“Blaming the Long Fall on the Coalition is the position of Imperium apologists. The Imperium was a galactic dictatorship that conquered tens of thousands of star systems. Claims that the Imperium brought some nebulous benefits and a so-called ‘improved standard of living’ are spurious and subjective. They hardly account for the fact that aside from their endless march across the stars, the Imperium had no qualms about manipulating markets to their favor, and destroyed untold numbers of democracies. Taking away the voice of the people and putting restraints on the free market are the antithesis of democractic ideals. One sentient, one vote is not just a high ideal, it should be the practical standard in all star systems, no matter the cost. If that cost is a trillion lives, then that blood is simply watering the tree of liberty. The road to victory is justified by the results.”

Frederick Ingraham, SFR Political Commentator

Dominus Valerius Artifex, Eternal Emperor

Antarasel Station, Antarasel System

The dockway leading to the Crown’s Vigor was sheer chaos. The floor was packed with shipping crates, plastic boxes and plastic bags, leaving narrow trails to get back and forth. The bribed portmaster, Madduwatta, stood guard at one end looking fierce, while a stream porters in sturdy clothes overtop basic thin-fit space suits lugged items in. On the other end, the four ship drones were loading goods from the dockway into the warship, and in the middle of the entire mess was Titus, dancing back and forth with sheets of plastic vellum neatly tucked into a clipboard with a grace that belied the madness. None of the dockworkers were allowed past the dockway bulkhead, a rule enforced by Madduwatta, leaving all the real loading to the drones.

Artifex stood back and waited for the endless train of goods to end, before attempting to get to the dockway with his four new guardians. The docking hub that serviced both the dockway for the Crown’s Vigor and a dozen other dockways was busy. It was a large, long room with dull, industrial pale blue walls that were dulled with age. The space was crowded with porters working in teams. Each set of workers was arrayed in front or behind of six-wheeled crawlers that were loaded to the max. The crawlers had no driver, following an electronic tether held by one of the porters. Smaller packages were carried back and forth by singular couriers, all rushed to make their deliveries to the various dockways as swiftly as possible.

When a lull hit the dockway deliveries for the Crown’s Vigor sufficient enough to enter easily, Artifex and his new escorts entered and walked up to the ship. Titus turned and caught sight of him as he approached.

“You’ve made new friends?” asked Titus.

“Volunteers, here as a protection detail,” said Artifex.

“Well, that didn’t take you long. Local allies?”

“Maybe much more than that, Titus,” he replied with a slight smile.

“Titus? The Saint?!” gasped one of the women escorting him. She blushed furiously when Artifex and Titus turned at her outburst. “Apologies, Deuses, but I’m of the Ardent Path.”

Titus nodded respectfully to her, which seemed to set her at ease. He turned back to Artifex with a questioning look. Artifex gave a subtle shake of the head, so Titus dropped it for the moment.

“I’ve secured us a drydock berth,” said Titus. “It seems this was quite the shipyard back in the day. There are quite a few abandoned facilities on the lower rings. They’re airless right now, but sealed against cold space. Cost is reasonable, mostly since the owners assume we’ll leave behind whatever improvements we make when we go.”

“How much space is it? I wasn’t able to see much at the Market, but the components that were visible were far too crude for what we need. I’ll need to build some basic fabrication facilities,” said Artifex with a frown.

“They are far larger than we need for just the ship. Come, let’s finish loading. We’ll move to our new berth and you can look for yourself. Before I forget, here’s your station phone,” said Titus. “I haven’t run our security algorithms on it, so assume it’s unsecured.”

“I always do,” said Artifex with a nod of thanks as he slipped the device into his pocket. He turned to his four escorts. “Would you mind helping us load? You can ride with us in my personal ship to our new berth afterwards.”

The four had semi-permanent looks of wonder, and nodded dumbly in agreement. Between the drones, the four Templars, and Artifex working to load the ship while Titus took the final deliveries. Within the hour, the Crown’s Vigor was on the move.

The four starstruck Templars clumped together in the back of the cockpit, sitting on unpadded seats at various unpowered crew stations and gaping at the exotic controls of the Crown’s Vigor.

“You’re cleared to your new berth at Ring GG-6. After the drydock’s blast doors are sealed, the station will refill the atmosphere. Be warned that opening the blast doors without pumping down the atmosphere is considered a major breach and will be considered an attack on the station,” said the station’s portmaster over the ansible. The Sauron looked bored, an impressive feat considering his lizardlike features and facial expressions were very alien and far from their human counterparts. He hung up without further comment.

Ahead of them, a massive section of the station cracked and began to open. It didn’t look anything like a door. Rather, it looked like a huge piece of the station’s hull was being pried open. A dozen small spacecraft painted in construction yellow and with flashing orange lights hovered at the corners of the door. Inside, the inner hull was doing the same, except that hull was split into two pieces that opened ‘up’ and ‘down’ on the station’s orientation.

Artifex pulled in and set the ship down. The hull was already sealing itself behind them, not wasting even a second of time once they were inside. The drydock hangar was massive, easily twice the size of the Crown’s Vigor. Huge pipes were riveted at various points along the wall, many of which were marked as high voltage. A power transformer was fenced off in one corner behind a chain-link fencing. Large industrial lamps on the ceiling cast harsh, bright light on everything. A few standard doors lined one wall on the station spindle side of the facility. Various bits of debris and discarded equipment were piled in one corner, a bit of graffiti tagged another. Next to the doors was a broken couch.

“Atmosphere in the facility is stabilized,” said Titus. “It’s safe to go out there.”

“Just the same, I’m glad we have space suits again,” said Artifex. “I hated flying without such a basic safety measure.”

He climbed out of the pilot seat and headed towards the airlock. “Go make contact with Philon and let him know where to find me. Give him my new station phone number. Then take up station at the outside door of the facility.”

The four held their right fists across their chest above their heart for a few seconds, the ages old Imperium pledge of fealty, before heading out the airlock and down the ramp into the facility.

“Walk with me, Titus,” said Artifex.

“Imperator,” said Titus, his clipboard full of velum.

Together they walked around the large room, examining the industrial feeds that were available to them. Basic liquids and gasses as well as electricity were available, so long as they built in the equipment to receive them. The debris was annoying, but could be easily hauled away for recycling. As they walked, Artifex filled Titus in on the Templars and the Mortalis Divinitas religion, as well as being blackballed in the Market.

“You had quite the adventurous morning,” said Titus.

Artifex opened the doors at the end of the large bay, to find smaller rooms filled with metal benches, cabinets and work tables. Titus found a room with a basic metal desk, and several rooms that had clearly served as bunkrooms at one point. All were in need of cleaning and were stripped of anything of value. But they were a start.

“This will do,” said Artifex. He took Titus’ clipboard and flipped to a blank page of vellum, and began to scribble rapidly on it with a stylus. “With any luck, we’ll be able to find what we need here. Philon is finding us a broker to the Market. Have you made contacts with the official trade markets here?”

“Yes. As we suspected, the rare metals are a controlled market, with fixed pricing. The only place we can legally sell them is to the station. I anticipate we will do much better through the Market. Fortuna seems to be watching out for us,” said Titus. He paused, then started again after a brief hesitation. “Imperator, I must say I am unsettled by this whole Templar business. We have never actively encouraged religions before, and certainly not one that venerated us, and you in particular. I have reservations. Are we not toying with them?”

Artifex stopped his scribbling for an equally short pause, before continuing. “Titus, my oldest friend. Tell me, why did we do it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why did we do it? Why did we build an empire? What drives me on, even now, to try again?” He paused again, no longer paying attention to the vellum in front of him. His eyes bored into Titus’ as they stood in the dusty, formerly abandoned industrial facility. “What is our Purpose?”

“We… have sought the unification of humanity, Imperator,” said Titus confidently. “We want the betterment of all.”

“To what end?” asked Artifex intently.

“I…” Titus faltered. He was a follower at heart. Titus had found Artifex in a lab when they were both fresh from university studies, and already Artifex had a growing group of adherents. His scientific genius was revolutionary; his ideas already generating him a fortune to build from. Titus had simply stepped into the role of administrator - keeping the money going to where it needed to go and helping Artifex as his projects got larger and more ambitious as the years went by. In the process, he’d fallen under the charismatic spell of his boss, like all who came to work for him. Following him came naturally, his loyalty well rewarded over the centuries. But it had been at least that long since he’d actually put thought into the philosophy that drove them.

“Tell me, Titus,” said Artifex, his demeanor intense. Any demeanor of casual acceptance of the current circumstances gone. It was a mask, worn as needed to suit the situation, and discarded when no longer necessary. This was the Eternal Emperor, the man who united trillions under a single banner. “Imagine you are operating a cargo train, and see a dozen people on the track before you, about to be struck. On a second track is a single person, but you must pull the lever to switch to that track. You can avoid the dozen but will kill the one. What is the ethical thing to do?”

“I… well, I suppose pull the lever. Although killing someone does not sit well with me,” said Titus. “I know I’ve helped you manage wars, so you could say-”

“I could say that there is no good ethical choice. In fact, morality plays no role when circumstances dictate either a bad outcome or a horrible one. Choice in the matter is an illusion,” said Artifex. “The question says more about the person who answers it than it does about the situation. You are pragmatic, and at our level, a degree of pragmatism is required. But there is a larger picture that is lost upon you, one you’ve never seen and may have willfully chosen to ignore.”

“And that is, Imperator?” asked Titus.

Artifex seemed to radiate power and intensity, his eyes hard. “The fact of the matter is that we are the train. There are consequences to our actions, and we must live with those consequences. No matter how we plan, people will die that may have lived had we not acted.”

“And yet we power on,” said Titus. “Are we so sure that unification is right, then, if you look at the destruction we will cause?”

“And this is what you fail to see,” said Artifex. “For we are not the only train. There are a great many dangers to this universe, and many other species competing for the same resources. Humanity is splintered and ill-prepared to meet these threats. We have managed some small progress in improving our genome, but at our core, we are the same tribal and overly-emotional savages that strode across a primordial jungle on a primitive planet lost in history. Humanity pays tribute to the first powerful species that came along, because homo sapiens are too short-sighted by their very nature to see past their selfish needs and stabbed me in the back while I was fighting for their safety. Only after I was gone did they realize that the devil they didn’t know was worse than the one they did.”

“I mean, I knew we were trying to fix genomic problems by evolving homo sapiens into homo supera,” said Titus. Deep thinking about such things was relatively alien to him, yet he felt that he must understand. “But is the situation truly that dire?”

Artifex looked at Titus. “Look around you, my friend. This station was three translations from Swiftes. All of the technology of our time is gone, replaced with inferiority. We weren’t just defeated, we were erased. Our legacy is that of death, and our species is beholden to an alien race that cares nothing for it. How could I not push for humanity to evolve, wish to try again? We must transcend the weaknesses that have cursed our species for countless millennia. I will drag humans into a better future kicking and screaming the whole way if I must. I care not if they love me or curse me. I will make use of any who will help, be it from self-interest or from religious conviction. The Templars may have been the greatest gift that ten centuries of lost time has left to me.”

Artifex returned his attention to the clipboard, and scribbled a few more lines to the vellum while Titus processed his words. The station phone in his pocket chimed, and he read the notification on its tiny screen.

“Come, my friend, think your deep thoughts later,” said Artifex, the intensity covered by the congenial demeanor once more. He pressed the clipboard into Titus’ hands. “Here is the first list of things I need. Philon is on his way with the broker. I need your talents to get these parts so that I can build my first Fabrication facility. I have a great many things to build.”