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Voice Interface Missive: Universal Date: 31872

Sender: Cargo Freighter Dark Meridian. MCT Conrad Mclaughlin

Destination: Nueva Rios

Recipient/Address: Tania Silva Carvalho, Ave. Arcadius-37, Santa Carina City

Master Silva, I hope the winter has not been too harsh this year and that the school is still as strong as ever. It has been a long while since I last spoke to you. I think… the day I was officially assigned to the Dark Meridian as a Cargo Tech? I need to thank you again for the reference. I know it seems like a little thing, but recent events have brought new information to light. It seems that your reference may have held more clout than either of us could have predicted. I may well have never got the job without it.

Things started off about as one would expect. It took some time to get acclimated, I have to admit that it is unexpectedly nerve wracking to be the only member of your species in an unknown environment, especially one filled with species you have never even heard of. I took things slow, keeping my head down and trying not to draw undue attention to myself. I spent time trying to listen and learn about each of these different peoples, so I didn’t make a complete fool of myself or accidentally scare anyone. I really didn’t want my first interaction to end in them running scared and getting me kicked off the ship.

In the end, I don’t think I needed to worry so much. Most of them are roughly the GalCom equivalent of blue-collar working species. As long as I wasn’t being actively aggressive, they really couldn’t have cared less. Well, Polite blue-collar workers. They certainly don’t get nearly as rowdy or as... Off Topic as humans do.

This all made integrating a lot easier once I finally felt confident enough to talk to them. Most of the talk was pretty standard, work, family, Galactic Politics and Events, the occasional gripe. It was oddly comforting to know that, no matter what arm of the galaxy you came from, most intelligent species worried about the same things. I eventually got to know most of the crew. The vast majority of them were trade workers like me, all taking care of necessary elements of running the ship. There was also the Command Crew, the ones who worked on the bridge and oversaw everything. I became pretty good friends with one of them, a Verach named Jjatha who serves as the Navigator. He seems to be endlessly curious, and we talked at length about Nueva Rios, Earth, humanity and his own species and home world. He got quite a shock when I showed him a picture of a fruit bat. He couldn’t believe how closely an alien creature resembled his own species.

I think the most surprising part of my time on the ship was when one of the Security Officers wanted to sit down and talk. They were both Ruulothi, the big warrior cats that seem to want nothing to do with humanity, so it was a bit of a shock when one of them approached me to talk… about anything really. Kiiroth wasn’t too particular about the subjects at first, but eventually he became more and more interested in our history, especially history around wars and conflicts. I guess as an aspiring warrior he wanted to learn all he could about war and combat, no matter the source. It was a smart move, like you always say, “Learn from someone else’s experience and mistakes so you don’t make the same ones.”

I was not entirely blind to what was happening, you taught me better than that. I know the two of them were testing me for something at first. I still don’t really know what they were looking for, but I guess they were satisfied because nothing ever came of it. In the end I didn’t mind because Kiiroth was interesting and fun to talk to. His people were very honor bound and kind of rigid thinkers, so his willingness to interact with me was a bit beyond the norm. I didn’t want to discourage it by confronting him about it. He didn’t speak much on his own people, but I picked up some stuff from him using personal experiences as comparisons. Kiiroth was on a Journey of Finding. Basically, he was apprenticed to an older Ruulothi to work and to find out what he was capable of. This would then be reported back to their clan and Kiiroth would be appropriately assigned from there. The Security Chief, Ruufaarl is what they call a Sheathed Claw… I guess you can call him a retired warrior? I am not one hundred percent on that though. It is something that Kiiroth let slip on accident. When I asked what it meant he shut down, it seemed as though it was a sensitive subject, so I didn’t pry any further. While I don’t know how he felt on the matter, I think we had become pretty good friends over the course of the last year.

The work I do is surprisingly steady. We don’t often have too much down time, even while the ship is in transit. Thanks to the wonders of supra-light interstellar travel the issues humanity had with intercontinental shipping are practically non-existent. We pull into port, off-load assigned cargo, on-load new merchandise and are ready to go after all the paperwork and red tape has been taken care of. If someone wants shore leave, we stay long enough for that to be taken care of, but then we are off again.

Honestly, the only places that even see someone taking shore leave are major planets and homeworlds, or the occasional tourist destination and doing so requires advance notice so that they can file the appropriate flight plans and schedules. Mining colonies, frontier worlds, backwaters and stations rarely have anyone who wants to stay and visit, so our turnaround is usually pretty quick. Once we are under way, we triple check that everything is stowed properly, preform our Preventative Maintenance tasks and prep for Jump. Jumps are incredibly quick, so travel time is strange. Most of our travel time is spent getting from the jump point to the destination and back again. Sometimes it is as little as a few days, others maybe up to a week. On our way in we start getting the destination’s shipment ready for delivery. We do a final check to make sure nothing has moved or shifted, then we track down the cargo containers we need for our destination and plan out our paths for getting them ready to deliver. We don’t move the larger containers during transit, that would just be plain stupid. But we often will re-arrange the smaller containers in transit one or two at a time to make our job easier later on.

Even that is strange to me, but it is a GalCom thing that they do to increase efficiency. Honestly, a lot of their policies don’t make much sense to me, or really even humanity in general come to think of it. And this is coming from a people that need to have warning labels that “Hot things are Hot” and “Closing doors can hurt you” and “Electricity and Water don’t mix” and “Opening Airlocks in space is Bad.”

Euughh…speaking of space being bad. I had to order out of my own pocket a Void Welder after the ship took some sort of micro-meteorite strike mid transit. It left a hole in the hull and was rattling around in the cross section of outer hull that it breached. They apparently don’t keep things on hand to fix issues like that and just get them taken care of in the next port. I mean, I get that they make things to perfection, use triple hulls, and honeycomb the support structures under the outer skin to localize any breaches, but how can you seriously go into space without spare parts or tools to fix damage?

Oh, AND they almost didn’t let me keep it. The Chief had to talk the Captain into allowing it because it, “Wasn’t approved or properly evaluated equipment”. I swear he refused to acknowledge that Humanity has been using them for hundreds of years. But now that I am thinking about it, the Chief’s approval is odd on its own. I don’t think I had ever even spoken one word to him before that. Well, it was after I had started talking with Kiiroth, so I guess maybe he had heard enough to trust my judgement by then? It seems weird that he would support me at all given the Ruulothi’s disdain for humanity. I am not going to complain though, it all worked out in the end.

I think the best part of my job is getting to use the exo suit. These things are just plain fun, and their acronym for them is H.E.M.I.! I suppose it is human humor, but I always get a chuckle out of it when I put one on. The suit amplifies the user’s strength by a phenomenal amount, while utilizing servos and hydraulics to limit the top speed and power levels at which one can move, so that no one puts a hole in the hull or in valuable merchandise. Being that our standard gravity is higher than normal, on both Earth and Nueva Rios, that makes humans especially impressive to the Galactics when using one. I had a race once with Kivan, the gantry crane operator, to see who could move the same number and weight of cargo units fastest. He beat me, but only just. I think if our experience levels had been equal, I would have taken him.

Don’t worry, we were being safe. We made sure there was no one else in the bay when we raced, and the containers were empty, so no cargo was at risk.

Speaking of cargo, most of what we move is personal items, food and supplies, so the vast majority of our cargo is held internally in pressurized bays. The Meridian does have a pair of racks each on the dorsal and ventral sides for the REALLY big containers that carry equipment and raw ores and such. Those containers are usually handled by Station Gantries and Cargo Tugs. The Cargo Locks are really just air locks that are big enough to fit two by two stacked large cargo containers on top of a grav-trolley through. They also have a smaller airlock next to them for foot traffic so that no one gets run over during cargo transfer.

I know you either don’t need to know all that, or already do, but it is important information to what comes next. Important to what I have been working up to talking about this whole time.

We… were kind of… boarded by Pirates. I didn’t even realize this was a thing. You would think that being the great Galactic Community they would have found a way to stamp that out by now…though maybe stamp isn’t the right word, not too many of them do any meaningful stamping.

These guys, they meant some serious business. They weren’t the, “Hand over everything you have” type of pirates. They were the, “Enslave you and/or eat you” kind of pirates. They were led by these MASSIVE freaking praying mantis things, Clantor they were called. They had arms like swords and their shells were harder than steel.

I don’t know much about how they caught us, that was all dealt with by the Command Crew. But I was working in the cargo bay where they boarded at. You remember that old space opera movie when the guys in weird helmets had their ship boarded and were looking all around before the doors got ripped open? It was kinda like that. Our engines went off, then there was some seriously loud clanging. None of us in the cargo bay knew what was going on. I guess it slipped the Captain’s mind to tell the ship, or maybe that is some sort of weird GalCom policy. They really do have a lot of them don’t they?

After the banging stopped I very faintly heard the personnel airlock start to cycle. I realized then what was happening thanks in no small part to that movie. None of the other crew members in the area seemed to understand, so I moved to get them as far away from the airlock as possible. I knew without a doubt that whatever was coming through there wasn’t going to be friendly. I managed to get my crewmates gathered and moving towards some stacks of smaller crates, but there wasn’t enough time to run or hide. If I had a few more moments I might have been able to move some of the crates around and hidden us among them, but they came through the airlock too quick. I WAS thinking to try and fight to buy them some time, but when those monster bug things came through… I, uhh… I froze. I didn’t know what to do, or really even what I could do. My mind just straight went blank.

I guess that not moving is what was expected though? Soooo there is that I suppose, as they didn’t just cut us down immediately. Instead they posted guards with these weird taser sticks to keep watch while they went and searched the ship. I have one of those things now and can bring it to you next time I am in system. They are freaking cool!

I, uhh, kinda stashed it when I was cleaning up after the whole thing ended………. Does that… Does that make me a smuggler now?

Umm, do…they keep recordings of these and review them?... Ahh, crap.

Soooo… anyway. They were a pretty serious looking bunch. I’m pretty sure they were all some sort of predator species. My other crewmen were pretty solidly subservient at that point. They kept their eyes to the ground and huddled together. It didn’t take long for more to arrive, and they all did essentially the same thing, huddled together with the ones they came in with and kept their heads down. I remembered then what the spacers back home had said about the bug people, the Clantor, “Killed in Battle or Held as Chattle.”

I wasn’t going to get eaten without a fight.

I started to work on my exo rig. Little by little I altered the safety limiters that had been hardwired in. The guards watching us looked like they might do something, but then decided it wasn’t their problem. Ambivalence and Complacency really are killers, at least one of them would come to regret that decision later.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

While I was doing that, I took stock of my tools to see if I could possibly do anything with them. I didn’t really have much, as I mentioned before GalCom doesn’t really DO emergency maintenance. But I still had a few human hand tools as the “designated human” and because we would sometimes pick up human shipping crates from places that we stopped at. The Captain would assure them that he had a Human on the crew while making the deals so…that… Son of a—

I just realized I’m a diversity hire.

The Captain brought me on so that he could access new markets on human populated planets. You know, he may be a money-grubbing bureaucratic toady… but he is a clever money grubber.

Anyway, what was I… Oh yeah, my tools.

Like I said, I didn’t have much. All I saw at first was the screwdriver and wrench, but then I remembered that I carried the Welder in a sealed container strapped to the back of my rig. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that it might be the only thing that could stop the bugs.

I continued to tinker and gather my tools until they finished bringing people in. The last two groups brought to the cargo bay was the Command Crew and Security. I have to admit to being surprised at the time that the Ruulothi hadn’t gone down fighting. Ruufaarl explained it to me later, and I suppose it makes sense that if you know you are going to die, at least do it in such a way as to be remembered.

The Captain didn’t say anything to the pirates, he just stuck with the Command Crew. But he was talking to them, and over all they seemed to be much better off mentally than any of the other crew. None of the Command Crew were sunken in on themselves. They all had their heads up and were watching events unfold. Though they clearly had no intention of fighting.

The Ruulothi though… I think my greatest regret in all of this wasn’t that I killed a bunch of people to save everyone, but that I couldn’t save ONE person in particular. I simply wasn’t fast enough.

Once everyone had been gathered and accounted for, the big bug (Ruufaaarl later told me it was a Matron) stepped forward and told us we could fight for our freedom or become slaves. I don’t think that the thing had even finished before Kiiroth had launched himself at it. I didn’t even have time to move he was so fast. Even the bug seemed to be taken aback as it actually recoiled a bit. He went after her like a Riosian Darter goes after chickens. Just a straight out, full bore assault. It was impressive, but impressive simply wasn’t enough. The bug’s exoskeleton was too hard, nothing he did would have gotten through it. And her arm blades, they must have been beyond razor sharp, because Kiiroth came apart as though he had been made of little more than soap suds when she finally went after him.

I can’t even begin to describe everything I felt then. Fear, absolutely. Dread, probably. But most of all, after seeing Kiiroth get shredded like that, all I could identify was seething, white hot, rage.

I didn’t give in to it, as hard as it was and as much as I may have wanted to, but I for damn sure used it. I let it build and build before I pushed myself to the front and rode the wave. I felt more than saw Ruufaarl ready himself, so I stopped him. I think that took him more by surprise than anything else I have done. I don’t really even know if I looked at him then, but he didn’t argue or fight me. At that point I was cresting the wave, and as soon as I got control of myself again, I relaxed and moved. I knew what I needed to do, and I was going to kill that bitch if it was the last thing I did. And I was going to do it with the Welder.

Do you remember when we, as a class, pestered you to teach us Kung Fu so badly that you finally relented, but you said that if we were going to learn it, we were going to learn it the way the founders had? Do you remember how you got us all these animal documentaries about the Five animals and forced us to watch them again and again, to learn from how the actual animals themselves moved and hunted and fought? Thank you for that.

I still remember it being a lesson in humility and respect, but it served its purpose. I don’t think I would have survived this day if it wasn’t for those videos. It is because of them that I knew most bugs had extreme difficulty reacting to and facing things on their flanks; that as fast as a praying mantis was from the front, from the sides and back it was virtually helpless.

I kept that in my head as we clashed. I dodged and maneuvered to stay away from the bloody arm blades, blocking with the rig’s claws when I needed to. Every time I got in range, I slapped another strip of cutting agent on her body. I managed to stay ahead of her, but I was going to need her to break away first. I knew that if I did it, she would take full advantage and simply cut me to ribbons. So, I waited, and as I waited, I put more and more strips on her.

I can’t really say there was any technique or direction to our fight, I was just scrambling to stay away from her arms or to protect myself when she got close enough to strike. Thankfully the loading claws are solid and dense metal, so she couldn’t get through them. She still got some ancillary hits in on the rest of the rig though, her blades were long and had a concave curve after all. She did eventually realize that she needed to change tactics, and she broke off the clash first.

I used the opportunity to back even further away, and boy am I glad that I did. If I had let only her determine the range of the engagement at that point, whether through relief or hubris, she would have skewered me.

But, standing there as we were, I pulled out the clicker, and I knew I had her. I grinned from ear to ear. It was an absolutely feral grin, the smile of someone who knew they had won against all odds.

I think some body language must transcend the boundaries of species and space, because I saw her fear at that moment. I can’t accurately describe it, but SHE knew that I knew I had won, but she didn’t know how, and it terrified her. It must have been a momentary freeze or recoil of some kind that I saw. But I knew, without any doubt, that she had seen her death in my eyes.

She launched herself forward to try and get to me. Like I said, if I hadn’t taken more space, she would have succeeded. But I was too far away, and I hit the clicker.

To say that burning chitin reeks would be a massive understatement, not to mention the cutting agents and whatever else was in her that got torched. She just, fell apart like some toppled ice or stone sculpture. I about gagged when the cloud of…bug hit me.

I think I may have over done it with the cutting strips.

I didn’t have any time to recover either as the second bug, this one smaller and, apparently, younger and weaker, tried to take advantage of my distraction and came at me from the side. I had stayed aware of my surroundings though. I fully deployed my rigs claws before it got to me and locked onto it with them, one on a blade arm and the other on its head. As strong as it was, it wasn’t strong enough to fight free of hydraulic clamps, nor was it able to flex and bend like endoskeletal creatures can. I pulled as I crushed with the claws, and it came apart far easier than I had expected.

After that, things happened incredibly fast.

I hadn’t felt it when I was fighting the bugs, I think I was too damn focused on simply staying ahead of them and staying alive, too damned angry at them. But once they were dead… once my targets were dead… once the others came for me and my rage started to subside, that was when I felt the adrenaline dump hit. That was when my mind and senses went into overdrive and time seemed to slow. That was when everything came flooding back. I remembered exactly what I had on hand to fight with, everything you had taught me over the many years, it all came back.

And I used it all. The first one hit me with that taser stick at the same time I hit him with the claws, and Holy Hannah did he go flying. I was hoping to just use him to trip up anyone coming behind him, but he went crashing through them like I was playing candlestick. His taser thing had disabled the rig though, so that was no longer an option and just dead weight. I hit my emergency release and saw another one running in at me as I was getting clear. I grabbed the only thing at hand, my screwdriver, and jammed it up under its jaw. I don’t know what it was doing running in face first, but I am not going to complain if they want to make it easy for me.

The screwdriver got stuck, so now that was gone, and more were coming. The only thing I now had on hand was my belt.

All those rope and sash and chain techniques really came in handy. I knocked the next attacker away by striking its eye with the belt cap and the second, some big bruiser of a monkey, tried splattering my head like a watermelon.

I hope you will forgive me given the circumstances. I know you said to never use any of the assassination techniques you taught those few of us you thought could handle the instruction. But I REALLY needed it right then.

After the monkey man was dead, Ruufaarl came over with the one I had knocked away and just growled menacingly at the pirates that were still getting up after I knocked them over. They hesitated while weighing their options. In the end they decided that they no longer had a chance, and I took the opportunity to throw their words back in their faces.

I told them, “Surrender or die.”

I felt like a complete badass.

The feeling I had once it was all over, once I knew that I had survived…that we had WON. It was unlike any other. The sheer energy surge from the adrenaline and the euphoria and relief that we were going to live, because of something I had done… It was like standing on top of a mountain in a thunderstorm.

A mountain of bodies in this case… a very… small mountain. But it still felt like a mountain.

I think I was grinning like an idiot.

I had always liked to fight in a way, even in the few actual fights I wound up getting into after we moved from Earth to Nueva Rios, fights that were more beat downs of the new kid than real fights. But this, this felt like nothing else.

After the fight, things were a bit tense. We emptied a couple of cargo containers and stuffed the surviving pirates in one, then the remains into another. Ruufaarl said that he would take care of Kiiroth in the way of their people, so at least I didn’t need to do that part.

The rest of the crew… wouldn’t really look at me though. It was almost like I was some new horrific thing to them. I kept my distance. The only ones who didn’t seem to think I was suddenly going to turn around and eat them were Jjatha and Ruufaarl, and the Captain. It got a little better by the time we made port, mostly because we still needed to work together to get things done, but the tension was still there. I think Jjatha had been making some ground in smoothing things over, but there was still a long way to go.

I went through a debrief with the Captain and the Chief. I guess they thought after my performance that I had lied about not having served. I had to explain to them that the records were factual. The Captain didn’t seem to much care in the end, he was only worried abut the delay that had been caused and how this would affect his bottom line. Once he was satisfied that I would continue to work as I had and not cause any problems, he left the interview.

The Chief continued his questions though. I think he may have been concerned that he was harboring a deserter or possible threat and he wanted to get to the bottom of his concerns, knowing this I accommodated him as much as possible. I told him about how we grew up on Nueva Rios, about how it is a ranching world at the moment, and as such requires that we learn hunting and stalking. I told him about how dangerous the world can get, all the threats it throws at us despite our preparations, and about how dangerous the cities can get. I told him about the Dojo, and the background of militia, military and public service that most people in the colonies have.

He seemed to understand and he allowed the interview to become more informal after. I think it may have been because his people are a warrior race and this sort of thing is something that they are familiar with. What I didn’t understand though is how surprised he was to hear it. After that he asked if he could continue to talk with me as Kiiroth had done. He said he wanted to learn more about humanity, as we did not seem to be matching his estimations.

I don’t know what he was looking for, but we did continue to talk. He took special interest in how we conduct ourselves in fighting and combat, this is why I wanted to invite him to the Dojo when we swing by on our route. Do you suppose that “The Art of War” has been translated into GSL yet? I think it would be something that would interest him greatly. That and historical records of our great heroes and battles. Figures like Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, and Spartacus and battles like Thermopylae, the Battle of the Bulge, and Shiroyama. That last one in particular I think would be right up his alley with the Ruulothi’s rules and honor codes.

OH! He gave me something as well, a marker of achievements from his people. He called it a Mantle of the Bloodclaws. It’s some kind of a hip-cape, black with a red border and red markings on it, that serves as a visual record of personal achievements. This one has markings for a Blooded Warrior. Looking at it now I recognize some of the markings. Ruufaarl has a short half cape with many similar markings on it. I had always thought it was a fashion piece of some sort. But now I think it is his personal records… and boy are there a lot of markings on it. It kind of reminds me of those old world goofy fake generals with all the medals and ribbons on their chest, even though they never did anything. Except there is no doubt in my mind that he absolutely has earned every single one of those markings.

He said the Mantle would prove to any Ruulothi that I was an “ally and worthy of respect.” I don’t know why he did it, but I know very well he is not someone to doing things without reason. I think this may be some sort of political thing? Does this mean I am some sort of ambassador? I hope not, I REALLY hate politics… But if this means I could step into the ring with some of our politicians like the Ruulothi do… heh hehhh. Oooohhh THAT would be fun. Just think about how much things would change if our senile and arrogant, or ignorant and loudmouthed, talking heads had to conduct ritual combat to defend and justify keeping their position because of their asinine policies. Maaaann that would fix so much of the BS.

These last few days have been... one heck of a ride, and it has opened my eyes. I understand a lot of things now that I may never have before this all happened. I get why you put us through so many drills, why you pushed and insisted and disciplined us to be humble. You taught us to remember that we all have faults, to respect others and not let our accomplishments or our emotions go to our heads. And when we didn’t remember, you knocked it back into us…repeatedly.

I don’t think I ever thanked you properly for that by the way. After my family moved, I was in a real dark place. I was just a kid and didn’t understand what was happening or why. I didn’t know why we had to leave everything and everyone behind to come to this strange planet in what might well have been the literal middle of nowhere on the other end of the damn galaxy.

I was acting out, fighting with my parents, with the local kids, and just being a pest in general. I think that if I had gone on much longer like that I would more than likely have wound up running with the local street kids and gotten arrested. I don’t know why or how you convinced my parents to bring my mouthy punk ass by your dojo after I had slammed into you and acted like some ankle biter dog. I was what… 11? 12?

I have no idea what you saw then but, thank you, for convincing them. Thank you for putting me in my place, and for picking me up when I needed it to be done, for showing me there is more than what was left behind. Thank you for teaching me not to quit. Not to quit on my family, on others, or myself.

Thank you for fighting for me.

And… uuuh. Please don’t kick my ass for all this when I come home?... Please?

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