February 16th, 2484 - Planet Vizran - the Shores of Lake Gallus

Drill Sergeant Ling Har’Toba marched up and down, watching the new arrivals intently, judging each of them in turn, his boots crunching the sand with each short, measured step. Alien birds squawked as they glided over the military base, their calls echoing across the sandy beach, and the makeshift grey barracks, assortment of hover tanks and mobile radio towers dotted along it. The Drill Sergeant stopped in front of a young blonde soldier, and stared intently into her eyes. She looked weedy, new, and perhaps even a little out of her depth … although the furious pout on her lips and furrowed brows highlighting her penetrating stare were a little off-putting. He decided to make an example of her.

‘What’s your name, marine?!’ he barked, his voice echoing in harsh waves across the beach, causing nearby soldiers to wince. He had never needed a microphone.

‘Private Olivia Mar Kolla, Sir!’ the blonde soldier barked back, just as loudly, saluting with perfect form.

‘What in the Emperor’s name are you doing on my beach, Private Mar Kolla?!’ Ling Har’Toba spat. ‘You think your scrawny-ass can handle what’s waiting on the other side of that hill?!’

‘Yes, Sir!’

‘Well I don’t Marine! You’re gonna’ drop and give me two-hundred push-ups, and if I tell you to give me two-hundred more, you’ll say, “Sir, yes Sir!”

‘Sir—’

‘—What’s that marine?! You better not have been about to give me lip, so help me!! A good solider follows orders, Private Mar Kolla, don’t you ever forget that!’

‘That’s not it Sir.’

Ling Har’Toba raised an eyebrow.

‘What was that?’ he growled quietly, but no less threating, demonstrating his impressive vocal range.

‘Sir, I was going to ask you when I should start?’ the blonde said.

Ling Har’Toba grinned. He liked this girl.

‘Now that’s what I like to hear!’ he bellowed, causing the other soldiers to wince again. ‘Drop and give me three-hundred on the double marine—the rest of you, four-hundred! Move, move, move!’

‘Sir, yes Sir!’ the soldiers roared in unison.

July 10th, 2486 - The Imperial Flagship ‘The Phoenix’ - Personal Quarters of Olivia Mar Kolla

Olivia sat on the edge of her bed. It was a double, bigger than the cots she had gotten so used to in the army. Sometimes in the middle of the night she would wake up sweating, her arms groping for the sides of the bed, her anxiety rising when she couldn’t immediately reach them. The single bed she had slept in during her stay at a sleazy hotel in Sanctuary City, before they’d confronted the traitors, had been more comfortable … how badly that stay had ended.

‘When was it that Akira’s mood had changed?’ She wondered. He had been supportive of her prior to Prince Yared’s arrival. She couldn’t put the pieces together. Was it that she’d been knocked out twice now, unable to be of use when it mattered most? The voice of the drill sergeant bored into her brain, and she was back on the sandy shores of Planet Vizran, on the army base, if only for a moment. ‘A good solider follows orders’, she recalled. ‘A good soldier follows orders … Unquestioningly. Even if they don’t make sense? Of course, even then. Who am I to fight them on it, to press the issue… if they have no use for me now, then…’ No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t justify Yared’s plan to herself, even if she agreed that Ichiro and the Bungirban were the lowest of the low. She wasn’t sure that she liked being part of a political coup…

There was a knock on the door, and Olivia returned to the present. She caught sight of her bloodshot eyes in the mirror across from her, of her loose, blonde locks that frayed at the edges. She tied her hair up. She rubbed her eyes. She stood up. She ignored the toll that this crusade across the stars was very visibly taking on her.

‘Who is it?’ she asked the door.

‘It’s Yared. My—the Emperor is on-board the Phoenix… he knows about my sister. Let me in, Olivia.’

She unlocked the door with a quick swipe of her fingers across a touchpad, and Yared strode into the room.

‘Close it’, he ordered. She obeyed. ‘Are we alone?’

She nodded.

‘I couldn’t lie to him…’ Yared continued. ‘He seems to … he believes that he has a more important mission than finding Abiona—he’s convinced, I have no idea why … and he wants to assemble a team—I recommended you for the role of commanding officer on this mission. He accepted. We leave in ten hours.’

Olivia maintained her professionalism, just barely.

‘Is that all, your highness?’ she asked.

‘There’s one other thing’, Yared said, smiling bashfully. ‘Do you have plans for dinner tonight?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Come by my quarters in an hour. We shouldn’t fly on an empty stomach.’

*

‘This meat … it is pork, isn’t it? Am I correct, your majesty?’

It was a study in name only; in reality, Emperor Finlay Var Oostabar Gan Kuji’s study was one of the largest libraries in the galaxy. There were mountains of scattered tomes, a wealth of knowledge spanning millennia. There were trophies: skulls from long extinct animals, swords, shields and bullet-based rifles, as well as a vast collection of globes. The two men sat at a desk, although in reality it was a grand, polished ivory table, made from dozens of tusks harvested from an extinct species of earth creature: the elephant.

‘Of course it is. Nothing in this universe is beyond my grasp’, Emperor Finlay Var Oostabar Gan Kuji replied.

He was, in every sense of the word, ancient. He hunched over his meal, wrapped in a silk dressing gown, which was embedded with diamonds and was the colour of wine. The poet or the rebel might have described it as the colour of blood. His beard was thick and shaggy, his head was fully bald, his skin was the texture of crumpled paper. Still, he lifted the fork to his mouth, chewed with his false teeth, and swallowed the most expensive meat in the known universe.

‘You are in good spirits today, your majesty’, Akira offered.

‘I have no reason not to be’, the Emperor replied. His tone was serious, foreboding even, never malicious but the opposite of joyful. ‘I am the luckiest man alive. Tell me … this planet … what was it … Haaloja-2, is it far?’

‘Three days of travel from where the Phoenix is currently moored, your majesty.’

‘Then I shall go with you’, the Emperor stated.

‘Your majesty, in the interest of maintaining your health—’, Akira stopped talking immediately. The Emperor had raised a bony had. He raised his head from the plate, and his cloudy, brown eyes shone beneath folds of wrinkled skin.

‘I want to see it with my own two eyes…’ the Emperor said. ‘… I want to storm the breach once more, as I did in my youth with your late father. You will stay here; I like you, because you remind me of him … but you are not the hunter Touma Choganta was.’

Akira grimaced, but quickly wiped the expression from his face, before the Emperor noticed it.

‘Unfortunately, I will no longer have need of heirs once I have it ... oh, but I want to see it with my own two eyes … the Stone of Ulgara is finally within my grasp once more!’ the Emperor said, his eyes sparkling with anticipation.