Memory Transcription Subject: First Officer Sifal, ARS Bleeding Heart

  Date [standardized human time]: January 25, 2137

  I found the Yulpa crouched on the ground before me downright fascinating. I rarely found cause to interact with prey species since I’d been promoted out of raiding duties, and even then, half-stripey hooved creatures like the woman before me were mostly defined by their fear. I’d legitimately never encountered an herbivore before who was too angry to think straight. Wait, was she even an herbivore at all, or was she one of the “cured” omnivores? The Yulpas, by reputation, struck me as far too bloodthirsty to not, well, have a thirst for blood. Their religious agents even “hunted”, after a fashion, seeking blood sacrifices for their god. I wondered, idly, where that knowledge might lead.

  Garruga, for her own part, opened her mouth and made as if to speak, eyes blazing with fury, then closed it again, a look of bewilderment in her furrowed brows. Then she opened her mouth again… then closed it again… The back-and-forth between rage and confusion continued to repeat itself.

  Gods of old, did I just make a person’s brain get caught in a programming loop?

  “I’ll give you a minute,” I said softly, not wanting to interrupt this fascinating phenomenon, and motioned back to Laza to join me back outside.

  I had the guard outside go fetch a canteen as Laza closed the cargo container door behind us, locking the Yulpa inside with her thoughts.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” said Laza, not quite questioning my competence. She was a little older than me, and had spent her whole career on the officer track. She was used to mincing her words around potentially irritable superiors. Nobody got to her rank as scarless as she had unless they knew how to hold their tongue. I sure as shit didn’t, and I had the scars to prove it.

  “Have you studied the humans’ attempts at diplomacy?” I asked, half-rhetorically. “That’s the most common response the Feds give to any request for peace: ‘You’re predators, you don’t want peace, all you want is food!’ We’re Arxur demanding, not humans begging, but she still reacted the same. But, you see, that’s when I asked her about spices.” I turned back towards the cargo container we were using as a prison cell, and I chuckled. “She can’t surrender, because all we want is food. But I technically asked about food. Her reflexive objection no longer works, but she keeps trying to make that objection, so now her brain is stuck in a loop.”

  Laza snickered, despite herself. “Okay. I don’t… I don’t know where you’re going with this, long-term, but you’re right, that was a fun trick you played on her.” She blinked, noticing her slip of the tongue, and her grin faded. “It. Played on it.”

  I shrugged, and waved her concern away. “Times are changing. Don’t worry about it.” What was Laza so worried about? I’d been calling Garruga ‘her’ all day. I’d even asked for her fucking name.

  Laza’s mouth twisted, like she was clenching her teeth on one side. “May I… ask you something, Commander?”

  I considered what kind of precedent I wanted to set for my term of leadership. “As long as you keep it respectful, and we’re not in immediate danger, then yes, you can always ask me anything.”

  Laza nodded, thinking. “You’ve been…” There was a long pause as she chose her words carefully. “...unorthodox with how you treat the prey,” she said at last. That wasn’t even a question. She hesitated further, like she knew that what she was leading up towards asking was treasonous. “Do you not… believe in Betterment?”

  There was a reason I’d switched my swearing from “Prophet’s mercy” to “Gods of old”. I took a deep breath, and started with a non-answer. “We’re at war with Betterment,” I pointed out.

  “Right, but…” Laza’s maw worked silently for a moment before she found the words. “Most of the troops are just here for the food. They think the end goal is just putting the Chief Hunter in charge of Betterment in place of the Prophet-Descendent, but leaving the rest unchanged. Do you think differently, Sifal?”

  My name at the end, not my rank. Whatever my new second’s thoughts were, this was a personal matter, not a professional one. Was she another defective Arxur? I’d need more data. Gods of old, I needed so much more data about so many subjects, and I was short on time to collect it all.

  “I think I have a lot of questions about what kind of society I wish to live in,” I said slowly, “and a very small window of opportunity in which to ask them. The Chief Hunter, in calculating what he can afford, may find concessions cheaper than executions. The Prophet-Descendent’s accounting has always been quite the reverse.”

  Laza nodded. “There might be some truth in that,” she said. “What kinds of questions would you want to ask, if you had the chance?”

  I laughed without humor. “You know I came from Engineering,” I said. “Gods of old, if I start asking why we do things, I’m not going to stop. How do you think we figured out FTL drives from Kolshian schematics? ‘Wait, why is that there? Why do we need this part? How does that entire component even work in the first place?!’” I sighed, and nodded back towards our prisoner. “It works on people, too, and it certainly works on political systems, which are made up of people. And once you start asking questions, sometimes it all just kinda… comes apart.”

  Laza’s brow furrowed. “Those are generalities, though. Can you give me some examples?”

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  I shrugged. “Alright. Core principle of Betterment: selectively breeding certain bloodlines for positive traits. Right?” Laza nodded. “Okay, so why are the traits in question always things like mercilessness and strength and savagery? Those traits are useful for raiders and infantry, at best.”

  Laza snorted. “Those traits are barely useful for proper infantry,” she pointed out, I presumed, from her years of experience leading them. “We both saw how well ‘savagery’ served Kitzz.” The poor reckless field medic was recuperating back on the Brennus after his bold charge had spilled most of his own blood, and none of the enemy’s.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about, though!” I said, gesticulating with fervor. “The war effort needs doctors, right? Even if we win, we’ll still need medical professionals just to keep society running! Did you see a line outside of Kitzz’s bunk of eligible women looking to breed a lineage of genetic super-doctors?” Laza laughed at the image, and I frankly laughed along with her. “Look, come on, I’m a great engineer, myself! Didn’t hear anybody hitting me up to become the matriarch of a grand lineage of genetically pure shipbuilders! Not like the war effort needs ships, am I right?”

  Laza laughed harder, and even I was smiling at the absurdity. I was happy I was able to make her laugh, as well. “You know,” she said, “I think the dumbest part of it is assuming we even know, in advance, what traits will be useful decades in the future. The last year alone has turned the world on its head. Which bloodline was supposed to be prepared for this?” She paused, and her expression was a bit alarmed that she’d spoken so frankly. She looked to me for reassurance that she hadn’t overstepped.

  I shrugged. “Honestly, I heard a human say once that overspecialization was beneath the dignity of sapients.”

  The other officer rubbed her maw, considering it. “I like the sound of that.”

  I nodded. “Same. The humans have a weird knack for simultaneously having it all figured out, and having no fucking idea what they’re doing.”

  Laza snorted. “Don’t we all?”

  I nodded back towards the prison. “Anyway, I’m going to go fuck with this woman’s head some more and see what else I can learn about how her kind thinks. Care to join me?”

  “With pleasure,” said Laza, getting the door for us.

  Garruga, the Yulpa, looked up as we entered. Her ears were pinned back against her head from stress, and she was panting a bit. Having too hard of a think must have been on par with too long of a run. The guard returned moments later with water, and I complimented his timing.

  “Here, drink up,” I said. “Your better half is in a similar state, but we have blood transfusions on hand for Kitzz. Barring that, though, we could just feed him blood or liver to get his strength back up. I imagine that’d kill you, though?”

  Garruga lapped up the water, then took a breath. She squinted at me. “It would defile me, not kill me,” she corrected. “What are you implying?”

  I’d been fishing for what kinds of plants contained the iron she needed to regrow lost blood cells. Assuming she even needed iron. Red blood for iron-rich hemoglobin, blue blood for copper-rich hemocyanin… what the fuck did black blood need? There were no black-blooded prey in Isif’s sector.

  Still, I could probably pull that information from their computer systems later, so I chose to follow her down this new path. “Well, there was that big bit of news, straight from Nikonus’s mouth. A full, what, ten percent of the Federation had the potential to match our greatness, before the Kolshians snuffed it out. In our sector alone, the Gojids certainly had a few moments of glory, here and there. The Krakotl, crippled fishermen that they were, still managed to breach the defenses of Earth. And all wrapped up in a bow with a false religion?” I gently tapped Garruga’s snout, and she flinched away, her eyes flowing back to rage. “I wonder where your people got the idea to hunt predators,” I said, laying the loaded word on, heavily. “To feed their blood to your god.” I laughed a little as I savored my words. “There are two known instances of a species relishing cruelty in the galaxy,” I said, “and the second one isn’t the humans.”

  “Fuck you,” Garruga breathed. She’d have shouted, I suspected, if she’d had the strength, but she didn’t. “I am nothing like you. My people are nothing like you!”

  I scoffed. “I think you’re selling yourself short. Your people hunt with sadistic fervor. Again, even humans don’t do that. It’s just Arxur and Yulpa. The pain of our quarry pleases our faith, am I right?” I leaned forward, and, to her credit, Garruga was too angry to flinch back from me as my maw approached her. “I think you might have potential, omnivore.”

  I had to flinch back as the Yulpa thrashed to the extent that her injuries and restraints allowed. “Never call me that!” she growled, her vocal chords’ best attempt at a roar. “I am an herbivore, through and through! I am nothing like you! I am not some hidden-shame, crypto-predator FILTH!!!”

  “A baseless statement, but easily tested,” I said, holding my arm out. “The Kolshian ‘Cure’ renders even a few drops of blood fatal to an omnivore.” I had claw scars across both forearms, the right set recent, the left very old. The asymmetry bothered me, sometimes. The old scars, inflicted as they were on a child, were slightly stretched and distorted, compared to the new, inflicted on a grown rebel who’d made a choice. With a claw, I made another choice and gently sliced an old scar open. “This is what your religion says brings the greatest fortune, is it not? Sapient predator blood.” I held my arm out to the Yulpa, who flinched back, not out of fear, but out of shock and bewilderment. “A drop of this would kill an omnivore. Drink, then, and prove your purity.”

  Garruga’s eyes narrowed in determination, and slowly, hesitantly, she inched forward until her tongue was in range. The dark tendril shot out, lapped up the red liquid, returned back to her mouth, and she swallowed.

  A long minute passed, and nothing happened.

  “There,” said the Yulpa. She hid her relief, but I could still detect it, underneath her words. She hadn’t been sure, either. “There is the proof that I am an herbivore to my core. I am no predator!”

  I chuckled. “On the contrary,” I said, “I’d say there’s a little bit of a predator in you now.”

  Garruga’s eyes went wide in shock and horror at the trick I’d pulled, and even Laza couldn’t stop laughing for a good long while.