piritskenyer - Tumblr blog

piritskenyer · 5 years

Text

Human vengeance - By observations of K. X”. Khruil

We thought we had figured out the Humans by the time the attack on their homeworld happened some 200 years after the Aaraken War. We thought they had calmed down and had put aside their destructive tendecies, but we came to realise that they just is no stopping their anger given a strong enough catalyst. That catalyst came, as mentioned, 202 years after the end of the Aaraken wars. By this point, the Humans have secured the Garsen Alliance’s territories andwere solely in charge of the Alliance’s military, as they were the only warlike species out of the four of us. They have been pushing in the Alliance Council for closer integration into a sort of empire and expansion. They were arguing for it bringing logic and reason and offered some valid arguments, and the debate was still open. Until the Horic attack happened. The Horic attack (originally named the “Destruction of South-East Asia”) was an event in which an atmospheric bomb entered Earth’s atmosphere roughly over the island of Hainan and scorched the atmosphere in a radius of 1200km, and if not for the rapid response of the humans, it would have slowly burned the entire Earth atmosphere. Some 3 billion humans died in the strike.

At first, there was much confusion over what had happened; Some speculated Human extremists, some a freak accident of a capital ship exploding in high atmosphere, but it was rapidly determined that what caused the death of billions was a single-shot device launched from a far world. Using only telemetry data and deduction, the Humans reconstructed the main features of the weapon (which was travelling at such a high velocity that the quite advanced Human defensive systems could hardy track it and had no hope of intercepting it), and also reconstructed it’s trajectory, pinpointing its exact origin on the other end of the galaxy. They named it “Atmospheric Deprivation Device, Single Use” or ADDSU, and immediately got to work working out a procedure to defend against it. This consisted by putting a blocking force in the trajectory of the weapon, corrected by the rotation of the galaxy since it has been launched.

I was on a human ship (a cruiser - see technical report n°538 by SO M1. C. Kort, appendix (f)) when the news broke about the attack, and the reaction I saw made me realise that humans, despite their advancements were still very much driven by instinct. Every single human crewmember that day was enraged, all of them losing their self control to a certain extent. They described that to me as being “upset” or in “emotional distress” afterwards, but the brainwaves I captured that day were most similar to a wounded predator’s rage reaction.

We (Garsen, Thikiid and Rowdan) initially did not appreciate just what the reaction of the Humans was going to be like. We knew that military action was unavoidable at that point, but we expected something similar to the Aaraken War where the Humans subdued the Aaraken without exterminating them. We should have listened to History Research Officer Werred who was trying to warn us that the retaliation was going to be much more gruesome. He had looked into Human history (his mission was to log Human history in an unbiased way from the past all the way to the present) and has predicted that a genocide of this magnitude would repercussions way more gruesome that any of our three species could ever dream of in our worse nightmares.

The first indication of him being right came when Force M, the outermost of the extended ADDSU defensive screen intercepted a convoy of 15 huge colony ships on a trajectory pointing towards earth. Force M consisted of a medium cruiser (GAS Amsterdam), two general purpose destroyers (GAS Allen and Quinet), 5 multipurpose frigates (GAS Job, Odin, Quinlan, Roffa and Popeye) and 24 corvettes (10 heavy and 24 beam) (see relevant entries in Garsen Alliance Navy Public Technical Database) under the command of Commodore Marcus N’Gaye. Force M stopped the convoy, hailing them and asking for their purpose and their destination. For description of the events that followed I am copying the log entry of Ensign Jacques Coter serving as fleet log officer on board Amsterdam.

Hostile challenge: “Attention unknown vessels, this is the Garsen Alliance cruiser Amsterdam. Stop immediately or we will fire upon you. I repeat, stop immediately or we will fire upon you.” Hail signal recieved, positive response, vessels compliant, engaged reverse thrusters to bring speed to zero. Commanding officer (CO): Engineering, initiate telemetry scan of the ships [engineering response: Aye sir], Communications Officer! Open a channel. Communications officer (ComO): Open channel, aye sir! Communications channel established, translator module engaged. CO: Attention unknown vessels, this is Commodore N’Gaye of the Garsen Alliance Navy, please state your destination and purpose on this trajectory. Unknown vessel (UV): Greetings N’Gaye of Garsen, we are Goulf from Hoor, leader to this colony convoy bound for W20SC438 [coordinates set in another reference frame]. CO: Greetings. Terribly sorry, can you transmit your coordinates with a reference point, as these coordinates are not readable cleanly. UV: Of course, we are sending you a transmission now. Incoming transmission. Recieved by navigation station. Decoding in progress Navigating Officer (NavO): 7 minutes, sir. CO: Understood. Goulf from Hoor, please stand by while we read your data. UV: Please, take your time. Decoding finished, data projected on known database NavO (in a low voice): Communications, please mute outbound. ComO: Roger, muted. NavO (voice breaking): Sir, you will... You will want to take a look at this. CO: What the fuck is going on Mr Thompson? NavO (voice still breaking): Sir, their reference point... [takes two deep breaths, composes self, resumes in calm and professional manner] Sir, their reference point is the origin point of the ADDSU, and their target point is Earth. CO (slight shaking in his voice): Are you absolutely sure, Mr Thompson? NavO: Aye sir. Positive. CO: Engineering! Chief Engineer (CE): Engineering. CO: Scan status? CE: Almost ready. CO: How long? CE: 25 seconds give or take. CO: You heard navigation? CE: I did. CO: Are they armed? CE: Negative, no energy or mass signature suggesting weaponry. CE: Scan complete, transmitting to your screen now. CO: Recieved, checking. CO: Comms, open fleet channel. Open to the 1MC as well. Also transmit the scan readouts to the fleet, Sec5 encoding. ComO: Transmitting, aye sir, channel open. CO: Attention all hands. We have encountered vessels that originate from the same point as the weapon destroying most of South-East Asia originated from. We are transmitting scan readings to all ships now. Engagement plan is as follows: On my mark corvettes and frigates will engage the enemy’s engine modules and immobilise them. On my second mark Joachim and Mark [CO’s of Allen and Quinet respectively] will close to point defence range and puncture the enemy hulls without outright destroying them. Target their bridge and life support systems. Acknowledge! Acknowledgement signal from all 31 ships Operations officer (Also executive officer - O/XO): Sir? CO: Go ahead. O/XO: Should we check for escape pods? CO: Point. Engineering! CE: Engineering. CO: Scan indicates lifepods. Are they mechanically launched, self-propelled or what? CE: Hold on. CE: They are self-launching, electrically powered from their own power source. CO: Are the enemy ships susceptible to EMP? CE: They are unshielded beyond basic radiation shielding. CO: Comms! Reopen to fleet. ComO: Open sir. CO: Frigates and Destroyers, on my third mark hit them with EMP also, how copy. Acknowledgement signals received. CO: Action stations across the fleet! Ship to action stations. CO: Comms, keep fleetwide channel open, mute all incoming from it, unmute outgoing to... them. ComO: Go ahead sir. CO: Goulf from Hoor, may I ask weather you have a communications array to contact your homeworld? UV: Yes, we do, why? CO: Mark! First part of engagement plan execute. Corvettes and Frigates reporting targets serviced. UV: [indiscernible] You are firing on us! [indiscernible] CO: Goulf of Hoor, we have a problem. Or rather, you have a problem. Quite a serious one in fact. You belong to the race that attacked our planet and wiped out 20% of our race. That is not your problem. Your problem is that you haven’t confirmed the kill on our planet and haven’t confirmed that all of us are dead. Your problem is that you are unescorted, and your biggest problem is that you are about to die. I know you have power even if your propulsion is out, so transmit a message for me to your homeworld: Message begins: We are coming for all of you. We are inhabitants of W20SC438. Message ends. You can also tell them what happened to you. Comms! ComO: Comms. CO: Monitor for transmissions. ComO: Monitoring for transmissions. ComO: High-power outgoing from lead vessel. ComO: Outgoing finished. CO: Roger. Mark! Second part of engagement plan execute. Frigates and Destroyers report good hits. UV: You are condemning us to death! CO: I know. I know. Mark! Third part of engagement plan execute. Frigates and Destroyers report good hits. CO: Ops, recall Corvettes, strafing is authorised.

Personal notes of Ensign Coter revealed the mood of hatred that came upon the entire bridge crew (and safe to assume the entirety of the humans present) upon the revelation that the ships they were facing were from the world that almost wiped out their own. Our later investigation found that there were around 12 million colonists on the 15 colony ships. Our three species tried talking the Humans down from what was about to happen, but all we achieved in doing was to spare the Horics total extermination like the Humans originally wanted.

Still, the Humans were true to N’Gaye’s word, wiping out half of the total Horic population, making Hoor (the Horic homeworld) uninhabitable for the Horics (the GAN bombarded Hoor incessantly for a third of the planet’s cycle around its star, turning the planet’s surface into an inferno) and condemning them to live on their colonies under Garsen rule. As a final spit on the grave of the Horic Empire, they terraformed Hoor ever so slightly and settled on the planet. HRO Werred later pointed out that this pattern of behaviour was perfectly in line with what he had predicted based on his research, but even he couldn’T have predicted the scale of the carnage. This wasn’t the measured, surgical and professional warfare without any deep emotion the humans were very much capable of, this was bloody vengeance where they just wanted to make others suffer. Originally we wanted to expel the Humans from the Alliance for this, but they came to the Alliance Council and very calmly argued that they would never do such a thing to us because we were allies and friends, but if something similar to what has happened to them was to happen to any of our three species, their reaction would be similarly horrific. This made most of use feel relieved, and strangely comfortable, knowing that the most cruel of species in the Galaxy was affectionately watching over us.

#humans are space orcs #humans are space vikings #humans are weird #humans are space oddities #humans are space australians

1 note · View note

piritskenyer · 5 years

Text

Science officer M1. C. Kort, personal log, entry 1127.

Short entry this time. I’ve been down on the surface of this moon with UES Amsterdam’s Marine away team for 3 days now, and I can hardly get any sleep with the constant noise of battle all around us. Thhere is literally no stop in explosions more or less distant, sometimes a salvo of gunfire pierces through the air. I’m having trouble dealing with it. The Marines however. They set up two sentries and the rest all go to sleep. They sleep sitting, lying down, however they can, in contorted positions, hugging their weapons, some of them hugging each other, being tangled together. But they sleep. They ignore the sound of battle around them. I have no idea how they can cope with a situation which is just concentrated stress without stop. A few minutes ago a series of heavy projectiles flew over our heads, it was so loud, I thought it might shatter their eardrums. Only one of the sleepers woke up, and she immediately went back to sleep, seeing that her fellow Marines were all there still. At the same time, they can wake up to the whispers of the sentries. At the last revolution of this moon, when the Marines went to sleep, after a few hours one of the sentries spotted something and whispered “Guys, wake up, I have possible contact!” in a voice so low I could barely make it out against the sound of gunfire, but all the Marines woke up instantly and were completely alert. They got ready and in position in a deadly silence, focus on their face. It turned out to have been a false alarm, and they all went back to sleep like they hadn’t been interrupted. From vulnerable to deadly and formidable to vulnerable again.

These humans are fascinating but also really scaring me.

#humans are space orcs #humans are space vikings #humans are weird #humans are space australians

0 notes

piritskenyer · 5 years

Text

Science officer M1. C. Kort, personal log, entry 1011

I am slightly inebriated. The Human crew has finally accepted me as a member of the crew, despite me only being on an observation mission. To celebrate this, some of the marines and seamen have invited me to “drink”. I thought they were talking about simple rehydration, but I was quickly reminded that Humans consume ethanol (and other mind altering substances) for recreational purposes. The terms seem to be interchangeable somehow. When I entered the mess hall, I was cheered for some reason, and someone shouted “Kort, you are right on time, it’s happy hour!” to which someone reacted “It’s always happy hour, you retarded cunt!”. A minor verbal exchange ensued, to which I feared there would be a violent incident, but all that happened was that a group of Seamen (I found out they are also called “sailors”) and a group of Marines were exchanging verbal abuse and challenging each other to a “drinking contest” (the point of the excercise is to ingest the highest possible amount of ethanol while remaining conscious. There seem to be no physical price awarded for this activity). Before I realised what had been happening, Iwas shoved into a seat and Staff Sargeant Elektra Mobal jumped on top of the table and screamed “Alright you ingrate shits, it’s Kort’s birthday, you better pay the fuck up”. I was confused and asked her what she meant to which Lieutenant Ariadne Kistev explain to me that Humans, registering every single revolution of their planet around their star keep records of an individual’s life cycle and use it as a reference point to determine maturity, unlike us who use the Horm test to determine that. I hadn’t realised, but they were actually right, it was actually 40 revolutions of Raydan around our star since I hatched. Before I knew it, there were literally 32 small containers, called “shot glasses”, in front of me, each containing what they called “hard alcohol” (which seems to mean 30% or above v/v% concentration) of different kinds. They were all synthesised on board by the drink dispenser, but they all had different names: yaeger, a black liquid, vodka, a clear liquid, “white rum” another white liquid, “dark rum” an yellowish.brown liquid (which supposedly bears kinship to the previous liquid), palinka and schnaps, both clear liquids I could make no difference between, but Lance Corporal Fekete and Machinist’s mate, first class Honecker swore they were nothing alike. There was also “Ouzo” to which Private, First Class Sarakis said was unrivaled, but Sargeant Bouchard came up with “Pastis” that seemed to have the exact same composition. Chief Torpedoman Higgins approached me with a clear liquid he called “Moonshine” while the rest of the crew was laughing and calling him “fucking redneck” (a nickname that I found quite disrespectful but that he seemed to shrug off and even take pride in). I drank everything the Humans gave me, despite knowing full well, it is qualified as poison. My sense of balance has regressed, but I can still walk. The people present were cheering me on as I was consuming the “shots” (they apparently called them that way because of how they have to be gotten over with like a shot to the head - a clear example of their dark humour tied to death and suicide), and I think, I am not sure, that I have earned a macabre sense of respect for having been able to drink the poison they gave me without losing consciousness. Apparently 32 (+5) shots are a lot. To my utmost shock, the ship’s commander and first officer stopped by the mess hall to drink with me, as seemingly “gaining years” remains important in human society even after reaching percieved maturity. They both wished me a long and full life, I assume tat is a standard “birthday” greeting. Before I knew it, the people present split to two groups, “sailors” (Seamen) and “rocking horses” (Marines) and started shouting insults and taunts at each other. They also started singing songs where one group would start a verse and then stop and leaving the other to finish. I cannot describe it any other way but this: It was a display of love between two groups divided by the pride of rivalry. After they had consumed enough ethanol (and some other substances) the two groups playfought, where they stood at the two ends of the mess hall, and then ran at each other. when the two groups met, some rolled on the floor hugging each other laughing, while others would be grappling on bigger counterparts only to be shaken off. This playfight was interrupted by the appearence of Major Henriksdotir, commander of the Marine contingent on the ship, at which point everyone, no matter how drunk, just stood upright, silent and unmoving (I am told that is the state of “standing at attention”) until Major Henriksdotir said “Fuck off, don’t stop on my account” at which point all of the Humans standing in perfect stillness and silence just collapsed to the floor laughing. The Major came to me to drink for my birthday. She deprated after having a single shot, stating that she had to “keep her head” (another one of those strange Earthling expressions) because she was on watch. I got away from the drinking after most of the company present had been overcome with ethanol stupor and were in stasis emitting strange noises on the floor of the mess hall. I am going to conclude this log entry with the statement that we should probably stop thinking of Humans as bloodthirsty, as they seem to have enhanced bonding reactions under the influence of ethanol.

PS: I am told that the substance called “yaeger” is written as “Jäger” and the full name is “Jägermeister”

EDIT: This is a note I am adding two days after the events described above. I am told by SSg Mobal that Ethanol may influence humans differently. It would enhance whatever their current emotion, namely if angry, would make them more aggressive and destructive either towards themselves or others, if cheerful, it would make them happier, if sad it would make thm suicidal or angry as in the first point.

#humans are space orcs #humans are space vikings #humans are weird #humans are space oddities #humans are space australians

1 note · View note

piritskenyer · 5 years

Text

Science officer M1. C. Kort’s observation log n°572 - Human military, n°1: Naval personnel, pt.1 (”Seamen” and “Marines”)

Preface: Following the integration of Earth into the Garsen Alliance, we have set out to observe Human behaviour from up close. This is the first entry on the actual military personnel operating the technology used for warfighting. I have so far spent less than a human week amongst them, so these are only my initial impressions. Detailed descriptions to follow.

My initial impression on these people is that they are fascinating. They have a special form of pack-bonding, based on on suffering and reprehension coupled with extreme professional proficiency called “discipline”. They can remain motionless on command for hours, while at the same time not losing the smallest piece of their inquisitive and curious selves. They have rehearsed (”drilled”) formations and commands to which they will react almost instinctively and will go from joking, uncaring, playful individuals into a focused, aggressive and coordinated group in mere milliseconds. It is truly fascinating (and quite frightening when they do it for no apparent reason).

The Navy as we now call it is structured similarly to what they had back on their homeworld when they used to wage war against themselves: first-line warships, second-line warships for auxiliary operations (blockade, security, bombardment and other specialised combat tasks), support ships, troopships, troop support ships. These ships are generally speaking standardised, something we did not introduce on this scale. The Humans operating these ships are referred to as Seamen generally and by exact rank and trade along with their sub-unit (”family”) name specifically. The structure, especially at lower echelons, can be quite confusing at first but is very logical with few legacy elements. The surface-warfare element of their fleets are called Marines, who, unlike the Army, are attached to the Navy structurally. As with Seamen, Marines is their collective name, and they are individually referred to by their specific rank and name.

There is a stark difference in the way these two groups operate, although they also bear similarities with each other. In day-to-day operations Seamen seem to be less formal, even with officers that significantly outrank them, while always remaining extremely professional, while Marines tend to be either completely formal or not at all. Naval officers and “ratings” (name given to their lower ranks) rarely mix socially, but are generally more easy-going during work, while Marine officers and “enlisted” (name given to their lower ranks) will readily mix socially up to a certain point, but will be rather formal during work. Marines are also much more pack-minded. At the ship’s (UES Amsterdam - UES stands for United Earth Ship, Amsterdam is an Earth city. All their ships are named after places, people and events and have the same prefix, see log n°556) second meal time (”lunch” they call it) I saw the ship’s entire security contingent composed of nothing but Marine “Commandos” (a specially trained branch) march in in complete silence and sit down to their tables in absolutely coordinated motions before they started having quiet conversations over their meals. Once they finished they stood up as one and marched out in the same silence, all the while never once barking a single order. At another instance I experienced a curious, yet telling part of their “discipline”. It was at their third meal time (”dinner”) another day, when mostly junior officers, “ratings” and “enlisted” were feeding. During this time, a senior officer (the ship’s commanding officer, a Captain (N) - see appendix (a)) entered the mess hall and the assigned mess officer shouted “Commander on deck!” to which all present rose to their feet and stood still in silence facing forward until the Captain shouted “Carry on!” at which point everyone resumed what they had been previously doing like nothing had happened. The members of the Human military are conditioned to mindlessly obey commands and yet retain their individualistic nature and thinking.

The latter part of this statement is best exemplified by the way how every Human on board has a favourite off-duty activity (”hobby”) they like to engage in. Some of these activities are related to their occupation (some people train in their spare time), while others are not (I observed a “Torpedoman’s mate, second class” - see appendix (a) - build the model of an Earth sailing ship from hundreds of years ago in the recreation room).

Their professionalism and efficiency are also extreme. They are assigned tasks well before they ever get into combat, and when alarm (”action stations”) sounds, everyone goes to their assigned post to do their assigned duty without hesitation or doubt. Any individual of a specific trade will be proficient in that trade to extreme (the above mentioned “Torpedoman’s mate, second class” was able to list all 231 parts and functions of the standard “torpedo” they use - a sort of guided missile weapon, my understanding is that the name is somewhat a legacy name, but there are apparently technical differences to a missile. I’m not a warrior, I’m a scientist.) Yet they also proved to be extremely resourceful and free-thinking in times of need. On my 4th day on the ship, a shuttle crashed into the ship, causing a breech in the pressure hull. The damage control teams managed to first isolate the depressurising compartments and then, to my horror went into the vacuum area and jury rigged a fix in order for the compartments to be repressurised. I avoid the area as I don’t trust the quality of repair, but the Human crew has restarted work in the compartments with little to no concern. This incident also provided insight into their ruthless nature, as the dead from this incident (the shuttle pilot, its copilot, and three “ratings”) were simply flushed out of an airlock while being covered in nothing but the Earth flag (they call this “burial-at-sea” and is apparently a naval tradition).

Their officers differ little from their subordinates but they appear to be generally older, more experienced and their focuses lie elsewhere. They seem to be macromanaging situations rather than be lost in details, all the while retaining an eye for detail. They have a mentality described as “leading by example” where the officers are required to know what the tasks (and limitations as well as strengths) of their subordinates are and how to perform them. The higher an officer is in chain of command the less he is supposed to be concerned with equipment (unless that is their specific trade, see “supply officer” in appendix (b)) and more with tactics, strategy, and management. Some of their officers are required to make split-second decisions based on complex tactical situations with incomplete information and they can somehow make good decisions in the majority of the cases despite having to decide in less time than it would be possible for our Aeumom 3 computers to calculate all possible outcomes. When asked about this, the response of the Human staff is “we trained for this”, which I find extremely hard to believe as, these situations cannot have been foreseen in their training. I suspect they refer to the general set of circumstances, not specific ones.

PS to however will have to edit my log entries: sorry, I’m not a writer, I’m a scientist. I never imagined that i would at one point have to write my observations down about Humans, so excuse my incoherent writing style.

Last minute addendum: I just observed a curious thing. Apparently Humans have the ability to mimic emotions beyond our range of mimicry and use these to obtain results. The ship just conducted the search of a suspected smuggling vessel, and when it came time for the Marines to board, they discussed and established the behavioural pattern most frightening to the opposing crew. When they finished their search of the vessel (which came back as a legitimate trade vessel), they stopped their mimicking and became most accommodating with the crew of the vessel before leaving them alone in a most orderly fashion. The commander of the Marines explained to me that intimidation this way leads to the opposition being subdued more quickly and less violently. For a species that is this warlike, this statement seems odd, but I’m learning to be surprised by nothing at this point.

#humans are space orcs #humans are weird #humans are space oddities #humans are space australians #humans are space vikings

0 notes

piritskenyer · 5 years

Text

Humans.

These “primitive” humans we wanted to colonise have revolutionised, if not outright saved us. The Garsen Alliance is composed of 4 different races, the three original ones of which were all peaceful, scientific or trading races: The Garsen, the Thikiid, the Rowdan and now the Humans.

We knew of the Humans, the inhabitants of this medium-sized planet in a small star system of little interest for long. They were primitive and warlike, and their resources were not abundant enough for anyone to want to deal with a colonisation of their world. That was of course until the Aaraken attacked the Rowdan and the Garsen Allience suddenly found itself cut off from some of their mining colonies. Earth, the homeworld of the Humans had the required resources, albeit not in great quantity, but we had to make do with what we ad available. The Humans were estimated to be still primitive and divided enough that we could conquer or at least control them, even with out relatively limited experience (none of our three species evolved from our respective planets’ apex predators, but rather of the luckiest circumstantial great herbivore - the Rowdan are even still reptilian in nature - while the Humans can be considered apex predators on their planet, though pack predators rather than individual ones).

The Thikiid took on the task due to their relative proximity to the Humans. Things almost immediately started going wrong. Since our last observation it turned out Humans had developed projectile weapons, but not only that, guided missile projectile weapons. First signs of that came when the Thikiian fleet entered orbit and hovered there for about half a system cycle to get into ideal landing positions (which was made very difficult by the extraordinary amount of debris orbiting the planet - these people were putting stuff up there but were nowhere near spacefaring yet). During that time the Humans have modified their missiles they originally developed to mass-murder each other to be able to fire (and hit) in space. Six of our ships were lost and several dozen heavily damaged when they were hit by missiles carrying fission and fusion type thermonuclear weaponry. The Humans were firing indiscriminately, ad they ddin’t much care for missing or for ammunition expenditure. The missiles that missed our ships just flew off into space and I don’t dare thinking about what is going to happen if they ever hit something. We also did not realise that time was of the essence when entering orbit, as by the time we were ready, it seemed that there was no way our troops could land anywhere without being immediately met by pickets at least. Had we been our enemy, the Aaraken, we would have obliterated the planet’s surface from orbit, but that is (was) not our way. We finally put our troops down on what they call their Northern and Eastern Hemispheres in a country (arbitrary subdivision they have but that has little bearing anymore) they call Russia. We figured our troops’ superior technology would give them a leg up, we were wrong. The Human response was swift and immediate, the 200.000-strong landing force was obliterated with alarming speed and ferocity by their united forces, all the while we couldn’t take control over their airspace, as their aircraft were much better suited to the environment at hand than our multi-atmosphere-space-capable craft. We assumed that our landing forces lost, our fleet crippled, there was no out for us. We turned for home and prepared to submit to the Aaraken, while taking some grim solace in the fact that they will have a much harder bone to chew through when they decide to conquer the Humans.

That’s when the “miracle” (as a scientific mind I hesitate to call it that, but I must admit there is not much else I could qualify it) happened. We recieved a transmission from Earth. It was short and confusing: “We want to talk, come quick”. It turned out that the swift action taken by the Humans against our troops was not a total massacre. Our troops, not being warlike, despite our best training efforts found themselves confused and outpaced by the Humans and around half of the landing force was taken prisoner. These prisoners were subsequently interrogated and revealed the entire source and history of our invasion attempt on Earth, to which, in a most surprising turn of events, the Humans decided to react by offering us an alliance: We share technology with them, they will fight for us. We didn’t quite understand what they got out of it at first, but they helpfully enlightened us: Their current lifestyle was quickeningly “killing their planet” (a term used by Humans to describe the planet’s capacity to support Human life decreasing), and they hoped to get technology from us to repair the planet or to abandon it if need be. They apparently decided to fight for us in exchange because of a combination of spite (some of the Thikiid apparently told them the Aaraken were the greatest warriors ever to exist and they had taken issue with that) and wanderlust (they got very excited at the prospect of seeing new worlds - and perhaps defile them). We took the deal, of course. They also supplied us the resources we needed.

Their approach to soldiering was lightyears more developed than ours (we were all peaceful species by nature afterall, while they were hardly peaceful at all or when they were it was by choice). In their militaries, training and discipline reigned supreme which gave their soldiers high moral and supreme confidence. Furthermore, due to their pack-animal ancestry, in groups these people were more effective than what numerical prognosis might have suggested. At the same time, their soldiers were also trained to fight effectively alone and were fearsome in and of themselves. In an unwinnable situation the soldiers (or “Marines” - the distinction is not entirely clear to me, but it seems to be organisational, “Marines” belonging to the fleet (or rather “Navy” who also have “Seamen”) and soldiers belonging to their army) would instead of giving up and surrendering go into a frenzy and try to break out of encirclement or take as many enemies with them as they possibly could. They had developed military rank, command and communication structures and had far more efficient surface weaponry than we had. It was a basic, but effective solution developed beyond anything we would have ever found practical that made energy beam and mass-driver weaponry simply redundant. They took our mostly merchant ships, modified them to their ideas and turned our fleets into an effective Navy.

The first time we deployed them on Raydan, the Rowdan homeworld, they thrashed the Aaraken mercilessly. The Navy punched into and obliterated the Aaraken Horde’s ships and the Marines and Soldiers deployed to the surface of Raydan took the Aaraken footsoldiers by compete surprise, wiping them out with surgical precision and frightening efficiency. The Aaraken threatened to wipe out the population of the mining colonies they took at the beginning of the war in retaliation and demanded submission, to which the Humans replied without waiting for us: “Do and we will wipe you from existence. We will exterminate every last one of you and erase your memory. You will be nothing” The Aaraken threat never came to pass.

We thought we could now bargain with the Aaraken and end this war but the Humans thought otherwise. They explained to us that a minor defeat is not going to phase the Aaraken and it will not bring them to the peace table. They will only bargain if they know they are not safe. The Humans organised a strike force, and set off for a raid on Ra’aold, the Aaraken homeworld. We all thought it was a suicide mission, but again, we were wrong, We know little about warfare, these people evolved in it. When they returned, the Aaraken capital was burning, their fleet, the Horde had been all but destroyed in a series of engagements where they could do little damage to our Navy and multiple of their oppressed worlds had been riled up to rebellion. When the Humans returned, “Admiral” Jarek Wolff, the commander of the raiding fleet said “Greatest warriors my f***ing arse!” The war was over. Not because we managed to bargain peace, but because the Humans simply won it for us.

The Humans made us from an alliance of humble traders and scientist into the most feared intergalactic federation there is. To this day they guard us and watch over us. The most shocking to us is how well they mixed in with us after the war. Having a Human or two in a crew (or generally just around) is always considered good luck. Their friends love them for their good heart and quick wit and their enemies (or their friends’ enemies) fear them for their ferocity and bloodlust.

#humans are space orcs #humans are space vikings

2 notes · View notes