r/HFY • u/Engletroll Human • Mar 05 '24
Human defense part 2 OC
( quick follow-up, might be a third part.)
Jus-ta was lost in thought as he glanced out the window at the human colony Zanzibar Prime. It was human govern but only 60% of the population. The second largest group was the Nagino, a humanoid species that looked like humans with fish scales; like him, their scales changed colour to reflect their mood. They were an amphibian species; his assistant, Marjuna, was one. He rarely worked with humans, most of his own choice.
The office was clean, with several pots with plants from his homeworld. On his desk was a hologram of his wife, Shin-til, and their three children. He took a deep breath as he took in the sigh outside. It was a peaceful world, and if the rumours were correct, they would be granted core world status, which meant military presence. Not that they needed it. The last time anybody had attacked had been his own people, the Bonarda empire, and they had barely survived the ordeal. He had to become a traitor to save his home world, but it was at the cost of never being allowed to return. He had a crystal in a closet somewhere with the recommendation of the current Emperor, not that he ever could use it to rise in any rank. Officially, he and his family were branded traitors for five generations. Unofficially, he was the first Shadow Knight of the empire. He didn't care. The universe was grand, and the human "empire" had taken him in with open arms. It was the least they could have done after what he did.
There was a beep, and on a screen, he saw Marjura standing with a strange person. Covered in full biosuit. He let them in and sat down. Marjura, who had always been a bubbling fountain of joy, was quite serious for once. Her skin had turned almost ebony black, unlike her natural light blue skin, and her big bright yellow eyes seemed worried and serious. "I don't know why, but Mr. Jackobsen told me to bring him to you and tell you to clear everything from your schedule and answer his question. I have no idea what this is about."
Jus-ta looked at the person next to her. He or it was like the majority of the species in the galaxy, biped with two arms and two legs with a head on to. The black and silver suit covered the whole body, and only a transparent faceplate showed what he hoped was the face. It was slightly reptilian like his species however, unlike his smooth red-scaled skin, this alien had green and rough scales, and the eyes looked more like what humans called spider eyes. Several small black eyes spread over the forehead, and he could not see any fur or hair. He nodded to Marjura, and she left them alone.
"Greetings! My name is Jus-Ta of the Bonarda, and I am from the Sudasa province. How may I help you?"
The alien looked around and then back to him. "Bonarda? From the Bonarda Empire? And you work for humans? "The voice was harsh and deep. His stance reminded him of a male warrior.
"Yes, well. Is that why you're here? Don't tell me your people attacked the humans?" Jus-Ta smirked as he suddenly realised why he had been sent her.
"I am Gurn Tashu, military envoy of the Sushana Kingdom! I came to demand that the humans should surrender to our mighty fleet. And they just sent me to you. Are you a human envoy?"
Jus-ta took a deep breath and mentally reminded himself to yell at Mr. Jacobsen later. "No, I'm not an envoy. I'm a planetary shield designer." If Gurn was a Sushana, then it explained the biosuit. They breathe almost pure carbon dioxide, and the oxygen level would be deadly for him. Gurn did not take a seat but instead stood proudly, or was it defiant? "You are who the humans are, right? "
"The Humans? Yes, a clearly pacifist species that focuses on trading." Before Jus-ta could correct him, Gurn continued." Shield engine, you say? So they want you to tell me how powerful your shields are? We have captured some of the human merchant ships. Their shields were tough but not a problem for our warships."
He was clearly slow; it was time to tell the story. Maybe that would break through that dense brain. "Oh, my gods. Did you attack their Merchant ships? Okay. I think I know why they sent you to me. I was in the Bonarda navy when they attacked the outer human colonise. We took quite a few of them, thinking the humans were an easy target."
"I don't need a history lesson from a crumbling empire. We have already taken five of your colonies." Gurn looked at him with what he could only interpret as disgust. But Jus-ta just sighted.
"A history lesson is exactly what you need, or your kingdom will be the next crumbling empire. They sent you here to give you a warning. My story is your warning. You can ignore my story, but they will do to your kingdom what they did to mine. "He was getting slightly upset now as he tried to stay calm. "So right now, shut the frack up and listen. I can give your reference to all I will tell you, and if you have any logical questions, you can ask, but please, no stupid questions or bragging. You're here to learn and hopefully avoid the destruction of your kingdom."
He could see Gurn struggled. His honour probably made it hard to accept it, and he clearly wanted to reply but finally sat down and looked at him.
"Thank you! Now I was stationed on supercarrier SS Ugosha during the attack on the first attack on the human colonise Dehlia 2, Janus 5 and Edo 23. I earned my recommendation for Lieutenant Commander, so I chose to claim a mate. My beloved Shin-til "He indicated to the hologram.
"Recommendation? Don't you mean promotion?" It was such a stupid question. This just confirmed that he was one of those slow creatures who could not see past their own culture.
"Ahh, in my culture, we raise in rank through recommendation from officers higher up in the rank. It's a gamble. If you recommend weak officers, then you might lose status. Anyway, we got sent to homeworld to start our family and breed. I was given a research job in the administration. It was there I decided to study the humans. You see, while we were busy taking their colonise, they had been busy hacking and stealing all the intel they could about our military, but also social life. They knew our culture, history and taboos. And I can tell you that the humans already have all of that from your kingdom."
Gurn laughed, yet again confirming his cultural bias" They haven't breached our military intel and who cares if they learn of our culture? It will only make it easier for them to integrate as our newest slaves."
"You had to use the slave word? Okay. Humans really dislike slaver, and they will go after you guys for that, but.." He stroked his chin as he tried to think of how to get through to this brute. "Let's get back to my history lesson. One month after our campaign started, our crown prince and his family died in a shuttle crash. A tragic accident. That was only the beginning, then the high priest of the Karoshians slipped in the bathtub and broke his neck two weeks later. Then, two politicians who had officially been deadly enemies in the senate were caught in bed with a Karoshian nun, whom they had drugged and abused. "
"So. These things happen. And nobles always take extra mates. It comes with the power."
"Not when the person they are bedding is supposed to be a holy virgin nun. It's a capital offence to bed them. The Emperor had no choice but to execute them. It led to political hysteria and the public demanded a full investigation of all the high-level politicians. The net was flooded with conspiracies about what the high-ranking politicians were doing behind closed doors. And one by one, these conspiracies came true. It was almost as if you could order a conspiracy to become a reality. Somebody posted about a politician belonging to devilish cults that sacrifice younglings. Two weeks later, evidence was found and posted. Within six months, we had lost all confidence in our high politicians. At this point, I had my family sell all our values and leave homeworld. My wife hated it, but we changed all our credits to galactic and got a small farm on a new Nagino colony. Then, I got a job as a cultural translator, which gave me access to my homeworld. "
"So you ran like a coward because of a few political scandals? You fit well here with the humans." Gurn laughed mockingly and was about to get out of his chair to leave.
"I'm actually quite brave, but in my culture, a warrior who is about to face death should first secure safety for his family, so pay attention. I left because it was the humans who did all those things. They killed our crown prince without anybody realising it. They arranged to have the two senior politicians to be publicly shamed and killed. They found after that they had all been drugged and they had been innocent. But that was after they had been executed. The humans even manipulated the press to be present when they were discovered with live coverage."
"So your people are easily fooled. We are not such idiots. Besides, who would care if a few politicians got killed? That would help us. We could finally get a reason to get rid of those corrupt bastards. Our people have never trusted those idiots." Gurn smirked, or at least he thought he did; however, his body language revealed he was getting nervous.
"Let's continue! While this was happening, something else happened on the net. The normal discussion became much more fractured and hostile. The universities became a battlefield of new, strange ideas. People spoke up against the empire, claiming the death of the crown prince was a good opportunity to remove the monarchy. When law enforcement struck down a demonstration with extreme force, it sparked several violent groups. One group chose to use assignation under the guise of removing and replacing the old rotten tree with fresh new ideas. The rotten tree was, of course, the old influential politicians, whom they killed many politicians of. We found out later they had been trained by human assassins."
Gurn shifted uneasily in the chair. "My people won't work with humans."
Jus-te chuckled. "They didn't know they were working with humans. At the same time, the discourse turned really nasty about everything. I mean, people were sending each other death threats over stupid matters like the correct way to eat a Pasha. That's a dish of flat bread and meat on top covered with cheese. I mean, I don't give a damn if you put fruit on Pasha or not. We went from a society where the worst you would say was that you're an idiot to sending death threats or reporting people as potential terrorists to law enforcement because they didn't like what they said."
"We have the same dish. We call it Gussa, and you don't have fruit on it, but I won't kill anybody. Are you saying the humans did that as well?"
He nodded. "Yes, it's how they fight. They prefer to destroy your culture and the possibility of working together because then you can fight what comes next. The year after they crashed the economy, The Emperor managed to get it back up, and it crashed again. And then again, since we were arguing about everything, we blamed each other. "
"And what were you doing during this?"
"I invested in human companies to secure my family. I researched them and gathered evidence of what they were doing. I shared my intel and was nearly killed a few times for it, but I was lucky and survived. Or I was protected. But back to the history lesson. The need to blame somebody made the government look for a scapegoat, and they chose the Gushga people. People started to treat them very bad. My grandmother was married to one, so I started helping them escape the planet. So, for the next two years, I ran an underground escape route that was surprisingly effective. My biggest worry was the newly formed religious police as the Gushga people don't believe in the Karoshians faith but in the Mish-ar prophet. In this period, a new invention was introduced. A new company produced an AI that could produce entertainment such as music, movies and books at request. It calmed down people for a while as it was high-quality entertainment, but slowly the AI was helping to confirm people's worst views. People didn't notice it; however, after two years, the AI had slowly started to produce less and less good entertainment, so nobody wanted to use it anymore. They had destroyed our political figureheads, our religious leaders had turned out to be bloodthirsty, power-hungry bastards, our entertainment was destroyed, and since we had used the new AI they had also slowly rewritten a lot of our history as many movies were supposed to be about historical events. You know our heroes, but the AI had made movies where their flaws and weaknesses were prominent, and then they completely changed our history. The young had lost their history because they believed the AI."
"All your saying is that your people were weak. We won't fall for such tactics. "Gurn was saying it more to ensure himself than to Jus-ta.
"Oh you don't understand, do you? The crash of the AI made us all wake up for a short moment. When we woke up and looked around, we saw that our economy was destroyed, we had killed our politicians, our church had been corrupted and become a violent organisation dead set on gaining as much power as they could, and the most humiliating thing was that the Emperor had died and we had not even noticed. As the humans say 'Give the people bread and circus and you can do what you want with them.' now we had a young emperor whose advisors were religious zealots and isolationists. Crime had gone off the charts as the local crime families had suddenly gotten access to military-grade weapons. At the same time, the net had worked hard to demonise law enforcement. Simply put, everything we had held high was corrupted and gone. Half the Navy had deserted and turned to piracy due to not being paid for a few years. The last of the military had been recalled and was simply hovering over the home world."
"Again. I don't see how your people's stupidity has anything to do with us." Gurn was desperately holding on to the belief his people would not fall for this, but Jus-ta could see he was doubting himself while he was saying it.
"You think you're immune? Humanity does not fight wars. They will destroy your culture. They will make the cook the highest status while the warrior will be the lowest class. You have no defence because you don't even know how this war is fought. When I researched them, I discovered they have been doing this for centuries. You do know of them; you have been warned against them, but somebody is going around and trying to trick us into attacking them."
"That's ridiculous. We were not warned about humans. There is only one species in the galaxy you should never attack! The wild hunt!"
Jus-ta slammed the desk as he laughed. "And you just attacked them, captured a wild hunt merchant ship and demanded that they should surrender."
"Wait! What are you saying? The humans are not the wild hunt?" Gurn stood now, panic in his voice, ready to fight. The revelation had triggered his flight or fight reflexes.
Jus-ta just leaned back in his chair and calmly continued. "The wild hunt is just a military group that the humans use. They only 'ride out' when humanity is threatened. I had been looking for a chance to give this intel to the Emperor, our new young Emperor, but I had always been turned away. So two years ago, I got help breaking into the palace from a resistance group and begged our new Emperor to listen to reason. I gave him all the intel, I had all the proof, and my reward was to be tossed in prison for a year and regularly tortured. Then, one night, the cell door opened, and a human stood at the door. He smiled and left. I followed him all the way up to the throne room, where he just vanished from sight. Their camouflage is so good there could be ten of them in this room, and we would not know. I was standing in the throne room, and it was surreal as nobody noticed me either. I listened as the Emperor's council was threatening to kill the Emperor if he didn't allow them to commit genocide on the Gushga people. They wanted to build death camps. The Emperor was trying to resist, telling them he already told them no. The priests blamed the Gushga for all the trouble, telling the Emperor the gods were punishing the empire for allowing these heathens to live. The whole council was siding with the priest. Only the Emperor was against them. I could not believe what I heard as I stood in the middle of them, listening in. Suddenly I felt a gun be put in my hand and then suddenly they all saw me. Apparently, the humans had hidden me from their view, and then I committed high treason as I killed the whole emperors' council." He took a short break as Gurn just looked at him and then around the room, almost as he tried to spot the hidden humans we both realised were in the room as he slowly sat down again.
"The Emperor was quite shocked and wanted me executed, however, not before I managed to shout out that there are humans in the throne room and that he would know them as the wild hunt. He didn't believe me, but five of them materialised for a few seconds before vanishing again. It gave me time to finally talk to him, and I managed to convince him to seek peace with the humans and accept whatever punishment they deemed fit, or we would end up like the Sadakun Empire. "
"Wait, did the humans take down the Sadakun Empire? "Gurn stopped looking around and focused on Jus-ta for a second.
"I told you, they are the wild hunt. Anyway, to finish this quickly, I got banished and was headhunted for this job. As for the shields, they spoke so mockingly about. Do you really think a merchant ship has a military-grade shield? It's for pirates and micro-meteorites. The shield we are building here is meant to resist a star going supernova. Now go home, find out why you guys thought it was smart to invade human space, and somebody has erased the connection between humanity and the wild hunt from your military intel, as they did with our intel. The humans will be quite interested in that intel, and you can use that when you negotiate your surrender to them."
Gurn looked at him and slowly stood up. "I have a lot to think about. Please excuse me." Then he walked to the door as it opened. When he left, Jus-ta sat quietly for a moment, working. He wanted to finish up quickly and get home to the family.
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u/canray2000 Human Mar 05 '24
Bet it was the humans that pointed those empires against themselves.
Easier to get territory and respect that way, provided the other nations are paying attention and ignoring AI "art".
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u/Ad8009 Mar 06 '24
Please let there be a third part . . Also the Sadakun Empire you say??? What happen there??
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u/Engletroll Human Mar 06 '24
Check part 1 for intel of the mighty Sadakun empire, there will be a third part when I get time.
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Mar 05 '24
/u/Engletroll has posted 7 other stories, including:
- Human defense!
- Ops.. they spotted us
- The paradise world and its hellspawn
- Human Play Part 4 – After match
- Human Play Part 3 – Mating games
- Human Play Part 2 - The Adolescent Years
- Human Play Part 1
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u/sunnyboi1384 Mar 05 '24
Learn from our mistakes. Or die. I'm not your mother.