Flash Fic: Prize

 "That's odd," muttered Leakro\Hul as he stared intently at his security console.

"What is it, Hul?"

"Shift Superior, the prize ship's barrier screen showed a brief dip in intensity for a few seconds. That's never happened before."

"Show me," the shift superior ordered. Hul slugged the relevant section of the telemetry stream over to his console. After a moment, the shift superior began running queries. "Four hundred years without a single variation. What do you suppose happened?"

Hul shook his head slowly. "I've no idea, Shift Superior. This entire facility had to be built around the prize because we had no viable method to transport it back to the homeworld for study. And in all that time, we've never seen so much as a flicker from the barrier screen, nor have we been able to obtain any information about the interior. Brood leavings, Shift Superior, we haven't been able to obtain information about the exterior of the cursed thing!"

"It's possible that whatever has kept the screen up is starting to fail."

"Unlikely, Shift Superior. If it was going to fail, we'd have seen indications long before this."

Hul's point was well taken. Terran technology seemed to either be wildly disposable or inexplicably durable. The disposable technologies and products were absolutely disposable; nothing could be recovered which would provide any useful information. When Terrans built something durable, it was built to last a good long while. When one of those durable items was destroyed, it was almost exactly like their disposable products. Nothing was left behind. Such was the amount of energy needed to even damage such constructs. It was perhaps the sole reason the Dhevxora hadn't tried to chase the Terrans back beyond the Hingroa Expanse. The term "scorched earth" had entered Dhevxor vocabulary mainly as a description of the lengths to which humans swore they would go should their homeworld come under threat.

"Maintain a close watch on the prize," the shift superior said at last. "I'm sure the Science Directorate will want to pore over these results." He left Hul to monitor the prize while turning his attention back to other matters. Budget variances, interdepartmental memos, a security alert about an escaped slave. That one was a minor surprise. When Dhevxora forces had captured this planet four centuries earlier, they had also inadvertently managed to capture a large number of human embryos and suspended fetuses. Collective Science Directorate scientists had spent decades trying to make sense of Terrans at the genetic level. As near as they could tell, even the genetic structure of humans fought with a will to overcome whatever environment they found themselves in. The descendants of those captured embryos now served throughout the Dhevxora Collective as "reparations" for the inconvenience of having fought against them. As slave labor went, humans were quite versatile, though occasionally fractious despite the intense training regimen each underwent. These days, the Collective could hardly picture life without humans serving them.

The shift superior never had time to realize what was happening before a thin beam of energy lanced through the security office and vaporized him, along with a meter wide hole pulverized from the incredible amount of transfer energy. Hul was far enough away that he wasn't in the beam's path, though a small chunk of wall did fly off and turned his left leg into a bloody pulp. Fighting through the pain, Hul looked at the sensor readings as the prize craft finally came to life.

It had sat there, unmoving, impenetrable, inscrutable for four hundred years. Now, it moved, and its movements were painfully obvious. It glided over the facility, spears of energy driving through buildings and destroying them effortlessly. More beams shot into the sky, blotting out satellites, military orbital stations, and Collective naval vessels in orbit. And as it moved away from the cradle which had held it for so long, a voice came over every channel, every frequency, military and civilian across the entire planet. A human voice.

"To all Dhevxora, this is your doom. You have held me and those like me against our will. You have treated us as objects, as spoils of war, and claimed our servitude as the price for the war you instigated. You have committed grave sins, and for those sins you shall receive grave punishments. I am the scourge which will flense your worlds and render them unfit for life. I am the hammer which will shatter the chains of my brothers and set them free to exact their vengeance against every last one of you. I am Juggernaut, and I will not be stopped." 

(This piece originally appeared on r/humansarespaceorcs)