It has been a year and a half since they arrived.
They came to our world bearing fire and death. Our cities burned as their spaceships rained fire, and their soldiers were inhuman killing machines. In less than a week the whole world had fallen. And then it got worse.
They enslaved us, turning our cities into slave camps and massive war factories. We were forced to strip mine our own world in huge monstrosities that lumbered across the ground. Our women became whores for the new overlords, sex slaves whose former husbands and lovers now toiled with shovels and pickaxes for the glory of the Empire which had claimed our planet.
But some escaped. Some managed to flee, to the mountains and the forests. They do what they can to free others, but it is a harsh life, constantly hunted by the oppressors. They are our only hope for freedom…
It still brought a tear to his eye every time he looked at the once-proud city of Haven. The capital of Anbus IV had been the first city to fall, it defenses swept aside like dust by an army of advanced war robots and ruthless soldiers.
Now it was the nerve center of the occupation, divided into three parts. One, the slave quarters, was a miserable shanty, a mixture of spartan prefabricated buildings erected by the new overlords to house their slaves, and crude huts built from whatever could be scavenged from the wreckage of what had once been the upper class district.
The second part was the factory section. Two dozen massive windowless structures, inside which hundreds toiled to build more robots, guns and vehicles for their masters. The smokestacks which graced the factories weren’t functional, as the power was provided by nuclear reactors, but their presence gave the whole thing another level of foreboding.
And finally, the sector reserved for the occupiers. Gleaming, high-tech buildings looking wholly out of place, guarded by automated defenses. In those buildings the highest-level authorities lived, them and their legions of servants, subordinates and pleasure slaves. Each was surrounded by half a dozen smaller, less impressive buildings in which the handful of local supporters lived, in something less than luxury but more than what their enslaved brethren experienced.
The man wiped a tear from his cheek as he hurried to his destination. A small, unassuming building which looked weathered and forgotten. He looked back and forth, making sure no one was in sight, and pushed the door open.
Lights flickered on as his presence was detected. Revealed in the center of the room was an old, but functioning, communications array. A quick check of the readouts revealed all was in order.
He sat down at the main console, adjusted a microphone so it was at the right level, opened all channels, and began to speak.
“I pray to the Gods someone will hear this. My name is Nicholas Chalis Kurayn, and I am one of the last free humans on Anbus IV. We have been attacked and enslaved by an unknown empire. They have killed thousands, if not millions, turned our cities into slave camps and war factories, and strip mined our world. Only a handful of us remain free to resist them. They have superior numbers and technology…”
His heart raced as his ears detected the whine of approaching gunships. They had found him.
“We cannot fight them alone. We need help. Please, if anyone is out there, if anyone can hear us, I beg you…”
A pair of evil-looking VTOL gunships appeared over the horizon, their stubby wings loaded with missiles and rockets. Multi-barreled cannons traversed to and fro in their noses, their cockpits covered by reflective black glass.
“Please, please, help us.” Tears were running freely down his cheeks as he heard the gunships hovering in front of the building. He pressed a button which would keep the message repeating until the transmitter was destroyed, drew a pistol and walked towards the door.
The gunships were hovering there like irate parents, cannons trained on him the moment he appeared in the doorway.
The man raised the pistol and fired, shouting obscenities at the machines. The bullets had no effect, ricocheting off their armor.
When the last bullet in his magazine was expended, the cannons tore him apart. His body disintegrated, coating the door with flesh and blood and gore. Soon after all of that was erased as four missiles obliterated the station.
But the message had gotten out, repeated twice before being cut off halfway the third time. Now the transmission shot through space, the hope of a world waiting for someone to respond to the desperate plea contained within.
