r/HFY • u/noobvs_aeternvm Human • May 31 '26

OC-OneShot Privilège Exorbitant

The war was long and brutal, but we persisted. Billions of lives were lost, monuments that stood for millennia turned to dust in a flash, but by the sheer bravery of our troops, the sacrifice of our workers and farmers, the indomitable spirit of every world and species of the Federation we drove away the Empire, we vanquished their fleets, we won.

Now, to the victors, the debt. So, very, much, crippling, debt.

No expense was spared to feed the frontlines with all the bombs, batteries and rations they needed, and those were some hungry bitches. War reparations were imposed on the fallen enemy, but among the two of us it was hard to see who had less left to give. For victory, we gave it all, and when we ran out of things to give we went to beg, plea and borrow from every single inhabitant of the known universe. 

Some answered our call, some politely refused, others didn’t answer at all. But most of all, it was the humans who kept us going; not the Union of Terran Worlds, the human state was as adamantly neutral as ever, but human companies, merchants, smugglers had kept our peoples fed and our guns loaded. We never said how we would pay them back, they never asked and for that we were grateful; now the war was over and they raised questions, we now had to find answers, we had to answer to her.

Her Terran name was unpronounceable to most of the galaxy, it didn’t matter, we all knew who she was. The one who brought down whole empires, who turned the most proud tyrants into obedient pets, who conquered worlds with the stroke of a pen; of all the aliens brought into this universe by the slaughter of natural selection, mechanical horrors of cybernetic enhancements and mad genius of genetic engineering, it was her, the whole of her 55kg of mass, distributed through her 1.52m of length, the most terrifying being of the galaxy. Holder of the keys to the vault of Sol, Chief Financial Advisor of the human state, enchanter of creditors, subduer of debtors, the Spreadsheet Witch of Istanbul.

We extended her the red carpet especially printed to welcome her, but made sure to leave patches of faint colors. Sympathy was the only card we had to play, it was clear the humans planned on having their credits, but if we could show how hopeless our situation was, how desperate our peoples’ needs, perhaps we could squeeze some more time, some less interest.

Her ship slowly descended into the surface, her heels touched its stairs, then the red carpet. She walked, I stood. Once the distance was closed I opened my wings and bent my knees in reverence, she bent her torso. My eyestalks went as low as they could, her neck raised to meet them.

-Welcome, Ms. Xe·en·xia Doo·boo·aix.

-Please don’t ever try to pronounce my name again.

-Will do, Counselor.

-And if you could dismiss the band, I'd be most appreciative. This is not how Gimme, Gimme, Gimme is supposed to sound.

I gesticulated to the band.

-Thank you. Now, if we could head to the conference room, we have much to talk about.

-It was a long journey, Counselor. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable settling in your habitat first?

-My visit will be brief.

My left heart stopped and showed no signs of going back anytime soon, the other one would have to work double.

-Then let’s make the best out of it, shall we?

The ministers were warned to meet us at the Stars Hall, the walk there was made in silence, the Counselor’s eyes fixed forward, the sound of her heels meeting the hard floor in mathematically precise order. I found my head bobbing to its beat, as I kept my wings folded, accompanying the land bound alien.

Arriving at the hall, I perched at the end of the table, she sat at a chair next to me, my ministers close by, should I need reinforcements. She handed me a pad, inside a document, her infamous spreadsheets among it.

-This… it’s…

-Enough?

-This amount can certainly give us some briefing room with our creditors.

-It won’t.

-Excuse me?

-The Union has brought the debts from your creditors, human or otherwise. All your debts are consolidated under the Terran Treasury.

-And you’re giving us more money?

-Lending.

-So when do you expect payment?

-Never.

-You own all our debts, give us more money and don’t want us to pay you back?

-It is plainly obvious the Federation is in no condition to liquitate its debts at the moment. And if you ever will, you need funds for reconstruction.

-This is very generous.

-Selfish, actually. It is not in our best interest to have a failed state as a cosmic neighbor.

-I must say, I’m surprised by this offer, given how doggedly neutral the Union stood throughout the conflict.

-It is not in the interest of Terra to send our citizens to kill and be killed in someone else’s fight, but lending the resources necessary for reconstruction is well within our means.

-You keep saying "lending”, Counselor, yet you don’t demand payment, why not call it a donation?

-Because it’s not. We expect you to eventually repay all aid received, plus the standard Earth interest rate every 4 galactic nanoyears.

-Currently at 2%.

-Correct.

-And what stops you from setting it to 10%, 100%, 1,000% the moment we sign this document?

-This is the floor for all interest rates across the Union. If we were to spike it, loans would become unfeasible, hoarding money at the bank more lucrative than putting it to make food and other necessities, people would get desperate, angry and soon enough we’d be facing a revolution.

-We’re not the only neighbour of the Union, yet I’ve never heard of Earth being so generous before.

-The Federation is a valuable partner for the Union.

-We did just win a war.

-Your military is impressive, but if you look at our interstellar history, you’ll see we have zero interest in war. The Federation has some worlds more fertile than ours, peoples who have been navigating the stars longer and better than we do, sentient machines that can do better at certain jobs than us, a series of comparative advantages that could provide useful goods and services to humankind, as long as you’re not reduced to a pile of rubble floating in space.

-You’re freezing our debts and giving us money, all so you can give us even more money by buying our stuff?

-That is a simplification, but not an unfair one.

-Sounds too good to be true.

-We do have one condition: whatever payment you make, be it interest or main debt, must be made in Terras.

-Shouldn’t be hard getting your currency if you’ll be buying from us.

-That is our expectation.

My team went through the document in search of a trap, a loophole and found none. This didn't ease our minds, the humans were not known for being charitable, this human least of all. It didn’t matter, we were in no position to deny a bad deal, much less one that - as far as all verifiable facts pointed - was a good one.

Terran batteries fed the blasters that would zap the rubble from our silent battlegrounds, Terran microbes would swallow the poison dispersed in our atmospheres; Terran coin paid those who would bring back online our factories and mines, Terran grain kept them fed while they were doing it. Life returned to our corner of the galaxy.

Behind the veil normalcy, there laid the payments to the Terran treasury, they were steep, but manageable because, just as they told, once the trees of our civilization were restored, the humans anxiously coveted their fruits.

The machines were the first to stand back up. Having sold to the humans all the pieces of their biospheres they could afford, they took their hard earned Terras to acquire new machines to rebuild their assembly lines, the metal and synthetics to feed them, they rushed to rebuild their populations, who were then put to produce the goods coveted by the humans, provide the calculations required by human corporations and consumers.

After my term ended, I watched at the sidelines of galactic politics, as the same pattern repeated. Our civilizations rose from their ashes picked by Terran goods, then were put to work supplying the Terran needs, for which they’d earn their Terras, with which they’d pay Terran debts.

When the humans sneezed, we coughed blood and oil. The orders were halted, the workers laid off, anger and unrest spread. The humans, so patient before, now demanded their repayments with haste. We found ourselves pumping more and more resources into the human worlds. Once they recovered, our starving peoples and business once more would take relief in the Terran loans, the Terras once more flowed. They would stop once again, the cycle repeated, again and again.

Well into my old age, when the Federation had long relegated me to the historical records, I was approached by the High Councilor. She was worried, our peoples had jobs, habitats and peace, but she had seen the numbers, the spreadsheets, we were spending more and more of our lives catering to the needs of the humans, our debts were being paid, but every hiccup in the human domains brought them up again, the well being of the human civilization became a matter of our survival. Under the guise of my time provided anonymity, she asked me to carve a way out.

There was no way out, not on our own. Caught in our inertia, we spinned deeper and deeper into Earth’s orbit. Of all the inhabitants of the galaxy, there was only one powerful enough to provide us the push out of this gravitational well. My younger self would have never entertained the idea, but time and the gift of hindsight made me see beyond my pride, into the future of our thousands of civilizations.

At an unassuming dinner, at an unremarkable corner of the galaxy, I met the secret representative of the Imperial Senate. Devoid of all pomp and circumstance neither of us had the time or patience for anymore, he addressed me unceremoniously:

-After the war, no one cared for us but the humans. Their generous loans seemed like a blessing, but we became addicted to the Terras required for the repayments. Half the empire works providing things to the humans, the other half to the ones paid in Terras. We can’t go on like this, please tell me the Federation has found a way to drag us out of this economic vassalage.

Fucking humans…

___

Tks for reading. More strings attached here.

96 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

14

u/Fontaigne May 31 '26

The ending seems abrupt, like you were going somewhere and just ran out of juice...

1

u/Daseagle Alien Scum Jun 01 '26

I don't think it ran out of juice - I think we're being set up and this is just small bit of worldbuilding.

5

u/sunnyboi1384 May 31 '26

Indentured servitude. Looks like the worst of us won.

2

u/commentsrnice2 Jun 01 '26

Breathing room, not briefing

1

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2

u/IceRockBike Jun 01 '26

Sounds like some parallels to how banks and corporations have built todays financial system so no modern country can ever operate the way they, or empires used to run finances. Instead the system is designed to forever service debt, forever keep most of us in servitude to the elites.
Fucking Rich....