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  In Year 9 of the imperial calendar, this created the opportunity for the Genetic Inferiority Elimination Act to be promulgated.

  The strong consume the weak! The fittest survive! Excellence is victorious while inferiority is defeated! This is the providence of the universe!

  So Rudolf expressed his beliefs to his “subjects.”

  Human society is no exception. When the number of aberrations exceeds a critical mass, society loses its vitality and declines into weakness. My ardent desire is for humanity’s everlasting prosperity. Therefore, the elimination of those elements that would weaken humanity as a species is my holy obligation as ruler of humanity.

  Specifically, this meant forced sterilization for the physically handicapped, those below the poverty line, and those who “did not excel.” It meant euthanasia for the mentally handicapped. It meant that societal measures for the support of the weak were all but eliminated.

  For Rudolf, weakness was the unforgivable sin, and the weaker members of society who “use their weakness as a shield, then demand to be taken care of” were nothing more than objects of his hatred.

  When this bill was shown to the people, even the throngs that had thus far worshipped and followed Rudolf blindly were ashamed of themselves, as might be expected. The number of those who could confidently declare themselves to be superior beings was not so great. Everyone was thinking, Isn’t this a little too high-handed?

  Politicians of the all-but-vanished republican faction still hung on in parliament, and they gave voice to the will of the people, lambasting the emperor. To this, the emperor determined to make a decisive counterstrike.

  He immediately and permanently dissolved the parliament.

  The following year, the imperial Ministry of the Interior created the Bureau for the Maintenance of Public Order, which came to wield fierce power against political crime. Ernst Falstrong, who was Minister of the Interior as well as a close associate of Rudolf’s, ran the bureau himself, arresting, incarcerating, imprisoning, and punishing—not according to law, but according to his own judgment.

  Such was the unholy matrimony of authority and violence. These two soon gave birth to the infant known as “state terrorism,” which grew in no time to be a giant that engulfed all of human society.

  At that time, a blackly humorous joke was making the rounds: “If you don’t want to be executed, don’t get arrested by the police. Get yourself caught by Public Order instead, because they don’t execute anybody!”

  It is a fact that of all those whom the bureau arrested for political and thought crimes, not a single one was ever formally executed. However, those who were shot dead without trial, who died under torture, who were “disappeared” to barren penal asteroids, who were left disabled by lobotomies or massive doses of drugs, who died in prison of “illnesses” or “accidents” … the combined tally of these climbed to four billion. But because this number was only 1.3 percent of the Galactic Empire’s total population of three hundred billion, the bureau was able to spuriously claim, “We have eliminated a handful of dangerous elements for the sake of the absolute majority.”

  Of course, that “absolute majority” did not include the four billion who shuddered in fear for their fates or the countless others who swallowed their objections amid the oppressive silence.

  Rudolf crushed those who opposed him, and at the same time selected and granted special privileges to certain “people of superior ability,” creating an aristocracy to support the imperial family. But was it a sign of the inferiority of Rudolf’s own knowledge that all of them were white people who bore old Germanic family names?

  Based on his strong service record, Falstrong also received the title of count, but on his way home he ran into a terror attack carried out by an underground republican group. In the flash of a neutron bomb, he met a tragic end. Rudolf mourned, and with the execution of twenty thousand suspects, he sought to comfort the soul of one who had served him well.

  In the forty-second year of the imperial calendar, Rudolf’s life of eighty-three years came to an end. It was said that his huge frame had been stronger than ever, but psychological distress had cast a heavy burden on his heart.

  The emperor did not die in full satisfaction. Of the four children he and his empress Elizabeth had, all were girls, and he was left without a male heir. Late in life, his concubine Magdalena gave birth to a baby boy, but it is said that the child was born an idiot.

  Of this episode, the public records of the empire are silent, but we may surmise that the rumors circulating at the time were almost certainly true, because not just Magdalena, but also her parents, her siblings, and even the doctors and nurses who had attended her birth were afterward all put to death.

  It must have come as a stinging blow for Rudolf, who had promulgated the Genetic Inferiority Elimination Act and sought the development of a superior form of humanity.

  For Rudolf, the gene decided everything, and to prevent the collapse of his belief system, Magdalena had had to die. It simply could not be that Emperor Rudolf had a genetic makeup that produced retardation. The fault had to lie completely with Magdalena.

  After the death of Rudolf, the imperial crown of the Galactic Empire came to rest upon the head of Sigismund, eldest son of Rudolf’s eldest daughter, Katharina. And so at the age of twenty-five, with the assistance of his father Joachim, Lord of Neue-Staufen, this young emperor came to rule the galaxy.

  With the death of Rudolf I, republican rebellions erupted in every quarter. It was believed that with the loss of Rudolf’s leadership and fierce personality, the empire would soon crumble; however, that kind of thinking was too optimistic. The aristocrats, military leaders, and bureaucrats that Rudolf had been nourishing at his side for the past forty years made up a troika far stronger than the republicans’ hopeful estimation.

  These forces were led by Lord Joachim of Neue-Staufen, who was both the emperor’s father and prime minister. Displaying the composed, cool leadership that might be expected of a man chosen by Rudolf as groom for his daughter, Joachim crushed the weaker forces of insurrection as though they were eggshells beneath his heel.

  More than five hundred million who had participated in the uprisings were killed, and of their families more than ten billion had their citizenship revoked and were thrown into serfdom. “In the suppression of opposing forces, be unsparing,” said the imperial regulations, and they were followed to the letter.

  The forces of republicanism were once again made to endure a long winter.

  In the face of such powerful dictators, it was thought that this harsh winter would stretch on forever. After Joachim’s death, Sigismund ruled directly. And after his death, Sigismund was succeeded by his eldest son Richard, who was in turn succeeded by his own eldest, Ottfried. The highest position of authority passed only to the descendants of Rudolf, and it looked as if heredity was the only thing that could determine the transition of power.

  However, deep beneath the thick ice, a watery convection current was silently moving.

  In IC 164, the republicans of the Altair system—who had been denounced as a rebel clan, reduced to slave status, and set to hard labor—succeeded in escaping, using a spaceship they had constructed themselves.

  Their plan was not like the ones that their forebears had been carefully refining for generations. The number of such plans that had been proposed was equal to the number that had ended in failure. The grave markers of republicans had only increased, and in place of elegies, only the cruel laughter of the Bureau for the Maintenance of Public Order resounded among the graveyards. It was a cycle that had repeated itself endlessly. Yet finally, there was success. And from conception to execution, it had only taken three standard months.

  It had literally begun as child’s play. A child of two slaves who were mining molybdenum and antimony in the cruel cold of Altair 7 had dodged out of the sight of his overseers and was play
ing at carving small boats from the ice, which he then floated out onto the water. A young man named Ahle Heinessen had been watching him absently, and this image reverberated in the back of his mind like a divine revelation. Wasn’t this lonely planet, after all, a bottomless storehouse of shipbuilding materials?

  On the seventh planet, the overall amount of water was not so great; it abounded more in natural dry ice than in frozen water. Heinessen chose a gargantuan mass of dry ice that was entirely buried in a certain valley. Its dimensions were 122 kilometers in length, forty kilometers in width, and thirty kilometers in height. After hollowing out the center, he made a propulsion area and a living area, and soon it began to look like it could fly. The most difficult part of the plan was the question of how to get materials to actually build a spaceship. It was no good trying to obtain materials illegally, for if the Bureau for the Maintenance of Public Order got wind of it, they would simply arrest and slaughter everyone involved.

  However, this world also had natural resources that would not draw the bureau’s attention. In the absolute zero cold of outer space, there was no fear of dry ice sublimating into gas. If they could just isolate the heat that would be generated by the propulsion and living areas, a considerably long-term flight would be possible. During that time, they could search asteroids and uninhabited planets for the materials needed to build an interstellar spaceship. There was no need to keep flying in the same ship in which they had departed.

  And so their glittering white spaceship of dry ice was christened the Ion Fazegas, named after the boy who had made that toy boat out of ice. Four hundred thousand men and women entered that vessel and escaped from the Altair system. This was the first step on a journey that historians would later dub the Long March of 10,000 Light-Years.

  After shaking off the ruthless pursuit of the Galactic Empire’s military, they hid themselves beneath the surface of a nameless planet and there constructed eighty interstellar spacecraft. Then they set out into the inner core of the galaxy. Here the escapees faced an immensity brimming with deadly giant stars, dwarfs, and variables. Here the ill will of the Creator crashed down on their heads time and time again.

  In the midst of this journey of hardship, they lost their leader Heinessen to an accident. His dear friend Kim Hua Nguyen took over as leader. By the time this man grew old and his eyesight faded, they at last passed out of the dangerous regions and found their future in a stable cluster of main sequence stars. More than half a century had passed since they had left Altair.

  To the stars of their new world they gave the names of the gods of ancient Phoenicia: Baalat, Astarte, Melqart, Hadad, and others. They made their base on the fourth planet from Baalat, to which they gave the name of their fallen leader Heinessen, that his deeds might be forever honored.

  The conclusion of the Long March of 10,000 Light-Years occurred in IC 218, but these people—who had escaped the yoke of the dictatorship—chose to abolish the imperial calendar and revive the SE calendar instead. In this, they prided themselves that it was they who were the rightful heirs of the Galactic Federation. Rudolf and his ilk were nothing more than contemptible traitors to democratic rule.

  In this manner, the establishment of the Free Planets Alliance was solemnly declared. It took place in SE 527. The first generation of its citizens numbered around 160,000. More than half of their comrades had perished during the Long March.

  It was far too small a number to truly say that humanity had been divided, but the founders of the Free Planets Alliance possessed incomparable diligence and passion, and by their power, material fulfillment was rapidly attained. Childbearing was encouraged, and the population grew. A national establishment was put in order, and the agricultural and industrial production capacity steadily increased.

  It was as if the golden age of the Galactic Federation had returned.

  Then, in SE 640, the forces of the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets encountered one another for the first time in the form of a clash between battleships of both sides.

  From the standpoint of the Free Planets, such an encounter was a possibility for which they had long been preparing themselves. To the imperial side, however, it came like a bolt from the blue, and so victory in the battle went to the Free Planets. However, just before a direct hit from a neutron-beam cannon turned the imperial warship into a fireball of destruction, an emergency communiqué leapt away toward the capital of the empire.

  Imperial bureaucrats there extracted old records from computer archives and learned that more than a century before, there had been an incident involving slaves escaping from Altair. So they had not died out in space after all; they lived and even prospered! A force was assembled to put down this insurrection. Great battleships were dispatched to the stronghold of those rebels.

  And there those warships were utterly defeated.

  There are many reasons why the imperial military was so soundly beaten despite its superior numbers. For one thing, the long-distance campaign caused physical and mental exhaustion to set in on the empire’s soldiers and officers. For another, the issue of resupply was taken too lightly. In addition, the imperial military knew too little about the area in which they were fighting. They also underestimated both the enemy’s strength and will to fight. Their strategy was careless. The Free Planets’ military had capable commanders. Et cetera, et cetera.

  Pao Lin—commander in chief of the alliance military—was a womanizer, a heavy drinker, and a glutton, and although the statesmen of the alliance—who placed great importance on an ancient and puritanical simplicity of lifestyle—were apt to cast a cold eye on his behavior, the man was a genius when it came to tactics and strategy. Yusuf Topparole—his chief of staff, who assisted him in this work—was also known as “Griping Yusuf,” for he was constantly crying foul in matters large and small, saying, “Why do you have to give me such a hard time?”

  Topparole, however, was also a precise and accurate theorist who might well have been called a living, breathing computer. Both men were still in their thirties when—on the outer fringes of the Dagon system—they conducted the greatest envelopment operation in history, annihilating the enemy and becoming the greatest heroes of the alliance since its founding.

  For the Free Planets, this was an occasion for material expansion. When malcontent elements within the Galactic Empire learned of the existence of an independent power resisting the hegemony, they fled the empire in droves. Seeking a home where they could live in peace, they came flooding into the alliance.

  In the three centuries following Emperor Rudolf’s death, the establishment—firm as it had once been—had become somewhat more lenient, and the influence of the Bureau for the Maintenance of Public Order, which had once spared no effort in oppressing the people, had faded as well. Voices of discontent within the empire were growing louder.

  The men and women who flowed into the Free Planets Alliance were accepted in a spirit of “he who comes shall not be turned away,” but not all of these people held to republican ideals. Among this number there were even some aristocrats and members of the imperial family who came, having been on the losing side of court intrigues. With such people being allowed entry, and with the Free Planets growing too quickly, it was an inevitable progression, perhaps, that the nature of the alliance should begin to change more and more.

  The Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance had been in a chronic state of war since first contact, but from time to time they were visited by periods of uncertain peace as well. A product of this was the Phezzan Land Dominion. This was a sort of city-state in the Phezzan star system, which lay almost exactly between the two powers. It was under the sovereign rule of the Galactic Emperor and paid tribute to the empire, but when it came to its internal affairs, it was almost entirely self-governing—above all, in that it was permitted to have diplomatic relations and trade with the Free Planets Alliance.

  The Galactic Empire, in making it
self out to be the singular, absolute ruler of all humanity, did not acknowledge the existence of any legitimate authority outside the sphere of its influence. In official documents, the Free Planets Alliance was not referred to by its formal name; “the rebel entity” was written instead. The alliance’s military were “rebels” as well, and the chairman of the High Council (the alliance’s head of state) was “that deplorable rebel warlord.” With state regulations such as these in place, diplomacy and trade with the alliance should have been out of the question, but Leopold Raap—a powerful merchant of Terran birth—was possessed of a passion that might be called extraordinary, and drove forward the establishment of this most peculiar dominion. With petitions and persuasion—and above all, very large bribes—the matter was decided.

  Representing the dominion was the landesherr, or domain lord, who as vassal of the emperor ruled there in his name, oversaw commerce with the alliance, and occasionally even played the role of diplomat. By monopolizing foreign trade, the dominion accumulated massive stores of wealth, and small as it was, its power became impossible to ignore.

  It would be untrue to say that no one ever worked for amity between empire and alliance. Manfred II, who was enthroned in IC 398 (SE 707) was one of Emperor Helmut’s numerous illegitimate children. After slipping through the clutches of assassins, he came to spend his early childhood in the Free Planets Alliance and grew up in a more liberal atmosphere.

  Because of this, it appeared that his enthronement might soon bring about peace and fair trade between the two powers, as well as political reform within the empire. However, these hopes soon came to nothing, as this young and popular emperor was assassinated within a year, and relations between the two powers immediately cooled. Manfred II’s assassin was a reactionary aristocrat, but there is also a compelling argument suggesting that behind the scenes, the hands of Phezzan were at work, seeking to preserve its monopoly on the right to foreign commerce.