Birthright

of all the thousands of sentient races, only a handful had descended from carnivore, and of these only

Man remained true to his heritage....

—Origin and History of the Sentient Races, Vol. 9 On a nameless world far out on the Rim of the galaxy, Man made his last stand. Or, to be more precise, one man and three women. There had been more when they had reached this world, hundreds more, but now all except these four lay dead near the entrance to the cave. The cave was about two hundred feet deep, with an opening so narrow that the man had momentarily gotten stuck trying to follow the women into it. It was very cold and dark, and filled with a fine powdery dust that made breathing a painful chore. But it was defensible, at least until their supply of food and water ran out, and that made the dust very easy to put up with, considering the alternative. The cave was situated high on the side of a jagged mountain, accessible to the four humans only by extremely precarious handholds and footholds, and totally inaccessible to the Kragan squadron that was besieging them, huddled together for warmth and comfort at the mountain's base. The Kragans, a large, chubby, hairless species of intelligent marsupials, weren't by nature a hostile race. But like almost all intelligent races, they liked to side with the winners, and Man hadn't been a winner for centuries. One by one he had lost his bases on the periphery of his empire, and in the last eighty years the core of his power—Caliban, Earth, Deluros VIII, the Floating Kingdom—all had been toppled. None had given up without a fight, but all were lost nonetheless: dead, desolate memories of a strength and a glory that had blossomed, flowered, and withered in the seasons of Time. And slowly, over the years, Man had become the hunted rather than the hunter. It was not to his liking. The galaxy showed Man no more mercy than he had shown it, and entire worlds were exterminated. Then came the search-and-annihilate missions. Sixteen humans had erected a small dome on Vega IX, which had never been able to support life or atmosphere; a proton bomb wiped them out. Two thousand human refugees found shelter on the surface of a long-dead star in the Betelgeuse region; they were destroyed within hours of being discovered. Man fought back, of course; Man always fought back. But with no central governing body, no military leadership, no coherent organization, even Man found the odds too high. There were 13,042 sentient races or mutations in the galaxy; no more than a dozen disavowed Man's extinction, and not one would do battle on his side.

“Still, we didn't do too badly,” said the man, looking out across the rocky mountainside. “All things considered, we made them pay for every goddamned inch they took.” “And they'll pay dearly for the last inch too,” said the first of the women, looking thoughtfully down on the device that they had painstakingly carried to the cave and lovingly reassembled in almost total darkness the previous night.

“Don't be too quick to give up yet,” said the man. “We're all that's left. After us, there is nothing more.” “So says the father of a new race,” said the second woman sarcastically. “Let's just worry about keeping the old race alive a little longer,” said the man. He gazed down on the Kragans. “Hell, they look so fat and gentle.”