Memory Transcription Subject: First Officer Sifal, ARS Bleeding Heart
Date [standardized human time]: January 25, 2137
The funny thing about transfers of power is how much smoother they go when you’re still visibly dripping with the blood of your predecessor. Sure, the usual handful of ambitious fools all spoke up, each announcing that they alone deserved to be in charge, but for each aspirant there was a full chorus of other soldiers screaming “Fuck no, absolutely not”. I think that might have been what fully sealed the deal for our new positions of power: nobody particularly minded letting Vriss take charge. The former first officer had a reputation for being orderly, even-keeled, and just. It was a wonderful upgrade over the previous captain’s streaks of sadistic whimsy; such a simple luxury, knowing that you could evade all punishments just by following the rules. And if the calmly efficient Captain Vriss wanted to pick that quiet but competent woman from engineering as his new first officer, well, nobody really minded me either, and who knew efficiency better than an engineer?
As for the cause for rebellion itself, a lot of the details were above our pay grade. Vriss and I might have had broader visions of what the rebellion meant for the Arxur people, but the average soldier mostly heard that their government, Betterment, was responsible for their hunger, and their superior officer, Chief Hunter Isif, wanted to fix that and feed them. People liked food, and people liked that all they had to do to get it was to keep following the orders of the same commander they had followed for years. In most ways, as far as day to day life on our ship went, nothing really changed. The biggest difference, frankly, was practical: after losing our stationary bases to attacks from Betterment, and after pocketing the Human-Venlil bounty on freed cattle, we found ourselves swapping one resource scarcity for another.
“Okay,” said Captain Vriss. “Run this by me again. What do you mean, we are out of hull patches?”
The new head of engineering stared at the new Captain’s feet nervously. I never thought I would live to see the day that a man of such mediocre talents could eat well enough to become chubby, but the fool’s slight paunch was, in its own way, inspiring. “I’m sorry, Captain. We haven’t gotten a proper equipment resupply in months. I tried to throw something together using scrap metal and solder, but it’s just not holding against the void of space.” His posture shrank down in shame and fear. “We just had to seal off the whole compartment. It was just a bunk, thankfully, but a hit to anything important would be catastrophic at this point.”
Vriss’s gaze flicked over to me, silently asking for my opinion on whether the engineer was full of shit or not. I shrugged helplessly. The man wasn’t wrong about our supply issues, and I’d have probably tried a similar stopgap solution.
“Alright,” said Vriss. “It is what it is. Keep the ship steady. I’m going to confer with my first officer and see if we can conjure up a more long-term solution. Sifal, my quarters?”
I nodded, and led the way. I knew the path well. Vriss’s quarters were sparse and mostly book by population--a deliberate affectation, given the existence of holopads. Most Arxur officers preferred ceremonial weapons and trophies, so decorating his quarters in books made a fairly avant-garde statement about what mattered to him. Beyond that, the room was furnished with a simple unordained desk, a few sturdy chairs that were comfortable without being decadent, shelves of clean metal bolted to the walls for stability, and a firm bed that left space for more storage underneath. I walked straight to the bed and sat near the head of it. My captain shut the door behind him, and laid down on the bed, face-up, the back of his weary head resting on my lap.
“All the food we could ever dream of, and we’re starved for scrap metal,” he said, letting the exhaustion tinge his voice.
“Rebellions rarely have the luxury of supplies of any sort,” I said, gently massaging his head. This kind of physical contact was our little indulgence, behind closed doors. Betterment never really condoned love, and even within the rebellion, cultural shifts took time. “The humans of America describe being short on food and materiel alike while wintering at Valley Forge during their own foundational rebellion.”
Vriss’s eyes winced shut. The responsibility for the whole crew was an oppressive pressure. He accepted it, but he didn’t enjoy it. “How did they win?”
I exhaled, trying to recall. “In that immediate position? The Battle of Trenton. A desperate night raid while their opponents were intoxicated and celebrating.”
Vriss looked bemused. “Desperate raids are all we’ve been doing. We need a new approach if we’re going to survive this.” He shook his head. “Anything else in your human texts?”
With my free hand, I retrieved my holopad and thumbed through my notes on Sun Tzu. “People hate it when you set their things on fire, make sure your troops want the same things that you want, consider the terrain when making plans, stolen materiel is worth five times as much as domestically-produced…” I trailed off, the gears turning in my head. “Hey, Vriss, we’re still technically at war with the Federation, aren’t we?”
Vriss blinked. “I mean, I suppose so. What, are you suggesting a cattle raid? We don’t need the food, and it’s probably still going to piss the U.N. off even if we’re only targeting Federation outposts.”
“Right,” I said slowly, the start of a plan taking shape. “But what if we don’t raid them for cattle? We need guns and ships.”
Vriss raised an eyebrow. “Would prey-built ships even be useful?”
I shrugged. “For the spare parts? Yeah, they… they might be.” The more I thought about it, the more it all looked like it added up. “I mean, a hull patch is a hull patch, and our drive cores are all based on Kolshian tech anyway, and it’s not like prey-built missiles share their owners’ cowardice. Shit, this could actually work.”
“We’d need the perfect target, though,” Vriss pointed out. “Federation-run, but far enough and small enough that the Kolshians would just write it off rather than pull forces away from the main war front to rescue them.”
I flicked open a star map on my holopad, and skimmed around rapidly until an outpost jumped out at me. “Here. This one. It’s called…” It was some gibberish in a prey language, so I just let it translate. “Seaglass. Habitable planet, cosmologically very young, which means a higher concentration of the rarer minerals useful in starship manufacturing. It’s a Nevok-owned mining outpost, but the owners are Federation loyalists, which makes them the worst of both worlds. They’ve refused human protection, but their species accepted it, so the Kolshians probably won’t protect them either out of racist spite. Perfect target.”
Vriss nodded, thinking. “So what’s the actual plan, then? Smash and grab, then scarper before the Federation or the Dominion notice we’re there?”
I considered it, but there was a tiny flicker of inspiration drawing my attention to something I’d read. I flipped my holopad back over to my notes, this time on human histories of warfare. “What if we took a cue from the Mongols?” I wondered aloud. “They started their campaign of conquests with raids, but they rapidly switched up their strategies wherever they could get away with it.” I looked Vriss in the eyes. “They kept a network of tributaries to bankroll their ongoing war effort. Low-maintenance vassals. Any time we show up, the Feds fill our cargo holds with goods, and in exchange, we don’t eat them.”
Vriss’s brow furrowed in confusion. “But I just said we probably can’t get away with eating them.”
I chuckled. “That’s the best part: they don’t know that. In fact, if you look at how much trouble the humans have had with diplomacy? I don’t think the Feds would believe us if we told them. They’re just too convinced that we’re all flesh-starved monsters.” I drummed my fingers idly on the lean muscles of Vriss’s chest. “Really, convincing them that they can pay us off to ‘spare’ them is going to be the hardest part.” I shrugged. “Guess we’re about to see which Nevok instincts are stronger: their fear of us, or their love of a good deal.”
Vriss snorted. “‘Your money or your life’ isn’t that good of a deal, Sifal.”
“Best deal we’ve ever given them,” I said wryly.
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Vriss considered the plan. “That covers the Federation,” he said, “but what happens if the Dominion catches us?”
I pulled the star map back up. The Dominion had cut our access to their spy stations, obviously, but the U.N.’s cyber warfare specialists had quietly restored it, at least in part. Nevertheless… “It’s a small colony,” I pointed out. “The nearest Dominion listening post is a few systems over, monitoring a major trade hub. If we approach Seaglass from the other side, they won’t even know we’re there.”
“Suppose the Dominion is monitoring exports, then,” said Vriss. “We knock the place over, the exports drop or disappear. The Dominion knows it wasn’t them, so they might send a scouting team to investigate, just in case.”
I shrugged. “Then they’ll find an unremarkable Federation outpost that stopped exporting for some inscrutably prey-brained reason. What are they going to do, talk to them? Ask them if they’ve been conquered lately?” I shook my head. “I don’t think the Dominion would even suspect we’re there. Arxur and prey peacefully working together, even under severe duress, is unprecedented.”
Vriss was running low on objections, and he knew it as well. “What if they raid our new tributaries for cattle?”
I laughed. “Worst case scenario, we lose the colony and try again somewhere else. Easy come, easy go. Best case scenario, the raiders aren’t prepared for any real resistance, and we ambush them while they least expect it.”
I could see the gears turning in Vriss’s head. Nodding decisively, he sat up. “Alright, that settles it, then. We’ll give it a shot. I’ll coordinate attaining orbital superiority over the planet, and you’ll have command of the landing team.”
I reared back in shock. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, why are you giving me the command? I’ve never led a book club before, let alone a landing team!”
Vriss smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. “I've been training you for months. You’re ready. Besides, it’s your plan.”
My eyes stayed wide. “I… and you’re not coming with?”
Vriss shook his head. “Needing a babysitter would only undermine your authority. Besides, you’re the right tool for this job.”
“For leading a ground assault?” I asked incredulously. “How do you figure?!”
My captain waved away my concerns. “Please. We’re Arxur. Ground assaults against prey aren’t that hard. Trust me from experience: you can pretty much make it up as you go along and still do fine.” Vriss looked at me dead-on, his golden eyes glistening in the dim light. “No, you’re the right choice for doing something as unprecedented and unconventional as negotiating actual terms of surrender with prey. I’m far too traditionally-minded for this, and you’re the Terran-trained social predator. This is your mission, First Officer Sifal.”
He squeezed my shoulder one last time for reassurance. I brushed it aside. It was in my way as I went in for a full hug. I tucked my maw down over his shoulder, wrapping myself around him.
“One more step towards our happy ending together,” I muttered into his upper back. The first verse of our little call and repeat.
“A clutch of fat hatchlings,” he replied, “and a farmhouse with a workshop.”
“And a cat!” I added petulantly, as Vriss chuckled.
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Days of preparation and travel passed. Our small bomber wing dropped out of FTL closer to Seaglass than was typical. The colony’s primary defense was being too small to be worth the dignity or expense of raiding. The whole world was just a couple sprawling company towns near the coast of a craggy supercontinent where the native life hadn’t yet seen fit to crawl out of the sea. If we hadn't been desperate to feed on its tight cluster of mines and factories, this whole mission would have been a rounding error away from launching an orbital raid on one guy’s house. In short, no, they had no defensive perimeter of FTL inhibitors established yet.
On our side of the equation, we weren’t particularly interested in ramping up their fear of an inevitable defeat by sauntering into the system slowly. We appeared in the sky in an instant, and hit them hard and fast. Very curiously to them, we only hit their long-range comm towers, and we did so with surgical precision. Orbit-to-ground railgun strikes like this were not standard Arxur procedure at all. We had antimatter bombs for surface targets like that. Nevertheless, as their emergency sirens blared, and as the prey scrambled to get their meager squadron of patrol craft off the ground, every ship and bunker in the settlement screeched a warning for a missile targeting lock--a promise to be kept at our leisure--as we hailed them.
We broadcasted our intentions publicly while we awaited their response. At my advisement, there were no roaring growls in our ultimatum. My lover spoke with the quietly menacing inevitability of a detonator slowly ticking down. “Federation Colony, this is Captain Vriss of the Disruption Wing of the Arxur Rebellion Fleet. We are assuming control over this outpost. Stand down, and your lives may yet be bargained for.” The word choice was a calculated half-truth. If we were very lucky, the prey’s thoughts would leap to the Human-Venlil bounty on cattle. That wasn’t remotely what we had in mind here, but it was a seed of hope for the prey below that they might survive long enough to be ransomed if they surrendered, which… well, in a sense, that part was true. Vriss had primarily balked at the OpSec concerns of letting a whole planet know who we were, but I assured him that for diplomacy to work, they needed to see the faces and hear the names of their occupiers. To accept us as their conquerors and rulers, they first needed to accept us as people. No one bowed to hungering beasts.
That being said, we weren’t so foolish as to sit around picking our teeth while we waited for their reply. My ground squad was already in descent directly above the colony’s main spaceport and command bunker. It was perhaps a sign of poor redundancy planning, keeping those two so close together, but they’d probably been the first sites constructed, and hadn’t yet been relocated. I’d been given command over an old cattle ship that had been hastily retrofitted as a resupply and tender ship, and now hastily retrofitted back into something not entirely unlike an assault transport. It had guns on it, and could carry cargo and/or people aplenty. Its name had been something pointlessly cruel, so I’d hastily renamed it as well to the ARS Brennus. It wasn’t technically named after my human mentor, David Brenner, but I liked to imagine that it was.
“Why ‘Brennus’?” asked Laza, my second on the squad, awkwardly pronouncing a name from a language and culture she’d never studied. We were all awkwardly gathered in the main cargo bay in full gear, waiting for the ground to meet us. It wasn’t the worst time for a short speech.
“Old human warlord who caught my interest while I was reading their histories,” I said. I kept my voice casual, but just loud enough to be overheard by anyone who wished to. “The city of Rome was the seat of power of a vast ancient human empire. For nearly a thousand years, from the city’s founding to its fall, it was conquered only once, by some supposedly uncivilized barbarian named Brennus that Rome had underestimated.” I chuckled. “The city was forced to purchase his mercy with an astonishing weight in precious metals. The barbarians made a grand show of it, too. They erected an enormous set of scales, with weights on one side, and space for their payment on the other. When both sides of the scales were evened out, the price was paid. The Romans noticed, however, that the weights were heavier than agreed upon. They tried to argue. ‘This is unfair!’ they cried.”
I slowly drew my fancy new ceremonial officer’s sword, holding its blade out before my eyes. As David once did, I could see every inch of my steel without taking my eyes off of the warrior in front of me. “Do you know what the great warlord Brennus said in response to their complaints?” I savored the eyes watching me with rapt attention. I held my sword out by its hilt in front of me, and let go. It clattered to the ground loudly. The few people who hadn’t been paying attention jumped, startled, and I let my voice rise to a crescendo. “He dropped his sword atop the weights, increasing the price of his mercy, and said ‘Vae victis!’ Woe to the conquered!”
An enthused cheer erupted from my assembled troops. Gods of Old, I could kiss David for the gifts of knowledge he’d given me. When you broke it down and explained it in writing, the rhythm of a good rousing speech was practically a math formula. Build up a beat, raise the intensity, ask a question, pause for a breath, and then let the answer hit them like a sledgehammer. Gods, everything the humans did was fucking music.
Start with the known and conventional, then reverse it for dramatic effect. “The lives of the prey are forfeit, this is true!” I shouted to the room. “But we do not want their lives!”
Repeat the shape, build upon the rhythm inherent in reversal. “We are here today, not for their blood, but for their steel!”
Repetition, repetition, repetition. “What need have we for flesh? We have eaten well today, and we have eaten well yesterday, and you may yet have faith that we will eat well tomorrow!”
Build to the crescendo, and then hit them with the one point that’s not like the others. “It is their wealth today that we hunger for, and their service towards our glorious cause! Today, we debut a new form of conquest!”
Vriss was right, I mused, as I savored the roar of adulation from dozens of footsoldiers, and tried to avoid recalling the Greco-Roman concept of hubris. Leading a ground assault against the prey is really fucking easy.