Chapter 4: Chapter Four

Before I continue, I should add that this was not my last experience with homo sapiens and alcohol, it was my first, and my most painful... at least with the aftermath. But those other times lie ahead, assuming you read on in this humble manuscript. For now it is enough to know that I woke up with a splitting headache, my professor slurring his words with a limp tongue, the chiten half shed from half again too many drinks. I didn’t think it was possible, but yes... he got so drunk he molted halfway and passed out, while our slimey colleague took another half day to rise beyond a puddle of his former self and he was utterly unable to speak until that evening.

But we did wake up in a single room, each of us with a small wicker basket and a bottle of that wonderful stuff along with a friendly note from a friend I would never see again. Lisa wrote a little scrawl that took hours to translate, to this day I think she was drunk when she wrote it, but it read, 'To toast to safe travels with the next people you meet who have a long way to go before they get to where they're going. All the best, Lisa'.

My mouth didn't really let me smile... but the warmth of her well wishes reached me somehow, as did the memory of that first human touch. That kind of openness and welcome isn't found anywhere else that I have ever seen, not before and not since, at least not away from humans.

Of course today I know that she was somewhat exceptional, even for her kind, not everybody is like that, but it was genuine and it was far from rare. To understand the importance, the significance of this, I need to point something else out. Human diplomacy is second to none, they are, most of them, uniquely attuned to searching out the needs of others, their fears, their hopes... and presenting themselves as the ones who can meet or dash them.

Human diplomacy has become the bridge across which species have moved to make peace, understanding others is the thing they are arguably the best at. Being a uniquely social species has set them up as the arbiters of choice for multiple races, and in that ordinary human, I understood why.

Because the good ones... they really 'care'. Even a stranger can matter to them if they're needed, even if they'll never see that one again once they've given help... it's a very strange thing, but it helped me believe my teacher when he talked about the self termination run that the humans launched just to rescue one outpost full of civilians.

I never did see Lisa after that, the cargo was loaded onto our ship and we were being escorted by the vessel we'd so recently traveled upon, the endless stars in the void still terrified so many that, quite frankly speaking, most races had very few who were willing to traverse the stars, and remote ships were the norm. But humans seemed to embrace it like they were born there.

Some said they were, that their race evolved on earth from material that first formed in space, or on their planet 'Mars' that was shot to earth by an impact from orbit. Nobody knows for sure, but the result, whatever the truth? People who play music in the unbounded dark, go singing to their deaths are now among the most common travelers in the great void.

And when the alarm rang announcing pirates a few days after we departed, all of us learned first hand the reason why nobody in their right mind... what was the word? 'Humps' with humans... no... no they have another term, 'Why nobody fucks with humankind.'

“Zenti! Zenti!” The loudspeaker called out, and the sea sentient living beings became a tidal wave of mindless terror. I was no different. I’m an academic, even coming from a rare ‘intelligent predator’ race, I’ve never been particularly brave. So when the announcement hit and the alarm began its blaring noise stung my ears, I went down on all fours, locked my limbs, and ran.

Fear is a strange thing, most races that develop intelligence develop a fear sense. They avoid danger like it is a disease, and the most common response to a threat is not to fight it, but to flee from it. By the same token, almost all intelligent races develop a way to alert others around them to the danger.

In all my life I’d never been sprayed with so many different foul chemicals, odors, or liquids, nor were my ears ever assaulted by so many different keening noises as we all rushed for the promise of safety in our own quarters. Those who could walk on walls or ceilings rushed there to avoid the press, only to trample each other and knock them down to fall on our heads down below. Tangled in a sea of limbs, tentacles, mushy flesh and howling fear, we were no longer intelligent or civilized.

We were the basest of animals, all of us, thinking only of ourselves and our lives as we scrambled to push our way free of the press. The ship rattled when our hull was struck, our shields were light, meant to fend off small space debris, not Zenti torpedoes.

The rumble was like the thunder of clouds and the torpedoes flashed past the portholes like lightning through the dark of night, trapped in our endless void, the ululations of passengers and crew were a nightmarish few minutes that seemed to stretch out for an entire lifetime.

Even today I look back on those minutes as the worst in my life. Fortunately as a predator race, even as a coward, I am stronger than most of those around me, and I forced myself through, using the curved nails to dig into some unfortunate flesh ahead of me and rip myself free with a violent pull and take me out of the fallen heap.

I rushed to my room with no thought to any life but my own, slammed the emergency button down and thrust my face against the porthole to watch the Zenti ship undertake its slow, wide banking maneuver. My breath fogged up the window, obscuring them from my view until I wiped the pane clear again and waited for the end.

The quarters of passengers and crew are referred to as ‘Scatterboxes’ in common languages. Each room contained a small communication device, some rations, and a miniature propulsion device suitable to help us dock, but barely anything more. They were often referred to as ‘space caskets’ since unless someone was found quickly, they would die inside those in a matter of days and just float through the void until their body was recovered or their pod burned up when it was brought down into the atmosphere by another planet’s gravity.

A few ‘space caskets’ have been found in orbit around small moons over the years, the bodies perfectly preserved for a rescue that came too late. But even with the low likelihood of rescue, we all still used them, any hope, however faint, was better than none. And Zenti pirates only wanted rich hostages.

Their banking maneuver would put them in line with our engines, the wide winged engines of their ships were almost birdlike, they might even have been called ‘graceful’ in another context.

But to me they were only ominous. Outside my locked door I could hear the shouting and screaming of the other passengers as they rushed in, I hadn’t ejected my scatterbox yet. I knew enough about the Zenti to know that the bored crews of other ships would take potshots at us, and I didn’t want to be target practice.

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Others though, their fear was even worse than mine, and they must have hit their eject buttons immediately after their doors sealed. A hundred tiny ships blew clear of the mother vessel and drifted away, I could see as they tumbled free, a few terrified aliens looking out… right before the Zenti light-guns sprayed their little explosive rounds out into space, and destroyed the life saving capsules with the passengers inside.

Nobody really thought the Zenti would be here, and that just made all of this worse.

The Zenti had shut down a lot of their military in the postwar era, but a handful of them simply took their ships and ran, becoming raiders, minor warlords, and pirates wherever patrols were few... but most? Most didn't last. Or if they did, it was because they went into hiding. I guess our vessel looked too tempting... not surprising, education vessels were filled with elites that could be captured and traded for ample goods and resources, perhaps that was why they attacked even knowing they were in human territory.

I heard a com beep at my door, it rang several times and I shouted the unlock order, I don’t know why, but at that moment all I knew was whatever was coming in was at least not likely to be a threat, and anything nonthreatening was welcome.

To my shock, it was my professor and some of the other students. Not all. Their absence told me plenty, and if I had doubts about that meaning, the way my professor looked past me toward my porthole told me to set those doubts aside.

'We are in human space. Just wait.' He said and pointed to the window to the void where a fleet of a dozen ships came into view.

They were green with wide wings on which a row of canons sat, their pulsing rays battered our shields and the ship shook like mad, and it was only my teacher's preternatural calm that allowed me to keep from voiding my bowels and hiding in fear.

"They gave us drink. They gave us food and supplies. They promised us safety. We will be fine." He said to reassure those who had their doubts. Me, I wondered if Lisa was going to be on the ship he anticipated coming to our aid. And that in and of itself was surprising... why did I think of her? I've never thought of anyone else of any species so quickly before.

These people... they are... infectious, and over the telecom device came something my professor promised would come in human space.

Music. I didn't know what it was called at the time, but now I know its name. 'Ride of the Valkyries'. And human voices came through every channel, I rushed to the window as fast as my wobbly legs... and substantial hangover, would permit, and pressed my eyes to the window again to see for myself.

Nobody rushed into a fight like this... not even my homeworld. The human ship emerged from the purple gas cloud where it lay in wait, and though it was one alone, it began to fire from its many canons, and explosions rocked the space around the Zenti pirates.

A broadcom communication hit the common airwaves used for everyday communications.

"Not to worry, just carry on on your voyage! We'll handle these, and safe travels!" I recognized the voice of the dark furred human, forceful and... as I would later understand, 'proud'. Humans had something curious about them, a work ethic not often found outside of artisans, they take pride in the things they deem their purpose, their profession, whether they are a janitor or an admiral, they proclaim excellence in their chosen craft as one of the highest virtues... and for their admiralty, that apparently included courage.

The human ship was a lean thing, long and arrow shaped, and as it came closer I could see from its sleek surface, many small guns and launchers emerging. Strangely enough, the human design for combat ships seems to have mirrored those of my people, which is to say, ‘one too many’. This single human vessel used large numbers of smaller guns that targeted the Zenti torpedoes and detonated them well before impact, while others targeted the individual Zenti ships.

Whether by intent or accident I do not know, but the humans never disabled their broadcom transmissions, and I realized something as I listened to the humans in the void barking out their orders and announcing their triumphs along the way. To them, this was a game.

I watched the fight between the human ship and the pirates as they broke off to engage the authorities, and watched as one by one the raiders were set to listing, their ships burning in space, each one disabled, broken, or shattered into a million tiny pieces so small that it was like they never existed at all. Before long they were out of view, and I couldn't see it anymore. When they left to chase the remainder of the pirates and our passenger vessel began to scoop up the surviving scatterboxes, my professor spoke.

"Humans are a rare type of predator. An active hunter species, those almost never develop civilizations, the others are all sedentary, almost to the last inhabited world...but theirs? The humans evolved to run their prey to death, or walk them to death, they are the only known species in the galaxy that can run all day and night. The known record for a human was one who ran for more than three days and nights without stopping before he collapsed." My professor said it like he was telling me the time... and I got a sense of just how dangerous this race could be if they were provoked.

It seemed so odd to think of Lisa and Mike then, they seemed so friendly, and so nonthreatening without even claws or sharp teeth to speak of... but the heedless courage of that single ship that could take on a dozen without fear and win? I felt a tingle in my spine that it seems was common among humans too, when I found something to fear.

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