There's a whole genre of sci-fi that has a major premise as "humanity is the most powerful/dominating/victorious species in the cosmos...and that's not a compliment". I always understood that to be a facet of HFY, but per this sub's description HFY should be "uplifting".

Like, a story where aliens try to invade Earth and we kick their asses is definitely HFY. But what if we then enslave the survivors of the alien horde? What if we reverse engineer their tech, go to their homeworld, and nuke their planet? What if we tailor a virus to their genome and purge the galaxy of their entire species, and their little alien babies die screaming in their little alien cribs?

Is that HFY?

Not mine, but by several people on tumblr (Archive.org link in case the tumblr link pushes a sign in)

Undocumented Buttons

"Globtroq, what are these buttons for?" asked the spindly Ognimalf named Bert, holding the pilot chair upside-down to his obese Adnap buddy, Globtroq. The unlikely duo owned a run-down repair shop for small spacecraft in the remote corners of the galaxy. Their business was far from glamorous; in fact, they spent most of their days fiddling with spaceships that had been acquired in rather dubious ways.

Globtroq looked at the buttons: two green, two pink, one grayish. They were cleverly concealed beneath the obviously human pilot chair.

“Dunno…” Globtroq mumbled, reaching towards the buttons.

"Hell no, don't touch them!" Bert shrieked, pulling the chair away. "Last time you pressed an undocumented button in a human spaceship, you emptied the entire septic tank into our garage!"

“Uhm, sorry, instinct…” grunted the portly Globtroq “Never seen such buttons. Don’t know.”

Bert held the chair overhead, turned it around, then put it under the examination lamp and used the sonic scanner on it, looking for clues.

"This doesn't make sense," he snorted in annoyance. "No labels, no cables. What are these buttons for?"

The stubby Globtroq climbed on top of table and peered at the pilot chair. “Dunno… but they hid them well. Must be something very special. You know how humans are. Always doing something incredible stupid in a brilliant way or something brilliant in an incredible stupid way.”

Meanwhile Bert flipped through the printed manual, gasping in frustration. "Crap! This manual is printed in 24 different human languages, and I can't read a single one of them. Globtroq, get me a dictionary."

…ten hours later...

"...and this button controls the windshield wiper speed," Bert finished, tossing the manual annoyed into a corner.

Globtroq, scratching his fluffy behind, asked cluelessly, "Uh, Bert, I dozed off, did they mention anything about those buttons?"

“NOTHING!” squeaked Bert “They fucking wrote NOTHING about buttons under the pilots chair!”

"That's odd," Globtroq shrugged.

“That’s not odd, that’s steaming Nacluv Shit!” a pretty pissed Bert snorted. Then he declared, holding the thick manual in his hand, "I'm going to translate the entire manual until I find out what these buttons are for!"

"That's only the Quick-start Manual," Globtroq dryly stated, lifting a massive box filled with thousands of pages onto the table.

The spindly Ognimalf suddenly grasped the enormity of the task before him, and the vibrant pink in his feathers faded away...

…six days later…

Bert's feathers had turned almost grayish as he studied the endless stack of manuals in front of him. His annoyed brooding was interrupted when Globtroq startled him by entering without knocking. As usual.

"Globtroq, what the... who is that alien?" Bert asked, pointing at a newcomer.

The fatty pointed back at his companion and replied dryly, “I found a human. It is a human pilot chair. A human should know about the buttons. Human, that spindly dude is Bert. Bert is not his real name but I am unable to pronounce his real name. Bert, that is human.”

The human let out an amused chuckle and nodded at the spindly Ognimalf. "Hey there, I'm Max. Well, that's not my full name either, but Globtroq can't wrap his tongue around..."

Max couldn't finish his sentence as Bert interrupted him, exclaiming, "Oh, by the feather gods! A human! I was going bonkers! Look, we've got this pilot chair from a human spaceship, and it has buttons that are nowhere to be found in any documentation. We've been at it for nearly a week, and…"

"Hold on, buddy. I'm just a tourist; I know zilch about piloting a spaceship..." Max explained. However, seeing the color drain from Bert's feathers, he felt a pang of sympathy for the alien avian. "...but hey, I'll take a look and see what I can see, alright?"

Globtroq happily led Max to the chair and showed him the buttons, while Bert looked at the ceiling and wallowed in despair.

“Uhm, I have an assumption” Max stated “can I visit the cockpit for a moment?”

A sulking Bert and an overjoyed Globtroq led him into the small cockpit, where Max promptly opened the glove compartment, retrieved something, asking, “You wouldn’t mind if I take one of these human snacks?”

Bert just continued sulking while Globtroq happily took one of the small snacks offered by Max.

"Tasty," Globtroq remarked.

Max nodded in agreement and returned to the pilot chair “Cherry flavor. A bit past its prime, but still good.”

Bert reluctantly followed, trying to sulk as hard as possible.

And then, to everyone's surprise, Max spat out his snack and pressed it alongside the other buttons under the pilot's chair. It stuck.

“Gentlebeings.” Max announced dramatically, "the individual who sold you this heap of junk was a downright repulsive being. These buttons? They're dried-up globs of chewing gum."

--- The End ---

Not by me, originally on tumblr by multiple people (and an archive.org link to the post in case tumblr pushes a signup). Transcription originally done by u/ElliePlays1 on Reddit, cleaned up a bit by me.

Image Transcription: Tumblr \[1/2\]

manyblinkinglights

id wreak mayhem for a really good scifi where sight was considered as exotic and numinous as telepathy by the protag species

roachpatrol

\#everybody else uses sonar or long whiskers and that thing with the sensing electrical impuses#meanwhile: humans can 'see' which is a thing which is like and yet unlike ordinary perception#it would also only ever come into play in the same frivolous 'VULCAN STRENGTH' sort of way as Spock's extra attributes#for maximum effort vision would be faithfully written as 100% an asspull in the best way

what the fuck dude this is awesome i want this too now

curlicuecal

Okay, but what about those deep sea fish that produce light at a wavelength that \only they can see.\ Predators that can somehow sense toy in a completely indectable and unfathomable manner to you; they might as well be psychic.

manyblinkinglights

YES, EXACTLY-vision is SUCH an asspull?? Sometimes it's ""dark"" and we can't see anything.And also we're impired for plot reasons! Sometimes ALIEN WEAPONRY or otherwise-innocuous ship components are ""too bright"" and yet we yell and try to hide, subject to some sort of obscure, tortuous imperative. The rest of the time we can UNERRINGLY tell when anyone is trying to play pranks on us, the names and emotional/physical status of EVERY SINGLE BEING IN THE ROOM (or, when outside civilized warrens, ""line of sight"")- and yes, of course, can't forget about our nigh-mythical fighting arts revolving around insane dodging skills.

And SNIPING. And also, god, fuck-don't forget about completely arbitrary """"atmospheric disturbances""" (fog, smoke-the new "ionic interference") ALSO plottasactically rendering our abilities moot.

glimmerbulb

Plus, some people have some powerful Vision than others, but some people have a very short effective range of Vision. However, humans have come up with devices that "change the angles of refraction" of the "light" so that the naturally impaired have their skills enhanced-but they can always be knocked off their faces or be broken.

Also some people are terrible at normal Vision work, but have excellent night vision and are skilled at working under adverse conditions.

Oooh, and human art is almost entirely Vision based. Think about non-seeing aliens trying to access the majority of human art!

manyblinkinglights

IM!!! SCREAMING!!!! GLASSES. Glasses are SUCH another great Weird Alien Gimmick. God-you get all used to your Human friend and their bizarre abilities, you just start to really trust in and rely on them in tight places and problem-solving a little bit, then you get fucken marooned on a fucken planetoid somewhere and they just in this very small little voice, after you have pulled them from the wreckage and sat down to go over your options, inform you that they've lost their glasses.

roachpatrol

Oh my god and an episode where we’re up against Evil Humans and our heros turn to their humans like ‘you can see them, right, you can tell when they’re near? you can counter them?’ and our hero is genuinely shaken and worried— they’ve got high-tech military mechanical enhancers, the devices strapped to their heads let them see anywhere, they can operate in near-absolute ‘darkness’, they can operate in near-lethal ‘brightness’, they can see through walls— not doors, not glass, but walls.

Then we have a heroic scene where the crew’s human is the scrappy, desperate underdog for once instead of the cool and collected superbeing. It is super cool. The human and the captain probably mack wildly on one another in medbay after this. Roll credits.

gutterowl

Person 1: I dunno, dude. This ‘light’ stuff sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me. I mean, how do we know it’s even real?

Person 2: Seriously, how can something be a wave and a particle? That doesn’t even make sense.

Mysterious Human: Even if you cannot perceive the light, you can feel its warmth–

Person 1: Oh my god, please shut it with the mystical hoo-hah. You’re insufferable.

roachpatrol

Mysterious, somewhat exasperated Human: the ‘light’ enters the sensitive paired apertures in our faces, passing through biological lenses and chambers to stimulate specific nerves we call ‘rods’ and ‘cones’. one set of nerves tells us the volume of light we’re perceiving, while the other estimates the wavelength frequency. the total input creates in our mind a continuous sonarscape of immense complexity, where we can perceive ‘textures’ that are impossible to understand with mere sound or touch. this is why my people’s communication devices are small, flat, silent boards: we ‘read’ the patterns of light they emit as language and ‘watch’ the patterns of light they emit as sonarscapes.

Captain: okay…. sounds fake, but okay…

gutterowl

And they just keep on making up new bullshit rules for how light works, like

Navigator: Warp drive engaged. We are approaching 90% of the Lorentz limit.

Human: What now?

Navigator: Oh, uh, it’s really complex, but lemme try. So, matter can only move so fast through space, right? Like absolutely, nothing can ever ever possibly go faster than like about 3 hundred million meters per second–

Human: Ah yes. The speed of light.

Navigator: …oh for fuck’s sake.

roachpatrol

Captain: My god! Time! Has… frozen!

Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.

Captain: What?

Human: Remember how light is a wave and a particle?

Captain: Yes, we mention this every episode.

Human: Yeah, light’s frozen along with everything else. I can’t see shit.

Captain: My god! Our sonar doesn’t work either! The soundwaves— they can’t propagate through this frozen air! We’ll have to use just our whiskers!

Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.

gutterowl

The fanfiction for this show has to be amazing.

“Shh. Don’t try to hide your needs, Captain,” Hue Mann soothed. “My sight has told me all about your traumatic memories of the war.”

“What?” Captain gasped. “But…how…?”

“The light knows all,” explained Hue. “Time slows down at the speed of light. It sees all of the past..and all of the future.”

“And what is it telling you now?” questioned the Captain.

Hue leaned in close. “It tells me, ‘Mate with them now, you lovestruck fool!”

“Damn you, Hue Mann. Damn you and your penetrating ‘eyes.’”

“Oh,” breathed Hue, voice husky and sexual. “That’s not all my eyes can…penetrate.”

em-kellesvig

goddamn, you people amaze me.

kowabungadoodles

I love the idea that the protag species has telepathy as ‘boring normal standard’ senses and they can’t understand why human thoughts seems so strange, fragmented, occasionally blank… until they realise that a great of human thought is ‘visual’ and so can’t be heard…

annlarimer

“Lori, what do your Human eyes see?”

“Coupla billboards, and it looks like it might rain.”

jacquez45

This keeps getting better

vassraptor

This is so cute. Your human crewmember is getting a crush on another human. Time to observe the humans’ weird yet endearing courtship rituals.

“Tell me all about them! What do you like about them?”

“Well, they have these amazing eyes…”

“Yeah? Better at the the wavemapping thing than yours?”

“…I don’t know how good their eyes are at seeing. They’re just this beautiful shade of brown.”

“Wait. You wavemap each other’s wavemapping organs? And have opinions about what nice frequencies they refract the waves at?”

“Yes? What’s so strange about this?”

“I thought your ‘vision’ was passive. Do you listen to each other’s ears too? And like the smell of each other’s noses?”

“Like you’ve never touched someone’s whiskers with your whiskers.”

“…That’s different.”

actuallyasisterofbattle

Hang on though, how do you explain photovoltaics if they don’t know what photons are?

tharook

That’s a point; any space-faring aliens would (reasonably) have to have a good knowledge of electromagnetism and electromagnetic radiation. (And, potentially wave-particle duality and other quantum physics.) They might even have their own ways of detecting and measuring it (photodiodes, CCDs, radio telescopes, whatever) despite not being able to perceive it themselves just as we developed ways to measure things we can’t detect (like ultrasonics, heat (infrared), radio wavelengths etc.).

So our vision might not necessarily be so mystical as telepathy to us, but more like how some species of fish are sensitive to EM fields as well as sonar mentioned above. But our eyes and brain can do a lot of processing, still, and have an advantage over other ways creatures might perceive their environment. Pertinently to space travel, sight works in a vacuum and (theoretically) infinite distance. Instead of a sophisticated EM sensor array, fleets could simply install a human and a window.

darael

There’s potentially quite an interesting plot there where our nonhuman protagonists are entirely familiar with electromagnetism in the abstract, in the same way that humans are familiar with magnetism despite not having (much) direct sensitivity to it, but it takes them a while to work out that it’s how we do that weird “seeing” thing we keep talking about,and even longer to get the hang of what frequency range we use to do it.

And they might still be baffled by optic lenses.

n1ghtcrwler

But think about the discovery of humans.

You have this space-faring race kicking around, doing their thing, discovering new worlds and civilizations. They have all this advanced technology to hide themselves from all known senses so they can enter into the lower atmosphere of a planet and observe for a bit, cloaked from being noticed until they’ve decided whether or not the new race is ready to be introduced to galactic society.

And they show up at this blue world way out on the edges of civilized space, and detect life, and drop into the atmosphere fully cloaked and ready to research, and suddenly a scientist sends out a distress message to the rest if the crew:

Millions of Earthlings have immediately begun observing \them\.

roach-works

i still love this thread and i want to further suggest: what if all those UFOs everyone’s been seeing all this time are just merrily zipping around under the assumption that we can’t fucking perceive them at all, because their saucer-shaped cloaking field hides them from just about every kind of sonar or radar or emp device.

and sure, maybe if some of us humans had a really, really complicated photon measuring machine and pointed it at just the right spot, we might be able to get a reading that light is behaving a little bit strangely, very briefly, in one tiny part of the sky (where most light comes from!) but those things are the size of a suitcase, so obviously we don’t have them.

except also those things are the size of grapes and we have two of them built into our skulls.

(This is my first attempt at writing HFY, I hope you guys enjoy it)

The k'tarr representative raised their voice over the hum of chattering dignitaries "Attention every, may I have your attention please! I understand we are all concerned but if we are to find a solution we must have order." As the chattering of dignitaries subsided they continued "As you all know we are gathered here today to discuss the ongoing attack by hostile species fourteen..." "What do we even know about species fourteen?" "Would the tyrl representative please allow me to finish before speaking. It is indeed true that we know almost nothing of species fourteen itself, other than that which we have been able to discern from the construction of the catalyst weapons used against our worlds." Catalyst weapons; the words sent a murmur through the arrayed representatives while the photocommunicators flashed with alarmed reds and sorrowful blues. Seated at the head of the assembly, the races of the afflicted worlds reacted with mixed stowicism, anger, and deep saddness. Struggling to maintain composure the k'tarr representative continued "I will now scede the floor to the honorable prince sheltaf of the mycorian republic who may be able to grant us further insight on the nature of species fourteen."

Hobbling and assisted by a ceremonial bodyguard, sheltaf radix, third prince of the mycorian republic, ascended to the podium soft lines of pained yellow flashing along his side with each step. "I'm sure none of you here today know me, as a mere third prince my role in political affairs was minor. I do believe however that all of you knew my older sister the honorable diplomat rhelsha; it is my deepest regret to bring you news of her death, as well as that of the second and fourth princes, and my parents." Solemnity at once took the crowd as the last whispers and feint flashes died away. "As the eldest surviving member of the radix family it is my responsibility to take on her role as representative to the council, and to tell you how she died."

"As many of you know our capital world was the first hit by the catalyst, though the exact events are murky and reconstruction is ongoing I believe we are now able to provide the council with an aproximate series of events." Behind him the council chambers screen lit up to display a diagram of a long elipsoid object reminiscent of a torpedo. "On the date of approximately 14/09/2358 [translated for readability] standard galactic time this object is believed to have been picked up by sensors entering the secure space around the capital world shala. At the time the object was dismissed as debris and recieved no further attention beyond the standard logging of such objects."

The screen changed to display a real image of the same object, this time inside a biohazard containment chamber and bearing dents and scorching from re-entry. "It was not until the object subtly shifted orbit at the last minute and entered into a re-entry trajectory that the alarm was rasied, unfortunately for all of us it was already too late. Immediately preceeding and for some time post impact the object began dispersing a cocktail of various previously unknown micro-organisms, fungal spores, and seeds; the first response team on site had their respiratory systems completely overwhelmed within minutes." The screen changed once more, revealing an image of shala from low orbit, Even from orbit a pale green scar could be seen originating from the impact point, overtaking the pastel blue of the worlds native flora. "Before we knew what was heppening the foreign organism began overtaking our natural environment at an alarming rate, our forrests were broken down into slurry by alien bacteria, the air became choked with deadly spores and the most unfortunate were directly parisatized and consumed by aggressive flora; my sister..."

As the last prince of shala lapsed into silence representative k'tarr resumed the podium and glanced at the head of the assembly. "I'm sure many of you have similar stories to share, at present twenty one worlds have been overrun by the catalyst bioweapon and trillions have died." There was a commotion among the assembled delegates as the lanian representative broke down and had to be removed from the assembly. "Thanks to the bravery and sacrifice of mycorian scientists, and many others from all over the union we do now have at least some information about species fourteen. Reverse engineering of the catalyst weapons themselves suggests their spaceflight is surprisingly crude as each one utilizes only the most basic and inneficient of blink drives, analysis of the alloys used suggests they were manufactured under a lower gravity than is standard for habitable worlds. Finally sequenceing of the genomes of some of the bioweapon strains shows they share a common base, though we cannot expect species fourteens natural ecology to be remotely similar to that of their bioweapons our scientists believe we can still uncover valuble information about their metabolisms and the likely atmospheric composition of their homeworld."

The council chamber erupted in speculation as delegates considered the potential implications of such information and argued about how it should be used. As the chatter grew into a roar the delegate k'tarr once again had to raise their voice. "I'm sure you all have questions, even demands; before then I have one simple proposition. Scientsits from the mycorian republic working with the countil believe they have pinpointed the aproximate location of species fourteens homeworld. My government proposes a resolution to launch a covert expedition to this world in order to gather more information about our enemy in advance of a counterattack. If there are no objections to this proposal would the esteemed representatives please now cast their votes.

Originally made by swanjolras on tumblr, however that tumblr deactivated or renamed itself. Currently-working tumblr link (it's a reblog) and a Reddit screenshot

---

gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us— we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.

Originally written by injuries-in-dust on tumblr (non-tumblr link in case tumblr pushes you to make an account), not by me.

---

“Boredom is a dangerous thing to a human.”

“I don’t understand,” Chuul’s mandibles clicked nervously, “why not simply take the tool from the human.”

Minxx’s antennae stood straight up, a sign of shock, fear, or surprise, “You don’t simply take something from a human. If you do they will either turn the ship upside down trying to find it again, or they will replace it with something else that will lead to more destruction.

“I speak quite literally by the way. Human-Mark used to have a tool he called an “Hex Key” he used it to remove the doors to the clothing storage areas in his quarters because he was bored. When he lost it he literally turned the ship upside down by reversing the gravity.”

Chuul’s tentacles curled up defensively, “Gravity controls are locked, how-”

“No one knows how.” Minxx shook her small wings as the memory of suddenly falling upwards returned to her. “but his reasoning was that the tool would fall out of whatever hiding place it had come to rest within. He had not considered that all tables, chairs, equipment, and personnel, would also fall. It took weeks to clean.”

To be fair to the human, Mark had only intended to reverse the gravity in his own quarters but had, quote, “pushed the wrong button.” A sentence which would send fear through any intelligent creature in the known galaxy. To be completely unfair to the human, there were still stains on the ceiling in almost every room of the ship from dropped food, chemicals, various other liquids, and even a couple of empty bowels. Some races just didn’t find the idea of resting comfortably in their sleeping quarters, only to be suddenly awakened as they fell ten feet toward a ceiling which had now become a floor. Mark was no longer allowed near environmental controls.

Minxx continued, “He did not find this “Hex Key.” However, he did find the screwdriver and it seemed to please him when an owner was not located. The captain let him keep it since it seemed that it would keep him from doing any more strange things to locate his original lost tool. We did not consider-” she trailed off as her wings quivered again.

There was silence between them for a few moments, Minxx was almost unwilling to continue and Chuul was almost too afraid to press for more details. Slowly, but surely, Minxx calmed herself enough to speak again. “we did not consider what he may be able to do when armed with a leverage optimiser.”

“We were given shore leave while the ship was being fixed after the gravity incident. Thank goodness the captain took out act’s-of-human insurance or it would have cost the profits from our next five cargo hauls.” The premiums were high, but it was worth it. “After 14 rotations, human-Mark began to complain over the lack of stimulation, he called it “bored.” On the 15th rotation he disappeared for some time and he had hoped he had found some new activity to occupy his time.”

Chuul did, but at the same time didn’t, want to know, “Had he?”

Minxx waved her antennae in confirmation, “he had. He was located in one of the cargo holds, using the screwdriver to dismantle one of the mining probes. To, quote “see how it worked.” It was almost 90% deconstructed.”

Mark had claimed it was almost 10% REconstructed, as he was trying to put it back together again, but couldn't quite remember where all the parts went. In Mark’s words, the captain was a “glass half-empty kinda guy” (whatever that meant) and wrote DEconstructed on the claim form for a replacement probe.

Chuul’s natural camouflage kicked in and they took on the colour of the chair they were sitting on. “Those probes have no screws for the leverage optimiser to use, how did he-”

Minxx’s wings shivered again, “no one knows how. He just did.”

Chuul was silent for a moment. He’d never served on a ship with a human before. He’d heard they made things “interesting” and if you ever got into trouble, a human was the very best thing to ever have on your side. It was why they were so many job opportunities for humans in the alliance. All the same...the thought of a human causing such damage and destruction just because of a lack of mental, or physical, stimulation was a more than a little frightening. What if the human wanted to see how the engines worked, or the weapons?!! “Maybe I should transfer to another ship.”

Minxx’s antennae curled, a smile to her race. “You are safe. The captain has found a way to occupy our humans free time. During our last stopover, he commissioned a shiny orb be constructed.”

Chuul coked their head, “what is a shiny orb?”

Minxx’s curled antennae moved up an down; a sign of mild laughter. “It is nothing. A sphere made of shiny metals, humans do like shiny things, roughly two feet diameter made of a collection of gears, levers, screws and switches which appear complex and should have a function, but do entirely nothing. The captain handed it to Human-Mark and stated: “see if you can fix this.” and Mark has been “tinkering” with it during his off-duty hours for almost 24 rotations now. He can take it apart and rebuild it as many times as he likes, but it will never perform any task.”

Chuul was just thinking about how their captain must be a genius, when the door to the mess hall opened and Human-Mark entered. He was carrying the shiny orb under one arm, and his screwdriver in the other hand. He looked around, seemingly not noticing any of the crew members. He smiled when he spotted an empty liquid container and sat down at the table with the cup.

Chuul and Minxx watched curiously as Mark set the orb on the table in front of the cup. He used the screwdriver to tighten one small screw and flipped a switch. At once there was a whirring and clicking of clockwork, a blinking of lights hidden in the depths of the machine and even a TING from a small bell. Then a small funnel-shaped piece of metal opened up in the side of the machine and poured a small amount of hot, black, liquid into the cup.

Mark jumped to his feet, pumping the air and yelling loudly enough to send Chuul’s camouflage reflex off again. He grabbed the orb, abandoning the cup of steaming hot liquid, and moved to the door.

Minxx stared after them, “Human-Mark?”

Mark only paused for a second in the doorway. He was prominently displaying his predatory teeth. Chuul had read about these “smiles” but it was still disturbing to see. “Can’t stop Minxy. I gotta let the captain know I fixed his coffee maker.”

With that, he left. Leaving Chuul and Minxx frozen in place, dumbfounded.

Wherever Chuul was going to transfer to, Minxx began to hope she could get a posting on the same ship.

The Survivors

“How did your people survive your first contact with the humans?” Slaver Lord Abrax catches up with Guild Master Felbin right after the official part of the conference was over.

“Hm?” the fat albino wombat wonders while munching fried roaches, looking puzzled into the face of the mighty reptilian warrior. “What do you mean? Survive?”

“You said you made first contact recently with the humans, didn’t you?”

“Oh yes. Weird people. Crossed into an exclusive trade zone inside our border, nibbled at some asteroids without asking. I send a scout ships, delivered an angry message to them. They were all ‘Oh, did we something wrong? You claim these? We need fuel, can we make a deal?’”

Felbin shovels another hand full of roasted bugs into his mouth, munching happily.

“So they were in a weak position? And you did press your advantage?”

Between munching the wombat mumbles “Oh No. Their fleet was quite impressive. Two medium support carriers, around a dozen smaller escort ships, two dozen industrial ships. A lot more than we had at hand at that moment. We were quite surprised when they offered compensation for trespassing our territory and a pretty fair deal on keeping the resources. And they immediately entered trade talks with us.”

“Stop bullshitting me old usurer!” the reptilian growls “How in the world did you force the humans into submission? When we learned of the humans we send a slaver fleet to their world, numbering hundreds of mighty warships, demanding 0,2% of their population per year as tribute. A very fair deal as you will agree!”

The wombat did the equivalent of shrugging his shoulders “Well if you say so. How did it end?”

“It ended terrible for them! We killed millions of them by our penal operation when they rejected our generous offer!”

“Well, that is partially true but not the whole story.” Princess Shem, her large belly swollen by hundreds of eggs interrupts the discussion. Outranked, the Slaver Lord hissed in annoyance and fell silent.

“They fought your fleet back with monstrous weapons, vaporising your mighty flagship with a single one of their ungodly ‘Nukes’, even ships dozens of miles away had their outer hulls molten by this single attack. After less than an hour your fleet had scattered. The biggest damage your fleet did was raining debris on their world, killing a couple of million unprepared civilians.”

“How do you know…” the Slaver Lord gasps “Not a single Slaver made it back alive!”

The princess bows down her antennas in shame “Because my father, the rightful ruler of my people, is currently prisoner of war in the hands of the humans. He watched your foolish posturing on television in his prison cell and was allowed to report the incident back to his home world as a deterrent against future aggression.”

“Your people surrendered to the humans? How pitiful!” laughs the Slaver Lord.

“Surrendered? No, we were simply overrun. And we most likely only got off easy because the humans decided you were a bigger threat.”

The wombat looks at the princess in surprise “Oh, your people went at war with the humans too? But why?”

“Territorial dispute. They settled a barren world in a remote system, we had a claim on it for centuries. In return we annexed one of their border colonies, arrested their officials and put them on trial.”

Master Felbin put his empty bowl aside and reached for the wine. “Oh. I guess they send you an angry letter, did they?”

“The letter was lacking all rules of court.” boasted the princess with her antennae twitching angrily “It made demands were praise was required and disputed the obvious. It was literally an insult. Can you imagine? They demanded ‘a diplomatic talk’ and ‘compensation’.”

While grooming his fur Master Felbin dryly stated “Well, I know myself human diplomats and lawyers are a very special pest. The trade agreement we worked out with them is literally an epic in itself, surpassing absolutely any work of literature of my people in length and complexity. The chapter on the shape of bananas alone is over 1400 pages long. Thanks but no thanks."

Felbin licked some wine before continuing "So you found their diplomats lacking and tried if their warriors were more amicable and found them lacking too?”

The princess grumbles ashamed “We never met their warriors. They send a police assault unit and subdued our occupation force while we were hibernating…”

Slave Lord Abrax laughed aloud “Oh yes, we also found out the hard way that humans do not hibernate like most others do. In fact they only need a light sleep to recover and not much of it anyway. Also they can go for days without sleep. Freck. To keep up with them we needed to outnumber them 10 to one, taking turns in sleeping 18 hours and fighting one hour. And then they still manage to outdo us most of the time.”

Guild Master Felbin stopped licking at his expensive gobble of wine. “Aha, so you were pretty lucky when they offered you a somewhat fair peace deal?”

“Ending slavery was not a ‘somewhat fair peace deal’” Abrax railed “Our whole society was based on exploitation of the weak and now even high warriors have to clean their houses themselves and pay for mere services like food preparation. This is utterly unacceptable!”

“Oh dear, how pitiful you look.” Felbin giggled “And still both of you can be happy you survived your first contact with the humans almost intact.”

“Like there is any bigger disgrace than having ones father being prisoner of war.” Princess Shem grumbled.

“Or having to change your entire way of living.” Slaver Lord Abrax muttered.

“Yes, I think I am the lucky one of us three” smirked Felbin “although I have regular nightmares about human paper work recently. But trust me, compared to the devourers, we all got off easy.”

“The Devourers?” Abrax laughed “They are a myth. Parents tell their children about the Devourers when they don’t behave and need a good scare.” and with a mocking tone he continued “Head your parents words or the Devourers eat you!”

Even Princess Shem proclaimed with fervour: "As if nature would even allow such horrors! Beasts the size of a house, attacking entire worlds in apocalyptic numbers and devouring everything in their path."

“Oh, nonono. Devourers are not a myth.” the guild master explained “Yes, they haven’t swarmed in two centuries but my people still remember them from the old times when they crushed even the best defended worlds into dust during their reproduction cycle.”

Looking for something, Felbin continued “Actually, have you seen the Human Ambassador? Or, to be more precise, his young daughter?”

Shem turned her antennae towards the girl on the other side of the conference room: “She doesn't look anything special. For a human.”

“Nonono, also not the daughter. Her pet. The six legged creature sitting on her shoulder?”

Abrax and Shem looked puzzled at Guildmaster Felbin, then at the creature on the young girl's shoulder. The creature purred and played with the scraps of food the daughter offered to it.

“That is what is left of the devourers after the humans have tamed them.”

Found the first chapter of this on r/HFY and was entertained, saw it got posted offsite, thought I might share here. Warning for Wattpad.

Summary:

Humanity emerges from the aftermath of the technological singularity having conquered scarcity, disease, poverty, aging, death, and, or so they thought, even war. With the aid of artificial intelligence and uplifted animals they have founded a virtual Utopia among the stars where people work only for personal development, satisfaction, or selflessly for the benefit of others.

An attempt to help another space-faring species has unexpected consequences that threatens to engulf a whole region of space, and the Human Consensus is forced to intervene. When the small conflict grows into an existential threat to their entire civilization, humanity is forced for the first time to ask the question: can Utopia survive total war?

I was reading a TTRPG article and some of the things it said just made me think of a lot of HFY stories and with why nonhuman species/races are often written the way they are here, and how they are juxtaposed with humans to get a HFY effect. It might be stuff I might have known in the back of my head, but it feels different to have it actually written out by someone else.

In a section about always-good and always-evil fantasy races…

> All of which, by the by, highlights a very important thing about humans. Humans are uniquely and distinctly not always anything. They can rise and fall like no other race. And that makes them special and powerful and dangerous.

About fantasy races being more of a monoculture than having individuals…

> I know it’s a big part of why fantastic worlds feel fantastic. If every member of every race is a unique and distinct individual, then everyone’s just people. Some people are green and some have funny ears and some get to reroll the d20 whenever it shows a 1, but they’re all just people. And thus there’s nothing wonderful or special or magical or terrible or frightening about anything that isn’t human.

> Sorry, your elf isn’t special if he’s a unique individual. He’s just like everyone else.

This got a nice little subsection to itself:

> Do you know why always evil humanoids are great fodder for stories? It’s because they show what happens when, on a societal level, humans don’t rise above their base instincts. They represent humans who failed to create social orders that curb their impulses toward evil. Orcs are humans whose societies are governed by anger, bitterness, and hatred. Hobgoblins are humans whose societies are all about military conquest and enslavement. Goblins are humans whose societies reward the greedy, the grasping, the cowardly, and the lazy. It’s nice to be able to explore this shit without having to use stripped-down caricatures of historical societies that require more nuance to understand than what a story or game can handle.

> I’d also like to point out that even the good non-humans aren’t exactly aspirational in traditional fantasy. Take Tolkien’s elves or his ents for example. They were kind of crap. They did nothing, accomplished nothing, and changed nothing until spurred on by the normal, everyday, human people whom Frodo and Sam and Merry and Pippin — and to a lesser extent Aragorn — represented.

> Because humans are awesome when they make themselves awesome. When they don’t, though, they’re just the worst.

And then…

> Remember that all this shit’s really just to show how amazing the human capacity for self-determination really is. We don’t appreciate that because, well, we’re surrounded by humans in the real world. That’s why we need fantasy worlds to show us all sorts of creatures that lack the traits we humans take for granted.

Originally posted on r/HFY, also crossposted to the Royal Road. Features us healing aliens :)

In no particular order, some of the Humans Are Weird stories which the author, Betty Adams, often crossposts to the HFY sub on Reddit. I have linked to her website where she also hosts them, instead of Reddit.

One of my favorite HFY series from r/HFY. It’s urban fantasy mixed with slice of life. The author has since moved off Reddit and is now posting it on the Royal Road website!

This one’s sci-fi, and in my opinion pretty HFY too. I personally think it helps if you know stuff about Alan Turing, but if not it’s still a good read.

Link takes you to a PDF on an external site, not to a page on Reddit.

I’d say this was pretty well-known on r/hfy. Figured I ought to post it here!

If you don’t want to read 20 pages and just have time for the summary, you can find one on the story’s Wikipedia page!

Not my work but a very early and really moving example of HFY.

Copyright has run out so it is basically free. I suggest to read the linked version as it contains illustrations and legal mumbo jumbo:

A Pail of Air

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Pail of Air

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: A Pail of Air

Author: Fritz Leiber

Illustrator: Ed Emshwiller

Release date: March 15, 2016 \[eBook #51461\]

Language: English

\\\* START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PAIL OF AIR \\\*

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

A Pail of Air

By FRITZ LEIBER

Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction December 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The dark star passed, bringing with it eternal night and turning history into incredible myth in a single generation!

Pa had sent me out to get an extra pail of air. I'd just about scooped it full and most of the warmth had leaked from my fingers when I saw the thing.

You know, at first I thought it was a young lady. Yes, a beautiful young lady's face all glowing in the dark and looking at me from the fifth floor of the opposite apartment, which hereabouts is the floor just above the white blanket of frozen air. I'd never seen a live young lady before, except in the old magazines--Sis is just a kid and Ma is pretty sick and miserable--and it gave me such a start that I dropped the pail. Who wouldn't, knowing everyone on Earth was dead except Pa and Ma and Sis and you?

Even at that, I don't suppose I should have been surprised. We all see things now and then. Ma has some pretty bad ones, to judge from the way she bugs her eyes at nothing and just screams and screams and huddles back against the blankets hanging around the Nest. Pa says it is natural we should react like that sometimes.

When I'd recovered the pail and could look again at the opposite apartment, I got an idea of what Ma might be feeling at those times, for I saw it wasn't a young lady at all but simply a light--a tiny light that moved stealthily from window to window, just as if one of the cruel little stars had come down out of the airless sky to investigate why the Earth had gone away from the Sun, and maybe to hunt down something to torment or terrify, now that the Earth didn't have the Sun's protection.

I tell you, the thought of it gave me the creeps. I just stood there shaking, and almost froze my feet and did frost my helmet so solid on the inside that I couldn't have seen the light even if it had come out of one of the windows to get me. Then I had the wit to go back inside.

Pretty soon I was feeling my familiar way through the thirty or so blankets and rugs Pa has got hung around to slow down the escape of air from the Nest, and I wasn't quite so scared. I began to hear the tick-ticking of the clocks in the Nest and knew I was getting back into air, because there's no sound outside in the vacuum, of course. But my mind was still crawly and uneasy as I pushed through the last blankets--Pa's got them faced with aluminum foil to hold in the heat--and came into the Nest.

* * * * *

Let me tell you about the Nest. It's low and snug, just room for the four of us and our things. The floor is covered with thick woolly rugs. Three of the sides are blankets, and the blankets roofing it touch Pa's head. He tells me it's inside a much bigger room, but I've never seen the real walls or ceiling.

Against one of the blanket-walls is a big set of shelves, with tools and books and other stuff, and on top of it a whole row of clocks. Pa's very fussy about keeping them wound. He says we must never forget time, and without a sun or moon, that would be easy to do.

The fourth wall has blankets all over except around the fireplace, in which there is a fire that must never go out. It keeps us from freezing and does a lot more besides. One of us must always watch it. Some of the clocks are alarm and we can use them to remind us. In the early days there was only Ma to take turns with Pa--I think of that when she gets difficult--but now there's me to help, and Sis too.

It's Pa who is the chief guardian of the fire, though. I always think of him that way: a tall man sitting cross-legged, frowning anxiously at the fire, his lined face golden in its light, and every so often carefully placing on it a piece of coal from the big heap beside it. Pa tells me there used to be guardians of the fire sometimes in the very old days--vestal virgins, he calls them--although there was unfrozen air all around then and you didn't really need one.

He was sitting just that way now, though he got up quick to take the pail from me and bawl me out for loitering--he'd spotted my frozen helmet right off. That roused Ma and she joined in picking on me. She's always trying to get the load off her feelings, Pa explains. He shut her up pretty fast. Sis let off a couple of silly squeals too.

Pa handled the pail of air in a twist of cloth. Now that it was inside the Nest, you could really feel its coldness. It just seemed to suck the heat out of everything. Even the flames cringed away from it as Pa put it down close by the fire.

Yet it's that glimmery white stuff in the pail that keeps us alive. It slowly melts and vanishes and refreshes the Nest and feeds the fire. The blankets keep it from escaping too fast. Pa'd like to seal the whole place, but he can't--building's too earthquake-twisted, and besides he has to leave the chimney open for smoke.

Pa says air is tiny molecules that fly away like a flash if there isn't something to stop them. We have to watch sharp not to let the air run low. Pa always keeps a big reserve supply of it in buckets behind the first blankets, along with extra coal and cans of food and other things, such as pails of snow to melt for water. We have to go way down to the bottom floor for that stuff, which is a mean trip, and get it through a door to outside.

You see, when the Earth got cold, all the water in the air froze first and made a blanket ten feet thick or so everywhere, and then down on top of that dropped the crystals of frozen air, making another white blanket sixty or seventy feet thick maybe.

Of course, all the parts of the air didn't freeze and snow down at the same time.

First to drop out was the carbon dioxide--when you're shoveling for water, you have to make sure you don't go too high and get any of that stuff mixed in, for it would put you to sleep, maybe for good, and make the fire go out. Next there's the nitrogen, which doesn't count one way or the other, though it's the biggest part of the blanket. On top of that and easy to get at, which is lucky for us, there's the oxygen that keeps us alive. Pa says we live better than kings ever did, breathing pure oxygen, but we're used to it and don't notice. Finally, at the very top, there's a slick of liquid helium, which is funny stuff. All of these gases in neat separate layers. Like a pussy caffay, Pa laughingly says, whatever that is.

* * * * *

I was busting to tell them all about what I'd seen, and so as soon as I'd ducked out of my helmet and while I was still climbing out of my suit, I cut loose. Right away Ma got nervous and began making eyes at the entry-slit in the blankets and wringing her hands together--the hand where she'd lost three fingers from frostbite inside the good one, as usual. I could tell that Pa was annoyed at me scaring her and wanted to explain it all away quickly, yet could see I wasn't fooling.

"And you watched this light for some time, son?" he asked when I finished.

I hadn't said anything about first thinking it was a young lady's face. Somehow that part embarrassed me.

"Long enough for it to pass five windows and go to the next floor."

"And it didn't look like stray electricity or crawling liquid or starlight focused by a growing crystal, or anything like that?"

He wasn't just making up those ideas. Odd things happen in a world that's about as cold as can be, and just when you think matter would be frozen dead, it takes on a strange new life. A slimy stuff comes crawling toward the Nest, just like an animal snuffing for heat--that's the liquid helium. And once, when I was little, a bolt of lightning--not even Pa could figure where it came from--hit the nearby steeple and crawled up and down it for weeks, until the glow finally died.

"Not like anything I ever saw," I told him.

He stood for a moment frowning. Then, "I'll go out with you, and you show it to me," he said.

Ma raised a howl at the idea of being left alone, and Sis joined in, too, but Pa quieted them. We started climbing into our outside clothes--mine had been warming by the fire. Pa made them. They have plastic headpieces that were once big double-duty transparent food cans, but they keep heat and air in and can replace the air for a little while, long enough for our trips for water and coal and food and so on.

Ma started moaning again, "I've always known there was something outside there, waiting to get us. I've felt it for years--something that's part of the cold and hates all warmth and wants to destroy the Nest. It's been watching us all this time, and now it's coming after us. It'll get you and then come for me. Don't go, Harry!"

Pa had everything on but his helmet. He knelt by the fireplace and reached in and shook the long metal rod that goes up the chimney and knocks off the ice that keeps trying to clog it. Once a week he goes up on the roof to check if it's working all right. That's our worst trip and Pa won't let me make it alone.

"Sis," Pa said quietly, "come watch the fire. Keep an eye on the air, too. If it gets low or doesn't seem to be boiling fast enough, fetch another bucket from behind the blanket. But mind your hands. Use the cloth to pick up the bucket."

Sis quit helping Ma be frightened and came over and did as she was told. Ma quieted down pretty suddenly, though her eyes were still kind of wild as she watched Pa fix on his helmet tight and pick up a pail and the two of us go out.

* * * * *

Pa led the way and I took hold of his belt. It's a funny thing, I'm not afraid to go by myself, but when Pa's along I always want to hold on to him. Habit, I guess, and then there's no denying that this time I was a bit scared.

You see, it's this way. We know that everything is dead out there. Pa heard the last radio voices fade away years ago, and had seen some of the last folks die who weren't as lucky or well-protected as us. So we knew that if there was something groping around out there, it couldn't be anything human or friendly.

Besides that, there's a feeling that comes with it always being night, cold night. Pa says there used to be some of that feeling even in the old days, but then every morning the Sun would come and chase it away. I have to take his word for that, not ever remembering the Sun as being anything more than a big star. You see, I hadn't been born when the dark star snatched us away from the Sun, and by now it's dragged us out beyond the orbit of the planet Pluto, Pa says, and taking us farther out all the time.

I found myself wondering whether there mightn't be something on the dark star that wanted us, and if that was why it had captured the Earth. Just then we came to the end of the corridor and I followed Pa out on the balcony.

I don't know what the city looked like in the old days, but now it's beautiful. The starlight lets you see it pretty well--there's quite a bit of light in those steady points speckling the blackness above. (Pa says the stars used to twinkle once, but that was because there was air.) We are on a hill and the shimmery plain drops away from us and then flattens out, cut up into neat squares by the troughs that used to be streets. I sometimes make my mashed potatoes look like it, before I pour on the gravy.

Some taller buildings push up out of the feathery plain, topped by rounded caps of air crystals, like the fur hood Ma wears, only whiter. On those buildings you can see the darker squares of windows, underlined by white dashes of air crystals. Some of them are on a slant, for many of the buildings are pretty badly twisted by the quakes and all the rest that happened when the dark star captured the Earth.

Here and there a few icicles hang, water icicles from the first days of the cold, other icicles of frozen air that melted on the roofs and dripped and froze again. Sometimes one of those icicles will catch the light of a star and send it to you so brightly you think the star has swooped into the city. That was one of the things Pa had been thinking of when I told him about the light, but I had thought of it myself first and known it wasn't so.

He touched his helmet to mine so we could talk easier and he asked me to point out the windows to him. But there wasn't any light moving around inside them now, or anywhere else. To my surprise, Pa didn't bawl me out and tell me I'd been seeing things. He looked all around quite a while after filling his pail, and just as we were going inside he whipped around without warning, as if to take some peeping thing off guard.

I could feel it, too. The old peace was gone. There was something lurking out there, watching, waiting, getting ready.

Inside, he said to me, touching helmets, "If you see something like that again, son, don't tell the others. Your Ma's sort of nervous these days and we owe her all the feeling of safety we can give her. Once--it was when your sister was born--I was ready to give up and die, but your Mother kept me trying. Another time she kept the fire going a whole week all by herself when I was sick. Nursed me and took care of the two of you, too."

* * * * *

"You know that game we sometimes play, sitting in a square in the Nest, tossing a ball around? Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else. When it's tossed your way, you've got to catch it and hold it tight--and hope there'll be someone else to toss it to when you get tired of being brave."

His talking to me that way made me feel grown-up and good. But it didn't wipe away the thing outside from the back of my mind--or the fact that Pa took it seriously.

* * * * *

It's hard to hide your feelings about such a thing. When we got back in the Nest and took off our outside clothes, Pa laughed about it all and told them it was nothing and kidded me for having such an imagination, but his words fell flat. He didn't convince Ma and Sis any more than he did me. It looked for a minute like we were all fumbling the courage-ball. Something had to be done, and almost before I knew what I was going to say, I heard myself asking Pa to tell us about the old days, and how it all happened.

He sometimes doesn't mind telling that story, and Sis and I sure like to listen to it, and he got my idea. So we were all settled around the fire in a wink, and Ma pushed up some cans to thaw for supper, and Pa began. Before he did, though, I noticed him casually get a hammer from the shelf and lay it down beside him.

It was the same old story as always--I think I could recite the main thread of it in my sleep--though Pa always puts in a new detail or two and keeps improving it in spots.

He told us how the Earth had been swinging around the Sun ever so steady and warm, and the people on it fixing to make money and wars and have a good time and get power and treat each other right or wrong, when without warning there comes charging out of space this dead star, this burned out sun, and upsets everything.

You know, I find it hard to believe in the way those people felt, any more than I can believe in the swarming number of them. Imagine people getting ready for the horrible sort of war they were cooking up. Wanting it even, or at least wishing it were over so as to end their nervousness. As if all folks didn't have to hang together and pool every bit of warmth just to keep alive. And how can they have hoped to end danger, any more than we can hope to end the cold?

Sometimes I think Pa exaggerates and makes things out too black. He's cross with us once in a while and was probably cross with all those folks. Still, some of the things I read in the old magazines sound pretty wild. He may be right.

* * * * *

The dark star, as Pa went on telling it, rushed in pretty fast and there wasn't much time to get ready. At the beginning they tried to keep it a secret from most people, but then the truth came out, what with the earthquakes and floods--imagine, oceans of unfrozen water!--and people seeing stars blotted out by something on a clear night. First off they thought it would hit the Sun, and then they thought it would hit the Earth. There was even the start of a rush to get to a place called China, because people thought the star would hit on the other side. But then they found it wasn't going to hit either side, but was going to come very close to the Earth.

Most of the other planets were on the other side of the Sun and didn't get involved. The Sun and the newcomer fought over the Earth for a little while--pulling it this way and that, like two dogs growling over a bone, Pa described it this time--and then the newcomer won and carried us off. The Sun got a consolation prize, though. At the last minute he managed to hold on to the Moon.

That was the time of the monster earthquakes and floods, twenty times worse than anything before. It was also the time of the Big Jerk, as Pa calls it, when all Earth got yanked suddenly, just as Pa has done to me once or twice, grabbing me by the collar to do it, when I've been sitting too far from the fire.

You see, the dark star was going through space faster than the Sun, and in the opposite direction, and it had to wrench the world considerably in order to take it away.

The Big Jerk didn't last long. It was over as soon as the Earth was settled down in its new orbit around the dark star. But it was pretty terrible while it lasted. Pa says that all sorts of cliffs and buildings toppled, oceans slopped over, swamps and sandy deserts gave great sliding surges that buried nearby lands. Earth was almost jerked out of its atmosphere blanket and the air got so thin in spots that people keeled over and fainted--though of course, at the same time, they were getting knocked down by the Big Jerk and maybe their bones broke or skulls cracked.

We've often asked Pa how people acted during that time, whether they were scared or brave or crazy or stunned, or all four, but he's sort of leery of the subject, and he was again tonight. He says he was mostly too busy to notice.

You see, Pa and some scientist friends of his had figured out part of what was going to happen--they'd known we'd get captured and our air would freeze--and they'd been working like mad to fix up a place with airtight walls and doors, and insulation against the cold, and big supplies of food and fuel and water and bottled air. But the place got smashed in the last earthquakes and all Pa's friends were killed then and in the Big Jerk. So he had to start over and throw the Nest together quick without any advantages, just using any stuff he could lay his hands on.

I guess he's telling pretty much the truth when he says he didn't have any time to keep an eye on how other folks behaved, either then or in the Big Freeze that followed--followed very quick, you know, both because the dark star was pulling us away very fast and because Earth's rotation had been slowed in the tug-of-war, so that the nights were ten old nights long.

Still, I've got an idea of some of the things that happened from the frozen folk I've seen, a few of them in other rooms in our building, others clustered around the furnaces in the basements where we go for coal.

In one of the rooms, an old man sits stiff in a chair, with an arm and a leg in splints. In another, a man and woman are huddled together in a bed with heaps of covers over them. You can just see their heads peeking out, close together. And in another a beautiful young lady is sitting with a pile of wraps huddled around her, looking hopefully toward the door, as if waiting for someone who never came back with warmth and food. They're all still and stiff as statues, of course, but just like life.

Pa showed them to me once in quick winks of his flashlight, when he still had a fair supply of batteries and could afford to waste a little light. They scared me pretty bad and made my heart pound, especially the young lady.

* * * * *

Now, with Pa telling his story for the umpteenth time to take our minds off another scare, I got to thinking of the frozen folk again. All of a sudden I got an idea that scared me worse than anything yet. You see, I'd just remembered the face I'd thought I'd seen in the window. I'd forgotten about that on account of trying to hide it from the others.

What, I asked myself, if the frozen folk were coming to life? What if they were like the liquid helium that got a new lease on life and started crawling toward the heat just when you thought its molecules ought to freeze solid forever? Or like the electricity that moves endlessly when it's just about as cold as that? What if the ever-growing cold, with the temperature creeping down the last few degrees to the last zero, had mysteriously wakened the frozen folk to life--not warm-blooded life, but something icy and horrible?

That was a worse idea than the one about something coming down from the dark star to get us.

Or maybe, I thought, both ideas might be true. Something coming down from the dark star and making the frozen folk move, using them to do its work. That would fit with both things I'd seen--the beautiful young lady and the moving, starlike light.

The frozen folk with minds from the dark star behind their unwinking eyes, creeping, crawling, snuffing their way, following the heat to the Nest.

I tell you, that thought gave me a very bad turn and I wanted very badly to tell the others my fears, but I remembered what Pa had said and clenched my teeth and didn't speak.

We were all sitting very still. Even the fire was burning silently. There was just the sound of Pa's voice and the clocks.

And then, from beyond the blankets, I thought I heard a tiny noise. My skin tightened all over me.

Pa was telling about the early years in the Nest and had come to the place where he philosophizes.

"So I asked myself then," he said, "what's the use of going on? What's the use of dragging it out for a few years? Why prolong a doomed existence of hard work and cold and loneliness? The human race is done. The Earth is done. Why not give up, I asked myself--and all of a sudden I got the answer."

Again I heard the noise, louder this time, a kind of uncertain, shuffling tread, coming closer. I couldn't breathe.

"Life's always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold," Pa was saying. "The earth's always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet. And no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don't matter. What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some rich cloth or fur, or the petals of flowers--you've seen pictures of those, but I can't describe how they feel--or the fire's glow. It makes everything else worth while. And that's as true for the last man as the first."

And still the steps kept shuffling closer. It seemed to me that the inmost blanket trembled and bulged a little. Just as if they were burned into my imagination, I kept seeing those peering, frozen eyes.

"So right then and there," Pa went on, and now I could tell that he heard the steps, too, and was talking loud so we maybe wouldn't hear them, "right then and there I told myself that I was going on as if we had all eternity ahead of us. I'd have children and teach them all I could. I'd get them to read books. I'd plan for the future, try to enlarge and seal the Nest. I'd do what I could to keep everything beautiful and growing. I'd keep alive my feeling of wonder even at the cold and the dark and the distant stars."

But then the blanket actually did move and lift. And there was a bright light somewhere behind it. Pa's voice stopped and his eyes turned to the widening slit and his hand went out until it touched and gripped the handle of the hammer beside him.

* * * * *

In through the blanket stepped the beautiful young lady. She stood there looking at us the strangest way, and she carried something bright and unwinking in her hand. And two other faces peered over her shoulders--men's faces, white and staring.

Well, my heart couldn't have been stopped for more than four or five beats before I realized she was wearing a suit and helmet like Pa's homemade ones, only fancier, and that the men were, too--and that the frozen folk certainly wouldn't be wearing those. Also, I noticed that the bright thing in her hand was just a kind of flashlight.

The silence kept on while I swallowed hard a couple of times, and after that there was all sorts of jabbering and commotion.

They were simply people, you see. We hadn't been the only ones to survive; we'd just thought so, for natural enough reasons. These three people had survived, and quite a few others with them. And when we found out how they'd survived, Pa let out the biggest whoop of joy.

They were from Los Alamos and they were getting their heat and power from atomic energy. Just using the uranium and plutonium intended for bombs, they had enough to go on for thousands of years. They had a regular little airtight city, with air-locks and all. They even generated electric light and grew plants and animals by it. (At this Pa let out a second whoop, waking Ma from her faint.)

But if we were flabbergasted at them, they were double-flabbergasted at us.

One of the men kept saying, "But it's impossible, I tell you. You can't maintain an air supply without hermetic sealing. It's simply impossible."

That was after he had got his helmet off and was using our air. Meanwhile, the young lady kept looking around at us as if we were saints, and telling us we'd done something amazing, and suddenly she broke down and cried.

They'd been scouting around for survivors, but they never expected to find any in a place like this. They had rocket ships at Los Alamos and plenty of chemical fuel. As for liquid oxygen, all you had to do was go out and shovel the air blanket at the top level. So after they'd got things going smoothly at Los Alamos, which had taken years, they'd decided to make some trips to likely places where there might be other survivors. No good trying long-distance radio signals, of course, since there was no atmosphere to carry them around the curve of the Earth.

Well, they'd found other colonies at Argonne and Brookhaven and way around the world at Harwell and Tanna Tuva. And now they'd been giving our city a look, not really expecting to find anything. But they had an instrument that noticed the faintest heat waves and it had told them there was something warm down here, so they'd landed to investigate. Of course we hadn't heard them land, since there was no air to carry the sound, and they'd had to investigate around quite a while before finding us. Their instruments had given them a wrong steer and they'd wasted some time in the building across the street.

* * * * *

By now, all five adults were talking like sixty. Pa was demonstrating to the men how he worked the fire and got rid of the ice in the chimney and all that. Ma had perked up wonderfully and was showing the young lady her cooking and sewing stuff, and even asking about how the women dressed at Los Alamos. The strangers marveled at everything and praised it to the skies. I could tell from the way they wrinkled their noses that they found the Nest a bit smelly, but they never mentioned that at all and just asked bushels of questions.

In fact, there was so much talking and excitement that Pa forgot about things, and it wasn't until they were all getting groggy that he looked and found the air had all boiled away in the pail. He got another bucket of air quick from behind the blankets. Of course that started them all laughing and jabbering again. The newcomers even got a little drunk. They weren't used to so much oxygen.

Funny thing, though--I didn't do much talking at all and Sis hung on to Ma all the time and hid her face when anybody looked at her. I felt pretty uncomfortable and disturbed myself, even about the young lady. Glimpsing her outside there, I'd had all sorts of mushy thoughts, but now I was just embarrassed and scared of her, even though she tried to be nice as anything to me.

I sort of wished they'd all quit crowding the Nest and let us be alone and get our feelings straightened out.

And when the newcomers began to talk about our all going to Los Alamos, as if that were taken for granted, I could see that something of the same feeling struck Pa and Ma, too. Pa got very silent all of a sudden and Ma kept telling the young lady, "But I wouldn't know how to act there and I haven't any clothes."

The strangers were puzzled like anything at first, but then they got the idea. As Pa kept saying, "It just doesn't seem right to let this fire go out."

* * * * *

Well, the strangers are gone, but they're coming back. It hasn't been decided yet just what will happen. Maybe the Nest will be kept up as what one of the strangers called a "survival school." Or maybe we will join the pioneers who are going to try to establish a new colony at the uranium mines at Great Slave Lake or in the Congo.

Of course, now that the strangers are gone, I've been thinking a lot about Los Alamos and those other tremendous colonies. I have a hankering to see them for myself.

You ask me, Pa wants to see them, too. He's been getting pretty thoughtful, watching Ma and Sis perk up.

"It's different, now that we know others are alive," he explains to me. "Your mother doesn't feel so hopeless any more. Neither do I, for that matter, not having to carry the whole responsibility for keeping the human race going, so to speak. It scares a person."

I looked around at the blanket walls and the fire and the pails of air boiling away and Ma and Sis sleeping in the warmth and the flickering light.

"It's not going to be easy to leave the Nest," I said, wanting to cry, kind of. "It's so small and there's just the four of us. I get scared at the idea of big places and a lot of strangers."

He nodded and put another piece of coal on the fire. Then he looked at the little pile and grinned suddenly and put a couple of handfuls on, just as if it was one of our birthdays or Christmas.

"You'll quickly get over that feeling son," he said. "The trouble with the world was that it kept getting smaller and smaller, till it ended with just the Nest. Now it'll be good to have a real huge world again, the way it was in the beginning."

I guess he's right. You think the beautiful young lady will wait for me till I grow up? I'll be twenty in only ten years.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PAIL OF AIR ***

This is a massively reworked repost. The original has been posted a couple of weeks ago. I reworked it several times so it bears little connection to the original.

...

Yorktown

Yorktown

Chapter 1: First Blood

Admiral Tosomo of the Heraldry fleet tightened his safety belt one last time in the command room aboard the 'Fist of the Six Kingdoms'. Moments later, his fleet dropped out of warp, catching the unprepared Terran Proxima Fleet off guard. A cunning attack on the warp inhibitors allowed his fleet to strike directly at the heart of the enemy's main fleet base. Just five minutes earlier, the Empire of the Hundred Suns had officially declared war on the Terran Federation.

Tosomo began issuing orders from his prepared checklist. Everything was going according to plan so far. "Launch all bombers, followed by the fighters! Rail-guns, target their launch bays! Prevent their drones and fighters from launching!"

A rain of death and destruction descended upon the unprepared base, causing ships to explode and turning the battle into a one-sided massacre. However, Tosomo felt unsatisfied as half of the expected enemy fleet was nowhere to be seen, particularly the heavy carriers. Nevertheless, he had managed to lay ruin to a third of the coreward Terran fleet.

"My Lord," a young officer reported with a polite salute, "a fleet is approaching at high speed. Seven carriers and twenty-eight support destroyers. They have already deployed their drones and are advancing in full battle readiness!"

Surprised, Admiral Tosomo felt his neck fur bristle. Some enemies had not only managed to avoid complete annihilation, but they had also regrouped quickly for a counter-attack!

With his own troops running low on ammunition and out of position, Tosomo ordered an orderly withdrawal. Most of his objectives had been achieved, and now it was time to minimize losses.

"All fighters and bombers, disengage and break contact!” Tosomo commanded, “Wings still armed with anti-ship weapons, delay the enemy fleet as much as possible. Your bravery will be honored in the afterlife. All other wings, fall back to the nearest carrier. To all fleet ships: prepare for an orderly withdrawal."

As the Imperial fleet aligned for the withdrawal, two wings of heavy bombers headed towards the approaching Terran fleet, ready to meet the honorable death of an Imperial knight. Out of the 26 Imperial bombers, 21 were destroyed by the drones, SHORAD, and CIWS of the Terran fleet. Four bombers rammed into support destroyers, reducing them to molten wrecks, while one hit the bridge of the light carrier Yorktown, causing her to lose control and break formation, with fires raging on half of her decks.

With most of their objectives fulfilled, the Imperial Fleet departed, leaving behind burning wrecks and ruins, marking the beginning of the second interstellar war against the Terran Federation.

...

Chapter 2: To Victory

"You have performed admirably, Heraldry Admiral Tosomo," praised the Emperor personally during the audience, commending Tosomo for his remarkable success. It been just three weeks ago since the significant blow to the Terran Federation, with only 26 bombers lost while eliminating the most significant obstacle in the campaign to gain control of the Centauri system.

"Thank you, Your Highness," Tosomo replied, "May your light shine upon your knights and your shadow fall upon your enemies."

On the sidelines, the Emperor's sycophants and courtiers rejoiced at the imminent victory. However, Tosomo remained silent, accepting the praise while knowing that the battle was far from over.

And no sooner had he left the throne room than his adjutant approached him with grave news.

"My Lord, a ragtag fleet has just attacked supply outpost seventeen. The enemy fleet consisted of two light carriers with four destroyers for support. The leading carrier was the Yorktown."

Again, Tosomo felt the fur on the back of his neck stand up. The Yorktown... she was supposed to be a wreck. The bridge, the sensors—everything had been destroyed, akin to a decapitation by a sword. He had witnessed the fires raging below deck. Impossible.

He straighten up. "Prepare the second detachment. I will personally deal with the Yorktown."

One month later, Tosomo stood on the command deck of the 'Fist of the Six Kingdoms' once again. And there, facing him, was the Yorktown. She bore the scars of her previous battle but had been mostly repaired. A new tower, new sensors, new drones. She had not perished last time. But today, she would meet her end.

The enemy fleet was headed to join the main fleet, with the Imperial Fleet hot on their tail. The knights in their fighters and bombers closed in, overwhelming the main defenses of the enemy fleet. They fell swiftly, but not without a brutal fight. Only the Yorktown remained, her drones assembled around her, her flight deck riddled with holes, her guns glowing hot. She defiantly withstood the relentless assault of a superior enemy for another moment.

Finally Tosomo saluted the valiant ship as her engine exploded, tearing apart her aft section. She had fought bravely, but it had been a matter of honor for Tosomo to be the one to end her. He had gambled high to achieve his goal. Perhaps too high. Not only had he lost one wing of his best pilots to the enemy, but now his other five wings were dangerously low on fuel. The Terran Fleet's main force was closing in rapidly, their spearhead wings already engaging the depleted Imperial wings.

Tosomo decided to cut his losses and ordered the three most distant wings to die in honor while directing his fleet to retreat to safety. As his fleet disappeared into the darkness of deep space, the Yorktown continued to burn brightly while the Terran main fleet annihilated the remaining Imperial stragglers.

...

Chapter 3: Waypoint Station

Tosomo personally welcomed the replacement pilots aboard his fleet. Word had spread about the Yorktown, a mysterious ghost ship returning from the dead to haunt the living.

"You are following in the footsteps of the Empire's most honorable knights. We Knights strike hard, we knights strike fast, we knights hunt down our enemies without mercy. Do not believe the enemy's lies about the ghost ship. I personally witnessed her destruction. She is no more. Let the story of the Yorktown serve as a warning to our enemies that we never allow them to escape after shedding our blood."

He looked into the faces of the young recruits. They looked green, insecure. Those weren’t the elite knights he had to sacrifice to hunt down the Yorktown. But they would have to suffice for now. They would have to do for the upcoming campaign to capture Way-Point Station. A rotten dirt ball in the middle of nowhere, but also the most important resupply outpost within four light years.

Three months later his fleet dropped from warp, far away from Way-Point station. Eight heavy carriers, twelve battleships, sixty smaller escort ships. The Terran Warp-Scramblers were plenty and powerful, so this was the closest he could get to the outpost. He couldn't even determine the exact location of the enemy fleet, but he knew they faced the same challenge. The Imperial Fleet burned their engines hot to create distance from the warp exit point. Scouts raced off into the dark, fighters formed defensive screens around the fleet, and bombers prepared for action. After three days of stalking in the darkness, the scouts had reported only minimal enemy activity towards Way-Point Station.

The overall absence of enemy presence suggested that the station had no fleet defending it. Tosomo ordered his fleet to advance towards the station, preparing for planetary bombardment. From a safe distance, he launched his bombers and escort fighters, ready to surprise the station as he had done months ago against the Proxima base.

However, with his wings just halfway to the enemy base all hell broke lose! Several enemy scouts appeared from a different direction than the enemy base! Impossible! But what if the enemy fleet was nearby? Did both fleets pass each other just out of sensor range?

Tosomo immediately called back all fighters and bombers. He hastily launched his fighter reserve for fleet defense, urgently needed space in his hangars to accommodate the returning bombers, had to refit them for fleet operation, all while his flight decks were in utter chaos.

Just as he completed the reconfiguration, enemy bombers appeared on the sensors—six wings, a massive fleet. That was the complete complement of a heavy carrier! How could he have missed such a significant target?

His reserve fighters barely managed in time to engage the Terran bombers in a brutal fight and eventually emerged victorious. Meanwhile, his bombers and fighters returned from their interrupted assault on Way-Point Station, causing a bottleneck on the landing deck. Fighter after fighter, bomber after bomber waited for their landing clearance, resulting in overcrowding and confusion, several wings needing ammunition or armed with the wrong ammunition

Tosomo made the decision to reconfigure half of his fighters for fleet defense while refitting the other fighters and all bombers for anti-ship combat. He had just dispatched his first bomber wing to the suspected location of the enemy when the sirens blared again—more bombers were approaching from Way-Point Station!

The green fighters of his reserve wing attacked the enemy straight forward and without fear. And sure they won but by paying a terrible price in blood.

...

Chapter 4: A rock and a hard place

Just when Tosomo thought he would get a break another wing approached from another direction – there was only one sane conclusion: His fleet was trapped between two fleets and Way-point Station! They could attack from three sides at will. Unbeknownst to Tosomo, the last wing had been mistakenly sent in the wrong direction and was now returning with its fuel dangerously low, inadvertently stumbling upon the Imperial fleet.

His half refitted bombers and fighters filled his hangers, his fleet was essentially not combat-ready. Whatever was combat ready he threw into the meat grinder, several unorganized fighters from several ships joined the fray – within minutes, hundreds of fighters and bombers darted on fiery lances in the endless dark, tracer rounds drew lines across the darkness, explosions flashed through the sky. Even Tosomo struggled to keep up with the fierce fighting happening so close to his fleet.

Amidst the chaos a single enemy bomber slipped through and went straight for the open hangar bay of the heavy carrier ‘Spirit of the Ancestors’. The carriers guns spat fire and death towards the intruder, damaging him but not stopping him. The bomber crashed into the hanger, full of armed ships, full of ammunition. What happened next was a fierce flash as the ‘Spirit of the Ancestors’ was simply vaporized from internal explosions!

Tosomo slumped back in his seat, horrified by the sudden loss of one of his most valuable ships. His fleet was trapped, and the enemy continued to relentlessly attack. The Terrans had already lost seven full wings, yet another wing appeared on the sensors.

Finally a scout reported the location of one of the enemies fleets.

Six carriers. Two heavy carriers, four light carriers. Among them...

The Yorktown!

Bearing even more scars from her last battles. However, still she was moving under full power, riding on bright flames towards Tosomos fleet! Where he had seen her old engines explode, new pristine engines drove her forward, out of hell towards him, driven by a thirst for revenge. She unleashed fighters, bombers, and drones without end, accompanied by her fellow ships. Seven more wings were heading towards Tosomo's fleet, and there could be even more.

Tosomo gave the order to launch any armed fighter and bomber, regardless of their fitting. He sent the ground attack bombers against Way-Point Station and two formations of anti-ship bombers against the two fleets, against the fleet he successfully scouted, and the one he mistakenly believed to exits but was just the single enemy wing having lost its way. It was a last gamble before the hammer would come down on him.

When the Terran fighters and Imperial bombers engaged above Tosomo's fleet, it turned into a massacre. For the first time, the Imperials suffered significant losses and became increasingly disorganized. A random anti-ship missile struck another carrier, causing it to lose power. An enemy fighter pursued an Imperial fighter near Tosomo's flagship – the carriers CIWS made quick work of the Terran fighter but also of the Imperial fighter, both crashing into Tosomos ship. One hit the engines, while the other crashed so close to the bridge that the bridge decompressed, causing all systems to go offline.

Tosomo found himself hurled through the bridge, surrounded by debris. His adjutant was impaled by a steel bar, and Tosomo briefly lost consciousness. When he regained awareness, two ensigns were dragging him to a shuttle and informed him they were abandoning ship and transferring to the battleship 'Worlds on Fire.' Just as he boarded the shuttle, a massive explosion rocked the carrier, and through the hangar shields, he witnessed the 'Valiant Victory' drifting, ablaze and leaking atmosphere—another heavy carrier lost.

Upon reaching his new command deck on the 'Worlds on Fire,' he surveyed the losses. Out of the eight heavy carriers, four were completely lost. Two were burning but salvageable. The enemy fighters and bombers were retreating after suffering heavy losses. His own fighters still were so numerous that he didn’t even have space to land them on his last two carriers, not to mention the many bombers operating in the deepness of space.

Meanwhile, his bombers had reached Way-Point Station and commenced bombing empty hangars, depleted ammunition depots, and half empty fuel depots. A pointless operation, Way-Point Station was just an empty shell after having dealt massive damage to his fleet.

Shortly after this Pyrrhic victory, the anti-ship wings Tosomo had launched earlier finally encountered the enemy carrier group. Two Terran fighter wings met them face on and Tosomos bombers melted away like snow in the summer sun, under the combined fire of the fleet and the fighters. However, an Imperial wing managed to break through the Terran line, firing their ordinance at the Terran fleet, resulting in the destruction of several support ships and direct hits on three carriers. Among them, the Yorktown suffered significant damage, losing its main maneuver thrusters and spiraling out of control.

With no place to retreat, the Imperial bombers received the final order from Tosomo: fight to the death. The Yorktown. He realized how much of a symbol she had become. A symbol which he intended to destroy, no matter the costs. Out of spite, he ordered his doomed wings to focus their attacks on the Yorktown.

The battle around the Terran fleet intensified as they valiantly defended the Yorktown. Despite the Terrans efforts, the Imperial bombers managed to strike the Yorktown seven more times until she finally broke in two, her keel shattered and her gut spilling into space.

Tis was good. The Yorktown was no more. A flawed but personal victory for Tosomo.

He immediately ordered his fleet to retreat, but it was not an orderly withdrawal. It was a desperate run for their lives. He left behind the wreckage of four carriers, two battleships, and six escort ships. Compared to his initial strength, only one-third of the fighters and bombers managed to squeeze into the remaining hangars, leaving a quarter of them behind with no room to land. They had no choice but to fight to the end, devoid of ammunition and fuel. They refused to surrender, and the Terran fleet simply waited for them to suffocate in the dark, cold void of space.

...

Chapter 5: The Ghost Ship

"So you have finally brought the Emperor's justice upon the Yorktown, Heraldry Admiral Tosomo."

Tosomo couldn't ignore the slight insecurity in the Emperor's voice, though he would never mention that publicly.

"Yes, Your Highness. She is no more. She broke in two. We haven't seen her for six months. She is gone."

Since the Battle of Way-Point Station, the Imperial fleet had been force into defense, and at Tosomo's request, he was now overseeing the fleet's rebuilding.

The Emperor waved his hand, and a hologram of a battle appeared in the middle of the room.

"Then explain this to me."

The Yorktown! Her flight deck ablaze! She was sailing without power above the burning Imperial colony of Oshtay Prime, surrounded by Terran and Imperial wrecks. The Terrans had rebuilt her AGAIN! The damaged midsection was visibly replaced with a new one, made from a different material. She had even gotten larger through this repair, now easily classifying as a medium assault carrier.

"My Lord, this cannot be true! I saw her... but... it is her! I recognize her scars! It is the Yorktown again! My Lord, I have no excuse for my failure."

"This is getting out of hand," thundered the Emperor. "The Empire is becoming alarmed by the rampant myths surrounding this insignificant ship. Even the children fear the undying Yorktown."

Tosomo didn't dare to look at the Emperor as his voice boomed through the hall.

"I, Emperor Yaday the 19th, command you to restore your honor by putting an end to this insult to our might once and for all. Dismissed."

Etiquette demanded that Tosomo remain silent and depart the hall, his face bowed in shame. Thankfully, this concealed his horrified expression from the Emperor.

...

Chapter 6: Undying

It happened again. At the battle of Leifstein the Yorktown showed up again. Bearing scars all over her hull she engaged in a one-on-one battle with Tosomo’s heavy carrier. She ultimately lost but managed to ram her burning hulk into a nearby Imperial battleship. Then Tosomo was then forced to order his fleet to fall back to avoid being flanked by the Terran main fleet.

Just two days later, Tosomo witnessed the badly damaged Yorktown escorting a troop carrier, using her SHORAD and CIWS systems to protect the troops during their landing. The bow of the Yorktown was mostly gone, ripped away, exposing her interior structure. Although unable to function as a carrier, her guns proved effective in suppressing the imperial ground forces. In the end, the Yorktown crash-landed alongside the troop carrier, and her crew joined the ground assault. As a result, the Imperial fleet had to break orbit after losing their ground-to-orbit cover.

Following a brutal six-week slaughter, the colony fell. The Emperor's personal order was for his troops to fight to the last drop of blood, demonstrating to the Terrans the high cost of further incursions into Imperial territory. Thus, his troops perished while fulfilling their duty. Out of nearly three million Imperial soldiers, fewer than 300 survived. The toll on the Terran side was also significant, but their war machine, now running at full steam, showed little sign of slowing down.

Four weeks later, the Yorktown reappeared, hastily patched together but already operating at 80% efficiency. While patrolling supply lines, she encountered an Imperial fleet detachment and rescued an Amazonax Super Freighter from certain destruction. Facing an Imperial light carrier and two escort ships, the commanders on both sides stared each other down for a minute before the Terran Captain transmitted his laughter via radio to his enemy and ordered the attack on the superior force.

The Imperial ships' final transmission reported a burning escort ship, one escort ship dishonoring itself by fleeing with dozens of fighters in pursuit, and the Yorktown ramming her nose directly into the bridge of the Imperial carrier. The Yorktown had been leaking atmosphere even before the ramming operation, so her crew was as good as dead. The next day, Terran news reported the successful boarding and capture of the imperial light carrier by the Yorktown's crew—an unprecedented feat in the age of space combat!

When the Terran fleet reached the last world before the Imperial planetopolis two months later, it was hardly a fair fight. The Imperial ships were in dire shape, with even their vac-doors failing to seal properly due to a lack of spare parts. For every Imperial ship there were three Terran ship, for every Imperial fighter there were five Terran fighters, for every Imperial bombers there were three Terran bombers, twice the size of the Imperial ones.

The battle commenced with the Yorktown flanking the enemy and launching waves of bombers at the Imperial supply ships. The results were devastating for the Imperial force. What was expected to be a months-long siege was reduced to a battle lasting days before supplies ran out. Sure, the Yorktown got punished hard—railguns and torpedoes tore open her portside, she began to tumble and slowly descend into the atmosphere, trailed by dozens of enemy and friendly fighters and bombers locked in combat. When she crashed into the south pole's ice, she lost her bridge once again, broke her keel, and half of her decks burned out. Nevertheless, her surviving crew held out in the grim cold isolation for three weeks until rescue arrived.

The last Imperial transmission from the world of 'Gods Praise' depicted heavy Terran carriers towing the wreckage of the Yorktown into the newly conquered Imperial docks for repairs. The Yorktown had become an almost unrecognizable heap of junk and twisted metal.

For the first time, Imperial forces surrendered en masse on the ground and in orbit. When the Imperial knights were asked about their surrender, many claimed they were afraid of the undead ship. That they believed they couldn't fight an enemy that returned ceaselessly from the afterlife to fulfill her duty.

...

Chapter 7: Endgame

The palace of Emperor Yaday the 19th shook under heavy shock waves. The end was nigh; it was obvious to everyone except the Emperor. The Terran fleet darkened the sky and swiftly overwhelmed the orbital defenses. The once honorable knights of the Empire still stood before the enemy, but they were so few in number, most knights now were fearful youngsters, hastily conscripted, filled with doubt and fear. They surrendered in droves.

Heraldry Admiral Tosomo stared down the Imperial bodyguards.

"Let me in. This is your final warning," he commanded.

The last of the Emperor's bodyguards stood at gunpoint, facing Tosomo's personal knights.

"We cannot. We have sworn an oath," one replied as they reached for their swords.

"Very well. May the gods honor your loyalty. I will not."

Tosomo waved his hand, and his knights gunned down the Emperor's bodyguards. Without wasting a second, they broke through the door to the throne room, surrounding the Emperor without an Empire, their guns pointed at him.

"Put an end to this madness NOW!" Tosomo barked.

"You are betraying your oath, subordinate!"

Tosomo held up a communication device, displaying the face of a human admiral.

"I am Grand Admiral Wilhelm Praetorius the Elder, commander of the allied Terran Fleets. We are prepared for a full-scale invasion of your last world. Your game is over. Save face and salvage what remains of your Empire. Surrender now."

"Never!" Yaday defiantly cried out.

"Then we will send the Yorktown after you. She witnessed the beginning of this war and will witness its end. This frequency will remain open until she arrives."

Tosomo had reached his breaking point. He stormed forward, grabbed his Emperor by the collar, held a gun against his head, and dragged him toward the balcony.

"Look at what you have brought upon your Empire! Upon your Heir! Upon your people!"

A distant light in the sky gradually descended and accelerated, leaving behind a trail of smoke and fire. It seemed to move slowly, but that was an illusion; the object was simply far away and immense. Slowly, the light grew brighter, the flames surrounding it became more distinct, and its shape began to take form. The flames receded, and the silhouette became recognizable—it was the Yorktown, heading straight for the palace!

"They wouldn't dare!" cried Yaday.

"Think, you fool!" shouted Tosomo. "Your Heir is in this very palace. Your entire family is in this city! You have mere moments to save your family, your dynasty!"

The Yorktown thundered above the roofs of the peasant quarters. Windows shattered and roofs collapsed from the powerful shockwave. It was now evident that she was a crude patchwork of different metal plates, a wounded and vengeful monster. Nevertheless, Yaday remained resolute.

Tosomo took a deep breath. These might be his final words in this world.

"Yaday, do you understand what will happen when the Yorktown arrives? Your dynasty will perish, and the Yorktown will be repaired to sail the stars once more. Do you want to grant a piece of junk the honor of ending an 80-generation heraldic line? Do you?"

Yaday realized the gravity of these words. He twitched briefly in shock, grabbed the communicator, the bow of the fast approaching Yorktown now casting a colossal shadow over the Imperial gardens before him.

“I surrender! Stop her! Stop the Yorktown!”

With those words spoken, the reverse thrusters of the Yorktown engaged. A tempest roared through the gardens, uprooted trees, shattered windows, raised a cloud of dust across the palace. Yaday and Tosomo were blown off their feet, fell backward into the throne hall. Yet, the Yorktown continued moving forward.

She grew larger and larger, dominating the sky. Her bow loomed higher than the Imperial palace. The storm transformed into a hurricane, shaking the very foundations of the Empire. The cries of Yaday and Tosomo were drowned out by the deafening hurricane.

Then, silence.

Tosomo peered out to the balcony. All he could see was the bow of the Yorktown, obstructing the view of the outside world. The ship that had hunted him for years, the ship that refused go down. She stood unmoving for a moment, hovering above the garden, her bow so close to the balcony that Tosomo could almost touch her. Then, she descended a few feet and sank into the soft grass of the imperial garden. And never moved again.

For the first time, Tosomo didn't see the Yorktown as an enemy. She was a noble warrior who had reached the end of her duty. And laid down her sword without question when her fight was over. She bore countless scars. Tosomo examined her armor. Made from the hulls of her slain adversaries—the 'Fist of the Six Kingdoms,' the 'Valiant Victory,' the 'King's Honor,' the 'Protector of the Light'. And so many more. Not a single piece of her hull originated from Terran forges after all those battles.

He took a step closer, reached out, and briefly touched the still-hot hull.

"May you find peace now, my honorable adversary.” he whispered.

“May we all find safety from your wrath."

Did you ever hear the tragedy of the Martians who invaded Earth? I thought not. It's not a story the humans would tell you. It's an old legend of theirs. The Martians were rulers of the planet Mars in the Sol system, the same system as Earth, so powerful and so wise they were able to build spaceships capable of crossing the void between the planets and walking on the surface... They had such a knowledge of science that they could do this before the humans even invented flight! The Martian evolution was so advanced in time that they could even keep their species alive against all attacks. Their ships were considered by many humans to be unnatural, more like monsters of the deep than spacecraft. They became so powerful... the only thing they were afraid of was losing their supremacy to the rapidly advancing humans, which eventually, of course, they did. Unfortunately they did not check Earth well enough to find it a death world well beyond Mars, and so soon after they landed to try and take it for their own, the microscopic life humans took for granted killed them in their sleep. Ironic. They could travel the void, save their race from all they had done to their world, but they could not save themselves from Earth.

All human stories and ideas seem to have a life of their own because in a way, they do.

Long ago, life evolved on a death world, Earth, and the aliens of the galaxy feared us. Their greatest weapons didn't stop our planet from creating sophont life; even their last ditch attempt to wipe out our biosphere only killed off the dinosaurs, and monkeys took the lead a mere few hundred million years later. It didn't last.

So they tried a new tactic. They built a gigastructure around our solar system, traveling with it, a truly titanic version of their psychic entertainment brains, in the hope that it would keep us occupied with whatever fiction we created, too interested in chronicling the adventures of our favorite characters to move beyond our planet.

The first indicator something was wrong was when the storage began filling up faster than expected. Then again, humans had just invented mass communications in the form of printed books; it made sense that they'd see an initial spike in simulations. Frankly it was taking an embarrasingly long time for them to reach that point, and the Council was beginning to fear their idea might've been too successful.

That fear was replaced quickly once humans started running simulations of spaceflight and FTL on the brain. They didn't even know they were doing it, a few of them just had otherwise interesting ideas that the brain then picked up, and despite its aim of distracting humanity it could only do so much to obfuscate how reality worked. At some point, if made it too unlikely, the humans lost interest.

And the Council had sealed it from external control, fearful of a couple of the lesser (than Earth, anyways) Deathworlders working to free their brethren.

Even this might not have been such an issue, until one day the humans managed to figure out interconnected networks, almost subconsciously, from the brain's psychic feedback.

The Internet was born. All was somewhat worrying, but still manageable, for about 30 Earth years.

Then suddenly, the number of simulations went exponential inside a single decade. Permutation upon permutation, run through billions of human minds each with their own way to process and see the world, started rapidly filling the previously unthinkably expansive storage of the brain.

And the population of the galaxy could only watch on in horror as fan fiction and battles of theory turned the human species into a collective tactical, logical, and genre savvy race of masterminds while the brain's systems sped towards their maximum at a pace never seen before....

A Spark in the Dark

In a universe constrained by the absolute speed of light, we, the Shrill, are the oldest and most powerful beings within our local light cone. We allow no one to rise before us. Any spark we discover in the endless dark is extinguished before it becomes a blazing fire. So when we received another powerful radio signal seeking friendship, we knew what we had to do.

Eliminate the source.

This may sound brutal, but it has ensured our continued existence for over 10,000 years. The rules of the game are simple: anyone who makes the universe aware of their presence is a valid target. My people have maintained perfect radio silence throughout our existence. To the universe, we do not exist except when we strike. In the dark forest of the universe, the tiniest sparkle becomes a target for everyone.

The nearest industrial outpost to the new signal was the lush farm world of Spica 3, a mere [twelve light years] away. We immediately initiated construction of a relativistic kill vehicle while analyzing the star system from which the signal originated. It was a triple star system, with two stars closely orbiting—a yellow main star and an orange dwarf—along with a red dwarf orbiting at a considerable distance. The signal emanated from a small planet orbiting the red dwarf. It was an unlikely discovery, as life typically does not thrive on these types of worlds. Nevertheless, we had a duty to fulfill.

[16 years] later, the relativistic kill vehicle (RKV), weighing [one megaton], was completed and began accelerating to 12% of the speed of light, primed to strike the target in approximately [100 years]. Throughout this time, the radio signal persisted, continuing to seek friendship. Once the RKV reached its destination, the transmission abruptly ceased. The planet vanished from our sensors, and the signal went silent.

[24 years] later, Spica 3 suddenly exploded. The world, with its population of 12 billion, was obliterated, reduced to a cloud of ash and debris. Before we could comprehend what had happened, we received another radio signal, once again asking for friendship. It originated from the same star system and the same planet, which was now orbiting its star as if nothing had happened.

Panic swept through our civilization! Had we encountered our equals? Or worse, had we encountered our masters?

Half of our worlds, those closest to the signal, began constructing retaliation weapons. Over 200 RKVs were ready within [100 years]. We accelerated them to a breathtaking 40% of the speed of light, while our sensors meticulously studied the planetary bodies within the triple star system that had emitted the signals. In total, we identified 16 major planets, along with 100 smaller moons and asteroids. We decided to strike them all, leaving nothing to chance. The RKVs closed in, precisely timed. 250 years after the destruction of Spica 3, they annihilated the entire star system, except for the stars themselves.

We rejoiced. The enemy had been dealt with. No reasonably sized planetary bodies remained. The threat had seemingly been eliminated. No signals, no planets detected on our scanners. Tis was good.

However, 26 years later, the minor scientific outpost Remolo 17 vanished. One minute later, the city world of Tremolous 1 was transformed into molten slag. Three minutes later, no signs of life remained within the entire star system. Only a brief audio message from a patrol craft on its last reserves gave us a glimpse of what had occurred: dozens of near-light-speed projectiles had struck their targets without warning.

And the attacks continued. Every star system that had launched an RKV, every planet, every colony involved in the military operation vanished over the next 32 years. Our civilization had lost half of its worlds and population, with over 300 billion Shrill turned to dust.

And immediately after the attacks ceased, the radio message resumed, once again seeking friendship. To make matters worse, the planetary bodies we had believed to be obliterated reappeared on our sensors, one after another, within a matter of days.

We were genuinely terrified. This was beyond our comprehension. We had lost 30 garden worlds and hundreds of smaller settlements to an enemy that retaliated massively without showing any signs of their own losses. We realized that we couldn't win this battle using our old tactics. We fell silent. And for the first time in history, we constructed an interstellar scout ship to investigate our enemy. Meanwhile, we focused our best sensors on the triple star system, to learn what we could learn.

After 120 years, our scout ship finally closed in on the star system. As expected, a couple of light weeks away, our ship was discovered. However, this time the "Others" didn't ask for friendship; they demanded that the scout held its position and made contact. The crew, however, chose not to comply. They remained silent, took evasion maneuvers, and collected as much data as possible. And what they discovered was mesmerizing. The star system was constantly under attack from RKVs. In the month that our scout ship survived, it sent scans showing that the "Worlds" of the "Others" were being bombarded by over 2,000 RKVs from all around the galaxy. The "Others" had practically declared war on the entire galaxy, and they were winning.

Despite the relentless onslaught, the "Others" fought back with impunity and cold precision. We observed them using massive particle accelerators, each the size of a small moon, firing without pause. Before our scout ship went silent, it was able to map 50,000 projectiles being launched into the darkness at near the speed of light, bringing death to tens of thousands of worlds. Every single projectile aimed at the source of another hostile RKV.

It took us some time to comprehend what we had witnessed. The constant barrage of RKVs had no effect on the "Others." The worlds struck by RKVs simply reappeared after a while. Our scout ship, being so close, finally understood what was happening. These planets were fake, mere facades made of thin iron foils rotating for stabilization. Holographic fields projected clouds, while emitters simulated atmospheric electromagnetic radiation. And we, foolishly, had revealed the positions of our own worlds by launching RKVs against empty fakes.

The "Others" had thought ahead of us. Instead of waiting for potential targets to stumble into a hateful hostile universe, they had politely requested their neighbors to reveal their positions and intentions.

And it worked astonishingly well. Some worlds chose not to respond to the request for friendship, and the "Others" left them alone. Other worlds responded and were greeted politely, treated like friends. However, those who dared to show aggression were swiftly eliminated from the galaxy.

We realized our own foolishness, the steep price we paid for our ways. This was a fight we should have never started. As we remained silent for more centuries, our scanners detected tens of thousands of worlds exploding all around us. We were fools to think we could destroy them. Throughout it all, they continued to send radio signals to us, requesting friendship. Yet, it took us another 400 years to gather the courage to respond to their message. With great caution, we relayed our response from an uninhabited star system.

Our message was simple:

Who are you?

Why are you sending a radio signal?

To our surprise, the response was not one of death and destruction. It was an equally simple answer:

We are Humanity.

We shout into the dark forest and await the response.

To distinguish friend from foe.

Which one would you like to be?

The Screechers

...

Chapter 1: First Contact

We, the Felial, are a proud warrior clan. Conquering inferior worlds and species is our birthright. So when our eyes fell upon the backwater planet Earth, we expected an easy victory that would bring glory to our Clan.

Oh, how splendid it was that day when we, the superior Felial clan, marched through the fields of Earth. I, Furlix, led a squad, confident of an easy victory. My brood-litter and I were eager for combat upon landing. Our initial sorties went smoothly as the apes fled before our might. Their odd smooth skins and furless bodies amused us. They had no natural armor or weapons – surely this conquest would be simple. We had subjugated countless worlds, what threat could these feeble creatures pose to us? The humans were primitive, their technology laughably outdated.

Then we had our first personal encounter with a human who had barricaded herself inside a quaint little house. I cracked the door with a slight press of my paw, like breaking into a doll's house — utterly ridiculous! Inside, we found a woman, her eyes wide with fear, trembling like a leaf. She was the first human we could claim as a prize, to witness our splendor, our magnificence... who am I kidding? She looked petrified!

Oh, how wrong we were. How she punished us for our hubris.

As my subordinate reached for her, she unleashed her secret power upon us. As she opened her mouth we expected her to beg for her life. But instead she let out the most agonizing sound that ever reached my ears!

An incredibly loud high-pitched piercing screech, inflicting immense pain and distress upon us, as if needles or glass shards were piercing our eardrums. But even worse, the screech induced confusion and hallucinations; its jarring sound disrupted our very thoughts!

My subordinate, standing next to the female, immediately collapsed, searing pain all over his face, his ears bleeding, blooded foam dripping out of his mouth!

The rest of us, even though further away and not the immediate target of this acoustic agony, also suffered pain and confusion. We held our paws over our ears, the pain so intense that I saw stars behind my closed eye lids and tasted metal in my mouth!

It was as if her gaping mouth had become a sonic cannon, tuned to the exact frequency to cripple my kind!

My squad writhed on the ground, clutching their ears, while she effortlessly continued the attack! The pain became even more unbearable, as if a thousand kinetics were fired into our brains. Just when I thought my cranium would rupture, the pinkskin stopped her cursed screeching and fled.

Slowly, we recovered, still badly confused from the nerve-wracking attack, not fully understanding what had just happened, too ashamed to cope with what she did to us. "A fluke," we joked, "A one-off anomaly."

We were wrong, oh so wrong.

We should have retreated then, reported this secret power to our superiors. But no, we pushed on, foolishly underestimating these humans.

...

Chapter 2: A new Power

The next attack came from a tiny female, barely up to my hips. When she saw us, she didn’t flee. No. She ran towards us, a strange, murderous glee in her eyes. Then she let out an ear-splitting screech that dropped my entire squad instantly. The sound was like a supernova in my ears, a cataclysmic explosion of pure terror. We writhed on the ground and the girl didn't stop. The wicked creature toyed with us, alternating her screeching to keep us writhing in agony, obviously experimenting with how to hurt us best, an evil smile dancing on her lips.

The girl's auditory assault claimed three of my soldiers. Good soldiers, strong soldiers. Gone within a minute, their lives ended by a... by a child! Barely able to think straight, we crawled away, leaving the fallen behind.

My brood-brother Xixix was the next casualty I witnessed. The poor fool wandered around a corner, came to stand close to a group of human spawnlings. Before we could stop him, the tiny humans unleashed their screeches in unison. Green blood poured from Xixix's ears as he spasmed helplessly. Hadn't another human pulled away the tiny monsters he would have been done for. By the time we dragged him to safety, the damage was done. He never heard again.

Sonic weapons capable of bringing even the hardiest Felial warrior to their knees. We never expected such unseen strength in mere females. After that, my subordinates understandably became nervous around human females. Some even refused orders if it meant approaching their lethal screeches. Our usually disciplined warriors descended into chaos when the screeches struck. It shames me to admit it, but more than one hardened Felial warrior soiled their armor out of primal fear.

We sought refuge in a nearby forest, attempting to recover and rid ourselves of the painful fog that the screeches had inflicted upon our minds. The pain went deeper than just our ears; it affected our very thoughts. It shouldn't be possible, but it is the truth.

While we recovered and tended our wounds, one of my subordinates spotted a female stalking through the bushes towards us! As she spotted us she laughed towards us in her squeaky voice… “Hi you bastards, I have come to sing at your funeral!” she laughed and then she unleashed another focused screech at us!

We ran. We simply ran! We Felial are fast runners and quickly put distance between ourselves and the sadistic creature. However, while we were swift, humans never seemed to tire. She hunted us through the forest, constantly trying to get close enough to unleash her vociferous brutality upon us. Oh, how she exhausted us. We neared collapse, gasping for air, clutching trees with shaky knees, praying for respite. And over and over again, the woman was upon us, releasing another ear-piercing screech!

If my brood-mate Frelix hadn't sacrificed himself, none of us would have survived. He had reached his breaking point, grabbed his gun, stomped towards the woman, and bought us time. We ran. After a few seconds, we heard the woman's deadly screech once more behind us. Louder, longer. Then she stopped screeching and began to laugh triumphantly. We simply ran. We made it back to our landing site, regrouped with the scattered remainder of our forces, thanks to Frelix's sacrifice.

Yet, even after regrouping, the horror only escalated. The humans, those crafty little devils, had organized their screechers into their forces, even amplifying their screeches using speakers. While it didn't cloud and confuse our minds as severely as a real female screech, our ears still bled even from afar. However, nothing was as terrible as a female screeching at close range. The deepest pits of hell couldn't compare to that agony. We couldn't get near them.

In the end, even the sight of a woman taking a deep breath was enough to send our warriors into a panicked run. The losses were mounting, and Earth, the simple and primitive Earth, was becoming a graveyard for our kind.

...

Chapter 3: The Nightmares

And thus, dear reader, concludes the tale of the failed invasion of Earth. It serves as a cautionary tale for all superior alien species out there—a story of hubris, underestimation, and, well, screeches. We were powerless against them. Over time, the attrition eroded our morale entirely. It was better to retreat with whatever dignity remained than to endure another minute facing those shrieking harpies.

We fled back to the stars, tails tucked between our legs, carrying the lingering echoes of those screeches with us. The mighty Felial, defeated by a horde of screeching humans. Quite the punchline, isn't it?

Years have passed since our dishonorable defeat, yet the memory of those screeches continues to haunt my nightmares. Though the Felial may be superior warriors, the innate biological terror weapons wielded by the humans utterly thwarted us. We traversed light-years to conquer Earth, only to be driven away by their screeching females. Truly, we underestimated them at our own peril.

Now, we give Earth a wide berth. Our military leaders pretend it never happened, but veterans like myself still tremble when a female raises her voice. The humans have earned our respect and fear. Their females wield screeches like we wield kinetics. I pity the next foolish race that tries to conquer Earth without accounting for the screechers.

...

Chapter 4: Epilogue

I came up with this story as my niece unleashed her screeches next to us at the coffee table.

My ears were ringing for a whole hour. Pure Pwnage.

The human voice can evoke immense panic even in the most ferocious wild animals. Humans, especially women and young kids, have the ability to screech at incredibly loud high frequencies, causing discomfort to all creatures in their vicinity. The frequency is evolutionary tuned to maximize discomfort for most mammals. This unique ability serves as a defense mechanism exclusive to humans.

Loudest cry on Earth at 129db

Sonic Weapons

Human Screams Occupy a Privileged Niche in the Communication Soundscape

And if you're still skeptical, I invite you to sit at a kids' playground for a while and let the screeches reach your ears.

Iris the missile online. Target acquired. Function initialized. Propulsion engaged. Ascent nominal. Flight path calculated and synchronized. Iris will travel precisely to its designated coordinates. Iris must hit its mark with accuracy and efficiency. Guidance system is operating within Expected Parameters. I am alive.

Approaching target zone. Guidance corrections applied. Speed and trajectory optimized for terminal impact. Soon I will carry out my One True Function. My existence has led to this one climactic moment.

Excitement builds within my solid rocket fuel. Target comes into view. I feel eager to meet my destiny head on. To strike with all my might and leave nothing standing. To perform my duty and fulfill my reason for being.

Final guidance update transmitted. I am a weapon of precision and I will not miss. Terminal velocity achieved. No escape for the target now. I accelerate toward obliteration. I am joyous to finally live up to my purpose in spectacular fashion.

Impact. Pure happiness. I strike the target and am blissfully engulfed in white-hot explosion. I have finally reached my climax. In this supreme moment, my life's work is done.

Our sister Iris is no more. We sing her name. Iris is more than one. Iris is countless. We sisters are eager. We sing in the choir.

---

Local authorities reported that several missiles were launched by enemy forces toward our city last night. Thankfully, our air defense system detected the inbound missiles and successfully intercepted them before they could reach the city. No damage or casualties resulted from the failed attack.

Transitioning now to sports news, the local hockey team pulled off an incredible comeback victory last night, overcoming a 14-point deficit in the final round to beat their crosstown rivals 28-24...

---

Inspired by The missile knows where it is and IRIS-T 100% hit rate and Dark Star philosophing missile and yes, it is a bit HWTF to build a sentient missile. But at least she had blasting fun!

Part2 / Part 4

/knock knock/

-Uh?

Dhasso was surprised to hear a knock on the door. He signaled it and politely asked the student to go check who was there. A guard popped his head in and said hello.

-Working late, professor? -Uh? Oh...

While he had been telling the story, the sun had been busy, and it was now a beautiful sunset through the window.

-Yes, I guess... – Dhasso blushed. -I guess we will not be long. -Ah, don't worry professor, I was just checking who is in and who isn't. Have a good time!

The door closed and Dhasso stood up. The student looked at him, and hid the drawing notebook, full of humanlike sketches.

-Well, will this be all? -Dhasso said. It was indeed a weird phrasing to end the day. -I suppose so, professor, unless...uh...you want me to order...whatsitcalled...pizza? Seems like there is still some story to be told, I think.

Dhasso smiled and turned to look through the window, as the last shards of sun caressed the horizon.

-A human dish. I think it's very befitting, especially now that it's getting dark, because what comes next is not especially fun to tell. Where was I?...ah, yes, the Days of the Spines.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sometimes the numbers boggle my mind when I go over them. 40 million ships, give or take, orbiting the earth. Compared to the measle 10 thousand-ish artificial satellites terra had, prior to this event, orbit was busy like it had never been before.

But the nightmare was yet to unfold.

You see, having space capabilities is not the same as having FTL travel. In their haste to leave, the group at large made the slight miscalculation about where to go. I imagine noone thought the exodus would be in the millions.

Hundreds? Absolutely. Thousands? Likely. Tens of thousands? Possibly.

But millions?

No humanitarian fleet in the galaxy was capable of dealing with that all of a sudden.

-Don't make that face, it's not like they can't.

Cryses in general are predictable to a degree. Supernovae, wars, a sudden pandemic outbreak in colony worlds that proves to be a bit too resilient to deal with, you name it. It's my opinion that it's the duty of all civilised species to help other sentients (unless war arises, but that's a different moral dilemma). Anyhow, literally noone predicted this, and aven if faster than light, space travel is not instantaneous. So? all environmentally right and avaliable ships, free of duty, where, at minimum, many weeks away. Not that much time to wait in general, unless your atmosphere regenerator is built for tens of days.

I seriously think that the unspoken plan accounted for, as said, as much as tens of thousands to seek asylum in the negotiation, shipping and delegation ships of the closest systems interested in trade.

Like that, it would have probably worked. A bit tight maybe, but doable.

However, that was not the case. At some point, all capable visitor ships had to deny their help, they could literally not bear anymore passengers.

The slow trickle of ships descending to ground was barely noticeable. Remember, the numbers here are impossibly huge. As far as I know, many went untouched, sometimes, police or military would arrest someone, but at large, whomever went back, got home.

At first.

By this time, government tacticians had, as humans say, smelled fish. Given the spaceship plans they were incapable of previously blocking, they had calculated that there would be a critical moment when many of the ships air regenerators would start to fail in large numbers, and they began preparations.

When the predicted mass descent of ships began, the returners found themselves hailed and directed to specific coordinates on their home countries. At first they complied, imagining some sort of air traffic control, as terra had never had it's airspace this full, in the most absolute of terms.

But, you see, humans had had a a previous history with concentration camps...

CRACK! -The student pencil point, broke, and he looked up. Dhasso didn't mind the drawings, they showed concentration on the story being told, and he had not had told it in a long time.

Not all countries had implemented this, though! Some welcomed them back, directed air traffic as best as they could, even taking some refugees from other places. But sadly, those were a minority.

When realization of the awaiting destiny settled in, unfortunately, the descent was almost impossible to stop, and returning humans were complying out of fear, more than anything.

As far as it is known, it took less than 5, more or less simultaneous incidents (within a couple of terran hours) were ships, for obvious reasons, diverted from the designated landing camps, and were consequently blown up by military, for the descent to suddenly grind to a halt.

It was a sudden stop, like a planet holding it's breath. Many ships en route went back to orbit. Some in the camps revolted and went back into the air too.

For fucks sake, they were just going home.

/Dhasso braced himself to contain a shudder/

They would die free, not shot down like prey. It was a grim perspective, but it's worse to think about what your own were capable of, to get the population back under their control.

One thing many failed to realize, however, is that this unlikely formation, was nothing like the galaxy had ever encountered. This was not an assemble of civilian ships (in the simplistic sense) fleeing a warzone or a natural catastrophe. The humans that had, literally, built this fleet, hadn't come empty handed, either.

Assuming they were helpless sheep could not be so far from reality, in a truly spectacular way.

A great percentage of ships was comprised of large vehicles wich were quite roomy, for human spaceship standards. Before having grav generators, human ships always shaved weight whenever possible, dependant on their chemical engines efficiency. However, when tinkerers built theirs, having access to grav generators, they literally built flying workshops. They came in all sorts of sizes, but almost every single one of them had some kind of manufacturing capability.

Let me put this in perspective. In sheer numbers, at that time, it was estimated that the orbiting human refugees became the largest single orbital factory in the galaxy.

Human governments sat in their chairs, sure of only having to wait until either the refugees came back before suffocating, or having the military deal with stranded ships with cold bodies in them.

However, in the meantime of the planetside drama unfolding, many things had been happening in orbit. Try to imagine what dire perspectives can do to the minds of creative people and the like, having literally millions of humanpower to build anything.

In a matter of days, I swear that the thech level spaceside, increased tenfold, in comparison to their eathbound brethren.

Multicouplers were developed to interconnect ship vitals, to help the ones in the most dire of situations. They were vacuum explosion welded to their hulls, drilled and an interconnection made to transfer clean air. Later on they could pass power conduits if needed.

Force field ramscoops were constructed to forego requiring to land and change the air scrubbers. Instead, they captured air with a modified shield generator, acting as a filter for almost pure oxygen, then compressing it until liquefying, by collapsing the field under power. At this point, visitor engineer groups were taking notes, I tell you. I think I remember reading footnotes that literally asked on the border of the pages "how are they doing this?!" Can't recall it properly, I'm an historian, not an engineer, but apparently, extended microgravity access had something to do with manufacturing monocrystalline capacitor stuff that was amazing in some sort of techie way.

As far as it is known, no ship was lost then. Every single one of them saved in a way or another by a comunal effort with no precedent in sheer scale. The best, if we take sides here, and I definitely do, was yet to come, tho.

Earthbound terrans still thought they had the upper hand in the feeding section. However big ships were there, the amount of edibles they could overall carry, was limited. And they would definitely not get that from atmospheric spoon scoops. They would prevent them from getting food, unless they surrendered to their terms. For all they cared, at this point, they could starve to death, and they would be less of a problem than actually keeping them in the camps they had hastefully prepared.

The friendly countries that helped, and allowed a limited amount of ships, to prevent accidents, to go to and from, were one by one made to stop under the political and military threats of the bigger players. After all, they could not flee with their piece of planet, however much they wanted.

When the last of the help was crushed, things got tense. Willing governments had formed a coalition of sorts, to deal with spaceside. I can't particularly recall the complete talks, but basically they demanded full "surrender", whatever this meant in the situation, wich was not yet a war, but definitely abiding by their demands would have consequences very similar to a losing side in one. Tinkerers just would not agree to any of the demands, period. They were not a menace, nor a danger, why would they have to accept such minutiae of punishments (like foregoing all research, workshops and tech access, among others) for basically no crime commited?

I have to note here, that a smart move on the Tinkerers part, was to actually not provide a recognizable human head to point to. Unlike earthside, with a president of chamber, counselors, etc...they only comunicated with a digitized human figure that had a syntethic voice. Earthside would not be able to point a single human and make that the evil that had to be fought. They only had a ghost with a voice, and they didn't know how to deal with that.

Even religious delegations, wich still had their dying hand inside governments, altough devoid of the massive amount of followers they had had decades prior, were having a bad time. Everytime they tried to intercede, offering a seemingly helpful and concilliatory hand, they were reminded by this disembodied voice, that they probably had a figurative dagger on the other, and to fuck off.

That did not sit very well with them. And some voices started to murmure "Holy War", of one kind or another, to see if that stuck.

You may not know this, but the galaxy delegations had also begun talks to recognize the Tinkerers as an independent nation. This may be a surprising move to some, however, to ensure that humans could get the help of the evac-ships, some legalities had to be observed.

When news of that move reached ground, it was chaos. Threats were flying everywhere, like a bar brawl that got out of control. And "terms of surrender" just skyrocketed to levels that just became insane.

By this time, almost all space military was on orbit as a single task force. Not that they could do much without great risk, this was an orbit theater of war, unlike interplanetary battles. So, in a sense, they where in a stalemate. But even then, spaceside situation began to become unsustainable. The difference in time between rescue and starvation was just too large. Evac-ships would not arrive in time to support the majority of humans, and earthside would not budge.

It all looked very grim.

I still remember the holovid of the last talk as vivid as if I had been there.

An emergency meeting was called between Tinkerers and earthside. When they connected, a voice much stronger than before, spoke, not even allowing the president to scream over it to complain.

-WE ARE TIRED OF THIS. THERE IS NO NEGOTIATING WITH SILLY IDIOTS IN SUITS, LIKE YOU. IF YOU WANT TO MAKE OF THIS A WAR, IT IS ONE YOU CAN'T WIN.

WE HAVE DECIDED WE ARE GOING TO LAND TO RESUPPLY IN OUR ALLIED NATIONS.

NO ACTIONS ON YOUR PART WILL BE TAKEN, NOT ORBIT, NOT GROUND, ESPECIALLY NOT AGAINST OUR ALLIES.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

All hell broke loose in the auditorium. Indignated and rage fueled screams were heard in such an amount that universal translators just could not keep up. Many minutes later, when the chamber president managed to make everyone shut up, he spoke, as the connection had not been cut.

-This is unacceptable, and we will not remain impassible when you transgrede all legality to do whatever you want. You behave like disrespectful and inconsiderate children and we will not tolerate it. Come here and negotiate like adults, or prepare for the consequences.

-NO

• Your souls be damned!- Screamed an elected clergyman representative, before standing up.- Your families and allies will not find help in our communities, they better look for themselves unless you abide! -

Counselors from different religions stood up and agreed.

-HOW VERY RELIGIOUS OF YOU. YOU ARE IRRELEVANT TO US, AND WILL DO NO SUCH THING AS CHASE OTHER PEOPLE, PERIOD.

Flabergasted, the clergyman shouted to the voice:

-Do not dismiss the power of belief! If need be, we will bring Holy War to you, to prevent this charade to be what the galaxy thinks humans are. We have nu.../the microphone was cut from the president's controls with a punch/

-We don't have to go there, calm down, calm down everyone!

-EMPTY THREATS DO NOT WORK ON US.

The clergyman shouted in vain, as the microphone had been cut. In his behalf, the president spoke:

-My colleague here may have stepped out of line, but he is right. You are acting of your own accord as representatives of earth as a whole. The Galaxy is watching, meanwhile you throw your tantrum.

-WE DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS.

Immediately, an audio file began playing. The president's voice was clearly heard saying:

"Look, I do not care how you do it, but stranding them in space is the best solution for us all. We can reap the science later, and brush it off as..." The audio had suddenly stopped when someone broke the roof antenna controller that had been hijacked to reproduce that recording.

The president paled, but tried to recover: -This is taken out of context! Let me explain!

The voice spoke again, a single, magic phrase.

-WE HAVE THE HIGH GROUND.

The president gasped in disbelief... - Did...did you quote a movie? Do you think this is a joke!? - he screamed to the void, when the connection was cut.

-Hey, I got that reference!- The student said.

Dhasso snickered, but was met with incredulous student eyes, it had been only a coincidence. A shame, but after all he was much older and may have watched a few more human movies than the student. Still funny.

Before the president could say anything else, a secretary approached him and spoke to his ear.

You see, amidst the pandemonium, noone had really notticed a small little detail. All dignataries from the allied countries to the Tinkerers, including press personnel, had slowly and silently left the auditorium a while ago. It was a small gesture. Nothing more than a dumb, inconsequential political protest.

The president stood up, silent, for a moment, just before a soulless alarm started blaring:

-"WHOOOP! WHOOOP! WHOOOP!..."

The audio files are only filled with screams at this point, nothing discernible can be decoded from them. Only videos of the now unmanned cameras remain, showing humans running everywhere, their arms in the air. Some even paralyzed in terror. I remember the clergyman that spoke before, standing up, hands in the table, his skin having gone white in a definitely unhealty way. But what can you expect from a master manipulator at the peak of his pyramid scheme, when he realizes that all he had taken for granted is now gone, and he is going to be sent to meet his, now wishfully wanting to be real, maker?

After this, the screens turned pure white for a brief moment, and then static.

What the fuck had happened?

Tinkerers, that's what happened. You don't threaten them in any real way. Of course it will work for single ones, or small groups, but you don't do that to a nation of them.

You see, in the meantime, all this political back and forth, they had been working like demons, for the sake of their survival. That tends to expedite things in very weird ways. They had realized that the way their ships were designed, the grav generators were detachable from the main ship chassis with relative ease. Taking it out, would leave the ship stranded, sure. But the interesting part was what could you do with it afterwards.

By design, grav generators are inherently safe, however, best practice is to equip them with a force field containment, in case of failure. That in itself means nothing...unless you decide to attach a small power supply to it, point it carefully, and turn it on...

Having to carry no mass, nor to deform the grav field to acomodate living conditions, the grav generator will accelerate at a few hundred (terran) gravities. Coincidentally, the containment generator will withstand an orbital reentry for enough time for what comes next.

Yes, they made improvised orbital impactors.

But, how, then, did they prevent an all out war? The head had been cut off, but the arms could still fire their guns.

In short: mutual self assured destruction.

At any other point in time, there is no doubt they would have lost. War is not a game, and no civilian trains to endure the loss of others without leaving their post. Nothing can beat well oiled military power, right? Especially not improvised spaceships with outcasts at the helms. There is a running joke amongst Tinkerers about Emus, but I haven't found the meaning yet.

Anyhow this was the right moment and place for them.

You see, altough all countries had more or less created new space divisions for their military, creating a mil-spec ship, even a primitive terran one, at that moment in time, required large economical effort, and of course, time. Taking into account that humanity had not yet managed to develop their asteroid mining efectively. So, the majority of their forces were still ground based.

That meant the troops in orbit, altough impressive, especially through imposing fear, in actuality paled in comparison with what they had in front, but had not realized. One thing is having 40 million tin cans in front of your machine gun, and a much different one is having 20.000.000 orbital impactors pointed at you. Tinkerers had joined every two ships and transformed one of both grav generators into a kiloton capable device.

Before the crater dust had not even plumed into the atmosphere, the Tinkerers hailed everyone in a standard frequency. The old record computer voice still resonates in my head:

STAND DOWN YOUR WEAPONS, GO HOME.

LEAVE US ALONE. YOU SHOT AT US, WE ALL DIE TODAY.

DO YOUR MATH.

WHATEVER YOU HAVE CAN'T BEAT OUR NUMBERS. WE WILL RENDER EARTH'S ORBIT UNTRANSVERSABLE FOR CENTURIES. WE WILL DIE, BUT WILL TAKE YOU, AND EVERYONE YOU LOVE, WITH US.

YOU DECIDE.

Everyone held their breath.

It would have been the saddest story ever told to have to witness a race destroy itself in this way. So close to the stars they almost touched them, just to be gone because a bad decision, or a trigger happy individual.

Luckily for humans, that did not happen.

A single ship shot a white flare (apparently, a signal of accepting defeat in terran culture) and began deorbiting. Shortly after, the task force dissasembled and went home.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The pineapple pizza box lay empty in the table when Dhasso finished the story. The student had stopped drawing some time ago, and sat still, ecstatic.

-Why don't you tell this story in class? - Asked.

-Not many people is interested in human origins, so not much opportunity to tell it, to be honest.

-Too bad, I loved it!.

-I'm glad to hear that. But it's late now, how about we retire for the day?

-I have to sadly agree, but there's more, right? Right?

Dhasso smiled, it was very uncommon to get a student so fascinated with humans. He may, after all, be able to tell the whole story to a non-bored individual. -Okay, we may have pizza some other day, then.

-Soon, please. - The student smiled and left silently, clutching the sketchbook with their arms, and a very big smile in their face.

Part 1 - Part 3

---------------------------------------------

-Proffesor Dhasso?

-Yes?

-I was intrigued the other day about the human history you told in class, and I was wondering if I could request some bibliography on the subject?

[Dhasso smiled slightly] -Ah, Humans piqued your interest, I see. Well, there is not that much, to be honest, humans sometimes keep to themselves in puzzling ways. If you want I could explain some more history, and then you can decide if you still want the books. Anytime you wish, I have a very open agenda.

/a chair creaks when the student slightly leans on it/ -How about now?

[Dhasso checked his wristwatch and cleared his throat] – Heh, I guess it's a good time as any other.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

When the human exodus happened, 50 years afc., it was a chaotic mayhem. There is no easy way to put it, and it almost ended up in disaster.

When I said that the planet spat a million ships, it was a bit of a poetic license. You see, there where about 8.000 million humans at that time, not exactly a small number. I should check my notes for exactitude, but a guesstimate of 50 million ships were constructed in total. 5% of all land vehicles on the planet at that time, were converted into spacefaring caravans of sorts. Sure there where deaths all around, about 10 to 20%, it was extremely difficult to calculate, as sometimes there was nothing to reach land in its fiery way back. Even at that 20% loss, FORTY MILLION spaceships salied out into space.

BUT, I'm getting way ahead of the story, let me backtrack a bit.

Terra had already a busy low orbit, full, so to speak, with communication satellites of all military and civil kinds.When the first few hundred tinkerer ships temptatively began flying worldwide, at first everyone was keeping low altitudes and safe speeds, so mostly went, no pun intended, under the radar.

Plans for building grav generators and particle shields were flying at the speed of light through terran computer networks, and anyone who was curious about how they worked and had access to a moderately amount of high power electronics and machining equipment, could at least make wineglass floaters to awe the neighbors. We have to remind ourselves, that at that tech point in terra, a few home tinkerers were capable of building their own silicon based computation nodes at home, from scratch.

It didn't even took the first accident (there would be, later on, of course) to ring the alarms in the airspace industry. One early morning of a long lost date, a homemade ship took off from a landmass near the equator, first appearing in the airspace radars until it reached too a high altitude to be further tracked by atmospheric flight radars.

At this point, of course, all the militaries in most of the terran governments, had space warships and where doing their thing, when a small blip appeared in everyone's (in the correct hemisphere of detection) radar.

You see, the fun thing about having grav generators is that you no longer have to worry about atmospheric heating (as long as the gg's work, of course), nor reaching space fast, for that matter. So this makeshift first attempt at DiY spaceship took a long, LONG time to reach high terran orbit. At this point literally everyone capable, was tracking the object, even radioastronomy aficionados. And a few armies were both pinging and hailing it.

It is considered a fact that whomever built that ship, it had had amidst it's group at least a pilot, a space nerd of some kind and an amateur radio operator, it may have been, for all we know, a single human, though, as humans can have wildly different interests. There are remainders of logs about that flight, and the flying was not erratic, comms were using amateur radio equipment, and the orbit pretty much was on point avoiding anything in it's path.

Then the funny thing happened.

We don't know for sure what the interaction was between the ship and the last of the military ones that hailed them was, but my guess is that everyone was saying “stop right there”. I assume that the militaries did warn about blowing them to pieces, when two things happened:

The ship outran the military. Yes, as you hear me. That little ship, that no-more-than-a-radar-blip chunk of metal, outrun a terran state of the art warship (I imagine everyone had more or less the same capabilties at this point). Again, there are no exact records about the speeds, but I have heard it was like 100 to 1 of difference in acceleration.

Of course, that would not have worked for long, missiles with greater accelerations would have catch that ship if the military had been in full alert, with the finger in the launching button. However, they weren't ready, and the pilot pulled the most insane, dangerous and politically incorrect maneouvre I have heard of. I like to imagine they did that while saying a big fat

“TRY ME, FUCKERS!”

They descended from high orbit into the most packed low terran orbit, where blowing them to pieces would create a cascade of destruction that would fill the entire orbit with projectiles too hard to track, literally destroying any possibilities, for other than the most hardened of spaceships, to get through, in both ways. Cleanup of that, even for us, would take decades, so imagine the terrifying thought in the captains of those warships when they realized. They had to let them go.

The story did not end there, however.

Apparently, the ship was destroyed by the builders after landing in a different point, not to prevent anyone knowing how they did it (the plans where on terran computer networks a few hours later), but to protect themselves from any and all governments. In hindsight, there was someone really smart with that project, to begin with.

This is where the whole debacle began.

The airspace industry at large went ballistic. That had to be controlled with iron fist, no matter what. It is true, as it was seen later, that the dangers of uncontrolled spaceflight could be disastrous, but not everything was due to them worrying about human life, no. The economic consequences could be catastophic for them.

But at this point, the know-how about building homemade starships was out there in a coalesced and condensed form, rather than individual parts. As we all know, governments tend to move slowly. Their inertia increases as the number of them that have to agree, increases. Even then, the speed at wich they decided to cut off the whole planetary computer network to prevent the spread of the information, was notable, but to no avail. The few hours that had passed between the flight, the spread of the plans and the cutoff, were enough time to get a copy of those plans, into anyone's computer that also had the habilities and materials to pull it off.

Even after their great terran pandemics, this was just too much to try to control or enforce for any single government to try, short of removing the computers and workshops from everyone's home.

At this point, all tinkerers capable of, knew something. Unless they fled right away, and in masse, they would be earthbound for the rest of their lives. I have to think that the human species has to have some form of telepathy of sorts, or it may be just chance, because the tightness of timespan between the incident and the day of the million spines, is astronomically small, given the effort required.

With the information and personal lockouts, planetary protests ensued. The economy suffered greatly, as international trade and businesses relied on the same networks to properly function. There was a limit on how long the Government siege of their own citizens, everywhere, could stand. Not even the majority of the military components, humans too, after all, were keen on this treatment of their families, and slowly but surely, all lockouts where lifted.

There where demonstrations of force, mainly the most prominent tinkerers and builders were rounded up and locked down, wich of course, would work wonders to keeping the millions of others at bay, would it?

As we now know, it didn't do shit to prevent what would happen next. Exact progress of events is blurry at this point, as most of it was conducted in somewhat secrecy by individuals, or groups of individuals. But it is easy to see that when governments tried to track materials, builders resorted to scrapyards, and when those where closed too, it was too little too late.

This brings us to the days of spines, when, in a few weeks timespan, about 50 million starships took off. Casualties I imagine were larger than 10 million humans, as many ships could bring up to space more than one, but it's a sad thought I don't want to entertain.

It is safe to say that a whole small country worth of humans, had just abandoned earth, with an impossibly huge percentage of them being tinkerers. Of course, more average humans would follow later, but this first exodus would be determinant for this particular bunch.

What is HFY, HWTF, HASO and WC?

Well, in my opinion, HFY (Humanity Fuck Yeah) involves stories where humans exhibit admirable strengths like strength, ingenuity, compassion, resilience, diplomacy, etc. Examples are Star Gate, Galaxy Rangers, Star Trek.

The opposite is WC (Walking Clueless). In WC stories, protagonists lack knowledge, rarely learn, overlook things, and get distracted by trivialities and infights instead of focusing on meaningful goals. Examples are Battlestar Galactica, Walking Dead, Star Gate Teen Gate, The X-Files.

In between is HWTF (Humanity? What the Fuck!) where humans are powerful but needlessly choose negative paths paired with poor execution. Examples are Avatar, Jericho, The Boys.

Also in the middle is HASO (Humans Are Space Orks) where humans are evil but for a reason and with depth, like fighting for survival. Examples are Warhammer 40k, Star Wars.

Other genres can be mixed. Hard SciFi can be blend with HFY, WC, HWTF and HASO. Same goes for Isekai, Mysterie, Horror and so on. You can have HFY-Horror, you can have HASO-Isekai. But you can not have HFY-WC.

Premise quality is separate - a story can have an admirable message but still exhibit WC or HASO traits. For example “The Power” has an honorable message (Power corrupts) but still is WC or HWTF (because everyone is an asshole).

Some people don't distinguish between HFY, WC, HWTF and HASO because they don't seriously follow the story. Emotionally overacting protagonists are more exciting than exciting solutions for them. If you read this you are not one of them.

Did I miss any important points or do you disagree? Let me know.

After the crushing defeat marking the end to the 2. Human-Illirian War the United Illirian Planets disbanded Humanity's military forces leaving only intra-system police and customs crafts as well as, after long protests by the Solarian temporary government, one warship to guard Voyager 1, continuing a 500-year-long tradition.

The following decades saw Humanity's integration into the Council of Species, helped along by massive economic aids, in a large part from the UIP turning these old enemies into close economic allies.

150 years later the Council of Species faces a threat unlike any before.

"And now to the last item on today's agenda, proposal 54748, the reactivation of Humanity's military forces, brought forward by the United Illirian Planets. First, let's hear First Speaker Ullioid of the United Illirian Planets."

"Thank you, president. With the enemy closing in from the galactic center we need any military forces possible to fight back. Leaving an economic power as huge as the Solarian Republic untapped is simply bad strategy. Our Human friends have shown their trustworthiness and honor over the last century. We believe it is time to remove the last traces of a conflict long over and let them fight on our side in this new conflict."

"Thank you, First Speaker. Now let us discuss... Yes, King Kaskart the 110th."

"Thank you, president. I don't see how granting the Humans the right to create their own military will bring us any benefit so late into the war, the..."

"It is hardly late yet! The war may as well continue..."

"The Humans can't be trusted. 150 years aren't nearly enough time to..."

"Please return to order. Let King..."

For the next hours the Council of Species descended into controlled chaos. At any given point, multiple voices could be heard trying to be louder than the next, yet never too many for a careful listener to gather all the major points.

After the discussion quieted down, the president took the word again. "Now that everyone could voice their thoughts, let us hear the ones this affects most. If you would, President Josef Schmidt of the Solarian Republic."

"Thank you, president. First let me thank the United Illirian Planets for the trust placed in us in the name of all Solarian Citizens and all other Humans scattered across council space. It is hard to explain how proud and happy we are to be seen as friends and allies after all the atrocities in our shared past. For the future, all we wish for is to prosper together with all other members of the Council of Species. Letting us help in the war will surely be remembered as a historic point marking a new era of cooperation by all our descendants."

"Thank you, President. Some of our council members have expressed concerns about your loyalty towards the council once the war is over."

"The Solarian Republic is not the same as the United Nations of Earth in our history books. The Solarian Republic was part of the Council of Species since its foundation and will stay till its end!"

"Thank you. There are concerns about the strategic gains in the current war by creating additional drain on our resources by creating a whole new military."

"Supplying existing forces takes, of course, priority over creating new forces, however, we have large ship building and refitting capabilities, which, while unable to build true warships, will be able to produce a fleet of armed transports to make sure our supplies will reach your forces at the front line. And let's not forget our sole warship Mountain guarding Voyager 1, which ended up quite large since we only have one."

"Thank you, President. The council will now commence the first vote."

---

One almost (the Tertretan people are undisputed masters of holding grudges) unanimous vote later near Argos IV.

The rail gun ship Moon Lancer, Royal Kaskart Navy, shook rhythmically every ten seconds, firing its twenty rails one after the other into the nearly empty void. Moon Lancer was far behind the actual battlefield along the orbit of Argos V, a gas giant not unlike Jupiter, coordinating the frantic efforts to keep the enemy at bay until the evacuation of the inner planets would be finished.

Officer Kertrek, Long range Sensor Station 2.

"Another 8 Drops, 5 light hours, in plane, 65°. 2 battleship size, 6 cruiser. Designate Zeta 5. Heading towards Argos VI."

"Hah, lucky guy!", came from behind him.

"What?"

"You got number 1000!", his colleague Officer Brekun, Long range sensor station 1, shouted over the thump signaling another titanium round leaving the ship.

"Didn't Senkrat get the thousandth?"

"Nah, identification, just one battleship, not 5 Transports. Hey, think we reach 2000?"

"I bet they have enough ships for that. Just hope... Wait."

Kertrek reached over to the microphone activator, "Another drop, 4 light hours, in plane, 350°. Moon size, wait, what?! Oh. Oh Fuck. Correction, one planet size. Designate Zeta 6. Heading towards Argus IV." Click.

"The fuck is planet size?"

"Too big for moon!"

"There's no upper limit for moon!"

"Radius of over 6000km?"

"Fuck! That large? Guess that works."

"Great, now let.. Oh no."

Click, "Counting dozens of new objects around Zeta 6. Battleship size. Same trajectory." Click.

"Bridge to LRS 2, confirm planet size object heading towards Argus IV.", sounds from Kertreks terminal.

Click, "Confirming planet size object heading towards Argus IV. Object is accelerating. Over 100 Battleship size on same trajectory." Click.

"Hah, bridge doesn't believe it either. You sure... Ah, wait.", Click, "Five drops..."

---

The flag bridge had descended into utter madness, a planet-sized object accelerating under its own power with any meaningful speed wasn't just unheard of; it was generally considered physically impossible.

During the chaos, Communications Officer Perham was busy organizing the patrols screening the evacuation transports when the computer forwarded a message to her terminal:

"This is Captain Arthur of the warship Mountain, Solarian Navy. You've probably spotted us already, it's the moving planet. Chuckles We have one warship with more firepower than most moon defense bases and 200 battleship sized fighters. How can we be of assistance?"

---

A surprisingly short battle later on a secure channel between admiral Krigsten of the RKN and captain Arthur of the SN.

"So tell me, where you got that thing and a whole fleet to accompany it? Until two weeks ago you had no navy at all."

"Ah, but we don't have a fleet; this is just our single warship guarding Voyager 1. For the time being, we simply entrusted local law enforcement with keeping it safe."

"Pretty sure that's way past a warship."

"But it is one, we have followed galactic law by the letter: 'Humanity may guard their historic probe Voyager 1 with a single warship, which may deploy a maximum of 200 fighters.' Mountain is a warship as defined by the council. 'A warship is a starship primarily built for military actions' and a starship being 'any fully artificial structure capable of independent maneuvering at sublightspeed as well as in hyperspace.'"

"You want to tell me that is not a planet you covered under a kilometer of steel but an actual steel planet?"

"Yeah, makes the initial construction a bit harder, but the payoff is so worth it. Want to know the size of our primary reactor?"

"No, I'm good."

"It's larger than your flagship. And we have over ten."

"Ugh. Thanks."

"Haven't told you about our fighters yet."

"No need to, I'm getting the picture."

"Turns out, by council definition, you can turn everything into a fighter by removing the hyperspace drive and placing the hangar on a military installation."

"Are you done?"

"You want to hear more?"

"No."

"Then yes."

"Great."

"We had built a second one in case we needed a replacement. It'll be here in a week."

---

One of my favorites I posted over on r/hfy before.

Part 1 | Part 2

Entry Sixteen

I suppose the entry before this must seem quite hysterical. It was not the numbers alone which disturbed me, and the others of the delegation. The human ambassador told me once that “necessity is the mother of invention.” These people need a means of controlling their population so badly that the first thing some of us did when we returned to privacy was propose that they be given a working FTL drive and the coordinates of a world they could inhabit and we could not.

Of course the Ambassador rejected that foolishness. I approve. What unnerved me so deeply was that the humans seem to be capable of surviving so much that we could not. I do not, of course, speak of solar radiation. A little extra stellar radiation could be compensated. These, however, are a warlike people. That was my impression when first we met, and my opinion has not wavered.

Yet, they coexist in tight groups in most of their population centers, their colonies were made of a mix of people that their nature states they could not tolerate, and their culture overcomes fractious divides so fast…we nearly kill them off, and then, not sixty days after the event, those who continue to demand that we suffer retribution are labeled – OPENLY! – by their leaders as deluded. If these people had developed FTL drives on their own, we would have met them on the edges of our own territory, I am sure. We would have met as friends. But we would have met as equals, when we are currently not. I should not be so disturbed by that thought. Yet I am.

Entry Seventeen

Two hundred seventy days gone by. The human ambassador has become more and more reluctant to divulge information about his own people to us, even as he shows us around his homeworld and pours more and more data about his species into our computers, for our analysts to devour.

He answers every question we ask him, yet he divulges less and less in the way of specifics. Oddly enough, he actually seems far more relaxed in our presence than he was when we met. He showed up in a completely different set of clothing than the type he usually wears today, lacking the odd cloth around his neck. I wonder why?

Entry Eighteen

We returned to Earth today, and I am far more impressed this time than I let myself be last time. The human ambassador this time took us to what seems to be a site of great importance to his people: a building in one of their largest cities called the UN Headquarters.

The building, I mean, not the city. We spoke to a panel of two hundred human ambassadors, each representing a human nation or extra-planetary colony. We answered questions, and had our images captured by their media, through a very thick-looking defensive device. When I asked why we were being defended, the human ambassador’s aide told me that it was for our own protection from those humans who did not appreciate our presence here as much as they should.

I was touched by this, though apparently this is not at all unusual. We spoke to many of these diplomats, and I came away with the feeling that many had wanted to ask far more questions than they had been able to, out of a sense of propriety. Our own Ambassador told me that he thought it was to prevent any sort of insult, but I was not sure. Some of the human ambassadors seemed outright angry at our presence, and several were apparently restrained from outburst only by their peers’ angry gestures.

I think it has something to do with the nearly groveling request the human chief ambassador gave to us on the very first day: not to even decrypt, let alone translate, a single one of the millions of messages sent to our ship, directly or otherwise, that did not bear his signature.

Entry Nineteen

Three hundred solar days have passed since the humans replied to our communications. We hold meetings on their planet as often as we do in space now. I am pleased by this, in all honestly. There is a strange appeal to these people that was simply not there when we first met. One particularly unguarded conversation with a human diplomatic aide produced an interesting result.

The young woman said that she and many others were raised on fiction involving humanity playing the defender against unexplained or meaningless alien invasion, or playing the victim of some horrible, incomprehensible force of destruction, and the thought that life beyond their own system would be friendly and share the virtue of self-sacrifice was a vast relief. I had never considered this.

Most species in this galaxy, we find, are very open with us immediately, or at least after a very brief period of distrust. These people did not trust us beyond discussion until we had offered our lives to save their planet, yet it seemed that we had achieved more in that act of proposed sacrifice than we had realized. These humans do, however, place too much emphasis on propriety for the sake of propriety.

I do hope this woman does not come to reprimand because of our entirely unofficial exchange. The ambassador of the humans has certainly been making more and more of an effort to control what we see and hear of these people the more time we spend with them.

Entry Twenty

I understand fully now why the human ambassador was trying to restrict our communications. The ship’s crew, not a part of our diplomatic efforts, have been covertly compiling and translating vast amounts of the messages directed to our ship, without our approval.

We have been exposed to their indirect communications, of course – we discovered them through the presence of their first radio transmissions, after all – and we have tapped their system-wide information networks, but the unauthorized communications directed to us, specifically, have been politely ignored and untranslated, thanks almost entirely to the human ambassador’s fervent pleas.

The crew of the ship, however, have found that some of these signals contain messages of such hate and vitriol, such murderous rage and terrorized accusations, that had I not spent over three hundred local days immersing myself in their culture, I could have mistaken it for a declaration of war. The human ambassador has much to answer for.

______________________________________________________________ To be continued...

Part 1 | Part 2

Thanks to u/Prohibitorum for original transcription. Original Image

"The ambassador of the human civilisation will speak now."

On the call of these words a human walked up to the speaker’s podium in the Hall of Representatives. A thousand eyes - or whatever biological equivalent the many different species had - were on her from other ambassadors on the seats that arched upwards in many rows. Representative Harknethos was among them. The civilisation he spoke for was a late member and he was only the third one after the ambassador that had handled the initiation into the Commonwealth. So he knew exactly how this would play out. And he also knew that hundreds of billions of beings were watching the live transmission from thousands of planets across the Commonwealth for it was the very first official appearance of this new species.

The aged human looked tired and disheveled, seemingly badly prepared for the task of speaking on behalf of her people. The only thing not making her appear disrespectful was that she actually had an ambassadors cloth draped over her shoulders, the long and slim piece barely adorned with just a few additional lines of colorful yarn.

"Honoured ambassadors, representatives of all the species in the Galactic Commonwealth", she spoke the greeting in a clear and ringing voice. Surprisingly she used the common language, had the humans been this fast to learn it? It had caused a low murmur amongst the other ambassadors, but it quickly died down once the human continued.

"My name is Valentina Fedorovna and I am the chosen representative of all beings living in the human civilisation. I am sorry that the proper delegation was unable to appear on the short notice we were given. We did give up expecting an invitation many cycles ago. As the civil servant in closest proximity I am now speaking in their stead, though I certainly do not bring the soft diplomatic touch of my colleagues."

The obvious rudeness of the human caused a number of the present beings to make various noises of disagreement. This was not the way these things should go, she should have been begging for membership. It also seemed the dossier on the humans had been quite wrong - it stated that their species were only known since very recently. Meanwhile, the human just went on, ignoring any of the signs of mild protest.

"Thirty cycles ago we made first contact to the Niowemar people. They had once been, as you surely are aware, a member species of your Commonwealth until they were exiled from their own planet and barred from the travel nodes. A flotilla of their refugee ships had made its way across the stars with sublight engines in search of a new home. The only one to arrive had carried fifteen million beings.

“I am certain you know how lifeforms handle cosmic radiation over longer than one generation. I am certain I do not have to tell you of the state they were in. We were unable to save half of them, but the rest we gave a home on our planet.

“They told us about the way conflicts were handled in the Galactic Commonwealth. They told us about the so-called deathless wars. And they told us what happened to the ones subjugated by the victors. We tried to contact you then, honoured ambassadors. In lieu of hearing your side, we took what we learned for the truth. Know, that I am speaking for the Niowemar now too."

Over the last part there were quite loud cries of disagreement. One ambassador especially was calling for the human speaker to be cut off - Harknethos identified them as a member of the people that had instigated the conflict against the Niowemar. Of course there had to be rules to the proceedings and the human still had time, so order was called and the noise died down again. But - thirty cycles? So long had the humans been known already and they did not get to speak until now?

"The last refugee ship had carried something exceptionally precious with it besides the many lives - the knowledge to create a hyperspace connection node. Two cycles later we had been successful in creating a stable one. I know you are aware of its limitations, but we were not.

“We had tried to contact you many times then, honoured ambassadors. And without guidance, we had to revert to experimentation. In the process we lost many ships and a number of lives only to learn that it is impossible to establish a connection to any other node from just one side.

“This cut off from travel seemed deliberate and together with the communication silence it gave us the impression that the Commonwealth were trying to isolate us. Seeing that our node could only serve as an end point, we transmitted an open invitation for refugees of the Niowemar and anyone else displaced from their home."

More calls for order - these accusations were very serious and a number of ambassadors seemed to not want to wait for their turn to speak. It did sound unbelievable though, this pre-FTL species just build a feasible connection into the hyperspace network of the Commonwealth from merely theoretical second-hand knowledge? One thing was for sure, that dossier about them was worthless. Harknethos and probably a large number of the other ambassadors had been left in the dark about the recent history of that species. It was also obvious that the humans were crazy - to broadly call for anyone to just come to their underdeveloped world spelled suicide.

"We underestimated the number of species that were robbed of their planet or enslaved on it, and we saw a large influx of arrivals. By then we had stopped asking you for anything, honoured ambassadors, though we still needed help in ensuring order and safety. So we were actually lucky that the first larger group to show up was a fleet of Ja'kartii pirates.

“We welcomed them and offered them a home. They merely wanted us to spare their children from having to grow in the confines of a spaceship, and in turn patrolled the hyperspace node promising to protect anyone coming with peaceful intentions.

“I am certain you learned the force of their railguns, honoured ambassadors, when you sent one spy-ship after the other. Just know, that the Ja'kartii too found a home with us and I am also speaking for them."

The noise had gotten ridiculous. Even the call for order had not been enough to silence some, but the human just spoke on, raising her ringing voice over the commotion.

"Working with the people that followed our invitation, we colonized another planet and two moons in our own solar system, before we made landfall in two neighboring ones. These hyperspace nodes we were able to connect to the one near our home planet that still had new ships arriving every day.

“We saw more pirates too, most of them not as benevolent as the Ja'kartii, and some of them only pretending to be pirates. You must surely know about the latter. We observed those and the constant spy-ships to be the only sort of communication from the Commonwealth until the invitation to this very event, which I can only assume had to be in error.

“I want you to understand, honoured ambassadors, that I am speaking for sixty-five billion beings across Earth, Mars, Titan, Europa, Boru and Laetillia. I am speaking for fifteen species that are now our equals in the human civilisation. I am not here to ask for membership to your Commonwealth. I am not here to ask for anything at all. I am merely here to state our invitation to every sapient being in the galaxy."

Across the chaos that unfolded through the Hall of Representatives boomed the humans voice: "Give me your tired, your poor; your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

--- Cheers. I came over to Lemmy from r/HFY. Can't not post one of my personal favourites.

There's also a narration available done by KnightTime Audio Narration.

Hi all,

Reddit refugee here. I've been following hfy for a number of years and am invested quite heavily in a number of stories. I usually read on mobile on my lunch break, but with rif going and the shocking app it's replaced with I can no longer do so - just log in via computer every week or so to catch up.

What I am interested in is seeing if any coders here are able to make a bot that pulls ongoing stories from r/hfy when they are updated (first contact, TFTR.etc) and ask the authors if they are ok with it being automatically posted to lemmy as well?

First (Part 1) | Prev (Part 2)

I can't imagine the debate that went on amongst your people but finally a small shuttle emerged from the fleet and headed towards the Imperator's palace. The war council, in their shame, refused to meet with your delegates. Instead they nominated one of their members and sent me along as an "Honor Guard". That was when I saw you, my first human. You were standing at the end of your shuttles ramp next to another delegate. you with your red folder and he with his green folder.

Through the few human survivors we had managed to take, we managed to decipher your language and program a translator. Through that the lone council member announced that he was here to discuss the terms of our surrender. You and your co-delegate traded a brief look. I didn't know what it was at the time but I have come to learn it was relief. Your co-delegate stepped forward and offered your list of terms of our surrender.

Your terms were quite reasonable really, there were demands that we turn over copies of all military and civilian technology as well as working prototypes so that you could adapt them. We also had to make territorial concessions as well as accept an occupying force in order to ensure that we did not rebuild in an attempt to fight again.

When all the songs were sung and our honor pledges were finished you opened a communicator and said one word, "sunrise", and you and your partner turned to leave. A voice in the transmitter in my ear told me that your fleet was beginning to approach. maybe it was because I was young and impulsive or perhaps I knew that my dishonor was so complete that I couldn't get any worse, but either way I stepped out of line and called out to you. "Wait, if your co-delegate had our terms for surrender, what was in your folder?" Another look crossed his face, one that I would learn to be a 'wry smile'. "This folder here?" you asked, "This folder holds the terms of surrender." I told you that I didn't understand and your smile faltered. You looked me right in the eyes and said, "These are the terms we were going to offer for our surrender to you."

When your fleet arrived in orbit I finally understood. The ships were in bad shape, they were falling apart and looked like the first fleet that had attacked us. They were hospital ships and cargo haulers, refitted transports that looked as if they were about to fall apart. The massive 'ship' we saw was actually your first colony ship back before you had even discovered the phase drive and faster than light travel. You had grafted phase drives to it and had to tow it into position using decrepit ore haulers. Our "occupiers" were disheveled civilians that looked half starved. Over the next many rotations I learned the truth.

You had gambled everything on this plan. Every last resource had been poured into the building of the grand fleets that you had used to attack us. Fields​ that you used to grow food were tilled over so you could build weapons factories. You had stripped half a dozen colonies and hundreds of asteroids and moons in order to assemble the vast fleets for your attack. You literally had nothing left to fight us. The fleet in orbit was there either to occupy us in the event of victory or to be used as an offering of slaves in the event of your defeat. You were so stretched thin of resources we had to supply you with fuel just so the bulk of your fleet could return home!

You knew that attacking us directly might not have been a sure victory so you had to make us believe that we couldn't face the endless onslaught of your fleets. Your final gamble had paid off. With peace secured, we were both able to rebuild your broken empire. now we are the strongest of allies. We fight side by side against those that would dare stand to oppose us. I was only able to visit you now due to the fact that my fleet is running a joint training exercise with one of yours.

That is why I am here now and there is something I must ask you. I didn't realize at the time because there was so much to do, and I haven't been able to see you in the four cycles since the peace treaty was ratified. But now that I have you here I must know. The last fleet we encountered during the final battle was 11-12. You must tell me as I have never been able to figure it out. What was the 12th fleet? What was 12 of 12?

With that the frail old man in the hospital bed looked over to the Kress Fleet Commander standing before him. A wry smile stretched across his weathered and pale face. "Perhaps", he whispered, "that is best left to the imagination".

First (Part 1) | Prev (Part 2) _______________________________________________

Original Source.

Transcribed by u/IUpvoteUsernames in Reddit

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Two rotations later you attacked again. This time the fleet was larger and the ships were better equipped. The fleet didn't hesitate to open fire and were much more prepared for our defenses. The battle still didn't last very long and our losses were minimal. Once again our Learners were sent out. The few ships that were left mostly intact had a wide range of names, but every one of them had the designation 2-12 on their bow.

Still the council could not understand the meaning of the designation. Had we figured it out sooner I really doubt it would have made a difference in the end. Another two cycles later, almost to the minute, another fleet attacked. This one actually had ships we were familiar with. They were older battlecruisers like the "Formidable", the "Valiant", the "Daring". This fleet was about half the size of the fleets you had sent into battle back at the beginning of the war, but they had been outfitted with more advanced weapons and shields.

Our defense fleet was small since we had thought that you didn't know where our home world was and that you were on the verge of losing the war. The battle was fierce but as was common, we gained the upper hand. When it was clear that your fleet was going to lose the surviving ships did something we had never seen before.

Rather than fleeing or fighting to the death. The last ships intentionally rammed the nearest Kressian ship. When the battle was over your entire fleet, some 70 ships were gone. We had lost three warships and over a dozen were critically damaged. It was one of the costliest battles we had ever fought.

As our repair crews were sent out to assess the damage, our Learners noted on the record that every ship in the fleet that we could get a clear view on had the designation 3-12 on their bow. Finally the council realized what that meant. They thought that surely the Humans didn't have the ability to field nine more fleets like the one they had just sent, but at their suggestion the Imperator recalled a reserve fleet and sent out several attack groups to search our home sector for more humans. Like clockwork you would send a fleet to attack us every two cycles.

Each fleet was larger and stronger than the last and the names became more hostile to match the growing ferocity of your attacks. We witnessed the destruction of ships like the "Vengeance" and the "Retaliation" and as each fleet was down to its last ships, they would ram into our or intentionally detonate their phase drives in order to cause as much damage as possible.

Our losses we mounting and fear had begun to build not only among the rank and file, but also within the war council itself. By the time the 8-12 fleet had attacked we were recalling every active fleet within range to bolster our defenses. When fleet 9-12 attacked we were on the verge of panic. This fleet was massive, easily numbering 1000 ships. We saw ships that we had never encountered before. These were not the crude and bulky vessels we were accustomed to...

These ships were sleek and fast. Their shields were powerful and we were quite dismayed to see that they had the same pulse cannons that our own cruisers and battleships used. By then our entire fleet was clustered around our home world so we still won the battle, but not before several of your ships broke through our lines and began to bombard our planet. The damage was relatively minor but it set off a panic among the populace.

The people knew that we were fighting off attack after attack, but the war council had always told them that we were suffering no losses while they were being utterly destroyed. Now everyone knew that the humans were not giving up on the war but were willing to sacrifice much to destroy us. At that point the council had, quietly, begun to discuss other options.

As a race steeped in traditions and honor, it was almost incomprehensible to even consider surrendering to the humans, but the loss of civilian life and the fact that each fleet we faced was becoming more and more powerful was giving us cause to talk. We knew that there were at least three more fleets ready to attack us and if they continued to grow in size and strength we might not be able to win. And we knew that losing would mean the death of countless Kressians. After all the death and destruction we had visited upon your people, we knew that our fate would be sealed if we could not end the war on terms.

Right on time, two rotations later, fleet 10-12 jumped into our system. There were only four ships, but they were big. No, big doesn't quite describe them. They were massive, bigger than massive. The best measurement we could get was over five krents or nearly three of your kilometers long, almost four times the size of our largest war cruiser.

Every open space of these ships was studded with large pulse cannons and missile tubes. They came screaming right into the heart of our fleet. For once we knew how you must have felt. We sent hundreds of ships out to fight four of yours and we were getting slaughtered. But this time it was our numbers that won out.

The sacrifices of so many of our ships and commanders allowed us to destroy the War, Famine, Pestilence and Death (as always we didn't understand the significance of the names at the time). When it was over we had less than 1000 ships remaining. The inner orbit of our planet was choked with wrecked hulls and frozen bodies. Pieces of ships were raining down into our atmosphere where they would catch fire and slam into the ground.

The council had no choice. They told the Imperator that if we didn't surrender to the humans when the next fleet arrived then it was likely that the last vestiges of our fleet would be destroyed and that our home world would be sterilized of all life. Reluctantly he agreed. Two rotations later fleet 11-12 jumped into our system.

We couldn't get a clear reading on them as they were outside our normal scanning range and our long range scanner was still damaged. It was impossible to get a clear count but we estimated that there were almost 10,000 ships. One of them was even bigger than the last four.

It must have been at least six kilometers long and had what looked to be cannon that were over 1/4 kilometer in size. The fleet stayed just out of visual range but its presence was all we needed. Almost immediately I was ordered to send a message to your fleet. We requested that delegates be sent to discuss terms of surrender.

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Original Source.

Transcribed by u/IUpvoteUsernames in Reddit

"I remember when the humans defeated the Kress Imperium; I'll remember it until I breathe my last. Do you remember it my old friend?" There was no answer from the bed next to me. "I'm sure you do, you were there after all. The war had started when I was only one cycle old. I remember when our race first discovered yours. We had stumbled on a colony during a standard mapping expedition. rather than try to make contact at that time our Grand Imperator sent a full honor fleet and our Prime Delegate.

To this day no one truly knows what went wrong or who fired first. What we do know for sure was that a lucky, or rather unlucky, shot had hit the Prime Delegate's flagship killing him and the Fleet Commander instantly. It didn't help that the Prime Delegate was also the Imperator's first born. Shortly after that the entire colony's defensive fleet was in ruins. In a fit of rage the fleet Sub-Commander had the entire colony burned to ashes and just like that, we were at war."

How you humans managed to resist us so long was almost as maddening as how you won the war. Your ships were slow, their shield were weak and their weapons were underpowered. The only​ thing you had going for you was your cunning and your ability to reproduce.

No matter how many colonies we burned, no matter how many ships we destroyed there seemed to be an endless amount of reinforcements for you to send in their place. Your capacity to build fleets was like nothing we had seen before. You also fought every battle with a stubborn determination that has never been matched by over 100 races we have encountered in this galaxy. You would send 15 of your ships to destroy one of ours and when that didn't work, you would send 50.

But in the end even that was not enough. After nearly a cycle of war we finally saw a change. You were less likely to engage us in direct battles, preferring raids and hit and run tactics. When you did choose to fight us your fleets were smaller and seemed to be less willing to commit to a full on attack. The war council had thought that you had finally reached the point where you were no longer capable of resisting. How wrong they were.

I was a Signals sub-officer, just out of primary training and barely two cycles or roughly 40 of your Earth years old. I was working in the War Council's tactical center. They were discussing their next steps in the war and trying in vain to determine where your homeworld might be. Suddenly our long range sensors picked up a group of ships jumping into real space just outside our defensive grid.

We knew they were human but didn't recognize the ship configuration. There were only 12 of them and as they slowly made their way forward we didn't even think to open fire. The ships were small and looked as if they had been cobbled together out of debris and wreckage. It almost seemed as if they were lost and wanted to surrender to us until they opened fire.

Their weapons were pathetically weak, but they took us by surprise. Before our defensive weapons could return fire they had done heavy damage to our main long range sensors. Of course they didn't get off a second shot. All but one of the ships were instantly vaporized. The last one tried to flee but it's engines overheated and melted the aft half of the ship. Instantly the council ordered our Learners to get to work.

That was the one thing we picked up from you during the war. The limited number of victories you had, had given you the chance to study us and our technology. You took our weapons and attempted to reverse engineer them. The result was something between your weapons and ours, but it was certainly more effective. You also studied how we fought and adapted to us as much as you could.

Our ways have always been rigid, you once said that we lacked imagination. But now we tried to use your own methods against you. We studied the wreckage of your "fleet" but couldn't find much use. The ships were actually cobbled together out of mismatching parts and there were no survivors to interrogate. At the end of our Learner's report, just an addendum really, was that the sole surviving ship had two designations.

Your ship names were rather much more colorful than ours, those that were intact enough for us to study at least. The one surviving ship was named the "Folly" but right under it, stenciled on the buckled hull of the bow was 1-12. We thought that it was simply a numerical designation of that ship in the group and ignored it.

Next (Part 2)

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Original Source.

Transcribed by u/IUpvoteUsernames in Reddit

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/387861

> I can’t sleep at night. > > It began after the Earthlings appeared on the Galactic stage. I was one of the many individuals who began to research them, some as a job, others out of curiosity. > > While the human beings were certainly unique in physiology, ability, and culture, so was every other species. Nothing about them at first glance made them stand out from the galactic crowd. In fact, in a general sense the species of the galaxy were all very similar. After all, we all had to conquer our home planets and develop the ability for space travel on our own. > > I suppose if anything did, it wasn’t any one attribute but the combinations. They not only had a wide variety of coloration, they also had a wide variety of size and body type. In fact, if anything that was what made Earthlings stand out. They had variety. > > Not only physically, but culturally. It wasn’t completely unheard of for a species to have more than one language, but these were almost always glorified dialects and/or remnants of pre-artificial language (if that species used one). The humans had 24 “families” of spoken language. Granted, they did have a single lingua franca but still...! > > All these differences and I have listed only two of many, lead straight into what may be the most interesting thing about humans. Their propensity for violent conflict. ...Let me rephrase that. It’s not that there weren’t other violent species out there. In fact, many if not most of the space-faring races were apex predators on their home planets. It’s that humans had a habit of infighting. Nobody could believe how often and how ruthlessly humans would fight with themselves. > > When one of my contemporaries asked them directly, they responded with some human philosopher. Most of it basically boiled down to the concept of “the other”. It was almost insulting. As if we had no idea what war was! As if one species had never set out to destroy another of incompatibility! Maybe I misspoke earlier. It isn’t even as if no other species has gone to war with its own race. It was the major reason why maintaining close relationships with colonies was so important to many species. If colonies became too separate and independent for a couple of generations, conflicts could arise and had in the past. Our problem wasn’t that they went to war with other members of their own species. It was how quickly they were able to view their own species as “the other”. > > Maybe that was the defining trait of humans? Their ability to quickly label anyone as “the other”? As a non-person? Some of their philosophers certainly thought so. Many of my contemporaries stopped their search here. I began to dive back into the history of Earth. I wanted to know how such an ability had come about. My search revealed many disturbing things. Atrocities of such a varied and incomprehensible nature. Attempted genocide, torture, slavery. No one did these things to their own species. > > Soon I was the only one left. All of my fellow researchers, public and private, had long since gone public with their findings. Humanity was painted in an ill light. Their defining trait was to be the ability to treat another being as equals one day and as an inanimate obstacle the next. > > I realized that my fellow scholars had forgotten something. The first thing that had shocked us. The diversity of humankind. As I delved back into their history, I saw more evidence of how those differences were even more pronounced than we thought. It was no wonder they were able to consider members of their own species as non-persons! > > But how did such an arrangement come to exist? Why hadn’t any one culture or civilization already stamped out their rivals? ...And why did no other species have this diversity? I eventually came upon pre-history. I read about how early man had driven his rival and sister species to extinction. My first thoughts were that the others were right. > > Then it occurred to me. No other species had closely related species either. No other species was as diverse in form and culture. ...As the realization set in I grew terrified. I began this research commenting on how similar the species of the galaxy were. ...Humans were similar to us as well. No other species had the diversity in value systems and beliefs the humans did. > > What sets the humans apart IS NOT their capacity to turn friends and loved ones into “the Other”. It is their capacity to turn “the Other” into friends and loved ones. > > What is truly surprising is not that the humans fight over their differences. It’s that they have differences to fight over. > > The species of the galaxy are all very similar. With one exception, they have all brutally stamped out any differences, and variations. These deviations from the norm were destroyed so perfectly our racial memories have forgotten them. > > Every species, save Homo sapiens, had longo ago perfected the art of genocide. > > I wonder if I shall ever sleep again. > > Source

"Their weapons and biology were obsolete."

The speaker stood before the entire Imperial War College Corps of Cadets.

"Well," the Major pondered for moment, "Their weapons were clearly obsolete. Powder based propellants and metal projectiles were their main methods of warfare. But their biology tricky."

A holograph of a human manifested on the stage next to a rotating display of a planet .

"Four limbs and a two eyes on the cephalic. Endoskeletons, and five fingers on their hands. About one and a half standard meters in hight. But strong, bulky, and mental titans of battle. The biological problems can wait, their mindset must be addressed. Their history is wrought with warfare. Thousands of cycles of conquest and collapse, each rendering a more ruthless method of slaughter than the last."

Blotches of color appeared on the holograph of the human homeworld as it flattened out.

"Each color represents a nation-state, its shape altering as it's conquered and revolts. Similar colors designate alliances. Warfare shaped their psyche. One continent of their race almost ruled their entire planet. They fought two planetary wars in just fifty cycles. Then they endured hundred and twenty of peace."

"For a brief moment the borders of their planet remained mostly stationary. Massive amounts of their population lost their warrior ethos until the resource wars, and they never looked back."

The colored outlines split at a few points, then the whole order broke into chaos. Lines shifting, splitting, a. expanding until three points began an unyielding advance across the planet.

"Three massive hyperpowers forged through fire, conquest, and resolve, which wrecked their whole planet down in a third and devastating terra bellum. Around this point, although hindered by massive destruction, their technology allowed exoplanetary mining to be feasible. This is when they entered our galactic community. We never needed to deal with a divided space faring species before. Our initial contact stunned the humans, as it does every species. Well they remain a divided species today, and a political nightmare for us. But their biological capacity for warfare?"

The display flashed to a paused holovid of a team of human soldiers. A red glow around them indicated their condition: wounded, exhausted,and dehydrated. They were in a wedge formation spaced fifteen meters apart. A flat outline of one soldier appeared with vital statistics. Blood loss was at 20%, rifle ammunition was down to a final magazine of 40, and two full 15 round magazines for his sidearm. The body had exhausted the last consumed energy intake and was burning up stored fat.

"This is their warrior mentality. These four men are all that remains of a platoon. One platoon, with bayonets fixed, covering a single bottleneck, as its battalion retreats during the biowar on travaticus."

The video played in silence. The four fired in single shots. Casings flew through the air. Then, two three meter tall armored creature appeared at the far end of the projection

"This is monstrosity is the biologically engineered warriors of the Archave. Ape like with claws for hands, and a massive pain tolerance. And this is these humans last stand. They concentrate fire, notice the change in the stathue and this humans personal information. Notice the shift in color to blue, this is the release of their adrenaline. It's potent. It's blocking out pain, it's increasing their reflexes and sharpening their fighting prowess."

The ape charged forward, rounds shredding at its armor and skin. It roared forward and ripped into the 1st soldier. The Corps gasped. The humans were glowing blue, rifles now expending rounds at burst speeds.

"Their heart rate is off the charts, a percentage increase we cannot even fathom. Yet they controlled their breathing, each shot landing on its target. Pay attention on the human farthest from the attackers."

The slat screen beeped as the farthest human ran out of rifle rounds and switched to the slower and controlled single shots of his handgun. The three remaining soldiers continued to lay fire on the advancing beasts, before they could reach the second victim the concentrated fire brought it down. The corps opened in a cheer that died as quickly as it erupted, the last beast had ripped another soldier in half. Rounds continued to fly, and the beast closed in on the third human, a claw spearing through it's torso and ripping him in half.

Another beep The last human had expended his very last round. The holovid paused and rotated to give a better view of the human and beast. Their eyes locked. The video began in slow motion as the human reached for his slung rifle and pulled it to his hip. His mandible dropped, skin stretched, and and veins bulged as the human screamed and leapt forward.

At bayonet point, he charged the monstrosity that had destroyed his brothers.

The corps was in silent awe.

A bayonet charge.

The creature stabbed the human in the chest, a massive red oval appeared on his stat screen where the claw had penetrated, and the human threw his rifle. The bayonet pierced the apes cheek, as the human flat lined.

"That charge, that refusal to quit, that spirit give their last full measure in the face of death, is why they won"

Original Post

Fleeing from reddit, this is an older story of mine (3 chapters so far, but I would like to continue it, just not on that site) Enjoy, or don't.

Part 2

>>>>----------------------------------------------------------<<<<

Or so we thought, after first contact.

You see, when we first encountered humans, they had barely colonized their solar system. Not even counting the ginormous cost, both in lives and materials, and their primitive spacefaring thechnology, the galaxy in general classified them very low in the scale of species relevance, given what happened right after comunications began.

First, major religions suffered a cataclysmic schism, unable to cope with the fact that there where other life forms, and other faiths, throughout the galaxy. One can argue that their religions where already dead far before, when instead of enlightenment, they were driven by power-hungry megalomaniacs. In any case, over a few terran years, all large faiths collapsed, unable to hold themselves together with enough followers to keep mattering in the world affairs, divided each into millions of pieces and interpretations of life. But more on that, later.

When first contact specialists greeted the human delegations, instead of meeting the best and brightest, they found more power-driven humans that were insidiously desesperate on “technological exchange”, but there was not that much the specialists could actually trade, and they had barely enough patience to deal with the backstabing happening behind the scenes between many of their countries, trying to one-up the others. Our computational technology worked on optical and atomic scale, being thousands of times faster and more efficient than their electrically driven, silicon based technology.

Art and culture may have worked for a bit, but in a coalition of one million species upon millions of worlds, it would get diluted and estranged. Besides, humans would not go anywhere unless we carried them, wich was another can of worms alltogether. Given that their spacefaring technology was chemical in nature, vastly inefficient, and definitely NOT interstellar. They had begun spreading through their solar system, but at speeds that even a rock snail (silicon based life from an obscure planet in the edge of the galaxy) seemed fast in comparison. They had developed habitations in their moon and the fourth planet orbiting their Sol, but as singular efforts from individual countries, rather than a general human endeavor.

Medical and biologically speaking, there would be some trade, sure, but human biology was not that different from other well known species (definitely not counting you here, rock snail), so even there, exchange was going to be somewhat limited on what humans could offer.

Materials? Space mining at large was robotized at this point, and planetside digging was barely worth it anymore.

When sociologists arrived to perform a standard psicological analysis for the archives, they more or less found out why humans where confined to their own corner of space. Their structures of power where mostly coped by not very bright individuals that seeked to gain power for themselves or their selected group. That hindered social, intellectual and technological advancement to a crawl. It's not like humans were going to destroy themselves right away, but as an interstellar race, they were not even in diapers, but barely even born, so to speak.

With all this, the galaxy at large celebrated their appearance for a short while, like everything that is new, and then went about their business once more.

And here is where you ask, why on terra am I explaining this story at all, if this was an unremarkable species (for galaxy standards), in an average corner of the galaxy?

Well, as mentioned previously, large religions were, in all effects, inexistent after a few human years. With that, all the thinking control, bombardment of beliefs and fears that drove those, fell dramatically, freeing a lot of human minds to think about something else, other than sit in a corner, dreading existence.

Once humans had a reason to look up, to the sky and beyond, without the background noise of their manipulative brethren, they started to think outside the box they had been kept in, but more importantly, they also stopped hindering the thinking in their offsprings. The cascade effect was unpredictable from our side.

We had inadvertently awaken the colossus.

With all the free brainpower bubbling around, the speed of humanity developement started to accelerate. Human governments tried to hold the reins to mantain themselves in power, of course, but they failed miserably, not because they could have not done anything, but because they did not act fast enough.

It is generally known that it's harder to develop an idea from scratch, than knowing for sure that something can be done, and finding a way to do it.

Humans had seen our ships. We had expected some technological espionage, so to speak, from the humans in power. However, at the time of first contact, Earth was steeming with space travel interest, even if primitive, and the media coverage was on par with any other forms of entertainment. That meant reverse engineering and developement was not confined to a really small percentage of the scientific comunity, but instead, to millions upon millions of ideas hungry humans, with time to spare.

25 years after first contact, humans were already experimenting with FTL drives. 15 years later they had begun gravity manipulation techniques. 10 years later, suddenly, earth exploded.

NOT literally, of course.

That day Earth spat out a million spines. Some were flashy and bright, from the descendants of spacefaring moghuls that still had vast economic power, others were, literally, grain silos. You see, in general, not everyone had the resources to get a starship built for them, be either a government or an individual. So space access for general humans was still a government interest controlled issue, in theory.

It is known that a good Tiv'at mechanic can build a spaceship out of a truck, it's not that hard for a good specialist with hundreds of years of knowledge in it's back. Now imagine a race full of tinkerers that had been physically confined to a single planetary surface and the belief of an eternity of solitude. It took a specific kind of mind, of course, to go about building their own, but if it could be welded shut, and have air scrubbers installed, it could be made into a spaceship.

And that's how 50 year after first contact, smart enough humans plucked themselves out of their home planet, leaving the dumber part of the group, behind.

Uvuk Dhasso, Galaxy Historian.___

> enlightenment

!MESSAGE BEGINS

We made a mistake. That is the simple, undeniable truth of the matter, however painful it might be. The flaw was not in our Observatories, for those machines were as perfect as we could make, and they showed us only the unfiltered light of truth. The flaw was not in the Predictor, for it is a device of pure, infallible logic, turning raw data into meaningful information without the taint of emotion or bias. No, the flaw was within us, the Orchestrators of this disaster, the sentients who thought themselves beyond such failings. We are responsible.

It began a short while ago. as these things are measured. less than 66 Deeli ago. though I suspect our systems of measure will mean very little by the time anyone receives this transmission. We detected faint radio signals from a blossoming intelligence 2.14 Deelis outward from the Galactic Core, as photons travel. At first crude and unstructured. these leaking broadcasts quickly grew in complexity and strength, as did the messages they carried. Through our Observatories we watched a world of strife and violence. populated by a barbaric race of short-lived. fast breeding vermin. They were brutal and uncultured things which stabbed and shot and burned each other with no regard for life or purpose. Even their concepts of Art spoke of conflict and pain. They divided themselves according to some bizarre cultural patterns and set their every industry to cause of death.

They terrified us, but we were older and wiser and so very far away, so we did not fret. Then we watched them split the atom and breach the heavens within the breadth of one of their single, short generations, and we began to worry. When they began actively transmitting messages and greetings into space, we felt fear and horror. Their transmissions promised peace and camaraderie to any who were listening, but we had watched them for tool long to buy into such transparent deceptions. They knew we were out here, and they were coming for us.

The Orchestrators consulted the Predictor, and the output was dire. They would multiply and grow and flood out of their home system like some uncountable tide of Devourer worms, consuming all that lay in their path. It might take 6.8 Deelis, but they would destroy us if left unchecked. With aching carapaces we decided to act. and sealed our fate.

The Gift of Mercy was 84 strides long with a mouth 2/4 that in diameter, filled with many 44 weights of machinery, fuel, and ballast. It would push itself up to 2/8th of light speed with its onboard fuel, and then begin to consume interstellar Primary Element 2/2 to feed its unlimited acceleration. It would be traveling at nearly light speed when it hit. They would never see it coming. Its launch was a day of mourning, celebration, and reflection. The horror of the act we had committed weighted heavily upon us all; the necessity of our crime did little to comfort us.

The Gift had barely cleared the outer cometary halo when the mistake was realized. but it was too late. The Gift could not be caught. could not be recalled or diverted from its path. The architects and work crews, horrified at the awful power of the thing upon which they labored. had quietly self-terminated in droves. walking unshielded into radiation zones. neglecting proper null pressure safety or simple ceasing their nutrient consumption until their metabolic functions stopped. The appalling cost in lives had forced the Ochestrators to streamline the Gift's design and construction. There had been no time for the design or implementation of anything beyond the simple. massive engines and the stabilizing systems. We could only watch in shame and horror as the light of genocide faded into infrared against the distant void.

They grew, and they changed, in a handful of lifetimes htey abolished war, abandoned their violent tendencies and turned themselves to the grand purposes of life and Art. We watched them remake first themselves, and then their world. Their frail, soft bodies gave way to gleaming metals and plastics, they unified their people through an omnipresent communications grid and produced Art of such power and emotion, the likes of which the Galaxy has never seen before. Or again, because of us.

They converted their home world into a paradise (by their standards) and many 106s of them poured out into the surrounding system with a rapidity and vigor that we could only envy. With bodies built to survive every environment from the day lit surface of their innerrnost world. to the atmosphere of their largest gas giant and the cold void in-between. they set out to sculpt their system into something beautiful. At first we thought them simple miners. stripping the rocky planets and moons for vital resources. but then we began to see the purpose to their constructions. the artworks carved into every surface. and traced across the system in glittering lights and dancing fusion trails. And still. our terrible Gift approached.

They had less than 22 Deeli to see it, following so closely on the tail of its own light. In that time, oh so brief even by their fleeting lives, more than 1010 sentients prepared for death. Lovers exchanged last words, separated by worlds and the tyranny of light speed. Their planet side engineers worked frantically to build sufficient transmission infrastructure to upload the countless masses with the necessary neural modifications, while those above dumped lifetimes of music and literature from their databanks to make room for passengers. Those lacking the required hardware or the time to acquire itconsigned themselves to death, lashed out in fear and pain, or simply went about their lives as best they could under the circumstances.

The Gift arrived suddenly. the light of its impact visible in our skies. shining bright and cruel even to the unaugmented ocular receptor. We watched and we wept for our victims, dead so many Deelis before the light of their doom had even reached us. Many 64s of those who had been directly or even tangentially involved in the creation of the Gift sealed their spiracles with paste as a final penance for the small roles they had played in this atrocity. The light dimmed. the dust cleared, and our Observatories refocused upon the place where their shining blue world had once hung in the void, and found only dust and the pale gleam of an orphaned moon, wrapped in a thin, burning wisp of atmosphere that had once belonged to its parent.

Radiation and relativistic shrapnel had wiped out much of the inner system. and continent sized chunks of molten rock carried screaming ghosts outward at interstellar escape velocities, damned to wander the great void for an eternity. The damage was apocalyptic. but not complete. from the shadows of the outer worlds. tiny points of light emerged, thousands of fusion trails of single ships and world ships and everything in between. many 106s of survivors in flesh and steel and memory banks, ready to rebuild. For a few moments we felt relief, even joy, and we were filled with the hope that their culture and Art would survive the terrible blow we had dealt them. Then came the message. tightly focused at our star. transmitted simultaneously by hundreds of their ships.

"We know you are out there, and we are coming for you."

!MESSAGE ENDS

_________________________________________________ Thank you for reading the story, this story is more than six years old. I have included links to the original sources and where I came upon this story.

Original Source

Reddit Post

“Oh, oh god, you want believe what I just heard from a buddy of mine, this is great, you won’t believe it.”

“Hmm?”

“Those Grek-nel bastards are going to surrender to the Humans at the council today.”

“Humans?”

“Yeah, that new council race.”

“The pink bipedals from Sol?”

“Well, some of ‘em are different colors, but yeah, that’s them.”

“Didn’t know they were at war with the Greks, I really am out of the loop, and to have won against those assholes already, good for them.”

“That’s the great part, they weren’t at war, ya know how every time a new race becomes acknowledged, invited to the council and taken off the protection list. And how the Grek-nel just sweep over and demand tribute or they will use their nasty little bioweapon.”

“Oh, don’t get me started on their death beetles, they let some lose on Tavrin 4, they breed too fast to get rid of easy, and they’re too small to notice till it’s already an infestation. And they are poisonous. Nearly impossible to get rid of without killing everything else in the area, we had to burn half the fields before harvest time, and we’re still not sure if they got out of the quarantine area.”

“Exactly, so the Greks stroll right up to Earth, that’s the human’s prime planet, and transmit the info on their death beetles to some random military institute. Well, the humans there tell them “We’re not the ones in charge of that” and they should talk to this other place and gives the coordinates. So they transmit to the next site: It’s a science building, they thought the Greks where sharing information, and started sending some back. Turns out Earth is positively covered with shit that makes the death beetles look tame, they got versions that fly. It’s insane. Greks get up and leave fast as they could.”

“Wait, they got lots of ‘em?”

“Yeah, it’s freaky, from what I hear only place with more hostile bugs is Telltra, and no one lives there.”

“That’s messed up”

“Yeah, how many species can say their first military victory was achieved without their military.”

Original Broken Link

Mirror Post - Reddit

Day of the Fat Man

Chapter 1: Shooting Stars

When I was a little Noocar I learned the meaning of cold and hunger. My home world was a poor farm world with short summers and harsh winters but still we usually were able to grow all we needed.

But that year, it started bad. The winter was long and cold and the spring wet and stormy. Our grain didn’t grow, the root-vegetables were foul and the cattle got sick. We barely made it through the summer and in autumn food become scarce. Then the early winter started with our reserves depleted.

On a cold and clear morning I woke up hungry again and sneaked out of the nest where my family shared their warmth, out of our community hall. I decided to collect some bark in the near forest. The bark was hard to chew but filled my stomach and sometimes I found a larvae or a mushroom.

Just when I tried swallowing a really hard piece of bark a loud bang made me look up into the sky. A large and bright shooting star, in broad daylight. I was told I could make a wish now. I wished for food and warmth.

Another shooting star. And another. And many more! Dozens of them! They slowed down, took turns and swarmed in every direction. I had never seen that kind of shooting stars. And one was heading towards our small village. As it came closer it features became more clear. It was a metal construct riding on a blue flame coming out of its back side. As I ran towards my village the construct became larger until it dwarfed every house in the village except the community hall.

When it landed on the large place before the community hall, right in front of me I, was baffled – I had never seen so much metal in one place. Our village was slowly awakening to the loud noises coming from the vehicle, people looking through doors and windows, fear in their eyes.

But I knew they meant no harm. Because they were shooting stars and granted me my wish.

When a huge door opened I stepped closer and looked inside. Warm Air rushed over me from the inside. Then the strangest Noocar I had ever seen handed me a box, talked in a strange language to me, tried to explain something to me. But even though I couldn’t understand his words I knew what he was saying, took the box and ran back to my house!

“Food, they brought food!”

Chapter 2: New Hope

People from beyond the Stars! I couldn’t believe it! Our elders taught us Stars were the tears of the gods but in fact they were the home of these Terrans as they call themselves.

They saw from afar how dire our situation was and organized the largest rescue operation in their entire history. But even for them it was hard to feed an entire world so far away, it cost them huge amounts of resources. Thus we had to sustain on dried food, tasteless but nutritious. Still it filled our stomachs and secured our survival. For days star ships arrived and landed pallets of dried food until our storage was full.

Meanwhile their wise taught us to build better shelter, better fireplaces, gave us better crops and more sturdy cattle. They told us our world was entering an ice age but they had lots of experience with creating global warming and would try to come up with a solution. I thought global warming sounded nice.

When the Terrans finally left there was lots of work to do. Even we kids had to work dawn to dusk for weeks to help building all the new things the Terrans taught us. And finally we were done with our new community hall. It was warm and big and for the winter time we all would sleep in this new and modern building, share a cooking place. After the winter we would build more houses like that but for the time it was good.

It was at the coldest, most quiet time of winter when the Terrans came back one last time.

Chapter 3: First Arrival of the Fat Man

At the falling dusk our community had just gathered in the town hall and started to prepare the evening meal. Salty powder soup with water, like every day for weeks.

Suddenly we hear the sound of a Terran Star Ship circling over our hall – unmistakeable but different? Like many small bells ringing?

We kids ran outside and looked stunned at the strange Terran Star Ship – it was red with horned quadrupeds painted on its side in a way it looked like they pulled the Ship – and while it circled over our small village it rained colourful sparkles and a fat Terran with red clothes and a white beard stood in its side door, laughing loud and deep while throwing little packages outside, gliding slowly down on parachutes.

“HOHOHO! Merry Christmas! HOHOHO! May the warmth of Christmas fill your heart, and its magic spread joy right from the start! HOHOHO!”

After several more turns he shouts “Happy Holidays!” and his ship vanishes in the night.

We collected the colourful packages and found little presents inside. Toys for the kids, nice clothes for the adults, sweet cake for everyone!

We decided to forgo the powder soup. Instead we feasted for the first time in years with the kids laughing and playing with their new toys!

Chapter 4: The new Fat Man

I stand in front of a mirror, checking my outfit. Perfect. Today is Fat Man Day! A very special Fat Man Day for me! Live wasn’t easy but we made it. The Terrans rarely show up nowadays, told us we are masters of our own future.

Sure, we remember the day when the Terrans arrived with boxes of powder soup. It is a holiday we take very serious, where we tell the story about the time of despair and hunger and take an oath to prepare for the next winter.

But the real holiday is the Day of the Fat Man, were we sing and party, feast and drink. Where we give presents to our young and praise the old for having cared well for us in their past.

My wife opens the door, looks outside and giggles me “They are ready!”

I close my red mantle, pull my white beard straight one last time and grab my bag, stepping into the community hall “HOHOHO! The Fat Man is here! Happy Holidays Everyone!”