Federations

Regulations require us to inspect fallen combatants for technological components that may have survived the firestorm. Here we weren’t likely to find anything; aggregated Confed data suggested this planet’s tech was a generation-and-a-half behind our own. They were on the verge of some major breakthroughs, like interstellar travel, but they weren’t quite there yet. That put the Confed in a perfect bargaining position, since it meant we could trade technology for some friendly real estate on the planet, which the Confed had designated ES-248QRT4T.

As ES-248QRT4T’s primary Xeno, I’m charged with coming up with a suitable name for the place. Some Xenos simply stick with trite standbys with an alphanumeric code tacked on, but there have to be two or three hundred planets with names like “Poseidon XG34T” or, worse, the ones obviously named after girlfriends, kids, or pets. Unlike many of my colleagues, I wanted to distinguish between planets with proper names, even if finding a unique name proved to be difficult. Our translators usually rendered the local names for home planets with words as unpronounceable as the administrative codes, and with the Confed branching out to hundreds of new planets each year, it took time to find a suitable moniker for each new planet.

I approached the body of one of the dead seditionists who had made a run for it just as the firestorm touched down. His momentum had carried him into the grass, and tendrils of black smoke curled up from the scorched husk of his armor. As a Xeno, I’m not required to do survey work with my fireteam, but I couldn’t abide being that kind of soldier. I had no intention of ducking any military responsibility. Of course, that’s easier said than done when you’re about to inspect corpses that have been burned alive inside suits of armor.

I set my rifle down and gripped the seditionist’s ankles when I heard a panting noise and froze. I looked up to see a wild-eyed, robed figure crouched at the head of the body, his hands inside the helmet’s shattered faceplate. Startled, I stumbled backwards with a shout. In immediate response, there was squawking over the com, a jumble of voices, and a burst of rifle fire. With a small cry, the robed man collapsed back into grass with a rustle.

Rauder sprinted to my side. “Kiernan, what was that? Are you all right?” she said, her voice tinged more with irritation than concern for the hapless Xeno.

“I didn’t see him at first, he was hidden in the grass,” I said catching my breath. “He was standing over the body.”

“Was he armed?” Rauder asked. She still held her rifle at the ready, waiting for the slightest movement in the grass. My viewscreen showed Marsten and Finnel approaching from behind at a run, but no combatants in the field.

“No,” I said regaining my feet. “He wasn’t even wearing any armor.”

Marsten pulled the armored body into the clearing as I lifted the robed man from the grass, whose chest had been caved in by Rauder’s shot, and laid him out beside the seditionist. His dead eyes still had a frantic look to them, and the glossy sheen of his flesh had already begun to fade. I drew his lids shut, then noticed something peculiar. His hair had been shaved into a triangle, one point at his forehead, the other two over his ears. We’d seen plenty of locals on the planet, but none who had fashioned their fine white hair like this.

“What do you make of it?” Finnel said.

“Who cares?” Rauder replied, then asked me, “Who you calling, Kiernan?”

“Adriassi, of course,” I said under my breath, ignoring her exasperated sigh. Invariably, Rauder never liked the cultural contacts I appointed, finding them all to be simpering, fawning twits, and I was sure she felt Adriassi fit that description perfectly. She refused to accept that a Xeno needed someone reliable to help decipher the bewildering maze of local customs for his daily reports. Most contacts, as in Adriassi’s case, turned out to be friendly, intelligent, and helpful. What was more startling than the surface differences between cultures were our basic similarities; it never ceased to amaze me how much humanoid species resembled one another, both in appearance and characteristics. If it hadn’t been for their waxy complexion and long, droopy earlobes, Adriassi’s kind could almost have passed for one of us.

“Kiernan here,” I said as the connection opened. “We encountered something strange. Adriassi, can you help?” I said, remembering the seemingly random rule of local etiquette: during telecommunication conversations one should start each question with a person’s proper name as a sign of respect. I initiated a visual pathway between our armors’ viewscreens, so he could see what I was looking at. He blanched the moment the image of the robed man became clear on his screen, and ran a nervous hand over his bald head.