“If any gods are real... if there's anyone out there who cares... we beg you... save us now. The Contali have come for us.... They brought mass drivers.... They plan to slaughter us.... We can't hold them off much longer.... Please... Help...”
The Kurn distress signal, if it can be so called, went out in all directions. The Contali themselves received it. And they laughed, as they maneuvered their fleet into final killing position.
Until a single jump point opened terrifyingly close to the Kurn homeworld. The jump point at low gravitational potential sent out shock waves that knocked the fleet from its orbits. But the Contali ships were warships, and they were not so easily shaken. They applied countermeasures, and returned to their positions.
A single ship emerged from the jump point and broadcast a general message.
“This is Captain Lenserr of the Human Battlecruiser Tamlin. We will not permit the use of mass drivers against civilian targets.”
The Contali admiral replied: “What business is this of yours?”
“The protection of civilians is everyone's business. We do not intervene in ordinary wars, but when a crime is too terrible, there is no need for jurisdiction. Our philosophers have spent a lot of words on this subject, but when it comes to mass drivers and cities, they can be summed up in just two: never again.”
“And you think you can stop me? With one ship?”
“Aboard this ship are 500 small fighters, each piloted by a veteran. A real veteran, of real wars, against real armies. Not merely experienced in murdering the helpless. But if that isn't enough, and you do destroy us, it'll be the last thing your empire ever does. Our government will uphold what I'm doing today. If you destroy a Human warship that was trying to prevent an atrocity we will see that as an act of war against us. Do you have access to a historical archive? Look up the Guvlad Empire. Look at how big they were; how long they lasted. Then see if you can find the video of their last emperor begging for our mercy. We gave him a quick death. It was better than he deserved.”
The tension-filled radio silence stretched to a minute, and then to another. Captain Lenserr didn't say anything more. He hardly breathed. If the Kurn had anything to add, they kept it off their radios. The Contali, presumably, were checking their history texts and discussing amongst themselves.
And then the Contali formed their own jump points, and were gone.
Shortly thereafter, the Kurn President opened a private channel. “Thank you so much. We can never fully repay you. Are- Are you gods?”
Captain Lenserr laughed. “No, we're people. Not too different from you, really. We've just been through more.”
“Why did you risk yourselves for us?”
“Because fifty years ago we were in roughly the same place you found yourselves today, except with the Guvlad instead of the Centali. The Guvlad were more conquerors than destroyers, but we lost millions in the initial invasion anyway. And then the rest of us were enslaved. I started my military career in the resistance. I was little more than a child...
“And I prayed. I prayed to every god I'd ever heard of and as best I could to the ones I hadn't. I prayed that there be someone, anyone, in this galaxy who stood up to oppressors. Who stood up for the innocent and for the weak. Who cared. Then one day the factory guards were lax, and I managed to steal an FTL radio. And I sent out a general distress call, much like yours. And in response...
“In response nothing. Just the cold, dark, silent uselessness of empty space.
“But I dragged the transmitter to a resistance hideout, in the tunnels beneath what had been one of our best technical universities. I thought maybe our physicists would reverse engineer it. Figure out how FTL worked. They did something better. They got onto the Guvlad automated network and started poking around for vulnerabilities. It was a real turning point for us.
“The day we found a buffer overrun in their weapons systems was a good day. The day we kicked them off our homeworld was a really good day. The day we executed their emperor – that was a good day too. But today...
“Today my childhood prayer is finally answered. Today, there exists someone who cares.”