Memory Transcription Subject: Lieutenant Kloviss, Weapons and Tactical, ARS Dominator

  Date [standardized human time]: January 26, 2137

  I licked an errant fleck of blood from breakfast off a claw, idly, as I stared out over a vast field of nothing in particular. Seaglass was a planet of mossy rocks. I thought it needed a few trees, for character. Maybe we’d plant some, if we stayed here long enough.

  The Commander was off touring our new vassal settlement with her second and a couple guards. The rest of us… had nothing to do, really. Full belly, roof over my head, and no work to do. Paradise, basically.

  I sat outside of the communal hab facility we’d set up in a long chair meant for lounging. I'd be in the shade of the building for a few more hours, then I'd either head back inside or move my chair to the east side of the building for some afternoon shade. A couple other Arxur were sunning themselves--my body ran hot, and I found the bright warmth irritating, but to each, their own--and a few were reading. I'd been up late reading about goat herding, myself, but absent any goats to herd, it was hardly urgent. I was taking a break from it for now, but I might read more later if the mood struck me. Maybe I’d try one of the human fiction books that had started to circulate. There was a fanciful tale about humans hunting giant sea creatures from an old wooden surface ship that was making the rounds…

  It was a nice day, but most of us were outside because the building interior was largely taken up by one Sergeant who'd looted a musical instrument from the prey--some odd piece of shaped metal that made different sounds depending on where you hit it with a stick--and was loudly trying to learn it. He'd been at it for several hours, from zero. This was an adequate measure of how good he'd gotten, which was to say, how intolerable his cacophony was. That wasn't strange, and it wasn't peculiar, to suck so intensely at playing an instrument after less than a day. But despite being larger and higher-ranking than he was, I'd decided that shutting his racket up wasn't worth the time, effort, or risk. I mean, yeah, I'd win, but it'd be a lot of work, and a casual nick from a poisoned blade could be ruinous. Frankly, forget the blade: with our medical supplies as low as they were, just the wrong bit of xenobacteria stuck in the man’s teeth, and I could get a lifelong debilitation out of the deal. Just didn't seem worth the effort when I could just leave the room instead.

  That all felt normal to me. What felt abnormal, and frankly suspicious, was that, for the first time in my career, if not my entire life, everyone else in the room seemed to draw the same conclusion. A dozen or so Arxur all thrown in a dorm together, and not one person starts getting angry and aggressive towards the loudest nuisance in the immediate vicinity?

  That was weird.

  That was extremely weird, and I didn't like that an explanation eluded me.

  But I had a comfy chair, a nice day, and nothing to do, so I filed that all away as something to keep an eye out for, rather than to worry about actively. Life was too short and too hard to overburden yourself with more worries than you needed. Keep just enough worries around to prevent more worries in the future, and call that enough.

  But enough about that. One of my ongoing worries called me.

  “Hi there!” said the tiny ruddy-furred prey creature in my holopad display. I grimaced. Prey, living among us. Too weird for words. Worrisome. “My name is Doctor Tika. Commander Sifal mentioned that you're the ranking Arxur still at the base?”

  I tried not to sigh as I did a couple quick calculations in my head. I was hardly the only First Lieutenant in the hab facility, but there was a non-zero chance that I had seniority. I was certainly bigger than the others, but more formally, I'd been a First Lieutenant for a while. Why wouldn't I be? It was a great position. Enough pay to eat well, but without the status or the responsibility of real command. I probably could've made Commander or Captain, sure, but that just seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I’d lived my life by the wisdom of not giving myself more trouble than that trouble was worth.

  “Sounds about right,” I said, in a clipped military cadence. If I acted standoffish enough, maybe she’d stop talking to me. “What do you need?”

  The Zurulian refused to take the hint. “Well, we’re down here in the infirmary, trying to do our part as doctors to get your injured comrade back on his feet, but we’re running into a bit of difficulty with patient care. We haven’t had much experience treating Arxur, you see. We were hoping you could stop by and help with that?”

  Maybe if I stared her down through the screen, she’d leave me alone. Even other Arxur tended to find it intimidating when I stared them down. “I’m not a doctor,” I said simply.

  The Zurulian was unaffected by my glare. Beyond weird, that she didn’t seem to fear me. “I understand, but the patient in question is the Arxur doctor we’d normally consult with, and he’s unfortunately still recovering.”

  I started picking at my teeth. That was about as terrifying as I could get without actively threatening the weird little fuzzy woman, and Commander Sifal left us with strict orders to avoid causing diplomatic problems for our new fiefdom. “I’m still not sure what you expect me to do here. I’m a weapons and tactical officer. Unless the problem you’re having is best-solved by a properly-aimed torpedo, this is outside my specialty.”

  The Zurulian shook her head, unfazed. “We don’t really require a specialist at the moment. To be frank, our immediate concerns are rather basic. What to feed him, how much water he needs in a day… frankly, even just moving him around is rather difficult for our staff, given his size.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I rubbed my eyes, already tiring of this conversation. “...how did you even get my contact information?”

  The Zurulian perked up. “Oh! Commander Sifal gave it to me. I called her a few moments prior. She said she was indisposed at the moment, but assigned you to help me in her stead.”

  My jaw dropped. “If it was a fucking order, why didn’t you lead with that?!” I growled.

  The Zurulian licked at her paws. “I wanted to give you the opportunity to volunteer.”

  I rubbed my eyes again. “Okay. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Wonderful!” she said. “Oh, and please make sure to--”

  I hung up on her. I took a nice, long, annoyed breath in the shade. Steeling myself, I left my nice lounging chair behind and started the long walk back to the spaceport and its adjoining infirmary.

  Upon arrival, I opened the door without a word, and scanned the room reflexively for problems. A Nevok woman squeaked in terror and dove behind the bed furthest from the door. That bed held a sleeping Arxur, so she squeaked again and dove into a supply closet and slammed the door behind her. Of the remaining people, a Yulpa was trussed up on the nearer bed, glaring, with her ears pinned back, and Doctor Tika was perched, unflappable and polite, atop a nearby counter.

  “Welcome!” said the Zurulian. “Lieutenant Kloviss, I presume?”

  I hadn’t given her my name. She’d probably been waiting to give me the opportunity to introduce myself, and hadn’t gotten the memo that I wasn’t interested in talking more than I had to. “Correct,” I sighed. I glanced at the other Arxur in the room, the one on the bed. About average size, so smaller than me. Looked like he had more scars than scales. Breathing sounded a bit ragged. Couldn’t really tell if he was sleeping or absolutely blasted on pain meds. Bit of both, maybe. Guy was in about as many restraints as he had bandages, and the prey doctors probably still didn’t want to chance him waking up. I turned back to Tika. “What’s the problem?”

  “Oh! Well, it’s morning,” she said, preening. “We were going to feed the patients, but in Kitzz’s case, we don’t have any hospital food available suitable for an Arxur in recovery.”

  I silently walked over to the Arxur’s bedside, undid the straps designed to keep the patient from biting, and opened his maw. I turned back towards Tika, stone-faced. “Okay. Get in.”

  Tika snorted. “Please, Kloviss, be serious.”

  “I am serious,” I said dryly. “You’re bite-sized and full of medical knowledge. Fresh Zurulian is an old folk remedy.” If that didn’t get her to stop bothering me…

  “Fascinating!” said Tika. Prophet’s mercy, what the fuck was this woman’s deal?! “I wasn’t aware your people had little cultural touches like folk remedies. I’d love to hear more sometime! But for now, I think we may need to improvise something a bit more…” She paused, briefly, searching for a delicate enough word. “...contemporary? Yes, that sounds about right. Perhaps a soup or a broth?”

  Those words were a bit new to me, but there had been a handful of cookbooks slipped into my assigned reading, perhaps out of wishful thinking from Commander Sifal. Most of the human recipes contained a disgusting amount of random plant matter ‘for flavor’, but the rudimentary gist of the idea sounded doable. Meat simmered in salted bone broth until soft enough for a weakened soldier to slurp down…

  Still, I shook my head, annoyed. “Doctor, if you wanted me to bring him food, why didn’t you mention that during our call? Before I walked all the way here?”

  “Oh! I tried to, but the call abruptly ended for some reason.” I had no idea how to read the body language of prey, but I felt mocked. “I sincerely apologize if our Federation-model comm towers simply don’t have the bandwidth your holopads might be accustomed to.”

  I growled under my breath, and rubbed my face, fully emotionally exhausted from a social interaction as infuriating as this one. “Fine. I’ll be back in about half an hour.”

  “Thank you,” said Tika. “Ah, but before you go, there’s another minor matter that we might not be able to postpone for that long.” The little Zurulian reared up on her hind legs, briefly, like she was trying to get a better look at me. “Man of your imposing stature… Yes, yes, I think you’re just the one for the job.” She tilted her head towards the other patient, the Yulpa, whose body language was not subtle in the slightest. The Yulpa had her ears pinned back, a fury in her eyes, and her teeth bared, bright white behind lips curled back in a pathetic attempt at a threat display.

  My memories flitted back to my day in Mexico among the humans…

  She looked like a growling dog.

  I sighed. “Again. What’s the issue, Doctor?”

  Tika beamed. “Ah, well, basic patient management. There’s a lot of orderly work that needs doing around the medical center, but none of the orderlies who are large enough to help move our two patients around seem to have the courage to be in the same room as an Arxur. Garruga, here, for example, needs a steadying paw to help her hobble over to the restroom…”

  My head swiveled around to stare at the Yulpa. “What?” Garruga growled. “What are you looking at? See something you like? You want to fucking eat me? I’ll kill you. You’re dead. Your whole family’s dead. I’ll stack your bodies on a fucking funeral pyre and burn you like incense to the one true god, the Great Spirit of Life. I’ll--”

  The Yulpa’s tirade continued unabated, but I blocked it out as I stared at her. Four hooves, long face, maybe the size and shape of a Terran pony, or a small horse. Some kind of ruminant, presumably. Sure, she also had a bizarrely long, dark, prehensile tongue, and her dark brown fur turned white and stripey near the rear and ankles, but still…

  If I was really committed to training myself to care for livestock, the Yulpa wasn’t entirely unlike a goat.

  “Fine, I’ll do it,” I said to Tika, ignoring Garruga’s continued ranting in the background. Her threats, while colorful, just weren’t as creative as some of the Arxur officers I’d served under. “If I’m working as an orderly, I get a paycheck and on-the-job training, right? I want to know more about the care and maintenance of herbivores.”

  Finally, I got a reaction out of Tika, who did a double-take. “Of… of course! We’d be happy to have you! I’ll make some arrangements with payroll, and yes, Doctor Wylla and I would be happy to share with you what we know.” Doctor Wylla, presumably the Nevok woman currently hiding in the supply closet, voiced no objections. Objections would give away her position.

  “Sounds good,” I said, ending the conversation. Garruga continued describing all manner of castigatory flames and sacramental bloodletting she would inflict upon my entire lineage. She wasn’t tied to the bed like Kitzz was--merely bandaged up on top of it--so I just scooped her up like a baby goat. Heavier than she looked, but I could hobble a bit while carrying her as long as I kept my back straight and my lunging muscles taut.

  Garruga, now draped across my arms--probably the first time she’d been carried since she was an infant--abruptly went silent and still, her eyes wide in shock. “What.”