The Worst Species In The Galaxy (The Complete Story) | HFY | A short Sci-Fi Story

what's the worst species in the Galaxy sentient species I mean that you've had to deal with there's a lot of spacers in here today and we've all met our fair share of aliens hey there are half a dozen different species in this cafeteria right now and a few more on this Trading Post so in all the Galaxy which sensient species do you want to avoid above all others humans that's the usual answer they're dangerous all right certainly wouldn't want to get into a fight with one of them kuk kamsu pain in the hind quarters to

communicate with and if you do get through to them their answer is likely to be we're doing this whether you like it or not get out of our way then there are the grek the OA RVA and the ashaa the extremophile species it's hard to find common ground with people who breathe methane or require an ambient temperature above the boiling point of water well as a Starship Captain I've seen a lot but it's a big Galaxy out there so take this with a grain of salt but based on my personal experience and what I've heard

in several decades working the deep space routs I'd say the absolute worst species in the Galaxy the ones you really don't want to come across are the stat Stan you weren't expecting that were you the statstan aren't known for being particularly dangerous they have the same environmental requirements as the majority of sentient species and they negotiate and trade with the rest of the Galaxy without too much trouble in the grand scheme of things they fit in fairly well to the pan galactic community of starfaring species well all that's true but let me tell you there

no one anywhere in the known universe who is so relentlessly untrustworthy less Common Sense than a fledgling too but it's the total lack of Scruples that gets you yeah yeah laugh all you want I know they're not very intimidating certainly not compared to humans or even most other sentient species in the Galaxy a meter and a half half tall at most no natural Weaponry or armor just insulating fur and a pair of short tusks they usually file down anyway they spend most of their time hanging upside down by their tails not aggressive either not the

type to start a fight but that doesn't mean they can't get you killed I have a nest kin who served on a freighter who told me this story that he got from a cook on a scout ship who got it from a trading post on tomai and for years I didn't believe it until I met someone from the crew it happened to in a cafeteria not too different from the one we're in now on the trading post orbiting EOS you know how it is you get a couple of deep spacers together and sooner or later

someone asks what's the craziest thing you've seen out there well someone asked and this guy starts going on and on about this one time his ship answered a distress call from some Staton an AIA Ship by the way this guy was as AIA as I am and I still didn't believe him thought he'd been letting his fruit punch ferment a little too long if you know what I mean I'd already heard the story so many times I thought it was just an urban legend he was trying to pass off as his own but when I

told him as much he didn't get offended he gave me a look that said yeah no one ever believes me I almost left but something about that look so I told him prove it if you can well he took me back to his ship and he showed me the logs that shut me up right enough it had all of it vid footage log entries even the IDS of the crew Men involved although for privacy's sake I'll name no names so I swear on my mother's beak what I'm about to tell you is a true story

it started with a distress call they were a transport ship The Light feather it's a common enough name no harm in telling you that on a mission to bring a couple of million tons of seed stock and dried fruit to the research cities on mean 4 3 months into a 4-month journey and they were well beyond the hi trffic shipping route and it had been more than a week since they'd even picked up another ship on Long Range scans then something came in over the comms a call for help well not even that just a

code from the UCS book Universal communication standards for you nons spacers listening signaling a ship in distress and in need of Assistance Plus their coordinates regulations said they had to render aid to any ship in trouble if possible so the light feather changed course to investigate the captain was an old spacer he'd spent years years at a time in the Deep black so he'd never have left a ship stranded even without regulations but when they got into sensor range and they saw who had sent the distress call he almost turned the ship around because he

was an old spacer he knew trouble when he saw it the signal had come from a Staton City ship the Staton are more social than most species among their own kind that is and they don't like to leave their home world without a large number of other Staton around them and I mean a large number their smallest ships hold several thousand and the city ships run up to several million this one was on the smaller side a little under 5 km long probably a long range exploration vessel so its crew was only around 100,000 the

crew of the light feather numbered a whole 23 all of them amam mind so worth two or three of any other species joke joke no need to get your feathers ruffled or whatever it is your species Ruffles but still not much help to a ship of that size and they didn't know what the Staton thought they were going to be able to do for them the Staton hailed them as soon as they were within range it was clear that they were desperate large sections of their ship had lost life support and they'd retreated into their

Central Nest Chambers the life support systems in those areas were struggling to keep the air scrubbed and the temperature down they still had FTL but this far out they wouldn't reach a habitable World in time it wouldn't be long before they had nowhere left to go they wanted to abandon ship all 100,000 of them they'd given up trying to fix their system so they decided their only option was to hitch a ride with someone else the light feather was a large freighter a kilometer and a half long so technically technically it had the space to

take them if it dumped its cargo but it would have been cramped as hell and jury rigging life support to accommodate an extra 100,000 life forms wasn't like to end any better than leaving the statson where they were so the captain decided he had to turn them down but because regulations and his conscience said he had to give them any help he could he offered to send his Engineers over to take a look at their systems see if there were any repairs they could make or any spare parts on the light feather that might be

useful the thing about the stat Stan is they don't have a conscience I mean that in the most literal sense their biological a moral it isn't normally an issue because normally Outsiders deal with them only in a limited set of circumstances for which There are pre-arranged rules the Staton understand rules they like rules and they'll follow them to the letter if you want to trade with them or negotiate with them or just pay them a visit then so long as you agree a framework for your meeting beforehand you should be fine but if there was

no rule against it and the statstan thought they might gain some Advantage by it then they would happily kill you and not spare at a second thought they're not an aggressive species mind far from it their instinctive response to stress is to climb up somewhere high and curl into a ball so there's little danger of them attacking you but you'd want to think very carefully before going aboard their ship and putting yourself in their hands of course both the Amia and the Staton are ancient space fairing species and a protocol for answering distress signals had

been negotiated long ago the captain of the light feather took a moment to familiarize himself with the procedures but it seemed like it covered everything he could think of even so before he left the ship he gave clear instructions to the crew who were staying if they lost contact with the rescue party they weren't to send more people over to find out what happened they were to send out their own distress call right away 12 Amia went over to the stricken City ship the captain the safety officer the medic plus the nine Engineers to see

what they could do for the life support systems the first mate and cargo Specialists stayed behind along with three of the engineers if anything did happen the captain wanted to make sure the light feather could get home again Staton ships aren't complicated 2 km diameter habitation sphere at the front connected by a thin spine to the main reactor and the engines at the back the captain decided to dock the shuttle at an airlock halfway along the spine the city ship's shuttle Bay was functional but rather than make space on their ships for hangers the stat

ston dismantle their shuttles after use and store the components separately there are technologically sophisticated species and their Auto factories can assemble and disassemble small craft almost as quickly as they could move a shuttle from hanger to launch bay provided the components are available it's efficient and it means they can customize shuttles for the specific circumstances the captain didn't know how familiar they were with AIA Tech and he didn't want to take the chance that they wouldn't be able to put his shuttle back together that and he wanted to know there was a shuttle there waiting

for him the moment he decided to leave a delegation of Staton met them at the airlock about 50 of them because in a group any smaller than that they'd start having panic attacks have you ever seen a stat ston in person you'd never see them in a place like this they like to stay with their own kind don't often see them fraternizing with other species I've met a couple over the years they're shorter than Amia and they only have three limbs compared to our 12 yes 12 not six aliens describe us as having one pair

of arms wings and legs each but our secondary Wings count as separate limbs the Staton are tripodal so on the ground they amble along using their two long forelimbs and a pad at the base of their tail but they're an arboreal species so they're more comfortable climbing where they can use their long prehensile tail Four Eyes Two forward- facing and two on each side of their head all in all not too unusual by the standards of the whole galaxy their diet on their home world is exclusively nutrient Rich sap from the trees they live in

triangular mouth with two tusks to strip away bark most Staton who live in space file these down for convenience they have a really long tongue for rooting for sap which Limits The Sounds they can make but their language is still mostly vocalizations with a few gestures not intimidating not even particularly alien looking in a galaxy that includes species like the OA ROK vow all in all you'd be forgiven for thinking they couldn't be a danger even if they wanted to be but don't trust them it'll come back to bite you and with sharp teeth life

support in the spine was out too so everyone was wearing space suits Amia suits are red for visibility while the Staton were in model green and brown same colors as their fur since the Captain had dealt with the Staton before he was expecting them to be in a large group what he wasn't expecting was that they'd all be armed well armed they were holding arc welders laser cutters industrial solder machines and gas sprayers but that was just engineering equipment right all perfectly normal tools for a maintenance team expecting to do some heavyduty repairs but they

way they were holding them the captain decided he was just being paranoid whatever else they might be the Staton weren't violent whatever had happened to their ship it had screwed up their system so thoroughly they didn't even have lighting which by the way was the first topic of discussion what exactly had happened to their ship after all it was 5 km long it should take a hell of a lot of punishment to knock out life support like this but there was not sign of external damage unexpected malfunction of the environmental controls was all they would

say the engine section the spine and the outer layers of the primary Hull had all been rendered uninhabitable only the inner core of the sphere the large Chambers where the statstan put their nests and nurseries were still occupied but with over a 100,000 individuals crammed in there the oxygen was dropping fast and the heat was Rising the captain pressed for details of course but they just kept saying unexpected malfunction of the environmental controls the fourth time they repeated the exact same words the captain checked his translation software to see if it was glitching but no

they just wouldn't give any more information he tried to press them but no one was talking and trying to work out who was in charge was pointless the statstan don't have leaders they do their decision-making by mutual agreement I heard a theory from a xenos psychologist once that this is the reason they often seem to have no common sense they evolved to live in much smaller groups but their social instinct is so strong that when they developed the technology to support larger populations it drove them to build larger and larger communities well past what they

were psychologically prepared to deal with in their native habitat every so often a stat ston would have to make an individual decision but when you've got a 100,000 others around you decision- making is always someone else's problem the Staton seemed to have decided to take the rescue team to the nearest control node for the life support systems which was was in the habitat sphere fortunately there was enough power in the spine that they could run the transport pods the reactors were still online and primary systems were functioning it was only the life support that was

out which was weird because normally life support is designed to be the last thing to fail the transport pod took them to the right level but then there was about 200 M of corridor to the node 200 M with no cover in the dark if you're not a Mia you won't understand this but we hate spending long periods in space suits can't use our wings it's like a straight jacket you learn to deal with it of course if you're in the deep space industry but not being able to fly for cover well the rescue team

was already nervous and that didn't make it any better and what made the captain even more nervous was that the stat ston escorting them seemed to be nervous too the group kept shifting around them as the individuals on the edge tried to get on the inside and the ones then left exposed tried to shuffle back towards the middle all the while holding their tools like they were expecting to do some surprise repairs any moment being tripods it's not easy for them to walk and hold stuff at the same time but the stats Stan were not

letting go of their equipment the captain checked a couple of the vents used for atmosphere regulation along the way they weren't working obviously but there was no sign why like ash from an outof control fire then they came across a robot looming in the darkness wide enough that it almost filled the corridor and the corridor was big enough to accommodate large groups of statan passing through it was obviously junk now bits and pieces of it all over the place the captain asked about it but all the escorts would say was that it was a repair

drone that had malfunctioned they got to the life support node without any trouble though which was a relief you know what the statstan said then they said look at the node and see repairs to life support are not possible evacuation is necessary they hadn't ever intended to fix anything just proed to the crew of the light feather that their ship was beyond repair and they needed a ride the captain of course wasn't having any of that he told his Engineers to do everything they could think of to bring the damaged node back online meanwhile they

waited in the dark airless Corridor and while they were waiting for the light feathers Engineers to assess the damage the Captain noticed that one of the stat ston was holding a scanner well he'd noticed it already but he' thought it was just to plot the safest route to the node avoiding any sections with high radiation or busted plasma conduits or something dangerous like that so why was he still holding it and why was he still paying extremely close attention to it the corridor must not have been in total vacuum because the captain suit picked up

the sound from the scanner faint but unmistakable definitely some kind of alert the change in the stat ston was immediate they started to Bunch together even tighter crowding round the nod so that the engineers working there had to start physically shoving them away more than a couple of the statstan were trying to climb up onto the ceiling but although there were handholds there as there are on every surface on a statstan ship it didn't accomplish much the corridor wasn't very high so when they hung down by their tails their faces were level with head height

for an Amia and were not exactly tall ourselves around a m 70 usually the captain could pick up their radio emissions but they were on a scrambled channel so he couldn't tell what they were saying to each other they were definitely talking about something though he asked but all they said was Hazard detected another dozen escorts climbed onto the ceiling the captain was about to tell the engineers to pack up their gear because it was definitely time to get the hell out of there but before he could give the order one of the engineers reported

reported back the damage was deliberate not the result of an overload or a malfunctioning control system the only way it could have been done was if someone was trying to take out life support it was sabotage ping yeah the scanner was still making noises and it was only speeding up the captain was about to tell the escorts that they were leaving but again he was beaten to the punch environmental hazard detected area no longer safe were the words they used if it was an environmental hazard then the captain was a vean giant porcupine but so

long as the Staton wanted to get out of there he wasn't about to argue the statstan quickly hustled them back the way they came the captain made sure he was the last of his crew to leave and just before he got out of there he took one look back down the corridor his suit lamps didn't cast much light but right at the edge of their range he thought he saw just for a second a flicker of movement when I say the the Staton got out of there quickly I mean quickly some of them were still

loping along the ground but a lot of them had slung their tools on their backs and were swinging from the ceiling holds we Amia aren't exactly graceful on foot but with wings not an option the rescue party from the light feather set new records for Amia Runners one of the engineers panicked and tried to use his suit Jets which are what the suits are designed for but not in a confined space smacked his head on the ceiling had to be carried back to the transport pod except the transport pod wasn't there there was just an

empty tunnel by this point the captain had had more than enough while the medic saw to the injured engineer he grabbed the nearest of their escort group now I said the Staton aren't intimidating but neither are we Amia particularly when you're in the guano needs must however the captain gave it his best shot Drew himself up to his full height fluffed up his feathers not that it made a difference in the the suit and he made sure that the Staton knew that when he said he wanted answers he was serious about it malfunction in the

transport protocols was what they told him well you can bet that didn't go down well the captain was not fresh out of the egg and he knew there was more going on here than the furry Little Liars were letting on so he threatened to tell the light feather to leave abandon both the rescue party and the stat St unless they started giving him the truth and he made sure they knew that if his comms were cut the light feather would leave anyway you know what their answer to that was the treaties between the Amia and

the statstan oblig you to render Aid to a ship in distress because that's how they think rules say the Amia have to help so they have to help never mind that any sentient with the slightest trace of self-preservation instinct would be running for the nearest airlock at this point treaty or no treaty never mind that the stat Stan have been lying there fuzzy behinds all all this time if that's what's in the manual then that's what you do they couldn't grasp the idea that anyone would say the hell with the rules no matter what the

circumstances well the captain had a comeback for that the treaty says the Amia have to render Aid where possible and by withholding information the statan had made it impossible for the captain to asses the situation accurately and decide the best course of action as Captain his first Duty was to the safety of his ship until they told him what the hell was going on he wasn't going to risk putting the light feather in danger he could see they were debating amongst themselves even though he didn't have access to their private channels to know what they

were saying then he saw the amount of eem signals his suit was picking up and he realized that it wasn't just the 50 individuals in the corridor with him it was the entire ship all the 100,000 Staton aboard were arguing over what to do next each one no doubt wanting to voice their opinion without taking any responsibility for the result just throwing out ideas and letting the most popular percolate to the top of the Gestalt no matter if it made sense or not just so long as it stayed within the rules it couldn't be wrong

no wonder they were in such a mess or as weam Mia put it right above the guano pool with a broken wing did I say the captain was done with their Shenanigans he was well past done he sent a quick private message to warn his crew that he was going offline for a few minutes then he jury-rigged his suit radio to flood all frequencies at once that got their attention the captain dialed up his speakers to maximum to cut through the thin atmosphere and prayed the staton's audio receivers had translation software the stat ston were

just about having a panic attack now they were cut off from all their friends so they actually seemed relieved to hear him speak the first thing he told them was to stop asking the whole ship for advice because those Staton in the habitat core were not the ones who were going to die if things out here took a nose dive the second thing he told them was it was time to tell the truth starting with what happened to the transport pod and working backwards there was still some chatter between the 50 statan in the corridor

with them but it seemed like without the rest of their City ship trying to butt in on the conversation they were more rational because they answered transport pod was withdrawn to maintain quarantine yeah that's right quarantine as you can imagine the captain's gizzard just about dropped out of his boots when he heard that and the natural follow-up question was quarantine of what the story that followed was a little garbled because there were 10 individual statson trying to tell him the same things all at once but the gist of it was clear there was an alien

life form aboard the city ship what kind of life form where did it come from all they would say was species Unknown Origin unknown whatever it was wherever they picked it up once it was on board it started killing the Staton responded fairly logically at first they're a technologically advanced species they should be able to handle a rogue xenoform so they modified some of their repair Bots to carry impromptu Weaponry their internal sensors aren't set up to monitor anything more than environmental data for the life support systems so they couldn't track whatever it was accurately

but they could narrow it down to certain sections they evacuated the affected areas and sent the AI controlled repair bots in to sweep and sterilize the rescue party had already seen the results of that dozens of repair Bots were torn apart before the stat ston gave up the repair Bots just weren't designed to take that kind of punishment and it was clear that the modifications they could make on the city ship weren't going to cut it that left them no choice but to do the job themselves they printed themselves Weaponry based on their existing inventory

of industrial tools and modified scanners to pick up Trace changes in air currents and electrical potential motion detectors they geared up and formed teams of no less than a 100 each to comb the ship for the alien Intruder The Hope was that in large enough groups numbers and Firepower would overcome ferocity the alien had torn them apart literally it was large enough and enough to rip a staton's arms off and it was fast too it always seemed to appear out of nowhere and it was gone just as quickly the other statstan would pick up the

panicked chatter from the group under attack but by the time help arrived all that was left was body parts and burn marks on the walls from weapons that hit nothing usually a few stat Stan got away they knew how to run and hide on their own ship at least but they were never in a condition to give any useful information afterwards at this point the stat ston had started to panic they withdrew the search teams and evacuated everyone to the inner core then they did the only thing they could think of to do go back

to the rule book The protocol for dealing with infestation by an alien organism was mostly made with microbes in mind and included as a last resort cutting life support in contaminated sections less effective when your target can move between different parts of the ship but if you cut everything all at once with everyone in the inner Chambers they opened the entire outer layer of the habitat sphere and the spine and the engines to hard vacum it had totally failed whatever was out there could survive in the void of the first scout team to sweep the

outer sphere after they repressurized everything only 10% made it back alive utterly desperate now the Staton had started pushing their life support system to the Limit trying every combination of temperature pressure and gravity they could think of in an attempt to kill the Hostile organism infesting their ship the problem with this was that generally the whole point of a life support system is to not let the environment get too far outside the norm so they'd had to bypass or disable a lot of the safety protocols and even then the equipment could only be pushed so

far beyond its Baseline function but they managed to get the temperature up to halfway between the freezing and boiling point of water at varying levels of atmosphere feric pressure they also managed to get their artificial gravity up to as high as 10 G's above standard but this still didn't manag to kill the alien unbelievably in the end all they accomplished was to completely trash their life support so they were now sitting in a ship whose last remaining life support systems were failing with an unkillable alien Predator loose on board they'd let the crew of the

light feather come over on a Mission of Mercy and led them right Into the Heart of the hunting ground all without mentioning any of these details now do you see my point Staton are the worst there were a lot of things the captain would have liked to say to the Staton at that moment but none of them would have been helpful nor repeatable in public for that matter the most important thing in that moment was to get out of there and for that he needed the stat Stan's cooperation he still had a nasty feeling there

were more details they were leaving out for a start he didn't believe for a second that they had no idea where they could have picked up the creature but they'd said all they were going to say and he couldn't stand around interrogating them any longer he tried to convince them to bring the transport pod back but the stat Stan with him didn't have access to the controls and they made it very clear that the others weren't going to send the Pod back while there was any chance the alien was nearby their only chance was to

make it to the next section the statstan designed their ships with airtight modules in case of a hull breach if they made it to the next one they could close the bulkheads and hopefully seal themselves off from whatever was hunting them unfortunately the alien had shown a remarkable capacity to find ways to get from section to section in the past they'd had to physically weld all the doors of the inner habitat sphere shut to keep it out with the exception of One Transport line heavily guarded to allow maintenance teams in and out but they might

be able to slow it down long enough to call a transport pod and get out of there the captain finally dropped the EM jamming and gave the crew back on the light feather an update on the situation he made it clear that under no circumstances were they to dock with the city ship and if the statstan tried to send a shuttle over they were to jump to FTL immediately he made sure the statstan could hear that part then he switched to a private Channel and had a conversation with the rest of his rescue party the

medic had got got the injured engineer back on his feet no concussion just stunned and bruised he'd have advised the engineer to avoid stress for a while but under the circumstances the safety officer thought they should abandon the whole mission the captain wasn't quite ready to leave 100,000 sentients to die but then again the staton's problems could wait until all his team were back on the light feather the Staton meanwhile were having a discussion of their own or an argument rather seemed like the others weren't happy that the escorts had let slip their little secret

they're not like the kuk kamsu they knew full well they should have disclosed the danger to the light feather they just didn't want to risk the Amia not helping them they were very clear on what they wanted to happen now though and the escorts relayed the results of their deliberations to the rescue team Evacuate the city ship then overload the reactors result thermonuclear explosion it's the only way to be sure the captain actually liked the idea of nuking the Staton ship a whole lot at this point but the problem was carrying out an evacuation without

giving the alien a chance to board the light feather they could cross that Branch when they got to it though right now getting the hell out of there was their top priority unfortunately that meant making their way through several hundred meters of pitch black corridors the only idea the captain liked the sound of less was staying right where they were the motion detector had made any noise for a while maybe the alien had decided that with 12 Amia among the 50 statstan the odds were against it or maybe it just wasn't moving the captain cast

one last look down the corridor but his suit lights didn't show much if there was something out there waiting well either way it didn't make a difference they were putting as much distance between themselves and this section as possible they took a left and followed the monreal for the transport pods a little way way before it disappeared into a tunnel the escorts advised against following it once you were in the tunnel there was no way out until you got to the other end so they took another left which led them through a corridor where the

artificial gravity was malfunctioning the Amia of course were fairly comfortable with weightlessness but the statstan did not take well to bobbing about and would only proceed clinging to the walls and ceiling this slowed them down a lot ping the captain tensed up what wouldn't have given for something thick and heavy to hide under at that moment but he had a duty to his crew and hiding wasn't going to do them any good here anyway they had to make it to the next section and seal the bulkheads ping at least the Staton were moving faster now

they were clumsy in the low gravity but although a couple of them lost their grip and bounced off the floor they kept going ping there was definitely something behind them moving fast closing on them but they still had time ping the captain turned trying to see where it was his suit lights glanced across the walls floor ceiling but they didn't show him anything but an empty Corridor ping they were almost at the end of the corridor it couldn't be that much further to the next section ping the captain checked all his crew were ahead of

him ping they were at the end of the corridor all of them the gravity was back this part still had power they were at a four-way intersection and the Staton had paused trying to work out which Fork to take the motion sensor wasn't picking up anything maybe whatever was following them didn't like low gravity crash the captain spun round just in time to see a vent cover slam to the ground something dropped from the shaft right into the middle of them the captain just caught a glimpse of it in the light of someone else's suit

lamps whatever it was it was fast and it was bone white everyone panicked some of the Staton dived for cover some brought their weapons up the ones who fled were the Smart Ones in all the chaos the captain couldn't keep track of the white blur but he saw a statan go flying and hit the wall hard every radio channel was filled with shouting screaming it was just as well atmospheric pressure was low muffling the sound of 50 statstan shrieking in alarm several of the Amia tried to activate their suit Jets on Instinct one or two

got clear but the captain saw a couple of his crew smack into the ceiling or bounce off the walls the safety officer kept his cool like he'd been trained to and retreated back into zero g section where an Amia would have an advantage the medic managed not to panic as well and made for an engineer who'd been knocked down the creature grabbed him through the mess of flailing statstan and Amia the captain just managed to catch a glimpse of a red suit being dragged into a ventilation shaft then it was over the whole encounter had

lasted less than 30 seconds seconds slowly the Panic died down at least enough for the captain to check that the rest of his team were all right everyone accounted for except for the medic of course and with nothing worse than a bruise or two the stats stwn weren't so lucky three of them were dead two from blunt force trauma and one from having its arm pulled clean out of its socket there was no use mourning them now however the creature could be back at any moment the captain hesitated but he still had 10 members of

his crew he needed to get to safety the medic would understand the next section was only 150 M away left right left again all the time waiting for the motion detector to go off again but nothing happened and suddenly they were there safety still the captain didn't let himself relax until the heavy vacuum proof doors closed it was only then that he thought to check the bio monitors in his Crews suits he wanted to make sure that the injured weren't seriously hurt the bio monitors were fairly basic and no substitute for a full exam but

it was better than nothing fortunately their vital signs were all within normal tolerances they'd been knocked about a bit but they'd be fine however when the captain opened the display on his suit's visor he noticed something else the medic was still alive he ran a diagnostic making sure that he was still looking at current data and it wasn't on some sort of time delay nope this was the current telemetry the medic was definitely still alive his vital signs were still strong too the captain then brought up a map every suit had a Tracker in it

and the Medics was still broadcasting he wasn't even that far away only a few hundred meters and two levels up the captain thought long and hard about what he was going to do next when things get tough you don't abandon your flock every Amia is raised knowing that however when you get older get given a position of responsibility you you learn that things aren't always that simple there are always risks when you're out in deep space but they're usually risks like a malfunctioning reactor or a toxic leak from the cargo pulling a crew mate out

of a burning engine room was Brave but taking on an alien Predator that was just crazy he was only a freighter Captain he wasn't some long range Explorer he didn't sign up to go boldly into the unknown and he certainly didn't sign up to fight Monsters the sensible thing to do would be to make sure the rest of his crew was safe and accept that there was nothing he could do for the medic now but he was still a captain and when he took the job he accepted responsibility for everyone under his command he told

the stat Stan that he first Duty was to the safety of his ship that was important sure they needed those supplies on Mi in4 but Above All Else as Captain it was his duty to make sure his crew got home again all of them after a quick conversation with the safety officer the captain made his decision the statstan were surprised when he told them there was a change of plans but not half as much as the rest of the Amia it took some arguing but in the end they agreed they would continued on to the

transport pod and take the rest of the team back to the light feathers shuttle the captain and the safety officer would go back for the ship's medic the Staton didn't like anyone making a decision without consulting well everyone but they also didn't care if two Amia wanted to get themselves killed they left in one of the motion detectors and continued on escorting the rest of the rescue team to the transport pod once they gone the safety officer got the stunners out of his pack there are always two on a frighter with a crew of four

or more and only the captain and the safety officer are trained to use them long sticks that fire an electrical pulse simple weapons but effective if one of the crew has a psychotic episode and it can happen out in the void then the stunners allow his Shipmates to subdue him without hurting him much it's designed to be nonfatal but it still hurts like hell normally the captain would never have brought weapons on board someone else's ship especially not without asking them first but this was the stat stun they were dealing with and he'd had a

feeling they were hiding something he told the security officer to bring the stunners keep them hidden and only use them as a last resort this seemed like a last resort as they waited by the door dividing the sections he tried raising the medic on comms a couple of times nothing it occurred to the captain that even if the creature hadn't eaten him already it probably wasn't doing anything Pleasant with him but his vital signs were still strong and as long as that green line held then there was still hope after a few minutes the door

opened the captain breathed a sigh of relief whatever else happened the others had reached the transport pod he looked at the safety officer without even needing to say it you don't have to do this you know but the safety officer was through the door before the captain it was his job to identify potential hazards to the crew and keep them out of Harm's Way he'd been trained to keep a cool head under pressure maybe no one had ever expected a situation like this when they were giving him that training but this was definitely a hazard

and there was a crewman In Harm's Way they retraced their steps and found an access shaft that allowed them to go up two levels using their Jets then they started following the medic's tracker beacon the captain kept a close eye on the motion sensor but it was quiet as well as the grave one intersection 2 3 they crept down the empty corridors suit lamps piercing through the darkness and found nothing they were getting close the medic must be somewhere along the next Corridor that came from behind them the captain spun round but once again all

he saw was an empty Corridor the motion sensor was definitely picking up something in the direction they'd just come the captain and the safety officer looked at each other then they broke into a run the medic suit tracker was still registering just a little way ahead the creature must have stashed him for later and then gone out to hunt down the rest of their group maybe they still had a chance get in get the medic and get out before the creature realized they doubled back the captain's legs were starting to hurt he wasn't used to

using them for so long but it couldn't be far now suddenly the safety officer stuck his arm out bringing him to a halt and in an instant the captain saw why there was a hatch there not a large one like the section divider so there was probably just a small room through there from the position of beacon on the medic suit he must be just on the other side the captain hesitated you never opened a door on a spacecraft if you didn't know what it led to dangerous Machinery radiation anything if the atmospheres weren't equalized

and that was a real Danger on this ship they could be blown back into the wall behind them the captain sprang forward and pressed the button the door swished open instantly the captain knew two things the first was that he should never have trusted the stat ston when they told him there was only one Intruder aboard the second was that they were as good as dead his wings flexed inside his suit trying to fly for cover the captain half turned but when his wings just hit the inside of his suit it shocked him enough to

think about what he was doing there was no cover here but he had the stunner the captain brought up his weapon and depressed the firing button too slow far too slow his Target was already moving the safety officer fired but he missed too the captain adjusted his aim already knowing it was feudal already knowing what was coming at him but he had to try he was just about to press the firing button again when the stunner was ripped out of his hand the safety officer lost his weapon a split second later then they were just

standing there face to face with it a human the safety officer half turned Instinct finally winning out then just collapsed adrenaline faint when an aia's Panic Instinct activates but they can't use that burst of energy to fly to cover it often causes an overload that knocks them out saves you from having a heart attack but not great in a dangerous situation right then however the the captain envied him no one could survive a human not in any kind of combat and certainly not up close like this they still weren't well known outside their little corner

of the Galaxy but the Amia had investigated and gathered a certain amount of information on them carnivorous aggressive brutally strong fast and tough insane predatory instinct to the point where they frequently hunted each other as well as anything else that came within reach the Amia government had sent observers in during the conflict with the kuk kamsu and what they'd brought back well the captain had seen some of the vids whatever the human was about to do to him he just hoped it was quick it was just standing there it was wearing a white space suit

not too different from the captain's own although obviously made to fit a human form a little taller than him but much bulkier most ground dwelling species are of course flight is a huge Advantage for the Amia but it does mean we're relative lightweights for our side the captain was fairly confident that if it wanted to the human could rip his limbs off one by one then fold him in half for good measure but it was just standing there the captain became aware of a presence behind him something picked him up and the safety officer and

shoved them both into the room then the door closed with a hiss of finality two humans now he was in an enclosed space with two humans he caught a flash of movement at the corner of his vision and a third human came into view all three were wearing bone white space suits that to an Amia looked disturbingly skeletal they were all just standing there this was what he got for trusting the Staton the captain realized there was only one thing left for him to do now he opened his Cal system to tell the light feather

to pick up the rest of the crew then get as far away from here as possible then he noticed that there was an alert on his Comm system it was picking up a signal on a new frequency almost on reflex the captain selected it an audio transmission or at least that was what it looked like he opened it hello hello can you hear me can your translation Matrix process this yeah that's right they were trying to talk to him you can imagine how shocked the captain was could have knocked him down with a feather as

we Amia say the only sensient predator species in the galaxy and instead of trying to eat him they were trying to talk to him which was when it dawned on him they sensient they may be carnivorous but they're sensient maybe just maybe there was a chance for him to talk his way out of this so he replied yes I can understand you he wanted to add please don't eat me but he didn't fully trust his translation program to deal with human language and even with perfect translation there's still the chance of cultural misunderstandings so he

decided to stay away from the whole topic of killing him and keep everything simple he started by asking what do you want the answer surprised him almost as much as the fact that he was still alive he followed up with another question and another and slowly he started to get an idea of what was really going on here it had all started a few weeks earlier a human cargo ship called the Idaho had been on a mission out to UPA row territory just an ordinary trade run except not ordinary for humans because that's a hell

of a long way for them their FTL drives are pretty primitive and and they have very few ships capable of Crossing that kind of distance they were 4 months into the trip when their FTL Drive broke down far far beyond the range of any possibility that another human ship would come across them so they sent out a general distress call and guess who answered that's right the Staton City ship now if you or I answered a distress signal it would be because we actually wanted to help but that's not how the stat Stan think they

found the Idaho drifting helpless and they checked its conf configuration against the list of species they have bilateral agreements with not Amia not velan not talk talk in fact the ship design was one they'd never encountered before the files said human don't think the stats on didn't know what a human was they exchange information with the rest of the Galaxy their databases contain as much information on all the various space fairing species as anyone even the Obscure ones but they'd never encountered humans directly before which meant they didn't have any treaties with them which meant

they had no obligation to help a species which had the tiniest sliver of an instinct for compassion would have thought to themselves well we can't just leave them out here we have to do something for them a species which had any amount of Common Sense would have thought maybe we should stay away from a ship full of humans but these are the statan we're talking about so they thought hey nice free ship that's right those Geniuses found a human disabled ship ship and they decided to just take it for themselves a human ship I told

you the first time I heard this story I didn't believe it because surely surely even the statan aren't that stupid but apparently they are I saw the logs and I still can barely believe it but they really are that dumb the city ship dragged the Idaho into its shuttle Bay and the auto Factory started carving it up keep in mind the humans thought up till this point that the Staton were coming to help them nasty surprise for for them although the statson were about to have a worse one as the industrial Cutters started slicing into

their Hull they had to scramble for their space suits and make a run for the Emergency airlocks 11 of them didn't make it the other 38 however got off their ship in time before it was torn apart for components I guess the stat Stan just assumed that anyone on board the ship would die as they were taking it apart and they wouldn't have to worry about them but 38 humans managed to evacuate and found an opening that LED them into the Machinery of the auto Factory and somehow they made it through without getting crushed or

cut up and activated an airlock it didn't take the Staton long to realize that they'd picked up passengers at first they tried to deal with the humans by containing them but humans are a reasonably intelligent species and the Staton like to keep their ships simple the humans quickly worked out they could move through the ventilation system and given enough time they could break open the door control controls and bypass the lockouts from there it progressed more or less as the statstan had told the Amia earlier first they sent in the modified repair drones these huge

lumbering robots actually managed to kill three of the humans partly because the humans still weren't sure what was going on and whether it was just an interspecies misunderstanding I should mention by the way that the crew of the Idaho wasn't part of the human Hunter cast their military well their captain and two of the crew were ex-military but all the rest were considered non-combatants by human standards they were ordinary space fright workers like us Pilots Navigators Engineers cargo supervisors they were as unprepared as humans get to face lethal violence but these are humans we're talking

about being humans they quickly adapted to the new threat trying to exterminate them because when you live on a world full of humans there's lethal danger around every corner LED by their Captain using what he remembered from his military training they worked out that the drones had blind spots and although they were powerful they were slow the Staton simply weren't used to designing weapons and soon every drone they sentent out was methodically obliterated by a combination of the humans tactical superiority and their innate raw aggression as the humans were explaining this part to the captain

of the light feather one of them mentioned that after a while it seemed like a video game boss battle the drones were much bigger than them but they had weak spots and they moved predictably the captain then had to ask them what a video game was and apparently it's a kind of educational or entertainment simulation humans use they come in many varieties and a lot of them aren't too different from our VR Sims but by far the biggest genre is where something horrifying is trying to kill you and you have to kill them first they

do this for fun from childhood maybe if the statstan had known this they wouldn't have started sending patrols out to hunt down their unwelcome stowaways at first the humans tried to avoid them but the Staton knew their own ship and they carefully planned their routes to herd the humans into their line of fire as lacking in common sense as they are Staton are still a highly intelligent species and if you give them a problem they can reduce down to mathematics they will solve it with no problem unfortunately for them humans don't need complex mathematics to

work out a hunting pattern they do that kind of thing instinctively they understood what the occupants of the city ship were doing so they decided to introduce them to some of the basic concepts of human Warfare starting with the Ambush as the captain of the light feather listened to the details of what the humans did to the statan who were trying to purge them from the city ship he realized something they were confused not confused over why the statan were trying to to kill them like a sane person would be all their media from the

moment a human first realized there might be other life Among the Stars had been preparing them for that before first Contact they assumed that alien species would be hostile predators and because first Contact was with the kuk kamsu it persisted for a while after that as well no they were confused over why massacring the statstan had been so easy it wasn't that the statstan were slow not like the kuksu the Staton had reaction times almost as fast as a human and they could move remarkably quickly when they had a handhold overhead to swing from but

when the humans ambushed them they were useless even when they heavily outnumbered their targets many would drop their weapons and flee and the ones that tried to stay and fight were terrible at it their aim was all over the place and as soon as a human got within Striking Distance their only defensive move was to curl into a ball the humans had been expecting that the aliens who destroyed their ship the aliens who had been relentlessly hunting them down would be some kind of aggressive super Predator like well humans they were baffled that their enemy

was so harmless because civilized species aren't meant to be Predators the captain of the light feather wanted to say that's not how the Galaxy is supposed to work until humans were discovered most scientists thought that being an apex predator was antie itical to the social structures necessary for the development of intelligence and it was taken as a given that no species so aggressive that they regularly attacked their own kind could develop the level of Technology necessary for Interstellar flight that was in the captain's personal log by the way he felt the need to note it

down later what he'd been thinking in that moment and I'll throw in an observation of my own most species are bad at intuiting the path of projectiles relatively speaking throwing things is not an important skill in most evolutionary lineages but humans have been making projectile weapons since before they even were humans their distant ancestors were tying sharp rocks to Long poles hundreds of thousands of years earlier it was practically the first bit of Technology they developed and there was a huge selective pressure to be good at throwing a weapon to kill something at a distance

whether it was a prey animal or another human so by human standards every other species has terrible aim along with being terrible at everything else related to violence think about that if you're ever tempted to relax around humans just because you're armed anyway what the captain told actually told the humans was that the Staton had probably assessed their Threat Level based on the technological sophistication of their vessel judging it inferior they assumed the humans wouldn't be much of a danger they had no doubt re-evaluated that position by now after the patrols had failed miserably the

statstan finally resorted to their really badly thought up abuse of the environmental controls if the humans hadn't had their space suits this might actually have worked but as it was all it did was make them uncomfortable five times their standard gravity is survivable for them apparently the stat Stan managed to drive some sections up as high as 10 G's before they shorted out still didn't kill them even when the stat Stan made the atmosphere denser and turned the temperature up to the point where it overwhelmed their suit's insulation it was still within survivable limits the

gravity I can actually understand given human bone density and musculature but it turns out they also have remarkable capacity to withstand temperature extremes another adaptation for hunting shedding excess heat faster than their prey if stabbing shooting or clubbing their target didn't work they could literally exhaust their prey to death I know I've said this already but seriously how stupid do you have to be to pick a fight with a species like that so the humans had had an unpleasant stay with the Staton but they were hanging in there 34 of them were still alive that's

right 34 humans had been enough for the 100,000 Staton on board to give up and seal themselves off in the habitat core then the humans Saw The Light feathers shuttle dock with the city ship they'd had weeks to get to know the place by that point so they'd figured out how to tap into a lot of the systems including the transportation system which had allowed them to the Pod to its destination and so they'd ended up here it was at this point that the medic who had suffered an adrenaline faint when he was grabbed started

waking up when he saw he was surrounded by humans he almost lost Consciousness again but the captain was able to calm him down enough to explain what was going on the medic checked on the safety officer who was also starting to come too he was fine but again it was a nasty shock waking up surrounded by a bunch of humans now that the humans had explained the whole debacle to him the captain was still left with the question what did they want more specifically what did they want with him his safety officer and his medic

his range of expected answers was hostage at the good end and lunch at the bad because surely being humans they were now going to wage a campaign of genocidal extermination against the stat Stan and to be honest as far as he was concerned anyone stupid enough to attack a ship full of humans deserved what they got but no they just wanted to get off the ship it was at this point the captain realized something the human asking most of the questions must be their Captain he might be a human when you got right down to

it they weren't so different all he wanted was to get his crew home the humans had been looking everywhere for a shuttle hanger and found nothing because of course the stat Stan don't have shuttle hangers just storage for parts seeing the light feathers shuttle dock had finally given them hope that they might be able to escape ape the humans were asking him begging him to get them off the Staton ship one Captain to another he couldn't refuse the humans visible sagged with relief when he told them he'd help then they started talking about the best

route back to the spine what to do if they encountered a Staton Patrol and how they might be able to get the rest of the Amia away from the Staton and the captain finally understood that they thought his group had been captured by the Staton looking back he could see how they'd made that mistake given that the Amia been escorted around by a large number of relatively heavily armed Staton the humans also didn't seem to realize just how desperate the Staton were to get rid of them the captain opened a calm channel to the Staton

and asked them if they'd like him to remove the humans from their ship this caused some confusion it apparently had never occurred to them that this was an option it wasn't that they didn't understand that the humans were sentient they just didn't think such an intensely hostile species would be open to negotiations also the humans were winning when the statstan have an advantage over someone they don't show Mercy they don't even understand the concept of Mercy the humans could have continued until all the statstan were dead and the city ship was theirs and from the

statstan point of view that seemed like the most logical thing to do hemmed up in the core of their ship most of the Staton wouldn't have lasted much longer a few could survive a while in suits but it had already been established that a few Staton were no match for the humans it took the captain quite a while to convince the Staton that the humans were willing to leave with him without further retaliation when it finally got through to the whole Community the stat ston were more than happy to accept the deal not everyone was

so pleased the safety officer objected strongly to the idea of letting a bunch of humans aboard the light feather even if this situation had completely been the fault of the Staton they were still an incredibly dangerous species and could pose a serious threat to the crew and the ship it was his job to identify potential hazards of course but as the discussion continued over their private Comm channels the captain got the impression that most of the crew was just as worried he thought about it long and hard given recent events he couldn't really argue the

humans weren't dangerous but in the end he overruled his crew he reminded them that regulations obliged them to come to the aid of other spacers in distress just because the humans weren't who they originally thought they were here to help didn't mean that didn't still apply the crew of the light feather weren't happy about it but they just had to live with it because for the captain this was about more than regulations when you were out in the void far far from home you didn't abandon a fellow sentient in trouble the captain did ask the

stat Stan to try rebuilding the Idaho because it would have solved a lot of problems if he didn't have to take the humans aboard the light feather but human ships are primitive and don't have the modular construction Staton ships are designed with the Idaho had been too badly mangled to put it back together again the Staton did at least provide an extra shuttle so they could Ferry the humans over to the light feather faster they probably would have given them all the shuttles if it had got the humans off their ship a moment sooner it

still took a while for all the humans to get through the kilometers long City ship to the docking ports they'd made several bases for themselves scattered across the ship places where they'd disabled the internal sensors then used parts stripped from the life support systems to repressurize a room some of their oxygen came from storage tanks some of it they'd made by collecting ice crystals from the depressurized corridors and splitting it with electricity they really are resourceful for a technologically backward species the safety officer raised Ed one last objection before the humans boarded the shuttles what

were they going to eat the light feather still had another month before it reached mean 4 and it wasn't like they kept a stock of prey animals for the humans to hunt unless of course you counted the crew the captain decided to just ask his opposite number from the Idaho how long humans could go without eating and he was well let's say slightly alarmed when the Idaho's Captain told him that three meals a day was standard a few days without food was doable and in extremis a week or two was survivable but three meals was

ideal the captain started trying to explain the problem but the humans didn't seem concerned they said they'd just eat whatever was on board the light feather the captain tried to make them understand that Amia aren't carnivores and the only available food was fruit the humans Shrugged and told him that would be fine at this point the captain opened a calm channel to the light feather and and asked the first mate to read through whatever they had on humans in the ship's archives it was supposed to sink with the galactic net every time they were in

Port there should be something on human dietary requirements the first mate got back to him a few minutes later apparently the common image of humans as ravenous carnivores was a little exaggerated they're omnivores yeah I know it's almost disappointing when you find out the only sentient carnivores in the galaxy and they aren't even real carnivores don't get me wrong they do eat meat lots of it but they eat a lot of other things and they can get by without meat for a while the crew of the Idaho could eat a wide range of foods including

the fruit rations carried by the Light feather it turned out the Amia had even recently started exporting native fruits from home world to the nearest human colonies the captain admired the courage of the spacers who had the nerve to sign up for that trade route in fact it was healthier for humans if they did eat fruit every so often their Optimum diet was balanced between meat fruit vegetables and Grains but for short periods they could survive on a much more limited selection once the humans were on board the light feather stuck around a while to

help the statstan repair their life support as much as the whole crew of the light feather were completely out of Sympathy for the statan it still seemed wrong to leave 100,000 sentients to die when they could help fortunately it turned out the stat ston hadn't damaged their life support so badly that it couldn't be repaired with some parts from the light feather at least enough for them to survive as far as the next inhabited world then finally the light feather got underway again with 34 humans stashed in a spare cargo hold at first the light

feathers crew kept their distance and because the captain refused to lock the humans up there were some tense moments when an Amia ran into a human in the corridor but after a few days without a sudden dismemberment everyone started to relax after a few more days curiosity won out and they started getting to know each other better it turns out that humans are among the few species in the galaxy to have a sense of humor most species don't even understand what a joke is let alone why it's funny to hang a human space suit right

next to the chief engineer's Nest cot while he's sleeping not only did they get it they were willing to join in a week in and everyone was having so much fun that both captains had to have a joint meeting and tell their respective Crews to settle down and be professional by the time they got to me 4 the humans had gone from being terrifying monsters to unwelcome guests to lifelong friends some of the Amia had even invited humans to visit them on home World sometime and they were all agreed that whenever their ships passed through

the Galaxy's various trading posts at the same time they'd get together for a drink or a bite to eat in a cafeteria like this the Amia were a lot more comfortable with that idea now they knew humans could eat fruit like a normal person when the humans disembarked on me4 which had grudgingly agreed to host them until they could arrange transport home the captain of the Idaho went to the captain of the light feather to thank him the whole crew of the Idaho owed him and anything the captain could do for him he only had

to ask you know what the captain of the light feather said no need it's what any decent Captain would do and the human understood Captain to Captain and sentient to sentient so when people tell you that humans are the worst species in the Galaxy don't believe them because it's not about how strong a species is or what they eat it's about whether they understand that when you come across another spacer in trouble you help them you don't just leave them and you certainly don't take advantage of them humans understand that and Staton don't which is

why they're the worst so have I proved my point yeah I thought so usually when I tell that story to spacers the only complaint they have is that the humans didn't kill enough of the bastards answering a distress call just to steal the ship no spacer would forgive that well before you think the stat ston got off easy when the light feather's report got back to home World our government got together with a few of the staton's other trading partners forced them to pay restitution for the loss of the Idaho and the 15 dead crew

also well think about all those weeks the spent on the Staton City ship and ask yourselves what did they eat yeah I know some of you were having lunch I warned you we am Mia have a sense of humor the end