Imperial Sunset

Humanity's thousand-year-old interstellar empire has been rotting from the inside for over a century, thanks to venal, corrupt, and power-hungry sovereigns from a dynasty many consider illegitimate.  The latest in that lineage, an increasingly psychotic empress, is pushing her realm toward catastrophic collapse as admirals and generals rebel against her rule.  That rebellion quickly drags the once mighty Imperial Fleet into a devastating fratricidal conflict between factions.With civil war raging across human space, a Navy torn asunder can no longer protect frontier colonies, and barbarians long confined to the galactic badlands see an opportunity.  After generations of hard existence on worlds beyond the bounds of human civilization, they hold life cheap, especially that of others.  The barbarians will gladly steal everything they find and condemn defenseless star systems to technological and demographic collapse.  That is if they don't wipe...