Subject: Captain Neil

Species: Human

Description: Mammalian humanoid, no tail. 6'2" (1.87 m) avg height. 185 lbs (84 kg) avg weight. 170 year life expectancy.

Ship: USSS Armstrong

Location: Classified

My first command and I'm already behind enemy lines in what has to be the worst detail a Captain can get. Scouting. I had no experience in scouting. Before I made captain I had served aboard the USSS Nidhogg, which hardly ever does anything. And before that I had station duty. I hadn't seen any sort of action, let alone action behind enemy lines.

The worst part was that the assignment was to the ship. I got dragged along for the ride because someone in charge decided it would be funny to have Captain Neil command the USSS Armstrong. Thanks to our last name, everyone in our family was familiar with the first man on the moon. When I had first got the orders I cringed when I saw the ship's name. Thankfully, the crew is competent and the Armstrong is rigged for the job.

We have several types of sensors that allow us to get a fairly detailed view on a system without having to be anywhere near it. Our orders are to exit warp in dark space, scan a system, and move on unless we see something that requires further investigation. We've effectively censused eighteen systems in the two days we've been at it.

The stress of the assignment had begun to get to me. Four out of the eighteen had the Omni-Union ships we'd heard about, and two of those had weird warp fluctuations that would have ripped us to shreds if we had jumped into the system. Thankfully we were far enough away that they didn't detect us, or if they did they decided not to do anything about it.

"Bubkis in this one too, Captain," Lieutenant Lee said.

"We'll hopefully see that a lot," I replied.

"Well I, for one, am hoping we find something exciting soon," Lee grinned at me.

I grabbed the bridge of my nose to demonstrate my exasperation, "Lieutenant Lee, our task is to map out the enemy territory to the best of our ability. It's not to go sight seeing. If we see something interesting, that's probably going to be a bad thing."

"Yes, sir," she replied in a playfully dejected way.

I knew that Lee knew why we were out here and how important the mission was. I also knew that Lee could tell how stressed I was about being able to perform said mission, which is why she was being playful. If she could tell, so could other members of the bridge crew. Her playful banter was a way of cheering me up and warning me that my mask of authority was slipping. I double checked the findings and saw nothing.

"Bubkis it is," I said. "Alright. On to the next system."

I watched the slight increase in activity amongst my crew as they prepared the warp. Omega had given us specific systems to check based on the incoming trajectory of the fleet that had attacked Sol, so there weren't a lot of calculations to do. I didn't really know what to think of Omega. I was fairly familiar with him because he interacts with the Nidhogg a lot. Every time we had a conversation he had appeared as a Grim Reaper, a very old personification of mortality.

Honestly, it was in bad taste. He doesn't have a body, and as far as I know he can't die. It almost seemed like a taunt, but I got the feeling that he just thought it was cool. Or maybe it's symbolism, because he was designed to take out the other AI when they went rogue. I guess it could be because he's their personification of death. Still, he probably just does it because he thinks it looks cool.

A slight lurch from the ship as we exited warp at our destination brought me back to reality. I watched as our scanners examined the system in question. Four planets, a yellow sun, and a bunch of wreckage. Several debris fields worth. One of the planets was in the habitable zone, and appeared as if it had vegetation. I took another look at the debris fields.

"What the hell?" I asked no one in particular.

"Sir," began Lieutenant Junior Grade Flowers, "we have several debris fields and a planet that has signs of civilization. We've also got warp fluctuations, but they're weird."

"Weird how?"

"There are a bunch of them. As if there are a lot of different sources," he responded. "Eighteen... no, nineteen total."

"Well, that would suggest that the enemy is amassing here," I said as I sat forward.

Lee looked at me, "No enemy contacts. No ships at all except for the broken up ones in the debris fields. I think we're looking at the remnants of a fight."

I looked back at the readings. She was right, there wasn't a single functioning ship in the space of this system. There weren't even any signs of functional satellites or stations. For a moment I wondered about cloaking technology, but then I thought better of it. We've got every type of scanner. You can do a lot of things to look invisible to a lot of different scanners, but you can't do all of them at once. We've tried.

It was Flowers' turn to look at me, "Sir, I suggest we get a closer look. I can't quite pinpoint what is causing the warp fluctuations. If we could get scans of it..."

"It could prove invaluable. Plus we've been told to try to get detailed scans of any inhabited planets we come across, just in case it's their home-world. If they even have one," I frowned slightly. "Take us in as far as we need to go. Don't answer any hails and stay away from the debris fields. I've heard they might have nasty surprises."

Lee had received the same briefing I had and grimaced. Nuclear and antimatter mines were nasty. Our shields should be able to withstand a few, but any more than that and we would be dead. There would be no rescue. Our calls for aid would take a long time to reach US space, and they likely wouldn't be willing to send a team. Whatever situation we reported could have changed drastically, and we're in enemy territory. I looked around, and saw the grim faces of a bridge crew who had realized the same thing.

We approached the system on thrust. As we got nearer, we could make out that the debris were from multiple ships of multiple types. It looked more and more like Lt. Lee was right about there having been a fight. There were also bits of stray ordnance, and the traps that we had been warned about.

"Sir, I've reconstructed a cruiser, and it matches the OU ship profile," Flowers said.

"Good work. Definitely avoid the debris fields," I ordered.

I waited and waited as our ship grew closer and closer. I watched as we first entered the warp fluctuations, then the system itself.

"Okay, that should be close enough Flowers," I said. "Let's see what we can see and get out of here."

We were now close enough to pick up bodies on the sensors. No emissions of any kind. All dead, floating aimlessly in space. I turned my attention to the scans of the planet. We were close enough for a visual, but I wish we weren't. Destruction was everywhere. Buildings were burned out and blown to pieces, corpses both organic and robotic littered the streets. Or rather, what was left of the streets.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

It had been a long time since the US had performed orbital bombardments, but we had seen them in training. I recognized these scenes as the aftermath. My eyes widened as I realized that it was the same no matter where I looked. Cities, towns, fields, stretches of wilderness. The orbital bombardment had been indiscriminate. The bastards had surrounded the planet and bombed it to oblivion.

I zoomed in on part of a city to get a better look at the dead. That was a mistake. The organics were humanoid, with tentacles on their faces. Rot had only just begun to set in, confirming that this had happened somewhat recently. Men, women, and children were strewn across the landscape. Most were missing portions of their bodies, or were scattered everywhere. I stopped on one that was intact with its eyes open. They were jet black. I wondered if they were like that when they were alive.

Then I noticed that the alien I was looking at hadn't died from the orbital bombardment. It was still relatively in one piece, and its wound looked like one from an energy weapon. Lying next to it was what appeared to be a rifle of some sort. I panned over to one of the robots. It was lying facedown, and next to it was a different type of rifle. They had been fighting each other? The orbital bombardment must have been proceeded by an invasion. But then, where are the winners?

I was baffled until a horrible thought occurred to me. Xenocide. The bombardment and invasion had been to exterminate, not to conquer. I couldn't help but express my horror with a small sound. I looked up and realized that everyone else was looking at the same thing and coming to the same conclusion. A war of extinction, something that had been avoided at all cost in our history. We had even forgiven the baby eaters, the Daluran, to avoid having one over our heads.

This... This was the horror we had avoided. How can something live with itself knowing that it's done this? I felt myself involuntarily gag as I realized that my ancestors very nearly did something as atrocious as what I was looking at.

I felt an immense shame as I realized that I might be related to something that said yes during the Daluran vote. Even the children? What kind of sick demented fuckwit would ever think that this was okay? That it was justified? Only comfy, cozy fat-fuck politicians who never bled a day in their life would be okay with this. That and sick fucks who need an entire team of therapists to even hope to be normal.

I saved the data. When we got back I would make sure Omega got this. I'll beg him to never let us do this. I'll give anything to be able to be certain that we never turn into the lowly creatures that would kill children just for the sake of winning a war. I felt a tear roll down my cheek, and a sniff from the bridge crew reminded me where I was.

I wiped my tear and looked up, "We all know what we're seeing here. We know it in our hearts, and our hearts are screaming at us that it's wrong. And it is. Those that did this will be punished. We will punish them with all of our might, and we WILL make them regret this. Even if they can't regret now, we will teach them," I slammed my clenched fist into my armrest, "WE WILL POUND IT INTO THEM!"

I stood up, "We nearly did this to the Daluran. But even back then more than half of us knew it was wrong. We will save this data and return it to the United Systems. The near half of us that voted yes will see what it is they were voting for. Until then, back to work. Flowers, have you turned up anything?"

"Um... Yes, yes sir. The warp fluctuations are coming from machinery," he responded, wiping his face.

I sat back down, "Any idea how it works?"

"No, I'm not an engineer, sir. But I've scanned it thoroughly enough that we should be able to extrapolate schematics."

"Sir," Lee interrupted, "what about Earth?"

My blood ran cold. The current population of Earth was three hundred and twelve billion. They wouldn't go down without a fight, but that many people...

"We'll give them the best chance we can. I want detailed scans of everything. Extrapolate enemy ship profiles and armament," I said as I looked back at the screen. "We will do everything in our power to make sure this doesn't happen again."

"Sir, by the time a message with this much data reaches Sol the assault will likely have taken place. The only way we'll be able to get this intel back to them would be to abandon our current mission and return to Sol with the data," Flowers said.

I looked at our list of systems. Four left. If we had more left than that I would say to abandon the mission and return to Sol with haste. But four will only take a few more hours if we're fast about it. Technically we were supposed to continue scouting based on our own readings after we finished with these systems. I think command will forgive us, though.

There's no way they're expecting the enemy to be xenocidal. They're probably thinking that the system will be occupied by enemy forces and the occupants will be enslaved until we take the system back. Hell, they might chew me out for finishing the mandatory part of the mission. That's what I'll hope for, at least.

"Okay, we'll finish the census and make speed back to Sol. How are the readings coming along?" I asked.

"We'll have them done momentarily. Should we..." Flowers paused for a moment, "should we do something about the planet?"

"There's nothing we can do," I said with grim finality. "We can't accept any hails and if we start hailing and the enemy is still down there, we're compromised. If there are any survivors, at least they're on their home planet. Air to breathe and food to eat. There's not much more we can do for them than that."

"Aye sir," Flowers said.

I turned back to the images of the planet's surface. I had been nervous about fighting the enemy before. Scared, even. Now I can't imagine anything I want more than to eradicate them from our universe. The rage that welled up inside me quickly overtook the sadness and horror I had been feeling. The only thing that pissed me off more than what they'd done was that I couldn't make them suffer for what they'd done.

I ran a quick tally simulation on the data from the planet. The estimate came to 32 billion. Damn. Anything over 20 billion is usually a home world for a space-faring species. I silently hoped they had colonies out there somewhere, but doubted it. Humanity hadn't begun extrasystem colonization until we had hit around fifty billion people on Earth. By then we had multiple habitats on Mars, Titan, and Luna as well. The Knuknus and the Gont had followed a similar path. The Alumari were an outlier because they were insectoid.

I double checked our scans. There were no other signs of habitation in this system. It was extremely unlikely that these people had extrasystem colonies, because they didn't even have intersystem colonies. I turned my attention to our extrapolations of their ship schematics. They had been fairly advanced, too. The enemy fleet must have been massive.

"Captain, we've finished the scans of the wreckage. We're good to go, sir," Lee said.

"Roger. Let's move on, then. Next system, as fast as we can manage," I ordered.

The next system contained nothing of note. The one after that contained a small fleet of OU vessels and a few uninhabited planets. They didn't notice us. The third system contained a larger fleet, but still no inhabited planets. We double checked to make sure that there weren't any ships that didn't match what we had scanned. There weren't, so we moved on to the fourth and final system.

As the ship jostled slightly from the exit of warp I felt that something was wrong. I don't know if I had caught a glimpse of the scanners out of the corner of my eye, or if it was some sort of sixth sense. Maybe I had felt the tension that suddenly emanated from the crew that was monitoring the sensors.

"What is it?" I asked urgently.

"Sir, there's an absolutely massive amount of OU ships in this system. And two... no, five planets with signs of habitation," Flowers said with a hint of fear in his voice.

"Do they see us?"

Flowers was silent for a few moments.

"Lieutenant Junior Grade Flowers, DO THEY SEE US?" I asked louder.

"N-no. No sir, they don't appear to have noticed our presence," he finally answered.

"Good. Let's get what we need and go to Sol. Quickly, people!" I ordered.

The crew set about their tasks with gusto. We got profiles for each ship. There were around thirty-five hundred ships. We compared the profiles to what we had on record. They had battleships, cruisers, frigates, destroyers, and corvettes. The corvettes that matched our profiles were the warp disruptor ships. They were inactive. The ones that didn't match the profiles looked like lightly armed shuttles. Light transport ships, most likely.

There was only one of the big types that didn't match our profiles. It also didn't seem to match the designs of their other ships very much. It looked... fatter than the other ships. Bloated, even. As if one of their battleships were in the final stages of a pregnancy. Kind of like when you compare our battleships ships to our...

"Carriers," I said.

"I think so too, sir. There are ten of them," Lee said.

"What about the planets?" I asked.

"We can't get close enough for a detailed scan, but there are extensive signs of habitation on five of them. Three out of the five would not suit organic life," Flowers responded.

"What does that mean?"

"Well, sir, one of the planets is extremely toxic. Another doesn't have a readable atmosphere. The third is a frozen planet that has parts of it reaching true zero. Also, the OU are not attacking these habitats," Flowers said.

"So it's likely the robots are responsible for the habitats?" I asked with amazement.

"Yes sir. But we're not able to get a definite read on the structures," Flowers said. "Also, there appear to be space stations that are manufacturing new ships. I'm counting... twelve."

This was huge. Five colonized planets that the machines weren't attacking. A fleet of three thousand five hundred ships. And on top of all that, ship-yards. Even if this isn't their home system, destroying it will definitely set them back. It was unlikely they would let it go without a fight, though. I remembered the briefing. Two hundred and fifty million enemy ships. If they all converged here we would need to use the dreadnaught. The marines aren't going to be happy that they won't get to put boots on the ground.

"Alright everyone. Finish up the intel gathering," I said. "Let's get back to Sol."