Or rather, we weren’t.
I am Technical Sergeant Matthews, of the United States Space Force, stationed in the Mount Elbert Observatory (MEO) Me and my team were assigned to tracing radio signals from all corners of the known universe, and translating them, from pulsar radiation to Supernovae, and all the background radiation in between. Of course that’s just the daily stuff, once in a blue moon we get different types of waves. It’s theorized that we have been getting alien transmissions since before the telegraph, although the first one successfully translated was in 2018, causing the Space Force to be established as Extra Terrestrials were confirmed. What this first message decoded was, I don’t know, I was an Airman at the time, but I can assume what it said. It probably said something akin to: RUN. I was stationed at MEO in February of 2022, and my team and I have since decoded over a dozen messages, in 7 languages coming from 3 directions. They all say roughly the same things.
“Run” “Escape” “It’s Coming” That’s the general subject of each message sent in our direction. Although we have decoded messages sent to what we assume to be different planets other than Earth. On September 8th, of 2022 we translated a message that reads something along the lines of: “The *…*has reached Critical *…* send the message to *…* evacuation protocol 92, sending refugees to 19h 16m 52.2s, +47° 53′ 4.2″ after time frame 11.1-1 down any ships.” Much of the message was indecipherable due to precedent, and most of the translation actually came from backtracking from coordinates, which thankfully, math and subsequently coordinate systems are truly the Universal language. Now the time system, and other specifics are hard with our limited received messages, but the general idea is clear. There is some sort of galactic society, and something is ravaging them.
On October 10th, a response was sent. “Negative 17h 18m 57.16483s −34° 59′ 23.1416”, losses down to 20k11, redirect refugees to-” While cut off due to some interference likely on our end, the end of the message was captured 11 minutes later. “-Status reached critical level, abandoning metro, good luck to the stars. This is *…* Signing off for the final time” This perplexed us, and other than the obvious missing translations, the main thing that we couldn’t wrap our heads around was the dates. We couldn’t tell if time is different that far, if the problem just so happens to span millenia, or if they had faster than light communications. The latter was our conclusion.
So now we know this is happening close to now, not in ancient Earth, but our superiors still raise no concern, it’s so far away. We continue to monitor, and our latest transmission is the most worrisome. “Status, critical level 11b3. Abandoning system, located possible allies and refugee system. New rally point located, all survivors of the *…* please proceed to RA 4h 18m 18s Dec +24° 11′ 25″. This message will now repeat.” The team’s faces were horrified once we decoded the coordinates. We double, triple, and quadruple checked. Cross referenced with other stations and all information we had. We were sure of it. They were coming to the solar system. With the transmission being replayed constantly and the team freaking out, everything was cut short by what followed the transmission. Coming from the same source hundreds of lightyears away, in perfect English, a robotic voice says “May god have mercy on our souls.”