"What the hell, lieutenant!" I shout. "What the hell!"
We've been kicked out of the senate chambers so that the politicians can vote away from prying eyes. We're currently on our way back to the 13, we need to get the ship ready for a speedy departure in case we need to defy orders.
"Sorry, sir," he responds. "I couldn't sit back idly while Nee'at'an tanked."
"Sorry you had to reveal yourself? What about the fact that you've been lying to us for the past six months."
"And all the other people during training?" John adds.
"It's what I do," Ren informs me. "Infiltrate a civilization, learn all there is to know about it and feed it back to the politicians."
"So you can learn our weaknesses," I shoot back.
"Yes, that is the entire idea behind this exercise. Without know key weakness or strengths you will end up inadvertently insulting them with a complement, or complement them with an insult. We know that you are not forgiving, that you will attempt to rescue hostages, that you are more than willing to turn a blind eye on other people's internal affairs and dislike people getting involved in yours. I know every sore spot of your history and am able to apply them."
"What the..." Connor mumbles.
"The Myren's hate secrets," Nyan informs us. "The only secrets they inevitably manage to keep are how they get other people's secrets."
"So military..."
"Unimportant," Ren admits. "Political assimilation is much easier than conquering an alien civilization."
"So you reshape alien races to better fit with you view of civilization?" Connor asks.
"No, we create a facade for our own civilization to better match the alien civilization we're trying to interact with. Take my appearance for example, yes, I'm alien, but I chose to be more on the masculine side to appeal to your species innate sexism."
"And everything I said, think back to all the fights I've gotten into and all the tricky maneuvers I've pulled off, now put that same brain in charge of a medium with a margin of error a mile wide. That's what happened in the room back their. Tone of voice, body language, breathing pattern, all mapped out to the half second. All my comments about my age? Complete baloney, I'm only forty, I'm going to remain untouched by age for another eighty years."
"And forty of your years are?" I ask.
"Just under forty of yours," Nyan assures us. "Myren's remain young for the bulk of their lives, but are killed quickly by old age."
"We would have perfected immortality, but our colony ship fleet is too small."
"How'd you fool me?" Connor asks.
"Five years of training, fifteen of experience," Ren responds.
"No, how'd you get past my telepathy?"
"A small flaw in our regeneration," he tells him. "The quick cell division prevents a mana charge build up, this results in all psychic based ability working at a fraction of their desired effect on us." He tapps his head. "Plus nobody can keep up with a Myren's mood swings."
"Also a side effect of bioengineering," Nyan informs us. "They exists in a perpetually drugged state."
"It's kept us from slaughtering each other for the last six hundred years."
"And prevented you from progressing at the same rate as the other species."
"We had FTL at the same time every other race was developing satellites. Would you really have wanted us to continue progressing at the same inflated rate all of you late comers are?"
YOU ARE READING
Lucky 13 (NaNoWriMo 2017)
Science FictionHumanity may not be destined for great things, but its children are. Cheep long rang FTL is finally a reality, and onto the Lucky 13, one of the first of these new ships, is thrown a crew new out of the Academy. Captain Daniel May, just as green as...
