Christopher Nuttall - Barbarians at the Gates

But it hadn’t taken long for Roman to realize the truth, even though the files had never stated it directly. The Federation’s intervention—in the name of saving the Purples from themselves—had ensured that the Purples would never become a threat to humanity.

The irony was chilling. Humanity’s first contact had almost been its last. The Snakes wouldn’t have allowed a race as adaptable as humanity to live—they’d enslaved several races, but exterminated at least two others—and humanity had learned a hard lesson. No alien race could be allowed to become a threat. Even without the Imperialist Faction pushing the Federation into war, the Blue Star War might have taken place anyway. An alien race with a space navy, even a primitive and unreliable one, was a clear and present threat. It could not be tolerated, even if it meant reducing entire races to beggars, dependent on human charity.

Roman jumped as a hand landed on his shoulder.

“Don’t think we’re ungrateful because of your presence,” the man who’d bought them drinks said. “You help keep the Purples in their place and…why, I hear that some of them are rejecting the benefits of civilization and are taking off to the wildness and hiding and…”

It took all the self-control Roman had not to put one of his fists next to the man’s nose. It would have been easy. The man was half-drunk, and Roman had barely touched his beer—overpriced, tasting suspiciously like it had come out of the wrong end of a horse—and it was clear that the man had no formal fighting training. Yes, he’d been warned not to cause friction with the locals, but how much nonsense could he take?

“Thank you for your words of wisdom,” Corporal Hastings said. Unlike Elf, the burly Marine exuded an air of menace. “Go away.”

The man looked at him with wide eyes, and then stumbled away, tripping over a chair in his haste.

Roman watched him go, wondering just how much of that had been an act. The settlers had been very welcoming to the Navy crewmen on leave, but there was something unsettling about their demeanor. It occurred to Roman for the first time that the settlers were hugely outnumbered by the Purples. If the Purples had revolution and mass slaughter in mind, the only thing keeping them back was orbital bombardment…and Marine Regiments from the Federation Navy.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely.

Hastings made a show of saluting. Traditionally, Marines only reported to captains and Roman was no longer even an acting captain. On the other hand, he’d earned respect from officers and men who were many years his senior.

“Why…?” Roman wasn’t able to finish the thought.

“That’s a fairly typical attitude for a settler,” Elf said seriously. “They’re the ones who don’t feel like breaking the ground on a new planet, so they find their way to a system where the locals will do all the work—if they know what is good for them. And if they don’t know, the settlers will be happy to break some heads until the locals realize where their best interests lie. Along the Rim, there are places where humans and aliens live together in perfect harmony—but not here , and certainly not formally. The aliens have no rights on their own planets.”

Roman looked toward the bartender. She mopped the counter, seeming to pay no attention to them at all. A pair of males—smaller, nasty-looking humanoids—were running around in back, jumping onto the counter to look at the human visitors. Roman shuddered at the look on their faces, the complete absence of anything but rapidly shifting emotion. The females, according to the files, traded males, effectively as pets. And yet, when a female Purple entered mating season, she was compelled to submit to a creature that was little more than an animal. The females had even bred males in hopes of improving the breed, Roman had learned, although the human settlers had soon put a stop to that.

“Ah, forget them,” Blake Raistlin said. Like Roman, he’d been promised promotion after heroic service on the superdreadnaught Thunderous . Unlike Roman, it hadn’t come through yet, not even with his family connections. Roman had heard that Raistlin’s father had been unable to secure him a posting to Enterprise —Admiral Parkinson had apparently hated Raistlin’s father—and it might well have saved his life. “I could do with another round of drinks. Who’s buying?”

Roman studied the pale yellow liquid that passed for beer and shook his head. “Not me,” he said, thinking wistfully of battle. “How do you think they make this crap?”

“They taught us how to make it,” an oddly musical voice said. Roman turned to see the alien bartender looming over him. Up close, she smelled of sweet flowers and something he couldn’t identify, almost like human perfume. “We grow the plants for them in a poor field and then turn it into drink for them. They cannot get enough of it.”

“Well, neither can we,” Raistlin said quickly. “Another round of drinks, and don’t spare the alcohol. We have a genuine set of war heroes at the table.”

If the bartender was impressed, she didn’t show it. Instead, she collected the empty glasses and headed back toward the bar. The twitch in her rear had to be an affectation she’d picked up from the settlers, Roman told himself. She couldn’t be trying to tempt them with the possibility of alien sex, could she? Or perhaps she was—there were plenty of stories about human-alien sexual relationships, even though they were the last, great taboo. A poor settler, unable to afford a wife, might just be tempted by an alien…

He pushed the thought aside before it made him throw up. It was far more likely that some of the other rumors about settlers—and RockRats—were true. Back at the Academy, he’d discovered that some of Earth’s citizens still believed that RockRats were all homosexuals, a stereotype that hadn’t been true for almost two thousand years. If ever.

“You saved an entire ship,” Raistlin said cheerfully. He made a show of lifting his glass. “Cheers, gentlemen; he served on Enterprise .”

Roman flushed. “I need some air,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. Why did his legs feel unsteady? “I’ll see you back at the lodge.”

“Unless you find someone and go home with her,” Raistlin called. “Enjoy yourself!”

The Purple town was a strange mixture of human and alien styles. Roman took a deep breath as he stepped outside, enjoying the clear air. He couldn’t help but realize that the human habitations were all prefabricated colony-style buildings, while the alien buildings were far more elegant. The ugly human buildings had been designed that way to encourage colonists to develop their building skills and eventually move out of the prefabricated buildings and into proper homes. But the settlers had never bothered to move any further, even in Maskirovka City. With an industrial node floating in orbit producing all the prefabricated buildings they could desire, they had no incentive to change.

The alien buildings bore no resemblance to human styles of architecture and design, at least at first glance. They looked to be constructed from a mixture of wood and stone, with earth pressed into the roofs and used to grow a grass-analogue. Roman recalled some of the genetically-engineered plants the RockRats had taken with them as they spread out among the stars and wondered, absently, if the Purples used something similar to help hold their buildings together.

He looked up at the gas giant hanging in the sky, and shivered. You are mortal , the gas giant seemed to say. I am eternal . You puny mites and your tiny starships are nothing to me .

A line of alien males ran past, squawking as they sighted a female target. Roman watched as the female dropped the bag she was carrying and knelt in front of the males, pressing her face into the dirt. The males surrounded her and began to fight savagely among themselves for the right to mate with the female. Roman wanted to look away, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the scene. He guessed that the kneeling female had just entered mating season—her scent calling the males to her—and that none of the other females was ready to mate.