The Galactic Alliance of Humankind is an organization in an alternate universe that claims to be the sole legitimate nation of humanity in all of its universe. It has been engaged in a war known as the “Evolution War” with the Hideauze – the only other intelligent species known to the Alliance – for over fourteen hundred years, since Earth was abandoned due to an environmental catastrophe.
The population of the Galactic Alliance is starkly divided into two castes. The “regular” humans of the Alliance generally live peaceful and luxurious lives on terraformed worlds, similar to United Federation of Planets citizens on peaceful, highly developed worlds. They generally have no involvement with the centuries-old war, and little interest in it, other than vague and broad ideological support for it. “Soldiers” are specially-bred and raised humans – genetically modified for combat and educated only in propaganda and military training – who have none of the human rights or freedoms granted to regular citizens. They are kept strictly separate from the regular human population, and are entirely ignorant of their existence and way of life, believing that all humans in the Alliance are warriors like them. They are used as cannon fodder in the Evolution War.
History
The origins of the Galactic Alliance of Humankind go back almost fifteen hundred years, before Earth was abandoned. Earth’s scientists realized that due to a freak astronomical event, the Sun’s luminosity would soon drop dramatically. Earth would become a frozen wasteland, with temperatures averaging at almost a hundred degrees below zero. The phenomenon would last for several hundred years at least. Humanity would be unlikely to survive the long freeze. The only viable option was to abandon Earth, and flee to the stars.
However, the technology level at the time was roughly equivalent to late-21st/early-22nd century United Federation of Planets technology, except that they had no knowledge of warp drives or subspace. Surviving for centuries in space, with no home world for support, was considered almost impossible. Two desperate projects were initiated.
The two projects
The smaller project was orchestrated by a group known colloquially as the “Evolvers”. Their plan was based on the logic that if humanity was to survive in space, they would have to adapt themselves, as a species, to space.
They began a series of radical and extreme experiments to modify the human genome. Their goal was to create an entirely new species of “human”, one that could live natively in space, without the need for technological support which might fail at any time. Their goal was “humans” – or some evolutionary extension of humans – that did not require an oxygen atmosphere, that could survive extreme temperature ranges, and that would be immune to most radiation found naturally in space.
However, the majority of humanity found the Evolvers’ plans to be dangerous, if not completely abhorrent. The idea of changing, or destroying, the most fundamental things that defined humanity was viewed as a kind of “species suicide”. They believed that technological solutions could be found that would not require humanity to surrender its humanness. They poured the bulk of Earth’s resources into developing technologies for space travel and long-term survival in space.
At first, the conflicts between the two projects were fought in scientific journals, with each side arguing the merits of its approach. But soon the dispute spread to the general population, and became less about reasoned scientific or technological disagreements, and more about ideological beliefs. Soon even religious positions were formed around the two approaches. Evolver fanatics argued against the “speciesism”, “essentialism”, and “arrogance” of their opponents for believing that the human form was in any way special; their opponents argued that the Evolvers were trampling on everything that made humanity meaningful, and that they weren’t really saving humanity, they were saving “something else” while letting humanity perish.
The conflict begins
As the ideological lines hardened, there were a number of incidents of vandalism, and even violent scuffles between supporters of the two groups. However, these incidents mostly only involved the most radical extremists on each side. Most of the world considered the dispute to be mainly scientific and technical; they figured the “winner” would be determined by which project succeeded. Their supporters would escape Earth and live on, while the “losers” would be left to freeze to death.
Everything changed after a particularly violent engagement at an Evolver laboratory. It was instigated by a militant band of extremist anti-Evolvers, who attacked the facility in paramilitary fashion, intending to capture and ritually execute the “heretic” scientists within. Unfortunately for the attackers, Evolver science had progressed quite considerably at that laboratory, and they had already modified a half-dozen humans to be able to survive environments far beyond what any unmodified human could. As a side-effect of this ability to survive harsh conditions, they were far stronger and more physically capable than most humans, and much, much harder to kill.
The attackers were broadcasting the assault live on the Internet, intending to show the world the fate of “infidels” who turned their back on humanity. Instead what the world saw was over forty heavily armed and trained commandos slaughtered without difficulty, by a group of only six modified children, who already looked more alien than human.
That changed the tone of the dispute overnight. No longer were the Evolvers a mere disagreement in perspective. Now their modifications were viewed as a threat. In modifying humans to survive the harsh environment of space, the Evolvers had incidentally created what amounted to super-soldiers. While some militaries salivated at the prospect of creating an army of evolved super-soldiers, most of the world was horrified at the prospect.
Most of the world united to condemn the Evolver project, and they passed resolutions outlawing the type of research and genetic modifications the Evolvers were doing. The Evolvers rallied in protest, arguing that if everyone evolved according to their designs – as they wanted all along – the problem of “super-soldiers” would be moot. And anyway, they had been attacked; they were merely defending themselves. Besides, clearly their project was advancing better than the alternatives, so perhaps it was time to abandon the alternatives and focus on the Evolver program. They defied the laws created to oppress them and turned their backs on the united nations that condemned them, and continued their work.
The war begins
Even at this point, there was not yet open hostilities between the Evolvers and the nations united against them. The “war” simmered, but remained cold, primarily because the Evolvers did indeed have a valid point: Their project was succeeding. They were producing promising results, and it may have turned out to be that the only way to escape extinction on a frozen, dying Earth was to give in and surrender to the Evolvers’ philosophy.
But then a breakthrough in the other project changed everything.
Scientists finally produced evidence of a viable theory of interstellar travel, using gates that cast wormholes across dozens or possibly hundreds of light years. They even demonstrated that it worked, by creating a gate near the Moon that launched a tennis-ball sized probe out to the orbit of Saturn. This, combined with advances in life support system technologies that were promising near-indefinite ability to support human life in space, meant that there was suddenly a very real alternative to the Evolver’s plan.
Emboldened by this, some nations tried cracking down on the Evolvers. The Evolvers refused to comply, which led to attempts to use military force to shut them down. These early battles were almost universally overwhelmingly won by the Evolvers, as their modified humans easily cut down the generally older and more traditional armies of the small, individual nations.
The nations of the world quickly realized that tackling the Evolvers separately would not work. So they formed the Continental Union, an alliance specifically organized to fight the Evolvers. The Union quickly scored a series of devastating victories against the Evolvers. In retaliation, the Evolvers – which, until now, had been a somewhat loose affiliation of laboratories and research facilities, with a handful of governments supporting them – organized and combined their resources, and began dedicated efforts to fight back (while always continuing their original research).
Now the entire world was at war, split mostly into two factions. The war raged, on and off, hot and cold, for the next fifty years.
The battle for the stars
The forces of the Continental Union outnumbered the Evolvers by almost a million to one, so victory should have been assured and easy. However, they were two factors in the Evolvers’ favour. The first was that while their forces were outnumbered, the combat capability of a single evolved human was equivalent to almost a hundred unmodified humans. But the main factor in their favour was that the Continental Union could not afford to put most of their resources into the war. Instead, they were building massive colony ships and a huge gate around the orbit of Venus. Their primary, ultimate goal had always been the survival of humanity. That took precedence over their war with the Evolvers. Besides, once they had evacuated everyone to the colony ships and begun the leap to the stars, they could always poison the dying Earth they were leaving behind, thus eradicating the Evolvers once and for all anyway before the Evolvers could escape Earth.
It was a race for the Continental Union to complete the ships and the gate before the Evolvers had advanced enough that they could survive in space.
For a short time, it looked like the Continental Union would win. The gate and the colony ships were completely swiftly, and unevolved humanity was being loaded by the million to the ships in preparation for the jump away to the stars. By contrast, Evolvers were only beginning to develop to the point that they could survive in space. They were not yet ready, but the Continental Union appeared to be. And the Earth was rapidly getting colder and colder.
What happened next was arguably an act of desperation on the part of the Evolvers. It wasn’t so much that the Continental Union would escape that bothered them. If they left, the Evolvers would be free to finish their evolution, and then escape into space at their leisure. What worried the Evolvers was the threat that the Continental Union would poison the Earth before they left. It will never be known whether the Continental Union would have actually followed through on their genocidal plan to poison Earth before they left. But the mere possibility was enough to drive the Evolvers into an act of desperation.
They performed the most extreme modifications so far to their small numbers, killing hundreds of thousands of them in the process, and pushing the remainder so far away from their ancestral humanity that they were no longer even genetically recognizable as once human. The few hundred thousand of them that survived these last, desperate modifications immediately launched from Earth, and flew toward Venus to destroy the gate.
The Continental Union, now almost all loaded in their colony ships, immediately charged to the defence, and the largest space battle in human history took place around the orbit of Venus.
The battle lasted almost three days, and though the gate remained intact, neither side was winning. Several dozen colony ships had been lost, and the number of Evolvers was dwindling to less than a hundred thousand.
Deciding to cut their losses, the Continental Union leadership opened the gate, and begin rushing colony ships through. Seeing this, the Evolvers attacked in one final, desperate push. Tens of thousands of them were caught up in the gate’s wormhole, and sent – along with the Continental Union’s colony ships – hundreds of light years away.
But the Evolvers finally succeeded in destroying the gate, though the resulting energy release wiped out all remains of both forces around the orbit of Venus, and scorched the planet itself.
It was the end of the war, but only in Sol System. A hundred and ninety light years away, around a sun almost identical in its physical characteristics to the Sun, the survivors of both groups that had made it through the gate continued their fierce, genocidal battle.
The birth of the Alliance
The war raged on for months around the star named HIP 11915. Both sides desperately attempted to wipe out the other, knowing that there could be no escape from this fight, and no return to where they had come from.
But eventually, losses on both sides grew so severe that long-term survival started to become questionable. No truce of any kind was ever reached, but both sides withdrew to lick their wounds and preserve the small populations they had left.
The survivors of the Continental Union decided that their best hope of survival was to abandon their plans to settle in HIP 11915’s system, and instead build a new gate and escape even further out. They formed a new government from the ashes, calling it “The Galactic Alliance of Humankind” to stress its ideology about the superiority of human nature.
Meanwhile, the surviving Evolvers knew that they had to escape the system, too. Staying meant their genocidal enemies would know where they were. They needed to travel faster than light, so they began evolving a “gate organism” – an offshoot of their own biology that would support a gate similar to what the Continental Union had built.
For the next three centuries, the two groups both tried to escape into the vastness of the galaxy, leaping thousands and thousands of light years away from Earth. There was no open conflict during this period, as neither side had the resources to spare. Both were concentrating only on survival, and expansion. Whenever either side detected the other, they would flee further still into space.
The war resumes
After three hundred years, the Galactic Alliance of Humankind had grown large enough, stable enough, and arrogant enough to decide that continuing to tolerate the existence of their hated enemy was unacceptable. The next time they detected the presence of the Evolvers, for the first time in over three centuries, they attacked.
The Evolver pod was caught entirely by surprise, and wiped out. But the victory was pyrrhic, because they had managed to whittle down a force almost five times their size to a only a 2% survival rate. If the Alliance was going to properly prosecute a war of extermination against the Evolvers, they would need a new strategy.
Their solution was the creation of a specially-bred caste of humans, raised from birth for the sole purpose of fighting the Evolvers. But not quite humans – to match the Evolvers’ enhanced abilities, the Alliance borrowed some of their tricks, and produced genetically-engineered human soldiers. Because they were not “pure human”, the majority of the Alliance’s population considered them to be mere animals, and not much different from their hated enemies. They were satisfied that these abominations were put to good use fighting their enemies (which meant that they would not have to risk their lives fighting), but wanted nothing to do with them. They wanted them kept strictly separate from “real” humans, and used only as tools in the war.
The Alliance also developed the machine calibre weapon system, for these modified soldiers to use in combat. Early models were crude, and not designed for pilot survivability. Generally, over 95% of modified soldiers sent into a battle did not survive it. These odds improved over time, as both the machine calibre designs advanced, and the breeding and training programs for the soldiers got more sophisticated.
With their new population of specially-conditioned super-soldiers, the Alliance began aggressively hunting the descendants of the Evolvers – which they now called Hideauze, and claimed were aliens, as part of their propaganda for the soldiers. Their brainwashed super-warriors lived lives of nothing but combat, going from battle to battle starting almost as soon as they could walk, believing that they were all that was left of humanity, standing against a hostile alien threat that had attacked them first. The Evolvers, in turn, attacked the Alliance whenever they could be found, wiping out entire planets in atrocity after atrocity.
That has been the situation for almost a thousand years now. Billions of humans live peaceful and happy lives on terraformed worlds far away from the front lines, while genetically-engineered super-soldiers are bred in breeding programs and brainwashed to serve out their lives fighting an endless war against what they think is an alien enemy.
Politics
The Galactic Alliance of Humankind is a federation of democratic republics, overseen by a council of representatives elected by the civilian population known as the Galactic Council. The Galactic Council in theory has no leader, though in practice it elects a Prime Director who moderates the discussions and debates in the council, and who is widely considered to be the “head” of the council.
The Galactic Council maintains fairly loose control over the republics of the Alliance. Most governance is handled by the individual republics, which each have their own council and director. The Alliance currently consists of thirteen terraformed planets, thirty-four colonies on non-terraformed worlds, and fifty-two space colonies. The planets each have their own Planetary Council and Planetary Director; the colonies have Colonial Councils and Colonial Directors.
Additionally, there is a sub-group of the Galactic Council known as the War Council, moderated by the War Director. This group oversees the progress of the Evolution War, and is the ultimate authority over the military command, and the billions of soldier-caste genetically-modified humans that fight in the war. The soldiers are unaware of the civilian population of the Alliance; they believe the War Council is the only council that exists, and that they are the only humans that exist. The soldiers do not vote, and are led by their indoctrination to believe that the members of the War Council and high-ranking military officials are soldiers like them, who have risen to their positions by performing well in combat. This is not true; none of the War Council or the upper echelons of the military command are genetically-engineered soldiers, nor have they ever fought in any battles. They are elected or appointed from the civilian population that the soldiers know nothing about.
The Evolution War
The Evolution War has been fought for almost fifteen hundred years between the Alliance and the Hideauze. It has its roots in an ideological conflict brought on by a freak astronomical phenomenon that threatened to cast Earth into a deep ice age for centuries. The Hideauze were originally human, but chose to engineer away their humanity in order to live natively in space. The Alliance grew out of a movement opposed to giving up their humanity, and instead seeking technological solutions for escaping the dying Earth.
In the early days, the Evolution War was a war for survival, as both sides conspired to completely eradicate the other, and both came very close to accomplishing that. But after four hundred years, the Alliance changed its structure, separating into two branches. The civilian branch would live peacefully, hundreds or even thousands of light years away from the front lines, essentially completely unaffected by the conflict. Meanwhile, a branch of engineered humans tailored for combat would be bred and indoctrinated into lifelong military service. They would continue to fight the Evolution War; they would carry out the Alliance’s genocidal attacks on the Hideauze, and act as cannon fodder to protect the civilian worlds.
Over a thousand years, this situation has stabilized to the point where many citizens are not even aware that the war rages on. Meanwhile, millions of brainwashed soldiers fight and die believing they are all that’s left of humanity.
Machine calibres
The Alliance’s primary weapon in the war against the Hideauze is the machine calibre, a human-piloted, humanoid combat robot. Due to the countless forms that Hideauze come in, ranging in size from no larger than a human child, to as large as small cities, and in every shape imaginable and then some, the most effective strategy is usually to close in quickly, and try to destroy the brains or other vital organs with traumatic physical damage. Machine calibres are extremely fast, and extremely manoeuvrable, and their humanoid form gives them all the dexterity of a natural human. They can rapidly fly at an opponent, and hack away at it with their charged lance until the enemy finally succumbs. Naturally, the chance of surviving such tactics is not high. Machine calibres and their pilots are not expected to live very long.
Alliance strategy upon detecting a Hideauze pod in a new system is generally to build up as massive a force of soldiers and machine calibres as possible, load them all onto a carrier, and just jump right into the heart of the pod, instructing the soldiers to just kill everything in sight. There are generally no contingency plans for retreat, so if the enemy turns out to be stronger than expected, more often than not the whole strike force will be annihilated.
When larger or stronger pods are detected, more carefully planned attacks are used. Usually hit-and-fade tactics are used to strike at key support targets, whose loss will drastically weaken the fighting strength of the Hideauze pod. Small strike carriers bring teams of hundreds, or sometimes even only dozens, of machine calibres right into the heart of the enemy, and while they attack the designated target, the carrier deploys an escape gate. Once the target is destroyed – or the mission is designated a failure – the machine calibres reboard the carrier and escape through the temporary gate. This strategy is repeated over and over until either the pod is weakened enough for a full assault, or the assault forces amass enough soldiers and machine calibres that it doesn’t matter.
This strategy has no practical hope of ever completely eradicating the Hideauze all over the galaxy. However, it is very effective at keeping them off-balance on the front lines. It is all the Hideauze can manage to hold the lines, and only occasionally effect successful attacks on nearby Alliance installations (which are always soldier bases – non-soldier citizen colonies are always hundreds of light-years behind the front lines). The result has been a stalemate that has lasted almost a thousand years. Alliance citizens – and presumably also most Hideauze – live peaceful lives light-years away from the front lines of the conflict, while the Hideauze and Alliance soldiers on the front lines fight deadly battles almost every day, shifting the lines a few light-years forward and back, back-and-forth, in and endless, futile conflict.
Soldiers
Alliance soldiers are a specialized branch of the Alliance population. They are distinct from regular Alliance citizens legally, culturally, and even genetically.
Genetic engineering is a strict taboo among Alliance citizens. However, soldiers are heavily genetically modified to make it easier to survive life in space, and to enhance their combat effectiveness. For this reason, most Alliance citizens don’t consider soldiers true humans at all, and are disgusted by them.
Soldiers are born as part of a breeding program that has been going on for over a thousand years. The best soldiers are assigned to mate and produce fertilized zygotes, which are then extracted and transferred to gestation tanks. There the zygotes are cloned thousands of times and modified, then allowed to grow.
Once the zygote has matured into a child, it is removed from the tanks, and a training and indoctrination program begins. If the child shows any physical abnormalities, or fails to pass all of the rigorous physical and psychological assessments, they are simply tossed into the bio-recyclers, to feed the next generation.
From the moment they leave the tanks until age 8, they are rigorously trained and indoctrinated with Alliance propaganda, to turn them into perfect soldiers. Most of their tests are conducted under live-fire conditions; more than 90% of soldiers don’t survive to age 8.
Once they turn 8, they are assigned a machine calibre, which will become their home for the next twenty years. They live in their machine calibres, going from mission to mission, only leaving their cockpits for short periods when the machine calibre must dock for repairs, maintenance, or rearming. Meanwhile, the machine calibre’s pilot support system serves as mentor and tutor for the child, continuing their training and indoctrination.
The child is led to believe that humanity has been driven to the brink of extinction thanks to an invasion by the alien Hideauze. They are told that the surviving remnants of humanity are all soldiers like them, fighting for their right to survive. They are never told about the billions of non-soldier Alliance citizens, living peaceful lives hundreds of light-years behind the front lines. They are told that the military leadership they answer to is all soldiers like them who have survived to old age and demonstrated superior skills in battle; in reality, military leadership largely comes from the citizenry – not the soldiers – and none have fought a real battle in their lives. The only non-combat installation they are told about is Avalon, located thirty light-years behind the lines.
Avalon serves as a sort of promised land for soldiers. It is, they believe, the only human installation where one can indulge in luxuries and recreation – where one can take a break from the war. If they survive long enough, they can visit Avalon, and enjoy its luxuries. They are told that once the reach age 18, they will be granted three weeks at Avalon every three years until they turn 30. During these breaks, they are allowed to mate, but fertilized eggs are extracted by the military before they return to their machine calibres.
Few soldiers survive to age 30, but those that do are allowed to “retire” from infantry service, and no longer have to fight day-in-day-out in a machine calibre. They are assigned to strategic command, and use their experience to help plan attacks, tactics, and strategies. They are also allowed to visit Avalon for three months every year.
Soldiers are never allowed to truly retire to the peaceful words far back from the front lines. The regular citizens would never tolerate their existence because of their genetic modifications. Most soldiers never learn about the trillions of humans living peacefully away from the war. Few live long enough to “retire” from machine calibre combat at age 30, and of those who do, and start serving as low-level military advisors, if any of them learn too much, or start to show any questioning of their loyalty, they are quietly eliminated.