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Humans, you're nothing really but bald apes. Ha! partially bald you couldn't even get that right. I mean seriously at what point did evolution decide to drop all your hair except that stupid little patch on top? Still you ain't that bad, I mean as intelligent species go I've met worse. Of course I've only met one other intelligent species, the same ones that you met.

I bet it seems like a long time ago since it all happened, you didn't see them coming, the Kree. Nasty bastards, they'd conquered my people almost three hundred human years before they found your people. Of course conquering we Cressella was far more impressive, after all we had warp technology, terraforming and our own interstellar Navy. It was a true war and we gave them a damn good fight, before they broke us.

Don't smirk, boy, it took them five years to conquer my people, it took them just a day to conquer Earth. Just imagine it, one day you're living your small life, you go to work, you pay your bills, cook you meals, speak to your friends and take care of your family. The next day your world is broken, hundreds of millions dead, your friends, your family all gone. That's what happened to my companion, of course it took quite a while after I met him to find that out, mostly because I didn't speak a word of English and he could only speak a few words of Kree.

Still I have found that he's unique even among humans, you don't believe me? Well let me prove my point before I tell you my story from the beginning. It was on my first visit to your world that this happened. Karl and I had just landed a shuttle, it was seven years after the Kree attacked and conquered your people.

They hadn't finished installing their defence net, that's why we chose Earth. It wasn't hard to find a hole in the net and slip through. We chose to land on the English coast, the choice made some sense in space. Europe had been decimated, although my friend would point out that decimation was a punishment by an ancient Earth culture called the Romans, who would select every tenth person in a village and then make the other nine kill them. The Kree could have taught the Romans a thing or two, the first day they arrived they didn't try to speak to your people, they just unleashed a weapon.

Don't ask me how it worked or what it was, I'm just a pilot and no scientist. All I know is that it killed nine out of every ten humans that the weapon's shockwave hit. Imagine that, one moment you are sitting at work surrounded by your colleagues, going about your boring day job, the next almost everyone around you is dead. You go out into the streets and they are lined with the bodies of the dead, you rush to your home, to your spouse and child, and you find your home quiet. What would that do to you? I hope you never find out.

Europe was heavily targeted, along with China, Japan and in your country New York and Washington. Your leadership wiped out, your people crumbled and surrendered without firing a shot. It was the wise thing to do, the only thing to do. How many died that day? I don't know, nobody does, hundreds of millions just wiped out. The Kree showed no mercy, they didn't give you a choice they just arrived, killed and conquered.

The result of course was that England was almost empty of people, most were rounded up and had been moved to cities in the North. That's where we were headed, where the human resistance could be found. We had a two hundred mile trek across that country to reach the first inhabited city. Two hundred miles of that green and pleasant land, as Karl called it. It certainly was green, but the empty houses and the skeletons in the streets made it far from pleasant. Not to mention the Kree military patrols looking for run-aways.

Still we managed to avoid them, travelling by bi-cycle at night, anything other vehicle would give off energy signatures that the Kree would want to investigate. An interesting human invention a light metal frame, some basic cogs and chain. I must admit I fell off the first few times I tried to ride one, still it was that or find a horse and one look at those huge stinky beasts was all it took to get me back in the bike saddle. The human love of animals is not one my people share, I have lost count to the number of times I have been compared to a walking talking cat. After meeting a few of the little pests I honestly have to say, it's not as flattering a comparison as you humans seem to think.

About a week into our slow journey we finished our nightly journey and as the sun began to peak out we selected a house. An old farm house Karl informed me, it was a building, in the middle of nowhere, somewhere we could rest and maybe find some food. We had to break a window to get entry, the first few times we had done that I had felt a slight tingle of guilt. After all we were smashing our way into someone's home. Of course the number of dead we found still in their homes helped me realise that they wouldn't mind sharing their abode with those fighting their murderers for a day.

I remember wandering around so many houses looking at the pictures. Human faces mostly showing their teeth in that odd way that human's find so pleasing. Show your teeth to someone on Cressa and they'd assume you wanted a fight. Still we have impressive fangs not those blunt little cuspids you sport. However their eyes haunted me, they were so alive and yet I knew most if not all of them would be dead. Some days I would sit in a house and flick through photo albums and wonder what had happened to those people smiling back at me.

Karl told me I was being morbid, he never looked at any picture longer than he had to. In fact I noticed in whatever room he slept he turned all the pictures around. I guess it was even more disturbing for him to be looking at those faces, after all he could remember a time before the Kree, a time when he was happy.

He doesn't look like much does he? A little over average height, a few too many years on his face, black hair, brown eyes. He doesn't have any serious muscles or anything that really sets him apart. Not until you look into those brown eyes, that's when you see it, nothing but emptiness. Pure hatred is hollow, empty and living with it leaves you the same.

Most people when they hate that much they snap and just attack, not Karl. He wasn't going to grab some rifle and get shot dead while attempting to kill some random Kree soldier. Oh no he was far beyond that, he wanted Kree soldiers dead sure, but for him it didn't matter if they died by his hands directly just so long as he had some part in it. Revenge by fractions, he'd help some resistance cell commit some act against the Kree and a small portion of the dead they were his. The longer he stayed free, the more small acts, the more Kree he could kill. Not a moment passed that he wasn't thinking of or involved in some plan or scheme all designed to kill as many Kree as possible.

Now you may be wondering what makes this house so special that the stay there sticks in my mind. Well the answer is nothing, it was a nice house, comfortable furnishings, plenty of canned food to which we helped ourselves. Pictures of the dead all around us and a couple of skeletons for company. Nothing we hadn't seen several times before Karl set up his small chemical burning stove and I filled a pot with water from a pond out the back.

It had become our routine for the days we had travelled together, cycle for twenty or thirty miles find somewhere to hole up and then indulge in a quaint English custom. The brew up, tea what a curious thing dried leaves soaked in boiling water to create some sort of infusion. To me it is palatable, to my friend it was like life itself. Fortunately the damn stuff was easy to find, almost every house seemed to have some of the damned bags somewhere, foil wrapped for freshness.

Karl used to tell me that he needed the drink to keep his upper lip stiff. I'm not sure why the rigidity of his upper lip was so important, but he assured me that to an Englishman it was as important as breathing oxygen and drinking water. I think it reminded him of times before all this, good times. That day he was extra happy, he had investigated a room called a conservatory. It was a glass room filled with plants and one of those plants had some sort of yellow fruit.

"Ah, at last it's been so long but today we don't have to drink our tea like some sort of savages," he informed me as he sliced the small fruit. A sharp smell some sort of unpleasant acid assaulted my nose as he dunked a slice in each of the two cups. "They had Earl Grey as well, the king of teas!" Crowed my friend as if that should mean something to me.

He handed me a cup and watched as I sniffed it, the fruit was unpleasant and the tea smelled different and not in a good way. Sort of musky with a weird perfume, I sipped it and tried to hide the expression of disgust. Clearly it meant a great deal to my companion and I have always found that it's best to humour xenocidal maniacs. Especially while alone with them, on their world and totally dependant on them to get me where I need to be.

"So, what do you think?" I struggled to think of a way to say that the slightly tangy musky water was not entirely unpleasant. However, I was saved from this by the sound of someone tapping on the window of the kitchen. A worse hero I could not have had, outside the window was a Kree soldier, a lieutenant dressed in the distinctive mauve uniform of the Kree foot soldiers. A smug look on his face as he gestured to the room behind us, where two of his soldiers stood weapons drawn pointed right at us.

The Kree look quite similar to the Cressella, or humans think so anyway. However, they have much broader noses and muzzles, long shaggy hair, instead of sleek Cress perfection. Their ears are pointed and spread much wider across their heads than ours. Suffice to say they are not pretty to look at especially when they have a clear and easy drop on you. We'd let a patrol sneak up on us all in the name of what Karl called a brew up. No doubt to him it was something worth dying for, me I had different ideas. Of course right then I just hoped I'd be sent back to the mines to be worked to death. A lingering death as a slave was by far the best possibility I could see before me.

Now Kree soldiers are all clones, bred and raised en mass, taught to follow orders. Emotions, desires, needs and wants, all removed by a mixture of genetic reprogramming and cybernetic enhancements. A true slave, their bonds of slavery binding their mind and soul not just their body. In a way I pity them, though not too much because pity doesn't stop a blast from their energy rifles and the merest hint of aggression from us would get just that from those slave.

Of course the problem with slaves is you need a master and that's what the lieutenant was, their master. We knew that because we were alive their orders had been to take us prisoner, at least at first. My experience of the Kree ruling classes told me that we might still die in that house, but not before the smug officer had a chance to gloat over the two captured escapees.

Gloating was exactly what the officer did, he crowed about how stupid we were to run away, to think we could escape and to spit the generosity of our betters into their faces. To be honest I don't remember his words, they aren't important. What's important was what happened next, the officer got a little too close to Karl.

Now what you will get to know about him more and more is that he is quite polite, quiet, unassuming and calm. In fact it's really hard to believe that inside the body of this polite unassuming man is a madman wanting nothing but genocide. So it's not surprising that the Kree assumed the human was just some helpless caught slave, with his head down shoulders slumped, nothing in his hands but a cup of tea and a teaspoon. No threat at all could be detected, I was watching carefully looking for an opening, any opening.

That's where Karl is really special, you see good soldiers and fighters they look for and spot openings. Little gaps, a step to far here, a gun held just a little too loose. However, Karl doesn't need to look for an opening, he just reaches inside himself, embraces the boundless rage within and makes an opening.

He dropped his cup and for a split second the three Kree soldiers lowered their eyes. It was all he needed, with surgeon-like precision and brute-like strength, he drove the teaspoon right through the officer's eye and into his brain. Snatching his pistol before the first soldier reacted, the spasming body of his former commander caught the blaster bolt and he caught a pistol bolt in the chest. The second soldier had had his gun aimed at me, in the time it took him to change his aim my companion had killed both his compatriots. He never even got to pull the trigger before Karl shot him in the neck.

The entire encounter lasted less than three minutes, the fight less than five seconds. He took out a Kree patrol with nothing but a teaspoon and I could see in his eyes he was chalking up another three to his score. I didn't ask but he still told me as he reached out and took my cup from my trembling hand, "three hundred twenty seven point six. You didn't want this did you mate?" He asked as he took my cup, drank my tea and put the teaspoon in his shirt pocket. Then we got on our bikes and started moving knowing the Kree would send more patrols to hunt us.

Now there was a point I was, perhaps not so elegantly or directly, trying to impart to you gentlemen about my companion. The simple way of putting it is that he is a genocidal maniac and, despite his calm and mild mannered demeanour, if he thought he could wipe out a few Kree with your death you would not still be breathing... and you just gave him a teaspoon.

If you wish to tip this hardworking bear then please follow the link below with my heartfelt gratitude.