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 #52.

"You bastards! You can't – this is my home! You can't do this! – "

Dean listened to Nick screaming at the night sky. Nick could scream like anything, even with tears streaming down his face. He was more emotional than Dean had expected, and it was more than a little frightening.

Dean himself was numb. It couldn't be. It wasn't fair, he thought, even as he knew life is hard and for Androsynth life is harder from when he'd just been sold to Genentek as a gene splicer. Fairness didn't matter, particularly to clones. Of course, after he'd grown up a bit, and the Deans had taken him in, and he'd become religious, he still knew, in a sense, that fairness was an arbitrary concept. All debts would be paid in the next world, but he lived in this one, and sometimes things didn't work out. It wasn't God's will; God had little to do with an individual's day to day lives.

All those years, he and his fellow Androsynth had assumed they were alone in the universe. Well, alone apart from their creators, the Earthlings. And now that someone else had appeared, the message wasn't 'we come in peace'. No, the newfound aliens were interested in only one thing: enslaving the Androsynth, or destroying them.

The Androsynth communities here on Eta Vulpeculae 2 had barely begun preparing for war as soon as the word came back from a Guardian that they weren't alone. That had been exactly twenty days ago. From all accounts, the Guardian space forces were soundly trounced, though whenever possible the crews tried to escape rather than be annihilated. Orders from above, so to speak, that between the lines read: We can't afford to lose you. Don't die.

And the aliens had – graciously or no – refused to completely obliterate the Androsynth who crossed their path. Instead, they crippled the ships, and took prisoners.

Nick had had grenadier training, but that was useless in space. Dean had volunteered for munitions manufacturing, but twenty days was hardly enough to get started, even by Androsynth standards.

Then the Ur-Quan Hierarchy, exactly one day, two hours and fifteen minutes ago, had arrived at Eta Vulpeculae 2 with their demands. Enslavement, or death.

None of those still alive wanted to die.

Nick had slumped to his knees, face buried in his hands, as the Vulpeculae stars formed their arch overhead in the deep blue sky, flanked by the uncounted, uncountable ships of the Hierarchy, close enough to see the light points in low orbit.

"Bastards," Nick sobbed. Dean stared upward at the sky, not knowing what to say.

"I'm not gonna be a slave again," Nick continued. "I can't. Not again. Not again - "

"It'll be okay," Dean said, knowing full well that he could be greatly and horribly wrong about it. "At least we'll be alive. We can escape again – "

"Against those?" Nick raised his face to the armada. "When we left Earth we had the upper hand, we had hyperdrive and they didn't. We can't escape them this time. We'll never escape. It's a fool's paradise, this world. We're doomed, we'll live forever always belonging to someone else..."

Dean stood for a moment, feeling awkward, then sat down next to his roommate. He consciously avoided looking at the Hierarchy ships at the spaceport, the fleets above; instead he looked out at the moonlit fields and copses visible from the knoll. Nick had come out here to express himself privately, and Dean had just... followed.

He still wasn't sure what to say. Nick was probably right – their time of freedom was over. He didn't know what the future would bring. Experimentation? Slavery of sorts unimaginable? But Dean just couldn't commit himself to death. He didn't know if that was cowardly or brave, to keep going. Besides, suicide was a sin. So was despair, come to that.

Dean had talked a few times with his fellow churchgoers, not bothering to put a happy spin on things when it was obvious the end was near. The best they could hope for was to soldier on, remember that God took care of his own, in the next life if not in this one, and that it wasn't personal. Someone else had tried to liken it to the Babylonian captivity, but Dean hadn't given any opinion on that; it was too soon to know whether the aliens meant captivity or pogrom.

He started to put a hand out, then changed his mind and wrapped his arm around Nick's shoulders instead. Nick made no direct response, just continued cursing the universe, the aliens, Earthlings, and luck in general.

The dark green Ur-Quan vessels glowed in the lights from the spaceport, waiting for the Androsynth response to their demands, in the first day of the twenty-sixth year of Androsynth autonomy.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com