Nic had seen similar scenes play out in countless movies, holos, and sims in his short 18 years of life. He even recalled watching a very old film from the twentieth century at Maqsud’s behest—one featuring comically fake set pieces that looked like they were cobbled together out of aluminum and then-commonplace petroleum-based plastic. He’d seen far more hyper-realistic iterations, too, complete with sounds and even smells, depicting what this day might be like.

None of it adequately prepared him for the moment the beings emerged from their ship on Planet Nereus.

PLEASE REMAIN SILENT AND STILL TYRIAN LEADER AWAITING WORLDGOV INSTRUCTIONS

Nic skimmed the message for vital information for all of two seconds. He couldn’t pry his eyes away from the spectacle for long.

A tall, gray alien, like the kind he’d seen during his abduction, stepped out first. He wondered if this was the same individual. It was bound in thick, vein-riddled muscle, cords of the stuff flexing with each movement under its leathery skin. There was so much to learn about the alien physiology. The being stepped out onto the surface of Nereus barefoot and stopped about fifty meters from the group of Wargame players. It was only the first occupant to emerge, however.

The green one came out next, the second creature present during Nic’s brief time aboard their ship. While the gray one moved with the power and swagger of a tiger, the green one was slower and walked gingerly, its fat head swiveling constantly, apparently taking in the sight of all 15 vac-armored humans gathered for the rendezvous. Its facial gills quivered.

Nic was grateful for his vac-armor’s HUD magnification. Without it, these little subtleties of behavior would have been lost.

A third extraterrestrial climbed down from the oval doorway. This was a type Nic had not seen yet, even shorter than the green one, and half as tall as the gray. It had four limbs like a human, two bulging arms and two legs. Everything above its waist was wide; its shoulders were broad with muscle, and its head was wide and flattened, with the smallest cranial crest and lobes of any of the aliens present. Its black eyes were about the size of the gray one’s, and it sported a similar frowning, wide-set jaw with four nostrils. Its sinewy, broad chest and abdominal muscles atrophied toward the waist, which gave way to short, stubby, toeless legs that reminded Nic of a tortoise. It moved about not unlike a gorilla, with features even more simian than the gray alien. This creature’s skin was a pale yellow, equally hairless as its counterparts, but drier and scalier-looking.

The last one to show itself was wholly unlike the other three. While the gray and yellow had somewhat anthropomorphic—or at least hominid—bodies, with two arms and two legs, and the green one had six limbs like an insect, this final alien had no arms at all. But it made up for its lack of limbs with an extra pair of eyes; the two upper eyes were small and beady, while the lower ones were more pronounced, but all were black like the others. It moved about on long, thin legs like a flamingo, gracefully and with purpose to each step. Its face was starkly birdlike as well, its jaw tapering into a beaklike muzzle. It bore four nostrils above its sneering lips. This alien was the thinnest of all, roughly the same height as the green one, with an elongated head but small side lobes like the short one.

What was most unnerving about its appearance was what it concealed behind its back. Nic saw rows of quill-like spines—thicker than a porcupine’s, but Nic didn’t know what other comparison to draw. They began on the creature’s head and lined all the way down its back in three rows. Each spike must have been about 30 centimeters, maybe as thick as Nic’s pinky. The quills moved almost imperceptibly, but each one seemed able to twitch or bob of its own volition. Some kind of defense mechanism, Nic theorized. It made sense, given the being’s lack of arms and spindly, almost sickly frame.

It was at this point that Nic noticed the aliens came bearing their technology—two of them did, at least. The big gray one wore a device on its left wrist, the bulbous pincushion thing that Severiano had identified as a weapon. The green one brought something else. It was a fleshy, balloon-like object with a long, thick tube protruding from the end of it. On the side were raised bumps that reminded him of pimples. As with the interior of the ship, there were underlying ridges, bonelike supports within the device that gave it shape and structure.

“Tyrian 1 is preparing to converse with the beings,” said the Vice Chair. “Everyone, remain absolutely still and silent. We don’t know yet how much they can hear right now. We won’t know until we hear a response from them.”

The gray alien made a sneering click that bared its teeth. The green one’s head bobbed heavily, its black eyes rolling in their sockets, and it squeezed a node on the organ-like apparatus in its hands. “Are you r...eady, Tyrian 1? W...e’re about to start speaking with the...m. Speak slo...wly a...nd clearly, okay? ...We don’t know yet how much they can h...ear right now. We won’t know un...til we hear a res...ponse from them.” It was the voice of the Vice Chair mimicked back to them again.

“Yes, I can hear you,” said Severiano in a calculated tone. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can h...ear you,” echoed the green alien. “Yes... you... can hear me.” It harvested Severiano’s words and rearranged them, repurposing them in real time.

“Remarkable,” the Vice Chair breathed.

“We are l...iving in truly unprecedented ti...mes,” the green one’s device said with the prerecorded voice of the WorldGov politician.

Nic saw instructions spelled out on his HUD, ones that were conveyed directly to Severiano textually, lest there be any confusion with the audio signals received.

T1: ASK ABOUT THEIR INTENTIONS WITH NEREUS

“What are your intentions with this planet?” Severiano asked.

There was a pause. The faces of the aliens made no discernible change whatsoever, nor did any other aspect of their body language—at least, none that Nic could detect at this early stage. Then the melon-headed one squeezed the biological speaker in its weak hands. “We’re going to take thi...s planet, baby! Woohoo!”

This was something that was uttered by a member of another team during the Tri-Team Tournament. It sounded like a Xanthic player. Nic’s stomach tightened with dread.

“We?” Severiano asked for clarification. “Do you mean you, and us, together? Do you want to share this planet with us?”

Another bout of silence. The green one pressed a different node and a new message played. Nic’s heart leaped into his throat when he heard it. “No. We don’t tie. We don’t... share. We win. And to the vic...tors go the spoils.” King of the Hill, he thought. He said those exact words at the start of the Sudden Death Wargame. How petty it seemed to him now, how insignificant. He didn’t know what the aliens meant by using this phrase against them. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. “We... don’t tie. We don’t sh...are. We win. And to the victors go the spoils... We don’t tie. We don’t share. We... win.”

Bits of the message kept replaying. The text on Nic’s screen disappeared and changed several times as WorldGov made up their mind about what Severiano would say next. They never got the chance to formulate a response—the aliens were delivering another message in the meantime, this one a brand-new string of human words, not a recorded playback.

This voice was garbled, guttural, and tonally dissonant, but it conveyed meaning as needed. “You are... Leave... Now... Team.”

SUPER-ENCRYPTION COMMS PROTOCOLS ENABLED CHATTER PERMITTED—KEEP IT BRIEF BE ON ALERT FOR NEW INSTRUCTIONS MOMENTARILY

“This is absolutely insane,” said Perri in a frenzied voice.

“Team? What does it mean by that?” Jarek asked.

“A team is a group of people with a common goal—with an agreement. Perhaps they’re asking if we agree to their terms,” said Maqsud.

“Or maybe they’re just telling us all to leave together,” Nic replied. “You know... as a team.”

By the time they indulged in this short conversation, Severiano had already received his updated instructions. He continued in his well-paced, diplomatic voice. “Does this planet belong to you? We do not want to take your planet from you. We... Do I really have to say this?”

TYRIAN 1 PROCEED IMMEDIATELY

“Okay,” Severiano muttered. “We would like to negotiate terms with you. We can share this planet, but our species needs some of it. The water and the air here are very precious to us. This planet is like our home planet in many ways. Can we share this planet with you?”

“Why is he saying that?” Jarek asked. “Are we really ‘bout to risk pissin’ ‘em off over another colony?”

Nic was petrified to hear his own voice replayed a second time by the extraterrestrial organ. “Nereus is OUR planet! You wanna... take it, you better hit... hard! COME GET ME!”

The gray one let out a throaty chuffing sound, baring all of its teeth this time. There were fang-like incisors that Nic hadn’t seen until now—the lobes on the side of its head bristled and contracted.

It all happened so fast that Nic didn’t even notice Severiano had been hit until the man was on the ground, a pool of blood forming beneath him.