We destroyed our homeworld. We destroyed the magnetosphere of the 4th planet of our system after fleeing from our homeworld. And we didn’t find another system with the ability of harboring life. It always has some problem. No water, solar cycle too long or too sort, no magnetosphere, gravity slightly over our threshold or under it. Well, that honestly was a lie. We found 3 worlds close enough to our homeworld conditions that we were able to terraform and so we did. But once and again our over industrialization of the planets brought them to a collapse to the little ecosystem that we could bring with ourselves in our travel. In the last one we realize that with the extinction of our last carnivore we would not longer be able to terraform another planet as the species that we have left were not enough to maintain a closed circle and without heavy machinery intervention our livestock was condemn to collapse. We were doomed to roam the galaxy with our ships until a final collapse decided to wipe us out for good this time. So, then we decided to do a very risky move. A last travel. Back to home. When I said we, I meant our ancestors, obviously. Faster than light travel would be impossible without curving the space, and the energy needed to curve enough space to allow one ship to travel is superior to the energy emitted by some stars. That means faster than light travel is (with the exception of subatomic particles which we used for communication) impossible. It had been several million years since our people started our exodus to the stars. And our scientists said that in that time it was possible that life could have resurrected in our homeworld. I, Slwagrna, was the head of our people when we entered back to the Farnit System, and also, I was the first one to cry of joy after seeing our homeplanet covered again on green colors (although it was a lot different from our archives as tectonic movement had transformed completely its landscape). But not everything was good news. Never was: we detected alien spacecraft orbiting our planet. Not only life had resurfaced… another sentient lifeform had evolved. Luckily for us the spacecraft was rudimentary, so they were starting their space industry. When the scientist came with the results of the orbital scans it couldn’t seem more of a joke. Mammals? The rodents that were marked as pest on our archives, that we didn’t even bother in bringing a sample with us because they barely had enough meat for a meal and were too difficult to catch to justify the effort if there was any outbreak in the farms. Not only that, every mammal was ugly as they had fur instead of our beautiful plumage, these ones were extra ugly as they only have fur in some parts of their body like they were losing it due to some illness. Anyways, we started to get every piece of communication we could get our hands on, as a way to get to know their culture. And more importantly, to get back our planet. At least we didn’t have to worry about concealing ourselves as our radiation plating technology made us invisible to any electromagnet radiation-based observation equipment, unless they were specifically looking for ourselves and knew where to look. As their propulsion was chemical, we were pretty sure they did not yet have gravimetric space radars, so we were, in fact, invisible. First, as they were little to no satellites in orbit, the data we could get was very low. But the volume was increasing exponentially over the years. While the linguistic team was busy deciphering their culture, our cybernetics engineers where making drones designed to look exactly as one of the members of their society. Others were busy mining asteroids now that we have entered another system and could get more materials. Always coordinated with the military, so they only mine asteroids that would not delate our position: asteroids located in the outer bell, and only when the native’s telescopes were looking to another direction. Slowly but steady, we were getting more intel of the enemy. First, some meaningless information, like the name of their system: “Sol” (personally I preferred a lot Farnit but opinions of this topic differed one to another) or that they have found fossils of our people, and were using our graveyards as powersource (recicling our bodies were norm as we lived on an enclosed system, but it was disgusting thinking that another species were profaning our ancestor tombs). But soon we discovered that the two major imperiums in our planet were in war. And not only that, they were threating each other with atomic arsenal. I made them corroborate that information twice. Not only an atomic fallout would make impossible the terraforming of the planet, but it was unthinkable that they managed to split the atom before they managed to get a stable orbit. We usually take our time to make things right and if it was not by this information, we probably will be learning their language today. But after hearing that, I, personally, restructured our economy to ensure we could finish our translations before they nuked each other. So after barely 20 years of listening, we learned enough to make possible the infiltration. That day we landed 2 drones with the face of each imperium leader (the cultural team makes me appoint that they were nations, not imperiums, as they had no emperors, but damned that “humans” are if I start to use their language before ours). They killed the leaders, dispose the bodies and took their position. In less than a year the so called “cold war” was over. Then we proceeded to make the same to the other countries and as so, we had the entire species eating from our hands. Misfortunately, a human reporter discovered one of our drones while they had a malfunction. We failed to replace him on time, but when we did, we started using their replacement to write news so unbelievable that every credential the reporter had was destroyed. It was a false alarm, but some humans already hear of the “reptiloids” and started to become part of their culture. We could not allow another mistake like that to take place. So, we started to replace important members of the press to gain total information control. And then we realized. We could use them to terraform the planet and make they destroy themselves while doing so. We used the press to discourage scientist papers related to global warming, and increase the energy dependency of the race declassifying military technology. The planet was 10 º C too cold for us but our ancestors would help us to raise that temperature again. We made cults, making people believe that the climate crisis was an invention to make their lives worse. We put hundreds of loopholes in climate correction programs so they benefit people who polluted with CO2. We started an economy based on computers making useless calculations so they had to consume more energy. We defunded scientist projects dedicated to renewable energies while grated subventions to oil mining companies that we possessed. But still we underestimated them. Their incredible fragmented political structure made us impossible to reach to every part of the society. The vocation of their scientist and engineers made renewable to advance even without funding. Their rapid growth in technology was not as fast as anticipated. We calculated that even with that, the damage was irreversible for them and they were doomed. But before they faced extinction, they started to develop terraforming technologies … without leaving their planet! Carbon scrubbers took CO2 from the atmosphere and they stored it underground. They started dumping chemicals in the air and using submarines in the poles to rebuild its ice layer to cool their planet. Even the civilians were planting trees in their spare time! This were temporal measures, but with the increase of their knowledge on renewables energy, the global warming was receding. Today a drone was destroyed. Not by accident. They knew. We are no longer invisible. We cannot cover this. I am Slwagrna. Leader of the Scrill, or as humans call us, “Velociraptors”. I am writing this as my memories in hope they survive me, and our voyage on the void is not forgotten. I don’t know which will be the future of our race, but if there is another race out there, hear my message: don’t underestimate the humans.
