Space is quiet, spaceships are the complete opposite. A low wailing sob reverberated through the hull making the kidnappers look apprehensively at the door that was the only thing standing between them and the enraged Terran on the other side.
“Is that thing going to hold long enough for us to get back to base?” Chittered a youngling with a glance back towards his commander. His face was begging, pleading for the older soldier to tell him it would all be ok despite the ichor staining his uniform. Once they had been thirty, now they were three.
“Yes.” Lied the commander. “We’ll be fine once we come out of warp and the reinforcements arrive.” He consulted the timer in his optic chip, five minutes until they came out of warp then another two minutes for a deceleration burn and docking. After that it was in fate’s mandibles. Of course, they probably would be dead by then.
“A lot can happen in seven minutes.” Mused the ambassador, he had a similar countdown running behind his eyes. As a former tactical marine in the Hesh Collective he was running the same hardware as the Kress commander. Both were insectoid non-hive minds, both could tolerate similar temperature ranges. Therefore the two species were doomed to fight forever over habitable worlds. “You got lucky Susan was standing next to the door when your team breached.”
“That was intentional.” The commander said with a hint of pride. “Too bad once I consulted the ship records I found out that you had a second human on your crew. Why wasn’t she on your security roster?”
“Just a happy coincidence, Susan’s mate agreed to come along for the ride because she was between contracts.” He reached down with a mandible and began to eat some of the gore off the floor. He hated the Kress, but they were delicious. It helped that there were so many fallen kidnappers for him to choose from. He greedily scooped up an eyeball and chewed lazily while looking over the panicked younglings. “You’re all dead. You know that right?”
“We’ve got seven million soldiers waiting for us back at the orbital station and billions more on the homeworld.” One of the braver younglings replied. “We have billions more on the outer planets. Even a human can’t take on that many.” He looked up expectantly at the commander. “Can they?”
And there lay the problem. Humans had developed an almost mythic status in the outer rim. Seldom heard from, less often seen, nobody knew what to expect from them. There were rumors that they drank poison with their meals and didn’t need rest, that they could track you in pitch blackness just by the sound of your breathing. They were the stuff of nightmares, apex predators that had spread out through the galaxy after some great catastrophe had befallen their homeworld.
The thing about toxins had turned out to be true. They had pumped enough caffeine based neurotoxin into the vents to kill an entire hive with no negative effect on the creature. If anything it seemed to make it even more alert than before.
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“Why hasn’t she come through the door?” The commander looked down at his captive, realizing that something was wrong. The Terran had proven to be adept with technology, opening and closing airlocks, overriding security systems. He had expected her to come in and kill them by now. “Why does she want us here on the bridge?”
The wailing stopped to be replaced by something the commander couldn’t recognize. The ambassador clued him in as the ship shuddered and began its transition from warp into real space. “It’s laughter.” He explained.
The ambassador sighed, it was too late for them to do anything now. He might as well tell them, if only to see the look on their faces as they realized what the Terran had done. He knew his history so it hadn’t surprised him when the ship started to shift into real space but the forward repulsor grid hadn’t come on line. Nobody else seemed to notice, but then again they were probably distracted by the evil laughter reverberating through the ship’s hull.
“I’m going to ask you again, why does she want us on the bridge?” The commander brandished his pistol.
The answer came over the speakers and it chilled him to his chiton. “I want you to watch.” Replied the human, speaking for the first time since they had boarded the vessel. “Susan was my whole world and you fuckers murdered her. She was my everything, my sunshine. So I’m going to take something equally precious from you.” Then she said something that must have been an error in the translation software, it had to be. Frantically he tried to stop the ship but the controls were locked out.
He could try and blow the computers but the backup system in engineering would take over. There was nothing he could do but watch.
The ambassador nodded sympathetically. “There’s two things you have to know about humans. If you’re going to kill one you have to kill all of them otherwise they won’t stop until they have revenge. That’s why they make such good bodyguards, they pack bond hard, even with other species. Too bad you murdered her mate.”
They hadn’t slowed down after leaving warp and by his best guess the ship was traveling at a fraction of the speed of light towards the Kress homeworld. It wouldn’t be enough to destroy the world, but it would cause significant damage.
The commander watched on the display and shouted in disbelief as the craft breezed past his homeworld instead of cratering into it. The human was still laughing, she thought it was funny. Still, the craft didn’t seem to be slowing down. Something echoed in his mind, sunshine. The Terran has said that Susan was her sunshine.
“And the other thing you have to understand about humans,” the ambassador continued as the ship’s warp drive started to spool up again, the sound continuing to grow in intensity as they hurdled towards the sun. “Is that they have an incredible knack for causing destruction. Through their entire history they’ve fought one another over race or creed or religion, they only stopped when their homeworld was destroyed.”
“What happened to their homeworld?” The commander asked, dreading the answer. The timer in his optic chip telling him they were seconds from impact.
The ambassador let out an evil smile, human style showing fangs. The warp drive was deafening now, on the edge of losing containment. The only thing louder was the human’s evil laughter as the drive finally burst, dragging the surviving kidnappers and Kress’ sun into the warp.
Now all is dark and cold, no light shines on the Kress worlds. Disturbances in the warp make faster than light travel impossible. None can escape. Soon the solar system will be dead and silent, all except for the echoes of laughter and the wails of terrible sorrow.