The invaders came just after New Year. It had started with the bombardment from orbit of our major cities and military bases. There was no warning, just death raining from the skies. It’s laughable really to think we’d been searching for life ‘out there’ for decades, had satellites and ground stations scanning space for the merest hint of life and yet we never saw them coming, prided ourselves in being so advanced, so superior.

After the bombardment the skies were filled with thousands of dart like ships, we had nothing that could touch them, anything we put into the sky was swatted like a fly. Then the ground assault came, massive ships the size of city blocks landed in their hundreds all over the world, disgorging what we first thought were armies of robots but later learned were armoured troops, bipedal beings slightly larger than us.

What was left of our military rallied and began to fight back against the ground assault but to no avail, not only did they wear some sort of armoured suits but our bullets just bounced off what appeared to be a kind of static shield that enveloped them from head to toe. Less than a week after the bombardment had started what remained of our world leaders capitulated to the invaders, there were no terms offered, we just rolled over and let them take our world from us.

With our governments surrendering and our armies obliterated there was little anyone could do to stop the occupation. Small bands of resistance fighters emerged but they were always on the losing side, our weapons couldn’t touch them, what with the armour and shielding they just marched through any attack and decimated what forces the resistance could muster. Yes, there were some successes but those were mainly down to luck, the aliens were rarely seen without armour on and it was on these rare occasions that our forces managed to kill any.

The first time I saw an alien without its armour on it was a dead one, it was at the beginning of winter, our family had been re-located to a small town on the coast, my father was an engineer and had been put to work rebuilding the docks. The aliens seemed keen to get our industries up and running again, so I had heard from some of the kids at school their world had a short supply of natural resources and so they plundered other worlds to keep theirs going, how these kids knew this I never asked. Before we’d left the city there were rumours that the aliens had been aided by our own people during the invasion; suspicion and paranoia were rife, whether the parents of those kids had collaborated and so had inside knowledge, I never found out and was too scared to ask.

It was less than a month after we’d moved that my brother and I were playing in the hills above the town, although the aliens imposed strict curfews and monitored all movements they seemed happy to allow children to wander at will, perhaps they never saw us as a threat. This was something the resistance learnt to exploit as time went by. We were less than a mile from home when we came across an abandoned farmhouse, it had been destroyed by fire but there was also evidence it had been bombed at some point. My brother, although younger, was always the more adventurous one and headed off into the derelict building, I, being more cautious, held back and kept looking around to see if anyone might see us going in. My brother kept calling to me from inside and so I joined him.

He was standing in what was the main living room looking down at something on the floor, there was rubble all over the place and I couldn’t see what he was looking at until I was stood next to him. It was a dead alien. It was only partially dressed in its armour, the helmet was still in place and breastplate but the lower half was exposed, it appeared to have taken a blast from an explosive shell in its genital area as there was little left in that part of its body, the tops of its legs were badly burned as well. My brother was shaking with excitement, he’d always loved stories about aliens and spaceships and now here we were stood next to a dead alien. Even though our world had been taken over this was the first direct contact we had had with them. He knelt down and began to prise the helmet off, I tried to stop him but he pushed me away and then it popped off.

The things features were sunken, emaciated, I guessed it had been dead for a while maybe since the invasion. It had pale skin two eyes a nose and mouth. In many ways it looked much like us but with subtle differences, the lower half of its face was covered in stubble and there was a scar across one cheek. It gave me the creeps looking at it and I half expected it to jump up and chase us both, the house began to creak and groan around us and my nerves were beginning to fray. I knew all those noises had been there when we first entered but now with that things dead eyes looking up at us they seemed louder. I tugged on my brother’s arm and finally he got up and we left, later that night we told our father about the find and we both received a beating for being so stupid. He made us promise never to go there again and the next day my brother was shipped off to our Aunt’s, my father obviously thought his adventurous nature would be the end of both of us one day.

It was soon after this the aliens started taking the young and fit in large numbers. It started in the cities first. Whole neighbourhoods were cleared; armoured troops broke into homes and pulled anyone under thirty into waiting vehicles. Any that resisted were gunned down without hesitation. Soon this roundup spread into the country and less than a month after my brother was sent to live with my Aunt he was taken along with our two cousins. My Uncle had tried to step in and had been shot. My parents were frantic, it was obvious they would soon be here and I would be taken, my father went to the Mayor to ask for his help but his pleas were rejected, he was arrested but no charges were laid. The next morning they came and I was taken, kicking and screaming, ripped from my mother’s arms.

Looking back I can remember very little of what happened straight after I was taken, I remember arriving at a large air force base and standing in line with hundreds of other children, armoured aliens stood either side as we were herded towards a ramp that led up into one of their huge troop ships. At the foot of the ramp stood two aliens who were not in armour, one was old with little hair and wore what looked like glasses, the other I took to be a female as it had long hair and it’s figure was more curved than the other. As we walked past them we were injected with something that made me drowsy, by the time I reached the top of the ramp I was stumbling and guards at the top, who were also not in armour, guided us into pens and shut us in. I remember the ship taking off, it felt like my weight doubled and I was pushed to the floor, soon after that I lost consciousness.

All this happened over forty years ago; I have never returned home, slaves don’t have that right. I learned the trip to the aliens home world took a little over a month, most of that time we were kept sedated. The aliens on the ship never took much notice of us except to feed us, they also gave us what looked like small handheld computers and we began to learn their language. By the time we reached their planet I’d learned what they were called and the name of their planet. In the past forty years I have travelled to three other planets accompanying my master, in that time I have learned that the Humans from Earth are the most feared race in the Galaxy and I can tell you from firsthand experience I believe that.

BACK TO TOP