Space travel is a dangerous job.

It's been much the same story for years - some craft is sent from Earth into space, and is occupied by aliens. A bloody battle ensues from this intrusion between the aliens and defenders, and lives are lost on both sides. Whatever the result, it's not front page news among spacedwellers. It's an everyday occurrence, in this line of work. But it's another thing to actually be there, to hear the screaming and see your brethren fall to the savage flashes of the aliens on both sides. When the carnage stills and you're the last left breathing among the fallen, crawling and hiding away for your miserable life, how long will it be before your own story comes to an end?

You are an infant member of your kind, a proud race of spacedwellers - beings that these so-called humans would call "aliens". For eons you've defended your system while keeping observations on nearby life. Your kind once had a destructive and militant past, but that was many sweeps ago. Now, the humans rise to begin the same phase, sending ship after ship into nearby systems and slowly choking them of resources until they're conquered through politics and repossession. Negotiations have failed, and your kind has had little choice but to take up arms once more and intercept invading ships. You yourself are too young to be a militant, but your pod-brethren have all been sent on the most recent excursion and, overexcited, you stowed away with them.

But what you saw aboard that ship didn't fit the theory. Armed with new pulse-tech weaponry, the humans slaughtered your kind left and right, all while screaming that hateful phrase: "Alien!" Now, trapped aboard the ship inside its fuselage with a dozen high-alert humans all around you, you have two choices as you navigate the ship, trying to remain unseen and avoid the hazards that come with crawling through ship exhaust. Send a distress signal from a fallen ally and survive until help arrives, or take a vow of revenge and dedicate the rest of your lifespan to eradicating these human aliens one by one until none remain.

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Spacedweller: "Alien sprite" by samuelcohen on DeviantArt http://samuelcohen.deviantart.com/art/Alien-sprite...

Background: "7 Days a Skeptic" by Benjamin "Yahtzee" Croshaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyqvFIEiXyo