Amazing! Awesome! Beautiful prose! Characterizes dwarves so well!

This was a very fun story to read! The strongest parts of it, especially in the second half, really give me Hitchhiker's Guide vibes in the best way possible.  The two halves of the story (the more high-level background at the beginning and the more personal story at the end) do feel a little disconnected to me, though, and I would have loved to see you cut some of the beginning to give the back half of the story the room to breathe it wants. I especially loved the reveal that the big scary extraterrestrial invaders were the Dwarf Guilds - it was a good pick over more "conventional" alien invaders like the Alien Hives or Robot Legions.

'You DID read the contract in full, right?' :O

An excellent sci fi dilemma!

If this gets fleshed out more, this could be a cool disaster story.