I saw Lee for the first time when she opened the bulkhead door. I couldn’t read human emotions, but she seemed calm. Thankfully I was not left wondering my fate for long. She said a few words to the other human before kneeling down in front of me, to make herself small, non-threatening. I said “asylum” one last time before Lee started talking and while I couldn’t understand her words or tone she spoke so softly I got the message, I was safe. That being said, making eye contact was unsettling. She was kneeling so close to me and human eyes were so different from the solid black I was used to. At first I was lost in the novelty of the brown and white of her eyes, then I noticed how intense her stare was. The two little bits of black told me exactly where she was looking and for a reason I don’t understand it was like a switch was flipped and I remembered how afraid I was, that I should be afraid, so I looked down at the floor. I don’t know if she looked away too, but she kept talking, continuous, calm, so soft I could barely hear her.
I don’t know how long it had been when the other human came back with two translators. The one for me was made for venalia so it was a little big, kept feeling like the headphones would slip off.
“Are these working?” she asked, her voice moved into the background behind the robotic voice of the translator. I chirped out of habit, embarrassing myself, I knew she didn’t know what it meant and that the venalia didn’t program it in.
“Yes.”
“Good,” Lee stood up, speaking louder, normally, or it seemed normal at the time, “I’m Lee, captain of the Chang’e, pride of the lunar navy, the only, well I guess I can’t say that anymore, the only human triple amphibious ship. What’s – “
I held out the hard drive, saying nothing. Lee took it and turned to the other human.
“Tyler, can you get the venalia computer we have and bring it to, the mess I guess?” She looked down at me, “if you're okay with that. We can stay here if you’re more comfortable, being close to the exit.”
“It would be nice to sit down.”
“And you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but what’s your name?”
“Saria.”
It’s amazing how familiar it felt, the narrow padded hallways, big airtight doors, soft handlebars along the walls and ceiling, it was like any other spaceship I’d been in. The mess was small and cramped, even for me, and the chairs were uncomfortable, hard, too big, and bolted into the floor making it awkward for me to sit down. My years in the diplomatic corps impacted me more than I realized, a part of myself out of my control scolding me for not being more poised, elegant, even though I knew that coming across as pathetic, vulnerable, innocent, those sorts of things, would be better, and I did do my best to let my fear and uncertainty show, not that I expected humans to recognize ioe emotions, but I had nothing else, and there was always the chance of some commonality.
Tyler returned with the computer before Lee and I had a chance to say anything else to each other, and she kept silent as she plugged in the hard drive and started reading. An unsettling calm passed over me, it had moved beyond my fate.
After an hour or so Lee spoke.
“Is this, is this real?”
“Yes.” I replied, even though I wasn’t sure if she was talking to Tyler or me, who was reading over her shoulder. He nodded, I hoped that meant yes.
Lee looked at me, “no pay, no voting, no freedom of movement?”
“Yes,” I replied, even though freedom of movement translated weird and I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, “and worse, there’s –”
“We don’t need to talk about it.” Lee cut me off, and kept reading, sometimes pointing out things on the screen to Tyler that I couldn’t see from my seat across the table from them.
A couple hours or so later Lee stopped reading to stare at me. I didn’t make the mistake of staring back, but I could feel her eyes on me.
“I mean, fuck.” Tyler’s voice broke the silence.
“Yea we have to,” she looked away from me, back to the screen in front of her, “get everyone up, spacesuits, guns, warm up all the reactors, ya know, let's assume we have to shoot our way out of this and hope we don’t have to.”
He left and nothing happened for a little while. It was so quiet that I could hear the slight hum when the ship came to life.
“I don’t know how the admiral will react but, I won’t turn you over, and it’s only a crew of five, including me, we’ve fought a war together, they’ll understand. You’re safe here.”
“Thank you.”
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“Nah, you did the hard part.” She took a device out of her pocket and plugged it into the computer and typed out something on the tiny screen before putting it on the table.
“And now we wait.”
The hum of the ship slowly got louder and louder.
“Can you believe they wanted to repaint her?” Lee said, breaking the silence that had lasted a minute or two.
“What?”
“The Chang’e, the ship, sorry ships are women to humans for some reason. Anyway, they wanted to get rid of the blue cammo, put her in line with the rest of the fleet, but it’s beautiful, makes her stand out.”
“Certainly is unique.”
“Do you know of any alien ships that can fly in atmospheres and underwater, I liked being able to say she was the only one.”
“I don’t think so, but considering the sphere has no open atmosphere or water, if any alien had ships that could they wouldn’t bring them here.”
“Of course of course, that makes sense. You know the only reason the Chang’e is part of the fleet is political. A little threatening to the people on our home planet, not good to have around when you’re trying to get everyone to trust each other." There was a brief moment where the hum of the ship was the only sound before Lee started talking again, “Sorry, I realized I left you sitting there for so long not saying anything and with humans you’re supposed to talk when we're in crisis so I’m trying but I don’t know if it’s doing anything.”
“I don’t think it’s helping, but the effort’s nice.”
“That’s good.”
“Honestly this chair is bothering me more than anything else right now,” A lie, of course, but I wanted to lighten the mood, and the chair was uncomfortable, “do you have somewhere else we can sit?”
“Yea, there’s –” The device on the table vibrated, “finally, took long enough.” Lee tapped the screen and the voice of another human came through.
“Why did you send it to everyone?”
“Sorry admiral, but it seemed relevant to everyone.”
“This is complicated, we‘re already in over our heads with this shit.”
“We can’t ignore it.”
“Of course not, but we could’ve kept it to the captains, learned more languages, get a better understanding of the political situation here, find allies, we don’t even know if it is true or not.”
“We can wait, the ioe can’t.”
“Lee –”
“And they have what, 10 ships, 11, each one only a few hundred meters. I know you’ve done the math, even if every inch is full of fusion warheads they don’t have the firepower to get through our countermeasures. And if they did, we have hundreds of ships, never mind the drones.”
A brief pause before the admiral replied. “We are not doing anything without proof, and we will try to act within the political structure the aliens here have established. If it’s true, and they won’t act, we will, unilaterally if we have to, but we have to try to avoid open war.”
“How much have you read?”
“Enough.”
“Apparently not. That’s years of rape, slavery, beatings, because you had to try.”
“And how many die if you start a war, what if other aliens join their side?”
Lee looked at me. “I can look anyone, human, venalia, ioe in the eye and say I am willing to do all I can without hesitation, and after, no matter what happiness, better to die free anyway.”
“And who are you to decide that.”
“And who are you to decide that they should live as slaves? Who are you to tell me what me and my crew can fight for?”
“It’s not your fucking ship, it’s the fleet’s.”
“I was elected and I will do what is right.”
“Its a crew of four, four fucking votes isn’t a license to start a war.”
“And thousands of votes isn’t a license to be a coward.”
“Stop. I will act, this obviously can not go on forever, but to do things right, that will take time.”
“They know what happened, they know we have all the dirt on them. The years you want to take are years for them too, to prepare, to crack down, to hide evidence, and honestly, think about it. Could you look an ioe in the eye and tell them they have to spend god knows how many more years in hell because you had to respect a political system that failed them, because you value the lives of the people that enslave them over their freedom?”
“We are not going to war tonight over this.”
“That wasn’t a hypothetical, the ioe that brought the information is listening to us right now. Their name is Saria. You should tell them how whoever the shits are that run this place are more important than them and the people they left behind.”
“What are you doing.”
“Tell them.”
There was a moment of silence, and thankfully it was long enough that I could figure out what to say.
“It’s okay. We knew I wouldn’t be able to make it aboard your ship without being noticed, and that realistically… It’s okay, my cell, my friends, knew that they would be found out and killed before anything changed. Better to die with hope anyway.” My voice seemed so quiet, and it was a lie, there was no cell, at least not one I knew about. Lyrei would be a suspect, but I assumed she covered her tracks well enough, and while they might ramp up the abuse in desperation, maybe even killings, they could only disappear so many of us before it looked suspicious, and Lyrei did a lot of very public work with aliens, that gave her a little protection. I knew what Lee was doing though, make it personal, don’t let the admiral hide her soul in distance, and I could play into that.
To my surprise Lee ended the call before the admiral could reply, laughing as she did. Thankfully the translator recognized it and let me know with a few words projected in my peripheral what it meant, though at the time I worried it had made a mistake, laughing didn’t seem like the right response.
“Good, good, I like you. Wish I was recording that.” She tapped her fingers on the table in a fast uneven rhythm, “so if we want our war we need evidence, tonight, I can do that. Most humans are already suspicious of how the venalia treat you, so we don’t need much. I can do that, I can do that.”
She was smiling, and the translator told me that meant she was happy. At the time I remember thinking that made sense, if humans were unusually violent they must enjoy it more than most aliens, but I know now the smile was a stress response, no amount of have to can become want to, even for humans, and with what she went through after the interplanetary war, it was have to, it was. Lee paced back and forth and I hoped whatever compelled her to act so decisively and whatever made her smile and laugh was cultural so I could learn it, so I could come out the other side of it all without being nothing more than guilt and misery, taking whatever good I felt about what I did and making it into something that could protect me from what might come from what I started.
