Ruby Stardust (Ruby Rose fanfic)

TWENTY-ONE (ISELEN POV)

"I'm still holding out hope..." I mumble absentmindedly while watching the irregular grey rock, now I know it's actually a spaceship, on a small screen of the control room. I lean back on my chair quietly trying not to disturb people working around me while sighing tiredly.

That thing has kept a steady speed and course for a couple of days ignoring that Kullat was monitoring its movements and Antares' soldiers were getting ready to fight. Annunaki seem to know what to do in every circumstance, everybody has been assigned with a task and they do their jobs very well, no one is lazy in this civilization, but they have surprised me these past days: it felt like watching a perfectly coordinated ballet dance. All the inhabitants on this ship have thrown themselves into preparations, getting weapons, defensive systems, fighter ships and hospitals ready... Doctors, mechanics, engineers, maintenance staff... Scientists and biologists are ready to evacuate carrying all their technology, plants and animals, also the archive and important documents for Ruby's civilization, every alien knows by heart the evacuation plan and where to go, their assigned transport, they have bags ready with their personal possessions, chefs have made emergency food rations for soldiers, teachers have gone over the plan with their students...

Even humans did their bit: I have drawn an evacuation plan of the greenhouse with my botanists but also helped my angel in the control room, giving precise orders to leaders and army generals in my planet in a language they were able to understand easily... this isn't the right moment to mess things up due to cultural differences. Some humans with military family members have helped me and others were involved in evacuation plans or helped Heze with the inventory of hospital and medical supplies.

After a couple of meetings and having thoroughly considered pros and cons, the Council decided that the best option was to try to set a trap, taking these newcomers off guard and trying to make as much damage as possible with Kullat's weapons, intimidating them to force them to back off and think twice about invading Earth. According to Ruby, if they find difficult to conquest us, it's likely that they decide to leave in order to find a different planet since survival in outer space depends on avoiding wasting your resources in impossible projects. Of course, our plan will fail if their technology is far more advanced than Annunaki's and their weapons more powerful, in which case everybody must leave this mother ship carrying only the essential possessions and travel to Earth. According to Antares, we'll be able to resist longer there, using weapons from their fighter ships and combining them with human defensive systems and ordering Kullat to turn the mother ship into a kamikaze throwing it against the enemy.

"Are you going to kill Kullat and Alrisha?" I asked in shock and all the members of the Council stared at me puzzled for a second till my angel seemed to understand.

"No, babe, they come with us on every ship and screens we use to work and a group of computer experts will evacuate the entire data base."

I felt calmer after hearing that, it's amazing how much I appreciate them even if they aren't real people, but I didn't like plan B because it meant that I was going to lose this ship that had become my home and for which I had big projects going on: parks, gardens, new greenhouses... Plan C was even worse: in the event that the defence of the Earth was impossible, we'd go back to the ships along with the highest number of compatible humans and resources possible to evacuate. Ruby had picked out two planets that were quite close and she knew well, they could accommodate us to start again although it'd take years to reach them. The idea of leaving my home for those creatures to loot it made me feel sick in my stomach.

They were two busy days and I hardly had time to eat and sleep some hours hugging my girl and Ishtar but I managed to get some minutes while taking a shower of purifying rays to pray for the technology of these new guys to be inferior or obsolete compared to ours: that's the only thing that could save our races right now.