++-SHANXI, 2104, FIRST CONTACT-++

United Earth. A government that had taken mankind millennia to develop, and would take millennia more to perfect. Nonetheless, General Williams had yet to see anything come close to how it ran. Never before had the vast majority of human civilization been united under one flag; not even the Romans had accomplished this so well. Humanity had finally achieved its pinnacle of society, and was climbing up. It was a new Golden Age, especially with the new Element Zero technology that had allowed them to clamber up into the stars.

Or so they had all thought.

Now, with giant monsters throwing his people into sacks, with giant guns capable of penetrating buildings being fired as though ammunition just didn't matter to these guys. Worse, the only thing Williams had heard from the fleet was that they were trying to retreat, but from the sheer number of wrecks crashing through the atmosphere right now, it seemed like they hadn't done very well.

And to top all this off, these aliens took no quarter. You became one of the thousands in a sack, or you died. No negotiations had even gone through. United Earth didn't even have a proper army any more, most fighting done ship to ship. The police generally were enough. Nobody knew how to defend themselves but the few thousand that made up the army, a mere fifty of which were present here on Shanxi, all forty of the actual riflemen already dead. Soon, that kill count would be 50.

Slapping a magazine into his rail pistol, Williams tucked it into his coat. The enemy had cracked their communications right off the bat. They knew where the military was, and had not bothered hiding that fact. Giant strides had carried them through the streets with ease, cars and APCs and even tanks just kicked aside halfheartedly. Gun emplacements didn't even penetrate their shields.

It was only natural that when they kicked down the door, they didn't even bother shooting everyone inside. Picked them all up, tossed them in bags. Williams, for his part, decided to try something new. When that ugly four-eyed giant freak grabbed him, William had his pistol in hand. He discharged it point blank into the soft flexible part between the thumb and forefinger, watching as the bullet penetrated the cloth-like material.

The giant growled in pain, squeezing reflexively, and the defense of Shanxi ended.

++-_ABOVE SHANXI: FIVE HOURS AFTER CONTACT_-++

The UESV Lazarus sat silently in a slowly decaying orbit. Everyone inside sat at the windows, hardsuits on but helmets off, waiting for the oxygen to deplete before relying on their suits. They had been hit by one of the supermassive rounds from the alien fleet after it penetrated a ship in front of them. Surprisingly no critical systems had gone offline- not even life support- but thinking quickly, Captain Richter had killed the reactor. That was the plan for now: feign death and try to get home to warn everyone.

So they all sat by the window to watch their planet, their charge, fall. No telltale marks of gunfire or shots traded, just shuttles landing and returning, presumably laden with thousands of their people. Every flight was a marked failure by humanity to protect itself. Every crumbling ship that burned up in atmosphere reminded them of just how weak humanity really was. That lone alien vessel that carved their fleet to dust was burned into their minds, the white fire of its engines and blinking lights of its- presumably- sensors forever burned into their minds.

They all watched it together as they clicked their helmets on at the Captain's order. The hermetic seals formed and they quietly drifted, floating ever so slowly around their planet, watching shuttles leave, return, leave, return, leave, return.

Leave.

Return.

They were running now, but one day they would all fight. One day these alien fuckers, these giants, would know that humanity didn't balk at a challenge. Right now they were leaving.

But one day, they would return. Maybe not in their lifespans. Not with this power difference, not with this level they'd have to claw their ways up to. Soon enough, the vessel left, shuttles safely packed in its belly. It jumped out of the system faster than any human ship could ever hope to charge its FTL drive. It took with it the population of Shanxi.

Immediately, all hands rushed to their stations as the reactor lit back up. Lights flickered on, and a holomap appeared in front of the Captain's chair.

And the Lazarus reignited its sublight drives, turning to limp back through the Relay, back to Earth. They had to be warned.

++-_UNITED EARTH HQ, EARTH: THREE DAYS AFTER CONTACT-++

Deep beneath the Earth's surface, two people watched the long footage in silence, all having read the reports.

On the left sat the representative for the militants of mankind, those in favor of rule by force and eliminating threats to United Earth with military power: Fritz "the Hawk" Klingenberg, a tall, pale, and thin man with a hook nose and heavy brow. His position in the left chair reflected the relative powerlessness of his party, theirs a stance that had been rapidly diminishing over ten years as most planets proved to have harmless wildlife and fewer and fewer people opposed United Earth.

On the right sat the woman at the head of United Earth's diplomatic party, Ellen White. Her name reflected nothing of her appearance, entirely East Asian features with a small and somewhat round stature. Seated to the right, she reflected the popularity of peace talks.

In the middle of it all was the being in charge of all mankind: System. Being was the only word for the sentient superstructure that underlie all of humanity's infrastructure, its many nodes stretched out across worlds and relays through QEC binary. It was the perfect and impartial mediator and final executive decision maker for United Earth. Originally something highly contested, it sat where it was now through a mix of the two stances at its right and left hands. The tall black obelisk, housing the crystal superstructure of System's mind, glowed at a point of simple green light, pretending to watch the video with the humans.

"It's time to start building up our military," Klingenberg pointed out. "We have to reactivate the Defense Research Committee. Military forces need to be exponentially increased in size."

On the other side was White. "We need to put understanding their language first. Despite having broken into our comms and all, I doubt they can understand what we say- they probably found the headquarters by looking at comm traffic. They don't seem inclined to try, so we need to be the ones to initiate peace talks."

Sniffing, Klingenberg shook his head and spat, "There will *be* no peace talks, White. They made that plenty clear. The xenos want us, and they want us dead or under their thumb. No comm hails were answered."

"It's possible they merely don't communicate the same way we do."

"What, QEC comms for every member of an army? That seems unlikely."

"And yet, we couldn't trace them."

"Because we're behind technologically and they have a real military. Which we don't."

A blaring sound emitted from System's obelisk.

[PLAN ESTABLISHED], came the order over their neural lacing. [MILITARY FORCE INSUFFICIENT FOR PEACE TALKS. NO POSITION OF POWER. PRIORITY ONE: MILITARY REFIT AND EXPANSION. PRIORITY TWO: UNDERSTAND LANGUAGE.]

The green light blinked red, and the two associates of System affirmed over the lace. The debate was over- they had to go put their plans into motion with the budget given to them. Opposing sides of a coin or not, Fritz and Emma got along pretty well, and neither would dare to disobey System.

System stayed where it was, silently reviewing the information over and over. Projection software was not making pleasant guesses. It immediately realized that sheer scale had humanity at a disadvantage. Infantry was effectively useless. Even heavy vehicles- or what had once been heavy- were effectively ultralight in comparison to their foot soldiers. And that was before factoring in whatever ground vehicles these aliens set out.

For a long time, humanity had just thought plants usually grew much bigger than their animals. System suspected that was not always the case, or even frequently. It needed an answer to the problem of the giants.

Logging that reflection, System sent a few ideas to the newly reinstituted DRC.