“I want you to know that you are speaking before the highest panel. It is a matter of absolute urgency that our defense force leadership learns of what happened as soon as possible.”

“Yeah. Okay, “ the being on the viewscreen said with a faltering voice. If it was caused by the prospect of speaking before people of such high importance or the recent happenings, it was hard to tell.

The room for the highest panel wasn’t opulent. It was actually rather small and not really befitting the wide-reaching decisions being made there. But its use had grown from history and was deeply imbedded in tradition, so the twelve beings of five different species sitting therein had to cram themselves at one end of the table so all of them could see the antique 2D viewscreen.

One of the twelve, the same who had spoken before, addressed the being on the other end of the screen, “Please verify, yours is a scientific outpost. Population circa one thousand?”

“That’s correct,” the base commander replied.

“You said there were no casualties?”

“Yes, there were none.”

“That never happened before. How did you do it?”

“It … it wasn’t us. We asked for help.”

“?” the speaker repeated the unfamiliar word.

The being on the viewscreen made an obvious gesture of embarrassment. “I mean species ZZ9.”

There was murmuring amongst the twelve as information about that species came up on the small handheld screens in front of them. ZZ9 was an uncontacted species incapable of interstellar travel. Even their first interplanetary expedition - if one could call a visit to the moon of their own planet that - was only recently and had no larger scale follow-ups.

The old table creaked as the speaker leaned forward, their tone incredulous, “You mean to say that it was species ZZ9 that successfully defended your sector against a warband?”

“No. They wouldn’t be capable of that. And as of now they are still uncontacted and know nothing about what happened. I meant to say we had asked specific individuals for help. Four, to be precise.”

“You are not making sense,” someone else of the twelve chimed in.

“We were about to perish. Or worse, to be taken as slaves. We were desperate, so we tried to exploit an extraordinary trait of species ZZ9 that we had encountered and that was reinforced in their culture to a ridiculous degree. See, they-”

They were interrupted, “But you had been told to evacuate, why did you not just leave?”

There were several changes of emotion displayed by the being on the screen. They remained with an expression of confusion. “We had sent an emergency aid request after we had first spotted the incoming fleet. We … we had no means to evacuate.”

This revelation caused some movement as most of the twelve hastily requested details of this request onto their handheld devices. There followed a minute of deafening silence as all of them learned that their call for aid had been denied - some officials had deemed the risk of losing whatever ships sent there unacceptable in the face of the dwindling number of military forces.

“Shall I continue?” the base commander asked. That borderline insubordinate act ripped the attention of the twelve away from their devices.

The speaker was the one to reply, “Yes. Explain this special trait of species ZZ9.”

“They say that everything is a weapon to a human. This is what we utilized by sending them to an orbital debris field around Nareen, a gas giant and the third planet in our system.”

“How did you go about that?”

“We gave them-”

“No,” the base commander was interrupted again. Though the speaker made an apologetic gesture as they continued with, “Please start at the beginning. To which criteria did you select four of these humans? How did you establish preliminary communication?”

The being on the viewscreen made a quick glance to the side and again displayed embarrassment. “There was no time. The crew of the system hopper we sent to Earth just looked for individuals in remote locations, which were questioned for willingness to help. I want to add that I alone take full responsibility for his breach of first contact protocol.”

“And you found such individuals?”

“We did. The first few either panicked, declined or both; they were subsequently sedated and released safely. But the crew came upon a traveling ground vehicle with four humans inside that agreed to the request. They were then brought back.”

The speaker remained silent and one other of the twelve took the word to ask, “Did they not object to this monumental task? And they had no problems with learning about our existence and being brought away from their planet?”

“The crew reported them to be only mildly troubled by their presence. I learned later that the four humans had held some military functions in their past and were apparently specially trained to cope with unexpected developments. They had also been given a brief explanation of our situation beforehand, so they knew what their help would entail.

“Though the crew did mention the need for sedation as one of the four had to be knocked out before take-off on the insistence of the other three. Other than that, the group seemed to handle everything just fine with one even reported to be very enthusiastic about the spaceflight.”

“And then you brought them to the debris field?” the speaker took over questioning again.

“No. They had been brought to the base where we handed them everything our head engineer thought could be usable to them. I will make sure to send you the full list of the tools, devices, gadgets and items the humans had been given. What they did make the best use of were the engineer-helper head circlets, as these-”

“Wait, they are biologically compatible?”

The expression made by the being on the viewscreen was one of mild frustration. “Our research data shows a number of similarities in our respective species’ brain physiologies. It seems we are similar enough that at least this kind of cerebral interface works on them. But the more impressive part is what came after-”

Someone else from the twelve loudly butted in, “This is a supremely dangerous development. These devices are supposed to be species specific and they contain highly sensitive information about the workings of our technology. You cannot just put them into the hands of some underdeveloped fools, especially if it turns out that they are capable of using them!”

“I am…,” the base commander trailed off into silence. After a deep breath, they began anew, “For us, it was about survival. It was also about protecting the system of the humans as they would likely have been a subsequent target. We just used everything we had available to give us and them at least a chance.”

“Honourable as your intentions may have been, this will leave a considerable mark on your personal record. I would go so far as to-”

The speaker stopped the agitated political leader by motioning for silence. Then they addressed the screen, “Please tell us what happened next.”

“Well, amongst those four humans was a pre-established hierarchy. It was their leader that took over all correspondence and they also put together a plan based on the information about the enemy we were able to provide and the available means for defense. They asked to be given a ship capable of bringing them and the equipment they had chosen to the orbital debris field at Nareen.”

“What kinds of armaments can be found there? What did the humans make of them?”

The base commander replied, “None and nothing. The debris field is the result of a failed gas mining operation and it remained a dumping ground for leftovers of interstellar development efforts by various civilian cooperatives for some time until laws were passed that stopped such doings. The group leader told us they weren’t looking for ‘firearms’, going so far as to even refuse to take with them the meager weaponry we offered.”

“No weapons? How did they put up any sort of defense then?”

“Unfortunately, I cannot say with certainty what they did exactly, nor how they accomplished to make it work. But I will tell you what I saw,” they paused as they took another deep breath, “With the knowledge made available by the engineer helpers, they went on to revive an ancient long-range colony vessel in an astonishingly short amount of time. Using its resource extracting capabilities, they then began removing whole subsystems from other, equally deprecated spaceships.”

For a moment, the being on the screen averted their gaze from the camera. Their tone shifted to one of disbelief as they said, “For some reason, through all of their scrapping work they were broadcasting music on low-range subspace emitters. From what I know about their homeworld, it was definitely an assortment of pieces from there. I think it could have been battle-”

“Please do not digress,” the speaker pulled them back.

“Yes, sorry.” They composed themselves and recounted, “We watched them rip out rift engines that were not only likely to be defective but also generations behind our current technology. They additionally seemed to be determined to collect spent power plants and computer cores I would call nothing else but relics. All of these and more they brought into their ancient colony ship to create … well, something.”

The others of the twelve had been listening intently up to that point. But one then blurted out a question, “What was it? What did they make?”

“I honestly have no idea. Before they finished the external refits on their ship, we lost subspace communication and thus sight of what the humans were doing. I thought at first it was the doing of the warband that had come close to entering space within our system, but I quickly learned it was not as it cleared up again.

“Without any idea what would happen, as we had no insight in the plan of the four humans, we were on the brink of falling into blind panic upon the arrival of the warband. I saw hundreds of ships dropping through the rift and nothing stood between us and them.

“But just as we could see the fleet setting into motion towards us, a broadcast came from the orbit of Nareen - in rough words the warband was asked to surrender. What our sensors could also pick up from there were the active signatures of some forty spaceships. It seems the warband had noticed the same and interpreted it as the local resistance force, because they did not hesitate to change course to Nareen.

“Of course, there was only a single ship there. That fact became apparent when the ruse of the humans broke down just as the warband had come into close range of the gas planet. We could only watch helplessly as they nonetheless began pelting any larger wreck within the debris field with their heavy ordinance.

“Then two things happened at once - a massive atmospheric eruption took place on Nareen that ejected numerous megatonnes of gas towards the fleet of the warband and we again were blinded by a loss of subspace communication. We did find out the cause of it as our engineers were trying to fix it; a localized subspace interference field that drowned out anything, including the pathfinding of rift engines.

“This blockage was only part of the defense the humans had set up. The second part revealed itself to us much later, as the light of the happenings near Nareen finally reached us. You see, the battleships of the warband were blocked from fleeing, muted, likely very confused, and caught in a dense cloud of gas. And into their midst those four humans rode in with their colony ship that was modified far beyond its factory capabilities. For my life, I have never seen a spaceship this massive move this effortlessly.

“We could only deduce from what we were seeing that they had been using the gas as a transmission medium for some sort of concussive attack. One battleship after the other was knocked out by the colony ship’s proximity as it zig-zagged through their ranks. But just as we broke out into celebration, a small number of remaining warships recovered from their stupor and opened fire.”

The base commander paused, but the few seconds of silence remained unbroken. “I think I should tell you why the mining mission on Nareen had failed. Amongst the lightweight gasses typically found in the upper atmosphere of gas planets, Nareen had a significant amount of volatile compounds brought up by massive stationary hurricanes. Compounds that can be accidentally ignited.

“We saw the whole fleet disappear in what I can only describe as an immense ball of fire. After it receded, we saw the warband barely able to stabilize their tumbling ships because their exterior systems had presumably been partly melted into slag.”

“And … the humans?” someone of the twelve stammered.

“They are fine. We were sent a transmission just when local subspace cleared up. There was a departure through a subspace rift shortly after that, which is a feat that I wouldn’t have put past that modified colony ship. So, the humans … they are somewhere out there, I guess.”

“How did they do that?” the speaker asked tonelessly and not anyone in particular. “How could they stop a warband with a single ship and come out of it alive?”

Another of the twelve threw in the question, “Did they truly suffer no casualties?”

“Yes, there were no dead. Which is why we will have to make another request for emergency aid.”

“What? Why?”

The being on the screen waved their arms. “Because while we were able to take them in, we cannot possibly accommodate some three thousand refugees.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The warband, they surrendered. It’s … it’s why we won?”

The speaker didn’t manage to finish the sentence as they asked, “So when you said no casualties…?”

“Yes, I was talking about both sides. I am fairly certain the humans were very careful to only use non-lethal means to disable the warships. But we do now have a large number of people here that are begging to stay planetside as they claim to be ‘scared of space’. So we need supplies.”

Two of the twelve tried and failed to say something, and one other kept staring wordlessly. Finally, the speaker broke the silence and weakly asked, “Can you put us in contact with those humans?”

“I think so,” the base commander held up a piece of paper into view, “In their last transmission, they told us we were to ask them for help if we or someone we knew came under attack again. They gave us a string of numbers that make up this value here. Apparently, that is the key to identifying them within some communication system used on their planet.”

“Did they say anything else in that transmission?”

“Well, they thanked us for the stuff we gave them. And then … then the group leader said something about having great fondness towards a plan that comes to fruition. I’m not too sure about my translation though.”

After an exchange of glances with the other members of the twelve, the speaker sat up straight and instructed, “That will be all for now. We need to go over this new information and will most certainly get back to you with more questions. Make sure to compile a full report of the incident in the meantime and begin to investigate this communication tech of the humans. Consider your supply request granted, it will be dealt with as soon as you hand it in.”

The base commander made a gesture of understanding and the viewscreen flicked off. The historic room remained in silence for a while.