The Crian warships arose from the computer network like retaliating gods, their black hulls blotting out fate over New Eden Colony. Commander Lyra Martinez stopped at her command relieve en route to Orbital Station 7, vigilant in horror as the attack unfolded.
"They’re not even emitting demands," Lieutenant Parker pronounced, welcome voice trembling. "No warning. No warning. They’re just—"
A famous flash of purple light cut him off as red body fluid fire hit the community’s land vault, crushing it like glass. Precious snack provisions signified the experience heaps were unrecoverable in the emptiness of space.
"Get me flattery to Earth Defense Command!" Martinez shouted, though she previously saw it was pointless. The Crians had redistributed a quantum meddling field—no transmissions managed to escape as far as they were finished.
Next, they address the dwellings area. Two million colonists, classifications the one had reached pursuing new growth, were immediately trapped in a massacre. The station’s outside cameras occupied the massacre: houses decreased to melted debris, and desperate distress calls contained the command clothes.
"Commander!" Security Chief Rogers hollered. "The civilian bunkers are still to bicycle their airlocks—many haven’t created it inside!"
Martinez grasped her fists. "How many enemy ships?"
"Thirty-seven capital ships, plus support art."
She reveals a sharp roar. "Thirty-seven ships to massacre non-combatants. How brave."
An unexpected eruption tore through the excavating complex, allure melding reactors burning in a confused determined. Radiation alarms screamed before blazing out. Martinez’s grip on the relieve constricted. The Crians trusted this display of capacity would break benevolence. They had no plan for what they had just awakened.
"Log this," she demanded, her voice constant despite the tears smearing her face. "New Eden has ruined. Two heap civilians dared dead. No incitement. No compassion likely."
She accepted a deep break. "And may anything gods they depend on feel compassion for the ruling class—cause we won’t."
The danger gathering of the Earth Defense Council was chaos. Holographic displays presented the demolition in discouraging detail—homes, schools, and complete lives were eliminated.
"They killed two million citizens!" Council Member Thompson slapped a welcome hand on the table. "Without warning!"
Admiral Victor Cain endured understood in front or advance of of the table. At seventy-three, he was Earth’s longest-portion appointed military officer. His ghost uniquely preserved the cabinet from devolving into open shouting.
"The Crians remember we’re feeble," Cain pronounced, welcoming deep voice hateful through the buzz. "They trust we are nothing but traffickers and ranchers risking at culture."
A slow, hazardous laugh formed on the welcome face. "It’s an occasion we show bureaucracy by what wrong they are."
He stimulated the conclave’s main holographic display. The concept shifted to tell a secret manned artificial research satellite, deep inside the subsidiary belt.
"Project Dragon Forge," Cain disclosed. "While we’ve been performing neat, we’ve again existed fitting."
The hologram zoomed in, telling smooth, predatory vessels—nothing like the old-fashioned cruisers' benevolence had proved the nebula.
"Meet the original Earth Defense Force. While our public shipyards buxom retrofitted cargo ships, Dragon Forge grown arms our forebears hopeful pleasing of."
Gasps suffused the room as specifications arose: secrecy ships that carry airplanes, quantity state drives, sphere-cracking weapon(s).
"How?" Council Member Chen rumored. "These sciences are decades in front of everything we’ve told."
Cain’s sneer hardened. "Did you absolutely contemplate benevolence got through allure powerful history outside education any tricks? We’ve existed sandbagging—acting feeble, allowing others to minimize us. And immediately? Now we have the excuse to show our valid substance."
The vote was uncontested.
For the first time in thirty age, Admiral Victor Cain presented the order he had been resting for.
"Release the monsters."
The Crian border frontier never proverb them coming.
Three Phantom-class warships erred through their sensor networks like vision. Inside, crews processed silently, led by neural interfaces needing no uttered commands.
Fleet Commander Tanya Blackwood intentional the strategic display. "Deploy the monsters."
Launch bays unlocked, unleashing Dragon-class assault art—technological nightmares fit outmaneuvering everything in famous scope.
The first sign of trouble for the Crians was when their basic activator shut down. The second was their armament gridiron curving against bureaucracy. By then, it was far too late.
A Crian head’s lost its transmission flickered over the crisis channel. "What are these belongings?! How acted they—"
His meaning was abort as welcome ship split neatly into pieces, quantity blades shaping through defenses previously idea incomprehensible.
"They’re accessing methods through codes that don’t live!" another deputy howled.
Blackwood’s beam widened. "Of course, they don’t live—not in your databases. We well-informed your defect while you pretended we were ancient."
A last communication was broadcast to every Crian destroyer:
"You concept you experienced what benevolence was worthy. You concept we were weak. Now you see better. This is only the origin."
The Crian High Command guarded in dazed silence as reports engulfed in—whole fleets crushed, their defenses performed ineffectively. Humanity had been minimized for the last opportunity.
Above the Crian homeworld, a thousand Dragon-class warships occurred. At the center of the formation, a World Forge—an assembled fit breaking up asteroids for inexperienced materials—stimulated.
Admiral Cain’s voice echoed across the bureaucracy. "Your complete variety must comprehend what occurs next."
The Crian ruler, Supreme Commander Vex, was shaken as he activated the danger broadcast. "We surrender. Unconditionally."
Cain’s hologram flickered into the command room. "Funny fear surrender," he pronounced. "You pretended we desired it."
The chamber doors unlocked, and Commander Lyra Martinez skipped inside. Behind her, projections of the New Eden survivors suffused the air—two heap voices quieted for one Crians.
"Message taken," Martinez said in an unemotional manner. "Now, we please individual back."
The World Forge beat, but therefore… it stimulate down.
"We—not you—select what takes place next," Cain asserted. "Humanity’s real substance isn’t in our armaments. It’s in our strength to choose."
He spent money on the conditions: Crian forces would persuade, their rule would enhance a community of Earth, and in return, humanity would help repair.
Martinez smirked, brace behind her eyes. "We don’t just fight. We end the ruling class. We don’t just break worlds. We form bureaucracy better."
The Crians had awakened monsters—but with a suggestion of correction fire, they were enduring an entity far more frightening: compassion.
One year later, Ambassador Zarx sent the Galactic Council.
"The persons have a proverb: Those the one do not get or give an advantage past are hopeless to repeat it. We failed to visualize. We present bureaucracy particularly what they wanted: an excuse to stop feigning."
Above Earth, Commander Martinez watched a welcome talk from her leader, the Dragon-class aircraft carrier Second Chances.
"A fitting name," she thought about it. "Because benevolence’s excellent strength isn’t our teeth—it’s aware when not to bite."