Aboard the command dreadnought Tal Karam, the scanners picked up a single craft leaving the atmosphere of the now dead Earth. The Neidarians were amazed. A survivor? Should it be shot down to burn like the others? The main gunner turned to his commander, who sat in a chair beside a computerised table of magenta and blue.
"Sir, we have a craft on radar. Your orders?" asked the gunner of his commander. The leader in the saffron cloak seemed interested in the possibility of a survivor. Perhaps it wasn't a human, but simply a fluke of fate.
"Identify its origin first," replied Commander Tor Ellery. "Is it human or Alien?"
The gunner nodded and turned back to his console, and after some moments, had his answer.
"Alien. It's an Irken Voot Cruiser, model SX." The gunner paused. "I didn't think they still used those ancient things..."
Tor nodded. The Irkens had set their sights on this world? Perhaps the Imperiuum should teach these upstart Irkens and their Invaders a lesson. For the glory of the Nanex Imperiuum, they should blow this alien interloper out of the sky!
Yet what was a lone Irken in an older model of Voot Cruiser to the might of the Imperial Armada? Tor decided on his course of action. "Let him go. Let him go and tell his Tallest of what we have done here to Earth." He paused. "Let him spread his tale of terror, so that we might conquer the Irkens more easily with their innate fear of creatures more capable of universal conquest than they." The gunner nodded and relayed his commander's decision to the outlying battleships.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Imperiuum's Tiamat Legion began to brood deeply. An Irken tried to invade the humans, thought Tor, and they probably never believed him. What a sad state of affairs, he thought, that the Imperiuum inspired more terror in the heart of what was humanity than the Empire ever could... With a deep sigh, the Commander turned to the main navigator.
"Set a course for home and plot the hyperjump. We shall tell our Empress of what transpired when we dock at base..." The fleet turned away from the devastated world that was known as Earth, and each ship began to disappear into the great unknown of hypraspace. As the Tal Karam began to waver out of normal existence, Tor Ellery had to commend the humans for surviving the Cydonian and T'lethan invasions, but held a hatred for them nevertheless. He muttered a single curse, one he had begun to say often and in private:
"Damn the X-COM Project to hell..."