"Bonded one, verify the third planet from the star is the source of the target ore deposit the probes picked up." The Executive Overseer of the ship croaked out, sponging himself lightly while he did so from the comfort of his personal bath. "I will not be wasting Xutu Corp resources on yet another bungle by you poorly trained louts."
A small mammalian busied himself at the sensor station,delicate paws adjusting dials and buttons with precision despite the controls being engineering for a much larger being. The same thought crossed his mind,as it had a dozen times since they had gotten the probes reading, "what if I lie?" "I can just say the probes were wrong and the sensors detect nothing, I can save these poor souls." These thoughts raced through his mind as he maneuvered through the logs on his console, but soon they were replaced by the mental images of what the Xutu corporation would do to his world and his people if he falsified information, to the people of the rest of the slave crew if his deceit was discovered. His heart ached as he sent the confirmation to the Overseer.
Guga Nalak was a very important being, he knew this, he had attained the rank of Executive Overseer of one of the most influential Megacorps on this side of the galaxy. He knew that life was only as valuable as it could be exploited to be and that most of the time death was simply more profitable.
When one of the billions of survey drones Xutu Corp had dispatched returned to his branch department and reported a deposit of insanely rare ore at the core of a backwater planet he had fairly leapt out of his bath to lay claim to exploitation rights,even going so far as to wipe the records of its return so he could be sole beneficiary. Sure there were some minor inconveniences, the planet was apparently brimming with life but that was easy to fix. Nudge a big enough asteroid into a collision course and in a year or two none of the government environmentalist will be able to say a word when you swoop in to mine a dead world. Croaking to himself with glee he gave the order to murder billions of innocents for simply existing at the wrong place.
In the cargo-hold of the ship the small mammalian sensor tech recorded a message and information into a tight band transmitter along with reference materials. As he discharged the transmitter towards the doomed world he hoped it would be enough to save at least a few of the beings on its surface.
The Xutu Corp vessel jumped out of the system when its grim task was done, a mundane flash marking the exit of mundane evil.
Two years later the asteroid it had set on course for the little blue green world struck its surface despite the natives valiant efforts to destroy or divert it.
Billions died over the next day, seas boiled and Tsunamis of mud and ash washed over landmasses. Debris plumed into the atmosphere and soon the entire planet was shrouded by a layer of dust in the burning air.
Plant and animal life on the surface withered and died, the warm caress of the sun unable to reach them,but deep underground, Earths stubborn children endured. They had no colonies in space,nowhere to run to,but 2 years ago they had received a message from space.
There had been mass celebration across the planet when every institute with a powerful enough receiver had picked up the message. Alien life had found us, we weren't alone in the dark any more.
The message from the alien had taken some time to translate even thought it had provided basic reference points for us to work with in common elements, but the visual reference it sent was easily understood.
A planetkiller sized asteroid was going to hit us in 2 of our years, and the beings ship was the one making it do so.
There was anger,outrage and sadness, someone we had just met was trying to kill us. When the rest of the message was translated some weeks later, detailing the why this was happening and who the culprits were it only further hardened the peoples resolve.
The heroic little sensor tech had included rudimentary plans for ship design and stellar engines from whatever learning books he could access. A planet wide funneling of resources began, every nation helping to build vast underground self sufficient complexes to house as much of the population as possible. Manufacturing facilities, resource gathering facilities,all built on the points most likely to remain intact after impact below ground.
When the asteroid struck our world it killed billions,but billions more survived, we endured, we prepared.
Guga Nalak still knew he was a very important being, he was an Executive Overseer after all, but he knew he was about to be so much more important. In the four years since he had cleansed the planet they were traveling to of life the price of the ore at its core had only gone up and this promised to be one of the largest deposits ever discovered.
When the Xutu Corp vessel dropped out of jump space in-system he ordered an immediate approach to the third planet and full surface scans to verify no life remained, or at least little enough to quietly brush under a rug.
So intent on his target and so assured of his superiority in system was he, he didn't bother to order the sensor technician to sweep the rest of the solar system, and so the little sensor buoys dotted through space went unnoticed.
Guga had kept the same slavecrew from his previous trip,having had them confined together and training for 4 years to keep any information from leaking about where they had been, this prize was his alone to offer to the Corp.
At the sensor board the same little technician sat, delicate hands moving swiftly over the controls,hoping to find any life whatsoever on the planets surface,any sign he might have saved even a few. Scan after scan showed nothing, a frozen surface with traces of dust from the cataclysm still in the atmosphere, a dead world. Artificial satellites and large metallic debris still hung on in orbit but with no hands to guide them they would eventually burn up in the atmosphere.With tears in his eyes he transmitted the all clear to the overseer.
Predatory glares skewered the Xutu Corp vessel through viewscreens across the planet, two years had been insufficient to make practical use of the technology we had been gifted by the message we had received, but 2 more years of living below the surface with nothing to do but work towards survival and revenge had been plenty.
2 years spent grieving our lost loved ones and the marring of Earth, 2 years spent living below the graves of everything we had known and worked towards as a species. We knew the references we had worked from were ancient vessels,fossils compared to the modern technology of the ship entering orbit to plunder the corpse of our murdered world. We also knew the crew of the ship to be largely innocent,effectively hostages to the lords and owners of the vessel.
We would suffer no more harm to innocent beings, and we would have that ship.
As the Xutu Corp vessel settled into orbit many of the seemingly dead pieces of debris started to close in on its position.
Guga Nalak gurgled happily to himself as he went over the sensor data, he had even pulled his bulk out of the bath long enough to take his proper position on the bridge. "This is marvelous! This is the richest deposit ever recorded! Oh I do impress myself sometimes, and you crew, do you understand how lucky you are? When i report this find back to the board of directors its very likely they will knock multiple generations of service off your species contracts!
Nobody noticed the brief blip on a diagnostic panel registering multiple simultaneous hull breaches, they winked back off as quickly as they lit.
The little sensor tech was still staring morosely at the null readings on his console from the planets surface, every gurgle of glee from the fat bastard Executive was a stab of pain in his heart. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a trace of movement from a vent by his console, the barest hint of a patch of black that was slightly darker than the shadows of the vent, then it was gone.
He knew there were smart machines that rolled through the vents and tight spaces cleaning and doing routine maintenance, but they were very obvious when they passed by. He turned one of the sensor suites to face the ship and quietly ran a scan.
83 life signs aboard a ship with a crew of 60,he turned to look again at the vent,he could now plainly see the black faceplate of some sort of helmet, an animated facsimile of his face appear on the helmet with a finger held in front of the mouth, it wanted his silence ,it would have it. He nodded and went back to staring at his console, he quickly typed up a message and sent it via the maintenance request channel to every other crew console in the bridge.
Guga Nalak was perhaps the most important person in Guga Nalaks version of the ideal universe, which made it all the more surprising to Guga Nalak when a very large armored biped dropped from a panel in the ceiling in front of his chair and struck him with a baton crackling with electricity. He almost had time to be highly offended after the charge proved too weak to render him unconscious but the fist that immediately crashed into his face finished the job satisfactorily.
As Guga Nalak was very importantly being slugged in the face the rest of the bridge crew followed the sensor techs order from the maintenance channel and dropped to the floor.
Armored bipeds appeared in every corner of the bridge, they seemed to be communicating solely through hand gestures and head movements. The sensor tech saw one of them pull out a device and look from him to it multiple times before it walked over and knelt down beside him.
"Is this you?" the biped said in a peculiar accent slowly in the technicians language. He pointed at the picture then back to the technician.
The tech looked at the picture a moment and a tear welled up in his eye, "Yes this is me,this is from a message I sent to the people of the world we are over,but I do not think it helped, I do not know who you are but please do not hurt my friends. We are forced to work by the fat one and his ilk." He gestured towards the very important crumpled form of Guga Nalak who was currently being sealed in some sort of container with a lot of dials on it. The biped reached to its helmet and the black faceplate became transparent, the technician had never seen its species before but there were obviously tears in its pair of eyes as it looked at him.
"Little guy", the biped addressed the technician in his peculiar accent, "Whats your name?" The technician tilted his head to the side and stated his existence number.
The armored creature in front of him nodded before addressing him, "they took everything from your people,including your names. They tried to take everything from us, but you helped us in our time of need despite the risk to your people. You're going to have to think of a name for yourself technician because as of today you and the your fellow crew are free. According to the logs we've pulled the toad in charge kept this whole operation off the books so there's no danger to you or your family's, in fact hes already listed you all as expended during duty."
The technician collapsed back onto his haunches, "you mean your people come from world we are above? Did the plans I sent help, did you build ships and escape?"
The armored biped made downward motions with his hands while saying "slow down" to the technician."I didn't catch all of that,im still not too great at your language,but we didn't escape, we built shelters and prepared underground.We managed to save half the population of our world thanks to your warning, and the information you sent us allowed us to intercept this ship today. We already have multiple offworld colonies in the works and this ship is going to jump our technology forward considerably. Thanks to you, the human race didn't die here,and thanks to you, we will have the opportunity to avenge our dead."
The technician sat in silence a moment,pondering what he had heard. To survive an extinction level event, and thrive after the fact attested to this races will. They had adapted the technology he had sent them and made it their own while buried in the corpse of their dead world.
He looked at the human in front of him a moment before addressing him. "My mother called me Shala when I was a kit, it was a type of flower she liked, we were separated as soon as I was able to work. I think I would like that to be my name."
The human nodded and replied,"My name is Hasse Ola,it means rising sun in my peoples language. Shala I hope you and your crew are ready for a party when we land this bucket of bolts because you're something of a hero on earth, and when we're done partying we've got a lot of work to do breaking this technology down and makin it ours.And we're gonna do our damnedest to make sure nobody else falls victim to scum like them."