On May 21st, 449al a synthetic life form was named the Director of the Joint Zivan Science
Institute and National Laboratory.
It’s appointment was the culmination of over a century of investment into cybernetics
and artificial intelligence.
But this was just the start.
In the ensuing years, hundreds of thousands of synthetic individuals would make careers
and lives for themselves within every level of the Antares Confederacy.
Across the nation, the definition of “life” had been changed forever.
But the integration of artificial citizens into the Confederacy was just one way in which
the revitalization of the nation had expressed itself.
Everywhere, the determination to prove the validity of Antares exceptionalism brought
about new innovations and ambitious projects.
Enormous gateways, reverse engineered from the scattered derelicts that littered the
galaxy, linked together the Confederacy in ways never thought possible.
Almost overnight, the distant frontiers of the Outer Rim were as accessible as the core
of Antares itself.
The economic opportunities were endless.
Barren worlds were transformed into paradises.
Over the still burning remnants of the ancestral homeland of the Vrul, an immense new station
was constructed.
A new form of habitat, and the first of many, in which hundreds of thousands brought life
back to a once dead star system.
That same year, poverty was eradicated as enormous social programs ensured that every
Confederate citizen was financially independent.
But the greatest projects were directed outwards.
Across the Intisar System, enormous structures were perpetually lit by thousands of glowing
engines as fleets of construction vessels moved tirelessly to complete the new center
of the Antares Military Industrial Complex.
A site from which the liberation of Earth could be launched and coordinated.
The Confederacy was united and driven by the ideal that “Evil must be Opposed.”
And with every year came renewed accounts of the atrocities and carnage that the United
Terran Protectorates and their Screk masters had unleashed upon the galaxy.
Far across the frontier, the horrors first unleashed upon the Thimodian Republic were
repeated.
Entire worlds were encased within unbreakable fields of energy at the direction of the Screk.
Any who resisted were crushed beneath the armies of their Terran subjects.
Within the United Terran Protectorates, the achievements of Antares were mirrored in a
warped and twisted manner.
The UTP had also experimented with cybernetics, but the same year that Antares welcomed its
first Synthetic leaders, a vast uprising took place across Terran worlds.
On Earth and its colonies, millions were butchered as artificial killing machines fought to free
themselves from Terran servitude.
The Solar System again became a battleground.
Terran fleets, that might have easily routed this threat, were not informed of the crisis,
continuing their own senseless wars against the Thimodians and other neighboring states
instead.
For a brief moment, Earth itself was isolated from the rest of the Terran state, as the
President and his executive Council fled the slaughter aboard a Screk courier vessel.
By the time the Terran Navy had arrived back in the Solar System and the rule of the Protectorates
restored, tens of millions had died across the nation.
Antares Intelligence had hoped that the uprising might serve to weaken the rule of the Protectorates
or even that of the Screk themselves, but in the aftermath, the dependency the Terran
state showed towards its collaborators only deepened.
And while it could ultimately never be proven, there remained the possibility that everything
that had transpired across the Protectorates had done so according to some terrible design.
The uprising that had killed millions might have only been a kind of trial, designed to
pit one tool of the Screk against another.
As the inevitable confrontation with the Screk loomed ever nearer, the Antares Confederacy
began to expand its relationship with its allies.
The Antares Treaty Organization, or ATO, had been signed by the Confederacy, the Commonwealth
of Vi Talas and the Commonwealth of Ventin Vi’Ta, two states liberated from the former
dominions of the Great Khan.
At first, it had been little more than a defensive measure intended to protect these nations
from outside influence, now it represented a growing base of stability and liberty in
a section of the galaxy that for over a century had been plagued by corrupt regimes, failed
states and chaotic borders.
The admittance of the Anthorian Republic into the ATO was a controversial decision.
Both Vi Talas and Ventin Vi’Ta were in many ways satellite states of the Confederacy,
and while the Antares Treaty Organization was intended to be a federation of equals,
many within the Confederacy were reluctant for Antares to willingly give up its place
of dominance.
When the Anthorian Republic entered the ATO, the nature of the alliance evolved further,
becoming a true partnership.
It was in many ways a successor to the Moya Pact, yet where the Cloister of the Spirits
had been enigmatic and often frustrating allies, the Anthorians were willing partners.
At their insistence, interventions by the Antares Treaty Organization into the former
territories of the Beldross Empire culminated in the complete overthrow of the last remnants
of their oppressive government.
Lawless systems were reintegrated into the Anthorian Republic and the damage wrought
by centuries of warfare, was slowly healed.
The military actions taken by Antares over the previous century had been driven by many
factors.
An earnest desire to liberate the oppressed, a hypocritical push to acquire new territories
and resources, and the growing frustration and rage over the actions of the Terran Protectorates
and their Screk overlords.
The success of the liberation campaigns forced a kind of moral calculation across the Confederacy,
within every Republic and every citizen.
Since its inception, Antares had defined itself by its scientific discoveries, its economic
advancements, by the opportunities it presented to its citizens.
But never by its wars, or its conquests.
And yet, the interventions, the wars of liberation, however they were branded, had done more to
stabilize their section of the galaxy than every sanction, blockade or strongly worded
protest.
Whenever the Confederacy had stayed it hand, whenever it had relied upon a half-measure,
its moral superiority had been maintained, but the galaxy had suffered.
The reaction to the growing philosophy of “Antares Interventionism” took many forms
across the Confederacy.
To its critics, the nation had become Democratic Crusaders, cloaking their aggressive acts
in utopian ideals.
To its supporters, Antares had finally learned that a few years of carnage was preferable
to decades of suffering and neglect.
Whether the Confederacy had betrayed its values or was finally living up to them, was a question
that had to be answered by each of its citizens.
But the martial fires had been lit and evil must be opposed.
Had the Screk attacked Antares, the call to action would have been immediate and without
any form of debate, but in 478al, the Confederacy was forced to confront not its greatest rival,
but its oldest friend.
As the Antares Treaty Organization had expanded its presence across its region of the galaxy,
it increasingly found itself at odds with the Cloister of the Spirits.
The Pneuma race that made up the cloister had often been inscrutable, but Antares had
always managed to find common purpose.
Now however, the good will between them seemed to evaporate.
The Cloister increasingly acted erratically, its diplomats refusing any agreement with
the Anthorians or Beldross, even after their liberation by Anatares.
The declaration of war was one of the greatest tragedies to befall the Confederacy, and put
to the ultimate test every interventionist ideal and philosophy of action.
The conflict was short and bloody, and while the war was fought exactly to the specifications
of the Confederate High Command, there was little sense of triumph when the last holdouts
surrendered.
It was only when Antares Intelligence investigated the logs and orders captured in the final
months of the campaign that the true root of the conflict had become known.
Over the previous decades, thousands of high-profile Pneuma, mostly government officials, had perished
in mysterious causes, ultimately ruled to be natural deaths.
Antares Intelligence had initially concurred with this assessment, but patterns increasingly
pointed to some outside influence.
At first the struggle for leadership within the Cloister, if that indeed was what it even
was, was thought to be the work of rival religious groups playing out some sort of shadow war.
fThe evidence had been deeply buried and might have easily been missed or destroyed during
the conflict, but it pointed to one unmistakable fact.
Every death had a greater purpose behind it.
The war between Antares and the Cloister had been engineered.
It was only through their intermediaries in the ancient Vran Nation that Antares was able
to demand a meeting with the Screk.
For the first time, representatives of the Confederacy spoke directly with the Empire
that had taken their homeworld and reduced their lost brethren to slaves and tools of
war.
For hours, Confederate diplomats raised every issue, brought to light every injustice and
presented their irrefutable evidence.
The Confederate Diplomatic Corp had prepared for every likely outcome of the meeting, from
the complete surrender of the Screk to the immediate declaration of war, but none could
say which was the most likely.
The reaction of the Screk was beyond any such predictions.
For days the Confederacy received nothing but silence, and then, two lists.
They were breathtaking in scope, containing untold billions of items.
Each list included everything from star systems, worlds, ships and stations, the names of the
Prime Minister and Parliamentary officials, all the way down to individual private citizens.
The first list, it was explained, was everything that would be allowed to remain.
The second, was of everything that would be taken.
If the Screk’s demands were accepted, then the Antares Confederacy would be allowed to
exist within the Miasma.
It could see to its own affairs in whatever manner it wished, and continue to function
without any fear of invasion by the Screk, the Terran Protectorates, or any other outside
force in the galaxy.
This, it was explained, was a victory for Antares.
No species or nation had ever been granted such an offer.
The Confederacy would be permitted to survive, but it would forever renounce any right to
endure beyond the boundaries of the Miasma.
Antares would leave the wider galaxy and never return.
Within the pages of the monumental work known as Ab Urbe Condita Libri, “From the Founding
of the City” the Roman chronicler Titus Livius tells of a moment in the history of
his Empire, when despair threatened to take hold in the heart of every citizen.
The words proclaimed that day were repeated two thousand, five hundred and forty nine
years later, aboard a flotilla of lost colony ships that found themselves stranded in a
vast alien wilderness.
And they were repeated once more, by the representatives of the nation that flotilla had become.
On July 24th, 492al, the largest mobilization in the history of the Antares Confederacy
began.
Fleets moved to their rally points, led by the greatest concentration of military power
ever put into service.
Armies bearing the banners of the Confederacy and every Republic within it moved to their
mustering stations.
And the Screk received their answer: Hic manebimus optime.
Here we will remain most excellently.