In June 833 of the Common Era, the enslaved laborers in the Empire's Black Labor Star Sector began secretly building their own spacecraft in the icy asteroid belt of the Hanse 12 system.
They gathered ice and asteroid fragments to use as hulls, then outfitted them with jump engines assembled from parts scavenged from junkyards and abandoned factories. Their ships were even greener and more ramshackle than the raiders' small privateers, but they were truly their own arks among the stars.
If something was theoretically possible, then of course it could be put into practice. Tan Jize hadn't done much in the Hanse 12 system, but he had managed to make everyone believe just that.
The enslaved laborers from various countries spent two months building twelve ice spacecraft. They were all standard small passenger-and-cargo vessels. This was partly for secrecy: smaller ships would make smaller targets when they set out. It was also because, given their current stockpile of usable parts, this was all the laborers could manage.
More importantly, they still needed to test whether ice spacecraft could actually work.
If they succeeded, the Empire's rule over the Black Labor Star Sector would be breached. People seeking freedom and dignity would have a path to hope. Even if they had to cross the sea of stars, even if the odds of survival were slim, so long as hope existed, a way forward could always be found.
But if they failed...
"If we fail, then we simply won't come back," Tan Jize told them. "When we prepare to resist, when we stake our lives, when we make ready to die, we're already on the road to victory."
His words might have sounded a little grandiose, but they struck home with them. If they dared to risk escaping in ice ships,