I tell you, there’s something I just don’t trust about the squids. Yeah, that’s what I said, squids! Report me to the Tolerance committee if you want but Angari have got tentacles instead of ears. That’s pretty squidy to me. And they smell like swamp water too...
Yeah, I’ve seen ‘em, and smelt ‘em, up close. I was a gunnery officer back when we hit Chintaro –the second time, not the first- and got captured once they smashed our fleet. They must have known we were coming, how else could they have beaten us so easily? I know, I know, it was a “tactical stalemate”, but the Imperium’s gone so let’s face it; they kicked us around their whole solar system and didn’t even bother to chase us once we turned and ran.
Angari deal in secrets get it? Archive information; shake all those little facts around until they discover new ways for their clients to use them, who knows what they might figure out by looking at the patterns. All I know is; they started pounding on us as soon as we entered their space, so they must have known the wheres and whens for the fleet before hand. And the stuff their ships could do... If they had come out to fight things might have gone differently with the R’Tillek.
Sure, they treated me pretty decent when I was a POW, and they sent me home way faster than we did their people, but those Angari were strange. They have this other language you know. Maybe telepathy or some kind of radio signal, I’m not sure, and I doubt anybody is really. They all can hear it, but only some of them can “broadcast” I guess you’d call it. So sometimes they’d just stand around, those tentacles twitching like knotted braids of hair with minds of their own, while they got their marching orders. It’s creepy as all hell, like one of those monster movies where something takes over the townsfolk and turns them into zombies.
You know what? I bet that’s why they mostly stay close to home. They’re never really alone when with their own kind so maybe they don’t handle solitude all that well. The rest of us are probably pretty lucky if that’s true. And I guess that makes the Angari who actually do venture out into the big wide galaxy their version of weirdoes or kooks.
Something to think about the next time the Angari ambassador drives by the shop...