The Great Catalyst

An Exploratory Essay by Galetilia Nazario

Modern galactic history has been shaped by Humanity. This is a bold claim to make, especially since Humanity has one of the youngest interstellar nations in existence, but it is undeniably true. Their dramatic and violent debut in the Orion Arm a century ago completely changed the Arm's political spectrum, and began trends still followed in the Arm to this day. Similarly, Humanity's disastrous first contact with our people (and by extension, the rest of the Council) set a tone that would color all further relations between the Orion Arm and the rest of the galaxy.

But should why is such a relatively young species so influential? Militarily, they've made fantastic progress in the hundred years they have had space flight, but they still don't have half the ships we do. Scientifically, Humans are famous for their creativity and drive, but Salarians and Liir are just as skilled. In terms of equipment, it took over fifty years for Humanity's ground forces to design a vehicle that could compete one on one with its Turians or Tarkasian counterparts. Politically, they have no more influence than any other Orion nation. No, their most unique quality has nothing to do with conventional strength. Humanity is a catalyst. To explain what I mean by this, we must first explore the history of Humanity, as well as the Orion Arm in general.

Humanity as a whole has had one of the most difficult roads of any Citadel species, with the possible exception of the Krogan. Even by the standards of the Orion Arm, theirs is a violent history, filled with barely-survived disasters. Throughout their 22nd and 23 centuries (18th and 19th centuries by Council reckoning) Humanity faced almost total ecological and economic collapse and dozens of wars, several of which included limited nuclear exchanges. In the space of two centuries, 70% of the Human population was wiped out. Their experience is actually quite similar to that the Drell: ecological failure leading to economic failure leading to desperate wars of conquest and extermination of what remained.

But while the Drell homeworld was beyond hope, Humanity's was not. Through strict policies of rationing and control, Humanity turned away from war and instead started to rebuild. The jewel of this reconstruction was the Node Drive, a technology that finally allowed for faster-than-light travel and gave Humans a chance to leave their crowded, dying planet behind.

Obviously, all this is basic history. Everyone knows the story of the Nova Maria, and how it was destroyed on launch by rogue fleet of Hiver Princess Obsidian Crown. Hivers bombard Earth, Humans launch the last of their nuclear arsenal (over three thousand missile worth) in a last-ditch defense, SolForce emerges as the galactic 'face' of Humanity, and the Hiver War begins. The tale is well known, and I'll avoid repeating it. I only mention it in reference to Humanity's earlier brushes with apocalypse, because Human have a very documented response to threats of extinction. They adapt and overcome.

As mentioned, the Drell and Krogan faced their own apocalypses, but were unable to overcome them. The Krogan nuked themselves back to the Stone Ages (where they remain, according to some of their detractors), and the Drell burned their planet out from under them. Humanity faced nuclear war and ecological collapse almost simultaneously and survived. Why? There are many theories, but I personally believe it is because Human thinking is fluid. Their environment could not sustain their old ways of life, so they adopted new ones. Their wars threatened to eradicate them, so they became pacifists out of necessity. And when their pacifism left them at the mercy of a harsh galaxy, they abandoned it to learn the ways of war again.

This flexibility is a learned trait, not a biological one. Humanity has many examples of static thinking in its history, both ancient and modern. They simply choose to collectively ignore or override such opinions. This may also be a reflection on the brevity of their history. Besides the Zuul, Humanity is the youngest stellar nation in known space. The Asari have ships that were launched before Humanity first left its homeworld. The Hiver Imperium and Tarkasian Empire had centuries of experience exploring space before Humans arrived. Even the Liir had a head-start. As such, they have no traditions to cling to, and no 'mold' they must fit. They become whatever they need to be, because they don't have a set identity. Adaptation IS their identity.

The conflict between static and fluid thinking can be found in the early years of the Hiver-Tarka War. After their First Contact with the Tarka also went poorly, Humanity entered a two-way battle with the Hiver Imperium and Tarkasian Empire. The Hivers and Tarka were in the midst of their own war at this point, one that had been raging on and off for over five hundred years, and neither nation had the time to bother with what both considered to be 'upstart apes'.

SolForce was happy to take advantage of their weakness. The power of the Node drive let them expand at a rapid pace, attacking and colonizing at frantic speed. Humanity was determined to spread as far and wide as it could, so a repeat of the Hiver Incursion could never happen again. Though SolForce started at a massive disadvantage, the conservative mindsets of the Tarka and Hivers gave Humanity the space it needed to claim its foothold on the Orion Arm.

It is at this point in history that Humanity's nature as a catalyst become apparent. Hiver and Tarkasian development has always been somewhat similar to that of the Council, with centuries spent refining existing technologies and very few revolutionary breakthroughs. Humanity's is considerably faster, and as the war progressed, the Hivers and Tarka found themselves adopting Human levels of research and expansion simply to keep up. The Tarkasian Empire alone has made more technological progress in the past few decades than they have in the past two centuries.

Humanity's catalytic effect applies even to itself. When Humanity's expansion began, the Hiver Imperium had no knowledge of its existence. Princess Obsidian Crown was a rogue and a criminal, and her arrival at the Human homeworld was a direct result of her own kin driving her into exile. As the Hiver had ignored all transmissions during her attack on their world, Humanity remained ignorant of this. In the decade after Obsidian Crown's attack, they waged a war of extermination against the Hivers, destroying every colony they found without mercy. Unbeknownst to them, many of these attacks were launched at poorly defended frontier worlds which had no knowledge of Humanity's existence or any desire for conflict. Faced with what they saw as a campaign of mindless genocide that had no cause, the Hivers began putting their previous struggles aside, uniting under leaders like Princess Radiant Frost to strike back at the monsters killing their people.

On the Tarkasian side of the equation, the Tarka had problems of their own. The assassination of their Supreme Commander just a year after First Contact with Humanity not only ruined any hope for peace with the fledgling Human nation, but also threw the Empire into chaos. Commanders on the Human front were forced to deal with conflicting and illogical orders from their High Command as the battle for succession began, while unrestrained mercenary bands began striking at comparatively vulnerable Human worlds to make a quick profit. By the time the dust had settled, the Tarka faced a genocidal enemy that was well fortified and had already seized several of their worlds. His position fragile, the new Supreme had to respond decisively, and wasted no time in doing so.

The Tarkasian Empire and Hiver Imperium were still much larger than the small area the Humans had carved out. Their crews had more experience, their technology was still better than what SolForce had access to, and their fleets were larger. Interaction and study had finally revealed the truth of the Hiver Incursion and the Tarkasian raids to Human officials, and a schism began to form. On the one side were progressive thinkers, who saw that their war was not only unjustified and unethical, but also unwinnable. On the other were the old guard, including then-SolForce Director Ashilde Falke, who believed that peace would never be possible with aliens. In the end, Humanity's fluid nature won out. Director Falke was killed in a coup by her successor, Director Edward Alton MacKenzie, who immediately signed an armistice with the Hivers, officially ending the Hiver-Tarka War.

Though the war was over, the trends it began did not die. Instead, they continued to evolve. The arrival of the Zuul presented a threat to all four Orion nations, and Humanity's new outlook of wary cooperation allowed it to stand side-by-side with its old enemies to hold back the deadly onslaught. When the dust settled, Humanity and the Liir had both emerged as powers equal to their ancient neighbors. Though the Liir's development was not as inspired by Humanity's as the Tarkasian Empire or Hiver Imperium's was, much of their tactics and militarization were developed as a response to the Zuul, who blatantly stole their technology and tactics from the other nations. Directly or indirectly, Humanity created the modern Orion battlefield.

This might simply be dismissed as coincidence, but a similar pattern emerged when a Human exploration fleet was discovered by a Turian patrol attempting to active a dormant relay. As per standard protocol, the patrol opened fire immediately but failed to check the ships against their database. As such, they did not realize they faced a First Contact situation until after several Human vessels had been destroyed and the rest had fled. The limits of ship construction without element zero meant that at this time a Human cruiser was a mere 90 meters long, less than a fifth the size of its Turian equivalent. The results of spinal bombardment against such small ships, especially those designed for exploration and not front-line combat, can be easily imagined.

So Humanity did what it does best: it adapted. Using the Node Drives ability to shunt their vessels into another dimension during travel, their strike forces harassed our fleet with hit and run strikes. Normal methods of tracking were useless, and the 7th Fleet was forced into a protracted campaign of methodical searches and glacial advances that lasted four months before it reached the colony of Shanxi. Many of its lighter vessels had been damaged or destroyed, and they were low on supplies.

The rest of the story is common knowledge. General Williams led a heroic last stand to dupe us into taking an incomplete Node Map, leading the 7th Fleet directly into an ambush at the colony of Excalibur. Mines at Relay 314 crippled the fleet's expected reinforcements, and the 7th fell back for a final climactic struggle to break through the Human fleets waiting at the Relay. Both sides returned with allies, and it was only through the intervention of the Liir and Asari that this minor boarder skirmish did not expand into an all out war between the Council and the Orion Arm. The political aspects of the Human-Turian War have been analyzed quite thoroughly, but war's effect on military conflict were also immense.

In short, this brief struggle changed interstellar conflict for the entire galaxy. For the part of the Council races and their affiliates, the yield of Orion weapons was game-changing. With Orion weaponry, frigate-sized ships could be armed with beam weapons packing the power of a 500 meter spinal gun that would also completely ignore the enemy's barriers. This sparked a radical design change as emphasis drifted away from large fixed guns and back toward smaller, turreted weapons to counter the tactics Humanity had showcased during the war. The tried-and-true tactics of long-ranged bombardment have also begun to give way to more complex strategies in response to the Orion Arm's preference for and proficiency at comparatively close engagement ranges.

In the case of the Orion races, the sheer size of Council vessels was something they were completely unprepared for. A Turian ship was large enough to simply shrug off all but the largest and most advanced Human weapons, and the standard Human tactic of attacking the exposed mounts of enemy turrets was almost completely ineffective against the static guns of our vessels. With mass effect technology now available to them, the Orion Arm began increasing the size of their ships, mounting more weapons and thicker armor. A modern Orion cruiser is the same size as a pre-Contact Orion dreadnought, and mounts a similar amount of equipment while being several orders of magnitude faster and more maneuverable.

The disdain for tradition that Humanity inspired throughout the Orion Arm has begun to catch on elsewhere. Fields long thought to be wastes of time have been reopened and now bear surprising fruit. Trade with the Orion Arm has caused an economic boom throughout much of the galaxy, and the addition of Orion warships along Terminus patrol routes have cut pirate raids in half. Technological and economic development has increased drastically through the Orion Arm and Council space since the Orion races joined as associate species. Still, while Humans are catalysts for change, not all change is good.

The number of pirate raids have decreased, but they now travel in larger numbers. The small size of Orion weapons allows such marauders to be much deadlier, and Independent worlds have begun suffering greatly from their attacks. The addition of Orion mercenary organization like the Silver Spears and Blue Suns has caused corporate wars to become even more aggressive and violent. The rapid rate of expansion Humanity still practices has forced the other Orion races to keep pace, which in turn has brought them into conflict with more conservative Council nations. Increased Orion militarization, including Humanity's construction of a super-dreadnought to bypass the restrictions of the Treaty of Farixen, have put many on edge. The willingness of the Orion races to use those military assets, as was horrifically proven during the Batarian Extermination, is even more unsettling. Though the Human-Turian War is decades old, the ideas it planted are still there. Many in the Orion Arm resent their leaders' decisions to join the Council, and Humanity is not alone in grumbling about what they see are pointless restrictions to their people's development. Traditionalists and progressives have begun clashing on all sides, as the Orion Arm struggles to reconcile its historical traditions of expansion and independence with the economic and technological benefits Council association provides. The Council and its affiliates face a similar problem, as many voices have begun suggesting the Council take a more hands-on approach to the rest of the galaxy, and others wish for the Council to remain relatively uninvolved with the activities of its members.

As the Orion Arm discovered at the end of the Hiver-Tarka War, once the process of change has begun it cannot be stopped. Humanity and the races it has influenced have become the catalyst for a reaction that is slowly consuming our galaxy. But whether this reaction will result in an amalgam stronger than the sum of its parts, or in an explosive blaze that will annihilate everything we've worked centuries to construct, that is something we cannot predict. All we can do is be ready.

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Instructor Comments: An interesting and entertaining theory, Cadet Nazario, but I requested an informative analysis on Human culture. This reads like the lead-in to a bad political thriller. See me after class.

Hey, you made it! Thanks for reading this far! Generally, you'll see these Author Notes at the beginning of a chapter, but since this is the very first one, I'm putting them at the bottom. Like where this might be going but you aren't familiar with Sword of the Stars? Don't worry! The story is actually a little better if you DON'T know anything about SotS, since the Codex will fill you in on anything you need to know and a lot of the later plot twists are very obvious if you know your SotS lore.

As a warning, this was the very first story I ever published, and it kind of shows. I'm going through and reworking a lot of the earlier chapters (this is one of the reworks), but it's slow going. For those of you frustrated, please jump ahead to Chapter 12: Epitaph. The plot kicks in there, and I mostly had my writing style fixed by then. All this early stuff is just filler to establish the crossover.

Though I mentioned it previously, this story has a LOT of Codex. Mostly this is because the Sword of the Stars universe is huge with reference materials, and having characters constantly stop to explain what a 'meson beam' is or what the different breeds of Hiver are would be too cumbersome, especially since even a child should already know most of this stuff in-universe. If the Codexs bore you, skip them! Only a handful are plot-relevant, and you can always go back.

One final thought before I stop my rambling. I LOVE feedback. I can't get enough of it, and I try to respond to every review I get. I will even rework a chapter if you can convince me I'm wrong about something. I especially love negative feedback, but please don't just tell me you didn't like my story and aren't reading anymore. I can't fix it if I don't know what's wrong, so telling me what turned you off would be really helpful. Even if what turned you off was just the massive length of this note.