Ants (HFY)

The enemy had thought us beaten. Our cities had been razed, our lands glassed, our ships pounded into orbital debris. And how could we not be beaten, with their soldiers rooting out and crushing the last remnants of our militaries? They had left a token force of merely a few dozen million to watch over our worlds, and brought the rest to fronts unknown in some far-flung part of the Galaxy. It was obvious that they thought of us as ants - how could they not, when they were so large, and we so small?

In desperation, we turned to the forbidden cloning technologies of centuries long passed, and we became the ants our conquerors saw us as, surrendering our bodies to our cause and marching in an unstoppable tide, climbing over the myriad bodies of the fallen to claw and tear at our foes. Our thronging masses numbered in the tens of millions, and for every one of us that fell another hundred rose up to replace them. Our horde grew with every passing day despite the losses we faced, and soon we had liberated what had once been a nation. We spread outward from our nation, drowning our enemy in our bodies and ripping him apart, piece by bloody piece.

It took many years to reclaim our world, but our enemy was still confident in his ability to hold the remaining planets of Sol. He still saw us as naught but ants.

We used the foundries and shipyards left behind by the brief occupiers, and soon the red planet was overflowing with us, as our dropships screamed from orbit to deliver tide upon tide of shrieking, hateful flesh. Corpses beyond number were taken to the Recyclers and broken down into food and metal to fuel our relentless advance.

Our enemy gave some thought to his defences from then on, and piled machine guns and rocket launchers onto his fortresses - but we exploited every crack in those walls, and ripped those cracks wider and wider, until the entire structure came crashing down around us. And where there were no weaknesses we formed mountains of our own dead and climbed over the walls, our bodies stained red with the blood of our dead kin. And when we could not climb, we filled the air with bullets and shells and leveled the fortresses entirely.

Everything went into the Recyclers; vehicles, bodies, guns - all to fuel our gargantuan war machine. We spread out from Terra and Mars and choked Sol in our numberless dead. We outnumbered our oppressors ten thousand to one, and soon the skies of every planet were clogged with warships. Whatever hope our foe had of holding our territory was ground under the weight of thousands of vehicles and blasted apart by endless rocket barrages.

You must know by now, my brothers and sisters, that our enemy seeks to reclaim Sol. He has assembled a fleet more vast than any the galaxy has seen before and plans to use our own tactics against us. But they shall find a fleet ever more vast awaiting them, and dozens of miles of defensive fortifications standing guard over our cities; uncountable surface-to-orbit batteries and gun turrets lie in wait, as do legions of soldiers and tanks and bombers, all ready to pound their meager forces into oblivion.

We shall lie in wait, we shall crush their fleet, and we shall smash any that DARE to set foot upon our liberated worlds! Brothers and sisters, take up your weapons once more, for after we have stamped out this pitiful fleet we shall bring retribution to our tyrannical foe - but we are not their only enemy, and our allies are being crushed as we once were. We shall bring liberation to every planet they have conquered and our horde shall grow ever more vast, bolstered by those they saw fit to trample underfoot! We shall flatten them under our sheer weight!

Let our enemy quake in fear, brothers and sisters, for humanity has returned to the stars once more!