The woman heard the man walk into the barn, but she didn’t turn to face him right away.

“Your herd of torzas are well-cared for, Mr. Hamac,” she said. “I think another three weeks before you have to worry about this girl here calving. But keep an eye on her anyhow, hydration’s important – but clearly you understand that.”

“Doc…um….”

She rubbed a hand idly over the gravid torza’s fur, looking it in the eye. A sweet animal. She hadn’t worked with them since she was just out of school. She should have kept on with it.

“They’re here, aren’t they.”

“Yeah,” Hamac said. “Not here on the farm, but in town. I can’t – I can get an autoshuttle, but I don’t know if it’ll get here before….”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I can’t run forever.”

Shatad Praxa straightened, and turned back toward the man. He looked at her apologetically, but she knew there was no need for him to. His family had taken her in after she’d fled from Dicat City, where she’d been hiding after she fled from Walak, where she’d been hiding after she’d fled from Krogh Fazala.

Trovo Hamac was a farmer, and a True Titan Party stalwart – not that it meant much, the True Titan Party had been banned by the traitors who now ran the Federation. But he was not a criminal, or at least, not a wanted one. Most people had been given a general absolution for their role in supporting Cesil’s attempt at secession – there was no way that the Empire could punish them all, and being magnanimous in victory was in their interests. It had mollified the masses, who were, if not thrilled to see Loona Armac welcoming “Servant-Leader” Temis to Tuaut, at least accepting that it could be worse.

Yes, most people in the Federation would be allowed to resume their normal lives, albeit with requirements that they treat the fish and reptiles and furballs and bhatwai like equals. The Imperators’ Corps were instead focused on hunting down the worst of the malefactors from the rebellion. Scylane Rimosi was considered Wanted Fugitive Number One right now, wanted dead or alive. Wanted Fugitive Number Two was simply wanted with a significant reward for her capture. But if you watched the news from the Empire proper, it was clear most of the decadent fools who lived there wanted her blood more than his.

30 counts of Class One murder, and one count of Assassination of a Public Figure, a crime that ranked with High Treason against the Emperor as one of the gravest that could be committed, one of the very few that carried the possibility of the death penalty.

These were the charges Shatad Praxa faced.

They were absurd, of course. She’d put down animals. That’s all. Put them down because the alternative was to starve them.

But that is not how the Empire and the new Federation government wanted to see it. They wanted to make her a villain – her, who had only ever loved humans, wanted them healthy and well-cared-for.

“We have a basement, you know,” Hamac said. “And we have some weapons in the store. If you want to hide, Doc….”

“No, no. You’ve been kind, Mr. Hamac, and I appreciate it. But it’s over, isn’t it.”

“Doc, they may take you. But there are a lot of us who know you was doin’ what’s right. You go on afore the judge, we’re gonna help pay for your lawyer. ‘Tain’t over yet.”

Praxa smiled just a bit. “Yes, Mr. Hamac, I suppose it isn’t. All right, I don’t want your family caught up in this. I’ll walk off your property and into town.”

Hamac rubbed his eyes. “Doc…good luck.” He reached out his hand, and grasped her wrist. “And if nothin’ else…you took down that prissy carpetbagger. None of us will ever forget it.”

Praxa nodded. “That is somethin’, isn’t it?”

Two hours later, on a gravel road leading toward the small town nearest the Hamac farm, Shatad Praxa was face down, with an Imperator roughly fixing restraints upon her.

* * *

“My client will have nothing to say,” said the older man in a rumpled suit, sitting beside Praxa in the interrogation room.

“Listen, Mister….”

“Aiususaiuse. Gobeas Aiususaiuse. I’ve been practicing criminal defense in Dicat City for twenty years, I know my client’s rights.”

Legatus-Imperator Saseu Gotegre didn’t sigh; she was too-well-trained for that. Vanser Nix wouldn’t have put any schlub on this job; she was one of his most trusted investigators. Which meant that she’d dealt with more than a few attorneys running interference for criminals over the years.

“Mr. Aiususaiuse, at least one of your client’s offenses falls under the Batr Act. She does not have the right to refuse interrogation in cases involving the assassination of public officials.”

“She can refuse to say anything, and she will,” the attorney said.

“Dr. Praxa, let me make what’s going to happen very clear,” Gotegre said. “You are facing the death penalty. Nobody’s been executed in the Empire in seventy-three years, but your crimes most assuredly warrant death. You videoimaged yourself killing people. I don’t have to interrogate you. I don’t have to do a gorram thing. The only reason I’m bothering with this is that in general, the Empire would rather you admit to your crimes and accept incarceration, rather than fighting this out. We are willing to take the death penalty off the table if you will confess. But this offer only lasts until I leave this room. Once I’m gone…well, like I said, I don’t need your confession. Any judicator will take a look at the video and their ruling will be automatic.”

“I didn’t murder or assassinate anyone,” Praxa said.

“Dr. Praxa,” Aiususaiuse said, “it’s best if you don’t say anything.”

“I euthanized animals,” Praxa said. “It’s insanity that you are treating this as anything else.”

“Under the Zeramblin Act, humans were Class One Sentient Beings, and you killed thirty of them. Those are the facts. You murdered thirty people. And no matter what Jota Cesil was telling people, the Zeramblin Act applied in the Federation as much as it did in Avalon.”

“I had no choice! We were overcrowded….”

“Dr. Neutha offered to take all the humans off your hands, Doctor. We have testimony from thirty people, plus video evidence from Neutha himself.”

“What are you talking about. He didn’t have a camera on him! I had him strip naked!”

“Yes,” Gotegre said, leaning back, “you did. If we wanted to, we could bring charges for that too, you know. Degradation of an Imperial Citizen, kidnapping, assault – there are hundreds of things you’re guilty of. But stripping him naked did you no good. Neutha had a videoimager installed in his cornea. Don’t you pay attention to Earth technology? It recorded the whole event. Multiple other humans imaged it as well.”

“Inadmissible. He was imaging without my client knowing.”

“She mooted that argument when she started imaging him. At that point, she waived her right to privacy. And you’re arguing the law, counselor, but I see where this is going. She intends to argue that humans are actually not people, despite the clear letter of the law. Strap yourself in, I guess. But before I leave, I want you to see something.”

“My client has no intention of watching the video of her euthanizing humans.”

“Who said anything about a video? And like I said before, she doesn’t have a choice. Batr Act, section fourteen, subsection three. Imperator-Probatio Vius, are we ready?”

“Ready, ma’am,” a voice said from over the speaker.

“Peacekeeper,” she said to the guard in the corner, “bring her to the holosuite.”

“I’m going too,” said Aiususaiuse.

“Of course you are. We’ll all go,” Gotegre said. “I’ve seen it once. Has to be easier the second time, I hope.”

“You’re going to show me what he saw, aren’t you,” Praxa sighed. “You think that will change my mind? Make me feel bad, give up?”

“I don’t frakking care what it makes you do,” Gotegre said. “I hope you do fight. I hope you end up strapped down, getting a lethal dose of zamik in your lungs and taranol in your veins. I just want you to see this so that you can see your actions for what they were.”

“I euthanized animals.”

“Then you’ll not have a problem seeing that from their perspective, will you? Come on. I have far better things to be doing.”

The peacekeeper guided her down the hall – none-to-gently, but she was used to that – and pushed her into the small station holosuite. It was soft light, low-tech compared to the stuff Tremarla Lumodynamics was doing, but then, nobody needed an interactive setup. The visual was quite enough.

“Imperator-Probatio Vius, time-mark 04:42.”

The walls disappeared, and they were in a room of glass.

There were thirty other titans around them, all naked. One of them, the closest to them, was staring up into the sky. He was an old man, with a gray goatee and slicked back gray hair, and his naked body was not atypical for a man of his age. And yet somehow, despite it, he maintained an air of dignity, an air of self-respect.

“Gorram, no. You can’t!” he shouted, up at the sky, and reflexively, they turned their gaze to match his.

Shatad blinked as she saw the woman he stared at, a woman immense beyond imagining. She stared at their position with hatred burning in her eyes. She was simply terrifying, and when she spat her words at them, she struggled to keep from feeling fear, even though she knew that it was a recording, and the woman spitting the words was herself.

“I ‘can’t?’ Oh really? And what am I supposed to feed them? Where am I supposed to hold them? We’re at two hundred and twenty-five percent capacity. We have no money. The Imperial HOS froze our accounts. We’re getting by on loans. I’ve got three loans on my house, and we’ve almost exhausted that. I’m not taking a salary. And I have no money to buy food for next month, so tell me, what am I supposed to do?”

“Not this. This is murder.”

“Hold playback,” Gotegre said. “He told you right there, doctor. Told you flatly what you were doing, in clear and uncertain terms.”

“It wasn’t murder,” Shatad said. “They’re animals. They aren’t people.”

“Right. You say that. Resume playback.”

“It’s a legal euthanization under Federation law. I’m authorized for one hundred and eighty humans per month. Before this year, I never put more than two or three down in a year, and none of them were healthy. But I have four hundred and forty two humans in holding, and I adopted out sixteen last month. These thirty are the least likely….”

“They’re Class One Sentients under Imperial Law! Gorram it, my wife will be coming soon. We’ll take all four hundred forty two!”

Praxa fought against the natural instinct to see the man as a titan. He wasn’t. It was an illusion. She had to remember that.

“And you’ll do what, ‘free’ them? Hmmm? And I’ll be full up again in two months. And meanwhile, you’ll still be shouting about how wrong our traditions are. How we’re all evil, here in the Federation. And we’ll be here, dealing with the fallout. And then we’ll be told how we need more Dunnermac and Avartle and Ler running things. And how the Federation shouldn’t be the Federation anymore. And if you win, more humans will suffer, and our province will suffer.”

“We can help you, you know. We have friends…they can help support this shelter. They can help you.”

“You’re a human. You’re a pet! Gorram it, you don’t know your place! That’s the problem! You’re pets! Avartle climb trees! Ler fight! Dunnermac swim! And we Titans protect you all, we make sure you’re okay, ‘cause you sure can’t do it yourself! But you can’t be happy with that, and now….”

Suddenly, the projection became chaotic, as the giantess reached in and plucked the man clean. He began to rise, and the three viewing the holoprojection were pulled along in his wake, trailing behind the hand as it sailed over the table and dropped him onto it.

Praxa wasn’t looking at him, though. They had settled next to the other box, and there were thirty humans in there, defeated and sad. She heard her voice ring out, loud and jarring and yet somehow distant.

“Look at them! Look what’s happening, because of you! Because you can’t be happy with the way things are, naturally! You’ve upset the balance, and these humans are dying because of it!”

“Stop playback,” Gotegre said. “Take your own advice, and look at them, Doctor. Look at them. Are those humans dying because of an ‘upset balance?’ I don’t think so. All Neutha has done so far is give you out after out after out. You have an offer on the table that will solve every problem you’ve advanced. But you won’t take those offers. You’re so intent on killing that despite everything he’s offered you, you’re going to murder all the people in that cage, save one. Tell me, doctor, why Bheloro? Why’d you choose her to save?”

Praxa shook her head. “You’ll have to wonder.”

“No, I won’t, I don’t frakking care what motivates monsters. Resume playback, from mark two.”

The world dissolved, and rearranged itself into the glass abattoir. Praxa’s voice resumed again, distorted.

“I’ll trade you for her, trade you back. ’Doctor’ Yamanu Neutha. I’m willing to bet you’ll gladly trade the life of some human pet for your own. You know and I know that the life of a pet isn’t worth the life of a person, and you know and I know that you sure think you’re a person. But humans aren’t, and you know that. You know that her life doesn’t mean as much as a person’s, right?”

Yamanu looked at the glass; Bheloro leaned against it, sobbing. It was clear that she knew this was wrong. Yamanu knew it was wrong. The humans in the box knew it was wrong.

“A long time ago, on Earth, a human once wrote, ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done before. It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’ Humans are not pets, and all of our lives are precious. If you are intent on murdering thirty humans, then it is my honour to save one by taking her place.”

“Well then,” Virtual Shatad said, “you will have that honour. I think my friends in the True Titan Party will enjoy watching you be honoured. So shall we get on with it?”

“Pause playback. And there’s motive, Doctor Praxa. Not a poor doctor euthanizing humans because she has to. A murderer and assassin, killing a man because she disagrees with his political positions, while streaming it live to her political allies in the hopes it will give them a political boost. Honestly, it will take a judicator less than a second to make the call on that, and even if you’re found without guilt on every other count, you know gorram well that this is the count that carries a death sentence. But I’m bored with you. You’ll jabber on about this or that…in the grand scheme of things, you’re utterly unimportant. Just a murderer. But before we go…I want you to see people that are important. People that are worth a billion times what you are. I want you to see how these ‘animals’ died. And think about whether you will be so brave when your time comes. Move to mark three, and resume.”

They world was dimmed, now; they were inside the gas chamber.

“You saved my sister,” said a crying man. “You didn’t have to…I know about you. You’ve done so much. We’re just…we’re pets. You’re a great person.”

“See?” Praxa said. “They know….”

“You’re a person too,” the ghost of Yamanu said, cutting across her. “All of us here, all of us are people. You know that? Whatever she says, whatever the Federation says, whatever anyone says, we’re all people.”

“She’s going to kill us,” an older woman said

“Yes,” Yamanu said, evenly. “She is. And I don’t want to die. I want to be with my wife and children again. I love them so much that the thought of losing them aches.”

“So why not trade yourself for Bheloro?”

“Because she can have a future. Because she can live a life, too. Because some day, she might have a spouse and children, and because she is no less a person than I am.”

“But you’ll die!”

“Yes,” Yamanu said. “But if she’s going to kill me, I’m going to die on my feet, like the person I am. She can take my life, but she can’t take that.”

An old man, who’d been watching carefully, stood up. “Do you think we’re people? Really?”

“I know it,” Yamanu said. “And there are many others who do.”

The man smiled. “I always knew I was smarter than they said I was. Always knew it.”

As the humans surrounded Yamanu, he wiped away a tear, and said, “There was a man, a great man, far better than me, on Earth, who was fighting for his people’s freedom. He was shot for that. Died before the final battles were won, before his people were truly seen as equal. But he knew, even the night before he was killed, that it wasn’t important whether he lived to see it. What was important was that it would come, some day.

“He said he wanted to live a long life, but that wasn’t important. What was important was that he did the right thing, and he’d seen what could be, seen the promise of the future. And he might not live to see it, but his people would see the promised future. Well, I am not the man Dr King was. Few humans have ever lived up to his standard. But I have seen the future of our people. Whatever happens to me, whatever happens to us, whatever they do to any human, anywhere, they cannot stop it now. Humans are people. That is the truth, and no matter what they do to us here today, that truth will win out.”

“Halt playback,” the Imperator said. As the room reappeared, she said, “Doctor Praxa, the truth won out. They’re people. They knew it, before they died, and they died more bravely than I will, I’ll wager. They knew it. I know it. The law knows it. And if you can look at that and still tell me that they’re just pets…well, then you’re a bigger monster than I already think you are.”

“Don’t say anything,” Aiususaiuse said, though the attorney was ashen.

“Really, don’t,” Gotegre said. “I encourage you to stay quiet. When we play this in court – and we will, it’s his dying declaration, we would be failing him and everyone who died with him if we didn’t – when we play this in court, pointing out all the many proofs of your guilt, you will be seen for the psychotic horror show that you are. And you…you will die, only unlike these people here, you’ll deserve it. Peacekeeper, take her back to her cell. The offer expires….”

Gotegre waited to see if either Praxa or her attorney would say anything, but they both remained quiet. So with a smile, she added, “…now. I do look forward to your cross-examination of me, counselor.” With that, she swept out of the room.

“Come on,” Aiususaiuse said. “We’ll plan your defense. They did us a favor, we know they’re going to use this, maybe we can force them to only do a transcript. And if we can show that Dr. Neutha wasn’t a person under Federation law, maybe we can get it thrown out entirely. I….”

“They’re going to get a conviction,” Shatad said. “That was guaranteed the second I was arrested. And they’re going to execute me. I’m okay with it. Maybe when we finally rise up and take our province back, they can look at me the way they will Poron Cesil – as a martyr who died for the cause. I want you to make the case that humans should not be considered people under Imperial law. I know it won’t go anywhere now. But I want it on the record.”

“I’m not the man for that job,” Aiususaiuse said. “I’m bound to argue based on the law, you’re arguing for me to make my case based on what you’d like the law to be. There are attorneys who will, but they aren’t good ones.”

There is a commonality between titan and human psychology, a tendency toward what is called cognitive bias. The two species tend to justify their actions and hold to their beliefs even when confronted with evidence to the contrary. And even when that evidence becomes overwhelming, both species have a tendency to try to retroactively fit past actions into the new worldview.

“Fine, let me know who they are,” Shatad said.

She would have sworn, before that day, that she had not killed a person. That she had simply put down animals. But the holovid didn’t lie. They were people, as much as she was.

They were people.

They were people who had deserved to die.

Well…twenty-nine of them were collateral damage. The only thing she felt bad about was that she hadn’t swapped them all out, killed off the whole gorram “foundation” when she had the chance.

But Yamanu Neutha was dead, and she was glad of it. And if it meant she traded her life for his…she was happy to make the trade.