“We all fear the Humans’ martial power—their navies, their armies, their special forces. But what we should truly fear are their scientists. No other species is so chaotic and ruthless in its research… none, perhaps, except the Shraphen.

  The Shraphen and the Humans never needed their mysterious ancient bond—no one can explain it anyway. They would have become best friends regardless, simply because they are both howling mad.

  I vote NO on declaring war on a species that blows up a radioactive moon just to see what happens—and because it ‘probably looks cool.’”

  Senator Urk’net Wasum, speaking before the Galactic Federation Senate on the eve of the Second War against the Aligned Worlds, 390 P.I.

  Karrn’s memories came back slowly: the odd face trying to calm him down, the tube shoved through his muzzle and down his throat.

  He remembered himself on a stretcher, being carried to a black ship.

  Masked faces. A bright light was stabbing at his eyes. The smell of disinfectant.

  Voices in the dark. Stress hormones are all around. The sensation of being moved.

  “Shraphen patient, caninoid, male, thirty standard years equivalent. Traumatic amputation, left leg above knee, major hemorrhage…” Then black again.

  One of the figures held something familiar in his hands.

  My leg, my beautiful leg! I’ll never be on a hunt again!

  Visions flickered across the readout of his HUD:

  — Left leg severed

  — Two ribs broken

  — Spine fractured

  — Massive head trauma

  — Emergency beacon offline

  Karrn, you self-sniffing idiot. Your spine is fractured, and you cry about your leg? Get a hold of yourself.

  Then another memory: his pack, all dead.

  Suddenly, he snapped wide awake and tried to sit up. Broad straps held him in place, soft against his fur but unyielding. A machine started beeping an alarm, and someone shouted:

  “He’s awake, get the doctor down here, and call Gerber.”

  Karrn let out an angry snarl. He couldn’t move and was obviously a prisoner of those foul-smelling humans.

  Then again, they didn’t smell foul. They smelled familiar in a confusing way. And he could smell other Shraphen too, live ones.

  Before he could concentrate more on the scent, he heard the voice of the human from the clearing again. The voices came closer, in their clicking and rattling speech. Whatever allowed him to understand them was gone for the moment.

  “Release me or kill me. I won’t betray my Pack, so forget interrogation. Batract-sniffing breed!”

  He couldn’t contain his anger and frustration anymore. No matter where they looked or went, the Batract or their helpers were there, or came after them.

  “Stay calm, Pack Leader. No one will harm you or your pack.”

  Suddenly, the human spoke perfect Shra again. He had seen speech translators before, but none that worked that instantly and with such precise grammar.

  “I will open your restraints. They were for your own protection. You obviously had horrible nightmares.”

  “You would too if you saw your whole pack wiped out—human.” Karrn spat the last word out like a swallowed fur ball.

  “Jane. My name is Jane, I’m your doctor, what you call a healer. Here.” With that, the human, still out of his eyesight, released the restraints. The band was released on his left side and pulled under the stretcher to his right side.

  Karrn was about to jump off the stretcher when he sat up, only to see that his leg was healed. Then he noticed he could move his body—the splitting pain in his back and chest was gone.

  He was about to ask the human how and why he was healed when he first looked at the human fully, in clear light.

  Tai. She—he was sure she was female—she looked like a tai, only more… domesticated.

  There were differences, of course, but she still looked like a tai: the eyes were the same brown, the general body features almost exactly the same. But the hair on her head was a different color, the skin much paler, with tiny darker spots. The head was bigger at the cranium, obviously. Tai were cute and really smart, but they couldn’t speak.

  On a closer look, she didn’t have as much body hair, and the fingers were more delicate.

  “Everything all right, Pack Leader. I know my appearance must be a shock for you. Almost all Shraphen seem to react stunned when seeing a human.”

  “How?” was all Karrn was able to say.

  “How what?” the human, Jane, asked. She was obviously something of a Pack Leader herself. Her posture and commanding tone carried authority as the two females flanking her handed what looked like pads to her, probably reports or intelligence data.

  Karrn looked at his left leg. It felt the same, even looked the same: black fur down to the ankle, then white fur the rest of the way until his claws on his toes. He was a whitefoot. All his hands and feet wore the noble white, while the rest of his fur was pitch black, except for his belly and chest. Only a thin, almost unnoticeable line around the leg showed that something had happened to it.

  “Oh, the leg? That was the easiest thing to fix, Pack Leader. Your old leg was completely torn apart. We had to use… let’s talk about this later in the briefing. Just don’t overstress your leg for now. Oh, and you might want to stop smoking Tumpa tree leaves. You were well on your way to lung cancer—that’s also fixed, for now.”

  With these words, Jane gave Karrn a uniform. His uniform. To be precise, something that looked like his parade uniform, but it didn’t smell like it. And his real uniform was still at home.

  “Cancer?” Karrn was confused. That word came untranslated, and the odd sounds of human mouths were hard to imitate. The fact that tai-like beings could even talk would surprise some people in the colony. Tai doesn’t have muzzles that allow speech. But on the other hand, humans aren’t tai; they are more… shratai, intelligent tai.

  Too many questions. Be careful. Don’t give away secrets. This could be a cruel ruse.

  “Oh, yeah, cancer. It’s a disease where cells grow unrestricted and kill the body in the process—basically, the body grows against itself until it dies. Many of your people seem to have some sort of it. We were lucky enough to heal all of them.” Jane seemed almost proud of herself, and if what she said was true, she had every right to be.

  “We call it consumption. It kills countless, especially here on the colony, for some reason. We were never able to successfully combat it. You healed my men?”

  When do these surprises stop? One revelation after another. To his own great shock, he started to wish Pack Leader Shruf was here. Shruf was the leader of the intelligence pack. Even though he was a self-sniffing fool, he would know what to ask.

  “Might be the radiation, or some other outside factors, and the smoking!” The last word sounded and felt like the scolding his brood mother gave him when he did something wrong. He felt betrayed by his body when he noticed his ears had flattened on their own, and he could barely keep his tail from moving between his legs.

  “Doctor Nesbitt, I hope you don’t overstimulate our guest.” A new human, male. Karrn could smell anger and resentment coming from Jane as soon as she saw him. Packmates in a crisis?

  The male human continued: “Hello, Pack Leader Karrn. I’m Captain André Gerber, Aligned Intelligence Network. I would love for you to have a walk with me, if Dr Nesbitt thinks you’re fit enough.” He looked at Jane with the last words.

  Jane, on her side, looked at Karrn with the same expression tai give their owners when they want something.

  “I’m always fit enough for everything.” Is the human trying to insult me?

  Karrn needed answers, and this Captain André Gerber was like Shruf: an intelligence pack, a spy.

  “Then let’s go, we have lots to discuss.”

  They walked out of the small room. Karrn noticed that the hallway didn’t look like it was in a base on the planet. The gravity was also different, almost like on Burrow, the Shraphen homeworld.

  “Are we on a ship?” He didn’t like the idea. It would make escape, if it were needed, almost impossible.

  “Yes, we’re on the ANS Rosalind Franklin, a hospital ship. Our fleet brought two of them to care for the wounded. As far as I know, each ship can care for hundreds of critically injured patients simultaneously. Its hospital has six thousand beds and can carry up to fifteen thousand in biostasis tubes.”

  “Hospital ship?” Karrn was astonished. This didn’t fit with the picture he had of human Pack Leaders sending their Hunters into their own fire—or did they do it because they knew they could be healed later? So many questions.

  “Yes. Don’t Shraphen have something similar?” The human was smart. Karrn had to be careful; depending on his answers, the human might learn how Shraphen Veyr were composed.

  “I’m Pack Leader of Hunters. We hunt on planets, not between the stars. For that, you should have asked the Pack Leaders of the Veyr that secured this planet before you arrived.”

  Two can play this game, Shratai, even if I’m not as skilled as you are.

  Gerber led Karrn into a cross-hallway. This was no stroll around the ship; the shratai obviously had a target in mind.

  “I will, but they are currently occupied repairing their ships. We tried to keep the damage to a minimum, but some took unlucky hits.”

  “Captain André Gerber, are you telling me that the Veyr still exists?” Karrn couldn’t believe this. And did the shratai really try to minimize damage to the ships? Who would do such foolery? A hunter either strikes down his prey or risks injury from it.

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  “You can call me Captain, or André. Captain is a rank, similar, I guess, to Pack Leader, and André Gerber is my full name. We humans usually use only one part of it. And to answer your question, yes, all but one ship will probably be fully operational in a few days. We barely managed to rescue the crew before the Krunuk exploded. Ah, here we are.”

  Before Karrn could process that the losses of the last days might not be as bad as assumed, the Captain opened a door, and Karrn saw his scouting pack, all alive.

  The room they were in was massive; it must stretch many decks upward. A park with alien green trees and vivid grass. His pack was sitting beneath one of the trees, Tulk and Frox deep in discussion. Karrn could smell their excitement even through all the alien scents.

  Krun seemed to be studying the shratai soldiers who were standing a bit aside from the pack. Rish—Karrn almost laughed as he saw her—was sniffing at some alien flower-like plant and sneezing as she inhaled parts of it.

  In the background, Karrn could see many different groups of Shraphen. He recognized some of them as hunters from other packs. The joy Karrn felt at seeing his scouting pack unharmed was immense, and he couldn’t control the natural response to wag his tail.

  Captain Gerber smiled at the scene. “Go, talk to your troops—maybe even to the others, too. Some have trouble… complying with our requests.”

  That made Karrn’s ears stand up. “Requests? Do you think you can order Shraphen Hunters? What are we to you anyway—prisoners, hostages?”

  Gerber’s smile froze. “No, Pack Leader, we see you at the moment as guests. We want to end the violence. If that isn’t possible, you will be treated as prisoners of war.”

  “To end the violence, you just have to leave the colony alone and send us back! You started it!” Karrn was now angry at the shratai. Who does this jumped-up ape think he is? Prisoners or guests—what’s the difference anyway? He couldn’t get off the ship without human assistance in any case.

  “The Batract started it. We decided to end it now. We could leave, but the Batract would send more of their troops—or decide to wipe the planet from orbit, Pack Leader. We might have something in common. But let’s talk about those things later. Go, see your troops. A guard will later bring you to my office, where we can talk more.”

  With these words, the Captain simply turned and left.

  Karrn stood in the hallway, alone. His head was full of questions, and every trace he followed led to more.

  Heeding the shratai Captain’s words, he went to see his pack. After only two steps through the door, Rish sniffed the air and noticed him, informing the others.

  Karrn was immensely relieved to see all of his scouting pack seemingly well. Of course, he thought about his full pack on the surface, but Larrf was a capable second, so he knew his fighting pack was in good hands—as long as the shratai didn’t attack further.

  But why would they, if they said they wanted peace? Why did they heal me if I’m their enemy? Shratai were even more confusing than tai, and Shraphen and tai had lived together for millennia.

  The pack gathered under the oddly vivid green tree. Rish spoke first to Karrn, her tail wagging with excitement.

  “Pack Leader, you’re awake. Healer Nesbitt said it might be a few days until your spine is fused correctly.” Then, remembering her rank and the circumstances, the wagging stopped, and she continued, “Reporting no casualties. The pack is unarmed by humans, but we were well treated.”

  Before Karrn could respond, Frox couldn’t contain his excitement any longer.

  “They are tai, Pack Leader—tai!” the young hunter exclaimed, his whole backside wagging.

  Krun knocked the young hunter lightly on the head with his fist.

  “Silence, Hunter. Remember, you’re in enemy lands. Behave like a hunter, not like a pup.”

  Frox went silent immediately. His whole body showed signs of shame, as did his scent.

  Karrn himself had to control his emotions; he was the Pack Leader, after all.

  “Thank you, Rish. Thank you, all. Now—how do you know Jane, Healer Nesbitt? What happened after the encounter in the clearing?”

  Rish gestured to a soft-looking spot in the grass for him to sit down.

  “That’s a long story.”…

  —————

  Rish was dazed and unable to move. Her suit seemed fused, and she couldn’t even move a finger.

  Seconds before, Pack Leader Karrn had stepped onto something metallic and been thrown above the treetops. The damned plasma packs must have exploded.

  When he crashed down, she was sure he was dead. His left leg was missing—no, it lay a few meters away from him, a mess of meat. His upper body was twisted into an unnatural position against his legs.

  Rish could smell the blood of her Pack Leader, the odd human scent, smoke, and her own body, drenched in fear and shock.

  The humans had somehow managed to take all of them out with a single salvo from a strange weapon. Unlike their previously used metal projectiles, this one fired a yellow, glowing, gel-like substance that instantly overloaded their suits.

  By the Great Mother in the Earth, those humans are devious.

  Her vision was blurred, but she saw the Pack Leader’s helmet move—facing her. The visor was half broken; she could see Pack Leader Karrn’s right eye, bloodstained but alive. Then, suddenly, the nictitating membrane closed slowly, leaving the other eyelid open. Her heart sank.

  He’s dead. The Pack Leader is dead. My sister will never forgive me for not protecting her husband.

  Then she felt her body being lifted by strong hands. We were sent to find out what happened to the wounded and dead. Seems like we’ll experience it first-hand.

  As far as she could tell, she was being carried by two humans toward one of the black ships parked in the human camp. Locked, motionless, she couldn’t see much except the night sky slowly growing lighter as the sun rose. It didn’t seem to blind the humans enough—Taishon, star of the eye. Then she saw only the white of the ship’s ceiling.

  Only two senses remained fully aware: hearing and, more importantly, smelling. And as a female, her sense of smell was leaps ahead of any male’s.

  In the compartment, at least six humans were out of their suits. The rest she couldn’t sense. These six were stressed—that much she could decipher, even though they were alien. Concentrating harder, she finally understood why the scent was so foreign and yet so familiar.

  Tai. The humans must be similar to tai. That fit perfectly, because they now smelled like only tai do under heavy stress.

  Then she smelled blood—lots of Shraphen blood. Karrn’s blood. Is that why they’re stressed?

  They sure sounded like they didn’t like it; the gurgling human speech sounded frantic all around where Karrn’s body must be. Then an antiseptic smell burned in her nose, together with something different, leaving a metallic aftertaste. Suddenly, a screeching machine sound paired with flesh-tearing and blood splashing.

  You monsters. You cut him open like prey? I’ll kill you all!

  She didn’t even notice she had screamed the words when her visor was suddenly forced open and a tai-like being looked at her. It must have been female. In the background, a male stood, also looking intently. His eyes moved between her face and the place where Karrn must be; he seemed concerned.

  “Madam, just wait a bit longer. We’re almost at the ship, and then we’ll get you out of your suit. We’ll explain everything. Don’t hurt yourself, lovely.”

  “I’ll kill you—what are you doing to Pack Leader Karrn?” Rish was so enraged that she didn’t even wonder why she could understand the human; all she wanted was to tear out their throat in that moment.

  “We’re saving his life, ma’am. He’s lucky we arrived just when we were about to take off, so the ship was ready to start. What’s your name? I’m Lieutenant Davies.”

  Saving his life? But he was dead, wasn’t he?

  “Rish. My name is Hunter Rish, of Karrn’s pack.” She was confused; the human's soothing voice didn’t match the aggressive behavior they had encountered.

  “Frox, Krun, and Tulk? Are they alive too?”

  “If you mean the other three, yes, they are well. I received notice that the big one almost bit a sergeant’s head off—through the armor, nonetheless—so they were sedated.”

  Rish couldn’t help but smile. Krun wouldn’t be stopped from moving just because the servos in his suit froze up.

  “Krun, he’s a heavy; you will have to sedate him more. So why are you helping Karrn? He’s your enemy.” Rish wasn’t sure she could trust the human—who attacks and then heals the enemy?

  “He might be, but first, our healers—or doctors—swore an oath to help any being on the battlefield. Enemies or friends.”

  Rish suspected they might trade the wounded to the enemy later—or use them as hostages.

  “And we might not be enemies for long if all works out, see. Now rest; we don’t have the tools to cut you out here, and we still have fifteen minutes to reach the Rosalind Franklin—the hospital ship equipped to fix your Pack Leader.”

  The human standing behind this Lieutenant Davies woman touched her shoulder and said something Rish couldn’t understand.

  “What? Why can I understand you but not him?” Rish hated being locked in her suit, defenseless. “You don’t need to cut it open; there’s a manual release on the back—just turn the ring and pull.”

  The two humans looked at each other and nodded. Then the standing one said something to someone out of Rish’s sight.

  A dark figure appeared, then another. They lifted Rish, and she could see the compartment for the first time in full. At the front, humans were frantically working on what seemed to be Karrn.

  She could tell they had inserted an infusion, and a tube was stuck down his throat. Another human was pressing a large ball at the end of the tube. Respiration—Karrn isn’t breathing on his own.

  The air was stale with blood and something else: human exhalation. She knew the smell from tai that had run too long—despair.

  “Show me. We need to get him out of this trashcan, or he dies!” another woman screamed; her eyes were full of water. Tears? Is she really crying for someone she has to see as an enemy? “Show me now!”

  “Turn him around. Halfway down from the head to the tail, there’s a ring inlaid in the armor.” The humans around Karrn carefully turned him, taking care not to squeeze the tube in his mouth; one even moved equipment out of the way so his bloody stump wouldn’t bump into it.

  The backside of Karrn’s suit was a mess. Bits of the strappings they used to secure their gear were melted onto the alloy, but the humans quickly found the hidden ring and opened the armor.

  Rish forced herself to watch as they took her leader out of his dead suit. It was painful to see him that way—parts of his fur were blood-soaked, and other parts were burned from the heat of the plasma charges blowing up.

  “His spine is fractured, and his pulse is erratic!” the female in the white uniform shouted, then looked intently at Rish. “You! What’s the normal pulse rate for your species? We don’t have a Lyra connection here on this transporter.”

  “What?” Rish was surprised by the question; she was still in shock about her leader’s injuries.

  The female came over to her, snapping her fingers in front of Rish’s eyes, forcing her to look away from Karrn. “You! Concentrate. Pulse—how often does his heart beat in a minute?”

  “One hundred twenty,” was all Rish could stammer out. Can human translators even recalculate time units that exactly?

  She was ashamed of her hesitation, but the onslaught of smells, noises, and emotions was almost too much to bear. Even a trained hunter has his limits; how can humans stand all of this?

  “Good, now if you promise not to kill any of us, we’ll let you out of your suit,” the man said. He had an aura of leadership—Lieutenant Davies? Pack Leader? His face made a tai smile, and his voice was calm and disarming.

  “Yes, if you promise I can stay with my Pack Leader.”

  “Not in the ER!” the female healer screamed from Karrn’s corner. “None of you—no guards, no spies, no soldiers! My job is hard enough as it is. Claire, hold that leg up and the trunk steady, or he loses more blood, dammit! Where’s the Unigel to stop the bleeding?”

  Spy? Who’s a spy here—the human male? Rish noticed that the female healer looked at him when she said the word.

  Suddenly, the suit opened, and Rish was so surprised she fell out of it like a pup out of a tree. Luckily, the male in front of her caught her.

  The human was surprisingly strong for his slender build. He helped her regain her footing and smiled again.

  “Hello, Hunter Rish. I’m Captain Gerber. We have a lot to talk about—later, when you’re checked up by our doctors.”

  Yes, he’s the spy, for sure. They always want to talk, always sniffing for secrets.

  Then Rish became aware that she was naked. Her fur was still damp from the humid air inside the suit, and her tail instinctively moved to cover her genitalia. Like all hunters, she wore her suit without clothing underneath. Normally, that wasn’t an issue, even in the barracks—but here, among these aliens, she felt vulnerable. She hated it.

  Lieutenant Davies appeared from behind some crates with a stack of clothes in her hands—a simple tunic in Shraphen style, but better than standing here naked. At that moment, Rish didn’t even bother to question how the human knew she felt vulnerable. How could a human possibly read Shraphen body language? It’s not as if they have Shraphen on Earth.

  The transporter began to make different sounds, then, with a loud thump, it stopped moving altogether. Rish found it interesting that the doctor—a healer—had the authority to order everyone else around, preparing for something to happen. The lights at the back of the cabin changed color from red to green, and the door opened.

  More humans stormed in, all wearing the same white clothes as the female healer. Carrying a stretcher, they carefully moved Karrn out of the transporter and into the ship’s hangar.

  Rish was not impressed. The hangar was crammed with the typical human transporters, their primitive winged designs—sleek but still primitive. The stench was intense: the sweat of many humans, chemical residue, and the fumes of oil and fuel filled the room.

  In the distance, she heard the healer speaking very fast to the others: “Shraphen patient, caninoid, male, thirty standard years equivalent. Traumatic amputation, left leg above the knee, major hemorrhage, severed spine…” Then they passed through a door leading to a sparkling white hallway.

  Just as Rish was about to follow Karrn, Captain Gerber softly touched her arm. “Don’t. You heard her—no one’s allowed to follow into the ER. Trust me, never make Dr. Nesbitt angry.”

  Rish was about to pull her hand away and tell the human he couldn’t order her around when another ship opened its back doors and out walked Tulk, Frox, and, on a stretcher, the bound, gagged, and sedated Krun. It hasn’t been more than thirty minutes since I last saw them… but it feels like an eternity. Her tail wagged before she could stop it.

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