I was born on Sinturi, into a military family. My father was a general, while my mother was a high-ranking executive for a major defense contractor. My grandparents, on both sides, were also in the military.

All this to say, I never had a say in who I would become or what I would do with my life. I never even questioned it.

I was enrolled in the Space Academy at an early age, though space exploration was always a bigger draw for me than military life.

You might find that surprising, but when all you hear about growing up are weapons and armors and strategy... after a while, it gets old.

The hugeness of space, on the other hand, was calling me. It was something I could get lost in.

I suppose part of me wanted to escape the life I had been forced into.

The truth is, I felt obliged to follow in the steps of my father and of all those others who had come before him. I wanted to make them proud, to be up to the task. But my heart was not in it.

Still, part of me wanted to be on a ship. I felt like it would be a suitable compromise, as I’d be in the army while seeing other things, other worlds, other species...

That hope, that aspiration, kept me going. It helped me endure the training, the strictness, the loneliness—all the stuff I highly disliked but felt compelled to comply with. Just because it was expected of me.

A pivotal moment in my life came when I met Vez Elhen. Yes, that Vez Elhen. He took me under his wing and taught me things they never teach you at the Academy. But, most of all, he recognized the weariness in me. I had grown more and more disgruntled, disillusioned, and disgusted with military life. I felt trapped, and he recognized it.

Rather than tell me about the army, he told me about the Imperium. About the people, the civilians, the innocent. Those we protect. He talked of the billions of worlds the Imperium ruled over. Of their beauty and uniqueness. There always was such passion in his words... He was a true believer. I envied that.

Without once mentioning the army, he helped me understand why our work was so important.

When you grow up in a family such as mine, it is easy to forget the bigger picture—to not see it at all, even. It all becomes about customs, traditions, rules, etiquette...

And on a world like Sinturi, where so many are in the military, there is little else to discuss. It is easy to lose focus—assuming you ever had any to begin with.

No. That’s not right. There always was focus, but on the wrong things. On living up to expectations, and making your family proud. When what should have been on our minds were the people out there who needed us. The worlds that would be destroyed if enemies came and ravaged them. The cultures and civilizations and histories that must be preserved at all costs.

Elhen’s passion instilled a new purpose in me. Not only did I now want to be in the army, I wanted to serve.

In the years that followed, I became the perfect little soldier. I landed jobs as a ship captain and was often promoted. I was content with my life and with my work.

But then...

Ten years ago, an incident happened.

We found a wreck floating in space.

At first, I thought it was the work of pirates. But among the floating debris, we spotted some that looked like nothing we’d ever seen before. These were obviously of alien design.

I grew alarmed we might have found the first victim of an invasion by some unknown species.

From the thilium leak, we could tell the enemy ship had been damaged and that it was small. But this did not tell us if it was alone. There may have been undamaged ships with it. We had to tread carefully.

I followed procedure to the letter...

Well, almost.

As soon as the wreck was found, I sent a report. After studying the alien debris, I sent another, where I stated my conclusions and my intent on tracking the attacker. I also asked for reinforcement, as I suspected there might be a whole fleet of alien ships out there.

I was told help was on the way. But it would take a few hours for the nearest ship to reach us. In the meantime, we were on our own.

I was growing more and more alarmed at the thought of what these savages could do. There were too many inhabited worlds nearby—small colonies at the outskirt of the Imperium, granted, but still. I didn’t want to risk any lives just because I had to wait for reinforcement.

So I made a call.

I decided to track the ship regardless.

I’ll admit I did not inform my superiors of this decision. I knew they would have told me to wait, and I would have been forced to do so. But if I waited and that a world got hit and that lives were lost in the process... I know, people would say, you were following orders, it’s not on you, it’s on them. But I knew I would regret it for the rest of my life...

Ironic, that.

Point is, I made a call, and we followed the leak.

What we found was a stray ship. There was no fleet. Only one, lonely, human ship. It just floated there, as if abandoned. It clearly was the source of the thilium leak.

So we boarded the ship.

But there were no humans there to be found.

What we found instead were monsters. I thought they had to be aliens—though I’d never seen any like these—and I’ve seen quite a few. These were like... like men, but deformed, with blisters and misshaped heads, missing eyes, twisted ears... their skins were scorched raw, with open and festering wounds... it was hideous.

They just sat there and looked up at us with startled expressions.

And that was when...

When I...

Well.

You must understand how horrified I was at that moment. I had never seen anything like this before. The stench was also overwhelming and messing with my brain. It was difficult to think. And, to be honest, I panicked.

I was so horrified, I lost my wits and shouted for my men to shoot.

We slaughtered them.

I suppose all would have been fine if these had truly been aliens.

But they were not.

We later found out they were humans.

They were archaeologists gone exploring worlds beyond the rim. There had been two ships, and they brought back alien artifacts from their digs. But with those artifacts came a virus unknown to men.

On one ship, the crew was so horrified with how the virus was affecting them that they set off the ship’s auto-destruct sequence.

The floating debris were some of those alien artifacts they had brought back with them.

The second ship had continued, hoping to find help on some world, but their brains grew addled by the sickness, to the point they no longer knew how to operate the ship and it ended up drifting in space.

They were like harmless children.

And I killed them.

I killed harmless children.

The Imperium did not want this to go public—there already was too much discontentment with the government and the military. Hearing of a screw-up like that could have started an uproar among the people.

So a small, private court-martial was held.

Many accusations were made... Setting off without waiting for backup, putting my men in danger, acting recklessly, not following procedure and, of course, killing civilians. Possibly a dozen other things I now forget.

But because they wanted to keep all this quiet, they couldn’t kick me out. Not when I threatened to speak up if they did.

The army was my life. What would I do if I was no longer in the army? And what would my family think? I would not be the one to bring shame to generations of Breggs that had so proudly served the Imperium.

My only option was to force them to keep me. If they did, I would tell no one. Not even my own family. If they kicked me out... What, then, would I have to lose? They’d go down with me.

They reluctantly agreed to my terms, and gave me a new ship with a new crew. I don’t think my previous crew would have still wanted to work with me after that experience, anyway, so it probably was all for the better.

If you wonder if the crew talked, well, the Imperium’s pockets are deep. As for those who could not be bought... There are other, more permanent ways to keep someone quiet.

I’m sure they must have considered such a permanent solution for me as well, but it would not have gone unnoticed. You do not so casually remove a colonel.

But now I am stuck.

I never expected to remain a colonel all my life! My father was a general. Many of my ancestors went even higher. And I would die a colonel?

That would not do.

The Imperium took everything from me.

My life, my future, my hopes...

I served twenty years in the military... twenty years! My records were impeccable. I had been promoted multiple times, and often more quickly than my peers.

Then I made one minor mistake... just one, and that’s it. I’m stripped of all my privileges. My career is thrown out the window. Forget all I’d accomplished before, forget the family I come from, none of that matters.

All that matters is that one mistake. Nothing else.

Is that fair?

Of course it isn’t.

It’s abusive, that’s what it is.

Should I have been punished? I’m not disputing that. But this banishment to the rim is just too much...

And refusing me any further promotion is the worst affront of all.

I despise the Imperium with all my heart.

It is corrupt and rotten to the core.

I will destroy it.

I will crush it under my boot.

I will tear it down until all that remains are the steaming ruins of the Emperor’s Palace.

And then, I’ll raze that as well.

The Imperium is the broken remnant of a glorious past that no longer deserves to survive.