A note to the reader:

Forgive me, for while this account chronicles the life of the Immortal Empress, I cannot conceive of a way to tell it without interjecting myself, at least for a time. My name is unimportant, but it will make the telling of the tale easier I suppose, and so you may as well have it.

I was born Val Vikaal, son of an unlikely pairing between a state biologist and a corporate regional belt miner. In fact, it was my similarity to the Empress that first drew me to her attention. I was born and raised on a mining station, just like her, a citizen of the Corporations, without loyalty to any one planet or system. I grew up knowing only the stale, refreshed air of Rivian IV and could recite the statutes and by-laws of the Rivian Combine by heart.

The first time I met the Immortal Empress, I was on my way to Corporate Headquarters on Solus Prime in the Core. Our cargo ship was attacked and captured by the Black Widow, the infamous flagship of the Immortal Empress.

Once her crew divvied up the contents of the cargo hold, they lined up everyone onboard the Rivian ship. It was terrifying. I thought we were all about to die. Instead, it was the day that my new life began.

The Empress appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Her royal guard flanked her on both sides as she made her way to hold court before the Rivian delegation that filled the cargo hold. There she gave everyone a choice: join the Empire or pray the life support held out until corporate discovered a shipment was late.

I remember thinking that the senior corporate officers’ reaction seemed almost rehearsed as they immediately scoffed and voiced their disdain at the Empress’s generous offer.

The Imperial guards wasted no time, silencing more than a few with swift backhands to the mouth before quickly escorting the senior officers out of sight. The majority of the corporate middle class followed suit, minus the mouthing off and subsequent backlash. No doubt they weighed the cost analysis of time already spent climbing the corporate ladder versus the opportunity cost of starting over with a new organization. Most of their life decisions were probably made that way, and they saw no reason to change now. That left the least among us. Those who held little or no status within the Rivian Combine.

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Silence filled the cargo hold as my fellow Rivians cast nervous glances back and forth, trying to decide which way to cast our lot in life. The Empire’s reputation was widely disputed within the Core Planets, made even more murky by each corporation’s internal propaganda designed to paint the Empire and its leader in the most unflattering light possible. As a boy I was taught that the Empire was a lawless gang of outcasts and criminals who attacked, pillaged, and plundered any civilized installation that they could; led by a tyrannical ruler who was rumored to be created in a lab and kept alive by the transfusion of a host of clones created from her own flesh and blood. This monster-tyrant-queen was interested in one thing and one thing only: the complete destruction of anything that resembled the law and order and decency that the Galactic Republic and the Corporations upheld throughout the galaxy.

The stories were ingrained in most of us as children, and as we grew up in the corporate environment, little was provided to dissuade us from believing those stories. Empire equaled evil. Republic and Corporation equaled good.

As such, even among the most disenfranchised of us, the majority of my fellow Rivians decided to stay with the ship and wait for a corporate rescue.

Looking back, I’ve often wondered what made me choose to join the Empress that day. My intellect and reason would have me believe that I was able to see through the lies and propaganda that the corporate-owned media had fed me—that I was able to maintain an open mind about who and what the Empire was. But in truth, I believe that I joined the Empire that day for one reason and one reason only—I had never seen a more beautiful thing in my life.

From the very first moment the Empress appeared—her long dark cloak swirling around her, giving glimpses of a well-toned figure and the weapons that adorned it—I could not take my eyes off of her. Something about her presence drew me to her like a magnet. Even now, years later, I find myself blushing as I recall the moment.

It was that feeling, the feeling of being in her presence, that did me in. For the first time in my life, everything felt right…everything made sense. And I knew right then and there, without a shadow of a doubt, I would do anything that was required of me to stay in that presence just a moment longer.

And so my journey with the Immortal Empress began. The next day—

I am a fool. I’m sorry. I must ask for your forgiveness one more time. I should not have begun with my beginnings with the Immortal Empress. No, I should have begun with the end.

Let us begin again with the end.