July 7, 2278

45 Days remain

Acting Secretary General Farid Madani couldn't say he was expecting much as he prepared to broadcast humanity's surrender to the oncoming Ivo fleet. After Fleet Admiral Moser's crushing defeat, Secretary General Fu Li Wei had sent couriers ships bearing humanity's unconditional surrender to the Ivo fleet, and the only response they had received was a beam cannon eviscerating them. Every colony incinerated by the Ivos thus far had broadcast their surrender to the Ivos, begging for their lives even as the beams fell. Harold Blanchet, Fu Li Wei's successor and Madani's predecessor, had shot himself before he had a chance to try his hand at surrendering. The complete and utter failure of his administration's Tau Ceti plan and the subsequent glassing of the planet had apparently been too much to bear.

The Ivo fleet that had defeated Moser had swelled to over five hundred ships after its victory, much to the despair of human war planners. However, the real scope of the enemy's war machine hadn't become clear until after the genocide at Tau Ceti, when two more fleets of equal size appeared on the other side of human space and began marauding their way towards their fellows in a strategic pincer maneuver. Even the most delusional of humanity's leadership had given in to complete despair when that had happened. The enemy was razing every single colony, habitat, and outpost left in a grand encirclement of Earth. Desperate refugees had fled in every direction. Few made it past the Ivo encirclement alive.

It was in this situation that Madani found himself ascending to the office of Secretary General of the United Nations. It seemed he was destined to be king of the ashes. There was nothing for him to do except beg for mercy. The Ivos were so close that there were scout ships within communications distance of Earth. With the revelation of their apparent ability to perform long range communication in Dark Space, perhaps his message could be relayed from one of these scout ships to the Ivo leadership. That was the idea, anyway. Madani cleared his throat and began to speak.

"This is Acting Secretary General of the United Nations Farid Madani. I give notice of the complete, unconditional surrender of my government and our remaining armed forces to the Ivo Nation. We will accede to any and all of your demands."

The recording was beamed to a communications space station. The station activated its transition drive and began broadcasting at full power in the directions where Ivo ships had been spotted. Secretary Madani was astonished when, an hour and forty five minutes later, the station transitioned back to real space and beamed an actual response message to him. He stared at the notification on his office's communication device, terrified to open it. Eventually, he summoned the courage necessary, and opened the message.

It was a synthesized, monotone voice speaking in Standard, with no visual data included in the message. It was the exact same method by which the Ivos had sent their initial demand and later redemand for the Tau Ceti system. The voice spoke only five words.

"Our demand is your extinction."

---

July 30, 2278

22 days remain

Jaime was awoken by a deafening explosion, its source being the ballistic missile that had just impacted the Mexican fortifications.

The attack must be beginning. I must've fallen asleep.

He sat up straight and took his position next to his other comrades in the bunker. In the distance, he saw them. A massive army, coming towards the fortifications. They were a mixture of military personnel, vehicles, and militia, all of them from Mexico's southerly neighbors. The combined militaries of the other Central American nations had moved out without any orders, their leadership long since having abandoned their people to secure their own evacuation. They were not after land, riches, or other more typical motivations of war. Their goal was one specific place: the Yucatan spaceport.

Getting into space was easier from the equator. Mexico was a semi-rare example of a country relatively near the equator that had the organization and resources to exploit this fact. The hugely expensive project had been mocked as another example of frivolous government spending when it was first introduced. Then it had become the single most important part of Mexico's economy. Now it had changed form yet again. It had become the only hope anyone in Central America had of getting off of Earth.

Mexico would not, could not, accommodate so many foreign evacuees, not when there wasn't even enough space for its own people. The huge array of laser lifts and launch pads in the space port could get thousands of people into space per day. They needed to move millions. Getting a seat on one of the flights out was hard enough when you were a Mexican citizen. It was impossible if you were not. With their leadership having abandoned them, and with no other hope for survival, the militaries and peoples of Mexico's neighbors had begun their ragged march towards the spaceport. Some, from the southern-most parts of the isthmus, had headed south, to join others in besieging Brazil-the only other nearby nation to harbor significant space infrastructure. The rest had headed north, hoping to seize the Yucatan space port for themselves and their families.

It was a story that was being repeated all over the globe: countries that lacked significant space infrastructure were invading the closest neighbors who did. It was already the most bloody human-on-human conflict since the Interstellar War, and the casualties would only keep growing with the panic as the unstoppable Ivo juggernaut continued its advance. The UN was effectively helpless. With the overwhelming majority of its ground forces completely destroyed on Tau Ceti, there weren't any peacekeepers left to put out the fires.

So, soldiers like Jaime would continue to fight. For Jaime and others like him they fought for the promise that their families would be given priority on the evacuation transports, in exchange for them staying behind. For the soldiers of the attacking nations, they fought because it was the only hope they had of ever getting themselves or their families offworld.

The desperate, makeshift army continued its advance. More deafening explosions rang out as missiles and artillery shells were sent against the Mexican fortifications. There was little organization or discipline to it. It was the ragged, uncoordinated barrage of half a dozen militaries trying to coordinate the largest ground assault in the history of Central America with less than a week's preparation. A massive wall of steel advanced under the covering fire of the barrage. Tanks, IFVs, APCs, and every other flavor of military vehicle swarmed forward. Behind them was an equally massive horde of trucks, military and civilian alike, carrying the countless militia that had been hastily armed with anything they could get their hands on and sent out to battle. As this wave of flesh and steel came into sight, the Mexican artillery came down. The massive barrage tore holes throughout the oncoming formation. Thousands died, yet still they kept coming, swerving to avoid the hundreds of wrecks and ruins that now littered the battlefield.

Aircraft dueled overhead as the attacker's air forces tried desperately to silence the Mexican Artillery with airstrikes, while the Mexican air force fought to intercept them.

As the oncoming wave continued to approach, hundreds of automated and crew-served weapons opened up across the Mexican fortifications. Jaime looked on as the mass of metal and light and fire came down in a deluge upon the swirling tide of humanity and machines below him. Yet, still they came on.

Had he been born just a little further south, he'd be among their number. Instead, he was here. Fighting to give his daughter a chance at a future. A life. It would be a life spent living in terror, crammed inside one star ship or another as she cowered, wondering why her father hadn't come with her. A life that might not even be worth living. Not for the first time, Jaime wondered if he wouldn't have been better off staying at home. Facing the end in the comfort and serenity of his home, clutching his wife and daughter in his arms. Then the enemy infantry began to dismount, and he pushed such thoughts from his mind. They began scaling the fortifications, covered by a vast array of vehicle-mounted weapons. Jaime opened up on them along with his comrades. Then a mortar struck his squad's position, killing him instantly.

Across the world, the same sort of battle was being waged. Neighbors turned on each other in their despair. In the larger nations, brother fought brother in a terrible civil war to be first in line. Others simply rioted, a less organized example of humanity tearing itself asunder. What they didn't, couldn't have known, was that it was all for nothing.

A report would reach Space Force Intelligence a few days later. The Ivos had closed the proverbial net of their encirclement weeks ago. Every evacuation ship launched since then had been destroyed. Every drop of blood shed in an effort to acquire evacuation transport had been completely pointless.

Because every human being on Earth was already dead.

---

August 21, 2278

14 hours remain

A slapdash collection of orbital defenses, elderly Diln War-Era warships, haphazardly armed civilian ships, and tattered remnants from Admiral Moser's fleet lay in wait in the Earth-Luna planetary system. They represent all of the known remaining human astromilitary assets. In Dark Space, the ever-shrinking Ivo net has finally come to a close. The last few evacuation ships brave enough to try to escape had met their inevitable end at their hands. A fraction of the massive Ivo fleet remains in Dark Space to ensure there is no escape. The rest get in formation and activate their transition drives. They appear from nowhere into real space, and are instantly the target of thousands of missiles.

From ships, defense platforms, bases on the moon and the earth, the missiles fly. They are of both kinetic and nuclear warheads. The enormous Ivo fleet carves through them with an incredible blade of light, forged from well over a thousand ships worth of overlapping point defenses. The scant few human missiles that make it to a target do superficial damage. A few ships are claimed, drops in an ocean. It was the last, desperate strike of all of humanity's remaining military power.

And it accomplished next to nothing.

The ragtag human fleet maneuvers to take a formation. The Ivo fleet advances, the scattered mass driver fire being swatted aside by point defenses, dodged, or outright ignored. The Ivo fleet reaches beam cannon range, and the battle ends in an instant.

Earth's nightside briefly turns into day as a second sun of over one thousand anti-matter beams light fill the sky. With an entire hemisphere being able to view it, it becomes the single most widely observed event in human history. Live streams and recordings spread like wildfire throughout the internet. For a brief moment, the riots and wars stop as every human being on Earth stops to look at their oncoming death.

Then the panic begins again, three times as strong

---

August 22, 2278

The end

The Ivo's annihilation of Earth was a slower, more methodical process then their previous genocides. The biosphere on most colony worlds was primitive, if it existed at all. Destroying it was trivial. For Earth, with it's vast and complex biosphere, it was more of a challenge. They started with the easy part: eradicating human civilization. Beams were dropped in the ocean, sending gargantuan tsunamis colliding into the coasts. Key points in the Earth's crust were struck, causing geological cataclysms to rip apart the less coastal parts of the world. After this barrage of artificial disasters, it was simply a matter of mopping up the remains the old fashioned way.

The Ivo fleet spent days raking the Earths surface with their beams. They started with the major population centers, and expanded out from there. Soon all the Earth was a firestorm. It still wasn't enough. Even in the current apocalyptic conditions, life would endure, stubborn thing that it was. And if life could endure, then humanity could endure. Huddled away in shelters and hiding places the world over, they could survive. The only way to be sure was to completely eradicate the Earth's capacity for complex life.

They started with the oceans. Anti-matter depth charges at strategically picked locations cracked the ocean floor, releasing toxic chemicals that rapidly spread and poisoned all living things. The ocean, the cradle of life on Earth, was turned into a vast puddle of toxic mud and disintegrating animal corpses. For terrestrial life, the task was simpler in its plan, but more labor intensive in its execution. Asteroids were towed towards the Earth and deorbited. As this apocalyptic rain fell, it was punctuated by anti-matter bombs and lances, as the bombardment had never stopped.

The wider galaxy experienced this atrocity through communications from Ivo courier ships. They brought footage of their work, and all of civilization in the Orion Arm saw it. There was outcry, of course. Condemnations of the highest order. But there was no action taken. The footage had served its purpose. The other denizens of the Orion Arm had no interest in meeting the same fate. The revelation of the true size of the Ivo fleet had quashed any talk of intervention. Over two thousand ships, each one centuries more advanced then any other warship in the Arm. If the casualty rates were anything like humanity had faced, it would take a coalition of nearly every species in the Arm to ensure victory. Such a feat of diplomacy would've been impossible enough under normal circumstances, never mind after the Ivos' "demonstration."

So, the Earth turned into a wasteland. If all of the artificial disasters didn't succeed in eradicating the biosphere, the catastrophic climate change caused by them would. The final Ivo propaganda messages sent to the other civilizations of the Arm showed a grey-brown carcass of a planet, enormous storms visible sweeping through the atmosphere.

Humanity's cradle had become its grave.

---

The war ended, just as abruptly and inexplicably as it began. The Ivos offered no explanation, returning to their long diplomatic silence with just as little ceremony as when they had emerged from it barely two years earlier. This time, however, the silence was more absolute then it had ever been. Previously, they had been known to respond to diplomatic inquiries. The Mak Re had even famously been able to draw them into a few diplomatic dialogues in the past, though they had all eventually been ended by the Ivos abruptly and without explanation. Their silence was now all-encompassing. For many years, the closest thing they did to communicating with other species was killing those would-be graverobbers who were foolish enough to attempt to loot humanity's corpse. The Ivos maintained their silence for many years. Nothing seemed to draw their interest.

Even when it was revealed that humanity was not as extinct as it seemed, they were silent. Even when a great and terrible war began to rage its way through the Orion Arm, they were silent. The thing that would make them break their silence would come as a shock to everyone. Particularly the humans.