He’d thought about punching a Shil’vati.
Who hadn’t?
Not only had the aliens conquered Earth with almost trivial ease, the seven-foot purple Amazons also had the audacity to start running the planet better than humanity ever had. Homelessness was down across the board. Cancer was a thing of the past. Global warming? Forget about it. Sure, there were hotspots across the world where the Resistance was still fighting the good fight, but for most ordinary folks living in the cities, life was much improved.
With that in mind, out of a mix of good old American freedom loving outrage and sheer human doggedness, Jason had occasionally considered planting a good right hook into the stupid smug face of the Imperial marine who manned the checkpoint he passed each day on his way to university.
He thought about it in much the same way a person might occasionally consider tripping a passing jogger or nudging their car up onto the curb. An errant ‘what if?’ that they’d never really act upon.
Which was why he was so surprised as he watched a video of himself brawling with an off-duty Shil’vati that a small crowd of enthusiastic humans cheering in the bar behind them as he went blow for blow with the massive alien. The video was helpfully titled ‘Drunk Dude PWNS Purp’ and Jason was equally alarmed to note that it had already received twelve million views.
Suddenly his hangover didn’t seem quite so pressing as he glanced up from the Omni-Slate to the imposing figure of the Shil’vati marine holding it.
“I believe we have something to talk about,” she said in her native language, her tusked maw formed into a predatory grin as she loomed in the doorway of his apartment.
“Y-Yes, I think we do,” he responded in passable Shil’vati, slowly lowering the melting bag of ice he’d had pressed to his head when he opened the door. “Do you want to come in?”
She nodded, stepping inside as she reattached the omni-Pad back to her belt. Jason watched her go before turning to shut the door, glancing around to make sure no one had seen her come in. The last thing he needed to do was get labeled as a Purp lover. The ‘war’ was only six years ago, and while the aliens themselves might have been pretty safe from human retaliation around here, those humans who were seen to be too close to them definitely weren’t.
“So,” he said, turning to the alien who was shamelessly looking around his apartment. “How much trouble am I in?”
He was too hungover to dance around the subject, so he figured it was better to just rip the band-aid off now. Whatever happened next wasn’t going to be fun, but given that he’d been woken up by a single alien knocking on his door, rather than an Imperial Strike Team knocking it down, he figured at the very least he’d be getting out of this alive.
“How very forward.” The alien smiled, the black sclera of her eyes settling on him. “I suppose I should have expected as much from the human who had the tits to knock one of his sisters on her ass.”
Jason deliberately ignored the odd turn of phrase. It was usually indicative of how long one of the aliens had been on the planet by how many native phrases they picked up and mangled. “Is she, uh, ok?”
The marine waved a hand dismissively. “A few bruises and a small concussion. I imagine the greatest injury will be to her pride. Not just from her loss, but from the endless ribbing she will receive from her squad mates about being laid low by a human of all things - and a male one at that.”
“You do realize we’re, traditionally, the bigger gender down here, right?”
Unlike most of the rest of the galaxy, apparently.
“We do, oddity that your species is, but cultural expectations and factual realities seldom go hand in hand.” She smiled. “One need only look at those of your kin who continue to fight us to see that.”
The insinuation was as subtle as a brick.
“I’m not a dissident,” he said, even as he fought to keep his already pounding heart from going into overdrive. “I’m an engineering student who lives in a crappy inner-city apartment, not a nutjob with a rifle and the naïve assumption that taking the occasional potshot at passing patrols is going to do anything beyond get me bombed from orbit.”
“Does it matter?” she asked. “Whatever feelings you have on the matter, you were caught on video knocking out a member of the Shil’vati military. Intentional or not, in the eyes of my superiors you’re a rebel who is fomenting dissent.”
Jason groaned, feeling the life he’d been working towards slipping through his fingers. “I don’t even remember it happening. Hell, I don’t even know how it started!”
“Truly?” The Purp cocked her head to the right slightly, the Shil’vati equivalent of raising an eyebrow. “According to a number of sources, including the soldier in question, you strode up to her and demanded a duel for ‘the pride of humanity.’”
He blanched.
“The soldier in question claimed to be more amused than anything else and accepted in return for a date when she won.”
He double blanched. Yeah, he could see that happening. Purp Marines were renowned for being three things: big, mean, and thirsty. Essentially the gender-flipped version of human Marines. They also seemed to regard scoring with humans in much the same way a man might have regarded scoring with a ‘hot space babe’ prior to real space babes subjugating the entirety of human civilization.
“I would note that her recent defeat has only made her more interested in securing that date. Not less,” the alien pointed out. “Of course, she’s also going to be on latrine duty for the foreseeable future so I wouldn’t worry about her coming around for a rematch.”
Jason deliberately ignored that last comment. “What did I get if I won?”
The Purp shrugged. “According to the Marine, you didn’t say. Perhaps the joy of standing triumphant astride the defeated form of an alien oppressor?”
He winced even as part of his soul giggled at the prospect. “Did I?”
She shrugged. “You did - before stumbling off into the night. Fortunately, the individual who recorded the altercation didn’t film you posing atop the Marine after your victory.” Her smile turned distinctly plastic. “I imagine if they had, we would be having a very different conversation right now.”
That small part of him that had been congratulating himself died a quick and ignoble death as it was drowned by the sudden reminder of the reality of his situation.
“Right,” he said, nervously straightening out his bathrobe, which in turn reminded him that he was having this very important conversation in a bathrobe. “So as I said before, what happens now?”
“A number of my superiors wanted you thrown in prison,” she said casually.
He swallowed, guts turning to ice water.
“Fortunately for you my diminutive friend, as the woman on the ground, and thus nominally in charge of this district, the details of your punishment are up to me.” She eyed him seriously. “Make no mistake, prison’s definitely still on the table here, but I loathe wasting talent. So, I magnanimously offer you an alternative.”
As she spoke, her fingers skittered across her data-slate before she spun it around to face him.
Jason stared down at the document displayed, surprised to see English text on it in addition to the runic symbols of the Shil’vati.
Stolen novel; please report.
He read it.
Then he read it again in both languages.
…Then a third time just to be sure.
“You have to be joking,” he said finally.
“I can assure you I’m not.”
“You want me to join the Imperial Military?” he asked, trying to wrap his head around the concept. “Since when did you guys even start accepting humans?”
“Since next week,” the alien said, taking back her omni-pad rather brusquely.
“You really think anyone’s going to go for it?” he couldn’t help but ask.
“I think we’re both smart enough to know that given a large enough sample size, someone is going to be willing to sign on,” she said. “We don’t expect many, but even a few will be a propaganda coup. Proof that humanity is being successfully integrated into the Imperium.”
He had nothing to say to that. She was right after all.
She turned her attention back to him, the veritable alien tank of a woman almost looming over him. “The concerns of the Imperium are ultimately irrelevant to you though. What is pressingly relevant is the possibility that by the time this conversation is through, you will either be a candidate for the Imperial Marines, or a man on trial for assaulting a member of the Imperial Military.”
Jason found himself reaching up a hand to pinch his nose. “Like that’s any choice at all.”
“No, it’s not.” The Marine gave him a toothy grin. “Welcome to the Imperial Marines.”
Part of him was tempted to go to prison right then and there. Just to spite her. Unfortunately, he was intelligent enough to realize that futile acts of spite against an overwhelmingly powerful opposition were what landed him in this position in the first place.
Damned if it wasn’t tempting though.
-----------------
“So this is the human who knocked one of our girls on her ass, ma’am? It’s been all over the data-net.”
“That’s me,” Jason interrupted before his escort could speak for him, irritated by the medic speaking as if he wasn’t there. “Went down like a sack of shit.”
Now that prison wasn’t so much off the table, as moved to the far corner he’d found some of his usual ‘winning personality’ returning to him.
He’d also admit to being a little out of sorts. He’d never been into the Shil’vati section of the city. You needed a pass to get in after all, and while they were apparently pretty easy to get – any reason would do – he wasn’t curious enough to go through the hassle of getting one just to see how humanity’s oppressors lived. Evidently he wasn’t the only one as he’d seen all of three humans in the area on the drive over.
Now that he was here though, the place was about what he expected. The hospital they were in was a pretty typical example of Shil’vati architecture. Squat, robust, and made of the frankly miraculous ceramic-alloy composite the aliens used for just about everything else from infantry armor to space ship hulls.
“Sack of shit?” the Shil’vati medic asked in confusion, surprised by the phrase almost as much as him speaking up. “Why would you fill a sack with excrement?”
He was about to respond when the woman behind him interrupted.
“Don’t try and make sense of it, Marine,” his Marine officer escort, whose name he’d learned was Brucdia, said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about ‘English’ it’s that little enough of it makes sense. It doesn’t so much absorb phrases and words from other languages as much as take them into a back alley and mug them for spare syntax. It only gets worse when people try to convert phrases over into our own noble Shil’vati.”
The medic shook her head. “I’ll have to take your word for it, ma’am. I’ve only been on this world for a few months and, Empress willing, I’ll be gone in a few more. Hopefully to somewhere in the Outer Reaches. Roach pirates have apparently been getting uppity in the area. With any luck I might see some actual action.”
“My home world not agreeing with you?” Jason asked.
This time the alien was less surprised at his interruption. “Surrounded by hot alien guys who want nothing to do with you because you’re part of the race that conquered their world? Sucks cunt. After a few months of getting the cold shoulder in every bar on this rock I need a good firefight to work out my frustration.”
His escort smirked. “You must be going about it the wrong way then, Marines. Sure, the humans might talk a big game if they’re in a group; can’t be seen working with the ‘enemy’ and all that. Wounded pride. Get one alone though? I think you’ll find they can be a bit more adventurous. They’re essentially females in a male body after all. Like us, they think with their cunts…or dicks, I guess?”
“You don’t say?” the medic said. “I might have to try that the next time I’m off duty, ma’am.”
“Good luck with that,” Jason interrupted. “Now if you’re done talking about how to get laid, I apparently need a medical before I get press-ganged into Imperial Service.”
“He certainly is spunky,” the medic said. “I have no idea what being ‘press-ganged’ is, but you can follow me for your medical.”
He followed Flavia, leaving Brucdia behind in the waiting room. “I take it there’s no chance of me getting a male physician?”
He didn’t much care, but it seemed apt to ask. He’d also admit to some slight curiosity. He’d yet to see a Shil’vati male in the flesh, after all.
“You think I’d be so wound up if we had a male around here?” the medic said as they kept walking. “Precious few enough of those in the military, and none in this hospital. The brass likes to keep them hoarded at headquarters, though they’ll never admit it.”
“Seems odd to me that you have so few of your own males serving, but you’re perfectly happy to have human males sign up.”
“Human females, too. Got my criteria list for them this morning,” the alien said as they reached a door at the end of the hall, opening it with a flash of her keycard. “We can’t all be lucky enough to have a one to one ratio of genders as decadent as that is. When you have eight females to every one male, people get leery about risking them.”
Jason glanced around the room, noting all the futuristic looking medical equipment. “Yet you let them serve anyway?”
The alien actually looked a little offended as she directed him into a chair. “We aren’t misandrists. If a male can reach the physical requirements and educational requirements for the job, they can have it.”
“Physical requirements?” he questioned as he shifted in his seat. “Aren’t Shil’vati males about my size? Wouldn’t that make it nigh impossible?”
Actually, that got him thinking about himself. Was he going into a separate program for just humans? Or would he be going into basic training with other Shil’vati? Because that was fucking terrifying. There was no way he could compete with the latter physically…his most recent gladiator bout not withstanding.
“Different requirements for males.” The alien rolled her eyes as she examined the screen of a device. “I’m pretty sure the criteria for males is going to form the basis for the criteria for human recruits, too.”
Well, that was a relief. The last thing he wanted was to be compared to one of these living battle tanks.
To be honest the whole situation hadn’t really sunk in for him yet. Yesterday he’d been on the way to finishing his degree in mechanical engineering, which would hopefully have put him on a career path toward any of the dozens of human companies that were working with the Imperium to incorporate alien technology into Earth’s pre-existing industrial output. Today, he was signing up to be a footslogging jarhead.
“Alright, down to your skivvies,” the medic instructed.
“Really?” he asked, already complying. “You’ve got machines that can detect if I have even a single cancerous cell in my left nut, but you still need to have a check using a pair of mark-one eyeballs?”
“Hands, too,” the alien said as she pulled on a pair of remarkably mundane latex gloves. “The bureaucrats like a certain level of redundancy.”
“Not even going to wolf whistle?” he asked as soon as he was stripped.
“I actually know what that one is and in different circumstances, definitely,” the alien said as she pressed a finger against his sternum. “Breathe in and hold it.”
He did so.
“Unfortunately for my libido, we’re in this room and I’m performing a medical check, which makes this as sexy to me as changing the fusion cell in my car.” She moved her finger away. “Release.”
He breathed out. “It’s good to know you guys aren’t always horned up.”
She scoffed. “I wouldn’t go that far. If you wanted to out for a drink afterwards and have a little reenactment of this procedure at my apartment, I wouldn’t complain.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” he said. “I imagine my dance card is going to be booked up for the foreseeable future.”
“That one was new to me,” the woman said as she ran something that emitted a blue light over him. “Though if it means what I think it means, I wouldn’t count on it. If the generalship is going for some kind of ‘human auxiliary corps,’ you might be here for weeks or months until enough of you are processed to form a unit for basic training.”
Jason frowned. “You said if?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible you might just end up getting shoved into the main recruitment stream and be gone by tomorrow. It’s basic training with the masses before being specialized later. It’s what we do with males. Same program, just different criteria for passing.”
“Sounds a little ‘one size fits all’,” he said.
“You’ll be serving with women eventually anyway. Little point in segregating you during training.”
He couldn’t really argue with that logic.
“Alright, put on these and let’s see what you can do.”
He raised an eyebrow as a plastic wrapped bundle of gym clothes thumped into his chest before landing in his hands.
“You’ve got clothes sized for humans on hand?” he asked as he unwrapped them and started putting them on.
“For males, at least.” She shrugged, leaning up against the doorframe.
The material was some sort of pseudo-synthetic material that adhered perfectly to his frame. To be honest, it left him feeling kind of exposed.
“Hmmm, that is nice,” the medic said, eyes roaming in a very obvious manner. “I might have to take the good captain’s advice sooner rather than later.”
“I thought you said that medical checks did nothing for you,” Jason grunted as the pair stepped out into the hall.
“That wasn’t a medical check,” she pointed out. “That was me watching a sexy alien change into gym clothes. Totally different.”
He didn’t see how, but it wasn’t worth arguing about.
Soon enough they reached a gym area where a few Shil’vati were exercising using machines that looked remarkably similar to ones you might find in a human gym. Jason supposed that when you got right down to it, when you had two species with similar morphologies, if different dimensions, the things they created were going to evolve in similar ways.
The pair of them drew a few semi-interested looks as they walked over to a treadmill, but most of the aliens returned to their own exercise after a cursory glance and once over. Those that continued to stare, Jason ignored.
“Alright, my omni-pad is reminding me that you humans have to stretch first before strenuous exercise, so do that before getting onto the machine.”
He did so. “You guys don’t have to stretch?”
“No,” she said as she pressed a few buttons on the treadmill. “I would explain it, but I don’t think either of us are that interested.”
He just nodded as he finished up his set and hopped onto the machine. It was almost like being at the gym near his apartment.
“Alright, I’m going to start slow and increase the pace gradually. Just keep running until you can’t. When you need me to stop, just say so.”
“Got it.”
Seemed simple enough.
----------------
Flavia felt a smile tugging at her lips as the human walked into the barrack’s seldom used male locker room, a towel draped over his shoulder that only served to emphasize the delectable rivulets of sweat running down his neck.
Now, Flavia didn’t consider herself ‘human’ crazy like so many of the other girls on this rock, but she could appreciate a bit of attractive alien booty as much as the next Shil’vati.
“It’s insane, isn’t it?”
Flavia glanced over to where another gym goer had walked up to her, Amova from squad five if her memory didn’t deceive her.
“What is?” she asked the smirking Marine.
“Are you kidding me? Humans.” The woman laughed. “It’s like something out of an old smutty novella. A race of tuskless multicolored aliens that are fifty percent males and look almost exactly like our own. More importantly, the males love sex almost as much as we do?”
The woman gestured to the now unused treadmill.
“And now I found out they have the stamina of a Turox?” The excited marine fanned herself. “All I’m saying is that the Goddess was looking out for us when we stumbled on this world.”
Flavia scoffed, but inwardly she was kind of impressed herself. It was one thing to get a report that the aliens could run four kilometers in fifteen minutes, quite another to see it in action. A human might not have half the raw strength of a Shil’vati female, but they had three times the stamina.
“Apparently it was a hunting strategy for them,” she said. “Chase prey until it literally collapsed from exhaustion.”
“I could think of something else he could do to me until I collapsed from exhaustion,” one of the listening soldiers chimed in. Around her, a few of her fellows nodded.
“See what I mean?” Amova said. “Proof positive that the Goddess is looking out for us.”
Flavia just shook her head as she strode off back to her little office. “Somehow I don’t think the humans see it that way.”
“Bah,” Amova called after her. “The Rakiri got over being absorbed into the Imperium quickly enough. Better us than someone else. The humans will see that, too, soon enough!”