Prologue

A man in a white lab coat stood over two bodies. Identical twins by their looks. They were laid flat and naked on a stainless steel slab, each limb bound to the slab by a retractable metal cuff. Their skin, pale and flawless, was coated in the blue gelatinous mucus they were just pulled out of. Their age appeared to be somewhere around fourteen or fifteen. They lacked any melanin and appeared albino. The lab coated man smiled, the bags under his eyes seemed to disappear with his excitement. He glanced behind him to the technician “Put them back in their tubes, the quarterly summit it coming up and I expect the prince will want to shows these off. By the time they get there, their growth would have accelerated.” His speech accelerated in speed and volume as he continued “the growth is accelerated you see, the tube and its liquids act as a catalytic solution for the subdermal steroids and growth hormones that lay dormant in the capillaries. By the time a three months passes they should be fully grown adults! Who would have thought the prince had a mind capable of such creativity. Thermal exhaust through lung capillaries! Physical neural networks processors! Who would have thought.”

The unenthused technician pressed a button on the panel and glanced worriedly at the sleep ridden scientist in front of him. The slabs the twins were bound to drew themselves erect until they stood ten degrees away from vertical. Two glass tubes rose from the floor to encompass each specimen. When the top of the tube made contact with the ceiling a blue liquid started to rise in each tube. The technician took in the view. Two perfect beings enclosed in a mysterious blue liquid inside a glass tube inside a damn depressing looking black room inside what had to be the loneliest heliocentric research laboratory in the galaxy stuck with a scientist mad from sleep deprivation and the crown prince; just what had he gotten himself into.

The lab coated man threw his hand up and started laughing while hopping from one foot to the other “We did it! We did it! Ha, the bastard won't last a second. One look and boom! Gone!”

The technician started to ease his way towards the door slowly as if facing down a wild animal then with one last look threw it open and bolted through escaping to the safety of saner minds. (namely his own)

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White fluorescent lights illuminated an endless hall. One wall was a polished white polymer, the other, a window that looked out onto an endless black void speckled with shining white and gold. The space scape was entrancing. Some said for every human soul there existed a corresponding star, it was a nice thought, that somewhere out there he had a mirror, that perhaps he wasn't alone in the universe, that he wasn't the only one to share the burden of his soul. Perhaps… but that was just naysaid. The dreams of men fabricated in times of mental desperation. The fantasies of week men who built their lives on the lies they tell themselves.

He wore black, the colour scheme of every navy officers uniform. They were barbaric in nature, the original design having said to date back over ten thousand years. Some said it dated back even further to when the human race was a monoplanet species. He shuddered at the thought of being trapped on one planet, confined to one star with no hope of escape. Destined his whole life to look up at one sky, to breath only one atmosphere.

He was uncomfortable in the two-piece uniform. It was largely useless, it had no value in the event of a leek or forced vacuum, it didn't even have built-in pressure seals or gaskets. Instead, it sported what historians called a “double-breasted” jacket with a pulled back “lapel” and “dress” pants. He wore leather shoes! Not even vacuum rated mettle boots. They looked more like slippers one would wear to go to bed then something meant for practical use.

‘Then again’ he thought ‘I’m not going to be in a hazardous environment anymore. My first time planetside in over eight years. What will it be like to look up and instead of seeing a bulkhead see a clear blue sky? What would it be like to breath non-ionized air? What will it be like to look out a window and instead of seeing black vacuum see …’ what would he see looking out a window? Buildings? Grass? Trees? Empty Fields? ‘Probably buildings’ he was unsure though. He was eighteen and spent almost half his life off-planet, travelling from star to star. Researching, making, and building weapons.

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A door behind him hissed open and in the reflection of the reinforced window, he could see an alcove in the wall behind him open to reveal a similarly dressed figure but with a grey band on his left arm. The symbol of a naval political representative. “I heard you plan on addressing the Counsel, Court, and King personality.”

   “I do”

The figure walked up beside him and looked out on the scape. “Do you expect to gain more support and funds for your project. No offence but you're not exactly known for meeting deadlines.”

“Something's changed” and with that, he pivoted on his heels and started to walk down the hall. The representative behind him kept pace.

“What? Another reported ‘breakthrough’? You need physical evidence. I'm surprised your funding wasn’t cut years ago. If it weren't for your father, the King, your pet project would-”. He took a breath, “I'm sorry that was improper and unbecoming. Let's just say that many people are displeased that kingdom resources are going into what appears to be a black hole and one with no corona at that.”

“Things have changed this time,” the prince said, “I have a model made”

The two sets of clacking dress boots cut to one as the man beside the prince stopped in his tracks his eyes going wide and his mouth parting slightly. Then shaking himself out of his shock he rushed to catch up. “It’s it as we imagined in our youth? Did you create the alpha or beta version? How did you do it? How did you merge the interface? Just plain how?”

“To your first questions, it is neither a alpha or beta… it is already a past beta testing. Once we got the original prototype working it took less than a half year to pass to beta, then only a quarter year to pass that. We're now on version two point zero”

“Is that why you didn't appear last three quarters? It was mentioned as an oddity that you didn't ask for more funding. But why didn't you? Even with the alpha, you would have been able to.”

“The primary reason is that I had momentum and didn't dare slow or pause, the second is that we no longer needed it. We were able to liquidate most of our unused and now worthless assets”

They walked for a quarter of a kilometre in silence than with a suddenness that surprised the representative blurted.

“Your father wants you on the line. I’ve made as much political manoeuvring space for you as I can but he keeps saying that travelling from star to star in the inner region and working on heliocentric labs are no place for the crown prince. Rumour has it he’s going to make you shadow Charman”

“Carman? Well that not entirely unexpected; I think I could learn a lot from the rear admiral”

“But you’ve done it! Once you show the court no one will challenge your right to guide your own future. You don’t need to go… right?”

“My father has always seen a warrior in me; all I see is an engineer and developer. I trust in his judgment though. I finished my task. The project is done. To be frank I was worried.”

“Worried how?”

“Worried that I would be lost… Have you ever finished a long book only to sit there and wonder what to do next? Every other task pales in comparison to reading the next book but when you're all out of books then you feel lost, adrift, taskless. That’s me right now. I’ve completed my task. I’ve designed and grew the weapons. Now my task is done and I need to throw myself and invest myself in another task. I may not be good at it, I may not like it, but my father has tasked me with learning both space strategy, tactics, and how to lead men. So I shall. I have nothing better to do and this way I satiate both my father and the court. I will become the warrior my father asks of me.”

“I agree politically it's the best move but we're talking about your happiness. You're my friend Ramius I won't throw you to the sharks.”

“I thank you, my friend, but the project is no longer in my hands. After showcasing them here I will deliver them to the line. I minus well get Charman as an escort if he's already here to pick me up. After showing my success the council will demand nothing less than a feat to escort them.”

They walked in silence for another quarter kilometre. “This is my stop, Zack. I will see you surface side.”

“See you Ramius”

The prince took a right, branching off the main hall and effortlessly navigate a maze only those experienced in space could. When came to what would appear to the layman to be a dead end he tilted his head back to looked up. The hallway extended vertically, straight up. He jumped and was weightless. With practised grace, he landed on what was then the wall, now the floor, and his shoes clicked as we was grabbed by the field. He continued to walk up, now down, the hall.