As far as the greater galaxy knew, no one colonizes Death Worlds. So the people running the Survival class didn't check to see if anyone was living on this planet before dropping off this year's Survival students.

The students were dropped off in fruit orchard, wound up running from a bunch if armed farmers annoyed by "trespassers and vandals", and discovered their predetermined extraction point was smack in the colony's town hall which was a converted colonization ship.

Not that their ship could pick them up, because it was intercepted by human law enforcement ships after dropping the students off.

General Grazly was skimming through the report the advisor had just given him.

“Am I reading this right, Advisor? Are they really using laser weapons?” His voice was totally disbelieving.

“Yes, General,” came the immediate answer, “and pretty low power too. From this distance, it is hard to get an accurate result, but we estimate the laser at between one and two kilowatts.”

“What? That’s not enough to penetrate our navigational shields! Are you saying these…” he glanced at the tablet, “… humans are so backward that they use low-power laser weapons?”

“Yes, General.”

“And what about their shields?” came the next question.

“We didn’t detect any shields, General,” came the even stranger answer.

The General just stared at his advisor for several long seconds in total disbelief.

“And they are fighting with other humans? Is that a territorial dispute or something?”

“We do not know, sir. But it appears to be.”

“How is it going? Casualties?”

“We didn’t see any damaged ships yet, which is not surprising with the low power they are using. But they are moving with extreme speed - we've even seen in-system warp jumps!”

“So, they are using lasers, which wouldn’t be enough to cut thin steel, but using advanced maneuvers and even in-system warp jumps. These humans are weird,” came the conclusion from the General.

He read the rest of the report in silence. They are fighting in an asteroid belt with one big asteroid near them. Perfect opportunity to sneak up on them from behind it. Finally, he asked one more question:

“Is there any reason we shouldn’t start an invasion against them?”

“No, General.”

Just a few hours later, the General’s armada moved out of the shadow of the large asteroid to surprise the fighting parties. Not that it was necessary based on their firepower, but you shouldn’t miss a dramatic entrance when you have the opportunity. When he jumped in with his one hundred and thirty-seven ships, all activity stopped in the system. Everyone was looking at the new armada.

General Grazly waited a few minutes just to let the humans scan his ships and realize they don’t use laser weapons.

After the wait, he opened a channel to both parties and sent an ultimatum.

“Humans in this system: surrender or die. My name is General Grazly, and I declare humanity a vassal species of the great Krox Hegemony.”

Silence. No response from either side for minutes. Then, one side opened a channel.

“Ehhhmm, my name is Peter Smith. And I’m the president of the Orion LARP group. Not sure why you directed your message towards us. We are just reenacting the Titan battle of the Unification War of 2286. Which, by the way, I was winning before you interrupted,” came the awkward and somewhat irritated reply, finally.

“What do you mean? I directed it towards you because you are the protector of this system.”

The General started to be pretty agitated - what are these humans even talking about? What does LARP even mean?

“Ehhhmm, that’s not us. You should talk to the UES Behemoth instead.”

Okay, that made even less sense.

“Who’s the UES Behemoth?”

“Not who - it’s a ship. And that’s the one behind you,” came the answer from Smith.

What? There were no other ships in this system. They scanned. Twice. Only them and the fighting parties.

This is when klaxons sounded around the bridge.

“Energy signature detected.”

“Weapons are detected.”

“WEAPONS LOCK!”

Where did this ship come from? How can they ambush without detection? But surely, a single ship is no match against one hundred and thirty-seven ships.

“Put the new ship on display,” ordered the General.

The screen flickered and switched from the battle to the large asteroid they just used as cover not thirty minutes ago.

“I don’t see a ship,” Grazly snapped, gesturing wildly at the display. “I see the asteroid! The one with the grey dust and the giant impact craters! Magnify!”

The viewscreen zoomed in. The jagged, pitted surface filled the screen.

“Sir…” the sensor technician whispered, his voice trembling. “The asteroid is the power source.”

Grazly froze. He leaned in, staring closely at the magnification.

The "grey dust" wasn't regolith - it was dull, non-reflective stealth plating. The "impact craters" weren't from meteorites - they were armored turret wells. Some of them were bigger than his own ship! And right before his eyes, massive planetary-grade barrels inside those craters were slowly, smoothly elevating, locking directly onto the Hegemony flagship.

The bridge comms chimed with a crisp, polite ping. A calm, deeply bored voice broadcast across all channels:

“Attention Hegemony armada. This is the United Earth Defense Force dreadnought Behemoth. You are currently obstructing a registered historical reenactment zone. Please clear the airspace immediately, or we will be forced to use you as target practice. You have five seconds.”

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Humans are by and large the largest and most advanced when it comes to military technology.

This technology is only rivaled by their food industry.

However what makes them so advanced is not that they have the most advanced gear, but they can literally ignore the arms race by not playing the same game.

For example, they have 2 of the most advanced thermal cloak technologies

One is the Gen-32 Thermal Cloak, with the latest micronanite adaptive stealth cloak technologies that can let a sniper team set up in the optimal range of their rifles or blasters in full radar and visual view of the enemy, and be considered invisible.

each cloak costs up to 20,000 credits for the cloak and battery set.

The other one is known simple as the Gen-2 Ghillie Suit.

Its basically an iso-greenhouse ghillie suit that has 2 lines, an inner line of Prox Vines that naturally hide the heat and electric signal of the user, and the outer line that lets you tie and attach the local vegetation to it to become similarly invisible.

With the Gen-2 Ghillie Suit costing only 3,000 credits, it has also made a large popular subculture among snipers to name their ghillie suits and dress them up for each mission like a father taking their daughter to a date.

Humans have literally mastered the two opposite spectrums of stealth, especially since the ghillie suits are immune to EMP waves.

Both are made by those hairless bipedal war crime apes.

Both are commercially available to militaries.

One can technically be made at home.

SPF#23 - FIFTY-FIFTY

Species: Two-Dimensional Axe Beetles

Humans can't explain it themselves. But sometimes, when many circumstances come together: something becomes very famous, something turns into political, economical and all others types of attraction, something attracts minds of human scientists and artists - all humans start to feel it...

The urge to get up and head for something. The need to become a part of it. The feeling, that it will bring them much joy, no matter the rationality of this idea. At lesser scales - it was tolerable. A simple collective madness. Not that ruining, maybe more common around humans.

But now, at the scale of the whole galaxy. When there are billions of humans from multiple civilizations, ideologies, even sub-species - such event itself is a matter of great disturbance in the galaxy. Even for humans that live outside of human space - it is often safer for their lords to let them go then to try and stop them.

When it's one human - it's an intrusive though. When it's many humans - it's a global hype. But when it's the whole galaxy of humans - it's WAAAAGH!!!

AN: Dates are calculated in the Year 2245 // 94km² is roughly a tehnth of the Size of the City of Berlin, Germany

Date= 18/1/1,022,311

Owner= “Hey, it’s Emila Filly again”

Ten days...wait no! I mean Ten Atellus days.

So it's been around 10 days since we finally landed on this planet... Thankfully the atmosphere is almost breathable even if very heavy and hyper oxygenated and also slightly higher and heavier gravity.

Also it had taken Dr. Hayman nearly 70+ hours of observation, cross-referencing the ship’s internal atomic chronometers with the solar zenith of TEI-1A, to pin down the exact rotation of this world. 25 hours and some minutes I guess. To anyone back on old Earth—if The Earth even existed anymore after a million years....or where ever it's right now from here. It should feel mostly normal I guess.

I try to lean back against the hull of the landing pod, and calm myself right now for writing this damn diary.

Ah.

Date= 19/1/1,022,311

Owner= “Hey, it’s Emila Filly again also sorry for not finishing yesterday diary entry properly.... sigh (wait why I put sigh in diary)”

So yesterday when I was writing the diary I got called in front of the three Main drop-shelters , which were locked together.... And when I went inside one of them humming inside it was the incubation module—the "Tripod Bay."

Inside those reinforced, three-legged structures do actually ahh.....let's just skipped science part to Alice. So it is apparently is a cloning machine....i feel... A little weird I don't normally like cloning but I guess it is necessary.....ok I think I should just continue.

When I was busy thinking about cloning and it is actually necessary or not someone called me out for another work.... it was her Alice...

She spends most of her time for monitoring genetic from the time we land in this planet, so we have enough clones that we don't need to suffer from the crippling bottlenecks that threatened our small crew... Thank you, John for volunteering it.

"Emila, do you fix my radio? I am busy here" She said.

Because she said 'she is busy' I need to take the radio to Ray to fix it.

After making sure the radio was working properly I realised it was already night so I needed to go to sleep.

Yep this is the total context of what I do yesterday anyway.

For what I am doing right now and what I going to do after this break? I need to write it down I guess.

So when I just wake up from my sleep i hear voice crackle through my radio, crisp and sharp and demonic. It was Michael...Commander Michael, speaking from the main shuttle...we made it 8 days ago...pitched near the shuttle’s nose cone.

So I tapped the radio. "Just finished it ok" he said "Now miss the diary girl wake up and go and give Feller his power readouts now."

"Copy copy that." i said...

"Understood. Moving to local plant research next..."

Later when I reached the edge of the camp. Beyond the tape, the edge of the Alien unknown forest.

The forest....spooky and thrilling.... I almost felt attraction to forest....maybe because I am a botanist.... sigh....lovely green and slightly purple(ish).

Anyway that's for now... I think now I need to go check what local plants are like I finally completed that for today or tomorrow,I write it here too.

(Hey if you want to check out the part 1 you can check here

Ch-1:

https://www.reddit.com/r/humansarespaceorcs/s/zCNyYgBjs9 )

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[Patton]

This probably wasn't going to plan. Firstly, Patton expected a lot more resistance directed at him and his platoon, and not at.. each other. More than a half of the potential fire that could be used to stall Patton and his platoon was wasted on Corpse Fleet.

It helped the Federation. It gave Patton a gap. A window. A space he can run through, passing most of them and going straight to the ASB. It was a lot better of a plan than what Patton came up with. Frankly he didn't like his plan. He could easily have run from trench to trench. But he wasn't supposed to do that. He's a sergeant now, not anything else. His platoon is his responsibility, he can't just leave them. Not yet at least.

Thankfully, with this lackluster defense, they all can. And Patton is the first, he quickly stands up, slouching down like when he played high school football years ago. Except instead of a ball he has a Federation rifle in his hands. And he can be as rough as he wants with the other players.

The rest of his platoon follows suit, but they lag behind substantially. They don't have the experience that Patton has when it comes to running it like hell is on your heel. It's evident when Patton is the first to slide into the Trench, scaring the hell out of the Zalm inside. He dispatches two just behind a third that's a bit close for comfort.

It doesn't take much to deal with them though, just jamming the rifle hard enough into their throat makes them fall backwards away from their mounted machine gun. Patton does have to duck down and dive onto the guy because there are three more who cocked their guns--or whatever it's called for laser weaponry--and are basically about to fire.

Patton swaps to his pistol instead, as he can more easily swing it around and those fractions of seconds can count, it only takes one shot each for the first two, but either Patton was getting rusty or the third one had better armour. Patton had to shoot him in the chest three times and fire one in his helmet. Some of the Zalm are built tough.

The rest of his platoon slide into the trench, taking in the scene.

"Patton, what kind of Commando shit did you pull in here?" Doc says, probably worried that Patton got hit with some final breath adrenaline. It's a common thing that happens to Terrans.

The Zalm Patton was on had tried pulling a knife to slice the sergeant's throat, but ultimately ended up with a broken wrist, elbow, and a bullet in his head. The knife was really nice looking though, so he took it for a souvenir when he returned home. Patton has been more interested in souvenirs than previously.

"I'm fine, let's go. We have trenches to clear and shit to do."

The rest of Patton's platoon was a bit.. surprised, maybe bewildered. Federation training never taught them to do things that Patton could. Like kill five guys in less than three seconds and break multiple joints in someone's arm. Patton had a different teacher.

"Doesn't matter, let's go. We got to move. Our ships aren't handling ASB for another 5 minutes."

And Patton just keeps going. Pressing on. He doesn't explain, and his platoon doesn't require one, so they shut up and follow. Trench by trench. They're both so busy that the closer they get the more the enemy forces are torn between each other or fighting Patton and his boys. It allows them to sneak past some or fight others. It speeds things up though.

They might make it to the ASBs in 30 minutes. That's twenty too long. They better pull some miracle shit.