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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/RegulusPratus on 2025-06-30 12:55:14+00:00.
Sticking with the med bay knuckleheads for a bit longer. Still need to think of something interesting for the beach crew to do today. Only plans I've got for Sifal right now is the fun she'll have at Vivy's tavern tonight. That chapter's gonna be called Bad Idea Juice.
Real life's settling back down to something like normal. Hopefully, between that The Bear being back with a new season, I'll remember how to write restaurants well, and Rosi will finally get to go home for the night.
Alright, clearly I've gotta start pushing out some new or extra content for you guys to think the ol' tip jar's worth the hassle. So, it's been brought to my attention that some soulless bot-person skimmed my first chapter and put it up on YouTube with a shitty text-to-speech thingy. I own a USB mic and dabble a bit in acting. I wonder if I should record a proper audiobook of my stories, if there's a demand for it? Get that Tubefolk Algo Magic working for me.
[When First We Met Sifal] - [First] - [Prev]
[New Years of Conquest on Royal Road] - [Tip Me On Ko-Fi]
Memory Transcription Subject: Lieutenant Kloviss, Arxur Medical Orderly, Seaglass Mineral Concern
Date [standardized human time]: January 26, 2137
Strategically, setting up the Arxur hab facility a twenty minute walk away from the spaceport had been a bright idea, and an excellent show of initiative on my part to prioritize operational security. But, since I wasn't currently seated in an officer's office boasting about why I deserved a commendation, it was also fair to say that having to make that walk four fucking times in one day was a pain in my ass, and, if I could go back in time, I'd have just set it up right next to the spaceport and rolled the fucking dice on us getting spotted.
I was currently wrapping up trip number two, med bay back to hab, which would lead cleanly into trip number three, hab to med bay again, but with an armful of drinkable meat this time to help our garrison’s resident bullet magnet get his strength back up. This came pre-packaged with its own puzzle: figure out what the fuck ‘drinkable meat’ was. Doctor Tika had mentioned the words ‘soup’ and ‘broth’, both of which translated just fine into my language, but I’d never actually heard an Arxur say them. Sounded pre-war. Troublesome. Still, not the first time I'd heard it through the translator, at least: one of the humans I’d worked with back on Earth had mentioned broth. Birria, the dish made from slow-cooked goat, tended to be served with a side of broth. I’d even tried it. Some… hot and salty health tonic brewed from bones and herbs. I probably had a recipe somewhere or other…
I threw the door to the hab facility open, and tried not to flinch too hard at the unsettling cacophony coming from the common room. That one sergeant was still going at it. Really showing his fancy new steel drum the meaning of violence as performed with a tiny wooden hammer. I gritted my teeth and forced my way past him to the kitchen. I dropped my holopad on the counter to reference my notes while I looked around for tools and ingredients. I paused, staring in awe at the sight of an overstuffed pantry. I allowed myself a small grin. That was the kind of abundance that was going to look magical to me for a while longer, still. I grabbed a bag of chicharrones--pork rinds, I think, was the generic term--to snack on while I got everything else together.
“Tough cut of meat with lots of bone and cartilage,” I read off, grabbing a few gristly beef shins and oxtails. Not very filling, but fun to gnaw on. “Check. Salt…” That was one of the few seasonings we used on our own. Lightly salted slivers of fresh Venlil heart were a high-class delicacy. Had it once. It was okay. “Check,” I said aloud, pulling the salt canister off the shelf.
“Spices…” I snorted derisively. The birria broth had tasted delicious, but I’d been one of a bare handful of Arxur bold enough to try it. Too many weird plants in human food. Even with the supply drops from the U.N., we weren’t stocking any Terran vegetables. That would have been a laugh, watching a human try to convince an Arxur quartermaster about the importance of stocking peppers and onions to go with all the sausages. Pfft. There was one little thing in the back that we’d accepted, though… Some funky concoction made from the fluid runoff of fermented sea creatures. Fish sauce, they’d called it. Better than salt alone, probably. “Check.”
That was about it for ingredients, aside from potable water, which we had no shortage of. Put it all in… I squinted in confusion at the fact that we even owned a cookpot. But there it was in the cabinets, next to the knives and cleavers, plain as day. That was a human tool, or maybe even a prey one. Must have gotten mixed in at some point. My illustrious species preferred our food raw. Nevertheless, however it had gotten there, there was our cookpot. Handy.
With my tools and ingredients at the ready, I started down the instructions. “Step one, brown the meat…” My lip curled up in disgust. Humans and their love of fire. Honestly, they were more obsessed with burnt flesh than the average Federation Exterminator. “Fine, I’ll just… heat the cookpot up without the water for a bit. Let the hot metal work its magic. Steps two through…” I rolled my eyes as I skimmed all the way down. “Throw the salt and seasonings in, and boil it for hours, basically. Who the fuck’s got hours to kill?”
I flinched as another barrage of atonal clanging came after me from the common room. But this time, I grinned a bit widely and wickedly. That was the beautiful sound of a fellow with too much time on his hands. Best of all, I outranked him!
I stuck my head out of the kitchen. “Hey, Sergeant!” I called out.
The more average-sized Arxur put his musical instrument down and turned to acknowledge me. “Need something, sir?”
I scratched my jawline idly, as I tried to figure out what, specifically, I wanted. I nodded to the steel drum he'd been banging on. “You pick that thing out on a whim, or you got a knack for metalwork?”
“Sure,” he said. “Hull patches, spot welding… all the basic stuff to keep a ship in one piece. Why do you ask?”
Even if I put this guy in charge of watching the pot boil, I think Kitzz needed something to eat a lot sooner than several hours from now. Had to speed things up. I didn’t have schematics, but I had a picture and a name of a tool called a pressure cooker. “Ya think you could put an airtight seal on a cookpot?”
The sergeant tilted his head back as he thought about it. “Yeah, I think so? Sure, lemme go grab my tools.”
I grinned and nodded. Now there was the sweet sound of a plan coming together. This was gonna be way faster than boiling…
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Memory Transcription Subject: Deputy Security Director Garruga, Seaglass Mineral Concern
Date [standardized human time]: January 26, 2137
I was curled up on my bed drinking fruit juice from a pouch with a straw. With Doctor Wylla back on duty, she was able to assess that my legs were healing well enough that I no longer needed to keep the casts elevated, and with Kloviss gone, she was also able to leave the supply closet to talk.
“I don't know what possessed you!” Doctor Wylla shouted at Doctor Tika, stamping her left hoof. Nevoks. So strange, working with a hooved species of bipeds, but hey, they paid just as well as their four-hooved rivals, the Fissans. “It's bad enough having the injured one tied to the bed, but a free and healthy Arxur? Working here!?”
Doctor Tika flicked an ear noncommittally. “You saw his performance with Garruga,” said the little Zurulian. “Well, heard it, at least. Or did you? Hrm. Well, even through the supply closet door, surely the silence was noteworthy. No screaming, no new injuries on Garruga or myself.”
“Just because he went a few minutes without killing anyone doesn't mean he can make it through a whole shift without lashing out!” Wylla protested.
Tika nodded. “I see. How many minutes would suffice to demonstrate that, then?”
Wylla's eye twitched, and her mouth worked silently. “What?” she said at last.
Tika licked at her paws. “It's a basic question of statistics and probability,” she said. “You think there's a 100% chance that Kloviss will kill us, but he just made it through an entire conversation without killing anyone. How many minutes, hours, or days of nonviolence will it take to lower your estimation of those odds to, say, 50-50 odds of killing us?”
“Ancestors spare me, there aren't any!” Wylla shouted, stamping her hoof harder. It was starting to make a gratingly loud clopping noise against the floor. “The Arxur exist to kill. Just because he hasn't yet doesn't mean he won't; it just means he's up to something!”
Tika brushed her paw across her head, smoothing the tousled fur there. “Surely there must be some amount of contradictory data that will force you to reevaluate even otherwise bedrock-stable theories. Gravity fails under specific circumstances, thus...
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