Peace War
Chapter 1
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Ovaap Resrek gazed at the sight opening before him through a thick plexiglass window. Under a thick, white, almost milky alien sky, an imposing dark figure loomed next to a snowy mountain range. He was looking at a piece of what was to be the hull super- structure of the United Orcs Starfleet vessel HemmoCruiser III. Numerous smaller craft buzzed around it, the tiny white flashes from their onboard welders revealing them as construction drones, tirelessly building the giant frame piece by piece. They'd been at it for weeks now, but the structure still resembled nothing like the self-sustaining space colony it was supposed to become. Ovaap Resrek, like everyone else in the base, wondered whether it would ever be finished before the Bacterians located the outpost. The accursed Bacterians! They had destroyed his home, all of their homes, forcing what was left of the United Orcs to flee into space in a desperate search for a hiding place. Everything was happening like it had before, so many years ago, during the Great Cataclysm of Orceron ... First their birthplace had been destroyed, and now their new home was gone too, infested with Bacterian monstrosities and occupied by their armies. All he and his comrades had worked so hard to rebuild over the years had vanished in an instant, and no-one even knew why the Bacterians were doing it. It didn't make any sense. His long life, Ovaap reflected, was not at all a blessing ... It was a cruel burden, being forced to witness history repeating its greatest tragedies over and over again. Generations changed and entire civilizations rose and fell, but nothing ever truly changed ... Suddenly a holoscreen embedded into the table flashed to life, bathing the room in a green glow and waking up Ovaap from his thoughts. Like everything else in the base, the holoemitter was quickly put together and barely working, the image flickering irregularly.
Ovaap stood up, straightening the knertty he had bought on Reel 5. He approached the door of his quarters and keyed the controls, but the mass of metal remained silent. He activated his cranial implant.
A crackling voice responded inside his head.
The stained red light mounted on the door frame lit up, and the pressure seal opened with a cheerless rattle. Ovaap stepped into the corridor, a hastily welded together construction with a red floor and unpainted gray, hexagonal walls; it had been thrown together only recently to connect the two base complexes on the planet. Ovaap stumbled as he made his way over the doorsteps and exposed pipes that littered the floor. Suddenly he heard a computerized voice echoing throughout the metallic passageway.
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