Human rules of war

Writing prompt: rules are there for reasons, do you want us to break them?

Before the Humans were encountered, there were only a few rules of war in the galaxy.

1: Never glass a world capable of supporting life of any sort. The rationale was that worlds capable of supporting life were so rare that the loss of any one of them was a loss for the whole galaxy. Breaking this law would get all other races to declare extermination on the rule breaker.

2: Might makes right. This spoke for itself. The mighty races were the winners and they made the rules.

These two rules were all that were agreed on and followed for millennia by the various races of the galaxy and as each new race was encountered, they very quickly discovered the two rules and had to live or die by them.

This was the state of the galaxy right up until the Humans were discovered by a scouting fleet of the Rhysteth Conglomerate.

The Conglomerate was a trading alliance of five races who were banded together for safety against the larger races or groups. They weren’t as strong as the larger groups but they could make it uneconomical for anyone to attack them, so their safety was assured for a while.

The encounter with the Humans and their fledgling empire was a boon for both sides as the technology differences were just enough that each side could trade something for what they were interested in.

Improved shielding technology for Human ballistic computers and programs, better FTL for Conglomerate mining swarms to name a few.

As with most first encounters there were some screw ups on each side but nothing so terrible that it couldn’t be smoothed over and forgiven.

But the Humans were a bit confused over the seemingly lack of any rules of war that the Conglomerate mentioned in passing. They were confused over why there was just two rules though they instantly understood rule one. It was the lack of any other rules beyond rule two that had them confused.

They sent the Conglomerate a copy of their Geneva Conventions Updated c .2263 Volumes 1-3 for them to read and pass along to any of the local groups that might be interested in adventuring towards Human colonies and space.

The Humans had given them fair warning.

Fifteen years after the first contact, a raiding fleet of Dagreth came through a human outpost and wiped out all the people living in the system. Automated distress beacons notified Fleet Command and a scouting fleet was sent to discover what had happened and to sort out the problem.

The Dagreth fleet was found to be strip mining the planetoid where the outpost had been and it instantly tried to escape.

The Human fleet was able to capture three of the larger cargo ships and had to destroy the escorts though another two frigate sized ships were able to escape. Scouting frigates were sent to follow the escaping ships to discover just who had wiped out the outpost.

Upon boarding the cargo ships, they were horrified to discover survivors who had been experimented on and turned into bioweapons for the Dagreth ground forces.

These poor victims had to be euthanized due to being left insane from the surgery and mutagenic viruses used on them.

The news of the violations of the Geneva Conventions, even if the Dagreth never knew about them, went through the Human infonet leaving horror and anger in it’s wake.

The scouts returned with navigation and scouting data on the Dagreth Empire who sent the fleet to commit so many crimes against people who had done nothing.