System Viceroy Ocherian was filled with anticipation. He had arrived a few months ago into the Claris system to assess the situation and to see if the invasion could be saved. His time surrounded by the armada of dark, unmoving ships filled only with sleeping soldiers floating in space was almost over. The ships were on the Claris side of the wormhole that punched through space near the Sol system's fourth planet. The anticipation came from the knowledge that the humans were about to bio-mark his last captured pilot which would finally allow him to surgically extract all of them out of their unfortunate predicament on the planet and into their assigned ships. These dead hulks around him would finally come to life, once again piloted by their masters, the cryo de-sleep process would be initiated to wake the occupation troops and the invasion of the planet could finally resume after so many years of waiting. The logistics of interstellar operations are significant. High Speed Faster Than Light travel is too hard on bodies. The first few HFTL operations resulted in significant loss of life among the war ships’ crews. Experiments showed that slowing down to just a few factors of light speed alleviated some of the damage to the crew, but at that speed the galaxy was too large to feasibly get to any other suitable planet. It took a few decades for cryogenic technology to catch up but when it did, it was a game changer. Cryo-sleeping bodies did better with HFTL operations and while it wasn't perfect, it was better. Fine motor skills and precision thought didn’t survive the HFTL trips well, but that was OK for the brutish ground combat troops. Massive troop carriers like the ones surrounding Ocherian now could be maneouvered almost anywhere in the galaxy within a matter of months. The only problem is that the carrier pilots could not go with them. Fine motor skills and precision thought are exactly what pilots need and it would not do to strip the pilots of these necessary attributes. That problem stopped the invasion plans for a few months until one young physicists suggested sending the pilots first and the unmanned troop carriers much later. The unmanned carriers would be somewhat imprecise and could not actually attack lacking a human pilot, but they could certainly manage to emerge in a target as large as a star system. The pilots would travel slower, so as to preserve their abilities. They would leave long before the troop carriers and then rendezvous with them on the Claris side of the wormhole, transfer to their assigned carrier, wake the troops and start the invasion. It was a good plan except that same young physicists made an error in time/space calculations. That error led to a series of alien ships dropping in the Claris system too close to the wormhole at too high a velocity. The pilots were unable stop their ships from blasting through the wormhole into the Sol system and crashing into the target planet. This allowed the humans to simply scoop up the pilots as they appeared. Shortly after the first pilots arrived in the Claris system, Ocherian’s Ops Commander came to Ocherian’s office in the lavish Army HQ building and broke the bad news to him. The first few pilots hadn’t reported in after arrival and there was no reason to believe the rest would either. The ship markers showed the pilot ships dropping into normal space in the Claris system, but the velocity was all wrong. The best guess was that the pilots either crashed into something on the Claris side, or shot through the wormhole and something bad happened on the Sol side. This was the largest invasion ever planned and there simply were not enough pilots left to just send another batch. Ocherian, embarrassed at the thought of his entire invasion force being captured, killed or dying from over-exposure to cryo-sleep immediately recalled his staff and began the long slow trip to the Claris system to see what could be done. By the time his dreadnought arrived, the last of the pilots had long since careened through the wormhole to the Sol system. When his command ship popped into real space, it was greeted silently by massive hulking troop carriers floating in space against the backdrop of some distant stars and the twinkling light coming through the wormhole from a system far way in normal space. There were no pilot ships and no sign of wreckage so it seemed the correct guess was that they overshot and ended up in the Sol system. Ocherian’s scouts carefully worked their way through the wormhole to avoid detection. The human’s technology was good enough to detect an out of control ship blasting through the wormhole, but it was no match for special scout teams. The scouts quickly confirmed through crash sites and various local media sources that the pilots had been captured alive and held in various facilities around the planet. It was fairly easy to discover the location of most of the jail facilities because many of them looked very out of place, made with the same material, scattered in unlikely places to build. But just knowing the probable locations of the pilots was not enough to extract them. The intelligence teams kept pouring over the scouts’ recon data and continued to observe the planet in the hopes of stumbling across something usable. It was the Signal Intelligence team that cracked it. It had detected a series of small, but loud, radio signatures coming from a number of facilities on the planet. Some of the obvious jails had a signature coming from them and a number of previously undetected facilities did as well. For reasons unknown, it seemed the humans were tagging their captors with radio beacons that were readable over large distances. The only perplexing issue was that there were less signals than there were missing pilots. So many fewer that Ocherian calculated there were not enough pilots on the planet to man enough ships to successfully defeat and occupy the planet. Ocherian was resigned to the fact that this invasion was a failure. Without pilots there was no expectation of a successful invasion and, even worse, It may not even be possible to bring the cryo-sleeping troops back home. He was preparing a report containing this information for the Army Commander in the home system when his cabin bell sounded. He opened the door to find his SigInt officer obviously about to burst with some news. The SigInt team had detected more radio signals in the past few days since the initial discovery. They were popping up in facilities that had been marked as jails but did not have a beacon a few days ago as well as other facilities that were previously dark. It seemed that Ocherian’s ship had arrived while the tagging was in progress so it is just a matter of time until the location of all the living pilots would be known. “Extract”. System Viceroy Ocherian gave the command to the transportation team shortly after the last beacon lit up on his display. Amazingly, it appeared that most of the pilots had survived and the number of beacons closely matched the number of pilots he had deployed to the system. It had been a long few months waiting on edge wondering how many beacons would light up. By the time the 40th beacon lit up, Ocherian knew he’d have enough pilots to continue the invasion. When the 55th beacon lit up, he knew he’d have enough pilots to win. Ocherian’s gaze was locked in this view screen. For the first time since his arrival, the hulking black shapes around him came to life. First tiny pinpoints of light from the bridges, then running lights winked on, and finally engines lit up. Ship after ship came to life and status reports came flowing in through the inter-ship ops channel with information about everything from fuel status to cryogenic de-sleep progress. Speed was of the essence now. The humans would be in chaotic disarray as they discovered every alien in their jails across the planet had suddenly vanished and it would not take them long to suspect the worst. Ocherian sighed happily as he watched his fleet’s operation metrics rise on the tactic display. This was going to be a good day.