I chewed the cud in my mouth while I waited for the station’s customs enforcement agent to look up from his desk. Would I have to swallow? Would I have to swallow twice? The blue-furred giraffe was certainly taking its time.
Its terminal chimed and displayed a flashing alert. I couldn’t quite make out everything it had to say — the angle was all wrong — but my translator implant was, apparently, smarter than me. It had no problem with the half-concealed text.
“ERROR: Unknown Species,” it read.
Wonderful. Not this again. I swallowed my cud as the giraffe looked up and readied my usual spiel.
“Bleat,” I said.
“An abductee?” asked the giraffe. When I nodded, it continued. “I’ll need to interview you in private.”
“Bleat,” I said, looping one of my horns through my second bag — the first was strapped securely to my back — and following the giraffe as it stood up. The blue-furred alien was shorter than I’d expected. Our Earth-bred giraffes were easily twice its height.
“Well, I’m glad you know how this goes, because I’ve only ever covered this in sims,” it said. No, him. My translator had just seen fit to inform me that it was wearing a nametag with a gendered title.
Lazy, bug-riddled piece-of-shit. If those damn Corti hadn’t bolted it onto my horns, I’d have smashed it ages ago.
The giraffe had paused, watching me with evident surprise. That was weird. I wasn’t drooling cud, was I? These alien’s low gravity could play hell with my digestion sometime. Oh, right, the gravity. Damn weaklings. You’d think they’d never seen someone carry a hundred pounds of gear before.
“Why do you think you’ll be leaving the station?” asked the giraffe in a pitiful attempt to hide his staring.
“Bleat,” I said. Article 227, paragraph 16. By now, I knew it chapter and verse. Or, my implant did. The little piece of metal was great at filling in the gaps. I mentally counted down the seconds until the giraffe’s own translator relayed the whole ‘non-sentient specimen of indigenous fauna’ spiel, then started chewing cud when my idiot guide processed.
The giraffe eventually nodded its understanding, then asked, “The Corti abducted you, didn’t they?”
“Bleat,” I said.
“‘Greys’? Never heard that before. Apt, I guess.”
From his slack-jawed expression, I had a feeling that there were a lot of things he hadn’t heard. What else do you call a race of little Roswell aliens whose entire sense of morality seemed to be built around the deliberate omission of blacks and whites?
“Why not have the implant removed and return to you homeworld?” asked my pint-sized guide.
(Seriously, he was barely three times my twice my height, and I’m a bleating goat. If your planet’s evolution is going to go to all the effort of aping a giraffe, you can at least get their second-most defining feature right.)
“Bleat,” I said, weighting the words with the appropriate scorn. Damn Office for the Preservation of Indigenous Species. As if the humans would believe a goat. “Bleat?”
“I apologize,” he said. “That was unprofessional. We’re here, anyways.” It motioned at a small interview corral, then followed me in and keyed a control. All sounds from outside the tiny fenced platform cut off. “Interview begins, interstellar convenient standard date/time 1196-5-24.4. Civilian trade station 591 ‘Outlook on Forever’, Customs and Immigrations Officer Krrkktnkk a’ktnnzzik’tk interviewing immigrant pre-Contact abductee. Could you repeat your identification for me, please?”
“Bleat,” I said. “Blea–“
“I must ask you to take this interview seriously. Your visa will be denied if you continue to mock the immigration system.”
I fixed him with a bored stare. “Bleat,” I said.
“But an actual category twelve? You can’t expect me to–“
“Bleat,” I said
“But it’s not considered possible for sentient beings to evolve–“
“Bleat,” I said. Damn aliens and their bureaucraciesy’s.
I regurgitated some cud and started to chew. The giraffe’s implants must have interpreted that as some sort of gesture — it wasn’t, I just felt like chewing — because he started to nod, then cut it short. He snuck a hasty glance at a small black bulb at the top of the corral.
Interesting. The camera must be there.
“I get the impression that Station 442 is not the only place where you–“
Three short squawks rang through the station, disrupting my contemplative ruminations. I stared balefully up at the camera.
“Impossible!” exclaimed the giraffe. As it rose from its seat, the noise returned. I tried to glare at each and every annoying individual, but there were too many of them, and they seemed far more concerned with finding escape or receiving further instructions than a pissed-off goat.
No matter. I swallowed my cud and let my face settle into its usual bored, slack-jawed stare. I could ignore them just as well as they were ignoring me.
“Them? Here?” continued the giraffe. He’d left the corral and was staggering over to a wall locker.
Weapons? Those could be useful. I postponed my valiant quest to ignore the station — that could be easily finished later — and trotted after him. Something had spooked the inhabitants, and I wanted to be armed.
“Bleat?” I asked. The locker was sliding open, but the giraffe’s ears still twitched as if he’d heard.
“Hunters,” he whispered without turning his head. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure that the long-necked idiot could have glanced to the side. It looked like every muscle in his body had gone stiff with fear.
What he’d said didn’t mean much to me, either. Hunters? Were those like farmers? I’d heard that some humans hunted, but they’d never gone after goats. They wouldn’t have been able to catch us.
The giraffe managed to grab a pulse gun, though, and fit a small device into a slot on his harness. The rifle’s form shifted the minute he grabbed it, reshaping itself to the giraffe’s body. He hefted a bundle of small discs contemplatively, then set them down to hand me one of the rifles.
Nothing happened. I stared at the unwieldy gun clenched between my teeth, then breathed out a resigned sigh. This was going to be fun.
A sizzling sound split the scene, setting the stage for a slithering snake sophont to surge southwards, squealing and squelching as it splatted solidly on the station’s interior siding.
That is, a snake-like alien ran into the room, squealing, and was promptly shot by the pack of six-legged monstrosities that had burst around the corner. They were easily the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, all pale skin and eyes and cybernetically-implanted weapons.
The giraffe and I dove for cover behind a customs booth, my trusty hooves more than making up for the alien’s height advantage. I beat him by a few seconds with the pulse rifle still clenched awkwardly between my teeth. The giraffe turned and shot at the Hunter who’d aimed at us — at least, I assumed that was what it was — but the shot evaporated harmlessly against some sort of protective field. Lovely. A shield. Why hadn’t I gotten one?
“We’re in trouble,” whined the giraffe. Aliens were just as bad
I popped my head over the counter, then ducked as six Hunters turned their guns on me. Their shots ripped through the air around my horns. I ducked lower.
“Bleat,” I said. Damn were the Hunters ever ugly.
“That’s not too bad,” said the giraffe. “We just need the grenades…” It swore. At least, my translator told me it used a swear word. Didn’t sound all that offensive to me.
“Bleat?” I asked.
The giraffe nodded, terror plain on his face. Slack-jawed idiot. I felt bad for the guy. Maybe there was something I could do. I dropped the gun — there was no way I’d be able to aim the thing, much less fire — and took off at a dead run.
He started laying down some covering fire when I was halfway to the locker. Better late than never, I suppose. I found the nerve-jam grenades easily enough — aside from a few spare rifles, they were quite literally the other thing in the locker — and grabbed them with my blunt teeth. I spun back towards the giraffe.
A pulse round smacked off the deck plating by my feet. Their shots were tracking closer. Damn it. Might not make it back after all. No matter. I’d always been good at goatball.
I sent the bag of grenades arcing towards the giraffe an instant before the pulse round smacked me in the side, knocking me off my feet. I hit the ground hard.
Ah well. It’d been a good life. Chewed cud. Stared at things. Climbed. What more could a go–
Wait a second. I wasn’t dead. I took a moment to marvel at the thought, then paused. Could I be dead? Truth be told, I didn’t really know what being dead would feel like. Maybe this was it.
There was a flair of light and some shrieks, and I snapped my head up. Hunters were convulsing on the ground. They looked dead. I didn’t have a mirror, but I figured I was a good bit better off than them. That made my current prospects seem a tad more positive. Of course, the sample size was still quite small — it’s hard to come to any firm conclusions with an N of 5 — but it would have to do.
Some of the surviving Hunters rushed the giraffe’s position. I hopped to my feet and met the charge as the giraffe’s shot went wild.
Kid’s play, really. I hit the flank of one of the attackers, luxuriating in the satisfying crunch of its spine breaking. It staggered, collided with one of its comrades, and fell.
Something smacked at my neck, and I vomited cud as I fell. That was it. Nobody messed with the cud.
I wrestled with the next one, its too-many limbs locked against my horns, but I found firm footing and threw it against the bulkhead. The next alien snap-fired at me, but I absorbed its pitiful gun’s impact. I feinted in, landed a few strategic bites, and then the Hunter’s weapon was locked into my horns, blood and mangled meat dripping from the severed cybernetic interface.
I crushed the Hunter’s skull with it. Another tackled me, trying to bring me down, but I planted my feet and threw him off my shoulder. Broke two of his legs with my newfound club for good measure, then drove a hoof through its chest.
I looked around for more enemies, but there was only the giraffe. I let the bloodied gun drop from my horns as the the all-clear message began to sound.
“Bleat,” I said.
The giraffe laughed. Somehow, he managed to look even dumber.