After Humanity

A short story by James Lomax, currently undertaking his Duke of Edinburgh bronze award. Part one of 12

AFTER humanity finally explored the entire universe, they were disappointed to find that they were the smartest life-form out there, which is a bit of a relief.

You wouldn’t really want to find some immensely intelligent being has been studying your species.

The humans began satisfying their second reason, resources. Earth was depleted, and was now metaphorically rung out to dry. The humans began conquering rich planets and oppressing

the primitive civilisations to work for them. For example, Planet X-82fig6, called the big fig, was rich in Iron, or X-12car8, “Motor world”, had fertile soil to grow plants. All of these planets and many more were led by humans with the “aliens” as slaves.

The slaves, primitive as they were, did not shrug this off lightly and some revolted. Thus S.T.A.R. was created to keep humans top of the food chain.

Members of such organisation were recruited to crush revolts and stop seeds of rebellion in the slaves’ minds. The latter didn’t work well, but it didn’t need to as the former was carried out incredibly and terrifyingly, keeping the majority in check. The majority.

One such member was known only as Carlos. He was orphaned as a child, but nobody adopted him due to the Kave wars. He lived mainly in the vents of S.T.A.R.’s flagship, The Black Hole, biding his time until he was old enough to recruit. When he did, he got a bunk on The Hole, and enough food and water to get by. At that time, it was destroying the mass revolts of

X-90pie6, violent attacks from the Frost species. Carlos helped decimate the population, but in the end the planet had to be destroyed. Carlos witnessed the whole thing.

He was awarded for his bravery by body guarding Senator Vatsra of the X-54 galaxy, a target of assassination by the ever-violent Kaves.

Carlos saved the Senator and was promoted to the position of vicecaptain-enforcer of X-67hat3, which meant he was in charge of an entire squadron of enforcers. (A squadron is twenty.) X-67hat3 had for many years been suffering strikes and non-violent protests from its resident species, the Gorgons.

They were humanoid besides from the fact that they were covered in green scales, had four fingers, sharp teeth and spikes on their heads that made them look like Medusa from Greek mythology, hence the name. Every now and then they would protest and get stopped, but they would always carry on as they were not smart enough to learn it’s best not to.

Carlos’ job was to give them the fear, even if they had to be killed to get it.

Because the planet was further away from the sun, the days were really long. It was around 56 o’clock one morning. Carlos received news via hololink that more peaceful protests had started. Carlos got up and got into his riot gear, including the deadly Voltstaff 5. He gazed up at the dawn and the landscape. X-67hat3 was a beautiful planet made of orange rock and XVX, a very powerful but dangerous fuel that powered the largest of the starships. Dangerous not only to use, but also to mine.

Today the Gorgons were protesting along the Red Canyon, and when Carlos arrived he found the captainenforcer’s squadron standing 60 metreyards away with their Class 40 shield-rifles in a row, as a kind of wall.

The captain-enforcer stared at Carlos with the regular look (I want to hate you but there is no reason) and shouted at the squadron to charge up their shield-rifles.