Memory Transcription Subject: First Officer Sifal, ARS Bleeding Heart

  Date [standardized human time]: January 25, 2137

  The ARS Brennus touched down on an open section of landing pad, and my hunters fanned out according to my contingent orders. Storm and secure each patrol craft, since we needed all the spare parts that we could get, and any ship that launched was a ship we’d have to turn to slag. Storm and secure each maintenance bay for the same reason, minus the flight risk. I mean, probably. I would be surprised and a little impressed if the prey had updated their newest construction schematics so that the buildings themselves were capable of fleeing. Nevertheless, the main team, I led towards the colony’s primary command bunker. The moment all hunters were disembarked, the Brennus, with a skeleton crew, took back to the skies. It hovered above the battlefield, an armored box coated in crewed guns, pinning the prey in their places as my teams swept through.

  I led my team in a dead sprint for good cover. Fear of prey was beneath us, but fear of bullets was somewhat more excusable. The enemy small arms fire slowly faded away in any event, as our associated squads dealt with the enemy, and as we started puzzling through the problem of breaching the command bunker.

  This was, unfortunately, yet another scenario where the standard Arxur operating practice failed us. Typically, during a raid, we weren’t picky about our targets. Grab anyone fleeing for cover and stuff them on the cattle ship. The bunkers were largely ignored until the end of the raid, when they were nuked from orbit. Attempting to force our way into one on foot was a new problem I had to solve.

  The top section of the bunker was a building made from heavily-reinforced concrete with thick steel blast doors, but we had no idea how deep below it our targets were. It was a mining colony, after all, so they presumably had the equipment necessary to drill an elevator shaft as deep into the bedrock as they pleased, or as shallow as their Nevok executive officer felt like skimping. There could be miles of stone in our way, or mere meters. That was problem two, though; breaking down their front door came first. Some basic demolition charges would have been perfect for breaching the aboveground blast doors, but we didn’t have any. Worst case scenario, we could probably steal some from the mines to the east, but that could take some time, so I filed that under Plan B.

  I rapidly ran down our list of available munitions. Grenades and small arms fire were obviously going to be ineffective, the Brennus’s heavy autocannons included. Requesting a missile strike from our bomber fleet might work, but it also might collapse the building and bury the entrance in rubble. The railgun strikes had been beautifully precise, but requesting one from our orbital fleet would just punch a hole straight down, vertically, killing the prey inside if the bunker was shallower than expected, and burying them the same as a missile if not. What I really wanted to do was shear the top level of the bunker clean off, which meant a horizontal shot from ground level, which meant either trying to delicately hover an enormous heavy bomber in front of the bunker doors, or…

  “Flight team, are the patrol ships secured?” I asked over comms.

  “Affirmative,” the ranking officer replied.

  “Excellent. So here’s an odd question,” I continued. “Do you suppose any of you could manage to fly one of those?”

  There was a long drawn-out silence.

  My new second, Laza, shook her head. “Commander, surely no one is going to admit to--”

  I held a claw up for silence and waited. I already knew what she was going to say. Most Arxur avoided prey-built tech with a revulsion that ran the gamut from casual disdain to fully acting like the prey’s weakness was a disease you could catch. It was short-sighted. Tech was tech. I just needed one hunter who could get the fuck over themselves and pilot the ship.

  A single voice finally replied in the meekly nervous register of a callow youth. “I, um… I think I could fly one of these, Commander.”

  Some snickering could be heard in the background from eavesdropping soldiers. “Cut the chatter,” I barked. “Name and rank, hunter?”

  “Uh, Zillis, ma’am. No rank.”

  I grinned to myself knowingly. First person to speak up: someone with nothing to lose. Checks out. “Alright, Zillis. I’m gonna need you to gently pull one of those patrol craft around in front of these blast doors. Since we’re going to be stripping these ships for parts soon enough, I think it would be a great idea if we ran a quick field test to see what they’re capable of. So Zillis, I would love it if you could give us all a first-hand demonstration of what their main railgun can do to the top story of a bunker.”

  There was a slight pause and some clattering noises, as the young hunter… well, my best guess was that she dropped her comms in surprise. “...Oh!,” she said finally. “Okay! Yes, ma’am! Gladly! One moment.”

  I fought the urge to join in on all the chuckling at Zillis’s expense, and gestured instead for the squad to fall back. It didn’t come up very often in space battles, but in atmosphere, railguns were unfathomably loud. As we backed up to my best estimate of a safe distance, Zillis carefully taxied one of the patrol ships across the landing pad, parking it directly in front of the blast doors. I did a quick check that there was nothing on the far side of the building that I cared about, then gave the youngling the go-ahead.

  I held my hands over my ears as the anti-ship railgun spat plasma. I felt the shockwave in my chest just from the exit velocity. Then the blast doors went away. And most of the building. The rest of the plasma slug and the variously-sized shards of concrete and metal debris that used to be a building lodged themselves in a nearby hillside. All that was left standing were some scattered bits of wall that had held fast, and a stairwell into the ground.

  Stairwell? I wondered. Maybe it goes basement, then bunker?

  “Excellent shooting,” I radioed back to Zillis, once I caught my breath again. “See if you can find any useful intel on the ship’s computer, and otherwise stand by.”

  “Y-Yes, ma’am! Happy to be of service!” Zillis yelped back excitedly. Maybe better to be feared than loved, I mused, but both is best when you can pull it off.

  I motioned my team to advance with caution towards the ruins of the bunker. One of the hunters closest to the ruins scowled at me, incredulously, and broke ranks. “Fuck caution!” he spat, before charging in. “First pick of the loot is mine!”

  “Kitzz, get your dumb ass back here!” shouted Laza.

  I reared back in surprise. I’d never said a damn thing about individuals getting to keep a share of the loot. That was a common practice on cattle raids, though. The hunters would be sent out hungry, and the first few prey would often get eaten on the spot by the troops instead of getting brought back to the cattle ships. We were hunting for things today, not people, but was my team still expecting to keep a few trophies?

  I glanced around at the faces of my troops, and they all looked anxiously eager to charge in as well. Shit! How did I miss that? Alright, it probably wouldn’t be the worst if I let the troops take home a few trinkets of their own--they might turn mutinous at this rate if I completely dashed their hopes--but I needed to get control of the situation quickly. I had a head full of Vriss's training and Terran theory on how to be an effective leader, but putting those lessons into practice for the first time was nerve-wracking. My two sources were contradictory at times, but on this topic, at least, they agreed: insubordination couldn’t stand.

  I slowly raised my rifle, taking careful aim at Kitzz. Hitting a moving target was always harder than it looked. Thankfully, he was moving in a straight line. I led the target, and let my claw slowly curl shut.

  I jumped as the sound of gunfire exploded out from the bunker’s stairwell, and Kitzz crumpled to the ground. He screamed, as a hail of bullets spewed out. I motioned for everyone to hold behind cover.

  They’re still close enough to the entrance to fire out of it? I wondered. Is there a bunker in there at all, or just a basement?

  For a long awkward moment, against all odds, nothing changed. Kitzz kept screaming, periodically forming full words--primarily furious profanity--and occasionally sentence fragments wherein he voiced complaints about the current lack of structural integrity in his legs. Bullets kept flying, but with the rest of us behind cover, it just seemed like the defenders were wasting ammunition. Gods of Old, with Kitzz having hit the deck against his will, the only target left in their line of sight was Zillis's patrol ship, and starship-scale shields could barely be scratched by small arms fire.

  I lowered my rifle and tapped it impatiently as I decided to wait this out.

  “Commander?” said Laza, a touch of incredulity coloring her voice. “What are our orders?”

  I shrugged. “None at present. Stay alert, I suppose.”

  Laza’s jaw dropped. “They drew Arxur blood!” she protested. “This insult can’t remain unanswered!”

  “I was literally about to shoot him myself,” I pointed out. “This whole operation is about making them do our work for us.”

  Laza’s maw clicked shut as the gears started turning in her head. “Should we… should we at least drag Kitzz out of that?”

  I pointed at the wall of bullets directly above the injured hunter. “You wanna walk into that, be my guest. I’m happy to let them tucker themselves out first.” I shrugged. "He seems safe for the moment."

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Kitzz kept shouting in the background. It was honestly impressive in its own way how clearly we could make out his colorful yet pained vulgarity over the roar of the gunfire.

  Laza squinted at Kitzz, thinking. “He's still bleeding a lot, though. Should we slide him a first aid kit, or something, at least?” asked Laza, finally.

  I popped my head out to get a better look. I squinted. “I think… it actually looks like he already has one?” I slid back down behind cover, and turned back to Laza with a look of utter disbelief on my face. “Wait, is that dumbass a fucking medic?”

  Laza flipped through her holopad, and blinked. “Huh. Yeah, it’s right here in his personnel file. He’s… actually trained all the way up through full-blown trauma surgery.”

  “You're shitting me.”

  Laza shrugged. “Intelligence is cousin to cunning, but family doesn’t always hunt together,” she said, and put her holopad back in her pouch. “We probably need to help him. He’s useful if anyone else gets hit.”

  I sighed. “Fine, I’ll help him out.” As a trauma surgeon, Kitzz was already the best-suited to rendering aid, even to himself, but he was caught in a behavioral loop. I just needed to shock him out of it. I popped back up out of cover, took a deep breath, and shouted loudly enough to be heard over all the noise. “PUT PRESSURE ON THE WOUND, DUMBASS!”

  “AAAAAH! FUCK YOU, BITCH!” replied Kitzz, but the reminder proved fruitful. The topic of his complaints switched from “my fucking legs are fucked!” to “can’t fucking believe I have to unfuck my own fucking legs!” as he began to treat his own wounds while still sprawled out on the landing pad.

  I nodded to Laza, satisfied. “There ya go, he’s been helped.”

  Laza tried very hard not to laugh and failed.

  The hail of bullets slowly petered out, though I couldn't be sure if it was due to depleted ammunition or depleted motivation. I had some thoughts about how best to proceed. "You good now, ya little chompers?" I called out to the opposing side. Chomper was the sort of cutesy nickname you'd call an Arxur hatchling when you were very proud of them for biting through a bone for the first time. Who's my big strong hunter? You are! "Got all that ferocious energy out of your system?"

  The sound of gunfire immediately picked back up to a frantic crescendo. "Aw, guess not!" I said, eliciting some scattered nervous laughter from my troops. 'Why nervous?' was a question whose answer needed a bit of preamble, though.

  The book Moby Dick had been an utterly surreal read for me. On the one hand, it was a vividly detailed--perhaps even tediously detailed--description of human nautical hunting practices of a few centuries back. Great hook, for an Arxur audience. On the other hand, the literary interpretation and context guide David had attached explained that those passages were fully omitted from several published editions of the story to focus more closely on the personal journeys of the story's human characters. Captain Ahab's tale in particular was an oft-cited tragedy, not for his failed hunt, but for the madness inherent in why he attempted it in the first place. He didn't need to hunt the white whale, he chose to, because his heart's greatest desire was to enact cruelty on a creature that lacked the sapience necessary to reciprocate Ahab's vendetta.

  In its own odd way, the story was a bitter condemnation of everything that Arxur culture had stood for under Betterment. How can a nonperson deserve to suffer? And what madness was it to hate them?

  But that was, ultimately, the contradiction my people had gotten used to living with. Cruelty towards prey species was imperative, and we all "knew" that the prey weren't really people. So when I upgraded the herbivores of the Federation from 'mockery towards a reviled nonperson' to 'mockery towards a slow child' just then--and I had no plans to stop--it had the side effect making my hunters deeply uncomfortable. My more casual style of mockery sounded far more natural than any of the depraved harsher cruelties they'd witnessed all their lives, and yet they couldn't quite figure out why.

  It's because the Feds weren't subsapient animals, they were just childish dumbasses.

  And speaking of, they were done wasting ammunition again for a bit, so it was time to continue taunting them in a way that, paradoxically, established a rapport of mutual personhood. They weren't going to like me--that was never in the cards--but if they reacted to my insults, then at least they were talking to me like a person. As with Kitzz, it was all about short-circuiting behavioral glitches. "You know, you've only hit one guy, and I'm pretty sure he's gonna pull through!" I called out. "You're gonna pull through, right, Kitzz?"

  "Fuck you!"

  "I think that's a yes!" I called back to the prey. Even bickering and infighting like that made us seem like people rather than monsters. Another volley of bullets spewed forth from the prey, but with wavering will. "You know, the war would probably be going better for you if you ever stopped to aim!"

  It was around this point when one of the herbivores charged, which I absolutely was not expecting. If I'd actually managed to hit a nerve with them, I'd need to remember to try that again later. Fortunately, even with the element of surprise, charging a full squad of riflemen, alone, across fifty meters of open tarmac was… well, it was the sort of thing that only a complete dumbass would do. Thankfully, after watching how badly Kitzz had suffered after disobeying me, if not necessarily because of it, the rest of my squad followed their standing orders and shot to wound. The Yulpa's stripey legs were shredded by gunfire, and the little psycho skidded to a stop about five meters outside of Kitzz's reach. "Burn you!" it screeched between cries of pain. I'd never seen or heard a Yulpa in person before. I only knew of them from their reputation as violent anti-predator religious fanatics. Smelled like cured omnivory, but honestly, who was keeping track anymore? Their ridiculously long tongue was something their language seemed to work around. It sounded gurgley to my ear. Or perhaps someone had hit a lung. I wouldn't know; I wasn't a doctor. Fortunately, we had one handy.

  "Hey Kitzz, if you're done patching yourself up, do the Yulpa next!" I shouted.

  "Are you out of your fucking mind?!" Kitzz roared back. "A fucking Yulpa!?"

  "The smoke from… your burning flesh…" the Yulpa choked out between haggard breaths, "will consecrate… the air of this world!"

  "Yeah, the Yulpa in front of you," I said. "I told you we want everyone alive today, remember? Patch the little zealot up."

  "I'd rather die!" shouted Kitzz and the Yulpa in unison, who then glared balefully at each other for daring to be similar.

  I sighed. "I've got thirty rifles pointed at you. I will hold you to that. Last chance to do the right thing. Five, four, three…"

  They both tapped out in unison, which was good. I'd have expected a fight if one of them had held out longer than the other. Instead, Kitzz crawled over to the Yulpa and did his damn job, and the Yulpa, to its credit, didn't resist. They both grumbled loudly, though.

  "See?" I shouted. "We're all making new friends here today. Any chance the rest of you want to come out and chat?"

  Gunfire was the only reply. Kitzz and the Yulpa both swore loudly at the noise.

  I sighed again. "Okay, this farce has gone on long enough." I turned to my second. "Laza, what do we have available in terms of nonlethal weaponry?"

  The other huntress, slightly older than me, thought about it. "Just a few nerve gas cannisters, I think. Only kills off their higher brain function. That should leave them alive, at least for a few days."

  My jaw dropped. It's like everyone was a slightly different and unique flavor of dumbass today. "I need them alive and able to talk, Laza."

  A flash of recognition crossed Laza's face. "Oh!" she said. "Then no."

  Psychic warfare it was, then. "Hey, Zillis, you still with us?" I said into my comms.

  There was a long pause as the younger huntress found her comms again. "Um, yes ma'am! Still here, Commander! The um… the prey ship's shields are still at 92%. Holding up alright against all the small arms fire!"

  I grinned. "Very specifically glad to hear it!" I told her. "Can you lift it off a bit, maybe fifty meters up, and park it right in front of the prey? Tilt it forward, down at the stairwell they're camping out in. I want you hovering directly in their line of sight like you're trying to win a staredown."

  "Oh wow! Okay. Yes ma'am!" Zillis yelped back. I silently prayed to a god whose name I'd never heard uttered that this would work. Levity of the situation aside, the only thing keeping my troops in line during this utter clown show was shock, and the remaining potential for victory. If this didn't work, they'd turn on me, and I doubted even Vriss could protect me from such a humiliating failure. Not without getting dragged down with me. And I didn't know if I could do that to him.

  I rubbed my eyes, and tried to think. I'd tried to imagine myself as a human before. I tried now to imagine what the world looked like from the prey's perspective. They were afraid, and completely convinced that they were about to die. Any attempts to convince them otherwise would fail because they did not trust us. I had to establish a rapport, and quickly. It was straight out of Sun Tzu: always leave your enemy the hope of survival or escape. Doomed soldiers could be paradoxically tenacious.

  "Yulpa!" I called out. "What's your name?"

  "Garruga," she spat. "Remember that when I come for you!"

  I allowed myself to laugh, not out of malice, but again, like I was humoring a boastful child. "Haha, okay!" I turned towards the bunker. "So, the funny thing is, we're actually only interested in starship parts today. You'll note that we've acquired some from you already! So I'm feeling generous. You can come out with your paws and related appendages in the air and come visit your buddy Garruga--who is, I might note, currently alive and being given medical attention for her wounds--or you can stay in your little hidey hole and find out if it can stand up to your little rail gun." There was no response, but I could hear arguing inside the bunker. Gendered pronouns, and the dignity of a name. That might have been the first time an herbivore ever received such basic respect from an Arxur without a human's prompting. I pushed further. "Again! If you surrender, you will not be harmed! If you persist, you will be! And if I'm lying… let's be honest, we both know what you were expecting from the moment we dropped out of FTL. The day literally cannot get any worse for you than that. Why not take a chance on it being better?" I sighed, and I prayed.

  Like a pebble beginning an avalanche, a few brave or cowardly herbivores threw down their weapons and came out with their arms raised skyward. They were brought aside and detained, but unharmed. The sight of our uncharacteristic restraint and mercy spurred their companions to try their luck as well, only to discover that everyone--myself included--was having a phenomenally lucky day today, with one exception. Group by group, the prey surrendered, until a final Nevok, unguarded, wandered out alone, looking miserable and betrayed.

  "Ah, Executive Debbin!" I called out. The Nevok's name and face had been all over the colonial registration paperwork. I hadn't gotten to opening Alice's Adventures in Wonderland yet, but with his white fur and formalwear vest, the Nevok looked almost identical to the creature drawn on the cover. "I wasn't expecting you until later!" The executive suite was by the mines, according to the maps we had. What an unlucky day to have been running inspections at the spaceport.

  The Nevok businessman's long rounded ears pressed down flat against his head from stress and outrage. He gritted his flat herbivorous teeth. I slowly grinned, not just with my eyes, but letting my teeth show as well. "Come take a walk with me, Executive. We have business to discuss."