For as long as anyone could remember every race in the galaxy had feared the Rix. Everyone in the galaxy lived with the knowledge that at any moment a Rix battle fleet could appear in orbit around your world. When that happened your life was over. Every sapient being on the planet would be eradicated and replaced with Rix, and there was nothing anyone in the galaxy could do about it. When your world was chosen for colonization by the Rix the only thing you could do was run. If you were lucky, you and a few others from your world may live out your life on some friendly world that the Rix had not yet colonized. No one knew how many races that the Rix had eradicated over the millenniums, but they occupied hundreds of thousands of worlds around the galaxy. In the blink of a galactic eye all that had changed. The Rix were dead, killed by some unknown virus that swept through their civilization like a wind from the gods. When word began to spread across the cosmos that the Rix really were gone the whole galaxy breathed a collective sigh of Relief.
Across the galaxy everyone wondered, was it really the wrath of the gods, or had someone managed to do this?
For years everyone avoided the dead Rix worlds out of fear that whatever killed them would prove to be just as deadly to other species. It was more than a decade before word began to spread that some outlaws had been using some of the dead Rix worlds as hiding places and had not been infected. It was the Okennans that finally got up the courage to actually land on the Rix home world. They were determined to discover the real source of the plague that wiped out the Rix.
Dr. Jertsu sat in front of a Rix computer console examining Rix medical records. His head hurt from deciphering the Rix language It had taken weeks but he and his team was closing in on the truth.
“Dr. Jertsu, I have it!” yelled his assistant from the next room.
Dr. Jertsu was so deep in thought that he visibly jumped, turning over a beverage cup sitting next to the computer keyboard. “Solmar, I have told you not to scream like that.”
As Dr. Jertsu finished his chastisement the assistant came running into the room carrying a data pad. “Sorry doctor, but I was so excited that couldn’t help myself. I found the answer in the words of a Rix doctor himself.” The young assistant handed the data pad to Dr. Jertsu, “See right there, it’s the personal diary of a doctor Iintobas, apparently written shortly before his death. According to this diary he discovered that the disease was a genetically engineered virus. It was apparently created on a world that the Rix colonized more than a thousand years ago. It was designed to lay dormant for nearly a thousand years before activating. That gave it plenty of opportunity to spread throughout the entire Rix empire. By the time it finally activated every Rix in the galaxy was infected.
“But, in a thousand years there has been plenty of contact between the Rix and other races, even the Okennan,” said the doctor. “Why aren’t we infected too? Why aren’t we dead?”
“Based on the early symptoms recorded by the Rix doctors I believe we are infected,” replied the assistant.
“We are?” replied the doctor.
“Yes we call it Mouth Silt.”
“Mouth Silt? Are you sure?”
“Reasonably sir. It appeared in almost every race in the galaxy a few years ago, around the time the Rix started dying off. Until now it’s origin has been a mystery.”
“But Mouth Silt is a relatively benign disease, other than some oozing sores that go away after a few days, most races experience no long term ill effects.”
“Yes,” replied the assistant, “and the Rix doctor that recorded this believed that most of the individuals of the race that modified it also carried it most of their lives with no ill effects. I believe that this applies to most beings across the galaxy. If I am correct that this is Mouth Silt, and I believe I am, we too carry it now as a minor annoyance. The Rix however, they had absolutely no resistance to this virus. Once it activated their fate was sealed.”
“Insidious,” whispered the doctor under his breath as he handed the data pad back to his assistant. “What was this race that we owe our everlasting gratitude to called?”
The assistant touched the screen of the data pad. “Human, doctor. They were called Humans, and their planet was called Earth. And get this doctor, they did not even have interstellar capability.”
“They couldn’t even leave their own star system, yet they managed to wipe out the Rix in every corner of the galaxy.”
“Yes doctor,” replied the assistant. “And since they couldn’t leave their own system, that means that none of them escaped. They all died a thousand years ago.”
The doctor bowed his head, “I would have liked to have thanked them. I wish they could have known what a service they did for the rest of the galaxy.”
Word of Dr. Jertsu ‘s discovery spread quickly across the galaxy. It was the humans that had rid the galaxy of the hated Rix. Some more research by the good doctor Jertsu had even found an image of these long dead humans. In a few years there wasn’t a capitol city on a single planet in the galaxy that didn’t have a gigantic statue of a human occupying a prominent spot in a public area. Most of them had some version of a plaque that greatly honored the long lost humans who had rid the galaxy of the Rix. But despite ongoing years of research no one had been able to identify the human home world, Earth. As millions of beings across the galaxy paid homage to these long lost saviors of the galaxy, no one knew where they came from. As the years passed the story of the humans who had destroyed the Rix was told and retold in every form of public media on every world. The story of the savor humans had even eventually became bedtime stories told to children. In time, as stories do, the story of the humans grew to almost mythic status. As the stories grew so did the perception of the humans, they even became revered on many worlds, almost on the level of the gods.
What no one in the galaxy knew was that a thousand humans had survived. For a thousand years these five hundred couples had been laying asleep in cryogenic pods deep underground in what was once New Mexico. While the rest of the galaxy was memorializing the human race these one thousand had been restarting human civilization. They were deciphering the left behind Rix technology. They were also doing what couples do. In no short order this one thousand grew to two and then three. In less than one hundred years Earth’s population quadrupled. Even though they were the best and brightest and had access to dozens of Rix ships the human race stayed Earth bound for over a hundred years. But eventually the temptation was too great. A Rix starship had been refurbished, a small crew was formed and over eleven hundred years after the Rix had invaded, Humans left the Earth for the stars.