[Planet Governor Destra Sind]

The thick bulletproof glass did little to shield me from the flashes of hundreds of cameras. Almost four billion Meldren were watching live, hanging on my every word as I laid bare the future of our race.

We would be going against one of the largest and most cruel forces in the galaxy while we have no combat ability to speak of. We had already been fully surrounded by a Grahtonian blockade, not that we were making any foreign trades anyway. Our only backing was a newly introduced race that hadn’t even figured out FTL until it was given to them. Despite this, the humans had already proven their lethality in combat.

Most of the worry held by my people was not placed in how well the humans could fight. In the short time that humans have been here, not even a full day between the beginning of passenger offloading from their colony ship and now, thousands of popular media figures and news outlets were cleared to enter the human colonies and were given freedom to report anything they saw.

The humans lived in tightly packed Megalopolises with their homes being smushed next to and stacked atop one another. Residential complexes and commercial nexuses were sectioned off and organized for maximum efficiency in one’s day to day life. Every other building had some sort of orbital defense system on it. Anyone with time to fit the pieces together could see that with the speed at which such gargantuan habitations were formed paired with the amount of land they had been looking to secure summed up to the most expansionist race in the entire galaxy. By a landslide.

And while public opinion was understandably stressed by the prospects of inviting a massively expansive race, there was a different, shocking wave spreading through the populace. A will to be a part of what was about to happen.

The insane layers of culture and philosophies experienced by walking along one of the thousands of aisles in their commercial districts had captivated the curiosity of my people. The ideologies shared by humans, to strive to be better than you were yesterday, or at least prepare to do so tomorrow, set the ambition of my people, which had turned stagnant with monotonous luxury, to burn bright. The way they portrayed themselves in their works of art, riding on tendrils of lightning and slaying creatures of fantasy with ancient tools, stole our idle hearts and minds, taunting our desiccated libraries of mediocrity.

My rehearsed answers and practiced plans fell apart when I was asked if citizens would be allowed to volunteer for Humanity’s military. I mentally kicked myself in the head for not inviting a Human spokesperson into this conference. It’s not like I could answer for the Human side even if we would allow them to participate. I was forced to give a blanket statement answer that would surely bite me in the ass later, but I couldn’t afford to look unprepared at the moment.

I felt a bit of guilty relief when one of my guards walked up and said they had an urgent message. I normally shouldn’t be happy about something important enough to warrant interrupting the press conference, but it was starting to get off the rails and I would gladly accept an excuse to cut it short.

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“Captain Nathaniel Brand is planning on making a move. He was trying to reach you just now.”

“...This conference is over. Get me on a call with him right now.”

I’m going to need one of those fancy plastic hearts in a couple years.

________________

[Dokchara]

“I have a couple questions.”

“Shoot.”

“Say that the two of us manage to take control of this entire military outpost and hijack a Grahtonian ship. How do you plan on getting up to the station without being shot down again?”

By this point we were looking down on our destination from a cliff a ways away. The size of the encampment was impressive, sporting a full spaceport and two orbital defense cannons along with however many hidden missiles the Grahtonians had the funds to cram in. Not a moment went by where there weren’t at least three patrol groups in view at once. It made sense that they were on high alert since their preliminary attempt at taking care of us went south.

“Honestly, not too many great options.”

“Well, what are they anyway?”

“The first one is calling for help, but I’m not confident we could get any. Chances are the colony ship has its hands tied with its own problems.

The second plan is using the cannons here to take out the ones at the other bases, but it would pretty much be trial and error with the trajectories since these cannons would normally be elevation-locked to avoid just that. It could take days if we don’t run out of ammo first.”

“Okay, any actually good plans?”

“Good? No. But they do get the job done. I could launch myself into the space station while you stay down here and hold the fort…”

“Are all humans as insane as you?”

“All the ones you’ll meet, yeah. And the fourth plan is to shoot down the station and have it land next to us so we can just climb in and grab the data.”

This time I knew he was messing with me. He had to be, there was no realistic explanation otherwise. Nobody in the entire galaxy would seriously come up with this shit and pass it off as a legitimate plan, I’m sure that he actually has some magic trump card up his sleeve that’ll trivialize this whole situation, right?

Right?

Sigh

“...Ok, fine, whatever you say. Now my second question, how the hell do you actually plan on taking control of the entire military base?”

“Oh, that one’s way easier to answer! It starts with this thing here.”

Great Ruler Above, please don’t let him be talking about that deformed railgun…

Of course he is.