Цв?т калини ламала

  Ламала, ламала

  Й у пучечки в'язала

  В'язала, в'язала

  Й у пучечки в'язала

  В'язала, в'язала

  На дол?вку кидала

  Кидала, кидала

  На дол?вку кидала

  Кидала, кидала

  Чоб?тками топтала

  Топтала, топтала

  Flowers of kalyna she picked

  Picked, picked

  In bundles them tied

  Tied, tied

  In bundles them tied

  Tied, tied

  On the floor she threw them

  Threw them, threw them

  On the floor she threw them

  Threw them, threw them

  With her she stomped them all

  Stomped them, stomped them

  Recording of: Jo March

  Race: Harchen

  From the project: Unofficial Collaborators, the Silent heroes of the Republic

  In that moment, I panicked as I saw my whole life, as short and depressing as it might be, run in front of my eyes. I started moving frantically but he kept me tight. After a moment or an hour, I cannot tell you how much time had passed, I stopped struggling and accepted my destiny.

  That’s when he spoke to me again: “Now, I am going to remove my hand from your maw, but if you try to shout or run, you will die before finishing the thought. Do you understand? If you do, move your maw up and down”.

  That was the moment I realised that my captor was from the republic, very likely a human. I had seen enough movies to know the meaning of that gesture. So I quickly nodded with my maw.

  “Good, now I am going to ask you some questions, and you are going to answer. Am I clear?”

  “Y..yes, yes”.

  “Who are you? And why are the exterminators out in full force tonight? You must be involved, you are soaked in yulpa blood.”

  “My name is Clas, but nobody has called me that in years. I guess I am prisoner 230993. Yeah, that might be my fault… I escaped from the facility… stabbed a couple of them in the process”.

  He gave me a long look. It was hard to tell since I could barely see him, but he seemed almost… impressed? After a long moment of silence, he spoke again.

  “And exactly what was your plan after this? This is Grenelka, not exactly a paradise for escaped predator disease patients”.

  “I..I hoped to reach a group in the desolate lands, you know the agricultural areas that got abandoned, and I guess become a bandit”.

  I heard him quietly scoff. “I don’t think you would have made it that far…”. Before he could continue, he inclined his head like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear. After a moment, he looked at me straight in the eyes. I should have been terrified, I should have tried to run but I found myself drawn to him. Like a rodent in the eyes of a snake.

  “Look, little lizard, you and I have a problem. You saw me, and you really shouldn’t have. Now there are three possible ways this could go. I kill you, you try to run and I kill you, or… you come with me. I normally wouldn’t give that offer but if you escaped from a facility and stabbed yulpas while doing it, you might have potential. But let me be clear, if you take this option you must be prepared to do whatever we ask and go wherever we want… So what’s it going to be?”

  I think that up until that moment I had never even considered the possibility of surviving that encounter, so I was completely stunned for a moment. He must have noticed because he growled: “I don’t have the whole day, little lizard”.

  I quickly considered if I could do it. Betray the federation. Join the scum of the galaxy. And I realised that it didn’t matter if I was possibly selling myself to a cattle farm, I was looking forward to it. I couldn’t wait to burn that bridge. After all, they tortured me for years because they thought I was a predator. I guess I was joining my kind, I thought. And back then I didn’t even know how right I was…

  “Yes”.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, I’m coming with you”, I said with a tone less confident than how I felt.

  He nodded and then said:

  “Sáppá, I need a way out. There are exterminators everywhere… and I will be carrying a guest”.

  After that he gestured for me to get on his back, and he started to run across the city, from time to time stopping to listen to some indications that I couldn’t hear. After a few turns he stopped, letting out a small curse, and then I saw it. An exterminator car, right in front of us.

  But then a miracle happened. Something came through on the radio and they… left. I heard him quietly exhale, and then we were on the run again. Up to that point I had heard about human endurance but never seen it. I was incredulous.

  I don't know how long we ran until he stopped to catch his breath. We were in a dark alley in the far periphery of the city that smelled of pee and sorrow, the place eerily reminded me of many of the refugee camps I lived in as a pup. The smell gave me nausea.

  A drunk Farsul walked in and, without noticing us, started peeing on the side of a dumpster. At a certain point he started sniffing, first slightly and then strongly, his addled mind compounding his evident confusion. His head started to tilt toward me when I heard a slight buzz and I saw him collapse. The human then proceeded to get next to him and collect something.

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  “Get on my shoulders, we need to go”.

  And so we continued our run. We ended up in a field just outside of town. He put me down and started doing something on his holopad. That’s when I heard a slight click, which the human also heard.

  “She is with me Ely, she is fine. We need to go, the phyros are everywhere”.

  From the shadows, a barely visible Arxur emerged. She touched something on her belt, and where there wasn't anything, a ship appeared. I was dumbfounded. They signalled me to be quiet as we went in. Just after we closed the cargo bay doors the ship quietly took off.

  They silently started removing some pelt, and I could finally see them in full colour. The Arxur had quite a few scars over her greenish body. As for the human, way more than his black fur and his eyes the colour of ice, it was a tattoo on his chest that drew my attention. It pictured a small venlil like creature and something written in one of the human scripts.

  “Enjoying the show?” he whispered, annoyed.

  “No, it's just the tattoo. What does it mean?”

  “Let justice be done though the heavens fall. It's a very old saying that got back in popularity after the Federation almost bombed us into extinction”.

  After that, the journey continued in silence until a female voice announced that we were out range of Federation listening posts. The human gestured for me to follow him and we went upstairs.

  The upper deck of the ship wasn't what I expected, to say the least. No corpses nor blood splattered around or weapons everywhere. It was white and very clinical, with doors opening on both sides of a corridor.

  We entered one of the rooms, which had a small bed, a couch, a TV and the poster of a beautiful domed palace.

  “This is my cabin. You can sleep on the bed, I will use the couch. This is a ghost ship. See, we don't have any spare cabins. But first take a shower, you smell… well, like someone that has just escaped from an [antiquated PD rehabilitation centre]”.

  Never in my life did I think I would get into a predator den and be scolded for my lack of hygiene.

  I was still confused and embarrassed as he led me to the cabin bathroom and showed me how to control the shower. As I was cleaning myself, I noticed that along with human soaps there were Arxur ones. Perplexed, I used the latter, hoping the smell wasn't disgusting and that it worked on my scales. I was shocked when I opened it and it smelled like woods and flowers.

  I don't know how long I stayed in, enjoying my first hot shower in years.

  When I came out, still rinsing my scales, I got startled when a voice coming from nowhere started speaking harchen:

  “The crew is having lunch in the meeting room, miss. If you wish, you can join them”.

  “What are you? And why do you speak harchen?”

  “I’m Alexa, the AI caretaker of this ship, and as for the second question, my linguistic database includes any known galactic language from Krev to Letian.

  If you need my help, just say my name and state your inquiry”.

  I took a moment to think, and my grumbling stomach decided for me.

  A bit fearful of what predators would call lunch, I asked: “Where do I find the meeting room?”

  “End of the corridor to the left”.

  “Thank you”.

  “My pleasure”.

  I walked toward the end of the narrow corridor, opened the door, and saw something I most definitely did not expect.

  Sitting around the table there were the Arxur, the human that brought me here, another human, and a yulpa.

  He raised his head from his dish and looked at me with thinly concealed curiosity.

  “I suppose that some presentations are in order”, said the human who brought me before continuing. “She is Clas, the reason why the exterminators were all out of their burrows. Clas, he is Moses”.

  The yulpa signalled nice to meet you.

  “Elena”, he said, pointing at the Arxur.

  “Sáppá”, indicating the human woman in a blue pelt with red and yellow embroidery around the margins.

  “And you can call me Achille”.

  “So what did you do that pissed them off so much?” asked the Arxur with a strange look in her eyes.

  “I escaped from the PD hospital and stabbed three of them”, I said, a bit nervous.

  “Good job”, she said with a tone that sounded almost impressed.

  “Three less, hopefully”, chimed in the yulpa, and that really surprised me.

  Before I could say anything, he gestured for me to sit and handed me a packet. Inside there was a roll of something that vaguely resembled rolled strayu with vegetables inside.

  “It has no animal products, so it shouldn’t trigger any allergies”, said Sáppá.

  “Why should animal products trigger allergies? I don’t know if I’ll ever be confident enough to try, but I know prey species like the Krev do it without any problem”.

  “Some species like yours do, which is strange”, and after exchanging a look with the Arxur she added, “Suspicious even”.

  Hearing that, the other human loudly cleared his throat and changed the subject, leaving me baffled, but I had to quickly rally my thoughts since he asked why I had been arrested.

  “My father is an exterminator, so I used to attend a lot of social events of the guild. A junior exterminator took interest in me, but let’s just say it wasn’t reciprocal”. I took a pause, and the human woman with a sympathetic look said: “So the small dick had you arrested because you said no?”

  “Yes and no. He stalked me for months but he couldn’t find much. I was always careful, you need to be in a family like mine if you like smuggled materials, so he had to grasp at straws and being Grenelka it worked”.

  My face contorted before I continued: “He saw me reading while seated on a tree, which apparently is human predatory behaviour”. That caused some incredulous commotion, and Moses, the yulpa, blurted out: “Does he live in Little Women?”. I looked at him, confused, so the human woman chimed in: “There is a character in that book, Jo March, that does that… but it isn’t exactly common behaviour to say the least… did they really put you in that place for this?!”

  “That was the excuse they needed to search my house. The smuggled media and my refusal to sell out my friends did the rest”, I concluded dejectedly. The yulpa, with a kind smile, said: “You know, you should own that comparison. Jo March was strong, cultured and intelligent, as you are”. The human woman nodded and gave me a pad, “It’s my old one. I will show you how to access videos and books on it. You should watch Little Women, the most recent anime version is amazing”. With that, everyone started talking about their favourite shows and media. As my anxiety about being among predators evaporated, I made some more discoveries, like that The Exterminators series was actually very popular in the republic for its unintentional comedic value and that they even made a parody of it starring an old actor, a certain Tom Felton, as The Officer. The dinner went on and got lost in a quiet chat.

  The next days flowed quietly, and I found myself mostly alone when it wasn’t lunchtime, as they mostly spent their time either in their cabins or closed in meetings I didn’t have access to. One day, as I was walking down the corridor, Moses asked me if we could speak for a moment. I followed him into his cabin. It was sparsely furnished, and on the wall were two photographs, which were the only decoration. The first depicted a young yulpa in front of a farm, with two humans, one of whom was carrying a pup and the other had his arm around a gojid on a beach. He followed my eyes, nodded and said:

  “My biological parents were priests of the Spirit of Life, and an acolyte denounced them as predator diseased so she would get their temple. They were thrown in the same hospital you were in. My sister, to convince everyone that we weren’t tainted, joined the exterminators and volunteered to defend Venlil Prime.

  When the ship was boarded by the Skull Crackers, she hid me in a garbage bin. That’s where I was found. A young warrior from the pack took pity on me and hid me. After I was discovered, she promised military intelligence that she would raise me as an infiltrator. I don’t blame her, she did way more than everyone would expect. Humans hated fed guts at the time, their species had barely survived two years prior. It’s a borderline miracle I survived. Her and another warrior raised me along with their pups. I think they really loved me even if I always felt a difference”. He paused to wipe some tears. “When intelligence came calling I had to go, but I was resentful, so I left my parents’ farm and moved to a tributary planet where I met Flower. That gojid stole my heart and opened my eyes to a new faith, wicca. I couldn’t have done it without her”.

  I was at a loss for words. I did not know what to say as my mind glitched. He continued: “When I was sent to Grenelka to… well, it doesn’t matter, I searched for my parents. I could only find my father. A sad drunkard who sold off his wife to be released, accusing her of being a black star. They didn’t even exist when they were arrested. He disgusted me. I couldn’t reach my mother, she was still trapped in that hell and going knocking at a PD place was way too risky”. At that point he gave me a long, pained look.

  “Her name was Dumi. Did you know her?”

  I thought very hard about every inmate I had ever met, but sadly I had to signal no.

  “I’m sorry, they only allowed us to meet sparsely”.

  He started quietly crying. I hugged him, and we cried together. We stayed there for a long time commiserating over our misfortunes.

  The next few days continued quietly, with a hint of sadness. This lethargy was suddendly interrupted by Sáppá speaking over the intercom: “We are about to jump out of FTL, you might all want to come to watch, especially our guest”.

  I rapidly walked to the command room and found everyone standing there with trepidation. Sáppá said something in a microphone I couldn’t understand. She answered my question before I could ask it. “You can’t understand, can you? That’s my language, Sami. The farsul thought it was too primitive to study so your translators can’t understand it. Which is quite handy”.

  As she finished saying this she pressed a button and we found ourselves in real space, surrounded by warships that looked like distant descendants of the Arxur ships that terrified my parents’ generation.

  “Wow, that’s impressive”, I said. At that the Arxur chuckled. “That’s not the show, little lizard. THAT’S the show”. She pointed at a huge light that kept growing, and when it disappeared, what remained was the most incredible thing I had ever seen in my life.