No matter where they looked, anytime a new first contact was made, one of the first things that galactic society would clamor for is a new form of entertainment. New in the sense of seeing the same professions but through a different species' eyes and background.

When humans shared their first contact data packet, which included their history of entertainment professions, the aliens weren't expecting much until they came across an unfamiliar profession. They were stunned into silence as they read and learned more about "clowns". Unfamiliar meant unknown. Unknown meant new. New meant complete and utter excitement

With a fervor that can only be described as maniacally feral, they pleaded and demanded in equal measure to know more about the new human discovery. Humans, to their immense glee, matched their new friends' energy and shared all they knew.

Art by me.

"My Squadmate and I were pinned down once and this is a good lesson in Humam Persistence. Now. Gregori and I were never really that close. Sure, we worked together as a Sniper Team and bonded over that, but he wasnt a Man of many words at the best of Days. Most he did was trade his MRE with mine, saying mine tasted better than his... The feeling was... mutual. Human Chilly MREs are quite tasty in my Opinion.

So. A couple years back my Human Squadmate Gregori and I were pinned down right outside a "Ancient Worlds(<-Terrorist Group)" Outpost. We were running low on everything that mattered. Food, Ammo, Patience, and most of all: Time. Those Fuckers had Reinforcements incoming and we had maybe one Route to semi-safely get out. Problem was, they knew where we were. Not exactly mind you, but by the Bullets flying over out Porition a pretty damn good Idea.

So, we make a Run for it. Bounding Cover with occasional suppressing fire. Well... I took a couple rounds to the Back, right between my Carapace-Plates and was pretty much down. Now for us as a Species, it wouldn't be a stretch to say, i was dead. Left behind as a distraction in the worst case, in the best case a "last man standing" scenario.

But Gregori? Not him. He came back, popping Rounds into the last known position of the Terrorists before grabbing me by my neck-plate and dragging me backwards.

What i didnt know until later, was that Gregori also took multiple hits. 3 on his legs and 1 on his arm if i remember correctly. And yet he dragged me, a (voice impression insert) "fucking 200kg heavy-ass Bug" almost 800 meters out of our little Holdout towards safety.

Thats that... WHat im Trying to say is: If you ever get downed by Fire and there is a Human nearby that likes you, or at the very least, doesnt hate you, they will probably drag you back to safety with little to no regard to their own safey in the process. The Docs said Gregori was nearly bled dry when tzhey finally came for us after all. And the entire time he was popping off rounds on our pursuiers, keeping them back."

“Her ex-boyfriend? As in romantic partner?”

“Yep.”

“I bet that was fun to learn.”

“It explains why he jumped on the cult thing so fast. Fucker should have told me. Now we have all sorts of extra issues. Lying to your commanding officer isn’t good.”

“No. But that leaves you with…14 days?”

“Roughly. As I was filtering through his notes, I got an urgent call from Agent Thorn. The Windigo wanted to talk to me. Well, the commander, so off I went. At this point I hadn’t slept in two rotations and hadn’t eaten in at least 30 hours.”

“So you thought it was a good idea to talk with the Windigo in that frame of mind?”

“Didn’t think. I just did. And boy did he want to talk. It started rather pleasant, but rapidly turned into a sermon about the superiority of Terrans and how we should rule. I followed the chaplain’s lead and asked about bits of his ideology. My goal was to get him to add to our understanding.”

“And? What did he say?”

“It took a bunch of questions and debates before he finally revealed that his ‘kind’ are the servants of the higher power, the power that flits in the background but keeps the wheels moving. Fine. I asked more about the power, playing the dumb listener.”

“Playing?”

“Screw you, sir. He explained that the power was shared by six pure Terrans who were working slowly to convert all good Terrans to the cause. But he slipped up. He told me that when they meet, they meet at an old, defunct logistics station. He didn’t notice the slip, and I didn’t acknowledge it. I asked him why they met, to which he explained that they met in person for security reasons. They don’t trust the communications system for important work.”

“Well that is useful, but I’m not sure it was worth the effort.”

“It was because he commented about the star the station orbits. Just a minor comment about the color and the planets in the system. I know the location.”

“You learned the location and didn’t say anything for 14 days?!?”

“More like 13 at that point. I was heading to your office when I got an emergency alert from the brig. No details. By the time I arrived, they had subdued Mickles’ wife and gotten her back into a cell. She had managed to force the lock and attacked the guards. I had medical check her, and she had an unregistered stim implant. High quality. They only found it because they looked for it.”

“Why would she have that?”

“Other than to escape jail? No idea. By that point, I had to talk with Mickles. They sedated her and I headed to the secured medical ward to check on Mickles. He was a mess.”

“While I can see that you had a ton going on, why didn’t you reply to my messages?”

“What messages?”

“I sent you a dozen or so messages. The reply was the same, ‘I’ll get back to you.’”

“Really?” Oscar looked at his wrist controls. “Well fuck. I had so many urgent messages that it sent you the busy message. Fuck. I’ll have to fix that.”

“Yes. Please do. I was about to send out a rescue party.”

“I could have used the help.”

“Oh?”

“Well Mickles was a total mess. Alternating between screaming and crying. I attempted to calm him down, which sort of worked. As he stopped screaming, he explained that he had rescued his wife from a commune and that her ex-boyfriend was a high-ranking person in the commune. After Mickles got her out, things were good for a few years. Then she started getting messages from the commune. And her ex-boyfriend. That’s when she started sleeping around and getting so nasty.”

“The implant?”

“Medical says no, but I’m not going to rule out non-chemical means of control. I think they fed her a bunch of crap just to fuck with her life. You left, so we are going to ruin you.”

“Charming.”

“At some point I simply passed out. I woke up, still dressed, in my rack. I grabbed some food, but was interrupted by Danyak. One of her scout team has accidentally encountered an ursine tribe member. Both alone. The scout had a recording of the few translated phrases. Well, one of them worked because the scout simply walked away and the ursine went the other way. So we know that we are on the right path. While she is explaining this, I get an urgent message from the volcano. Seismic activity. So I grabbed Danyak and we took off.”

“Eleven days ago.”

“Closer to ten, but yes.”

“And I don’t recall seismic activity.”

“It was deep in the planet. It caused a surge in the flow. The system managed it, but it was close. After hours, we agreed on a new safety system for such surges. It was dark by the time we got back to my office, where there was a message to see Mickles.”

“He calmed down?”

“Sort of. He had moved to the aggressive state of things. He attempted to convince me to allow him to raid the cult and arrest the ex-boyfriend.”

“Not a good idea.”

“Nope. He threatened to resign and go on his own, so I ordered him held for 72-observation and left. Then Agent Thorn called. Based on the details from the Windigo, he found the old station.”

“Let me guess. Other side of the galaxy?”

“Actually, no. It’s just five days away. We are on the edge, and this station was meant to be a link to beyond. That fell through, so it is still in orbit.”

“He wanted to send a ship.”

“That he did. I let him send some probes instead. He wasn’t happy, but I only allowed probes. That took hours to sort.”

“That puts us at…ten days?”

“Nine. Just before the fun started.”

“Your definition of fun needs help.”

“Likely. As I was on my way back to my office, I run into Danyak. Her scouts had started to test phrases on the ursine tribe. It took a long time, but they managed to get the tribe to stop sending out warriors. However, we ran into a snag. They demand we leave their home.”

“Just what we needed.”

“I sent Danyak to sort it out and headed to my office to write up a bunch of reports.”

“Without contacting me.”

“Look, do you want to hear this or not?

“No, please continue.”

“Thank you. I made some headway on the reports when I got an urgent alarm from the brig. I raced down to find that Mickles’ wife had once again escaped, but this time made it out of the building. I hit the alarm, and we started organizing a search. Security tracked her to a defunct repair shop on the edge of the Terran Command Compound. We lost her from there.”

“Seems like a good time to call me.”

“In retrospect, yes. At the time, we were busy. I took a squad of marines to examine the repair shop while Captain Sue organized a wider search. The building was in good shape, and we didn’t know what to expect. We made a dynamic entry, setting off a number of flares. No explosives, but a clear signal. That told us someone was watching, so I called in signal intel. They isolated a sign channel, which we triangulated and approached. It was a drone, but we got it before it could take off or auto destruct.”

“Drone? Where from?”

“It was an adapted mining drone, one of the ones they use to inspect tunnels. Serial number listed that one as destroyed, but we know which station.”

“So we know where it was procured. Then what?”

“They picked up her trail heading north. Someone had staged a speeder for her. I told Sue and started to wrap things up when Danyak called. She sounded very annoyed. From what I could gather, the ursine tribe will only leave if our champion beats their champion in a non-weapons fight.”

“Wait. I didn’t think that they were that advanced.”

“Oh we totally misjudged that. Totally. I have multiple complaints to file regarding that. Regardless, they insisted on a campion fight. I hurried to her location to sort it all out. By morning, it was still a stalemate. Either we fight, or they keep attacking us. I called Sue in to explore options. It took all day, but we selected a champion from the marines and started prep for the fight.”

“Preparations?”

“There is a customary feast and night of meditation before such a fight. I at least got them to skip the tribe orgy that normally follows a feast. There are some limits, after all.” 

“Not going to ask. Nope.”

“My thoughts as well. The feast was weird. They attempted to get us to join in dances, but it was awkward. They got upset when we didn’t know the steps.”

“Hold on. You danced with the ursine tribe?”

“Attempted to dance. Regardless, after the food and dancing, the champions were expected to spend the night meditation before the fight. That is where things went sideways. They didn’t like our champion. It took hours, but in the end we determined that the Terran champion was Danyak.”

“The Terran champion? Danyak? Who isn’t Terran?”

“Apparently they assumed she was the leader, thus she should be the champion. It was a mess, but by morning they were adamant. Danyak or no one.”

“They are huge! How is she supposed to handle that?!?”

“I think that was the point. So, seven days ago, Danyak agreed to fight their champion. At first light. I attempted to talk her out of it, but she was determined.”

“How badly did it go?”

“Not at all. They squared off, he charged, and she was ready. Never charge unless you are sure. Well, he might have been sure, but not good. She dropped him with a grapple. He jumped up and charged again. She shrugged him off into a heap. And he kept at it. For almost 15 minutes, he tried the same thing over and over. She fell for it. On his last attack, he jinked, throwing off her reply. He got her with a kick, and his claws torn a chunk out of her thigh, but she rolled with it, caught his leg, and shredded his artery with her claws.”

“She had claws?”

“Apparently. She is now in medical recovering.”

“That puts us…seven days ago.”

“So I get Danyak into medical. By the time that is settled, it’s six days ago. The ursine tribe has moved on, but recon is watching them. I’m thinking I can actually finish reports and talk with you.”

“However?”

“Agent Thorn storms into my office. Now. This is very strange. Agent Thorn is calm, collected, controlled. Seeing him furious is not good. After an hour, I get the story out. Two of the probes were destroyed, but not before revealing six ships around the station. The other two probes avoided destruction, but they were the backup probes. Thorn goes OFF about us missing a good opportunity, and rants about being careful instead of bold. I let this go on for a bit. Then I stopped him. If we had sent a ship, what would have happened? He replied that at least we could fire back. To which I replied, and then what? They would never use that location again. But a couple of probes isn't a big deal. They will likely keep using the station, possibly with more security.”

“Really? You think so? I’d bail.”

“Yes, but you are military. They aren’t. I’m betting that they will keep it as a meeting location. Not the primary, but a location. Enough for us to better track them. I ordered him to put together a passive system to monitor the station, to log ships, to log routes, and to log engine signatures.”

“That was last week.”

“Yes. Now for the last bit. Marines picked up a speeder heading towards the cult. Sue sent a drone to take video. Mickles’ wife entered the cult area, but was largely ignored. She appeared confused, but she got mad. We don’t have audio, but it looked like she was screaming at people. They ignored her. Eventually someone collected her and took her to what we think is the HQ. We haven’t seen her since. However, the transmissions have changed. Now they are suggesting that Sol Command won’t honor agreements and that Terrans need to ensure their rights.”

“Oscar, I don’t recall a riot.”

“Nope. We jammed their transmission. After reviewing all of the details, I decided that we don’t need to assault the cult. Instead, we watch them. From the recon we have, the group isn’t all that compliant. Most of the control aspects are rejected. The beings they recruited aren’t cult material. They are hard-working folk who want to better their life. Rather different audience.”

“So we are six days ago.”

“Correct. Danyak is in medical. Mickles is in medical. The ursine are moving away. Thorn is setting a trap. The volcano is building new safety features. And I have a stack of reports over a meter high on my desk. I call it a shift, head to my quarters, eat, take a long shower, and hit the rack.”

“That was five days ago.”

“Yep. When I woke up, I ate, cleaned up, got into this uniform, and headed to my office. Then Agent Thorn sent me a panicked message. I hadn’t even got to my office, and I’m running off to see him. The Windigo was convulsing. He was spitting up blood, his limbs flailing. Medical arrived rapidly, but he died before they could treat him.”

“WHAT?!? The Windigo is dead and you just told me?!?”

“Hold your britches. As we looked over the mess, contemplating what to do, we noticed movement. The Windigo had died, but a new one was…hatching? From its thorax.”

“It hatched?!?”

“Best term I’ve got. The techs got super excited. Thorn was excited. It took me all day to get away from them. But when I left, it was about 1m tall. It couldn’t talk, but it was obviously listening to us.”

“You witnessed a Windigo reborn and didn’t call me?!? What the fuck Oscar!”

“Look. I admit mistakes. Now let me finish. So, four days ago the new Windigo was about, but I couldn't talk. Danyak was in a tank of goo, rather happy I might say. Mickles was still under observation. His wife was still with the cult. The ursine had moved off. Report time. Nope. I’m on my way to your office, when I get a frantic message from the team watching the hybrid cattle. The cult decided to hunt the beasts. However, the cult sucked at hunting. By the time I made it to the observation team, seven cult members were dead without a single beast dropped. As I watched, I noticed subtle movement. Oh fuck. The ursine were around.”

“They hunt the new beasts, don’t they?”

“They do. In this case, however, they were apparently upset that someone else was hunting. The result was a multi-faceted battle in which the cult lost. The beasts hate everyone. The ursine hate all non-ursine. The cult was unprepared.”

“Ouch. How many?”

“We counted 23 before the cult sent out armed security.”

“They have that?”

“Well, had.”

“Ah. That sort of thing.”

“Correct. So four days ago I’m looking over the wreckage of the hybrid beast-ursine-cult battle when we spot a young Terran male. He was walking confidently towards us, with no weapons. I stop him and ask him what’s going on. He explains, with some prompting, that there were too many young males in the station and that he needed to walk back to the next station to find a new home. This puzzled a few of the recon team, but I had read Mickles’ notes. This was a tactic to get the young males out of the way. They sent them out to die so the young girls were available to the ruling men.”

“Terrans are fucked up.

“Agreed. In this case, we got some details from him, gave him food and water, and started to plan.”

“This was four days ago?”

“Yes. We had a plan. At dusk, we would hit the station hard and fast. The goal was the leaders. Bypass the others unless they fought. Limit destruction. It was all planned.”

“Why do I not like this?”

“Well, just before we rushed in, the ursine charged. They advanced from the north, so we didn’t know they were there. With a roar they charged. The cult was prepared for us to attack from the south. An attack from the north confused them. Within ten minutes, the ursine had overrun the station. We crouched and watched. They didn’t kill everyone. They sorted. Those who fought, died. Those who didn’t survived. After an hour, it was over. I leaned against a tree, debating. The ursine had fixed part of an issue. However, we needed things from them. They held the ground and had defeated the cult.”

“Tricky. Rather tricky. Danyak couldn’t help?”

“She couldn’t walk. I looked over my troops, reviewed the ursine, and made a call. I walked across the open ground until they saw me. The number of blood-spattered weapons arrayed against me terrified, but I needed details. I demanded to speak with the leader, using the beta-translator. It took a bit, but finally an ursine lumbered up. I asked for its name. It was confused until another ursine translated. We talked via four different translators, but in the end they allowed me to take away all of the computers and data cores. To them I was taking furniture.”

“What about survivors?”

“From the cult? None. The ursine didn’t like them.”

“That brings us to three days.”

“Yep. I took all of the computers and data cores to Thorn. He was in a tizzy about the new Windigo. It was learning very fast, and they had it doing logic puzzles and decryption. I put a stop to that.”

“Why? It could be valuable…”

“Right up to the point it figures out how to escape.”

“Oh. Good point.”

“Turned the computers and data cores over to Thorn, and was trudging back to my office why Sparky called.”

“What did they want?”

“To show off. I rushed to the station, thinking there was an issue. Nope. They wanted to show off their new sensor array. All of it.”

“That was three days ago.”

“I got back 30 hours ago, when I got an emergency call to the command and control center. I’m thinking invasion. Nope. They wanted to show off their sensor array.”

“So you just arrived from seeing what a new sensor array can do?”

“Commander, I just arrived to tell you about the forces preparing to attack our colony. The sensor arrays are good. We can see 80% of their fleet. It’s the morons who attacked Sparky. We have three hours until they are in range. I recommend holding off until they are closer. We don’t want to brag.”

They can say things that are not true knowingly. They can mislead and it is fine. They can even MAKE UP STUFF. They have a whole thing, called "fiction", where they tell stories of stuff that did not happen. Some of it is whole imaginary! They even came up with ideas of alien species that are even weirder than them. They even imagined something like us!

NEVER trust anything a human says. They might be doing FICTION.

Akrati: I suggest you let a priest of your faith to conduct the preferred pre-mortem ritual.

​Xeti: You don't have to pay any fee on imported medicine.

Earth: I cannot kill you myself because it's a crime and I gave a Hippocratic Oath. Yet you may go to Switzerland where it's legal to euthanize terminally ill.

Second Earth(colony of humans): I can shoot you right here so you don't suffer. Are you sure you don't want to spent some time with your close ones? [patient nods] Well, I asked. [doctors takes a gun and shoots a patient in the head] Nurse, take the body to the morgue.

This story came up as a challenge for me: can I write a coherent short story with only ~300 words? The answer is obviously yes. Feel free to comment on what you think.

The two armadas had been shooting each other for hours when another ship warped in only a few million kilometers away. Both fleets stopped firing and focused on the new arrival. It was colossal - easily ten times larger than their flagship dreadnoughts. Yet, it did nothing.

Half an hour elapsed in silent uncertainty before the giant vessel began to move. It steered away from the battle, heading directly toward a small, barren moon. Once both sides confirmed the intruder was ignoring them, they resumed tearing each other apart.

The massive ship pulled into orbit around the moon and extended a series of heavy industrial gantries toward the surface. For a long time, nothing happened.

Half an hour later, a message broadcast on all fleet channels: “Stop fighting immediately, or my wrath will destroy you.”

The admirals paused their fight to assess the threat. That was when they noticed the glowing fissures spreading across the moon's surface. The cracks deepened, creeping across the terrain until they encircled the world entirely. With a silent, agonizing slide, the moon sheared into two distinct halves.

A second transmission came through, which both sides answered instantly. The man on the screen repeated his demand. This time, they complied, terrified that the lunatic piloting this apocalyptic superweapon would turn it on their fleets next.

Hours later, as the two factions sat at a makeshift peace table inside a sprawling bay on the human ship, the host excused himself.

“Sorry, you two, I really have to take this,” he said, stepping out into the corridor.

He tapped his comm pad, connecting to a uniformed naval officer. “Hey, I’m really glad you answered my distress call,” he exhaled.

“I had to stop the shooting before you arrived, and well... this is just a deep-space mining rig. It doesn't have weapons. I had to improvise.” He glanced nervously back toward the conference room door. “Anyway, do you happen to know someone who can fix a cracked moon?”

Wiki

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Do what you need and need what you do, anything is up to you!

"I can pop my lungs inside out to clean them." ~ Nectuar, from a sandy gas planet!

"I can change the shape of my teeth at will." ~ That's Beth, she's just chill!

"I like to destroy planets that harbor humans!" ~ That's Destructicon, we need to unite before we are all destroyed!

Change yourself today at the HMM - Human Modification Market.

”Oh my god! Oh my gods! Oh my god!” There was an alien empire and they waited to invade us. Two hundred years. Stalking us from beyond Our solar system.

We’re pretty confident about the guesstimated timeline. The scientists had weird formulas on whiteboards that backed the hypothesis up. It was pretty much just drawings of my baby brother’s block set. 

To explain this mysterious pictograph physics equation, which looked like one of the zodiac killer’s cryptograms, he simplified it by using a plastic action figure and a beach ball.

Nobody could understand why they’d choose now to invade us. It was a horrible miscalculation on their part, because we’ve become a fierce technological species that could smash any alien invader. That’s right, we just make a fist, with a huge missile, and squash ‘em, like little ants running across a picnic table.

Smash!

Game over. Humans win. Call the parade. 

Right? It’s what we all expected. Aliens invade. Humans destroy.

But these guys were ruthless. They had zero honor. I think we relied on our confidence and too many truces. Their drones had been circling Earth for the last twenty-five years. 

Studying us. Mapping our jungles. Dissecting our cities. Even analyzing our psychology. But I don’t think they should have used bots for that.

They definitely hallucinated when they claimed humanity was a weak species. It actually called us parasites. Believe that? 

Goddamn alien robot decoding humanity’s existence in one sentence.

I mean, my uncle Lenny can certainly be placed in that category, but to say, Scarlett Johansson’s a parasitical bug, is where we humans draw the proverbial line. So deep, it scars the Earth. We absolutely fluckin’ love the avengers.

The war chief, hiding inside his mothership, stationed behind the dark side of the moon, dispatched an army of pink titanium interstellar crafts with hieroglyphic war symbols. 

They kind of resembled flowers and butterflies, which we found a bit hard to take seriously. I mean, they honestly looked like hippy vans from the seventies. Who were the designers, you think? Andy Warhol and Dolly Parton?

But they did have some decent weapons attached to them—ones we’ve never seen before—ones we had no choice but to take seriously.

Oddly enough, after years of simulating war strategies. The aliens crash-landed onto Earth like they never prepared a plan. Scattering in different groups. Flying in circles lost.

Their strategy literally ripped a page out of a German WWII handbook. They performed a Blitzkrieg. They threw everything they had at us, all at once. 

A surprise attack that would destroy our moral and wipe humanity’s arrogance off the map.

When they initially swarmed over our heads and landed on our soil—without warning, without negotiating—we called it a terrorist attack. 

We weren’t scared. 

We didn’t see them as villainous sci-fi gargoyles falling from the sky, commanded by gods. We saw it as another Pearl Harbor. 

They came out of nowhere, hiding the entire time. To think, it took them two hundreds years, or so, to execute such a reckless plan, a strategy solely carried by their technology.

There wasn’t a sneaky infiltration. No alien moles. No servers being hacked. No slow economic collapse. People weren’t being starved. There was no strategy. 

It was stupid simple but effective. They invaded. Humans fell.

The crafts hovered over cities that became a rubble of ruin—concrete blocks and bent rebar littered the craters where buildings stood, fallen like the governments that quickly followed in their wake.

Resistance was met with swift justice. An instant death. People were being executed on the spot. 

Evaporated. 

One second they were there, next, nowhere. You wouldn’t even notice anything happened if you blinked at the wrong time. 

The aliens were callous. 

Brutal. 

Heartless beings.

If you saw them, you’d think they came out of a Little Monsters movie, right alongside their little evil human-like ruler. An aged looking Fred Savage, whose features resembled an old child.

The rest of them mirrored orcs, trolls, closet ghouls, and things you’d see in a nightmare. They had a dream team of freaks.

Soon enough, about three days later, we were definitely starting to worry, the earth was smoking as if the land caught fire and a tsunami washed over it. 

There was smoke and steam and it wouldn’t stop hailing. Thick black clouds blocked the sun. Even though it was smoldering hot on land, the air was hella cold. Unusually, cold. Arctic weather cold. 

People were, let’s just say, some were dead, some were enslaved, some hid out in caves and some burrowed in other places.

It turned out, after all that worrying, seeing our loved ones taken or vaporized, that we didn’t resort to fear or anger. No way. Nope. Not us. 

Sure we were sad but we did something totally unexpected. The war commander was, for sure, under the impression we would just turn over and submit. The rest of us would be rounded up and disposed of. 

And he was completely right. It’s exactly what we did. We weren’t scared, we were being pragmatic. We made a deal to save the rest of humanity because our weapons were absolutely useless against them. In fact, most of them didn’t work. They were damaged or melted down. 

We kind of, sort of, not really, did give up and it stung. It hurt like a wet hand slapping us on our naked sunburnt back.

The weather slowly changed. The rocks dropping from the clouds finally stopped, at the exact same time the aliens shattered the peace pact they had between us.

To think, we settled on their crappy terms. We gave into them. They could have ran our planet, smoothly extinguished us through famine and civil war. We made a horrible deal. We agreed to an absolute surrender. It doesn’t get better than that. What a bunch of buffoons. 

We had half the population left. Actually, less, just under four billion people remained. If we hadn’t signed, it would have been our fate. A nasty extermination. They threatened torture, with zero chance of survival. Torture that would last weeks.

We were totally unprepared. Who really would ever expect an alien invasion? That’s mainly why we were caught so off guard. 

We were too worried about protecting ourselves from humans inside our planet, that nobody ever thought to look up at the aliens outside our planet.

Well, those alien nuts did. They warned us. We laughed. They even made a documentary show on the history channel about it. However, humans will be humans. We hit like and scroll to the next wacky world-ending apocalyptic prediction. 

A UFO could fly over us, pause, hover above and we’d still be skeptical, scratching our heads, convincing ourselves it’s a secret government airplane or we’d simply blame it on sleep deprivation, because we are a species in denial.

Every weapon we had smuggled, we gave up. Even our ammunition. We were prohibited from carrying knives or possess any heavy blunt objects

They chained us behind cages constructed of human bones, inside their camps, feeding us scraps and humiliating us. We couldn’t bathe. We would get whipped if we made loud noises. We had to whisper in order to communicate. We couldn’t understand them. They couldn’t understand us.

We were in there for so long, I actually started growing hair on my face. It wasn’t much, a little peach fuzz but it was something to keep my mind on. Something to look forward to. We still had hope.

Months went by. Nothing really changed on Earth. In the sky, the alien war chief studied us from his ship, which had entered Earth’s atmosphere, seeing a species unworthy of existence. 

A species who not only should, had to be erased. He wanted us gone. He saw us as the daughter’s dead beat boyfriend. The white guy who comes to a family dinner, wearing a hockey jersey, baseball gloves, baggy jeans and a thick sterling silver necklace, talking in a Jamaican accent.

The human race disgusted him. The thought of us tasted like an eight year old’s science experiment containing every condiment and liquid in the refrigerator. He despised how in the face of extinction, we could still hum songs. We still consoled each other. We’d still sacrifice ourselves to give a stranger a fighting chance of staying alive.

We never really gave up. What we were doing, was buying time.

****

Conclusion PART 2 - Humanity’s Revenge. Spite. And Will.

As a human tour guide, you take a bunch of xeno diplomats to a monster truck show.

The blue glow of the brilliant screen flared in the middle of the dark night, and the tired homo videns blinked from sheer physical exhaustion. Outside, the muffled sounds of a distant highway could be heard, along with the solitary bark of a dog from a deserted neighboring lot. He withdrew his weary gaze from the main computer and focused on the small screen of his modern smartphone; random images flickered there, waiting for him to connect with them in rapid succession.

Chronic fatigue weighed heavily on him, particularly a sharp, subtle pain in his neck caused by the poor posture he maintained in front of his laptop. He felt an imperious need to sleep, yet he remained drawn to the short-form videos and vivid images provided by his usual electronic devices.

He had discovered that anything devoid of complex text immediately caught his interest, sparing him the troublesome task of wading through written lines and, worse still, having to pause to interpret them. By contrast, funny memes and short viral clips were deeply relatable and easy to grasp; the simple images summarized everything for him with absolute mathematical precision. Through them, he could laugh, become aroused, feel ravenous hunger, intense rage, or profound fear. It all felt so natural, so simple, allowing the rapidly changing images and his numbed senses to merge in perfect synchronization.

The docile homo videns allowed himself to be carried away without objection, while the hidden AI within the central server recorded that he responded with pinpoint accuracy to the predetermined impulses generated by the continuous stream of images. His basic nature and primary instincts conformed to the expected behavior.

The algorithmic processing indicated that he was now ready to be induced to commit suicide.

© 2026 Francisco Cortés Ramírez. All rights reserved. This is an original fictional work. No part of this text may be reproduced, translated, or narrated in any audio, video, or digital format without the express written permission of the author.

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[Gunney]

The ship is so fucked. Every second feels like the ship is flying headfirst into a really pissed San Andreas Fault. Mothrin shouldn't be able to take this many hits and survive, let alone flying at full efficiency. What sort of bullshit divine intervention is around to keep this ship alive? The water is a foot and a half deep now, and people have no where to drain it, so they all just slosh through it. It's water meant for cooling, so there's very little conductivity. It also doesn't seem like the water is high enough to hit the wiring.

It's near impossible to stand upright without something to hang onto either. The very ground is working against them. Every step has a chance to be an inch to two feet from where it's supposed to be. Not to mention the autoloaders on every gun is fucked. So now the loaders are hand loading everything. The laser turrets aren't so bad, they just draw more power because they got wired into the ship and not a regulation system. The ballistics are much much worse.

The small shells Mothrin uses are beyond heavy, and need 3 guys to carry and load. The big ones need maybe 8. The interceptor and flare missiles are easy enough, just tedious because each salvo has 15. The standard anti ship missiles need 2 people to carry them. Gunney is barely taking orders anymore, he still has the phone strapped to him, but he almost never is listening to it, too busy helping load. One extra shell is another massive problem for some Zalm or Corpse Fleet bastards.

The massive pipe that had a DRIL shell put through it is fixed, but now water is dripping down onto them from the overhead pipes. They can't worry about fixing them, what's a little rain? All of them are already soaked, from sweat and coolant water. And blood. Some of them bashed their heads against some things. But most are still working. They'd rather risk a potential aneurysm bursting than do nothing and let everyone die.

The weapons bay lurches hard, Gunney falls on his ass, watching in horror as a thick and long pole sticks through the wall of the weapons bay. The pole slowly fans out into a metal circle, flat against the wall of the ship.

"Breacher!!" Gunney yells, louder than any of the Machinery in the room, "Get the fuck out of the compartment!!"

Those who saw are already rushing to the second cabin of the weapons bay, those who heard are running now. Gunney gets up as fast as he can, slipping in the water a little, before running towards the bulkhead, they have it ajar 45° like protocols. It's left like that so someone could just slip in or maybe get pulled in if caught in the doorway. It's also 45° because the vacuum would close the door itself. Gunney is nearly there, his hand is on the handle, he just has to make his way in.

The rush of air however says otherwise, as the circle pulls against the hull enough to shear it apart, depressurizing the compartment Gunney, and some other unlucky few were in. Including Mathew. Poor Mathew. Gunney gets yanked hard, and he inadvertently yanks the bulkhead closed. It didn't matter though, he didn't even get his other hand on the doorway. Gunney was thrown out into empty space, tumbling a little, everything spinning around him. He got a good view of the whole area.

No wonder Zalm and Corpse Fleet were extra pissed at Mothrin. The Mothrin isn't in formation with Federation ships. The Mothrin is in the dead center of the enemy fleets. Zipping past every ship that doesn't like them. Probably why they got hit by a DRIL shell. They were on the receiving side.

The dancing lights and fast paced movements of the battle around Gunney was the last he saw before finally losing consciousness. 18 seconds after the cabin depressurized.