“There’ll be a meeting, over video, you don’t have to be there if you don’t want to. I’ll be charged with mutiny, there’ll be a vote but it doesn’t matter, shouldn’t’ve let the Chang’e land on their front lawn.”

  “... Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “You can try, I think they’ll listen.”

  I didn’t like how familiar I was getting with the near silence, hearing only the hum of the ship.

  “Thanks.” I said quietly, meaning it.

  Lee shrugged, “I made my choice years ago.”

  It didn’t seem right to pry, so instead I asked for pen and paper. She took me to her room where there was a little desk tucked away in the corner. I wrote plenty down but when Lee’s phone rang and we went back to the bridge I brought none of it with me.

  I decided to be on camera, standing next to Lee who sat in the captain’s chair. There was a monitor in front of us that showed us some of the other captains, but there were far too many to fit all of them on screen. She’d offered me her seat, or to get a chair for me, but the first option was in bad taste and the second seemed like a hassle.

  “I take it all of you have some idea of what has happened over the past few hours.” I recognized the voice, it was the admiral. She looked the part, in a proper uniform and everything. “A few hours ago an ioe arrived at the Chang’e requesting asylum. Captain Lee granted asylum, and I will honor that, no issue there. The ioe had with them a hard drive containing documentation of alleged abuses at the hands of the venalia. After reviewing the documents Captain Lee shared them without authorization on our private network before inviting a venalia aboard and presenting them with terms of surrender, which is beyond her power, and the reason for the charge of mutiny. She then put the documents on the alien’s shared public network. While faking that amount of evidence seems unlikely and there are reasons to be suspicious of the venalia we still lack solid proof. We need evidence and an honest attempt at peaceful resolution. I will not lead this fleet into war. If the mutiny vote fails I will resign, there will be no non-confidence vote.”

  It was more chaotic than what I was used to. There was a moderator, but they seemed reluctant to mute captains and interruptions were frequent during others speeches. To my surprise and relief most of the arguing was around the truth of what I’d presented them. If anyone was opposed to intervention entirely they didn’t speak up, unless it was hidden in subtext. Lee didn’t say anything and I didn’t understand why until the moderator muted everyone and gave her a chance to defend herself. Still, Lee kept quiet, instead looking to me. I braced myself and spoke.

  “Thank you for granting me asylum and ensuring my personal safety. Thank you for seriously considering intervention, it is beyond what I dared hope for. No matter what all you ultimately decide I am happy to help in any way I can, in gratitude. I am willing to submit to medical examination. I have some scars, and while I understand the species barrier is an issue, if you doubt the claims I would hope you would make the effort to examine me, even if the results are likely to be inconclusive.” I hated how I sounded, half politician, half clumsy wording to try to make sure the translator wouldn’t fuck me over, but I had to try.

  “Sorry,” the moderator said, “I still need to hear from Captain Lee.”

  “Can I play a video?” she asked.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “No longer than 10 minutes.”

  Lee turned off the monitor and used her phone, no sound, and angled away so I couldn’t see anything. I appreciated it, to this day I haven’t watched most of what was on that hard drive.

  “And yet,” Lee said after the video ended, turning on the monitor, “they make no public denial and one of them offered to all but sell us ioe, and think about it, we’ve been closely working with the venalia since we got here. Have you ever seen an ioe alone, or only with other ioe, or in a group where they outnumber venalia. If we wait for evidence we will never get it. If their survival depends on denying us that they will do everything they can to do so. We can pretend that we somehow will be able to peacefully resolve this, pretend that this isn’t exactly what this fleet was built for, but if we failed to liberate Earth peacefully what chance do we have now. We can be at war, or we can be complicit, there are no other options.”

  “Closing remarks Admiral?”

  “I did not spend years at warp to fight another war. Vote how you will, I wash my hands of this.”

  It was anticlimactic, I’m not sure anyone expected the Admiral to give up, I certainly didn’t. The mutiny vote failed, falling decently short of both the crew and ship majority. No one put their name forward to be the new admiral, so Lee did, reluctantly, and our little coup was complete. Lee thanked everyone and ended the meeting.

  “I need some food.” was all she said.

  The rest of the crew was already in the mess cooking and eating.

  “Congrats on the promotion Admiral,” One of them said.

  “Fuck off.” was her immediate response before she thought for a moment and continued, “Saria, this is Habi, Hao, Tyler, and Kamaal. Actually if you,” she reached over and pushed a button on my translator, “say something.”

  “Hello?” It worked, little speakers playing an english translation of what I said. I didn’t like hearing a voice that wasn’t mine come from me but it was better than not being understood.

  “Want anything Saria? We have waffles, fresh fruit, fried smoked tempeh.” Kamaal asked.

  “I can’t.” Even if the translator managed to convey what those were, I couldn’t take the risk of eating any human food.

  “Right, sorry. Water?”

  “That’d be nice, thanks.”

  “Didn’t think I’d get enough Martian votes.” Lee said after sitting down with a plate of food.

  “I mean who else is there?” Habi said, “Carter, Yuan, Ange.”

  “Murphy?” Hao added.

  “Maybe, maybe Reid?” Habi looked at me, “Point is not a lot of people that would even be considered, and the Chang’e has a reputation.”

  “And about a third of the crew are from earth,” Hao added, “yea not a lot of captains but that is too many to ignore, and no one wants to deal with this mess, no offence to you or Lee.”

  “No, I understand.” I replied.

  Hao continued, “It’s not your fault. Whole fucking fleet is a half assed demilitarisation effort after the interplanetary war. Too many warships, too many soldiers who didn’t or couldn’t adjust to civilian life, and then we see the same shit we were fighting but worse, doesn’t matter that you’re not human, still feels like our fight.”

  It was, I think, an attempt to comfort me, and the effort was nice, even though it didn’t work.

  Lee interrupted, “Sorry one serious question Saria, you don’t have to of course, but is there anything you can tell me about the venalia ships, weapons, countermeasures, armor?”

  “Um, magnetic guns mostly I think, some missiles, laser countermeasures, I think, they don’t let us near the weapons, so I don’t really know. The hulls are just magnetic plating, some ablative stuff underneath, they let us work on that.”

  “Thanks.”

  Despite not having anything to eat it was nice sitting at the table with all of them. Lee left pretty quickly, she had work to do, but I stayed with the crew, and they talked about seemingly everything but what was about to happen. Habi was learning standardized pyrav and she was surprisingly good, not enough that we could have a proper conversation but it was still nice to hear a real voice speak my language, and she promised to help me learn english which was something I didn’t realize I was worried about until she offered. Hao had slept most the night so she offered me her bed and I managed to sleep a little, though it was the hunger that made that possible, and I didn’t sleep long, still better than nothing though. It didn’t feel normal, spending time with them like that, but I could imagine it feeling normal, and that was something.