I watched thousands of red rose shields flare, the sigil of the Sacred Rose Potent Academy, as we dove for the vast symbiont shipbuilding spires dotted all over the artificial mechanical planet. A wave of laser fire followed our descent. The dropships performed high-altitude, low-angle drops to get past the swarm of Rek ships that spat vicious balls of plasma, and the equally deadly, but much slower, Gargantuan Gruba blasted us with their cannons. These biomechanical wonders had protected all Founder Forge Worlds.

These precious planets held the key to ultimate power in the universe. They had provided access to the system, granted missions, and, most importantly, provided a link to the various resource rifts we needed to level up our symbiont ships.

Our titanic dropships had pitched and rolled, scattering the scrapyard clouds of destroyed dropships and rattling nervous cadets, including myself, held mere centimeters away from death by a magnetic safety lock. They had unfurled their massive re-entry rotors even in the thin atmosphere. The near twelve thousand metric tonnes of propelled armor had needed assistants to get to our destination safely. My dropship had voiced a tense shearing as the wreckage had spewed debris all over us, pouring out hundreds of hopefuls into the vast mineral-processing maws below. Even now, as the bodies of the fallen rained down outside my viewport, I had known it had been worth it.

Staff Sergeant Rodriguez had yelled at the top of his lungs, "Cadet Anasazi!" The deep rumble of his voice had shut out the heavy wheezing of the battered dropship rotors. Even the thud of his heavy Synth-suit footfalls had fallen silent as he had loomed over me like an uncaring titan about to stomp on an ant.

"Why are you still on my dropship, cadet?!" The man had somehow, while in a vacuum, as no Founder Forge World had a natural atmosphere, only the gases from the constant manufacturing happening below, rattled me to my core. It hadn’t felt like normal comms. I had been used to that feeling. This man's voice had thundered in the middle of my chest. Like everything that had happened that day, it had been new, terrifying, painful, and a life-changing purge.

"Sir, I'm making a small repair to my..." I had tried to explain myself to the imposing armored bulk of Staff Sergeant Salazar Rodriguez. I had had the highest scores in the country, damn near the entire sector, but because I had had no family, no blood relative linked to the Hegemony to speak on my behalf, and because I had refused their slave contracts disguised as “opportunities,” I had been relegated to scrapping for crumbs from the various government programs. These programs had been underfunded on purpose to funnel us into the hands of Star corporations and the ruling elite.

I had been lucky enough to be trained, at least. Master Wilson had run a free school for orphaned and displaced children as long as we passed all his tests. He had fed us, kept us, and had given us the knowledge needed to take the trials and, most importantly, the skills to survive and the ability to design functional symbiont ships. Many Potents had died because of poor design choices.

Unfortunately, Master Wilson hadn’t been able to provide anybody with the gear we needed. The various programs we had needed to study to be prepared would have bankrupted a small conglomerate. So all my gear had been scrap bought from pawnbrokers or hand-me-downs. Heck, even my suit had been a loaner from Mercy's mother. The problem had been that my flight system hadn’t been fully operational.

I had spent all my remaining personal funds on 'Sergeant Rodriguez's Premier Potent Program.' A budget-friendly elite Potent Program that even my master had agreed with. We had many names for people before they had acquired the system—seekers, climbers, the chosen—but I had always liked "potent," as it had meant, “The ones with the power to become gods through battle.” It had been a Nigiri word, my home language. Or rather, the language of my mother, my people, from whom I had been permanently displaced.

The Sergeant's four-week course had been a fast-paced practical application of all the theory we had learned over the years. He had used a mix of phantasm-reality and real-world exercises to get us up to his standard. Plus, his program hadn’t automatically locked me into a term of service if I had succeeded. He hadn’t even taken a share of future earnings or forced me to join some small, unknown private military company. Even Master Wilson hadn’t been able to say that.

The problem with raising a Supreme in the Hegemony had been that there had been no universal enfranchisement program like in the core worlds of human space. We had been told at ten years old our options, and I had chosen at eleven—two years before the maximum cut-off—to commit to trying to become a Supreme.

Learning the basics of fleet logistics, stellar command, intergalactic law, and so on, would have sent most teenagers off the bend. Not me, though—once I had met Master Wilson, it had only been a matter of time. It had been his recommendation to wait until I had been fit enough before registering. The Hegemony had a minimum competency program that one had to pass before being allowed to step foot on a Founder Forge World or even use any of the specialized programs needed to understand and operate Founder technology.

The course had really only had two requirements: time and patience. However, asking this of teenagers whose only certainty had been uncertainty had meant that we lost people. Plus, potent-poachers had killed ninety percent of potents in their first year as Commanders, and so not many had wanted to do it. No matter the stories of eternal glory, like Tau the Golden, or even Sesi the Ruthless, there had been countless trillions of those who hadn’t made it. I had even known seven people who had become Commanders only to be killed or, even worse, had ended up as slaves in all but name.

Even my trainer and Master Wilson had had a provision for me, just in case I had succeeded. He had always been straightforward about it, and truthfully, I had had no real alternatives.

I had wanted it for every reason: the power, the influence, the money, and the glory, but also, more than anything, I had wanted it for the ability to create a family that would never disappear like mine. At eleven, I had escaped my orphanage, run by Mercy's parents, because I had been tired of people who hadn’t even dared to dream telling me I couldn’t do it.

Tired of my stalling, Sergeant Rodriguez had pointed to a point just beyond his specialized dropship ramp and had said in that chest-rattling voice, "What's that there?"

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Below us had been a fleet spire, five domed structures, and the symbiont spire spiraling almost into space. Founder Forge Worlds had been system-built rewards meant to encourage those much higher on the ladder to keep growing. Raising a Supreme had taken the resources of stellar empires. These planets had been the only place I could have become a Commander, the only place stellar kingdoms were born. At least those with military, economic, political, and cultural relevance. These hugely strategic, artificially created natural resources had been an infinite source of the most powerful kind of power known to thirty-two sapient species in the universe.

In the Hegemony, we had designated Forge Worlds as natural resources because we couldn’t reproduce them, and so far as we could tell, no species had exhausted them. A single Founder Forge World could support most, if not all, industries of any economy. It had simply been up to the designated owner to complete the various missions offered to keep it running and spewing out technology and resources. We, like the surrounding powers, had been rated at tier four, which had been the second lowest. The problem had been one of distance, not power, but the Ministry of Expansion had refused to release information to anyone who wasn’t a Commander.

I had taken a few tentative steps forward and, like an idiot, had looked and said, "What, sir?" The vastness of what I had been about to do hadn’t weighed heavily on me. I had felt prepared, seven years of life dedicated to getting to that point, and it had only been the beginning.

"It's you!" Was all I had heard as Sergeant Rodriguez's mirth-filled voice had laughed, and I had tumbled toward the mostly machine planet. My heart had pounded in my ears as I had done my best to activate my suit systems. The various warnings that had caused me to stop when all the others had jumped had needed to be solved now!

At a quick glance, the suit had needed a soft reboot. Soft so that I could have kept my heat shield up as I flew through the toxic mirage of fumes coughed out by the forge world. Cheap suits like mine had always run hot, and I hadn’t wanted to be cooked alive. I had taken a breath, processing everything, and pulled from the vast database of survival macros held in my personal neural node. My neural node had always been exceptional and had set me and other war orphans from the kingdom of Noshu apart.

I had run the macro through the suit’s system, which had somehow disconnected my neural node. This damn suit had figuratively speaking, tried to kill me. The suit's neural controller had overloaded and melted into scrap as soon as I had pushed my macro.

Without my node, I couldn’t have controlled my suit at the speed of thought, which had been important when falling to my death. I could still try something. Master Wilson had taught manual operations to us all, as he hadn’t trusted in neural nodes. Which had been like saying I didn’t believe in breathing. Neural nodes had been integral to life. I had thanked him for teaching me to push a button and use gesture controls.

Without my node, manual operation had used a simple gyroscope and altitude display controlled with gestures. The government programs hadn’t taught any of this. Master Wilson had literally beaten it into us over the years. I had put the suit into demo mode, bypassing the fried node and running on the suit's small internal loop processor used to run through various programmed display modes. My hands had moved as fast as they could to get the flight system test firing.

The problem had been that my suit hadn’t had enough power to keep my heat shield up and the flight system running concurrently. The flight system had been an upgrade kit Mercy’s mother had installed for me as a gift for passing first in the country. Sergeant Rodriguez, as part of his training, had made us do one of the government placement tests, which had been a clever way for him to get around the cost of paying for spots. With our scores, Mercy, me, and a bunch of others had gotten placed with one of the top scions in the Human Hegemony. His joining hadn’t even been a problem if he hadn’t been such a douchebag. The problem had been that Mercy and her mother had liked him a lot as he had showered everyone but me with gifts. I should have looked it up before leaving, but the suit had been on loan, and I had been working fourteen hours a day. I had been excited and thankful and hadn’t wanted to nitpick at the level of trust and enthusiasm Mercy's mother had shown me.

The flight system had let me right myself, aligning my body toward the shipyard spiral. The fog from my increased breathing and sweat had made it harder to read the scopes. Still, I had had a chance, so I had focused on crashing into the tower rather than landing. Injuries had been nothing new to me, and it had been a calculated risk. Like coming here and seeking and activating a symbiont ship had been a rite of passage in Founder society, after which an adolescent potent had been named alongside their symbiont ship and given the rank of Commander.

These commanders had to explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate; through these actions, they could have upgraded their symbiont ships. Founder society had been a militaristic expansionist society, and as the most successful civilization to have ever existed, we had all tried to emulate and capture their power. Symbiont ships, even at the first rank, could have been flagships in most militaries up to tier three. Even Sol, the oldest and most powerful human polity, had been only at tier three. This had mainly been because anybody with a shred of power had left Sol to create their own empires. Though they had gotten better over the years at retaining powerful individuals, which had led to a pseudo-golden age in the systems held by Sol.

I had been doing the calculations in my head because, of course, I had had to. The short from the fried node had been clouding my internals. The fried circuit had created an electrical fault looping my neural node, which would have caused a full neural system shutdown. Thus, it had kept me from being able to operate the suit, even in manual mode. One of the distinct features of my people’s neural node had been the expansive memory. It had allowed me to contain the loop, and this had kept my node from frying my brain. Which would have killed me. A looped node had been as serious as a heart attack.

My suit had dodged and dived, bringing me closer to my goal. The micro jets had pushed me past the bodies and debris floating about, and with a heart-stopping explosion, I had hit the spire shipyard…