The Fall of the Minotaur

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Yet the humans screamed. They screamed within the vacuum of space as we ripped them from their garden of Eden, as they called it. They screamed as we took them like livestock and spread them among our ships. They cried out in the silent vacuum of space and screamed in silence. We have never before encountered a species so weak yet so ruthless. If we had known, we would have never tried taking what was theirs. The humans did not go willingly when our ships dropped into their orbit. They did not go without a fight as we gathered them together. Our technology was more significant, and we had little trouble at first. We took them all. The council was greedy, envious, and decisively struck to take that garden of Eden. We scattered the humans out and thought that was the end of it as we began cultivating their forests and oceans. We were harvesting the surplus as our algorithms saw fit, allowing the planet to flourish.

Then we got word of strange happenings within ships containing humans. The odd phenomenon began happening; engines were failing, navigation being light years off course, cryo-chambers failing mid-cycle, and even one report of mutiny. How could that be? Humans were weak, meek, and unfit to challenge our people. We were the Pivari, a species of mammals not unlike that of the human cow. Strong, horned, and intelligent. We thought back then that we were the dominant species and the humans would be like the many other small mammals we'd claimed. They had a legend of a creature called the Minotaur, which looked like one of our people. We jokingly said one must have crashed there and faced imprisonment.

The reports continued of humans being on ships with issues that had never had issues for thousands of galactic cycles. We investigated, we searched, and we even checked the small mammals. We found nothing, just the hard eyes and clenched jaws of our captives. Finally, the council decided enough was enough. After only a single generation of humanity, we had them all removed from our ships and transferred to the penal colony on the satellite of our home world. Our ships continued having issues, but not nearly as frequently, and we could never figure out why. Decades passed with occasional glitches to our engines and navigation systems. Then everything changed.

The next generation of humanity had begun, which was different than before, but we failed to notice. Then, one night, without warning, we lost all communication with the penal colony. The council would send convoys, and they would never return or reply. Finally, the council sent a military contingent, and it, too, never responded or returned. Three cycles passed before the council decided that the penal colony must have been taken captive by some unknown enemy force. Some new combative alien species that we had yet to encounter. They recalled all of us, the entire fleet. We set up between the moon and our home world and began what was meant to be the total eradication of the penal colony. Instead, and to our surprise, the entire satellite was protected by a shield. The same kind of shield our ships used, we had never before seen a shield on such a magnitude, and the strength seemed to exceed even what we could use. These new aliens had taken our technology and used it against us. Our sensors then started blaring that something was wrong with our positioning, but we all ignored the sensors. We knew right where we were until it was far too late. We all realized, too late, that the moon had moved.

The council scrambled, the military scrambled, and we fired everything we had at the satellite. It was no use, the shield supporting it was far too strong, and that's when they poured out. Hundred, thousands of tiny vessels, the very vessels we had sent over the years to inspect the penal colony. They all came out, and while we attempted to focus our firepower on the approaching satellite, they focused fire on all of our gunships. One vessel at a time, with precise accuracy. We moved what ships we could out of the way, dropped them into defensive formations, and watched as our moon passed us by. The council's screams silenced as we watched a satellite a third of the size of our planet make an impact. You've never witnessed anything as devasting or tragic as watching a planet die. We watched in stunned, tragic, and unbelieving silence for hours as mountains crumbled, oceans spilled out like lifeblood, and entire continents tore free from the shattered atmosphere.

Our receiving devices began receiving the same transmission three hours after our homeworld was destroyed.

"It has been three hours since your world died and three generations since you've taken us from our homeworld. We will return to our garden of Eden and accept your unconditional surrender as a result. We spent our time serving you well Pivari. We learned your technology, and we learned how to improve it. We studied your engines and learned how to slow them. As we ended you, we observed your habits and learned how to maneuver you where we wanted you to stand. You will find that in our years of imprisonment, we have slowly removed our garden of Eden from your navigation records. You will never find our home world again, and you will never again take from us as you have in the past. We will return home in these ships we've taken, but our revenge has not yet ended. We will leave you a single location. It is the only location left in your navigation systems. Farewell, and good luck."

The humans then turned and left, we watched them go, and we could not follow. The navigation glitches we'd experienced over the years had been the slow reprogramming of our navigation software, and as promised, we had a single destination. Unfortunately, although with hesitation, we proceeded, there was no communication from any of our other planets, and we had nowhere else we could go. When we arrived, we found, in horror, a giant artificial world. A new message greeted us once we were off our ships and on this artificial planet.

"As we were your captives, you will now be ours. Welcome to the Labyrinth, named after the prison of the Minotaur. In the center of your world, you will find the means to escape your new home. We have work to do, and we'll see you soon."

The humans did not disappoint. There was a complex series of puzzles, traps, and passages that took us years upon years to navigate. Along the way, the humans gave us more messages explaining how food generation would occur. Notes about how to farm, cultivate what we had, and use the resources they left us most efficiently. Decades later, we finally reached the core and found millions of humans living there. They greeted us warmly and then invited us to go with them, this was a fraction of the human population, but they were many compared to what was left of us Pivari. The planet of our imprisonment, Labyrinth, was a ship. The humans here were humans from the mutinies that had taken place. The rebellions we wrongly assumed were machinations and fabrications. These were their descendants, and, as a race, they had exacted revenge upon us. They guided us to our other worlds, and, one by one, we had to watch as the humans would destroy them. We were forced to watch atrocities we had never committed against them repeatedly. With anguish, we watched our final planetfall, and the dark, angry eyes of the humans we were among told us that this fate was far from over.

"Your children, your next generation, will be free to share our world, but not you."

My grandmother had told me this story, and yet we still remained. Until this day, when the humans returned to release us from our Labyrinth. They guided us then to Earth, to their garden of Eden. Grateful for our release, I will personally spend my life building a strong relationship, as my grandparents should have, with humans. Today is the first day, and I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

We, the Pivari, had screamed in the vacuum of space, and the humans answered our cries.