“Like turning on the shield,” Rig said. “And developing hyperdrives. The better we get at defending ourselves, the more we convince them they’d better bring everything they have to destroy us.”
“But if you don’t do those things, they will enslave you,” I said.
“Is that what it’s like for your people?” FM asked. “You’re slaves to the Superiority?”
I hesitated. There were so many on ReDawn who didn’t see it that way. “No,” I said. “Because we have maintained our autonomy. Instead of killing us, they isolated us, denying us hyperdrives and mostly leaving us alone.”
The humans all stared at me.
“That must be nice,” Kimmalyn said finally.
I looked down at the table. These people had been on the front lines, fighting people who wanted them dead. Our squabbles on ReDawn must look so easy to them by comparison. “I’m not trying to compare our situations,” I said carefully. “But the Superiority keeps us all in cages of different kinds. They control us and call it peace, but it isn’t peace when we don’t have a choice.”
“That’s fair,” FM said, but none of the humans would quite meet my eyes. This all clearly weighed heavily on them.
I’d misjudged them, I realized. It wasn’t that the humans couldn’t think for themselves. It was that they had fought for so long with so few resources—but only for survival, not for any particular ideal.
They were desperate and confused, so they were striking around in the dark making confused, desperate decisions.
That was something I could offer them, I realized. Hope. A goal beyond mere survival.
“Our peoples were both autonomous once,” I said. “And Jeshua Weight is right. We lost that war together. But before that we worked together for centuries. Cytonics from my planet made contact with yours long before either of us were spacefaring. You inspired myths that we still treasure, and your people wrote about mine in their own mythology. One of your ancient writers even preserved bits of our language, so that when we began to travel across the universe, some of your people could speak to mine.” I’d never read the book, though now I wished I had. There were still a few copies on ReDawn. Something about a ring. “We don’t have to let the Superiority tell us we’re lesser species. We can return to our ancestors’ fight. We can pick up our old alliances. We can remind the Superiority why they were so afraid of us to begin with, and maybe this time we could win.”
“Or maybe we’d lose,” Kimmalyn said quietly.
“Maybe,” Jorgen said.
“If you’re losing now, would that outcome be so different?” I asked.
Before anyone could answer me the door opened, revealing Admiral Cobb in the hallway.
“Is this a social visit?” he asked to the room.
Jorgen startled. “No, sir. I mean, we brought Alanik some food, and we were talking, but—”
“At ease,” Cobb said, though he was the one who looked uneasy as he checked behind him in the hallway and then closed the door. He limped toward us, leaning on a cane.
“Any word from the assembly?” FM asked.
“Yes,” Cobb said. “They’ve granted permission for Alanik to remain on Detritus as a refugee.”
“I didn’t ask for that permission,” I said.
“I’m aware of that,” Cobb said. He scowled at Boomslug, who had started on a second of my algae strips. I hadn’t tried them yet, and I wondered if the humans would find that rude. I picked one up with my fingers. It was dry and crumbly, like some kind of wafer. Cobb focused on me, and I held the wafer still. “Jeshua has been conferring with NAL Algernon Weight and the rest of the assembly over the radio. Your petition for military aid has been denied—for the moment at least. The assembly is willing to continue debating the issue, and they say they’ll revisit it at a later time.”
“But I need help now,” I said. “My people are going to be given over to the Superiority—”
“So you said,” Cobb said. “They’re right that committing so many resources to your cause right now would weaken our position, especially after losing a flight’s worth of starships.”
FM and Jorgen exchanged guilty looks. I wanted to ask how they managed to lose multiple starships, but I’d lost two so far myself, so I supposed I couldn’t judge.
I should have asked that my ship be returned to me, I realized. That would have to be my next request. I stuck the end of the algae strip in my mouth, sampling it. It tasted like bittermoss, deep and earthy, with an even sharper aftertaste.