She’d endured an almost unending series of congratulations and interviews, days of them, and then the excruciating few moments when the Imperatrix placed the gleaming platinum decoration over her head and turned to the crowd calling for acclimation. The shouts had been deafening as she received an honor every young officer in Alliance service craved beyond all others. But Katrine simply endured, as she had been taught to do, though more than anything she wanted to slip away, to escape from the fawning elites and the endless noise and shouts of the crowd.

That was impossible, of course. It would have been so even if she’d been across the avenue, attending the festivities as an ordinary ship commander, but it was unthinkable for her to leave the exalted company she found around her now, the great and mighty of the Alliance. She had no choice, save to stay and play the role of hero of the state.

The recent battles had won the Alliance six of the Unaligned Systems, worlds that had now surrendered, taken their place among the other conquered planets that formed the Alliance. They brought their industry with them, and millions of their former citizens, new Plebs to feed the endless war machine. It was the Alliance’s way, to conquer or die. And it was the lot of the subjugated to become part of that apparatus, to spend their lives hard at work in the mines and factories, producing ships and weapons under the watchful eyes of their masters. The Alliance’s flag was emblazoned with its mantra, Vae Victis. Woe to the defeated. And the Patricians and Citizens of the Alliance—and the Probationary-Aspirants who served under them—took it to heart.

It was a hard way, a life dedicated to duty, to strength…but it had seen the Alliance grow from the seed of a single world, poor and subjugated by offworld conquerors, to a proud interstellar nation of thirty systems in less than sixty years. There were Alliance citizens still alive with living memory of servitude, and as a people they had sworn a collective oath. Never again.

These are your people, she thought, trying to encourage herself but realizing how uncertain she felt about that realization. She was descended from ancestors who had been heroes of the Rising that had freed Palatia—and of the brutal Cleansing that had followed. Her grandmother had risen from the slavery and servitude of pre-Rising Palatia…and gone on to lead fleets to victory in the early wars of the Alliance’s expansion. Kat was heir to a great tradition, a benefit that had aided her rise…and a burden too, a constant pressure to excel, to achieve ever more and to live up to her family’s reputation.

A load that became heavier the day my father died…