Return of and Empire

Prologue

Space, the final frontier.

What a joke! Majon Rezer had been told that too many times for it not to sink in. In all his life, he had dreamed of the exploration of that final frontier. Flying through the great void, fighting against unknown foes whose barest thoughts could decimate planets. All those things that made heroes. Made you famous.

However, fate normally, and maliciously, throws you several curve balls. Instead of being put on a destroyer like a graduate of the Okun Military Academy should be, Majon had been stranded with a bunch of geek scientists on the Eltonweil, a science vessel. A botany science vessel. Studying plants, fungi, and diseases. The most dangerous weapon on the entire frigate was a torpedo tube. One tube. One blasted tube that wouldn't do anything against any of the real ships in the sky.

Majon ran his head over his bald skull. He was pale like any of his race. As an Orian, he was slightly lanky and tall with deep blue sparkling eyes that shined out of his porcelain skin. Unwilling to wound what remained of his pride any further, his military uniform lay in a closet in his quarters. As captain of this whole blasted geek convention, he could get away with a more causal form of dress. As such, his Federation garb was red with no true additions other than his rank as captain of this vessel. No medals penetrated through the fabric like so many of his fellow graduates. Beside the uniform, he had a half finished mosaic of some ancient Earthly leader named Julio Caesran or something along those lines. He planned to give the thing to his sister, Tammith, who was a junior in a transfer high school on Earth, and she was the top student, with an unnatural love for the historic art. Well, at least, that's what the humans and Mobians said.

Entering the bridge wasn't the most dramatic affair that Majon had ever experienced. At every one of the desks, navigators and/or scientists waged virtual wars against the figures and vectors that their computer screens were expelling. Complaining that someone in the assembly line of the figures had goofed. Much of it all was the same, day in and day out. Somehow, Majon was unsure of how they accomplished the feat, but there was a married couple that worked on Deck 4 who were, how you say, unusual. No matter what happened, no matter what glorious and radiant mood they would start the day with, a transmission would come up to the bridge with both of them, blasted, frayed, hair on fire, soaked, being choked by plants, etc . . . all the while screaming that the other had did the other wrong in some way or another.

It was a period of the day that was both a blessing and a curse for the aptly bored captain of the science rig. Whilst the two Orians were both very amusing when their squabbles reached the bridge on the holo-vid, they became increasingly annoying to all on the bridge, including him, as their battles wore on. So, to make the day even more troublesome than it already was, as captain it was his duty to resolve the combat before it 'escalated.'

Clangs and clamor against folded steel were the signal. Groans came from all mouths aboard the bridge, jealousy for all the crew members who had never heard of this sort of thing. Majon gave the geeks a shrug before answering the incoming transmission from inside his ship. "Alright what is it this time?" he inquired, hoping that it would be something they had never done before. He needed something new on this dull day.

The couple was, of course, just like his opinion of everyone else of this hellhole of a ship: geeky. The husband, like all Orians, was bald with some form of tattoo signifying his work. Such as a green mark of a cut leaf to show his position as second-in-command of this whole bloody thing. He was rather young, around twenty-three years with those ugly horn-rimmed glasses from earth just solidifying his embarrassing nature. A young age for a scientist, even in this age where a child had been elected Holy Sovereign of Ori. Thankfully, she wasn't a child any more. Near his age, anyway. Nevertheless, the husband, Osma, he believed his name was, was also one of the few Orians who had any facial hair. A small goatee on his chin made the science officer have a roguish look about him. At least, that's what his wife said.

Speaking of her. Unlike male Orians, women let their hair grow to their shoulder blades at least. Hers were a little past, with a little bit of flame, minute in size, singed at a strand on the left side of her pale face. Dark green eyes glared through the holo-vid, burning holes all around. Sometimes, Majon wished she could really do that so that she could glare him though the floor of the cruddy place. She was lithe, like almost all Orian women were. Even if they were scientists, the entire race received a basic military training. A small laser rested on each of their belts, and thank God they forgot them every time this sort of thing happened.

"That's it, captain!" Mem said, with the strong, somewhat light voice that was noted of her. She continued her tirade. "I want to be moved to a different deck. He is incompetent! Foolish! And downright lewd!"

Osma griped a pipe in his hand above him. "She is only fooling herself, captain!" It was always the same. Majon just tuned them out after that. He was tired of their bickering. It was as if they had their seventy-fifth anniversary yesterday. It was an every day affair with these two.

He should have listened to mother and become a writer. The more he read Shadow's books, he wished he had. Last night he had finished Champions of Ravenloft. It had been one of the few Shadow titles involving the fantasy genre and it was pretty good. He had never really tried to get into that genre but now that he had read it, he wished he could have gone to the Raney School of Arts, but oh no. He had to listen to his father and head off to the academy. Now he was stuck with these two.

". . . a mass that large in space could not possibly be one living organism!"

"What?" said the captain, now jolted out of his daze of longing for sanity. "Repeat that."

Osma gave the captain' strange look but resigned a sigh. "I said, captain, that my brain-dead wife found a anomaly out in space." He gave the woman a glare which she had no qualms in returning. "A pulse of a life force ninety degrees to our left. Not only that, but her computer also seems to be picking up a signal radiating from the thing. We both know that's impossible, right captain?"

Maybe jumping out the airlock was a better option.