There was the usual anticipation when a new warp signature was detected. The last few aliens to come to the sphere had been sleepers, and while none of the venalia would’ve ever admitted it publicly they only cared about impressing other warp capable species. They worked us extra hard those couple months as we waited for the new aliens to arrive. It was just an act, busy work, to make them feel like they were doing something, to make it seem like they were doing something. The diplomatic corps was always desperate to justify its budget since the scientists and engineers did all the real work studying the sphere itself.
I was working in the kitchens when the fleet started arriving so I missed the excitement, the little gatherings people had to celebrate, forced to cook for them instead. It was late into the night when Lyrei was able to sneak into my room and tell me about it. She had a way of making even the mundane funny, loved to talk, and I loved listening to her, so it worked well. I miss her. Living on the first floor was truly a blessing, we wouldn't have been able to spend any time together if she couldn’t climb through my window.
She enjoyed her work as a linguist, and while her nali was one of the better ones that wasn’t saying much. The two of them only got along when they were working, but with nothing new for a while they were having trouble. Not that there wasn’t work, we had a massive backlog of things to be translated that aliens sent us or was publicly available, but it was the pressure of figuring out a completely new language as fast as possible that Lyrei enjoyed, and that was really the only time her relationship functioned.
The lighthearted excitement and anticipation was broken the next morning while I was eating breakfast. The Bolivar had arrived, all 146 km of her, human paranoia made into a carrier beyond excessive. Of course no one on the sphere knew the drones she launched were to coordinate the rest of the exploration fleet as they left warp, and she alone dwarfed every other ship by orders of magnitude, so it was assumed to be an attack. At the time I didn’t know anything, no ioe did, nothing was ever explained to us. The alarm sounded and I went to the ioe bunker and honestly the only emotion I remember feeling at the time was annoyance that I wasn't able to finish my breakfast.
They never let us spend too much time with each other, so the day and night we were in the bunker, a massive empty room with only a small bathroom attached, nothing in it but sleeping bags and rations and all of us, was honestly nice. At the time I must’ve been at least a little afraid but what I remember most of that bunker was how nice it was to sleep next to Lyrei. I hadn't been sleeping well with my imprinting looming, and it was so easy with her there, a deep, instinctual feeling of safe.
Someone had snuck a ball in and a circle was scratched onto the floor. The noise of people playing dain was nice, made it all seem less serious. We weren’t the only ones to take the lack of supervision as a chance to cuddle and be close in a way we weren’t normally allowed to. It’s hard to understand, to look back on. That was the last time I felt like I belonged anywhere, the last time I was with Lyrei. I don’t think I would’ve done anything different, but I wish I knew what it was while I was living through it.
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The next three months sped by. I had to get a blood test every second day for the imprinting, and I dealt with it by dissociating or trying to figure out how to get a gun if it came to that. Not that I wanted to, it wasn’t a death sentence or anything, and while I would have to do revolting things my life wouldn’t change that much, but I wasn’t strong, not in that way, and there was comfort in the idea that I didn’t have to try to be strong, that there was another option, even if it was an option I didn’t plan on taking. Lyrei couldn’t help, she was too busy working on translating english. So I was alone and spent all my free time sleeping. Worked well enough I guess, made it out in the end of course so no harm done.
It was June 12th 156 A.L.R. when it all began. Late that night Lyrei climbed through my window for the last time. I was half asleep, not expecting her at all.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t have much time until I have to be back. The humans are violent, more so than anyone else, but, sometimes, it seems like for the right reasons. You’ll have legal protection, I think, pretty sure.”
She handed me a hard drive. I knew what it was, knew that countless people I will never know even the names of risked everything to get the information that was on it. The most complete documentation of abuse against us in existence at the time (I think).
“By the second port side landing strut you’ll see a panel, knock on it. I know it’s sudden, and we could, should, wait to understand the humans better but with your imprinting -”
I chirped, cutting her off. We didn’t have time and I didn’t want to talk about it.
She taught me one english word and basically pushed me out my window, which honestly I needed. I tried to think of what I wanted my last words to her to be, but I never had the chance to say anything.
“Just go, I understand.” she said, and I left, not strong enough to look at her one last time.
I only had to run when I got to the field the human ship was in. An advantage of the venalia being worried about their abuse being exposed was that they didn’t like cameras. We actually had a lot of privacy, and could be reasonably certain if no venalia was watching us with their own eyes we weren’t being watched at all. A sign of how little they respected us. The idea that we would ever be able to run any sort of large scale organized resistance, like the kind that got the data that was on the hard drive, probably never occurred to them. That being said, I assumed there must have been cameras watching the human spaceship. It was an unusual thing but still strangely beautiful. A massive flying wing about as tall as the two story building nearby, with basic countershading, a light grey, with a hint of blue, on the bottom, and blue with irregular blobs of darker blue on the top. I remember very intentionally focusing on how weird it was to see a spaceship with camouflage to avoid thinking about what I was actually doing as I ran across the field to the landing strut where the panel was. I knocked, and told myself I was breathing heavy from running, that I wasn’t panicking, even though I knew I was.
It took only a few seconds for it to click open and fold out into stairs. At the top I saw my first human. Between breaths I said “asylum” over and over again, pronouncing it a little different each time to make sure they knew what I was trying to say. After I think the fourth time the human said something into a little device they pulled out of their pocket and gestured, moving their hand up towards themselves, which I took to mean I was allowed on. The relief I felt when the stairs folded back up behind me and the panel closed was the most intense thing I’d felt in my life up to that point, enough that I stopped repeating “asylum” and stood there, managing to actually catch my breath.
