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[OC] The Last Human

Silence reigned on the bridge of the Imperial battlecruiser Kvorkian Exchange. Every one of the Confederation's eight primary species were represented in the battlecruiser's command crew. All were quiet.

Some, thought Alpha-Commander Lilter, were quiet out of fear and trepedation. What would the entrapped human vessel do? What weapons did it have at its disposal? No human vessel yet encountered during the Thousand-Years War had ever been bereft of either military hardware, or some uniquely human-rigged contraption that could be wielded as a weapon.

Lilter remember his days as an Omega Waste Disposal Technician, as lowly a rank as one might find aboard a Confederation warship. He had barely made it to his escape pod before the human civilian transport had rammed the light cruiser Confederated Harmony, taking both together into the fires of damnation. Humans would suicide themselves in irrational attempts to strike a blow. They would attack with welding torches, with rocks, even with claws and teeth.

They were as ferocious a species as the universe - and the Confederation more specifically - had ever known. Only the massive technological superiority and orders of magnitude greater population of the Confederation had tipped the scales in their favor.

Even then, the Thousand-Years War was not so named for the brevity of the conflict.

Still others were quiet out of intense concentration. The human vessel was a hodgepodge collection of parts salvaged from other vessels - not all of them human themselves. It was smallish, barely larger than a Confederation destroyer, but bristling with possible weapons signatures, much more so than even a Confederation heavy cruiser would possess.

Enough, reflected Lilter, that the human vessel might tear itself to pieces if its commander dared to fire them all at once.

"The human vessel has ceased acceleration. Drive signature indicates critical cascade failure of the powerplant. Core ejection in progress." Beta-Commander Ilkys explained, breaking the silence.

This is it, Lilter thought, the last humans.

At least, he thought it was the last one. The first few centuries of the Thousand-Years War had seen several human empires spawn on the edge of Confederation space, even after their homeworld of Terra Prime had been eradicated by c-fractional bombardment. Each time, the humans came in great crusades hell-bent on revenge against the Confederation.

Each time they lost, and more planets were eradicated. Each time, some number of humans escaped to infest another part of space and grow strong again. Confederation warships spent decades in the void between the stars tracking them all down.

Trillions of sentients - perhaps hundreds of trillions - had died in the Thousand-Years War. Now, as the humans said, the curtains were closing on that epoch of history.

"Approach slowly. I want to capture it intact if possible," Lilter ordered, tapping his console with the projected flight path. "We need their computers intact, to see if there are any more of them."

"But Alpha," Ilkys protested, "surely they will just wipe them."

"Perhaps," Lilter admitted. "Then again, if they are the last, perhaps they will not bother. Either way, we must try to obtain what information we can."

Ilkys clearly did not agree but knew better than to continue questioning his Alpha. Betas had an important role in bringing up alternative points of view, but this was tempered by the supreme authority invested in the Alpha. To bring it up once was duty, to do so twice was insubordination.

Weapons ports opened on the human vessel, as it maneuvered with chemical thrusters to bring them to bear. With its ion engines destroyed, it bordered on a statistical impossibility that the vessel could even adjust course enough to make landing at a safe port. They were dead already, the chase having exhausted the hodgepodge vessel's over-gunned, under-powered frame to the point of critical damage.