The Chronicles of Lich King's Landing

Prologue

With a soft hiss, the spotless door slid aside and the harsh light of the bridge illumination fell on Xyandorias' polished suit. With a flick of his mind, the graviton repulsors in his suit propelled him forward, and he floated in a gentle parabola to his command throne in the center of the bridge, facing the main screen.

Around him, the organized hustle of his well-trained crew performing the routine checks before a planet-devouring operation filled the clean air. His well augmented eyes - which he had replaced hundreds of cycles ago with far superior implants - fell on the central bridge screen that showed their target. The blue marble hung in the middle of black space, like an overripe rownda-fruit ready for plucking. If Xynadorioas would still have a physical mouth, like some lesser castes were forced to, he might have salivated. This juicy piece of resources was just what the Drynari needed to further fuel their expansion across the galaxy. The AI integrated in his implants offered him a projected estimate of fleets that could be constructed from their target, and the profit his caste would make.

But duty first. He dismissed the AI-offer and banished the thoughts about the post-harvesting party his officers had prepared in the cantina to the back of his mind. Although he couldn't stop himself from wondering if the small female from Engineering with her spindly appendages would be there.

"Status Report!" he sent over the data link that connected him to his bridge crew.

His Head-Up-Display began filling up with information, as every station reported readiness. Nothing out of the ordinary. The planet was inhabited by a class IV-A2 civilization. Primitive humanoids, barely capable of producing spaceworthy craft. They called themselves humans and hadn't even made it further in person than the only moon of their planet. Of course, they had sent out a few non-crewed probes to other bodies of their system, but none had managed to travel very far. And Xyandorias had made sure to let his navigation officer plot a route from their FTL exit point into the system in realspace that let one of those tiny "Voyager" probes shatter meaninglessly on the prow of his planet devourer ship. Just to send the right message.

On the subject of sending a message:

"Any messages?" he sent to his Comms officer. Of course he could have used audible communication, but since every single one of his crew members had at least the basic implants, they all shunned this lower-class mode of conversation in favor of sophisticated text messages.

"No. But they sent a ship. And they are trying to contact us."

"They managed to actually send a ship to space and really want to talk to us?" Xyandorias sent a stylized pictogram of a laughing Drynari to his bridge crew. Most responded in kind with a similar emoticon.

"Patch them through."

The main screen switched view and showed an ugly humanoid creature wearing a bulky white space suit. He was sitting in a confined space with blinking lights and even some buttons meant to be physically pressed. Xyandorias would have shuddered in disgust, if his implanted AI hadn't suppressed the motion based on its "preserve commanders dignity" protocols.

"Speak." he said simply and waited, while the ship AI translated the strange noises the humanoid was uttering from his flapping mouth.

"Yeah, uhm, this is Commander Lennard McCoy of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, OV-105. We greet you as first species to make contact to humanity. May we ask your intentions?"

Xyandorias hadn't expected the humans to adapt so quickly to meeting another - the first - alien species. Usually, they didn't receive more than panicked replys and in some cases, the inhabitants of the planets the approached had ripped themselves apart and destroyed their civilization, even before they had completed their cycle-long voyage from the fringes of the system to the planet.