I. Intro

The Ascendancy of Man promised us, the masses, the spoils of Empire - Wealth, Power, and 'Living Space'. In exchange for supporting their war against the 'Alien Meneace', they said every Human would live like the President-for-Life's cronies, with mansions, space yachts, and private gardens the size of Greece. If we signed up for the flag and gave our all, our days of worrying about rising prices, lower paychecks, and being bossed around by some random corporate official would be over and it will be our turn to boss 'Xenos' around.

Enough of us believed. Enough of us fought. And a few of us even committed ugly crimes in the name of a better life.

Then we lost the war. The Aliens were just too many, too stubborn, and eventually matched our weapons and tactics. The final battle was at Proxima Centauri, four Light Years away from Earth itself, which spooked the Ascendancy into suing for peace. If not for the Aliens deciding not to strike the dagger home, they'd be bossing us around by now, not the President-for-Life's cronies, which after getting their asses beat, blamed us, the people who had fought for them, for it.

Obviously, we were not having any of that. In the months after the peace, many of us decided to rebel, some under a new organization called Moonstrike, others on our own. And some others just wanted to make enough cash to survive the new taxes and tolls and 'mandatory service' which the President-for-Life has imposed all throughout Human Space. So a few of us formed a group called RealAscendancyStockBets to squeeze those fat cats out of every cent they had out of the comfort of our homes.

In hindsight, this was a bad idea as the Ascendancy's spooks had very good decryption apps. After we ruined an entire set of hedge funds, the resulting crackdown resulted in almost every member - Hundreds of thousands of us - being dragged from our homes and into one of their newest Prison Ships, Devil's Island.

There, we were offered a bargain - The Ascendancy has created a new 'Wormhole Gate' to a pristine sector of space, filled with new planets to settle... And they needed colonists. So in exchange for a reduction in our sentences, we are to do the hard work of taming new worlds for them. Oh, and we can bring our families too.

And so here we are, pawns in their game yet looking forward to a new life anyway...