All I can see is we are doomed. I used to spend my days conquering new worlds and my nights watching the sky looking for some more to conquer. Now I realize all we did was break the natural laws of the universe. Kill many innocents. I nourished the spirit of revenge amongst so many who would not have hurt us if it wasn’t for me. Their lands, their homes, their loved ones. They are all destroyed and they’ll seek us across the galaxy to claim revenge. We are not prepared for that. We’ll lose ladies and gentleman. I apologize for what I have brought upon you. So this is farewell.
Those were Leo Richardson’s last words right before swallowing a botulinum pill before his loyal slaves. No one could believe what was happening. Their grand master had such a fatal destiny at the peak of his works. There was not a single soul who did not mourn his lost. And let alone who would understand what he meant.
Eighty nine million skilled slaves watched in horror his decease inside the enterprise, and in spite of what he meant as their leader, they were still pretty confident about his goals.
We can still make it – said a crew member of the engine’s room.
Yes, indeed. And we will not stop until we succeed – replied the new ship commander.
Fear and doubt are normal emotions to feel when going through a similar situation. Their leader and inspiration was gone. However, when over 12 planets have succumbed to their power in the last six centuries, things still looked good enough.
All people on the ship wondered what their home was looking like, though. Getting a suitable new planet, for an overpopulated world was their objective. Or so they thought. But in reality, they did not realize it was greed what drove them.
165 years ago, a young and fierce Leo Richardson took his father’s place on command of the massive enterprise. His lineage had the control of 6 Earth-like planets already. 4 of them contained intelligent life forms. Only three had the technology to try to defend themselves. But it wasn’t enough. Humans had developed teleportation, and that was way too much of an advantage. Diplomacy was attempted on their first invasion, yet it is not possible to get to good terms when taking over others’ homes.
Victory was accomplished so easily, men thought they were invincible. Only a few hundreds of humans saw death coming to them during the six hundred years of their crusade. The average human being was said to now live up to 900 years thanks to the vast knowledge there is in quantum physics, brought to them by Leo’s grandfather, but no one really knew that for a fact as only a few had ever died of a natural cause.
Leo never took part in battle until the 9th invasion. He only attacked military at first, but eventually the lands civilians occupied were also needed for their survival. Only a handful of the victims managed to escape. He felt no remorse whatsoever, until one night, when something happened.
Before that night, it was the second day of the what-so-called war on the 12th planet of the enterprise. Leo was leading a crew into the depths of some cave-like structures. He would usually get involved in battle during the last days of conquest, when the danger had diminished. Nevertheless, the Feins, a humanoid and not too advanced species, seemed harmless to them; so he decided to venture himself. The buildings (or so they seemed to be), were actually their homes. You could see children hugging their bleeding parents and crying for mercy. But it was agreed that no survivors were going to be held. Yet they were so foolish and arrogant, that they didn’t take the preventions needed to guard one of the teleporting ships. It was to their surprise when a group of 5 younglings managed to steal it and escape. The crew didn’t seem to matter much, but Leo knew something was wrong.
Earlier that day, he saw how those same kids howled their parents’ death, and he made eye contact with one of the. It shocked him to see such anger concentrated in that eye. They vanished into some woods and nobody saw them again until that night when the ship was stolen.
Leo was getting old, so he stopped going to battle. He was in charge of the tactics now, which made the crusade even more deadly than before. They could not stop conquering planets for humans could reproduce at such high speeds and with little to no deaths coming soon, planets were overpopulated in no time.
The other species feared them as much as they despised them but no one was capable of stopping humanity.
Fortunately, the universe is so vast, the outcomes might be infinite.
One night Leo saw something while sleeping. He saw a dark silhouette surrounded by the five Feinians who had stolen the ship. He felt it was not a dream, though. He had actually been teleported to the next planet they were planning to invade. He was warned of their technology, and showed him a vision of how they were going to destroy the enterprise, the terrestrials on the conquered planets and on Earth itself. They were not a conquering race. They were happy in their planet. They took care of it and lived and died as humans did many years ago. Everything was in balance for them. But they saw how other races ran away from their own planets to escape from humanity, which made them consider humanity a plague. And plagues must be exterminated.
Leo felt hopeless when he saw their troops and weaponry. He knew the end was coming, and it was all his fault. All he could see is they were doomed.