Memory Transcription Subject: Chief Executive Officer Sifal, Seaglass Mineral Concern

  Date [standardized human time]: January 27, 2137

  The med bay, like everywhere else on Seaglass, had been built with later expansion in mind. Architecturally, it was a small hospital, same as you'd find on any space station or fab-on-site command center. Except space stations didn't use concrete, and the last time the Arxur Dominion occupied territory long enough to need to build a base facility was during our humanitarian efforts to help humanity.

  But the building itself was a maze of dark hallways and empty rooms. Maybe a desk and chairs here, or a few spare hospital beds there. Nothing needed, not until another few dozen doctors and a few thousand civilians immigrated to the colony. Tika led me into a room with couches. Gloomy and secluded. I felt a little more relaxed already without all the light and sound of prey and medical instruments flittering around.

  Tika clambered up onto one of the couches, and gestured towards the other. “Please, have a seat.” I let the breathable synthetic fabric upholstery brush against my scales as I settled in. The simple tactile sensation grounded me. I couldn't fully relax, though. The tension kept me sitting fully upright, perhaps even leaning forward a little. My tail was a little too big to fit comfortably through the gap in the backrest anyway, so this afforded me the space to let it swish freely to the side. It needed to rest a bit after last night anyway.

  The little Zurulian doctor tousled her fur into something a bit more tidy, and pulled out her holopad with a notetaking app open. “Before we get into your particular troubles, Sifal,” she began, “would it be alright if I asked you a few questions about Arxur society? It would help me to understand the context of what’s come to pass.”

  I nodded, and took a sip of my tea. “Ask away.”

  “What was your childhood like?” Tika asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders awkwardly as I stared into the wafting steam from my mug. “I don't know. Pretty normal, I suppose. I was raised by my aunt, so better off than a ward of the state, less good than being raised by my parents.”

  “Oh, I'm sorry to hear that,” said Tika, making some notes. “I’ve known several colleagues over the years who grew up in similar circumstances. It's not uncommon in the Federation to be raised by relatives after the parents have passed away.”

  “Huh?” I said, confused. “No, my parents are fine, I think. They just didn't want me around anymore.”

  Tika froze up for a moment in shock. “I see…” she continued. “Is, uh, parental abandonment common in the Arxur Dominion?”

  “I think so?” I guessed. “I don’t know. My colleagues and I don’t really talk to each other much. Certainly not about our childhoods, I don’t think. You’d get singled out as a sentimental weakling and bullied by the entire crew.”

  Tika turned even paler. “Is… bullying commonplace on Arxur ships?”

  “Oh, definitely,” I said, at last back in the comfortable territory of the known. “My former captain used to beat us bruised and bloody. Even most of the rank and file would take a bit of stress out on whoever was nearby and an easy victim.”

  Tika’s eyes went wide. “And is that, um… is that an outlet you took advantage of yourself?”

  “Rarely, as a child, when instructed to by teachers, but like…” I took a sip of my tea and only caught the tail end of Tika incredulously repeating the phrase ‘instructed to’ under her breath. “I dunno. It never really appealed to me, personally. I came up from engineering, so I was always fairly dedicated to finding root-cause sources of problems. If one of my superiors was being a petty tyrant, smacking my assistants around wasn’t going to change that. It’d just make resentful assistants, which would make my job harder.”

  “That’s… a healthy attitude to take,” said Tika, bleakly. “It shows a lot of empathy.”

  My eyes lit up as I remembered. “Oh, right, Kloviss mentioned you guys can just test for empathy? I’d love to know more about that. I hand-selected every Arxur on this mission for defectiveness…” I perked up even further. “Oh, right, I should probably explain defective Arxur. I think it might be our version of your ‘Predator Disease’, but it’s got the polarity reversed, so it’s a bit more like ‘Prey Disease’. Arxur who lack any instinctual taste for cruelty, essentially. Now, obviously, we all have our different coping strategies to fake it--I focused on my career as an engineer, for example, and mostly got away with coming off as too level-headed and efficiency-minded to waste time hurting people--but I learned during my time on Earth that being cognizant of how others perceive you is part and parcel of having genuine empathy. I even got to study a bit of how humans, as highly-social pack predators, use empathy in warfare!”

  Tika’s jaw had fully dropped at this point. Was I giving her enough information to work with? She held a paw up for me to wait as she tapped out notes for nearly a full minute. I was excited, but I waited patiently. This tea was nice. I think it was caffeinated, but it tasted different from the one I’d had at the company cafe yesterday morning. More floral. I tried to remember the identifying scents of various esters and ketones from my organic chemistry classes, but it had been fully ages since I’d used that knowledge, so most of it was gone.

  “Okay,” said Tika, more cowed and timid than she’d been even chained up in the mines. “Just to clarify, you would describe the Arxur currently inhabiting Seaglass as somewhat unusual in how tame they are?”

  I blinked. “I mean… yeah? Aside from Kitzz--he got to stay because he was too injured to move, and one of our best surgeons besides--the Seaglass Arxur are pretty much the twenty most empathetic Arxur that I, Vriss, and Laza could scrounge up. It’s a fairly literal selection bias.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “And um…” said Tika. “Why, exactly, did you do that?”

  I did a double-take. “Because… that makes them the most suited to living amongst prey? That’s the whole point of this mission, on our end. If the Arxur are going to join… well, probably not the Federation, but whatever Human-led coalition comes after it, then we need to learn to coexist with prey, don’t we? Start with the easy prey… sorry, the low-hanging fruit…” I shook my head and reset. “Start with the Arxur most temperamentally inclined towards coexistence, encourage that until it’s normalized for them, and then let social pressures help reinforce it once new Arxur get introduced to the population. I mean, look, even the kindest Arxur hunters on Seaglass are still socialized to performatively engage in cruelty so they won’t get targeted or victimized themselves. I need to start cultivating an Arxur Rebellion counter-culture based on kindness and empathy to oppose the Arxur Dominion’s mainstream cruelty, then hopefully start spreading it to my people at large.”

  Tika blinked and put her holopad down. “This is astonishingly well-thought out,” she said, wide-eyed and teetering.

  “Yeah, well, I’m guessing they took your Terran literature away when you were in custody,” I said modestly. “I’ve had the luxury of binging it continuously for the past few months.”

  “Let’s, um…” Tika said, rubbing her paws on her face. “Let’s circle back to your childhood. Your parents… did they love each other, at least?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I only ever saw them a few times, and rarely in the same room as each other.”

  “Did your parents dislike each other?” Tika pressed.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think they really thought about each other much at all. The Dominion doesn’t really encourage love or relationships. Emotional connections, relying on others… that is weakness. Some elites, sure, they have their arranged pedigrees, I suppose. Breeding contracts, inter-familial alliances… it’s mostly political, though, not… romantic, as you’d consider them.”

  Tika’s snout rankled in confusion. “So you probably wouldn’t describe the Arxur, generally, as monogamous?” The unspoken question hung in the air. ‘Wait, then what’s the problem?’

  I stiffened up. “Not… generally…” I said, my breath catching. “But Vriss and I… Sorry, I don’t think you met him, Tika. Commodore Vriss, my commanding officer. We were close. Very close. I was his right hand, and we plotted together in secret. Our little conspiracy for a brighter future.” I chuckled a bit to myself sadly. “And it was a secret. I don’t think the other Arxur would understand it yet. You herbivores with your herds might get it, or even humans with their packs and tribes… We Arxur are just so self-condemned to solitude by comparison. The very idea of putting someone else’s needs above your own is an alien concept for us.” My hands clenched around my rapidly-cooling mug. “But it was a concept that meant the world to Vriss and I.”

  Tika nodded. “And that’s where this worry is coming from.”

  I nodded back. “I suppose so. Look, as I said before, it was horrible, living under the Dominion. Vriss and I… We had each others’ backs when no one else would. He trusted me with his life. Literally! The day we mutinied, when we killed our former captain and joined the Rebellion, he gambled everything on a leap of blind faith in me. Unthinkable for an Arxur. But he trusted me, and everything changed because of it. That’s why…” I shook my head. “I haven’t felt guilt like this since Earth. Since…” I sighed, looking up at the little Zurulian. She looked like a funny little bear cub. I was probably going to need to explain that to her sooner or later, why I had so many complex feelings tied up with the idea of prey being people, and my guilt for having eaten them…

  “It certainly sounds like it’s been tough for you,” said Tika, a bittersweet smile on her face. “I think it might be healthy for you to take a moment to reflect, and to appreciate that you’ve survived. I can empathize. I know, from my own experiences these past few months trying to speak out against the Federation, that it is… a rare miracle, to be able to take a stand against such tyrannies and come out the other side, with your life and wellbeing intact.”

  ---------------------------------

  Memory Transcription Subject: Sopa, Mazic Aquaculturist

  Date [standardized human time]: January 27, 2137

  I hadn’t been thrilled, waking up this early, but Mira was determined that this morning was the day our Exterminator Militia would take its first stand against the tyrannies of the Arxur occupation of Seaglass. It was barely past sunrise, and Cowlin’s cousin, the orderly, was just finishing his overnight shift at the medical bay. We just had to wait for his signal that we were all clear to slip inside and free Garruga…

  “Oh, it’s you lot again,” came a horrible hissing growl behind me that made the hairs on my back stand on end. “Good morning,” said Sifal, bleary-eyed. “Everything alright?”

  “Uhhhhh!” I said, unsure of where I could flee to. “Cowlin’s cousin’s shift is just ending?” Shit, too honest! “We were… going to take him to breakfast?”

  Sifal nodded. The gods themselves spared us, that she was too tired to be stirred to violence. “Sounds lovely. Enjoy.”

  The Arxur commander walked away past us, and we watched her go until she was nearly out of sight… “Shit!” shouted Bori. “Cowlin, get your cousin outta there, now!”

  Cowlin looked to Mira, who nodded. “Safety first,” Mira said. “We’ll just have to bide our time. The Arxur will leave the room eventually, right?”

  Cowlin nodded. “We’ll stay by the back window. I’ll signal when the coast is clear.”

  “I’m going to keep watch from the roof,” Mira said, decisively. “It’s open tarmac for miles. We can’t let the mission get derailed by another Arxur sneaking up on us. Sopa, you have the command.”

  Me?! I glanced anxiously at Bori, the only other person left with me by the front door. Bori glanced back and shrugged. “Act casual, I guess?” he suggested.

  The two of us tried our best to look like a pair of inconspicuous loiterers--difficult, standing by the front door of the hospital--as Debbin and his new assistant filtered past us with an awkward wave to us apiece.

  A soft whistle came from overhead, and my translator chip turned it into words. “Two Arxur, still in the rocks, but approaching the tarmac,” called out Mira. “Maybe fifteen minutes out?”

  Cowlin dashed back over to us. “The Arxur commander just moved further inside the complex with the Zurulian,” he whisper-shouted. “It’s now or never.”

  Bori did a double-take. “Shit. Should we try to rescue the doctor, too?”

  More pointed whistling from above. “She’s a PD Patient,” said Mira. “Unideal, but acceptable losses. Move in, I’ll keep watch.”

  “Behind me,” I said bravely. Fear gripping my heart or no, I was the largest and the strongest. Bori and Cowlin formed up, and I charged in through the front door. It slammed open, sending all the Nevoks inside jumping halfway to the ceiling in fright.

  “The fuck are you doing, Sopa?!” shouted Chairman Debbin, settling back into his chair. “Ancestors spare me, woman, the door was unlocked!”