Ivan Kal - Sanctuary

So she sat in her office busying herself by reading reports on various projects.

“You should go, Tomas might need you.” Luna said in her head.

“I can’t. And he is a big boy, he can handle it now.” Seo-yun responded.

“Perhaps then, you need him.”

“What I need is a little time alone. Tomas had five years, all I ask is a few hours.” Seo-yun said harshly, and immediately regretted it, but she didn’t apologize. Luna remained quiet.

Seo-yun spent the next ten minutes in silence, only statistics and graphs occupying her mind. And then Luna spoke again.

“Seo-yun?”

“I’m not going to the meeting.” She said out loud.

“It’s not about that. The fleet just received a message for you, they forwarded it to me.” Luna said.

“Who is it from?” Seo-yun asked.

“ I don’t know, but the message is encrypted and from out of the system. ”

“Nuva?”

“No.”

Seo-yun accessed the inbox on her holo-table. When she tried to open the message it asked for verification. She entered her key, and her holo cleared. Then a small hologram appeared on her table.

“Hello, my friend.” Said an image of a four armed alien.

Startled Seo-yun watched as an image of an ancient Ai told the story of events that transpired since Olympus left Earth. The more he told her, the more her feelings changed. And then when his tale neared the end disgust for the way people of earth threw their lives away fighting among themselves turned into fear and then helplessness as she listened of what the alien race called Ra’a’zani did to her homeworld.

“We lost six hundred and fifty eight people, with another one hundred and seven injured, forty of which are critically injured with very little chance of survival.” Laura read. “We lost two ships, light cruiser Talon, and heavy cruiser Valkyrie, which is just a wreck. Rescue crews managed to save thirteen crew members from the wreck, but most of them are critically injured. Other ships sustained various amounts of damage. Light cruiser Conqueror is barely able to move, and its power grid is constantly going offline. Battleship Protector has problems with their cores, which are on the verge of going critical. Heavy cruiser Freedom and Enterprise, and light cruiser Sting got off with light damage. Battleship Battle Song also got of lightly a couple of hull breaches, but, it could have been much worse. Dreadnought Leviathan while being in the middle of most of the fighting is still operating at near full capacity. A few of its weapon grids are offline, but should be up and running in a few days. And then there is light cruiser Swift, which somehow managed to get through the battle with no damage at all. They have also almost depleted their ammunition, they will need to fabricate more.”

“Thank you Laura. Elias, what about the fighting on the planet?” Tomas asked.

“We got through much better, at least our forces did. We lost two soldiers, when the Sowir rushed our positions and got close enough for melee.” Elias said, “Nel on the other hand, had a lot of casualties. Their militia lost twenty nine hundred, out of their four thousand. And they lost over three thousand civilians when one Sowir group managed to get in one of the shelters. Our people got there too late to stop them.” Elias said softly.

“God.” Laura said.

“How was that possible, weren’t they protected? Did Nel even prepare?” Tomas asked.

“Poorly, at least by our standards. Tomas, they didn’t know how.” Elias said.

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Their tactics were pitiful, it was on the level of children playing. No, not even that, our children would have done better.” Elias said grimly.

“Why? How could they not know?” Laura asked.

Elias grimaced, “Company Leader Okoro had a theory, after speaking to their Laas Rett, and reading through their history. He thinks that it’s as simple as that they never learned. They know how to police, but war, at least on the ground they know almost nothing about. I have no doubt that they know what they are doing in space, most likely more than us. And rightly so, they were in space for longer than us. But ground warfare…” Elias said, shaking his head. “They never warred against themselves. They never had a war on the ground. Not even the Sowir. The planets Sowir took were won in the orbit, and then fought against police and civilians on the ground, not trained soldiers.”

Tomas got a faraway look in his eyes, “War.” He said.

“What?” Laura asked.

“Just something Seo-yun told me a long time ago. When we found the Union ship. We were surprised that most of their technology wasn’t all that more advanced than ours, at least military technology. She said that it was because we progressed much faster. The reason behind that being so, was war. Humans have fought against each other since before we learned how to write.” Tomas said.

Elias nodded. “That makes sense. No matter how much we try to deny it, our history is one bathed in blood and war. Well, at least now I can guess why our soldiers outmatched the Sowir and Nel so much on the ground.”

“What do we do now?” Laura asked.

“I don’t think that the Sowir will be back anytime soon. Their transport ship will take at least a few months to report back. Until then we start with exploring translanes around Sanctuary and Nuva. We send as much as we can to help fortify Nuva, and then we will see, after we get our shipbuilding operations back online.” Tomas said.

“Adrian had some suggestions for that.” Laura said.

“We will go over them later, I’m sure he has a lot of insights as to what we need to do for our new ships.” Tomas said.

Then the doors opened and Seo-yun entered the room. Seeing her expression Tomas immediately got up.

“What’s wrong?” Tomas asked.

“Earth has been enslaved.”

March 2170 – Earth

Aileen no name, stood at the head of the table behind her master, Vit’r’an Dakar of the clan Ooruvan, overlord of the planet Earth, while he finished with his meal. It was a part of his practice to have her standing behind him as he ate, it was a part of Ra’a’zani creed to never turn their back to an enemy, and this gesture was a way of him telling the humans standing across the table that he did not consider them a threat.

Though the humans across of him had no knowledge of Ra’a’zani creed and the gesture was lost on them. Aileen’s presence only served to remind them that they were slaves on their own world, which in a way made the gesture work in Vit’r’an’s favor.

“Master Vit’r’an w—”

“Dakar Vit’r’an.” Aileen interrupted the man, he looked at her angrily, but knew better than to lash out at a Ra’a’zani’s pet.

“Apologies, Dakar Vit’r’an, as you know we here represent the humans that have accepted your rule, and we are here to discuss some additional benefits for our continued support.” The man said, he was speaking in Ra’a’zani, and to Aileen’s ears was passably good at it. As much as a human can be good at a language that their mouths weren’t designed to speak. The Ra’a’zani language was harsh.

Vit’r’an continued to eat not responding to their words. Looking at a Ra’a’zani eating can be disconcerting for a human. The Ra’a’zani were carnivores, and ate uncooked meat, and one of Vit’r’an’s favorites from Earth was dolphin meat. The sight on the eating table was enough to turn anyone’s stomach, a dolphin was laid in front of Vit’r’an and he proceeded to bite into the flesh and innards alike, ripping them apart with his powerful jaws and teeth. Blood dripped from his face and from his claw like fingers. Ra’a’zani didn’t wear clothes, unless they were going into battle, then they wore armor suits. They had no need for clothes as their bodies were covered by hard scales. The scale color varied from white to dark brown, Vit’r’an’s scales were gray in color. Vit’r’an lifted his lizard like head from the meat and proceeded to swallow the piece he had bitten off. Ra’a’zani didn’t use chairs as their four legs could be locked in a position that leveraged their weight so that they could rest. Vit’r’an unlocked his legs and rose to his feet now towering over the humans with his full two and a half meters height. His legs weren’t straightened all the way, in fact, none of Ra’a’zani could do that, their legs looked vaguely like those of a crab.