Have you ever faced overwhelming odds? Felt the fear and panic sweeping through you. You want to run, to never stop. Fighting back is the last thing on your mind, but fight back you must. Honor and bravery are very human emotions formed from our fancies and morals, yet they can be trumped by fear.

Right now I have little time to explain, but I’ll tell you what I can. We are fighting a war. We don’t know against what. We just know that humanity is threatened and we must win. It is in our blood to fight while cornered; it is in our hearts to live.

First contact; the word still haunts me. We were scouting a new, if not so promising, system. It had three worlds deemed suitable to terraforming, but it would be costly for most. One however, was a jewel of a rock; it had water and everything. There were other planets here, but they were unimportant to humanity, so we were to ignore them until better samples of our primary objective were received. A thick asteroid belt surrounded the star after the 4th planet. A rich mining center some said, a place for pirates and traders to war.

As our Fleet mark three scout ship: no weapons, minimal armor; flew through the coldness of space, a power pulse disabled our sensors. The crew immediately went on high alert. Captain Morgan at the bridge was cool and alert as always, reacting to the situation with calm and ease. He was due for a promotion to fleet admiral soon, but for now still commanded this small scout ship.

A few simple sensors kicked in, running at minimal capacity. The helmsman saw it first; a glint of rich golden light in the asteroid belt. It only lasted for a second, but that was all the helmsman needed.

“Captain, we’ve struck it rich!” he exclaimed.

“What have you seen helmsman?” inquired the captain.

“A glint of gold, and… Now I see silver!” the man bubbled in excitement.

“We should wait until more of our sensors return before scoping it out” said the captain carefully.

The crew; however, was far too excited and took a step on the side of recklessness. The captain eventually folded when the navigation systems recovered, and they started for the asteroid belt.

Halfway there another pulse hit them. The systems were all down again, and the ship shuddered as if under an impact. Alarms went off, hull damage reports however showed nothing. The captain was starting to get worried; he cared for his crew and ship.

Before he could change his mind about going into the belt they were there. After a few minutes of asteroid navigation, the field opened up into a large clear area. They gazed in awe, for what they saw there would cause anyone’s heart to skip a beat. A colossal structure hung suspended there in space, it shone all sheens of gold and silver. It was incredibly streamlined and bulged out at what the crew would call the back end.

“We should get a team on this right away.” The head scientist stated.

“I’m sorry Lawrence,” said the captain, “but we have safety guidelines which must in all cases be followed.”

“But… but this is a find of extreme significance!” Lawrence exclaimed, “We need to study this right away!”

It was then that the Streamlined ship, at least twenty times bigger than the small scout frigate, began to activate. All along its sides burst blinding lights in regular patterns, the sensors picked up enormous power readings from inside the bulge at the end.

“What’s happening?” shouted Lawrence to captain Simmons.

“You tell me,” he replied, “first order of business: communication.”

So they sent light, radiation, radio, and everything else they could think of to try to communicate, towards the alien relic. Its reply was not comforting. A shell of blue… what looked like water, appeared on the surface of the ship, then started to radiate outwards in a burst of light. The asteroids it passed through immediately turned to molten slag.

“Helmsman,” the captain exclaimed, “get us out of here!”

“Sure thing.” The helmsmen replied with forced coolness.
As their ship turned around they bumped into a few asteroids in the hurry. The “plasma” wave seemed to be dissipating with distance from the origin, yet it was still strong enough to vaporize the ship’s hull.

“Go!” screamed the captain.

“I’m pushing her to her upmost.” The helmsmen replied.

They were racing away from the plasma as fast as they could, then whoosh, it passed over them. It had enough energy to turn the outer few inches of hull into molten slag, but the crew remained untouched. The temperature however skyrocketed and many of their sensors were destroyed in the blast. Their last hope was the earthly planet they were actually sent to scout out.

With all of the vigor the ship had left it made a crashing descent into the atmosphere of the planet. Smashing into the ground, the impact caused shockwaves to ripple out along the planets crust for many miles.

“Are all crew uninjured?” blared the captain’s voice over speaker system accompanied by too much of static.

The answer was negative, only slight injuries which were already taken care of. With the limited sensory mechanisms left on the smoking hulk, they identified the alien ship flying down towards the planet in search of them.

They launched twelve emergency buoys, only three of which even made it past the alien ship. The crew spread out onto the planet’s surface, but that made no difference. No amount of running would take them away from the blast of feral energy which rocked the planet to its core; it even knocked it several hundred miles out of its orbit.

Many days later the message buoys were found by a larger search ship, which decoded the information on it and quickly reversed back to earth in a roundabout way. I really didn’t want to be found. What it didn’t know was that the alien ship followed it all the way home.

The war then began in earnest. Our human galactic empire could not stand against the awesome might of these new beings. And now it is what I believe to be our final battle, today decides who wins or loses in this great war. The fate of the human race, maybe even the whole universe rests on the shoulders of our troops.