> Even then, despite my brother’s recalcitrance, I knew we’d made the right choice. His presence, his manner, the way in which he interacted—all of it felt different to me. Special. I didn’t know if it was divine intent or mere happenstance, and the underlying presumption of a universal plan; but I understood to my core that we had been meant to meet him. For me it was a simple matter of following what I knew to be true. Looking back, even with everything that’s happened, I still believe I made the right choice.

Arthur fell in with the two Kidemónes when they set off, and carefully remained half a step behind.

Enough for them to lead, but not enough to look as if he were being forced to follow.

He didn’t want to look like he thought himself their peer, but neither did he wish to be antisocial or appear to be. It was a delicate balance, especially given the blatantly abnormal level of favor they were showing him.

Something about their willingness to help him tickled Arthur’s deeper-rooted sense of caution, but he couldn’t quite place what it was. He felt as though he should have known the answer, but every time he tried to focus in and find it, his mind slid away from the thought and put him right back to his state of mild vexation and answerless suspicion. They shouldn’t have been so willing to help. He knew that.

Then again, people did strange things for strange reasons.

It was very possible they truly were just bored.

“What did you think of the System when you came in, Magellan?” Perseus asked while they walked.

“You’re resource rich and know how to exploit it.” he said candidly. “I respect the sheer ambition of the Ascendancy. With what you have here, you could rival some of the outer-Verge nations given enough time. You’ll climb to parity with them faster than some Fringe powers will.”

Endymion grunted at that. “That’s a rare sentiment from a Fringer.”

“I suppose I’m a pragmatist.” Arthur said wryly. “And I know how to acknowledge true potential, no matter which sector it’s from.”

Perseus and Endymion glanced at him, and the senior Kidemónes inclined his head.

“I apologize.” he rumbled quietly. “The insult was uncalled for.”

Arthur shrugged a little and smiled. “I can’t blame you for it. I can imagine what manner of bullshit people from the inner sectors give you.”

“I suppose you can.” Perseus said with a chuckle. “The Fringe was the Rim before the Rim existed, after all.”

“And the inner sectors never let us forget it.” Arthur agreed with a nod.

“Shit rolls downhill.” Endymion muttered. “The Core gives it to the Mantle, who gives it to Verge, who gives it to the Fringe, who gives it to us.”

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“We don’t give it to the Frontier, though.” Perseus said conversationally.

“That’s because the Frontier’s too busy killing itself with a violence we couldn’t hope to match.” Endymion snorted.

“I had heard it was pretty bad out there.” Arthur stated quietly.

“The stories don’t do it justice.” Perseus confirmed with a shake of his armored head. “We get the occasional Frontier trader out here, and other than some special clusters, it’s bad. Local warlords and failed states bad.”

Arthur’s eyebrows rose in genuine surprise at that.

“What makes this wave of colonization so much less stable than the last few?”

“Distance, so people think.” Perseus said grimly. “The Rim only barely feels the Grand Imperium, but we at least understand that Censure has happened. The Frontier? The Core may as well be a distant and irrelevant boogeyman to them. Imperial Censure is almost pure legend a dozen light years further out from Graecia, let alone the two hundred from here to the Frontier.”

“It’s worse the further you go, too. Every dozen light years is a devolving level of civilization, and the outer-Frontier may as well be a permanent warzone. What few colonies do survive are—”

“Better not spoken of.” Endymion interrupted with a rumble.

“Nobody has tried to help?” Arthur asked with a twinge of anger. For some reason, the idea of such unpoliced chaos struck a chord of rage in him he hadn’t known to exist until that exact moment. Chaos, his mind told him, was antithetical to everything he believed in. Why that was, he was unable to say.

Perseus glanced at Endymion, and the older Kidemónas sighed and gestured for him to go on.

The pair of them led him through a chair-populated waiting area and toward a large, white-painted metal opening with the words ΗΘΗ ΚΑΙ ΕΘΙΜΑ in bold, blue-lit letters on the panel above. A galactic standard translation of CUSTOMS was lit below. Arthur followed the pair through the long access gate quietly while Perseus continued.

“Everyone’s tried, but with no true hegemony in the Rim, it’s not plausible.” Perseus said with a turn of the helmet back to Arthur. “Even Graecia, for all that we’ve actively sent aid and help out there, just can’t afford to send proper expeditions. We could restore peace across many Clusters, and pretty easily at that thanks to our stability and economy, but…”

“You’d be making yourselves too vulnerable to your enemies.” Arthur guessed.

“Those Parthian animals would be pounding at the gates within a month.” Endymion growled.

“And without a guarantee of safe borders,” Arthur surmised, “moving fleets that far out is just asking for any deployed forces to lose logistical support.”

Perseus nodded and continued with a tone of regret. “We wish we could help. Honor would demand we should, but our people have to come first, and we simply can’t run the risk of exposing ourselves to Parthia.”

“What a mess.” Arthur muttered.

“It sucks.” Perseus agreed sadly.

“The trickle-down enforcement used to work.” Endymion muttered. “The Core checked the Mantle, the Mantle checked the Verge, and the Verge checked the Fringe.”

“But the Fringe largely broke that cycle.” Arthur said with a glimmer of sudden insight. “They—we—didn’t properly do for the Rim what the Verge did for us, because the emphasis on a peaceful outer sector had eroded so much with time and distance.”

“And as a result, the Rim has abandoned the Frontier entirely.” Perseus said with a resigned nod. “It’s a failure in the chain of responsibility, but that’s what distance does. The Grand Imperium cares about peace enough to enforce it, but send people far enough from the immediate range of those enforced ideals—”

“And it all goes to donkey shit.” Endymion said flatly.

Arthur would have smiled at that, if not for how depressing the topic was.