The Alliance & The Kragga

The Alliance
The Alliance is a loose conglomerate of independent star nations that have banded together for trade, cultural exchange and mutual defense. The best description for it is a League of Nations that actually works, mainly because space is big, vast and full of resources. There's no real need to war on one another when everything you need is easy to get without violence. FTL travel is the big unifier, not just with interstellar distances, but also with equalizing economies and creating true post-scarcity societies. Who needs matter-energy conversion when you can get everything you need with less energy than it takes to light a small town?

The Alliance consists of over four hundred species, of which over eighty percent are humanoid. The humanoid shape is simply an evolutionary short-cut for a lot of things, and while number of limbs and digits might sometimes differ, two legs, one head, opposable thumbs and up-right walking seems to be a common factor in developing what we humans consider civilization. Naturally, the remaining twenty percent range from things like intelligent cephalopoids to six-legged insect-hamsters, but for the most part, the aliens of the Alliance are beings you can fairly easily understand and associate with.

In fact, the whole humanoid thing is sort of more disturbing than the non-humanoids. Uncanny Valley gets a whole new meaning when the only real physical difference between yourself and an alien species from three thousand lightyears away is the fact that they lack fingernails and have funny-colored hair, as with the Chimauri, or have crimson-magenta skin, tentacles for hair and lack body-hair, as with the Veen. It's somehow easier to deal with aliens that look like barely bipedal winged iguanas than someone who looks like a model who just stepped out of the prosthetics make-up department at Paramount Pictures.

Kragga
The Kragga, in contrast, are truly alien, unless you ask a zoologist about pack hunters. The best description of the Kragga by a survivor was "think saber-toothed polar bears with a temper who figured out how to drive a starship by hitting it with a blunt object". These aggressive, crude, savage aliens seem like they shouldn't be a true threat, except for a few very important issues: Firstly, the Kragga have no real unified leadership, not as we humanoids know it. Killing a leader of Kragga just means they'll split into a hundred splinter groups, all eager to prove their worth as the one who feasted on the bones of the one who defeated their temporary hunt-leader. It's much like striking at a school of fish, you'll get a few of them, but then they reform elsewhere as if nothing happened. And secondly, they breed faster than rabbits. Kragga females can carry as many as four litters a year, and generally have 10-20 young per litter, half of which survive to adult age, which is a mere couple of years after birth. They have short lifespans, young adults at 2-3, fully grown at 5, senior at 10, dead of old age at 15.

The thing that makes the Kragga so dangerous to anyone else is the fact that their brains don't have a non-prey setting. They're physically unable to see anyone who isn't Kragga as anything but potential food (and even with this, they'll happily consider other clans of Kragga potential dinner), even species they can't really digest. They're not very good hunters of intelligent prey, but make up for it in enthusiasm and single-mindedness, much like wolverines they'll attack as much as they can in the hopes of getting something, anything.

The history of how the Kragga made their way into space is shrouded in myths and tall tales. Some claim they did it through single-mindedness, others that they were genetically engineered weapons, but the story that makes the most tragic sense is that once, the Kragga were confined to a single planet, a 2g world further from their pale blue-white sun than Earth, where they were the supreme pack hunters of a planet full of very aggressive wildlife adapted to a frigid climate.
To this world came a delegation of peaceful aliens, who saw the primitive societies below and decided to try uplifting the dominant intelligent species...who promptly butchered and ate the first contact party, and then spent many years trying to figure out how to work the ships and technology.

The story's been used many times to justify multiple safeguards and safety procedures when First Contact situations come up, and there is a hint of truth to it, the technology of the oldest Kragga ships seems to belong to a now long-dead species of peaceful chelonians who would, in fact, contact any species they encountered.

The Kragga are basically small packs of huge, furry, heavy-gravity land-sharks who have figured out how to load and fire a gun, but they are not very good at technology. When they need manual labor or brains, they save a few of the people they attack and work them to the bone, once they're unable to continue slaving for their captors they're eaten and a new batch is caught. This also forces the Kragga to constantly expand, hunt down new prey and assault other species, though some inter-species warfare for slaves and food supplies does take place. Populations on planets taken by the Kragga can basically be written off as dead, anyone not killed in the initial attack will be eaten within days of the occupation. Wait a week or two and the Kragga will leave due to lack of food.

It's the aggressive drive to hunt and the high metabolism that makes the Kragga so deadly. At 300 kilos minimum weight they are big, sturdy and require meat almost constantly, and since they use anything they take, they're fairly well-armed. A Kragga might not know how to rig a cannon, but it's amazing what threats of being eaten can do for a sapient's willingness to cooperate. Of course, they'll eat you anyway once you're done, unless they need you for maintenance, but still.

[Basically, the Kragga are not space orcs, they're space ogres or gnolls. With fur, horns and shark-teeth.]

The reason the Kragga haven't already conquered everything inhabited is the same as why they're so hard to wipe out: they have no central leadership. Kragga society is divided into small clans of maybe 20-30 individuals, when a clan gets bigger than that they'll either start killing one another or the younger will break off and start their own clan. Each clan runs on survival of the fittest, the fit runs things and eats the weaker. Other clans are either rivals, or potential food. Usually both. But every now and then, Kragga clans get so numerous that something akin to a lemming migration occurs, a large concentration of Kragga ships will suddenly coordinate somewhat and head for the nearest inhabited space to kill, massacre and feast on anyone standing in their way. Once they've gotten far enough from the original area the cooperation will quickly end, and whoever remains are those who were best at killing the others. Such migrations are known as "waves", though the Kragga call them "hunts", and usually they're lead by a single, strong Kragga pack-leader.

By the way, it's both singular and plural. One Kragga, many Kragga.

Currently, the main deterrent against occasional Kragga waves is the Veen Royal Star Navy, the humanoid Veen have a massive military presence in the space bordering the areas of Uncharted Stars where the Kragga hold sway, and their ships are more than a match for single waves of Kragga. Some say that when the population pressure in Kraggan space gets high enough this will end in a massive Wave that not even the Veen will be able to hold back, but this is, hopefully, just a theory. Others say when the pressure gets high enough the Kragga will turn on one another instead, most hope this is what will occur.
=================================
Next time: Humanity and the Alliance.