"The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind can not stay in the cradle forever."
Space travel, humanity's greatest dream. For generations upon generations, mankind has looked up to the stars, wondering if there was something out there that peered back.
Turns out there was, and it would have been better if we had never found out.
The first signs of them were discovered when our first scientific probe entered the Proxima Centauri system. The probe had found evidence of artificial lighting on the surface of Proxima Centauri B. The scientists back on Earth were beyond happy, they were the first ones to find evidence of non-human life.
Governments and private corporations couldn't wait to throw cash at new missions to the neighboring star system. Within a year, the number of active Space Agencies quintupled. Rockets were being shot up into the infinite skies non-stop, and space travel technology progressed at a staggering pace. At the turn of the 22nd century, traversing astronomical distances with human passengers didn't seem like science fiction anymore.
The first major step towards sending humans to Proxima B was a small outpost on the Moon. This base would act as a stepping stone to the rest of our own star system.
After the Moon came Mars, the last stop before crossing the treacherous Asteroid Belt. Here, ships would be stocked with all the resources needed to complete the next step of their journey.
Then came Saturn. The rings were aptly named the Shackles of the Heaven because once a person stook their head through these rings, they were shackled to the ship until reaching the new world.
From there, the journey to the unknown truly began.
In the year 2124, the first human ships reached the outer edges of Proxima Centauri. They were an envoy sent by a cooperation between the United States of America, and the European Federation. Their flags were proudly displayed on the side of their ship, so all back home could see their nation's achievement through the broadcast filmed by the camera probe that followed them throughout their journey.
Billions of people sat behind their screens, filled with anticipation. Though the events that were broadcast happened more than 4.3 years ago, it was the earliest time that the signal could reach any human in the Solar System, so for all intents and purposes, it was live.
At first, the broadcast went as everyone expected. The ship flew through the first Asteroid belt. For hours, viewers on the home planets were amazed by the sight of the icy asteroids, bathed in Proxima Centauri's scarlet light.
Then, suddenly, in the distance, people could slowly make out an odd-shaped object. It had sharp edges, a metallic glow, and thousands of small lights on its surface. As people sat on the edge of their seats, a green light started to appear in the middle of the object. It shone brighter and brighter, eventually shining brighter than the star it sat in front of.
For a split second, the entire screen flashed green. If you had blinked you would've missed it. But when the screen returned to normal, all that remained of the human ship was red-hot debris and the faint outline of human bodies.
The public was in shock, the scientists were baffled, and every military general on the planet was sweating profusely.
In less than a blink of an eye, the culmination of humanity's finest engineering, strongest materials, and best technology was wiped from the face of the universe. It had stood less chance against the flash than a twig in a hurricane.
The culprit of this disaster was all too evident. Whilst all of mankind was processing what had just happened, the object slowly neared the camera, revealing its true nature;
A ship, and one more advanced than even the most outlandish science-fiction author could've dreamt of.
The ship and the beings that presumably commanded it were named Charybdis, and the Charybdae respectively. Named after the mythological monster that would swallow ships whole.
For decades humanity had neither seen nor heard anything about the Charybdae. They had become an urban legend, used by parents to scare their children when they misbehaved.
Scarred by its past, humanity dared not to venture outside of its home system. Instead, it focused on colonizing every planet and moon. Cities were founded, urban life flourished, and the human race entered a golden age.
That was until in the year 2198, a small mining outpost in the Kuiper Belt detected a faint signal millions of kilometers into the distance. The signal approached rapidly, speeding past the outpost and reaching the first Ring City around Neptune. Scientific stations nearby detected a stupendously high energy signature for no more than a second. A second that would later be recorded in history as the Second of Sorrow. More than a million lives were lost in a single blast of green light, and the ship that had fired it was nowhere to be found.
The attacks continued and became more frequent, though none as devastating as the initial attack on Neptune. Each time tens of thousands would lose their life, and an important outpost of humanity would be lost.
The first real combat of the war happened in 2201 when a company of NATO troops encountered a strike force of strange-looking creatures stranded on one of Jupiter's moons. They looked like large, black lizards. Their faces were featureless. Just a blank slate of pitch-black scales with two vertical slits for eyes, and one horizontal one for a mouth. They carried rifle-like objects that shot green beams of light. Though the NATO company outnumbered the Charybdae 100:1, only 10 soldiers managed to survive. The few survivors ended up taking their own lives before the year was over.
When the year 2204 came around, humanity was pushed back to the inner Solar System, 50% of its population had died, and morale was low. In this year, what remained of the nations of the world came together and formed the United Human Front (U.H.F.) to hold back the invasion. With sheer tenacity, millions of human lives, and every nuclear warhead in the solar system, the U.H.F. managed to halt the advance of the Charybdae. The war wasn't won, it wasn't even brought to a stalemate. They had just bought time.
"The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind can not stay in the cradle forever."
Mankind had learned a valuable lesson; They should have stayed in their cradle.