that isn't a fair fight. Only once they have help from more powerful allies can they really win even battles, and even then, they'll be on the back foot.

- How does this AU differ from canon?

The most obvious difference (at least for me) is that the TNP verse will actually feel realistic and not just like an HFY story. The Federation will feel like a real and fearsome interstellar power that could feasibly last 1000 years, the Shadow Caste will actually feel like a secretive cabal and not just a free ship dispenser for the bad guys, the Dominion will be actual badass warriors instead of the fear effect merchants they are in canon, and the UN will be real underdogs who have to work hard to win victories rather than just God's specialest little guys who steamroll a 1000 year old empire in a matter of just months.

- But Cap, we already have the Scorch Directive AU! Why not just read that?

Well, you should read Scorch Directive, it's a great piece of writing, but The Nightfall Protocol is a different piece of writing in a very different field. In Scorch Directive, there are no good guys. The United Dominion is just as evil as the Federation, if not more, and that's the grittiness of it. The Nightfall Protocol, by contrast, very much does have a good guy in the form of the U.N, they're just hopelessly underpowered and all but doomed to failure in the long run. The tension of this fic comes from how overwhelmingly powerful the Feds and Dominion are compared to our heroes, and how even one mistake can doom humankind and end all hope in the galaxy for good, not from how that hope has been ended already and here we see the aftermath.

If you have a question I didn't answer, or a comment you want to say about the fic, please feel free to post it in the comments and I will get to it as soon as I can. Much love.

Synopsis: Just over a year after the end of the Federation War, an ambitious human businessman teams up with a crew of Arxur veterans to illegally smuggle goods in and out of the Arxur Quarantine Zone. Gunfights, space battles, and other shenanigans ensue.

CW: the morning after, arxur relationship dynamics discussion, more character development, mild sexual content, cliffhanger chapter, monogamy the board game, you get the idea

Memory Transcription Subject: Markus Becker, Enterprising Businessman

Date (Standardized Human Time): April 8, 2138

I woke up to the feeling of cool scales against my skin, and it took me a few moments to process exactly what had happened yesterday. My whole body was sore. My head ached like a bitch, my hips were tender to the touch and probably a little bruised, and my throat was dry such that I needed to cough a few times to clear it out. I rolled over to face Sylara, not quite ready to be the little spoon in the relationship, and kissed her on the part of her snout where she liked it the best.

Last night had been a learning experience for both of us, really. The first real foray into a human-alien relationship. Sure, it had gone a bit faster than I would've wanted, but if I was ever caught on camera saying that I wouldn't bang a pretty alien woman who showed up to my door butt naked, I definitely made that statement under duress.

I guess every alien is kind of butt naked all the time, though. Strange.

Sylara stirred a bit in bed and stretched, catlike, pressing me against the wall as she did so. "Hey, hey," I breathed, in a strained voice. She shuffled away and gave me some more breathing room. "Just because it's an Arxur-sized bed doesn't mean it's that big."

"Yes, I know," Sylara hissed. "Apologies. I'm not used to actually... any of this, really. Any of it."

I raised an eyebrow and ran a hand along her flank, the latter done just for the sheer hell of it. God damn, she was beautiful. And crazy in bed, if last night was any indication. I still didn't know if she was an outlier or if all Arxurs were just like that, but either way, it didn't matter. She was the only woman I had eyes for.

"You've never... been in a relationship before?" I asked, responding to her earlier statement. I mean, I had no idea what Arxur dating standards were like, but I couldn't imagine Sylara being somehow excluded from the pool.

"I have," she clarified. "Plenty of times. But that was... Dominion fare. Nobody loves each other in the Arxur Dominion. Nobody's allowed to show empathy, compassion, any of that. I think most Arxur are actually secret defectives, it's just that we've all bottled it up so deep inside we don't even know the feelings exist. I certainly didn't know I could feel like this. Not until you."

Whoa. That was actually some really deep shit. I took a moment to recognize it as such and then kissed her on the snout again. "Well, shit, I love you too, Sylara," I said, because it was honestly the best thing I could think of to say in that moment. "What we're doing? You? Me? This is probably the greatest thing I've ever done in my life."

Sylara asked me to clarify, and so I did. Her tail wrapped around my leg in the meantime. "Everything I've been doing up until today, I've done it for me. Because I want to make money, because I want to feel morally good, I want to honor my dead friend, I, I, I!" I stopped myself cold when I realized I was shouting, but Sylara didn't seem to mind. I clearly had a lot of emotions to let out. "I think us banging last night was the first time I can remember where I've done something without thinking of myself at all. Just you, and how amazing you are. It's a new perspective on things."

Sylara bit me on the nose in her equivalent of a kiss. I didn't mind. Truth be told, I'm kind of into it. She let the moment drag out before adding words into the mix. "This is the first time like that for me, too," she admitted. "Desiring a man for himself rather than his status, or the prospect of future favors. It feels good. I like it."

"I like it, too," I concurred. Then she added something more.

"I feel good. Helping people, that is. It's so unfamiliar to me. For the past three decades, I've woken up under a gray ceiling, only caring about where my next meal is going to come from, and now... I am proud. I am proud of what I am doing, Markus. With you. With Teklala and the Reformists. It feels good, and I love it. What is this?"

I smiled warmly at her. God damn, I wish you could see this right now, Zefriss. "That's called empathy, Sylara. You're discovering empathy."

"Empathy." The word rolled off her tongue. "I like it. If this is what the Old Dominion gnashed its teeth at, that's just all the more reason to see it gone." I happily expressed my agreement in the form of another kiss. Really, I was just finding excuses to kiss her, at this point. But could anyone really blame me? If they had a tall, scaly lizard girlfriend, they'd be kissing up on her, too!

And speaking of girlfriends, actually... "What are we?" I asked Sylara, just to make sure there was no confusion. "Romantically speaking, that is. What are the ground rules?"

Sylara made a show of scratching her head and thinking about it before surprising me with a bite to the front of my neck. Right where my throat was, actually. I was lucky I only flinched a little, and double lucky she only bit down a little, too. Her bites had broken enough skin during the act of passion last night, and I did not want to be the first guy to go down in history as Dead From Banging an Alien Too Hard.

Actually, wait, maybe I did want to go out like that. That sounded like a cool ass way to go.

"We can be whatever you want us to be," Sylara crooned, nestling her snout near my neck. "I'm serious. I have never been in a loving relationship in my life. I have no idea what this is supposed to look like."

"We trust each other, stay faithful to each other, and love each other till death do us part?" I helpfully suggested.

Sylara bit my neck again in a way that would've given any Venlil conniptions. Not me, though. What was I supposed to do, complain? Oh no, my steak is too juicy! My lobster is too buttery! Woe is me! "That works," Sylara hissed. "What's the policy on monogamy?"

"Isn't that a board game?" I asked her. She just looked at me funny. "You know, monogamy? With, like, Park Place and Boardwalk and shit? The hotels? 'Go directly to jail, do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred dollars'? Is any of this making sense to you?"

"Markus, I have never heard of any of those terms in my life," Sylara helpfully clarified. "Monogamy is the act of having only one sexual or romantic partner. It's not a common practice among Arxur, but most species differ from us in that way. Your verdict?"

Well, that cleared things up. And as freaky as I was, I feel like sitting in the Cuck Chair while Sylara screwed some other man's head off was just a tad bit weirder than I was willing to get. I mean, no offense to anybody who was into that, of course. Who was I to judge? It just wasn't for me at all.

"We are staying monogamous," I hastily but firmly clarified. "I can't stop you from taking other lovers, but if you do that, we are done. You're dead to me. Understand?"

Sylara nodded. Where the hell she had learned that, I didn't know. "Understand. I wouldn't feel betrayed at all if you were to take another lover, that's just what Arxurs do sometimes, but... I understand. I will not betray this trust you have in me."

Well, that worked for me. "Sylara, I am not going to take another lover," I assured her. "You're amazing. You're all I will ever need."

She bristled a bit at that. "You really mean that?" she asked. "Me? Do you have any idea what I've done?"

"Woman, you name me one Arxur who hasn't done something they should regret," I sagely countered. "Shit, if I lived under the Dominion like you did... I don't know. I can't imagine how that changes you. An entire civilization dedicated to cruelty."

Sylara bristled even more at the mention of that shit, which I guess was pretty fair. I mean, she literally used to eat people to survive. I wouldn't want to remember that stuff. "That's why I'm so glad to have this with you," she murmured. "This purpose. Working toward a better future for all Arxurkind, free of the regime those fuckers impressed on all of us."

"Speaking of..." Sylara trailed off. "I think we should get dressed. Teklala has a job for us to do." Oh. Well, I guess I couldn't spend all day making love to her. Even if I kind of wanted to. Sylara rolled herself out of bed and landed on her feet in a single catlike movement, seeming all the more graceful when compared to my own clumsy movements.

She could've left the room immediately--Arxurs were allowed to be naked, for some reason--but instead she handed me my clothes and even tried to help me put them on, though she hindered more than helped my efforts. Still, I could appreciate the intention, at least. Sylara and I left my quarters, or our shared quarters now, I think, together, and went to the bridge. It was empty, save for us of course, and ships of Teklala's ragtag fleet could be seen through the windows. People of all species clambered across them in space suits, welding the weapons we had bought to their hulls.

"Teklala says her fleet is still weeks away from having enough firepower to risk a direct assault on Lizard Maw Station," Sylara helpfully explained, with the assistance of a few visual aids, even if she was a lot more visually pleasing than they were. "What they need now is food to last them those weeks. We are going to go and get it to them."

She showed me a space station above what her holoprojector helpfully identified as a farming colony. "This here is the target in question. Prosper Fields Handling Station. They're a bumfuck-nowhere Nevok owned food-transport facility that's been skimming off the top of their shipments and wants somebody to sell it to. Namely, that somebody will be us. We go there, get the food, pay them with Teklala's money, and then that will be that. Sound good?"

It did sound good. Hell, it sounded great, in fact. An easy job, with the promise of a good reward as well, if that karma shit was real. Truth be told, though, this task being so great and easy for me only made me all the more suspicious. "Is there a catch?" I asked questioningly.

"There's always a catch," said Sylara. "The Dominionists need food too. They're probably offering a better deal than we are. If their ships interfere at all with our deal with our client, Teklala's given us orders to shoot them on sight."

Shit. I sucked some air in through my teeth, pondering the problem. Without Zefriss, I didn't feel good about getting into a fight, but I didn't feel all that good about fighting even with Zefriss. Besides, there was always the possibility we wouldn't have to fight if we were quick enough. And if we did, well, the Little Runt had weapons systems for a reason. "We'd better get moving, then," I concluded. "Is the crew ready to roll?"

Sylara made a show of curtsying and bowed her head in compliance. "They await only your order, my captain."

I guess it was official, then. I was unquestionably in charge. Not exactly sure how to feel about that.

---

Memory Transcription Subject: Captain Jelim, Sapient Coalition Quarantine Enforcement Task Force

Date (Standardized Human Time): April 8, 2138

I felt physically sick. A deep disgust filled all parts of my body. I wanted to curl up in a corner and die, having seen what I had just seen. The only thing that prevented me from taste-testing my sidearm then and there was the fact that I still had people who depended on me and I would suffer any torture before I let them down.

Torture. I thought I was above it all. We, the civilized Sapient Coalition, harmonious union of predator and prey, were above such evils. We would never let a fellow intelligent being starve while we ate well, or live as cattle while we enjoyed freedom. Right? Right?

Wrong. Wrong! We allowed so much evil to fester, to grow behind closed doors, and we had done nothing but keep it caged in. I had done nothing. Hell, given how easy it was to see the truth, my lack of knowledge only meant that I was practically complicit.

As an enforcer of the quarantine, my interactions with Arxur had been limited to keeping their criminals in my ship's brig for the few brief hours it took to rendezvous with one of the Isif government's prison ships. I had believed what the QF authorities had told me to believe; that the Isif regime was doing well on its own, that famine and sickness were being quelled, that the Old Dominion was dead or dying, and never bothered to ask otherwise.

Why would I, after all? This wasn't the Federation. It was the Sapient Coalition, remember? We were better than that.

What really hit me the deepest was how god damn close I had been to continuing to believe that shit. How easy it would've been to just ship my prisoner, Zefriss, off to his corner of the galaxy and let him rot. If it hadn't been for his poor health, and his connection to the elusive Lizard Maw Base, I'd have put him on an Isif government ship that very day. As for what really happened, well, Inatala worked in mysterious ways.

The truth was undeniable. The quarantine had to end. What we did here was not purification, it was containment. Like locking the doors to a building on fire, knowing damn well there were children inside. Anybody who looked at Nishtal, at the Cradle, and said a people who did that could be trusted to manage their own affairs deserved to see what they had wrought firsthand.

By anybody, of course, I meant me. I had read Zefriss' mind with the neural readers, with his full consent of course, and collected all the worst memories of Isif's one year of rule for my perusal. I deserved to see what I had been complicit in. And I did. Oh, Inatala save me, I absolutely did.

The horror I "remembered" from Zefriss' memories was sickening, both in its inherent nature and in how easily predictable it was. What did we expect? That we could take a species defined by trauma, raised for ten generations to revere any evil and shun all good, and expect them to build a sunshine-fucking-rainbow land when left to their own devices? They literally ate babies!

I did not know the kind of evils I had been a party to, nor would I probably ever. All I knew was that they had to stop. No longer could we stay on our side of the quarantine line and watch as Arxurkind tried and failed to save itself. The logic was simple and clear as day.

When a man is drowning, you don't quarantine him, you jump in and perform a rescue. Why should a species be any different?

But I couldn't end the quarantine. Who the hell was I to dictate policy? The only two options I had were to enforce it or not to enforce it. To hold the line, and trap all of Pandora's evils inside her mythical box, or to abandon my post out of some purity-culture bullshit and loose hell upon the worlds for the sake of my clean claws.

My claws weren't clean. There was so much blood on them already. So much blood. No matter what I did, people would suffer--were suffering--because of me, and it tortured me. How was I a hero? How could I look at my beloved, my father, my dead mother in the afterlife, and tell them I was someone worthy of their love? Was this who I wanted to be?

Did I even have a choice?

Everywhere I looked, horror reared its head and roared. The only good course of action--to end the quarantine, bring Wriss under Sapient Coalition authority, and reform their species directly with a firm but gentle claw--was restricted from me. All I saw were two evils.

Either I continued my work as an enforcer of this hell, condemning generations of Arxur to suffering under a dysfunctional dictatorship founded and ran by warcriminals, or I quit my job and prayed whoever took the post next was competent enough to keep the floodgates from opening up. And if they failed, if even a single pirate or cattle trafficker got through who I would've stopped, that was blood on my conscience.

I couldn't breathe. I felt like a Mazic was sitting on my chest. The cold logic of the decision stared at me like the eyes of--ironically enough--an Arxur. Necessary evil. I hated that term. If it was necessary, it wasn't evil, and so it was good by exclusion, but this wasn't good. I couldn't take pride in this like I had my other work. Was it right? Was it better to enforce a corrupt and twisted version of peace rather than let the attack birds off their leash and watch planets burn?

That was what they did, remember? They burned planets. Sure, when I worked on a smaller scale, I could afford to make mistakes, but when any idiot with an asteroid could wipe out a city, how could I? I was here because I was the best person for the job. Full. Stop. Anybody else taking over meant people would die. I had been over that already.

I probably would've kept in that obsessive loop for a while longer, replaying the facts in my head like I expected them to change, were it not for a chime on my data terminal calling my attention. I answered immediately, relieved to do something other than self-flagellate.

"Captain," my first officer snapped. "An enemy has taken the bait at one of our trap stations."

"Which one?" I asked, heart flooding with relief. Here were terms I liked. On one side, law and order, peace and justice, and on the other, the same criminal scum that kept the quarantine alive. Just because they happened to be helpful when the SC had something Arxurs needed didn't mean they were good. Were it not for their ilk, smugglers, pirates, sapient traffickers, we could have dropped the quarantine by now. There might never have been a quarantine in the first place. Those animals had to be stopped. In that aspect, at least, I had no doubt in my righteousness.

"The smugglers are heading to Prosper Fields Handling Station," said my top officer, in response to my earlier question. "It's received two requests for a sale already, both through criminal channels. Our ship can get there faster than they can."

"Good," said I. "Make the crew ready for action, and move us out at once." My comrade terminated the call and a duty klaxon began to sound. I filed Zefriss' borrowed memories back into my neural helmet and took it off, setting it on my desk, smoothing out my feathers and shaking out the trauma of what I had seen.

Tomorrow, I would file a report of what I knew to headquarters on Skalga, and see if they concurred with me. If not, I'd go to the media, and expose the horror that was happening in Arxur space and the need to help Isif and his dream directly by going in and stopping it. If they didn't listen, I would go to Secretary-General Zhao and plead my case directly to him. I would not rest. I could not rest until the quarantine was lifted and the last embers of the fire that was Dominionist cruelty were stomped out by Sapient Coalition talons.

But that was tomorrow. Today, I had smugglers to hunt.

First | Previous | no jelim not those smugglers those smugglers are actually alright guys

Synopsis: Johnny Kern is a regular human dude who likes birds, likes men, and definitely likes bird men. Teklim is a shy but flirtatious Krakotl who's looking to meet someone. I am a fanfiction writer hoping to get some fanart of my fics (as per this post). What will happen when these two star-crossed lovers meet?

CW: chubby krakotl, brief gender mixup, scary ass gojid spines, brief jack kern shoutout (top 5 bird kisser in the verse btw), we're all adults here we can all say the word 'sex'

Memory Transcription Subject: Jonathan Kern, human civilian

Date (Standardized Human Time): October 19, 2137

Whoever told me that aliens sucked was a motherfucking liar, man. Aliens were great! Ever since Star Trek, every human being had been having dreams of being friends with an alien, and every human being with taste had been having dreams of banging one. Which is why I was here, actually. On Skalga. In Dayside City. At the planet's most well known bar for interspecies hookups.

I waded through the sea of humans, Venlils, humans, Venlils, one Gojid, more Venlils, more humans--god damn it, was there anybody who wasn't a human or a Venlil in this place--in search of the woman or man of my dreams. Somebody with thighs for days. Somebody soft, who I could hug and lift up into the air. Somebody with feathers, actually, because I had been exposed to the wrong parts of the internet at way too young an age and so I was freaky like that.

I went up to the bartender and ordered myself a drink. "Just a regular Venlil beer, please." I slapped two credit chips on the counter. Yes, Venlil alcohol was toxic to the extreme for a human. But I had water to water it down with, and if I was gonna be spending fifteen credits on a drink, I was gonna have to make it last.

I waited and waited, actually getting pretty thirsty, until a drink finally came for me. Not my Venlil beer, but a drink. Some strange orange thing with a little umbrella and a slice of mango. "Hey, what the hell is this shit?" I asked the bartender. He nodded to a little perch at the corner of the bar.

"Krakotl over there sent this to you," said he. I looked, straining my eyes, and saw a Krakotl with deep blue plumage waving her wings my way. Hell yeah! I hopped off my stool and made a beeline for her, shoulder-checking a few Venlils out of my way as I did so and dodging that Gojid from earlier because those spines were scary, man. By the time I got over to her, she looked shocked, concerned, and slightly amused by all that effort I had put in to get there.

"You must really have liked that drink, huh?" the lady trilled. "I'm Teklim." I could've sworn that was a masculine name, but Teklim's voice sounded female enough and she certainly looked the part. "Pull up a chair."

I did exactly that. "I'm Johnny," said I, sitting and sipping my drink. It tasted like shit, but there was no way I was going to spit it out and give up my composure in front of a bad as fuck Krakotl woman. I was just gonna have to choke it down. "What brings a lady like you to a place like this?"

"I'm a man," said Teklim, completely out of the blue. Or, you know, maybe not completely out of the blue. I'm sure there were signs. I fucking knew that was a masculine name!

"Fine by me," I clarified. "I swing both ways. Anyway, what brings a gentleman like you to a place like this?"

"Meet a human," said he, tilting his head and fluffing up his head crest. "Preferably a tall, strong, handsome human who can treat me right." There was an unmistakable trill in his voice that you just didn't see from the exterminator waving a flamethrower in your face or the Predator Guard lunatic throwing a brick. Oh, yeah. This guy wanted me.

"Well, you're in luck," I told him. "I'm in here to meet a Krakotl. Preferably a..." I looked Teklim up and down, trying to gauge his appearance. "Beautiful, elegant Krakotl with a sizeable lower half."

Teklim preened a bit and sipped at his drink. "I think you're the first person I've met who complimented me on my legs," said he. "Most guys want someone lean and streamlined. But, hey, you have taste."

That I did. I mean, sure, everybody with taste wanted to get lucky with a beautiful bird with long, lean legs. But there was just something about Teklim's chubbiness that made him even hotter than the alternative. More man to go around? I didn't know, and I wasn't complaining. I sipped another sip of my drink, which, again, tasted like ass, and got to talking my talk.

"I actually thought you'd be quite the catch for Krakotls," I told him, smooth like butter, the Johnny Kern way.

"Nope," Teklim chittered excitedly. "Not at all! But you seem like a man who appreciates the finer things in life."

I had to nod to that. "Hey, man, Krakotls are like chickens. The breasts and thighs are the best part of the bird." Part of me worried that I had made the wrong call by comparing Teklim to a bird we humans used to eat, but he seemed to like it. Besides, I was a vegetarian anyway. "If some guy out there says he doesn't want you? Let me tell you, man, they are completely missing out." I looked to the door. "Wanna get out of here?"

"Not yet," Teklim deferred, which was fine. I was a better man than the kind who would pressure a man I was flirting with, after all. Or a woman, for that matter. I swung both ways. "I want to get to know you a bit better. You have any family I should meet?"

Oh, boy, did I have family. Where did I even start? I mean, I guess my weird brother would be a good place to start at. "Well, right now I'm living at my brother Jack's old place," said I. "He's actually dating a Krakotl, which is where I got the idea, but besides that he is one strange dude. I mean, you should meet him. He's funny and I laugh at his jokes, but man do I worry about him sometimes."

"Sounds like my sister," said Teklim. "She's... uh... she's an exterminator. Who hates humans. But besides that, she is one stand-up person. The type who will be the sweetest and kindest woman, but the day I bring a 'predator' home, she's up in arms and ready to burn the house down. Crazy, right?"

I wiggled my hand a bit to express my point. "Ehh, I dunno. I've met a few guys like that." Teklim cocked his head and took a sip of his drink. "What brings you to like humans so much?" I asked. "Sorry if this is a personal question."

"Oh, not at all," Teklim chirped. "Honestly, I think it's the danger of it for me, no offense intended." And no offense taken! "I've always been drawn to stronger, bigger mates. It's a Krakotl thing. Instinct."

"I can understand that," I nodded, smiling. "Lucky for me, you know?"

"Lucky for me," Teklim clarified. "You're about the hottest human I've seen in here." He clicked his beak and trilled.

"And you," I told him, "Are without a doubt the hottest Krakotl."

"You tease," Teklim flirted back. "So, I have to ask. Is it true that humans bite each other during, you know?" He made a gesture of something lewd thrusting in and out of a hole.

"Teklim, I'm twenty-five. You can say the word 'sex' around me."

"Well, alright then," said he. "Do humans bite each other during sex?"

I waggled my arm to prove my point, which was something I did a lot. "Ehh, some do, some don't. It's really a varying thing," said I. "Why? Do you want me to?"

Teklim clicked his beak and gave an amused trill. "Fuck yes I do!" He smacked the table with his chubby wings and hopped once on his perch. "I mean, not to reduce you to a stereotype or anything. But I can see the appeal in someone getting rough with me in the bedroom."

I nodded my head, now very much into this bird man. I mean, earlier, I was a little bit interested, true, but this whole idea had gotten me very locked in to say the least. "Teklim, I am absolutely willing to get rough in the freakin' bedroom," I said, trying not to sound freaky and turn him off. "Just list off all the things you want me to do and I'll do them."

"Really?" Teklim asked, perking up. "Right now? I mean, like, today?"

"Oh, no, no," I clarified. "I don't fuck on the first date. It's a rule I made." What I conveniently left out was that I had made that rule no longer than two seconds ago, and solely for the purpose of sounding sophisticated in front of my new Krakotl talking stage.

"Johnny, you were asking me if I wanted to get out of here and do the devil's tango no less than ten minutes ago," said Teklim wryly.

Teklim, again, we are both grown adults. You can say the word sex. I won't spontaneously explode from hearing it.

"Alright, alright, alright," I said, putting up my hands and leaning back. "You've got me. Dead to rights."

"If the crime is being handsome, you are guilty as charged," Teklim flirted, bobbing his head crest in excitement. My crazy brother Jack and his girlfriend were polite enough to teach me Krakotl body language, though I wasn't brave enough to ask them what I was supposed to do to one in bed. I guess I'd cross that bridge when I came to it, though. It is what it is.

"If the crime is being hopelessly attracted to you..." I flirted back, dragging out the U while thinking of something cool to say. "Then give me the goddamn death penalty."

Teklim trilled again and puffed out his chest in that little heart shape that meant he was ready to get it on. "You want to get out of here?" he asked.

I nodded my head and smiled. "What, you've gotten to know me well enough now?" I had certainly gotten to know him well enough.

"Well, if you want to keep talking..." Teklim hesitated. "I- to be entirely honest, I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to dating humans. All I know is how to send people drinks."

"You're doing a pretty bang-up job, is what you're doing," I clarified for him. "But the drink wasn't good, though. It tastes like shit. If you and I don't work out, send the next guy a different one."

"It tasted like shit?" Teklim asked, bewildered. God, he was pretty cute when he was bewildered. And, you know, the rest of the time. "I thought it tasted pretty good." He pointed to the Venlilese beer he had nearby. "This is the drink that tastes like shit."

"Well, hey, how about we switch?" I asked him. "You drink my drink and I drink yours." Teklim happily agreed, and we switched drinks in an instant. I was so attracted to him that I nearly forgot to water down my beer. That would've been a shitty way to end the night.

As for good ways to end the night, though... I had a few ideas. I took a sip of my watered-down beer and gave Teklim my best impression of bedroom eyes. "To answer your earlier question," said I, "Yes, I do want to get out of here with you."

Teklim puffed himself up, bobbed his headcrest, and trilled. "So you do fuck on the first date." I put up my hands again, because he had caught me dead to rights.

"Teklim, you give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'pretty bird'," I told him. "Who wouldn't hit that on the first date?"

"A lot of people," he uselessly clarified. A lot of losers, more like. "Like I said. This kind of chub-chub is not the peak of male beauty in the average Krakotl's eyes."

"Well, it's the peak of male beauty in mine," I chuckled. "Who gives a damn what those bums think?" I got up from my seat and extended Teklim a hand. "Come on. Let's go back to my place and give you the loving a handsome, beautiful, wonderful gentleman like you deserves." His headcrest bobbed faster and faster with every compliment. Damn, it was nice to see how much he wanted me. And I wanted him, too.

Teklim took my hand and put his beak to it, trying to kiss it like gentlemen in movies sometimes did. "Teklim, that is not how you kiss with a beak," I told him.

His eyes twinkled and he looked up at me. "Oh? And how do you kiss with a beak?" he said challengingly.

"I'll show you."

My other writings | Q: how do you kiss a beak? A: lovingly

Synopsis: Just over a year after the end of the Federation War, an ambitious human businessman teams up with a crew of Arxur veterans to illegally smuggle goods in and out of the Arxur Quarantine Zone. Gunfights, space battles, and other shenanigans ensue.

CW: not quite Vulcan mind meld, deep introspective philosophical discussion, a lotta character development happening in not a lotta words

Memory Transcription Subject: Zefriss, Sapient Coalition Prisoner

Date (Standardized Human Time): April 7, 2138

The last few days in captivity had been completely uneventful. I was fed three square meals of carnivorous rations per day. The doctors and nurses checked up on me, if not to actually care for my health, at least because their captain wanted me in good shape as soon as possible so we could begin the neural interrogation. Whatever that was.

The captain of this ship of war, which I had learned by now was called the Inescapable Justice, visited me twice daily to check on my health and general welfare, as well as to try and make some conversation. I recognized it as an interrogator's ploy and declined every time. I would not betray my friends.

I had even considered sabotaging my own health--maybe a hunger strike--to avoid being pried at by the neural devices, but that was all for naught. I healed well enough. Soon, the marines took me from my bed and brought me to the neural machine.

White-armored Venlil soldiers dragged me down the grimy halls of the ship's brig, past other prisoners wearing similar shackles and ankle monitors to myself, until we reached a large door that said 'MEMORY TRANSCRIPTION CHAMBER'. This is it. One of the guards buzzed my door open and the two of them combined pushed me inside. One alone probably couldn't manage the weight.

The door hissed shut behind me and my two guards held me by the arms as I looked over the chamber. Empty, save for a two-way mirror on the left wall, a sealed door next to the mirror, and, in the center of the room, an electric execution chair-looking device made of metal with strong restraints. One of the guards strapped me in without saying a word while the other leveled his gun and watched. The first one pulled the restraints tight and stepped away, flicking his tail to his friend.

"Secured," said he. Then he tapped a communicator band. "Prisoner ready for interrogation."

The door next to the two-way mirror hissed open and in walked the captain of this massive vessel, blue and tiny as ever. "Captain Jelim," I growled at her. "I should have you know I'm trained to resist torture."

"Torture." Jelim clacked her beak derisively. "Look at me, Zefriss." I was doing that. She was small, weak, and strong-willed to the point of insanity. People just like her had stood on the bridges of Krakotl battleships two years ago to watch Earth burn. And then again, at Nishtal. And the Cradle. And every other atrocity in galactic history.

"If I had vital information on a group that butchered your friends, killed your family, marauded your worlds, would you torture me to get me to talk?"

What the fuck question did she think that was? I wasn't your average Arxur. Me and mine weren't torturers. "Go stick your head in a hole," I mocked her.

Jelim tapped her foot a few times in annoyance, which was good, because it meant I was getting through to her. "Your comrades would," said she. "Look me in the eyes and tell me you can't think of one of your fellow lawbreakers doing it. The snarling. The blood. You've probably even seen them torture for fun."

"My comrades are fine," I snapped without meaning to. What the hell kind of a statement was that? They were Arxur! I mean, yes, they did seem well-adjusted when I met them, but every Arxur had a checkered past. Even me.

Did their past define them? Did my past define me? I guess not. "My comrades are fine," I repeated, more sure of it this time. "Better than you are. Fuck yourself."

"Fine, then." Jelim turned and called to one of her subordinates out of sight. "Load up the program!" Her guards stepped forward to put some kind of wire-mesh helmet over my head.

Oh, shit. A wave of fear crashed over me as I realized how helpless I was to stop what was coming. They were going to neurally-interrogate me and flay my head open from the inside, or something else hopefully less graphic, and then they were going to use what they learned to hunt down and kill everybody I cared about. I thrashed and snarled to stop them, but it was to no avail.

"This will not be torture, Zefriss," Captain Jelim said, putting a helmet of similar design on her own head. "It will be painless and humane. I'm not one of you."

"An Arxur?" I snapped, straining against the restraints. It was no use. Those metal cuffs could've held ten of me.

"A criminal." Jelim clasped her wings behind her back and closed her eyes, concentrating. True to her word, there was no pain, but I felt chills run down my spine. Something was wrong. I remembered things almost without thinking of them, Markus' face, Vazega in her navigator's chair, the gun batteries I had seen on Lizard Maw Base...

Oh, no. She was inside my head. She was inside my head. I had no defense for this. I tried to block out all the information I could about my friends and their potential whereabouts, but everybody knew how the saying went. If you're told, in no unclear terms, not to think of a purple Gojid, the first thing you're gonna think of is a purple Gojid.

I had to try something. I closed my eyes and thought hard about something else, the first and hardest-hitting memory I could think of, that would consume my whole mind and block her interrogation out.

I was sixteen. A defective grunt on his first raid. Gojid blood on the floor, walls, ceiling. Gunfire chattered haphazardly in the distance as my comrades made mincemeat of the town's exterminators. Fear filled my body as I realized what I had to do. In front of me were three Gojid pups, and behind me was a Betterment officer with a loaded gun, and the pups--children--mewled as I brought them to my mouth and their blood was like ichor running down my teeth and- and-

The pressure on my mind eased, though the pain of my memories did not slip away. I felt the disgust, the self-hatred, as real as if it had happened yesterday. When I opened my eyes again, Captain Jelim was pressed up against the wall, wings and chest puffed out, her one biological eye bulging out of her skull as she panted for breath.

"You- you-" I hadn't realized she'd be affected this deeply, but now that she had, I wasn't going to complain. This bitch was an oppressor and murderer. Let her feel what I felt that day. What I feel now. "Why?" Jelim croaked. "You're a defective! The new Isif government should be like heaven to you! Why do you want to return to... that?" She brought back a flash of the painful memory, just to prove her point.

I lunged at her, only the strong restraints on my chair holding me back, and spewed a string of curses that would've made a Wrissian back-alley thug turn his head in surprise. "You think I want to go back to that?" was about the only coherent sentence I said.

Jelim stood up straighter and tucked in her feathers, still teetering a bit from the shock of my memory. She had never seen something like that before. She was lucky. "You're not exactly jumping to help go the other way," said she. "What do you think smugglers do? Do you know how many ships just like your Little Runt I've boarded to find cattle cages filled to the brim, hundreds of terrified faces staring at me through the bars, just like the days of the old Dominion? Why do you want to help that?"

I could explain it to her. How there were smugglers like me, and there were smugglers like them. But would she believe my words? "Look into my head again," said I. "I have another memory to show you."

"You're sure?" asked Jelim. "I don't want to provoke another... episode."

"Look at my fucking memories, bitch."

She did just that. Not forcefully, like before, but slowly and probingly. I could've probably forced her out of my head if I wanted to, only I didn't. She had to see this.

It was the first year of Isif's new reign. Famine had struck all of Wriss. The cloning machines the U.N. gave us were producing meat that was toxic to the Arxur body, and the cattle they had supplied weren't enough to make up the demand. I was a soldier in Isif's government at the time.

I approached the tarmac of a flat landing pad, flanked by fellow troops, ordered to arrest the smuggler whose ship had landed here. Our ribs were showing, and not a one among us was free of hunger pains. The feeling of starvation then was worse than even under the Dominion, but when we got to the ship, lo and behold, salvation.

Beef. Chicken. Cows and pigs. All the foodstuffs and proteins of Earth, here to feed the starving masses of Wriss. My comrades and I ate only our fair share that day, but it felt like the meal of a prophet-descendant. The rest of the food went to those who were starving worse than us. And the smuggler?

Hell, we thanked the smuggler. And paid him, too. The taste of that ground-beef packet I first devoured, plastic and all, was one of the best things I had experienced in my life. I was actually a little disappointed when the neural link ended and Jelim's mental presence eased me back into reality. "You'd have shot that ship down," I told her, not hiding my disgust. "Starved us all."

"We were told you had the famine under control," she backpedaled, quite literally backing up as well. "I swear to Inatala, that was what we were told. I never knew any of that."

"You expect me to believe that?" I snarled, taking the offensive again. Every moment she spent distracted by my pain was a moment she couldn't spend tearing apart my head in search of important memories. "There's blood on your hands anyway. How many food shipments did you shoot down?" She gave no answer. I scoffed at her. "You fucking Krakotl are all the same."

"You know I could say that about Arxur, right?" snapped the captain, jumping back into it. I had spoken wrong, but, hey, words were never my strong suit anyway. I was always more of a man of action. "I have every right to think of you as just another savage. But you're not. Neither is Isif or his government security. Your species has the chance to rebuild itself into something beautiful."

"And you think the smugglers are hurting our case?" I asked. If this came to a debate of knowledge and wills, I was next to unarmed, but I had to give an account of something. I couldn't just sit there and wait for the next mental invasion, could I? "Woman, if it weren't for the smugglers, all of Wriss would've starved in that famine, or died from lack of medication during a plague, or something. We're not a self-sufficient planet. No planet is."

"One good criminal doesn't mean we change the law," Jelim countered with what I'm sure she thought was a stupendous comeback. "Smugglers don't do it to help others, or to change the world, just for profit. Those same people who delivered food during times of famine will be delivering captive cattle right around now to the Arxurs who still like that stuff."

"As opposed to, what, arresting all the smugglers and letting my people starve in the next famine? Or die from lack of medicine, because the medicines aren't produced on Wriss? Let's face it, captain, you are not a good and bloodless person. Don't act like you are."

"I know that much," Jelim said solemnly. "But are you?" I had no comeback to give for that one, nor did I god damn want to. There was a pause before Jelim spoke again.

"I respect your people," she continued, and for once I felt something coming from her end of the neural link. A vulnerability that she had never exposed before. What had been a one-way connection now became two-way, and I could see into her thoughts as readily as she saw mine. Warmth radiated from her mind, and I realized she really did believe in a future for my people. Hell, she was more optimistic than I was about them. She just had a really, really, really fucked up way of showing it.

"I want to love your people," said Jelim, completely honest. This was new to me. In the old days, the Isif rebellion and the first stages of his governance, you were either good and on the good side or evil and on the bad side. Whatever this captain was, it was a completely new kind of person to me. "I want to tell the galaxy, truthfully, that the Arxur race is ready to join us. But how can I say that when all you have shown the worlds is the same barbarity that got you quarantined in the first place?"

I actually had to think about that one. A person trying to be good, thinking good thoughts and making good points, yet still fighting for the side of evil. None of this made sense. Why should they let us out? I considered her point. What did we, Arxurs, have to show the worlds that they didn't already do better than us? I had to think about it long and hard. What would Markus do?

Markus!

"You're just flat-out wrong about that one," I said quickly, the words spilling out as I had an epiphany about myself. "We have more to show the worlds than just savagery. My comrades, my crewmates, they used to be as despicable as anyone, but I saw them change in an instant when Ma-" Damn it! I can't say his name out loud. Or think it, for that matter. "When the human aboard the ship looked their way. When he showed them there was more to life than robbing and killing just to survive."

Jelim cocked her head, listening intently. I could feel her fascination through the neural link. She'd never thought of this before. I dared not probe deeper, she probably had some hidden mental ninjitsu techniques that could leave me thinking I was a Sivkit for the rest of my life, but it was good that she was listening.

"Yes, most of us are savages and killers," I told her. "But as long as this quarantine stays up, that is all we are going to be. You say you want a future for the Arxur species? Prove it. Lift the quarantine. End our oppression and let us become civilized."

Jelim perked up as she considered my idea. She didn't know I had that one in me. Truth be told, I didn't know I had that one in me either. I guess Arxurs can be more than just slavering marauders, huh? The thought was a relief, even if I didn't speak it aloud.

This wasn't what I had grown to expect of my own kind. It was what Markus Becker, or Elias Meier, or Tarva would've done. No snarling or snapping, but a civilized discussion of ideas between the right guy and the wrong one. And if I could be civilized, after what I had done, then most of the Arxurs I knew at least had a fighting chance at it. We had hope! We just needed more people like my friend Markus, helpers from the outside world, to show us the way.

"Thank you for that idea, Zefriss," Jelim said sincerely. She was so alien to me. I think I was alien to her, too, although maybe I was wrong. "You've given me a lot to think about." Looking at her now, I could scarcely believe this was the Ghost of Nishtal. The crazy murderer who blew a refugee ship to ash.

Jelim stood to leave, taking off the neural helmet, and I realized that an opportunity was slipping. I was getting through to her earlier, and that was bettering both her and myself. If she left, I might never see her again. Then what? "Wait!" I called to her as she went for the door. She waited. "The ship. I call it a refugee ship, you call it a criminal, whatever. Why did you open fire?"

"To be quite honest?" Jelim turned her head back to face me. "I didn't. My gunnery officer made that call. But I would have. Any day before today, I would've taken that shot." She put the neural helmet back on to try and convey some sense of what she felt in the moment. Fear. Pure, paralyzing terror, where any decision she made would've been the wrong one. If she fired, it was refugees, and she had blood on her claws. If she held back, it was pirates disguised as refugees, and she had blood on her claws all the same for letting them go.

A surge of relief had filled her when her gunner made the decision for her, followed by a surge of disgust at being relieved. She was meant to be a knight. A shield, not a sword. A hero. What kind of hero stood back and let somebody else bear the burden of a hard decision?

I hadn't grown any closer to liking her, she still had a lot of bad deeds to atone for even without the ship involved, but I respected her. What was more important, I thought that I could help her change. Like Markus would. Or Noah Williams. Or Isif, even. I could be a hero.

"I spend so much time thinking about defending the world on my side of the quarantine line, it's not often I wonder if I'm really helping yours," the captain twittered. I had her. I could fix her, and then after that, help fix my broken species. "I apologize for that. For being so callous toward the plight of your people. I don't think I would take that shot if it happened today."

Well, yeah, I sure fucking hope you wouldn't. You have enough blood on your hands already.

Still, I had to keep pushing. To be like Markus, or Isif, and drag this fucker from the dark into the light. "Now you'll... what?" I asked her, trying to say the right words. I had no experience convincing anyone of anything. I was a man of action, not words, but the action in question was usually killing people and I owed it to my species to be better than that. "Keep doing what you're doing, except with the idea that you're better now? Even if you don't shoot down a single ship, think of how bad it is on Wriss. Food shortages. Water shortages. Medicine shortages. Every smuggler you arrest is one who can't bring life saving aid through the blockade any longer. Are you going to stand for that?"

"I don't know," Jelim confessed. "I sympathize with you, really, but... what can I do? I can't just abandon my post."

"Why not?" I asked her. I felt good. Civilized, even. Not un-Arxurlike, but exactly like an Arxur. What an Arxur was supposed to be.

"Why not?" Jelim retorted, chattering her beak. "You've seen why not. Your ship and crew may be alright, but there are real criminal elements out there that are working to bring down everything Arxurkind can achieve. Yes, if the quarantine fell, the worlds would be better for it, but I don't get to make that call. I can only do the best I can."

This was bad. Really bad. I had fucked up. She was digging in her claws again, as I'm sure she had done a hundred times before when she was confronted with the idea that she might have been wrong. 'It may not be perfect, but it's the best we have' was the exact same thing that justified Betterment back in the day. How could she not see that?

"One last question." I tried my Praise Isif play. "Two, actually." Jelim cocked her head and told me to ask them. "If there was another way, some chance to cleanse the smugglers of scum and allow the good ones to keep operating, would you allow it?"

"Find me a way, and I'll do the work myself," said the captain. That was good. The best answer I could hope for, in fact. It meant, unless she was lying and somehow blocking out her deceiving thoughts, there could be a change. Something better than Arxur against non-Arxur for the end of time. "Ask your second question."

"Will I be able to speak to you again?"

Jelim fluffed out her feathers and cocked her head the other way. "Zefriss, the conversation we've had over the past ten minutes was more helpful for me than every prisoner interrogation I've ever done up until this point ever. So, yes. Yes, we will be speaking to each other again. Thank you for your insight."

She brought guards into the room, and they took me from the chair, cuffed me, and dragged me away like usual. This time, though, I held my head high as I was brought to my cell. I was a proud Arxur, but not a savage one. I was a hero of my species and a good man to my friends, and I saw the way to end this dark night that had fallen on them both. First, I would have to change Captain Jelim for the better. Then, I could change all of Wriss.

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