Reinhardt had seen enough of the false prosperity of the Relay Station.
He didn't say goodbye to anyone.
For a world about to be purified, there was no need for goodbyes.
Using his personal terminal, he hacked into the port management system of the Relay Station. His soul, blessed by the Emperor, gave him a near-intuitive understanding of data flow. He easily bypassed those crude firewalls, moving through the sea of data like fish through water.
He needed a ship.
A ship that could leave the core territory of the United Earth Goverment and head for the border.
Soon, he found his target.
"Bison six," a cargo ship registered under a small mining company. Its flight application was for the outer mining belt of the Turanks system, the outermost edge of UEG territory, bordering the chaotic spheres of influence of several non-diplomatic alien civilizations.
This was a gray route.
To save jump energy and evade interstellar taxes, the captain often deviated from established lanes, traveling through undeveloped, wild star systems.
A perfect target.
Reinhardt didn't alert anyone; he simply added a non-existent "Intern Engineer" to the end of the bison six crew list. A reasonable identity that wouldn't attract any attention.
Then, he deleted all his temporary identity information from the UEG network.
Like a drop of water merging into the sea, he left no trace.
At the scheduled departure time, Reinhardt, wearing grease-stained gray overalls and carrying a simple pack, blended in with a group of boisterous dockworkers and boarded the bison six berth.
The interior of the freighter was a stark contrast to the glitz and glamour of the Relay Station.
The air was thick with the smell of engine oil and metallic rust. The corridors were narrow, the walls covered in messy pipelines and dents. There was no soft lighting, only flickering emergency lights and harsh maintenance lamps.
This familiar smell of cold steel actually gave Reinhardt a long-lost sense of peace.
He found his quarters, a narrow storage room where it was difficult even to turn around.
This was what he deserved.
The captain was a fat man with a face full of rough flesh. He glanced at Reinhardt's forged ID, looked his thin body up and down, and snorted disdainfully.
"Kid, stay in your kennel and don't cause me trouble. And don't go to the lower cargo hold; the guests there have bad tempers."
After saying that, he left without looking back.
Reinhardt didn't care.
Soon, a violent vibration came from the hull, a signal of detaching from the station's gravity anchors.
This was followed by a slight, almost imperceptible sense of weightlessness.
The jump began.
Through the stained circular observation window in his room, Reinhardt saw the starlight outside stretch, distort, and finally turn into a band of multicolored light.
He had left.
Left that nauseating utopia.
The ship traveled through space for several days.
During this time, Reinhardt spent most of his time in his small cubicle, studying the star charts he had already downloaded to his personal terminal.
Occasionally, he would go to the crew's mess hall.
It was a noisy, greasy place where the crew drank low-quality synthetic alcohol while loudly bragging and complaining.
Reinhardt always chose the most inconspicuous corner to sit and listen silently.
These rough men making a living on the border spoke of the true face of this universe.
"...Damn it, I almost didn't make it back last time. In the Kassim Nebula, we ran into a bunch of 'Blood Claw' pirates. Those bastards were flying modified gunboats with more firepower than a damn UEG patrol ship."
A one-eyed crewman slammed his glass heavily onto the table.
"We were disabled on the spot. They boarded us and killed the first mate without a word. If the captain hadn't been smart and given them half the cargo, we'd probably be floating in space as popsicles by now."
"What about the UEG fleet?" a young crewman asked.
"The fleet? Hahahaha!" A burst of laughter erupted around them.
He looked at the young man mockingly.
"Kid, you new here? The UEG fleet only struts around in the core systems, protecting the wealthy merchants who do business with the alien lords. In this hellhole, they won't even fart. Their logic is that as long as the pirates don't attack their alien friends, robbing a few human junk ships isn't a big deal."
"Exactly." Another crewman took over, a long, shocking scar across his face. "Pirates are nothing. You guys haven't seen the 'Glibso' Raiders."
At the mention of that name, the noise in the mess hall died down, and a hint of fear appeared on everyone's faces.
"Those bastards with slimy tentacles... they don't steal cargo, they steal people." The scarred crewman's voice was low and trembling. "Three years ago, I was on another ship. We passed a newly developed agricultural colony called 'New Hope.' There were tens of thousands of our fellow humans on it."
"Then, the Glibso came. Their ship was like a giant, rotting starfish. They didn't use cannons; they just dropped countless capture nets onto the planet."
"We hid behind an asteroid belt and watched through telescopes... I'll never forget that scene for the rest of my life. Those nets scooped up humans like fish and hoisted them onto their ships. Anyone who resisted was whipped into charcoal by their guards' energy whips. Women, children... they didn't spare a single one."
"And then? Did the UEG do anything?" The young crewman's voice was shaking.
"Do something? How could they?" The scarred crewman laughed bitterly. "Glibso are members of the 'Kraken' Business Alliance. The UEG has a trade agreement with the Kraken. After it happened, the UEG only issued a 'solemn protest,' demanding the release of 'mistakenly captured' human civilians.
The final result was that the Glibso paid a sum of money and then claimed those humans were their 'legal property' because the governor on that planet, to save his own life, signed a 'voluntary sale of population' agreement."
A deathly silence filled the mess hall.
Everyone lowered their heads; no one spoke.
That atmosphere of humiliation and powerlessness weighed heavily on everyone's hearts.
Reinhardt listened quietly.
There was no expression on his face nor any anger in his heart.
Because all of this was within his expectations.
The Emperor's teachings had long ago revealed the truth.
To harbor any benevolent illusions about xenos was the most foolish act of suicide.
It wasn't that the UEG didn't know these things.
They simply chose to ignore them.
To maintain that false, ridiculous facade of "multicultural coexistence," they would rather sacrifice the lives and dignity of their own people.
"Gravity anomaly detected in the flight path ahead, suspected signs of a large-scale fleet jump! Evade! Evade immediately!"
A sharp alarm suddenly blared from the ship's public address system.
The hull jerked violently, clearly having been forced out of Warp.
The crew in the mess hall turned pale and scrambled to their posts.
Reinhardt also stood up and walked back to his cubicle.
Through the observation window, he saw an unfamiliar star system. The distant nebula appeared a strange dark red, like a mass of clotted blood.
The ship's engines were emitting an abnormal roar, clearly performing emergency maneuvers.
"What the hell? This is the 'Omega-7' abandoned sector; why would there be a fleet here?"
"Is it pirates?"
"Doesn't look like it; the gravity signal is too large... My God, look at that planet!"
Exclamations came through the crew's communication channel.
Reinhardt magnified the view from the observation window, focusing on the gray planet nearby.
It was a human colony planet.
Or rather, it used to be.
In its orbit floated countless wrecks. Fragments of human warships, the skeletons of space stations, the hulls of civilian ships... they formed a cold ring of death.
The surface of the planet was even more horrific.
Former cities had been turned into massive, black-smoke-belching craters. The ground was stained a nauseating green by some corrosive liquid.
Reinhardt's gaze penetrated the thin atmosphere.
He saw it.
In the ruins of the cities, groups of human survivors were being driven like cattle.
Driving them were upright-walking, mantis-like aliens. They brandished sickle-shaped forelimbs, beheading any human who moved too slowly on the spot.
In the former city center square, countless human corpses were piled into a small mountain. Some aliens were feasting on the corpses, making hair-raising chewing sounds.
Other humans were kept in giant cages, their eyes hollow and full of despair. Alien guards used long spears to randomly stab a human to death in a cage and then drag them out, as if picking tonight's dinner.
Slaughter.
Slavery.
Feeding.
This scene was more direct and more cruel than any story Reinhardt had heard.
It carved the meaning of the word xeno into reality in the bloodiest way possible.
Reinhardt's body didn't move.
But his soul, that soul blessed by the Emperor, was undergoing a violent transformation.
The last trace of illusion that peace might exist in this universe was completely shattered.
The last trace of understanding that the UEG's rhetoric might have "extenuating circumstances" was completely incinerated.
Anger, pity, sadness... these emotions all vanished.
In their place was an absolute, cold, and divine resolve.
There had only ever been one truth.
There was no possibility of coexistence between humans and aliens.
It was either us or them.
The UEG had chosen a path to destruction and was willing to drag all their fellow humans down with them.
And Reinhardt would be the one to sound the alarm.
No.
He would be the one to carry out the judgment.
The captain of Bison Six was clearly scared out of his wits. He didn't care about saving energy and ordered the ship to perform a short-range jump at maximum power, wanting only to leave this hell as quickly as possible.
The ship entered the Warp once again.
But the tragedy on that planet was forever etched into the mind of every witness.
The atmosphere in the ship became incredibly oppressive. No one bragged or joked anymore.
Reinhardt returned to his cubicle.
He opened the star chart again.
The massive Milky Way rotated slowly before him.
The blue UEG territory, the green Insectoid territory, the red Business Alliance... these colorful patches, in his eyes, were no longer different nations.
They were massive cancerous tumors waiting to be purified.
His gaze crossed half the Milky Way and landed on the tip of the Orion Arm.
That isolated black region wrapped in nebulae and asteroid belts.
"Terran Dominion, a commonwealth of mankind."
A purely human polity. Fiercely xenophobic, untouched by the UEG's peace plague, still fighting for something worth fighting for — human dignity. A cold smile tugged at the corner of Reinhardt's mouth.
He didn't know exactly what it was like there.
Perhaps poor, perhaps backward, perhaps full of bigotry and extremism.
But none of that mattered.
What mattered was that the people there still remembered they were human.
They still held the sparks of resistance.
That was enough.
He would go to them. Bring them the Emperor's truth. Show them that humanity's destiny was never to cower in some forgotten corner, gasping for breath.
But to rule the entire Milky Way.
He would reignite the sparks there, turning them into a fire of crusade sufficient to burn across the entire universe.
Reinhardt closed the star chart.
In his heart, there was no longer a single trace of confusion.
The goal was set.
His, and humanity's, divine crusade would begin from this so called "Terran Dominion."