Groz'eol was annoyed by the new reports. Yet another cargo ship had disappeared behind the gas giant. He throw the data pad across the room in anger and smacked the Vyob slave with his gel tentacle.

“How many times have I told you? This system is plagued with strong interplanetary magnetic fields that disrupts our sensors! It is perfectly normal for ships to randomly disappear and reappear on our screens!” He shouted. “There is no need to report this to me!”

“But… that is the 6th ship that had gone missing this month…”

“We are in the middle of a geomagnetic storm right now. This. Is. Perfectly. Normal!” Groz'eol did not want to waste time with a pathetic slave from a pathetic race anymore. “Now get back to work before I send your children down to the mines!”

As the Vyob ran away in fear, Groz'eol sat back onto his chair and poured himself a drink. Maybe he could finally enjoy a moment of peace after all the…

“There is a military vessel approaching us my lord,” a Zoltied peaked its head into Groz'eol’s office. “It is a destroyer, Espiegle.”

“Huh? What do they want?”

“They said they have been damaged by some primitives in the Sol system and will need to be repaired before they can rejoin the fleet,” the Zoltied explained without even walking into Groz'eol’s office.

“Well we are obliged to give them docking priority. Let them dock at airlock 2 first. Oh and tell the engineers to get ready,” Groz'eol replied unenthusiastically.

“Very well my lord,” the Zoltied quickly disappeared from sight, much to Groz'eol’s delight. He hated working with slave species but with manpower stretched thin across the sector, he had no choice but to use slaves onboard his outpost.

The destroyer soon appeared on the station’s sensors. Its signature looked a bit different from other destroyers. That again, the raging magnetic storm could have interfered with the sensor array. Groz'eol was actually more worried about the primitives which damaged the Espiegle. He had never heard of a primitive species capable of damaging a naval vessel before. Perhaps the primitives got some outside help? Or maybe it was another exile colony founded by escaped slaves?

“Contact the Espiegle. I want to talk to their captain,” said Groz'eol as he walked onto the command deck.

The engineers quickly got to work. A connection request was sent to the incoming warship but it was met with silence.

“That’s weird,” said one of the engineers. “No one is picking up. Not even their automatic docking system is responding.”

“Maybe their communications array is damaged?” asked Groz'eol in confusion.

“Then how did they send a message to us?” The engineer was a bit more concerned.

Groz'eol did not have an answer. He paced around the room to calm himself down but that only made the crew more uneasy.

“Huh? They are accelerating?”

Groz'eol rushed towards the sensor panel. A small, blue hologram was picking up speed. The thin blue line extending from the front of the hologram intersected with the orange hologram in the center of the transparent display.

“They are on a collision course! Signal them to stop!” Groz'eol ordered in panic.

“They are not responding to our hails!”

“Activate defense systems!” Groz'eol ordered with no hesitation. It must be an enemy ship in disguise.

A few large hatches slowly opened. Particle beam cannons and missile pods were raised from armored silos. All of them pointed towards the warship closing in.

“Weapon system ready… Are you sure…”

“Tell me when they are in range!” Groz'eol was still hoping that the ship was not hostile. Maybe it was just a glitch in the system.

Suddenly, the destroyer opened fire. It was not even in range for missiles or particle beams. Instead, a dozen small projectiles were launched with great speed. Before anyone could react, the automatic point defense systems fired. However, these laser cannons were designed for large asteroids, not small artillery shells. Only a handful of them were intercepted before the first shell slammed into the communications antenna.

Alarms started blaring around Groz'eol. He got back on his feet and started barking orders to his crew. “Activate fire suppression systems! Alert the damage control teams! Seal the…”

Out of the comer of his eye, he caught something shiny flying towards him. He looked out of the window and saw a shell streaking past the command deck, narrowly missing him. Another shell followed but it was hit by a laser beam and instantly detonated. A shower of debris and fragments rained down onto the main hydroponics bay, riddling the glass ceiling with holes. A few unlucky crew members were sucked out into the vacuum of space before the emergency bulkhead could be closed.

“The Espiegle is in range!” One of the engineers shouted.

“Hurry! Open fire!”

The missiles pods spewed out dozens of missiles. Groz'eol glanced over the sensor panel, the blue hologram had started intercepting the missiles. Its relatively advanced jammers were also more than effective against his rather obsolete missiles. This is, after all, a small outpost and not a dedicated military station. They were easily outgunned by a normal destroyer, let alone one with mysterious gun upgrades.

Groz'eol’s only hope lay in his particle beam cannons. One by one, the accelerators charged up and lit the skies with high energy particles. Back on the command deck, a few red dots appeared on the blue hologram, indicating successful hits on the ship.

“Come on! Come on! Just a little more…” Groz'eol could see more and more red dots on the bow section of the destroyer. Soon its bow armor would be penetrated.

Suddenly, the Espiegle dived into an asteroid belt. A mist of micrometeorites quickly dissipated the particle beams’ energy. The destroyer turned and banked to dodge all the larger asteroids in its way before emerging in one piece. Its main gun open fired yet again, putting a hole in the outpost’s mess hall.

At first, Groz'eol was relieved. The mess hall had been evacuated in time with no significant casualties. He tried to focus on adjusting the targeting algorithm but the series of loud bangs, from the lower decks were very distracting. Suddenly, a security officer showed up in the doorway, her body was covered in blood.

“Enemies…onboard….” She warned as a medic rushed towards her.

Groz'eol turned to the security feed. He was surprised to see a few bulky robots slowly moving across the hallway. A multi-barrel autocannon was mounted on top of each of the rovers, unleashing devastating firepower on security officers trying to stop them. There were no exposed wires or unprotected joints on these death machines, even their large wheels were covered by thick armor panels.

A few security officers attempted destroy the cameras on top of the robots. However, their particle beam rifles were slow to fire and hard to aim. Worse still, these private contractors were not crack troops in the Ilioneus sector. They were trained to control slaves and maybe stop small riots, not battling killer robots. A few officers even dropped their weapons and ran away from battle.

“Seal the blast doors, don’t let them through!” The mad outpost director yelled.

The blast doors to the upper deck was finally closed, just before the first robot could squeeze through. He watched as the robot pumped thousands of rounds into the blast doors before finally backing away in defeat. The crew around him signed in relief but Groz'eol knew better. The rogue destroyer was still out there and its guns were still firing at them. Moments later, another shell slammed into the reactor compartment, disabling the cooling circuits around the antimatter core.

“Temperature is rising in the reactor, we must divert power to cool it down!”

“Shut down all non-critical systems…and life support to slave pens,” Groz'eol ordered. He needed that reactor more than the slaves.

“…the life support system…it ignored the shutdown order!” Said a panicked engineer.

“What?!”

“It has been hacked!”

The lights on the command deck flickered, then turned off completely. All computer screens went black and all holograms disappeared. Groz'eol stumbled in the dark for a few moments before the red emergency lights came on. He looked around in confusion as the intercom crackled.

Attention to all crew members onboard outpost 322-5, this is human destroyer Sydney. Surrender immediately.

“Humans? Who are they?” Groz'eol was confused. There were no FTL-capable civilizations in a 100 light-cycle radius. Where did they come from?

Your fleet has entered our star system and launched an unprovoked attack on our homeworld, with a goal of enslaving all of us. Since then, we have declared war on not only your commonwealth, but also your slave trade operations.

“The slave control system is unresponsive! Remote termination has been disabled!” A panicked officer cried.

Vyobs, Zoltieds, Nev'iens, or any other members of the oppressed species in the Xok'an Commonwealth: your liberation is here. We have disabled your implants through the outpost’s wireless network. Join our fight and help liberate your own people! Stand together and end the tyranny forced upon you all!

“Reboot the mainframe now!” Groz'eol barked. He still couldn’t understand why anyone would want to start a slave rebellion. There was no way that these “humans” would help those lower species. The concept was just alien to him.

“We don’t have enough power to … Is that…?” one of the engineers caught a glimpse of the approaching destroyer.

It was no doubt the Espiegle. The commonwealth emblem was hastily covered by a thin layer of paint. The small, round bridge looked just like other Mythic class ships. However, its torpedo launchers were missing on its bow. More importantly, 3 large gun turrets were installed on the foredeck, each turret was fitted with 3 guns. Cooling coils were wrapped around each of the large barrels and an obsolete fire control radar was fitted behind the turrets.

As for all other crew members onboard, you must have witnessed the power of our railguns. Surrender immediately or be destroyed. We don’t enslave prisoners of war, nor do we show mercy to those who refuse negotiations.

The crew watched as a small fleet of shuttles were launched from the warship. Groz'eol groaned in frustration and defeat. All his weapons were disabled, the mainframe was still down and there was nothing he could do against those flimsy shuttles landing in the shuttle bay.

The lights came on abruptly, followed by a reboot of some secondary systems. The weapon stations were still offline but at least Groz'eol could turn on the security feed. He was surprised to see one of the human robots parking itself next to a remote access point in the shuttle bay, accompanied by a few damaged robots that formed a circle around the console. The ground was littered with robot parts and pools of blood.

The human shuttles landed right in front of the battleground. A small group of Humans got out of their antique shuttles and demanded the remaining security officers to surrender. Another group of humans started working on the access point, resetting the life support systems onboard the outpost. Groz'eol could see every data point that they accessed in his terminal but he was powerless to stop them. The humans had delivered a few destructive programs into the mainframe via their robots, allowing them full control of the station.

“We cannot stay here any longer. We need to get to the escape pods now!” The only medic on the command deck begged desperately.

Groz'eol did not want to abandon the station but he had no other options. He sighed and nodded.

“Engage manual access override and activate the escape pods,” he ordered. “And arm self-destruct systems. We need to destroy this outpost per commonwealth protocols.”

The crew pulled a few levers around him. A panel in front of him opened, revealing a holo-scanner underneath. Groz'eol fitted his gel tentacle into the scanner but it lit up in red.

Error: self-destruct system disabled.

“Those damn humans,” he thought to himself. “At least the escape pods are still working.”

Groz'eol followed his crew into the escape chute, reaching a small airlock right beneath the command deck. He crawled into his personal escape pod and launched himself into space. He looked back through the small window and saw a few dozen escape pods flying out of the launch tubes. At least he was not the sole survivor.

He activated the emergency signal beacon in his pod, hoping that the navy would arrive before his supplies were used up.

“This is destroyer Vespira, please respond.”

That was quick, Groz'eol thought to himself.

“This is Groz'eol, station director of outpost 332-5. Hostile primitives have taken over the station and disabled self-destruct. I have launched an evacuation of all crew members. We are awaiting rescue.”

“Standby…We are unable to detect your escape pods. The magnetic storm is interfering with our sensors… Please provide us with your location coordinates.”

“That will not be necessary,” said Groz'eol. “We can rendezvous behind Bevuahines. That gas giant can shield us from the humans’ railguns.”

The destroyer seemed to agree to Groz'eol’s plan. They sent him a set of coordinates right behind the only gas giant in the system. Groz'eol calibrated his guidance computer and fired his engines at once. Before he could contact the destroyer again, human signals began to barge into his channel. Cheers from former slaves onboard the station, as well as victorious humans filled the small spacecraft. Groz'eol smacked the control panel angrily with his gel tentacles, turning the comm system off.

Hours later, his small fleet of escape pods arrived at the far side of Bevuahines. To his surprise, there were a few ships sitting above the planet’s ring. None of them were warships and all of them were dead silent. Not even the automatic systems were responding to his hails. Then he remembered.

These were the ships that went missing this month.

“So, director Groz'eol, welcome onboard.”

Groz'eol turned around and looked out the small window. There was a destroyer outside, scooping escape pods up with its robotic arms one by one. However, Groz'eol could see something different. There were unusually large turrets on the foredeck, as well as an alien emblem that he had never seen before.

His wailed in defeat as the robotic arm started moving towards him. He could only hope that the humans would show mercy to prisoners of war.