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

  Date [standardized human time]: January 25, 2137

  The troops had mixed reactions to Laza’s commissary plans. Vriss was generally considered trustworthy, as were Laza and I, but Betterment in general had a mediocre track record. “We’ll pay you later, honest!” was a sentence frequently followed by “And you believed us? Let that be a lesson in cruelty and cunning.” Most of the hunters reluctantly accepted their store credit chits, but the people who’d been burned before had trouble trusting again. In their case, though, it turned out that lots of little knick-knacks were still available on site if you put in the work to scrounge around. It was a company spaceport, after all. Everything from tools to pencil cases to a fancy polymer bandolier straight off of a Takkan security guard’s hips got pilfered. I immediately took a hint and grabbed one myself, frankly. My current bandolier had been “pre-Rebellion leather”, which was bad optics. In any event, the rewards were all approved and noted, except for the one chucklefuck who thought an incendiary grenade was something we’d let her keep in her bunk. She had to put that back.

  A few long goodbyes later--and a particularly long and lingering one with Vriss; I was going to miss him terribly--Debbin and I piled into an air transport to flit over to the mines. I had Laza with me for security, plus a couple extra guards, but most of our twenty pioneers were left at the spaceport with instructions to set up some hab facilities and get themselves comfortably situated. Long-term, I wanted them to live in the main settlement alongside the prey, but… well, that level of acclimation wasn’t going to happen overnight. Besides, we Arxur had a far more solitary streak to us than humans did. Even once they’d gotten used to spending time with prey, there were going to be Arxur who just wanted a quiet home in the suburbs, and to visit the city only occasionally.

  I’d made a point to snatch up Zillis as one of my guards for the day. Face to face, the runt looked exactly how she had sounded on the radio: a scrawny klutz who got bullied for being rankless and a terrible raider. My hunch was that she’d make a competent pilot someday, but nobody recommended weaklings for pilot school. You’d think that piloting a spaceship would be the one job that wouldn’t require much in the way of hand-to-hand combat skill, but that just wasn’t how Betterment did things. If you couldn’t prove yourself as a raider first, you were weak and unworthy, and officer training of any stripe would be wasted on you. The bile was rising in my throat just remembering the adolescent years I myself had lost living through that frustration, scrabbling around on the ground like an animal until I’d distinguished myself enough to earn my seat at the engineering academy. Towards Zillis, at least, it was stirring something maternal in me, so I kept her in my protective sights for now. She was nervously smiling at everyone around her, like she hoped that presenting a positive attitude might make her look less punchable to anyone looking for a stress outlet. That was wishful thinking on her part.

  “So… how are you holding up?” asked Debbin, apropos of nothing. He was strapped into the seat next to me while some other Nevok piloted. Fucker stole the window seat, too, even if I could easily see over him. I think he just wasn’t comfortable yet with sitting within arm’s reach of any other Arxur besides myself. As for me, I was just thankful that the Federation featured a couple herbivores with some heft to them. I don’t think I could have fit into a transport seat designed solely for Nevoks. The weird little hind-hooved lagomorphs weren’t particularly small by Federation standards, and only a little smaller than a human, but nearly everyone on two legs was towered over by the average Arxur.

  “Reeling a bit, I guess,” I replied. “Bit of a big change for me. Fine overall, though.”

  “Right, but I mean, uhhh…” Debbin began, hesitantly. “We’re heading to a major mineral extraction area. Lots of herbivores trying to put in a hard day’s work. Just making sure you’ve still got your bloodlust under control.”

  I sighed. Ah, this particular shit. I hadn’t experienced the anti-predator propaganda much myself, thankfully, aside from a couple of hysterical Zurulians medics back on Earth, but all the reports I’d read on human attempts at diplomacy had given me migraines by proxy. I had no idea how the U.N. put up with it and kept coming back for more. “Alright, Debbin… how long is it going to take to reach the mines?”

  Debbin tilted his head, confused why I’d seemingly dodged his question. “Only ten minutes or so. Why do you ask?”

  “Alright. Do me a huge favor then,” I said, already slightly tired by this topic. “Let’s just lightning round this. Get all the stupid questions out of your system, quick as you can, and then put it in a pamphlet or something so I don’t have to repeat myself to everyone I meet. Sound good?”

  Debbin snorted. “Alright. First question: per previous, how’s your bloodlust holding together?”

  “It’s a non-issue if I’ve eaten recently,” I said. “We had a big meal right before we landed. Standard procedure nowadays for nonviolent surface missions. We should all be good for most of the day at this rate.”

  Debbin blinked. “You’re, ah, not going to deny experiencing bloodlust when you are hungry?”

  “No?” I said, confused. “You know what I eat. Hungry people get the urge to eat. You can kind of ignore it, but when you get hungry enough, the urge gets overwhelming.”

  “That… no, that hasn’t been true to my life experience,” said Debbin, looking at me askance.

  I snorted. “Because you’re an herbivore, or because you’re rich? Have you ever, even once in your life, gone hungry?”

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  “I mean, certainly not enough to murder someone over it,” he muttered.

  I abruptly leaned in towards him, looming. He tried to stand his ground, but his ears betrayed him and fell back. “Imagine you haven’t eaten in ten days,” I said, my voice echoing hollowly through the aircraft’s cabin. “You’ve been counting them off. There’s a dull ache in the pit of your stomach from how empty it is. Your head is swimming and you’re turning woozy from the lack of energy. Despite that fatigue, you can barely sleep most nights because your instincts are screaming at you to go out and forage for something, anything, that might be edible. You’re starting to wonder if gnawing on wood might let you suck something nutritious out of it, or at least the sawdust that your teeth grind away might make you feel a little less empty for a while. You run into a Fissan who’s in the same situation as you. But he’s got a piece of fruit, a huge juicy melon the size of your head, and refuses to share. Not a bite. Says he’ll die if he doesn’t eat it. But you’re starting to think you’ll die, too, if you don’t eat it.” I licked my lips. “If I handed you a gun right now, how dead is the Fissan?”

  Debbin stared at me in silence for a long moment. “It’s only armed robbery if I don't pull the trigger,” he muttered under his breath.

  “And armed robbery is legal on your homeworld?”

  Debbin shook his head hollowly and changed the subject. “So what did you eat for breakfast?” he asked, pointedly not asking “who?”

  “A whole chicken,” I said honestly, as I leaned back in my seat. The rocky ground flew past us out the window. “It’s a dumb flightless bird from Earth. Non-sapient. Little bit smaller than a Krakotl. Pretty popular ration choice these days. They’re about bite-sized for us, so it’s convenient.”

  “How often do you need to eat?”

  I shrugged. “Once or twice a day is plenty. Most of us are used to eating once or twice a week, which is miserable, but endurable.” There were some reflexive nods and grimaces from the other Arxur at that last bit. Poor Zillis had been looking pale ever since my vivid hypothetical towards Debbin. But everyone present had stories about the misery of enduring hunger. Not a one of us had been part of the elite bloodlines of Betterment.

  The Nevok squinted at me suspiciously. “Where are you getting your food from?”

  “Human-made bioreactors,” I said simply. “They can clone animal parts that haven’t ever been technically alive. It’s worked well for humanity, diplomatically, getting to separate eating from killing like that. Earth used to send us shipments of meat, but they shared the production tech with us recently. It’s nice to be self-sufficient again.”

  His brow furrowed. “If that kind of technology existed even in a pre-FTL civ, why didn’t you ever invent it yourselves? Why were you hunting us instead?”

  I sighed, and leaned back in my seat. That was always the big question. “I don’t know all the details for certain,” I said, “but I strongly suspect that our government, the one we’re rebelling against, was keeping certain solutions hidden on purpose so we’d be too hungry and desperate to ever start questioning their authority. Like, they’d argue that hunting non-sapients simply wasn’t possible because the Federation killed off all the large game on their own worlds. But you definitely didn’t, did you?”

  Debbin looked at me like I was nuts. “What? No, of course not. Sure, any big herbivore creature that starts acting fighty or gets too close to our cities gets put down as a matter of public safety and sanitation, but it’s not like we scoured the planets clean to try and find them all.” Several of my Arxur guards abruptly looked spooked, which I took note of, while Debbin continued, oblivious to the bomb he’d just casually dropped. There’d always been other options than starvation or murder. Betterment just hadn’t wanted us to know about them. “It’s not like my homeworld is an ecumenopolis, either. There are wild areas away from cities. You want me to have a--” He said some untranslatable noun in his language that I was too distracted by my own thoughts to catch. “--caught and shipped over for you as a treat? They’re these huge antlered fellows around the size of an Iftali. They live in the tundra back home. We tend to give them a wide berth.”

  “It’s a nice thought,” I said, shrugging, “but I think we’ve got more pressing concerns than importing exotic animals. Anything else you wanted to cover?”

  Debbin smirked suddenly, and his ears perked up excitedly. “Speaking of animals, do you guys have that cuteness fixation like humans do?”

  Debbin’s fur looked very soft, but the fact that it was still attached to him was kind of a dealbreaker. Honestly, the idea of petting someone who could talk felt overly intimate even in the best of times. Maybe I could talk Vriss into putting on a costume? “Not particularly,” I said. “I have a bit of a soft spot for cats, though. It’s a Terran, uhh…” I wasn’t sure if the word pet would translate. “Non-sapient subordinate species. Fluffy little ambush predator. Mostly hunts pest-sized prey that would get into early Terran granaries. Probably dangerous to a Dossur, but you’d be fine.”

  Debbin’s brow furrowed again. “Wouldn’t that be counterproductive for pest control around the grain supply?” he asked, baffled. “Predators spread diseases.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “No more than any other type of species. Plus, if we wanted to have some cats here… well, you and I aren’t from Earth. Terran diseases wouldn’t affect us.”

  Debbin abruptly went silent. The face he was making felt tantalizingly familiar… And suddenly, it clicked for me. He was making the “something about my government’s propaganda isn’t adding up” face. I’d made that face, but I’d never seen it before today. Debbin looked like he’d just realized that two bedrock-stable facts he’d internalized didn’t actually fit together.

  “Something on your mind?” I asked, and my curiosity was genuine. Centuries of warfare, billions dead, and the Federation was worried about Arxur spreading diseases, of all things?

  Debbin shook his head. “No, just… processing something.” He stared out the window silently.

  “Spotted a Kolshian lie?” I tried.

  Debbin flinched, just for a moment. I only caught it because I was staring at him. Then the facade came back up, and he waved it away. “It’s nothing. We can discuss it in private, if you insist.”

  “So be it,” I said. A disease spread by predators, but he’s reeling because he forgot that alien diseases can’t jump biospheres, I thought, mentally storing the hunch for later. “Any other questions?”

  Debbin shook his head and put his game face back on. “Later. We’re here.”