Earth swirled blue and white with ocean and cloud cover as the Ivaldan armada made its initial approach. The planet was still far enough away to look like a child’s toy, a shooter marble perhaps, out in the vast black. But Kaz knew that human technology was advanced enough that it wouldn’t be long before they were spotted. That is, if they hadn’t been already.

No matter, Kaz thought, allowing his men to tap into the thought stream if they so choose, they will not be prepared for us either way.

Have you made the decision, Sir? Kazimir’s second in command, Nix, asked, his voice rising sharply in the din of thought.

Yes, Kaz replied, though of course he didn’t need to. He could simply open up the plane of his mind for Nix to see. And so he did: it was a vision of beautiful silence. Although the warships were prepped and ready to wage a bloody war, Kaz wanted to spare every life that he could. After all, they weren’t there to conquer humanity. Not exactly, anyway. They were there to co-exist peacefully alongside them.

So not a single laser would fire, not a single warhead would detonate. Instead, they would approach slowly, calmly, Kaz’s star-like ship at the forefront. And before the humans had the chance to panic, before they even knew what was about to happen, the Ivaldans would release their nanites into the world, these infinitesimally small machines, each of which could be uniquely controlled, and they would seek out sentient life. They would seek it out, they would be ingested, through breathing, through the pores, through eating, through any means necessary, and once they were ingested, they would put their host safely to sleep.

They wouldn’t drop all at once—no need for such dramatics. Instead, the nanites would remain dormant in the system, going to work only when breath and heart rate had regulated to the point where it became clear that the host had fallen asleep naturally. Then, they’d simply stay asleep and wait to be collected.

And they would be collected, each one of them. Collected, cleaned, and placed in cryogenic stasis. They would be handled gently, and with great dignity. They would be watched, monitored, cared for. Then they would be awakened one by one, until they had all been roused, slowly and over time and over many years. It was in this way, Kaz thought, that the humans and the Ivaldans could share this planet, this Earth, without waging war on each other.

They had to make it work. They had to. For the Ivaldan home planet no longer existed and Kaz and his people had nowhere else they could go.

“All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.”

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre