It feels like I’ve slept for a whole year. Living with my mom is not the most glamorous of quarters and I’m not exactly enthusiastic about staying here when I have free time. A weight of guilt and terror makes it feel like the walls are closing in on me. I have to get out of this cave.

So I leave. And I head to the largest room in our subterranean home that is not dedicated to some important mechanical purpose.

It’s the cafeteria. And while it’s also a natural cavern like mom’s apartment, it’s utterly enormous, and the floor has been cleared of stalagmites to give it more space for seating. Giant metal ventilation tubes hang from the ceiling and a long galley kitchen lines one far wall. It is an easy place to use as a meeting spot, so naturally I can find several friendly faces gathered at tables.

And right now, Mel and Terry are playing cards with some of the other younger members of the home army.

I approach quietly and take a seat at the table. Without even asking, Tom deals me in while Dirk and Gracie continue their banter.

“Oh what fools, thou art not to permit another Chapel in our midst!”

“Thine buttons could never be secure more secure with one of their ilk among us, and a second wouldst most surely destroy personal property with haste!”

“Can’t yall cut it out?” Mik grumbles to the pair. “I’d like to just play the game and not listen to you murder the English language.”

Looking at my cards, I’m no risk to their win rates. I’ve been dealt a terrible hand.

“Wherefore wouldtst thou not enjoy our diatribe?”

“It is only mine most desired distraction.” Gracie winks at me and I can’t help but smile in response.

“Ah and see!” Dirk points to me dramatically, “That which we have created in distraction has brought forth the most glorious of radiance from the face of our saboteur, now do let us continue this dalliance of cards.”

They carry on for several more minutes while I resign myself to the fate of being in their presence for a time. Oh no, it’s contagious.

Mel switches seats with Al to be closer to me. She presses a bottle of water into my hand. Condensation beads on its sides and I carefully avoid letting it make a ring on the cards I’ve placed down on the table. I limit the damage I cause to my surroundings.

“You feeling okay?” Mel asks in a low voice, she leans close to me and our knees touch in a vaguely comforting way.

I shake my head as an answer, and let her lean against me across the armless chairs.

“I know it wasn’t the mission we were supposed to be on,” Mel continues, “but you turned a disaster into a massive success.”

“Wouldn’t a regular success have been better?” I sigh and make a face at my disastrous hand of cards. “We were supposed to get information that could help us recover the satellites they’ve taken control over. Now we don’t have access to those resources and we might never get that back. They’ll keep having an information edge on us.”

“True, but you didn’t get captured and you didn’t get killed.” Mel folds her cards and leans back away from the table. She makes a face and a rude gesture at Terry.

Terry mimics her rude gesture and then raises one eyebrow at me. I look back at my cards and then up at him without moving my head at all. He grins.

The card game moves on as Terry starts to talk up how good a hand I clearly have to be able to be so cool at the table. When all the cards are down, I’ve somehow won because Dirk and Gracie are too intimidated by Terry’s talking up my hand. Perhaps they are right about how it is unsafe to play against us both at the same time.

“And,” Terry offers, “while you were asleep, we got the strangest message. The Troos are open to negotiations.”

I drop the cards as they’re handed to me and stare, mouth agape. My eyes sting with tears that are barely held back.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Apparently the Troo king or whatever they call him thinks we’re threatening to take the whole region and might be trying to slow things down so they can bring in one of their big guns.” Terry points at me and I catch the reflection of his hand in his shiny metal dog tags. It isn’t bad.

“That wouldn’t be wrong though,” Mel concedes, “Their only remaining fortification in this area is a former prison. If we can persuade their collaborators that we have the upper hand, then they won’t be able to hold any of the commercial ranches in the area. Without those they’ll have no food. If they’re starving, they’re not going to bother us.”

“How’d a preferential carnivore like a Troo ever end up building a civilization capable of spaceflight anyway?” Gracie grumbles a familiar complaint. “If they just ate bread like any reasonable person they’d not have so many problems with their supply chain.” Gracie, my dear friend, works in the Logistics center. Things such as food processing are absolutely her domain.

“Or rice,” Mik helpfully provides.

“Or beans,” Tom contributes, shuffling the deck again after dealing.

“Or beer,” Terry says with a wolfish grin. “They’d probably be easier to deal with if we could just sit down and have a drink with them. Settle our differences, come up with some kind of plan to get them to be able to live here without all of us having to die for their lebensraum.”

“You know they really do think of this as some kind of reconquest,” Mik’s crooked half-smile is one that tells me of his skepticism. “They say they lived here before we did and they’re just coming back to reclaim what’s theirs.”

“Of all the planets in the universe, how could they really think that ours would be their original home world? How could they possibly have managed to keep the data for long enough to have proof positive that this is it?” Gracie rehashes the old argument.

“Oh come on,” Terry shakes his head. “You know we call them Troos because they’ve so many features in common with Troodon, straight out of our own fossil record.”

“So you believe them?” Gracie gives Terry her very best raised eyebrow. “You actually believe their story about being dinosaurs from outer space?”

“Makes more sense than legitimate aliens deciding to invade us for our Goldilocks perfection of a planet.”

I clear my throat.

The communal group turns to look at me.

“Does it matter if the story is true if they believe it?”

There’s a brief moment of silence.

“Whelp, there’s our philosopher,” Terry says with a laugh, “we ought to listen to her more often.”

Mel looks genuinely thoughtful, and gives me a concerned nudge with her knee.

“Hey you jerkface,” my ability to insult a person never progressed out of grade school, “you know what I mean. They came from outer space. They look a lot like dinosaurs. And they want to call themselves dinosaurs? Why not just roll with it? It’s not like that justifies anything they’ve done.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if they were real aliens?” Gracie asks, her cards forgotten on the table, face-up for all to see.

Not that anyone is really caring all that much about the game anymore.

“Why?” neatly fold my own hand and put it down where it can’t be seen.

“Because then we’d know we don’t owe them anything.”

“What could we possibly owe some dinosaurs that should have been extinct before our species even existed?”

The group consensus leans in my favor. As do the cards. I win another hand, and this time without any assistance from my cousin.

It’s my turn to deal. I shuffle the deck thoughtfully.

“Well,” Gracie finally comes up with an answer to that question. “If they are really dinosaurs, then don’t they have a right to be angry with us for all the damage we’ve done to the environment while they were gone?”

“Not if they don’t want to admit that their spaceships did more when they started destroying population centers.” Mik answers for me, shaking his head. “Nah, Gracie, we can’t even give them that. We can be plenty mad at our great grandparents for being shortsighted without needing to feel some kind of stewardship guilt on the behalf of creatures who admit that they bailed out as soon as it looked dicey. We’re still here. We own the joint. Possession is whatever percent of whatever and blah blah blah.”

I nod agreement.

“Okay you geniuses,” Gracie fires back, “what would peace even look like with them? What do you think would happen if we just stopped fighting? Do you really think they’d help us rebuild, or would they go back to that tactic of population redistribution that everyone loved so much?”

“It wouldn’t be peace if they were able to force people out of their homes like that.” Mel shakes her head. “If we’re to have some kind of peace at the end of this war, everyone will have to make some kind of sacrifice. There’s no way to win this outright without a genocide, and no truce would make both sides content.”

“No,” I disagree with her and start passing out cards. “We don’t have to be murderers to live. And they don’t need to be tyrants to survive either. They would have to give up their idea of reconquest.

But couldn’t we use that narrative against them? Couldn’t we try to convince them that they are reintegrating with the native systems instead of reconquering their lost homeland? Couldn’t we find a better way to handle the narrative?”

“July, why in all that’s holy are you a saboteur instead of a propagandist?” Mik smirks at me.

“Because the paper mill caught fire three years ago and the Troos are better at intercepting our internet communications than we are at hiding from them.”

We share a bleak laugh. It would be more funny if it weren’t true.