The WAAAGH!!
that tore through the tunnel was primal and feral, ripped from the throats of the two figures giving chase.
And those two things spotted Aldric first.
“Help, help, run, run…”
A terrified warning, pure instinct.
Both of them were draped in a chaotic jumble of bags, so filthy and bundled up that it was impossible to tell what kind of creatures they even were.
One of them panicked and glanced back, and that single moment of distraction was all it took.
Her foot caught on something and she went flying.
“Sister!”
“A two-legged creature?”
Swallowed inside bags far too large for their frames, the two small figures tumbled through the air, flailing helplessly.
“They look humanoid!”
Two green-skinned monsters burst out of the shadows.
They were humanoid, but they were not human.
Massively built, grotesque muscle packed across every inch of their bodies, green skin stretched tight, mouths full of tusks.
They looked like the orks straight out of science fiction.
Their weapons were crude beyond description, something like two pieces of pipe held together with tape, the kind of thing you weren’t even sure would fire.
In their other hands they gripped thick, rough-hewn axes, and nobody needed to wonder whether those could kill.
Drool dripped from their malformed teeth and pattered onto the ground.
Disgusting and terrifying in equal measure.
They were fast.
From the moment the two sisters appeared to the moment the two greenskins broke through, barely three seconds had passed.
“No, my sister!” The creature’s shriek was pure horror.
“What are you two?
Human, or something else?”
They were filthy beyond recognition.
Not that Aldric could be blamed for asking.
Wrapped in oversized bags, the pair looked less like living beings and more like two garbage bags that had somehow grown legs.
“I, I, we’re human.
Humans.
Please help, please, don’t…”
One of the orks snatched up the fallen sister and lifted her toward its open mouth.
The other immediately lunged to fight over her.
Human.
Aldric’s gaze lifted and locked onto the orks.
Hunting humans right under the Federation’s nose.
“Beast!”
Watching the ork try to stuff the girl into its mouth, something visceral rose in Aldric’s gut.
Not a reasoned response.
A bodily one.
Revulsion.
He had been born in the Earth Federation, but chose to join the Human Federation.
And nothing in this universe drew his contempt faster than xenos.
Why?
Because those hybrid mongrels had tried to ship him off to a farm.
The bitter irony of it still rankled.
A welfare system built by humans, seized by a pack of misshapen half-breeds who called themselves human enough to claim its benefits, while shoving the real thing past the culling threshold and into the farms to be processed into war machines.
From that moment on, Aldric’s hatred of xenos had never cooled.
*Buzz!*
Two streaks of light carved through the dark tunnel.
Both greenskins froze in midair.
A beat of stillness.
Then a thin green line of blood appeared across each of their necks.
*Thud!* *Thud!*
Two heads hit the ground.
Aldric sheathed the laser sword and caught the younger sister before she could fall.
She was pitch black with grime, nothing visible but two wide eyes staring up at him, chest heaving.
Her expression was unreadable under all that filth.
Most of his mods had gone offline, but the Modeling Optimization mod had not.
Anyone who laid eyes on Aldric would feel it without thinking: what a perfect human being.
He set the younger girl down beside her brother.
The older brother collapsed to his knees, sobbing, clutching his sister and pressing his forehead to the ground over and over in front of Aldric.
Through the thick layer of coal dust caking his face, he could at least make out that he was a fairly young man.
Human enough to tell, anyway.
“God-Emperor above, thank you, thank you!”
“God-Emperor?”
He’d better be human, Aldric thought.
Otherwise this was going to get complicated.
Before he could think further, a thunderous crash shook the tunnel and chunks of stone rained from the ceiling.
Aldric’s gaze shifted to the far end of the passage.
The sounds of gunfire echoed from that direction, punctuated by screams and monstrous roars.
“Are there more of those things down there?”
“Yes, yes, so many, so many…
They broke into the settlement…
they broke in…”
The boy was trembling so badly his words came out in fragments, emotion pushing him right to the edge of collapse.
Aldric’s expression hardened.
He turned and walked toward the noise.
He didn’t know whether this was Federation territory.
He didn’t particularly care.
All he knew was that his human kin were crying out under the claws of those animals.
“Don’t go, there are so many of them, you’re alone!”
“I’m human.”
“Human?” The boy stared at him, bewildered.
He was human too.
But faced with those monsters, all he had managed was to cower and scream in despair.
He had hated himself for it, hated how small and powerless he was.
And yet this man said it like it meant something.
Like it was enough.
In Aldric’s universe, that was simply the truth.
In this cosmos, humans sat at the top of the food chain.
That was just how it was.
He didn’t have time to think on it further.
Two more orks crawled out of the darkness, axes raised, bringing them down toward where Aldric stood.
“Watch out, orks!” The younger sister, still nestled against her brother, had been watching Aldric quietly.
The moment she spotted them she screamed a warning.
*Bang bang bang!!!*
The freshly emerged greenskins were riddled with searing bolts of light before they hit the ground.
Out of the darkness behind them, a squad of soldiers emerged.
They wore pale grey full-body armor and carried standardized weapons.
A proper military unit.
The players had arrived.
“What are these two things supposed to be?”
Drool glanced at the human tags on the heads of the two creatures on the ground.
“Human?
why do they look so filthy.”
The players filed past the two siblings one by one.
“Hold on, let me lick the ork real quick.”
“That’s gross, man.”
“Get out of here.
I meant licking their loot.
Nothing weird about it.”
“The corpse is showing an energy reading.”
“It needs to go into the bio-power system?
So we have to drag it back and feed it into the bio-furnace?
What a hassle.”
Another player nudged Drool.
“Alright, keep up with the Commander.
We can talk later, we’ve got a mission.”
The two siblings watched as more and more soldiers appeared, their eyes wide with disbelief.
Aldric stood with his back to the players and the siblings, his gaze dropping to the ork corpse beneath his boot.
“I don’t know exactly what’s going on here.
But if there are humans here.”
“Then this is Federation territory.
It always has been.”
“The Federation protects all of humanity.”
“Now, what happens here is the Human Alliance’s responsibility!”
“Mission updated: clear out the monsters!”
He waved a hand and moved forward, the players falling in behind him.
At the front line, gunfire and laser fire wove together in a wall of light and noise.
War cries and death screams answered each other in the dark.
Somewhere deeper in, the sound of weeping never stopped.
A soldier was raising his weapon to fire when a heavy shell’s shockwave caught him and hurled him off his feet.
The defensive node collapsed.
“Captain, we can’t hold!”
“Hold until the last man standing!
Reinforcements are on the way!”
At the end of the tunnel, the space opened up considerably.
Makeshift houses lined the area, and a defensive line built from piled mining rubble stretched across the ground.
Below it, a dense mass of green bodies surged forward.
Several hundred orks, throwing themselves at a single small outpost.
A machine gun roared, tearing green blooms of blood across the charging horde.
But the orks pushed too hard.
Some had already broken through into the mine pit.
If the line wasn’t retaken, the entire outpost would fall within minutes.
Aldric swept his gaze across the battlefield and pulled up the minimap, piecing together the rough positions of both sides.
“The line is about to break.
The defenders are starting to panic.”
“Three squads reinforce the human defenders.
Three squads hit from the flank.
The remaining four squads cut through the middle and break the orks’ momentum.
We can’t let the orcs regain their rhythm!”
“Captain, those look like reinforcements!”
Dozens of soldiers in exoskeletal armor stood out sharply on the battlefield.
That kind of equipment was reserved for the elite.
Everyone on the ground knew it.
But no one had ever seen that particular design before.
“Brothers, reinforcements have arrived!
Drive these scum out of our mine!”
“For the God-Emperor!
Charge!”
The battle cry gave Aldric pause.
The players heard it too.
“Hold on.”
“What do you mean, for the God-Emperor?”
“Does this planet have a god?”
“Or someone who calls himself one?”
Gods were nothing new to Aldric.
The Federation had dealt with more than a few of them.
A so-called god was just an exceptionally powerful individual species.
If you could tank a disruptor cannon and walk it off, sure, that was pretty divine.
But the moment an Aether-Phase Engine spun up, it could make all the gods in the universe fly.
Even the evil Gods had to scramble when it kicked in.
Those multiverse-tier deities that were slow to react got a very firm slap for their trouble.
(note: the mc still thinks he is in stellaris)
In the original text, the story featured an older sister and a younger sister.
However, I personally find it tiresome when books surround the main character exclusively with female characters, as it often feels like fan service.
So, I’m changing one of them into a male character — partly for fun and partly to bring some freshness to the dynamic.
I also want to avoid using women purely as plot devices or as the classic “damsel in distress” trope.
After all, men can be a damsel in distress too.
alt + 0151 = — so don’t go pointing this is ai.