[b]Sol System[/b]
The Terrans stared at the empty space before them, the Iscandarian ships had vanished. At first they thought it was a trick, but on every ship the sensors officer said the same thing: They had jumped out. It was over, the battle had been won. A channel was opened to all ships from the TSS [i]Norway[/i], the Dreadnought that had taken control of the Terran fleet. For what seemed like an eternity, everyone was silent. Then a single person spoke. 

"We've won!"

They were joined in a thunderous roar by the rest of the fleet, thousands of humans yelling in dozens of languages. It was a victory cry like none before it, for the first time in decades, humanity had something to be proud of.

On the surface of Earth, soldiers and civilians alike looked up to see the lights of the Iscandarian fleet gone. Raising fists in the air, they cried the same cry as those in orbit. Lovers embraced, as did the soldiers as they lifted the UTF flag as high as they could. At the site of the main Iscandarian invasion, the army surrounded the Iscandarians and with her coilgun aimed directly at the Iscandarian General, the woman who had sent the message to the Iscandarian fleet in the first place spoke in a spiteful tone.

"You'd better have been telling the truth, because this war was personal the moment it started. If you were lying, then you collectively broke the heart of someone who I've known for a long goddamned time. If you surrender now, then I'll give you a chance. If you were lying to us, though, then I will have my revenge for fucking up a man's already abysmal life!"

[b]Fergus's Room[/b]
"People died. Lots of people, there's no such thing as apologizing for that, even if you had nothing to do with it. Every being projects... well, the exact term escapes me, so I'll call them lines of force. They have to do with higher-dimensional physics, and they connect beings to distant planets, galaxies, and even universes. They connect everything that exists together. When one being dies, hundreds of those line disappear. It's a terrible loss, and those scars are felt by every being in the universe. Some feel it more than others. You can't apologize for what happened, you can, however, apologize to all those people that felt it."

Fergus turned to look at Emily, recognizing her.

"Captain Emily!" He said, remembering the first battle. He realized that her uniform had a different marking on it. "Oh, change in rank? Demotion? No, you made first contact and tried to help us, promotion then? Or is it a simple uniform redesign? Does it change with the seasons? No, there aren't any seasons, silly me. Alas Prime has an almost perfectly straight axis. Different times of month? No, too obscure. Oh! It's a fleet insignia, isn't it! No, no. Insignia's usually look more flashy. Or does the marking have some religious significance? Different religious celebrations then? Like Lent in Christianity, with all the purple and stuff. At least, I think it's lent. When is lent, anyway? Didn't it have something to do with a pilgrimage? No, no, that's Judaism, wait, no, well, they both have pilgrimages. Hey, wasn't lent originally a fasting thing or whatever? Most people just give up their favorite brand of potato chip now. I wonder why, probably has something to do with modern culture. We don't like discomfort. Well, interplanetary travel at a reasonable pace usually knocks the crew out and can cause permanent brain damage. That's a problem. Maybe we should have warp drives installed on all ships. No, that's too costly, that's it! Warp conduits! If we could control the flow of negative energy using magnetism we could-"

He cut himself off, realizing that he had just changed the topic from her rank to human transportation. Blushing, he started to apologize.

"Sorry, I was talking too fast, wasn't I? I do that whenever I get nervous. It's what I did on your ship... I never apologized for it. For a moment, you all thought I had killed half your bridge crew. I know what it's like to see people under your command die, I've lost my entire crew before. The Aníki̱tos, the Invictum, the Valhalla, the Yamato, the Hood, and countless others. All of those ships were destroyed, and their crew with them. When it happened, I couldn't believe it. You always expect that other ships will de taken out, not yours. Then it happens, and it feels like a nightmare. I'm sorry to have made you believe that any of your crew died."

[b]Utopia Planatia Shipyards, Mars[/b]
The huge transport vessel flared it's plasma engines, pulling into orbit near the gigantic space station. Twenty barely visible nanofiber strings connected it to the ground, massive transport elevators moving up and down, full of materials for shipbuilding. A new dreadnought sailed out of one of the drydocks, with warp rings in the place of artificial gravity ones. It was a joint effort by the European Nations, utilizing a new (and expensive) plasma shield originally designed for use by tanks. Since argon plasma was being stretched thin, it had to use hydrogen plasma instead, giving it's shields a blood red glow. 

As the two ships passed, the Dreadnought's weapons emplacements could be seen. The ship has a standard "tuning fork" railgun in the center, but instead of being exposed, four giant plates formed a circle around it (with gaps in what would be the corners if it were a square). The plates were covered in triple-mode metal streamer turrets (capable of firing molten metal, laser beams, or plasma bolts). White letters on all four plates read "Mjolnir", the perfect name for such a vessel. Even with it's vast size, the transport was slightly larger than it. Being an interstellar transport, it had to be as large as possible to, funnily enough, conserve fuel.

Dozens of tub vessels swarmed towards the transport, firing chemical rockets to bring it in to dock at the industrial ports. Open vacuum trams carried over huge crates, and the crew of the transport rushed to the airlocks to see what their cargo was. Soldiers in combat exoskeletons stood guard over the crates, marching along with perfect discipline. The officer in front handed over the codes for opening the crates.

"Go ahead, take a look." He said

The captain ran up the the crates and keyed the codes into the tablet that the officer left sitting on top of the first crate. All of them opened immediately, revealing dozens of different cargoes. Most crates contained modular metal parts for some sort of building, but a few held shelves filled with odd cylinders.

"The hell are those?" Asked the captain, pointing to the shelves. He walked up to them, reaching out to touch them. "They're cold, why?"

"Population bomb." Said the officer "Eight million fertilized eggs, frozen in cryo. The people are being loaded through the passenger trams two decks down. I don't think I need to tell you what you're doing."

The captain smiled, closing the crates again.

"What system?"

"Epsilon Indi, 12 light years out. It's fourth planet is habitable to humans, 50% Earth's gravity and size, similar atmosphere, and open for a species to come and take it. You drop off the pioneers, leave the worker bees in orbit with the spare parts, and come back for the rest of the colonists. Ten years later and you've got eight million humans spread out across a continent and a 500,000 person space station in orbit. We've modified the genetic code of the egg cells, they'll be perfectly suited to the planet. We made their bone and muscle structures more resistant to decay, of course. Besides letting them come home, they'll get to have some fun in the low gravity."

"Timetable?"

"Be out of dock at twenty-three hundred Olympus Mons Time. That'd be... 0900 by Belt Time."

[b]Mars[/b]
After a long drive to the spaceport, the convoy stopped in front of multiple odd-looking tubes. The tubes extended to connect to the airlocks, once they were connected, both sides of the airlock doors opened to reveal a squad of humans clad in heavy, black armor. Some held coilgun assault rifles, others plasma sabers. Having heard that the aliens communicated telepathically and probably couldn't understand any Terran language, they bowed to the aliens to make sure they wouldn't think they had been betrayed. They definitely looked excited about something, probably the aliens.

As the group walked to the main waiting area, they began to hear cheers in dozens of languages. 

"What's that about?" Asked one of the humans who had been with the convoy

"You'll see" Said the squad's commander

Once they reached the waiting area, they found that every flight was delayed indefinitely, as was displayed on the screens. Everyone was cheering, and the main screen (which always displayed system-wide news broadcasts) was showing some sort of victory celebration. Images of multiple beings marching with humans pointing weapons at them. The fact that it was a war probably wouldn't be that odd to the aliens, but everyone being marched looked almost exactly like humans. The only difference was the color of their veins (not visible on the screen), and their wings. Everyone escorting the aliens realized that the situation could easily be interpereted as humans of one race marching humans of another race to their death, and humans of the apparently dominant race cheering at it.

An image of Emily was shown on the screen, and the human anchorwoman identified her as 'The Iscandarian who sent in the signal". The project lead pointed to Emily, making sure she had the alien's attention.

"Iscandarian." She said, then pointing straight up.

"Alas Prime"

She then pointed to herself "Human" she said.

She then pointed up diagonally, implying a different location.

"Earth."

Pausing for a moment, she looked the alien in the eye. Knowing the alien couldn't understand her, she continued.

"Those people being marched, they're not going to be harmed. We wouldn't do that, we have laws against that kind of thing. A military ship is going to take us to Earth."

She pointed to one of the spaceplanes outside.

"Ship."

Then pointed in the same direction she did before.

"Earth"

She began to move towards one of the tubes, motioning for everyone to follow her.