Chapter 5: Military Matters Discussed

The story by General Fealia of Deya on finding the humans continued:

“A recon marine, what is that?”, I ask.

He seems to think a bit, likely on how much of background to include and then says, “Our country divides the armed forces into several branches, I was in the brach called Marines, we act as ships troops and as assault infantry. We are commonly seen as an elite force and the Recon Marines are commonly seen as an elite within the Marines. It was our job to go to places often far from the other forces and try to locate enemy forces, landing sites and similar, thus the not being noticed by the hostile forces was an important skill”

I nod and say “Ah, we have something similar in the scout sections. I used to serve in such for quite a large part of my earlier career.”

He seems to think a few moments and asks, “If I may ask, why was I selected as the person to contact first?”

I told him that he was not the first attempted contact and about the problems we had at the first attempt.

He replied with a, “Ah, Michigan in deer hunting season, with your lot looking enough like deer to make me seriously consider that you might be deer spirits and I do not even believe in such. Combine that with the high number of drunken shooters, yes, definitely I can see them mistaking you for a deer, given how often they mistake other humans or even a tree stump for a deer. But then why me as second attempt?”

“Well, we wanted someone distant from other humans so that if there were problems we could get away before too many humans reacted and someone who did not have a dog.”

He nods and says, “Thant makes sense. So how do you see this going forward?”

“Well, the plan we have so far is to try to talk with you and ask about your ideas for how to contact your leaders and the general public. Basically we do not have a good psychological model of your species behavior, though of course the experts have been working on such.”

He nods and asks, “What is your goal then?”

“Well, our current goals is to make contact and then to start the talks of your species eventually joining the Alliance.” I then decide to tell a bit of our reasons behind things, “Basically the Alliance is in a long war with a species that wants to assimilate all life into itself.”

He looks at me with a strange look on his face and it suddenly strikes me how easy it is for me to understand human gestures and body language compared to most other species, but I then just stop that line of thought for the moment and try to focus on more immediate things to discuss as he says, “So the Borg are real?”

After some back and forth about Star Trek and the Borg, I explain that there are some similarities, but obviously the Crey are very different from the Borg, and it is more more like the Crey want just the best and brightest, in order to integrate the best traits into themselves and how they are a strange combination of a hive mind while still having individual initiative, action and apparently even some deeper individual thought.

So he then asks, “So your war is not going well and you are looking for others to help?”

I reply, “In short yes. The Alliance has a problem that only really two of our species are capable of land combat and one additional of space and water combat.” And then continue, “Looking at how your species seems to be, your contributions would likely be helpful, though you are fairly few in numbers, but any new edge that we could get could help us a lot in the war.”

He replies, “Yes, our species and I have seen and continue to see a lot of conflict and war. War seems to be a human nature, though in absolute terms the amount of such has been in decline in the time since the Second World War, it will never likely go away as there is always someone who wants something someone else has bad enough to use force to get it.”