Chapter 3

Amad was mad.

He floated through the void, contemplating on life and the enemy he was deployed to fight.

In an earlier era, Amad was a peaceful herder on the steppe of the Aeilia continent on the planet Aes. He lived with his wife and two children, son and daughter, and six hellers, a dog-like animal that his people domesticated and turned into working animals. He didn’t like conflict and would defer to his wife on disputes on land and grazing as he herded his flock every day. He hoped his life to be peaceful as the day he was born to the day he finally died and joined his ancestors in the afterlife. All he wanted was to herd his animals and raise his family.

Then they came.

Mysterious ships from beyond the stars.

Praise the Lord they were not alone.

Well, of course they were not. Amad was a human citizen of a spacefaring empire that claimed and colonized many worlds and a third-generation colonist to the planet Aes. The name of their government was the Order of Fire and Light, and their people’s name being Centaurans, people from Centauri, their home, and now capitol system. According to their myths, Amad’s people were Nephilim, a crossing of angelic and human ancestors, eons ago. Most Order citizens considered themselves just Centauran rather than of their myths.

The Order had encountered several other space-faring civilizations on the edge of what they considered a reasonable territory around their home system. All of them were curiously human. Or rather, genetically human. All three were humanoid species like the people the Order governed but were genetically close enough to interbreed with their people despite having a different appearance and different home worlds. This fact was something all their anthropologists were very interested in learning about.

There were the Fhurians, a multi-species elven civilization of Dark Elves, Moon Elves, and High Elves, their proto-civilizations making a pact with one another millennia ago to always be by their side. The Fhurian civilization and their government were the ones to make first contact with the Order and introduced them to the other two. They were now one of the Order’s greatest allies. The Fhurian Fleet defended their space with powerful interstellar battleships and fighter carriers and the Fhurians frequently were called upon to support the Order’s more ground-based defense force. The Fhurian civilization made use of magically-empowered technology, similar to the Order. Fhurian “technology” was much closer to “technologically assisted magic”, though, compared to the Order, which made use of “magically assisted technology”. Neither civilization made use of pure magic, though.

Then, there was the Rtesians (silent-R, as diplomats made note), an all-female civilization of reddish-dark-skinned demonic people, complete with hooves, skull horns, and a semi-prehensile tail almost as long as their legs. The Rtesians were a young civilization that had only recently went interplanetary a century ago. The Rtesian Mandate, their government, claimed a stretch of star systems surrounding their home system. The Rtesian civilization were an only-technology civilization but built their technology off their honorable traditions and mannerisms, and one of the few civilizations the Order made contact with over the years that saw ranged warfare as heretical. Pure magical warfare was also considered dishonorable when they came into contact with mages. Contact with the Order culminated with a trade deal for Avatar access, which the Rtesians quickly built around melee combat, dueling, and mobile warfare. Rtesian Avatars were renowned for their myriad of swords, and their Spirits were capable of going toe-to-toe with the more range-oriented Order.

And finally, there were Penthesites, a civilization of humanoid-hybrids, the entire species being half-delphinite, a mammalian family from ironically Nephilim mythology as friends from the sea. Contact with the Penthesites was a legendary event as the Penthesites had their own legendary equivalent in the Order’s humanity friends of the land and the two civilizations swiftly consolidated a relationship with one another. Being people of the water, space travel was difficult to say the least, but the Penthesites used magic, which offset this need for technology. The Penthesite star cluster was fortunate to be abound with ocean worlds and frozen asteroid belts so with portal magic they were able to explore and expand beyond their home.

The four civilizations were stunned when unknown ships came from beyond the stars, from the direction of the center of the galaxy.

Starships in the shape of dark grey arrowheads with a wide bridge centered on a central spine and built-up dorsal superstructure.

They were humans, too, or at least, humanoid. They appeared to breathe the oxygen like that of Amad’s humanity, and their Fhurian, Rtesian, and Penthesite friends, though the Penthesites also had gills for dual-respiration methods in air or water.

They initially landed up the homestead planet Amad and his family lived their herdsmen lives on asking for directions to other colonies and the Order’s administrative center. Curiously, these unknown aliens came with a fleet of ships. Humanity and the other three civilizations went with single ships when they made their diplomatic contact with the others. A red flag in hindsight.

That they also asked for directions to other colonies, not just the main administrative center where the Order’s diplomats, and military, would be located, or waited for an official diplomacy detachment to come out to them, should have been a clue to their real intentions. But since Amad’s people were peaceful colonists colonizing unclaimed planets and moons and star systems, no one paid the warning any heed until it was too late.

One ship was left at Aes while the rest of the fleet left for parts unknown. He would later find out that the fleet split up. The majority of ships went to the Order’s capital but individual ships went to the other colonies, staying just out of range of humanity’s sensors. Things were getting suspicious but humanity had no need to be alert at that point.

At the capital and home system of humanity, Centauri, Amad watched with bated breath as first contact was officially made by the aliens and the Order. It was a glorious day, at first. The aliens met with the Knight Commander of the Order of Light and Fire at the capitol building at Centauri III.

There was some difficulty in receiving the aliens. Translation technology needed to be updated. A few weeks went by while the Order’s technicians upgraded their language translator to include the new alien language into the translator’s matrixes. When it all finally ready, the Knight Commander and his cabinet officially met with the alien diplomat team on imperial television broadcast.

First contact ended up being brief but pivotal.

“It is a great day to meet a new people as neighbors and friends,” the Knight Commander went.