Trust

Saying that the war was going poorly would be a massive understatement. If one were to say that the war was a horrifying shit-show, they would be closer to the mark, but still underselling it. We were losing, simple as that.

My entire shake, except me, were killed as soon as our dropship made landfall and opened to deploy. Three branches of eighteen warriors each gone in an instant. I was still in shock, covered in the purple slick of my fellows’ blood and bits of destroyed armor when they came into the dropship and captured me.

They were efficient in their movements, disarming and securing me before I could gather myself enough to fight back. Beneath the shock, shame began to build. This wasn’t my first battle, but I froze like a fresh recruit. Me, a decorated warrior, officer, and veteran. I thought I’d been through everything in battle that could happen. I’d just never seen such devastation in less than time than a single breath.

I spoke their language a little bit. It was expected of an officer like myself. It turned out that at least half the enemy shake spoke my language. We would never allow that, as the threat of enemy propaganda grows exponentially with every new possible target. At least, that’s what our military doctrine said.

With half their troops as possible targets, though, our steady propaganda barrage should’ve turned them all if that was true. That realization made me wonder what else we had wrong. If we could correct our mistaken assumptions, we could turn the war around.

These creatures were like nothing we’d ever fought. They wore armor on their heads and torsos, but left their limbs exposed. Of course, hitting a limb would injure them, but they could often still fight.

At the same time, their weaponry, though crude, smashed through our armor, and even punctured the hulls of our dropships. If that wasn’t bad enough, they had hyper-maneuverable flying craft that could attack our dropships in the atmosphere and hit them with chemical explosives.

After securing all four of my graspers with self-locking, polymer bands, they loaded me into a ground vehicle. With no viewports in the section of the vehicle I was in, it was a disorienting, bumpy ride for what seemed like an entire day with three of the infant-skinned creatures guarding me.

I was unloaded at a prison. At least these creatures had the same sort of ideas about a prison as we did; high walls, guard towers, and I guessed the strands of wire coiled along the top were their equivalent of our stun beams that kept prisoners in.

That’s when I met him. His skin was a deep brown, and he had some lines around his eyes. Maybe they just don’t come into their adult skin until later in life. If that’s the case, though, then we’re losing a war against children.

He cut the polymer bands off my limbs and offered his grasper. “I’m Captain Jerome Morse, but you can just call me J,” he said.

I looked at the grasper, unsure what to do. I extended one of my graspers the same way and said, “Grisshk ix Pikshis, Commander of the Red-Sky-Over-Green-Water Shake … or at least I used to be.”

He grabbed my grasper in his own and shook it up and down a couple times. “Welcome, Commander. If you don’t mind, I’ll have one of my troops take you to the medics to get checked out, then off to the showers to clean up.”

The creature that checked my health knew enough about our anatomy to pick out that my fourth heart-segment had a murmur in the second chamber. I’d had that since hatching. It wasn’t a threat to my health, but I’d had actual doctors miss it in the past.

After washing the blood of my compatriots off, I was given a drab outfit to wear. My jailers had whisked away my uniform and armor.

Captain Morse joined me after that in a sitting lounge my cell shared with several others. It didn’t feel nearly as much like prison as I expected. “I suspect the accommodations are due to my rank?”

“Well, there are perks to being an officer, yes,” Morse said, “but the enlisted have all the same amenities. The only difference is that the officer’s cells are mostly empty.”

“Not surprising.” I sat in one of the available seats and took in the room around me. There was a way to escape, I just needed to find it.

“We sent a message to your people, to let them know you’re alive and well. We also put your soldiers on a drone ship with instructions on where to pick them up so they can be returned home for interment.” He leaned on the armrest of the seat he occupied. “I don’t know long it will be before we’re sure that messages are getting through, but once we are, we’ll allow you to send recorded messages home to your family.”

“Heavily redacted, I suppose,” I said.

“If we think you’re trying to sneak information out, yes.” He sat up straight and leaned forward. “Look, Commander. I don’t know you, and I don’t trust you yet, but that’s no reason for me to be a dick.”

“Trust?” I asked. “You speak of trust with an enemy?”

“I do,” he said. “Trust is earned, regardless of allegiance or flag. I will do my best to earn your trust, and I hope you’ll do the same.”

“By telling you about our military disposition and plan, I suppose?”

He laughed. “Hardly. If M.I. thought you had valuable intel, you wouldn’t be here.” He stood and stretched. “I’ll let you get settled in. Don’t try too hard to escape, I’d hate to see you hurt yourself on your first day.”

I tried to escape. That was my first of dozens of attempts, none of which got me far, and most of which went unnoticed — or at least unmentioned — by the guards and Captain Morse.

He came in every day, and even though I could feel his animosity, he did his best to be professional and not let it show. We settled into a routine after a few day cycles: the latest news on the war from my people, then from his, a meal, record a message to send home and play any messages received, then talk about everything and nothing.

“It’s all propaganda, you know,” I said.

“What is?” he asked.

“The news about the war. That’s why my people say we’re winning, your people say you’re winning.”

Instead of disagreeing or arguing about it, he turned the news of his own people back on. Rather than talking about the state of the war, they were covering protests against the government, along with government officials trying to mollify the crowds. Not the sort of thing a state propaganda machine would report so openly on.

After that day, I ignored the propaganda from my world, and we spent more time watching news and entertainment from J’s world. It gave me more insight into these creatures. They still looked weird with their baby skin and missing arms, but they were just people like us.

We discovered that certain fruits of this world were intoxicating to me. There were some days that we would close out with intoxicating drinks, his some sort of poison, mine an orange or yellow fruit juice.

The war was getting closer to my home world with every passing day. One day, J came in and sat down with a serious look on his face. It was still early in the day, but he broke out the intoxicants and poured us both drinks.

“What’s on your mind, J?” I asked.

“Good news and bad news,” he said.

“My home world has fallen, and the war is over,” I guessed. “But that’s not bad news for you, I’d think.”

“Well, G, it actually is, because it means you’re going home. No more escape attempts, although the one with the cleaning cart was enjoyable.” He poured us both another drink. “Here’s to hoping to see you again under better circumstances.”

“You say that as if I’m leaving right away.”

He nodded. “The property sergeant is getting your uniform and armor packed up, and we’ve converted one of your dropships into a shuttle that will take you all back to your transport ship in orbit.”

“We have a transport ship in orbit?”

“Yeah, ever since they surrendered last month,” he said. “About the same time your escape attempts became more a matter of habit than real attempts to get away. I get the feeling that you might enjoy my company.”

“I might, J, I might. How long will we have to vacate our home world?” I asked.

“What?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve won. Will you not take over our worlds?”

The look of confusion on his face was clear. “No. What? We don’t do that. If anything, we’ll help you rebuild and make sure you’re not left in a position where your only option is to start another war.”