---Crash---

---Bonheh’s perspective---

I stand in the doorway of my home aboard Xartham Space Station, looking down at Lagomeer.

“OK Laggy, before we leave, what’s rule one?” I ask, running a forepaw over his head, flattening his long ears backward.

His nose twitches as he chants

mp♫The Hjopian is not tough nor large nor fierce and nor are we strong!

Speed is our weapon. It’s best for us to simply hop along!

Larger folk have no need of care when they trudge and step and stamp!

What they lack we must have, so, my child, you must be a careful champ!♫mp

“Very good, baby!” I praise, causing my son to thump his left leg involuntarily.

Lagomeer is an only child.

This is uncommon for my species.

Usually, we have litters of three to six.

I may be… just a touch overprotective as a result.

Hopefully, when Huch and I are ready for a second litter, Laggy won’t be too spoiled to be a good big brother to them.

Hopefully, by that point, he and I will have earned enough at our respective jobs on Xartham to move back to Hjop and take a [decade] or so off of work.

I step out of my family apartment in the Warren, the space station’s quarter for smaller species with an evolutionary history of burrowing.

The Warren is about the only place on Xartham where we don’t have to be on constant guard against being stepped on!

The ceiling is only about [1.5m] over the floor, meaning that most who could carelessly hurt us are too large to fit in here.

“Fine daybreak, Bonheh!” hails one of my neighbours, Vatra, extending me a membranous wing in greeting.

Her species are not burrowers. Nevertheless, she lives in the Warren for much the same reason as Huch, Laggy and I. It’s the safest place aboard for the small and delicate.

“Good morning, Vats.” I smile, kindly.

“Where are you off to today? I thought Third Diurnal was one of your days off?” she queries.

“Oh, just headed over to AnThuk and Daughters’… a special order just came in for us from our homeworld. Laggy’s coming with me too.” I say, gesturing to my son.

She feigns shock as she says “This fine young gentleman(!) No, no(!) You must be mistaken, Bonheh(!) He could never be Lagomeer(!) He looks almost grown up(!)”

Excitedly and completely oblivious to Vatra’s humouring tone, Laggy pushes himself from his juvenile quadrupedalism and into a bipedal stance more typical of an adult, straightening his back and his legs to bring the top of his head about level with my hip and standing his ears straight up on his head “It is me, Auntie Vats! Mummy and Daddy measured me and told me I’m [49cm] the other day!”

She smirks “And how tall without the ears, Laggy?”

He looks embarrassed as he answers “…[37cm]…”

She laughs “Don’t worry, son! From the looks of your father, I’d say you have a good chance of ending up [>1m]!”

“Nooo…” he answers, confused “…Daddy’s only [94cm]!”

“You might be taller than him?” she suggests with a mischievous turn of her snout.

Lagomeer looks like his entire conception of reality is imploding at the realisation that, one day, he may be taller than either of his parents.

“And, I’m sure, when you are, you’ll wish you could go back to the days when you were only [37cm], when the world seemed so simple! Don’t forget to enjoy it while it lasts!… Anyway, much as I would love to stand around catching up all day, I’ll let you both go… I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to be careful out there.”

I smile back “You don’t, Vats… but we appreciate the sentiment. See you later!”

I turn to head toward the Warren’s exit. Lagomeer follows behind me, dropping to all fours.

We pass an oval window, around [1.1m] tall and [3.5m] wide and I stop to scan the panorama of space outside the ship, my insides tautening with anxiety.

Lagomeer hops his front legs onto the lower sill in order to see out.

“What are you looking at, Mummy?” he asks “There’s nothing there.”

“Nothing, sweetie… Mummy’s not looking at anything.” I smile, consciously relaxing myself.

Technically, what I said was only half true…

What I was looking at was an empty patch of space where, yesterday, was a Terran warship that, had it simply decided to, could have annihilated the entire space station in a matter of [minutes].

A warship that still haunts my nightmares, [30 years] since I was medically discharged from the navy.

It’s gone, it’s not there, I can rest easy… so long as I don’t think about it coming back!

The odds of the Terrans recommencing the War by surprise attacking some random space station on the far side of the galaxy from their core systems are so low that a rational person wouldn’t even consider it… Me though…

Tearing my thoughts away from the memory of the way a single one of those devil ships cut through my fleet like an incandescing plasmablade through water ice and how I went from running because I was a runner to running for my life, I turn from the window.

I step up to the exit and bring my left foot in front of Laggy’s chest, just in case he tries to bolt forward.

The door opens, revealing an enormous cylindrical leg which stamps down from high enough a height that Laggy would easily have been crushed by it.

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All the good will I feel that Xartham’s designers thought to include a place like the Warren is negated by the utterly moronic decision to have its exit open directly onto one of the busiest thoroughfares aboard!

We literally have to take our lives in our hands every time we want to enter or exit our enclave!

I poke my head from the door, quickly turning my long ears to listen left as I look right then right as I look left.

“Follow me.” I say to Lagomeer, my voice humourless and urgent enough to let him know that now is not playtime!

I dart through the crowds, keeping my left ear swivelled down and back to make sure that I can still hear the pitter-patter of his little legs behind me.

I make for a nook in the far wall that I know serves quite well as a shelter for us to catch our breath.

I’ve got a mental map of every such refuge aboard. Fortunately though, the corridors around the trading company’s warehouse are significantly less trafficked than these so, as we draw closer to it, we can slow down and don’t need to dart through gaps in the crowd and dodge and weave through deadly sets of legs so much.

Most of the giants probably didn’t notice much more than the flash of my hi-viz backpack as we ran past them.

As we come up on AnThuk and Daughters’, my ears pointing backward to listen for anyone who might be approaching us from behind, I smell something…

Oh… nooooo!

We are, almost literally, as far from Terran Space as it’s possible to get here and yet… if my nose is not deceiving me, we’ve had three ships with Terrans aboard dock within the last week!

First there were the traders who strutted about, arrogantly throwing their weight around for a few days (before seeming to leave in a hurry), then there was the litany of sailors who came aboard for shore leave from the devil ship and now…

I round the corner and my stomach sinks…

Two of them are stood at the counter with two R’qali women, a blue skinned biped with four arms and a bipedal droid.

They’re chatting to MoRas (who seems surprisingly at ease, all things considered, as her three teal eyes shift around the group).

Well, at least they don’t seem aggressive!

Gesturing Lagomeer to stand up (ostensibly for politeness) I pull his shoulders to rest against my leg as we approach.

One of the Terran's is male and one female.

They’re both enormous for their species, the female a little under [2m] and the male a little over.

The female has her long, golden head fur tied tightly into a long tail at the top back of her skull and is clad in bronze coloured armour over her legs and torso. She spares me a brief glance before turning away, seeming to have correctly judged that I could pose no threat to them, even if I wanted to!

The male has a mop of curly copper fur and a powerful build clearly apparent under his skin tight, royal blue outfit.

Unlike his companion, he doesn’t turn his head or eyes to look at me and he doesn’t falter in his conversation.

Nonetheless, every hair on my body stands up as I feel his attention rest on me by some means I can’t explain.

It’s chilling!

I almost pick up Lagomeer and bolt from the premises!

Then it passes… The pressing weight of his unmarked awareness of me and my son lifts and I breathe a silent sigh of relief.

Terrans aren’t large or oblivious enough to step on a Hjopian accidentally… If, however, they decided to step on me or Lagomeer, either of us would be no less dead than if we had been crushed under the foot of a Sho’uso, a Threndian or a Vinjirian!

“I’ve just received word that your order is ready. My cousin should be bringing it right out for you.” smiles MoRas.

Wait… smiles! How can she smile!?

Does she not realise who she’s talking to?!

She must not!

She couldn’t be so at ease if she did!

I’ll have to tell her… later… don’t want to cause them to take offence!

I know better than most what an offended Terran is capable of!

“Alright, thanks!… Guess we’ll step outta the line then.” answers the large male Terran, turning to face me, smiling while, mercifully, keeping his teeth hidden and gesturing me to go ahead to the counter.

“Thank you.” I mutter, averting my eyes downward as respectfully as I can.

With great conscious effort I manage to keep my ears pointing forward rather than tracking the Terrans with them (as my every nerve is screaming at me to do).

“I should have a delivery to collect, MoRas?” I say, forcing calm into my voice.

The pink skinned girl smiles and gestures in confirmation.

“You do, Mrs Joodie… special delivery from Hjop… I’ll just let the warehouse know to bring it out and-By the STARS!”

Her three teal eyes flash up to look at something behind me.

My ears swivel back, ahead of the rest of my head.

In that moment, I become aware of two things; Lagomeer is no longer at my side and one of the Terrans is moving… fast!

Then I hear a noise that causes my whole body to freeze in fear.

*CRASH*

---MaThal’s perspective---

Stars! Stars! Stars!! Stars!!! STARS!!!

I’ve just killed someone!

I was just driving the loader from the warehouse to the shopfront to deliver some goods when a [2m] tall biped sprinted to throw his entire body in front of the vehicle!

The whole thing stopped dead in a way I would have imagined it would have taken the inertia of an adult male Ulat or female Spelvuk to achieve!

The front of the loader is crushed from the impact!

I’m surprised the relatively gracile alien had quite so much mass!

But, however sturdily he was built, there is simply no surviving an impact with [hundreds of kilos] of vehicle, travelling at [tens of kilometres an hour]!

I’ve killed a man!

Then, my vehicle shakes.

I look around for the cause but see nothing!

“Aaaaaaaaah!” I shriek as a bloody, five fingered hand appears from in front of the crumpled bonnet.

It digs into the metal panelling, deforming it further as a mess of copper hair is pulled into view ahead of a grimacing face.

Too terrified to scream at the rows of white teeth bared at me beneath a vertical nose and two bright green eyes, I sit there and breathe rapidly.

“You’re… on… my… leg!” he growls at me through his gritted teeth.

“Do… you want me to reverse?”

“NO you moron! Get out!”

I panic as I hurriedly and clumsily begin extracting myself from the vehicle.

“Samus, Twila, Tuun, lift this thing off me please!” growls the man to his companions as they approach.

The two women and droid quickly and seamlessly take positions around the front of the loader and hook beneath it with their hands.

Just as I’m thinking what they’re attempting to be impossible, the three of them lift the vehicle around [30cm] into the air between them! It seemed to take zero effort from anyone but the blue skinned one with the four arms!

The man shuffles forward and sits up, his back facing me and his left arm cradling something I can’t see.

At a loss, I begin “Why did you jump…?!”

But I’m cut off by screams of “Lagomeer!? Lagomeer!?!?!?” from a Hjopian woman I recognise.

Bonheh Joodie runs right up to the unfamiliar biped with the copper hair.

Her face is coloured by sheer terror!

The man turns to her, revealing what he holds.

In his pentadactyl hand is the rump of a tiny creature covered in lilac fur with pale blue splotches.

The Hjopian infant seems dazed but unharmed as the miraculously alive alien takes him in both hands and proffers him to his mother.

I understand now.

I was about to run over Lagomeer Joodie and, far from suicidally throwing himself in front of my vehicle, this man jumped in to save him!

Did he even know he would survive it, though?

The Joodie woman falters a moment before taking her son from the man more than twice her size and (if the destruction of my vehicle is anything to go by) dozens of times her mass!

Overcoming her hesitation, she takes her son from him and gives a heartfelt “Thank you, Sir! I can’t thank you enough!!!”

“You alright, you idiot?” smirks a golden haired biped of a similar looking species to the copper haired one.

The man shakes his face from side to side before answering “Nope! Pretty sure I got a cracked rib from that!”

That’s absurd!

If his rib were cracked, he would be convulsing in shock right now if he hadn’t already died from it!

“Is it one of the places Thran broke, baby?” whimpers the blue skinned one with four arms.

Another side to side head wobble from the man “New one. Not as bad!”

He’s had broken ribs before?! He’s had worse than that that he got from an impact with a vehicle!?

“Don’t think I’m gonna be much help with the stuff… could one of you take me backta the ship?”

“No, Victor…” begins the droid, startling me “…I’ve got a hovertrolley already on its way, wait here for that and you can lie down and ride it back. It’s probably best if you don’t walk anywhere right now!… I’ve already let the medics know.”

This time the man wobbles his face up and down as he answers “Good thinkin’, Twila.”

Agog, I stare across the group.

For the first time, I notice the two R’qali women standing in the back.

One of them is staring at the scene, her beak hanging open, seeming to be at just as much of a loss as I am!

The other is staring at the first with an expression flagged as smug satisfaction!

What is happening right now!?