And now, the rest of the story.
Senator Cooper, Honor and Order on your house,You asked me, in our last discussion, what it was like to be the one responsible for bringing Humanity into the Hierarchy, the one chosen to pay our blood debt to Drake McDougal’s bloodkin and kind. At the time, I could not answer you properly, today, I intend to do so. First, before I explain further, I wish to impress onto you something we have spoken about before, that my kind, the species you know as the Drac, consider “altruism” to be one of the most alien, and fascinating, of concepts. Until we brought Humanity into full citizenship with the Hierarchy, we did not have a word for it, the closest word to it is not translatable into your language, and holds more similarity to that of “martyrdom” as I understand the concept.This rose out of what it is to be Drac. Each of us, each and every one of us, sees ourselves, and those directly related to us, as more important than all else. It is instinctual, and a distrust of all those not directly related to us is inherent and nearly overpowering to my kind. It is why we have always distanced ourselves from other species except in the enforcement of the Pax Draconia as Humanity chose to call it (and indeed, the Drac Hierarchy does maintain many similarities with the pre-industrial empire your kind derived the name from). We nearly extinguished ourselves following our own industrial revolution, bloodline turned on bloodline. Further, we used our technology to eradicate every species on the planet that posed even the slightest threat to us. Our xenophobia and clannishness nearly cost our entire world it’s biosphere. When we finally realized what had happened, and that we were facing extinction if we did not change our ways, we established the Hierarchy, and a strict set of castes, duties, and rules of honor.This, is where Drake McDougal comes into it. He was not conscripted or caste bound to save others or protect them, he sacrificed himself, when it was not his duty, when he had not been asked to do so, with equipment he knew would mean his own death or permanent harm. You must understand, this was practically unprecedented. Only four other times in the history of the Hierarchy following first contact has such a thing occurred. Almost every other species that has evolved has required similarly, brutal or extreme methods as my species’ in order to control these tendencies towards clannism and xenophobia. The Grt’zla have a single hive mind, enforced by non-technological ansible implants, preventing them from seeing one another as separate individuals. The Vandals, less effectively, electronically and chemically subdue their instincts through injects and invasive surgery, controlling themselves through pure logic. Our kind uses a strict moral code and cultural “brainwashing” I think one of your journalists once called it.Either way, it took us completely by surprise. Drake McDougal paid everything simply to ensure that others lived, gave up his own life for that, without a debt needing to be paid, without a duty to be fulfilled. That this was something “routine” for your species still makes my head ache, and it explains so much at the same time. The Hierarchy, up to that point, saw you as we saw almost every other species that has not fully brought itself under control against these urges. Piracy, smuggling, criminality, intraspecies murder, rape, and anti-social activities. We thought it a wonder, when we made first contact with your kind and brought you into the Pax, that you had not driven yourselves to extinction. We only gave you access to our trade and harvesting systems such as Tau Ceti because your technology at the time was frankly laughable. Fusion, please. We were past it by the time we left our solar system, it still boggles the mind how your kind continued to propel ships by fusion rocket and laser light even after unlocking spatial jump technology. We simply brought you in out of tradition, and truthfully, to keep you from accidentally screwing up anything actually important.Then this happens. An uneducated, undisciplined, APE saved one of ours, and then we never got so much as a single request for recompense for his death from your kind. It was beyond imagining. The Senate was tearing at their mandibles trying to understand why no blood payment had been asked for. It took them three months to come to the conclusion that it had been a proper martyring, and act of pure selflessness. I can tell you, that made waves throughout the Hierarchy. A bunch of apes, little better than animals, completely undisciplined by any genetic or artificial means, and yet they had done something completely selfless. One of my kind MIGHT do such a thing, our code encourages it in fact, but does not demand such rises beyond duty, and to actually do so is rare in the extreme, and all but unheard of towards another species.Then came the Vandals in their attacks on your system, and still there was debate in the Senate on how to repay the blood debt, something of that much weight had to be carefully considered. The fact that the issue was further muddied by the Internalists claiming that such an undisciplined, and obviously insane, species could not have understood what they had done, and that Drake McDougal had as likely done it out of some kind of mad fit of whim rather than actual martyrdom was still part on the table. It was not until the Vandals, in their decision to eradicate and enslave your kind for some imagined slight, entered your home world and captured three planets worth of orbital facilities that the Senate finally came to the decision that it was better to be safe than sorry.I was chosen, a young fleet commander, to be given the honor of repaying our blood debt. I still remember going over the vids of Drake McDougal’s sacrifice again and again, the images playing holographically in every chamber and room of the fleet as we prepared to launch, singing our war hymns in preparation for battle. Then we made the Jump, and that massive, red gas giant, Jupiter, covered the stars, and your pathetic little fleet stood against the war vessels of the Vandals. We opened fire immediately, there was to be no quarter asked for given. The Plutonium-Ion beams our ships were armed with did their terrible work, obliterating their fleet.There was never any question of who the victor would be, it was simply a matter of time. After all, we were not just repaying the debt, but protecting those who we owed the debt to, we might have been able to end the battle in half as much that span of time if we had not be redirecting our fire to lance down their projectiles before they struck your ships. Though, even knowing your kind better now, no, especially knowing your kind better now, I am just grateful you didn’t jump into the fray beyond laying down your own long range bombardment, that would have made things… much more difficult.When it ended, I had expected this to be routine. They’d know who I was talking about, surely this Drake McDougal was famous throughout their space, someone as selfless as he was. And then your communications officers didn’t know.I thought to myself: “Of course, such a horribly disorganized species, they probably haven’t heard, even now, they’re just Apes, do not grow angry, do not insult them for insulting the memory of Drake. Just ask for their commanding officer, surely, HE must know.”That was when your Admiral Tiberius spoke to me, and once again he didn’t know. I couldn’t comprehend what was being told to me, surely, it must just be a problem with translation, yes. Translation. That would explain it. I told the Translator to explain it fully, slowly, as he would to a hatchling. And then that one word.“Who?”That one word sent me over the edge. I thank the stars above that the translator system had been turned off, I was ready to demand that the fleet open fire on them, my officers might even have obeyed if they have been less level headed. “Surely” I thought, “This admiral is an idiot, or a monster. He either is so uninformed that he has never heard of the great hero Drake McDougal, or he is vile, and trying to deny that the sacrifice had ever been made.” That there could be any race so debase and chaotic as deny such heroism made my stomach roil, and it was only the intervention of my second in command that prevented me from turning our Pu.Ion projectors upon the human’s flag ship and purging it.I sat through the entire diplomatic meeting, through all the news stories. Awestruck. There was no way what I was watching was possible, it simply couldn’t be. They must be fabrications, or possibly all condensed from centuries upon centuries and centuries of selfless acts. If we went through my species entire history, we MIGHT be able to turn up as many as your species has routinely carried out, with barely a fifth of our population, over a period of 10 Sol-3 revolutions. It was mind boggling. The senate was sent into absolute chaos over it. It was inconceivable that a species without some form of strict organization could do such maddening things so routinely that it simply did not register as important enough to make them major historical figures. Our only choice of action was obvious.Humanity was made full members of the Hierarchy, we had to learn, perhaps glean some secret of your psychology we could apply to our own. We opened our libraries and our sciences to your species, and even then you astounded us with how you took only basic principles, and worked to master them, rather than taking our entire designs. That was nearly 70 Sol-3 revolutions ago, and still shakes me to my core that your kind do not consider this attribute at all special in your own kind, and are so confused when it is not displayed in others.That, Senator Cooper, is what it was like to be the one responsible for bringing Humanity into the Hierarchy, and allowing one such as yourself to join the Senate, and that is how I have felt ever since that day, and all because of one, single asteroid miner in a tug-craft, doing something that, to him, was nothing special, and I am convinced, he would never have asked for more than a verbal thank you, if the thought of being thanked had even entered his head.May All Your Debts Be Paid,High Admiral [Untranslatable into Terran Symbology] of the Hierarchy.
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