Memory Transcription Subject: First Officer Sifal, ARS Bleeding Heart

  Date [standardized human time]: January 25, 2137

  I left poor Garruga in a state of bug-eyed horror at having been tricked into slaking her Yulpan bloodlust, and motioned for Laza to join me back outside.

  “That was fun,” Laza said, slipping into a casually chipper tone. Subordinate or not, I think I might have made a friend. “Another round of fucking with the Yulpa, then, or…?”

  I shook my head. “Nah, I think I got what I needed. It’s time to talk to the Big Bunny himself.”

  “The what?” she said, her head tilted.

  “The Nevok,” I repeated. “Executive Debbin. We need a surrender, we need it twenty minutes ago, and I think I know how to talk to furious prey now.” I shook my head as the infantry leader and I walked together towards the Deluxe Prisoner’s Suite. “I reached for the wrong tool in the box. I thought this situation called for ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’, but I should have been banking on ‘Redirection’. No matter. That’s why we practice.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” said Laza.

  “Good Cop, Bad Cop is the two-person interrogation technique I mentioned earlier,” I said, as the concrete hangar drew closer. “One of us acts kind, one of us acts cruel, the target flees from the cruel one into the waiting arms of the kind one.” I shook my head. “Rookie mistake on my part. The Feds already think we’re all cruel, and they can’t conceive of a kind Arxur even when one is staring them down. Now, with most of these weaklings, just roaring at them is enough to get them to talk, but we’re dealing with two very specific weirdos who’ve chosen to face their apparently certain deaths with dignity. It’s noble, in its own way, but it makes our jobs harder. Garruga had already accepted her inevitable end, and she was ready to crack some ribs on her way out. When I acted in a peculiar mix of friendly and quirky, she short-circuited, and started becoming a bit more willing to talk.”

  The boxy building of poured concrete reared up before us--a good hundred meters to the left of the one that young Zillis had obliterated with a railgun--and a guard opened the door for me out of respect. I could do with less stress and anxiety, but there were certainly some small perks to being in command. A quick salute and a held door went a long way towards making me feel like I mattered. “Whatever the Nevok’s thinking, we need to throw him off his game,” I summed up, as Laza and I knocked on the wall of a shipping container before entering. “If his heels are dug in to stop a charge from the front, then we have to hit him from the sides. We don’t need to understand his plans, we just need to fuck them up.”

  “Got it,” said Laza, as we entered. There was nothing in the room, for obvious penitentiary reasons, but at the back of the shipping container sat a resplendently-dressed Nevok, his hooved feet cross-legged, his eyes closed in meditation like some manner of ascetic monk.

  His eyes opened, bright and gemlike. “First Officer Sifal,” he said simply, like a prince addressing a courtier. “Or is it Commander Sifal?”

  Shit on sheet metal, had he been chatting up my guards while he was incarcerated? Fucker’d stolen a march on me! I shrugged, trying to play it cool. “It’s both. First Officer of the Bleeding Heart is a posting. Commander is my formal rank. I’m qualified to Captain a small ship, or to second a large ship. Or, as the day brings us, to lead an away mission.”

  The little lagomorph raised an eyebrow. “Shall I await the arrival of your superior, then?”

  How the fuck was this fluffy little twerp getting under my skin? “Commodore Vriss, Captain of the Bleeding Heart, has entrusted me with the finer details of this operation. You can speak to me freely.”

  Debbin laughed just subtly enough that it’d be weird to assault him over it. I’d look petty for resorting to violence so trivially. “As you wish,” he said, smirking.

  May as well get to the meat of the discussion. “We’re here to discuss your terms of surrender,” I said.

  Debbin snorted politely. “How unprecedented!” he said, making something of an effort to avoid laughing too loudly during our negotiations. “Why?”

  “What?” I said, cursing my reflexes as I fed into his diatribe.

  Debbin shrugged. “We’ve been at war for centuries. You’ve never once offered terms of surrender. You’ve ended worlds before ever considering peace. Why should I believe your intentions now?

  I snorted. “We’ve never been kind, but we’ve never been anything but earnest about what we are. Why would I offer you peace if I didn’t mean it? To hear the Federation speak of us, the word ‘peace’ shouldn’t even exist in my language, and yet I keep saying it.”

  Debbin rubbed his eyes. “I can’t speak to linguistics, only motives. What do you gain from peace? At a guess, you want a planet of slaves, but you don’t have the numbers to hold it. And if that’s what you want, why should I indulge you? You’re going to eat us eventually. Let’s just skip to the end, then, and not watch my legacy be tainted by aiding the enemy.”

  Infuriating as he was, I saw the shape of the conversation now. The main topic was walled off. I needed to steer him around the wall. Less talk about me, more talk about him. “Is ‘legacy’ a matter of significance among Nevoks?” I asked.

  Debbin perked up, eyeing me with confusion and suspicion. “It is,” he said slowly. “Everyone dies eventually. The purpose of wealth is to build something that stands a chance of outliving you. Let your community remember, forever, that a man of your caliber was once a part of it. Grand tapestries still hang in my family’s hall that are older than your species’ first spaceflight, ancient records of the achievements of my forebears, so that we, their descendents, will never forget them. So yes, legacy matters.” He sighed, and let the icy intensity to his voice fade away. “Honestly, though. Why do you even ask?”

  I chuckled, softly. “Perks of the Rebellion,” I said simply. “Nobody threatens to kill me for asking questions anymore. I’d be wasting an opportunity if I didn’t ask.”

  Debbin shrugged. “I mean, I understand opportunities,” he said softly. “What else did you want to know?”

  I looked to Laza and shrugged. “I’d frankly just love to hear about how other people live,” I said. “Studying humans was life-changing for me. Just finding out that there was more than one way to be a predator was world-shattering.” I nodded nonchalantly towards the Nevok. “I’m genuinely curious to hear how other predators go about their dark work.”

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  Debbin tried to keep the facade of calm up, but his eyes went wide despite himself. “I beg your pardon?”

  The strong-willed among the prey always seemed to have such peculiar and interesting reactions to these sorts of predacious accusations. “Hm? Oh, I’m sorry, I thought we were on the same page about this.” I pulled out my holopad, and read from the notes I’d compiled on the Nevok-Fissan trade wars. The Arxur Dominion had spy satellites everywhere, and a passionate disdain for the people we were spying on. Troop movements got studied, sure, but all the little day-to-day life stories our listening posts dredged up from Federation networks? The sort of information you’d use to ‘know your enemy’ like Sun Tzu suggested? We had entire servers full of intelligence reports, and I think I might have been the first person to ever fucking read them. Well, the first Arxur at least. The Human cyberwarfare specialists who’d breached our networks probably loved all the work we’d done for them.

  “From the outside looking in,” I continued aloud, “it’s not unreasonable to study you Nevoks by contrasting you against your rivals, the Fissans. You’re the two main mercantile players in the Federation, right? But it’s the way you talk about each other that stuck out to me. To hear the Nevoks speak of them, the Fissan Compact is full of flighty thieves who took advantage of a few loose-lipped Nevok engineers to copy your technology and undercut you. ‘Too gossipy’? ‘Low prices’? Not very scary. When the Fissans speak of you, though, they go so much further. It’s all ‘tyrant’ this, and ‘cartel’ that. You’d almost think they were talking about us.” I put my holopad back and looked Debbin in the eyes. “Are they, you think? The Arxur Dominion, the Nevok Imperium… If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you guys were trying to mimic our branding.” I tilted my head, and I asked the big question with the heartfelt honesty only an empathic predator could muster. “Do you… want to be more like us?”

  Debbin leaned back against the wall as my words hit him like a sucker punch, from an angle he’d never anticipated. He tried to keep his cool. His eyes looked shocked, his ears were angling back in distress, but he still held a contemplative paw in front of his mouth as he considered the world through the lens I’d proposed. Considered me, for that matter. I was better at reading people than most Arxur were, but I couldn’t quite yet tell what was going through his long-eared head. If I was very lucky, it was an earnest self-assessment.

  Meanwhile, his other paw idly patted at his pockets until it found a little packet of paper and leaves. He pulled a little cylinder out, and then offered one to me. “I don’t seem to have a light,” he said. “I’ll trade you one for a bit of ignition. Can Arxur smoke?”

  I shrugged. “If the scent of burning leaves could kill us, our raids on your worlds would go rather differently,” I pointed out. I was familiar, conceptually, with the human habit of smoking, but I hadn’t been aware that the Federation had any comparable tradition. I was entirely too unaware of the Federation altogether.

  That being said, I was still an engineer. I had one or two means of making fire tucked away in the ol’ toolbelt. With a tiny blowtorch, I lit the two thin cylinders and focused all my energy into not coughing as I breathed through mine. Whatever they were, these leaves were pungent, and I couldn’t afford to look frail or weak.

  Debbin stared at me for a long while before he mustered the courage to take the cigarette out and ask a question or make a statement. “I don’t actually have an issue with humans,” he said at last.

  “Same,” I said. “They’re neat.”

  “That they are,” said Debbin. “Most unique thing on the galactic stage since… well, you bastards.”

  I shrugged. “You going somewhere with this, or are you just flattering me?”

  Debbin snorted. “No. But…” The rabbity-looking guy trailed off briefly as he took another long drag off of his cigarette. “I thought it was a safe bet to bet against them,” he said. “The Kolshians have been waving their collective dicks around since the dawn of fucking time. You know?” He shook his head. “I thought my people had lost their fucking minds, betting against that.” He slapped the ground below him, a wry twist to his mouth. “You could just as easily bet against the Firmament.” Debbin stared at me abruptly. “Forty to one odds, the ground will still be there tomorrow. Easy bet. Will you take it?”

  I scoffed. “What? No, I’ve seen the specs on your mining equipment. You could quarry the whole airfield to win a bet if you felt like it.”

  Debbin smiled. “See? You get it. Of course you get it. It’s all…” he shook his head as he swirled a forepaw around in a ring. “Predatory deception, am I right?”

  I was starting to grasp why his people at large had sided with a certain species of tricksy furless monkeys. “I’m not looking for food today,” I said, veering the conversation back on track, “and I’m not looking for slaves, either. Just tribute. A small but regular donation of starship parts to keep our war effort going. Our war against other, less reasonable, Arxur, mind you.”

  Debbin made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Yeah. The ones dancing on Kolshian strings, apparently. Can’t believe the whole Federation was just a protection racket.” He shook his head. “Can’t believe I never thought of it myself.”

  Nevoks had protection rackets? I thought idly. …Nevoks had marionettes?

  “You saw how well your tithe to the Kolshians paid off when we came knocking. Our price is a lot cheaper than theirs, and we can offer more in return.” I held a paw out to the lagomorph. “Let’s make a deal.”

  Debbin’s grin widened. “Now you’re speaking my language,” he muttered, as he reached his paw out to clasp mine. “I want an advisor,” he said. “As you said: all business is predatory. I want a real predator on speed-dial.”

  A real shark, specifically, I think the human saying went. I shrugged. “I’ll give you my personal contact information,” I said. “We can renegotiate if you need someone more full-time.”

  “What a wonderful start,” said Debbin. “Alright. What kind of protections can you ensure for my people?”

  “We’re well-fed as of late, and we run a tight ship,” I said. “Anyone who kills one of your people will be disciplined severely. We need you alive and working your hardest to build or buy things for us.”

  “Speaking of: remind me again where you expect me to get starship parts on a mining outpost?” he asked.

  “You have access to markets that would shoot us on sight,” I pointed out.

  Debbin shook his head. “They’ll cut me off as soon as they find out I’m working with you.”

  “So don’t tell them.”

  The little lagomorph froze up in shock for a moment as the idea sank in, and then he just started laughing. “Ha! A conspiracy of our very own. I like it! Serves the Farsul and Kolshians right.” He held his paw out. “It’s a deal, then. You protect us and help us make money as you can, and we pay you a tithe in starship parts, or in whatever else you can’t make or buy. Agreed?”

  I took his little paw in mine once more. A great deal was one where both parties stood to benefit. Debbin seemed to think that having access to a hunter’s mind like mine might offset what we’d be costing him. Time would tell if that was a good gamble for him, but here and now, I had no reason to disabuse him of the notion. “Agreed,” I said. I never thought I’d be striking a deal with prey, but who else did we have to turn to? As always, humans had a saying. “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

  “Let’s, ah… let’s keep our working relationship professional, my good man,” said Debbin, flustered.

  “Didn’t mean it literally,” I said, snickering. “Also, not a man.”

  “Oh! Huh. You ah. You don’t say.” Debbin rubbed his chin, considering me in a new light. He was spending a little too long taking in my appearance for my liking.

  My eyes narrowed. “Hey. I’m gonna leave you in here if you keep looking at me like that, fluffball.”

  “Think nothing of it.” The Nevok put his little paws up in a “not touching that” gesture, and followed us out.