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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/This-Ocelot-646 on 2024-09-27 19:20:32+00:00.

A/N at the end. :)

Malaxtr was a gem in a sea of darkness. A shining azure marble, orbiting a dual-star system, and orbiting the planet were three additional moons. Populated by nearly 50 billion beings, Malaxtr was the thriving capital of the Lanthari, a new space-faring species hoping to make their way in the world. They were beings of peace, a pillar of diplomacy. Their world had never seen war, or plague, their ecosystems barely contained natural predators. As a result, the Lanthari were slim, weak boned creatures with 6 eyes, two pairs of three stacked on top of eachother. They were definitely not built for violence, and had to use many machines to do basic strength-required tasks.

Yet, the Lanthari were amazing diplomats. Good speakers, good listeners, good negotiators, they managed to avoid inter-stellar war for centuries.

Until the Zharlo joined the council.

The Zharlo were perhaps the polar opposites of the Lanthari. Tall, broad-shouldered, incredibly toned, the Zharlo were an apex predator species that had risen to sentience and set out to claim their place among the stars. Millenia of imperialism and civil war among the Zharlo had made them ruthless; attack first, negotiate later type of civilization.

It had started with just the other planets in their star system, like every other space-faring civilization. Then it was the star system next door. And the one after. And the one after that.

Like a pestilence that grappled the galaxy, the Zharlo flew their warships from planet to planet, conquering everything in sight. Any planet that did not resist were conquered, enslaved, and heavily taxed. Any that did were destroyed, their seas and air polluted, their land masses left uninhabitable, their people slaughtered.

The Zharlo continued their conquest, until about 10 star systems away. There, they reached Lanthari borders. One of their outer systems, mostly consisting of agriculture and leisure worlds.

The Zharlo, despite being part of the council, had no care for the diplomat race. They saw easy prey, weak boned beings with worlds to conquer. So they did.

Billions of casualties on each planet as the Zharlo tore through the star system like a hungry beast. They polluted and razed the agriculture planets, conquered and enslaved the factory planets. They pillaged, slaughtered, and eventually glassed the leisure planets.

The Lanthari pleaded for peace with the council, begging for help.

But no one did.

The Zharlo sent a message to the council: ‘Any who interfere with the Zharlo conquest will be destroyed.’ They took that message to heart. Not a single ship showed up to the Lanthari Fleet’s aid as they positioned themselves outside the capital. A pitiful fleet, unfortunately. The Lanthari had no use for the military, and as such they had only 8,000 troops and a dozen ships facing off against the might of the Zharlo fleet, easily numbering in the hundreds of huge, war machines.

By the end of the battle, the Zharlo lost one ship: A scout ship that had been sent out to distract the poorly trained and ill prepared Lanthari fleet. All 12 of the Lanthari ships had set their guns to max just to take down the scout ship. They reveled in their victory as the scout went down in flames toward the planet.

Then they were obliterated. One single, massive laser cannon engulfed the fleet, and the Lanthari military were reduced to atoms.

The Zharlo warband quickly surrounded the planet, massive hulking beasts with cannons that could destroy moons (which they did, to two of Malaxtr’s). The taking of a capital was tradition in Zharlo culture; they seeked not to destroy the planet, but to instead conduct long sieges and blockades to starve the enemy, and walk into a castle filled with corpses without even having to fight anyone. So, the Siege of Malaxtr began. The Zharlo bombed and destroyed Lanthari spaceports, burnt fields with incendiary lasers, and dripped toxins into their oceans and rivers, all without sending a single warship down to their planet. The Lanthari began dying in droves, via starvation or dehydration or coughing up their own lungs via the genetically enhanced virus the Zharlo had sent down to their world.

The Lanthari began to die, all the while screaming into the void. Millions of pleas and cries across every single radio channel spanning for thousands of light years that the Zharlo let through. They laughed at the pitiful cries of the dying species, knowing that no one would save them. In fact, they further projected these radio waves, taking the transmission radius from thousands of light years to millions.

And no one came.

* * * * * *

Down in the Lanthari capital city, Julxunopalitoragus (Jul for short), the Central Communications team had almost completely given up. Their alliances, built up for centuries, crumpled to dust as the Lanthari cursed their friends for not helping them in their time of need. The CCT frantically checked every station, every single communication interface, searching for something, anything,

They sent out another call on every single wave. The engineer at the computer clicked the button again and again, before he was tapped on the shoulder by his commanding officer.

“Yes, Madam Ignia?”

“Any response yet?”

“No Ma’am. Not a single one. I think they’re probably blocking us out now.”

“Are you sure you’re broadcasting to all networks? Check again. We need to be sure.”

“With all due respect Ma’am, I’ve already checked a dozen times, what would-”

“I SAID CHECK IT AGAIN!” The commanding officer yelled. The engineer begrudgingly spurred into action, flipping up the panel that contained the switches to every radio frequency. They were all swapped on.

“See? They’re all-” The engineer paused as he noticed one of the switches flicked to the left, instead of the right. The switch was faded, the label barely legible. But the engineer managed to decipher the frequency: 7.83 Hertz.

“I told you, now switch it on, maybe the Council doesn’t have us blocked on that frequency.”

The engineer flicked the switch, his skinny upper body required his entire hand to push it to the side. He tapped the button again, sending out a call.

For a moment, the pair watched with bated breath, waiting for one of the screens to light up. For a moment, they had hope.

Nothing lit up. The engineer slammed his fist on the table, and the commanding officer sighed.

Then, a green blinking light. Static. Buzzing. Then, a fractured, crackling voice.

“Hel…lo?”

The pair jumped up in their seats. The engineer quickly flicked a few switches and turned up the volume.

“Hello?! Hello!!!” The commanding officer yelled into the microphone. Static.

“Poor … signal … heard… we’re …”

“Shit! Koloy, stabilize the frequency!”

“I’m trying Madam! I think the processor’s too old, no one ever uses this frequency-” The engineer paused. The commanding officer stopped. Through the mic, above the static; a series of beeps, pauses, longer beeps.

“Ah shit, let me stabilize it-” the engineer moved to the module again.

“No! Wait,” Ignia stopped the engineer, “I recognize that… that’s universal constant! Let me get my translator!”

Ignia quickly ran over to the desk, grabbing an old, dusty textbook, marked “languages of the universe”. She frantically flipped through the pages, before stopping on a page titled ‘universal constant’. Sprawled across the paper were images of dashes and dots. She quickly listened to the message, writing down each corresponding letter. She held up the paper to the engineer, a smile on her face.

‘Stay alive. We hear you. We’re coming.’

This message gave something the Lanthari had given up on many months ago. Hope. So, they listened to their mysterious messengers. They stayed alive. A streak of bravery in a usually cowardly species. They played dirty, shooting from windows of decimated buildings, hiding under shrubbery with close range weapons, setting up elaborate explosive traps under Zharlo cruiser landing sites.

For three entire months, while the population and food supply dwindled, the Lanthari held out.

* * * * *

The Zharlo fleet was massive. Most species’ militaries consisted of one megaship, a dozen warships, and then several hundred cruisers, transport ships, or singular fighters. The Zharlo on the other hand had five megaships, each one the size of a large city. Accompanying them were easily a hundred warships and an innumerable number of cruisers or transports. They were invincible, a fighting force that even the combined forces of the council had to respect. The leftmost megaship was preparing another aerial bombardment, its large, building-sized cannons whirring as it charged up. This laser would obliterate the Lanthari’s last major agricultural sect, and the species would starve in less than a month.

Then the ship exploded.

A sudden, catastrophic detonation that blew the megaship to bits, and crippled the surrounding warships. The Zharlo looked from every cockpit and window towards the wreckage. In their megaship’s place, tearing the husk of the war machine in half, was the biggest megaship they had ever seen. Easily the length of a small moon, the ship towered over the other megaships. A wide gap in the middle made the ship look sort of like a giant ‘U’. In the center of the U, in between two ships, sat a large, city sized ball of flame and heat, white in coloration. Wisps of smoke dissipated off the ship, meaning it had just come out of FTL. The ship must’ve dropped out right int…

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