Year: 2098 – Two Months After Victory
The world had stopped burning. Smoke no longer poured in black plumes from scorched cities, but the air still carried the iron scent of death and the silent tension of survival. In the aftermath of a war that consumed continents and shattered skies, Earth's surface was a fractured scar, stitched together by tent cities, mobile clinics, and the whirring of reconstruction drones.
The Crimson Maw was broken. Their ships were either destroyed or scuttled, their leaders dead or being dissected in interrogation chambers far beneath the surface of secure facilities. Most traitor governments had collapsed under the weight of their defeat, their collaborators executed or fled into the wilderness, now hunted as war criminals. And yet, peace tasted bitter.
Across former battlefields — Warsaw, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Chongqing, Vancouver, Damascus — flags of a still-fragmented Earth flew beside the banner of the United Earth Defense Command. There was no victory parade, no grand celebration. Only work. Endless work.
UEDC Central Coordination Hub – Geneva
A low hum of generators powered the repurposed Palais des Nations, now the heart of Earth's central military command. Inside, men and women sat hunched over digital war maps and resource allocation models, their eyes red from sleeplessness. Among them sat General Marcus Voss, alive but gaunt, the weight of the war hollowing out even his once-imposing frame.
"59 million dead in Europe alone," he muttered, scrolling through the latest civilian loss reports.
Admiral Katsuro Ichihara, representing the Pacific Alliance, leaned in beside him, arms crossed.
"And those are just the confirmed numbers. Africa's post-war recovery infrastructure is still fragmented. South America hasn't even started post-conflict damage assessment. We could be looking at a global death toll closer to... two hundred million. Maybe more."
Silence. Not out of shock — they had passed that threshold months ago — but from exhaustion. Numbers didn't cause panic anymore. They caused numbness.
Dr. Amira Nassif, coordinator of the World Reconstruction Program, entered with a set of holo-projected documents flaring to life above her wrist.
"Reconstruction efforts are underway," she began, her voice sharp, clipped. "We've secured basic shelter and clean water access for 62% of the displaced. The lunar mining operations have been repurposed to redirect raw materials planetside. Civil engineering drones are already rebuilding hardened infrastructure corridors across North Africa, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia."
"And food?" General Damian Hewt asked.
Nassif didn't hesitate. "Hydroponic yields are stable. Vertical farm districts survived in most major arcologies. The fusion grid is intact. No one's starving, much— though distribution remains a logistical nightmare in South Asia and parts of Brazil."
"And the traitors?" Ichihara added, his voice hardening.
"They're being dealt with," said Damian quietly. "Systematically. But we can't let this turn into a second war — no purges, no massacres. We're doing this clean, by the book."
Ichihara scoffed. "By the book? Have you seen the streets? People are executing collaborators in alleys with garden shears and kitchen knives. They're burning homes. Whole neighborhoods were razed in Gdańsk after a single whispered accusation. You want clean? Give them justice before they give it to themselves."
Reykjavik War Tribunal Complex – Iceland
The Arctic Circle had become the new Geneva. Earth's most secure facility — buried beneath kilometers of ice and reinforced alloy — hosted the joint tribunal for post-war crimes and high-level interrogations. Here, traitor generals, corporate warlords, and Crimson Maw prisoners were processed.
A panel of judges both military and civilian, presided over a stream of cases. Some proceedings lasted weeks. Others, minutes.
One of the former South American cartel generals stood trial, defiant to the end.
"I gave my people power!" he spat, spittle flecking his bloodied lips. "I gave them a future. You gave them chains!"
"You gave them to slavers," the judge replied coldly. "And now you will face what you gave."
Sentence: public execution. Live-streamed. A reminder.
Southern Poland – The Reclamation Belt
Once a battleground, now a blueprint.
Here, the scars of war were not hidden — they were integrated. Bullet-riddled buildings had their facades replaced with reinforced concrete. Collapsed roads had been dug up and replaced by hybrid grav-rail networks. Children now played near walls that once echoed with screams.
But behind the renewal was rage — quiet, simmering. Collaborators who hadn't fled were now part of a national shame. Some were hanged in the town squares by angry neighbors; others were spared only by intervention of military patrols.
Yet for all the violence, cooperation was happening. Engineers from South Korea rebuilt power grids in Ukraine. German fusion experts reworked Turkish cities' shattered infrastructure. Brazilian hydro-farmers arrived in famine-struck Kenya to share tech and manpower. No flags were flown. Only badges — silver with a black insignia: Reconstruction Core.
In Orbit – Athena Array
Above it all, the Deep Crown still floated in silent orbit — scarred, old, but sovereign.
Much of its secrets had already been extracted. But its symbolism remained. To Earth, it was no longer just a relic. It was The Relic. Proof of destiny. Proof that humanity was now part of something greater — and more dangerous.
Within the command decks of Athena's orbital station, research continued, even as thousands died below. Engineers worked in shifts. Linguists decoded still-fragmented logs. A room of diplomats watched star maps shift as new signals were detected.
One such signal, faint but undeniable, had begun pinging from the outer system.
Unknown origin.
Unfamiliar encryption.
It hadn't been answered. Not yet.
Cairo – Civilian Reconstruction Hub
The once-chaotic city was now a model. Half the skyline still lay in ruins, but new towers — energy-efficient, adaptive, clean — rose above the ashes. Civilians walked the streets under shielded lights. There was power, food, security.
And under it all — grief.
A grief that no speech could erase. That no monument could sanctify.
In one district, a mother walked past a wall of names. Names of the dead. Her husband. Her two sons. Her neighbors. Her priest. She touched their names with trembling fingers, then turned to watch a construction crew begin rebuilding the school her youngest once attended.
Behind her, a child's voice whispered, "Mama, was it worth it?"
She didn't answer. She couldn't.
Earth was no longer bleeding, but the wound hadn't closed. Cities smoldered under scaffolds and dust, not fire. Rubble still choked avenues that once led to parliaments and markets. Entire coastlines had shifted under orbital bombardment, while farmlands had been turned to glass or mud by advancing columns of stolen plasma tanks.
But there was movement. Progress. Struggle.
Across what was left of the former European continent, reconstruction centers operated out of retrofitted bunkers, schools, and surviving metro systems. Every government that still had a spine to stand on was digging in to rebuild what they could, and coordinating with those who no longer could. Massive military caravans rolled across broken highways, carrying not troops, but concrete, wiring, new plumbing systems, energy nodes, seeds, filtration pumps, clean clothes, field rations. Tanks had given way to diggers, and uniforms bore flags stitched with dirt and sweat instead of polished emblems.
In Kraków — or what remained of it — a concrete auditorium had been converted into a joint administrative chamber for Reconstruction Zone 4, designated "Balkan-Continental Central." A battered Polish flag hung beside the crests of neighboring states, and the halls were filled with military officials, civilian engineers, economic advisors, and those stubborn few diplomats who hadn't either defected or died.
At the head of the chamber stood Commander Józef Malik — not a war hero, not a general, just a former logistics officer who had kept supplies moving during the bloodiest months of 2095. That alone earned him a voice people listened to.
"Production in the Silesian corridor is stabilizing," Malik said, his voice rasped from too many days without rest. "We can start moving modular housing units into Lesser Poland and Transdanubia by the second week of April."
"That's a miracle considering the entire energy grid there was firebombed by the Atlantic bastards," muttered a Hungarian technician nearby.
One of the Ukrainian delegates raised her hand — a woman in her early forties, sunken cheeks, eyes too sharp for comfort. "We can assist with engineers. Our universities may be shells, but our people haven't forgotten how to wire a reactor. We've already built five temporary shield arrays for Odessa. We can share the blueprints."
Another voice, Serbian — "And power those arrays with what? Old air?"
That sparked murmuring — not angry, just tired. Not one soul in the room had slept more than four hours a night in weeks.
A German representative at the far side of the table cleared his throat. "Solar installations are being shipped up the Danube, via Romanian convoys. The new reactors developed in the Czech zones are holding well. We'll have backup cores online within two months."
Commander Malik leaned over the map table. "Then we hold the line. We've lost too much ground to stall now. If we let this effort fracture, every bastard who sided with Crimson will crawl out from their holes again thinking they were right to do so. Rebuild faster than they can return."
No one argued.
Elsewhere, in Asia:
In what was once Eastern China and coastal Russia, the cleanup was less diplomatic and far more utilitarian.
Entire cities that had sided with the NEC were razed to the ground, not by bombs, but by order. Collaborator regions were declared "structurally compromised" and slated for demolition. Millions displaced — not punished, necessarily, but not trusted either. National lines had blurred, but memories had not.
In Hokkaido, Japanese survivors held a moment of silence in the remains of Sapporo, where rogue NEC units had massacred nearly twenty thousand during the third month of the war, using orbital strikes provided by Crimson Maw ships. Memorial stones were laid not just for the fallen, but for the "Marked" — citizens who had been implanted with tracking devices and used as living shields.
A survivor, middle-aged man with burned hands and a scorched kimono stitched with military tape, wept openly in front of a war memorial that was still being built. Around him, schoolchildren handed out saplings to plant. No words were exchanged.
In South America:
Post-war Bogotá had become one of the new major logistical centers. The Amazon Basin — once a jungle and battleground — now served as a proving ground for some of the most ambitious ecological reconstruction efforts ever attempted.
The warlords who had sided with Crimson had been wiped out or executed, often by their own people. Now, young leaders emerged from those same territories, hardened and disillusioned, but determined not to let their continent fall into cartel rule again.
Mobile terraforming platforms were deployed to cleanse poisoned rivers, repair ecosystems, and in some areas, terraform ruined land into new agricultural zones. These were not romantic efforts — the air still stank of burnt blood and metal, and the mines weren't all cleared — but they were something more than survival.
Africa — Post-Crucible:
No continent had suffered more under the weight of betrayal than Africa.
Some warlords who had joined Crimson fled into the Sahara. Others were hung by their ankles in town squares — often by other warlords who switched sides mid-war. Civilian reprisals were brutal, and often overlooked by the still-battered UN response units. Not because of cruelty, but because no one had the time to police vengeance when millions were starving.
Entire regions in the Congo and Sahel operated under martial law imposed by joint African coalitions, many of them formerly at war with each other. Now they built bridges — literal ones. Metal trusses across chasms created by plasma bombardments. Infrastructure hubs protected by mixed-nationality garrisons, each learning each other's languages in silence.
A young Ghanaian woman named Captain Zara Owusu led a convoy of engineers to rebuild a devastated primary school in Burkina Faso. When a war orphan asked her who she served under, she simply replied: "Earth."
North America & Pacific:
Former traitor zones along the east coast of the United States had been turned into Reconstruction Exclusion Zones. No one in or out without clearance. Many were still patrolled by drones, some former collaborators choosing to disappear into the wilderness, hunted like ghosts by revenge-driven militia squads.
In Canada, the situation was calmer, though grief ran deeper. The betrayal of Pacific factions — especially corporate-run districts of Vancouver and Seattle — had cut through old national pride. There were purges, some silent, some public.
Australia, having fended off a massive Crimson-backed push in the southern deserts, had emerged relatively intact. But it too bore scars. A small desert town known as Broken Ridge, once used as a staging point for Earth traitor forces, had been wiped out entirely — not by plasma, but by citizen uprising. Nothing was rebuilt there. No one wanted to.
And yet… despite the death, the ruin, the grief — there was progress.
Children were born in clean hospitals. Trains ran. Electricity flowed.
The war was over.
But peace? That was something still being written.
The smoke hadn't yet faded, but the embers of the war had given birth to something colder: politics.
What remained of Earth's governments — some crippled, some barely surviving in bunkers and provisional capitals — had begun to talk. Not out of idealism. Not out of hope. But because there was no alternative. The war had unified the trenches; now it had to unify the boardrooms.
For the first time in human history, a global political conference was held not to prevent war, but because war had already erased the lines they once argued over.
It was hosted in a half-rebuilt Geneva, a city that had changed hands four times during the war. The flags that once stood before the old United Nations were gone. In their place stood a single banner of Earth itself.
The conference was officially called the Earth Strategic Recovery Forum, but most just called it "The Quiet War." Because nothing about it was peaceful. It was a battlefield of its own — just one where the weapons were memory, blame, and hard negotiation.
Inside the Geneva Dome — Spring 2098
Representatives from over 102 nations gathered, those that survived. Some representatives arrived in armored convoys, others in patched-up orbital shuttles. Many arrived with bodyguards and contingency plans, still unsure if the conference wouldn't explode like everything else in the past five years.
The opening speech came from Chancellor Dario Mbeki of the Pan-African Transitional Government, a man who had lost his son in the fighting and survived two assassination attempts by former collaborators. His voice, scarred by shrapnel, was low and deliberate:
"We did not survive this war as Americans, or Africans, or Chinese. We survived as humans — or we died as pawns. We lost continents. We lost oceans. But we also lost our delusions. Borders did not stop the Crimson Maw. Only unity did. That truth must stay with us, or this planet will break again."
Silence followed.
And then the arguments began.
Power Blocks Form
The Earth Strategic Recovery Forum (ESRF) quickly divided into three informal power blocs, though their lines were far more fluid than any pre-war alliance:
The Stabilists – Mostly from Europe, North America, and parts of Africa. They had functioning infrastructure and saw the idea of one government as the only path forward. They pushed for strong central governance and rapid unification.
The Autonomists – Comprised of Pacific Rim states, South America, and some African warzones. They feared another imperial structure rising from the ashes and demanded local autonomy within any global framework. Their support came with limits.
The Reclaimers – Made up of war-scarred states, especially those overrun by collaborators. They wanted justice — public trials, purges, reparations. Some were openly hostile to their neighbors across the table.
In one especially tense session, a Bolivian representative stood and read out the names of every mayor and governor executed during the war by South American collaborators — then asked why Brazil hadn't purged theirs.
A shouting match followed. Chairs were nearly thrown. Security intervened.
The wounds weren't healed. But they were being acknowledged.
Uneasy Consensus
Despite the infighting, two common truths emerged in every backroom negotiation and hallway whisper:
Earth could no longer afford fractured governance. The war had proven that alien threats were real, and more were likely to come. The Deep Crown, the Crimson Maw, the whispers of other powers in the galactic void — Earth had only survived because nations put aside their pride and bled together, what was most shocking was that there were other humans on other planets, have been for millenia which has thrown the idea Earth being human homeworld out the window.
Galactic attention was slow to come but it was. Earth was no longer invisible. Signals were being intercepted. Fleets had been noticed. Only saving grace was that Earth was so far off the beaten path and with little to offer that no major galactic power has stirred, probably their major figures don't even know about Earth yet.
In a move that surprised many, smaller nations — long ignored in major global affairs — began asserting themselves with fire-hardened resolve.
Finland, having held out with brutal winter campaigns, demanded a seat at every post-war intelligence committee. "We did not bend," said their scarred Prime Minister. "We froze them instead."
Kenya offered its logistical command models, which had kept relief supplies flowing across a war-torn continent. Their strategy of "mobile governance" was being studied as a potential global model.
Vietnam, whose jungle resistance had tied up entire Crimson divisions, and vanquished others, earned respect even from former rivals. Their commanders were now advisors to the Earth Defense Integration Board.
Their message was clear: "We are no longer footnotes. We fought. We bled. We decide."
What Was at Stake
The real issue wasn't whether to form a global government — most accepted it had to happen.
The question was what kind.
Would it be democratic, technocratic, militaristic?
Would former traitor states be given amnesty or face tribunal justice?
Would rogue corporations be nationalized, destroyed, or absorbed?
Would the military control reconstruction, or would civilian governments retake power?
One delegate, anonymous, was overheard muttering:
"We won the war with soldiers. Now lawyers are going to try and lose the peace."
Betrayal Still Lingers
Not everyone in the room had clean hands. Some had voted to side with the Crimson Maw, under duress or greed. Others had done nothing when neighbors were dragged away. And everyone knew it.
Old alliances trembled. South Korea and Japan refused to sit together at first, citing intelligence leaks during the 2095 sieges. France accused several former officials of aiding the Atlantic Dissidents. In India, a purge was still ongoing, and they had sent no delegate at all — only a recorded message of conditional support.
And hanging over it all, the unspoken fact: many of the war's worst collaborators were still alive, hiding in exile or waiting to be traded as bargaining chips.
But then came the recovered map. On the fourth day of the conference, the Terran Cartographic Bureau — a newly-formed neutral agency — revealed something that shocked the delegates into rare silence.
An ancient star chart. Recovered from the Deep Crown's archive, it showed a sector of the map a bit north and east off the Hutt space and south east of Zyggerian Slave Empire. Decoded with the help of collaborative prisoner experts in hacking, it showed a distant part of the galaxy labeled "Terra Sector."
A Republic-era designation. Over 4,000 years old.
Earth's name, its label — was already there. Not as Earth. Not as Sol. But as Terra.
The chamber fell silent.
Someone called for a recess and to come back to it later when more pressing matters are resolved.
The massive chamber was a testament to Earth's fractured past—a relic once intended for global diplomacy but now a grim theatre for the tired and weary survivors of a world at war with itself and the stars. The air hung thick with smoke from smoldering incense burned to ward off despair, mingling with the metallic scent of unwashed bodies and sweat from countless sleepless nights.
Delegates from the major powers, minor states, and broken remnants of once-mighty nations gathered around an elongated table that looked more like a war council than a place of peace. Many wore uniforms patched with the scars of battle, others in threadbare suits marked by years of austerity. They bore the weight of the past decade's carnage in their weary eyes.
Ambassador Maria Sokolov of the New Baltic Federation was among the first to rise, her voice cutting through the oppressive silence like a cold blade.
"We spent decades on the brink, fighting over scraps of land, fuel, and pride. Entire cities turned to ash because of old grudges and outdated alliances. We bled and died—not at the hands of an alien invader—but by one another's bullets and bombs."
She glanced around the room, holding the gaze of each leader with relentless clarity.
"When the Crimson Maw fleet appeared, no one cared about borders or flags. Soldiers from countries that were mortal enemies saved each other's lives, shared their last rations, and fought side by side. The divisions that once seemed so vital dissolved in blood and fire."
Sokolov's voice cracked slightly, betraying the raw grief beneath her words.
"We are all scars on the same face now. Our enemies forced us to see each other as human beings again, stripped of banners and politics."
Murmurs of assent rippled through the room, though not everyone was ready to embrace such bitter truths.
Prime Minister Hassan Al-Mansur of the Middle Eastern Coalition, his face lined with the deep wrinkles of lost years, shook his head slowly and spoke with the weight of his people's long history.
"Ambassador, what you say is poetic, but it is also dangerously simplistic. Our cultures, our faiths, our very identities are not so easily erased. To suggest that years of strife, centuries of tradition, and thousands of years of language can simply be set aside because of a shared enemy—this is wishful thinking at best, and hubris at worst."
He tapped his fingers on the polished wood, eyes narrowing.
"We cannot forget who we are. To force unity on people who are not ready will only deepen the wounds and risk tearing us apart again. Some will resist. Some will rebel."
General Joseph Madsen of the Scandinavian Union leaned forward, his posture rigid, exuding the hard-earned pragmatism of a soldier who had watched too many friends die.
"Prime Minister, resistance will come regardless. The question is whether we choose to resist each other or the real enemies who tried to break us—both the Crimson Maw and those who betrayed us from within."
His tone was steel, a cold reminder that idealism must be tempered by harsh reality.
"Look around you. Our cities lie in ruins, our people displaced or dead, families torn apart by hunger and disease. The world we once knew is gone. We cannot afford to be prisoners of old hatreds when a new order must be born from these ashes."
There was a long silence before Chancellor Araya Mwale of the Pan-African Bloc spoke softly but with conviction.
"We must build a future that includes everyone—not just the victors or the powerful. If this new order is to succeed, it must be rooted in fairness, justice, and the shared sacrifices we have endured."
His eyes shone with a fierce determination, unbowed despite the exhaustion that marked her features.
"The kingdoms, the nation-states, even the old empires—they have all failed us. Our people deserve better. But better will only come if we look past our divisions and embrace our common humanity."
Away from the prying eyes of the plenary session, private talks revealed even more nuance—and bitterness.
In a dimly lit side chamber, Minister Yuki Tanaka of the Pacific Confederation spoke quietly with her closest advisers.
"Before this war, I never thought I'd find myself fighting alongside Siberian militias or African volunteers. They were strangers to me—'others,' if I'm honest. But now, I see the truth that war forces on us. They are no different from my own people. They bleed, they fear, they hope."
She paused, rubbing her temples as if to stave off a migraine.
"The problem isn't our differences—it's our refusal to recognize what unites us. We wasted so much time and blood fighting each other when the real enemy was always beyond our skies."
Her chief aide nodded gravely.
"The challenge now is how to channel that truth into political will. How to make old enemies into new partners without the bitterness undoing everything."
But even as some began to glimpse unity, the shadow of betrayal cast a long and bloody pall over the proceedings.
Governor Thomas Gallagher of the North American Reconstruction Authority's voice was low and grim as he addressed a small group.
"We can't move forward without first facing the traitors who sold us out to the Crimson Maw. These men and women—some for greed, others out of fear—delayed our defenses, sabotaged supplies, and handed cities to the enemy."
He clenched his fists.
"Their actions cost millions of lives. Entire cities wiped out because a few couldn't stomach loyalty to their own people."
Gallagher's eyes darkened.
"The reprisals have been brutal, but necessary. We've executed hundreds of collaborators, publicly, to remind those who remain that betrayal will not be tolerated. Some of those trials tore us apart—when soldiers had to stand in judgment of their own kin, or when militia leaders ordered executions of neighbors who once fought beside them."
A grim silence followed.
"One story haunts me. A young militia recruit refused to execute his own uncle, a known collaborator. He begged for mercy, said the man was blackmailed, forced into treason. The commanding officer gave no quarter. Both were shot, side by side."
"We are building a new world on the bones of old wounds—and the cost is far greater than most will ever understand."
Despite all the anguish, political leaders and military commanders alike knew that the alternative to unity was the return to chaos.
The weary yet determined faces around the table reflected a grudging acceptance.
"We have no choice," Ambassador Sokolov admitted quietly.
"Either we forge a single future or risk slipping back into endless conflict. History will not forgive us if we fail."
As the sun set beyond the shattered glass of the conference hall, casting long shadows across the weary faces of Earth's leaders, the faintest glimmer of hope took root.
A hope born not of dreams, but of necessity—and the brutal lessons of a war that had tested humanity's very soul.
Location: Geneva Assembly Chamber, Global Security Block
Date: March 3rd, 2098
Speaker: Colonel Adrien Murovich, Strategic Intelligence Bureau (SIB), Unified Reconstruction Command
The chamber was darkened, lights dimmed except for the massive screen behind the speaker's podium. Dozens of heads of state, military officials, and scientific leads leaned forward in their seats. The silence was thick — not from tension, but gravity.
Colonel Adrien Murovich, broad-shouldered and unshaven since the cleanup operations in Angola, stood before them in a plain duty uniform. His face was pale, his voice iron.
He pressed his hand to the biometric pad and began.
"SIB Report 9830-D.
Topic: Preliminary Analysis of Seized Crimson Maw and Collaborator Archives
Data Collection Window: Jan 4 – Feb 25, 2098
Classification: Assembly Eyes Only"
A map of the Sol System flared behind him. Red arrows marked the dozens of hidden caches and depots uncovered over the past two months.
"As of last week, our decryption teams—operating out of the Kaliningrad Vaults and the orbital Node Four facility—have successfully breached four out of six primary data banks extracted from Crimson Maw command vessels and rogue Earth-based server clusters.
Combined volume: 12.4 exabytes of raw data."
"The most immediate discovery: this war was not isolated. The Crimson Maw was only one appendage of a larger structure. A web of disconnected pirate clans, rogue kajidics, and extremist slaver cults operate beyond known Republic monitoring zones. At least 42 systems outside charted space have been used in the last twenty years to traffic slaves, weapons, and information."
He tapped a switch, bringing up an image of a rusted orbital dock hanging over a blue moon.
Subsection 1: Slave Trade Extent
"Of the original 80,000 collared slaves deployed during the inital invasion of Earth, fewer than half were originally from Earth.
Our best estimate suggests roughly 35,000 came from elsewhere."
"These include humanoid species unknown to us. Genetic sequencing has identified 27 distinct sapient races, including multiple near-human species. Many appear to have been enslaved for multiple generations. This was not a campaign — it was a pipeline."
"The scale is staggering. In the past five years alone, the Crimson Maw managed to process over 6.1 million sentients through hidden depots on six worlds, three of which are confirmed to still be active."
One image showed a massive crater complex on a scorched planet — living quarters, collars piled like bones, scorched branding pits.
Someone in the room exhaled sharply. Another whispered, "God..."
Subsection 2: Infrastructure, Technology, Expansion
"Captured logs show that Crimson Maw leadership intended to use Earth as a nexus node — not merely a conquest.
Their original plan was to retrofit our orbital platforms for trafficking, and convert Earth's major population centers into industrial slave centers."
"New York, Istanbul, Lagos, São Paulo, and Jakarta were all flagged for conversion — specifically due to their existing underground infrastructure, rapid transport capacity, and high civilian density."
"The Maw brought with them prefabricated command nodes and auto-forges capable of producing plasma-based tools and surveillance tech. Several of these devices were hidden in caverns beneath Brazil, Central Europe, and Siberia. These are now being excavated under the Emergency Protocols."
A few eyes shifted in the chamber. He ignored them.
Subsection 3: Collaborators and Asset Networks
"From Earth's side, the betrayal was far worse than anticipated."
The screen split into six panels. Surveillance footage, stolen encrypted files, corporate messages, shipping manifests.
"Galvanex Industries ran 12 off-books orbital stations, three of which were reconfigured to serve as slave transport relays.
Orion Holdings coordinated at least 68 unauthorized intercontinental logistics flights, many of them camouflaged under humanitarian aid efforts.
Helix Dynamics experimented on over 9,000 live prisoners and undocumented individuals across five underground labs in Africa and Asia."
A bitter pause.
"At least two major superpowers on Earth knew this was happening. Intelligence leaks now confirm that members of both the NEC and the Atlantic Dissidents had prior communications with Crimson Maw envoys dating back to 2087."
"This means planning for Earth's invasion began six years before their arrival."
Subsection 4: Personnel Data
"Recovered manifests suggest that the Crimson Maw's offworld slaver armies had a skewed gender composition.
Combat rosters indicate a 3:1 male-to-female ratio across both alien and human slave-soldier regiments."
"The Maw preferred using women for logistics, maintenance, and medical work — while deploying male slaves en masse for assault and occupation. This imbalance is likely due to their market structure — male slaves fetched lower prices and were more 'expendable' during planetary conquests."
"Earth-born slaves were divided similarly: men used as front-line fodder or heavy labor, women as admin, translators, or controlled 'comfort' assets."
One councilwoman stood up and stormed out of the chamber. No one stopped her.
Subsection 5: Threat Assessment
"The war may be over. This network is not."
"We have confirmation of encrypted pings being sent from three systems in the past 72 hours. Unanswered. We suspect these are fallback protocols or distress signals triggered by the loss of the Earth operation."
"It's also clear that the Maw's database was not the only archive. Some command ships deliberately erased segments during their final days.
We believe Earth was a 'test run' for larger campaigns. There are names we haven't cracked yet, titles of Crimson Maw branches we haven't encountered."
"We must assume there are others — better organized, better funded — watching what just happened."
He closed the file. The lights came up slowly.
"We must decide, now, if Earth is going to hide from the galaxy…
Or if we are going to prepare for it. We were prey. And we got lucky.
But next time… next time, luck may not be enough."
Later, a massive display shimmered to life on the central holowall of the assembly chamber — a highly detailed star map of the known galaxy, compiled from captured data cores, decrypted archives from the Crimson Maw, and fragmented logs taken from wrecked slaver command ships. The map was immense, overlaying thousands of hyperlanes, regional influences, and major polities — a dynamic network of dominance, conflict, and fragile neutrality representing millions of different planets and trillions and trillions of sentient life.
High Marshal Erwan Kalov, tall and weather-worn, stood before the hologram, arms behind his back, his voice calm but serious.
"This... is what we now understand of the galaxy at large," he began, as murmurs spread through the chamber. "Our position is here—"
A soft pulse illuminated a region far to the northeast fringe, just beyond what the galactic powers considered Uncharted Space. Earth was marked as a faint blue dot surrounded by a swathe of dark, empty territory — labeled by some captured charts as The Uncharted Reaches. To the galactic core, many referred to it as Wild Space. Earth now knew better.
"We are far from the center of things," Kalov continued. "And that has been our shield and our prison."
To the west and south of Earth's position sprawled a dense green sector — the domain of Hutt Space, a fractious oligarchy of cartel rulers, filled with the scum of the galaxy. While the mainstream Hutts did not join the venture with the Crimson Maw invasion, Earth intelligence still viewed them with caution. Their borders, thick and vibrant on the map, marked a volatile buffer between major powers.
Further northwest of Earth, a crimson expanse loomed: The Sith Empire, identified not just by the map, but through the heavily biased historical records accessed through the Information Matrix. Although Earth had yet to encounter any Sith operatives, the data characterized them as the military might behind an expansive Imperial machine — technologically sophisticated, politically authoritarian, and actively engaged in galactic war with their most ancient foe.
Just a bit south of that sat a fanged wedge of orange and grey space labeled the Zygerrian Slave Empire — their name alone evoked immediate disgust and tension in the chamber. The Crimson Maw had drawn heavily from Zygerrian training methods, slave-control tech, and political ideologies.
"We are surrounded by powers for whom slavery is still a living institution," Kalov said bitterly, highlighting dozens of minor empires, syndicates, and neutral zones that bordered Hutt or Sith space. "We know now that what struck us was not even a true galactic power. It was a rogue element—a fragment, a literal 3rd rate band"
The central part of the galaxy, covered in deep blue tones, represented the Galactic Republic, flanked by its protectorates, independent allies, and semi-autonomous sectors. The Jedi Order operated here — the records described them as peacekeepers and mystics, although heavily idealized from Republic perspectives. Some accounts, however, portrayed them as guardians of stagnation and inertia, agents of a dying bureaucracy.
To the north of the Republic, a smattering of orange territories marked independent realms like the Mandalorian Clans, or the Corporate sector while something called the Chiss Ascendancy was in similar isolated space as them just to the west of the galactic centre, with smattering of other minor powers throughout the galaxy. The Tion Hegemony and Corporate Alliance appeared in varying shades, fragmented and politically unstable.
"What we face is not a question of who is 'good' or 'evil'," Kalov said, flicking through maps showing the Third Galactic War's frontlines. "It is survival. For many of these powers, we are an opportunity. A resource. Or a threat yet to be understood."
He gestured again, highlighting the space routes near Earth's location.
"These are the Crimson Maw's plotted arrival vectors," he explained. "They used outdated but functional hyperspace routes connecting fringe Sith space to slaver enclaves in the mid-rim, then made a catastrophic blind jump through an unstable hyperlane—an anomaly. It dropped them near us."
The hologram zoomed in further, displaying hidden jump beacons, refueling stations, and two uncharted systems which may have served as Crimson Maw logistical outposts prior to the invasion. It became increasingly clear: Earth had been within reach of galactic expansion for decades. They simply hadn't known it.
"We were blind," one delegate muttered. "But they saw us."
Kalov nodded.
"And others may too."
He turned toward the assembly.
"We have discovered that multiple factions, including some fringe Sith Lords and outlaw corporations, had begun mapping our region in secret long before the Maw arrived. One even marked Earth as Aria-Prime — likely a code for resource extraction."
A chill swept through the room.
"So we were never hidden," murmured another voice. "Just ignored... until now."
Kalov nodded. "The galaxy's major players may be too entangled in their own wars to care. For now. But others — opportunists, pirates, slavers, even cults — will come. And they will be worse."
The screen now displayed over twenty different emblems — crime syndicates, rogue Sith orders, slaver guilds, corporate militias — each with known operations in the regions adjacent to Earth.
"We have confirmed encrypted supply manifests and shipment logs. The Maw trafficked slaves not just from Earth... but to other planets. Some from other sectors were brought here. Others... taken off-world."
"Taken where?" a voice asked sharply.
Kalov paused. Then the hologram changed again — a bleak asteroid field surrounding a red dwarf, marked unknown sector, with two abandoned stations and what appeared to be shielded slave storage vaults. A faint signal beacon had activated days before Earth forces arrived.
"We believe some slaves — Earthborn and alien — were stored here. Stasis tubes, long-term transport pods. Possibly waiting for offload at more permanent slave markets deeper into Sith or Zygerrian space."
A silence hung over the chamber like a funeral cloth.
"Some may still be alive," he said softly.
He let that sink in.
"And if there are survivors, we will find them."
The map zoomed out again, Earth's position slowly blinking in the void. A solitary light surrounded by unknowns — empire, war, and predation on all sides.
"This is the galaxy we have stepped into," Kalov said. "We have no more illusions. We have knowledge. We have scars. And now… we have purpose."
Kalov stepped back from the hologram as murmurs swelled into murmured discussions across the assembly. Delegates and military officials leaned into their consoles, reading briefing files that updated in real-time with the latest recovered galactic intelligence. The room felt heavier now, not only with grief and exhaustion from years of war, but with the sobering weight of their new reality.
The era of Earth's isolation was over.
Standing in the back rows, Commander Tasya Moroz of the Mediterranean Joint Guard leaned toward her colleague, a grizzled American veteran named Hargrave.
"Do you think the others out there know what happened here?" she asked quietly, her eyes still fixed on the expanding galactic map.
Hargrave didn't answer immediately. His face was drawn and unreadable, eyes reflecting the shifting glow of Hutt space and Republic territory.
"I think some of them helped make it happen," he finally said. "And now they're watching to see how we survive it."
A new voice rose from the central stage — Chancellor Sofia Ortega, newly elected by the Interim Planetary Assembly and one of the few recognizable faces who had led Earth's civil governance during the latter days of the war.
She stepped forward, speaking not just to the men and women in the room, but to the thousands watching across the rebuilt networked world — a world of ruins, shelters, and rebuilding.
"What Marshal Kalov has shown us," Ortega began, "isn't just that we've been found. It's what was already known."
She turned to face the map again, focusing on the blinking points of light where Crimson Maw staging stations had once operated.
"We were observed. Cataloged. Measured. And judged to be weak enough to exploit — not by one empire, but by the refuse of many."
She highlighted a few routes — known hyperspace corridors running near the Zygerrian Empire and Sith border worlds.
"According to seized communications, some within the Sith border realms knew of something being planned near the galactic northeast. Whether they knew it was us or not is unclear — but they allowed rogue fleets to pass. They sold arms and slave collar tech, even bio-modified sedatives"
She turned back to the audience.
"We are not alone. But that does not mean we have allies."
That last line sank hard into the silence.
Suddenly, one of the central screens shifted — a bold red alert flashing Translated Intercept: Encrypted Slave Shipment Manifest. A team of linguists and analysts had been working for weeks to parse what had once been layered in triple-encryption across five languages.
It was now mostly deciphered. The categories chilled everyone.
Primary Shipment Sources:
Aria-Prime (Earth) – 502,000 individuals, mostly war ready slaves
Ryloth (unauthorized raids) – 556,600 individuals, mostly Twi'lek females
Pau City (fringe colony) – 351,100 forced laborers
Unspecified penal colonies – 800,000 "biological stock"
Final Destinations:
Vault Station Thesh-9 (confirmed destroyed in final Earth orbital battle)
Exchange Hub Kura-Vess (status: unknown, believed active in Zygerrian corridor)
"Dark Nest" (location redacted – requires further tracing)
Notes:
17% of Earth-captured individuals sold into psychic override programs
Estimated 6% already deceased during transit
31% slotted for resale to Vahla or Sith-aligned buyers
This was what the Crimson Maw had done.
And they hadn't done it alone.
Kalov resumed his place beside the Chancellor.
"We have also uncovered signs of further rogue elements operating inside other empires," he continued. "Splinter Sith lords. Pirate barons. There are whispers of something called the 'Dark Sun Circle,' though our intel remains fragmentary."
A projected symbol appeared on the screen — a triangle of scorched stars with a sun-like orb behind it, marked in bloodred.
"They don't act openly. Not yet," Kalov said. "But they trafficked in weapons, in slaves… even in forbidden tech. Some of the neural shock collars were not Zygerrian design. They were something else."
He brought up a new slide — schematics of a collar-like device that pulsed with unfamiliar energy signatures.
"These were traced to old Sith tomb worlds — Korriban, Ziost. Tech that supposedly hadn't been seen in millennia. Which means someone… somewhere… is digging up ancient horrors, manufacturing them and selling them to the highest bidder."
A wave of discomfort swept across the room. Even hardened war veterans shifted in their seats. The idea that Sith war relics were being reactivated and distributed on black markets struck a very specific nerve.
Chancellor Ortega clasped her hands behind her back.
"Let me be clear. This wasn't just a rogue fleet. This was an experiment. A proof of concept. A field test for technology and control methods meant for larger operations — maybe even full planetary assimilation programs."
She gestured toward the image of the Unknown Regions — dark, cloudy, and marked only with vague warnings.
"We may not be the last world they try this on. But we will be the last world they succeed with."
A sudden crackle on the floor indicated incoming data — a security delegation from South America had just forwarded decrypted messages from a former Atlantic Dissident commander captured weeks ago. Among his confession logs were discussions of "interstellar trial runs" for managing populations under total cognitive suppression — using not just tech, but biochemical mood regulators and VR suppression fields.
They'd begun testing them in parts of coastal Brazil. That explained the comatose civilian camps Earth soldiers had uncovered — entire villages lobotomized and pacified.
And it wasn't just for control.
One file stood out — a requisition form for "5,000 compliant Earth specimens for off-world memory-stripping and psychological resequencing." It bore no clear destination but had Zyggerian Imperial formatting.
"We have reason to believe," Kalov said grimly, "that some of our people have already been reshaped… to forget who they are. What planet they're from."
"And used to infiltrate other systems," Ortega finished.
A hush fell. The map once more zoomed out — this time to show everything. Earth was not a dot anymore. It was a wound — visible and bleeding — that the rest of the galaxy might soon come looking to reopen.
Or finish.
"This is our position," Kalov said, eyes scanning the room. "We've survived what was meant to break us. We are not ready for peace because we are not allowed peace. The predators in this galaxy do not rest."
"And neither will we."
The lights dimmed.
The vast chamber had gone quieter in the last seven days. Not for lack of activity — quite the opposite — but due to exhaustion and grim sobriety. The galaxy had been revealed. Not in grandeur, not in triumph. But in threat. In theft. In blood.
The same figures sat again at their respective seats — world leaders, generals, intelligence directors, scientists, and foreign policy architects. The circular table now displayed more refined stellar data, updated and cross-referenced with decrypted manifests and active reconnaissance from Earth's new orbital tracking systems.
A holographic tag still blinked slowly: Recovered Manifest: Crimson Maw Vault K-6, pulsing red with every half-second — a slow heartbeat of atrocity.
High Marshal Erwan Kalov stood again, but his expression was harder than before, jaw slightly clenched, voice tighter.
"A week ago, we learned that Earth is not just on the edge of the galaxy… we are on the edge of every moral and strategic failure it allows."
He tapped a control, and the galactic map zoomed back in — this time, highlighting not just borders, but movements. Smuggling lanes. Slave shipping patterns. Known black-market exchanges. Half of it came from Crimson Maw data. The other half — disturbingly — from legitimate trade manifests tolerated by larger galactic powers, even the self proclaimed "good" Republic and Jedi.
A web of red, grey, and green streaked the stars like infected veins.
"This is where the Maw sent its captives. This is where Zygerrian Empire commerce intersects Republic patrol lanes. Where Hutt cartels dock legally at 'neutral ports.' And here" — he highlighted a wide band of blue in the galactic core — "is where the Republic looks the other way."
Gasps rose in the room. A few curses.
Director Faizan spoke up, arms crossed and dark-eyed.
"We've intercepted communications confirming Republic internal divisions. Multiple sectors have outlawed slave trading by law — but enforcement varies wildly. In some areas, 'compliance zones' allow for regulated indenture systems — a euphemism for slavery approved under economic emergency clauses."
President Sani of the Pan-African Union slammed a fist into his table.
"So they pretend to be the beacon of civilization while letting monsters set up shop in their backyard?"
Faizan didn't argue.
"They turn a blind eye when it's inconvenient. And they're too fractured, too old to adapt. Corruption isn't a worm in the system. It is the system in places."
Kalov picked back up, voice low and direct.
"The Jedi — supposedly the moral backbone of their system — have gone silent on these sectors. We've found recordings of them actively avoiding border worlds where known slave guilds operate. That silence has teeth."
Chancellor Ortega leaned forward, voice like cold steel.
"Then we name them for what they are. Complicit. If they tolerate evil for the sake of stability, they are not our allies. They are collaborators in a larger crime."
Kalov nodded grimly. He flicked to the next display — intercepted images and recovered surveillance from Maw ships: Zygerrian officers laughing as Earth-born slaves were loaded into stasis pods; cartel representatives inspecting goods — human goods — with scanpads; even documentation of buyers marked with Republic commercial insignias.
Not sanctioned. But not hidden either.
"These images were taken at Junction Port 14-Theta," Kalov said. "A known transit hub in the Mid Rim. Officially neutral. But it processes nearly 15% of the total Hutt and Zygerrian cargo. The Republic sends one inspection vessel per year. It gives them plausible deniability."
He paused as the next slide appeared: images of Earth-born prisoners on other worlds.
One showed a girl, no older than twelve, collared and seated in a glass cell on a jungle world. Her file: "Unit 6440, Type: Labor-Grade, Origin: Aria-Prime." Another showed several adult men — scarred and chained — digging in crimson soil near ancient ruins on a remote Sith-aligned colony.
"Some of them have been off-world for years. Before the invasion. This has been happening since at least 2090. Possibly earlier. We were being harvested long before we knew we were in a garden."
Choking silence filled the room again.
Vice Minister Liao of the Eastern Cooperative finally spoke, voice grave.
"Have we made contact with any of the other powers, have they responded to our inquiries? Or our warnings?"
Faizan shook her head.
"No, it is too dangerous, as of now we are invisible for the most part, this is our shield, we are too weak."
That stung everyone in the room.
Commander Hargrave from the North American Recovery Command shifted in his seat.
"What about other factions in the wild, uncharted regions like the Chiss?"
Faizan frowned.
"They're silent. We suspect they simply do not care and from the recorded history we have of them they are ultra-isolationist. They have their own reasons apparently, other warmongering species and from history it shows that they rarely if ever share information freely."
Kalov tapped another control.
"We're consolidating everything we've found — routes, stations, collaborators, names, buyers. And now we prepare."
He clicked again — bringing up a list of known off-world slave transit stations. Marked with red X's: those already destroyed or abandoned during the final battles. Marked with yellow: those likely still active.
There were many yellow markers.
"We've identified eleven hubs still active. Two deep in Zygerrian space. Three under Hutt control. One that may be Republic-affiliated. The rest are unknowns. We believe Earth-born prisoners — our people — are still held there. And we intend to recover them."
A murmur of support swelled into open applause — bitter, thunderous, fueled by grief and fury. Kalov raised one hand to silence it.
"We must be precise. And we must be ruthless. These systems won't give up their slaves out of guilt. They'll only do it when they believe the price for keeping them is higher than the profit."
Ortega spoke again, stepping forward, her voice softer this time, yet unyielding.
"We have made many mistakes. We were not ready for the galaxy. But now we see it — truly. Not through the lens of myth or hope, but fact. We are surrounded by scavengers. Pirates. Tyrants. And yes… pretenders of justice who sell it to the highest bidder."
Her gaze scanned the room.
"We will not become like them. But neither will we beg them to like us."
The display dimmed. Earth's blinking position remained. But the shadows around it no longer seemed vast and unknowable — they were mapped. Tracked. And ready to be met with steel and fire.
The scars of the Crimson War had not healed. But they had hardened. And now… Earth prepared to reach out not with trust.
But with weapons drawn.
The skies over Zurich were still recovering.
Even three months after the war's end, fires still flickered in the high valleys of what used to be prime economic zones. Skyscrapers that once pierced the clouds now stood as shattered tombstones. Yet beneath them, inside the subterranean chambers of the old European Coalition complex, a series of emergency escalators descended into a vast forum — temporary, modular, and heavily guarded.
It was here, under layers of steel and silence, that the first true talks of planetary unification had begun.
No ceremonial flags. No anthems. Just scars, warnings, and a cold clarity shared by those who had lost too much to continue as before.
The chamber was made of sloped concrete, recently reinforced with salvaged alloys from fallen orbital wreckage. On the center stage: a hexagonal table of ash-black metal. Around it: representatives from what remained of the major blocs.
There were no applause lines. No cameras. Just a decisions.
Chancellor Sofia Ortega sat at the edge of the circle, no longer presiding over a war council, but something far more dangerous — peace.
She leaned forward.
"We have lived separately. We fought the war as one species, but from a thousand splintered bunkers and command centers. That is no longer sustainable."
No one objected — yet.
High Marshal Kalov, seated to her left, looked even older under the low ceiling lights. He did not speak — not yet — but his presence was enough. The man who had guided the last months of the war did not need to raise his voice to project power.
The representative from the Bharat Syndicate, Rajendra Kulkarni, a rail-thin man with fire in his voice, nodded slowly.
"We've all seen the same data," he said. "The galaxy is fractured. Savage. But unified when it needs to be. When it sees prey. If we do not unite now, we invite dismemberment."
Vice Minister Liao of the Eastern Cooperative interjected.
"But we cannot pretend there's no blood on our hands. Many of our nations failed to act until it was nearly too late. Some even collaborated, or looked the other way. Unity after betrayal is not just a signature on paper. It's a reckoning."
Hargrave, commander-turned-representative of the North American Recovery Command, looked toward her and spoke with gravel in his throat.
"Then reckon. But reckon fast. Because those Maw bastards were the bottom feeders. What's coming next will be smarter. Better funded. Coordinated. If we don't have one chain of command… if we don't have one face to show the stars, we'll be picked apart."
Across the table, General Ireti Adegoke of the Pan-African Union stood.
"We won the war with blood, not flags. Not ideologies. But when it mattered — when our cities burned and our skies collapsed — it was the joint task forces, the underground militias, and the hastily formed alliances that turned the tide. Not governments. Not parliaments."
Her voice cracked just slightly.
"The people are ahead of us. They're already rebuilding together. They're already trading, protecting, mourning — together. If we as leaders don't follow their lead… we'll lose them again."
Silence followed. Not of disagreement — but of realization.
That was when Ortega stood again.
"We have something rare. Something unprecedented."
A small hologram flared to life above the table. It wasn't a weapon or a planet or a star map.
It was a corpse — an alien overseer from one of the Crimson Maw slave ships. Dissected. Studied. Marked. And labeled.
"Every major power on this planet contributed to its death. To the decoding of its language. To the breakdown of its neural control mechanisms. Every soldier who fought in those last boarding actions bled for the same reason — survival. And vengeance."
She let the image disappear, replaced by a series of overlapping global maps — economic flows, ruined cities, relief supply routes, and reconstruction hubs.
"And every factory being rebuilt… is interlinked. Not by trade. Not by treaty. But necessity."
Now a third hologram emerged. The faces of captured collaborators. Executed traitors. Blackmailers. Warlords. Opportunists.
"The ones who divided us before… are gone. Or buried. Or burned."
Kalov finally spoke. Just three words.
"No more factions."
It wasn't a command. It was a statement of reality.
Vice Minister Liao spoke again.
"So what do we call it? This unity?"
Ortega raised her eyes slowly.
"We don't call it anything yet. Names have power. Too much power. For now… we structure it. Functionally. Joint military oversight. Shared intelligence banks. One budget for off-world operations. One tribunal for off-world crimes."
"And Earth?" Hargrave asked. "Does it have a seat… or a throne? Maybe a king?"
Ortega looked around, her voice quiet but sharp.
"It has a responsibility."
She sat back down.
And for the first time since the Crimson Maw invasion, the representatives of Earth — battered, bloodied, grieving — began laying down the foundations of something greater than survival.
They were not yet one world.
But they were no longer many.
It had taken twenty-one days, five constitutional drafts, and two walkouts — but in the end, they returned.
Not because they had all agreed, but because they all understood what happened the last time Earth was divided.
The Zurich subterranean complex — once an emergency shelter, now an impromptu planetary war council turned future-seat of unity — was filled once again. Not with apprehension, but a new, foreign emotion:
Commitment.
The air inside the main chamber was taut with it. No guards fidgeted. No aides whispered. Even the monitors refrained from cycling visual noise. Everything waited.
At the center stood Chancellor Sofia Ortega, no longer just a war-time figurehead. Behind her: Marshal Kalov, looking like he had aged a decade in the last few weeks, and several interim delegates that had become more like caretakers of a newborn planet than representatives of their regions.
A massive holoscreen flickered to life above them, shimmering with a stylized projection of Earth. Still scarred. Still ringed by orbital debris. But whole.
Sofia raised her hand and the room stilled.
"For thousands of years we called this world by a thousand different names," she began. "Some were born of faith. Others of conquest. Most of habit. But now we face a galaxy that will not ask who we are."
She paused.
"They will decide what we are."
She turned, gesturing toward someone to display a map at the center of the room. It showed a clearly heavily aged star chart, evidenced by the huge empty regions and sectors that 4,000 were still not discovered. It had been recovered from the Crimson Maw Archives.
The chart had a single marking near the northeast fringe of the galaxy, where Earth now sat, just beyond old Hutt routes and south of Zygerrian slaver lanes. It had been labeled not "Earth," not "Sol," not "Human Sphere" — but one ancient, speculative label used by long-dead xenoarchivists who had theorized about uncontacted sectors:
Terra.
That name now glowed on the table in clean white letters. Above it, a second word blinked beside the ancient one — typed in modern script, bolder than the original:
Dominion.
The murmurs began again, but none in protest.
Ortega continued.
"This is not an empire. We do not seek subjugation. Nor is it a federation. There is no opting out of survival. We are not a republic — not yet. That takes time, culture, and trust."
Her voice hardened.
"What we are — is bound. By blood. By ruin. By vengeance. By duty. We stand not above each other, but behind one another."
She raised her hand again toward the screen now displaying:
TERRAN DOMINION
— Provisional Unified Governance Charter Ratification — Year 2098 —
Marshal Kalov stepped forward now, his voice a guttural rasp.
"There will be one chain of command for off-world operations. One military structure. One intelligence core. Our space fleets — still being rebuilt and retrofitted with modern technology scavenged and reverse engineered from the war— will be unified under a joint commission. Our colonies — when we make them — will not be the domain of any one state."
He looked across the table.
"We may differ in law. In speech. In belief. But when the stars look back down at us — they will see one flag."
He nodded toward one of the aides. A digital relay sent the file through.
The screen shifted once more.
A slow unfurling revealed the finalized design of the unified planetary banner: deep crimson, veined with gold filigree around a circular gray, gold, red sigil in the shape of a rectangle but with 6 sides going from top point to the bottom with a forward shield protecting a longe star, Earth. the old mark of Earth or Terra was some weird hexagonal shape with a weird emblem in the middle but it was not adopted.
There was no cheering.
Just a silence so dense it felt like gravity itself had thickened.
Sofia Ortega looked down at her console and placed her hand on the ratification imprint. One by one, the others followed.
General Adegoke. Vice Minister Liao. Hargrave. Kulkarni. Commander Tasya Moroz. One by one, the hands rose and fell. Steel meeting steel.
It was done.
No celebration. Not yet. Just the echo of the last press — the final consent.
And then Ortega spoke again, voice low, barely more than breath.
"We are Terran now."
She paused.
"And they will remember us."
Outside, in the ravaged cities and rebuilt settlements, the broadcast was carried across old war networks and reconstructed communication lines. In bunkers, people wept. In towers, they raised glasses. In orphan halls, the children asked what it meant.
And everywhere, the new flag began to rise — sometimes over ruins. Sometimes over scaffolding. But always higher than before.
The new flag flew everywhere, but not everyone saluted it.
Across the battered continents of Earth, the rise of the Terran Dominion triggered a surge of emotion that could not be confined to words or ceremony. It was history in motion — and history never moved cleanly.
Some reactions were celebratory.
In Johannesburg, survivors danced barefoot on the scorched marble of what had once been the old Parliament. The square had turned into a cratered ruin during the Maw sieges, but now, amid the rubble, speakers blared music. Not a national anthem — no single culture claimed this moment — but a rolling mix of battle chants, folk songs, and reconstructed orchestral pulses. A Dominion flag stitched from salvaged tarp and crimson-dyed curtain fabric was raised on a piece of rebar, and no one questioned it.
In Jakarta, refugees and militia veterans set off flares and handheld beacons atop the cratered skyline. "We lived," they wrote in chalk and ash. "Now we build."
In northern Mexico, in a town that had once been wiped off the map by a Crimson Maw orbital strike, locals rebuilt the old bell tower. The first bell rang for the dead. The second for the lost. The third — for the Dominion. And the sound rippled through the valley like the beginning of a new calendar.
But not all responses were joyous.
In parts of Central Europe, where betrayal had cut deep and neighbor had turned on neighbor, the Dominion flag sparked argument, not unity. Some refused to raise it at all — not out of disloyalty, but out of raw grief. They had given everything. Too much. And what they received in return felt more like duty than healing.
In Warsaw, a former militia leader knelt beside his brother's grave and watched as Dominion soldiers erected a small outpost nearby. He said nothing. Just stared at the flag as it rose over the base, his face unreadable. When a reporter asked for comment, he simply said:
"I buried half my family. The other half helped kill them. I'm still deciding how I feel."
In former Atlantic Dissident strongholds, where the Dominion's rise came on the heels of military tribunals and rapid purges, the population reacted with quiet compliance. Some buildings bore no flags. Others flew them upside down. In Glasgow, Dominion officers reportedly had to intervene when ex-dissident civilians tried to burn the new flag in a closed alley. It was put out. No arrests were made. But the message was clear: unity, yes — but under watchful eyes.
And yet, even in the shadows of resentment, hope stirred.
In Tokyo, children lined up to receive bread rations from rebuilt supply posts. On each ration bag was a stamped seal of the Dominion. The kids didn't know the political arguments. They only knew the food came now. And the skies were quieter.
In the newly reclaimed parts of the Amazon Basin, drones patrolled from reconstructed watchtowers built in harmony with the surviving jungle. Scientists and survivalists — once adversaries during the Crimson incursion — now coordinated ecological clean-up together under Dominion funding. One of them, a grizzled veteran named Theo Damásio, was quoted in an early broadcast:
"I didn't fight three years to wave a piece of cloth. But if it keeps us from killing each other while we heal this forest, I'll plant that bastard flag myself."
Meanwhile, in the surviving pockets of New York — a city now a broken skeleton of what it once was — graffiti bloomed on every remaining upright wall.
Some of it bore slogans:
NO MORE CHAINS.
WE DIED FOR THIS.
TERRAN AND PROUD.
But others were more bitter:
WHERE WAS UNITY WHEN WE NEEDED IT?
A FLAG WON'T FIX GRAVES.
DON'T FORGET THE TRAITORS.
The Dominion's Public Sentiment Council, hastily formed to monitor global morale, released its first findings that same week.
62% of surveyed survivors expressed cautious support for a unified planetary government.
21% stated neutrality, citing grief, trauma, or lack of trust.
11% expressed outright opposition or resentment.
6% refused to answer or feared reprisal.
It was not a mandate. But it was enough.
Back in Zurich, Chancellor Ortega addressed the global population via reconstructed orbital comm-nets. Her speech was short. Purposeful.
"We do not expect celebration. Not yet," she said, her face lined and raw on every screen. "We expect anger. Mourning. Doubt. That is honest. That is human. We do not want false joy. We want you to live long enough to find real joy again."
Then she finished with the line that would be burned into textbooks for generations to come:
"Unity is not a prize. It is a price. And we have paid it."
Across Earth, people stood in silence.
And then, slowly, the flags kept rising.
Some were printed. Some were burned. Some were drawn in blood. Some were etched into broken walls. But they all bore the same mark.
The gold, crimson, grey Terran shield.