“Daddy, what is that?” Ella, the youngest child asked while Marcus and Emma blankly stared at the phone screen.
“Nothing don’t worry about it, let’s go inside the house,” Emma said not breaking eye contact with the phone.
“Your government has been hiding the truth from you,” The alien said. “And they have been harboring a dangerous alien species while you knew nothing about it.”
A video of a spaceship, different looking than one in the sky, latched to the International Space Station popped on the screen. The video showed an alien ship powering up and then warping the space around it before completely vanishing, leaving the remnants of the ISS, a thousand little pieces of now junk, floating around the space.
“They allowed this species named Anoi to dock on your station and fix their ship, which we damaged in the battle. These Anoi are a dangerous species, part of an even more sinister coalition that travels the universe looking only to conquer and enslave anyone inferior to them.” The alien continued after the video cut.
“Because we can’t trust your obviously corrupted governments, we will temporarily take control of your planet. More of our ships will be entering your solar system and then planet in the upcoming days. We will need your help humans in order to stop the Anoi and their blood-thirsty coalition from reigning hell all over the universe and now that they know that Earth is habitable and has this many citizens they will for sure come back to use your natural resources and use you, humans, as a working force in their war effort.” The alien concluded its speech.
After the short pause, another Kraz’oxs came to the screen, this one introduced himself as an ambassador and the one who would coordinate human and Kraz’oxs meetings and everything that is going to happen in the near future. His last instructions were to continue on with their lives as normal for the next few days before the rest of Kraz’oxs ships arrive and when they do he would be broadcasting again with instructions on what to do further.
As soon as the broadcast ended all the streaming platforms, websites, apps, and cable went back to normal and all the devices that were on started blasting their own things. Marcus ignored the sounds standing in the same spot looking into the distance with the sweat pouring from his forehead. Not only aliens existed, but there were at least two different species and they were some talk about coalition so god knows how many species existed that were far more advanced than humans. Marcus snapped out of his hypnosis and looked around the house where his children were running around oblivious to what just happened, how could he protect them from this? Was there a need for protection? Questions kept popping into his mind one after another, questions for which he didn’t have any answers.
*****
James woke up from his sleep or did he pass out? He couldn’t remember, but he was awake now and as he looked around he could conclude that all the other astronauts suffered the same fate, some were waking up, some were still out, while the Anoi were already on their feet scrambling around the ship.
“Where are we?” Azcrawford yelled at another lanky Anoi.
“Don’t know, our navigation is not online yet were are doing our best to fix it.” The lanky alien yelled back and went on his way.
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The thing that was holding James to the wall finally released him and he went on to check on Chloe and Meng, first helping them on their feet before helping the other astronauts.
It took them over fifteen minutes to get everyone on their feet and by that time Azcrawford came to James pulling him to the side.
“Our ship is still in pretty bad shape,” Azcrawford said. “We could use your help fixing it, if everyone is ready tell them to ask my team what they can help and they will give them tasks.” James nodded.
“What happened with the jump? Did we land where you intended?” James asked
“We still don’t know and we couldn’t aim precisely so we just aimed towards our coalition space and we hope we reached it, come with me,” Azcrawford said.
James followed Azcrawford through the ship. They reached a smaller room with a huge amount of screens and in the center of the room there was a huge device that resembled a conference room table above it hovered an image of Anoi ship, it looked like a diagnostic hologram. The screen flashed mostly red, Anoi apparently used Red as Humans did, for something that was off or broken. The alien from before enters the room running and one of the blinking red dots turned green seconds after he came.
“We fixed the navigation,” He said and Azcrawford did a gesture that resembled nodding.
Azcrawford turned towards the hologram and did a few gestures with his hands and the hologram zoomed out of the ship. The image now showed their ship as a tiny dot in space, and the words in an alien language popped on the screen. James had no idea what was going on but somehow knew not to bother Azcrawford as he continued to do the hand gestures.
“This is not good, get everyone here,” Azcrawford yelled towards the other Anoi and he then relayed the message over the comms that James couldn’t hear.
“What’s going on?” James asked.
“We ended up in the forbidden part of our galaxy,” Azcrawford said.
“What do you mean forbidden?”
“Well, the species that live here are far older than all of us involved in this war and far superior, we need to get out of here as soon as possible, let’s just hope they are not here, or they haven’t seen us yet,” Azcrawford said
“Please explain further, this is getting rather confusing,” James pushed Azcrawford for some answers.
“Well this species called Qhiks, are ancient compared to all of us, and they were a war species long ago, destroying countless stars and solar systems and even galaxies in their war with other ancient species. Some long time ago they all stopped the war for some unknown reason getting into their own corners of the universe.“ Azcrawford spoke as he continued playing with the hologram. “Some centuries ago we enter their space unknowingly and their technology made us look so inferior, they could wipe us all with a blink of an eye. They gave our expedition a strict message to get it out there to all of our allies to never enter their space or we would be completely destroyed and wiped from existence. They gave us the location of their planets and solar systems and we have respected their wishes since then, so that’s why we need to get out of here right now.”
James felt a knot tightening around his throat, his heart was racing, and he felt completely broken. Things kept getting from bad to worse at rapid speeds. What if they just denied the Anoi’s land and they somehow left on their own, he and the rest of the Crew would be on the ISS, and earth could be safe. Now, he didn’t even want to think about what was going on on Earth, but he hoped the Kraz’oxs just left after Anoi.
The rest of the Anoi rushed into the room and took their positions around the table and on the far wall which had some instruments on it.
“Can we jump immediately?” Azcrawford asked.
“Trying to get the drive online,” Another alien answered.
“Cloak us in the meantime, don’t let them see us,” Azcrawford shouted at the team on the far wall.
“The drive won’t be ready for another ten minutes,” The first Alien gave his estimate.
Before Azcrawford could answer the hologram that was showing the ship now zoomed out just a little bit and popped with what seemed hundreds of tinny orange dots, the Qhiks noticed then and they were already here.
“Send them a message we ended up here by mistake and that we will be leaving right away, apologize, beg,” Azcrawford yelled.
“We can’t, they took full control of our ship,” another Anoi said and the ship shook violently, “We are being pulled by them…”