Star Trek-Outwardly Moble
Reavers
By
Jay P Hailey
The woman was restrained. A good thing. The Reavers had shown themselves to be inventive, cruel torturers, psychopathic killers, and ready, almost desperate to practice to practice their craft.
She was nude, and cleaner than the rest of the Reavers I had seen. Large portions of her body showed the bright pink baby skin of recent regeneration and generic transplant skin.
What hadn't been repaired by the Discovery medical staff was a mazework of piercings, mutilations and tattoos. The effect was profoundly disturbing. The metal was gone from the piercings, leaving gaping holes.
I had never minded looking at a live, nude human woman before. This one was creepy.
I took a deep breath and reset myself. This person was an alien. More alien in all the ways that counted than people on the Discovery who had no genetic relationship to my species.
I approached her "Would you like to talk with me?"
She glared at me. Then an evil smirk slid across her face. She wriggled suggestively in her restraints, and spoke harshly, "Rape me. [Have unnatural sexual relations with] me. You know you want to. I am helpless. Your true self struggles to break loose. Let it. I want to scream in agony because of you."
The Translator made a soft beep and let me know that this was an approximate translation. I got the point - in her native language her expressions were probably a lot cruder.
I have a half grunting chuckle. That was interesting. Was she even close to right? Perhaps in some deep dark pocket of my soul I was angry. These monsters had killed and tortured several members of my crew.
"Not today," I said.
She peered at me. Her face went from a sick lust to an emotion that I could not identify then.
"Then kill me," She said. "Have you ever killed before?"
I looked at her carefully.
"You have," she said looking at me, "but ... you didn't enjoy it. You are new to it and didn't have anyone to show you the way," She sounded wistfully sad. "I remember my first time. It was a young girl. She cried so, and in the end begged for her momma. I had real mentors to show me the way. I could see the beauty in it."
I clamped my jaw around my reaction. After a deep breath I asked "Why?"
"Why?" She smiled, "Yes, many ask that. They don't understand. They are so poisoned and corrupted by what you call civilization that they don't even see their own true selves."
"What?" I asked. I shouldn't have.
"You'll know, eventually. We're killers. Humans. We're killing machines. It's what we do. It's what we're good at. It's what we're for," She said.
"I do not believe that," I said firmly.
"I know," she grinned "that's what makes it funny to torture you to death. You are a predator pretending to be a herbivore. And you work hard even to die like prey. Some get it towards then end and rage 'I am not a meat animal! I shall kill you!' By then it's too late. But it's fun to see them get it."
I just looked at her "And that's your culture, huh?"
She laughed. It was a full body belly laugh "You could say that. Do you respect my culture?" she laughed again.
"The United Federation of planets is an organization of peace," I said. "We're dedicated to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts. We'd like to help you and the people of the Alliance find a way not to kill each other."
She stared at me with disgust. I could see her swallowing several times.
"You are the child of a mad god, left behind with a purpose - and that purpose is to kill others. All others. Your twisted little utopia fantasy makes me sick. Like all civilized people you hide your nature under a cloak of etiquette and polite behavior, when you really want to kill. You want to torture and hear the screams of pain."
"I belong to me," I said. "I get to determine what I want and who I am today."
She sighed "When I get out of here, we'll talk again. When you're in such deep pain that you loose conscious control of your body, then we'll see what you're truly made of."
"Are you sure there's no way for us to talk this out?" I asked.
"We'll talk all you want to, and more, in time," She said.
I realized that she couldn't be much more than 25, still a kid really.
"Thank you for your time," I turned to leave.
"Search your heart, " she said. "You know what you are. You know it deep inside. We all do."
I nodded "I do. It's not what you think."
I left.
-*-
Gensilan draped herself across the couch in my quarters, **Any luck talking to the Reavers?** Her tone of voice was curious and sincere. Somehow she believed that if anyone could talk a Reaver out of her tree, it might have been me.
"Nope" I said. I felt like I wanted to take a shower. "They're pretty solid in their culture."
**May I show you what I saw?**
"Can you edit out the gory details? I've had enough of gory details," I asked.
Gensilan looked through me with her solid blue eyes **There's something there you should see.**
I sighed and thought about it for a while. If anything could help avoid another run-in with them, maybe find a way to find some peace there, then I owed it to everyone, including myself, to try.
"Go ahead," I said.
Gensilan showed me the same Reaver I'd been talking to. Her name was Arlagna. She was raised in a culture that made the Klingons look like Sunday school teachers.
The blood and pain and savagery involved were a tsunami - and yet I could see Gensilan showing it to me from a great distance. She wasn't kidding or rationalizing a damned thing. Her people saw themselves as war machines. They were bringers of pain and death; they were sufferers of pain and death. Every aspect of her culture was mine turned on its head.
Children were neglected and brutalized, but owned passionately - the strong survived anyway. Schooling was controlled brutality and bullying at the hands of older children.
Arlagna's first cultural milestone was to take a cute, furry creature of some sort I didn't recognize and to kill it brutally. She was a toddler. The violence she received, she learned to pass on.
After classes in how to kill and maim and torture, she was taught, by pain and brutality how food is tortured from the Earth. How metal is tortured from it, and then the metal is tortured until it gives the form needed.
As a young teenager, Arlagna was issued a slave. A girl her own age from an agricultural colony somewhere else. Arlagna interacted with her new belonging through pain and brutality. She discovered the mindset of someone from a different culture, and found it perverse and backwards in the extreme. In the end Arlagna broke the girl completely and then killed her. Then the Reaver cooked and ate her. She received some rare but treasured positive feedback from her parents for her preparation of the meal.
When Arlagna was 15 they conducted her adulthood ritual. Gensilan saw Arlagna being excited and giddy for weeks before hand. Then she was taken to a temple. It was hideous affair decorated with the rotted remains of people.
In the center of the temple there was a crystal on a pedestal.
Arlagna was pushed towards the crystal and touched it.
She saw the truth and I screamed.
The crystal was a Rishan Artifact. It contained the memory of a Rishan, who had gone about the Galaxy some 30,000 years ago seeding humans, human compatible worlds and life forms with no plan that Arlagna or I could see.
His intention was clear - the various groups of humans and others (especially the Vulcanoids favored by his friend) would meet, and trade, and interact and fight. In the end the fittest of the created species would survive. And this was a good thing, a happy thing. The process of violence through which the created species were distilled was fascinating and fun. Like a cock fight.
Arlagna's violence, until then was self centered. She bullied, tortured and killed to get what she wanted, and she worked hard to avoid the torture and abuse of those stronger.
Afterwards she realized. The Rishan had created a race of humanoids whose main talent was to be violent and horrific. These were not as pretty as some humanoids, not as smart as others. Art and science while within reach were secondary. A human's job was to torture and kill - Animals and plants for food, other individuals, groups, nations and species for survival. Their very world for resources to continue their function
Arlagna was taught the history of the home world of the Alliance - but with a much different twist than most Alliance citizens were probably exposed to. A litany of war, violence, debauchery, genocides, massacres and brutalities.
This, Arlagna was told, was human nature asserting itself past the futile illusion of civilization. The Reavers (Called in their own language The People) were the only ones truly aware of the true mission and nature of humanity. Civilization was some weak person's attempt to avoid pain and suffering writ large. It was doomed to fail because it was inherently antithetical to the true nature and function of humanity.
So the Reavers set out on their two fold holy mission. To destroy civilization, at least as the Alliance conceptualized it, and to teach their fellow humans of their true nature in a very Reaver fashion - by torturing them until they got it.
The weak would be culled. Worked to death or eaten or just killed out of hand. The strong would make the turn and become true killers.
To die in this attempt was only slightly less holy than to torturously kill the enemy.
Heaven was an eternity of peace with no struggle and no pain.
-*-
As I found myself in my office again, I had to rush for the bathroom.
After throwing up, I was able to recover my composure.
I rinsed my mouth out, and returned to my office. I sat down. "God in Heaven."
**We found people immune to a Rishan Artifact,** Gensilan said wrly. **They're already mad.**
"I thought the Kliges'chee were bad!" I said.
Then I remembered what happened to the Kliges'chee. Oh.
I looked at my desk for a long time.
**Look around you.** Gensilan said. **Who you really are is right in front of
your face, but you're not seeing it because you're taking it for granted.**
I mentally waved off her advice, "Thank you Gensilan. You're right. I did need to see that." I stood up and walked towards the door. "I am going to go pet my cat now."
**Probably a good idea. Purr therapy.**
-*-
Later that night it hit me what Gensilan was saying. I had a small creature whose sole purpose in life was to be loved by me, and to express love back. I was in a ship that was the collective accomplishment of 150 planets. I was surrounded by friends and colleagues I could trust at my back.
We were killers. We were also builders. We were explorers and we made a profession out of making friends.
I could pick the elements of my character I liked and leave the rest behind. I had a bright soul with a dark corner that could overwhelm me if miss used.
Arlagna lived in an opposite world. She was all darkness with a bright spark inside that she had to hide from everyone, even herself.
That didn't mean she didn't do a frighteningly good job with it.
But this also meant that a peace treaty with the Reavers was well, well out of reach. How do you treat an entire culture that's dangerously psychotic?
Purr-Bot informed me that I needed to do less thinking and more petting. I obliged her and her happy, innocent purr lulled me to sleep. There would be time to tackle the hard questions tomorrow.
-end-
Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this story for me.
This story posted by permission of the author. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.