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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/PerilousPlatypus on 2025-11-28 06:25:56+00:00.
"Hella, that's it!" Yerki said, jamming an elbow into the other child huddled beside her. "The Human! The one they been talking about." Hella perked up, uncurling a tentacle enough to let an eye stalk sprout out and take in the scene. She blinked the bleary film away from her eye, trying to focus it. She needed to spend less time drinking with Yerki, everyone knew its was a fools game to try and go tentacle to toe with a Yheresian.
"Human? No." Hella replied, the bubbles emitting into her mobi-tank and translated in the feminine robotic voice she liked best. She craned an eye stalk to follow the strange creature as it sat down in a dark alcove on the other side of the tavern. "Notice the lack of blood on its fangs, which are not even bared. No claws either. Its stature is fully half the standard Human size."
Yerki blinked at that, the narrow slits of her eyes disappearing before reemerging, the pupils dilated in the dim light of the common room. "Well, if it isn't a Human, what is it?"
Hella had no response for that. The creature was quite unusual and certainly not from local space. She and Yerki had spent enough time lurking about the station and its tavern to have a good enough sense for things that didn't belong. Most of the danger in a place like this came from things that didn't belong, so you got to be wise about it.
A tentacle idly scratched at the base of her eye stalk, removing a bit of debris that had accumulated in the viscous ooze surrounding the orifice that safeguarded her eye stalks when she was resting. "A Kavernian?" Hella offered, knowing the guess was even worse than Yerki's.
"You're gassing me, Hella. I'm tellin' you, that's the Human." She squinted, her own eyesight a far shot better than Hella's at least when on land. Drop the two of them in an ocean and then the tables would be reversed, sure enough. Hella blubbed out a bit of air, searching her now faded memories for that feeling of floating serenity long since behind her. That damn trawler. If only she'd slept in the deeps like her broodmarm had told her, she wouldn't be stuck on land in a space station a hundred light years from home.
"Yeah, see? The jacket! It's got the jacket!" Yerki jammed a clawed finger toward the alcove. She narrowed her eyes further, peering at the creature. "Terras Fleet," she whispered.
Hella's eye puckered at that, withdrawing slightly in alarm. "They're all dead or imprisoned." The Terras Fleet had been destroyed over a year ago, during the Battle of Fallen Gate. Depending on who told it, the Humans went down without a fight or took out half the fleets within three jumps. Hella tended to believe the latter given how much activity had picked up after the battle and the alarm even the mention of Humans created. The fact the Humans had somehow managed to destroy a warp node before they lost made the whole thing that much terrifying.
Warp nodes were supposed to be indestructible.
Stories said the Humans fought to the last ship. No surrender. No attempt to negotiate. No fleeing or hiding. They just fought it out in the open, numbered forty or fifty to one. Trading blows while their colonial fleets retreated through the node until they were all through and the node collapsed, preventing any attempt to follow them.
And now, maybe, there was a Human here. The others in the tavern had fallen quiet, something that rarely happened without trouble brewing. Hella swiveled her eye stalk over to Yerki, "What is it doing here?"
Yerki shrugged, "Where else? Pirate station on the ass end seems like a better place than most for 'em." She stood up, her joints creaking and cracking after the night spent dozing at the tavern table. "I'm gonna ask."
"This is insane, you are insane," Hella bubbled, hesitating for a moment before directing her mobi-tank to creep along behind her friend and source of most of her troubles. Yerki padded along lightly, her form lithe and her footing sure and smooth. Once again, Hella wished Yerki could see her, just once, in the ocean the way she was meant to live. Instead, she had to carefully navigate around the various tables, bags, and other obstacles that stood in the way of her mobi-tank, making the journey arduous by comparison.
Yerki stopped in front of the alcove and the Human who sat inside it. The Human looked at her. She looked at him. "One of whatever people drink around here," it said. It spoke local common fluently, though the accent was strange, with the sounds alternatively too harsh in some places and too soft in others.
"I, uh, I'm not...that's not what I do," Yerki stumbled, sounding, for once, thoroughly out of place.
The Human did a strange thing with the furry bit above its eye and appeared to conduct a thorough examination of Yerki. Thankfully, it spared Hella the same appraisal. "I see," it said.
"You're Human," Yerki said.
The Human raised and dropped its shoulders. "So it would seem."
"She said you're all dead," Yerki replied, gesturing to Hella behind her. Hella released a vexed spurt of bubbles, which passed for an expletive among her kind. Yerki either blissfully ignorant of the epithet or willfully uncaring, continued on. "She said all of you died at Fallen Gate."
"It would appear not," the Human replied, its voice flat. Hella did not think it advisable to gab on about the slaughter of the Human's companions, but Yerki rarely did the advisable thing.
"But you're here," Yerki said.
The Human inclined its head.
"Why?"
"A drink, to start, do you think you could help with that? These other folks seem a bit skittish," the Human said.
Yerki nodded, bouncing from foot to foot in excitement. "Sure! Do you have any cred? What do you want?"
"Uppinian Ale if they have it. Whatever is closest to that if they don't," the Human replied, offering her a cred stick. Yerki quickly snatched it from his hand, and then bobbed her head.
"Great. I'm Yerki, that's Hella," she said, prompting Hella to release another spurt of bubbles.
"Ah. Nice to meet you, Yerki." He nodded to Hella in her mobi-tank. "Hella. You can call me Red."
"Salutations," Hella managed before carting off behind Yerki, who was scurrying toward the bar to gather up drinks.
They returned a moment later to find the Human relaxing back in the booth, its feet propped up on the table, holo images dancing across his eyes. Hella knew Humans augmented, particularly their warriors, but it was still surreal to see it in real life. It made her want to curl up in her tentacles and sleep until the waves stilled.
When Yerki approached, the blue lights faded from its eyes and it focused on the two of them. "Should have a few hours before they figure it out," it said, reaching out to take hold of the tall mug Yerki offered. It made no mention of the cred stick it had handed her.
It took a sip, smacked his lips and then bared his fangs, which were considerably smaller than Hella had been led to believe they were. "Leave it to a pirate port to have the Uppinian. Been a circuit and a half since I've had one. Damn good. Thanks, kid."
"I'm not a kid," Yerki said. She clearly was.
The Human looked her over and then nodded slowly. "Hard to stay young in a place like this."
Wisdom. For all of the menace attached to their legend, this Human seemed to be quite sensible. Hella scooted closer, stretching a second eye stalk out to get a better look at it. She believed it was a male, by the descriptions she had heard, though she could not be certain. A primary distinguishing characteristic between the two Human sexes was fur upon the lower half of their face and this Human, Red, appeared to have a smattering of stubble across its jaw.
It was a he.
That changed the risks little. As far as Hella understood, both sexes were capable of great feats of destruction. The Terras Fleet had been commanded by a female known as the Unbreakable.
"You are Red?" Hella asked, the feminine robotic voice interjecting into the conversation. "I have heard of the Crimson Thorn. This is related?"
Red took a long swig of his ale, his eyes settling on Hella in a way that felt her stripped bare, floating in the open waters. "What have you heard of the Crimson Thorn?"
Hella's tentacles clutched around her nervously. "A starfighter clan. Very powerful. The most powerful in the Terras Fleet. Capable of great destruction." Her eye stalks retracted slightly. "Specializing in deep strikes."
Red lips quirked upward. "Mostly correct. We weren't any more powerful, we just did more with what we had with the others. Scarlet always knew where the soft spots were." He took another sip. "I like the sound of 'deep strikes' but we mostly went by Tactical Extended Deployers, or TEDs. Self-sufficient. Can last a whole long while without touching back at a base." He raised his drink in salute, as if to suggest he were a example of precisely this.
Yerki leaned forward, her eye slits wide with interest, the hair on her nape raised. "And you fight them? The Imperials? Even now?" This was not an academic question for Yerki. Her hate for the Imperials ran deep and red hot. Hella did not blame her, but she often found the hate clouded Yerki's already questionable judgment, as their present engagement with the Human clearly exemplified.
"Ah, well, a Thorn will be a thorn, won't it? Can't change my nature," Red said, his voice steady but tinged with Hella suspected was humor. "Thankfully there's enough pirate ports for me to ply my craft without coming into too many diff...
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