Humanity War PT1/2
The Empire was vast, sprawled across the Milky Way, mighty spaceships 10 Kilometres long, prowling gas clouds and star systems under their control. For hundreds of years, they expanded unopposed, subsuming almost 100 pre-FTL civilisations every decade, enslaving their civilians while slaughtering all military who dared not kneel before them. Food, resources, and network bandwidth was allocated by race, the Overlords (proper name - Gwa'ralg), progenitors of the Empire, getting almost 80% despite being barely 5% of the population. Technology and medical assistance was also restricted, with almost 90% of the population living in abject poverty, barely a shack, refrigerator, and radio antenna to their name, with all the prosperous cities of pre-contact civilisation having been taken over by the Overlords while the native inhabitants of the planet were slowly but surely shepherded into slums and derelict areas.
Eventually, occupied planets would end up with the original population isolated in certain desolate areas, away from the cities, and that is when the the Empire would pepper the area with small meteors, wiping out the natives who were by default deemed inferior, ensuring that the population of natives in the Empire never exceeded 80% of the total. Rarely, the Empire would induct species as second-class citizens, with no rights and allocated resources, but an allowance to at least survive, even if they were only the dregs of Empire civilisation. The inducted second-class citizen species were about 15% of the population, but were accused of almost 90% of the crime.
The Empire itself had major problems with a thriving black market and stagnating technological progress, rebel groups gaining influence and pirate factions eating away at the unity of the Empire and the power of the Overlords. Supplies of food and water were being stretched thinner due to pirate raids, causing increased inflation of the currency.
What the Empire needed was a war with another civilisation strong enough to unite it but weak enough that eventual victory was assured. For almost 10 years, the Empire kept expanding, hunting for prey.
At the end of 2153CE, they found it in a small civilisation of around 15 star systems in the Orion arm of the galaxy. Known as the Human Federation, they had primitive Faster-Than-Light technology, and roughly equal weapons technology to the Empire. Compared to the Empire's own 40,000 planets and vast fleet of over 10 million military ships alone, their own fighting power of 2000 ships with FTL capability would be an easy kill. Of course, the almost 30 Kilometre-long Human ships would be harder to destroy than anything they had come across in other civilisations, but the vast size of the Empire fleet would still result in utter devastation and rapid annihilation of the Federation, especially since the Empire had no qualms about obliterating civilian colonies. This whole war was simply to unite the people of the Empire against a common enemy, after all, and they had no intention of leaving anyone or anything human in any other state than 'molten slag' by the end of it.
A few days before hostilities commenced, broadcasts were sent across the Empire - news channels on radios and TVs switched their programming to almost always taking the piss out of humans. Government-approved jokes about the weakness and inferiority of humans were spread around, and unbeknownst to the inhabitants of the Federation, they became the laughing stock of the Galaxy overnight, with stories of human stupidity and utter incompetence abound in pubs, diners, schools, and public areas. It did not take long for people in the Empire to view humans as both bumbling idiots and a major threat that justified the harsher-than-usual rations and more intensive surveillance. "Human" pretty much became a dirty word, and anyone branded with it as a nickname would become a social outcast almost immediately. Lack of knowledge of Human physiology meant that anyone could be branded by it, and no-one would ever know that it was a ridiculous thing to call an aquatic creature with 9 tentacle appendages and 3 mouths.
Then, on the 28th June, 2153CE, the offensive of the Empire began. The 2 outermost colonies of the Federation, each a small moon of a gas giant with around 1.3 million people, were hurled towards each other by the Empire's own gravcannon. As the two bodies, each about 30km in diameter, approached each other some civilians desperately tried to evacuate, to no avail. The screams of over 2.5 million humans, each with families, friends and pets, as the moons were sent tumbling toward each other in a death dance, were broadcast to the Empire amidst cheers and laughter from its own inhabitants. Almost immediately, the Federation began evacuation protocol, and within a week almost 80 million people had evacuated from the outermost colonies to Earth.
That did nothing for the almost 400 million people murdered in the next two attacks, this time on two habitable planets inside a binary star system. The Empire landed almost 100 million troops on each planet, slaughtering every man, women, child, and pet they found, and it took only another week for the population of colonies K23-A (Planet Mist) and K23-B (Planet Blueset) to be annihilated. After the week, the Empire removed almost all but microbial life from these planets, using hyper-powerful gamma radiation emitters across the entire planet. A population of 10,000 humans were left on the planet after the initial cull, just so they could broadcast their slow deaths of agonising radiation poisoning across the Empire. All that was left were tardigrades, cockroaches, and the unfathomably resilient Earth microbes. It certainly took far longer for the radiation to kill Earth lifeforms than the Empire had expected - even the humans had survived far longer than they should have. This was duly noted by the Empire, but they never made any further inferences from this. If only they had.
The next 5 colonies, the Federation was more prepared. They brought their space-navy to show, but it was not enough to outcompete the Empire due to sheer numbers. Fleets of 1 million ships simply walked through the Federation, ignoring their fire entirely and proceeding to sterilise the colonies.
6 colonies more, 5 months later, almost 1.5 billion evacuated and 2.5 billion brutally murdered, and the Federation was pushed back to the edge of Sol, only the most massive colonies of Earth, Mars and the Jupiter Ringworld colony were remaining - a population of almost 15 billion humans present there. The scraps of the Federation navy circled around the 3 colonies, its only remaining mission to protect the civilians from the 5 million strong Empire fleet gathering outside the heliopause, ready to devour the remaining Human population. Inside the Empire, every television and radio station was set to a livestream of the Glorious Empire's impending victory over the Inferior Humans, and all work and education was cancelled for the event. Over 2 trillion civilians of the Empire sat and gawped at the vast armada of Empire ships gathered. Fireworks were launched across the galaxy, for the impending destruction of the human race.
Then, observers on Earth, then Mars, then the Jupiter Ringworld saw Sol go dark. Night descended upon the planets, moons and asteroids of Sol, one-by-one.
The citizens of the Empire watched on in awe as a vast hole opened up in the very fabric of space itself, the full energy output of the host star of the human species pulsing through the veins of reality, engulfing the entire system in darkness, the boundaries of the hole manoeuvred around the heliopause by human technology.
Empire ships, deprived of their glorious victory, moved to follow the (now barely visible through a hole in space) Sol system in an attempt to remove the Humans. Unfortunately for them and the Empire, the humans would detect Empire ships and simply move the rapidly closing hole in space out of their path. In only 20 more seconds, the hole, and with it the Empire's chance of completely removing humanity in the war, disappeared, leaving the Empire fleet thoroughly confused and angry at the loss of victory.
The war had not been lost, but it had also not been won. Despite this, its prime purpose had been achieved and the Empire had united enough for the ruling class to thoroughly consolidate their power, crushing any potential revolutionaries under the guise of national security, with ever more totalitarian laws put in place. A few attempts to recreate the incredible "system-warp" of the Human Federation were performed, but all were utter failures, the entire output of at least 100 stars only managing to generate a wormhole 1 micrometre in diameter (as well as over 100 failed experiments gravity-shredding "inferior" worlds). As centuries passed, stories of humanity faded to legend, and legend faded to myth, until, after around 1100 years, the only records of the Humanity War were buried inside the depths of Empire computers, long forgotten. Over this time, the Empire continued its expansion, and in the space of those 1100 years, it colonised almost all of the Milky Way. The Empire began to look outward towards the Andromeda galaxy in search of new planets to colonise and inferior lifeforms to crush under its boot.
On June 28th, 3254CE, the Empire sent a scouting vessel to explore Andromeda.
On July 15th, in the year 3254CE, the ship reached Andromeda.
On August 2nd, in the year 3254CE, the ship detected radio signals from within Andromeda.
On August 3rd, the Empire lost all communications with the ship.
On August 5th, the Empire researchers identified the radio signals that the ship had relayed back home, before being lost.
They were human.
Submitted August 16, 2017 at 08:00AM by TheEdenCrazy http://ift.tt/2v03B4K HFY
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