Random stories

When twenty six kilometre long extraterrestrial ships appeared in orbit, they were met with equal parts joy and terror. Joy in that we weren't alone, and that we might soon fly with them. Terror from our own stories, the thoughts that they would break us, make us into slaves.

Countries raced to make first contact. Welcoming messages were broadcast, as the world watched with bated breath. For three days, those broadcasts were met with silence. They did nothing but sit there. That was what the public thought. But behind closed doors, there were reports of them coping vast amounts of data, breaking through firewalls and the like with little effort.

On the fourth day, a message came from them. A simple audio file, available in every known language. It was a clearly synthetic voice, speaking without emotion.

"Humanity. You are guilty of breaching the galactic population limit for a planet. You are allowed no more than five billion individuals. We will return you to compliance."

That is when fear took over from joy. Those twenty ships began raining fire down upon our most populous cities. We tried to fight back, even as diplomats tried to get through to them. We had no idea there was a galactic consensus. But despite our best efforts, the slaughter continued.

When they finished, they sent another message. It was that same voice, one we had come to despise.

"Those who hear this, congratulations on surviving. We wish you the best, and look forward to seeing you join our number."

With that, those ships left, leaving us alone again. We had to mourn those we lost, taken by an uncaring hand. In the aftermath, world leaders came together. For the first time.in our history, the entire world had a common enemy. Most cast aside previous issues to join up. Those who didn't were swiftly removed by their people, replaced by others who were willing to work.

In the ashes of a split people, Humanity became one. We threw ourselves into reaching space. We were determined to find those murderers, and have vengeance for those lost.

By working together, in a few short years we had created our first space-saving warship. Data we had scraped from the invaders was analysed, and taken to create our own drives. We cheered when the first FTL engine was proven to work. But we did not stop there.

We created smaller, unmanned vessels. They travelled to the asteroid belt, mining for resources. We made a shipyard in geostationary orbit over the Pacific Ocean. We threw ourselves into advancing as fast as possible, leaching our combined rage to propel us.

We expanded, reaching out to nearby habitable planets. We created colonies, increasing our number. We made more and more ships, each carrying the most advanced technology we could cram inside. And we hunted. We hunted for the other races.

We found them by chance, a lost ship coming into our space. Immediately, we seized it, taking it apart for all the knowledge we could. Its inhabitants, a species resembling half a metre tall woodlice, were understandably terrified of us. But cooler heads prevailed on boarding. They were civilians, not our targets. But we could use them.

And we did. We convinced them we wished to join the wider galaxy. They were more than willing to help, as apparently bringing in a new species would make them famous. But behind our smiling faces, daggers were sharpened. They would lead us to their centre. We would find out which race was responsible. When we found out who, they would realise just how big a mistake they had made.

*A/N: Thank you everyone! For those calling for a second part, rather than making a second part immediately, I am planning on taking this to r/hfy. This will involve a bit of a re-write, to make it much more detailed. Edit to add: Here is the link to [part one.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/u1enk8/human_vengeance_chaper_1_surprise_guests/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)*

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Submitted by Shalidar13 on Sun, Apr 10, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

Humans are the only species in the universe with concepts of hatred and vengeance, and this is what makes us so warlike. The galactic council's decision to punish us for exceeding their arbitrary "population cap" backfires HORRIBLY because of this.