"Why did your species attack ours?" Darren asked, an audio recorder in his hand. Spatha had recently consented to their conversations being filmed, which made Darren somewhat embarrassed that they had already been doing so.
"Because we could. Your fleets were meager when we encountered them, but now we see that they were not your main fleets, correct?"
"Yes, they were System Patrol craft. Though, that opens up another question: now that you see that we are not weak, why don't you try for a peace?"
"When one starts a war, they are stating their intent to see it through. A ceasefire would serve as an embarrassment to the Combine, or even a sign of weakness."
"To who? Who would see you as weak?"
"The other nations. The Nostrodomo Citizen Federation, the United Syndicates of Seremai, even our close allies could see a defeat as a time to enforce their will upon us."
"Your allies?" Darren didn't like where this was going.
"Chiefly the Yolyski Union, but a few other, smaller nations. Though, in the case of 'lesser partners' in any alliances we have, they're almost universally controlled governments we establish when an outright conquest would be in violation of galactic law."
"There's some sort of international committee between your nations, then."
"Of course. Who else could be trusted to moderate disputes, determine the victors of wars and divide the spoils accordingly?"
"Describe it further, then."
Over the next half hour, Spatha borderline rambled, explaining as quickly as possible what, precisely, the galactic situation was to her limited knowledge.
As it turned out, they hadn't come in peace. Nobody had. Nobody ever did.
The galactic community was pseudo-Darwinian. Any nation without the willingness to go to war to settle a dispute was destroyed by one with it. Over the course of history, this had continued, on and on and on, until the remaining nations were either of roughly the same size and strength or under the protection of a larger empire, making war a non-viable solution to most issues. To that end, their committee--the Council of Arbitrators, Spatha called it--was there to ensure that galactic activities adhered to their values of honor, glory, and strength, except in the case of the so-called "primitive" species, which simply could not be trusted to uphold those values and thus could be dealt with with impunity. According to Spatha, humanity had earned itself the title of primitive, and according to all rational laws, once a primitive, always a primitive.
"That seems incredibly hypocritical. Weren't the Poslushi primitives at some point?"
"Hypocritical?" Spatha said, her head cocked to the side and her tone such that she seemed not to know the word.
"You know, when somebody tells someone not to do something, but then they themselves go do it?"
"Yes, but the Poslushi are the Poslushi, and you are you."
"So it's okay for the Poslushi to say that about us but it's not okay for us to say that about the Poslushi?"
"Of course." Spatha talked about it like it was elementary knowledge, and Darren didn't like that.
"Well, we have a concept of ours called 'moral relativism.' Does this seem right to you?"
"Certainly. Morals are relative, just like anything else. The only absolute things in this universe are mathematics."
"What if you were human, and the Poslushi were doing these things to you? Would they be okay then?"
It was like Darren had slapped Spatha. She just sat there, antennae twitching in surprise.
"I... never thought of that. I don't think anyone does. You just pay attention to what other people think? All the time?"
"Yeah."
"Seems like a good way to drive yourself mad."
"From an outside perspective, I guess so," Darren said, clicking the button on the recorder and returning it to his bag.
"Spatha, you've given us all that we need for today. Thank you."
"Wait." Spatha replied, holding a hand out.
"Oh?" Darren said, turning the recorder back on.
"There's one more reason why we're fighting you."
"Yes?"
"You might think that we hate you because you're too different, but that isn't the case. We hate you because you're too similar. We understand many of the same psychological concepts, we're both bipeds, we have five digits on each hand, we come in many of the same colors. Humans even smell the same. You're like us, if we took a wrong turn on the evolutionary path somewhere."
"I see. We'll keep that in mind." Darren said, silently worried. A basic skimming through any history book could tell him that the concept of similar, but different had led to many of the worst crimes in the records of the species. All he could hope for now was that the Poslushi didn't pursue this concept to its "logical" conclusion.
---
It was green here, but not the green of parks and forests. No, this green was mottled with gray asphalt, in the form of cracks in streets and roadways, moss and lichen crawling up the sides of long-abandoned buildings. This green was the green of Detroit.
The stricken city had already been all but dead when the Third World War broke out, all major companies having abandoned it, and what little industry returned rather than moving to the resurgent towns of Philadelphia and San Francisco didn't help much. Still, it was just enough to keep the city just barely holding on. Then, as the war came to an end and the last factories closed down, the city was finally left to decay, detritus of a past age.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Once, they called this place the capital of the Steel Belt and the jewel of American manufacturing. Then, in the aftermath of World War II, it became the symbol of the Rust Belt. Now, it was just another city in what was now called the Rot Belt, a huge gray-and-green stain on the American heartland, like a necrotic patch in the center of the continent.
Still, the place wasn't abandoned, far from it. Over the years, it had become a haven of informal settlement, a city filled with everyone who, for some reason or another, just couldn't make it in the titanic urban sprawl covering most of the coastline or the endless Big-Ag-owned fields of the Midwest. Sure, the water and power was intermittent, and all supplies either came from price-gouging smugglers or the UN, but by golly, it was their hellhole to own.
At least it was until the train came in.
Everyone looked up as the locomotive pulled into the station, an older wheeled model as opposed to the near-ubiquitous maglevs of the cities. This was an uncommon sight, but not unheard of; on occasion, someone would find that it was just a hair faster to go on a slower train through the city instead of a faster one around. However, the trains never, ever stopped. This one did. It was a passenger train, even stranger. Worse yet, its doors opened.
Out came a small retinue of tough-looking men wielding batons and the occasional submachine gun, probably mercenaries. Immediately, the few onlookers scattered; they all knew that they didn't have the means to prove how long they had been living there, and thus no protection under squatter's rights. However, this wasn't like the occasional raid that other cities reported. No one was rounded up, detained, or resettled. Instead, the mercenaries simply provided guard to a single man exiting the train. The corpo adjusted his suit, clicked on his megaphone, and started talking.
"Hello, people of Detroit. My name is Oliver McEvoy, and I am the regional manager of the Hallevue Manufacturing Company's Michigan Division. Now, as you all most likely know, the United States has found itself at war with a foreign power, and an alien one at that. That means the boys in camo need supplies, and lots of them. Long story short, there's been something of a scramble lately for unused land, and Detroit is one of the best places to get."
Many of the wiser residents of the city immediately began to pack their bags at this statement. They knew this was coming.
"We've paid our dues to Uncle Sam for his land, and as of this morning, the entire city of Detroit is now the property of Hallevue, and you're all hired! Well, everyone who wants to work, that is. Everyone here will be compensated for their land, and all our new employees will receive complimentary housing and food while we refurbish the city's apartments."
By this point, a small crowd had gathered, and they weren't happy.
"You're just going to push us off our land like that!?"
"My father built my home, and you're just taking it from my family!?"
"You don't care about us! Typical fucking suits!"
Then, there was a sharp pop as one of the PMCs discharged his weapon into the air, scaring the group into silence.
"Now, please remain calm. After all, our contractors are going to give this city a makeover! Detroit will be just like new, better than it was before World War II!"
"We don't want it to be like before! We want our own city!" a man had stepped forward out of the crowd. There were tears in his eyes as he yelled, but it was useless. People didn't get managerial positions by listening to sob stories. The regional manager rattled on about how this was just the first step in what Hallevue considered to be a remake of the entire state as the heart of American industry once more, and slowly, the crowd dispersed. Some left the city, retreating further into the rapidly-shrinking remains of the Rot Belt. Others stayed and took Hallevue's job offer in the biggest day recruiting-wise in the company's history.
Over the next few days, huge volumes of men and materials were pumped into Detroit. Soon, the sight of exosuit-clad construction workers and engineers in the streets became common, as did maintenance and cleaning crews in the buildings. A small army of utility technicians in white hard-hats got to work reconnecting the city's power and water grids, and truckfuls of goods were distributed in old marketplaces free of charge. Still, no amount of renovation could make these people forget what had been done to make it possible.
Around the world, similar scenes were playing out. Chinese engineering units knocked down the homes of non-complying residents in the Pearl River Delta, while GSG 9 helped suppress anti-industrialization riots in the Rhineland. Decrepit towns in the Caucasus found themselves suddenly nationalized, and the factories of North England began belching out black smog for the first time in nearly a century.
All the while, the bureaucracies of Earth's myriad nations were working double-time, frantically pushing through all the paperwork required to re-gear an entire planet for war. President John Herald got up early and worked late into the night signing into law an ever-growing stack of bills and executive orders six inches tall. War bonds, civilian drafts, nationalizations of companies that didn't comply with federal demands.
Then, a particular bill caught his eye, passed, worryingly, by his own party. It concerned the indefinite deployment of soldiers to population centers, screening everything and everyone for any trace of Poslushi infiltration. The fact that this had made it through Congress shocked him to his core, because he knew that those soldiers wouldn't be sent home when the war was over. Disgusted, he vetoed the bill.
Later on, historians would debate as to whether President Herald had really avoided the descent of the country into dictatorship through this act, but all agreed that he had done the country a great service in sending the bill back to the House of Representatives, where, somehow, the politicians saw a little sense and didn't pass it on. Threats, perceived or real, and things done in the name of national security were the mechanisms by which democracy died.
---
The endless ranks of hard-faced soldiers goose-stepped in formation past a screaming crowd, rifles in hand. Following them was a column of Type 70 tanks, their gun barrels pointed high. A J-130 shot overhead at supersonic speed as the whole formation came to a halt just in front of the Great Hall of the People. The capital building of the People's Republic of China had been completely rebuilt a few years back, and now it was a monolithic structure, a towering, hundred-story construction of concrete and steel, topped with a torch reminiscent of that of the Juche Tower before it was torn down when North Korea was conquered in World War III.
Ambassador Zheng stood on a massive, overhanging balcony, alongside the smiling leaders of several former CAST nations, with the pointed exception of India, the most notable of them. A camera drone hovered in front of the balcony, broadcasting to millions worldwide. Ambassador Zheng clicked on his microphone, then began to speak.
"Citizens of the People's Republic of China and beyond, it is believed that great power should only exist to combat great power. In the modern age, the Coalition of Aligned Solar Territories is the world hegemon, but that does not have to continue. No longer will the vibrant nations of the East be chained to the will of the West. Similarly, the new, alien threat we face stands opposed to our way of life, and thus, in the name of peace, collaboration, and prosperity in the face of these two adversaries, the myriad nations of the Global South are joining together under one glorious alliance, not only to check the power of the Coalition, but to coordinate a defense against the Poslushi.
"We have been in talks with over twenty different nations worldwide who are similarly disillusioned, and it has been decided. From now on, the People's Republic of China shall serve as the spearhead and vanguard of the All-Hominid International, or AHINT for short. No longer shall China stand alone against the Poslushi. No longer shall any nation stand alone against the mighty forces of capitalism. The West may have won its battles in the past, but it is once more up to the East to win the battles of the future!
"So, citizens, rejoice! China stands by the world, the world stands by China, and together, we are unstoppable!" Zheng finished his section of the speech and was soon met with near-deafening applause. Sure, the guards interspersed around the crowd didn't hurt, but he could tell that most of it was genuine. He turned around and went to stand at the back of the balcony as the General Secretary of Vietnam went to speak. Now to let the propagandists of the PRC work their magic.