"The Scapegoat" is a science fiction novella by American writer C. J. Cherryh, set in her Alliance-Union universe. It deals with a war in which the two opposing species can not communicate with one another and do not know how to stop the conflict. The work was originally published in the 1985 anthology of military science fiction Alien Stars and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novella. Source: Wikipedia (en)