To Take With Great Force

Planet Equitis Wayside…

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. The orange sun shone brightly as it rose over the circumference of the blue and green planet, as it did the orange glow of its fusion process cried its eternal tears for ten billion years of burning. The sphere of pure power rose steadily and bathed the planet in precious light, heat, and entropy. Without warning, an orange explosion rippled in the planet’s atmosphere, as if trying to eclipse the majesty of the sun. The explosion sent waves of gas and metal debris into the sky, which instantly burned up. The whole scene was suddenly covered with a reflective shimmer showing a man’s face, then the scene disappeared and was replaced by a cold Dratium wall.

Computer: “External camera feed lost. Preparing to enter atmosphere.” A hand reached out and pushed a button, which transformed the metal into a reflective mirror. In the mirror a tired warrior’s face stared solemnly before it began to shake. The man took a look around the room inside the escape pod. Another man might have hoped the Dratium walls would hold together, but this man, Brendon, was beyond caring about his own life.

Brendon: “Computer, status on escape pods.”

Computer: “56% destroyed in atmosphere.” Brendon put his hand on his forehead, his internal pain and struggle far outweighed the stress and strain the one man escape pod was currently enduring. As Captain of his ship, he was entitled to the best escape pod, with the best metal, the best shield, while the other crew members were considered expendable and received life saving devices created by the lowest bidder in a fitting metaphor for the cheapness of life in this corner of space, in this corner of time.

Moments earlier Brendon’s ship, The Halbred, had been engaged in a battle with several Fantomian Lust Hawk class battle cruisers. The Halbred was an ageing model ship, and was no match in capital ship combat even when not outnumbered. There had been no heroic one-in-a-million shots, no decisive tactics. The Fantomians were ruthlessly efficient, having trained their entire lives for battle against people like him. They were the best, the most disciplined, with the best technology. Brendon was a number waiting to be scratched off, along with the entire crew.

The Halbred was a Death Ship. Its entire purpose in life was to go to planets the galaxy was not currently watching and exterminate all sentient life on the planet when all other strategic options, like diplomacy, had failed. Obviously, no one knew about the death ships because they operated as such; alone, with orders to engage anyone they encounter in the hopes they would be completely and utterly destroyed with all hands lost. Brendon, however, had spent what money he had to upgrade the escape pods for a chance at survival.

Equitis Wayside was a paradise world of endless resources. The xenophobic race that invalidated it did not even attempt to negotiate with Brendon’s people. For that, they earned a strike by the Death Ship for ease in terraforming. Once the virus warheads had run their course, the buildings would be intact, as well as all the resource stripping.

The escape pod shook again. Another group had exploded. Out of the 2,000 crew on board, probably less than 500 would survive. A group of 500, whose only job in the universe had been to destroy life, would now be attempting to create it for themselves, away from all their past sins. Brendon wondered how they would fare in this complete role reversal.

His people, the Fotch Allied Reach, would not so long ago never have dreamed of using Death Ships and wiping out other people for their own gain. Less than a generation ago, they were a peaceful people devoted to science and art, not warfare. It all changed when an outside force, the Pel-lam, invaded and enslaved them with no resistance. For a generation, the Fotchians were slaves to a dying empire on its last breath. No mercy was given. The weak and sick were burnt for fuel. The women were comfort slaves. The men were tireless workers or thinkers for the pay of being kept alive. If the Pel-lam empire was not already on the soon to be burnt pages of failed empires, Brendon’s people might have been eradicated and forgotten. Instead, the Pel-lam’s own hubris and desire for gratitude undid them.

The Pel-lam used a system of rewards based on suggestions from their peers. Everything in their society, from number of slaves you owned to promotions to even if you were worthy of a spouse, was determined by the number of suggestions. The Fotch people observed this silently from the shadow of slavery. The great hero Sil Ya was the first to use this against them, by planting the seeds in his master’s head that he could game the system by bribing his peers to give him suggestion points. Within a few weeks, he was head of the Empire. News of this spread like wildfire, until the Empire was in civil war beyond which anyone in the galaxy had ever seen. Instead of two or three sides in conflict, the entire population was in conflict, with alliances of two people being the absolute maximum. Ships fell from the sky, food supplies completely dried up, and the race went extinct holding onto their obsession with self-worth based on nothing. The Fotch Allied Reach rose from the ashes, adapted their technology, and vowed that never again would they be under the foot of anyone else. Even if it meant all life must be eradicated.

Brendon pressed a button and removed most of the oxygen from the cabin, putting him into a deep sleep for re-entry. He would either survive the trip, or not. Either way, sleep would bring relief for a few moments or an eternity away from the horrors of life with weapons of such magnitude, and the justification to use them. Before he slipped into his self-induced coma, he prayed he would not dream of the people he had killed in order to obtain resources and avoid a world in which people are killed for their resources.