On Humans

“Oh, that’s awful.”

Kolrax took another sip of his beverage. “What is?”

“On the display there. That… that… what does it say? Hoo-Mun?” Both of Belzvar’s mouths were clearly having trouble with the word.

Kolrax put down the beverage container, and pointed at the holographic readout. “Human,” he said, slowly. “There’s a sort of ‘y’ sound.”

“Y sound or not, just look at it. All smooth, and soft, and… stubby in all the wrong places. How do they even- You know, what? Never mind. And only two of each limb? Ugly little things, aren’t they?” Belzvar gave an involuntary shudder, his four pairs of shoulders shivering in unison.

“I know! It’s a wonder they ever managed seafaring, let alone space travel. And just… wow, just fifty standard years ago” Kolrax was genuinely impressed. His own species had first achieved interplanetary space travel more than four centuries back, but it still had taken another three hundred years to work out most of the kinks. Even now, there was still a .978% chance of catastrophic resonance failure during foldspace jumps. A decent portion of the planetbound population stayed out of space for that very reason.

“And you said they control that entire sector?” A tinge of worry seeped into Belzvar’s voices. Unlike Kolrax, Belzvar had only recently joined the Galactic Watch, and hadn’t entirely acclimated to the amount of information they processed.

“That’s right. And they’re expanding.” Faster than most of the Interplanetary Parliament had been willing to admit until recently. The humans had, of course, agreed to abide by the general conventions of the Pax Galactica, but then, officially, so had all of the known spacefaring races. Kolrax knew for a fact his own people chose to selectively ignore certain clauses when it was convenient. He’d bet his last credit Belzvar’s people did, too.

“How?”

“Well, it just sort of… happens.”

“How can colonial expansion into galactic space just happen? Why doesn’t someone just do something? Put a stop to all this?”

“Because technically, in the eyes of the Parliament, they haven’t broken any treaties. They haven’t taken any populated worlds by force, not to mention the fact they’ll build on any half frozen ball of rock circling a star.”

“So they’re just taking trash no one wants, then?” Belzvar asked.

“In theory, yes.” Kolrax said. “But once the humans sink their claws into a-”

“They have claws?” Belzvar yelped. “Where?”

“It’s a human figure of speech. It means to attach oneself irrevocably. Anyway, once they’re dug in — another human idiom, before you ask — they always seem to populate the worlds almost immediately.” Kolrax had been part of the observation task force assigned to the humans for almost eight standard years now. In spite of himself, he’d rather come to admire the species, and through his monitoring of human transmissions had picked up a few sayings. It was almost hard not to; if nothing else, you had to admire the human gift for wordplay.

Small and soft, and with just two sets of visible appendages, only one of which was of any use for manipulating objects, and on top of that, like Belzvar had said, they really were phenomenally ugly. Moreover, they just seemed so impossibly fragile to most of the galactic community. Compared to a great number of the species who made up the Interplanetary Parliament’s constituent races, evolution certainly hadn’t done the humans any favours. And yet, here they were, anyhow, expanding at a fast enough rate to warrant round the clock surveillance.

“I’m surprised no one’s done anything about it,” Belzvar mused. “You, know, military action. Sanctions at least.”

Kolrax chuckled. “Sometimes I forget how young some of you recruits are. Too fresh to remember what happened to the Bendrassi.” The Bendrassi had been a powerful species, and had played a leading role in the Galactic Parliament until about twenty years earlier. “You’ve grown up under a completely different order.”

“They don’t teach much about Bendrassi history at many Vorzon academies,” Belzvar sniffed. “At least not at the good ones.”

Kolrax sighed and rolled both sets of primary eyes. The Bendrassi and Belzvar’s people, the Vorzon, had been political rivals, with several notable conflicts over the last couple of hundred years. Both species were adamant the violence was the other’s fault, the result of some long-forgotten slight blown up to galactic proportions. “Well, allow me to enlighten you, then.”

“If you must,” Belzvar sighed. “Though I’d hardly think anything related to those Bendrassi brutes could be considered enlightening.”

“Well,” Kolrax started, “it was actually a pretty important lesson for the galactic community as a whole.” Belzvar opened one of his mouths to respond, but Kolrax cut him off. “That includes the Vorzon, kid. Just shut up and listen.” Scowling, Belzar folded three pairs of arms, while the fourth made a dismissive looking gesture that Kolrax took to mean ‘if you must.’ So he did.

“Hey, you asked,” Kolrax shrugged. “About twenty years back, the Bendrassi got it in their, well, whatever their species’ equivalent of a head is,” another approximation of a human idiom, Kolrax noted, “that the humans, these relative newcomers were expanding too fast. Now, like I said, the humans were careful not to violate the Pax, and the Interplanetary Parliament said as much when the Bendrassi filed a motion with intent to halt the nascent human expansion. Diplomatically, their respective appendages were bound, and, it was argued, it would have been political suicide for the Parliament to support either side of a conflict between two member species, particularly given humanity’s status as relative newcomers to the galactic community.”

“Typical Bendrassi arrogance,” Belzvar grumbled. “Of course they’d stoke conflict.”

“Kid,” Kolrax sighed, “come on. We both know the thing is, the Bendrassi weren’t technically wrong. Hell, that’s why we’re here now. The Bendrassi were just… overzealous. They disagreed with the Parliament’s ruling. Called them cowards, bureaucrats, and worse. Said the humans were a threat that needed to be dealt with immediately. So of course they withdrew their representatives, called up their reserves, and went about declaring war on humanity.”

“Fools.”

“Yep. Things did not go well for the Bendrassi. Got themselves near to completely wiped out, and lost something like 85 percent of their overall territory.”

“Please. Everyone knows that was a result of the Bendrassi civil war,” Belzvar interjected. “The two most prominent factions of Bendrassi internal leadership turned on one another and those barbarians basically destroyed themselves. We all know they’re stupid enough to do it.”

“Well, they made a stupid decision, I’ll agree, but it wasn’t just jockeying between political factions that did them in. Mostly it was the humans.”

“But how?” Belzvar demanded. “You said yourself they’ve only been part of the galactic community for about 50 standard years. The Bendrassi, awful as they were, have had full representational membership, and therefore level 8C technology, at least, for almost a millennium.”

“That’s the thing,” Kolvar muttered. “We don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? This doesn’t make any sense.” Belzvar was pacing the room now, several of his arms twitching in agitation.

Kolrax shrugged again. “I’m only telling you what I know. The humans pushed the Bendrassi back, and they made them pay for every inch of space they’d taken, for every human life they’d ended. By the time it was done, the Bendrassi Protectorate was in ruins, and their numbers were so reduced their Parliamentary membership was reduced to a constituent state, rather than representational membership.”

Belzvar swore. Partially, Kolrax assumed, because he was angry that the Vorzon had not been the ones to so severely bloody their sworn enemies. He wondered how well he’d have taken the news that his own people’s mortal enemy had been crushed by a mysterious new opponent. Poorly, he supposed. Not that Kolrax’s people had many enemies. Almost everyone in the galaxy agreed the Proslians were incredibly trustworthy, almost the point of parody.

“The thing to understand about humans, Belzvar,” Kolrax continued, “is that they’re not strong. They have outdated tech. They’re unfamiliar with the galaxy at large — for now, anyway — but they still won. No matter the odds, they always seem to eke out a victory.”

“But how? How do they keep winning? It doesn’t make any sense, Kolrax. In theory-”

“Yes, in theory,” Kolrax began. “They shouldn’t win. In theory, the Bendrassi should have wiped them out. But something a lot of people overlook, is this: they have the numbers.”

“How many?”

“Somewhere in the mid billions on Earth alone.”

Belzvar interruped. “Earth? What the hell kind of a-”

“The human home world.” Kolrax thought it was a stupid name, too.

“Billions on a single planet?” Belzvar sounded alarmed. “But that’s- Why, that’s just-”

“Preposterous. Trust me, I know. Their resources must be absolutely ravaged. But it would explain an awful lot.”

“But that would mean their breeding is unregulated. Gods, if left unchecked…”

Belzvar swore. Kolrax took the opportunity to continue his story.

“There was a message. Purported to be from a human naval commander during an early battle in their war against the Bendrassi. One of the few humans actually lost. It said only this: ‘We are just the beginning.’” Kolrax gave an involuntary shudder, and noticed Belzvar had done the same.

“Does the Parliament know?” Belzvar asked, quietly.

“About the war? Of course they-” Kolrax said.

“About the threat they pose.”

“I’d wager they do.”

“Then why don’t they do something?”

“They are.”

“Like what?”

“What do you think we’re doing here?” Kolrax asked, a tinge of exasperation in his tone.

“Sitting out in the middle of nowhere space, and, what? Filling out… Filling out klaxxing spreadsheets!” Belzvar threw several sets of arms in the air, in what Kolrax took to be a sign of exasperation. Though, the alien curse word the translation software hadn’t been able to figure out was another sign.

“Well, what would you prefer? Xenocide?” Kolrax had had this conversation with rookies before. Belzvar only glared back at him. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. Anyway, you’d just end up like the Bendrassi.”

“We would never-” Belzvar began, indignantly.

“Oh save it, kid.” Kolrax was tired of the conversation. “We don’t have any other choice. For now, all we can do is wait. And gather information. When we know all the facts, then we can act, however the Parliament decides. But for now, the orders are that we leave the humans alone, and we focus on what we can learn. So far, we know there are billions of them. We know they are scrappy as hell. And we know that, thanks to the Bendrassi, whatever it is that drives the humans in a fight, they do not know how to turn it off.”

At that, Kolrax picked up his beverage container, took a sip, and sighed in annoyance. Belzvar simply continued to pace the room in agitation, stopping only occasionally to check a readout, and mutter another curse.

Kolrax had more important things to worry about, however. For starters, his beverage had gone cold.