Garret Vance looked out from the windy balcony of one of his many home-offices. This one was on the 500th floor of a building on Aurora called the Central Tower. Auroran cities were groups of towers, and a region could be considered a cluster of floors. Floors one through twenty, where the bottom of society lived, had no windows to protect their inhabitants from the elements. Hundreds of thousands of people lived on the floors of the various buildings. People viciously fought their way up toward floor twenty of their building or, failing that, to the center of their respective floors, towards the Central Elevator of their buildings. Access to the floors above them, where life was better, was relatively scarce. Those floors, twenty through thirty, had windows. Tens of thousands of people lived here. The windows meant that things like temperature and humidity could be changed. However, there were no balconies and the windows did not open. In what ways the temperature should change was a hot button issue, as it was centrally controlled. From thirty to thirty-five there were individual temperature and humidity controlled units for each domicile and workplace. But still no balconies. The thousands of residents on each floor did occasionally open their windows. People occasionally jumped from them. Or were pushed.

From thirty-six to fifty the floors were different in increments of two. Thirty-six and thirty-seven were not quite as good as thirty-seven and thirty-eight, and so on. The differences were minute, but competition was fierce. Someone on floors one through twenty would probably not have been able to distinguish between these groups of floors, however. Hundreds of people lived in these floors on any given building.

From floors fifty-one up on every building, every floor mattered.

The privileges, prestige, and power climbed steadily up to the 499th floor, a place of power nearly inconceivable to most people.

And here Garret Vance was, staring out from the 500th floor at an entire world that had might as well be clay in his hands, feeling like an ant.

His whole life had been spent fighting for the seat of power on this world. Aurora was often called "the heart of the galaxy", although Garret suspected it was mostly Aurorans who said this. As a very young boy he'd thought it was literal, that Aurora sat at the center of the galaxy pulsing like a drum.

When he was older, he'd found that, metaphorically at least, it was very close to being true. Aurora held so much power and influence, even compared to the other powerful worlds of Fos and Tenebros, that gaining power here was akin to gaining power over every world circling a seemingly limitless number of stars.

But in all that time climbing, in all that time maneuvering, it had never occurred to him that some of those worlds might not care for this. It seemed that no one on Aurora, or Fos, or Tenebros had. And so came the wars.

It had started as most wars do: small. A skirmish in a remote asteroid mine over an unfair tax. A work stoppage at an essential planetary depot. A protest over poorly divided rations in a corporate colony. The people entrusted to keep these situations under control near these sites out near the fringe did everything they could to avoid revealing their incompetence to the Homeworlds. It wasn't their fault, however. For the Homeworlds planets, Fos, Tenebros, and Aurora, had already known for some time what was going on. It was just that most had thought that whatever battles they were fighting in the Homeworlds were more important than the actual battles being fought over at the fringes of civilized society.

It was only when news of open defiance began to reach the lower floors of Auroran buildings that those in power finally mobilized the military to put down the situation abroad. Each resistance movement the Auroran military encountered on countless worlds was quickly put down. But there was another issue. The worlds were just so damn spread out that when they quelled a rebellion on one world two other rebellions would spark to life several systems away from each other in response.

That was when the Homeworlds realized: just because they would inevitably win every battle didn't mean they would win the war. And suddenly, there was a new issue at the center of a power struggle on the Homeworlds. Whoever solved it, whatever their methods, would attain untold power.

For the 500th floor of Central Tower, mythical though it was, was not the highest floor on Aurora. There were, in fact, five floors above it. And each of these floors belonged to one person, each member of a group known only as the Crown, about whom information was scarce and incredibly valuable. The Crown were the five most powerful people on the Homeworlds and, therefore, in human history.

Garret Vance, like most on the top hundred floors, wanted in. And so, when he'd come across an abandoned project to study what might have been a "slow wormhole", a project that had been abandoned by Auroran leadership including the Crown, he'd jumped at the chance. The powerful often lacked imagination. But this failure had been his opportunity. It took him years to secure the funding, often through complex exchanges of political favors, and it had cost him even more time and money to keep the resurrected project silent.

When the original scientists and engineers had finished proving that the anomaly was, in fact, the slow wormhole and had completed their designs to contain such a wormhole, Garett had them put in cryonic suspension. It had been and was still Garett's favorite move when people were too useful to kill but couldn't be allowed to move freely.

It was better than those who had constructed Nexus had gotten, anyway. Garret felt the tiniest bit bad about that one. However, their families had been well compensated. He wasn't a monster, after all.

But Garett wasn’t in the clear just yet. He’d need a crew. One that he could be reasonably sure contained no spies. One that would accept cryonic suspension at a moment’s notice without explanation and without mutinying.

Where in the world was he to find such a crew?

It was only with the birth of his children that he realized the answer: there was no such crew. He would have to make one himself from scratch.

He would send his own child, certainly, but where would he find the others? And so, a second favorite move was added to the first: to ensure the loyalty of various people of strategic importance on the floors of Central Tower and other buildings he would have them commit one child to attend his special, exclusive school hidden amongst the stars. Using this method he had slowly built an information network that ran through nearly every floor of Central Tower and touch a good many of the other towers.

Initially Garrett had thought this would end badly, and so was surprised with the near desperation with which some parents threw their kids into the program. For some, he imagined, it was a way to move up. For others, an escape plan. More of a running from their situation on their respective home floor than a running to a higher floor. At any rate he had underestimated their resolve to improve their conditions and status within society. What a useful tool that resolve had been.

And some, Garret thought, remembering a particularly troubling character profile he’d read, were probably just anxious to get their child as far from them as possible.

It had all gone more or less smoothly until the reactor shield had begun to degrade for no apparent reason. Perhaps putting the original scientists and engineers into suspension had been a mistake?

No.

True, they had figured out enough about the issue to bring the ansible station back, but they had also almost immediately begun digging into things that were none of their business. He’d had to put them back on ice immediately after their victory.

Of course, whether it was actually a victory was still to be seen. Yes, the ansible station was back. Yes, it contained critical information that might allow Garrett to track down the whereabouts of the full Nexus station. However, the ansible station and the information it contained were currently under the jurisdiction of one Amber Lynch via her dog, Dominic Landaar.

At the moment she probably didn’t know what she had, which gave Garret quite the quandary. If he attempted to bargain with her, she would immediately know that whatever the ansible station was, it contained something of value. That would be trouble. He needed her to relinquish it to him almost insistently, as if dumping it off on him.

Garrett Vance cracked the tiniest smile.

All he had to do was create a path of least resistance, an opportunity that was so good that she couldn’t pass it up. He would use her own cleverness and curiosity against her.

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Amber Lynch had a bad feeling. Normally she trusted her instincts, but the rational thing seemed to be at odds with them.

Here she had a ship out from the middle of nowhere. On this ship had been children under cryonic suspension. The ship seemed like it did not have fully functional self-sufficient systems, which implied that some of its infrastructure was missing.

But that wasn’t the strange part.

On Aurora there was very little mixing between children of different social classes. Yet here, on this ship, there were children from nearly every floor of every building in Central Tower. The children of diplomats, military generals, and scientists, mixed with the children who… were from below to varying degrees.

There was a big opportunity here, Lynch could just feel it. However, it was clear that she was balancing on a razor’s edge.

If she could pin this to someone and dump it on them alone, she could utterly destroy someone or else bind them to her service. This was too big a step outside of orthodox behavior, and no individual outside of the Crown itself would be allowed to get away with it without consequences.

And of course, it simply reeked of Garrett Vance.

The arrogance. The ambition. The secrecy. The cunning. There was no one else on the board who held all of these traits to a degree high enough to pull something like this off.

“What are you thinking about over here. Planning for world domination?”

It was a male voice that spoke as the man who possessed it slipped his arms around her waist from behind. Lynch smiled. It was Nomora Jaredson, her lover as of late. He was the perfect, gleeful little pet to keep her in good spirits when things got tough. And, when she tired of him, she would see that he got another position – in another building, of course.

She leaned her head over her shoulder, and he kissed her passionately.

Well, she hadn’t tired of him yet, that was for sure. But she needed to send him away.

“I’ve got some business to attend to. Why don’t we get together later and explore the meaning of the word ‘domination’ together.”

He chuckled. She loved his large guffawing laugh. It radiated strength, spirit, and youth. But his expression suddenly became serious.

“You know that I could help you, right?” he said, earnestness in his eyes. And a little ambition, perhaps.

Lynch wasn’t annoyed. She had sent her last lover away because of his absolute lack of ambition. He had loved her, sure, but he had also nagged her constantly about leaving it all behind and running away together. Nomora would never even think to do that. He was ambitious, himself. Deep down, he probably hoped to enter the HQ Board, himself. But he had lost any chance at that the moment he had become hers.

“I know. But right now, the best way you can help me is by leaving.”

He looked disappointed but nodded. “And then later, I suppose, the best way will be to come back,” he said with a wry smile.

She pulled him into her and gave him a passionate kiss.

“Now you’re getting it.”

After he’d gone Amber Lynch walked out to the balcony of her domicile. One thing about floors 490 to 500: the balconies went out far from the building. Just far enough to be able to see the Crown, rising up at the top of society. Those below were not allowed to know it existed for sure, but those above were never allowed to forget. The Crown was, had always been, the goal.

She looked down.

The floors on these balconies were made of a semi-opaque glass. Lynch had gotten the message immediately upon stepping out onto this balcony just after she had finally moved up to the 495th floor.

For those who approached the Crown, there was a long way to fall.