Flash Fic Redux - Darkest Before

Langstrom scanned the board intently. The fleet (hah!) of ships which the Erebus Group had assembled were running silent. Periodic comm laser bursts, routed through an elaborate network of buoys scattered between the orbits of Venus and Saturn, would update Command Central with the positions of the fleet. The task groups had their individual targets, each had their own specific battle plans. If this went even halfway right, it would deliver a body blow to the alien invaders which humanity could capitalize on. Give them enough time to gather their strength and deliver the coup de grace.

It had been a quarter-century of backbreaking, heartbreaking, and mind-numbing work. All of it. The comm network, the fleet, the battle armor, the enhancement programs to let humans operate in zero-G for extended periods of time without bone or muscle loss (among other "improvements"). Trying to get even a fraction of humanity unified to face the threat, and do it in a way which didn't move the invaders to go "hot," had been nothing short of Herculean. There were times where Langstrom almost felt something which might possibly be mistaken for a perverse gratitude to the Devsalxi for their quiet little invasion of Earth. Whatever else happened, humanity would finally leave the cradle.

Which didn't mean it had been clean, or pleasant, or even ethical. Langstrom would vehemently deny he'd sold his soul to fight the enemy. But he would allow that he'd taken out more than a few eye-watering mortgages on it. A line from an old movie had summed up the struggle all too well: "A war without battles, without monuments, only casualties." He knew there would be a reckoning one day. He hoped this strike would make it all worth the blood spilled and lives destroyed.

Data codes began to scroll up the sidebar of the board. "All task groups report they are in position and awaiting attack authorization," reported the operations officer.

Langstrom nodded, studying the board one last time. "Signal to all ships. Execute Hydra Alpha." He paused, then looked over to the operations officer. "Addendum to authorization. Deguello." The operations officer nodded and sent the authorization. To Langstrom's mind, since the Devsalxi hadn't bothered to declare war, there was no reason to observe any niceties of war. There would be no surrenders accepted, no quarter asked for or given. This time, the bastards went down for the count.

Above Venus, Task Group Cupid unleashed ten kilogram KEWs on hidden mining facilities. Accelerated to five percent of light-speed, the penetrators popped the facilities' protective shielding like soap bubbles before gouging out massive craters and launching countless tons of soil and rock into the atmosphere.

Task Group Eris, in orbit around Mars, fired their own heavy KEWs, shattering both Deimos and Phobos (and the Devsalxi facilities hidden inside them) before launching assault pods towards Olympus Mons on the surface. Each pod carried a squad of battle armored infantry and their ammo allotments, along with medical and food supplies to carry out operations for an extended period.

Task Group Typhon launched salvos of "smart" missiles against concealed shipyards floating in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, then released KEWs in a "bank shot" against water extractors on Europa. Meanwhile, Task Group Argus sent their own assault pods down to the surfaces of Titan and Mimas before engaging low orbital "ice skimmers" catching the ejecta from Enceladus.

Langstrom's timing had been perfect. For some reason, all of the Devsalxi vessels were either tied up in shipyards or "grounded" on moons like Mimas or planet-based docks on Mars. Whether it was laziness or overextension, the Devsalxi didn't have a single ship flying at the moment. And now too many of them were either outright destroyed or mission-killed.

"Contact!" snarled the operations officer. "Heimdall arrays are reporting a large fleet of ships approaching from beyond Neptune's orbit. Tentative count is over a hundred point sources. Energy emissions and drive signatures are consistent with Devsalxi-build ships."

Despair smashed into Langstrom for a moment. The new fleet outnumbered his forces four to one. Spread out as they were, each task group would be zapped like mosquitoes in an Alabama trailer park if they tried to stand and fight. "Inform all task groups to continue their original fire missions, but do not attempt to recover assault forces. They are not to engage the inbound bandits. Upon confirmation of target destruction, all task groups will fall back to Pallas and rearm. Tell the jarheads to complete their missions, but do not destroy any air pockets they can make use of. They need to dig in and hold position at all costs." Langstrom let no hint of his self-loathing touch his voice as he wrote off six hundred men and women. He knew he'd lose some of them in the course of the operation, but the newcomers almost guaranteed he'd lose them all.

"Sir, we're getting a communications request!" the operations officer cried. "It's coming from the inbound bandits! They're tapping into our comm systems!"

"Well, that's a novelty," Langstrom said mildly. The Devsalxi had never tried to communicate with humans before this. He'd always assumed they knew about the comm network, but either hadn't been interested in talking or hadn't thought it was worth destroying. "Play the message."

It was audio-only, of course. Pre-recorded, the distance too great for real-time conversation. Clearly washed through Erebus' translation systems, the best ones thus far developed. "To all native vessels, this is Admiral Alopthai of the Vaskthen Polyarchy. We are registering weapon discharges against known enemies of the State. Do you require assistance?"

*    *    *

A week had passed since the successful completion of Operation Hydra. A week which had changed everything everybody on Earth knew. And that included Langstrom and other resistance leaders. Admiral Alopthai had already completed the opening round of meetings with world leaders who expressed amazement at the existence of intelligent life in the Universe. This meeting, however, was different. It was the first time Langstrom had been in the same room with all of the other surviving resistance leaders at the same time. It made him deeply uncomfortable. Particularly since he was sitting nearby to one of the aliens whose "countrymen" had caused such misery.

Alopthai was (from the information provided) a typical example of a Vaskthen. Their homeworld's gravity was about fifteen percent lower than Earth's. Their skin tone almost bone white from the lack of direct sunlight, as well as the bulging eyes which were required to see effectively. It made it a little easier to understand why the Devsalxi looked like they did. They were properly Vaskthen.

The alien admiral entered the meeting room gracefully, then sat down. "It is a pleasure to meet you all," he burbled through the hastily assembled translation device. "My discussions with your official leadership was most unsatisfying. They seemed quite unaware of what you all had been doing. I must compliment you on your ability to maintain operational security under such adverse conditions."

Several nods came from around the table. Alopthai folded his hands across his chest as he looked directly at Langstrom. "I understand, from more unofficial sources, that it was your group primarily responsible for the final actions against the Devsalxi terrorists. Is that correct?"

"With considerable assistance from all of my comrades here," nodded Langstrom. "Erebus Group may have led the charge, but we had a lot of people following our lead."

"So I have gathered. Allow me to compliment you personally on your leadership and your efforts, Mr. Langstrom. It was...elegant in its execution. Our tactical officers and operations officers are dissecting your 'Operation Hydra' very carefully, along with other records of what you've accomplished. They seem fascinated by it all."

"No doubt they are, Admiral. However, I suspect you haven't come here simply to tell us what a good job we did."

"Quite true," Alopthai replied. "I wished to brief you all on the reason your home came under attack. Following that, I wish to discuss what the Polyarchy might do to make amends for the actions of the terrorists."

"The floor is yours, Admiral," Langstrom said gravely.

"For many of your centuries, the Polyarchy has maintained a strict policy of non-interaction with any species which hadn't achieved at least the rudiments of interstellar flight. Under other circumstances, we probably would have placed your star system under observation, waiting to see whether you made it past what you refer to as 'the Great Filter' or not. Individually, it's disheartening and disappointing when a species doesn't break through. But there are too many instances in our history where we tried to take a course of altruism and lift up a species before they were ready. The results were perhaps more tragic because of those efforts."

Alopthai sipped some water and continued. "The name 'Devsalxi' translates from an earlier iteration of our language as 'Those Who Bring Forth Light.' Originally, they started as a loose collection of activists who wanted the question of non-interaction re-examined. They believed it was unethical and immoral for our people to be so comfortable when other intelligent species were struggling, even going extinct. When such a re-examination failed to change the policy, they organized into a full bodied political faction and tried to reshape the policy from within the government. When those efforts failed, they turned to organized violence against the Polyarchy.

"Somewhere along the way, they lost sight of their stated goals," Alopthai sighed heavily. "It became more about forcing us to admit we were wrong. And they have been willing to go to extreme lengths to try and make that point. While they engaged in organized violence in the Polyarchy, they sent out 'pioneer' forces, much like what came to your star system. I think they believed they could reorganize our entire society by remaking other species into 'advanced' forms and destroying our government with their 'allies' leading the way."

"Our own history has had similar radicals," Langstrom said quietly. "Not on the same scale, obviously, but certainly equal in fervor and unthinking conviction."

"And I suspect they have inflicted a disproportionate degree of suffering compared to their absolute numbers." Alopthai leaned forward slightly. "The most contemptible element of the whole situation is that the Polyarchy now has a responsibility towards the species which the Devsalxi have meddled with. Including yours. We're having to do what they wanted us to do in the first place! And because of that, it will likely cause some practical changes in our policies. They brought us down to their level."

 "I sympathize, Admiral. To fight your enemy effectively, you sometimes have to be worse than they are. Adopt methods and practices which you wouldn't accept under any other circumstances. In our case, it's meant making deeply invasive changes to our species' genome. And that's just the beginning. The genie is out of the bottle in a number of fields. We can't simply destroy all we've built and learned, nor can we just pretend it doesn't exist. Worse, there's going to be a lot of outrage and resentment when it comes out that it was a group of terrorists from your home system that caused all of this. They're going to want to know why you didn't deal with them earlier. Why you didn't intervene sooner when they were turning our people into guinea pigs and assassinating our leaders.  The answers will piss people off no matter how reasonable they are."

"And are you one who feels that resentment, Mr. Langstrom?"

"Yes, I am, Admiral," answered Langstrom flatly. "No matter how grateful we are for the assistance you did render, it cannot erase the third of my life spent trying to stop these lunatics. It cannot sufficiently replace the lives I have spent, nor can it retroactively justify the actions I have taken.  For all that I've done, it absolutely infuriates me that you took so long to drag yourselves out here. The fact you didn't show up until the bulk of the blood work was already taken care of just makes it worse.  That may sound small and petty. But it's my honest reaction."

"Then what do you suggest?"

Langstrom steepled his fingers in thought. "You may wish further discussion with my comrades here, but my first instinct is for you and your fleet to stay a couple of parsecs away from us at least. You are not part of the Devsalxi, but they came from your people, and it's going to be a long time as we measure it before we can dispassionately accept that fact. The best thing you can do is simply wait and see what happens. Give us a few generations, and if we're still around, we'll reach out to you. Try to start fresh. This lets you maintain your existing policy and lets us try to get ourselves sorted out."

"Even if it leads to your extinction?" asked Alopthai curiously.

"If it does, it does. We've put ourselves under threat of extinction before," Langstrom said with a wire thin smile. "We'll manage." 

(Originally written in r/humansarespaceorcs)