“Reporting for the scheduled inter-species diplomatic orientation as ordered sir.” The new Human said.
The other—Kel—rolled its eyes simultaneously with Chyrkrady. I was pleased to see at least one mannerism our two species had in common.
Kel called over to his protégé. “Caleb, glad to see that last night’s festivities weren’t the end of you! But do please slow down a bit. Check the calibration on your servos, it appears as though they are still set for the Human districts.”
I watched as Caleb stopped and reached under his loose garb and tapped a few buttons on a small flexible control panel that appeared to be glued to his abdomen. Kel must have recognized the puzzlement on my face, because he parted the garb over his abdomen to reveal—in addition to extreme scarring—a similar control patch connected to what looked like a lattice of mesh radiating out along his limbs.
“Standard issue smart-weave for all Humans assigned to non-terrestrial postings.” Kel said as he showed the low profile servo assembly at his elbow. “We wear these pretty much round the clock, it’s like a second skin, you hardly notice it after a while. It lets us customize the resistance we experience against our movements.”
“You all wear servo-assisted smart garb?” I asked.
“That’s right. In a sense at least. Servo assisted might not quite be the right word for it though…”
Chyrkrady must’ve seen the gears turning in my head, because at that moment he cut in.
“They are servo hindered, Chakky. Remember, Humans are used to higher gravity than our species is—than all other species in fact. While, as an occasional courtesy, other races may choose to increase the force of their Grav-Drives for visiting Humans, this simply isn’t possible for many of The Collective’s members. For example, The Chluuryns come from a world with a sixth the gravity of Earth, they simply couldn’t function in such an environment. So in many inter-species interactions, the burden of accommodation lies with the Humans, out of necessity. Fortunately, with their smart-weave garb, they can more faithfully replicate the stresses their bodies are optimized for, making it mostly a non-issue.”
“I understand,” I said. “it’s familiar to them, a psychological comfort.”
“Oh it’s far more than that, Chakky. It’s a physiological requirement. You see, for all of their amazing and intimidating physical attributes, Humans simply aren’t adapted to low-G, let alone zero-G, environments. Unlike the great majority of The Collective’s members that suffer no ill-effects from prolonged low-G and zero-G, Humans need the stressors of their Homeworld, lest they decay.”
I turned to Kel in disbelief, how could such a creature, this solid mass of muscle before me, simply decay?
But Kel must have sensed my incredulousness because he only confirmed Chyrkrady’s sentiment.
“That’s right. As strange as it may sound to you, we just aren’t built to be offworld. Without the gravity of our home, our bones weaken, our muscles atrophy, we suffer a whole host of issues. We had developed the smart-weave resistance tech as a way to try and prevent such issues back before we ever encountered The Collective and learned that gravity manipulation was possible. Before we could just flip a switch to pick how strong of a pull we wanted. Back then the only way we could make artificial gravity was to shape our space habs like rings or drums and spin them around.”
“Fascinating.” I murmured. “Such an imposing race yet so… primitive.”
I caught myself immediately afterwards.
“Sorry! I mean, umm—“
“Oh don’t be.” Kel laughed. “You are absolutely right. We were quite primitive, still are in some ways. It was quite the rude awakening for our scientific community to realize that there was a whole branch of physics that we had simply… missed. Just over 30 Cycles later and I think Human society is still adjusting to the implications—”
At that, Kel seemed to stare off into space. I couldn’t yet read Human facial expressions with any certainty, but I supposed he was lost in thoughts of places far away and times long ago. After a brief moment he gestured toward Caleb.
“—although for the younger generations it all seems quite normal I imagine.”
“Yes sir, it’s hard to imagine the world as it was pre-contact.” Caleb said.
“Oh please Caleb, enough with the sir this and sir that. Save that for our public exchanges. I’ve known you since you were small enough to fit in my hand. If your father were still around he’d sock me right in the mouth if started letting you call me ‘sir’.”
“Yes Thirkle, apologies. My habits from academy are proving harder to kick than anticipated.”
“Well, that’s to be expected anyway. It’ll come with time. And then there’s the whole host of other things you’ll have to unlearn from academy as well.”
“Likewise for you Chakky.” Chyrkrady interjected. “As you’ll see, much of what you know about Humans is… is a half-truth at best. Our culture as a whole does not paint Humans in the most gracious light. Yes, we learn from a young age that they are our allies, but there is a disproportionate emphasis on their warfighting prowess and imposing physicality, rather than their capacity for empathy and understanding.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
And this is true even more so for your counterpart. While First Contact with Humans from The Collective’s viewpoint was just business as usual, from Humanity’s perspective it has been a much more difficult process. Due in no small part to the actions of—“
“—those fucking Lizards.” Kel said in a tone that sent shivers through my carapace.
I shot Chyrkrady a puzzled look and he continued, clarifying. “That’s right, the Lizards. We were not the quite the first race to make contact with Humanity. Unfortunately for them, it was The Hegemony, not The Collective that found them first. Of course you know all that, every Nymph learns the history in primary, but what the texts cover is barely surface level really. A full account of the atrocities perpetrated by The Hegemony would span volumes.
To put it bluntly Chakky, Humanity’s first experience with an offworld intelligence was a decidedly negative experience, and despite The Collective’s assistance with Humanity’s liberation, they still view any species originating offworld with an understandable degree of suspicion. Yet another reason that your role as an Ambassador is of the utmost importance.”
“Yes, to foster goodwill between our peoples.” I ventured. “To let Humanity know that we are their allies to the end. To show them through our actions. To remind them that we saved them once, and we will save them again if ever necessary.”
Chyrkrady didn’t say anything for a moment, he just looked at me, deeply thoughtful. For a moment i feared I had said something wrong, but then he spoke.
“Chakky, I hadn’t expected to arrive at this particular topic of discussion so early, before we’d even completed the ceremonial introductions, but, as the subject has been broached, I think it best to commence your, and your counterpart’s, first lesson on the full scope of The Collective’s role in Humanity’s war with The Hegemony.
That is, if you agree, Thirkle.”
Kel dipped his head in what seemed to be agreement.
“Might as well. I brought a few days’ worth of Ether and Wine to this meeting, so by my reckoning that’ll only last the 4 of us about 2 more hours before we need to venture to one of the Tsch’laxiyan dispensaries… so let’s get this over with.”
He walked over to the low table behind him and sat down, we all joined him. Chyrkrady spoke first.
“In school you learned, as all races in The Collective do, that Humanity, besieged by The Hegemony for several years, was on the brink of destruction when, by sheer luck, the conflict drew the attention of The Collective, who subsequently vanquished The Hegemony from the Human’s Homeworld and extended them the offer of membership.
Now, while this is true, it doesn’t paint the full picture. In fact it occludes a rather significant detail.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“Well, though it is true that Humanity would never have reclaimed their Homeworld without the assistance of The Collective, it is also true that The Hegemony would never have claimed it either.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’d’ve glassed the whole fucking planet before giving it up to those scaly fucks.” Kel said suddenly, in a tone different than before. It seemed harder, more distant somehow.
And then, seeing my confusion, he added,
“Sorry, more Human slang. ‘Scaly fucks’, ‘Lizards’—that’s what we called ‘em. They looked like bigger versions of another thing we had back home. Anyway, the war, before The Collective joined in, it was lost before it even started. We had no chance, and we knew that. The Heg came to enslave us, to harvest us—“ He shuddered for just a moment, eyes gazing beyond the here and now for just a second, before snapping back to me.
“—to breed us.
It was the end for us. There was no outcome in which we could come out on top.
We couldn’t win.”
“So what was the plan? If you knew you couldn’t win, why did you fight? What did you do?” I asked.
“We knew we were doomed. We knew that anyone and anything we’d ever cared about was going to die. We were going to lose everything. Hell, we’d already lost really, we were just too stupid to accept it.
So we did what any Human who had nothing left to lose would do, we decided that we were going to take as many of those fuckers with us as we could. We were going to make the cost of war higher than they could’ve ever imagined.
We were going to die and they were going to live, we knew that, but we were going to make damn well sure that they’d spend the rest of their lives regretting the decision to come here.”
The Human was staring wide-eyed at me, teeth bared in what didn’t-so-much seem like a smile anymore. Another shiver ran through me and flattened my spines against my crest.
“It was a guerrilla war campaign on a scale never before seen in our history. Every Man, Woman, and Child fought. We utilized every tactic, employed every weapon we had. Even those we’d vowed never to use again, those we’d long ago deemed too abominable. Turned them against our own world, to smite the Lizards.
We strung up their dead—or at least the parts we could recover—throughout our cities as a warning, a symbol of our defiance. Put their severed heads on pikes. Left their entrails strewn through the streets. With their blood we painted symbols of war on our machines.”
His eyes slowly left my own and returned to that distant point at the place of memories long ago buried.
“On occasion, we ate them, though that was as much out of necessity as out of an attempt at psychological warfare.
We killed them in the most horrific ways imaginable. Thought up ever more elaborate methods to torture those we captured. Broadcast recordings of their suffering round the clock.
The Heg tried to adjust their tactics of course. Tried to compensate. But they couldn’t beat us at our own game. For as long as we’d had recorded history we’d engaged in such savagery and barbarism. It’s practically in our DNA.”
“And—and adopting those tactics was—was easy for your kind?” I could barely get the words out. “It—it felt—natural to engage in warfare of that kind?”
The Human let out a long exhale, eyes still focused on the beyond.
“Chakky, would I be right in supposing, that in the course your studies on The Collective’s various races, that you have come across at least a few examples of the wars Humanity fought throughout its history? The ones against ourselves? Where brother fought brother, father fought son? Where the line between combatant and non disappeared? Have you seen the atrocities we have committed against our own?”
“Yes—yes, I have a surface level familiarity with the topic.” I said, swallowing hard. “I admit I often skimmed those portions of my lessons. I found the graphic descriptions of your species barbarism rather… unsettling.”
“Indeed… indeed.” The Human said slowly, as though thinking carefully about what to say next. “That is a sentiment shared by all of The Collective’s races, even The Hegemony’s I’m told.”
He looked up at me, focus returning to the present moment.
“Chakky, you’ve seen what my species is capable of, the things we’ve done to one another.
Now, knowing that, knowing the horrors that we have visited upon those of our own kind,—”
Those blue orbs pierced right through me with their intensity.
“—what such horrors do you suppose we might visit upon those not of our kind?”
In that moment I had no response. I had suddenly grown quite parched and I could only continue to swallow futilely. I had also become aware, more acutely than ever before, of just how small the distance currently was between myself and this Human, this very essence of Violence Restrained…
So I sat there, without words. Unable to speak, mind failing to provide me an adequate response, not that my tongue ever could’ve relayed a message in my present state.
I later realized that this had been one of those uniquely Human conversational implements known as a ‘rhetorical question’, to which answers were not expected, being rather intended to prompt reflection on the part of the listener regarding the implications of the unspoken.
I also learned that this ‘question’—in the precise manner that Kel had just recited it to me—had been asked of The Hegemony too, near the climax of the final battle for Humanity’s independence, by none other than Kel himself.
Separated from their respective units, pinned down, and with no hope of rescue before being overrun, Chyrkrady and Kel had worked together, leveraging their most fundamental competencies. Chyrkrady overseeing the large scale strategy, manning the comms and the last of their long range armament to pick off key targets and create strategic bottlenecks; Kel donning all of the ballistic dampening armor they could scavenge and charging headfirst into The Hegemony’s formations with an additional half his bodyweight in energy grenades and the last functioning pulserifle-soon-to-be-bludgeoning-device, intent on causing as much enemy casualty as possible.
And before that infamous suicide run—‘kamikaze’ I believe some Humans call it—Chyrkrady, at Kel’s request, had opened a channel with The Hegemony’s commander—and everyone else for that matter—and Kel had posed that very same question.
Now, whether they understood this particular Human rhetorical device and gave it a second’s consideration at all, or whether it merely served as self-motivation for Kel is up for debate. But what’s not up for debate is that less than an hour after that broadcast was heard by everyone in the system, there wasn’t anyone left in The Hegemony’s ranks to respond to it.