Served

“What the hell just happened?”

The unfortunate trader shuffled his pods. You could generally gauge Governor Beltin’s mood by how far his spines were elevated. Right now they shot right up to the ceiling. “I’m, well, I’m not really sure about that, sir.”

“Well you’d better figure it out before I have to! Because the Mosstones are gearing up for war! Every single one, and in case you forgot, we have absolutely no means of talking them down!

“Now, my agents tell me that this whole thing started with an incident on your ship fifteen hours ago. What exactly did you do to set the Mosstone off?”

“It wasn’t me, sir!” cried the trader. “It was the human!”

He wilted under Beltin’s gaze. Those rumors of the governor eating people who troubled him were completely fabricated. Had to be. The Vassadriin were completely civilized. They hadn’t eaten anybody in years.

Beltin’s voice was quiet. “The human?”

“Yeah, you know, one of the monkeys. We took him on when we passed Bedra colony. He said he wanted to see the universe.”

“And what exactly did this human do?”

The trader was dreadfully aware that the governor’s spines, while lowered just a bit, still stuck up well past ‘mildly ticked’. “Well, ah, sir, he was working on a coolant leak when the Mossy came by. We picked him up a few years back, and he seemed all right. Can’t understand a word they’re saying, you know, and they shuffle and shake all the time, but they’re real good with their hands. You just push them over to whatever’s broken and-“

Beltin’s spines rose just a tad. “Get to the point.”

“Ah, yes. Yes. Sir. Well, the Mosstone came by, all jumping and shaking, and the human, I guess he hadn’t seen one before. So he stopped, and watched him for a while, and then he goes up, right up to the Mossy’s face, and starts shaking and jerking right back! Couldn’t believe my eyes! Ah, sir.”

“And did the human offer an explanation for his actions?”

“Ah, yessir. He said that the Mossy served him.”

“What?”

“Ah, yeah. He said that he got served. And, ah, that if you get served, you have to serve them back.”

“Is it some kind of obedience, a display of loyalty? What kind of service is entailed?” Did Beltin’s spines droop, just a bit, or was it the trader’s imagination?

“I, ah, don’t know sir. But the Mosstone, he just jerked right back at the monkey, and it just went back and forth. It got worse, too. We wanted to call a med team for the monkey- er, human, cuz he was just spinning around on the floor near the end.”

“And was there an explanation for that as well?”

“Well, all he said was that if they serve you, and you serve them, then it’s on. Sir.”

“What’s on?”

“Just it, sir. It’s on. He wouldn’t say more.”

It seemed that sheer puzzlement was routing away the governor’s rage. Hope began to gleam in the trader that he might make it through the meeting without making it through Beltin’s digestive system. “If the Mosstone performs services for the human, and the human performs services in turn, then… an alliance? A life-bond, of some sort?” He looked back to the trader. “And then what happened?”

“Well, after all that, the Mossy just turned and left. We haven’t been able to find him since. The human’s still on our ship, we were about to leave when-“

Oh, no. No no no, the spines were up again, they were almost shooting forwards, and the governor had nailed him to the wall with his glare. “When all this happened! When all the Mosstone ships in known space showed up at our doorstep, armed to the teeth! Even the workships!” The trader tried unsuccessfully to ooze his way through a crack in the wall. “Do you know what an industrial rivet gun can do to military armor? I’m not willing to find out!”

Suddenly an alert blared on the governor’s desk. INCOMING TRANSMISSION, it read. Beltin paused, halted in the middle of venting his spleen (quite literally, the Vassadriin spleen doubling as a third lung for vocal disputes and mating calls), and opened the feed.

A human female stood on his screen in military dress. “Governor Beltin,” she said, “I am Renn Schumacher, Commander of the United Forces of Humanity. Our fleet will be arriving soon.”

Beltin’s spines retreated out of self-preservation. “Here? The entire Human fleet is coming here? The Mosstones are already here! You’d have an all out war with my planet caught in the middle?”

The human looked shocked. “Of course not, governor. Humanity has always maintained a policy of negotiation to avoid conflict.”

There was a crash as the trader took the opportunity to jump out the window. Beltin ignored him. “You can’t negotiate with the Mosstones! You can’t even communicate with them!”

“Of course we can. We achieved a language breakthrough with just one shipworker. Now we’ve got our best linguistics experts on the case, and our best poppers, lockers, and breakers. We’re setting up the dance floor now.”

The commander leaned into the camera. “Haven’t you heard, governor?

“It’s on.”