Humanity entered into the stars in the mid twentieth century and were colonizing their own star system before the twenty-first was even half finished, but, aside from shadowy encounters kept mostly under wraps, they hadn't officially encountered another space-faring race until the existence of the Yautja was leaked from blacker than black files into the common classified files, giving the bulk of the military knowledge of the other race's existence.
As humanity spread further out into space, a dichotomy between the spacers, colonists and Terrans grew and grew. Starting with one groups perceived difference from another, the split grew and grew and the lack of unity that had marked humanity for most of history progressed unabated.
The civilian government, the military, the corporations, the colonists, the merchant vessels and the pirates all sat at odds against each other.
Then there was STARS, a loose collection of rebels that had grown out of a special-means combat team in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century that spread throughout every where there was humanity. Unfortunately, they were far too loosely organized, a defense against the destruction of their cause that had resulted in that very cause being corrupted. Some STARS cells were paragons of morality and exceptionally well-trained and organized, others were little better than bandits with an eye toward targetting corporations.
Garrison's crew fell somewhere in the middle ground there.
Telepathic, telekinetic and chi-active humans, a side portion of humanity for millenia, were being born in significant numbers to almost split aside into their own ethnic groups. They remained split and seperate, however, by their own need to remain hidden from the corporations that sought them out to capture and study.
Many of them were inspired to seek out safety in numbers by the actions of others, however, ones created by humanity.
Lacking strange alien beings encountered at the edges of space, humanity made their own.
Most were rare, almost unheard of flukes, but they sat around the edges.
As many as fifty of Aya's kin lived throughout the galaxy, the youngest being fifty years old, and none appeared older than thirty. They hid amongst humanity with a variety of power levels ranging from minor abilities to the almost cosmic level of power that Aya was growing into.
Unfortunately, the existance of these synthetics meant there always existed a chance for a parasite to spawn from one of them in the same way that they originally spawned off of Eve.
And Eve was still alive and most difficult to kill.
SIL herself had been long dead until the Repository tried to resurrect her, but elements of her genetics had been used by a shadowy group known as the "Agency" to enhance their members for centuries. A dangerous procedure since the more SIL DNA spliced into the person, the more likely that they would fall to the alien instincts to breed and breed and breed. In addition, the SIL DNA seemed to reduce the human lifespan.
Unknown to the Agency, several of their "dead" agents had survived, and SIL-spliced humans lived in growing numbers in the undershades of humanity. None very pure or very powerful, but they sought each other out to purify that DNA.
And, while the goal of the SIL project was impossible now that humanity was flung across the stars, they individually could be very dangerous, especially if a SIL so pure as the one that had just escaped the repository escaped back out into the world.
Then there were the "toasters" a variety of combot robots that had long ago turned against humanity and been driven off escaping into the stars as a burst of degrading data sent into deep space. A burst that was captured mostly intact by an alien vessel, which was subsequently taken over in completion as the robots being built on the vast vessel faded into the shadows to regroup.
Synthetics, human seeming robots, of all varieties existed as servants to humanity, some of whom had gone renegade and underground in the last few decades. Free-willed androids were looking for places to hide and blend, and maybe a way to propogate themselves. Amongst the most dangerous of these was Project Demon-God: Ifurita.
An experiment using captured alien relics, Ifurita had originally been cloned and then injected with nanites to convert her into a techno-organic lifeform capable of producing extreme levels of power and effects approaching magic.
Ifurita was a bridge between the synthetics and their cultural brothers and sisters: the replicants. Genetically engineered clones, the changes wrought on them making them completely separate species from humans and each other, bred for specific purposes: pleasure, research, labor, combat and other such things.
Until the opening of the yautja-human war, the only aliens known where indigenous lifeforms of a non-sentient nature. The colonial marines were called in by a corporation to clear an infestation of insectoid creatures on one of the earliest colonies, leading to the slang term "bug", something that originally described any dangerous life form.
Then came the first official encounters of with the Xenomorphs.
And one hundred years later, "bug" was limited speficially to that galatic nightmare.
Of course, due to the Yautja, these were not humanity's first encounters with the xenomorphs.
Goblin-Spiders. Grendelspawn. Laestrygonians. Wendigo. Dragons.
They were known by many names, sometimes names that also went with other aliens that had visited the world. The Yautja themselves were known as gods, demons and evil spirits as well.
Other than the Yautja, mankind had not yet encountered other sentient species.
The Fraal, the famous greys of early days, were scattered about the galaxy in colony ships after the destruction of their own homeworld. Some factions of the race had protected Earth in its early days, and others had targetted it for research, but, as Earth became a space-faring culture, they retreated and humanity had yet to reach official contact with them, or even more than shadows of shadows of strange tech found by corporate raiding teams.
And with the developing Yautja-Human war, it was unlikely that the Fraal would ever reach out.
Another ancient race, known only as the Shadows, sat in the dark places of the universe and watched as things developed, their agents moving things here and there and trying to manipulate the world according to their own philosophy. The SIL were their weapon, but it was uncertain whether the bio-weapon had been sent to eliminate or test humanity.
Then again, while almost no humans really knew of the Fraal, even the Fraal had only spotty information on the Shadows.
There were other races as well, races that humanity, now having come across faster than life travel, were about to run into and encounter. Races that had only ever heard rumors about humanity, for whom humanity itself was little more than a shadowy urban legend of strange beings in silent, dark ships that abducted lone wanderers and stole their ships and secrets.
So it was, the lines were split:
Earth as ruled by a government increasingly distant from its populace and manipulated by corporations of immense power.
The Yautja, seeing humanity as an upstart race that refused to accept the honor of being considered worthy to hunt.
Splintered subspecies of humanity tired of centuries and even eons of isolation, prejudice and even elimination.
A cabal of dangerous combat drones waiting for a time to return.
Synthetic andrioids and replicated clones desiring equal treatment.
Far flung colonies tired of being treated as expendable.
A rabble of loosely connected freedom fighters of varying degrees of trustworthiness and abiltiy.
And then the superhuman creations of humanity such as the SIL agents, the Aya symbiotes, the Eve parasites and various Xenomorph Hybrids.
The Fraal, losing empty spaces to hide from the species they had long manipulated and split by ethical decisions on how to approach them.
The Shadows, manipulating everything from their ancient lairs.
And a host of aliens that only the blackest of corporation teams had encountered. And encountered in such a way that humanity was becoming one of the galaxy's nightmares.
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(Posted Sun, 31 Jan 2010 03:18)
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