Prologue - You would be too if you did what they did
#1 of Hella's Story - Joey to G.I. Joe
War What is it Good For?
_The reason people didn't trust thylacines, in part was a double-edged sword. The majority of the thylacine community were introverted, but they were introverted because people trust them. And people didn't trust them in part, because they were so introverted.
Also, because of the actions of the Corporate Wars (which had occurred after what became ubiquitously known as the 'Third World War', and there was nuclear devastation bandied about, and other such nasty weapons. And there was a lower population density of humans. And they turned towards engineering critters. Initially, after bioroid and synths became passé, and a sort-of golden age was settled into that gengineering started picking up the pace. And so, critters were remade from genetic material. Initially common animals. Dogs, cats, iguanas, parrots. Then, the companies started to combine DNA strains, and the first Recoms were made.
Initially composed of human DNA strands (until it was made illegal to use human DNA) they were initially highly intelligent versions of pet-models. NeoDogs of course were the first, then neocats, and parrots and then the company tinkered with the design, adding opposable thumbs.
The second step, was to make them walking and talking and bipedal, all the better to take on the next product line.
Like something out of Alice in Wonderland or Beatrix Potter, the recom line came into being, and for a time they were used as 'Indentured Servents', not that any of them ever bought out their contracts. They lived and died as slaves.
But then, they weren't human, and they seemed happy about it so nobody thought too much about it.
But as humans started looking towards war again, they found a new use for their Toys. Human Officers in command of Recom Regiments, using them for war against other humans. Corporations holding the power like Warlords over Fiefdoms, swaying politicians.
There were rebellions of course, but they were quickly and brutally put down, and surpressed and were so small and so few and far between that such things were considered aberrations at best.
But it was the successful mutiny at the orbital yards, of the last Recom line to be design, cockroaches (descendents of the Cosmonaut-roach Nadezdha) who took over the ships, and seeing their place in the world and didn't like it, went 'to the second star on the right, and straight on till morning'.
As word of this spread, and subversion grew, and riots raised. The recoms fought back. And the humans fought back harder.
It would be nice to say that there were 'good guys' and 'bad guys', but the war was not so black and white.
A Recom rebel/terrorist would detonate a rubbish-bin bomb because a mate of his had been killed by a neglectful master or in some corporate war.
The powers-that-be would of course respond with brutal crackdowns.
A Fourth World War, after a fashion was fought. By this time, humanity versus recoms.
But there was an Australian town wiped off the map, man, woman and child brutally killed, the methods used were slow and...well, unpleasant would be putting it lightly.
The perpetrators of this act was a rogue sect of the SASR(R) (Special Air Service Regiment (Recom)) who decided that a message need to be sent that the kid gloves were well and truly off. And what better place to prove it than right at home.
And the species that were the ring-leaders and the greater density of this rogue group?
I'll let you take three guesses; and the first to don't count.
This was, one of the actions (and the fact that everyone knew that eventually both sides would wipe each other out. Earth and her colonies both..) and a ceasefire was called.
And so...peace for a hundred years has reigned. But people still whisper about the savage thylacine._