Kalanz12
Three human tribes. 14 hell races one fleet.
The universe was supposed to be empty.
It wasn't. It was just sealed.
Four hundred years ago, Humanity Prime tore a hole from the First Plain into this empty Seed to hide. They seeded Terra - a garden meant to be free - and the First Tribe - guards meant to watch the door. Then they closed the book. Literally. They left a Manual that was blank.
Until a Syndicate captain got bored.
Joren Voss fires a loose shell at the Tear - the scar between pockets - and cracks it. The crack is loud. Too loud.
Fourteen side-doors tear open.
Fourteen Hell Empires leak in. Not monsters. Nations. Elegant, intelligent, ancient fleets with laws and maps and choirs who have been fighting each other for eons and just filed humanity as "debris."
For the first time, two human tribes - black Syndicate and white First Tribe - have to turn together.
For the first time, Terra Loyal has to leave its garden and fight.
For the first time, 270 human ships have to tie themselves together with steel cable and dirty fire and screaming and become One Fleet - because elegant beats perfect, but free beats elegant.
And for the first time in 13.7 billion years, Prime bleeds back through.
They left us a warning on page two of the Manual, now writing itself in wet ink:
We made you free because we were not free enough to run. Below you is not empty. Below you is a living plain - one ugly organism that saw our light once when its scout weezed into the First Plain. We killed that scout, but it left a stain. We ran here to hide from it.
Its new scout is called They Who Wait.
The Hell Empires are elegant. They can be beaten.
They Who Wait is ugly. If it learns what a human looks like, it will grow over you.
270 ships. 14 Hell Empires. One loose shell that started a war.
And in Chapter 9 - Earth hears us for the first time and realizes it was never alone, never first, and never ready.