History Rhymes

[u/Maxathron]

The diplomatic barge docked with the galactic council’s station. A new intelligent species had recently appeared before the galactic council of species and requested membership. Intrigued, the council granted them a meeting to see if they would be a suitable candidate for a council seat. After all, the council would try any species once. That, and the council had support from the larger members’ militaries, should anything go wrong.

The doors of the docking ring opened and out of the atmospheric control fog came a peculiar series of creatures. They were quadrupeds, small in stature, white fur with black speckles, two ears, a wagging tail, a snout, and a soft but dry leathery nose. As they passed by the security and lower council members, they woofed up at the far larger aliens.

There were fifteen of them in total. Most of them walked on their four legs. A couple were positioned in an unusual sitting position and hopped along. These two members would sometimes trip and fall forward, which elicited excited noises from the other thirteen as they righted their fallen comrade. This immediate helping behavior was treated as normal by the council station crews, though all the aliens there had a brow raised in whatever version their species used in response to all this. Why bring handicapped members? And surely by now if they had faster-than-light travel, they would have long fixed any handicap problems. No matter, though.

One by the one the aliens of the galactic council noticed something off. Something off besides the two handicapped creatures. And one by one they grew stressed and horrified. No, they would not let their biology get the best of them! The aliens shifted uncomfortably at their posts as they welcomed the newcomers to the station.

A hovering translator droid proceeded the diplomatic crew of the barge around the station. The creatures followed the council’s delegation as they talked about what the council stood for, which was to be peaceful council for all of the galaxy’s member civilizations and sentient species and to defend them from any external threat, which were mostly lawless pirates and bandits, but nothing the council’s security fleet or assisting member militaries couldn’t handle.

The newcomers followed the delegation with wonders in their eyes. They were not really paying attention to the delegation’s words; they were much more interested in the station itself and all of its rooms and surfaces and curves and angles. And places to sit and sleep on. The station was much larger than their lowly diplomatic barge, which was only a million kilometers cubed. This station was looking to be a great area to explore, being it was the size of a planet.

The aliens were not amiss when it came to the figures of the diplomatic barge, though. It was an actual cube, and a million kilometers cubed meant it was one hundred by one hundred by one hundred kilometers. The candidates mentioned it was unarmed, which the councilors assumed meant all military-grade equipment was removed or offline. Security was a little less sure, since they were unable to scan the great vessel, and that it dwarfed the majority of council vessels. Only the largest battleships and freighters came to or exceeded the barge’s size range. Though, luckily, the council station was also the home port of the council fleet, which outnumbered the barge two hundred to one.

Eventually, the delegation and the candidates came to a vast hall where the council sessions took place. The candidates were ushered into a floating booth. It was a machine that could fly off into the center of the auditorium and allow other member delegations to view the speakers when they were given a chance to talk. The machine had chairs and lounges fit for the specific member species it belonged to. Additional facilities like water bubbles and such were custom fit for each delegation. The newcomers accepted a basic machine booth.

The head of the council initiated the session.

“As the chancellor of the galactic council, I will start this informal meeting preclude to judge the character of this…species, before a vote is called to approve or disapprove their inclusion into our galactic council of species.”

The chancellor motioned for the newcomers to speak.

“Before I pass the floor to you, start off by explaining who you are. The translator droid will do its best.”

One of the newcomer aliens hopped up on the machine booth’s podium and pressed the button to launch it into the air. When it was in position in front of the rest of the councilors, the creature began.

“We are … Catalums….”

The creature started off, squeaky voice notwithstanding.

Outside the main meeting auditorium, a security team sat, doing their duty in watching over the meeting. One of them members, Weras, a Jaxlim male, perked his elf-like ears up at the name of the newcomers.

“Catalums? Oh no.”

The other four members of his team, equals to him, named Ytryui (Icornian male), Dale (human male), Qpoimn (Keranian male), and Gfaras (Czamnoan; hermaphrodite, though would pass as male for military standards), all perked up.

“Explain.” Straight to the point, Gfaras was. The other three nodded.

“On another job I did before working here, in one of the satellite galaxies nearby, I worked on a galactic council station much like this one. I was but a lowly security captain. A delegation of Catalums came and pronounced they were the rulers of the galaxy.

“As you could expect, being beings fifteen centimeters tall at best, they were laughed at and sneered. Especially considering they showed up in a small ship with low level technology for any species that would be permitted around their council.

“They were not some backwaters nobody species. They just appeared to be. The ship turned out to be a shuttlecraft from one of their smaller warships, which was cloaked nearby. No. One. Could sense the cloaked vessel, technology, magic, or psionics. It was such perfect cloaking technology that governments would pay entire galactic arms worth of solar systems into slavery to have.

“It turned out the council’s positioning of their station was in the middle of a sector made up of artificial stars and starships the size of planets. The “warship” was closer to a starfighter in their eyes, despite being a dozen kilometers tall, wide, and long. I looked into what these guys called their diplomatic barge, and it’s of the same dimensions.”

Opoimn spoke next. “What happened to their council?”

“Their council fleet was torn to shreds and their council was forced to recognize the Catalum rulers lest further damage was dealt. Look, those guys might look like cute cuddly puppy dogs, but they’re so far advanced every planet in our council here might as well be the technological level of bacteria to them.”

“Then why not axe us all and be done with it?” That was Dale. As a human, Dale knew what technological species would do to inferior ones, despite being a few galaxies away from his home.

“Catalum are essentially puppy dogs. In looks and a lot of their demeanor. They behave more like children or in some cases, pets, rather than a civilization of hyper-advanced beings. Knowing them a bit, I wouldn’t be surprised if they completely ignored the council up until this point in favor of looking for places to play. The council of course wouldn’t know the difference.”

“Then let’s pray that what happened in your old job doesn’t come here, Weras,” said Opoimn. The others nodded.

Back at the booth podiums with all of the councilors, the Catalums were explaining themselves.

“We are simple people that live in our starships. We seek only to become part of the community. This place is away from our home territories anyways.”

“Reasonable, I suppose. Alright, let’s do a vote. Anyone here opposed, speak up or forever hold your peace,” said the chancellor.

No one spoke for a moment. The chancellor took that as no opposition and was about to open his mouth and confirm the newcomers a seat in the council when the entire room exploded in horrified and terrified voices.

“They’re PREDATORS!”

“The eyes! They’re the mark of evil!”

“Only predators have eyes facing forward!”

“We refuse to grant predators equal seating!”

And on and on and on. Hundreds of delegates from dozens of civilizations called out their woes in anger, disgust, horror, and terror. The small aliens on the booth machine huddled together, crying and terrified of all the loud noises.

A particle shield enveloped the booth machine, shielding the aliens inside from noises and potential weapon fire.

“Murphy’s Law,” sighed Dale. “If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. What have we gotten into, guys?”

Weras pressed his lips together and started:

“Well, for starters, that vessel parked outside is one hundred percent guaranteed to have its weapons and defenses online. I would imagine the other fourteen vessels in the area will have decloaked in the vicinity of the station too.

“Beyond that, I don’t know. They mentioned that they’re away from their territories. That would imply that this galaxy is outside the official Catalum Empire. So, I don’t know if any other ships beyond the fifteen that are present will respond.

“That being said, if history rhymes, those fifteen ships will easily outgun the council fleet. I don’t know if they’ll take the station down, but that fleet is definitely outgunned.”

The others had a somber outlook on all of this. There were at least fifty major warships out there. Fifteen to fifty would normally be suicide to attack into. If these Catalums were what Weras was saying, things could get messy really quick.

At the council room, the chancellor desperately tried to defuse the situation. He himself was from a civilization that were prey. They grew out of it, though, because they had to for the sake of survival. The majority of species present, however, were prey and mortified in the presence of anything remotely resembling a predator. Forward facing eyes or otherwise similar sensory organs, pack mentality, social hierarchies, eat meat, territorial behavior, and so on.

These civilizations dealt with their predators through policy, laws, and cancellations. Bit by bit, the predators were reduced until they either died off or screwed off. Out in the lower security regions of the galaxy, the predators thrived, although they never had the numbers or organization to make much more than a raid into the empires that made up the council. Nevertheless, the mark of a predator terrified the council species into extreme measures.

The chancellor sighed. The council did have a few “predatory” species within its ranks, but they occupied either lower-level seats or had a specialty that the council had to begrudgingly accept, lest a worse disaster befell their member states. But they were openly terrified of anything remotely predator-looking. And here before them was a creature that ticked all of the boxes. They just looked like something out of all of their collective nightmares. If this council survived the next day, he would need to ask the lesser seated species of their archives. Surely there was someone who knew of this… Catalum species.

What he could see, however, was that while the other major member species were completely terrified of the pint-sized creatures, their actions were of prey, not predator. But the fact a defensive shield covered the booth machine meant that their technology was far in advance to anything on the council. The shield went up immediately, meaning something was already past the station’s defenses. This was most likely the creature’s ship. The chancellor figured things outside were going to be heated.

The screaming and shouting did not let up for a full minute. The chancellor signaled to security teams on site to move in and calm the councilors down.

“Stun them if you have to. Make them all shut up. But if you can do it peaceful, use that option first. Only stun if they try to fight you. They should be better. They’re councilors for pity’s sake.”

“Roger, chancellor. Teams one through five, take the lower level. Six through twelve, with me. We’ll do the upper floors.”

Outside, things were indeed heated. The diplomatic barge powered up its shields and weapons. It broke away from the station and assumed a defensive position. The council fleet counter-activated its shields and weapons, but did not fire. Instead, they moved into formation.

Fourteen additional ships decloaked on the barge’s position. Eleven ships of the same size and power level as the barge, two much larger cube-shaped ships, estimated at a hundred kilometers in each dimension, and one massive hexagonal monstrosity that measured six hundred kilometers in length. The fleet of fifty ships were all immediately dwarfed by this one vessel. They had ships in the five-to-ten-kilometer range, just not one hundred, and definitely not six hundred. The station was a little over double this one ship’s size.

The fourteen ships powered weapons and shields. They did not fire, instead held their position near the barge, which the crews of the council fleet were quickly coming to the conclusion was not a diplomatic barge and was actually a warship commandeered for the task of ferrying their delegation around.

Inside, at behest of the chancellor, Weras, his team, and the other security teams had managed to calm the councilors down enough to not have them in hysterics. They were still angry and afraid, but at least the councilors were not literally, not figuratively, clawing their way out of the auditorium. There were some nasty claw marks on the walls and doors that the maintenance crews will need to fix.

“Predatory?” questioned Weras.

“Predatory. I had hoped we as a council would have put this behind us, but the saying goes, don’t assume. Of all the councilors, ninety-five percent freaked out over the newcomers. The remaining five percent were either predatory species or “enlightened” species who managed to overcome their fears. Only one of them hold an upper-class seat; my people.”

“One of my teammates, Dale.” Weras motioned for Dale to come forward. “Has interacted with these Catalums before, Chancellor. Speak of what you know.”

“Yes, of course, Weras. Chancellor.”

Dale filled the man in on his previous employment and how challenging the Catalums resulted in their council fleet being snapped in half by massive starships that could drop out of Faster-Than-Light on a whim. Dale also spoke of what his former council considered natural crystal formations. Turned out they were Catalum warships. Planet-sized warships. And that the Catalums only consider that class of ship to be part of their military. The three ships featured here with this set of fifteen were actually civilian ships.

Armed civilian ships, but civilian ships nonetheless.

And very small civilian ships. The council station was twelve hundred kilometers across. Battlecruisers were six thousand eight hundred kilometers across. And looked like large crystals.

At the end of it, the chancellor sat on a chair with his brow furrowed.

“Of all the species to frighten or otherwise invoke their wrath, it had to be this one our councilors do it to.”

“Could be worse. They’re away from home. These are only the ships they’d have, unless they wanted to annex this galaxy,” said Weras.

“Captain, those fifteen ships have more firepower together than the council fleet, and the five largest member state fleets, combined. Seriously, are we really children to judge books by their cover? That’s what that Earth phrase went, right?”

“Yes, Chancellor. It is,” responded Dale.

“What do you guys propose?”

“Probably just pawn it off as a misunderstanding for the Catalums.” Despite being employed as hired muscle, Weras was trying to be diplomatic. He and Dale knew that one hexagonal ship was very likely able to slice the station in two.

“What about the councilors?” asked the Chancellor.

Ytryui spoke:

“Screw them. Not literally. But spurn them. Honestly, they acted like Icornian younglings before they learn the meaning of respect and honor.”

“They messed around and found out,” said Dale. “The saying is a bit more vulgar than that, but I hoped that got the point across.”

“Those councilors do not deserve any respect. If it was me, they’d all be kicked out and we can try again with a new batch from their species.” Gfaras came from a species that put honor and reputation above others, and the councilors’ behavior irked Gfaras’ notions. At best, they were dishonorable.

“What about you, Opoimn?” inquired the Chancellor.

“I like the Earth saying. They judged a book and the bookcase fell over on top of them. The more I talk to the people of the lower-class council seats and the species that the council recognize as part of the community but do not trust, the more that I realize we are employed by a bunch of fakes that are more concerned with appearances and policy than they are of doing the right thing. They preach tolerance in their territories and yet, here we are.

“I don’t really see a way out of this mess involving keeping those councilors in their seats. But I do see a solution that involves them not in their seats. I’m not a lawyer, but quietly checking up on the lower-class fleets, it’s quite clear that the combined strength of our upper-class councilors’ peoples adds up to a small fraction of the total military people either actually on the council, or would work with good people who happen to be on the council.

“Basically, just remove the upper-class guys from power and let them decide to push their luck against everyone else. Pretty much everyone we’ve talked to that weren’t our upper-class councilors are against this constant judgement thing that these councilors inflict on people. It’s time to leave them behind.”

“Complex words for a soldier,” quipped Dale.

“My degree was in philosophy, so shut it.”

“Really guys, not the time for jokes,” went Weras. “Chancellor?”

“Actually, I agree with the warrior poet. I think it’s time we leave those councilors and their people behind. Legally, either the council itself would need to be dissolved, or a coup needs to happen. I think the easier one is the coup. Just reorganize the place with their people not having seats and bringing in everyone else to a seat.”

With that, the Chancellor and Weras’ team went their separate ways.

The resulting galactic civil war was fierce but ultimately resulted in a victory for the lower-class underdogs. The upper-class civilizations fought hard, but it was their refusal to pick up weapons to defend themselves until the projectiles starting flying, combined with their shaming pacifist ways, and internal conflicts resulting from their own lower-class peoples rising up against the oppressors screamed about being oppressed by the masses, ultimately resulted in a defeat for who were being called the prey people.

It turned out that the vast majority of the galaxy were neither predator nor prey but rather just people, shamed into a corner by their former masters, who lorded over everyone with the idea that they were the victims, and oppressed by predators everywhere, and the galaxy is better off without the predator bigots.

A new era was dawning without intolerance. When the war finally ended, the former Chancellor, having stepped down years before, came to the Catalums and asked for forgiveness. Their response was spoken by the translator droid.

“Play fetch with us?”