These are my stories.

I write short stories every now and again and post them here.

[thefalloutdiaries]

There is Something

There is something out there, in the dark. There is something that lurks out beyond the warm light of the stars in the cold reaches of the galaxy. It does not speak any known language, it does not trade or build great works. It simply drifts along in the vastness of the blackness that permeates the spaces between stars. If your ship encounters it, something will try to board it. If it succeeds, it will... change the crew. And the crew will return to their home port, flooding the bands with screams of truest, deepest terror. They will open fire with whatever weapons they have aboard, seeking to kill anything and everything they run across. They cannot be reasoned with, we don’t even know if they can hear us when we broadcast demands for them to cease fire, to prepare to be boarded, to quench their engines or be killed. So we kill these ships, and their crews, and every time we do we wonder what it is they saw. What happened to them? What could possibly have been done to them?

The answer, ultimately, is immaterial.

The light of faith had guttered like a candle in a cold wind in the centuries that elapsed since mankind slipped the surly bonds of earth. The blaze of faith that had once sent thousands to the afterlife and had kept millions more through trials that I cannot even conceive of, was just a low bank of embers. What need was there of faith out among the stars? Where humanity ruled supreme, where the only God was trade, the only hymn the hum of a ship’s engines.

But we had found our faith again. A common faith, a faith in mankind. A faith that taught that whatever tribulations were yet to come, whatever monsters that came crawling from the long dark, whatever disasters that would befall us, humanity would persevere. We would dig graves for the fallen, we would weep for our losses, and then we would shoulder our tools and go forth once more. Let the skies boil and the seas churn, let hideous things come to kill us from the black, we would not fail, and we would not falter. The aging Pontifex, his beard grey flecked with white, stood at the door to his cathedral and proclaimed a Crusade. A Holy War, a calling for men and women of all planets and all nations to set aside their differences, for there was a threat to humanity.

We answered the call. The Pontifex called, and we answered. It began as a trickle, a merchant captain who bid his crew with families go ashore and took those who remained with him. A pirate cruiser whose crew wished to die doing one thing right in a life of misdeeds. The crew of a battleship that all-but mutinied before they were given leave to come. Merchantmen purchased by collection plate. A thousand ships, from tiny little sub-light barges to massive fleet carriers and everything in-between. A thousand ships crewed by men and women of such courage and faith that I cannot but weep for it.

Humanity called, and we answered.

We don’t know what awaits us in the darkness. We don’t know what was found out there, that drove those crews to fratricide. We don’t know if we will live or die. What we know is this one simple truth. Humanity will endure. So my crew, my beloved crew, light the engines. Make ready the ship to supercruise, and say one last blessing over the guns. We are the clenched fist of mankind, we are the instrument of humanity’s fury, we are the Crusade of Man, and we shall know no fear.

[thefalloutdiaries]

And the Heavens Wept

Gather around my children and you shall hear of the most terrible, most implacable, most improbable friends ever met by our people. They came from the third planet of a tiny system, surrounded by desolate space. Not one sentient species for hundreds of lightyears, and they managed to propel themselves into space.

We watched from afar as they developed slowly. We watched as they warred among themselves, brutal and savage. We watched as they rendered regions of their planet uninhabitable to themselves, a hardy species able to adapt to even the most hostile of environments. We watched as suddenly and without warning they united under four banners, the rest falling by the wayside. We watched as they expanded into what we had begun to use as a buffer zone, to allow these humans to burn themselves out in.

But they did not burn themselves out. Despite their warring among themselves. Harsh people. Humankind is a race of warriors, do not be fooled by the eloquence of their diplomats. In their own words, “All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means”. Their greatest artists and philosophers were born from blood and conflict. I had the privilege once to view a painting by one Pablo Picasso, entitled Guernica. It was a savage piece, with not a drop of color. It showed the horrors of war, and the irony of it all was that the painting hung in the office of one of humankind’s generals.

It was sudden, when they burst from the containment zone. When they realized they were not alone. And we, with heavy hearts, prepared to fight them bitterly and to the last. Imagine then, our surprise when humanity embraced us among the stars as long lost brothers. They were overjoyed to discover they were not alone in the darkness. Despite their brutal and warlike culture, despite their glorification of death and violence, their people do not seek out combat. An ancient general of theirs once put it thusly “Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace”.

For centuries humanity worked to better itself. They unified under a single Interstellar Empire, the Empire of Man, the Human Empire, however you called it. They enjoyed art and music. They became leisurely at home, exploratory in the field. Their weapons of war were long gone, beaten into plowshares as they say. Humanity was finally at peace. There was no conflict among them, a few border skirmishes for certain, and they kept a small standing military, but nothing more than that. We considered them domesticated.

At first we were surprised at their transformation, then overjoyed. We welcomed them into the fold of the cosmos, embraced them as they would embrace us. We thought we knew humanity then, that we had seen them at their best and their worst. We were wrong, so very wrong. We did not truly understand humanity until the Texar-Hakara came into the void between the stars.

Seemingly more brutal, more bloodthirsty than even the humans, they swept into our region of space like conquerors. They smashed whatever feeble resistance the Yungling managed to put up, took their planets, enslaved the survivors, and pressed on. The Junti were next, utterly destroyed. The four great races left, ourselves, the Itaxa, the Kukrama, and the Illnaa, banded together to try and stop them. In our arrogance, we did not include the humans in our pact. Too few in number, too weak in frame, too backwards in technology we thought.

The Texar-Hakara hit our borders like the great wave that sweeps life from the beach. We hardened our hearts and prepared for the worst. Seeming without pause they crushed our border defenses. They obliterated the first fleets we sent to them. The Itaxa fell to the Texar-Hakara, enslaved, killed, scattered to the corners of the galaxy. Then the humans sent us an offer, a request really. They asked to fight alongside us.

Bemused, we accepted. What else could we do? Deny them the right to fight with us for their very survival? We thought to assign them as rearguards, to ferry our people to safety after our fleets fell. We thought wrong.

Humanity swept into the stars with a fury unmatched by any other. Their fleets were not the heaviest. Their guns not the most accurate. Their soldiers however. Their sailors. Their warriors were unmatched by any others in the cosmos. I remember the first battle in which the humans fought the Texar-Hakara like it was but a single solar cycle ago. Our forces were on the brink of breaking and fleeing. Our ships were gutted ruins. Our fighters exhausted and out of missiles. Then humanity fell upon the flank of the enemy, and the full force of the Human Empire was unleashed in a single moment of utter fury. Landing craft spat across the distance in an instant, slamming into enemy hulls and disgorging humanity’s greatest weapon, their Marines. In close combat humanity is unstoppable, and so they took the vast distances of space combat out of the equation.

Their ships belched fire and plasma. Lasers crossed the vast distances in the blink of an eye. Half the Texar-Hakaran fleet was obliterated in minutes. The other half turned to face this new enemy, only to be wracked by internal explosions as the Marines did their work. Their greatest ships turned on the rest of the fleet, a handful of humans holding the bridge against waves of enemy attackers to turn the tide of battle.

The Interstellar War came to a screeching turnaround. The advance of the Texar-Hakara halted, like it had hit an immovable wall. In many ways that is what humanity is, an immovable, implacable wall. Then, with the ferocity humanity is alone capable of, they routed the Texar-Hakara. Not from that lone battle. They pushed them out of Itaxa space, liberating the slaves. The space of the Junti and the Yungling was swept clear of invaders. Then the Texar-Hakara committed the gravest of sins in humanity’s eyes. They warped a fleet to Earth, jewel of humanity’s empire. They burned that blue and green world. They destroyed it, and the trillion people it housed.

Humanity is a forgiving race my children. Even their most terrible of wars have resulted in lasting friendships between nations. When they left millions dead and broken on the muddly fields of their world, they rebuilt the aggressors. They raised them from the mud, dusted them off, and welcomed them back into the fold. But there is one thing that humanity cannot, will not, tolerate. It is abhorrent to them my children. To strike at their home, to strike where they raise their young ones. Where they leave their mates and non combatants. To strike there is to raise the ire of the human race, truly.

Humanity raged. Their attempts at obtaining the surrender of the Texar-Hakara halted. The war turned from a righteous war of liberation to a furious and hateful war of retribution. We begged the humans to stop, to leave what few planets the Texar-Hakara had alone. Our pleas went unanswered for months, until a single human ambassador came to us. His face was cold and emotionless. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that the Texar-Hakara had doomed themselves and that any trying to aid them would suffer the same fate. Quietly we watched then, as humanity wiped the Texar-Hakara from the stars. The Texar-Hakara pleaded for mercy. They offered their unconditional surrender. They came to us and begged on bent knee for us to reign in the mad dogs we had unwittingly unleashed into the universe. Humanity had for so long repressed their warrior culture. Tried to become better. Then we had given them back into the fires of war, and humanity had awakened it’s warrior past.

The Texar-Hakara ambassadors were taken from our halls by grim human Marines and thrust out airlocks. Finally there was but one planet left, and we came to the humans, we pointed to our own losses, our own dead friends some of whom had lived for longer than humanity had been among the stars, and we begged the humans not to take the last of the Texar-Hakara’s lives.

I watched, children, I watched as the Texar-Hakara’s world burned. As humanity left but one of their planets alive, a simple backwater colony of no more than ten million. Ten million, out of the trillions. Then the leader of the human military turned to me, and with no emotion in his voice, told me that humanity accepted the unconditional surrender of the Texar-Hakara, and walked off the bridge of my ship.

My children, the lesson here is that a warrior past is never truly gone. Only buried, mayhaps even wiped from living memory. But gone? Never. Humanity showed us that.

[noheadcanons-juststories]

I remember seeing this on Pinterest back in 2017, and was like “I gotta find this story”. It wasn’t until I was watching P.M. Seymour’s “Humans Are Space Orcs” videos (during late-night/early-morning hours) that I realized the stories he read, your stories specifically, were similar to this. “This has to be the place,” I thought and I’m happy I found you and the original post.

[noheadcanons-juststories]

Turns out it was not Impala who wrote this particular story, oops, lol. I need to slow down and read. But still happy to find this story again @thefalloutdiaries

[thefalloutdiaries]

Glad you liked it!

[whitey-the-blue-eyed-devil]

And the Heavens Wept

Gather around my children and you shall hear of the most terrible, most implacable, most improbable friends ever met by our people. They came from the third planet of a tiny system, surrounded by...

Damn it. I just re-read a story I hadn’t read for a while and realized it tremendously influence my own stories. I’m sorry @thefalloutdiaries for being a dirty, dirty plagiarizer.

[thefalloutdiaries]

That's alright, I'll just wait till you get famous and sue for some of those sweet sweet royalties

[pipistrellus]

STILL ON PATROL

I learned something new and horrifying today which is… that… no submarine is ever considered “lost” … there is apparently a tradition in the U.S. Navy that no submarine is ever lost. Those that go to sea and do not return are considered to be “still on patrol.”

?????

There is a monument about this along a canal near here its… the worst thing I have ever seen. it says “STILL ON PATROL” in huge letters and then goes on to specify exactly how many WWII submarine ghosts are STILL OUT THERE, ON PATROL (it is almost 2000 WWII submarine ghosts, ftr). Here is the text from it:

“U.S. Navy Submarines paid heavily for their success in WWII. A total of 374 officers and 3131 men are still on board these 52 U.S. submarines still on patrol.”

THANKS A LOT, U.S. NAVY, FOR HAVING THIS TOTALLY NORMAL AND NOT AT ALL HORRIFYING TRADITION, AND TELLING ALL OF US ABOUT IT. THANKS. THANK YOU

anyway now my mother and I cannot stop saying STILL ON PATROL to each other in ominous tones of voice

[tharook]

There’s definitely something ominous about that—the implication that, one day, they will return from patrol.

[thehoneybeewitch]

Actually, it’s rather sweet. I don’t know if this is common across the board, but my dad’s friend is a radio op for subs launched off the east coast, and he always is excited for Christmas, because they go through the list of SoP subs and hail them, wishing them a merry Christmas and telling them they’re remembered.

Imagine a country whose seamen never die, and whose submarines can’t be destroyed…because no ones sure if they exist or not.

[hardoncaulfield]

No but imagine. It’s Christmas. A black, rotting corridor in a forgotten submarine. The sound of dripping water echoes coldly through the hull. You can’t see very far down the corridor but then, a man appears, he’s running, in a panic, but his footsteps make no noise. The spectral seaman dashes around the corner and slips through a rusty wall. He finds himself at the back of a crowd of his cadaverous crew-mates. They part to let him through. He feels the weight of their hollow gaze as he reaches the coms station. Even after all these years a sickly green light glistens in the dark. The captain’s skeleton lays a sharp hand on his shoulder and nods at him encouragingly, the light sliding over the bones of his skull. The ghost of the seaman steadies himself and slips his fingers into the dials of the radio, possessing it. It wails and screeches. A bombardment of static. And then silence. The deathly crew mates look at each other with worry, with sadness; could this be the year where there is no voice in the dark? No memory of home? The phantasm of the sailor pushes his hand deeper into the workings of the radio, the signal clears, and then a strong voice, distant with the static but warm and kind, echoes from the darkness; “Merry Christmas boys, we’re all thinking of you here at home, have a good one.” A sepulchral tear wafts it’s way down the seaman’s face. The bony captain embraces him. The crew grin through rotten jaws, laughing silently in their joy. They haven’t forgotten us. They haven’t forgotten.

[beautifultoastdream-deactivated]

I am completely on board with this. It’s not horrifying, it’s heartwarming.

Personal story time: whenever I go to Field Museum’s Egypt exhibit, I stop by the plaque at the entrance to the underground rooms. It has an English translation of a prayer to feed the dead, and a list of all the names they know of the mummies on display there. I always recite the prayer and read aloud the list of names. They wanted to live forever, to always have their souls fed and their names spoken. How would they feel about being behind glass, among strangers? Every little thing you can do to give respect for the dead is warranted.

I love the idea of lost subs still being on patrol. Though if you really want something ominous, let me say that the superstitious part of me wonders: why are they still on patrol? If they haven’t been found, do they not consider their mission completed? What is it out there that they are protecting us from?

[amusewithaview]

@boromir-queries-sean

[emilysidhe]

 There’s been something in the water since we first learned to float on it.  Not marine life, although there’s more of that than we’ll ever know.  Not rocks and currents and sand bars and icebergs either, although they’ve all taken more than their share of human life.

But something deeper.  Something Other.  Something not natural.

Sailors have always been superstitious.

Not one of them described it right.

You don’t hear about it so much now that we don’t lose ships anymore, really, not like we did at the height of the sea trade when barely an inch of ocean floor didn’t bear some wreck or other.  And better ships and GPS and weather satellites have all played their part in that.

But we have protection now that we didn’t before.  They don’t interfere with war and battle, even on behalf of what used to be their country, or with rocks and weather and human stupidity.  Those are concerns for the living.

But the Other Things, the Things that shouldn’t be there - They can’t get to us now without a fight.  It’s a fight They haven’t won in a very long time.

As long as we remember them, as long as we call out to them - not very often, just once a year will do - they will keep protecting us from the Things that go bump in the deep.

More than fifty submarines, Still On Patrol.

[thefalloutdiaries]

Around this time of April, 1943, the USS Pickerel and Grenadier went missing. 1944, the Gudgeon. 1945, the USS Snook.  Godspeed gentlemen.

[thefalloutdiaries]

Howdy Folks

Okay so first I don’t have a new sci-fi story for you. Sorry guys but I’ve been hellishly busy lately and haven’t had much time to devote to writing for pleasure. Writing for classes yes. Pleasure, not so much.

However just under a month ago I polished up a bit of fan-fiction (I know, I know) that I’d written some months before that. So if you’d like to read more of my writing, if not the kind of thing I usually post, then I thought I’d offer up this for your pleasure.

Harry Potter and the Department of Magical Affairs - What if JK Rowling wrote the American Wizarding Community like a bunch of competent bureaucrats adherent to things like the Constitution and Rule of Law. 

It’s mostly me late-night drunk-writing and watching shows like Blue Bloods.

Thanks for following me everyone.

[thefalloutdiaries]

Alright so it hasn’t been a week

At the end of my “omg 100 followers” post I said I’d try and have a new story out in a week. Unfortunately the writing bug has since left me. This doesn’t mean there won’t be any new content ever on my tumblr but it does mean it’ll probably be more than a week. Or ten. I don’t know. 

I’m really bad at the whole “making new stories” thing. 

Anyway I thought you all deserved an update. Have a great rest of the summer everyone!

[thefalloutdiaries]

100 Followers!

Holy crap! 100! What? Awesome! 

Thank you all so much for your kind words, your reblogs, your likes, and your support. It means the world to me, and I’m so happy to have you all as my readers. 

I’ll probably have a new story up in the next week or so. I say probably because as per usual I’m struggling with writers block. So if you happen to have a concept you want me to explore, or something please feel free to let me know!

Love and kisses,

TFD

[arcticfoxbear]

Humans Are Weird

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving. 

[arafaelkestra]

To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.

[radioactivepeasant]

Earth being Space Australia Words cannot express how much I love these posts

[crazy-pages]

Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”

Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”

Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”

Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.” 

Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”

Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”

Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”

Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.” 

Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.” 

[val-ritz]

“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?” “Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.” “What, the molten rock?” “Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–” “You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?” “Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”

[wuestenratte]

Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.

[networkentertainment-offici-blog]

“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?” 

“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”

“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”

“… well, actually…”

“… what?”

“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”

“…”

“…”

“…what?”

“we sent-”

“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”

“y-yeah”

“and they didn’t… die?”

“Well the first few did”

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”

[arcticfoxbear]

My new favorite Humans are Weird quote

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”

aka The History of Russia

aka Arctic Exploration

aka The History of Alaska

[unicornempire]

Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:

1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.

2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)

3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.

4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)

5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.

[reformed-roark]

“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?” “Those worthless rocks? Yeah.” “80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”

[insane-male-alphabeticalsymbol]

This would be an interesting read if this was a book.

Like, an alien invasion is about to start and the book is a chronicle of how the aliens couldn’t handle both humans in general and the range of environments and ended up being destroyed through the eyes of one of the aliens.

Like a caption from the book would be something like

“So we sent a recon team to this place called Russia, but all we’ve heard back thus far is about the temperatures, giant monsters with fur the humans call “Bears”, and that once again, we have been reminded of how heavily well armed almost ever human settlement is.

Thus far we have lost more than a good chunk of our forces through experiments gone wrong, unsuccessful fire fights, and above all else, the humans seem to be more worried about these strange variation of their species calling themselves “Clowns”.

I don’t know what a Clown is, but sounds as if it is the dominant faction of this planet, and considering we only just found out humans practically poison themselves with this thing called beer and only get stronger and more violent, I don’t ever want to encounter such a being.

I believe this invasion was a mistake.“

[elidyce]

I’ve been reading a bunch of these and all I can think about now is aliens finding out about our insane ability to walk away from accidents.

“Human Colony SDO435**, this is Gxanimi survey vessel 3489. We regret that we must inform you that the wreckage of your ship ‘Gecko Flyer’ has just been detected on planet F56=K=. We offer expressions of sympathy for this catastrophe.”

“Shit, thanks for telling us, we’ll be right there.”

“Why?”

“To find our people, of course.”

“… you wish to retrieve the corpses for your traditional death rituals, of course, we understand. We have sent the coordinates.”

“What do you mean, bodies? No survivors at all? There must be some.”

“Official mouthpiece of Human Colony SDO435**, the ship has crashed. It has impacted the planet’s surface at speed. Moreover, this might have happened as much as five vek ago. We do not understand why you speak of ‘survivors’.”

“Oh, there’ll be survivors. There always are.”

“(closes hyperspace voicelink) How sad that they are unable to accept the reality of their loss.”

*

“Hey, Gxanimi survey vessel 3489, thanks for letting us know about the Gecko Flyer. More than half the crew made it!”

“Made what?”

“They survived! A couple of lost limbs and so on, but they’ll be fine.”

“… but that vessel was destroyed! Images have been examined!”

“Oh, well, everyone in the fore-below compartment was crushed, obviously, but the others made it out.”

“… but the crash was vek ago! Excuse we… at least eighty of your ‘days’! How could they survive without a ship? Without shelter and supplies?”

“Well, the wreckage gave them some shelter, and of course the emergency supplies kept them going until they could start growing stuff. It’s actually a nice little planet, they said. Quite a lot of edible flora and fauna. T-shirt weather, in summer, too.”

“What is… t-shirt weather?”

“Oh, you know, when it’s comfortable to go around with only modesty covering over the epidermis. Exposed limbs.”

“That planet is so cold that even water solidifies in its atmosphere!”

“Well, in winter, obviously. But we like that. Listen, our people have been raising crops down there, and that’s usually how we rule a planet as ‘colonized’…. is anyone else using it, or can we call it?”

“Er… we have claimed the warmer planets in the system, but we believe we could come to some arrangement.”

*

It was really nice, the humans thought, how carefully most of the aliens kept an eye out for downed ships after that, once they found out that humans tended to survive anything less than explosive decompression or… well, explosions generally. They’d immediately inform the nearest outpost of a wreck’s location, or even ship survivors back themselves. It was very thoughtful.

They didn’t find out until a long time later that the Gxanimi had put out the word to every species they were in contact with. It was vital that everyone knew the things they had learned about humans after that first encounter.

1. Humans can literally walk away from an impact that renders a space-worthy hull so much scrap and would have actually liquefied a Gxanimi.

2. Humans will eat just about anything not immediately fatal to them - including, in extremis, the corpses of their dead crewmates. In fact, most human vessels keep a list of those willing to be eaten and those whose socio-religious scruples forbid it. They have a ridiculously high tolerance for dangerous substances, and if they can breathe on a planet they can probably eat something on it too. They also have something they call the ‘Watney Protocol’, which requires them to carry live soil samples, seeds, and simple tools that will allow them to start farming their own native foodstuffs on any remotely habitable planet immediately in the event of an accident.

3. Once they’ve farmed a planet, they bond with it. They’ll be polite, but it’ll take significant effort to get rid of them even so.

Conclusion: If a human ship crashes on a planet you like and want to keep, get other humans to come and get them immediately. Remove them yourself if you have to. Even the worst crash can result in a thriving colony in a few vek.

And don’t, for the love of gravitational regularity, try to solve that problem by killing off the survivors. Just don’t. It won’t work and it just makes all the rest of them mad.

[thefalloutdiaries]

BUT WHAT ABOUT BOOZE?

“So, what exactly do you do for fun in your cities?”

“Oh there’s lots of things to do! People go dancing, they join sports teams, they go out to bars and drink, they go see plays and movies, join clubs for all sorts of activities.”

“What are, bars?”

“Well they’re kinda like social clubs where people go get drunk in a communal atmosphere.”

“What is, drunk?”

“You guys don’t drink? Well, on Earth we sometimes ferment plans and drink the result, it’s called alcohol.”

“Your species consumes ethanol? Isn’t that a primitive fuel source?”

“Well yeah.”

“You consume a toxic substance, with no adverse effects?”

“I wouldn’t say that, I mean we lose some motor control, some social inhibitors. Sometimes we get all emotional. My buddy Jim, whenever he drinks too much he gets all weepy over his ex Sarah. If he keeps drinking he ends up picking a fight with someone and then it’s just a whole thing.”

“You can consume ethanol with only minor side effects? That’s incredible!”

“Well I wouldn’t say that. Prolonged usage can result in damage to the liver and stomach, increased likelihood of cancer, but we try to avoid that.”

“... your species deliberately consumes a toxic substance, with toxic effect, for fun.”

“Well when you put it that way it doesn’t sound nearly as fun.”

[thefalloutdiaries]

And the Heavens Wept

Gather around my children and you shall hear of the most terrible, most implacable, most improbable friends ever met by our people. They came from the third planet of a tiny system, surrounded by desolate space. Not one sentient species for hundreds of lightyears, and they managed to propel themselves into space.

We watched from afar as they developed slowly. We watched as they warred among themselves, brutal and savage. We watched as they rendered regions of their planet uninhabitable to themselves, a hardy species able to adapt to even the most hostile of environments. We watched as suddenly and without warning they united under four banners, the rest falling by the wayside. We watched as they expanded into what we had begun to use as a buffer zone, to allow these humans to burn themselves out in.

But they did not burn themselves out. Despite their warring among themselves. Harsh people. Humankind is a race of warriors, do not be fooled by the eloquence of their diplomats. In their own words, “All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means”. Their greatest artists and philosophers were born from blood and conflict. I had the privilege once to view a painting by one Pablo Picasso, entitled Guernica. It was a savage piece, with not a drop of color. It showed the horrors of war, and the irony of it all was that the painting hung in the office of one of humankind’s generals.

It was sudden, when they burst from the containment zone. When they realized they were not alone. And we, with heavy hearts, prepared to fight them bitterly and to the last. Imagine then, our surprise when humanity embraced us among the stars as long lost brothers. They were overjoyed to discover they were not alone in the darkness. Despite their brutal and warlike culture, despite their glorification of death and violence, their people do not seek out combat. An ancient general of theirs once put it thusly “Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace”.

For centuries humanity worked to better itself. They unified under a single Interstellar Empire, the Empire of Man, the Human Empire, however you called it. They enjoyed art and music. They became leisurely at home, exploratory in the field. Their weapons of war were long gone, beaten into plowshares as they say. Humanity was finally at peace. There was no conflict among them, a few border skirmishes for certain, and they kept a small standing military, but nothing more than that. We considered them domesticated.

At first we were surprised at their transformation, then overjoyed. We welcomed them into the fold of the cosmos, embraced them as they would embrace us. We thought we knew humanity then, that we had seen them at their best and their worst. We were wrong, so very wrong. We did not truly understand humanity until the Texar-Hakara came into the void between the stars.

Seemingly more brutal, more bloodthirsty than even the humans, they swept into our region of space like conquerors. They smashed whatever feeble resistance the Yungling managed to put up, took their planets, enslaved the survivors, and pressed on. The Junti were next, utterly destroyed. The four great races left, ourselves, the Itaxa, the Kukrama, and the Illnaa, banded together to try and stop them. In our arrogance, we did not include the humans in our pact. Too few in number, too weak in frame, too backwards in technology we thought.

The Texar-Hakara hit our borders like the great wave that sweeps life from the beach. We hardened our hearts and prepared for the worst. Seeming without pause they crushed our border defenses. They obliterated the first fleets we sent to them. The Itaxa fell to the Texar-Hakara, enslaved, killed, scattered to the corners of the galaxy. Then the humans sent us an offer, a request really. They asked to fight alongside us.

Bemused, we accepted. What else could we do? Deny them the right to fight with us for their very survival? We thought to assign them as rearguards, to ferry our people to safety after our fleets fell. We thought wrong.

Humanity swept into the stars with a fury unmatched by any other. Their fleets were not the heaviest. Their guns not the most accurate. Their soldiers however. Their sailors. Their warriors were unmatched by any others in the cosmos. I remember the first battle in which the humans fought the Texar-Hakara like it was but a single solar cycle ago. Our forces were on the brink of breaking and fleeing. Our ships were gutted ruins. Our fighters exhausted and out of missiles. Then humanity fell upon the flank of the enemy, and the full force of the Human Empire was unleashed in a single moment of utter fury. Landing craft spat across the distance in an instant, slamming into enemy hulls and disgorging humanity’s greatest weapon, their Marines. In close combat humanity is unstoppable, and so they took the vast distances of space combat out of the equation.

Their ships belched fire and plasma. Lasers crossed the vast distances in the blink of an eye. Half the Texar-Hakaran fleet was obliterated in minutes. The other half turned to face this new enemy, only to be wracked by internal explosions as the Marines did their work. Their greatest ships turned on the rest of the fleet, a handful of humans holding the bridge against waves of enemy attackers to turn the tide of battle.

The Interstellar War came to a screeching turnaround. The advance of the Texar-Hakara halted, like it had hit an immovable wall. In many ways that is what humanity is, an immovable, implacable wall. Then, with the ferocity humanity is alone capable of, they routed the Texar-Hakara. Not from that lone battle. They pushed them out of Itaxa space, liberating the slaves. The space of the Junti and the Yungling was swept clear of invaders. Then the Texar-Hakara committed the gravest of sins in humanity’s eyes. They warped a fleet to Earth, jewel of humanity’s empire. They burned that blue and green world. They destroyed it, and the trillion people it housed.

Humanity is a forgiving race my children. Even their most terrible of wars have resulted in lasting friendships between nations. When they left millions dead and broken on the muddly fields of their world, they rebuilt the aggressors. They raised them from the mud, dusted them off, and welcomed them back into the fold. But there is one thing that humanity cannot, will not, tolerate. It is abhorrent to them my children. To strike at their home, to strike where they raise their young ones. Where they leave their mates and non combatants. To strike there is to raise the ire of the human race, truly.

Humanity raged. Their attempts at obtaining the surrender of the Texar-Hakara halted. The war turned from a righteous war of liberation to a furious and hateful war of retribution. We begged the humans to stop, to leave what few planets the Texar-Hakara had alone. Our pleas went unanswered for months, until a single human ambassador came to us. His face was cold and emotionless. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that the Texar-Hakara had doomed themselves and that any trying to aid them would suffer the same fate. Quietly we watched then, as humanity wiped the Texar-Hakara from the stars. The Texar-Hakara pleaded for mercy. They offered their unconditional surrender. They came to us and begged on bent knee for us to reign in the mad dogs we had unwittingly unleashed into the universe. Humanity had for so long repressed their warrior culture. Tried to become better. Then we had given them back into the fires of war, and humanity had awakened it’s warrior past.

The Texar-Hakara ambassadors were taken from our halls by grim human Marines and thrust out airlocks. Finally there was but one planet left, and we came to the humans, we pointed to our own losses, our own dead friends some of whom had lived for longer than humanity had been among the stars, and we begged the humans not to take the last of the Texar-Hakara’s lives.

I watched, children, I watched as the Texar-Hakara’s world burned. As humanity left but one of their planets alive, a simple backwater colony of no more than ten million. Ten million, out of the trillions. Then the leader of the human military turned to me, and with no emotion in his voice, told me that humanity accepted the unconditional surrender of the Texar-Hakara, and walked off the bridge of my ship.

My children, the lesson here is that a warrior past is never truly gone. Only buried, mayhaps even wiped from living memory. But gone? Never. Humanity showed us that.

[the-blue-butterfly-effect]

(I’ll remove this if you don’t like it) Finally, after years of cowering in fear of the carnage the humans left behind our leader breached the question of : why? “Humanity could have stopped anytime after that, why did you not? They were ready to surrender halfway through, but you kept going. Why?” And a soldier responded,

“They were willing to take our home away from us. Our families, our origins. That is not something you do if you are not ready to face the same. If they wanted to leave millions unburied, millions of families and innocents ripped apart, they had better have known that the same could be done to themselves.

We signed the treaties and declarations so that no soul that lived in our world would be harmed without reason or care.

You may see us as a bloodthirsty and raging people, but at least we didn’t aim for civilians and children.”

[thefalloutdiaries]

I'm sorry it took me so long to see this, but actually I wanted to say that was a very nice addition that perfectly encapsulates the feelings I was trying to evoke with this story.

Thank you for taking the time to write it. :)

[thefalloutdiaries]

A Pile of Empty Brass

Author’s Note: This is the first time I’ve felt like I have a story worth writing in a long, long time. I wanted to thank everyone who has made such kind comments on my writing in recent weeks. All of the stories that you’ve seen on my tumblr are at a minimum a year old. You’ve reminded me why I enjoy writing, and I can only express my deepest gratitude to you all. Thank you.

—

It was not the human warriors that convinced us of their worthiness.

It was not their works of engineering.

It was not their music, it was not their cuisine, it was not their weapons of war, it was not their policies of peace, it was none of these things for how can we measure a species by these things?

A species may fight with ferocity and valor on the field, and scorn their poor. 

A species may build great works, and flee before a fight.

A species may sing beautifully, and use that song to pervert the truth.

It is no measure of a species how they treat their poor if they treat those who are not of their species as worse than dirt. 

No, no it was none of these things that convinced us of humanity’s greatness. 

It was their spirit. It was their resilience, their willingness to take a just cause to the bitter end and to watch their towers crumble and their skies burn before they would sacrifice what they considered sacrosanct. 

It was as their great fleets were smashed before the oncoming tide of terror and their armies massacred from the skies, for though we might not judge their race by their martial prowess it was a prowess they had in abundance. And the terror that came from the great void between the stars could not stand before the fury of a human army, and so rained fire on them from the skies. 

It was as disaster after disaster befell them, and a single demand was broadcast again, and again, and again. 

Surrender. Bend the knee. Permit the terror to stand tall. Let them break you beneath their whips.

Surrender your freedom, and be spared.

And so it was that a human diplomat came to us, the Concordat, the council of spacewalking species, and to my everlasting shame we counseled surrender. Many of us had. It was not wrong to bend the knee to the strongest, we argued. 

Humanity, it seemed, disagreed. 

“Honored Speaker of the Concordat, my fellow members.” He began, slowly, and I heard something in his voice I could not place then but I know now to be the joy humanity can only feel when they have dedicated themselves to a cause they know deep in their hearts to be so just, so pure as to be worth the deaths of everyone they knew or loved. It was the voice of a man who saw his death on the horizon and resolved to greet it with his head held high and a song on his lips.

“Caution, you have counseled us. It is wisdom you say, to bend the knee to that terror from beyond the void, to let them have our homes and our families to do with as we please. For you say there is no shame to live as slaves. No dishonor in surrender to an evil, so long as we live.” 

There was an unspeakable quality to his voice, a deep tenor that echoed throughout the chamber for those of us with the ability to hear it. 

“My fellow members of the Concordat you call your policy accommodation and say if we surrender, if we let the enemy into our homes and our hearts he will come to love us. 

“Humanity has considered this proposal, and as one we have spoken. As one we have rejected it, for we are not a people who will go quietly into the night we are not a people which will let our children grow up with the yoke of slavery around their necks without a fight. 

“We are all retreating under the pressure of this war and so you say that the time has come to surrender because you have heard from your own people pleas for peace at any price. You have heard those that say they would rather live on their knees than die on their feet.

“Honored members of the Concordat those voices may speak for your own people but they do not speak for us. There are things in this life worth bleeding for, worth killing for, worth dying for and the sweet air of freedom is such a thing. We will not surrender. This has been our position from the very beginning, and it has not changed.

“There is no price we will not pay to maintain our freedom, for as we die it is the only thing we have. One day, we all know, that one day we will go to meet our creator or the void. One day we will go into that darkness, and we will be judged, of this I have no doubt. I, my father, my mother, my son, my daughter, my people, my people will go into the void and we will hold our heads high. Our children will enter the void. Our children’s children will enter the void. This we all know.

“So the question before us is not ‘will our children live’ for our children will die. This is our burden to bear. The question that lies before us is how will they live. How can we look our children in the eyes and say ‘we did this for you’ as they are broken beneath the heel of a tyrant. 

“So members of the Concordant, we will set our children to flee. We will send them and our parents and those we can spare far, far away. We will send them further than the terror can follow and they will grow up free.

“And we, we who can? We will fight. We will fight in the space above our colonies, we will fight in the atmosphere of our homes and we will fight on the landing grounds of the terror. We will fight, and fight, and fight until the terror no longer comes, or the last of us has fallen.

“And we will pray to whatever God we believe in. We will pray to be made fast and accurate. We will pray for true aim and quick hands and minds. And we will not pray for victory, for we will not leave victory up to the fickle hands of fate. We will take victory, and our victory will be the free lives of our children. 

“We will not pray for victory. Our victory is assured. So members of the Concordat, we do not ask for your prayers for our victory. We ask that you pray for us to die in piles of empty brass.

“We will die on our feet so that our children will never know the agony of living on their knees.”

[thefalloutdiaries]

Democratia Aut Mors, Sed Non Imperium

Frantically posting a story I wrote a year ago (seriously, a year ago) in order to appease the people who just started following my blog (I’m alive I swear)

---

We were the pride of the Ytrian Imperial Fleet. Five hundred ships, more than most species had in their possession, military and civilian. Five hundred ships, tens of thousands of sailors. So we did what we do best, what empires do best, we expanded our territory.

We expanded, and our rule was benevolent. We built hypergates, expanded trade, ensured the naked were clothed and the hungry were fed. We did this for those who we conquered, and in time they came to love us. A line of emperors a hundred generations long unmarred by a succession war, a line of emperors a hundred generations long each educated from birth to know they served the people. We had perfected the rule of a monarch, we had perfected the hereditary leadership, by getting rid of the only issue it had. Unreliable monarchs.

So when we came to the edge of a Republic, we were amused. Many species that now lived and died in the borders of our great empire had experimented with democracy at one point in time, and now all had renounced such failings and were happily in servitude to our glorious leader, Emperor Ytriax'us the Forty Third of His Name, Light of the Empire, Great Servant of the People.

So when we came to the edge of a Republic, we did what we always did. We gave them a choice. Submit to us peacefully, or submit to us through war. We will give you all the boons of the empire, or grind your armies away and restructure your planets to better serve.

The first of the Republic's planets came to us, and they accepted our benevolent offer. They were enfolded in the arms of the empire, and loved as all our people are loved. They were given boons of technology such as their planet had never seen.

Then came the second, the third, and eventually the fifteenth planet of the Republic to submit to our glorious empire. We grew ever stronger, as was our destiny, as was our duty.

The other planets of the Republic, they would not submit. So we marshaled our great fleet, our five hundred ships, and we sent them to war.

The Republic met us in combat, and the Republic fell in combat. And the Republic was absorbed into our benevolent empire as dozens of species before it had been absorbed into our empire.

That is, they were going to be. But right as our great fleet, still with four hundred and sixty six great ships of combat was about to finish off the flagship of the Republic, and bring the predictable end to this predictably tragic combat, four massive ships jumped into the system.

All four were huge ships, many times larger than any of our battleships, and all were emblazoned with similar words, hated words, words I have come to dread hearing. The Yorktown, the Waterloo, the Normandy, the Gettysburg. A pale skinned biped came onto the screen.

"You sailors, soldiers, and ships of the Ytrian Empire. You will visit no more violence upon these people. You will depart this system and all systems which did not voluntarily join your empire now, or I swear you will suffer the consequences. These ships are those of the Knights Terra, as are those that will follow, and you will visit no more war upon those peaceful stars."

We laughed, shocked by the presumption of these four ships. What paltry force this was, to presume to issue demands to us. We were the Ytrian Empire, and we knew no master but our Emperor, may he reign forever.

So our Admiral, great Ytriax'an, cousin to the Emperor Most High, amused by their impertinence, deigned to speak to the scum.

"You who are the Knights Terra, we know not of you, but you clearly know of us. We are the ships of the Ytrian Empire, and we will not permit you to stand in the way of progress. All will come under our benevolent rule, by peace or by force the choice is yours."

After that, after that there was violence. Sudden, immediate, overwhelming violence. We had no idea the Terrans were in range for their weapons. We had no idea their missiles were capable of destroying one of our Battleships with a single blow. We handful of survivors fled, ran for the safety of home and Empire.

As we left that system, they broadcast a single message to us.

"Democratia aut mors, sed non imperium."

We've spent the last decade decrypting that message. It is in a Terran tongue that was dead a thousand years ago, but they stubbornly refuse to let go entirely. Loosely translated it means “Democracy or Death, but never Tyranny”. It is the motto of the Knights Terra, who have rained death and destruction upon our Empire.

To your battle stations now crew, the Stalingrad just warped into the system, to join her sisters the Madrid, the Bull Run and the Kursk.

Defend the Emperor, prepare to meet your ancestors with dignity, and when our Empire dies remember those who destroyed it. Remember those who shattered our rule, who would not suffer our Emperor to spread his rule throughout the galaxy.

Remember the Terrans

[thefalloutdiaries]

Um Hi

So I just got about 20 emails in the last day or two about people starting to follow me, which is weird because I don’t think I’ve updated this blog in like a year

So uh, hi everyone and welcome to my blog

I write stuff. 

Not as much Sci-Fi as I used to, but, well I suppose I should think of a new story huh?

Had some serious writers block for oh, yknow, a year or so.

Just haven’t had a story worth writing I suppose. Anyways, hello, it’s nice to have you, if you like my stories I highly recommend you go visit reddit.com/r/HFY for more of the same. 

PM me if you have ideas for stories you’d like to see written I suppose

[thefalloutdiaries]

Bite Me

In honor of a few new people following this old tumblr I’ve decided to quickly post a few stories I have from other places on the internet. Enjoy.

"Help save Terra? Help save Terra? Sir, sign a petition to save Terra? You, you there! Human! Sign a petition to save Terra?"

Hank Miller looked up, bleary eyed, from his drink. A young, idealistic looking quextal male shoved a dataslate under his eyes.

"Terran, won't you sign a petition to save your planet?"

The human grunted noncommittally and shoved the slate away, waving over the hotel bartender to fill his glass again, and attempted to shove the thoughts of the quextal to the back of his head. An impressive feat really, quextals look like a remarkably ambitious blue furred bipedal dog had the brilliant idea of mating with an anteater.

Rather, it was an impressive feat until the data-slate was shoved under his nose again, jarring Hank's wrist and nearly causing him to spill his cheap xeno-brand knockoff whiskey wannabe. Which, while it wouldn't have been used to clean toilets in a human bar, was the closest Hank could get to something remotely familiar tasting in this ass-backwards corner of the universe.

"Fuck off." He grunted, and tried to turn his attention back to his drink for a third time.

"C'mon man just sign the damn petition. We have to protect Terra!" Hank sighed, placed his xeno-whiskey down on the table, turned, and half turned towards the seven foot tall quextal.

"Look pal, I ain't in favor of your stupid fucking petition, for reasons I think I just made clear, namely, that it is a stupid fucking petition. Now please let me drink my stupid knock-off whiskey in peace." His short speech given, he turned for what he thought was the last time back to his drink.

"Why don't you wanna help man? It's your fucking planet isn't it?" The quextal demanded in its both low pitched yet somehow irritatingly whiny voice.

Hank took a deep breath, slammed the faux-whiskey down on the table, turned, and stared the xeno in the eyes. Despite being seated and nearly a foot shorter while standing, Hank still managed to give the quextal pause.

"Listen to me you little shit and listen good. That's not your fucking planet to save. It's ours. We were born there, not you. When your species was communing with nature and figuring out your precious fucking place in the fucking ecosystem, we were barely scratching out a living. When your arrogant species had developed a per-fucking-fect system of getting into orbit, and were busy singing your way into spacecraft we were busy not dying.

"Mother Terra is a stone cold bitch. A lot of scholars like to call it 'resistant to developed life' which is code for 'it'll chew you up and spit you out'. When we were shat out onto the cold, uncaring surface of our bitch mother we were scared hairless primates barely able to understand who we were. We were born without teeth or claws, without armor or fur. You were breast fed your worlds gifts, not a poisonous fruit in sight. We tore open the breast of our mother and took what we needed, because she wasn't going to give it to us.

"Did we fuck her up? You bet your ass we did. We plundered the bitch for all she was worth and then some. She birthed a race of vicious primates and we turned on her in our fury. We pockmarked her with explosions and tore her with mines, we burned her forests and plundered her oceans. We razed her surface all the while desperately outrunning her wrath. Storms that could wipe this bar and half of this godforsaken planet off the map. Waves that could drown cities, human cities mind you not these pathetic bend-in-the-wind deathtraps you xenos call cities. We fought earthquakes that could swallow coastlines, and you haven't the faintest fucking clue what an earthquake is do you?"

Here the quextal tried to butt in.

"Of course I know what an earthquake is you arrogant-"

"No you don't you pup, now shut up and listen. You think you know what an earthquake is because you read about it in a book. I grew up on that bitch earth, in a place known for earthquakes. I know what a real goddamn earthquake feels like, it feels like judgement day has come and the world is ending.

"We fought storms and waves and earthquakes, we fought fires that set half a continent ablaze. We fought and fought and fought and finally we said 'fuck it' and gave dear old mom one last kick in the teeth, nuked the hell out of eachother, and fucked off that godforsaken rock forever.

"Not five years later your expeditionary fleet comes in, tells us we've 'lost our planetary mandate' and that they're placing our home, our planet, under quarantine from us. We can't do a damn thing about it because we're still reeling from leaving home, still reeling from the knowledge we're not alone in this universe, still reeling from the deaths of millions in atomic fires and the throes of Terra both. Billions of us, adrift in space. We just barely manage to colonize Mars and Europa in time to save our species, because we 'lost our planetary mandate'."

Hank leaned over and spat onto the floor.

"That's what I and every goddamn human thinks of your precious planetary mandate. Fifty years later, half a century of the most hard-core terraforming known to the most esteemed scientific minds in the galaxy, and the Galactic Council is considering letting us back onto our home planet. Considering it, as though they weren't the most imperialistic bastards we've ever known and trust me you fuzzball we've known some fucking imperialists.Considering letting a few of us live on our bitch mother again, and an entire goddamn movement arrives to try and say we can't go back yet, it's not safe, we'll destroy our planet again."

Miller stood up, swiped his wrist-pad against the counter to pay for his drinks, and placed his coat back on.

"How dare you tell us what we can and cannot do to the bitch. We'll heal her up, but because we want to not because you and a dozen species like you told us to. We'll take care of the hag in her old age, but don't you think for a goddamn second its because of your precious 'Galactic Council'. It's because despite the fact that she's a hag, and a bitch, and the worst mother in the goddamn galaxy, she's our mother. And I swear by all that I hold dear, Whiskey, John Moses Browning, Sergei Ivanovitch Mosin, Mikhail Kalashnikov, and the United Terran Republics, if you space-communists keep us from taking care of our mother how we see fit, I will make it my life's mission to eradicate your government and your way of life."

Brigadier General Hank Miller, UTR Marines, stood up, and a half dozen of his staff stood and followed him.

"And if one day she dies, when she comes to hell, she can bite me."

[thefalloutdiaries]

The Tomb

This is actually one of my personal favorites, shorter than most but more poignant I think. Anyway, not like anyone reads these so.. here you go. 

"Why here?" I asked my human comrade. We stood in front of an ornately carved piece of marble, in front of which two human Marines paced back and forth in dress uniforms, holding ancient projectile weapons made of wood.

I was a visiting dignitary from the Itaxan Republic. After humanity had resoundingly crushed the Texar-Hakara, they had become a dominant force in the galaxy. Leaders in many new technologies they had captured from the Texar-Hakara and put into production for themselves.

And they were universally known as the last species in the galaxy to fuck with.

They were small these humans. And smelly. And to be frank their cuisine left something to be desired. But their concepts of honor, courage, respect, they were instilled in their warriors. Interestingly enough they do not have a warrior caste, instead their military is all volunteer except in times of the greatest conflict.

My human guide had become rather stiff, and I was concerned that he was undergoing a bit of a seizure or something of the like, until I noticed his hand was rigidly flat and touching just above his optical nerves.

He lowered his hand, and relaxed.

"You mean why did we stop here?" He replied, his translator spitting out near perfect Itaxan.

"This was the point where the Texar-Hakara were stopped in their invasion of Luna wasn't it?"

"Yes" He admitted.

"Why here? This isn't a particularly defensible position." I noted. Despite the ignominy of our defeat at the hands of the ruthless invaders, we Itaxans prided ourselves on our tactical genius. We made up a large percentage of the higher echelons of the Allied Galactic Military.

"Because this is special." My guide said.

"This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier."

"The what?"

"Warriors who died, whose bodies were found but we could not name, they are laid to rest here where their memories may be forever revered and honored. They above all others deserve it."

"I don't understand." I admitted.

"Neither did the Texar-Hakara. This is the new tomb, dedicated especially to those who die in space. There's a prayer written on it. Would you like to hear it?"

"Yes?" I half asked.

“Lord our eternal father, grant me this prayer. Grant me this that I might be the sheepdog to thy Shepard. Grant unto me that which I beg, that I might guard the borders of man from the evils of the universe that you in your infinite wisdom have placed here to test our faith.

"Oh lord, grant me that you might strike down with great vengeance my enemies who come upon the field of battle. And if that be too much to ask, Lord I beg that you would grant me the Angels of Heaven, that they might fight beside me on the field of battle. And if that be too much to ask, then Lord give me strong men and women to stand beside me on the field of battle. And Lord, if that be too much to ask, grant me the strength and the courage to take my enemies and all the enemies of mankind, and deliver them unto your eternal judgement.

And Lord, if you will not grant me that I might take my enemies to their judgement, then grant me absolution, for I will not permit the enemies of humanity to live while I still draw breath. And Lord, if you will not grant me absolution, then I will burn in the fires of hell with a light heart, for I will have served humanity, my family, and my brothers in arms. Amen."

[thefalloutdiaries]

And the Heavens Wept

Gather round my children, and let me tell you of the humans. They came from the third planet of a tiny system, surrounded by desolate space. Not one sentient species for hundreds of lightyears, and they managed to propel themselves into space.

We watched from afar as they developed slowly. We watched as they warred among themselves, brutal and savage. We watched as they rendered regions of their planet uninhabitable to themselves, a hardy species able to adapt to even the most hostile of environments. We watched as suddenly and without warning they united under four banners, the rest falling by the wayside. We watched as they expanded into what we had begun to use as a buffer zone, to allow these humans to burn themselves out in.

But they did not burn themselves out. Despite their warring among themselves. Harsh people. Humankind is a race of warriors, do not be fooled by the eloquence of their diplomats. In their own words, "All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means". Their greatest artists and philosophers were born from blood and conflict. I had the privilege once to view a painting by one Pablo Picasso, entitled Guernica. It was a savage piece, with not a drop of color. It showed the horrors of war, and the irony of it all was that the painting hung in the office of one of humankind's generals.

It was sudden, when they burst from the containment zone. When they realized they were not alone. And we, with heavy hearts, prepared to fight them bitterly and to the last. Imagine then, our surprise when humanity embraced us among the stars as long lost brothers. They were overjoyed to discover they were not alone in the darkness. Despite their brutal and warlike culture, despite their glorification of death and violence, their people do not seek out combat. An ancient general of theirs once put it thusly "Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace".

For centuries humanity worked to better itself. They unified under a single Interstellar Empire, the Empire of Man, the Human Empire, however you called it. They enjoyed art and music. They became leisurely at home, exploratory in the field. Their weapons of war were long gone, beaten into plowshares as they say. Humanity was finally at peace. There was no conflict among them, a few border skirmishes for certain, and they kept a small standing military, but nothing more than that. We considered them domesticated.

At first we were surprised at their transformation, then overjoyed. We welcomed them into the fold of the cosmos, embraced them as they would embrace us. We thought we knew humanity then, that we had seen them at their best and their worst. We were wrong, so very wrong. We did not truly understand humanity until the Texar-Hakara came into the void between the stars.

Seemingly more brutal, more bloodthirsty than even the humans, they swept into our region of space like conquerors. They smashed whatever feeble resistance the Yungling managed to put up, took their planets, enslaved the survivors, and pressed on. The Junti were next, utterly destroyed. The four great races left, ourselves, the Itaxa, the Kukrama, and the Illnaa, banded together to try and stop them. In our arrogance, we did not include the humans in our pact. Too few in number, too weak in frame, too backwards in technology we thought.

The Texar-Hakara hit our borders like the great wave that sweeps life from the beach. We hardened our hearts and prepared for the worst. Seeming without pause they crushed our border defenses. They obliterated the first fleets we sent to them. The Itaxa fell to the Texar-Hakara, enslaved, killed, scattered to the corners of the galaxy. Then the humans sent us an offer, a request really. They asked to fight alongside us.

Bemused, we accepted. What else could we do? Deny them the right to fight with us for their very survival? We thought to assign them as rearguards, to ferry our people to safety after our fleets fell. We thought wrong.

Humanity swept into the stars with a fury unmatched by any other. Their fleets were not the heaviest. Their guns not the most accurate. Their soldiers however. Their sailors. Their warriors were unmatched by any others in the cosmos. I remember the first battle in which the humans fought the Texar-Hakara like it was but a single solar cycle ago. Our forces were on the brink of breaking and fleeing. Our ships were gutted ruins. Our fighters exhausted and out of missiles. Then humanity fell upon the flank of the enemy, and the full force of the Human Empire was unleashed in a single moment of utter fury. Landing craft spat across the distance in an instant, slamming into enemy hulls and disgorging humanity's greatest weapon, their Marines. In close combat humanity is unstoppable, and so they took the vast distances of space combat out of the equation.

Their ships belched fire and plasma. Lasers crossed the vast distances in the blink of an eye. Half the Texar-Hakaran fleet was obliterated in minutes. The other half turned to face this new enemy, only to be wracked by internal explosions as the Marines did their work. Their greatest ships turned on the rest of the fleet, a handful of humans holding the bridge against waves of enemy attackers to turn the tide of battle.

The Interstellar War came to a screeching turnaround. The advance of the Texar-Hakara halted, like it had hit an immovable wall. In many ways that is what humanity is, an immovable, implacable wall. Then, with the ferocity humanity is alone capable of, they routed the Texar-Hakara. Not from that lone battle. They pushed them out of Itaxa space, liberating the slaves. The space of the Junti and the Yungling was swept clear of invaders. Then the Texar-Hakara committed the gravest of sins in humanity's eyes. They warped a fleet to Earth, jewel of humanity's empire. They burned that blue and green world. They destroyed it, and the ten billion people it housed.

Humanity is a forgiving race my children. Even their most terrible of wars have resulted in lasting friendships between nations. When they left millions dead and broken on the muddly fields of their world, they rebuilt the aggressors. They raised them from the mud, dusted them off, and welcomed them back into the fold. But there is one thing that humanity cannot, will not, tolerate. It is abhorrent to them my children. To strike at their home, to strike where they raise their young ones. Where they leave their mates and non combatants. To strike there is to raise the ire of the human race, truly.

Humanity raged. Their attempts at obtaining the surrender of the Texar-Hakara halted. The war turned from a righteous war of liberation to a furious and hateful war of retribution. We begged the humans to stop, to leave what few planets the Texar-Hakara had alone. Our pleas went unanswered for months, until a single human ambassador came to us. His face was cold and emotionless. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that the Texar-Hakara had doomed themselves and that any trying to aid them would suffer the same fate. Quietly we watched then, as humanity wiped the Texar-Hakara from the stars. The Texar-Hakara pleaded for mercy. They offered their unconditional surrender. They came to us and begged on bent knee for us to reign in the mad dogs we had unwittingly unleashed into the universe. Humanity had for so long repressed their warrior culture. Tried to become better. Then we had given them back into the fires of war, and humanity had awakened it's warrior past.

The Texar-Hakara ambassador and his delegation was taken from our halls by grim human Marines and thrust out airlocks. Finally there was but one planet left, and we came to the humans, we pointed to our own losses, our own dead friends some of whom had lived for longer than humanity had been among the stars, and we begged the humans not to take the last of the Texar-Hakara's lives.

I watched, children, I watched as the Texar-Hakara's Empire burned. As humanity left but one of their planets alive, a simple backwater colony of no more than ten million. Ten million, out of the trillions. Then the leader of the human military turned to me, and with no emotion in his voice, told me that humanity accepted the unconditional surrender of the Texar-Hakara, and walked off the bridge of my ship.

My children, the lesson here is that a warrior past is never truly gone. Only buried, mayhaps even wiped from living memory. But gone? Never. Humanity showed us that.

[thefalloutdiaries]

Permed

"Is recorder on?"

"Yeah it's on."

"Recording?"

"Yup."

"Live feed or..?"

"Nah it's just recording. We'll edit this out later."

"Really?"

"Probably not."

"Fine, let's just get started then."

"Please state your name for the record."

"My name is Professor Mohammad bin Hukukk"

"What is your profession?"

"I am a professor of Xeno Culture at New Harvard University."

"Was this your profession during the Texar-Hakara war?"

"No, no my profession was a Orbital Drop Trooper, Sergeant, First Terran Marines."

"Can you give us an explanation of what your job entailed?"

"We drop in, we fight our way out."

"You took part in the fighting?"

"Yes."

"During the assault on Rygel Nine, were you with the Marines?"

"Yes, yes I was."

"Can you describe it for me?"

"Long. Muddly. Bloody."

"Come on Professor Hukukk, you can do better."

"You're making a documentary?"

"Actually we're making a movie. We want it to be as close to reality as possible. From what we've heard even the folks back at Galactic Studios won't need to embellish much."

"How much sway do you have with the studio?"

"I'm a Senior Producer."

"That didn't answer my question."

annoyed sigh from off camera

"I have a lot of influence. I'm pretty much in charge of this production."

"Then I want your personal assurance that the names and places I tell you won't be changed. These men deserve that, and much more besides."

"You have my word."

"I want a copy of this transcript immediately after the interview."

"Fine. Can we please move on to what I came here for?"

"Alright, ask away."

"Professor, tell me about the lead up to, and the battle at, Rygel Nine."

"As I said I was with the First Marines. Specifically with Third Company, Second Battalion."

"The infamous Riley's Rangers."

"The very same. Our CO was Captain Hank Riley. Tough old bastard, like a father to every man in that Company. Underneath him were the three Lieutenants. Jacobs, Stern, and Gibbs. Gibbs was a First Lieutenant, second in command of the Company. I was transferred to them two weeks before drop. Just enough time to learn the names of the Captain and Lieutenants, get used to my unit, then suddenly we're in orbit over Rygel Nine. Texar-Hakara world. The first of their original worlds we were invading. Earth was... she gone by that point. Burned by the bugs. Some of the men talked quietly about what their plans were for when they went home. Most considered that bad luck.

"I was sitting with my squad when Captain Riley gave us his speech. Hold on I brought a recording of it..."

a new voice enters the conversation, only the slightest hiss of static mars the audio file

"Men, today we're dropping into enemy territory, real enemy territory. It's fortified and they're waiting for us. We have never dropped onto a world like this before. All Texar-Hakara are to be considered armed and dangerous until the local hive mind is taken out. That's our job. We're Riley's Rangers for a reason. We drop into the meanest parts of enemy territory to do the most damage. That's what we're doing today. Stick together, work with your squad. You'll come out of this just fine."

the voice stops, as does the faint static

"When Marine Shock Troops drop into enemy held territory the CO sometimes plays some heavy metal or hard rock or something to get the men pumped up. It works too, wipes away some of the fear. Just enough so that the men can still function as they strap themselves into what is essentially a big bullet, that's going to be fired out of an under powered railgun directly at the planet's surface. Captain Riley always played Hard Corps . Old song, but damn good. The Captain came on, told us he'd see us on the other side.

"The Captain never made it down. Anti-air took out the command pod on the way down. Captain Riley and Lieutenants Jacobs and Stern were wiped. Never even heard a peep. Thankfully SOP said Gibbs had to be in a different pod, and he was.

"Lieutenant Gibbs took command. Good man, solid. Exactly the right guy to replace the Captain in combat. He got us up, armed, and organized, and he did it fast. My squad was on the far left flank with the rest of First Platoon. Our job was to hold the line and secure an exit line for Second Platoon, who would be handling the assault on the hive mind."

"Is this where things started to go wrong?"

"Things started to go wrong when the goddamn brass decided that they wanted to drop us in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the middle of a goddamn Texar-Hakara staging ground."

"Jesus."

"Damn straight. The first we realize that we're in the middle of another grand cockup is when Third Platoon got hit by fifty Texar-Hakara warrior drones. They took sixty percent casualties in an hour. We were told to reinforce them and dig in while First Platoon scouted the area. First platoon got jumped two hundred meters out, every last one of them dead, including Lieutenant Gibbs. Now I'm in command of what we can only reasonably call ourselves an over-strength platoon. And we're smack in the middle of a staging ground for the Third Hakaran Army.

"We radioed for support, and of course the nearest supporting elements were five klicks away. Through the largest concentration of Texar-Hakara on the continent. And we didn't even have a direct line to them, because we were supposed to be linking up with another force twenty klicks to the north, and our communications were only keyed to Orbital Command and transmit a confirmatory ping to other Terran forces. Originally it was intended to keep us beneath the radar, so to speak. To allow us to get close to the hive mind without giving away our position. Instead what it did was effectively cut us off from the rest of the Army. Orbital was too busy to relay our messages for us.

"I was working with our tech guy, Corporal Swanson, to bypass the block on the radio when the first wave hit us. We knew the Texar-Hakara were out there, and we'd dug in feverishly. We weren't equipped to hold the line against hundreds of enemies, but each soldier had been issued the standard anti-tunneling package. Slam a spike into the bottom of a foxhole, and the SATUFP, Strategic Anti-Tunneling Unit for Fixed Positions, shoots out thousands of nanomite cables throughout the ground, sets them firmly in place, connects them, and runs a million volt current through them. Try and tunnel into the foxhole, and you get an ugly zap. It had forced the bugs to engage us on the surface, and we set up a few some meters in front of our position. It was a good way of encouraging the bastards to come up in front of us.

"And holy mother of god did they come up in front of us. Hundreds of them came charging out of the forest, no warning, no sound except the clicking of their legs and their blasts of plasma. We had entrenched defenses, some light plasma machineguns, and the rest of us had laser carbines, plasma grenades, the usual outfit. It was a brutal fight, they kept coming even when they should have been dead. We mowed them down by the dozen, and they swarmed over the bodies of their dead. We started to take casualties as they got closer. Their accuracy was shit, but the hive mind keeps them on task, and their sheer weight of numbers often carries the day.

"It got to hand to hand at one point. They were just coming faster than we could shoot them. Vibroblades and Power Armor versus rock hard chitin and mandibles. Four Privates were MIA after that, just too ripped up to be positively IDed or POWs, the bugs were still taking prisoners at this point. Power Armor can stop a lot, plasma, lasers, bullets. Knives just bounce off. But bug mandibles have crushing force the likes of which our suits just can't handle. I was hunkered down with Private Tulman and Corporal Swanson. We're pouring fire into the bugs. Tulman's Plasma MG is really what kept them off us. Then they swarmed over their corpses, and on top of us. Swanson got ripped apart. Three of them grabbed on and pulled. He was screaming and swearing and shooting to the last, but he died bloody. Tulman lit those three up the second Swanson's vitals went flat. One of them jumped on me. These things are ugly up close. They look like short ants. Two main body pods instead of three, six big legs, six beady eyes, spikes everywhere, a plasma rifle attached to the underside of the head. I stabbed into the eyes with my combat knife. Despite what some idiot writers will tell you, a nanometer edge on your blade just makes it that much easier to break. It doesn't matter if it can slide through titanium, in combat you're not cutting titanium, you're fighting a living being that is going to be moving, and when your edge breaks off, you're dead.

"I was a Sergeant. I had a responsibility to be better than my men. Cleaner, smarter, tougher, meaner, and everything in between. Part of that is having your gear perfectly stashed and equipped. So when I say my knife had a perfect edge on it, not too thin not too dull, I'm not kidding. I stabbed straight through that bug's eye and into its bug brain. And that bastard kept coming. So I shoved my plasma pistol up against it's torn up eye and pumped six shots into the brain. It collapsed halfway through cutting my arm off. The connectors to my left arm were shot. My helmet's HUD was flickering in and out and the faceplate was cracked. I was bleeding, not a lot but a little. And the bug had shredded my injury suppressants, so it hurt like hell.

"Most of my men weren't much better. We couldn't take another wave like that, but moving was damn risky. The way I saw it, the bugs knew we were here. It was only a matter of time until another force came by to wipe my three quarter strength company off the face of the universe. So we had two options. Stay and die, or leave and die when we ran into a bigger bug patrol. The men made their voices clear. They were prepared to die. And the way they saw it, they had a better chance of killing more bugs here than they did moving around. So we hunkered down. We piled up bug corpses to use as sandbags. We stripped the bodies of our comrades for parts and ammo. We envied the bastards actually."

"I'm sorry?"

"We envied them. By this point in the war-"

"Revival tech."

"We traded the Yungling for it. Standard issue on every fleet ship. Upload your neural patterns, and when your body died you got a new one, right off the printer. Commercializing DNA sequencing, one thing the twenty first century did right. As soon as those bastards were confirmed KIA, they were regrown. A hour later they were safe and sound back up on the ship. Dying isn't fun, I'll tell you that. But there's a certain peace that comes from knowing it isn't final. More likely to throw yourself on a grenade and save your squad. More likely to hold the line against impossible odds, or volunteer for a suicide mission. Best thing to ever happen to the human war machine.

"We hunker down, shore up our defenses, and we kill another group of bugs that wanders by. Fifty odd insects in that one, all dead. Along with fourteen men. Quarter strength now, about fourteen of us total. We keep doing the same thing. Kill a few bugs, a few of us buy a ticket back up to the ship. It gets to the point where it's just me and Tulman left, out of an entire company. But we're surrounded by bug corpses. Must have been two hundred at least."

"Four hundred thirty."

"I'm sorry?"

"Official after action report says at this point it is estimated your Company had killed four hundred and thirty bugs."

"Never read it."

"It was declassified sixty years ago, when revival tech went public."

"Wasn't interested in reading it. Dying isn't fun, and remembering death... it changes you."

"I'm sorry, please continue."

"Next wave is about a hundred of the six legged freaks. They come at us like bats out of hell. Tulman dies quick, plasma to the face. I'm left manning the plasma MG with one hand. It clicks dry, no more charge. I can't change the ammo by myself. It's made to be completely operable by one man, but one man with two working hands. I charge up four plasma grenades, prime them, slap them onto two ammo boxes for the plasma MG, and run full tilt at the bugs. I jump on top of one, and the box blows. Plasma everywhere, burning the hell out of everything and everyone. That's when I died.

"I wake up on the UHS Washington DC. She was named after the battle in the old earth capitol, back when she represented the United... Statues I think it was."

"United States."

"That makes more sense. Anyways, that was my part in the Battle of Rygel Nine."

"Nothing else?"

"Nope."

"Nothing about the awards you received?"

"They were after the fact."

"You received the Medal of Honor for recording the deaths of over twenty men. Without that they might not have been confirmed KIA, and never revived."

"I did what any man there would have done for me."

"Thank you Professor, that's all I have."

"Don't forget these names, those men that were torn to shreds by the Texar-Hakara, the ones that were MIA? If you can't be confirmed as KIA we can't revive you, having two of the exact same person in the universe, the exact same memories, the exact same fingerprints and DNA. Same loved ones, same bank accounts. What do you tell the one that turns out to have been a POW for ten years. Sorry, there's another one of you that's been with your family the entire time? No, no we can't do that. They were permed."

"Permed?"

"Permanently killed. Permadeath. Never revived. Privates Rodger P. Ackleman, Reginald Puller, George H. Killroy, and Yassah B. Hukukk."

"Any relation?"

"My son."

[thefalloutdiaries]

And the Heavens Wept

Gather around my children and you shall hear of the most terrible, most implacable, most improbable friends ever met by our people. They came from the third planet of a tiny system, surrounded by desolate space. Not one sentient species for hundreds of lightyears, and they managed to propel themselves into space.

We watched from afar as they developed slowly. We watched as they warred among themselves, brutal and savage. We watched as they rendered regions of their planet uninhabitable to themselves, a hardy species able to adapt to even the most hostile of environments. We watched as suddenly and without warning they united under four banners, the rest falling by the wayside. We watched as they expanded into what we had begun to use as a buffer zone, to allow these humans to burn themselves out in.

But they did not burn themselves out. Despite their warring among themselves. Harsh people. Humankind is a race of warriors, do not be fooled by the eloquence of their diplomats. In their own words, "All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means". Their greatest artists and philosophers were born from blood and conflict. I had the privilege once to view a painting by one Pablo Picasso, entitled Guernica. It was a savage piece, with not a drop of color. It showed the horrors of war, and the irony of it all was that the painting hung in the office of one of humankind's generals.

It was sudden, when they burst from the containment zone. When they realized they were not alone. And we, with heavy hearts, prepared to fight them bitterly and to the last. Imagine then, our surprise when humanity embraced us among the stars as long lost brothers. They were overjoyed to discover they were not alone in the darkness. Despite their brutal and warlike culture, despite their glorification of death and violence, their people do not seek out combat. An ancient general of theirs once put it thusly "Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace".

For centuries humanity worked to better itself. They unified under a single Interstellar Empire, the Empire of Man, the Human Empire, however you called it. They enjoyed art and music. They became leisurely at home, exploratory in the field. Their weapons of war were long gone, beaten into plowshares as they say. Humanity was finally at peace. There was no conflict among them, a few border skirmishes for certain, and they kept a small standing military, but nothing more than that. We considered them domesticated.

At first we were surprised at their transformation, then overjoyed. We welcomed them into the fold of the cosmos, embraced them as they would embrace us. We thought we knew humanity then, that we had seen them at their best and their worst. We were wrong, so very wrong. We did not truly understand humanity until the Texar-Hakara came into the void between the stars.

Seemingly more brutal, more bloodthirsty than even the humans, they swept into our region of space like conquerors. They smashed whatever feeble resistance the Yungling managed to put up, took their planets, enslaved the survivors, and pressed on. The Junti were next, utterly destroyed. The four great races left, ourselves, the Itaxa, the Kukrama, and the Illnaa, banded together to try and stop them. In our arrogance, we did not include the humans in our pact. Too few in number, too weak in frame, too backwards in technology we thought.

The Texar-Hakara hit our borders like the great wave that sweeps life from the beach. We hardened our hearts and prepared for the worst. Seeming without pause they crushed our border defenses. They obliterated the first fleets we sent to them. The Itaxa fell to the Texar-Hakara, enslaved, killed, scattered to the corners of the galaxy. Then the humans sent us an offer, a request really. They asked to fight alongside us.

Bemused, we accepted. What else could we do? Deny them the right to fight with us for their very survival? We thought to assign them as rearguards, to ferry our people to safety after our fleets fell. We thought wrong.

Humanity swept into the stars with a fury unmatched by any other. Their fleets were not the heaviest. Their guns not the most accurate. Their soldiers however. Their sailors. Their warriors were unmatched by any others in the cosmos. I remember the first battle in which the humans fought the Texar-Hakara like it was but a single solar cycle ago. Our forces were on the brink of breaking and fleeing. Our ships were gutted ruins. Our fighters exhausted and out of missiles. Then humanity fell upon the flank of the enemy, and the full force of the Human Empire was unleashed in a single moment of utter fury. Landing craft spat across the distance in an instant, slamming into enemy hulls and disgorging humanity's greatest weapon, their Marines. In close combat humanity is unstoppable, and so they took the vast distances of space combat out of the equation.

Their ships belched fire and plasma. Lasers crossed the vast distances in the blink of an eye. Half the Texar-Hakaran fleet was obliterated in minutes. The other half turned to face this new enemy, only to be wracked by internal explosions as the Marines did their work. Their greatest ships turned on the rest of the fleet, a handful of humans holding the bridge against waves of enemy attackers to turn the tide of battle.

The Interstellar War came to a screeching turnaround. The advance of the Texar-Hakara halted, like it had hit an immovable wall. In many ways that is what humanity is, an immovable, implacable wall. Then, with the ferocity humanity is alone capable of, they routed the Texar-Hakara. Not from that lone battle. They pushed them out of Itaxa space, liberating the slaves. The space of the Junti and the Yungling was swept clear of invaders. Then the Texar-Hakara committed the gravest of sins in humanity's eyes. They warped a fleet to Earth, jewel of humanity's empire. They burned that blue and green world. They destroyed it, and the trillion people it housed.

Humanity is a forgiving race my children. Even their most terrible of wars have resulted in lasting friendships between nations. When they left millions dead and broken on the muddly fields of their world, they rebuilt the aggressors. They raised them from the mud, dusted them off, and welcomed them back into the fold. But there is one thing that humanity cannot, will not, tolerate. It is abhorrent to them my children. To strike at their home, to strike where they raise their young ones. Where they leave their mates and non combatants. To strike there is to raise the ire of the human race, truly.

Humanity raged. Their attempts at obtaining the surrender of the Texar-Hakara halted. The war turned from a righteous war of liberation to a furious and hateful war of retribution. We begged the humans to stop, to leave what few planets the Texar-Hakara had alone. Our pleas went unanswered for months, until a single human ambassador came to us. His face was cold and emotionless. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that the Texar-Hakara had doomed themselves and that any trying to aid them would suffer the same fate. Quietly we watched then, as humanity wiped the Texar-Hakara from the stars. The Texar-Hakara pleaded for mercy. They offered their unconditional surrender. They came to us and begged on bent knee for us to reign in the mad dogs we had unwittingly unleashed into the universe. Humanity had for so long repressed their warrior culture. Tried to become better. Then we had given them back into the fires of war, and humanity had awakened it's warrior past.

The Texar-Hakara ambassadors were taken from our halls by grim human Marines and thrust out airlocks. Finally there was but one planet left, and we came to the humans, we pointed to our own losses, our own dead friends some of whom had lived for longer than humanity had been among the stars, and we begged the humans not to take the last of the Texar-Hakara's lives.

I watched, children, I watched as the Texar-Hakara's world burned. As humanity left but one of their planets alive, a simple backwater colony of no more than ten million. Ten million, out of the trillions. Then the leader of the human military turned to me, and with no emotion in his voice, told me that humanity accepted the unconditional surrender of the Texar-Hakara, and walked off the bridge of my ship.

My children, the lesson here is that a warrior past is never truly gone. Only buried, mayhaps even wiped from living memory. But gone? Never. Humanity showed us that.