Gox stood before two hundred recently-drafted men and women aboard the Altterran flagship, Mother’s Scorn. His likeness filled screens on two dozen smaller craft that made up the Altterran fleet sitting in orbit over Earth.

“During their study of the Altterran transport craft during their ‘Ragnorok Project,’ the Russians failed to crack the cloaking technology that keeps our craft from showing up on their sensory equipment,” he began. “The captured Cosmonauts that launched the attack on our planet were thoroughly probed for relevant information during the fleet’s construction. This allowed our Exemplars to plot vital locations which will be targeted prior to making landfall, to ensure minimal armed resistance from the Russians. May your chosen deity guide your hand, and the memories of the fallen shield you.”

Gox stepped aside, and the ship’s Exemplar began issuing his final orders to his crew. Each other ship had its own exemplar doing the same.

Gox paid little mind to the Exemplar’s words. His part was done. He acted as little more than a figurehead and friendly familiar face for both the soldiers and the people back home. As chief of Altterra’s peacekeeping force, and one of the highest ranking officials remaining after the attack, he was the logical choice. A choice he regretted not long after.

From his peacekeepers, he hand-picked the most able-bodied to become Exemplars of the fleet. They were people he considered to be like family, and he sold their souls.

Although Altterra had known peace for centuries, there was no shortage of historical and technical information from the times prior. The Exemplar Project hardwired microcomputers to the brains of the subjects to aid in battlefield analysis, targeting, threat assessment, and even allowed for near-instantaneous communication between Exemplars for unparalleled battlefield coordination. All it cost was any sense of self they once had, and all those pesky emotions.

Even the warships they traveled on were of centuries-old design. Gox’s family history was full of pictures and tales of distant relatives serving on ships just like those that accompanied the Mother’s Scorn. The last of the Forzz Class Strike Cruisers was under the command of Gox’s great-great-grandfather at the time it was decommsioned. Never would he have imagined holding that same position. It was an honor he now wished he hadn’t agreed to.

The room emptied, jarring Gox from his thoughts. The Exemplar approached him with the emotionless demeanor Gox had come to hate in the Exemplars.

“History will mark this as a great day, Chief, and you a great hero.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, Glim.”

“Victory is assured, I see no reason for concern, Chief.”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?”

Glim had been Gox’s lieutenant before all this started. He had been engaged to marry his youngest daughter. It pained him to see the man reduced to this, to think of his daughter when her fiance returned from war a machine and not a man.

“If you’ll excuse me, Chief, we begin bombardment shortly. I am needed on the bridge.” Glim took his leave with sharp practiced military movements of a seasoned soldier, all part of the programming.

Gox strolled down the hall to the observation deck. Full view of the earth and the fleet stretched out below him beneath a floor of wall-to-wall glass a meter thick. He watched as each Orp Class Destroyer maneuvered into position. Shortly their weapons came to life, and Gox knew each lance of light meant hundreds or thousands of deaths on the surface.

History would remember him as a hero. He would remember the day the gates of Hell opened to engulf the Earth.