BOAF:19

I'm getting sick of writing 'sorry for the delay' here, lol.But seriously, I had planned to end this chapter before the POV shift, but then had a change of heart. Ending on a cliff hanger would have been too cruel. I feel like ive been dragging out this rebellion arc a bit too long, so im gonna start picking up the pace a bit. Hope you enjoy!

X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X

Chapter Nineteen:Caw and Response

X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X

Simon Karosas

The Bad Egg, Panzyr System

Deep Periphery

April 10th, 3025

The lord–the former lord of Smithon–Simon mentally corrected himself, carefully straightened his already immaculate tie, using the precious few seconds the act required to center himself before he tackled his next rising challenge. 

He stood in one of the many entryways that led into the gargantuan beast of a DropShip that XCOM had named as their flagship. Two of the armored mercenaries flanked him on either side, his ‘escorts’ for the meeting. Their visored helmets revealed nothing, but the large laser rifles slung casually across their chests said enough. 

With a marshaled breath through his nose, Simon plunged into the unknown, leaving his own men waiting outside on the tarmac. And what he found inside that DropShip was… revealing. 

The first thing that immediately stood out to him was how immaculate the craft was. For a ship that had supposedly spent the Succession Wars buried under a mountain of ice and snow, it was in shockingly good condition. Rust did not linger in the corners of the bulkheads, none of the lights flickered, and the paint had not yet lost its luster. If he did not know any better, he would have assumed that the craft had only just rolled out of dry dock. 

Dare he say, that this vessel of war run by unwashed mercenary scum was in better condition than the personal craft of some Great Houses.

The second thing he noticed was the sheer amount of war matériel being casually moved about. In spite of his original assumption, those high-tech armored EVA suits the mercenaries were wearing were not specialty equipment given only to the outfit's most elite troops. It appeared that all the marines, whether they were actively deployed or not, were casually equipped with gear that would beggar most noble houses.

Scores of men marched past, all of them dressed in the unknown suits of armor. If one were to sell the amount of infantry kit these mercenaries seemed to wield without a care, then buying a heavy BattleMech may not be off the table. 

With his trained eye, honed by decades spent behind the yoke of a BattleMech, he easily spotted a few MechWarriors walking around. Identifiable by the distinctive stiff-legged stride, their cocksure mannerisms, their very being. 

And what he saw shocked him to his core. 

All of them, every last man and woman, were fully kitted out in enclosed armored suits; Slimmer than the common infantry’s own, sure, but would undoubtedly be hell to wear in the sweltering heat of a BattleMech in combat… if it weren’t for the SLDF-grade cooling suits he could spy peeking up from under their collars.

Cooling suits, in the hands of mercenaries. 

It was unthinkable–unbelievable, even. Yet there it was. LosTech that should have only been found as the personal effects of scions of powerful nobility, or deep underground in the blackest of black sites, being agonized over by scores of researchers trying to ply their secrets out from between their polymer threads. 

Even with all his training and experience, a lifetime spent looking those greater and lower than him in the eye and callously squeezing every last drop of use out of them without so much as a twitch of the eye… Simon was ashamed to admit that he stumbled when he finally registered what he was seeing. One his escorts caught him by the arm before he could fall, but his face still burned from the humiliation.

And it was only after that did he spy what they all had tucked under their arms. 

Those were not neurohelmets!

Or at least, none that he had ever heard of.

These were not the unwieldy monstrosities that the MechWarriors of today were forced to endure. The ones that had to be lowered down over the pilot by a team of Astechs and were more akin to instruments of torture that forcibly locked the MechWarrior’s head in place to ensure the neurotransmitters had a secure connection to the scalp. 

And they were certainly not the sleek, comfortable, and powerful ones used by the SLDF.

These were something entirely new.

They appeared to be modeled after industrial EVA gear, with a wide, fishbowl-like visor with a minimal rim. If they worked even a quarter as well as the SLDF’s own, then Simon could only imagine how valuable such equipment would be on the open market. 

The former lord of Smithon finally tore his jealous eyes away from the trio of chatting mercenary MechWarriors wearing better gear than Great Lords to survey the rest of the interior. Though he was disappointed to find that, beyond how clean and well-maintained all the equipment was, there was not much to see here on the upper decks. 

Despite his unspoken desire, Simon had not been led in through the motorpool–where he could have caught a glimpse of all of the BattleMechs that were no doubt down there now. Instead, he had been led up an external cargo elevator straight into the upper crew compartments.

No matter, there was still plenty to learn here. He thought as he was led through the ship by his two silent escorts. All of the intelligence agencies of the Inner Sphere were running themselves sparse, agonizing over what was happening inside this ship, and here he was, being given a guided tour. 

Through the winding corridors he was led, taking two different elevators and passing uncountable mercenaries going about their day. The further up they went and the closer they drew to this mysterious ‘Handler’, the sparser the crowds became–until finally, they reached a completely empty corridor blocked by a wall-to-wall blast door.

To Simon’s utter surprise, both his escorts turned on their heels and marched back into the elevator they had arrived in. Just before one hit the button, the mercenary turned to him, the featureless visor flashing in the overhead lights. “Wait here; the Handler will see you shortly.”

They said no more as the elevator doors slid shut, and the whir of electric motors spooled up from within as the carriage slid down and away. Now completely alone and slightly unnerved, Lord Karosas turned to face the blast door–just as a lone camera in the corner swiveled to face him. 

He stared defiantly into its glassy, lifeless gaze for what felt like hours, but could have only been a few seconds before the blast door slowly creaked to life, the two interlocking halves breaking apart and retreating into the floor and ceiling, respectively.

Which revealed… another long and empty corridor, blocked by yet more doors. 

Simon straightened his tie again–and strode forth.

And immediately flinched when he felt the temperature drop the second he crossed the threshold. A severe chill swept straight through his suit, causing a shiver to run up his spine. It must have been fifteen degrees cooler here than the rest of the ship! Scowling at the ancient but effective strategy of making your diplomatic opponent uncomfortable to throw them off, Simon squared his shoulders and continued marching forward. Stubbornly refusing to show any signs of discomfort.

No one announced themselves, and there was no obvious signage to guide him. The only clue he could see was that all the doors had red lights above the handle, save for one with a blinking green light.

Hedging his bets, he made his way straight towards the anomaly and was rewarded when the door slid open just like the blastdoor. He stepped through the portal, only to find yet more doors.

All of which were glowing red.

With an unamused huff, he had just been about to turn around when a soft click caught his attention. He turned and found that one of the doors now had a green light. Feeling annoyed at being toyed with, Simon marched through the door, ready to flip the board of whatever game this ‘Handler’ was playing–only to stop dead at what lay before him.

A whole room, stripped of any furnishings save for rows upon rows of strange gun-metal grey boxes of varying sizes. Upon which articulating arms flashed and flailed around objects atop the boxes. Orange and blue strobing lights flickered from the ends of the arms, seemingly without purpose. The entire process was eerily silent; all of the movement created not even the whispers of electric motors, or anything else that he could detect, for that matter.

Curiosity piqued, he slowly crept towards the closest box; it being roughly the height of a coffee table. This one was currently not flashing with any lights, but instead was stock-still as one of the thicker arms ending in a nozzle extruded a strange black paste onto the surface of the machine. 

As he watched, the extruding arm ceased its work and retracted down into the machine as the ‘flashing’ arms swiveled into place. He was enlightened as to the purpose of the ‘flashing’ as the arms meticulously blasted away parts of the paste with short bursts of laser fire, whittling it down with every flash. The machine paused periodically as the extruder arm would pop back into view to spray out pastes of different colors. Then the process would repeat when the flashing arms would go back to shaping… whatever this was supposed to be. 

The process happened so fast, as the machine worked so quickly, that he almost missed it as the end product took shape. But mere moments before the flashing arms finished their task, was he able to spot what this device was ‘printing’. A rifle–the same strangely shaped model that all those mercenaries had been carrying.

With a final click, all the arms lifted away from the gleaming firearm on the printer, and another mechanical arm descended from the ceiling to pry it from the table. It lifted it away, and the arm rode off down a set of tracks on the ceiling to carry the gun towards a pile of cargo boxes at the far end of the room. Something that he had failed to notice when he had first entered. 

The whole process didn’t even take two minutes. 

He slowly stood from his hunched position, heart pumping and eyes wide as he took in exactly what was happening in this room. From just where he was standing, he could see those neurohelms being printed in bulk, many of them crowded together on a single printer, along with more cooling suits and innumerable other things that should take factories the size of cities to make. Things that should be priceless LosTech artifacts! 

This… this was far beyond the capabilities of the Inner Sphere–Beyond the SLDF.

Beyond humanity.

“Avalian Nano-Lathes. It's old tech, but still reliable for smaller operations.”

Simon whirled around at the deep, growling voice coming from behind–so unlike that disgustingly oily-smooth purr of the ‘Handler’ as to be laughable, though he found nothing but the shadowy corner next to the door. 

Fool. He chided himself. He had been so distracted by these marvelous devices that he failed the most basic rule of survival–always be aware of your surroundings. His hand instinctively went towards his waist, searching for the holstered pistol there, only to grimace as he recalled that one of the requirements for this meeting was that he must come unarmed.  

He growled under his breath, furious at–movement! Someone, something his hindbrain unhelpfully supplied, detached itself from the wall and strode towards the murky edge of the unnatural shadow.

Short. Was the very first descriptor that popped into his mind, before it was quickly corrected to very short. Whoever this was barely came up to his midriff, and Simon was not a particularly tall man. That unflattering thought was immediately discarded as far more impertinent details became known as the man–no.

The creature stepped towards the light, for no man had a stuttering stride like that, no man walked hunched forward like that, no man swayed like that with every step, no man had hair like that, and what was that slithering in the darkness behind it!

The thing made itself known as it stepped fully from the shadows. 

And Simon physically felt his understanding of the universe, and his place in it, shatter into a trillion irreparable pieces. 

Two huge watery sea-green eyes larger than a balled fist blinked up at him, poised above a flat, fox-like snout and surrounded by a thick coat of downy white fur. The fur bled into a mane of glacial-blue feathers along the edges of the creature's face, rising up into a full mohawk cresting its head and running down its back. 

Correction, it appeared that four of what he thought were particularly large feathers proved to be two long sets of ears poking out from under the fur, one atop the other. The lower set remained still, while the slightly larger ones swiveled around slightly.

Still not quite believing his eyes, Simon dragged his gaze lower.

It was wearing a slate-grey capelet with XCOM’s emblem sewn into the shoulders and a strange golden symbol on the breast, right over where the heart would be on a man–one that he had never seen before: Two towers standing parallel and curving in towards the top to meet in the middle, but stopping just short of touching. Both towers were flanked by what could have been either wings or chevrons.  

Under the half-slung cape, Simon could see that it was wearing the same grey fatigues that all the other mercenaries had been wearing, save for a silver lining highlighting the cut of the uniform. The pants were cut in such a way as to accommodate the being’s digitigrade legs. Which made his unconscious hindbrain scream a nauseating alarm that legs should not bend that way.

And finally, he noted incredulously, the creature was barefoot. Its scaly, raptor-like talons flexed against the deck as it swayed back and forth slightly. What had been slithering around in the dark made itself known as a long, sinuous tail swept in and out of the darkness looming behind the…

The…

…

Lord Karosas so desperately wanted to write off whatever was standing before him as some… freak genetic experiment, either the long-lost result of a Hegemony research team playing God, as was their want, or the newest act against morality conducted by those sex-obsessed degenerates in the Magistracy.

But no, neither those hedonistic fools nor the Hegemony, even at the height of its power, could have produced what stood before him. It was too real, too lifelike to be anything but the genuine article.

Which meant that…

“Holy mother of God.” Simon breathed, despite not being particularly religious. But it felt appropriate. 

He found himself backpedaling away from what could only be an actual alien being. Not one of the myriad of limited insects or mindless animals humanity had found during its long march across the cosmos, no. It was an honest-to-god alien, straight out of one of those turn-of-the-century sci-fi flicks that had fallen out of fashion as humanity came  to accept that they were alone in the galaxy.

This meeting, right here, right now with an intelligent extrastellar being could possibly be the single most important moment in all of human history.And he was having it here, in the alien’s workshop. Aboard, he realized, as the thought struck him, a stolen SLDF DropShip, snatched right out from under the Commonwealth’s nose. 

His eyes flicked up nervously towards the open door. How many more of them were there, lurking in the shadows? Was this whole ‘XCOM’ nonsense actually a front for an alien invasion? Did those mercenaries know, or were they being tricked into prepping the Inner Sphere for an alien occupation? And most importantly: would he have time to prepare his home for such an inevitability?

His searching eyes landed on the almost magical machines around him, producing high-end war matérial faster than even Hegemony automatic factory complexes. A horrible thought struck him then: even if he had the time to prepare, would it even matter in the face of technology so superior as to border on the fantastical?

Unfortunately for Simon, he soon ran out of room, and his back hit one of the printers. His fumbling hands snapped out to steady himself on the lip of the machine as he struggled to steady his gasping breaths and racing heartbeat. 

Seconds, then minutes passed without the thing saying another word. It merely watched him as he gathered himself with that same damnably blank look. As a noble, Simon was well versed in reading the minutiae of human expression, but none of his training or experience availed him here–staring down at an alien fox-bird thing as it calmly stared back. Its face remained frustratingly empty of everything he had come to instinctively look for when dealing with others, with absolutely no tells as to what it might be thinking. If the positioning of its ears or the swishing of its tail held any clues, then they were lost on the lord of Smithon.

Simon opened his mouth to say something, anything. To beg for answers from whatever this was, or to demand that whoever was behind this step out from the darkness and to stop hiding behind puppets. Anything to deny the new terrifying reality taking shape before him. A reality in which humanity was no longer the sole inheritor of the galaxy.

Lord Karosas bit down hard, snapping his mouth closed with a click of teeth.

He would not, could not show weakness. Not now.

After taking a moment to catch his breath, Simon pushed himself off the printer and straightened his tie. He had too many questions to count, while confusion and fear still clouded his mind. Did this creature have human collaborators? Was this ‘Handler’ one of them, or an unknowing stooge? Maybe he wasn’t even real, which made the ‘reveal’ of his face a double bluff that he fell for completely. 

Damn it all, what a fool he was! No! No. Self-recriminations can wait. The situation unfolding before him cannot. 

He so desperately wanted to take a step out and gather his thoughts, yet he must speak to it now. History might very well remember him for what happens next, for good or ill. And he will not be remembered as a coward who fled from this challenge.

“Greetings.” Falling back on a lifetime’s worth of convention, he offered the thing a courtly bow, hoping against all odds that the gesture translated correctly. “Lord Simon Karosas, though I suspect you already knew that. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

The alien tilted its head and raised a brow as it propped a furry paw on its hip in a remarkably recognizable stance. Finally, an expression that he could understand! 

Hopefully.

 “I took you for more of the ‘bold and brash’ type. I didn’t think you would be one for flowery formality.” It, he maybe, said in that shockingly deep and gravely voice. A voice like that should not come from something that small. “Commander Vesox Endoiris, at your service.” He, and Simon was fairly sure he was correct this time as to the alien’s gender, sketched a tight curtsy in return; Its feathery arms held out at the sides as it inclined its head. Though Simon could not help but feel that the gesture had a slightly mocking undertone to it. But perhaps he was anthropomorphizing the alien’s movements too much. 

“Though,” The now named Vesox continued as he drew himself back up to his full diminutive height, the small smirk that pulled at his lips allowed Simon a glimpse at a mouth full of horrifyingly sharp shark-like teeth. “You knew me as ‘The Handler’, but in private I’d prefer my real name.”

Out of all the world-shatteringly shocking things that have happened in the last two minutes, Simon couldn’t help but silently marvel at the alien’s perfect grasp of English. “Very well then, Commander Endoiris–” Simon felt pleased at not stumbling over the strange-sounding name. “I would–”

He trailed off, because he had no idea where he was going to say next. He would ‘what’, exactly? He had agreed to come here to negotiate an ‘alliance’ between the burgeoning Aurigan Restoration and the mercenary scum who had intruded upon their home and kicked off the rebellion far too early. 

‘Negotiation’ in this case being just a polite way of saying that he was here to find out what blood-price they would carve from the Reach in return for their aid in destroying the monsters that took his daughter and robbed his son of his mind. 

He had also come here intending to find out for how long these blood-sucking parasites planned to occupy the critical world of Panayzr. The Reach might not survive what came after, even if the Directorate is overthrown and these mercs are not ousted from one of the three worlds in the Coalition that has a functional HPG.

He was emphatically not prepared to represent humanity at large to a space-faring race of intelligent fox-birds. Though, who the hell was?

Thankfully, he was saved from his sudden stage fright by the alien in question when it snorted in what might have been amusement. “You know, you are taking this far better than I thought you would.” Vesox stepped fully into the light, stalking across the deck in a loose circle around him. “I was half-expecting you to decry my existence as impossible, as some sort of trick. Or,” He said with a wry smile replacing the smirk. “For you to run out the door screaming the second you first saw me.”

Out of all the ways Simon would have imagined a First Contact Scenario to go, being snarked at by a fox-bird thing in perfect English was not one of them. 

Before he could defend himself, or even get a word in edgewise, Vesox turned and padded towards the door. The soft clicks his talons made against the floor lingered in the silence. “I just wanted to show you exactly what you are negotiating with before we begin. If you would follow me, I’d prefer we did this in my office.”

He watched his tail snake across the ground and out the door before he quickly shook himself out of the numb shock that suffused his being. Simon pushed himself away from the alien machine and hastened to catch up to the surprisingly fast creature. He was determined, no matter the circumstances, not to allow this alien to dictate the pace and tempo of these talks. So, without making it appear he had rushed, Simon used his longer stride to catch up and walk beside Vesox as they made their way through the ship.

The alien gave him a bemused side-eye, but said nothing as a door opened to reveal the usual cramped accommodations he had come to expect aboard a starship, no matter the size. Space in space was a luxury, as the saying goes.

Vesox’s office was undecorated, save for a single banner depicting XCOM’s logo hung from the ceiling. It was also bereft of any personal effects, with no framed family photos or any other recognizable items of importance. In fact, the only hints that this office did not belong to a human were the customized chair and the… what might be some sort of noteputer.

Simon quickly disregarded the bicycle-seat-like chair designed to accommodate Vesox’s biology as uninteresting compared to what lay propped up on the desk. It was the thinnest noteputer that he had ever seen, barely thicker than a credit-chip. The entire front of the device was taken up by a screen showing a vivid picture of a gleaming, gilded arcology–a harmonious blend of cityscape and nature, the skyline was crowded by skyscrapers taller and grander than even the ones on Earth. The fidelity of the screen itself was breathtaking; it looked as though he was staring out a window and seeing the city in person. There was none of the usual blue-tinge or fuzziness that he had grown accustomed to with the monitors at his estate.

There were no visible buttons or even any way to control the device as far as he could 

Tell. Maybe it was just a digitally framed photo?

As he watched, the picture faded and was replaced with a new one. This time depicting a glittering green and blue planet as seen from low orbit, the photo having been clearly taken from the porthole of either a spacecraft or a station. And there, hovering over the planet and sparkling in the light cast by the system's star… was a fleet of spaceships holding formation. 

These were not the rounded balls of DropShips or the spindly spider shape of a JumpShip, but the long, predatory spikes of what could have only been WarShips, or whatever equivalent that Vesox’s species fielded. 

His mouth suddenly very dry, Simon pried his eyes away from the noteputer to find Vesox settling himself down on his skinny chair, his tail draping over it and curling around the neck to steady himself. The alien gestured to the far more normally shaped crash-couch before him, and he accepted with a nod. 

Vesox propped his elbows on the desk and rested his chin atop his folded paws in another remarkably human-like gesture. The alien then tilted his head, regarding Simon with those inscrutable eyes. “Before we begin the negotiation to merge our respective causes, I’m sure you have questions. Now would be a good time to get them out of the way.”

That was the final straw. 

Simon’s jaw fell open, and he gaped like a fool at the being across from him.

That was it? ‘I’m sure you have questions’?!  

That's all the alien being armed with technology so advanced that he could scarcely comprehend it could say?! 

His fists balled up in his lap as he gritted his teeth. Oh, he had questions all right. 

X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-X

Vesox Endoiris

The Bad Egg, Panzyr System

Deep Periphery

April 10th, 3025

I saw the exact moment when Simon Karosas regained his faculties and found his spine. 

The man was practically scowling at me as he bit out. “What is this? What is all of this?” He waved a hand in the direction of my XCOM banner. “Why have your kind hijacked a human starship and then tricked humans into aiding you?”

A dawning look of horrified realization flashed across his face before it was stamped back down under the grumpy expression he wielded like a shield. “Or are they willing collaborators? Do they know for whose cause they fight for?”

Ugh, more of that pseudo-nobility speak. I’ve had to deal with enough of these pricks by now to recognize their ilk within seconds of them opening their mouths. They all sounded like college students trying to phone in their papers on Old English with as high a word count as possible, as well as being condescending assholes to the extreme.   

By all the Spirits above and below, this was a mistake. I should have just flexed my thousands of tons’ worth of Metal to get what I wanted from these highborn pricks instead of dealing with them directly. 

I swallowed back an exhausted sigh as Simon’s face got progressively redder from anger as the silence stretched. 

No, I did sigh then. I could not just sweep the local nobility aside with force of arms, or at least not right away. They were too entrenched in human society at this point. It would be too far an upheaval to try and revolutionize all aspects of society at once. Not to mention, I’ll need their support in order to stitch the Reach back together again after the horrors the Directorate inflicted upon it. 

And that painfully long healing process started with winning over the man seated across from me. 

I suppose I could have done worse than Simon as my point of first contact. It was he and his family that turned a worthless mudball like Smithon into one of the most valuable worlds in the Reach, after all. His skills and expertise would be an invaluable addition to my growing team. And the industrial base of his landhold would make an adequate launching-off point for the Protectorate. That was, if I could manage to gain his trust here and now.        

And speaking of trust…

I would not, could not entrust him with the entire truth of my being. If I lied and claimed to actually be a modified human, then stealing even one of my feathers and performing a DNA test on it would quickly prove me to be a liar when they fail to find any recognizable genetic markers.

Telling the truth by explaining to them that I am a human trapped in an alien body would just make me appear insane, discrediting me in every conceivable way going forward.

Which meant that the only option available to me was a carefully manufactured version of the truth. 

Yet, for as long as I’ve had to come up with a suitably believable lie, the one that I ended up with was still an extraordinarily dangerous one. I could not claim to be part of an official Avalian expedition for many reasons. Chief amongst them was the terrible panic the news would inspire in anyone who heard that there was an alien organization working on ‘taming’ humanity’s newest frontier. 

There was no way around it. To assuage the fears of an alien invasion, I would have to reveal that I was completely alone out here. With no way to call for reinforcements, or even help from the rest of my kind.  

In a way, Simon was the perfect subject to test my particular brand of bullshit on. He was smart enough to recognize the species-wide paradigm shift my mere existence represented for his species, yet desperate enough for aid of any kind that he might be willing to overlook where that aid comes from. 

He was also isolated, beyond the few hundred men and women brave enough to follow him in his rebellion. He couldn’t even look at Panyzr’s HPG station without me knowing about it. If he proved to be a problem and a threat, well–I glanced up at XCOM’s starry emblem. 

I still held all the cards. 

So, I spun my implausible but irrefutable tale to a captivated audience of one.

“My ‘kind’ have hijacked nothing.” I patiently explained. I couldn’t blame the man for his outburst, all things considered. “I found and repaired the SLS Manatee and have repurposed her for my own needs.” I gave him a wry smirk. “Nowhere in any of your laws does it specify that one must be human to reap the rewards of LosTech prospecting. So by all rights, the ship legally belongs to me, and me alone.” 

I ‘let’ the smile fade and tried to morph my inexpressive face into something he could identify with. I doubt a human unfamiliar with avalian biology would pick up on sub-vocal keening or the subtle titling of feathers indicating distress. 

“To be quite honest with you, I am alone out here.” 

And there it was, my most dangerous and closely guarded secret, spoken aloud for the first time. 

I did not have to fake how my eyes moistened. Letting my paws fall to the desk, I fiddled with an outstretched claw, avoiding Simon’s piercing gaze. 

“My species does not use dimensional tunneling for FTL, so the term does not technically apply, but the easiest way I can describe what happened to me is a ‘Misjump’.”

Even Simon, as shocked and angry as he was, flinched at that. The nightmarish scenario that lurked at the back of the mind of every space-faring human. 

“I was the only survivor,” I barreled on, shoving down the bubbling, frothing memories threatening to overwhelm me–the ones of that day at the Protectorate HQ. The day Vesox… The day We died. “Alone, stranded on a barely habitable world in the middle of an alien empire. I could not locate where I ended up with any of the star charts I had, and there was no way for me to call for help.”    

I forced myself to look back up at the now visibly uncomfortable stellar noble. “So I hid, watched, and studied those aliens. And I learned that this ‘empire’ was not as monolithic as I first feared. That it was instead a series of seceding factions warring against one another in a bid to claim a throne that has been empty for hundreds of years.”

I let the silence hang.

“And that disgusted me.”

Simon’s eyes snapped open in alarm. He tried to say something, but I interrupted him with a raised paw. “For nearly two hundred and fifty years, your people have sacrificed everything upon the altar of victory. All of your technological and exploratory gains, all of your peace and prosperity, all of your hopes and dreams.”

“All of it, everything that makes you human, was burned as fuel for your engines of war.”

We stared each other down, until I released the rising tension by blowing out a breath and closing my eyes. 

“But it is not entirely your fault. You are not a particularly cruel or warlike race, nor are you incapable of making peace. The ‘Inner Sphere’ and beyond just lacks… a moral compass at the moment. I am afraid that the Amaris Civil War may have stolen that from you.”

I could not accurately put into words how to describe the many expressions ghosting across Simon’s face at that moment. Perhaps it was a mix between ‘dawning enlightenment’ and ‘growing horror’ at what I was implying.

I ignored whatever revelations he was having in favor of continuing my tale. “Back home, we do have that compass: We have The Protectorate to guide our peoples. An extrajudicial, inter-species peacekeeping and exploratory organization." I tugged on the Winged Matter Manipulator on my cape with pride. “We were the first and last line of defense against the cold cruelty of the galaxy. We go where none dare, fight against what none could imagine opposing, and we protect those who could not protect themselves.”  

“We were heroes.” I beamed at him. “And I think humanity could benefit from having a Protectorate of its very own.”

I leaned way in, paws flat against the desk. “That’s what ‘this is’.” I pointed towards XCOM’s emblem on my cape. “XCOM is just the cover. A convenient half-truth to use as an excuse to travel the Inner Sphere. I am, or was, a full-fledged member of The Protectorate; it is my sworn duty to assist all of those in need that I encounter. But I cannot do it alone.” I sadly shook my head, causing my four ears to flap.

“Now,” I pointed over his shoulder towards the door. “You have some options. You could stand up and walk away with no hard feelings. Hell, you could even run out screaming about an alien secretly being in command of a fleet of DropShips. No one would ever believe you, but you could if you wish; I will not stop you.”

“Or,” I leaned way in until I was halfway over the desk. “You could help me. And together, we could build something different than everything else currently tearing your species apart. Something that builds, rather than destroys. Something humanity as a whole can be proud of.”

I extended my paw out, smiling widely. “So, how about it, Lord Karosas? Care to take a chance on an Avali?”

Simon continued to gape at me, eyes all but bulging out of his head. “D-did you say inter-species?!”

I bit back another sigh.