Ensign Ben Carter stood at parade rest, his reflection a faint ghost in the polished black floor. Next to him stood Lieutenant Evan Rostova, his uniform crisp and posture perfect. Normally, he was calm and collected, a shining example of a Sovereign Earth Conservatory field officer. Today though, he was practically vibrating with eager anticipation.

  Ben felt a knot in his gut. He respected Lieutenant Rostova—he was brilliant—but his ambition bordered on a fanaticism that made Ben uneasy. Rostova didn’t see himself as just a soldier, he held an unwavering belief for the “purity” of their mission.

  "This is it, Ensign,” he suddenly said. “This mission, even being on this vessel—EMV Glorious Purpose. The Inquisitor only grants these briefings to those he deems worthy of the true mission. You should be honored."

  Even the name held weight. EMV—”Earth’s Majestic Vessel.” Everything about the situation they were in was telling Rostova he was on a mission from God.

  Ben chose his words carefully. “My attention is here and now, Lieutenant. My feelings on the matter are irrelevant.”

  Quickly, he added, “Meaning no disrespect, sir.”

  If the lieutenant had been offended, he didn’t get a chance to express it.

  The door hissed open and Rostova yelled fiercely, “Attention on deck!”

  Both men snapped to attention, heels clicking together, arms straight down and fists flexed against their legs. The air seemed to grow colder as their commanding officer walked in, and Ben felt an immediate jolt of fear and adrenaline. He felt like a specimen under a microscope.

  Some referred to their commanding officer as Captain, most called him sir, and few knew his real name. To almost everyone, he was known as Sable, an elite operative, a Field Inquisitor—one of the highest ranking officers in the Conservatory military that still operated in the field.

  He was undoubtedly the most skilled.

  Sable studied both Ben and Rostova for several long moments. There was nothing angry about how he looked at them—it was a calm focus, like an expert surgeon looking over the spot he was about to cut open.

  “At ease,” he finally said, and strode over to the large holo-table. He gestured for both of them to join him.

  As they approached, Sable said, "Lieutenant. Ensign. We will soon be conducting operations outside Conservatory controlled space, which requires you to be properly briefed. What you have been taught all your lives regarding humanity's solitude in the galaxy is an essential political lie. It is a necessary fiction to maintain order among the civilian populace and the general fleet. You are not in the general fleet."

  A chill ran down Ben’s spine, and he swallowed hard, making sure he showed no weakness.

  “Humanity is not alone in the galaxy,” Sable’s eyes locked onto Ben’s. “I share this information with my officers myself because it is classified at the highest levels. Unauthorized dissemination to anyone I have not explicitly approved is an act of treason. I am authorized to personally and immediately execute anyone I deem as having committed treason. Do you understand?"

  “Yes, sir,” Rostova answered immediately, his voice filled with pride.

  “Yes, sir,” Ben was filled with dread. He desperately covered it. “A question, if I may.”

  Rostova shot him a dirty look.

  Sable’s expression didn’t change. “Proceed.”

  “You are informing us together,” Ben nodded to Rostova. “Are there others we may discuss this information with that already know of it?”

  Sable nodded faintly. “Excellent clarification, Ensign. Yes, after this briefing, you will have a secure file sent to you. Memorize the names on it, they are the only ones you are permitted to discuss this with.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Ben nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

  Sable’s hand swept over the holo-table. The air above it shimmered, coalescing into a three-dimensional image. It was a surveillance photo, grainy but clear enough. A family, gathered around an outdoor table, sharing a meal. They were short, stout, and the men had beards that were extremely long and thick. They were, to Ben’s surprise, almost perfectly human. A flicker of relief, faint but definite, eased the tension in his shoulders. They didn’t look like monsters.

  “We begin with the most deceptive,” Sable’s voice was a scalpel, cutting through Ben’s momentary comfort. “The D’moria. Their near-human appearance is a genetic coincidence, nothing more. Do not be fooled.”

  He magnified the image, circling the family with a red light. “Their loyalty is pathologically insular, devoted only to their own blood kin. This tribalism makes them a subversive element, inherently untrustworthy. They are a rot that weakens from within.”

  Ben was taken aback. The logic felt thin, a prejudice desperately searching for a reason. But Sable’s certainty was a physical force in the room, absolute and unyielding. It planted a seed of doubt, not in what he was hearing, but in his own right to question it.

  The image of the d'moria family vanished, replaced in a jarring flash by something else entirely. It was a blurry, after-action photo, streaked with motion and the chaotic flare of weapon discharge. A creature, tall and gaunt with greenish skin, dominated the frame. Its face was a mask of alien rage, but it was the long, bone-like blades fused to its wrists that seized all of Ben’s attention. They were slick with something dark. The image was pure nightmare fuel.

  “Others are less subtle,” Sable stated, his tone unchanged. “The Shorn are not a culture; they are a weapon. Born with blades fused to their bodies, they exist only to kill. They are a mindless affliction upon the stars. Extermination is the only logical response.”

  A visceral wave of revulsion washed over Ben. His stomach turned. This one felt undeniable—this creature was a monster. In the face of such raw, biological horror, Sable’s harsh logic suddenly seemed… necessary. He glanced at Rostova, who nodded faintly.

  Sable swiped the image away. The battlefield horror was replaced by a clinical wireframe diagram. It depicted a somewhat humanoid figure with four arms, four eyes, and a reptilian snout, rotating slowly in the blue light.

  “The Lazarco,” Sable said. “A reptilian-insectoid mutation. Their minds operate on a logic alien to our own. This makes them inherently duplicitous. You cannot reason with them, because you cannot comprehend them. Their very existence is a mockery of the proper humanoid form.”

  Ben stared, a mix of fascination and unease churning within him. The argument felt more abstract, less immediate than the visceral threat of the shorn. But his defenses were down. After that monstrous image, he found himself more receptive to the idea that an alien "other" was, by its very nature, a threat. The seed of doubt was beginning to sprout.

  Sable’s hand moved again, and the wireframe lazarco dissolved. For a moment, the holo-table was dark. Then, a new image materialized, this one in stunning, high-resolution clarity.

  Ben’s breath caught in his throat.

  It was a woman.

  Or, at least, she looked more like a woman than anything he had seen yet. She was magnificent. Dressed in heavy ballistic plating, her powerful, curved form was undeniable even through the seams of her armor. Her expression was fierce and defiant, her eyes burning with an intensity that seemed to cut through the holographic projection itself. She looked like a warrior queen from some forgotten Earth myth, a figure of impossible strength and beauty with hair and skin almost as dark as the black armor she wore. It took him a moment to process the details that marked her as alien: the long, jackrabbit-like ears that swept back from her head, and, as the image rotated slightly, the hard, dark hooves that stood in place of feet. The sight created a powerful, dizzying conflict in his mind.

  She was alien, but she was beautiful.

  “And this,” Sable’s voice slapped through Ben’s stunned admiration, “is the most dangerous of all. Do not let its appearance deceive you. This is a Lacravida. The particular abomination in this image has taken tens of thousands of human lives, starting with multiple platoons on Proxinara. She was only fourteen years old at the time.”

  Ben had to make sure he had heard his commander correctly. Fourteen? Tens of thousands? A wave of nausea rolled through him, and the beautiful image was instantly corrupted, twisted into something monstrous.

  Sable’s tone dropped from a casual brief to something more serious. “They are extremely deadly in combat. But their greatest threat is biological. They are an all-female species with a parasitic reproduction cycle, forcing males of other aliens or even humans to breed with them. These base instincts drive them, and they only ever produce more of their own kind. Left unchecked, these foul creatures would eventually bring about the end of humanity. They are a plague.”

  The holo-table went dark and Ben felt a suffocating silence pressing in on him. His mind reeled, trying to reconcile the monstrous facts with the undeniable humanity he had seen in the d’moria’s family portrait, the raw horror of the shorn, the breathtaking beauty of the lacravida.

  “Do you have any questions?” Sable asked, his voice pulling Ben back to the cold reality of the room.

  Ben didn’t even know what questions to ask. Before he could form a thought, Lieutenant Rostova spoke, his voice crisp with the pride of someone who had just been handed a sacred text. "Sir, are these disgusting creatures responsible for the destruction of Earth?"

  Ben’s head snapped toward him in shock. Like everyone else in the Conservatory, he had been taught that Earth had simply succumbed to centuries of overpopulation and war, a sad but inevitable footnote in human history. In that moment, he realized Rostova was already part of an inner circle, one he had just been forcibly invited into.

  Something in Sable’s expression flickered. It wasn’t anger. It looked like a deep, motivating pain, a wound that refused to heal.

  “No, Lieutenant. Earth was taken from us by something much more powerful.”