en kort historie fra/a short story form the-last-ghost

————Part four————

As you know, back in the early years of the USF, they stumbled across my people as we ourselves were searching the stars. We were told of the wonders the USF ad discovered, of the untold splendor of the cosmos, and of the amazing species that were a part of the Federation; what we were not told though, was anything about the other, hostile races that your Council kept hidden from its people. They let us believe we were safe, that we had nothing to fear in the stars. After countless millennia filled with war and strife, we were ecstatic about a future of peace; but as we have learned time and time again, peace is only an illusion and war… war is the one real truth in the cosmos.”
As he spoke, I couldn’t help but be reminded by just how weary and sorrowful the Terrans eyes seemed to be; almost as if the weight of untold ages lay behind them. “Since my people left the USF, I ask you, how many major conflicts have there been? How many wars fought? Civilizations destroyed? I doubt there has been very many. Have you ever stopped to wonder why?” Hearing his words make me think of our own past; beyond the occasional pirate group or minor territory seizure, there has been no sizable engagement since they were banished. “I can tell you can think of nothing even remotely similar to the stories you have heard from my peoples time. Your Council hides the truth; they allow you to live with the false belief that you are safe. We learned that at great cost and then we were branded traitor and our past expunged from your records. So hear now, the truth of my people’s fate and watch as history unfolds before you.”
“My people have, over countless eons, waged war against each other, done unspeakable things to survive, and learned the price that is paid is seldom worth it but sometimes needed. Prior to the Icarus incident, we had not had a ship lost to a military action in hundreds of years. There had been the typical policing actions, anti-piracy engagements, and counter-terrorism operations but nothing on the scale of all out war. When we lost the Icarus, we were shocked as was to be expected but we didn’t believe it was anything more than a rogue pirate fleet that we had stumbled upon, as such, over the next 4 years, we searched for what we believed was a heavily armed pirate group, a conflict we believed we could handle. We informed the Council of our intent to seek them out and they approved the request and sent aid to secure the sector we lost. While we searched for those responsible, we came across world after world that was once vibrant and full of life, filled with the lifeless, charred bodies of its people. We came across entirely new civilizations that had been reduced to naught but ash and death. It was around this time that my people knew that war was coming. True war; not the petty conflicts your people were accustomed to facing. So, we set out with enacting our old, long unused wartime protocols; we sent out notices to all of our fleets informing them to prepare for mobilization and instructed our people to prepare for a war we hoped would not come. Then one day, seemingly out of the blue, one of our expedition fleets made contact with them as they were engaged in a surface war with an unknown species; we never were able to identify them, there was so little left by the time it was all over. Our fleet immediately called back requesting reinforcements and USF aid but by this point, they had been noticed and forced to engage in a fleet on fleet battle. It’s a pity that you have not hear of the engagement that occurred; it was the first defining moment for the war, discovering the identity of our prey.” It is easy to forget that these Terrans evolved as a predator-based species, they looked so small and harmless and yet… there was something about the way he spoke. Something that chilled me to my core and made me unnaturally afraid. Looking around the room, I could see my crew was similarly affected; seeing this made me more hesitant to know the truth but I knew I would never get this chance again.
“Orks. Old legends, myths, and fictional stories from our past turned real. In all of our stories, there is some mention of them. Some subtle description of these warlike beasts that we all know, yet no one knows where the stories originated. We have no record of ever coming across them, but we knew from first contact that they would be nothing but hostile. When we finally made contact again, it was with our 87th expeditionary fleet lead by Admiral De Maré aboard the Command Frigate, Solemn Promise. It was a force to be reckoned with; nearly 30 frigates and 50 support cruisers of various classes were assembled under her command; the largest force we had gathered since our War of Unification to bring peace to our solar system. We were hopelessly outmatched.” It took me a moment to grasp just what was said. “You Terrans gathered the largest military force you had in centuries and were… outmatched…? How could this even have been possible? If the legends are to be believed…” I could not even think of a monstrosity horrifying enough to defeat them. Not after seeing the devastation they themselves caused. “We were unprepared for the fight, you see. We did not know they were Orks until they had boarded one of our ships. Even then, we knew them only from our stories, little we had at the time actually did much to harm them. They were suicidal, reckless, a true power to be feared. De Maré’s fleet stood alone while your Council read the reports and debated what they should do. Slowly they realized that they were hopelessly unprepared for an all-out war and so they did the only thing they felt they could; they abandoned my people there, purged their request logs from the records, and blockaded the system into which De Maré had gone.” The anger that emanated from the Terrans at this revelation was palpable. Millennia had passed since this incident and yet the pain of the betrayal was still there. “Your people may not have access to the transcripts and footage from the battle, but we do. I have seen the recordings, heard the screams of my people dying, and watched them by slaughtered; there were no survivors. Your Council abandoned my people and wrote the engagement off as a random act of piracy, telling us that they did not wish to start a panic amongst the populace because not many of the races had a good understanding of what war was truly like. Unofficially, they told us all that they knew about the Orks, or as they called them, the Xulrata. Upon hearing what they had to say, we became aware of just how much they lied to their own people. The sudden arrival of De Maré’s fleet had enraged the Xulrata and caused them to go on a conquest through the stars that slowly brought them closer and closer to Terran space. We fought them alone, for the Council refused to get involved, believing that if they left them alone, they would remain unnoticed. Then one day, a rogue, suicide fleet was able to punch through our lines and slip past the defensive line based on Titan. It wasn’t until they bypassed the outpost on Mars that we realized they were making a run at Terra itself. Somehow their main battle cruiser managed to remain functional, and for a time, we believed it was going to impact the surface of our home; such an act would have destroyed us then and there. It was a miracle that one of our Destroyers was able to ram their ship and cause it to veer away from our home. We thought we had one, yet it had merely set its sights on a new target, one of our own legacies; our first International Space Station. The Orkish ship set out on a head-on collision with it and there was nothing we could do to stop it. Over 89,371 people lived aboard that station, mostly children from Terra gaining their first glimpse of life amongst the stars.” The fire that I saw in the Terrans eyes earlier was gone. In them now dwelled an unfathomable sorrow, but even I could understand the pain of the needless loss of youth’s lives. Hearing this reminded me of how most of our record indicated that they were a very symbolic people and that the killing of children was amongst the greatest of taboos a being could perform.
“The Xulrata killed them all. 89,371 lives lost in a matter of minutes. Over all, it was not a vastly significant number, as we had lost much more with the fall of De Maré’s fleet, but these were children. Innocent lives taken without any chance to defend themselves and we could do nothing but watch. It stunned us, we were in so much shock at the needless loss of life that we were unprepared to the rest of the Xulrata fleet to enter the system and butcher our people. They took Pluto, Io, Enceladus, and Rhea, destroyed or slaughtered their way through the rest and then the razed Mars, all in a matter of months. We scrambled to defend what we had left but we knew it was no use. We had to order the evacuation of the system and so we fought, for the next 4 months we held them back as we evacuated the system as best we could, but we knew we couldn’t hold it forever. With the Council still refusing to answer our call and the rest of the Federation blind to our situation, we knew we must do the unthinkable, we must abandon Terra.” He spoke the last as little more than a whisper, as if ashamed to voice the loss aloud. “This is a tragedy, of that there is no doubt. However, your people made a sound military judgment. You saved your people, how is this something to be shamed of? Surely you have been able to reclaim your home since then?” I ask, hopeful that there must be some good in this tragic story. The Terran only sighed and asked, “Have you ever heard of something called, ‘Scorched Earth?’ No? Well it’s a military tactic we used long ago and basically it is this: when we know our position is no longer defensible or a plot of land no longer useful for us, we will destroy the equipment we leave behind, burn the food stores, slaughter the livestock, and, in some cases, we will burn the earth beneath us and salt the ashes as we go. This in theory, will prevent our enemies from gaining anything from the ground that they took. When we abandoned Terra, we refused to allow the Xulrata to rule over our homes; so, we did what we felt was right, we turned our world to glass. We ‘Scorched the Earth’ so to speak and left naught but dust behind for them to take. With this last act of defeat, we fled out into the stars and sent the call to all Terrans in the known systems and told them of what occurred. I’ll never forget the silence that fell aboard my ship when the words came over the display on the bridge…Terra has fallen.”

————end Part four————

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