The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers (read along books txt) 📗

you’re kidding, right? Do you have any idea what’s happening out there?’

‘Not as well as you, I’m sure,’ Speaker said.

‘They’re bombing civilians,’ Pei said. ‘Whole settlements, from orbit. What possible opinion could be had about that?’

Speaker opened her palms upward in a crass approximation of what an Aeluon would do if they were trying to back down. ‘Captain, I—’

‘No, really, I want to know.’ Pei was not going to back down, and was not about to let Speaker do the same. Speaker hadn’t seen what Pei had seen. She hadn’t seen the limbs, the char, the craters where towns once stood. Differing opinions. Pei had carried the gory corpse of her crewmate – her friend – out of an alleyway on what should’ve been a safe world because of differing opinions. She’d spent two days cleaning out her mine-riddled ship – her home – because of differing opinions. No, she wouldn’t stand for this. Her cheeks seethed purple, and it had nothing to do with the kick or the hormones. This whole turn had started because Pei had wondered if she’d somehow insulted Speaker, but now the opposite was true. Even on her best days, she would not let this slide.

‘I don’t agree with what the Rosk are doing to the Aeluon civilians,’ Speaker said. Her words remained obnoxiously placid. ‘It’s horrific. I’m not arguing that. But I do think, simultaneously, that it’s worth asking why they’re doing it.’

The limbs. The char. The craters. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does. Nobody bombs civilians from orbit without cause. My understanding of the situation is that the Rosk believe planetary colonisation is abhorrent, and they’ll do anything to stop it from happening in their territory.’

The purple deepened to the cusp of black. ‘We’re not in their fucking territory. They can do – or not do – anything they want on their side of the map.’

‘Yes,’ Speaker said. ‘But who drew the map?’

Roveg sighed softly from where he sat between them. ‘Oh, stars,’ he said to himself, and took a hefty drink.

SPEAKER

If the Aeluon wanted to make Speaker angry, she was doing a fantastic job of it. Speaker was trying to keep her head cool, she really was. She didn’t want to fight, and she wasn’t at all comfortable doing so with a species outside of her own, but for fuck’s sake, Captain Tem had asked. What was the point of asking for an honest answer if you didn’t want to hear it?

Captain Tem slammed her cup down in the grass, the kick inside sloshing over the edge. ‘The colonies my government are protecting are at the border,’ she said. ‘Not across the border. At it. If the Rosk don’t want to settle off of their own planet, fine. They do not get to dictate what happens in the systems next door. And even if they did, murdering people would not be the answer.’

‘I’m not saying it is,’ Speaker said. Calm, calm, she told herself. Be the reasonable voice. ‘But you – your government – is murdering them in response, and I’m sorry, but I can’t accept a lesser evil for the sake of it being lesser.’

Captain Tem glared. ‘Your people kill people, too. You can’t tell me that’s not for the sake of your own interests.’

‘And I wouldn’t. I don’t agree with them, either. But I do understand why. I sympathise with the reasoning even if I disagree with the action taken. And in that, I can simultaneously feel sympathy for the Aeluon settlers and for the Rosk who don’t want them there. Who I don’t feel sympathy for are … well, the people killing over it. On either side.’

‘Could we perhaps—’ Roveg started.

‘What else are we supposed to do?’ Captain Tem said over him. ‘They won’t negotiate. They won’t compromise. They won’t listen to anything else.’

‘Did you ever consider leaving?’ Speaker asked. ‘Do you need yet another planet so desperately?’

‘It’s their home,’ Captain Tem said.

‘No,’ Speaker said. ‘Sohep Frie is your home.’

‘Sohep Frie nearly wiped us out. You know this, right? You seem to know a lot.’

Speaker bristled, but let it go. ‘You had a population crash of some sort in your pre-spaceflight era. But I don’t know the details, no.’

‘The details boil down to a lot of fucking volcanoes, all of which popped off at once and killed almost everybody. It’s the greatest luck in the universe that we’re not extinct. That’s why we built our first ships and went in search of other planets, so we wouldn’t be tied to the fate of just one.’

‘Stars, that is lucky,’ Speaker said flatly. ‘That would be a terrible way to end up.’

The sound of Captain Tem’s talkbox came out distorted around the edges, a sign that its operator was punching thoughts through it. ‘We’re not like the Harmagians were,’ she said. ‘We were never like the Harmagians. The Rosk border – nobody was on those planets, when people settled them. There was nothing sapient there. We’ve never taken a world from someone, not once.’ She stared as though Speaker had lost her mind. ‘You know we stopped the Harmagians, right? Back in the day? You know the whole reason you’re free of them is because of us, right?’

That was it. The last load-bearing support in Speaker snapped, and there was no chance of hoisting it back up. ‘How dare you,’ she said.

‘Speaker—’ Roveg interjected.

‘No,’ Speaker said. Her voice shook, and she could not find a way to make it stop. ‘No. How fucking dare you. You think I’m talking about history. You think I’m talking about something that’s over. You think that because you have your accords and your treaties and your fucking licences, you can keep doing the same shit as always with a clear conscience. Oh, yes, it’s all so civilised.’ She heard the words leaving her mouth, and she was afraid – afraid of what this angry alien might do, afraid of getting into trouble, afraid of all the unpleasant situations she’d spent her whole life teaching herself