The Swiss Prefer to be Neutral

Part 1 - Prologue

I can still see them – the arcs of fire and smoke streaming into the sky towards the vast black ship. I stood in a crowd of thousands, watching in fear as the nuclear missiles closed on the ship like predators closing on prey and then exploded, darkening the world and forcing us to hide our eyes for long minutes. We knew that we shouldn't watch, that it was dangerous, but after all we'd been through, after all the death and destruction, we just wanted to see the bastards burn.

It didn't even put a dent in their shield.

It's almost impossible to think now of how we greeted the first Ch'i ships, with cheers and garlands of flowers draped round their thick necks. The first few scouts seemed determined to stop at every city to greet us, pretending to be a peaceful race and everywhere they went a crowd followed, desperate to get a glimpse of these strangers from the stars.

We were not alone and for the first time we felt connected to the outside world, connected to the universe, we felt like we belonged and that we had a greater purpose.

Looking back, ... it's almost impossibly naïve.

The scouts made vague promises to our leaders, pledges of friendship and offers of shared technology, we agreeded excitedly knowing how much more advanced they are. Of course we know now that they were merely assessing our defences for the coming invasion, taking our technology and adapting to it in secret, building defences against it, we should have done the same but we were blinded by the events that had recently unfolded.

When the vast mothership arrived, they had learned exactly where to hit us to cripple us, information they had gained from the scouts, they crippled us in just days and it was out own fault.

Humanity had welcomed its doom and shown it how best to kill us.

Like every over choice that has been made throughout the course of history, there were some who objected, who demanded that we stop these scouts, that we demand proper assurances before we showed them our world. They were denounced as crackpots and kooks; only one country was smart enough to allow them entry at all. The Swiss were tolerated for their odd behaviour, but mocked widely in private.

The Ch'i accepted their lack of invitation to switzerland and announced that they would avoid the Swiss borders and airspace, but we know now that was another lie. Thankfully the Swiss did not ever believe it. They tracked the scout ships and unbeknown to us, they destroyed and captured a dozen or more who strayed into their territory reverse engineering it for the battle they knew would eventually happen. Neither the Ch'i nor the Swiss ever mentioned it, but it was a silent war that raged before the rest of the world knew there was anything to fear.

Perhaps that is why they avoided them at first, the Ch'i have a strong warrior culture and with this early defiance the Swiss set themselves as Earth's strongest nation, protecting themselves fiercly with force no over country had access to. Whatever it was, the Ch'i waited until the rest of us were in ruins before they attacked the swiss

America was hit with the full force of the invasion as they were seen as a threat to the Ch'i , they fell in days. Their computer systems were disrupted by massive emp weapons and their leadership targeted and murdered with swift brutal strikes. The air force did well against the lighter ships of the Ch'I, as they did not have shields, which our weapons were completely in effective against, but our jets were vastly outnumbered and soon were overwhelmed by the enourmous Ch'i force.

Once America fell so, it seemed, had our hope.

Russia and China held up a fight. China was seen as a nobody to the Ch'i as they conducted all their experiments, trained their military and built their weapons in secret. To the Ch'i, China had no military, so they attacked it with the least force. China's military held up against the first wave, however they were utterly demolished when Ch'i Reinforcements arrived. Russia, on the other hand, showed the Ch'i everything, except the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. Russia intended to recieve a large invasion force and kamikaze them all. So, when the invasion occured, the leaders of Russia, detonated every single nuke they had, destroying most of the invasion force, only corvettes and over shielded ships remaining, however, Russia no longer existed.

The nukes had been our last chance, maybe our only chance – a large group of elite soldiers operating in silence managed to find America's nuclear codes and coordinate a manual launch of a dozen or more against the mothership...but it did nothing. As the smoke cleared, we saw the ship was still flying ,undamaged, so we slunk back into the city, ashamed.

We felt defeated, we were defeated.

Or so we thought...

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