The Spirit of Man (Patreon)

In the memories of all races across the Galaxy, the Hegemony had always been there. They were the first great empire to rise, and they used their technological advantage to dominate and hold the shackles of all other alien empires struggling to leave their home systems. The conquests were always swift and brutal, most were made client races in service to their masters in the Hegemony. And other races were deemed unfit to serve and were wiped clean, their worlds reseeded with the client races.

Those who were wiped clean weren’t deemed unfit to serve because they were rebellious, or dangerous. They were deemed unfit for one reason, because they were ugly, and only those the Hegemony found aesthetically pleasing were allowed to serve. The race of Man, or humanity as the often called themselves were not one of the ugly inferior races.

In fact they were often cited as some of the most pleasing xenos for the Hegemony to look upon. The Hegemony were tall and willowy bipeds to Man’s squat robust form. Upon their discovery many powerful aristocrats scrambled to get themselves some human slaves to serve in their houses as domestic slaves. A position coveted by all client races for the ease and luxury afforded to those favored servants. Most races were doomed to toil away on toxic forge-worlds, or to starve on farm-worlds as their hard labor was taken to feed the bottomless hunger of the Hegemony.

It came as a surprise to many when Humanity refused the comfortable and plushy yoke of domestic servitude and chose to rebel. It was even more surprising when the Hegemony declared that the race of Man was to be wiped clean.

The masters of the galaxy were no strangers to rebellion and riots. It had been present in their empire for so long that it had become a sport to quell to boredom of many young aristocrats. So it was highly unlikely that the Hegemony saw Man as a sufficiently troublesome thorn. It was something else within Humanity that inspired to vain Hegemony to wipe out a race they had previously favored. Something within the very soul of Humanity that angered the Hegemony, the so-called Spirit of Man.

Many bitter and jealous client races waited to hear news that humanity had been wiped clean. They had been enslaved for so long that none dared to dream of freedom, only the destruction of those who had earned their ire. But the news never came.

Years went by, with each year they saw an uptick in the labor and toils as the Hegemony war machine spewed out more and more weapons. Fleets assembled and never seen again. Young aristocratic scions gone to war, never to return home. And soon, in back alleys and basements, rumor of Human victories began to spread. Somehow Mankind was pushing back the Hegemony, and soon the first client worlds fell.

Fire streaked from the sky of Gartu as Hegemony fleets bombarded their own client world to prevent it from falling into humanity’s hands. Then a new sort of fire came from the sky, slaves who had hunkered down under the Hegemony’s attacks were shocked when no explosion came from this new fire, but instead armored Human drop troopers.

Gartu became the first world to be liberated by Human ground forces. A brilliant tactical victory, but over all a grand strategic failure.

The Human counterattack cost the Hegemony a total of six worlds, three forge-worlds, two farm-worlds, and one industrial powerhouse and ship builder. The Human generals had thought they would be welcomed in with cheers of joy as liberators and heroes. But instead the client races only saw them as a new master, one who was weak, refused to crack the whip, and far too enamored with feeding and clothing them. They had been slaves for so long that the concept of freedom was lost to them, instead they saw the war as only a battle for a new master. And they wouldn’t be controlled by such weak masters.

The riots, suicide bombings, and sabotage to production cost Humanity greatly. Their forces were now spilt between the front lines and keeping the peace on their newly occupied worlds. Just in time for the Hegemony’s counterattack. For the first time since the war began Humanity was pushed back. The forces of gamma quadrant defense made their final stand over the liberated and rebelling world of Gartu. The Hegemony lost eight ships for every Human ship, but they came with a fleet ten times stronger. The people of Gartu cheered for the Hegemony as the last Human ship fell back.

Their cheers were cut short by the glassing cannons that soon followed the Hegemony’s victory.

The Hegemony could not afford to glass all the conquered worlds, but they had to make an example for the rest of their empire and squash any pro-Human sympathies.

The next years of the war saw the Humans dig in their defenses on the liberated world and slowly try to bleed the massive beast that was the Hegemony’s counter offensive. But with every enemy ship cut down another three took its place. The same could not be said of Hegemony soldiers however, they lost so many Hegemony lives to human trench warfare that the decision was made to incorporate client races into the armed forces.

Boron was the next world to fall. Hegemony charges of unarmed poorly trained slaves overwhelmed human trenches, and no amount of flechettes could thin out the hoard of client races that just kept coming. But even when completely outnumbered and cut off from supplies the humans never surrendered. Instead they fought to the bitter end, turning to crude crossbows and boar spears when they ran low on ammo, or trapping their trenches with improvised explosives. They began to play sirens while fighting to condition the enemy soldiers to associate that sound with fear, breaking enemy charges before they could reach their trenches. Encircled humans would turn to suicide runs to break through enemy lines, sending their most grievously injured to die so that others might live another day.

It was on the corpse strewn fields of Boron where the client races learned that spirit of Man was unyielding, defiant, and most of all spiteful. Even though the Hegemony won battle for Boron they suffered six times the casualties as the humans, and suffered an even greater blow to the moral of their armies.

After the battle of Boron the Human Coalition of Nations unalterally pulled out of the Geneva convention and authorized the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons in the defense of the four remaining client worlds on the front lines. There the Hegemony saw fighting and death worse than anything that had come before, and yet the did not let up.They refused to lose their momentum and fall back.

Over the span of the next two decades each of the captured worlds fell back into the Hegemony’s domain, but at great cost. In the case of the final industrial world humanity’s forces were so deeply entrenched that they declared that the planet would break before their lines ever did. After nine years of constant battle the Hegemony finally believed the absurd statement and dropped a megaton class nuclear warhead into the planets core. With the final barrier against their advance cleared the Hegemony could finally advance into human held space, and reach their first human worlds.

With two and half decades to prepare those humans worlds had been turned into impenetrable fortresses. And the star systems hosting them had been armed to fend off hostile fleets. Asteroid observation stations, interplanetary ballistic missile silos, and shielded defense platforms. And in the case of the human world Elysium the planet itself was one massive platform for a powerful particle beam that obliterated Hegemony Titans.

But the Hegemony wasn’t here to conquer these human worlds, they were here to wipe out the race of man and snuff out their unyielding spirit. Weapons of mass destruction were deployed in mass, wiping out layer after layer of human defenses. They did not invade Elysium, nor did they drop bombs from high orbit. Instead they obliterated the planet with a focused beam of power from the local star.

It was the first human world to fall, the first of many.

Defenses were adapted to handle the Hegemony’s new tactics, but all it did was slow the impending doom. After another five years of fighting the Hegemony finally arrived on Earth’s doorstep. Decades of war had sapped the vast resources of the Hegemony, and their industrial advantage had slowed as more and more slaves were killed in factory accidents. Any attempt to strike or riot for better conditions was met with deadly force. over the course of the war client race fertility rates had declined while the death toll grew higher and higher. And the Hegemony war machine soon chewed through its laborer’s, resulting in massive production shortages as the war entered a crucial climax.

By the time they arrived in Sol the Hegemony fleet had shrunk to a tenth of its maximum size, but so too had the human fleets. Their ships destroyed in a desperate attempt to reverse the Hegemony’s advance. Human admirals had done what they could to reverse the invasion of Sol, always saving a portion of their fleet for the final showdown. And now with nowhere to fall back to the admirals finally fully committed all of humanity’s forces to one final battle.

In the final battle of the war the humans held nothing back. They showed the Hegemony a ferocity unlike anything they had seen before. Kamikaze runs, heroic last stands, and the deliberate destruction of Mars to create a screen of rubble for human ships to skulk in. Every inch of space the Hegemony took was contested with everything Humanity had. Their fleet dwindled to just a handful of heavily damaged ships, but so to had the human fleet, and soon the Hegemony was hovering high above the Earth. Ground based particle beams and missile silos did their best to fend off the Hegemony’s final blow, but it all seemed like the desperate flails of a dying beast.

Just as Hegemony victory seemed at hand, several unknown ships entered the system. Their make seemed to be neither Human nor Hegemony, instead appearing a grab-bag combination of the two. Like they had built their ships by welding the mostly intact remnants of both together. Their warp signatures were shaky and unrefined, and their armor did little to deflect incoming signals. Some of the ships moved faster than the others, while some suffered from an off-center design and strayed to one side.

As both sides watched the unknown ships in confusion the strangers let loose an opening barrage against the Hegemony. Their weapons were just as unrefined as their ship designs, and their crews showed little fire discipline. But against the very exhausted Hegemony fleet they were enough to break the siege of Earth.

Years of unending war, worsening conditions, and inspiration from Humanity’s defiance had finally inspired the client races to take up arms and fight for their freedom. Rebellions had popped up in every world of the Hegemony’s failing empire, and one such had managed to construct a makeshift fleet from the wreckage of both human and Hegemony fleets. Their timely intervention had been humanity’s saving grace, and with the help of their new allies they rebuilt a fleet that could charge into the Hegemony’s Coreworlds.

In the decades Humanity had to fortify their worlds they had created powerful fortresses to hold back the enemy. But in the few short years in took Humanity to rearm thew Hegemony hadn’t created something half as formidable as humanity. They were unprepared for the human/slave race coalition to rearm and retaliate so soon after the devastating loss over Earth, they had instead tried to build another fleet to once again besiege Earth. The introduction of human industrial methods on former client worlds had resulted in doubling of their prewar production numbers.

Auto forges, 3D printers, and advanced alloy layering at the atomic level had given the coalition the industrial advantage. And human training camps had turned ragtag militias into well trained soldiers and sailors. Simultaneous coalition invasions of many Hegemony coreworlds  put the final nail in the Hegemony’s empire as their ground forces were not prepared to fight a defensive war on their own worlds. And instead of fighting to the last man like the humans had the Hegemony surrendered as soon as it was clear that victory was impossible.

With the fall of half their core worlds the Hegemony surrendered unconditionally.

Many within the Coalition were looking to punish and subjugate the Hegemony, just as their ancestors had been. But instead human peacekeepers stepped in and seized total control of the situation. They established courts to begin trying hegemony military command and aristocracy for war crimes, dolling out death sentences to thousands. But otherwise sheltering the civilians from any retaliation. They shielded the wider Hegemony population from any retaliation and instead vied for a policy of mercy and rehabilitation.

Many in the coalition grumbled, and some outright cut off all contact with humanity for what they called the greatest injustice in the galaxy. But even after being driven to near annihilation Humanity still stood as the greatest military power in the galaxy, so there was little they could do to interfere.

It was a move that deeply confused many, if there was any who should have a right to punish the beaten Hegemony it would be humanity. And yet they seemed to have completely forgotten about all the suffering the Hegemony caused during the war. Instead they dismantled every facet of the Hegemony’s empire only to build it up again in their own image. A society rebuilt with the spirit of man. A spirit that was unyielding, spiteful, chaotic, vengeful, but also merciful and caring.

While the Humans were occupied with rebuilding their society and rehabilitating the Hegemony the newly freed people of the galaxy instead turned their eyes towards the future. They established new regimes, seized unclaimed territory, and built up professional fleets of their own. Soon they began to compete with each other, and the galaxy once again spun itself into another cataclysmic war as all the former client races vied for their place as the masters of the galaxy. And when the war spilled into Human space the people formerly known as the Hegemony stood at mankind’s side.

Once conquerors and tyrants, the new Hegemony stood as a beacon of freedom and equality. They set out at mankind’s side to fix the mess they had made to repay humanity’s kindness and show the galaxy a better way.