My first UFO story, I hope you enjoy it. I don't own the series, that's down to the Gerry Anderson estate.
Please let me know what you think.
The Words of a Dying Race.
His ship was accelerating through warp drive, heading straight towards the blue-green cloudy planet which was the third world in its solar system and the only planet capable of supporting humanoid life.
A planet the local inhabitants resembled his own race.
A world known as Earth.
The pilot of the spacecraft tried to relax, taking deep and well practiced breaths through his transplanted lungs although he was breathing in nothing but the oxygenated liquid within his spacesuit and his life-support helmet, fighting the deep-rooted urge to struggle within the confines of his stasis couch as he breathed in the liquid and opened his mouth and took in great gulps of the foul-tasting chemical. Like all pilots trained to go to Earth to collect the organs needed to transplant into their race until a more effective cure for their race's condition came about, the pilot had known about the use of the oxygenated liquid which would be pumped into the life-support suits to save time on simply pumped atmospheric gases like oxygen and helium into the spacecraft and instead focused on a liquid which had the properties of a spring which would stop the crew from being crushed in their stasis couches and harnesses and was oxygenated at the same time.
But while he had prepared himself for the liquid, the pilot was always struggling to keep himself calm while he fought the natural impulse to get away from the liquid, and breath normally.
Fortunately, he was not the only one; there were veterans who had been jumping through warp for two or three decades now, and they still struggled each time they donned their suits.
The pilot checked the ETA clock. They would arrive at Earth in another hour, but when they emerged near the edge of the solar system and engaged their sublight drives along with the rest of the ships of the small squadron sent to get through to Earth to acquire the desperately needed replacement organs. The pilot was not looking forward to the encounter that was about to begin; the moment they were in range, the satellites labelled 'Space Intruder Detector's' would activate and broadcast a warning to their human enemies. And when that happened, the humans' comparatively primitive interceptor fighters would launch an attack. The pilot had listened to the scorn and derision in the words of many of his peers, about how primitive the humans were, how limited in range, endurance and firepower capacity their ships were - on that he privately agreed wholeheartedly with since the interceptors were just armed with a single missile.
They had no lasers, no plasma pulsars, no phasers or quantum cannons. Just a single missile that had a one on one chance of hitting one of the pilot's fellow's spaceships, unless they were joined by two other pilots.
Under the control of the organisation known as 'SHADO,' although his people did not know what it meant, whether it was a call for the humans' myths and legends or something in their history.
Nobody cared, either. To the pilots and the surgeons and medical analysts assigned to the gruesome but necessary task of harvesting organs and other stable genetic tissues following the damage to his people's genetic codes following the stellar disaster which had pushed them to the brink of extinction and had forced them into taking these steps, all SHADO was were a group of murderers.
The High Command had quickly realised the flaws in the humans' battle strategy. It wasn't a particularly difficult thing to realise, given how easy it was to get through to Earth. While the Space satellites were dangerous and the interceptor fighters were powerful enough to match one of his people's space vehicles, the very real danger lay in the fleet of aircraft within the planet's atmosphere. The pilot knew there were plans to automate a number of spaceships and send them to Earth and weaken the planet for a full-on attack in the hopes of beating SHADO down and make it clear to them that their superiors would not tolerate resistance.
Inwardly the pilot sighed.
Since when had he and his people viewed humans like animals, raised to be slaughtered? Since when had his people who had mastered so many mysteries and opened the doors to hyperspace travel so they could travel through to one system after another viewed any other people as inferior?
Of course, he knew the answer.
His people were desperate to survive ever since the stellar explosion which blasted his planet and his people with high levels of radiation - while their advanced technology had managed to mitigate the worst of the damage, the radiation had taken its toll on their race. Their bodies were falling apart on a cellular level. Birthrates were non-existent virtually, and their lifespans were shortening. While their scientists and doctors were continuing to try to find a more permanent way of staving off the inevitable, it was found if they slowed down the degenerative damage through organ and tissue transplants, their people would gain a lot more time to find a more permanent and practical solution.
Unfortunately, it had been years since that point, and their scientists hadn't yet discovered a solution; some were trying to clone new tissues and organs after discovering how compatible humans were with their own physiology. Indeed, aside from a few differences and technological and scientific development, the two races were largely compatible. Others were experimenting with cybernetic and bionic surgeries, replacing tissues and organs which had been wasting away thanks to the radiation blasts with metal and plastic, motors replacing organs and muscle mass and hydraulics replacing the circulatory systems. That one was a promising survival method, but the pilot found it too brutal and gruesome. How could they ensure their people survived if they became more machine than organic?
They just needed time. He still had faith there was a way they could save their people without becoming monstrous machines, perhaps if they gene-spliced human DNA into their own DNA, or used human DNA to create fresh embryos so then even if their older generations died off then the new generations would have a chance to survive. The pilot felt that if they contacted the humans, told them of their plight, some of the more sympathetic numbers of their population could see that they were not an evil civilisation. But a desperate one. If they were given advanced technology as an incentive, the pilot believed the humans might be willing to help. Unfortunately, he was just a space pilot, tasked with ferrying doctors to Earth and getting them through SHADO's defences.
As his ship dropped out of warp, breaking out of the hyperspace corridor, the pilot immediately checked the readouts. The humans had noticed their approach and were already getting their fighters launched. The pilot activated the targeting sights, and calmly locked onto one of the fighters -according to the battle computer, his fellows were doing the same thing.
He opened fire.
The blast nearly destroyed one of the accursed fighters, clipping it and bursting atoms on a level humans just didn't understand how to reach yet, sending the fighter spiralling out of control, but the pilot ignored that ship and then turned his attention to the others. They were the threat, unfortunately, the loss of their comrade had geared them up. Their weapons were running hot.
As the missiles streaked towards him and his ship, the pilot wondered if another way would have been better.