Well, I decided to write a sequel after all. I'll try to go a little more in depth this time with the characters and such, but I'm not making any promises.
Brian Pilot, whose name had in the three weeks on Earth been reduced to simply "Brian," began the walk to the UE Naval Academy. He'd decided to apply for a professor job there. He soon ariived. But the UE Naval Academy was not there.
Nothing was.
He screamed a multitude of words that do not need repeating. And then, out of nowhere, a series of purple blasts destroyed a nearby building. Abandoning his briefcase, Brian ran for his life, away from the huge, mysterious thing in the sky. He knew those blasts extraordinarily well. He knew that triangular shape inside and out.
It was a Voinian Frigate. This was thirty years after the Voinian War had ended. The Voinians were supposed to be extinct.
How the hell had it gotten past Earth's defenses?
Then he saw the indescribably immense hull. Really little more than a wide pyramid. He watched the near dozen rockets fly from its bays, screamed more inappropriate words, and froze stiff. Nowhere to go. He could not run backward, for he would become cinders from the Frigate. Ahead, he would survive only milliseconds.
A Voinian Dreadnought was not an easy thing to get past.
Still nowhere to go. Except...
He leaped forward and dove into a manhole, landing in the repulsive sewer water. Why sewers were still in use, he had no clue. But he didn't give a damn why, for this one could have just saved his life.
He swam out and wrung his clothes out. So much for wearing formal professor clothing.
He cautiously headed down the long tunnel. Thousands of thoughts filled his mind, all jumbled up.
Voinians? Here? The Dreadnought? There was only one of them, and I destroyed it! Plus, a Frigate? Something bad's going on.
Of course, it went through his mind as:
Voinnought? Only one, I destroyed, bad thing going Frigate? The was and on something! The here!
A swift invasion had apparently encompassed the Earth. He was trapped, unless he could flee off this planet intact. Any in-system defenses, as there inevitably would be, would not be a problem; he'd just customize a UE Cruiser and haul ass.
Then, more thoughts raced through his mind, not of the two ships a thousand feet up, but rather of his cruelty. He remembered the first time he got a set of blaze cannons. He'd immediately started plundering innocent ships with little or no defenses. When he went to battle, he cared of only his ship and would not care about his escorts to save his life. He remembered the shrieks and screeches from his escorts as they approached the enemy and were soon a lump of charcoal.
He shook the thoughts from his head. He had been young, naďve, foolish back then. He convinced himself of that, anyway. He would change.
If he made it out alive.
Out of nowhere, rockets and neutron blasts tore through the "cieling." Brian ran back and was knocked unconscious by a Voinian Marine (if you could call them that).
Brian fumbled with the lock, but it was pointless. Even if he did get out, the guard would kill him. He was a P.O.W. No, a hostage. They were demanding that the UE give them half their Fighters and correspoding pilots. Which was strange. The Voinians didn't take people hostage.
They simply killed.
Something was not right, and he had to find out what. If he didn't, he would be doomed to the consequences of ignorance.
Unless, of course, knowledge was worse.
The guard went off for his daily break. Brian had lost count of how many days he'd been a hostage. Twelve? Eighteen? Thirty? Fifity? He grunted with the effort it took to put all his endless fumbling to practice. The gate was hard to open. And it was loud when it opened. Guards came rushing in through both sides of the corridor, and in thirty seconds, he was blocked by as many on each side. One guard was no more than three feet from him. And, for a brief moment, Brian realized that they were not Voinian—they just looked similar. He had that one last moment before the guard three feet away took aim at point-blank range.
He fired.