Memory Transcription Subject: Chairman Debbin, Seaglass Mineral Concern

  Date [standardized human time]: January 25, 2137

  What a fucking day.

  Wasn’t even dinner time yet, and already:

  What a fucking day.

  That Gray woman and her retinue were setting themselves up in an office down the hall from mine--like they were ordinary people, like this was all perfectly fucking mundane--and I was, for the first time since the raid alarms blared to life this morning, alone.

  I closed the door to my office behind me, leaned back against it, and just… slid down it until I was seated on the floor.

  Fuck the fancy desk chair. Imported Grenelkan lumber, topped with the finest cushions ever woven by Nevok paws. But it was all the way over there, and my legs were giving out now.

  I pulled another cigarette out of my vest pocket. My paws were shaking trying to hold it steady as I reached around for a lighter.

  Still didn’t have it on me. I think I dropped it when Garruga fucking bodied me behind cover once the bullets started flying. Stupid brute.

  I was going to die. I was going to fucking die. Either Sifal would get sick of me once and for all and eat me, or my fucking heart was going to give out at this rate. One or the other. She might eat me afterwards anyway. Wasteful, otherwise, honestly.

  I let the cigarette slip out of my paw unlit and just started giggling. Maybe I was already dead. That’d be more plausible. I was having some bizarre delusional fantasy as my brain shut down. It involved a bunch of gruff-voiced Arxur women who could pick me up and slam me against the wall, and then tell me I was being insensitive, and my business plans weren’t daring enough. Normally you’d have to have to pay good money for that kind of experience, and even then, the escort agency would only send you a Takkan tomboy in a costume.

  I shook my head hollowly. Monsters were real, and I’d bummed a light off of one. Tomorrow, I’d be having revenue trajectory meetings with them.

  I needed a freaking drink.

  Slowly, my quivering knees still objecting, I stood back up and teetered over towards my desk. I had a flask of the good stuff in my desk for when a long night at the office wrapped up, and I needed to turn my brain off with the lights on the way out. Hadn’t drank water in hours, though. Went for the minifridge instead, and grabbed a can of good Gojid wine. Garnet Orchards, “Tears of Autumn”. Last of it, to hear the rumors, and out here in the boonies, I’d heard the rumors last. The orchard, and most of the family that ran it, had gone up in smoke with the rest of Cradle, and the final few pallets of backstock had already been bought up by the time I’d found out. Word on the vine was that the daughter of the family had survived and shacked up with a human of all the ridiculous things. Certainly felt like such depravities were finally in vogue these days.

  I laughed deliriously, and sank into my expensive chair. I popped the can open and held it aloft. “To predatorfuckers,” I toasted. “May we thirsty few inherit this strange future.” I slung it back. Sweetly fruity and dryly tannic in turns, juicy yet lightly effervescent. You could practically smell the damp misty air around the warm autumns on the Cradle. A wealthy man could drink Tears of Autumn all day. A poorer one would start the evening with it, then switch to something cheaper. Gemstone Harvest wasn’t terrible. That was Garnet Orchards’ more mainline offering.

  I sighed, and scooched some paperwork over to use as a coaster. It was all garbage anyway after this morning. All changed now. World’d changed.

  I shook my head. What the fuck was I going to do now? I hadn’t died yet, and I might yet die tomorrow, but today, at least, I was still alive. Free, by and large, as well, which I still found astonishing. “We don’t want meat, we don’t want slaves, we just want things.” Pfft. Ridiculous. The Arxur show up, guns locked and loaded, and just… what, engage in some comparatively bloodless armed robbery? And now they were playing the part of business consultants? It was a mad farce, but I got to live so long as I played along.

  The strangest thing of all was the impossible thought slithering in that the Arxur were telling the truth. I knew far too little of what was going on behind those terrifying eyes to make a solid assessment, but… it added up, didn’t it? That these predatory rebels were overfed and underequipped? And besides, the vibe I got from their leader, this Sifal woman, was a technician’s aversion to fluffed-up falsehoods. She could smell lies like they were drops of blood, and tore them apart. Lies offended her.

  Predator Disease was another Kolshian lie? That was like claiming that gravity only worked when people were watching… only to turn around and find my mini fridge floating away.

  Like… I had to accept what I was seeing, right? Anything less was madness. But accepting it was madness, too. If sanity had simply forsaken me, what was left to me besides playing along with this mad fucking circus? There was money to be made, and strange women to bed. What else was life about? Glory and legacy, of course, but…

  I chuckled to my empty office and took another long draw from my can of wine.

  “First Nevok to ever bed an Arxur” would be a glorious thing to add to my family tapestry. Debbin the Peacemaker, Debbin the Bold, Debbin the Suave. I could be legendary.

  I had no idea why I was like this. Near as I’d managed to coax out of PD specialists at parties without letting on about my predilections was that fear and lust were strange cousins. That’s what made scary movies such surprisingly fantastic date ideas. Lust or terror, your heart fluttered all the same. And it was certainly to a connoisseur’s taste to be doted on by someone stronger and fiercer than you. Frankly, I was mostly mad that the reality of flirting with an Arxur apparently didn’t come with a fucking safe word. I was eccentric, not suicidal!

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  I sighed and finished my wine. Thoughts for later. I should go see how our new guests were settling in. Make small talk, make them comfortable, make them tame. Keep the band playing so this strangely dangerous dance never came to a sudden and fatal end.

  Sifal's new office wasn't far from mine. Only one guard in the hall, but I knew she’d probably have her fearsome second, Laza, inside with her. I think I recognized the door guard, though. She was much smaller than the other Arxur, so she stood out. I think she was a she? Sifal was female, Laza was female, that imposing Commodore was male… It was trickier than I’d anticipated, telling the Arxur men and women apart at a glance, but I think I was starting to understand the trick. There was something in the scale patterns…

  “Hello there!” I said, putting my friendliest hoof forward. I held out a paw to take hers. “I don’t believe I caught your name, ma’am.”

  The guard’s eyes widened, and she left my paw hanging. She looked around frantically for guidance, but it was just the two of us in the hallway. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was afraid of me. “Zillis?” she stammered, and it was almost a question.

  “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Zillis,” I said, beaming my best Terran smile. I’d caught Sifal using one and recognized it from my negotiation briefings. Gotta keep up on all the major intercultural communication trends. Never know who you’re going to shake down next. Not that I got briefings on Arxur culture. In any event, it’d been a rock in a storm, recognizing a human smile. Either all predators favored them, or this particular group had picked up a few human traits from cultural osmosis. Either explanation was to my benefit. “I’m Debbin, the Chairman of this operation. Are you enjoying your time on the planet so far?”

  Zillis licked her lips. Hunger? No, combined with the panicked flitting about of her eyes, it looked more like nerves. “I got to fly a patrol craft,” she said quietly.

  “Oh! Are you a pilot?” The small Arxur--small by Arxur standards, I should say, since she was still head and shoulders taller than me--shook her head silently. “Aspiring pilot, then?” She nodded. I smiled and shrugged. “Well, you’re welcome to give it another go if you want to practice,” I offered. “You’ll certainly have no objections from me.”

  Again, Zillis glanced around the empty hallway like she expected a hidden camera crew on a prank show to pop out and throw a pie at her. When none appeared, she just turned back to me. If she’d had long ears like a Nevok, they’d have been pinned back in stress. “Thank you,” she said, quietly, her voice tinged with a mix of sincere gratitude and fear.

  Why an Arxur might be afraid of small casual kindnesses was something I’d have to mull over more. “No worries at all,” I said cheerfully. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to make you feel comfortable. In the meantime, though, I think I ought to see how our mutual acquaintance is settling in.” I gestured towards the door. “May I?”

  Zillis dipped her head and stood aside.

  Laza looked up from her desk near the door, registered my existence, and turned back towards what looked to be a pricing ledger for importing consumer goods. Certainly couldn’t fault the Arxur for doing a bit of shopping. New markets, new toys.

  Sifal, by contrast, was fully engrossed in a large-format holopad that was fairly hefty by Federation standards. Meant for bigger hands, and probably sturdy enough to survive being flung against the wall in a fit of violent rage. She was a touch smaller and leaner than her second-in-command, each muscle fiber tuned precisely to its designated purpose, with prominent clawmark scars on her forearms, near symmetrically. Were those a mark of rank, maybe? Some seemed fresher than the others. A rising star, then? I kept my eyes fixed on her chest. Half because I kept hoping something would be there--no such luck, finding a certain pair of mammalian traits on a reptile--and half because maintaining full eye contact with the physical embodiment of Death itself was something I was still working my way up to.

  “So, find any new horrible revelations in that Terran literature of yours?” I asked, half-jokingly.

  Sifal didn’t look up. “I think I might have autism?”

  Wasn’t she looking at a Terran Predator Disease manual? My smile faded. Wait, shit, fuck, could Predators have Predator Disease? Was that better or worse? “I’m not sure what that is,” I said hollowly.

  Sifal shook her head. Her long toothy maw dipped down into my field of vision as she did so. Her fangs were hidden behind her scaly gray lips, but throwing a tarp over a machine gun turret didn’t really do much to hide the danger. “One of the harmless conditions. Even suggests it’s common among engineers.”

  I blinked. “Computer use causes certain subtypes of Predator Disease?” Did I need to stop using spreadsheets for the sake of my sanity? Aside from the usual reasons, I mean.

  Sifal snorted. “No, other way around. People who find methodical problem-solving to be soothing tend to seek out careers near computers.” She sighed. “And people with atypical social instincts tend to seek out careers where they can hide away in an engine bay for years at a time,” she muttered, half to herself. “Sorry, did you need something?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing in particular. Just checking in. What’s the verdict on our patients?”

  Sifal set the holopad down and rubbed her eyes. “I’m gonna forward this to our medical officer to be sure, but as near as I can decipher, Tika was telling the truth. Tourette’s Syndrome is a harmless malfunction of… nerves or internal chemistry or something, and it’s literally named after the human who first documented it. There’s no way a Zurulian would have even known the name unless she’d been reading Terran medical manuals. Which really begs the question of how the fuck she ended up all the way out here. I thought anyone in the Terran sphere of influence was protected from this kind of idiocy.” Sifal looked over at me, and my eyes dodged back down below her teeth. “Do you seriously lock people up in insane asylums for political dissidence?”

  I blinked, trying to parse some unfamiliar phrases. “Yes?” I answered, hesitantly. “Why, what do the Arxur do?”

  Sifal rolled her eyes. “Summary execution, generally, which is still stupid, but it’s stupid faster.”

  My eyes widened. “Ever the efficiency-minded. Should I let the patients know to expect a firing squad at dawn, then, or…?”

  Sifal laughed. Not out of cruelty, even, but like I’d made a good joke. How wild! Never thought I’d live to hear an Arxur laugh in casual conversation. Like we were just two people chatting. “No,” she said. “We should aspire beyond stupidity. Besides, the more herbivores willing to accept us, the better. The Yotul and the Zurulian, at least, seemed more scared of you than of me.”

  The idea that two out of three PD patients weren’t particularly afraid of Arxur was going to be living rent-free in my head for the foreseeable future. Fearlessness around predators was a known mark of Predator Disease, but I worried, idly, about what the socially acceptable amount of fear was. Half the workers were practically soiling themselves, but the rest of us were just grimacing as we cautiously settled into a dangerous new normal. Was that enough? I don’t think I was that much more scared of Sifal than I was of, say, living in a storm-prone region. Sure, you needed to keep a cautious eye on the weather report and know your flood evacuation routes, and maybe you’d jump a little bit more at the sound of thunder, but it wasn’t something that required a state of constant panic. But was constant panic expected of me? How much fear did it take to be sane? What was the threshold? Had we all met it? And if not… What did that say about Farrin?

  …What did that say about me?