One World

Part 1

He was watching the footage for the fifth time.

What fascinated him most, however, was not the fact that their opponents had once again found a way to delay their inevitable end, but the same Earthling whose face regularly appeared in similar battle videos.

The young man who led the last human resistance on the planet.

In the ruins of destroyed cities, they had pursued him relentlessly, trying to capture him and break him. He was the symbol of defiance, the only one capable of escaping them, a flame of hope for the others.

Rag'ell couldn't allow someone like him to exist. He needed this renegade to submit to him, to acknowledge him as his master, to surrender as the rest of the world had already done.

He couldn't allow others to join this rebel, to follow his example and defy their masters. The Ardanians had to conquer this planet once and for all and claim it in its entirety.

Therefore, it was imperative to eliminate this man as soon as possible.

But yet Rag'ell had failed to do so.

No matter how many air strikes he ordered, no matter how many troops he sent after him, Gabriel Cassel always managed to escape.

Although the Ardanians had enough firepower to destroy the entire Earth from orbit with their spaceships, turning it into a scorching wasteland, that was never their goal. They wanted that beautiful blue planet for themselves. Not to burn it to the ground.

The Ardanian leader looked again at the moving figure on the screen. The shaky footage from one of the scout probes showed a tall man with tousled black hair, piercing eyes, and a determined face.

The fact that Rag'ell had seen him again made his heart beat faster. He shouldn't be happy to see his enemy alive and well. He shouldn't be relieved that his officers' report of the Earthman's death had proved false.

He didn't want to admit that somewhere deep inside Rag'ell wanted the human alive. He wanted to see that rebel escape the traps, the fiery inferno, the explosions, the falling debris, the precise gunfire. He wanted Cassel, against all odds, to find a weakness in those seemingly flawless plans, to escape and fight on.

Why did the image of that same man keep coming back to him in his dreams? Why couldn't he forget that defiant face? Such behavior completely contradicted Rag'ell's nature, completely contradicted logic.

Gabriel Cassel was a mere human, a member of this inferior race that revelled in its decadence. This primitive civilization was no match for the Ardanians.

But he couldn't help himself. There was something about this rebellious Earthling. Something that made him watch the footage again.

He pressed the necessary button on the control panel and leaned back comfortably in his seat on the command-bridge of the huge spaceship orbiting the Earth.

Long white hair glistened in the artificial light, purple eyes focused on the screen in front of him.

Through the starship's porthole, the bright glowing mother star of this system, which the humans called the Sun, could be seen. Although it was similar in size to their home star, the Sun's intense light posed a considerable danger to the Ardanians.

Many of his soldiers had lost their eyesight on Earth before they solved the problem with a special filter in their contact lenses that adapted and altered the radiation to their physiological needs.

Perhaps that was why Rag'ell had never left the safety of the command ship, never descended to Earth himself. He knew the planet only through recordings, transmissions and reports from his subordinates, a lone leader on the command-bridge planning precise strikes against their enemies.

The last seconds of the footage remained.

He leaned closer to the screen, not wanting to miss the close-up of the black-haired man shouting directly into the camera. Just then, the transmission was cut off as their robotic scout was shattered by a fired missile.

The words still echoed in his ears.

Words spoken in fluent Ardanese, words without any doubt addressed to Rag'ell.

"Come here and get me!"

~~~

Welcome to my new book, this time a sci-fi story with a boy x boy romance.  

Have fun reading it. ❤️

All the pictures used here are AI generated.