If I'd thought the bomb about humans being studier than they expected us to be was enough to throw them off, this would have started a full riot. As soon as I finished speaking all four of the Commanders meeting with me were on their feet and speaking so fast that Cai wasn't able to translate everything they were saying. Apparently, he needed an upgrade of some sort for that.
"Silence!" Gul-fen bellowed, finally bringing order back to the meeting. "Commander James. Do you know what you are implying with this plan?"
"If you mean 'Do I know that according to the Warden Accords what I'm suggesting is treason and goes against everything that the Wardens of Life swore to uphold?' then yes, I do know," I told him. "However I would like to point out to you all that I am not supposed to be here. According to those same Accords, signed by all races within the Wardens of Life, if a race is found uncontacted by the Scourge and you feel that you have reason to believe that they will be capable of fighting them, they must be contacted and the details of their participation must be discussed. Any choice they make is to be respected, even if they choose not to fight."
I stood from my seat and leaned toward them all for my next words.
"Did the Wardens of Life make contact with my race and discuss with them the idea of us fighting with the Scourge?"
I could tell by the way that none of them could meet my eyes what their answers were.
"No, you didn't. Your ships came to my planet and found my species. Your scientists examined incorrect data and drew incorrect conclusions. From those conclusions, you made a decision that left me hurtling toward an unfamiliar planet with no training and an AI as my only company." I gave them all a moment to consider what I had spelled out for them before continuing.
"Now, I'm here to pull your alliance's collective ass out of the fire. You can all spend years debating if what you did was right later. After you've seen the Scourge pushed back and the worlds you've lost are being returned to you. Now, you all need to make a choice and go along with it full bore, whatever you decide. If you decide to help my people be the Scourge killing machines you think us to be, then you need to go along with my full plan; even if it goes against everything you believe in right now. If you decide not to do that, then you need to suggest a different course of action. And I can promise you all that I will listen to that even if I don't agree with it."
"My point," I said, "is that if you need to justify my plan, then you already have the perfect excuse. We are not technically a part of the Wardens of Life. You've added other races to your roster after the Accords were put together, but their leaders all signed those Accords and agreed to everything they said. Humans didn't. We weren't even given the choice of it."
"I do not like this loophole you force us to confront," Gul-fen stated before taking his seat. "I must however admit that it allows us a chance to attempt your plan. To truly go forward with this plan, you will need to name your organization and mark it as a sister to the Wardens of Life without placing yourself and your race beneath the Warden of Life umbrella. Do you have a name for this army that is to be raised to combat the Scourge?"
"I was thinking of calling it the Nephilim Army," I told them.
"What does that term mean?" Mult asked. "Nephilim?"
"In human stories and some of our religions Nephilim were beings born from the union between Angels, divine messengers who served Heaven, and humans. They were typically taller and stronger than their human counterparts due to the Angelic blood that had mixed within them. I chose that name because my people aren't Angels sent by Heaven and we won't be human anymore, instead we'll be more."
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"I support the creation of this Nephilim Army and that we do not sign Humans into the Wardens of Life," Krnnmt said quickly.
"I also support this," Mult said.
"As do I," Hyell stated.
"Then with that we are in agreement," Gul-fen said. "You will each return to your ships and the fleets under your control and send to BS-HP-003 your geneticists and genetic engineers to begin planning the upgrade of Human volunteers into Nephilim soldiers. Furthermore your fleets will begin stripping the materials from this system and the surrounding ones for the creation of the three Galaxy-Jumper class starships and their fleets that will be under the command of Rickshaw James, the first Commander of the Nephilim Army. Does anyone have anything they'd like to add?"
"Yes, actually," I said. I was really tired of this and was looking forward to finally seeing it done. "I'd like to rename the planet to something other than BS-HP-003. It's fine enough when nothing's really happening on it but now that its under Warden and Nephilim control, I think it needs a different name."
"I agree with Commander James," Hyell said. "Typical desigantions can be a mouthful and choosing a name will be something that will tell our people more than Commander James' parade yesterday that things are changing for the better now."
"Commander Hyell raises an excellent point," Mult wobbled while Krnnmt chirped.
"Very well," Gul-fen said before turning to me. "Commander James, since you've suggested this, you have the honor. What shall we name this planet?"
Well that was something I hadn't expected. Really, I was just tired of having to read out a string of numbers and letters to let everyone know what planet I was talking about. Oh well, I could do this, naming something's easy right? It only took me two and half weeks to come up with Nephilim Army. And that was the start of a military group that would sweep the Scourge from the stars. A planet's child's play after that right?
Wrong. If I picked a stupid name then I was going to have a similar issue that I was afraid of with the Scourge; people wouldn't take it seriously. I needed to pick something that for generations to come would let everyone know that this planet was where it all started. This planet was where the Nephilim Army was first formed. This planet was the first in a long line of planets that had been taken back from the Scourge. Then, like a sign from a higher power, I had it.
"Rallypoint," I said. "I think that this planet should be named Rallypoint."
I was ready to justify my choice to them all but everyone nodded in their own way and agreed that it was a good name. And so Rallypoint became the name for the planet that had been the start of my journey. The planet where I'd seen things no one should have to see and now was free of anything that would make everyone else run in terror. I hoped; I still had no idea what the natural animal life there looked like and I'd spent days searching for them before finally concluding that the Scourge had eaten them all and run the survivors off.
Back in my room, I asked Cai a question that had been nagging me for a while now, one I hadn't thought to ask the other Commanders while I had them closeby.
"Exactly how many humans were taken from Earth?"
"When the Warden Commanders chose to take their course of action they wanted enough of your people for a comprehensive test of your abilities and to ensure that they had chosen enough warriors from your people," he told me. "To that end, two groups of Humans were gathered. First, were the one hundred of you that were selected by various criteria to be the first tested in combat. You are a part of this group. Next, was the group that was selected so that the Wardens would be able to determine what went wrong if the first group were to totally perish and fail their objective. For this group five hundred thousand males and five hundred thousand females were chosen. All of them are between your ages of fifteen years old and thirty years old."
As he spoke, I remembered back to when he had mention that a million people were conscripted by the Wardens. I was almost afraid to ask my next question.
"And where are these people being kept?"
"All members of the Human race that the Wardens have conscripted are being kept in a state of cryogenic hibernation. This allows the Wardens to keep them safe and to seperate them from the other races until you had either achieved your goals or totally failed them. Would you like me to inform the medical personnel to begin waking them?"
Oh, my head hurts now.