Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to 15 Minute Ficlets' Challenge #30.

Lynn, this is bad. I mean it's bad, Lynn, bad bad. You won't believe how bad it is. 'Cause it's worse.

We thought the Earthlings were the worst, because we were all alone for so long. And they aren't. I hope you're safe, I hope you'll stay safe. If I don’t come back then you'll never hear this. But better I don't come back and we stop the things, than for all of us to get wiped.

I don’t know how it's gonna turn out. I don't. There's so many of 'em that they can stomp us anytime they want. We're like one a' those rare butterflies that only lives in one tree in the entire freakin' rain forest, and they're the developers this time.

The awful part is that we never really had a chance. All of a sudden they were there, around Alpha Vulpeculae 1, who knows why, five of them. You know we hunt in packs for safety – but these were five dreadnaughts, and they're called that for a reason – I can't think of anything those monsters would be afraid of, encased in ships like that.

Then one – don't know if it was male or female, the voice was just... okay, it sounds strange, strong and full and deep and just... like it was barely containing itself from ripping us apart with its bare hands. And that was just the voice. It said it was Lord 419 of the Hierarchy and we could surrender or die.

Oy. You know how that makes me feel. And the rest of 'em, too, in my crew, and the rest of the ships. So we started a stalling tactic, 'cause we didn't want to surrender, but sure as hell didn't want to die either. Then the view came up and this thing's hideous, abso-God-lutely nasty – like some kinda nasty red and black and purple and green caterpillar with feeding tentacles writhing about like snakes. Oh yeah - giant caterpillars. It took us a while to figure out scale but the thing was something like ten freakin' meters long -

[garbled speech]

Sorry 'bout that. Gotta go in just a moment. I hope this gets to you, we're sending an emergency infopacket back and this can go. Ajay – that's my mission leader – he's sending back all the details of the thing's transmission. Oh, and it spoke Anglic. How's that for weird. Talk about the preferred language for communication, har!

Stay safe, Lynn. Hope to see you soon.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com