“Do you always travel with such a well-stocked bar?” Captain Zzuural said as he expertly mixed Manhattans.

“Nope. We stopped by the liquor store when we bought the meat for the party.” Sheila said as she accepted a glass.

“This place has a liquor store?”

“This place has everything,” Sheila said as she took a sip.

“Too bad that we would cause an evacuation if we stopped by more often. This place is nice,” the captain said as he filled his dish. “They even have these weird candied cherries.”

“I bet we could get used to Nightguard if your money is good,” Kolvac’’ksa said as he tore into a new skewer. “At the very least, I could fill any ‘to go’ orders you might have… for a modest fee, of course,” Kolvac’’ksa said as he rubbed his hands together in the universal sign for cash.

“We may very well take you up on that. Terran liquor isn’t illegal in, but it is very hard to get,” the captain said. Lieutenant Guzzala started to say something, then she took another sip of her pina colada and decided to keep quiet. A little bootlegged liquor isn’t going to hurt anyone, she concluded.

“Booze is one thing we always have in good supply. Pirates are a thirsty lot. I am certain I could fulfill any order,” Kolvac’’ksa said as he flared his nostrils in a smile.

“Jeez,” Gloria said as she grabbed a Manhattan, “You will deal with anyone, won’t you.”

“I let you into my shop, and you guys are about as hot as a client can get right now. The entire Federation is just dying to have a chat with you.”

“Sho, what did you do this time,” Lieutenant Guzzala said as she clumsily pulled out her tablet.

She and the entire Juon crew broke down into laughter as they were brought up to speed.

“That wash you?!” the lieutenant exclaimed while giggling. “Empressh’es tentaclesh!”

“Yep. It was all thanks to our little Flaxen beauty here.” Sheila said as she hugged Gloria.

“Fuck you,” Gloria said with a laugh as she shoved Sheila away.

“Flaxen?” Captain Zzuural asked.

“Flaxen is what we call the former ruling class of Mars. Her hair, skin, and eyes are all dead giveaways and all recessive. They liked to ‘keep things in the family’, so to speak. Have all those traits, and you are definitely Flaxen. Believe it or not, she is a direct descendant of the fucking head of the Martian Industrial Group. Her grandparents were part of the Flaxen that got sick of watching people starve just because of profiteering. They were the among the ones who turned off the turrets and unlocked the gates.”

“Considering everything wasn’t what they were doing suicide?” the captain asked.

“Well, as my grandpa said, ‘Sometimes you just have to do what is right and worry about the rest later.’,” Gloria said between sips. “Fortunately for us, the leaders of the uprising knew who they were and were able to get them to safety before the violence really got into full swing.”

“How about you? From what I hear, you Terrans aren’t very nice to those they think to be porkies,” the captain asked.

“It’s ok when we are in our dome. Everyone there knows who we are and what we did. We get respect, but we have to stay there. If we want to go elsewhere, we have to dye our hair, skin, and irises,” Gloria said with a frown.

“Yeah, even we didn’t know she was Flaxen until we needed someone to sneak onto a Federation planet,” Sheila said as she filled up her glass. “They only let her into the Republic Navy because they needed people to pilot suicide sleds. Once the war was in full swing, they even went through the prisons. I really wish I was kidding,” Sheila said as she shook her head.

“Suicide sleds?” one of the Juon asked.

“Moray Torpedo Boats. We were the first target during a battle, and for good reason. The bugs knew we were packing the big nukes. I have twenty-five confirmed capital ship kills, including one of their super-battleships,” Gloria said proudly.

“It works out great for us. She puts on some fashionable clothes or a Federation officer’s uniform, and nobody questions it,” Sheila said with a smile. “Sergeant Roberts can also easily pass for a porkie. They can just walk into a lot of places, like a Federation security station, for example,” Sheila said as she raised her glass to them.

“Why did your family stay on Mars and not flee to the Federation where it would be safer?” One of the Juon asked.

“Uh-oh...” the captain said, moving between Gloria and the Juon trooper.

“It’s cool,” Gloria said as she waved her hands in a reassuring gesture. “We stayed on Mars because we are Martians. It’s our home, and we fought for it just like everyone else. As far as the Federation goes, we are Republic citizens even if we do get some static sometimes. If anything, we hate the Feds more than anyone else,” she said as she took another drink. “Besides, we are safe, even respected in our dome. It’s everywhere else we run into problems. It really sucks that my grandparents did what they did only to have to live in what is basically exile, but Sol is our home, and things were getting a lot better… until the fucking porkies and the Federation struck,” she said with a growl. “Now, in addition to losing my sister in their attack, my little brother had to quit college because of all the harassment.”

“Thatsh horrible!” Lieutenant Guzzala exclaimed. “I thought that the Terrans were good people.”

“We’re ‘good’, but we aren’t perfect. We are very far from it.” Sheila said with a frown. “We have a lot of problems, hate being one of the biggest. The Sol Wars were only about one hundred and fifty years ago, and there is more than enough hate to go around even among groups that call themselves Terran. The porkies were the ones universally hated, but plenty of the groups that are now officially Terran viciously fought each other over that last bushel of wheat or that last grain of rice, especially in the early days of the disaster, and there are too many grudges to count. Jessie catches static because ‘she had it easy’, Eno catches flak from other Africans because some believe that the Pan African Alliance were wrong protecting some species in preference to people, Jacob regularly gets into bar fights over the Battle of London, Hell, even I cut someone’s throat outside a New Orleans bar because the old fucker was bragging about killing Salties back in the day,” Sheila said with a sigh. “Most people have almost forgiven each other, and the newer generations harbor less hatred towards each other than the ones before, but it only takes one asshole to start something.”

“But you forgave us almost immediately,” the captain said in confusion.

“Zzu, my old friend,” Sheila said as she patted his head fondly, “we are much better at hating each other than we are at hating anything else. We will band together to fight a common foe, like the Empire, the Federation, or the Collective, but when that threat has passed, we are just one incident away from violence on a good day. We are just too used to killing each other. We’ve been doing it since before we developed the writing to record it. Reconciliation is happening, but it’s going to take time. We are still a strong Republic, and we have far more ties binding us together than pulling us apart, but if some idiot runs their mouth too much, they will probably get stabbed, and someone dying over a century and a half old grudge doesn’t even make the news.”

“I understand to some extent. We are much harder on and expect more from our own species than others. We would never do some of the things we do to ourselves to our subjects. An old saying is that we subject ourselves to tyranny in order to save our subjects from it,” the captain said as he slid a skewer underneath himself and took a bite.

“Well, you kinda did that to us,” Gloria said as she spat out a small bone.

“That we did, and it worked out so very well didn’t it?” the captain laughed. “Oh, that reminds me. Where did we leave off?”

“We had just annexed the Terrans,” one of his troopers said.

“Oh, yeah, right,” the captain said as he mixed and diluted another Manhattan, much to the horror of the humans present.

“Water? You monster!” Jessie yelled.

“Forgive me for not wanting to die,” the captain said with a laugh. “For the first twenty-seven years, things went like a dream. The Terrans liked us, and we loved them. Tanker after tanker of deuterium and helium-3, along with untold megatons of just about anything you could imagine, streamed out of Sol. Technology exchanges benefited both the Terrans and the Empire. We go on and on about how the Terrans gained tech from us, but we tend to minimize their contributions to the Empire. Their compact fusion reactors were superior to ours, and every single successful mining or processing company in the Empire either borrows heavily from Terran tech or outright copies it. It was a great time for all of us,” Captain Zzuural said as he sipped his watered-down cocktail.

“Then, the former Emperor Kal-Zurx-Belran-Delsn II abdicated the throne after one-hundred and fifty years as is our custom and named his son Emperor Kal-Alran-Calx-Delsn IV his successor,” the captain said.

His crew made razzberry noises. The Terrans were a little shocked. The Juon damn near worship their Emperors as gods.

“Yeah, that guy,” Captain Zzuural said. “As you all know, he really screwed the squid. The Terran Uprising was probably his biggest cock-up of all. He and his friends were all part of this, for lack of a better word, cult that romanticized the early days of the Empire or its ‘Golden Age’, as they put it. Yeah, back when we had succession wars and actually had to fight systems in order to actually conquer them. Never mind that we are now a hundred times larger, systems now actively petition for annexation, and we haven’t had a civil war in over a thousand years. Back then was the ‘Golden Age’,” The captain said, flashing his chromatophores in the equivalent of an exaggerated eye roll.

“Why didn’t he just name the Cyan Empress as his successor?” One of the Juon asked.

“That is a very good question and one that he refuses to answer to this day,” the captain replied. “It’s hard to get anything out of him at all anymore. He mostly just stays in his chambers, refusing to leave. Some say that he thought the Cyan Empress to be too gentle and retiring to effectively lead-”

He was cut off by some startled spluttering from his crew.

“Too gentle? The Empress? The Cyan fucking Empress!” the Juon trooper exclaimed.

“They say that she was,” the captain shrugged. “I think the operative word is ‘was’. Personally, I believe the theory that she was always the former Emperor’s favorite child, but he considered her brother ‘adequate’ and chose him so she could lead a normal life, free from the burden of the Empire on her head. After all, the Empire was in good shape. All her brother had to do was just sit there and be a figurehead,” Captain Zzuural said as he grabbed another skewer. “I think that theory is closer to the truth, but we will likely never know.”

“Their blood is cyan in color,” Sheila explained to the Z’uush, “and she most certainly earned that name several times over.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” the captain said as he continued, “The new Emperor who we shall not name again,” he said as he spat on the deck, “wasted little time in basically fucking over the entire Empire. He replaced people in vital positions including high military leadership with his poorly qualified friends, forced the abdication of heads of noble houses in favor of his cronies, rolled back social progress a thousand years in the making, intimidated rivals, and imprisoned or exiled those he couldn’t hold under a tentacle, and basically was a giant turd sitting on top of the greatest Empire in the galaxy.”

“The noble houses allowed that?” another of his troopers asked.

“Well, they were in a tight spot. There are checks and balances in place, not the least of which is their private armed forces but they got blindsided with many of those houses suddenly led by the Emperor’s beak cleaners. Those powerful enough to resist were faced with a difficult choice, either risk civil war or play along and try to use diplomacy to somehow fix the situation,” the captain explained, “They, and I think wisely, chose the latter. A civil war would have torn the Empire apart. Anyway, one of the changes was the removal of the first lord chancellor from the Sol system and replacing him with one of the biggest beak cleaners of the bunch, Lord Calal-Ras-Kalen. He wasted little time taking control of all Terran-owned businesses and placing them under the control of his beak lickers.”

“Needless to say,” Sheila said with a grin, “That didn’t go over very well.”

“No, it did not,” the captain replied, “To say that it did not go over well is a bit of an understatement. They also slashed the Terran’s pay, saying that it wasn’t fair that they were doing better than so many Juon and that their new pay was more in line with what was appropriate for ‘unskilled laborers’”.

“This also did not go over very well at all,” Sheila said with a laugh.

“Mismanagement of what were some of the most profitable businesses in the Empire coupled with a suddenly unmotivated workforce caused productivity and profits to plummet. Soon, many of them were running at a loss,” The captain said as he poured himself a dish of water.

“Quitter!” Jessie slurred.

“I’m intoxicated enough, thank you. The new Lord Chancellor, may his name be lost, and his little cloaca wipers didn’t even consider the thought that they fucked up and placed the blame solely on the Terrans,” the captain said, scrunching his eyes in a smile. “And, in their infinite wisdom, decided to start to apply increasing pressure on them. The old Lord Chancellor, Lord Zuk-kal-brekal, tried to warn them and the Emperor that something bad was on the horizon, but he was rebuffed and dismissed from government service. The new Terran leadership, wait for it… disregarded his warning because since the Terrans ‘surrendered’ so easily, they must be weak and easily cowed.”

The captain smiled and waited for the hysterical laughter to die down.

“I shit you not. You can actually look up the documents if you like. They said it,” the captain laughed. “As they continued to apply ever-increasing pressure, they got to encounter the first rumbles of what was to come. The Terrans have a concept that they have had since ancient times, collective bargaining.”

“What’s that?” a Z’uush asked.

“That’s when all of the workers in a business or trade band together and form a labor organization that deals with management as a single entity. As such, they can wield some very powerful tools such as a work slowdown involving everyone or a complete work stoppage or what they call a ‘strike’. Suddenly, entire mines, then entire groups of mines, then all of the mines simply stopped working. All production stopped almost system-wide. The Juon were at a complete loss. This was at the time a uniquely Terran concept and something that they were simply not equipped to handle,” the captain said with a laugh. “So, they decided to pile stupid on top of stupid. Instead of ‘looking weak’ and negotiating, like the Terrans wanted, they decided to be idiots. They first tried to just fire everyone involved and replace them, but that didn’t work for two big reasons. One, just because the workers had stopped production, they still were in the mines and factories and weren’t leaving, and two, almost all Terrans with the right skills absolutely refused to ‘cross the picket line’ or go to work in a striking plant. Things were starting to get very, very bad, and violence was beginning to start, mostly when trying to get replacement workers into the mines or when union supporters were trying to deliver supplies to the striking workers. The Juon in the Sol system were beginning to meet the real Terrans, and they did not like it.”

“Then they got really stupid,” Eno said with a laugh.

“Stupid is the theme here, and it didn’t stop,” the captain said with yet another laugh. “The Lord Chancellor, may his name be forever forgotten, got the brilliant idea of tying rations to production. Remember the Sol Wars? Going after the food was a bad idea, a particularly bad idea.”

A chorus of groans and laughter came from the Juon and Z’uush.

“Yep,” the captain laughed, “they did that. Unfortunately for the Juon in charge, in the years after the wars, Terrans had learned their lesson, and every station of any size now had food production, and there were even station-sized greenhouses throughout the system. To make their great idea work, they had to seize all of them. This was a big problem. They were only using household troops, not Imperial ones, to save money and keep better control over the system. Violence and civil disorder became an increasing problem, and this is where a smart evil Juon would have called upon the Empire, but they were already losing money, and they did not want to admit that they were losing control of the system,” the captain said rippling with both irritation and amusement at the same time. “It cost lives on both sides, but ‘we’ just managed to wrest control of the biggest agricultural centers from the Terrans, and they started to try to put a stranglehold on the workers and everyone else. This went about as well as you would expect. People just turned their backs on the whole affair and reverted to the lifestyle and used the techniques that they had perfected during the Sol Wars. The Juon would show up, and entire cities and stations were… empty. Off planet, stations started to fortify themselves and run their own food production. The food they produced may have been less than palatable, but every Terran knew what to do and how to do it,” the captain chuckled. “The Lord Chancellor, may his entire line fall from the book of names, had no idea what to do. Still, all was not lost. He could have called the Empire for help or dealt fairly with the Terrans, but no, he decided that stupid was the best course. He started capturing Terrans and forcing them into the mines and refineries at gunpoint cutting off all food and water for them and their families unless they complied,” the captain paused, “Never, ever, ever threaten a Terran’s family. They will seem to comply, but the first chance they get, they will get you.”

“We can’t do this!” one of the troopers exclaimed. “How did they get away with it?”

“Actually, they could. A lot of the laws that we have are ancient, and many haven’t been updated in centuries,” the captain replied. “Back then, the Lord Chancellor of a system had absolute power over a subject state. The only balance in place would be the patronage of an elder house, and Sol didn’t have one yet. The Cyan Empress has changed a lot of this during her blessed reign. This sort of abuse is now against an Imperial edict, and a violator gets to have a ‘private reception’ with the Empress herself by her command. She wants to deal with any violator personally,” the captain said, making a slashing motion.“ Oddly enough, nobody has chosen to defy that particular edict,” Captain Zzuural said as the humans and juon laughed.

“Back to the story,” the captain said. “These people that the- I’m going to stop calling them Juon. They aren’t Juon. These people that the tyrants rounded up were often not skilled. Terran industry, refineries in particular, aren’t user-friendly. You can’t just press a button and expect it to run on its own. As the barely sapient animals that they are, they don’t trust automation. I think the magic boxes scare them,” Captain Zzuural said, laughing as he dodged a few coconut husks thrown his way. “The long and short of it is that someone has to know what they are doing. The tyrants got lucky most of the time. Mining and refining were the two biggest industries, with only ecological reconstruction coming close to rivaling them. Any group they captured would likely have at least a few skilled tradesmen in it. Luck, however, is not an infinite resource, and it finally caught up with them, causing the Luna 5 disaster. Poor working conditions and unskilled people trying to operate and maintain the helium-3 plant resulted in a major rupture of several processing tanks, causing plasma and high-pressure gas to be released and the main dome ruptured. Vital escape routes were locked in order to prevent Terrans from sneaking away, and the tyrants responsible for those controls fled, leaving the workers trapped. Over a thousand Terrans lost their lives and the rest of the Terrans in the system...”

The captain paused for effect.

“...lost their fucking minds. The party was on, and the tyrants finally got to meet the Terrans in full force.”