The space immediately outside the building was an open lawn – if a lawn could, indeed, be broad-leafed, feathery, and dusted with unusually-shaped flowers that almost certainly came from some alien biome tens of thousands of light-years away, if not further. Still, it was a place to pause, to breathe, and to consider.

We are so fucked, Cass thought. The Affini weren’t interested in negotiation, and that was the only route she saw that didn’t lead to either mass domestication or a long-drawn out conflict that would be far harder on them than the xenos. The best we can do is make ourselves not worth the effort.

Nell was still sitting on the groundcover where Cass had set her, vaguely spacing out but slowly coming around. “Are we– are we outside?” she said, blinking. “When did…?”

“Good, you’re coming around,” Cass said, kneeling down next to her. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“The meeting? We were… that asshole was saying that they were going to take us off, and then–” Her voice caught in her throat. “I– I said–” She swallowed heavily. “Oh fuck, what happened?”

“I think the Captain hypnotized you,” Cass said. “Tsuga did it to me once, accidentally, and I think Pisca may have been doing it to Blaine, but that was much faster and much harder than either of those.”

“I wasn’t hypnotized,” Blaine said, crossing his arms and looking away with a guilty look on his face. “It just… felt nice.”

“I can’t stay here,” Nell muttered, shaking her head and hugging her knees. “I can’t stay here, not with– not with that running around.”

“We have to play along for now,” Cass said. “But we’ll get you back planetside as soon as we can. We’ll say you’re going down to convince them to surrender or something. You’ll have to get the word out: lock down hard, go to ground, and make this”evacuation” as expensive as we can for them. Get them to just give up on us. That’s our only hope now, if they’re not going to treat us as equals to be negotiated with.”

Nell nodded, closed her eyes. “What about you?”

“I’ll stay,” Cass said. “Someone has to keep running delaying tactics from this side, and it’s probably for the best that it’s me. Tsuga…for whatever reason, she doesn’t want to hypnotize me. She claims to support domestication, but I think that’s just her acculturation talking. She seems really, really uncomfortable about it, and I think with her around, I’m probably safe.”

Nell was silent for a moment, then looked up at Cass. “I thought he was a guy.”

“What?”

“Tsuga,” Nell said. “I mean… I don’t know, that’s just how he reads to me.”

“Well, she did say any pronouns when she introduced herself,” Cass said, “but she just always felt like a woman to me.”

“Tsuga is an alien plant, Cass,” Nell said bitterly. “I mean, you saw that asshole Captain of theirs, I’m pretty sure it’s all some kind of weird joke for them. Like, what even is e/em/eirs, some kind of alien pronoun?”

“Spivak,” Cass said.

Nell stared at her. “What?”

“They’re from the early Info– nevermind,” she said. “It’s not important.” Now was not the time for an info-dump.

“I’ve honestly just been they-ing Tsuga in my head,” Blaine added. “I couldn’t figure it out either way.”

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Cass said. “What matters is getting the two of you down to the planet. I’ll handle the setup so you two can keep away from the Affini.”

“Wait, why am I going down?” Blaine said, confused, maybe even unsettled.

“Do you really have to ask?” Cass said, glancing up at him. “Just go. I’ll be fine, and you’ll be safe down there.” Blaine was quiet for a long moment, staring down at his feet. Cass knew this look: it was the I-have-to-say-something-I-don’t-want-to look. Most of the time, this look wasn’t enough for her to intuit what the person wanted to say, but in this case, there wasn’t much debate, and she didn’t like how things added up. “You want to stay, don’t you?”

“…yeah,” Blaine whispered.

“Ex-fucking-scuse me?” Nell said, all but leaping to her feet, hands already clenched into fists. “What the fuck did you just say?”

“I don’t wake up shivering here!” Blaine said. There were tears in his eyes, and his voice was dipping into creaky, achey tones. “I’m not starving here! I got to eat a hamburger yesterday! A hamburger! With real meat and real tomatoes and real lettuce and it was amazing and… and they don’t want anything from me for it! How is this not what we’ve been fighting for this whole time?”

“Coward!” Nell spat. “You want to sell us out to the fucking plants for some cheap comforts? You want to betray the revolution for what, to be some kind of pet without a mind of your own?!” This was more than the usual Nell argument over ideology – her face was red, and her eyes were so wide Cass could see whites all the way around. Cass’s mind reeled through a dozen possible ways she might defuse this novel situation, each spiralling off into dozens of branches as she imagined any of Nell’s possible responses and how she might handle those.

“I just want to live,” Blaine replied, his wet and red-rimmed eyes finally meeting Nell’s. “I don’t want to be miserable all the time! I don’t know why you’re so upset, I mean, they’re communists, you’re a communist! What, are you mad because you’re not the General Secretary of the Alien Plant Communist Party?”

“Fuck you, you little traitor!” She threw herself at Blaine, and Cass was only just able to put herself between the two of them.

“Stop it!” Cass said, catching Nell by the collar and pushing her away from Blaine. “This isn’t helping!”

“What, so now you’re on his side? Are you going to betray the revolution too?” she spat, grabbing a fistful of Cass’s jacket in turn.

“You know better than that,” Cass said calmly. There, she thought, that’s an opening. Cass forced herself to meet Nell’s glaring eyes, choked down the roiling urge to immediately look away. Let her focus on me. “I’ve been fighting capital since before you hit puberty. You would have been, what, 8 years old when I blew up that logistics depot?” Nell knew the story. Cass had told it often enough, when people asked what got her sent to Solstice.

“…nine,” Nell said. The first crack in the wall of her rage. “I remember seeing that on the vids.”

“So you think I demolished one of the five biggest military-industrial shipping hubs on the homeworld, got transported to Solstice for it, then spent twenty years organizing so that, when the chance came, we kicked Osbourne-Clark off-planet – and then, after the navy destroyed Landfall, spent the next three years organizing not only to keep the survivors alive but so that when the Accord inevitably came back, we could still fight them – after all that, you think I’m the one giving up on the revolution?”

Nell was still angry, and when her eyes darted to Blaine, just behind Cass, that anger flared momentarily, but she was getting herself under control. “Fine,” she whispered, letting Cass’s jacket slip through her fingers, otherwise still tense from head to toe. “But when they open up your skull and put a–” Her voice caught again. “Stars damn it! When they unmake you, McCracken, don’t think I’ll feel sorry for you!”

“You don’t mean that,” Cass said firmly. “Calm down and listen to me. Underneath all that tankie bullshit, you absolutely do care. You think I didn’t notice you skipping meals to cover shortfalls in rations? You’re a good person, Nell, and a good comrade.”

“…fuck off,” she mumbled, looking away.

There, Cass thought. Fight’s over. She finally let herself look away. Blessed relief. “Go back to the surface, get everything together. Just do one thing for me, Nell: promise me you won’t go to Case Wildfire.”

“But that’s the core of the guerilla strategy!” Nell protested. “If we don’t–”

“And if we do,” Cass cut her off, “if we make them mad, they can annihilate the planet without even really trying. Make it expensive, make it frustrating, make it absolutely maddening. Make it not worth their while! But don’t you dare make them mad, Nell. Too many lives are riding on it.”

“Fine,” she said, glancing at Blaine. The anger flared again, briefly. “And what about him?”

“Blaine,” Cass said, turning to him, “do you still want to stay?”

He nodded. “You’re going to need help, and–”

“Don’t,” Cass said, cutting him off. “Don’t try to come up with post hoc justifications. You don’t need to. What did I say when you volunteered for Bulwark duty?”

Cass watched him remember. “We fight as long as we can?” he said tentatively.

“And if you hit your limit?” she prompted.

“Know it, and say it,” he finished, sighing. “But I don’t want to let you down,” he added. His tears had stopped, but he still sounded as if he were about to start crying again at the slightly provocation.

“You’re not.” Cass reached out and put a hand on his shoulder – he needed the steadiness and the comfort, maybe now more than ever. “I still think you should go down, though, and transfer out of Bulwark. I know a bunch of shelters in the Elysium Valley that would be happy to have you.”

He was silent for a moment, then finally said, “N-no, I want to stay here. I want to help you, I really do. But…that’s not the only reason.” He looked down at the ground, clearly ashamed of himself.

“I told you,” Nell growled. “He wants to be a pet.”

“Shut up! Just because you’ve never been happy a day in your life–”

“Stop it,” Cass said, squeezing his shoulder a little. “Both of you.” I’ve lost him already, Cass thought, her heart sinking. I should have seen it sooner, somehow. But she knew, too, there was no way she could have, not before Tsuga accidentally hypnotized her. Just a few days with the Affini had completely upended Blaine’s mind, made him empathize just as much with the enemy – and it was clear they were the enemy, now, merely a different shade of imperialism than they were accustomed to hating – as with his own comrades. I knew they were dangerous, but I had no idea how dangerous they really were.

“So…I can stay?” He finally lifted his head, staring up at Cass with pleading eyes.

“I think you’re making the wrong decision,” Cass said, as gently as she could. “One that’s going to have life-long consequences you can’t foresee. But it is your decision.”

“Anarchist bullshit,” Nell muttered, shaking her head and turning away.

“It’s your decision,” Cass repeated. “I’d advise against it, but I won’t stop you from making it.”

Tears were again rolling down Blaine’s face, falling to the ground cover below. He finally managed to look up, his eyes meeting Cass’s for an uncomfortably long second that she, again, forced herself to endure before something else caught his attention. His eyes darted away, and close as she was, Cass thought she could see his pupils dilate ever so slightly.

“There you are!” Pisca’s voice came from behind, and as Cass turned it was clear Blaine was staring up at her. “I looked all over! You know, for such little legs, you terrans can run surprisingly fast!” She knelt down next to the trio, one hand idly stroking Blaine – and only then did Pisca notice the tears. “Oh, petal, what’s wrong?”

Blaine immediately burst into sobs, anything he might have tried to say wiped away by a waterfall of tears. Before Cass could even react, she felt Blaine being dragged up and away, out of her reach and into Pisca’s arms. She gently cradled him, rocking him back and forth as her vines coiled around him. “Shhhh,” she said, “don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Collecting themself had taken Tsuga some time, but they were whole once more, and once more in a position to, if only temporarily, supervise a fairly independent little sophont. Pisca had said, when Tsuga caught up with her, that there’d been some kind of disagreement, and sure enough, there was Blaine in her arms, his face red around the eyes in a way Tsuga recognized as a sign of distress. Nell, meanwhile, had not been quite so loud as Polyphylla had predicted – perhaps she was getting accustomed to the Affini? It was a slim hope, but the Captain had handled her well, and it might just be the beginning of her turning the corner, especially since she and Cass had immediately requested that Nell be provided transport back to the planet’s surface to present the committee’s findings to the Bulwark Assembly ahead of the evacuation.

Tsuga was surprised the two had agreed, but then again, Cass in particular was a smart little terran. Perhaps the Captain’s influence had helped her to talk Nell down. In either case, now Nell was on a shuttle bound for the planet, Blaine was with Pisca (who had insisted he was absolutely in no condition to be on his own), and Cass was once more in Tsuga’s hab, seated at her little table and scribbling away in a notebook she’d requested from the compiler. Apparently terrans too felt the allure of writing properly on a sheet of paper, and it had the additional benefit of being very cute. This made it hard for Tsuga, seated on their sofa, to focus on reading the hab manual – they still hadn’t determined where the setting for the voice modulation was. It was a part of the habitat they’d never had to interact with, since the default Affini profile had always sufficed for them.

When the sound of pen on paper suddenly stopped, curiosity sunk its hooks into Tsuga. “What precisely are you writing, anyway?” they said, now that it wouldn’t be an interruption.

Cass almost jumped in her seat before turning to look up at Tsuga. “Just organizing my thoughts. Works better on paper. I think it’s the…the tactile feeling of writing. And it forces me to pay attention, and not just let my thoughts spiral.”

“Mmm. I see,” Tsuga said. They had a habit of using notes in much the same way, when faced with a task so large that even breaking it down into sub-tasks mentally was insufficient to fully grasp the whole. “Is everything alright?”

“Mmm.” Cass nodded, tapping the pen rhythmically against the paper with a gentle flick of her fingers. “When you came down to the planet, you mentioned a treaty you made with what’s left of the Accord.”

“The Human Domestication Treaty,” Tsuga helpfully supplied. “We’ll work out one with you here. It’ll probably be substantially similar. Though, you’ve been much more cooperative, so that will probably influence it. I’m afraid that sort of thing isn’t my specialty.”

“Could I have a copy?”

“You can find it on your tablet easily enough, I should think,” Tsuga said. “But if you’d like help–”

“No, no,” Cass said, waving her hand. “I mean a hard copy. One I can mark up as I read it.”

“Oh!” What a charming little creature, Tsuga thought, warmth filling their core. Perhaps I can extract a video from the hab’s memory later. Polyphylla would just about rebloom on the spot if she could see that. “We can arrange for a printed copy, certainly. Though–” Their mind darted to the hab voice modulation problem. “We should probably be quite specific, lest you accidentally end up with a version written with florets in mind.”

“Good thinking,” Cass said, nodding and making another entry in her notebook. “I need the full, detailed version. No abridgments, no omissions.”

“I’m sure such a translation exists,” Tsuga said, nodding. “Though that might add some time to the request. Generally, the full version, and the legally controlling one, is written in Affini. Especially for sophonts like terrans, who have so many radically different languages.”

“So if I want to actually understand the real thing, I’m going to have to learn Affini?” Cass said. She shook her head and sighed. “Well, what’s one more language? I’m only 44…”

“It shouldn’t be too difficult, if you really do want to go that route,” Tsuga said. “The local Affini dialect is designed with maximum intelligibility with your own languages in mind, after all.”

Cass looked back up and Tsuga and stared. “You redesign your own language every time you meet a new species?”

“Of course,” Tsuga said. “Did we not mention that? It’s much easier than expecting you to understand the Core Worlds dialect. That doesn’t even use approximated mouth and vocal parts.”

For a moment, Cass was silent. Then, she let out a soft chuckle. “You know, I don’t know why I’m surprised when you say things like that anymore,” she said, shaking her head and adding more notes to her book.

“In time, you’ll grow accustomed to it,” Tsuga said. “Sophonts all do.”

“You’re assuming I plan to stick around,” Cass said, not looking up. “I don’t.”

There was a shiver in Tsuga’s core, a twitching and a contraction. What does she mean by that? they wondered. “I’m not sure what you mean,” they said.

“You’ve made it clear you don’t respect our agency,” she replied. “You, specifically, did. I’m still mad at you about that.”

“Mad?” Now the twitching spread, rippling out along their vines in waves of confusion. “What did I do?”

“You sold us out,” Cass explained. Despite her stated anger, her voice was calm. “You told the Captain we can’t stay down there.”

“Because you can’t,” Tsuga said. “It’s not safe or healthy, and it won’t be for some time.”

“But you plan to fix it.”

“Yes, of course.”

Cass stopped writing, set the pen down, and turned to face Tsuga. “Then why can’t you simply give us the technology to do so and let us do it? Hm?”

“Because…that’s not how we do things,” Tsuga said. “And it would be deeply irresponsible to place technology like that in your hands, anyway. If used improperly, you could wipe yourselves out.”

“Then that’s our choice to make,” Cass insisted. Tsuga bristled, each needle standing on end. Everbloom, they thought, trying to quash their anxiety at how casually Cass treated discussion of her own extinction, don’t let me drop needles in front of her. That’d be so humiliating. Cass, perhaps, had noticed, because she added, “You know…you’re the best one of you – you actually talk to me like I’m a person – but you still treat me like a child sometimes, like all the other Affini do all the time.”

Tsuga was still for a long moment, turning Cass’s assertion over in their head. How to approach this without saying something that’ll upset her? “How old do you think I am?” They started to work the math in their head, converting Affini measurements of time to terran ones, so that they could have an answer ready.

“I don’t know,” Cass said, shrugging. “You said something about eighth bloom when you landed, so, I’m guessing, what, you’re in your eighties?”

Tsuga laughed, a rumble from deep inside their trunk. They didn’t even have to force it, and it was a relief to feel something other than worry. “No, no, dear one, much higher.”

Cass paused. “…eight hundred?”

“In your reckoning, I first bloomed two thousand, one hundred and thirty…seven, I think, years ago. I might be off by a year or two.”

“Two thousand?”

“My mentor in archaeology, when I first started working in the sciences, was on their Seventh Bloom at the time, so they’d be about twice that by now. I haven’t spoken to them for a few blooms.” Never mind why, Tsuga thought. That’s not germane to the conversation.

“I… what?”

“The oldest Affini I’ve ever personally met was the subgalactic administrator for… I think you call it Messier 32? In any case, they were on their 28th Bloom at the time, certainly above 30 by now, so… let’s say nine thousand or so.”

“You’re immortal.”

“Not quite, but close,” Tsuga said, nodding. “When faced with severe trauma, or when our biological systems falter due to age, we rebloom, a process of restoration and rebirth. The youngest Affini you’ve met is Pisca. She’s not quite a child, but she’s very, very young. Don’t let her being in her Third Bloom fool you, she’s only about three times your age. She’s just nearly died twice, and had to rebloom to survive. Any Affini with even a dollop of common sense would still be in her First Bloom for at least a century to come at her age.”

“You treat me like a child,” Cass said, her voice soft enough to almost be a whisper, “because to you, I am one.”

“Again, not quite,” Tsuga said. “We recognize that sophonts live across different scales of time, mature at different rates. But on a species level, we do have a vast trove of experience to call upon, one that greatly exceeds your own. On that scale, as an analogy, perhaps it’s not so far off: as you would surely not give a terran hatchling a dangerous machine to play with, we would not give a younger, less experienced culture a tool with which they might cause themselves or others harm.”

Cass was silent for a long moment after that, and Tsuga let her have her space. No doubt that’s a shock to her, they thought, but it’s important that she understand our relative positions. Our responsibility.

“I think,” she finally said, “I need to get some air. I’m going to take a walk.”

“Very well. Would you like company?” Cass shook her head. “Well, at least take your tablet with you,” Tsuga said. “That way, if you need me to tell another Affini to leave you be, you can call me. Alright?” She nodded, picked up the mini-tablet off the table, shrugged on her jacket, and tucked it into the pocket. She left without a word, the door silently sliding shut behind her.

Tsuga sat alone with their thoughts. They had begun the work of clearing out the pet room of their stacked boxes of reports and studies. Perhaps they should finish that, and… yes, there was more they could do to help Cass feel safe and welcome in their hab. They lifted the tablet, their vines tapping in commands as they searched for the perfect addition to the hab’s furniture.

<random_seed> Caaaassssssiiiiiieee

<random_seed> Cassie cassie cassie cassie

<random_seed> Oh yeah the meeting!!!!! oms say hi to the captain for me!!!!

<random_seed> Cassie is the meeting done yet????? im bored!!!!

<random_seed> Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> Hi

<random_seed> Cassie!!! yay!!!!! how was the meeting??? 

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> Not too great.

<random_seed> Oh no!!!!! what happened??? 

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> It's complicated. Basically, it just didn't go how I was expecting, or how I wanted, and now things are a huge mess. 

<random_seed> Yikes!!!! have you asked for help??? im sure theres someone who can help!!! do you want me to go ask Mistress if she can help you??? 

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> No, that's kind of the opposite of what I want.

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> The Affini want to stick their noses into our business and don't trust us to do things on our own.

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> I know they don't have noses, not really. Maybe those antennae things, but that doesn't sound right, does it? For sticking into things, I mean. 

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> ...Leah? Are you okay? 

<random_seed> Sorry!! i zoned out a little but im okay!!! booo im sorry why arent they letting you do stuff??? is it dangerous???

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> They say it is, but I think it's more that they just don't trust us not to immediately screw everything up because we're practically early hominids by comparison to them. 

<random_seed> Ooooohhhhhh you met a real old one didnt you??? they can be real spooky sometimes!!! but theyre nice too my Mistress knows a couple older Affini and theyre always super nice to me 

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> I'm sure they are, but nice to you and nice to me are two different things. 

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> It's frustrating to be told that everything you've worked your entire life for is meaningless now because someone else is going do it for you, and without even really asking for your input. 

<random_seed> You sound sad ;_; lets go get lunch im hungry!!!! Mistress snuggled me a whole lot earlier but now shes doin work stuff and i dont wanna bug her for food while shes busy

<random_seed> If i ask nice and say im gonna meet someone im sure shell be ok with me going out

<random_seed> Theres a cafe super close to where i live do u wanna go there???? 

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> I am kind of hungry. Sure. 

<random_seed> Yay!!!! its a date!!! 

<PropagandaOfTheDeed> ...wait, what?