Blac People Rule the Galaxy

My name is Kalbrid Aston of the Lasher Clan. Son of Kalbur Aston and Sira Lashme. By all appearances, I'm a six-foot-six, broad-shouldered and muscular, thirty-something man with dark brown skin, pale gray eyes and long black hair braided into neat dreadlocks. I am one of the Warrior Princes of the Brethren. I am currently on the ruins of the planet Earth, long since abandoned by the human race. It is here that I will battle the sworn enemies of my people, the Soul Stealers. They're a plague which threatens all sentient life in the Milky Way Galaxy. And they must be stopped at any cost.

Why Earth? Because it's a stronghold of the Soul-Stealers. The birthplace of both my species and the ordinary humans we originate from. They've turned the planet Earth into one of their Spawning Grounds. Basically, millions of female Soul-Stealers will come here to lay their eggs. The place is heavily guarded. Soul-Stealer spaceships monitor the planet from above. Patrols of their warriors roam virtually every inch of the world we all once called home. If I can destroy the Spawning Ground of the Imperial Soul-Stealers, I will deal their entire species a powerful blow. But I'm getting ahead of myself. A little back story is in order, I suppose.

My kind, known as the Brethren, are allied with the humans against the Soul-Stealers, a mutual enemy. The Brethren are a race of genetically engineered superhuman beings who've traveled further in space than anyone in the universe. We came into being in 2078, when an African-American scientist named Joel Brown used genetic engineering to alter his own DNA along with that of approximately seventy eight hundred men and women who shared his beliefs. They were a diverse bunch of people. Mostly African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics, but with a sizable number of Caucasians here and there. The human population of the planet Earth had outlawed genetic engineering and forced our ancestors to either leave the world and be destroyed. They left the planet onboard the city-sized spaceship New Paradise, and were never seen or heard from again. We found a habitable planet a few light years away from the planet Earth, and colonized it.

We named our new planet New Paradise, after the spaceship which carried our noble ancestors safely to their destination. With hard work and determination, we transformed this primeval jungle planet teeming with gigantic predators into a true paradise. We avoided contact with ordinary humans until 4289 A.D. Simply put, they had little that could be of interest to us. In the two thousand or so years since we've last seen any humans, they haven't changed a bit. Still a species of losers dominated by prejudice and neo-phobia. These days, there are millions of us. We've colonized planet after planet. The planet New Paradise is now the capital of a Brethren Empire spanning over one hundred colony worlds.

The humans had for the most part abandoned the planet Earth. For you see, it was polluted beyond repair. They wanted to trade with us but we didn't care for anything they had to offer. Until, in 4301 A.D. a new threat forced both humans and super-humans to work together. What was that threat? The Soul-Stealers. A species of intelligent parasites which travel from world to world, destroying the indigenous population and consuming all natural resources before moving on. They invaded the planet Earth, and slaughtered six billion men and women. The humans thought the Brethren had attacked. We're supermen, not barbarians. Although we pride ourselves in our military might, attacking randomly isn't our forte. Soon, we all realized that we had a new enemy. The Soul-Stealers.

What is a Soul-Stealer? A sentient creature from another galaxy. It is an amalgam of every life-form it's ever encountered. It adapts to every situation because it acquires the DNA of every organic life-form it touches, and selects from their genetic structures what it finds useful. The first one I saw had the appearance of a nine-foot-tall, spider-like creature that walked on two legs and had sixteen whip-like tentacles that were easily twelve feet long each. After they basically devoured six billion human beings on the planet Earth, their appearance changed to a more humanoid one. Like I said, they adapt to different situations and different enemies by changing form after DNA acquisition and genetic selection. The Soul-Stealers feed by latching their mouths onto a life-form. And they drain him, her, or it of all life. The drained life-form turns to dust.

The Soul-Stealers reproduce rapidly. A single female can lay eight hundred eggs, and within a few days, the hatchlings are ready to come into the world. It takes a Soul-Stealer hatchling only a few standard weeks to become an adult. And every hatchling has the memories of the Soul-Stealer that spawned it. The Soul-Stealers are a diverse bunch. I've seen some of them with bat-like wings. I've seen some who are fish-like and others which were even more strange. And the weirdest thing of all is that they all work together. These sentient parasites communicate telepathically with one another. And they really don't like us. They've invaded human worlds and Brethren worlds. They want us all gone. There's no reasoning with them. No negotiating with them. You might as well be trying to convince a snake not to eat a rat. They are intergalactic predators. It's what they are and what they do.

For decades, we've been fighting them. And world after world has fallen to them. The human colony on the planet Mars was wiped out in 4323. Three hundred million men and women, slaughtered and sacrificed to the terrible appetite of the Soul-Stealers, they who need the energy provided by sentient life-forms in order to reproduce. They've destroyed the Brethren world of Methuen. Slaughtered twelve million of my genetically enhanced brothers and sisters just so their nightmarish species could go on living. I hate them. They must be stopped.

Here I am, on the planet Earth. In the ruins of what once was the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Brave men and women died to get me this far. I am referring of course to the crew of the Starship Salvation. The flagship of the Alliance, with a crew made up of humans and super-humans, working toward a common goal, the destruction of the alien race that seeks to wipe us all out. For years, the Starship Salvation lived up to its name. Under the command of my cousin, Commander Vanissa Lashme. A tall, dark-skinned Black woman with bright yellow eyes and long hair bleached bone-white. Even among the genetically enhanced men and women of the Brethren, she was special. A woman of great intellect and vision. She united the humans and the Brethren, forcing members of both species to realize that only together could we destroy the Soul-Stealers.

I am proud to have served under Commander Vanissa Lashme. I remember the day she introduced me to my human crewmates Alexandra Russell and Edward Masterson. A tall, short-haired and brown-skinned, very voluptuous human female of African-American and British descent and a tall, red-haired Irishman. As you can imagine, I wasn't thrilled to be working with the humans. I considered all humans, male or female, Black or White, to be my inferiors. After all, I was a genetically enhanced superman from another world. The average Brethren, male or female, can lift five and a half times their body weight and run at a top speed of thirty miles per hour. This is the result of cutting-edge genetic engineering and intense training. The average human, well, is painfully weak, dumb and limited. I doubt the humans would fare well against the Soul-Stealers. They were such easy prey.

Of course, underestimating anyone is a mistake, as my cousin Vanissa Lashme reminded me so often. I still didn't like having two humans working under me. Especially the dark-skinned human female, Alexandra Russell. She was the most stubborn human I've ever encountered. One of those humans who feel like they have something to prove. I wasn't impressed. Not at first. Of course, I wasn't impressed with the human race as a whole. The lifespan of a human male before the war was ninety years. Human females generally lived a year or two beyond the males. Among the Brethren, it's not uncommon for both males and females to live upwards of two hundred years. Our ability to regenerate any lost body part ( except our heads) greatly extends our lifespan. Benefits of genetic engineering, folks. Of course, as I learned rather painfully, genetic engineering wasn't everything. I was down on the surface of the planet Clayborne with a crew of five hundred or so soldiers, both Brethren and human.

Clayborne was a desert world whose human inhabitants were under attack from Soul-Stealer forces. My crew and I found ourselves in a firefight when we came to help them evacuate. And we were desperately outnumbered. That's when I saw that the humans weren't as useless as I'd been led to believe. They could fight well when sufficiently motivated. I watched wave after wave of human men and women charge into a horde of Soul-Stealers. They got cut down, but many of them took some of the enemy down with them. And they kept fighting. Truth be told I was impressed. Especially by Corporal Alexandra Russell, the lone human female serving in my unit. I saw her chop the head of a Soul-Stealer as the alien monster snuck up on me, moving stealthily. I was amazed. the human female had saved my life! That day, we lost a lot of people and a lot of ships. However, we managed to evacuate eighty percent of the planet Clayborne's sixty thousand inhabitants. Considering the Soul-Stealers usually wipe out one hundred percent of the populations of any inhabited worlds they invade, this was a great victory for us. And both humans and Brethren rejoiced as our side won that day.

After this memorable battle, I found myself revisiting my previously held beliefs about the humans. Maybe not all of them were inferior. Maybe humans like Alexandra Russell were the exception. I don't know. I had a talk with my cousin Vanissa about that next time I went home on shore leave. Of all our people, she was the most vehement supporter of the Alliance between human and superhuman. This didn't make her popular among many of our kind but she saw the Alliance as necessary for the survival of all of us. And I had to agree. The universe can create some strange bedfellows. Alexandra Russell became my friend, and we had a relationship based on mutual respect and shared belief in a common cause. When two-thirds of the Alliance's fleet was destroyed, I lost her, along with many friends, both human and superhuman. That's why I must succeed in my mission. In the name of the fallen ones.

I stalk through the ruins of Boston, Massachusetts, watching the floating spheres of energy where the Soul-Stealer females lay their eggs. There are Soul-Stealer spacecraft patrolling the skies. Soon I will be discovered. So I must hurry. When night comes, I prepare myself for what must be done. In my backpack, there is a weapon which I must assemble. A doomsday device created by a top-secret team of human and Brethren scientists. Simply put, it's a Planet Killer. Only one ever made. It can fit in a backpack, and looks like a steel thermos. Inside of it is a weapon made of Duranium, the most dangerous element in the universe. It will burrow to the very core of the planet Earth, and cause the planet to fall apart. Billions of female Soul-Stealers and their eggs along with their hatchlings will be destroyed. For the first time since the war started, the Soul-Stealers will experience a loss not unlike the one experienced by countless humans and Brethren. The loss of a home, and the loss of members of one's own species.

Silently, I prepare the weapon. I know I won't leave the planet Earth. There are too many Soul-Stealer spaceships on orbit. At any time, a patrol will discover me and end my life. So I hurry. I look at the thermos. Hard to believe something so small can destroy an entire world. I activate it. The electronic buzz is felt by every sensor on every spaceship on the planet. Within minutes, they come for me. The planet killer burrows deep below the earth, at a speed of several hundred miles per minute. Soon, it will be at the earth's core. The spaceships converge on me. I stand up, and look at them. A single shot is fired, and I feel a burning sensation in my chest. I fall. The spaceships land, and the Soul-Stealer soldiers come out. They surround me. They love torturing supermen like me. Thanks to our healing powers, we last longer than the humans. I look at them. All of them look humanoid, with something vaguely insect-like about them. They're nasty to look at. Not because they're aliens. I've seen plenty of alien life-forms on many worlds. They look horrible to me because they're evil. Their leader, a large Soul-Stealer female, approaches me. One of her tentacles burrows into my fast-healing chest wound. I scream.

The female Soul-Stealer laughs, as do the large male aliens who accompany her. I laugh as well. It surprises them. So they beat me up and tear me to pieces. I heal, and they start again. Through it all, I laugh. I was still laughing when the earthquakes began, and the whole planet began to fall apart. They stare at me, and slowly it dawns on them that for the first time in this war, one of us is going to have the last laugh over them. They cut me up, and make a dash for their spaceships. I lay on the earth, home of all humans, genetically enhanced and otherwise, and I feel my body re-knit itself. I know I'm going to die here, and I am fine with that. Because I'm taking all of these evil bastards and bitches down with me. I think of my parents, and my friends, human and Brethren. I think of my cousin Vanissa, and my human friend Alexandra Russell. The Brethren are atheists, but the humans believe in an afterlife. In spite of myself, I find myself hoping for one, even as the Earth spins on its axis and hurtles toward the sun. If only to see my loved ones again.