"They're coming, sir," Captain Vysh's lieutenant said, rushing into the room to initiate emergency procedure.

Vysh began covering his body in protective armor, barking orders at his soldiers as they prepared to meet the humans.

"Remember their weakness," he said grimly, sliding into his seat to focus on the giant aircraft speeding toward them. "We are smarter. We are prepared. Stay out of range, and we will triumph."

"But, sir," one soldier said fearfully, looking at his friends for support. "We've never engaged in battle with them before. None of us have."

Vysh scowled at the new recruits. Plump, untrained bodies. Their hair hung in shiny, rich green rivers down their backs. No sense, any of them. No matter how many time they were told about the threat of humans, they rarely trained their bodies to be suitably lean, or cut their hair off.

Some of them scoffed at the very idea of humans, half-convinced they weren't real despite mountains of evidence. It took years of Academy discipline to beat sense into them - but these were fresh, green recruits. Literally.

"Stay out of the way," he growled at them as he checked his weapons, resolving to send them all for an extra two decades worth of training when this was over.

They stared at him, terrified, and he softened enough to throw some advice their way as he strode out of the room.

"They will literally consume you if you allow them to get close enough. That is not an Academy myth. Humans are very real, despite what you tell yourselves to feel better at night. It's called eating - remember your training about how to combat eating."

An ominous trembling shook the ship, and Vysh glanced out the window. The ships were engaged, and he saw figures in protective gear spill out and drift toward their doors.

Despite his bravado in front of the recruits, he winced as he saw one of the figures grip one of his soldiers in two hands and rip into his face, chewing hungrily. Barbaric. Unbelievable to witness, even after all these years, when the galaxy had awoken to the new threat and began preparing itself.

Unlike almost all other species who drew sustenance by drawing upon the power of minerals and the soil of their native planets, humans ripped other lifeforms apart to sustain itself. And ripped ever more viciously as their moved further from their ruined home planet, and food was scarcer to come by.

"Bacon!" one of them howled to the others. "It does taste like bacon!"

Frenzied movement was awoken in the other figures, and they surged on board. Vych found himself engaged with two of them, skipping lightly backwards every time he tried to swipe at them with his twin daggers.

They were infused with a cocktail of toxins that reduced humans to slime in a matter of seconds. Though many preferred to shoot the liquid at the humans, Vych was always partial to his daggers. Something in this metal he had honed and crafted for years replenished the toxins by themselves.

He managed to catch one of them in the neck, and grinned in satisfaction as the thing began to melt down to its bones, meat sliding off it in great chunks to the floor.

"Hey, burger man," he heard a voice behind him say menacingly. "We brought a little help this time. What, you think we never go back to Earth, giant research lab that it is? I'm proud to say one of our experiments finally paid off."

Vych looked around, and noticed a giant crate on the floor. He saw five more like it nearby, humans fiddling at doors whilst others protected it.

"What - " he said, feeling sick with fear. The Earth was dead. Gone. No sign of human life. That was what all the reports had said.

As if reading his mind, the human spoke while opening the latch.

"We didn't even need to go there to conduct this one. Isn't technology amazing? And by the time we went to collect, you had all forgotten about our home and all that lives there..."

Vych screamed as a giant squealing slab of meat escaped from the cage and leapt straight toward his head, foam dribbling from its snout. He screeched as the pink thing alternated between sniffing at him and trying to rip at his head.

"It's probably confused," the human chuckled. "Probably caught between thinking you're sexually attractive and wanting to eat you. Sic 'em, pig!"

The thing needed no further invitation, giant fangs boring into Vych's lettuce-flavoured head.

"Hasn't tasted that in decades," the human went on, though Vych couldn't hear him anymore, as the pig tore away his ears. "We bred them to a special state of near starvation. Took a lot to accomplish this, I can tell you. Hard to morph a creature to adapt in space, be fucking huge, and not chow down on us all at the same time. Still, I'd say it's worth it."

Vych lay dead at the human's feet, who promptly shoved the pig away with a special weapon he had concealed under his jacket. The pig squealed in protest and turned to ravage the nearest alien, eager to escape the human. He, in turn, sighed in satisfaction as he scooped up a piece of Vych's arm.

"Delicious," he muttered as he sank his teeth in, and closed his eyes, the battle raging on around him.

It had taken decades to find the legendary bacon and lettuce-flavoured aliens, but every moment of scheming and mutating their squealing helpers had been worth it.