BATTLE FOR STARS

Finkley had also received the Hill Empire's Award for Outstanding Childbearing.

Most people didn't think much of it, but it was still an official government honor. She proudly displayed it on the most prominent wall in her home.

In the Hill Empire, a child was considered an adult upon reaching the age of fourteen.

At that point, they were generally expected to begin supporting themselves.

Remaining at home afterward would invite ridicule from neighbors and acquaintances, and parents were no longer obligated to provide for them.

Making a living in the Empire wasn't particularly difficult.

A person could seek opportunities independently or accept a job assigned by the state.

The problem was that government-assigned positions were rarely appealing.

They were usually either exhausting, unbearably dull, or completely lacking in future prospects.

Starting one's own career path was also possible.

However, for someone without family connections, wealth, or influence—and in a society that did not strongly encourage free trade—it was an extremely difficult road.

As a result, most people eventually found themselves with only two realistic options:

Join the military.

Or join an interstellar development corps.

Military service carried obvious risks, but the pay and benefits were excellent.

The Hill Empire was fundamentally a military state. The armed forces enjoyed priority in nearly every aspect of society.

Military personnel were among the most respected members of the population.

So many people wanted to enlist that the Empire had never needed mandatory conscription, despite providing military training to nearly every citizen.

More importantly, the wars of recent centuries had remained relatively stable.

Combined with the steady improvement of starship defenses, casualty rates had fallen dramatically compared to the great interstellar wars of the past.

Ironically, that also meant the military recruited fewer people.

For every hundred applicants, perhaps only one would be accepted.

The Interstellar Development Corps was an even older Imperial tradition.

After all, nearly every territory controlled by the Hill Empire had originally been acquired through frontier expansion.

In simple terms, participants traveled aboard civilian starships to distant star systems and established new settlements.

In practice, however, relatively few people chose that path.

The universe might be vast, but truly habitable planets were surprisingly rare.

Gas giants were obviously unusable.

Many other worlds either lacked development value entirely or possessed environments so hostile that settlement became prohibitively expensive.

Planetary terraforming and Dome construction required enormous investments.

The harsher the environment, the more advanced the Dome technology needed to be—and the higher the cost.

Most of the star systems surrounding the Hill Empire had already been developed.

Expanding farther meant venturing into increasingly distant regions of space.

That dramatically increased the required time, resources, energy, manpower, and logistics.

Interstellar expansion was no longer nearly as efficient as it had been during the Empire's early years.

There was another reason as well.

Frontier development was hard work.

After years of effort, a colonist might successfully establish a settlement and become one of its founding citizens, gaining wealth and special privileges.

Yet for many people, the reward simply wasn't attractive enough.

It was like being offered a luxurious mansion on a remote island.

Many would still prefer a modest apartment in a thriving city.

The difference in opportunities, environment, and social life couldn't be compensated for by a larger house alone.

Back then, Pierre had failed to earn a military position and had no desire to join a development corps.

So he reluctantly accepted a government-assigned job and became a farmer.

Not a traditional farmer, of course.

In an age of advanced automation and artificial intelligence, nobody was expected to till fields by hand.

More accurately, Pierre worked as an agricultural transport driver.

His job involved delivering farm products from various agricultural zones to industrial centers and transporting supplies back to the farms.

Grain, livestock, feed, fertilizers, and countless other goods all passed through his hands.

Even that work was largely automated.

The transport vehicles were operated by computers rather than humans.

Pierre's actual role was closer to that of a supervisor.

Truthfully, even that position could have been eliminated.

But the Hill Empire had more people than available jobs, so another employment slot had been created.

The work was boring.

Still, Pierre managed to find ways to entertain himself.

His greatest pleasure was driving the transport vehicles personally.

In a world filled with autonomous vehicles, very few people still enjoyed manual operation.

Computers were faster, safer, and more efficient.

Pierre, however, loved the feeling of being in control.

As a result, he insisted on piloting the transport craft himself almost every day.

Ironically, that hobby changed his life.

Three years earlier, it helped him pass the military's selection process and finally become a soldier.

Even though recruitment had expanded in recent years, the Hill Empire's population exceeded one hundred billion.

The number of people hoping to enlist remained overwhelming.

Pierre's natural talent for piloting was quickly discovered.

Before long, he was transferred to a specialized academy for fighter pilots.

After a grueling year of training and physical enhancement, he officially entered military service two years ago.

Naturally, these enhancements were nowhere near the level of the pig-faced soldiers of the Resk Empire.

Even so, they made him far stronger than an ordinary human.

The primary objective was increasing the body's ability to withstand acceleration forces.

In other words, G-forces.

An average person could typically tolerate around five to six Gs.

A highly trained individual might endure nine or ten.

Starfighter pilots, however, routinely needed to withstand fifteen to twenty Gs.

Without such extreme acceleration and deceleration capabilities, fighters would have little chance of evading missiles and other high-speed weapons.

Physical enhancement was therefore the most important stage of pilot training.

After a year of medication, conditioning, and augmentation procedures, Pierre barely recognized himself.

The frail young man he had once been was gone.

In his place stood a broad-shouldered, muscular officer.

Yet the biggest change wasn't physical.

It was the way people looked at him.

In the Hill Empire, anyone wearing an Elephant-rank insignia immediately became the center of attention.

They were especially popular among women.

Things certainly hadn't been that way before.

Back then, Pierre had come dangerously close to receiving a government-assigned spouse.

The policy wasn't intended to discriminate against women.

The Marriage Allocation System had originally been introduced as one of the Empire's population-growth measures and had survived for centuries.

Men could be assigned wives.

Women could be assigned husbands.

Many people disliked the arrangement.

Even when the government officially paired two individuals together, some couples filed for divorce the very next day.

As for what happened during the one night they were legally married, everyone seemed to have their own version of the story.

One thing was certain:

For that night, they were recognized as husband and wife under Imperial law.

Of course, not everyone opposed the system.

For people who couldn't find partners on their own, letting the government's matching algorithms try wasn't necessarily a bad option.

After all, both participants were usually individuals who had struggled to find relationships.

There was no harm in giving it a chance.

The government still officially encouraged free romantic relationships.

But in any society, those with greater power, status, or wealth inevitably enjoyed more choices.

It wasn't that Pierre could never find a woman willing to sleep with him.

The problem was that the choice was always theirs, never his.

More importantly, not a single woman had been willing to have children with him.

And that meant one of humanity's most fundamental instincts—the desire to leave behind descendants—remained unfulfilled.