Gabatrix: Veleshar

Chapter 1: February 20th, 2351 AD

In the vacuum of space, you hover in the zero gravity like a baby trapped in a mother's womb. The warm voice of a woman can be heard, both calm and soothing. Despite the cold darkness, you feel as if the warm hands of a mother's embrace engulf you, making you feel safe from anything that would bring you harm. In the distance, the orange star glows intensely. Past it is the continuous array of other stars.....galaxies....and more......much more.

I know that you've often appeared. You are like a traveler from some distant universe, come to witness events. I'm aware of the concept of who the Kiline are, the harbingers, the first race of beings that our people believe, mythologized to that of gods, observers, and overseers.

At least.....that was for a time. As each year passes in the Itrean calendars, so too do the ancient religions. Old faiths are slowly discarded, and new ones will take their place in an ever-slow rhythm. My people have existed far longer than most of the alien races we've met. Our ancient homeworld of Itrea has been rediscovered, the place of our birth. The humans called us Dinosaurs, but we called ourselves Itreans.

Our history is a long path of triumph, success, progress, and ultimately bloodshed. We are a people who can live twice as long as any human being, yet there are times when we reduce our lifespans simply because of conflict. Eons of war have led to revenge and anger toward the other clans. It is a cycle of death....but a cycle of life.

I place no blame on the male counterpart as the female shares the same responsibility as the male Itreans partook in. For the general part of all Itrean clans, both sexes were created equal. Yet, it was the hand of a woman, a Yutilian, who wanted half of the Itrean population destroyed. In her madness, she unleashed a deadly plague, the great disease that carried her name.

That was 12 Earth years ago, the day I lost my husband. I remember when the news hit our media. I was witnessing the designs of a new ship to eventually carry his name when the first male in front of me began to cough and hack. Suddenly, like clockwork, all the male Shal'rein started to get sick. They spat out blood and cried out in pain as their mates came rushing to them. They grew weaker and weaker. I wondered to myself, "What foul virus did our enemy unleash upon us now? Surely, we can resist it...."

In the course of 50 years, we had defeated the Emphra, the scourge of all life. Then, we did something for the first time in Itrean history. We managed to create a United Itrean Republic when the clans put down their weapons and focused on rebuilding. There was a time when red, green, and purple worked in harmony. There was a time we even debated about every Itrean ship being painted in blue, the color of unity and harmony. For the Itrean idealists, sadly, we wished too much. Even I simply didn't believe it was possible. Despite this, we still made progress. Any alien race that understood our history to see ourselves reach this point could understand that we were making progress. Sometimes, I wish the Itrean Republic had never fallen because when it failed, it dropped deeper than the deepest oceans of hell.

And then, Zilik's Disease appeared. The males were gone. The women watched as the sons in their wombs died. Economies nearly crashed. Hospitals were overrun. The Itrean clan wars were called into a ceasefire till a remedy could be found and the damage assessed. Suicide began to take hold as the Itrean mothers couldn't live with what had happened.

I wept like any mother did. Perhaps I was more fortunate than the others. Besides my mate, I had only one daughter, and that was it. Others had sons who perished. Meanwhile, I watched the other women be selected to undergo surgery to be made into "replacement mates." Each of the clans nearly fell into their own civil wars just because of the creation of the ivon, the third gender.

Then, the war continued. I begged the Shal'rein Greater Adjuncts to reconsider and convince the Autarch to a complete ceasefire and reinstatement of the United Itrean Republic, but she refused. The new Autarch, the mate and widow of the prior Autarch, was old, stubborn, and used to the days before the Emphra War. In her opinion, the Yutilians unleashed the disease to kill Shal'rein, and in that fact, she was correct. However, she did not know and did not believe that the other clans were equally affected. The other clans wanted the complete decimation of the other....and so the war continued.