The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. Isaiah 11:6 - Human Religious Text Compilation, Extranet, Chapter: The Works of Levant, Subchapter: Bible
"United Nations of Humanity's Representative, Theophilos Fvabb proposes a motion. Envoys and diplomats, please standby for the message, regular translation delay restrictions apply."
The message, relayed in binary static from an ovoid, silvery device, not unlike the loudspeaker of an earlier human era suspended in perfect anti-gravity chirped over the massive chamber; the signal, in its simplicity elicited sounds, vibrations, and even smells from the seats where multitudes of species were seated. The seats, shaped to a flexible, modular spiral, circled by a novel invention, the Universal Translator were supplied by one of the empires that had formed the Galactic Community: Orbis Customer Synergies.
The representative of the United Nations of Earth sighed, his hairy arms resting on the balcony, despite the precautions about making unexpected noises so as not to confuse the translator devices; for millions of different species were listening right now. Having been chosen for his unique name and family past, he knew the message had to be convincing, universal, and attractive enough even to impress UNE's rivals.
Representatives of The Commonwealth of man, the sister empire of United Nations of Earth, were staring him down, men and women in red-black, crisp, form-fitting uniforms not dissimilar to that of the "Third Reich" which had existed three centuries ago. The bitter irony of the situation was that most of the uniforms were worn by humans with heavily African, non-white, and even Ashkenazi phenotypes to Theo's clinical eye.
Racism amongst men died, racism against "Xenos" had been born.
Theo's mind drifted down to memory lane...
His last name was, much to the fascination of others, was because of the Scyldari Federation he grew up as an orphan.
That was not always so. His family, both paternal and maternal, had been a long line of pilots from the earliest days of the United Nations of Earth; they had been settled on one of the newly colonized planets when their military tour ended. Off came the pilot's helmet, it was time to farm, establish a homestead, and procreate.
But humanity would not be free of menaces and dread, to the quiet brooding of many of the galaxy's oldest philosophers, and a running gag to dark comedy broadcasts in the galactic web.
He could still remember the day when the Vlyarik Purifiers, a molluscoid species endemic to the northern galactic quadrant led a war of extermination on the human race. Deploying a "planet cracker", a Colossus class warship to wipe out Europa Seven, the Vlyarik had not only horrified the galactic community of that time, which comprised of still nascent species but also managed to draw the old racial siblings of the United Nations of Earth, the xenophobic Commonwealth of Man to humanity's defense.
Down the memory lane, he remembered his family drafted into the fighter hangars orbiting the planet, barely remembering their assuring smile as they left for the transporter shuttles. His days in the military orphanage were that of worry, as the Interplanetary Television in the mess hall kept blaring messages of casualties, the terrified children sitting close to each other, ashen-faced with horror. Theo couldn't tell them his own parents were up in the sky, trying to fight off what seemed to be an impossible swarm of alien fighter craft wreaking havoc around their world.
It was a quiet, dreadful wait for the little children, many already frozen in the early stages of the trauma of the war, children that knew many of their parents tho flew to man the fighter hangars above their home, glittering every night in geosynchronous orbit, were not coming back.
As days passed, night lights of explosions became closer and closer to the crux of lights above their home. Even the youngest started to sense that something was happening, hostile lights gathering in number every day the children ate heated rations under an instant-concrete fabricated bunker for military brats. Their caretakers, men, and women with worried expressions could say nothing to assuage their fears.
A month later, Theo was watching the mess hall television sullenly, watching some data-stored cartoon until the screen went black. His heart nearly stopped.
The Emergency Announcement System, a warning system harkening back to the early Atomic Age of Mankind was all that was seen on the black screen when little Theo was huddled, terrified at the blaring sound. The sound itself had permanently traumatized him up to his day.
The EAS, the black-red-and-white electronic scream had a single, terrifying declaration.
/PLANETARY CATASTROPHE IMMINENT-UNIDENTIFIED ALIEN WEAPON DISCHARGE-IMMEDIATE EVACUATION/
The monochrome signal, unchanged for centuries, had the little boy freeze in a fetal position until a terrified caregiver, a black woman snatched him to a shuttle waiting in the town center. He never forgot the screams, screeching of metal, earthquakes, and the hot winds that were indicative of a month-long Colossus discharge: unlike fiction stories of gigantic, instantly detonating beam weapons, the gigantic Colossus vessel would send bursts of neutrinos to heat the metallic core of the planet until the entire world came apart like old clothing at the seams.
He saw his world melt away at the gigantic pillar of endless light, squeezed tightly inside the refugee shuttle. His earliest memories of space were thus limited to creaking metal, the smell of ammonia from terrified, crying children, cramped quarters, and pressurized, metallic-smelling air. Days of hunger and horror passed, some children falling asleep on their metal bunks, never waking up. Sobs of caretakers, groans of the pain of the wounded, and the ever-increasing thirst and hunger had petrified him further, convincing him he was in Hell...
He was certain some of the caretakers and children, crying, but well-fed, had done something horrible he could not conceive of.
...until their nearly-starved, tiny lifeboat of a shuttle was scooped up by a Scyldari fleet passing by, a species he fondly remembered as oversized otters with big smiles.
He didn't understand why there weren't as many bodies in the ship's hold as the day they boarded, and many, gnawed bones were put in body bags reserved for humans. He would understand much, much later to his horror.
Given to an orphanage on the planetside, he grew up with a literal company of humanoid otters until the chaos of the Vlyarik Purification War had subsided. Not much remaining of bureaucracy on UNE's part to reclaim all of the refugees, he was adopted by a charitable Scyldari family, who were wise enough to place him in the company of other human children as well to avoid any awkwardness during puberty.
Now decades later, he was fortunate enough to be noticed, partly due to his unique upbringing, to represent the United Nations of Earth, when diplomats scoured the refugee records of the Purification War to scoop up potential testimonials and survivors. His adoptive family, although saddened, were glad to see the human they adopted return to his kin in (relative) glory. Luckily the United Nations had cleaned up most of its corruption: there was no unelected European "nobility" from The Hague to assassinate him to usurp his position anymore. Not after the Boswash Riots' aftermath, at least. The Old World's conspiratory nobility like was luckily purged from the United Nations, making it a respectable organization.
Breathing in, Theo returned from the memory lane, the medical chip in his right ear cavity buzzing with stimulants. The lentil-sized electronic regulator had already sensed he was going into shock and started to pump anti-psychotic medications into his veins.
Years passed. He was here. He was safe.
Time to speak.
He began his proposition with a cautious tone, respecting the Universal Translator's own programming lingo, Orbex: this was a unique problem for envoys. The galaxy's diplomats had to re-learn and entirely reshape their own grammar since the universal translators, once uniquely built by every civilization were monopolized by Orbis Customer Synergies. The Chairman and local CEO continuously denying any allegations of tampering, having drafted a unique code of conduct to appease the Galactic Community. Even so, the message was spoken during Galactic meetings often had a unique, weird, convoluted grammar despite the best attempts of Orbis Megacorporation.
"Fellow delegates. I come before you as an adopted child of two species. Scyldari and Human..."
He had chosen his adoptive family as the first point of address, despite warnings from the UNE brass not to offend their cousins, The Commonwealth of Man. Even now, the 3-dimensional projection of Lady Beauclair The Fifth, clearly visible across the circular pit full of countless politicians of all species, furrowed her brows in distaste. Theo saw no joy in annoying one of humanity's only brethren outside their government. But the Commonwealth of Man, despite their prodigious military might and fleets, was a small, and relatively distant friend. The Scyldari Confederacy, on the other hand, constituted over half of UNE's trade income and population exchange, as well as the main supplier of alloys, and research information regarding galactic history.
"...proposing a motion to shape the future of countless generations."
Taking a quick swig of water, Theo almost spilled his glass before proceeding, hands trembling.
"The Galactic Market, auspiciously situated in our race's cradle, Sol, is a bright center of commerce for trillions of living beings. Yet it has a wound in it. A travesty that we must address, a travesty that we, the human species, -can not- abide. You know what I speak of. I speak of the black shuttles coming and going between the misguided dictatorial governments in this very chamber, polluting our solar system with our dark past!"
Beauclair's mouth subconsciously opened to interrupt. It was working. Presenting humanity as an opponent of the Galactic Market's unpopular section, euphemistically named "Sentient Worker Exchange", would reduce the Commonwealth's clout, itself employing all captive aliens as slaves to maintain its empire.
The exchange had a simpler name:
The Slave Market.
Theo raised his hand to interrupt Beauclair's sharp intake of breath, who already quieted down in anger, no doubt cursing herself to react aggressively to such a simple tease. Theo went on.
"Our race, when it was limited to Terra(he used the galactic name to avoid awkward translations), we had traded each other, our captives, kidnapped females, broken males, and abducted children, to be used. Used in labor, used for -rape-..." He spat out the word intentionally to emphasize the point for the delegates. "...breeding without consent, and unauthorized, fruitless pleasure of the captor for millennia. Until we realized the fruitlessness, the disunity, and the evil of the entire franchise, humanity preyed on itself, thinking nothing of the future. Humans of -all- skin colors preyed on each other, sometimes codifying this vile trade in religious and false science (he knew not to say pseudoscience-the Orbex protocol didn't recognize it) excuses...Until our forefathers banished this vile trade to dark pages of our history." He flashed a button to display an ancient member of his species who started to fade into obscurity. A kind, middle-aged Caucasian man with facial hair, grown fully and long over the jaw and chin, meeting with the sideburns but lacking a mustache to hide his sharply angled face, declare that in his fledgling nation of "America", all slaves were to be freed.
"Now as we all mastered the way of hyperspace and spread out to the stars like sailors of terrestrial waters, we have all met here, in this Sacred Senate..." His voice rose to a crescendo when he invoked the last part and squeezed a fist at shoulder height:
Sacred.
That would probably strike a chord with the spiritualist Glebsig Foundation as well. Or tune. Or a frequency. Theophilos had no idea what the shapeless, floating jellyfish-like Glebsig even thought inside that oxygenated, custom seat-vessel of his as the tendrils wiggled and danced. Surely the big blue jellyfish was listening to (its?) chirping translators around its seat, itself a big blue blob amongst the thousands of journalists, strange, spidery humanoids called hive-monitors(a class of drone traveling autonomously for reporting back to the central hivemind), security staff made of robots and the ever-present Kel-Azaan private security floating in small platforms resembling surf-boards: xeno-arthropoids with shock batons and tasers, dressed in blue-and-silver livery buzzed to and fro, preventing any violent arguments.
"To trade in sentient beings like us, men and women..." He flinched, changing the words in a hurry. "Male and female, small and big, young and old, citizens and servants as if they are..." He paused, almost biting his tongue.
The only machine race present, X-11-Industrial Combine's representative had its visual lenses squinting. He wouldn't make that mistake, drilled into his mind a hundred times.
Do. Not. Say. Robot.
Machine Intelligence itself already detested the massive robot trade going on: Lokken Mechanists exported their droids to Orbis Megacorporation by the billion, where the decadent Orbis species employed the robots in the worst jobs ever, up and including robots reforged in shapely Orbi female figures in certain establishments.
The X-11. Did. Not. Approve. Theo knew that war was certain between them, only held in check by a common threat: a similar machine intelligence, some speak of a common maker: XT-489 Exterminators looming between them and constantly beseeching the X-11 to join them in cleansing the galaxy of organics. The X-11 was smart enough not to: they bordered the Panuri Preservers, a massive, silent empire that predated everyone, and didn't bother engaging in diplomacy. Yet they occasionally sent a representative or two watching the younger races and took the occasional refugee species to their reservations, including some humans that willingly were relocated to their heavenly lush planets, living in reservations similar to North American reservations for aboriginals until the tribes themselves melted into the UNE's populations early in space exploration age.
"Theo. Focus." He thought, his face a stoic wall as he kept speaking.
"Traded like inert commodities, food, or raw minerals. As if they were articles of clothing or livestock. We, the Galactic Community differ on many lifestyles. Some of us practice inter-factional slavery. Our cousins..." He gestured to the Commonwealth representatives circling Beauclair's hoverchair. "Keep conquered aliens and their families as indentured servants." Seeing his allotted time on his chair HUD run low, he increased his pace.
Time to strike home. Raising his hands in the air, he spoke like a priest preaching to the crowd.
"It is not my place to question a foreign Empire of its practices." That sentence surely soured the Commonwealth representatives, and their matriarch, Beauclair the Fifth. Foreign Empire, he truly declared the sharp difference of morality between their clearly racist Commonwealth siblings who let the captive and bought Xenos do their scutwork and kept them in prefabricated slums, and the multicultural UNE citizens, who even saw abusing robots as a sign of bad character. Now, the part where the honey softens the blow had to be said.
"And neither is it my right to ask the Commonwealth, whose founding species, our brother humans, who came valiantly to aid us during the Vlyarik Purification War, suddenly to change their morals! Yet it is my right, and duty, to propose henceforth, that the trade of living, sentient, organic and inorganic persons of intelligence, Lithoid, or Synthetic Sentients included-" As he kept talking, he saw both Commonwealth and Machine Intelligence representatives, silvery molluscoid replicas with glass CPU heads, nod in assent.
For the lack of a better word, the sudden help of Commonwealth out of human sympathy had torn the Vlyarik a new cloaca. A three-pronged assault from the galactic north on Commonwealth Armada's part, task forces Leviathan and Kraken had ripped the Vlyarik fleets surrounding Europa and scooped up as many refugee lifeboats as possible. Even Scyldari and other Xeno species' refugees were, after a brief Commonwealth screening, promptly delivered to respective species' outposts without comment. So they -had- some morals after all.
Then, they did the unthinkable. To the astonishment of UNE attache, the signature of Commonwealth's own Colossus ship had roused elation in many, but also trepidation and horror in some. The same ship could very well be used against them one day. And that ship's continuous blips registered on UNE channels, who broadcasted the inevitable.
It was unnecessary: the Commonwealth had promptly sent the footage of Vlyar Prime's invasion, and to the shock of many, destruction, to all present factions. Their fleet had no ground troops in the footages. It was an hour-long movie of silent, grim-faced men and women wearing military attire reminiscent of the Third Reich grimly staring at the blue orb below them, as waves of neutrinos and plasma roaring under the Commonwealth's own Colossus flowed to the planet, peeled its atmosphere, and slowly, ripped the planet as it spun faster and lost coalescence.
Then another.
And another.
To the Galaxy's horror, the Commonwealth had cracked all three planets of the "Vlyarik Purifiers", reducing the less than a million survivors across the galaxy freeze and recoil in horror, some managing to swallow their pride and fleeing to be pirates, some begging to the nearby Marauder systems to be taken in even as slaves, just to be taken care of.
The rest, a perfect 166 billion molluscoid population, boiled alive in the cosmos.
It was a perfect genocide, with no one to accuse, no survivors to build a case about. After that day, many empires closed their borders to the Commonwealth of Man but also were terrified of it. The Artisan Enclave was having the day of their lives selling Adolf Hitler replicas of Beauclair to the galaxy.
Commonwealth citizens bought as well, despite threats of jail or "servant indenture". Their government's headache, The Xeno Freedom Party was outlawed the next month.
Theo did not buy one. He knew the Commonwealth were his brothers, but he could not forget the visuals of collared Xenos, Scyldari even, toiling with sad faces in Commonwealth powerplants and fields and mines in one of his diplomatic trips. It was the only trip he took and had earned him a blue eye, but a broken nose and tooth to the Commonwealth slave overseer that did it. As the old saying went, "You should see the other guy."
Still, he had a mission. He HAD TO show them their path was wrong. The Xeno was not to be purged unlike the old fiction tabletop wargames, or jingoist parodies of Heinlein's interesting book on Citizenship Service, a civic act the UNE was considering, and Commonwealth had already adopted.
"-henceforth, that the trade of living, sentient, organic and inorganic persons of intelligence, Lithoid, or Synthetic Sentients included-"
He raised his voice, his clean-shaven face, and bald head sweating as he finished his rhetoric.
"Made a major crime, liable under Galactic Community to highest economic sanctions! FELLOW SAPIENTS! It is time that we adopt the very reason this SACRED SENATE is founded! A plaza where we meet, communicate, and decide on critical issues regarding the galaxy, as equals, more or less! For if we are bound to reason with each other, HOW CAN WE TREAT FELLOW SENTIENTS AS CHATTEL ANIMALS?"
He slammed his hairy arms and palms on the seat's edges.
"THE UNITED NATIONS OF EARTH PROPOSES A BAN ON ORGANIC SLAVE TRADE!"
His words were translated and transmitted across a booming chamber a battleship could fit in. The air buzzed, electronic signals rained on seats. The giant ovoid loudspeaker above the senate chamber boomed the final verdict.
"The motion to ban all Sentient Slave Trade is proposed, result pending in five stellar rotations of proposer's homeworld."
1800 days.
Theo smiled as some of the seats made noises and gestures similar to applause. He had struck a chord. Sighing, Theo wiped his sweaty face with a shiny gray nanofiber towel and clicked the seat's "Recess Area" button so that the graviton engines would dump his body where he could recover. This was going to be a long, and painful discussion.
At least there would be plenty of synth-protein cakes and slices of meat, made from Sirius Blowfish with the toxic liver removed. And of course, the beverage of diplomacy, even enjoyed by Lithoids.
Champagne.
He had come a long way, plenty more to go.