Recruit

But, wherever we go, no matter how far we travel, what new worlds we land on, there we are. All the things that make us human travel with us. Ego, empathy, vanity, greed, desire and all the other attributes that make the human race seek out new horizons and claim them as their own. Maybe, if the Human race continues to evolve, a thousand thousand years from this time, we will be the shining examples of intellectual and emotionally developed beings that make our universe proud. We aren't there yet.

After the human race began colonizing Mars and the Moon of its home system a scientist challenged Einstein. We can cheat! Using a massive amount of focused power, Doctor Leonard Samuel opened a hole through space time on July 23rd of the year 2234. The Human race began competing to be the first to explore this technology.

Four super powers had developed on earth, the Europact. The United North American Hegemony, The Russian Federation and the Peoples Republic of China. Similar in technology, military capabilites and socio economic strength they had divided the Moon, Mars and developed international law to mine the planets and asteroids of the solar system. The discovery of wormhole travel changed the balance. Animosity built up as each power began pouring money and technological resources into making this experiment into a viable method to transverse the vacuum between stars. World leaders began puffing out their chests, military leaders rattled their sabers and beat the drums, religious leaders began talking of destiny.

The first travel through a wormhole took place in December of 2239. The Chinese sent an unmanned probe through a hole outside of a secret lab in the Khyber belt. They could not hide the hole with all the power it took to generate it. Three fusion reactors working in tandem opening a rift long enough to send the AI probe out of the solar system. It was like setting off a road flare in a dark closet, everyone saw it. Where did the probe go? No one ever really knew but three hundred years later it's message reached the place where the hole had opened. No one was there to recieve the message.

The response from the other three powers was immediate. The Chinese Space Force ships guarding the science outpost where quickly overwhelmed by the fast reaction forces of the combined super powers. Special Forces landed and retrieved the data, sharing it with one another, the platform exploded in a nuclear detonation. The Chinese response destroyed 12 ships and a Russian military outpost for a cost of 8 of their own. Even today, more than two thousand years later, the remains of men in combat spacesuits are still in orbit around the old Earth sun.

Each of the super powers built well defended stations and with 20 years had developed stable wormhole travel. It was found that directly traveling through a wormhole and gravatic anomalies made for incalculable changes to the end point of a wormhole. Some probes careened wildly off into the nether reaches of the cosmos, never to be heard from again. The bases moved further away from gravity, to the edge of the solar system.

Treaties were signed, the universe was designated into zones emanating out from the sun, dividing the milky way as evenly as possible years before the first ship ever returned after generating its own wormhole. The Europact landed their first men on a extra solar planet in October of 2261. There was no fanfare or news, the mission was clandestine. This was followed by the Hegemony, the Russians and Chinese within a few years of one another. Each power denying they had been successful, each building colonies on other planets. At some point when the colony ships containing thousands of people left Earth from the different powers it further declined the level of trust and safeguards were put in place. For another 100 years the exodus took place. Earth was overpopulated, resources were used up, the animosity between the different world leaders was building up, especially as the colonies built up outside Earth's little corner of space.

On August 1, 2368 the Chinese and Russian interests came into conflict. A minor engagement between four fighters on patrol near Mars turned violent. A Chinese Dragonbane fighter was destroyed by a focused beam weapon from a Sukuyev 304I interceptor. Chinese forces immediately responded by burning in four Nightshade class Destroyers and a Shanghai class Cruiser. The Russian ready force of three Bear class Destroyers and one Stalingrad Cruiser, all engaged at high speed. Ships launched clouds of fighters, missiles and torpedoes. The ground forces on Earth began immediate operations and Chinese forces launched an "area denial" weapon to stop from being over run. The Russian forces retaliated by launching four of their own, the Chinese applied ECM and three of the missiles lost their targeting. One struck London. One exploded in the Pacific between Hawaii and California. One landed in Bangladesh. The last one hit its target of Peking.

The governments of all four superpowers were propelled into automated system reactions. Top officials and government representatives boosted off planet in their respective transports, WMD's launched, space forces engaged, killer satellites began their paths of automated destruction. At the last, the crippled ships that were still in the system jumped to their respective colonies and their powerful jump stations added to the debris floating around the sun. By the 8th of August 2368 the Earth and the entire Sol system was abandoned by any human that could leave. Most of the population of humans simply ceased to exist.

There is still survivors left. They now no longer even recognize themselves as part of the same human race that they evolved from. No one has been back in a thousand years. Self repliciting AI ships took over the solar system, destroying any ship that made an entrance into near space. Human civilization is different in the Sol system. It is difficult to call it civilization at all. In fact, not all the intelligent beings in the Sol system are even human...