HUMANITY RISING
Part 6: The Great Betrayal And The Human Age.
Even as the Hiddrell and Trylixian races celebrated victory over the Kra, gears ground toward their inevitable destruction.
During the two centuries of unabated war with the Kra, the Loloth believed they had free reign into the minds of Human leadership. Always they probed the mental depths of their assigned human Commanders and Captains, taking every stray thought, and amassing a store of data which was sent to Loll for analysis.
The Loloth felt they knew all to well humanity’s lust for violence – they saw it projected directly onto the Human mind – a bloodlust which the Loloth believed could not be contained. During the war, the threat of the Kra provided an outlet for human violence, as well as the Human’s irrepressible drive for “progress”. But, the Loloth knew, when the war was over, the blood weened Humans would not be satisfied with peace.
Even fifty years into the two centuries of war with the Kra, it was already the position of the Loloth Conglomeration of Minds that betrayal by the Human Race, and the destruction such betrayal would bring to Federation species, was inevitable.
Moreover, by the Loloth’s reckoning, once the Kra were defeated, there would be no stopping the Human’s from turning around and violently seizing control of the Federation. The Human manned fleet was simply to large, and too well armed. Even if the Loloth ceased assisting them, the Federation would simply be exposed to a repeat of the Kra threat, without a savior to turn to.
With Human supremacy all but inevitable, and resistance sure to be futile, the Loloth began to chart the course of their own survival.
The seeds of Human conquest were sown, ironically, where the Kra had first appeared, in the same nameless system of a Red Dwarf. There, stoked by the Loloth, who swore their fealty to the Human race, Human High Command laid out the plan for a comprehensive takeover of Federation space.
With Loloth assistance, several captured Kra war cruisers were manned with Human crew and deposited deep in federation space. In order for the threat to be taken seriously, the Loloth quickly moved the same few cruisers from system to system, wreaking nuclear havoc in each and then moving on, leaving a trail of destruction behind them.
The Human Fleet remained stationed at the outer rim of the galaxy, awaiting the inevitable distress call, ordering them to defend the Federation’s core worlds against what would be perceived as a Kra counter attack.
When the call came, the Human fleet dispersed under the auspices of peace and protection, arriving like heros in every major Federation system. The Kra warships were quickly destroyed, their human crews sacrificed on the alter of Human dominance. Meanwhile, any suspicions the Federation Council harbored toward the Human’s were allayed by the reassurances of the Loloth, who attested to the psychic purity of Humanity’s intentions.
A mere decade after the war with the Kra was completed, the stage was set and the initiating order for the Human coup was given, in the very center of the Federation, at Planet 1. Simultaneously the order was sent across the galaxy in a psychic wave by the Loloth.
In System 1, a barrage of nuclear missiles impacted the primary Federation fleet and the military targets planetside, eradicating the Federation military command structure in one fell swoop.
An FTL distress beacon was sent, but it echoed across the galaxy, perpetually late, always just behind the Loloth’s psychic message of betrayal, following in the wake of nuclear violence – a wave trapped within an already expanding wave.
Even before the final Federation ship was destroyed, in the distant outskirts of the galaxy, Human High Command seized the reigns of Galactic Power. The Hiddrell and Trylixians were removed from the Federation Council, each of their seats replaced by Human Commanders. All but one non-human species in the Galaxy was decimated by the Great Betrayal. All but the Loloth were relegated in under a year to second class citizenship, and widely subjugated under the yoke of Human tyranny.
Only the treacherous Loloth, now despised across the galaxy, were spared the fell wraith of Humanity. Even as the other Federation species watched their fortunes collapse, the Loloth retained a measure of autonomy and wealth. They held the only non-human seat on the Federation Council, filled by Commander KyuTanLol, the architect of Human freedom, and now the most polarizing single figure in Galactic history.
On Loll, the Loloth Conglomeration of Minds believed their species had threaded the needle of galactic politics. In the new Human run Federation, as in the old, the Loloth’s gravity well technology, their ability for Ultra-luminal transportation, made them an invaluable and irreplaceable ally. In their hubris, they believed their species too precious to be discarded.
And so, for a time, the Human’s consolidated power under the auspices of the Galactic Federation. This period of twenty four years became known as the final age of the Federation’s impossibly long history – The Human Age.
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