Preparations
Alwen watched in confusion as Terran sailors bounced a ball between the two ships and tried to figure out the rules to the game, if there were any. As best as she could tell they were all just content to bounce the ball back and forth like children. When the ball fell to the hanger floor fifty or sixty meters below they all groaned, and someone produced a new ball. She was only watching to make sure no one jumped in after the ball.
They had all been confined to the Hellworlder hanger for the week before the trial officially took place. Alwen wasn’t too disgruntled over that decision, the trips into the rest of the station weren’t really that entertaining. Alwen had no context for all the stalls that sold illegal and illicit substances since it all looked equally alien to her. Though she did find a grey bipedal alien called a Ceshix selling tea leaves, though she got the impression that tea had a more narcotic effect on his people from how he talked about it. He tried to convert her to worshipping one of his own gods by introducing her to a post and insisting it was Krell, whoever that was.
The arena and gambling dens were a little more impressive than the street venders, but they really weren’t the kind of thing Alwen usually went in for. And Gato had refused to go into any of the pit fighting dens. Beyond the strange tea merchant this station didn’t have anything else that could really intrigue her, so was happy to spend this last week getting used to the heavy and restrictive armor the Terrans wore into battle.
She had expected more push back when she had decided to join Gato and his team in the gallery at the trial. She knew the Terrans had plans that could result in something going horribly wrong, it was apparent in the way they all tensed their shoulders and how their eyes seemed colder and more focused lately. She had expected Gato and Astarte to say ‘hell no’, but instead the Captain looked her up and down and ordered a set of standard armor to be made for her. Gato then took it on himself to teach Alwen how to work all the complicated straps and magnetic seals, how to arrange the ‘waste plumbing’ without getting a rash. And the worst part was the ‘bra’ she had to wear. The Terran women had been pushing her to adopt the hellish clothing for months now, ever since she had flashed everyone back on Femeri. She had always refused since she didn’t see a point in it, but now that she had to wear the standard armor of the Hellworlders Alwen had no choice but to accept wearing the evil thing.
Just wearing the armor was exhausting despite how light weight it was and she had to retrain her body to get used to the way it moved with all that extra weight and the way it restricted her movements. Gato had set up a large obstacle course beneath the ships and had her running it day and night, stopping only when some dumbass broke their legs on the rope swing after smacking into the Beelzebub’s side. In a show of solidarity Limey brought out Sin team to run the course right alongside her, and after a while Alice and Virtue team oined them.
As soon as she had gotten the hang of the course, Gato switched up all the obstacles and she had to start from scratch. And whenever they got bored of running drills they broke up into sparring matches and Alwen got to actually use Makaze in combat, three months of training wasn’t enough to put her on level footing with Gato, and certainly not with the captain. But it had at least made her competent enough to work one on one with the other marines, and whenever she trained against other equally unexperienced Torweni she was able to win a match or two.
Her brother’s crew had viewed her with curiosity at first, and even a bit of reverence. She knew they were mentally comparing her to Kalwen and their father. They were nice enough, but Alwen didn’t like the reminder of the people she always had to measure up to, so she kept her distance from them.
She felt the railing bend around her as someone else begun to lean against it, she turned and saw the massive shape of Gato beside her. “Any injuries yet?” He asked smoothly.
“None yet, and you shouldn’t sneak up on people” she grumbled.
“I didn’t, you were just so ingulfed in your own little world that you didn’t notice me approaching.” He shifted his weight to his other leg which drew Alwens attention to the bag at his waist.
“What’s in the bag?”
He glanced down to the bag and then back up to her “A present” he said coyly, his fierce feline face twisting into a slight smile.
Alwen blinked in confusion, “A present for me, what’s the occasion?”
“You’re going into battle tomorrow, for real this time. I thought it was about time for you to be properly equipped.” He passed over the duffle bag.
Alwen opened it to find a belt with a finely made handgun and several clips of ammo, and a loop for her to slide Makaze through. She unholstered the gun and examined it, careful not to point it at anyone “This looks expensive” she remarked
“There’s a man hidden in the bowels of this shit hole who collects and sells fancy things, I went to see if he had anything that might bring down an Aunviry easier and thought of you when I saw this. I also found this” he said pulling a purple and silver talisman from his pocket.
“Is, is that a Bora?” she asked.
“I think so, he said it was a Torweni charm for good luck. Not sure if he was telling the truth or how he even got one.”
She took it from his hand and examined the intricate thread work and beads of the Bora, it looked authentic. She wasn’t sure how a back ally merchant on a pirate station got ahold of one, but she had a suspicion it was taken off a Torweni slave before they were sold off to an uncaring alien master. The base color was a rich purple, with the silver thread making the symbol of Orath, a champion of both the war god Torwen and her own Lady Ashendra. “It looks real, it’s a charm of Orath. She was an ancient warrior who died defending a temple of healers, her symbol is usually meant to grant protection and health, we also use it to mark healer’s graves.”
“Really, I just thought it looked neat, purple for your violet skin, and silver for you hair.” He said softly. Alwen blushed a little at his tone. “He told me it’s supposed to be braided into the persons hair, would you like me to help with that?”
Alwen chuckled “He was half right; Bora’s are usually only worn by men. My hair is much too short to braid it in properly.” Gato looked confused. “Torweni men usually have longer hair than women, I noticed that its sort of reversed with Terrans.”
“Really?” He asked bewilderedly as he brushed his jet-black fur.
“Yeah, when I first met Karega I thought it was the same for Terrans, but then I met the Captain and mistook her for man because her hair was so long.” Alwen explained with a smile.
Gato nodded “I see, so you won’t be able to wear it then?” he tried to keep his voice even, but his drooping ears told her he was disappointed.
Alwen pursed her lips, “Maybe” she said cryptically as she began to fiddle with the worn and frayed leather of Wraith’s old sword belt, she passed the old belt to Gato and took the new gun belt and slid it tight around her waist. She reached for the Bora and tied the charm through a loop near where Makaze would sit. “There, how does it look?”
Gato chuckled “it looks fine, you should tighten it up though, so it doesn’t get in the way”
She fiddled with the cords until it was tightly secured by her side. “Thank you, this makes me feel a little more confident about tomorrow.”
He frowned “About that, why are you joining us anyway? Last I heard you didn’t want to become a marine and go into battle, what changed?”
“Besides three months worth of grueling training and footwork?” she asked wryly.
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“I’m being serious” he growled.
She watched his face to get a good read on how he felt about her joining them, he seemed apprehensive but didn’t seem like he would stop her. “To be honest, I don’t know. Last year the idea of me in plate mail with a gun at my hip ready to storm a pirate stronghold with a bunch of alien space pirates would have seemed ridiculous. I don’t want to hurt people, but these guys hurt the people I care about. If I have to break my vows I might as well do it protecting something precious right? I don’t feel right killing people just because I already broke my vows once, but killing them seems morally okay. They’re literally the worst scum the galaxy has to offer.” She cupped her elbows into her palms. In her head she wasn’t sure if this was the right thing to do, but in her heart it felt right. And maybe it was time to start ignoring what her head thought and listen to her heart more.
Gato looked at her for a longtime before he sighed “To kill the wicked, or protect the innocent. On some level they are one and the same, but protecting the innocent by killing the wicked doesn’t make what we do any easier. Killing is wrong, it taints the soul and spreads more pain and grief. But when the alternative is looking away and letting evil win, then what choice is there? If you ask me, a man has to look within themselves and gauge how much of their soul they are willing to part with for the greater good, knowing it will break them in ways that can never be undone.”
Alwen thought about what he said, “And how much of yourself did you choose to give away?”
“By the time I had a choice my soul was already long gone.” he said softly.
Alwen looked at him for a moment reached up to his head and laid a sympathetic hand on his cheeck “For what it’s worth, I still think you have something worth protecting still. A little piece of yourself that you haven’t lost yet.” She smiled and turned to walk back into the ship.
~~~*~~~
Gato watched as Vi walked back into the ship, that new belt doing wonderful things for her hips. He was glad he had it made.
There was a man living in the bowels of this cesspit who collected and sold rare and luxurious items, but Gato hadn’t gone to him for the belt and gun. He had ventured alone into a market close to the Aunviry quarter and spoke with a gunsmith who made a small fortune from commissions. He had the man make the gun and belt specifically for Alwen. He had seen the Torweni men from the Asmodeus wearing the ‘boras’ and had asked if anyone had a spare. He didn’t know that they were just a thing men wore, and in hindsight he should have asked them more before buying one off of them.
He had been training Alwen one on one for months now and he thought that the guns and charm could give her the confidence boost she would need to get through tomorrow. She was so kind and alive, she shouldn’t have to fight, but if this was the path she had chosen then he would support her.
He wasn’t sure if he really believed what he said about choosing what parts of your soul to give away, he was just quoting something Wendy had said to him long ago. Back when he was little more than a feral beast with no purpose.
Back then he was just an animal fighting in pits for other ‘peoples’ amusement, they had caught him as a cub and made him fight other bigger animals. He could have escaped anytime he wanted after he was fully grown, but he never did. Life outside the pits seemed too complicated, in the pit it was only about the survival of the fittest, the biggest fighter winning and killing their opponent. But when he was sold to a new boss in LA his life took a drastic change, because that was when he met Wendy and Alice.
They were working for the local police and had busted the ring and killed the pit bosses. When they came into the pens where the beasts were all held Gato had simply thought they were just some new opponents, or new people who would hurt him, but he was wrong. They freed him and took him back to their base and tried to make a man out of an animal, maybe if they were both human it wouldn’t have worked. But they were both Feliniods like him, and they walked and talked like any other human, and showed him there was another way to live.
He would never forget how they taught him to cage the animal within and be a proper man. And every day he fought for the Astaroth he did so to repay his debt to them. To repay his debt and to protect their beautiful dream, their dream for a better future.
And now he would be fighting harder than ever to protect Alwen, to protect the beautiful innocence and kindness she still had within her.
~~~*~~~
Alwen checked the x-ray image of the snipe who had broken their leg on the rope swing, she had set it right and the miraculous bone pills the Terrans had access to were doing wonders. If all went well he would be back on his feet within a week or two. It was the last bit of normal medical work she had to do before what ever was going to go down tomorrow.
“So long as you don’t try anything stupid again you should be up and moving within half a month” She said calmly.
The snipe groaned “Half a month spent on my ass”
“You wouldn’t need to spend anytime in bed if you had been a little smarter. For a man with degrees in engineering and quantum physics you should have known that this could only end poorly” She chided. When she worked with an entire hospital’s worth of patients Alwen could generally muster much more patience and kindness in her ministrations, but these were all people she had been slowly getting to know over the course of half a year. She had once seen this man make a RC helicopter out of spare parts in the mess deck, only for it to immediately nosedive into her mashed potatoes and ruin her dinner.
He hung his head and hobbled out of the med-bay on his new crutches. Alwen watched him go and sighed heavily to herself. “Bad enough they go into combat on a regular basis, but do they have to add stupid stunts on top of all that?” She asked towards Bachir.
She got no response.
“Doctor Bachir?” still nothing. She got up and rushed over to where he was staring blankly at a computer screen “Doctor Bachir!” she shouted as the worst possible thing came to mind.
Bachir jolted and growled at Alwen “You don’t need to shout Dr. Djani"
“Sorry, when you didn’t respond I thought something bad had happened” She said in embarrassment.
“I’m not that old, I’m just a little drowsy. Must be hibernation time” He said with a huge yawn.
“Hibernation?”
“Yes, you likely don’t get it on Torwen since your world isn’t as tilted as Earth, you likely get milder seasons than we do. Due to the tilt in Earth’s rotation we get to experience extreme temperature fluctuations, for half the year many places on earth get frozen over with temperatures close to zero degrees Celsius. My non-sapient ancestors would pack on a lot of fat and then sleep through the cold.”
Alwen felt shocked, temperatures like that were only found in the artic and freezers. “So you need to sleep for half a year.”
He chuckled “No, the uplifting process lessened that instinct. Nowadays us Ursiloids only get a little drowsy and lethargic in the winter. I used to be able to resist it when I was younger, but now my age is catching up with me.”
“Is that why you want to retire?” Alwen asked. She hadn’t brought it up since Kalwen had let it slip.
He glanced at her suspiciously “Who told you?”
“Kalwen”
He looked confused then shook his head “That little brat needs to mind his own business.”
“So it’s true then?” She asked crestfallenly.
“A little, life on the Astaroth is fun but also very exhausting. I’m an old bear and I’ve been thinking about retirement for years now, I was holding off until Astarte found a suitable replacement.”
“Which was supposed to be me?”
He grunted and went back to his work.
Alwen stared at his broad furry shoulders for a while before she asked something that had been on her mind for a while. “Why did the humans uplift the Ursiloids and Feliniods, and all the others?”
When she had first heard about the disturbing details of taking a non-sapient wild animal and drastically warping its physical and mental state until it resembled humanity she had been a little too disturbed to ask why or how. But now she had gotten to know Alice, Gato, and Bachir, she really wanted to know the answer.
“They didn’t” he growled. He spun his chair around and focused both of his black beady eyes on her. “It was the Union.”
Alwen furrowed her eyebrows, “that’s not right. Most people told me that it was irresponsible humans, the same kind who had spliced their DNA with other animals”
He harumphed “That’s the official story, but I have PHD’s in genetics and neurology. I always wanted to better understand what had been done to us, and I had a suspicion that there was something off about the official reports concerning the uplifted Mammaloids that began mysteriously appearing on earth. The changes were too clean to be done by the same amateurs who had given themselves cat ears and lizard scales, we didn’t have the same genetic abnormalities the descendants of variants experienced. And many interviews done with the recently uplifted revealed they had no memory of something happening to them, the metamorphosis just started happening one day. Wild animals with little to no contact with humans also experienced the change. The facts just didn’t line up with the narrative we were fed, so I began to do some digging into our genetic code. I examined hundreds of thousands of samples and began to assemble a new complete genome of the Mammaloid species and compared it to what it was before. It took years of hard work and I had to stop my research many times to work on other more fruitful projects, but eventually I discovered a single clue. A genetic marker similar to the one left by DPDV-27”
DPDV-27 stood for deathworld pathogen disabling virus. It was a cheap aerosolized retro virus that entered a Terrans system and genetically altered every viral pathogen in their body so that it couldn’t jump the species barrier and infect non-deathworlders. It’s what the Union pumped into stations to prevent viral outbreaks at the expense of the pathogen’s carriers. Outright exterminating every possible pathogen would be deadly to the hosts, and curing every one of them was far too difficult. So the Union just restricted the diseases to Terrans.
“It wasn’t exactly the same though” Bachir continued “It was a modified version that began a series of changes within anyone it infected and then eliminated itself to hide the evidence. The modified version was far too sophisticated to be done in human labs at the time, even now it is impossible for us to modify DPDV-27 with the genetic safeguards in place. It would have been impossible for humans to do something as complex as this even with support from every world government, they just didn’t have the technology. That leaves only one other culprit.”
“The Union” Alwen finished. “But why would they do something like this. I like you Dr. Bachir and I’m glad to have met you, but drastically warping entire species of animals seems highly amoral”
“No offense taken, I enjoy my life and I like that I can think, but I feel rage and indignation on behalf of my nameless ancestors for what was done to them. As for why, I’m not sure. The Captain believes it might be to create racial tensions, humans had spent years eliminating bigotry from their society, to varying lengths of success. The creation of a race of powerful predators that harbor deep set hatred for humanity has certainly drummed up the racial tensions. The only native Earth fauna to be uplifted were large mammalian predators, no horses, moose, or birds. That surly cannot be a coincidence.”
“So the Union went through all that trouble just to create race wars.” Alwen crossed her arms unimpressed.
Bachir sighed “I don’t know, I never got to fully pursue my research like I wanted. When I presented my findings to academic circles I was promptly stripped of my title and my job, despite my tenure, and was deported to Earth. I didn’t even get a hearing. I worked in back alleys to pay rent until Astarte tracked me down and offered me a job I couldn’t refuse.” He looked dejected at the last part. And Alwen could understand why.
He had spent his life searching for what really happened to his ancestors, earned several PHD’s in pursuit of it, and devoted a lifetime to his research. Only for him to lose everything when he had finally learned the shocking truth.
Now his only hope for continuing his work laid in working on a pirate ship, despite his old age.
Alwen sighed and set down her clipboard before walking over to Bachir. He was so tall sitting down, that she didn’t even have to crouch down to give her mentor a hug. He was shocked for a second before he gently hugged her back, careful not to hurt her with his claws. Even though he put up a brave face, Alwen knew that deep inside he was angry with the unfairness of it all.
Once the embrace reached a point that just felt ‘right’, he let her go and they both returned to their work as if nothing had happened.