“I am from Earth, the third planet orbiting the star we call Sol, or the Sun. In the reckoning of my homeworld, I was twenty eight years old when my race died. For all but one of those years, we knew we were not alone in the universe. In the year of my birth, an alien craft descended on the surface of our planet. It landed in the middle of the North American continent, in the fields by my childhood home. But it was empty, containing no signs of life.
“The craft was deemed a probe, sent to discover what it could about humanity. The craft was harmless enough. The reaction it brought was anything but. War erupted across the world as country fought country over who would get the damn thing. They wanted to use it to figure out how it worked and build ships for space. A solution was found in the unification of all of the countries of Earth. It seems that the threat of an outside force was enough for humans to put aside their differences and work together.
“I grew up under the rule of the United Federation of Earth. My father was a military man, so I went to school on a military base, where they teach you to master academics and war in equal measures. I met my wife there. I was sixteen and she was fourteen and it was love at first sight. We married when she graduated. Two years later we had a daughter. Two more and we had a son.
“Those were good years, the happiest of my life. They ended when Earth was visited for a second time by alien technology. Driving back from work, I saw an alien craft appear from the sky and crash into the ground. I ran towards it and found a being crawling out of the wreckage. I took it back to my work at the military science division, hoping they could save its life. I should have let him die.
“When the alien awoke, communication was attempted. The alien knew English, the main language we spoke on Earth, but it refused to speak to anyone other than the one who pulled it from the wreckage. They found me and they sent me in.
“The alien’s name was Hye-otu-edk. He was an exile on the run from his homeworld, Swrun. He had defied the orders to kill a rebel and he was declared a traitor. He stole a ship and flew into space, heading for the most remote sections of the galaxy. He crashed on Earth after his ship malfunctioned.
“I was the only one Hye would talk to and so I was made a permanent fixture in the military base, unable to leave. My family was brought in as well. I spent my days getting as much information from Hye as I could. I spent four years with him.
“We became friends. He taught me to speak his language, Swrune, and Galactic basic. That was a shock. We learned that there were over a hundred races of sentient beings in this galaxy cluster alone and they had known about each other for hundreds of years, enough to devise their own language to speak to each other. In return, I brought him little things from the outside to make his life more bearable. Things like music and movies. He seemed to enjoy them but what he truly wanted was to get out of that place.
“I managed to get my commander to allow Hye supervised excursions around the base. He seemed awestruck by his surroundings. It was from him that I learned that Earth was considered a deathworld by galactic standards. Where Hye came from was considered a near-deathworld, but it was still a far cry from Earth, he said.
“Eventually, I convinced my superiors to grant Hye access to his ship. We had managed to open it and analyze the contents, but we were unable to repair it enough to make it work. The hope was that Hye would be able to. He was. He and I worked for weeks on his ship, repairing what we could and building anew what we couldn’t. He taught me everything he knew about ships and alien technology, which was a considerable amount. With the knowledge I gained from Hye, the Federation began to construct ships for voyage into space.
“But I was drawn to the tech and I tinkered with it incessantly, until I had made it much more efficient and effective than it had been. Hye was very impressed. He wanted to learn of the other things humans could do. I showed him food, art, and literature. He absorbed it all.
“My superiors had already learned all they could from Hye’s ship, but they wished to know more. So they brought the probe to Hye and asked him to tell them what it was. He stared at it in shock and said, ‘Not Them, not here.’ He refused to say anything after that, not even to me. He retreated into his ship, tinkering with the power source, which we had never managed to get to work. Well, Hye thought that. I had been ordered to sabotage the ship to prevent it from working. Though I disliked it, I did so. I was confident enough in my ability to leave Hye alone with his ship.
“That night Hye got it to work. No one knew about it till the next day when we arrived. Hye was immediately taken back to his cell and we tried to figure out what he had done while his ship had power. We weren’t long to find out. In the skies all around Earth, alien space ships appeared in great numbers.
“My commander demanded to know what was going on. Hye said that these were his people and that it would be alright. They had come to protect us from the race that sent the probe, who Hye called the Elder Beings. He would not say more.
“I trusted Hye and I told the commander that it would be alright. He allowed a small delegation of the aliens to land in the base to meet with our leaders. They gathered in one room to discuss with the Swrun what their intentions were. The Swrun’s answer was simple. A plasma burst to the center of the chest.
“In orbit, the great battle cruisers began to rain death down on the planet, burning everything. In the base, the delegation of Swrun rampaged through, killing anyone they could see. A defense was attempted but the Swrun weapons destroyed us. Only a few of us survived that initial assault. I raced to my quarters and gathered my family. I did not know what else to do, so I lead them to the hangar and piled them into Hye’s ship. I didn’t know where that traitorous swine was, but if I had, he wouldn’t have lived much longer.
“I flew the ship up out of that pit of horrors. We climbed higher and higher into the sky, fleeing the death below. I could see hundreds of other ships doing the same, but one by one, they were shot down. We survived only because we were in a Swrun vessel and the rest were in human vessels. We climbed ever higher into the sky. I was going to run for it, to some planet far away.
“From orbit, I could see the surface of Earth turned to fire. As far as my eye could see, the Swrun rained destruction upon my home, with such power the very air burned. But my family was in danger and I had to get them to safety. Hye’s ship flew through the fleet of ships and we were almost free when the ship stopped.
“The Swrun had taken control remotely and directed it into the hangar of the flagship. We were pulled into the hangar. I grabbed a large wrench left in the ship from our repairs and prepared to fight. The door slide open and I was shot. Electricity rushed through my body and knocked me unconscious.
“When I came to, I was lying at the feet of the biggest Swrun I have ever seen. I was pulled up and held by two Irgh. One of the Swrun asked what the Admiral wanted done with us and the Admiral replied, ‘They are worthless. Kill them.’
“I fought. I don’t remember what exactly happened, but I ended up against the wall, my family behind me. A dozen bodies lay on the ground and I was covered in blood. Several Irgh came at me and I fought them off. But I didn’t see the one behind me. He smashed me to the ground and they bound me with cable. My family was pulled from the wall and the Admiral shot my son and then my daughter. One of his aides killed my wife.
“I went blind. When my sight returned, I was flat on my back, a neural implant on my neck, numbing me. I could see blood and body parts strewn across the bridge. The Admiral and the aide were still alive, the aide clutching his face. A gun was shoved in my face and the Admiral was about to shoot me when he was ordered to stop.
“In strode Hye. I would have done something but the neural implant numbed my senses and my emotions. He told them that he did not want me harmed. He told me that, while I had only been a means to an end, he did like me and so he would sell me into slavery rather than kill me. I could do nothing.
“I was sold and I passed from master to master for a year until I was freed by Tedix. I wandered the galaxy, avoiding the memories of that day. I lost myself in the pursuit of money, pleasure, and killing, always on the edge of madness. My mind was turned away from what had happened but I still gathered what information I could on the Rebellion and the Swrun Empire. Something happened a few months ago and I was pulled back from the edge and I focused on revenge.
“I learned that the Admiral that killed my planet and my children is named Zey-ken and he is the High Admiral of the Swrun Navy. The one who killed my wife, I killed weeks ago. And as for Hye, I found that his proper name was Hye-otu-edk di Yth-Usa, once High Prince of the Swrun Empire and now its emperor. The Swrun Empire destroyed my planet, my people, and my family. For that I will kill them all.”