A Genetically Engineered Race Ch. 02

Life is hard, folks. Mine is much harder than yours, no matter what you say. Things haven't changed in the future, I'm afraid. Even in the year 7899 A.D. it's still a fight for survival. My name is Arcanium Heracles, of the planet Barokh and I am the captain of the great spaceship Moctod. Who is speaking to you? The hero of this fascinating story. I'm a tall, good-looking black man in his late thirties. I'm actually much older than that. You see, I'm an Uberman and my kind age very slowly. I'm actually one hundred and eleven years old. Among my people, it's not uncommon for men and women to live well over two hundred years. Yeah, not bad, hey?

For most of my life, I've been a military man. I have five thousand and eighty six men along with three thousand and seventeen women under my command on this very vessel. We have a truly mighty spaceship. The Moctod is triangular in shape, and spans exactly three dozen miles across. It packs enough firepower to destroy an entire star system. It's the first Galaxy-Class Cruiser ever produced by the Universal Military Force or U.M.F. I am a proud member of the Universal Military Force. It employs men and women from over three hundred planets and we patrol the entire galaxy, maintaining peace and protecting all of our member worlds and peoples.

The Moctod is the flagship of the Universal Military Force. We are soaring through the Dark Beyond, the uncharted territory outside of the Milky Way Galaxy. It's our mission to stop a horde of terrifying enemies before they can invade our universe and destroy all that we hold dear. We're on a rogue mission. It's not one sanctioned by the U.M.F. In fact, we'll probably all face court-martials when we return. Actually, if we return.

Friends, I have some dire news. Vampires are real. They're not weird-looking white guys in tacky black suits speaking in bad accents. They're real-life monsters from beyond the stars. There are trillions of them, and they're coming for us. Vampires travel in massive spaceships and they move from world to world, transforming the local life-forms into half-breeds by infusing them with Vampire DNA and devouring the rest. They invaded the Milky Way Galaxy in 7600 A.D. They slaughtered billions of human beings. They destroyed dozens of planets. We managed to drive them off, but that was not a victory, only a temporary respite. And now, they're coming back to finish us off.

When the Vampires came along for the first time, humanity was unprepared. We had been doing what we did best, fighting one another for all the wrong reasons. For the past six thousand years, genetic engineering has been extremely popular in human society. So much that there have been many wars between the Ubermen, those who found genetic engineering to be a shortcut to the peak of evolution, and the Mundanes, the ordinary humans who refused to use genetic engineering to improve themselves. The funny thing is that our ancestors were bio-enhanced human criminals whom fate and science changed and set apart from the rest of humanity in the early twenty first century. The Ubermen later left ordinary human society and formed an alliance, the Uberman Conclave, established to grant them their own colony worlds. The members of the Conclave were men and women from all races and backgrounds : Black, White, Asian, Latin and Middle-Eastern. They felt that ordinary humanity was stagnant and used genetic engineering to achieve evolution.

The first world colonized by the genetically enhanced supermen and superwomen of the Uberman Conclave was the planet Barokh. It would become the sacred homeworld of all Ubermen and Uberwomen and the source of moral authority for our entire species for millennia to come. The supermen and superwomen multiplied and reached billions. Then, we set out to colonize more worlds. We colonized the planet Shaor, then the planet Hawth, followed by the planet Kharzull. The numbers of our people continued to grow. We colonized world after world. Ordinary humans numbered one trillion. We were a minority in the cosmos, numbering only five hundred billion. But what we lacked in number, we made up for in intelligence and resilience. All we wanted was to multiply and make our mark in the universe. Unfortunately, the humans got in our way.

That's why we went to war with them. It was a terrible war. Billions died on both sides. Entire worlds were vaporized. The humans were on the verge of losing. A massive Uberman fleet left the planet Barokh and traveled to the planet Earth, capital of the Human Worlds Association or H.W.A. We unleashed a weapon called the Planet Shatterer, and it was supposed to have torn the planet Earth apart. The destruction of the planet Earth appeared certain, but somehow, Earth's scientists managed to repeal the effects of the P.S. Forty percent of the planet Earth's human population perished, but they still saved their world. That was a devastating blow to the humans. Earth was the birthplace of humanity. It was the most heavily defended of all human worlds. This royally pissed off all humans in the universe. We couldn't be happier. We continued to attack human world after human world. They had superior numbers. We had superior intelligence and weaponry. They were going to lose.

Then, the Vampires came in the year 7600 A.D. They attacked both human and Uberman worlds. Millions of people, both Mundane humans and genetically engineered superhumans, were slaughtered. The Vampires didn't care about our foolish wars over genetic superiority. They wanted to destroy us. They wanted our worlds. They wanted our galaxy. They wanted us dead. Still, how do you kill an army of half-dead aliens who have taken over the bodies of millions of men and women you once considered friends and family? Desperate times have been known to make strange bedfellows, as you might already know. We were forced to form an alliance, in the hope of mutual survival. Thus, the Universal Military Force, made up of both humans and superhumans, was formed.

The Universal Military Force was created to protect both human and superhuman worlds from this unprecedented threat posed by the Vampires. We patrolled the galaxy, fighting the Vampires. They outnumbered us. There was one trillion humans and five hundred billion superhumans in the galaxy. The Vampires numbered in the trillions. They were a force to be reckoned with. A deadly foe which possessed an invincible army, as well as massive fleets of spaceships and technologies from a myriad worlds across the cosmos. Somehow, we managed to drive them out of our galaxy. They left, but they would come back. We knew they would be back.

Centuries later, the Universal Military Force was still around, enforcing peace in both human and superhuman worlds. Humans and superhumans still didn't like each other, especially since they had drastically different views. We superhumans are militaristic for the most part. To serve in the military is the highest calling for any man or woman. We have scientists, artists, entertainers and all that but warriors are revered in an almost religious manner in our society. We believe in a system of hereditary monarchy. The Supreme Emperor is the head of the Uberman society, and shares power with his Reigning Empress, and the Holy Assembly, made up of delegates from various worlds.

Our society is organized into many different Castes. Which Caste one belongs to is determined through genetic and psychological testing and of course, personal trials. There is the Red Caste, which is the Warrior Caste. The Silver Caste is the science and technology Caste. The Blue Caste is the academic Caste. The Purple Caste is the worker Caste, and they are bred to perform virtually any purpose. They're the most numerous Caste, next to the men and women of the Warrior Caste. Members of all Castes are required to take military training at some point in their lives. Men and women from all Castes are loyal to the Emperor and the Empress. The Emperor's City is on the planet Barokh, the sacred throneworld of all Ubermen, which all supermen and and superwomen revere.

As you can see, superhuman society is well-organized and quite different from the chaos of human society. I was born on the planet Barokh. My father, Antonin Heracles was a scientist of great reputation. He built the Planet Shatterer, the doomsday weapon which nearly brought the humans to their knees. My mother, Theresa Scalia Heracles was a warrior. She was a lieutenant in the fleet of warships which nearly destroyed the planet Earth. Our family is among the wealthiest and most influential on all of Barokh. My maternal grandfather, the esteemed warrior Salukar Scalia, was once the Supreme Commander of the Barokhian Imperial Fleet, answering only to the Emperor and the Empress themselves.

My decision to serve in the military was hailed by both sides of my family. However, the fact that I harbored no special hatred toward humans often put me at odds with my fellow genetically enhanced superhumans. The ordinary humans had no lost love for us either. They called us super freaks, behind our backs, of course. Many of my people called them genetically regressive losers. If you ask me, that's really not necessary. The way I see it, in times of war, people are capable of evil things. We're all wrong in times of war, in one way or another. In times of peace, we should remember what we're capable of and try not to make the same mistakes. An odd thought pattern for a warrior, I know. I will serve my people and the Universal Military Force as best as I can. However, I don't feel any special hatred for anyone. That being said, I'm no pacifist. Any person, human or superhuman, male or female, who tries to kill me will have his or her neck snapped. In the interests of self-preservation, I will do anything. That's just who I am.

Which explains why I'm onboard the spaceship Moctod, leading hundreds of men and women, both ordinary humans and genetically enhanced superhumans, into what seems to be a suicide mission. We've been traveling in deep space, at a hundred times the speed of light, for twenty six months now. Life onboard was kind of boring. I mean, we're all aching for some action right now. The last time we got any action was six months ago, when we destroyed a Vampire Cruiser. Vampire Cruisers are massive spaceships, carrying close to a hundred thousand of these wretched things. We caught them by surprise, just as they were exiting a portal. Usually, these types of ships were the death of any vessel they came across. But we had superior weaponry for once, and the element of surprise. We blew them to a million pieces. That was fun.

That was right before we left the Milky Way Galaxy. We had gone where no human, genetically engineered or otherwise, had ever been. This a great moment for the entire crew. Too bad what we saw within the next few weeks proved to be a shocker. We knew the Vampires had superior technology and numbers. We knew that if every man and woman, both human and superhuman, in the entire Milky Way Galaxy suited up and joined the fight, we'd still be outnumbered by the Vampires. Yet this knowledge still didn't prepare us for what we saw, right outside the Milky Way Galaxy. We gasped collectively when we saw a massive fleet of Vampire spaceships. There were billions of them. So many of them that the Moctod's sensors burned themselves out counting them. Billions of Vampire spacecraft, containing untold trillions of these nightmarish creatures. Ready to invade the Milky Way Galaxy and destroy every living thing in it.

Our spaceship was hidden by a stealth device, so they couldn't sense us. I summoned my best officers, and we had a meeting. What do we do now? In the space all around us, the stars were blotted out by the enemy ships. I stood at the head of the table, and the men and women who sat around it stared at me as I began. We were in a hopeless situation. A few thousand men and women versus a countless horde of war-like, highly intelligent and heavily armed super predators from beyond the stars. I looked at them all.

Michael Sharkhi, a fellow Uberman and my chief of security. This big and tall, red-haired, taciturn man had served with me since the U.M.F. Academy. Douglas Schrovski, a rather jovial, stocky and openly gay human. Odd attributes for a tactician. Uh, I mean his jovial disposition, not his sexual orientation. Tacticians are usually grim. Amanda Stein, a large, square black woman. A human who was the ship's fire control officer. Donald Des Moines, a tall and lean blond soldier and fellow Uberman who was the ship's engineer and his wife, a tall Uberwoman named Majel Chang, who was our chief medical officer. Rhonda Stone, a large, blonde-haired and battle-scarred Uberwoman served as my security detail. George Talkuth, a short and bald, black-skinned human male, was the communications officer. They formed my inner circle.

All of these people had families and friends waiting for them back on their homeworlds. When I asked for volunteers to join me on this dangerous mission over two years ago, they all agreed without hesitation. Now, I was about to ask them even more. Do we turn back and return to our galaxy to warn our people? Or do we make a stand here against the Vampires? I asked the question, and waited for an answer. One by one, they answered me. To a person, they wanted to fight the blood-sucking alien monsters and blast them out of the sky. I smiled, and told the rest of the crew to prepare for battle. Every man and woman onboard suited up and went to their designated positions. The spaceship Moctod is the largest and mightiest spacecraft ever built, but a crew is only as strong as its weakest member. We had to be ready. And I knew we would be.

Hidden by state-of-the-art stealth technology, we soared to the very heart of the Vampire fleet. They were about to enter a Cluster. That Cluster was an extremely rare but amazingly stable, natural wormhole. Essentially, it's a portal allowing instantaneous travel between galaxies. The Vampire Fleet were about to leap from this unnamed galaxy into the Milky Way Galaxy. From then on, it would only be a matter of months before they made it to our cherished worlds. They had trillions of warriors and billions of spaceships. The Universal Military Force wouldn't be enough to stop them. No force in the universe could stop them. But maybe we could slow them down. Buy our people enough time to find some way to save themselves. I had a plan. It was probably going to cost us our lives, but it just might be crazy enough to work.

We went to the Cluster, and there, we unleashed hell. The thing about a wormhole is that its event horizon is somewhat similar to that of a Black Hole. It pulls you in. It's also the place where the most unstable energies in the universe are gathered. Wormholes are rare for a reason. They're literally a tear in the fabric of space, and the amount of energy needed for them to be maintained for any extended length of time naturally is incalculable. The thing about energy is that it cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be absorbed, transformed and channeled in many ways. We waited until the bulk of the Vampire fleet was in sight, and that's when I gave the order. I ordered my weapons control officer to deploy the Absorber. The Absorber is a device I personally stole from the top-secret laboratories of the Universal Military Force, guaranteeing myself a court-martial and an execution if I were ever to return to the Milky Way Galaxy.

The Absorber is essentially a device which sucks energy from all sources in order to artificially create a Black Hole. It was theoretically supposed to be able to do this at unprecedented speed. I closed my eyes, and unleashed Hell. The Absorber was deployed, and fulfilled its purpose to absolute scientific perfection. It absorbed energy from all available sources. The most powerful ambient source of energy it could find was the Cluster, the wormhole itself. It swallowed up every last ounce of that energy, thus destroying the wormhole, then exploded. In doing so, it tore a hole in the very fabric of space. The surprised Vampire fleet sought to flee, but it was too late. Nothing escapes from a Black Hole. Not light, not energy, and certainly not a massive fleet of billions of spaceships. It sucked them in.

Before our amazed eyes, two-thirds of the enemy fleet were lost. Trillions of Vampires met a gruesome end inside our artificially created Black Hole. The remainder of them noticed us. We had exhausted an amazing amount of energy in deploying the Absorber, and our stealth device was no longer working. Fire came upon us from all angles.

We were hopelessly outnumbered. All around me, I could feel the ship breaking up. I could hear the screams of my crew. Brave men and women whom I was proud to have served. I sat in the captain's chair, and contemplated what I've done. A smile crept into my face even as the flames consumed the command deck, and roared toward my body. I wish I could have seen the faces of my enemies as they drifted to their deaths inside the Black Hole, the nightmare I had unleashed upon them. As the flames leapt over me, I shouted defiantly. As it is with all of my kind, victory was mine in the end. I hope those blood drinking alien freaks suffered inside the Black Hole. Those were my last thoughts as I surrendered to blissful oblivion.