Kat smiled. “That was only because Tarkus was too much of a mouthful for me back then. A breach of protocol, perhaps, but I was only three.” She walked up toward the desk, a tentative smile slipping onto her lips. “Still, it’s a bit unseemly for a lowly ship commander to address a Commander-Maximus in such a familiar way, wouldn’t you say, Uncle Taks?”

Kat had been troubled since she had returned from the front lines, but her spirits lightened now, at least temporarily. The Commander-Maximus was widely feared by the officers under his command, especially those who had seen him on one of his tirades, but she had long thought of Tarkus as a second father. She loved the gruff old man, and she knew he loved her.

Vennius gestured toward one of the guest chairs. “Sit, Kat. Be comfortable…and humor an old man who has far too few joys in life.” He paused until she had taken the seat, then he dropped back into his own chair. “And I wouldn’t call you a lowly ship commander, certainly not after your exploits in the last war. I can’t walk down the Via Magnus without seeing your image hanging from a building in ten meters of Gybilian silk.”

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. Indeed, 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.