In the least-bad neighborhood of the largest village on an unremarkable world in the Dec empire, Aaron and Judith Roth finished lighting the five candles on their Hannukah menorah. Judith put the shamash back in its place. The two clasped hands and sang.
They sang “I Have a Little Dreidel” and Judith remembered brighter celebrations back on Earth, with family and friends. With laughter and games and latkes fried in real vegetable oil.
They'd be back. This was a temporary gig: four months in and two to go. It only felt like eternity.
They sang “Oh Hannukah” and Aaron stared into the candle flames, trying to honor the long-ago miracle. Trying to believe in miracles.
Miracles were in short supply. Not that their lives were terrible. Aaron's job as a technician of human-made robotics required travel to places like this and offered little hope of advancement, but at least it paid well. And Judith's as a receptionist at a “medical” supply firm, well, it could easily have been worse. And as citizens of the Human Republic, they were immune to most of the local law's abuses.
Still, when he'd began studying robotics he'd hoped for more than this... this mediocrity.
One for each night They shed a sweet light To remind us of days long ago
There was a knock on the door.
Neither of them had any real friends on this planet. Aaron's employer would have called, not knocked, and Judith's wouldn't contact her after-hours at all. Nervously, Aaron opened the door.
There was a human standing there: a young woman dressed in a camouflage pantsuit, with a blaster and some miscellany belted to one hip and a rock-hammer on the other.
“My name is Rivkah Maccabee,” she said, “And I need help. Will you stand with me against oppression?”
“Maccabee.” Aaron repeated flatly. Judith just stared.
“Not the name I was born with,” she admitted. Then she drew the hammer and laid it solemnly against her chest while staring him in the eyes, “But one I have earned in battle. Will you help me?”
“Help you 'stand against oppression'?” Aaron said, “I'm no hero.”
“Neither was I, until I needed to be. Neither, I daresay, were Mattathias or Judah. Their moment came with Antiochus. Mine three years ago, when I was kidnapped and could no longer ignore certain things. Yours is now.” Then she smiled, “You're getting the gentle version, believe me.”
Aaron glanced at Judith. After so many years, a glance between the two of them could say a lot. She glanced at the candles.
“Come in,” Aaron said, “Let's talk. No promises beyond that.”
“Thank you,” she said. She sheathed the hammer and entered. Behind her flowed a hard-to-count crowd of low-to-the-ground creatures wearing active camouflage. The last one in closed the door.
“Who are they?” Judith asked, gesturing.
“The oppressed,” Rivkah answered, with a gesture of her own.
The crowd deactivated their active camouflage, changing from dark blurs to recognizable people. They were feathery quadrupeds, a race Aaron had run into a few times before – “Edomi” they might have been called. Each wore a heavy iron slave collar.
“Oh.” Aaron said. “That oppression.”
“Yes,” Rivkah said. There was steel in her tone: not quite hostility, but warning.
“I'm not going to fight an all-out war against the government of this planet,” Aaron said. His tone was sadder, but also unyielding.
“I'm not asking you to,” Rivkah said, “We just need a ride out of here and a place to hide until it departs.”
“You came here with no escape plan?” Judith asked.
“My escape plan got caught,” Rivkah said, “I stashed a stealthed ship in the hills south of town, but it wasn't stealthed well enough. They must have upgraded their scanners since our last intel.”
“My company does have a mostly-empty cargo ship leaving soon,” Aaron said, “It came with replacement parts and leaves with empty boxes. It's unlikely to be searched. What happens when you arrive in a General Robotics warehouse that isn't expecting you I don't know, but at least you'll be in Human space.”
“We can talk our way past warehouse staff.”
One of the escaping slaves interrupted their conversation with a quick burst of song. He'd stationed himself next to a window, keeping watch without being seen, and apparently he'd seen something.
“Police are doing a door-to-door search,” Rivkah translated.
“You can all hide in the kitchen,” Judith offered. There's no windows, and we'll tell them we haven't seen you.”
“And if they search the house?” Rivkah asked.
“Legally, they can't without cause. I work as a receptionist in a pretty shady business: they made me memorize this stuff.” Judith said, “If the police are truly canvassing the neighborhood, that's not cause. If they saw anything, though...”
“Active camo is pretty good against Dec eyesight,” Rivkah said, “But I turned mine off to knock on your door. So they might know I'm here. And if they don't see me, that could be cause.”
“So they all hide,” Judith said, “You put on my shawl so you don't look like a soldier,” she passed the garment, and Rivkah wrapped herself tightly, “and tell them...”
“Tell them you're here to gamble,” Aaron said smiling, “I'll stake you.” He tossed her a mesh bag.
She opened the bag with a knife and smelled it. “Synthetic chocolate,” she laughed, “this really is the low stakes table.”
“You should see what real chocolate costs out here,” Aaron said, “Besides, using the cheapest chocolate around for gelt is a tradition. Not as old as pretending to gamble, of course...”
“It's funny,” Judith said, “I've always figured part of the point of holidays was to keep alive the courage to do things like this, but I never thought of them as keeping the skills alive.”
“I hadn't either,” Rivkah said, tossing a coin into the middle and taking the dreidel, “I guess we'll see how well it works.”
By the time the police reached Aaron and Judith's house, the escapees were well hidden and the chocolate had changed hands many times (with only a few pieces eaten).
The Dec police officer towered over the three humans. “We've had a report of escaped slaves in this area. A dozen Edomi with full collars. Have you seen anything?”
“Nothing here,” Aaron said calmly, “It's been quiet. Not that we've really been looking out the windows.” He gestured at the table and the piles of chocolate coins.
“I'm going to have to search the house.”
“This is a really bad time,” Aaron said, “There's only the one entrance, so it's not like they could slip by us and in here. We've got company and it's a holiday. There's three days of Hannukah left. You can come search when it's over.”
“Company?”
“That's me,” Rivkah said, “My name's Miriam. I'm just on-world briefly, doing consulting for a construction project. These two heard about me and invited me to spend Hannukah with them. Holidays are a lousy time to be alone.”
“It's hard enough playing dreidel with two of us,” Aaron explained, “I'd hate to imagine doing it with one.”
“Hmph,” the officer said, “Well I'm not waiting three days. I'm searching now.”
“No, you're not,” Judith said, voice carefully level, “Not without immediate cause or court order.”
“Exactly that,” Aaron said, voice harsher.
“I'm sick of you humans,” he snarled, “with your legalism and pretentiousness. It's time you all learned your place. I'm the law. Obey me.” He raised his truncheon and brought it down toward Aaron's head.
Aaron froze. He wasn't that sort of hero.
But Rivkah was. And in the past three years she'd shifted from studying historical martial arts casually to studying black-ops martial arts seriously.
So instead of upon Aaron's head, the officer's arm came down behind his own back, at a rather painful angle.
“As a guest,” Rivkah said, “I can not permit any harm to come to my host. It would be improper.”
“What... are... you?” the officer gasped.
“Human,” Rivkah said, and tightened her grip.
Judith looked ready to say something, but Rivkah mouthed “wait” at her. She was behind the officer, so he didn't see it. A few seconds later, the officer's body untensed. He was beaten and he knew it. “Now,” Rivkah mouthed.
“I'm prepared to call you adequately punished,” Judith said, “but if you make any more trouble for us we will press charges for illegal search and assault. And we'll file a formal complaint with the Human consulate. Got it?”
The Dec nodded.
“If she lets you go, will you leave and not cause any more trouble?”
“Yes,” he grumbled.
Rivkah let him go, and he slouched out the door.
“How much trouble are we in?” Aaron asked, once he was sure the officer was out of earshot.
“The law is on our side,” Judith said, “And the Human consulate is nothing to take lightly. Our biggest problem is if he catches any of our lies.”
“Most of what we said was true,” Rivkah said, “and I can have records of Miriam Evens arriving a few days ago.”
“You can do that?”
“My friends can. Most commercial transport companies are pretty lax about information security, at least where money isn't concerned. They just don't think anyone's going to bother making mil-grade attacks on their logging systems.”
“That's some impressive friends.”
Rivkah shrugged. “We're organized. For every field-op like me, going into danger, there are half a dozen back in safe territory doing things with computers or money or co-ordination. There's people like you, too – living quietly in places like this, providing information or backup options. Doing what they can. We don't ask for more than that.”
For a tense moment no one spoke. She hadn't quite asked a question, but they still didn't want to answer it.
“Well,” Rivkah said, “in case you ever want to contact us, here's a crypto chip with all the relevant keys, including one so we'll know who you are.”
She held out the chip. After a long moment, Aaron took it.
“Why did you pick our door to knock on?” he said.
“I came to the human neighborhood because I needed a hero. Every human has that potential inside them. That's why everyone else is afraid of us: because even the most innocuous-seeming human might remember what they're capable of.”
“Remember,” Judith echoed, “You timed your knock didn't you? Stood outside the door and listened and waited for the right song.”
“Well, yes,” she said. The expression of embarrassment looked out-of-place in her eyes.
“But why us?” Aaron asked again, “There must be a dozen human houses, and you couldn't have heard us until you were right at the door.”
“I needed a miracle,” she said, “And I saw the candles advertising 'miracles happen here'.”
“There,” Aaron corrected, “The candles advertise that a great miracle happened there.”
“Close enough.”