“Good morning Captain! How would you like your coffee?” Y22, my personal robot, says in its monotonous voice.
“ Good morning Y22,” I yawn. “What time is it?”
“It is 9:27 and 56 seconds Earth time. My apologies, you still have not answered my first question,” Y22 answers.
“Oh, of course, black coffee please,” I answer.
“Thank you,” Y22 slowly scoots on his wheel to pour the coffee. Y22’s silver arms act with perfect precision as the task is performed. I get out of bed throw on my uniform and wrist watch. I walk to my desk, grab my gun and my recorder. I pace as I record my space log.
“Space log 734,” I say into the recorder. “After 734 Earth days of being in space, we still have found no signs of life. We have searched fourteen planets and four solar systems. We are currently traveling at a constant speed of,” I check my watch linked to the shuttle’s computer, “5,000,000 miles per hour. We will be arriving at the Nemesis region in approximately 12 hours and,” I check my watch again, “34 minutes, Captain Hutch out.”
I grab the coffee and walk out of the room. I turn into the command center, still heavy with weariness and I slowly sink into my seat. I press the buttons on the motherboard and turn on the lights. One’s out. I’m sure it's just a mishap. I turn off the lights and turn them back on. The one light flickers and goes out. Perplexed, I look at the light. Then I turn back to the desk and rapidly hit the light button maybe twenty times. The light still doesn’t turn on making one side of the room ominously dark. I shrug my shoulders and decide to ignore it. I press the button next to the lights and an echoing sound turns on. I know that within five minutes the rest of the crew will arrive.
First comes Beth; she’s a 24-year-old Harvard Graduate. She's my second in command. Then comes the biologist Hunter; even though he’s a biologist, he’s stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. Then comes Brad; he’s the medic. Soon Kari walks in, she’s the mechanical engineer and pilot. Finally, the fraternal twins Mary and Jackson arrive. They are the scientists and they study the planets we go to for signs of life.
“Good morning!” I announce.
“Good morning Captain!” they answer as they take their seats.
“Alright. Crew, today is the day we arrive in the Nemesis system, Kari as always, begin sending out boarding signals so that Extraterrestrials may find us if they are in space. Also be checking the radar for ships.”
“Sir yes sir. Oh and Captain,” she laughs, “we’ve told you, you sound so professional, call them ETs.” 
“Alright alright,” I laugh. Kari turns on the signal. My crew turns on music connected to their headsets, and I do the same. I begin to check the monitor every 10-15 minutes. We just reached 100 garflogs away from Earth. Communication takes too long to reach them. We’re on our own in this vast darkness of space.
I stare through the starshield, the darkness is there but it seems distant with all the planets and wonders of space. I sit there for an hour, two. The first few month’s of this trip were full of action, now we're bored. The fun will begin when we find another planet… or life.
Four hours have passed, and what I see hasn’t changed.
Then suddenly…
“Sir,” Kari says.
“Yes Kari,”
“There’s an object on our tail!” she exclaims. “Our readings say it’s not an asteroid and it’s made of metals we don’t know of!” 
I am unalarmed, “It may just be a space rock from a crumbling planet, many of those have metals we don’t know, continue as usual.” Everything goes silent again.
One more hour passes and I am still staring out the starshield. Then suddenly Kari exclaims, “Someone’s docked!”  We all shoot up and rush to the docking bay. The lights shine as we run down the hall. We reach the docking bay within twenty seconds.
“Guys, don’t freak out no matter what ET comes through that door. However, be prepared anyway, they may or may not mean no harm,” I explain.
Hunter looks prepared, he grips the rifle over his back, his dark eyes are livid with energy. We wait patiently for the doors to open. When they do it’s not what we expected. Four 8-foot tall, dark green and blue giants with broad shoulders, long tails and one spike on the back of their head emerge. Each of them carries a long sleek blaster-like object in their clawed, seven-fingered hands.
I step forward. “Greetings, we are humans from the pla--” I’m cut off.
“We know who you are,” the front ET says.
“Come with us,” the one in the back says. We step on the ship and everything changes. Gravity seems to decrease and every step is easier. However, darkness consumes the ceiling. The walls emit a dull green light, eliciting a primal urge, a primal fear that we have all suppressed for ages, to run from the dark. I suppress my instincts, we’re on a mission. We walk into a throne room. Well, it’s what I think is the thrown room. From what I see, there is an ET taller than the rest of them, bigger than the rest of them, and dressed more extravagantly than the rest of them.
“I am emperor--” I can’t understand the rest, “from the Juargbugh (Jar-g-boo) system. What you humans call the Nemesis system.” the bigger ET says.
“Hello Emperor, I am Captain Hutch of the human race,” I begin, “We have been looking everywhere for signs of--” he cuts me off, they seem to be a very rude species.
“Life, yes I know, we have been following your primitive spaceship for 5, what do you call them, garflogs,” he responds.
“Primitive, I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t call us that…” I stutter. The emperor begins a long speech about how unintelligent we are compared to them. He mentions things like a universal translator and plasma weapons. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Jackson beginning to study their wall panels. He presses a button that blows a terrorizing steam into his face and he falls backward into a glass case.
It breaks.
The king stops talking. All the aliens eyes turn completely black. A deadly, horrifying, make you cry for your mother, kind of black.            
“NO! THAT WAS THE CROWN OF MY DEAD WIFE! YOU IMBECILES! YOU WILL DIE!” the emperor screams.
“Guys, we should go,” I say as we turn to run. As Jackson gets up the four ET’s we first saw explode into action. The first lifts his gun and fires it directly into Jackson’s chest. He can’t even scream before collapsing and dying.
“NO!” Mary screams as I drag her away.
“After them,” I hear. We turn and run, Mary in shock, tears streaming down her face, as I pull her along. We burst through our doors and close them. We run through our own ship’s hallways, gravity instantly returning.We run to the control panel and start speeding away. The ET’s ship shoots after us. Only now do I see it’s enormous size, it’s powerful shadow making everything dark. It is colored a sleek, pitch black and is nearly three times the size of us! We’re doomed.
We start to feel shaking, my eyes widen as I realize that they are firing at us.
“Captain, good news and bad news,” Kari says intensely.
“Say it!” I respond.
“Good news, there’s a wormhole ahead and their ships too big to travel through it, our computer says it leads to the Hermes system!”
“That’s great news, set course for that!” I exclaim. We’ve traveled by wormhole before, this is great!
“The bad news is, they broke our shields and they’re right on our tail!” Kari screams. It’s gonna be close, but I think we're gonna make it. I increase the speed as the wormhole comes into view.
Then an explosion rocks our ship.
Oh no.
They hit our engine room. The power begins to drain, the lights slowly dim and then go out. The auxiliary power begins to turn on the emergency lights. Between the darkness of space and the ET’s enormous ship, vision is a luxury we can’t afford.
Our ship stopped gaining speed, but we might, no, we have to make it because if we make it…we live. Their ship hovers above us. We’re within 100 miles of the wormhole when I feel a harder shake than the previous blasts.
“What was that?” Beth asks.
“I don’t know!” I scream.
5 miles.
4 miles.
3 miles.
2 miles.
1 mile.
“WE’RE THROUGH!” I scream. We all celebrate with joy.
Then all the lights go out, and darkness fills the air.
Four screams ripple through the spaceship. I use my flashlight to look around and all I see are four mangled bodies.
“You destroyed our most important possession, YOU’RE DEAD!” an ET hisses. I grab for my gun, but it’s gone. I hear a click, and something hits my head. As everything goes black I have a realization, there is other life out there, and some of it wants to destroy all of humanity!