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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/SSBAlienNation on 2025-12-28 16:13:55+00:00.
“Unidentified land-vessel, this is Imperial Local Command Garrison Six Six Three Alpha. Under Imperial Peace Agreement Forty Three identify. Alter course immediately. Failure to do so will be interpreted as hostile intent, acknowledge.”
“I’ll show you hostile intent”
-Transcript between a local garrison in Maryland and First Contact with a confirmed group dispatched by Emperor. Result: Total loss of garrison, with minimal insurgent casualties. A small patch of territory that took a year to regain and pacify was lost in a day.
Social Distancing
We’d been running laps around the stone wall perimeter of their yard’s tall grass for the last hour and change. Well, I’d been running. Natalie had been doing her best.
By now though, even I was getting tired, to the point where I’d briefly lost track of where I was.
Right, I was inside the Rakten family home again.
All slightly too-large furniture, misshapen even by modern architecture’s standards. Purple ornamentation, because of course it was, across a wall-to-wall soft carpet-like material that disappeared at the edges, through which ambient lighting complemented the giant ‘window’ I knew to be fake, mostly because its position and geometry shifted practically every time I visited, sometimes not even matching the landscape around us. At least it had high ceilings, though, with the vaulted dome geometry offering a generous feeling of spaciousness.
Amilita had emerged from one of the rooms in the house- I hadn’t actually learnt which one. As far as I was concerned it was ‘not Natalie’s’ and ‘not the bathroom.’
“Elias!” She seemed surprised to see me all sweaty.
“Hey,” I managed a slight smile for the General while Lady Rakten had uncharacteristically offered to get some more water for us. “Sure is hot out today.”
We hadn’t been motioned toward the set-in couches that ran along the wall of the lounge, and so we stayed on our feet, taking long drinks from our collapsible flasks that I was assured were standard issue. Either way, I was happy to be out of the sun for just a few moments, even if the water tasted a tad too sterile for my liking.
“I’ve filed your application, we should hear back soon. Thank you for letting me use your office,” she said to Lady Rakten, who whispered something to her daughter and then turned to me.
“How’s your first day of training going?” Amilita asked politely.
“Good,” I breathed hoarsely, accepting the offered flask before taking a long pull of water. Then I started trying to unstick my skin-tight shil’vati shirt from my chest, to let the cold inner air waft through until I felt a pleasant shiver.
She seemed excited to see me, eager, almost, standing tall and proud in ways like I hadn’t seen her do in months.
“I reviewed your application. Can I just say that I loved your essay?”
I blinked, put on my best understanding face and racked my brain for what she was talking about. “You did?”
“You really captured an interesting perspective between balancing individual rights against the needs of the state, and the nature of classical heroism in an era of modern bureaucratic managerialism and sports as a stand-in for combat. This is hotly discussed in xenological studies, and your paper is excellent.”
I smiled tiredly.
Gavin’s handiwork, no doubt. He’d likely paid someone. Given our cell was now funding him, had I just paid someone to do my test for me? That felt like a more disturbing use of the funds than if he’d just gone out and bought explosive material with it.
“Thanks.” Any appreciation I tried to put into that word just made it feel that much more hollow.
“Are you still excited to go up?”
“Yeah,” I managed to croak through sweat parched lips. “Still excited. Today’s just the start.”
“How are you getting home once you’re done for today’s training?” Lady Rakten asked.
“Morsh says she rarely leaves boys able to walk when she’s done with them,” Natalie piped up helpfully.
The bodyguard slowly turned toward her ward.
“Oh, I’m fine. I’m gonna ride home on my bike. Lesha had it repaired for me, apparently something happened to it while I was...” I trailed off rather than drag up the topic again.
“You don’t want a lift?” Amilita offered, eyes widening and taking in the state of me one more time.
I wanted to ask: ‘Do Marines get rides when they’re tired?’ But the answer was parked outside the Rakten house, and seemed accidentally rude. Worse than being a bad host was being a bad guest, a rule the Shil’vati had broken on many occasions, and one that it rankled me even applied at all. This was our planet, our land, our- I squashed the line of thinking.
I could save it for later, use that anger if I had to dig deep. “No.”
As hard as they were, I still had plenty left in the tank.
“You’re not just saying you’re still excited for my sake, are you? They’re not going to go easy on you up there just because you’re a boy,” Amilita urged.
Natalie shifted around a bit and looked me in the eyes, but didn’t say anything to disagree.
“The training so far is not bad,” I said honestly. “I can keep up. Feels a bit pessimistic, training for a war when we’re at peace.” That wasn’t to say I didn’t understand the point.
“Armies negotiate with each other, and that leads to peace more than one side having an army and the other not,” Amilita said wisely. “And we are in a negotiated peace.”
“Plenty still want the human Emperor’s head,” Lady Rakten offered, staring neatly at me, and I felt a little uncomfortable under that gaze.
“Well, I can understand why,” I said slowly, not at all liking the intensity in her gaze. “He killed a lot of Shil’vati. There’s a lot of pride, a lot of honor in your culture. You even have duels to settle grudges, right?”
Lady Rakten nodded in a restrained motion. “I’ve discouraged Natalie from partaking in this new fad. It accomplishes nothing.”
“Maybe, but what would it look like if she were to reject one?”
“She’d be foolish to take it up,” Lady Rakten said simply. I looked over at Natalie, who seemed almost mopey at the assessment. “Besides, you look better without mincing your face. And with no active fronts, scars without medals creates a nasty reputation I think we can do without.”
“She should be able to handle herself,” I argued. “Else I’ll have to fight for her.”
Nive blinked, then laughed- even more heartily when I tried to scowl to show how serious I was. “That’s very sweet of you,” she managed after getting herself under control. “How many times has my daughter come to your rescue?”
I tried to determine which occurrences Lady Rakten was likely to know about, and took a sip of the last droplets of my flask to stall while I thought. “A few.” A diplomatic vagary. And I wasn’t about to ask how many times I’d come to her rescue, not in front of company at least.
“Two?” She asked, pressing me.
“Ah…” I was about to agree just for the sake of humoring her, when Morsh clapped me on the shoulder.
“Actually, a word with young mister Sampson- let’s put that human stamina to the test outside, shall we? Back to training.”
I was still sweating, but that meant I was still warm and ready to go, so I set the glass down without another sip and walked out for where she waved me through. As soon as the heavy bulkhead between inside and out was shut behind her, the bodyguard rolled her shoulders and took off her jacket, some sort of windbreaker like material covering up her lithe muscles and scars as she circled around the back, where the grass had been matted down from us repeatedly trodding across it.
I assumed a ready stance, and sure enough she tested my guard almost immediately.
“So, how many actually?” The bodyguard asked lightly, as if she hadn’t just thrown a punch.
“Four?” I gave a figure. You, Track party, stopping the bombardment, Goshen. Shit, could I make up a fourth if the bodyguard pressed for details? I was already getting used to this new form of training, capable of thinking and acting at the same time.
“And you think this time she’ll be able to pull it off the same as she’s done before?” Morsh somehow shook her head even as she ducked around my feinted jab, though my follow-up footwork made her take a step back. Though the bodyguard had the reach on me by a lot, and I could see the trap she was laying, so I let her get the reach on me instead while I absorbed her words instead of a blow.
“Maybe.” I hadn’t thought about it, really.
“The Raktens are, as noble families go, respectable. The name pulls serious weight in imperial inner circles. But it’s far from the richest, far from the most powerful, and up there you’ll be meeting kids from families that are usually richer, more powerful, and sometimes even both. Ones that managed to get their kids into Vanguard even though they’re nowhere near Earth. Do you understand?” She reset, no longer holding out for me to fall into her trap, though going by her facial expression I wasn’t sure she knew I had sussed it out, rather than failed to press the initiative.
I only sor...
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