Casey Beyer had done it.

Sixteen years, she had crusaded for the Unity of Humanity. Ever since the Fifth War, during which her husband, one of her sons, and her brother were all drafted and killed, she had made this her quest. A Federation of all the planets of humanity, and here she was, the orchestrator of it. And all it took was some clever politicking, a few civil wars, and one or two political killings here or there.

The crowds outside were roaring, screaming, with excitement. A new era, which Humanity would rule! They wanted a speech, and by god, Casey would give it to them. Her speech papers in hand, she stepped outside, up to the podium at the balcony. Cameras focused in. The lights glinted off her ambery skin. In an instant, all went silent. The tension was so thick, you could only punch through it with an anti-ship missile. Casey tapped on the microphone, which screeched feedback, piercing the silence.

Casey cleared her throat;

“Brothers and Sisters of Terra!”

The crowd cheered at this, for they were all siblings now, in the abyss of the galaxy.

“Ever since the medieval ages, when we walked only The Earth and were confined to the reaches of the inner planets, we looked out to the void, and we wept, for we were confined to a dying planet, our oceans fated to swallow us up as the atmosphere burned!”

“But no longer! WE rule the stars! Terra is long behind us, but a memory, but an afterthought as we bring humanity out from our doomed homeworld. And yet, all who have arrived before us did not see any potential for unity, no, they were content to war and bicker, and that, Brothers and Sisters, was their downfall at the hands of the Xenos!”

The people booed and jeered, for the Xenos were the enemies of humanity. They were they that wished for an end to human expansion.

“Yes, the Xenos! They see humanity, and their eyes burn with hatred! They do not see us as equals, they see us only as a pestilence upon their universe! They see our need for expansion, for new planets, and they see it as a problem which needs to be stopped! But they do not know, it is as human instinct to expand! It is our duty to search the stars, to steal the stars, to make them our homes! They do not understand, and they will never understand, as long as we remain disparate and cacophonous! But, united, we may force them to understand!”

“What are we without unity? Do we have force? Do we have a voice that can be heard? No! We are a mess of hatred and screaming into the void! We are impotent and weak! We must never allow this state of affairs to occur again!”

“For almost Sixteen Years after the first attempt for union, we have screamed at each other as they ate away at our territory! We yelled so loud, we did not hear them as they took their chisels and chipped off chunks, piece by piece! But now, we can hear, and we have fury! We must take back what has been stolen from us! That which was ours, has always been ours, what is fated to be OURS.”

“No longer must we let the Xeno lord over us!”

“No longer must we allow the Xeno to dictate where we, the disparate peoples of Terra, may spread!”

“No longer will there be limits to us! We are humanity, the children of Terra, Siblings of the Stars!”

“And the Stars, well,” Casey chuckled a little, smiling what could be called an evil smile, “The Stars will evermore belong to US!”

Casey raised her hands to the sky, nay, to the void, to the stars which now inhabited it, calling their power down to her as she spoke her final words:

“GLORY TO THE FEDERATION, MAY IT REIGN FOR TEN-THOUSAND YEARS!”

And, as the people, her brothers and sisters of Terra, echoed her cry, it was decided that those would indeed be her final words, as right then a Red Las-Beam lanced out from a building a few miles away, and the sudden pressure and temperature change from the superheated air and plasma around the powerful light that was now cutting through Casey’s head indeed caused Casey to no longer possess a head, creating a paint job that, if it had been done by somebody hired to paint the wall behind Casey, probably would have gotten them fired for all the grey matter used in the design.

And so, a public, bloody assassination heralded the beginning of the Federation, a fitting beginning to a public and bloody era.

May it last for 10,000 years.