Your vessel’s AI is programmed to notify you of any deviations from the laws of the local star cluster. The protection of every star-citizen’s well-being is our highest priority, and violations are addressed swiftly.
The IMPERIUM encompasses all species across all known galaxies.
While you were taken from what was once yours, you are now one of us.
You are under our protection.
Welcome to the IMPERIUM.”
Standard Welcome Message to Protected Beings upon First Contact
Lily rested her forehead on the control panel.
“Goddammit.”
The ship didn’t break the silence of space for a long time after that.
Ninety universal chrono-cycles later (approximately 112.5 Earth days)
Lily had never felt this free.
Her health glowed from the inside out. She was in the best shape of her life.
Her days brimmed with study, training, exploration, and play, with no one to tell her what she should or should not do. She commanded a small but technologically superior starcruiser and wandered the endless night of space by her own will alone.
She did not know Earth’s coordinates, so at the ship’s suggestion she set course for the nearest general station. The ship’s AI explained that they were deep in unmapped space. Reaching civilized territory would take more than three Earth months in conventional mode, without deep-void jumps. Those were off-limits until she completed the IMPERIUM’s mandated training. The Universe, it turned out, had opinions about who was allowed to fold spacetime.
Lily protested at first, but after the ship insisted, she began the acclimatization program. It became the best decision she had ever made.
She learned to fly the ship.
The first time she overshot a docking maneuver, the ship quietly reduced her control access for a quarter of a chrono-cycle.
She never missed again.
She mastered its life support and emergency systems. She devoured cultural archives from countless species, though even a dozen lifetimes would not have been enough for true immersion. She mapped every corridor and chamber. She uploaded her genetic blueprint into the medical bay and let the system design a personalized regimen of nutrition and training.
In time, she renamed the ship Helios, after the Greek sun god. True to the name, Helios saw nearly everything and understood even more.
He taught her that the deep void teemed with life. Species ventured beyond their stars and eventually encountered an IMPERIUM envoy, becoming part of the grand alliance. In truth, it was not optional. Refusal meant facing the combined military force of entire galaxies.
Membership came with real benefits and strict rules governing diplomacy, trade, and conflict.
Because Lily had been taken aboard a vessel that met universal standards, the same rights and obligations applied to her as to any Registered Spacefaring Species. She wasted no time learning them.
At one point, Helios played her a jingle of a youth show about the common scientific belief of the IMPERIUM, the Cradle of Life:
“What is this movement?
Is that light?
No, it’s just a tiny cell!
How can this be?
I don’t know,
But now it’s real as well!
