Content Warning: Contains violence and coarse language.

3. Resistance: Endgame

In the darkness something stirs on a densely treed hillside, sniffing and pawing at the fresh ground underfoot. It’s only minutes before six more patrol units arrive. Unit 7 watches from a ridge across the valley. Within minutes they find what they are looking for. A corpse, the one we buried the other night. It is only a matter of time before they track us back to the compound. Unit 7 will do everything I can to slow them but it won’t be enough. Maybe an extra hour or two but against six of them linked to the hive they will fall. Hopefully, they will be the last to die. The weapon is ready but the deployment mechanism is still in flux. It doesn’t matter we have to go now.

I raise my hand to volunteer. There is no other option, I am one of only a handful of operators with enough hours in the simulator flying the alien vessel. None of us have ever actually flown the craft. I will carry its payload to the wormhole on my maiden voyage.

The word comes of Unit 7’s demise, a message sent a moment before their Captain is impaled, the gruesome sounds of his death broadcast throughout the compound before his radio falls silent. They will follow our god damned scent back here and be on us before nightfall.

The vessel preparation rushed and ready for launch, its payload in place as I climb the ladder, my dog watches from below whimpering, almost begging me to come back. He knows as does my girlfriend smiling through the tears rolling down her face.

Outside the bombardment has started. The enemy is knocking at the door and if I don’t launch this tin can everyone in this compound will be lost. Humanity will be lost. With that thought, I begin the launch sequence and moments later I am screaming “fuck’ as I’m pasted into the seat of a vessel catapulting into the heavens.

Humans once defied gravity, sending aircraft around the globe in dizzying numbers and spacecraft to the stars but today I am the first human in over 10,000 years to leave the ground. It is overwhelming as I watch Earth, my home receding behind me. My eyes wide but tinged with hope and sadness. Mother is a beautiful jewel in the vastness of space. Looking out over this swirling blue sphere it is difficult to believe our ancestors could have caused so much damage to her.

I might feel the same about the wormhole my vessel is approaching if it had not been a gateway from hell. A swirling vortex of infinite colour melting together. Iridescent against the black of the space behind it. Stunning in its own way and then one last look at home. The vessel once part of the collective flings itself into the rift at my command and moments later detonates its payload. The space around me turns white and then collapses into blackness…

This day will fade into history, songs will be sung and stories told, but they too will take on a life of their own or fade away over time. I was never meant to return home but what I saw gives me hope that humanity will renew its commitment to protect and live harmoniously with our Mother.

The Resistance Trilogy

Content Warning: Contains violence and coarse language.

2. Resistance: Two Worlds

None of us fighting today were born when they arrived from across the Milky Way but we carry on the fight as four generations of our descendants did – a fight for human survival, Earth’s survival. Tonight’s effort was a small but valiant act toward the cause. Every one of them that we eliminate without detection is a moral victory. That we got away without losing anyone is a miracle.

The trip back was long but quiet. Most of the team was exhausted but sleep is difficult when you’re on the surface. We can all name someone we’ve lost and putting that murderous monster in the ground was deeply satisfying. They are an invasive species in the same way colonial Europe was as it traversed the ancient globe but at the same time, it weighs on a person knowing you’ve killed a sentient being. We didn’t ask them to come here, not directly anyway. They found some old technology from Earth’s space age drifting beyond our solar system. It was sent to explore the heavens long before global temperatures wreaked havoc on the planet and put an end to the first human epoch.

The sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history and the only one directly caused by one of her native species almost eradicated humanity. Estimates put the population decline at nearly 90% as food systems failed, and disease spread. Those who survived returned to a subsistent existence, traversing the planet’s parched lands for shelter and sustenance.

Nearly 10,000 years have passed since the collapse. Humanity was beginning to rise from the ashes of our own destruction when our ancestors gifted us with one final “fuck you!” The invaders used our own star map and the other information we place on that wayward vessel to plot the wormhole terminus now visible in our skies. They did not come in peace but instead to exploit what resources our ancestors had not already plundered from the solar system.

Our small group begins to stir from their trance-like state as we approach the compound entrance. The screening at the entrance is extensive but once we get through home always lifts our spirits, although most of us will head straight to our regenerative pods to get some proper rest. While many of us survived in hardship on the surface, another group seeded from the greatest minds of the old world flourished for millennia beneath the surface. Each new generation tasked with preserving and furthering the whole of human history including our art, literature, cultures, science and technology while thriving hidden from a dying surface.

When the surface dwellers, myself included, learned of the underground world we were envious and wanted to take it despite the alien threat. When we finally realized it was in our collective interests we put aside our differences. It is here in this hidden world that we discovered the knowledge required to end the scourge above and return Earth to its native inhabitants. Finally, the upper hand is within our grasp.

The Resistance Trilogy