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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/six_6u on 2024-11-05 09:11:52+00:00.
The war had been raging for nearly thirteen years when the first game-changing victory was had. We were ecstatic that it was a victory earned by us, the Federation. After over a decade of waxing and waning progress for both sides, we captured fifteen whole systems and changed nearly half of the frontlines.
The representatives of every species in the Federation gathered in a huge summit that was televised across the stars, so that every citizen could witness the celebrations.
Everyone was giving glorifying speeches sending out praise, gratitude, and encouragement; many had bottles of various intoxicating substances that they healthily consumed in celebration; more than a few of them handed out medals to the fleet admirals that commanded the most successful fleets; some even tried getting a leg in for the upcoming election season by announcing their intent to make the day of this groundbreaking victory a Federation holiday.
Every representative was celebrating healthily. Every single one, except the human representative.
One of the more influential representatives in the congress noticed this, and believed that it was some kind of scripted act to bolster enthusiasm for the war effort. And, being one of the more powerful representatives, decided that it was their place to take action on that. They asked,
“Our dearest human colleague! This victory has changed the tide of the war without question! And we’re getting reports on the frontlines that the Alliance’s morale is plummeting faster and faster, there’s no doubt that we’ll begin capturing Alliance territory soon! This war will be over within no more than a few years! And that is thanks to your species, above all! Your strategies granted us the power to dominate the Alliance!”
At this point, every representative at the summit had hushed, excited to hear humanity’s words that would surely twist into those of glorious celebration so that they may release bellows and cries of victory.
“Enlighten us! Why the long face? Did you hope for a greater victory? For greater spoils from the Alliances treasuries? Or are you awaiting the return to the joy of the fight? Tell us! Tell us why you seem so solemn!”
You could feel the anticipation across the galaxy. The summit was dead silent, everyone staring at the human representative. Everyone watching on their holo-screens at home, or at work, or on the frontlines like me, most certainly had the same feeling in their chests – waiting for the human to burst forth with the most extravagant speech at the summit, so that they may also erupt in cheers.
“We joined the Federation nearly two-hundred years ago. We saw how the Federation operated, how each species interacted with each other and collectively ran the Federation. It wasn’t without flaw, no system is, but we liked your system, so we joined forces with you. We trusted that we would enter an era of peace, of scientific revolution, of social development for every last sentient being that walked this universe.”
The human stepped away from their seat in the summit hall, walking into the middle and staring each representative in the eyes – then they looked at the recorder, fixing the trillions upon trillions of viewers with an expression I cannot describe – but it drew forth some deep, primal fear in all of us. I would know, because everyone in my squad, sheltered in our little bunker on the frontlines, was trapped in paralyzed silence.
“Yet here we are. Giving out medals and popping corks over a mere strategic victory. There’s no social development here. No scientific revolution. Certainly no peace. No, the only thing I can see here is zealous praise and people that can’t see past the crosshair.
“This war isn’t liberating, it isn’t clean, and it most definitely isn’t backed by what the Federation is supposed to stand for. This war is gruesome. It’s violent and honorless. And we’re here, showering ourselves in alcohol and giving grandiose speeches that praise atrocities, instead of tending to the victims of war and giving aid to those in distress.”
The human spat out every word like it was bitter, pacing around and looking at everyone with a sour expression. Even their hand gestures seemed outraged and appalled, despite many species not using gestures to convey meaning.
“Horrific acts are idolized, people you would usually deem irredeemably criminal are rewarded handsomely, you’ve even started to worship your warships. This will all come falling down on you. Maybe before the war is over, maybe long after it ends, but it will. You’ll see the husks of these… of these war gods, monuments of violence to which you will have thrown away everything to honor and maintain. You’ll look at them and see a hollow reflection in a broken mirror. You’ll rule the stars, no doubt. Stars surrounded by nothing but ash.
“Humanity joined the Federation because it stood for something. Now look at you. Praising genocide like fucking mongrels.”
The human stormed out of the summit room, leaving nothing but a silence that screamed volumes. Representatives all began making attempts at salvaging the summit, to undo what was already irreversibly done by the human’s monologue.
Shortly after, the war resumed. Rumors about humanity’s intent to withdraw from the Federation spread across the stars, and only a few months later they actually went through with it, returning to their home system. At first, we barely noticed a difference – humanity was a relatively small species, only a few billion in size, so their contributions to the armed forces weren’t high in number.
But as the war raged on, our progress began to stagnate – it became harder and harder to win battles, even with the same strategies the humans had shown us, and life for anyone not on the frontlines worsened as the Federation began conscripting people and laying out rations on materials and necessities. It was all for the war effort, of course; we had to repair and maintain our warships, and had to keep superior numbers on the frontlines.
It took another twenty years to end the war. We snuffed out the Alliance, that was certain. We subjugated the few civilian population centers wise enough to surrender to us, we dissolved their fleets, and we executed their government. We celebrated our success over the Alliance, and our newfound dominion over much of the galaxy.
Despite the toll the war took on us after humanity abandoned the Federation, we felt invincible as a result of our victory. We thought that everything would be able to return to normal, that we could lick our wounds and carry on doing what we did before the Alliance stirred up trouble.
We were wrong, of course. As we tried to ease back into our pre-war life, the true effects of war set in. Us soldiers returned to homes stripped of many valuable materials, to families that were scraping by on rations more pitiful than our meager MREs. A famine struck shortly after the war, dwindling the already small supply of food that many species needed to survive.
In the hopes of combating this and raising morale, the Federation commissioned expeditionary fleets to colonize former Alliance worlds so that we could establish new agricultural facilities – and those same fleets returned barely months after being sent away, all bearing the same grim news: of the Alliance worlds, only the ones that surrendered were even habitable; many of the planets had lost their atmospheres or were suffering severe nuclear winters as a result of the orbital bombardments we had subjected them to.
The thing is, it wasn’t like we could take the food supplies from the few surrendered Alliance worlds either. Not only was most of the Federation unable to eat the food they produced, but the Federation had too many mouths to feed. It didn’t help that those worlds sent out requests for food supplies, because they too had fallen under famine.
Our problems were, of course, not limited to food. There was talk of infighting between some of the Federation species, and even within species – the council denied this, thinking it would help with morale, but their denial of an increasingly obvious problem did the exact opposite. Our planets were becoming increasingly unsafe too, what with the pollution created by hyper-industrialization, caused by the need to manufacture and repair our warships.
As time passed, the Federation became increasingly divided, with disputes over who owned what, who needed what, and who was crossing lines that hadn’t ever been established. It didn’t take long for the first shot to be fired, only five years after the war against the Alliance ended. Nobody wanted to fight anymore, not after enduring years of famine and poverty right after a grueling thirty-year war. But the Federation council, now divided, thought the right way forward was to stomp out these traitors that were demanding unreasonable things.
Because a meal on the table was so unreasonable.
I had resigned from the military at this point, but I saw many of my friends forced to fight people demanding nothing more than a good government, people that had only months before been part of our Federation. It wasn’t a fair fight, the Federation’s fleet was far superior to the ragtag band of ships that the “traitors” had amassed, but the small fleet still dealt a blow not even the Alliance could. They blew up the Federation’s Horizon ship, the largest ship that we had ever built.
And though we didn’t know how they predicted it, that moment was when humanity’s words …
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