What Happened When the Humans Came

By squirrelbey

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It was known to be impossible to cross the great, dark expanse between galaxies, but the Humans did it anyway.

They arrived in world-ships: physics-defying behemoths, the mass and size of planets. Roaring onto our galactic shore at blistering speeds, bristling with disturbing weapons and impenetrable shields, each ship was a technological wonder beyond anything anyone had dreamed possible.

They were superior in technology and arms to any known species, but would they be a threat or an opportunity?

The first to find out were the Picori. An Empire of aggressive isolationists, scarred by centuries of war, they did not even consider greeting the Humans peacefully when they entered the galaxy through their borders. Perhaps things may have gone differently if they had. Instead, they attacked on sight, and so the Humans rolled through their fleet as though it was not even there. Thousands of ships were vaporized instantly. They didn't even slow down.

The Humans sent out a message. What had happened to the Picori was unfortunate, but they had been attacked. They came in peace and were here to save the galaxy. 'Submit peacefully,' they pleaded, 'and you will come to no harm. In the name of the greater good, we will set you truly free.'

The galactic community at this time was a complex web of alliances, dominated by warring factions of ancient enemies. In an era of constant war and strife, in which slavery and genocide were common and struggle and sacrifice were mundane, none were open to trusting the Humans, and so their pleas fell on deaf ears. The destruction of the Picori had sent shockwaves across space as every Empire scrambled to defend themselves, and the Humans were greeted with hostility at every turn.

To their credit, they showed restraint; they begged and pleaded with every Empire to submit peacefully, but after millennia of war, none could swallow their pride in the face of a fight. Soon, their reputation preceded them, and the word 'Human' became synonymous with death and destruction. Their titanic world-ships had no choice but to descend upon the galaxy like a plague. Seemingly impervious to all weapons, it did not take long for every major homeworld to have a Human world-ship looming in its orbit like a loaded gun.

They promised they were bringing salvation, security, progress, and plenty, but the reality was that within a year, every living being in the galaxy had been forced into servitude. Propaganda flooded all comms, preaching about the greater good: every being had a part to play if they were to be saved, though from what, the Humans never said.

It was a time of great change: technology so advanced as to seem occult became commonplace, an intergalactic network was created, allowing for instantaneous transfer of information across impossible distances, a standard currency was introduced, and species were forced to coexist and cooperate as they never had before.

Despite all this, they were not benevolent masters. Productivity ruled above all. Beings grew old and died working the same job they were assigned in adulthood, the wondrous technology was used only to strip-mine planets of their resources and further the material gain of the Humans. The galaxy was converted into an advanced and convoluted chain of production, in which every Non-Human was a tiny, insignificant cog. None knew their purpose in the machine. There was no choice, no freedom.

They painted themselves as saviors, but after all, flowery speeches about shared destiny, unity, and the common good fall on deaf ears when you spend every hour working your fingers to the bone in a dark mine. They had a saying, "an iron fist in a velvet glove," that described their attitude. They were not above treating their slaves with smiles and kind words, but if a planet didn't meet its quota, they would introduce 'production initiatives' to improve things. The velvet was removed to reveal the iron, the teeth behind the smile grew pointed, and the kind words turned hard.

If you treat beings as tools, they will inevitably rise against you. It was very early on when the Alethi rebelled. They saw themselves as honorable warriors, and could not tolerate the idea of being trodden beneath the heel of the Humans, never mind the fact that they had been employing slaves for millennia.

The Humans dropped a single bomb on their homeworld, releasing a virus that tore through the population in days. They were decimated, and within a week, the workers had been replaced with other species from off world, with barely a blip in production. In their announcement, the Human spoke at great length about 'the greater good of the galaxy,' and 'shared responsibility to the future.'. "You think us monsters," it said, "but we are nothing compared to what we are trying to save you from." Most assumed it was a falsehood, invented to lend plausibility to their heinous crimes. It was shamefully dishonorable but effective in its messaging. The will of the galaxy was broken, and none rebelled after that.

Fewer than 100 cycles passed like this, the downtrodden masses lived and died in servitude, until one day, the order was given to cease production. For the first time since their arrival, the galaxy once again ground to a halt.

The day the Humans had been preparing the galaxy for had finally come. Another extragalactic visitor had been detected, arriving from the same direction they had, so long ago. It was far sooner than they'd expected, they said, with only a cycle left before their arrival.

The screen changed, and the beings watching the announcement were united in collective horror. Ships, millions upon millions of them, some many hundreds of times the size of the human's world-ships, were barrelling through space towards the galaxy. Sinewy and grey, ridged with spikes and oozing ichor, they appeared shaped from living flesh. The Humans referred to them as The Pursuers. A race of ravenous, mindless monsters, twisted and malformed, endlessly hungry.

The greater good had been real all along. They had been fighting them across the universe for millennia, trying in vain to eradicate them once and for all in a series of desperate last stands. They had arrived in the galaxy ahead of them to unite and guide the species there to victory, for The Pursuers' only goal was to consume, until the complete and utter decimation of all life. In every previous galaxy they had visited, telling the populace about the Pursuers had caused such widespread panic that informing them only served to seal them to their fate, ruining their chances at survival. The galaxy's only hope was to bend to the Humans' rule, to organize and prepare, entrench itself, and fight until the bitter end.

Immediately after the announcement, the Humans finally revealed what they had been producing with the century of slave labor. Towering Humans in powered exoskeletons arrived on every planet with vast caches of weapons, armor, and vehicles. Entire populaces were transported off-world to be trained in space combat. Every being in the galaxy, old enough to fight, was to be trained, armed and sent into battle against the enemy.

The Humans were not truly the dictators they had been believed to be. The perceived lies about the greater good had all been genuine, they only regretted that they had not been honest about the Pursuers sooner, to give them more time to prepare. The galaxy saw a different side to them, then. What had previously been seen as aloofness revealed itself as quiet fortitude. The brutality with which they drove the workers was determination. Everything they had done had come at the expense of the people, true, but it had genuinely been done for the greater good.

The Pursuers, when they arrived, were everything the Humans had promised them to be. Mindless savages, intent only on destruction and consuming every living thing they could find. There was no method to their madness, just the sheer weight of numbers. In space, they would launch wave upon wave at the allied fleets with no regard for themselves. Their ships were impossibly fast, and could somehow sense sentient beings. They would aim themselves at enemy spacecraft, ramming them at near-light speed before sprouting limbs and tearing through the metal. The world-ships and their supporting fleets, now crewed by the former slaves, were in constant combat. Any defeat in space would allow Pursuer ships to make planetfall. Once they landed, millions upon millions of drones would throw themselves tirelessly at any living creatures they could find, ripping them to pieces and devouring them in moments.

The fighting was brutal. Billions of lives were lost daily, as the coalition of species, led by the Humans, fought desperately for their survival. They were few, but on land and space, the Humans fought like warrior-gods, always where the fighting was thickest, never tiring, never wavering. They inspired those around them to fight harder, to never give in, and even sometimes to sacrifice in the name of the greater good. The war went on for decades, and at times seemed lost, but the bravery, preparation, logistics, and tactics of the Humans snatched victory from the jaws of defeat time and time again.

The cost was dear, trillions of lives were lost to the Pursuers, but in the end, the galaxy was victorious. It had been a long, bloody, and torturous war, such as had never before been seen. Cities had been leveled, planets thrown out of orbit, and soldiers returning to their homes found them empty or destroyed.

Not knowing how to rebuild, they turned to the now beloved Humans for help, but they were gone. With no fanfare, no celebration, the surviving Humans just sailed off into deep space in their world-ships, towards the closest galaxy, leaving behind the fruits of the labor of a hundred cycles: technology and resources enough to render scarcity impossible for the rest of time.

Shortly after they left, a message arrived from the direction the Humans had traveled in. It read, "We are sorry, there are others we must help, for the greater good."

"Now, you are truly free, even from us."