Chapter twenty-five

Furthermore, almost all their organs possess the ability to regenerate from just a few cells. It is astonishing how their body can function without these organs for long enough to regenerate, in some cases for days. -extract from “Terran biology; a look inside the body of a human”

Humanity had never been one to sit back and relax; while the Union was bickering about what to do about the new arrival, humanity has stepped up their efforts. Now that they had an approximate idea of what forces were present in the galaxy, good old paranoia shone through.

Humanity immediately assumed the worst, and war preparations were started. New planets were discovered at a great rate, far away from the star rails (human name for the “conduits”). Colonisation packages were immediately sent over, full of nanobots that immediately started to convert the planet for human use. On numerous factory worlds and military bases, new ships, troops and equipment were churned out. Huge voidforts were built far from any stars, with hyperdrive anchors capable of pulling ships out of star rails.

One day, 2 sol years after first contact, humanity discovered its first intelligent alien species. Two of them. One of humanity’s automated exploration ships dropped out of subspace into the middle of a battle between two species undiscovered by the Union.

The aliens were startled at first by the sudden appearance of a new ship, and both sides opened fire. The exploration ship wasn’t programmed to attack and so raised its shields. After shooting at the shields for half an hour, the aliens both realised that it was futile to continue attacking the newcomer and proceeded to continue with their battle around the exploration vessel. Which was promptly stopped by a human fleet arriving.

The negotiations afterwards were tense. The two alien species turned out to be an insectoid species and a reptilian species. The whole war also turned out to be a misunderstanding. The reptilian species had a history of blood feuds, and one was launched when one of the first contact team was accidentally killed by an insectoid alien, who thought they were robots stealing his livestock. The blood feud then escalated until the whole of both species were involved.

After some explaining of these facts and a few threats from all sides, both sides agreed to drop the matter and reconcile. This was helped by the humans threatening to blow up the moons of both their planets if they continued to fight.

After a bit of posturing and a few tense moments, a peace treaty was signed. Humanity as a whole’s first reaction to them was a bit fearful, but they were soon accepted and after a couple of years they had merged into human society and had adopted many of the same customs and idiosyncrasies as humans. The Union, of course, didn’t find out about the whole matter until a few more years later. When they did find out, they made a big fuss about it and said it was illegal. Humanity proceeded to completely ignore them until the whole thing blew over and everyone forgot about it.