Jel (continued)

“Absolutely.”

Jel’s eyebrows shot upwards, and he had to stifle a smile at the way the military aide’s bicep twitched and her head spun around to stare wide-eyed at the human, drawing breath to cut the response off.

“But,” Specialist Cardoso continued, and the kespan stilled, narrowing her eyes. “I’m also a pragmatist. After working alongside Imperial citizens for the past six months and spending a lot of time with them, I have become convinced that what happened to us was a terrible mistake.”

She took a deep breath. “It would be easier to believe the opposite, that what happened to us was a deliberate act, because how could something so terrible even occur other than by an act of pure evil? But I trust my new sisters in the Imperial military when they say that this has been the worst year of their lives. They’ve shared with me their shock, horror, and disgust at an action that they feel partly responsible for. Perhaps most importantly of all, I refuse to believe that the people of Earth are alone in this galaxy.”

Jel watched her closely. She seemed earnest, and his translation software agreed with him, but it was hard to be sure without a frame of reference. She wasn't looking at any of the officers in the room either, which might indicate that she wasn't trying to appease them. She also said she hates the Imperium. I'm pretty sure they don't usually let soldiers say that kind of thing.

He turned his attention back to what she was saying as she continued, steel entering her voice. “That said, I still believe that the Imperium must be held accountable for its actions. It is unbelievable to me that the current blockade, which is only now beginning to lift, has prevented humanity from seeking restitution on its own terms.”

“What would your ideal outcome look like?” The same journalist again.

The human grimaced. “I think we’re well past ideal outcomes here, but with that said, I’d like to see everyone involved with the nano swarm face justice. I understand that the Imperium has imprisoned a handful of officers over what happened to us, and that changes have already been made to the induction protocols. It's not nearly enough. We need names. We need the ones responsible for maintaining and updating these protocols to face up to justice. If the protocol for something as integral as contacting new species can exist in the state it did, then I have no doubt that there are other Imperium policies out there that humanity will find just as distasteful."

“As you've just said, those induction protocols have been in place for hundreds if not thousands of years without issue," the same questioner stated. "How would you attribute blame for what happened to your people?” The words had no sooner left the journalist’s mouth before she flinched back at the expression that came across the human’s face.

Rage. Pure, seething anger that simmered beneath her eyes like a pot about to boil over.

“I would attribute it widely,” she replied through gritted teeth, and the PR aide edged a little closer to the podium, clearly on the fence about letting her continue. “A one-size-fits-all approach to selective genocide is not something that humanity could have sat back and been a part of, even if our own induction had gone off without a hitch. For the ones in charge of something so vile to make the kinds of assumptions that they did is just as unacceptable, it’s criminally negligent. Assumptions kill people. They certainly killed us. The entire galaxy should be ashamed that it allowed this situation to be possible in the first place.”

Many in the crowd averted their eyes, finding something fascinating in the slate grey floor of the hall. Jel couldn’t escape the shudder of equal parts disgust and mortification. What she was saying made sense. Why had it taken a situation so horrific to change that protocol?

There was a shuffling sound from behind him, and Jel recognized Rumarr’s low, even tone as it carried across the crowd. “You say that you believe joining the Imperium to be the best option for your people and you’ve even signed up for its military, despite everything. You also say that you hate the Imperium for what it has done to your people. How have you been able to reconcile those things?”

The human spread her arms in what Jel’s translator interpreted as earnestness. “Simple necessity. We need to work with the Imperium because there are no other options that don’t result in us being bombed back to the Stone Age. Let me put it this way; does anyone in this room believe that the Imperium would ever allow my home planet to exist outside of its control?”

There was an awkward silence. Independent systems weren’t unheard of. There were a handful of trade systems and a dozen or so independently run micro-federations operating in their own space across the galaxy. Some species just didn’t integrate properly, and so long as they didn’t represent a threat, they were simply cordoned off from the travel lanes. Ervamir though…

“No. I think not.” Specialist Cardoso answered her own question, setting her hands down on the podium. 'Weariness' whispered Jel's translator. “Earth, if left unchecked, would be a destabilizing influence, if not in this generation, then in others to come. Our fate is cooperation, subjugation, or destruction.”

She sighed. “I, for one, would rather change the system I hate from within than be bound or destroyed by it.”

The human scanned the crowd from right to left as she spoke, and Jel spotted something.

While the rest of the journalists around him muttered amongst themselves at what she was saying, he had finished taking notes and was staring intently at the skin of her neck.

There, just above the line of her suit. What is that?

“Have you been ordered into combat against other humans?” This question came from somewhere in the crush to Jel’s left, and the human’s finger twitched. She leaned forward to speak but was cut off.

“Specialist Cardoso will not be answering questions about ongoing military operations,” the aide spoke, her voice amplified over the level of the crowd. “Please consider this a final warning.”

The human’s eyes found the questioner though, and in a minute movement that could have been easily missed, her head nodded once, slowly. When she straightened up, Jel got a better glimpse of the thing that had caught his attention.

His hand rose without thinking, and, with the desperation of a fish out of water, the PR aide pointed at him frantically.

“Jelakka Mar’miar, ma’am, with GalWave magazine. I hope you don’t mind a lighter topic, but may I ask what that is on the skin of your neck?”

“This? My tattoo?” Specialist Cardoso blinked at the abrupt change of pace. Then she smiled, this time the expression making it all the way to her eyes, the skin there wrinkling like a kespan’s. She peeled back the flexible plates near the collar of her suit to show a little more skin, and despite the crowd’s initial annoyance at having their line of questioning derailed, they leaned in closer.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The dark splotch that Jel had at first thought to be some kind of pattern or marker turned out to be an intricate design, a stylized art piece of a human woman with flowing black hair, clad in a long robe. The tattoo was mostly black, with accents of blue weaved throughout.

“This is Yemanjá, the queen of the ocean. She is a water goddess worshipped in my country of Brazil as well as in others across the sea from us where her story came from. She is the mother of all humanity, or at least so the legends say. I got this tattoo to remember my own mother, not out of any real religious significance.”

“How are these tattoos applied?” Jel asked, managing to get his question in before the rest of the pack. “I’ve worked in fashion for many years, and I’ve never seen a design that looks so much like the skin it’s printed on.”

“Oh, this is not printed on,” Specialist Cardoso laughed. “The ink is inserted under the skin with needles. They can fade with time and exposure to sunlight, but I’ve had mine retouched, so it still looks pretty fresh.”

Stunned silence greeted that statement, and Jel seized the initiative. “Do many humans get these tattoos?”

“Oh yes,” the woman replied. “Especially the military. It’s a huge industry. My ink is pretty conservative too. It comes a little way up onto my neck, but it’s the only tattoo I have. Some people get their entire bodies covered, and some cultures do it as a rite of passage.”

“Does it hurt?” Jel couldn’t help but ask.

“It does, but how much it hurts depends on where you get it done,” the human grinned. “The part that covers my collarbone was easily the worst.”

“Gropnik Heshpar from Quip Quorum,” another journalist finally got in before Jel could ask any more questions. “What are conditions like on the surface of your home planet, and how can the galaxy assist in improving them?”

“Thank you for that question,” Specialist Cardoso acknowledged, her eyes still on Jel. She looked him up and down thoughtfully, then frowned and turned back to the group. “To put it simply, things are not looking good. Infrastructure across the entire northern hemisphere is severely deteriorated, and most humans living in those places are still deeply affected by the genocide.”

She held up a hand as the military aide leaned forward. “Many distinct human cultures are facing complete extinction. Accident or not, I will call it what it was. Genocide.”

The aide was sweating bullets. She glanced toward the back of the room for a sign that didn’t come. One ear folded down, and she leaned back without a word.

Specialist Cardoso went on, “Communication with many regions is spotty at best, but what we do know is that there is a profound shortage of food and energy. Many are without heat or even clean drinking water. Governments have fallen. Building those places back up is going to be a long, difficult, and thankless operation. Many of them will not accept help from aliens either, which is why it is important that there are humans who are able to set aside our anger and work on stabilising things for future generations.”

She clasped her hands together. “The Imperium, as part of its ongoing aid efforts is currently providing enough to feed many of those affected, but it’s getting those supplies to where they need to be that remains a problem. These communities do not trust aliens, and they especially do not trust kespans. They need a continuous show of solidarity and support from the galaxy as a whole; they need technology that is easy to work with, and they need human faces to be a part of that solution. That’s a huge part of why I’m here today, and why I’ve joined the Imperium’s ranks.”

Another frenzy of appendages went up from the crowd, but at some invisible signal, the uniformed soldiers in the room stepped forward to place themselves between the podium and the reporters, and the PR aide leaned in to cut across the rabble. “There will be no further questions,” she said. “Any additional queries you have for Specialist Cardoso can be directed to the Imperial military’s Humanity department for her to answer at her discretion. Thank you all for coming.”

Jel watched the human’s nostrils flare, and as she stepped back off the podium her eyes caught his again, and her head cocked slightly to one side, a thoughtful expression on her face. A taller kespan reporter crossed in front of Jel, breaking their eye contact, and when he craned his head around her, the human was being led back through the double doors where she vanished out of sight behind a wall of grey military jackets.

A gap in the crowd parted to one side of him, Rumarr sidling her way through the masses with Skara in tow. His wife was agitated, bristling as the flood of bodies pushed past to flow out through the sliding doors at the entrance to the hall, and she leaned in, possessively sliding an arm around his hip to draw him close.

“I could never get used to that,” she said, rubbing a cheek over the top of Jel’s head absent-mindedly. “So many people all packed in, and so noisy. Is it always like that?”

“You should see the crowds at product launches,” Jel remarked drily. “Absolutely rabid. Of course, it’s mostly men so the smell is at least a bit more manageable.”

“Part of why I prefer field work,” Rumarr grunted. “Less crowds. That could have gone worse though. Seems their pet human had more of a backbone than they might have hoped.”

“I liked her,” Skara said, still busy working to remove the crowd smell from Jel’s skin. “She kept her head and said what she needed to. If the rest of the humans are like her, things might just turn out okay in the end.”

“She’s dreaming if she thinks the Admiralty will submit to a fair trial though,” Rumarr grumbled, watching through slit eyes as the suits in the back slipped out through the auditorium doors. “They’ll point fingers and delay until they’re dead and buried. They’re already calling it a mistake of the past generations as if some of us haven’t been critical of that policy for centuries. Disgusting.”

“Think they’ll get away with it?” Jel asked.

“Hard to say,” Rumarr huffed, turning for the door. “But it’s always the vermin who are first to crawl out from the wreckage. At the end of the day, we can only do our best to keep that from happening.”

---

Their schedule was clear for the rest of the afternoon, with the first shuttles down to the surface leaving early the next morning, so they spent it playing basq’at in the recreation hall and comparing notes on human behaviour.

“Built like a tree trunk, wasn’t she?” Skara said, then placed down a set of cards, and hissed in displeasure as Rumarr flipped hers over in response. “K’vetch, how do you always have an answer?

“Reading people is literally my job,” Rumarr shrugged her broad shoulders, her full grip of five new cards comically small in her paws. “And you’re right. She’s probably stronger than I was in my prime.”

She looked up as the table went quiet. “What?” she asked as the two kespans stared in open-mouthed disbelief. “Have neither of you worn power armour before? She peeled it back like it was synthweave. That took insane amounts of grip strength.”

“Yeah, but stronger than you? I mean, come on.” Skara scoffed as Jel placed three cards of his own face down. “You’re ursinian.”

“ Our homeworld is 1.04 standard gravitational units,” Rumarr perused her hand of cards and then set a single one face down. “Once you factor in the generations that have spent a good chunk of their lives at 1.0 on space stations and the like, we’ve started to lose muscle mass since joining the Imperium. There’s a reason most life starts on moons you know. Before the incident, the entire science community was losing its collective shit over a 1.3sgu planet with complex life forms on it.”

“But still, the size difference…”

“Wouldn’t matter if a single punch could break every rib in my body,” Rumarr shook her head. “Of course, once you factor in power armour they can’t possibly compete with Imperial troops. Put them in a suit of their own though? Who knows. And there are billions of them. I’m beginning to think there's another reason the brass ordered the media blackout.”

A buzzing sound cut across the conversation, and Jel glanced down at his communicator. A message had been flagged as important by his system. “One moment. Huh, that’s interesting.”

“What’s that dear?” Skara leaned over. Her eyebrows raised higher as she read the note. “Wow, that’s bold.”

“Hmm?” Rumarr asked.

“A message from the Admiralty,” Jel answered, perplexed. “Apparently the human wants to meet me for a… cultural exchange? She’s offering an exclusive interview and to… show me the rest of her tattoo.”

Rumarr snorted. “Alone? How transparent. We’ve all heard the rumours about human behaviour. Sounds like she’s just trying to get her freak on with the hot alien boy.” She grinned as Skara narrowed her eyes. "Relax, I'm not out for your husband. He is hot though."

Jel ignored her. “Oh, there’s a note. The Admiralty has extended the offer to you as well love. Something about ‘cultural blind spots’. They want to know if we’ll host the human, tonight.”

“Blind Spots? More like blindness,” Skara deadpanned. “I hope they don’t expect us to fuck her.”

He looked up. “I’m accepting. This is too good an opportunity to let slip. If I’m quick, I can even get something written up and dispatched before we leave tomorrow morning. I’ll be the first in the system to get an exclusive interview with a human, probably days ahead of everyone else. It’s a literal goldmine.”

Skara sighed. “If you’re sure dear. Just colour me unsurprised if she starts coming onto you halfway through your ‘interview’.”

Jel shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out exactly what she wants together.”