It took nearly two hours before our supervisor appeared at the door, a malicious grin decorating his-bug like features.

"Show time" He drawled, turning and striding off, no doubt expecting us to follow. I walked after him, my eyes following the arrows painted along the wall, each of them giving much needed direction in a ship constructed as Blandly as this one. Every corridor I've seen has looked almost the exact same. We walked after the arrow marked "Hangar, linking up with a few similar groups to our own as we did. Eventually we reached a large door, thickly reinforced and stark grey against the white interior of the ship, when it opened we caught sight of hundreds of Geressians reluctantly looking over a cordon of clearly ill-maintained weaponry. Most of them resembled over sized armbands, and were clearly supposed to be the same stark white color as the ship. Unfortunately a number of them where blackened with a mixture of rust, dirt, and what I assumed was dried blood.

Apparently they kept the equipment for as long as they could even if the considered the slaves disposable. I grunted as a particularly shitty one was all but thrown into my stomach, listening to the bug man even as I gasped for breath.

"This wonderful piece of machinery is called the arm-blaster, and its going to be your new best friend. Normally it's designed to work in tandem with your battle power, but at the strength you bunch average at it'll only tickle your opposition. These models have been set to rely on an internal power core designed to last around two-hundred blasts of...acceptable strength. I'd keep count if I where you." He laughed for a second. "Or kill myself outta shame. We'll be dropping in a few hours and for that you'll need to be ready to use your weapons, and operate the drop-balls."

He sighed, before gesturing to one Gerresian's arm cannon. "The arm-blaster comes with a squeeze trigger inside the attached glove, so its as simple as pointing at whoever needs to die, and clenching your fist, but the Drop-ball is a little more complicated. Lord Freeza doesn't believe in waste, these are all intentionally poorly designed attack balls, made with lesser material and large size specifically to cheaply transport disposable slaves, materials, and supplies planet side. "

He opened the pod with a tap of his scouter, revealing a concerningly sparse interior, alongside a few straps to keep people in place. He gestured lazily to a few levers arranged inside along the walls."These are designed to remove the walls if your pod has any trouble opening from the damage descent will almost certainly cause. I wouldn't worry about any damage they sustain, it's mostly cheap scrap metal and a outdated targeting system." I rose a brow. That was... concerning. I tried to keep my face neutral as he continued. "The inner console will be your only alternative means of communication with command if you lose the blasters, and if you fail to report in once everything is finished by either opening comms with someone, or asking one of us, you'll be marked as MIA, and a deserter to the PTO under traditional military doctrine."

His teeth flashed in a rather grisly grin. "It doesn't pay too much, but when the catch is that easy bounty hunters tend to gather conscripts in bulk. Alive or otherwise." I felt the Gerresians collective hearts drop as he killed off their chances of just running and hiding. Our supervisor turned as a number of lights and warnings began to flash across the room, a robotic voice sounded out over our heads.

"Planetfall in under two hours, galactic standard time. Begin invasion procedures." Immediately several other groups of conscripts were ushered into their drop balls, loading in as the real soldiers started loading up supplies into crates all around us. The bug man left us alone to follow everyone else's lead, leaving only a few parting words over his shoulder.

"See you planetside. Try not to die anywhere too inconvenient for us." I stepped into the pod a heartbeat later, strapping myself to a seat and closing my eyes before the others had even really decided to move. I started stretching and prodding at my ki a moment later, the only exercise I knew that didn't tire me out. It was almost a full two minutes later that everyone else had loaded in, ironically they all felt more lively than they had in days. Now that danger was looming in their face they were starting to think of reasons to live again.

I followed the movements of the other conscripts' energy as they entered spheres like our own around the hangar, before feeling out progressively larger sources of energy as they moved about the room, and committing them to memory as best I could. There were around twenty power signatures of note, waiting for the others to move, with a few close outliers moving with the rest of the soldiers. If I had to guess the strongest one was around six times as strong as the average soldier, who all sat around ten times as strong as the average slave did. Roughly three-hundred if my math was right.

I grimaced slightly as I looked back at my own power, before I clenched my fists and took a calming breath. The Geressians started talking actively amongst themselves as I pulled away in frustration, going back to my exercise. "Why in any of the hells is he so calm?" One of them grounded out. "It just isn't right." One of the aliens was letting the situation get to him, lashing out to the first target he could find. Me.

The elder among them spoke up. "We all have our ways of dealing with the fear, the grief. It's not right to judge a man in the same positions as any of us." I heard a couple of them mumble in relative agreement, before he grew more restless.

"Exactly! Our world died! Our people died! We've been made into slaves and he's not even concerned! I don't think I've even seen him speak since he was dragged in our cell weeks ago!"

The old man cut him off again. "G'dar! Enough. We can't claim to know this man, but we do know his pain. Soon enough we'll be fighting together, there's no need to pick a fight now." I heard a scoff from 'G'dar', before he settled down again.

"We're all being sent off to die, and this one decides to take a nap. Should we really be trusting him with our backs?" This time no-one answered him.

I tried not to let that bother me.

I finally opened my eyes when I felt it. The world we would destroy. Traditionally my range doesnt extend all that far , maybe a few dozen feet before things start to get "blurry". But an entire world? One filled to the brim with what I assumed to be millions of people, plants and animals? I might not be able to make out anything regarding its size or scale, but I could tell it was there. We were moving within fifteen minutes.

Orders started to sound out around the hangar outside our pod, but none of them were for us. Our pod launched out almost as soon as they started, sending out the slaves and disposable combatants to absorb whatever the enemy attacked with. And attack they did. A single glance out the large window that took up most of the forward half of our transport told me all I needed to know.

We were fucked. Green laser-fire tore past us in droves, striking out against the ship and all the pods that flew out of it. I watched as single precise strikes ended the lives of dozens of slaves trapped inside metal spheres, punching through the metal to strike the hull of the main ship. Lighter and better defended attack balls easily moved out of the way of the fire, easily absorbing any hits they did take along the way, a reminder against the backdrop of explosions and heat that we were the bottom of the barrel.

I watched as the Gerresians screamed, and tried and failed to hold back my own as our descent quickened. Our pod managed to veer out of the way of a particularly large blast, the concentrated beam of heat striking a neighboring drop ball and sending us careening through the air. The inside of our weak tin shell suddenly lighting up with red light as a monotone "Warning! Warning!" met our ears. We struck the relatively soft sand with force enough to send us skidding across the desert, the walls starting to crumple around us like paper. The sound of metal tearing, and the sudden, horrible feeling of flying through the air told me that the alien wasn't lying when he said our transport was dirt cheap. I felt the back of my head slam against what was left of the metal interior, shooting a spike of pain and fear down my spine.

I don't remember falling unconscious, but I know it didn't take me too long to wake up.

Through the fuzziness of my vision and the ache of my head I managed to survey my surroundings, noticing a little too slowly for my own comfort that I was upside down, held up only by my straps and whatever grace of luck I happend to have. I was suspended on about a third of our drop ball, hanging dead center over a pile of sand, electronics, and a single disembodied arm that I(After a brief check) was distinctly happy to know was not my own. The only light came through a tear in the wall distressingly close to my head.

I grunted at the feeling of my safety harness digging painfully against my skin, almost as if I weighed a couple times more than I actually did.

I waited a moment, processing the sounds of ongoing battle outside, before I pounded the release switch of my harness of straps. I coughed as the too rough motion stung at my already bruised rib-cage, and groaned as the restraints refused to give way. After a few fruitless tries I tapped into my ki, bringing all the heat I could from my hands to the bindings, cringing as the power began to singe against my chest. I still had my blaster, but I really didn't want to fire it off so close to my own body.

For a painful minute I grit my teeth and listened to the heat sizzle against tattered bindings and my own flesh. I was ready to give up when the cloth finally snapped, and I fell a good five the wreckage below, deceptively soft and comfortable after all I just lived through. Ignoring my bodies attempts to ignore everything and go to sleep, I brought myself up to a crouch, taking a few more breaths, and then tapped the metal casing surrounding me. The resounding thunk was not reassuring.

I wouldn't be able to break through with ki, and certainly not with strength. Which left...

The barrel of my blaster came up to meet the metal of my prison. The bug man had said the weapon was adequate. Time to find out.

A few squeezes left a super-heated hole in the wall, and a few more gave me enough space to crawl through. I dug at the course, burning sand, and clawed my way out, already feeling more than battered. I closed my eyes at the sheer brightness around, suddenly reminded in the worst of ways that I was in a desert, and that I had probably not landed were I was supposed to. The mixture of dry air and the curtain of heat surrounding me was immediately painful. The fact that I could barely move even more so.

I struggled upward, standing on shaking legs and looking blearily into the distance, catching flashes of light and color. A brief touch at my Ki told me that at least one of the cities wasn't too far ahead of me. Now I just had to get there.