It was supposed to be easy. A dozen unarmed aliens with a badly damaged vessel was what the scanners had shown. Now the captain was laid out on a slab with his helmet caved in and at least three other members of the crew were dead. Things were not going well for the marauders. They had expected to snare some helpless traders or colonists to be ransomed back to their people, not hardened fighters willing to die rather than be captured.
The second in command was demanding an explanation. His feathers were fully puffed out in a threat display as his gold dipped talons clicked across the floor of the morgue. How could things have gone so wrong? How could they have let their captain be murdered by these… savages.
“Fornicating monsters...” Whispered the marine who had led the boarding party. “We offered them a chance to surrender but they kept fighting like mad animals until we were down to the last one. It had to know resistance was hopeless. It had to have seen what we had done to the others.” An involuntary shiver went down the marine’s spine. “Maybe it was just too angry to die. Even after the captain disemboweled it the damn thing it kept lunging at him. What happened next, either it got lucky or he got complacent thinking his armor would protect him. Same result either way.”
Of course he was referring to the human fist shaped dent in the flexsteel of the captain’s helmet. That was the problem with flexsteel, it was the most comfortable lightest armor their race had ever made and it was designed to move with the wearer like a second skin. It achieved this miraculous feat by being malleable until it encountered a high speed projectile or energy blast at which point the reactive matrix hardened instantly. Edged weapons were equally useless against it, a necessity for a captain of a starship where all serving members had six inch long claws growing out of their feet and hands.
A punch from a human was slow enough and broad enough not to trip the armor’s reactive matrix, unlike a knife or fast moving club which would have shattered harmlessly. Now the captain was dead, either by bad luck or hubris, but equally dead.
The second in command had been in stasis when they first spotted the damaged craft and was just now coming up to speed. “So you were checking our traps along the warp route when you got notice that one had been triggered and went to investigate.”
“Correct. The Captain thought it might be best to try and ransom the crew since the scans showed them to be unarmed. In hindsight we should have just vented the atmosphere and been done with it. But we’ll know better for next time, it was our first contact with this particular species.”
“Humans.” The second in command pulled out one of his feathers and threw it at the ground in a show of disgust. “How does some backwater race not even important enough to rate having their language included in our translation packs manage to kill four of our best?”
“They are quite large sir. There was some variation in size, I expect because of gender or age but the last one was the same height as the captain and much heavier.” The marine turned away as his superior glared at him. “Sorry, as I was saying, our snare nearly tore the craft in half as it exited warp. The section the humans were in was sealed from the outside, welded shut, we’re not quite sure why.”
A loud chirp echoed over their suit communicators signaling an important announcement. The shaky voice of the comms officer announced that they were being hailed. “It’s some kind of human ship, they included a language burst in their transmission but it hasn’t fully loaded yet. All the software will tell me is that they’re looking for something.” He let out a frustrated growl. “They must be outside of scanner range because I can’t find where they’re broadcasting from.”
“Did you disable the emergency beacon on the craft?” Hissed the second in command.
“There wasn’t one, it was probably on the half of the ship that got destroyed.” Assured the marine. His blood started to run cold as he considered another option. “Unless of course these humans are so backwards that they use some kind of beacon we haven’t seen before.”
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A chill spread through the morgue that wasn’t just from the refrigerated corpses. The comms officer let them know that the translation software had been updated and relayed the human’s latest message.
“Hailing unknown alien craft. We come in peace, one of our ships experienced a warp malfunction and is venting atmosphere. Our scans show you are close enough to render aid, please respond.” The human sounded weak, desperate. No wonder, they had just lost a dozen of their fiercest warriors. Of course it would be panicking.
The second in command decided that if they might as well get to it. “Open a channel to the humans.”
“Channel open.” Confirmed the comms officer. “You can hear us, but they can only hear you.”
“Greetings Human. I am sub-captain Hyaa of the Avian Marauders.” The second in command introduced himself. “Your warriors do you proud as a species, they fought bravely and refused to surrender. We had hoped to ransom them but they fought to the last.”
The confusion from the humans was palpable, even through the translation software. “Warriors? What warriors?”
“The largest of your warriors engaged our captain in single combat and I am sad to say was victorious. His legend should be sung from the roosts of his grandchildren.” The second in command continued on obliviously. “Even after being disemboweled he still managed to crush the skull of our captain with a single blow, bare handed.”
The silence was deafening. Somehow it seemed to suck the air out of the room like a pinhole leak in a viewport. Finally the humans spoke. “When we lost contact with our ship it was leaking atmosphere and the caretakers were sacrificing themselves to seal the children inside the undamaged areas. It was supposed to buy them time for us to come and rescue them. The youngest was four years of age, the eldest was only nine. We consider our children to be adults at the age of eighteen but they do not fully mature until their twenties. I explain this so you will understand the crime you have commited.”
The translation software didn’t do well with tone or inflection but the second in command was wondering why the human sounded so calm. Suddenly he got an answer as all around him human vessels dropped out of warp bracketing his ship and denying escape. They were colossal, each one bigger than anything he had seen before and they must have numbered in the thousands. This wasn’t some caravan, it was a world ending battle fleet.
The marine felt his heart sink. Younglings, he had been fighting unarmed younglings. And he had seen enough of xeno war to know what warm bloods did to those that harmed their young.
“We didn’t know.” Croaked the second in command. “We didn’t understand your biology.”
“That’s too bad.” The human captain seemed cold, dispassionate as if weighing a decision. The second in command didn’t know what the humans were trying to decide but the marine had a good idea. He took advantage of the confusion to plunge his claw into the second in command’s unarmored throat.
As the second in command flopped around on the floor choking on his own blood the marine searched the captain’s corpse until he found what he needed, the self destruct switch. No marauder captain ever went on a boarding party without one, for fear the crew might leave him behind or mutiny.
He hailed the comms officer. “The second has become overwhelmed and put me in charge, patch me through to the human fleet.”
He considered his last words carefully. They would be lies, but lies now were all that stood between his people and the wrath of the humans. Because this fleet could and would burn his people’s worlds to glass for what they had done today.
“My name is not important, and I would not curse my family by having it mentioned aloud after the great atrocity, the great act of barbarism our people committed against yours. Allow me to die with honor, so my people do not suffer for our mistake. Let me die, unknown and unmentioned. Let them wonder instead of knowing the horrible truth.” He pressed the button on the captain’s failsafe, starting a cascade that would overload the core and destroy the ship. “Please achieve minimum safe distance, our ship will now self destruct. It is better to die than to live with the shame.”
A flash of light lanced from one of the human ships and the marine gaped as his own ship went dark. They had done something, used some kind of weapon to disable the core before it could go critical.
The comms were running on backup power so the human’s message came through loud and clear. “You have the bodies of our children, once you have returned them to us personally you will be allowed to die. Only once you have looked into the eyes of the grieving mothers and fathers will you be allowed the sweet embrace of death. You will go into the void with their tears in your heart and their cries in your ears.”
The marine looked at his blood soaked claw. The second in command had stopped moving now, which was for the best. He weighed his options, none of them were pleasant. “I will do as you command.” He said, dreading what would come next.