Author's note: I know it's not the most creative thing out there, it was an idea that popped in my head, and I wanted to put it on paper before I lost it or my nerve.

......

"Fleet Lord, I believe our preparations to attack the Humans' home world are ready. Their attention is devoted to this worldly event they are celebrating in 5 days, and as such, they still have not noticed us."

"Excellent. I will be in my chambers meditating until then. Message the fleet to do the same, both their Ship Lords and battle fleets."

"At once, Fleet Lord."

......

As I meditate, my mind becomes clouded with thoughts... and voices I have not heard in many years.

But one voice began to drown out the rest... deep and repetitive. A singular sound and a phrase. As confusing as this was, the sound was comforting. Even as I recognized this as a human voice, I still wasn't concerned... the voice seemed to make me happy and excited! And expectant of something... My battle plan to conquer the humans! It would work! It would come true! This will be the best day of my life!

HO HO HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

"And a very Merry Christmas to You, Fleet Lord!"

My eyes snap open from my meditations. "Who are you?! What are you doing here?!"

"I am Santa Claus, and I am here to deliver a message to you: Should you pursue this course of action, I will be forced to put you on the Naughty List, and you shall receive naught but coal for Christmas! To help guide you towards better decisions, you will be visited by three ghosts. Heed their warnings, because the fourth will give none."

"Pah! I am not scared of these humans or their spirits! Our intelligence has shown the humans have no weapons to harm us or defenses to shield themselves! No psionics, no magic, no advanced technology! In our lands, they are next to nothing - humbugs!"

"Then how am I here, Fleet Lord, in your private meditation chambers?"

......

My eyes snap open to the same sound of voices from earlier. But, I also spot a young human boy sitting in my desk chair.

"Guards! GUARDS!"

"Hehehe, they can't hear you, silly!"

"Then I'll kill you myself!"

I may be older, but I am wiser, and I have never given up on my training. But as I slash with my sword, the human child deftly dodges my swing, and I slice cleanly through nothing but my chair.

"Argh! I will destroy you and take your corpse as my prize!"

"This is fun! I never get to play chase with adults, I only get to watch moms and dads chase their children around the house with things they shouldn't have. Weeeeee!"

"Stop! Moving!"

"Okay, fine. It's not like I have all day to play. 'That's enough, son. Time for chores.'"

And as my sword clearly goes through the middle of the boy, absolutely nothing happens to him. Try as I might, I cannot hurt him.

"You know, it's not nice to hurt someone. It's even worse to want to hurt someone. Why are you like this?"

"This is how I have been raised! I was born and trained to be our Fleet Lord! I will not fail them!"

"You were raised to be mean? I don't think that's true. Everyone is raised to be good, and nice, and kind, to have fun and cheer! Let me show you!"

As he floats towards me and stretches out his hand, I realize this is the first ghost I was told about. Having no other way to ignore him, I take his hand, and we are suddenly standing outside my favorite courtyard, where my friends are playing. The sounds of voices are suddenly clear, and I recognize them as my childhood friends.

"We're playing space battles! Come on, you're my partner! And I have a new strategy, those idiots won't even know what hit them!"

"Hey, I heard that! There's no name-calling! That's not professional! You lose a point!"

As my two friends start wrestling about as they always do, I'm taken away, to another point a few years into the future. I see myself, with my future wife at my side, graduating with honors from our home's most prestigious military school.

"Ship Lord, you have made us proud! Every task, completed with humility and respect! Continue your training, as commander of your ship, and protect us from the horrors of space!"

......

A quiet chuckle came from my side, and as my eyes snapped open, I turned to find the boy replaced with a grown human.

"Hmmhmmhmm, the boy was right. You were not raised to be mean as you said. So what changed you, I wonder?"

"What happened to the boy?"

"He is the Ghost of Christmas Past, and I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Let us see what your friends have said that has made you be so rotten."

We are flung out to a conference room, where the leaders of our empire are seated.

"Why is the Fleet Lord so obsessed with these humans? Sure, their planet has some resources, but nothing outrageous."

~"Perhaps pride and greed have gotten to his head."~

"I would hope not, he's already got the biggest ego of them all!"

("So true! Even his beloved wife left him, when he spent more time at war than at home.")

My anger rises at their comments. They have no idea of the sacrifices I made to be here, to gether for our kind so they could sit on their overstuffed chairs in perfect relaxation. My mind goes cold with determination to kill them for their disrespect.

......

My eyes snap open as my entire body grows cold, and I start shivering. I see that I am on a dead battlefield, dark and foreboding. A wind, seemingly from every direction, whips at me, threatening to freeze me as I stand and push me over into a bomb hole to make me join the thousands of corpses that surround me.

My shadow begins to grow and move of its own accord, growing into a new figure. I look to my left, and the jovial sounding Ghost of Christmas Present is gone, replaced by this spectre in black.

"If I have been visited by the Ghosts of my Past and Present, am I to assume you are the Ghost of Christmas Future?"

The figure merely points beyond me, and I am disgusted by its hand, completely stripped of flesh and gristle. As I try to back away from the sight, I trip and fall to the ground, landing amongst the dead.

I try to scramble to feet, but one of the warrior's faces catches my eyes.

"My son! Ghost, this is my son! Who killed him? How did he die?!"

The Ghost merely points again, towards a human. The human has my son's rifle in his hands, the plasma battery dead, the barrel melted, and the whole thing pointed at my son.

"This cannot be! The humans do not know how to use our technology! They are too primitive!"

Even as I say that, I spot our of our smaller fighter aircraft, with a human at the pilot's controls.

"...they learned. They learned how to reverse engineer our weapons. They learned how to fight in space, in our craft. And they used that knowledge to kill us, with our own might. And in the process, I lost everything, including my son. Spirit, take me from here. I understand now."

......

My eyes snap open. I am in my meditation chambers, dressed in my battle gear. The visions in my head have given me the clarity to end the nightmare before it even begins.

As I make my way to the ship's bridge, I notice my crew are acting strangely. Nothing outright alarming, but little signs that something is amiss. Movements are not perfectly fluid and effortless, nervous twitches and quicker breathing as they salute while I pass, hushed whispers...

"Fleet Lord, we are ready to attack at your command."

"Good. A question before we begin: are we truly ready, or are we distracted by other thoughts?"

"Well Fleet Lord, the crew are all reporting having had visions and dreams during meditation. Three Ghosts of Christmas came to visit them to give warnings to not attack."

"Intelligence said there were no psionics! Yet, here we are, being attacked as such! My mind is made up. Begin the attack!"

Inexplicably, the entire ship goes dead. Every console, every light, every vibration... ceased.

"I'm gonna give you to the count of ten, to get your ugly, yella, no good keister out of my system, before I space your guts into the cold!"

"One."

The nav computer sprang back to life, calculations flickering across the screen faster than I've ever seen.

"Two."

Propulsion came next. Warnings started popping up on the two screens, being dismissed as fast as they appeared. Vibrations from the engines came back to my feet. The crew started panicking.

"TEN! AHHHH HAHAHAHAHA!"

The engines begin igniting and firing, one by one, making explosions like the sound of human machine guns. I, and my entire bridge crew, were thrown back into our seats, as the ship accelerated at a rate I had never felt before.

"Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!"

......

"Navigation, where did the Fleet Lord jump to?!"

"Into the center of the local sun! I don't understand how that's possible! Every safety must have been disabled, and some of those cannot be disabled except at the ship yard for offline testing!"

"As acting Fleet Lord, get us the gods-damned hell out of here!"