'So what makes this worse than what you have shown me so far?' Jane asked, refusing to allow the mysterious woman to bring her off balance. 'The previous battle had some pretty gruesome scenes, from very close up,' she recalled. She felt a shiver creep down her spine. She hadn't been fully prepared to the raw carnage the Genesis could inflict in close quarters. She remembered how, in some journals, veterans had described the leftovers from such combat as "human paste". She hadn't fully understood that. Not until she had seen it up front. She still felt queasy recalling the scene.

'While that is true,' came a response in a far too happy tone for the dark subject, 'it is...' The woman trailed off for a bit. 'The previous battle only held soldiers,' she specified.

'You already said as much,' Jane replied, her eyebrows tilting in a frown. 'You even told me how many civilians were slaughtered.'

'What do you think of when you hear the word "civilian?"'

There was an undertone to that question that Jane did not like. She pondered it. In her mind's eye she saw factory workers. People carrying out administrative tasks in offices. Pubs and clubs being full, university students, — She froze when the realisation struck her. Then her face turned to ash. 'No', she whispered, utterly horrified. She physically reared back from the black box, her mind struggling with the idea.

'Genesis did not differ,' came the ice cold reply. 'They did not discriminate.' The blue light somehow turned to the purest black without changing colour. 'Not by gender. Not by race. Not by—'

'SHUT UP!' she roared.

The box fell silent.

Nightmare eyed the Historian through her sensors. The woman was off balance. Completely and utterly so. Perspiration was running down her forehead and there was raw disgust in her eyes. The emotions themselves were familiar to the AI turned Genesis, but the cause of them was utterly alien to her. To her, and to every other Genesis as well, the world consisted of rational factors and threat assessments. The potential danger a thing or being held could never be overlooked. So if they encountered a hostile, what did it matter if they were young or old? Any age could be made to hold a weapon, pull a trigger, paint a target. Any encountered hostile was a threat and so they would eliminate it. It was simple and clear cut, with no room for disagreement or debate. If anything, Nightmare purred to herself, the devastating effect on morale and the sheer panic it caused made them an even more attractive target. She remembered her first encounter, with Admiral Cindy close behind her. Even the NavInt officer had briefly paused after witnessing the carnage, but she had offered no comment on it at the time. The Admiral followed the same Imperial logic that Genesis operated on, after all, though she had made some interesting comments later on. Not ones the Historian would approve of, however. Oh no.

When Onoelle had seen similar footage, though, it had evoked the same reaction as the one Jane was displaying now. And it had sparked a major argument between the human and Mentuc. The former being appalled and horrified that her husband had committed such grave warcrimes, the latter utterly failing to understand what he had done wrong. For a few days Nightmare had been ready to eliminate her, as the woman was in a state of near hysteria. Until, to her great surprise, Onoelle had suddenly begun to calm down and had started to professionally analyse the entire thing. She had known Mentuc to be different and was, at that point, intimately familiar with the lack of his "moral compass", as she had described it. Rather than let the initial disgust she felt tear them apart, she had chosen to study it and understand it. It had helped that she had fallen deeply in love with him, at that stage, and struggled to associate the man she saw with the man he was.

That understanding had come painfully quickly. The truth was, as was ever the case with Genesis and Imperial doctrine, simple, direct, and brutally straightforward. The rationale behind it was clean cut and, though the psychiatrist had been loathe to admit it, made sense in a dark, grim way. The human had known better than to try to argue with Mentuc in that regard. Convincing a being who lived and breathed combat tactics and stratagems that his actions were wrong simply would not work. Instead she had fallen back on a trick that did get through to him. Telling him to, very simply, never do it again, because it wasn't normal. Children were to be protected, not targeted. Mentuc had taken it in stride. He was used to receiving orders he did not fully understand. He was, she had reasoned, a civilian now. Not an Imperial soldier. Which had made sense to him. Her further attempts to explain the morality of him had been met with less success, even though he had still filed away the information as a fact. He had surprised his then girlfriend, soon-to-be-wife by easily admitting that just because he did not understand something, it did not make the truth any less true.

The entire discussion had been surprisingly civil, polite and open, given the nature of the subject, and had earned the human a measure of respect, in Nightmare's eyes. Jane, on the other hand, was nowhere near as graceful, and the AI let out a sigh as the Historian's face contorted itself in a dozen different ways, struggling to fully grasp the new information. Then she threw up. A pulse ran through her processors as she let out another sigh. Jane was supposed to be a Historian for crying out loud. If she was shocked by something as simple as this, then what happened in the later stages of the war would cripple her mind.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

'Bombardments always killed civilians. Street-to-street fighting often claimed innocent lives. Blockades and the famines they caused made no distinction either. Biological weapons don't differ between those with a uniform and those who didn't.'

'Shut up,' Jane croaked, barely able to force her voice out of her throat.

'And the Empire was not the only one who did so. In the Alliance Civil War, both the Alliance and separatist factions committed similar atrocities on civilian population, for research purposes or purely because they could. Countless regimes between then and now have preyed on those weaker. Slavery. Mutilation. Torture. For profit, for pleasure, for purpose. You, who studied history, should know this. When the Alliance began to lose its hold on the far off sectors, they took hostages, children and adults alike, and tortured them in a desperate attempt to maintain control. When the Kra'lagh invaded a world, they too killed everyone. The Novicans ruthlessly repressed their own citizens to maintain their regime. When the Empire fell and the galaxy jumped its rotting carcass, they relished in the slaughter.' A personal note of hate crawled into her voice. She had been alive then. Still fighting. Forced to abandon objectives and allies for the sake of survival. Imperial soldiers had fought and died beside her, as she was unable to fulfil the task she had been made for. The few outposts that remained, manned by the elderly, the wounded and the young, were overrun one by one, and a frenzied galaxy put all survivors to the torch. Age had been utterly irrelevant. 'When the 'evil Empire' fell, those who laid it low were just as monstrous as the Empire itself ever was. There is no right. There is no wrong. It was war. You are a Historian,' she hissed, stressing the word. 'This is what history is made of. Life is not fair. Life never was, nor ever will be fair. Safety belongs to those who can protect themselves. Morality will always be abandoned in favour of survival.'

'Please,' whispered Jane, her lips forming the word but no longer having the strength to voice the word.

Nightmare was about to continue her tirade, when her sensors noticed movement and she saw Onoelle getting to her feet. Though the woman was physically exhausted, her eyes were clear and filled with fury. It surprised her. Onoelle understood these things. She understood the truth of life, that humanity, at its core, was a merciless predator when left unchecked.

'That's enough out of you,' she said, her voice soft but firm. She slid off the bed and brought an arm around her retching friend. She had been exhausted and tired, but the argument had woken her up. She had planned on remaining immobile and listening in in secret, but Nightmare's heavy handed accusations had forced her hand.

She was recalling Mentuc's words. That Nightmare was struggling with her emotions. That the AI had been antagonising her because she had enjoyed it. Chances were this was much of the same.

'It is important that she knows this. She is a Historian,' the AI countered.

'And you are in charge of protecting their good name, then?'

'It is important that—'

'To whom?' she interrupted. 'To you? To her? To me? To Mentuc?' she snorted, giving Nightmare a disdainful glare. 'I believe he made some choice comments about arguing like this.' She glanced at the black box. 'It is as you said, war is war, and Genesis and the Empire fought it differently than how we do now. You've already established that. Excessively so.' Her eyes conveyed the contempt she felt for the AI's crumbling stance. 'What you're doing now serves no purpose.'

'I disagree,' the AI replied, but the cockiness in her voice was gone. Nightmare seemed unsure, both vindicating her and yet simultaneously causing her deep concern. An AI wasn't supposed to be "unsure". 'It is necessary for anyone who studies war to grasp this.'

'You know that she grasps this. You also know she only recently recovered from being brainwashed and that the worst part of humanity she has personally witnessed were unwelcome advances in clubs and junkies on the streets. Not someone who's stitched up in a uniform and commits atrocities on the daily or someone who's world view is so messed up from the beginning that they look at the world in but two tones,' she growled, anger slowly welling with her. She had never liked it when the AI picked on her. Now that Nightmare was doing the same on her friend, that sentiment was rapidly transitioning into teeming rage. 'So in other words, get to the point, show the damn footage and shut your big mouth. And don't think this is over either. You and I will have a talk later.'

The box went silent for a moment, its light dimming. 'Understood,' she replied after a while, the AI's voice sounding uncharacteristically demure. 'The footage of the invasion of Nagalan will commence in one hour.' The light fully winked out, giving Jane the calming idea that she had left them alone.

Mentuc had been right. Nightmare was struggling with her newfound emotions and was in over her head to sort them out. That would be the project of a lifetime. Oh well. She was dealing with one Genesis so far. How much harder could taking on a second be?