“‘A sleeping giant’?” His mouth moved slowly as he repeated the phrase back to his opposite, a four armed, tendril-mouthed alien in a blue form-fitting outfit. “That is what the galaxy thinks of us?”

“Not all, I assure you, judging by your tone, ambassador.” The man scratches his head, sighing. “We fought several-“

“You forget your police actions and interventions on behalf of weaker species, your… ‘covert operations’ behind certain opponents lines, and more. Your people are more experienced in warfare both within and without than a handful of the oldest races combined. You have the capability to destroy whole nations in week, months or less. Yet, you refuse to unless given a reason, what we ask of you- is that reason” the alien pointed out, its head nodding and its tendrils squirming as it spoke.

“You want an entire fleet near the conflict zone? Is that right? You want us to be the galaxy’s policeman, more like!” The ambassador laughed. “That never ends well, hence our-“

“We are all aware, but are willing to provide necessary as needed advice and resources if need be to aid you in this. You are well regarded by most races, I’ve told you before.” The old man sighed, rubbing his face.

“Very well, I’ll take this to my government. I’ll see if I can pull some strings.” The ambassador nodded.

A day later

The Liberty Carrier Strike Group had jumped into the conflict zone. Immediately, all sides stopped fighting as human fighter squadrons escorted aid shuttles to the surface of beleaguered planets and moons. There were peace talks a day later with the humans standing guard. Rumors of ‘human operators’ surfaced again on the galactic network as wanted war criminals (recently former officers, politicians, and arms merchants plus their subordinates) were found dead or disappeared from existence for a time.

The Terran Confederation Armed Forces became the galaxy’s foremost military interventionist by popular opinion. Though many within the Confederation were frightened with said power and insight

"Hey humans, that asteroid is really harshing our mellow," said XXX49-Cheeze-Whiz.

"Really?"

"Yeah, coudl you like do somethign about it," continued the alien.

"I mean, sure, if that is a formal request," said the human starship.

Glorblax frowned at XXX49-Cheeze-Whiz, "If you think we are going to be impressed that the human starship cuts that asteroid apart with its lasers or maybe fires a missile at it, you are going to be disapointed."

XXX49-Cheeze-Whiz shook his tentanacles, "I've never been dissapointed by humans before."

Glorblax swizzled his nizzles, the audacity of the Produplacians brining in the humans was one thing, but the mighty doom fleet was ready to lay waste to their latest colony. The single human ship was not even half the lenght of one of their cruisers. If they thought that destroying a single asteroid was going to impress the doom fleet they had something going. Certainly it would take the entire fleet a minute or so, but it was well within their capacitties.

In fact, Globlax though, let us just end this. "Target the asteroid."

"It is already gone, sir, swallowed up by a wormhole."

"A wormhole can't move things," said Glorblax.

"Science thinks it was attached to a black hole, they saw spagitification before the asteroid vanished."

"Their main weapon can do that," asked Glorblax.

"Science believes that was one of their secondary weapons. I don't even want to guess what their primaries can do."

"Can we target the human ship?" asked Glorblax.

"With those shields, what are we going to do give them a light show? Our main weapons are just partical beam cannons. "

"I think we'll leave," said Glorblax.

The bridge shuddered from ordinance meeting the Barin's shields. "Another barage like that will bring down our shields!" reported Ashfling, Second Quill of the Barin's. Primary Quill Chlorush's skin colored in irritation, "Turn 87 degrees port, rotate the shield frequencies and prepare for a broadside. Instruct the gunner crews to coordinate their fire on-"

Chlorush was interrupted by a fleet wide broadcast, "This is Alpha Prime Diphique, a human dreadnought has exited FTL in the system. Cease fire and maintain positions! Alpha Prime repeats, cease fire and maintain positions."

Barin's crew jumped at the orders, not needing Chlorush to repeat them. Immediately they safed the weapons and cut the engines, but maintained the shields. Incoming fire evaporated simultaneously, their enemy receving similar orders.

One of the junior crew members looked around on confusion. "Prime, why must we stand down when a human ship enters the system? Surely they are no threat to our entire war fleet?"

Chlorush's eyes nearly popped off their stalks in surprise. "Primary Chlorush knew the academy's were rushing recruits through, but Primary Chlorush had no idea just how much they skipped." he couldn't help but give his second in command a look of bewilderment that was returned in kind.

"Sven Quill Hyalyat, the humans are incredibly dangerous. Their first encounter with non-humans was the Imperium, our former masters. The imperium sought to add the humans as another vassal species, but humans balked at the idea, they refused."

Ashfling interjected, "The humans value independence, even when they enslave their own kind. The galaxy found out the hard way that humans must be masters of their own destiny."

Hyalyat's eye stalks were rigid in equal surprise and fear. "What happened?"

"The imperium went to war with the humans, but the humans have another trait - adaptability. They adapted to space warfare faster than any other species. They recovered and reverse engineered technologies from every species they could steal it from. Then they adapted those technologies into fearsome weapons."

"Do you know of the Travbend Nebula, Sven Quill?"

"Sven Quill Hyalyat does."

"That nebula is all that remains of the Imperium core worlds."

"Humans are the reason the Imperium no longer exists, why we are free. To invite the humans into battle-"

"-is to invite them to deliver your doom."

A vessel from Earth drops out of sub-light speed, a million miles away from an ongoing battle. The vessel, a thin white tube of aerogels and graphene wrapped in ceramics, looks delicate, but that is to put it lightly. It comes to a stop and bobs dangerously inside a gravitational anomaly.

"Fuckers are using gravitational weapons on each other. Need to find a safe eddy to set up operations," says the ensign on control, a brash fellow freshly graduated from the academy.

"Engage." the man sitting in the captain's chair intones as if bored.

The navigator finds an eddy and plots a course. And the control works his magic. In route the science officer chimes in, "Captain, getting a system read out now, 500 vessels engaged. Detecting north of 500,000 inert bios. Gravitational weapons, subatomic explosions, and plasma sparks are taking out as many friendlies as they are enemies."

"They must really hate each other. Which war is this again?" the captain sits with his chin in left-hand, elbow on its armrest. He scowls as his question goes unanswered. Humanity numbers wars and this one was categorized with a barcode. The slang term for any war is a thrift shop but no one volunteers that information or bothered to memorize the twelve-digit code associated with the here and why of the death on the bridge-viewer. This thrift shop is bits of color and the occasional quantum explosion. It is not a coincidence they are here to witness this, for this is humanity's bread and butter. Most of human space-faring existence has been spent sniffing around graveyards like this one. Vast regions of space in which the fall out of interspecies warfare exists well beyond peace, or annihilation, and will likely until the heat death of the Universe and then maybe even beyond that.

"Any change? Have they seen us?"

"I don't know captain. This is a bad one. They might be too distracted. But I can't tell."

"Captain to dramatics."

"Dramatics here." The face of the director appears on the bridge-viewer. He is a frail man with many health problems. Yellow skin, black bags fully encircling his beady blue eyes. He is certainly not fit for space service, under any other circumstances, save for being the Terran solar system's imminent combat materialist.

"Mister Director, how close are we to getting started?"

The director turns a critical eye over a data pad, then a finger down the information there, and reports, "Aye, captain, putting the finishing touches on today's theatrics now. Can probably raise curtain whenever you want to call action."

The Captain nods, "Action, Mister Director, and give them hell."

The director smiles a crooked yellow tooth smile and the viewer goes back to the battle. Immediately there is a huge explosion, right in the middle of all the action. The flash is accompanied by a gamma particle wave. It's an illusion like being in a wave pool back on Earth. The gamma wave can only nudge, but when the director lets loose five more explosions of light and gamma waves, one right after the other, he gets every single living thing's attention.

Communication confirms, "we got them now sir."

"Good. Mister Director, when you are ready for the second act, on your mark."

There is no reply only the sudden appearance of a planet-sized being sparkling with green lightning. The gamma wave roll of the illusion rocks both sides of the conflict. One of the reported effects is massive amounts of motion sickness. Like shaking a soda bottle, a few ships pop in huge explosions. A few others shut down, with all electronics and non-life systems fried. The Gamma waves of the massive illusion can isolate a target over and over but what it looks like to those observing is that the ship exploding has been eaten.

The chaos, the theatrics cause, is immediate. Some of the warring vessels turn and run leaving a few behind to fire on the monster before them, but being a thing of light the weapon-fodder sails right through. This is actually the dangerous part for the humans. Where at any time a fear-induced accident can occur.

But nothing going, the execution of the production, this time is flawless.

"Excellent work Mister Director. Conduct act three and begin the clean up."

The captain acts stoic but inside he is smug. It is all too easy, this deception. Like no other species knows how to detect a performance so for that silly reason alone this keeps working. Some of the slaves have suggested the ability to lie is unique only to humans, that, everywhere else, honesty is considered the gold standard for a species' survival.

An alarm sounds announcing the beginning of act three. This was everyone's favorite part. All hands type action. The illusion extends to a fleet of salvage vessels that fly into the graveyard and begin chopping up the alien tech. The human vessels look like moon-sized versions of the planet-sized monster that curls into a ball and begins snoring green gamma lightening as its children eat what's left. But in reality, survivors are enslaved and auctions are set up with allies across the galaxy for the interesting bits. And most importantly those that escape take with them a fear that they don't fully understand, a fear for a new Apex predator, most call The Ship Devourers from Terra Prime.

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

Reminders:

>* No AI-generated reponses 🤖 >* Stories 100 words+. Poems 30+ but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* [RF] and [SP] for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

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