The Heterih

The Heterih people were once denizens of the 2nd nega-dimension, proud strong and free, expanding throughout the massive area of the 2nd nega-dimension rapidly. Their technological expertise was astounding, and their military, while unimaginative, was top of the line. Their culture was blooming in the extended golden age of the early days, and often envoys would travel the long journey to the 5th nega-dimension to exchange information, gifts, and goodwill with the Alteriian and Kazequi peoples.

Those were happy days.

Then of course, as all seem to do, those happy days ended. Suddenly.

Explorers under the command of "Razor" Walliarh Westrih came speeding back to their homeplanet, heavily damaged and riddled with holes. Upon examination, the crews of the 6-man vessels were dead, killed by slashing wounds to the body.

The twelve ship military expedition sent to explore met a similar fate... but one ship, the recon frigate/fighter "The Icarus" made it back to tell the story.

The foul deeds were done by giant space creatures, often several dozens of meters tall, which appeared in coordinated swarms and attacked on sight, ignoring all communications. Shields halted them, but not for long. Weapons were effective, but only in bursts as the small targets rarely stayed in place long enough to be hit by a main gun.

Several hundred Heterih had died that day, and these creatures were a danger to all Heterih's safety. In a unanimous vote, the Heterih War-Council issued the 2nd and 4th fleets to find these creatures and destroy them.

Which thus began a war that lasted hundreds of years. The Military of the Heterih was advanced, but even their technological superiority was outbalanced by the endless numbers of the Fleshers, and their ability to adapt to new inventions so quickly. Eventually, the Fleshers developed plasmic-weapon shedding carapaces, and the Heterih's main advantage was useless. They were unable to hold off defeat any longer. One by one, Heterih worlds fell to the ravaging Flesher hordes, until the final battle on the Homeplanet. The ragged fleets of the Heterih had positioned themselves in strategic positions throughout the sector, and here they had the home advantage of being able to build traps in the asteroids, lay mines, and use the defense cannons and turrets of the space stations orbiting the planet, as well as being closer to re-armament and re-fueling stations.

So the fight began.

In a pitched battle that raged for six days, the Heterih people were completely and totally defeated. Their preparations had killed endless swarms of enemy ships, but the Fleshers were hydras. For every ten they killed, a hundred took their place. They were heedless of traps, sacrificing thousands of troops to kill one enemy ship. Eventually the Heterih could resist no longer: their warships were destroyed, and their defenses obliterated. Even most of the civilian ships were piles of space debris, having been pulled into the military and given military-grade weaponry for ship to ship actions.

So the peoples of the Heterih crouched in the night, and hid in the day, waiting for the Flesher advance units to start wreaking havoc upon their world. Weapons were ready, the ground military in position...

But the invasion never came.

Instead, giant gaseous Fleshers appeared floating high in the skies of their world...
What could they be doing? Surface Air-craft ascended to the skies to find out, eventually able to capture one despite heavy losses from the Flesher forces protecting them.

They were releasing poison. They hadn't the honor to take the homeworld in a conventional attack! The Heterih were outraged, but there was nothing they could do. It was an outrageous war.

Then, deep within the laboratories of a starving and diseased people, came the "stealth" technology. But it had been too late to use it. The Flesher's numbers were too great...

The only thing they could do was load as many people on to the newly-created vessels as possible and escape, watching their planet choke as they left, knowing that for every ten that made it out, there were a million that did not.

That, and hope that some day...
That some day in the future there would be vengeance.