Abandoned Space III

The black hole in the center of the galaxy, ever-present, ever-looming, had been their source. What had seemed a simple black hole, or perhaps disguised as so, had truly been a wormhole. Fleets flocked from it like a wave of steel, spreading out in an arc of destruction. They gave the humans no warning, no mercy. The aliens fired on the planets that had once been their homes, now monuments to their forced retreat, and sought to destroy all that the humans had created.

The humans posed no threat, no remarkable resistance of any kind. Generations of armistice and pacification had left them declawed, having lost that which had made them so remarkable before. Weapons no longer existed in any form, having long since been decommissioned and repurposed in the wake of galactic peace. Countless planets, entire solar systems, fell without significant retaliation. Once again the ancient mystery resurfaced, of the galactic catastrophe that had wiped out all sentient species and civilizations before - but this time, no city would remain intact. Inferno rained, as billions cried out in the anguish and flames.

Their fleets tore through the paltry resistance of the humans. The humans were now no more than children, having lived without care or worry for generations upon generations. The alien races, in contrast, had been made to survive in depravity, subsisting on the empty recesses of deep space.

The aliens had advanced in technological prowess in their exile, spending centuries in a state of constant wartime production on the barren planets they were forced to inhabit. They had united against the existential threat of the humans, the rage and shame at having to flee their homes honing their fervent plan of revenge. Vengeance had become their religion, as reverence and fanatical faith ebbed into the production of their armaments. They now possessed weapons that dwarfed what the humans had had in their prime, and intended to use them to their full extent.

Like an ever-increasing sphere of death, the alien fleets moved out in a circle from the wormhole, tearing through the cities near the center of the galaxy, colonizing the remains and siphoning the planet's raw materials for further production of weaponry.

In no time at all, most of the galaxy was firmly in the grasp of the united alien races. The humans on those planets that were not immediately killed were instead forced into slave labor, to help produce the weapons to be used against their brethren. They were worked to death, as the aliens' ultimate goal was extermination, not submission.

Only the perilous planets on the far outskirts of the galaxy remained in human control, the planets deemed uninhabitable by the majority of the human race. Those planets' human inhabitants were quite unlike their docile counterparts, having been forced to live in tundra, through natural disaster, through conflict against the native beasts for the few resources the planets contained.

Just as good times create weak men, as does hard times create strong men. And these men, shunned by the human populace at large for their rugged and violent manner, were strong men indeed. Despite the rest of the human race falling into willful ignorance, they had never forgotten the legend of galactic catastrophe. No, they instead prepared for it, revered it.

And these men had a goal. A goal to save the human race, what little of it remained, and to destroy the cowardly invaders that had attacked them so unprovoked.