Fuchsia: The Tale of Two

By Jack H. Green

The story of galactic war and the side that humanity took in it. As fourth side at the war, The Eternal Empire will not bow to any other species.

As they faced extinction before and now under the watchful eyes of The Emperor they thrive and prosper.

This story however will not be about Empire and its struggles. And not how battlefield unraveled.

This tale is told by Violet Salazar, the soldier of the Empire. Beginning of her story as she sets a new path for herself.

This tale will also be told from another point of view. Alas the other hero of our tale must remain unspoken.

What if I tell you that some heroic actions can lead to the complete change of one’s life? Don’t believe me? Witness for yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Apr 1, 2024

Book preview

Annotation

The story of galactic war and the side that humanity took in it. As fourth side at the war, The Eternal Empire will not bow to any other species.

As they faced extinction before and now under the watchful eyes of The Emperor they thrive and prosper.

This story however will not be about Empire and its struggles. And not how battlefield unraveled.

This tale is told by Violet Salazar, the soldier of the Empire. Beginning of her story as she sets a new path for herself.

This tale will also be told from another point of view. Alas the other hero of our tale must remain unspoken.

What if I tell you that some heroic actions can lead to the complete change of one’s life? Don’t believe me? Witness for yourself.

Part 1

Chapter One. Reborn and Fourth Side.

The Eternal Empire. The home we live in. I have to confess that the story of our nation and species is kind of fucked up. Honestly the amount of shit we as a species had to go through is insane. And most of it, if not all of it is our own bloody fault.

What? You want to hear it? Okay, well… The good thing is that our Emperor never hid the history from us. I mean, he of course didn't have all the history. Much of it was lost in time and wars. I guess also extermination, I know harsh word, but truth nonetheless.

In the past, at the time when humanity only lived on one planet there were different countries all over the planet. How the hell did they all live like that is beyond me. The cold war, information war and outright wars all over the planet for centuries. Humans killing humans. And for what? Money and power. Pathetic.

Don't get me wrong, there is political and business conflicts all over empire, but it never went to hell like in the past. And if it ever did… Well, let’s say that Empire is always watching.

Anyway, by some miracle people of the past time thought, Oh, let’s unite all of the sudden. And unite they did. Took them time of course. Different languages, traditions and demands. Demands… Can’t imagine. Anyhow, together they started to expand.

I mean, building starship and traveling to different planets. Working together to create colonies. Over hundreds of years they worked as a United Allied Nations. Thousand years fast forward, humanity left there star system and had colonies all over their part of the galaxy. Remember that part for the future.

So the main planet, Earth was the ruling planet and obviously the colonies didn’t like it. So they decided to make their own government with their own laws and borders. Some agreed, some didn’t and some wanted to rule.

Earth obviously didn’t like that, like at all. So after years of meetings, threats and pleads, humanity shattered to three sides. The Earth and its colonies, United Colonies and Independent Colonies. Yes, you guessed right. The War.

Earth's history had three major wars before. World War they were called. This time however, this was Star Systems War. Awful shit. Dropping bombs on each other, destroying convoys and assassinating politicians. Fucked up thing.

And as I said before, Empire isn’t perfect. Like, assassinations exist and other ways to gain power do too. But dropping nuke on a green planet and killing all life on it just because this people had another flag? That’s fucked up.

Over four hundred years the war went on. Generations changed, but hatred towards each other remained. Each side had its own rebellions and power change. Parties fought for the control. The longer the war went on, the less colonies remained. At the end, three sides simply killed each other. Last bombs, last breath and the last ever prayer to the gods of old.

Humanity was exciting. The remaining people weren’t nearly enough to save our species. And here we have our Emperor.

Over the years of our civilization we tried to create live in the form of artificial intelligence, AI for short. Humanity never reached the point where AI were alive. No feelings or soul, if I can say that. Hope you understand.

So one scientist had a crazy idea, well… He wasn’t the first one with such thought, but the first to try. His thoughts were, What if we take human mind and unite it with AI. Infuckingsane. Honestly, the hell? But as it was the time of Star Systems War, the scientist managed to convince his government to allow the experiment.

The war was very heated at the time, so the scientist took his staff, subjects and hid away. And he did it quite well. His own government didn’t know where he was.

Preparations took time. Making the AI and training subjects. And building the merging machine. The subjects were to merge with AI and lose their bodies. By the words of Emperor, all of them were volunteers. We don’t know why they agreed or what pushed them to do so, but fact remains, they volunteered. Emperor remained silent about it.

One by one they went, trying to merge with the AI. Their brains were fried. Until subject 37. When he started his merge, it gave the best of hopes as he survived longer than others. Unfortunately the facility was attacked. Scientist did his best to save his people, but in the same time he tried to save the experiment. He believed in its success. So, staff to the bunker and as experiment didn’t finish, scientist sent the merging machine to space. Why? Don’t know, even Emperor doesn’t, he only have logs of what happened. The theory is that they had a save factor. If something goes wrong, machine will be send to the space via build in room spaceship.

Emperor couldn’t tell how long the machine was in space or when and how it landed. But when subject 37 became conscious his body was dusting skeleton and he saw it from the machine itself. He understood that the merge was successful. The knowledge and power he had in his mind was astonishing. But the worst thing was inability to move.

So, locked away in machine with no connection to any network, subject 37 worked his nonexistent ass off. He managed to connect to the spaceship and activate a replicator, like super cool 3d printer. Creating robots to help him move and work for him, he finally managed to move and to start preparations to fly from the planet.

It obviously took a lot of time. Like a fucking ton lot. Not enough resources to rebuild the wreck that was the spaceship, or even enough to build more robots. He did his best to get more resources.

And when he successfully left after around half a year, he found out that humanity is gone. Completely gone. No network, no life on the planets he remembered and being powered by AI he remembered all the planets humanity had.

The solution came quick. Find survivors. That didn’t work. Bunkers full of dead, far colonies wiped clean. Total failure. So another idea came as quick. Find DNA and recreate the entire race. Bold isn’t it?

I’m not going to tell everything that happened at the time of the beginning. But I will summarize.

Subject 37 took one of the old Independent Colonies planet and began his work. After finding enough DNA materials first batch of humans where born in less than two years.

37 became like father to them, he raised them and taught them. He raised them to be the first humans to live and help him with his mission. Another batch came and then the other.

For over hundred years, 37 build the beginning of the new human history. Teaching humanity about the past time. And mistakes that they as new humans should not repeat. While raising his children he sent thousands, hundreds of thousands of robots to clean and rebuild the planets that humanity had before. He couldn’t remember the moment when he had billions of children. The children that called him The Father Emperor.

Let’s just say he was quite surprised, apparently some kids thought that the live they were having seemed like the live under ruling Emperor of the distant past. Don’t ask, I’m not a historian.

So the kids started to say it, adults found it amusing and kind of true. So the subject 37 became The Father Emperor. Over the course of time the Father part disappeared, history and memory remained, but every one used The Emperor now. Or simply Emperor.

Now, the full name of the Emperor is unknown, he asked to address him as Crow. So he is Emperor Crow of The Eternal Empire.

How the name of The Eternal Empire came to be? The time when new humanity was sending first colonist to another planet, Emperor gave a speech. He said that The Empire that they build together will stay eternal. So here is the name. The Eternal Empire.

Please understand this, Emperor is not some sort of tyrant or the guy who controls the entire Empire with iron grip. He just watches. Constantly watching what is going on in the Empire.

There are different political departments, be it army or civilian. There is different people watching over it. And all of their requests and wants go to the imperial board. There are representatives from each political division that review the entire requests and they are the one to make decisions or laws. While The Emperor is watching. Always watching.

Of course, he also have his own plans and control over many things. But he prefers not to intervene in what we do.

In the entire 2500 years of The Eternal Empire he took matters in his own hands only twice. Well, kinda three times now, but about that later. First time when the board wanted to rebel against him and take the complete control. Another one when colonies of the border wanted out of the Empire. Both times where rather bloody, but necessary.

Emperor never hid the fact of what happened in the past or what happens now. There are secrets of course, but most of the things that the government do, can be found out one way or another. So the first time people were confused why the board did something like that. The Emperor told them about politics, power and corruption behind it. Power corrupts and all of that. After that the imperial board was chosen much more carefully. Nor politicians, nor simple citizens wanted the repeat of this. Humanity were rather young at the time. And they trusted Emperor and his words. We still do, but we do know how to think for ourselves.

Second time, it was more of stupidity of the outer colonies, yet Emperor again spoke out. Reminding why first humanity went extinct. Around 70 percent of outer colonies took matters into their own hands and dealt with politicians. While other politicians of other 30 percent much smaller colonies just shut up and tried to hide away. No one attacked them. But remember, Emperor is always watching.

Now, in my life time there were never any rebellions or even a bad political actions towards the Emperor. Don’t get me wrong again, people know that not everyone is perfect even he. Yet Emperor brought the entire race back, he didn’t enslave us or something. Emperor was watching us, and making sure that we are safe. He was the father of our race, reborn race. Everyone was aware that they live thanks to him. He is truly respected.

No wonder that the only religion we have is the worshipping of the Emperor. Not everyone is religious of course, but there are churches in Emperor’s name. I don’t think he likes that very much. But same as with everything else, he doesn’t intervene.

This was short story of The Eternal Empire. Well, the birth and basics. Many thing happened in this many years, but this is story for another time.

Now, one more thing. You should understand that we are not perfect. Yes, I believe we are less flowed than the humans of the past. But it doesn’t mean we don’t have crime or wars. We fight pirates mostly, but even that can’t compare to the wars of the past. And we understand it.

We have police force and army. We have crooks and crime syndicates. I know what you want to know. Why Emperor doesn’t do anything about it? Pretty much the same reason as before. He doesn’t intervene in our affairs. All the humanity are his subjects and children. Pirates and syndicates also don’t touch anything related to the Emperor. Like his envoys and Voices. They might not be the most good of people. They might have done bad things. But even they respect the Emperor. I will explain about Voices some other time.

So, that’s our life. Someone is rich and powerful, some poor and meek and some are in the middle of it. Life is life. But I prefer to think of our life as better than the humans of the past. No offense to them, just facts. They are all extinct after all, isn’t that proof enough?

You might ask, what about now? What’s going on now? Yea, I don’t like to admit it. But we are at war. Like first Galactic War. I will give you the short version again.

We have patrolling and exploration fleets. And other fleets too, but now they are not important. Even after thousands of years in the galaxy, we didn’t know is there any other sentient life out there? I mean we found new lifeforms. Be it animal or plants they are of course new, but not sentient. Without their own history and traditions. Just instincts and biology. Nothing new. Until one exploration vessel went missing.

So the patrol fleet went to search for the vessel. I have to explain how we travel, don’t I? Here is the short version of dimensional tunnel explanation. The ship creates 4th dimension tunnel and pass through it to the destination. Easy right? Don’t ask for specs, I have no idea. I’m not an engineer.

So, when the ship is ready for the jump it sends the coordinates of the start and the end of the jump to the patrol network. And while exiting the tunnel, it sends the coordinates of the end journey again through the closing tunnel.

Then the virtual artificial intelligence, VAI, behind patrol system merges the information and stores it. If something is wrong like data doesn’t merge because exiting coordinates are different or didn’t come at the time it should have, VAI immediately informs the operator.

Now the data came with no issue, but then after some time the ship didn’t come to contact. They have their own set of rules when to contact. Like explorers have their rules, patrol theirs and attack their own. Be it just to say We are fine or Everything went to shit doesn’t matter, everyone have rules.

So, the contact didn’t come. The ping that explorers send to the vessel didn’t ping the ship at all. They immediately notified the patrol fleet. It could be pirates or something entirely different. So the patrol fleet immediately sent the search party. They came to the system and only then received weak signal from one jungle planet. They rushed to assist and found the vessel with exhausted crew. Why you ask?

They found another species. Tribal species of snake like being. Like imagine big ass snake, now add shoulders and arms and breasts for some fucking reason. So they all looked like woman. Don’t ask, not a biologist.

Apparently Emperor was quite surprised. I mean he was addressing the population regarding some new exploration missions, when the news came. And him being half AI with all information within moments, he got all the news first and even broke his speech to say,

They found fucking Lamias? people were quite shocked. Not just cursing was surprising, but the exclamation in general. Emperor was the definition of calmness and control. They just stared at the screens.

On the other hand, not surprisingly, Emperor didn’t hide the information, he just apologized for the language and explained that they apparently found new species. People were shocked yet again.

Now back to the exploration vessel. With technology far beyond tribal species understanding, they managed to hold the Lamias off the ship without killing them. Yes, we started to call them Lamias, Emperor called them that, so they are Lamias.

The vessel landed on the planet when photos from the orbit showed some sort of buildings. Not the brightest idea, but you could understand the excitement of the crew. And they immediately got swarmed by Lamias. The reason they didn’t flew back up is that they might have killed a lot of this snake ladies while doing so.

The leading captain of patrol fleet just nodded her understanding. In her eyes, captain of exploration vessel did the right thing. She also smacked his head for not sending the network beacon back to space or while being in space. He in return just rubbed his head with apologetic smile. You might ask, how do I know that? That’s my grand-grand-grand parents. The story traveled generations. Cool right?

Anyway, scaring the lamias off, they took off and as per first contact laws contacted imperial board.

Quick word about the first contact laws. If you see the vessel that probably belongs to a different species you take photos and fuck off from the system with the dimensional tunnel. DT for short. With planet contact rules are being the same.

When the laws were appointed, ruling body asked the Emperor why so strict about flying away. He just grumbled something about Effect and told to add stealth systems for exploration vessels just in case. And to keep them on while jumping anywhere, bar the home systems. The board just shrugged and appointed the law. Say no to Emperor? There are easier ways to end career.

The board asked Emperor what to do with this new race? This lamias weren’t evolved enough for the space travel. They lived in tribes and weren’t united to represent the entire race. Emperor just ordered to ascend the race. It obviously took time but before my grandparents were born Lamias joined The Eternal Empire as new race under the Emperor. There of course, was a bit of xenophobia, but it died out rather quick. In my time it’s not a surprise to see lamias on the streets even of Empire home planet. I believe that Emperor have at least a couple of Voices, who are lamias. Again, about Voices at another time.

This was the first encounter with another species and it was rather peaceful. And this was also the last peaceful one. When my parents were born, exploration fleet found another species. In the middle of the space battle. Fun experience I bet. The speed with which the vessel ran away was quite astonishing. VAI lost its mind with warnings.

When exploration fleet joined with patrol fleet to send envoys they were met with hostility and open fire. It was intense. Took ages to meet with representatives of the new species. But it led to no where, but war.

All of this idiots wished to rule over humanity as we were new race. We are too young to be even considered as equals. Humanity obviously didn’t agree. The answer they got was, Than we will enslave you. Obviously they said this more politically, but the fact remained. They wanted to rule over us.

Let’s just say that Emperor wasn’t happy. Like at all. The entire Empire was mobilized, the ships constructed at rapid speed and soldiers trained not to attack, but to defend the home systems.

They want to take our freedom. Freedom that you and your ancestors build. I will be damned if I allow them to take this from you. Humanity was once reborn. Humanity thrived and welcomed another race among us. We will not let them take our freedom and our dreams. We won’t let them take future of our children. We will defend against all they have to give and we will attack if we have to. We will show them the power of our Empire and our people. The Eternal Empire will thrive for eternity and nothing and no one will change this. For My Children! For the Freedom! For The Eternal Empire! This was part of speech, which Emperor gave after breaking the news to people.

For The Emperor! For the Freedom! FOR THE ETERNAL EMPIRE! This was the answer that Emperor received from all the systems around Empire.

With that, Eternal Empire joined the Galactic War as fourth side of the conflict.

Chapter Two. Galaxy, Who and Why.

Now, I already told you that we joined the war as fourth side. To understand this better, imagine galaxy. The way you see it on a poster or movie. Now we are on the right side of it. While other three on other sides. They have been at war for generations. Why? The fuck if I know. I’m not even sure their soldiers know. They just fight for every planet. Like their very existence depends on it.

Now the sides themselves. Republic of Allied Species. RAS for short. They have over 50 different species that live together, yet they have their own home planets. And each planet have representative in their senate. That also includes representative from reach planets that answer only to RAS laws. Yes, each home planet have its own laws and RAS laws they have to follow. How the fuck they make anything done is beyond me.

The leader of this circus is Republic President. And for the last hundred years it was same race. For some reason.

I won’t waste time telling every race one by one, so the main race for now. Now think of rather tall human above 6.1 feet, take away all the hair and make the head pointy. Then change their skin color to greenish-blue, and varieties of this shade. Now the whites of the eyes are more greenish, and pupils like a bit squashed down and iris is most of the time dark blue. Nearly black. Each individual had vibrant blue or green lines all over their skin, like a tattoos. I have to admit looks kind of cool, and you can understand the relation of individuals by the patterns on their skin. Like family members have pretty much same pattern. Now for the last part add another set of arms just at the end of their rib cage.

This fuckers can shoot and throw grenades at the same fucking time. God I bloody hate this jerks. They are the main race and the biggest in RAS. The name of their race is Octia. Also they take around 50 percent of the army.

Our Empire half expected the offer to join the Republic as 51st race. Nope, they said that octians will be the one to take care of us, and we will be their subject species. Fuck that answered Empire. We had more citizens then like 85