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The Emperor was in high spirits. For the first time over the past eight years, he managed to significantly expand his influence over the galaxy. Ariadne has entered an agreement with him, both sides pledging to the secrecy of sensitive information; the New Empire made no moves to stop his recruiting campaign on the Damned Flotilla territory. Of course, he was not yet fully prepared for war, but given a few years, his modest Empire would become a formidable opponent to anyone. An then he can think about expanding. Provided that his main project will be realized.

After giving orders to some of his troops, Ironside proceeded to the prisoner’s cell to try and get information out of him, something that can help the ruler to achieve the goal set by the legendary General.

“Greetings, Oracle.” Ironside’s voice sounded calm. “I would like to hear the tale of Jericho’s past.”

“Greetings to my captor,” the Oracle retorted. “Jericho’s secrets shall remain unheard.”

“A pity. Your secrets are curious to me,” said the Emperor. “But I am more curious about the Divide and the Frontier. The reasons for billions of deaths. You may not have seen it yourself, but you could know. I want to understand why Bartle destroyed so many people to reach his goal, why he later attacked the Direktorium.”

“I think you should look for the answers to those questions in historical records, not in my head, general.”

“Jericho people usually don’t talk at all. It makes it hard to understand the reasons behind your viewpoint. I interrogated several followers of Bartle back in 4612. The only piece of information I managed to pry out of them was that Bartle is still alive.”

“After the neural network was destroyed, it was decided to hide Bartle for a while. I am quite surprised that your torture managed to break my brothers enough for them to reveal such a highly guarded secret.”

“There was no torture. There was no time for it, even. Your brothers were so eager to come up with elaborate insults during interrogation that they unwittingly implied this fact, and then literally just said it out loud, independent of each other. But I just want to understand how Jericho sees the world.”

“I will not give up this knowledge for free. In return, you will tell me how you escaped Earth while it was besieged.”

“It’s a very simple story. Shortly before the siege, I arrived on Earth with half of the fleet under my control on personal orders from the Emperor. When the siege began, the Legion and Warden fleets fought the Biomorphs furiously. In the first month alone, we burned about a million of their ships. When it became clear that the situation was extremely dangerous, the Emperor summoned me to the palace. He told me to go to the sector where my fleet was stationed. He ordered me to prepare for the coming war with those responsible for the attack on Alien territory and provided me with a Jarl to get out of the Solar System. My implants were compatible with it. The Biomorphs detected the lone stealthy interceptor, but weren’t able to attack in time.”

“Alright, I will tell you about Bartle, the Signal, the Divide and Jericho. It all started with the Frontier. Young Bartle was collecting transmitters for it. It was such an important space exploration project at the time that its communication systems just had to be able to connect to the nearby star systems. To test the transmitters, it was decided to try and establish connection to old machinery in those systems, which was usually impossible because of the Signal. But Bartle managed to connect to the Spectre-RL radio telescope sent to Proxima Centauri before the Signal appeared. It turned out that the Signal remained homogenous even at such great distances. A year later, Bartle secured a modern radio telescope for his work. Compiling the new information with the Spectre-RL data, he created the best measuring instrument in the whole galaxy.

By taking pictures of pulsars and black holes, he discovered a pattern. Bartle saw the first messages from the Precursors in the Signal’s modulations. The same year he planned to publish an article on his findings, the fall of the Frontier happened. The prophet survived only by a miracle. Despite the chaos on Earth, Bartle worked incredibly hard to decipher the Signal. He discovered what later became the Divide Philosophy: the Signal is a promise to elevate those civilizations that will agree to peacefully co-exist with the Precursors. But this also presented a seed of doubt in the Signal, since there was no trace of other higher civilizations in the galaxy.

Seeing the chaos on Earth, Bartle realized that the situation can be used as an opportunity to elevate humanity to the peak of new technology. He created the Church of the Divide to unite and lead those who believe in the Signal. At the time, the prophet still didn’t know many important truths and often acted on his intuition. It was impossible to study the Signal further without the Frontier. Impossible to understand each facet of its meaning. Forging a path to outer space was the main goal of the Divide. And as for the history of the Religious wars, I think you know it better than me.”

“I do,” said Ironside. “But I never understood why Bartle pressured the Direktorium to issue the Divide Decree.”

“You’re saying that the prophet did that? Nonsense!” the Oracle replied.

“It just seems suspicious to me that this mysterious man tried to build ark ships even before the Decree was issued. This ambitious project of his was rejected time after time. But then… just after the Direktorium overpowered the Divide, he suddenly managed to convince the Direktors to build his precious arks, which now were prisons,” said the Emperor.

The Oracle showed no emotion in response; his implants made not a single hiccup. He fully believed in his messiah.

“You better ask Bartle himself about this, Ironside. Though I doubt he will grant you an audience. As for the Divide’s path to Jericho, it’s a tale of great suffering. We lost most of our people in the first century. Our numbers kept dropping until we managed to establish our first proper colonies, Jericho-1, Jericho-2 and Jericho-3. Our civilization inherited the name of the most ancient and famed city of Earth. And our attack on Direktorium was an act of revenge. People who had lost millions of relatives to human error on Earth wanted revenge on those who they felt had made them suffer. It is no great secret that the attack on the peaceful fleet of the Direktorium was not an order from Bartle, and further escalation of the conflict happened very quickly. After the First War for Bartle sector began, we could no longer coexist peacefully with the Direktorium.”

The Emperor was pleased with what he heard.

“Thank you for your tale, Oracle,” he said. “I believe we will have more fruitful talks in the future. It’s just a pity that you’re insane.”

“Indeed,” the Jericho man laughed. He proceeded to look at the photo report on the ships being built at the Ironside’s shipyards.