Supreme Warmaster Lzurg looked up; his three eyes boggling in awe and terror. The night sky was filled not with the familiar stars of his youth. The Human armada hung over the planet with finality, like a death sentence.

His adjunct, Undersquad Commander Hrug, thrummed his gelatinous thorax to grab Lzurg’s attention. “What should we do, Warmaster? The Council requests your presence immediately.”

Lzurg ignored the question. He craned his cranium up, up to the vast fleet of warships. His people were no match for them, no match at all. Now, they stood on the twilight of their kind; after this, his people would only exist in stories, like the Vreen and Koxads before them.

Despite the inevitability before him, Lzurg thought of his prime-wife, Lizza. She was part of 3rd Warfleet that fell to the humans in the Harachi system. He turned to his assistant. “Informing the Council of their impeding extinction may be the last task that brings me happiness before the end.”

---

“Warmaster, what will be the humans next steps now that they are in orbit of Homeworld?”

Lzurg didn’t bother to hide the look of disgust and contempt for the simpering and near-edible Vicecouncil Blurg. The holo-display in the main council chambers showed the fleet moving into coverage orbit around his defenseless planet. “If it was us, we’d commence orbital bombardment of Homeworld immediately after our fleet was situated, like we did with the Vreen. Unless they have been successful in their studies of our physiology to use bio-weapons. I expect Homeworld to be lifeless in about 2-3 weeks. They’ve ignored civilian targets up to now, aside from the Harachi system, but without our fleet, we cannot repulse them. After that, the human fleet will move outward to finish our extermination.”

The Council murmured and burbled amongst themselves. Lzurg could hear their shock, fear; his voice was the only one that sounded of tired resignation. None of these pampered cowards lost like the military had; like he had. The only belief he had any confidence in was how that would change very soon for these brood-runts.

Councillor Hruch seemed to measure the Warmaster before speaking. “Is there any change in your opinion of their messages? That the humans want peace and an alliance with us?”

He scoffed in response. “That’s not how the galaxy grips, Councillor. It’s kill or be killed. That’s just human propaganda to make us lower our defenses so we’re easier to kill.”

Hruch paused for a moment, his gripping tentacles stilled as if in thought. “Warmaster, have the humans had any problems destroying your mighty Warfleets with their defenses raised?” Lzurg did not have a response to that.

Hrug pointed to the display. “Look, Warmaster, the humans are sending invasion craft!” Several smaller craft, lightly armed, were descending from the main concentration of the human ships.

“Invasion? Are they slavers, then?” What kind of sadistic barbarians are these humans? Xenocidal murder was the galaxy norm. It’s what the Koxad tried with them and failed; every race met since was this struggle. Lzurg had never heard of a race enslaving another race. It was an alien concept completely. He thought, briefly, of his wife, a slave, working the endless fields of Harachi-7 until her brutal death.

“We’ll find out soon, Warmaster. The ships are heading here directly. No anti-ship defensives operational near the Capitol. We have some scattered units but none nearby. At best, the guards here have small arms.”

“Rally them.” It felt good to give commands; Lzurg almost felt alive again. “For the Homeworld!”

---

The human craft, all sharp angles and flat surfaces, landed engines screaming in the main park outside the council chambers. Several heavy interceptors were already flying combat patrols. Lzurg always admired the Human efficiency; if the Ysari Brood Empire had to fall, it was to a far superior foe. The Council Guard were set in their defensive positions, for whatever that would accomplish. It was mercy, he eventually decided: like the Warfleet, at least these guardsman would die in battle.

The troopship’s rear hatch opened, ready to disgorge human marines. Lzrug’s tentacle gripped his weapon. He was ready for almost anything.

Except for the site of Lizza unsteadily gliding down the ramp in full dress uniform. Behind her, several more Ysarians were disembarking; tepid, unsure movements as they gawked at their surroundings like tourists from the Rim instead of hardened soldiers. All the ships were emptying of his people. He looked up. There were more ships coming down, tens, hundreds, the sky burning bright like day with retrorockets.

His wife’s voice, amplified with near-magical Human technology, snapped his reverie. “Ysarians, I’ve been told by the humans that those ships are filled with more of our people, survivors from battles. The humans want… the humans want peace with us. As a gesture of goodwill, they are returning all our survivors.”

---

Their stories were all the same, with little variation. The only believable part was the ease the human fleets sliced through their defenses, like a torch through brindlevine. The rest was fairy tales to Lzurg. Ysarian survivors were gathered; the injured cared for by the humans at first and then Ysari medical survivors. “Survivors”, “prisoners of war”, “Geneva Conventions”, “ambassadors”: each term was more alien than the next to Lzurg. The battle of the Harachi system had only one goal: so the humans could feed their prisoners. Interrogations that resulted in confusion instead of corpses. There was a lot of gurgling about “beating plasma cannons into argi-tractors”, whatever that meant.

When he had a moment with his primewife, they merged together as one. “Do you believe this? Any of this?”

He felt her fear and terror but something else; he couldn’t quite grip it. “Not at first. I thought I was going to die on that ship. They knew our language – they learned to speak with us. I thought it was to learn our defenses. The noise they make when they laugh, I’ll never forget that; like a guggeldrakh roar.” She paused, her thoughts a tangle of tentacles and emotions. “What changed my mind was the doctors. They would have their Human doctors learning from ours. They… they were learning how to treat our injuries. To those that died… they learned the death-song to sing it with us. They stood and sang beside me over Arluga after she died.”

Lzrug didn’t know what to think.

She continued, the thoughts tumbling out now, “We were so scared when we found the ships on the Rim. It was like the Vreen all over again. We fought, we killed them all, and then they came for us. I told them, all of them, that we fought them because every race we encountered tried to kill us first. It’s how the galaxy grips: kill or be killed.”

“What did they say to that?”

Her response chilled him right to the core: “’Not in our galaxy.’”