We did not, of course, realize we were doomed until it was far, far too late.

Our scientists had long since ruled out the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and with no unifying enemy to bind us together, we did as we always had.

The mega-corporations who ruled our worlds were no strangers to warfare. They would spend entire planet’s worth of resources on petty feuds, squabbling over dominion rights and esoteric points of contracts. In the early days, there had been governments, expeditions, hope… but that was all gone now. The corporations controlled everything. As the air of our homeworld soured and the ice caps melted, you were given a simple choice. You could go into debt, tremendous debt, to buy a ticket off-world to one of the colonies. Or, you could drown.

Indentured servitude became the order of our lives, a wealthy elite at the very top of society holding the leashes of our impossible debt. Everyone worked for a megacorporation. They controlled what we could eat, what we would see. Out in the cold vacuum of space, a pink slip was as good as a death sentence.

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There were rebellions, of course. The occasional riot or uprising, quickly put down by the corp’s hired mercenaries and papered over by the corp-branded media. It went on for centuries. It could not be otherwise, we thought. How else could it be?

In our disbelief, we were slow to react as the first of our frontier worlds fell silent. A shadow war between competing corps, perhaps. As they struck into the core worlds, our ignorance was torn from us.

Too late we realized that the descendents of ancient ark vessels, long thought lost, had finally returned. Too late we realized that they had gone a different way. The harsh reaches of space and foreign worlds had reforged them across all divisions of class.  We rallied as best we could, thinking that perhaps our ancient cousins might have overextended themselves. But with each world that fell, their lines did not stretch, their power did not dim. Instead, their fleets and armies seemed to only grow with each victory.

Horror dawned on us as we realized our civilization was doomed. They were not conquering our worlds. They were liberating them.