She looked up from where she had fallen, there amidst the half-carbonized plain-grass of the battlefield, and saw the alien trudging toward her.

and now this is it, now I die and the suffering will be long, it will want revenge

It came and stood over her, looking down. Or she presumed it was looking, because its head was tilted. She could not see its face through the front plate of its helmet. Its weapon was pointed at her, which was not a surprise. It had clearly stayed alive through long scorching battle. It must not be stupid.

She screeched her defiance, because this was expected. It reared back, but not much. Then, when she did not move to attack, because she could not, even the screech had taken all her breath, the alien turned its weapon round so that it hung from the creature's back rather than its chest.

Maybe she had been wrong, about the creature being stupid, then. But it looked ready, ready for anything she might do, strange many-fingered hands held out, and she was weak, that was clear, would be clear to the creature as well. Her own weapon was many paces back, she did not know exactly how far, lying where she had dropped it when the strength had gone out of her arms before her legs. She wanted it badly. She could do her duty, then, before she died.

The alien bent lower. It was resting on its backward knees. Its helmet faceplate had gone clear, she could see its features, strangely soft for such a hard fighter. Small beady eyes moved back and forth, examining her injuries. She would suffer, she knew it. It was studying how, planning to take advantage of the ways she was already hurt.

It reached out with something in the many-creepy-fingers of its stubby hand. All of it was stubby, it was from a high-gravity, high-starlight world, hence the thick limbs and small eyes. She tried to screech, again, but her strength was spent for now. Her vision was beginning to swim. She had lost too much blood. Her implants and fluid-bots could replenish blood, but all her liquid ration reserves were gone, had ruptured with the hit she had taken. Lucky, almost, because it had dissipated the energy of the hit. Only her arm was really wounded. But she had lost so much blood that it hardly mattered.

And the creature was touching her arm. Right on the wound, something she could not see with the alien's own arm in the way. She hissed in pain, ashamed. She should have had more will, to stay silent, but just keeping her consciousness moving from moment to moment, that took all of it already.

The alien made soft sounds, through some speaker in its armor suit. It took a moment for her own system to translate.

"Hey, yeah, that looks like it hurts. I'm not trying to make it worse, just stanch the bleeding. Sorry."

Sorry. Her system must be malfunctioning. No, that was too much for a simple glitch. There must be some cultural context she was missing, some cruel sarcasm. Maybe her system had misinterpreted the tone, not the literal words. Soon she would be hurting worse than she ever had since First Training, she knew it, they all knew it, that was to be expected from an enemy, especially one so relentless as this species-coalition had been.

It was what she would have done. What any of them would have done. Part of their training, part of the expectation. Make war hurt, make it a horror, and the enemy should lose their appetite for it, sooner or later.

The alien was making noises again.

"You were bleeding less than you should have been, given the amount of damage. I think you're dehydrated."

Again, she doubted the translation. Were bleeding? But maybe it just didn't want her to die too quickly, before revenge could be extracted. And when she checked her systems, using every scrap of concentration she could muster, it was confirmed: she was no longer losing blood.

The alien held out a tube. More noises.

"Here, water. Look, don't try to turn your head like that, if I wanted to hurt you, there's nothing you could do about it. Drink."

And she did, to her shame, because the alien was right, and if the liquid contained some exotic torment there were worse ways to force it into her system.

But it was only water. Sweet, filtered, nothing added she could taste and, a few moments later, nothing the fluid-bots could detect. Her systems began the task of making more blood, though it was slow with only water, all her rations gone, it would have to draw on her own bodily reserves, eat into the storage-tissue. It would not be a fast enough recovery for her to find her feet and attack this alien, it would be many standard days.

She drank greedily for a long sweet time before the alien pulled the tube away.

"There. Maybe we'll both survive this large-male-ruminant-excrement."

It still made no move to do anything to her. In fact, it stood up, as if to go.

She managed to speak, her voice uncracked by new fluids.

"Why show such weakness to me? I would kill you if I could."

The alien just looked down at her. Its faceplate had gone blank again, she could not see its face. Noises.

"Weakness? No. You don't get it. Mercy is for the strong. Only the strong can truly show it."

Then it looked up at the sky, and must have seen something, because it turned and ran.

Ah. Reinforcements. Finally. Now it would die, they would all die.

But she wondered about that, what she really wanted, and she was ashamed.

~

The reinforcements were not enough, in the end. The enemy pushed them back, and kept the continent. But she was recovered, and because of her position they believed her when she said her recording systems had been damaged. If they had pried, they would have seen the clumsy deletion. But she was who she was, and she had fought with ferocity and honor, so she was given award-ribbons and allowed to heal.

The war went on for several standard years, and then her mother died.

~

They came into the chamber as she settled herself onto the seat-of-command for the first time, and made their genuflections.

"We have the colony world's defenses utterly stripped," one of them said. "It is our honor to deliver your very first conquest as Queen."

"Thank you," she said. "We have made our point, we have fought well. It's time for this war to end. You know it, I know it. My mother was stubborn. The Sapiens Coalition is stubborn. We are all hurting from this, and no real gain is being made. It is time to make an end."

They looked between each other, the small crowd of advisers and general officers. A mixture of shame and relief, because she was right, they did know it.

"Your mother was a brave and determined woman," one of them ventured.

"Agreed," she said. "But now I am queen, and I will be that too, but I will learn from her mistakes. We will end it."

"Very well," said the Apex General. "After the colony world has been scourged, we will start negotiations."

"No," she said.

"I'm sorry, my queen?" he said.

"No. We will give it back. We could scourge the world, but we will not. You will harm not one human or any of their fellows on the surface. We will give it back, untouched."

The general fought noticeably to keep his rising anger hidden. "My queen, we cannot show such weakness before negotiations begin."

"You are right," she said softly, "But only partly. We cannot show weakness. But mercy is for the strong. Only the strong can truly show it."