Author's Note: I wasn't going to write this, but it was suggested by a reviewer (looking at you "Pat), and once I got started, as usual, I couldn't limit myself to a short story. Sorry, no gundams in this story, just the rise of an empire through primitive means and the help of a smart-mouthed, quick-witted young man from Earth.

PS: Pat, thanks for reading my work and reviewing. If you don't have an account here, make one and you can message me. I have this story written already, but when I finish publishing it, I will be doing another that takes on Earth and in the colonies. I wouldn't mind sharing ideas with you.

Chapter 1

Binary system space

The light of the ejection button was pulsing before his eyes, his hand hovering over it, but Duo Maxwell was hesitating. Why? He had rehearsed this moment over and over in his mind for the last several days. He didn't want to do this, but it was for Trynity's own good. Duo knew he was holding her back, and he did not want a future where he saw regret in her eyes for choosing him over a brilliant career in astrophysics. Hell, Duo was not even sure what that was, but Trynity had been offered a grant to study it at a prestigious university and they didn't hand out that kind of money to just anyone. She had to be truly special to be chosen and he knew she would not do it because it would mean being separated from him. But Duo wasn't giving her a choice. She was going to be angry, and he might have to use all his charm and then some to earn her forgiveness when he returned in a few months, but it would be worth it to know she wasn't resenting him for giving up the opportunity of a lifetime.

Mind made up, he touched the button and braced for the explosion that sent the escape pod careening away from the transport just entering the wormhole. There were so many ways this could go wrong, ways that Duo probably hadn't thought through before sending himself hurling into space in little more than a pressurized can with a space anomaly nearby sucking everything into it.

He had arranged with the space pirate, Newt, to pick him up even though Newt didn't strike Duo as the most reliable guy. He wouldn't be in the binary system if he had been following instructions in the first place when, several years ago, he had been sent on a routine mission to look for gundanium laden debris on the outer rim of settled space. Although he had been warned to stay far from the sector where a spatial disturbance had been detected in the past, Newt had ignored the caution. His ship and crew had been sucked into a wormhole, the same wormhole that had sent Trey into their solar system. Until Duo met up with Newt on the pirate station located on an observation satelite between Bayman and Calabria, he and his crew had been presumed dead. That was the guy his life depended on? Then again, who was he to criticize Newt after all the idiotic things he had done in his life, not the least of which was hopping into this escape pod and leaving behind the reason his heart beat.

There was no portal for Duo to see out of the escape pod and no way for him to contact Newt except for the transmitter that would send a signal to any nearby craft, so he was stuck strapped into a space that wasn't even big enough to stand in. For several moments it flipped end over end and just when he thought he might vomit in his own space helmet, it stabilized, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. Newt had warned him that he would wait until the gravitational pull from the wormhole subsided before collecting him, so he would be on his own for several minutes. But several minutes seemed like several hours before the escape pod jerked to a stop and it began to move slowly as if it were being dragged. His hair stood on end, so Duo knew that a magnetic tractor beam was pulling him, that Newt had proven good to his word and was retrieving the escape pod.

The process of getting the pod onto Newt's ship seemed to take hours when it was probably only a few minutes, but Duo had begun to feel claustrophobic, so he was relieved when banging on the outside of the pod indicated that he should release the hatch. He pulled the manual lever and when the small hatch opened, he bolted from the confined space and nearly banged his head above the doorway of the hatch.

Newt floated towards him and he could see through the visor of his helmet that the other man was laughing, and since they did not have communication devices, he motioned to the left where Duo saw the door and he floated as he followed the other man. They entered the temporary walkway that led to a decompression chamber on Newt's craft, and once inside, they drifted down until their feet were on the ground.

When Newt reached up to remove his helmet, Duo did the same and he was relieved to breathe in oxygen. "Hey, thanks for getting me so soon."

Newt grunted and rubbed his grubby, whiskered chin. "If I hadn't, you would have been fried by the wormhole. You missed quite a show."

The other man ducked out of the chamber and Duo followed him through the short corridor that led to the cockpit of the small craft. Looking around, he saw strange symbols, so he guessed it was either a commandeered Calabrian warbird or a Bayman fighter craft. He decided on the former, thinking that Newt probably swiped it when he was on the surface among the men Maeryn, the pirate chief, had taken to help Trey in his bid to win his rightful place in the empire.

After they removed their spacesuits and stowed them away, Newt dropped onto one of the seats and motioned for Duo to take the other. "There is a freighter heading towards Bayman from Varoonya," he told him. "We will catch up to my fleet heading to intercept it, and when we have the freighter in our control, we will take it to the market near Varoonya to sell the goods on the frontier."

Duo managed to keep his face from betraying his disgust. Sure, he had grown up on the streets where stealing was a way of life, but he had left that behind.

He must not have done a good job of hiding his feelings for the mission because Newt sneered at him. "What do you think pirates do, Maxwell? You said you didn't have any reservations about joining us, and that's why I agreed to help you."

Duo didn't need Newt reminding him that he had agreed to join Newt's crew when he asked him for help, but during the time that Duo had been at the pirate satellite the "pirates" had been scavengers and traders. Maeryn had approved of claiming deserted ships, dismantling them and selling parts or trading them with Bayman or worlds further away, so Duo hadn't had any qualms about agreeing to join them. He would not have agreed to what Newt was proposing now, but he wasn't in a position to refuse.

"No one is going to get hurt are they?" Duo was sick of killing, especially after what he had witnessed on Calabria, and he was glad that he would not be sitting in the cockpit of his gundam for a long time, if ever again. When he returned to Cinq Kingdom space, he would probably return to a court martial for abandoning his duties on research colony L10.

"They get hurt when they resist," Newt told him grimly.

Duo had a hard time believing that Maeryn, Trey's mother and the commander of the pirates, had condoned this attack. "Is that acceptable to your chief?"

"Chief? I am the chief now. Maeryn is staying on the planet grieving for that bastard Zeno. Good riddance. Glad he's dead, and nothing was more fitting than his death at the hands of a female. Maeryn was too soft, and we missed a lot of golden opportunities following her rules. Now I make the rules, and I say we take that freighter with or without bloodshed. Selling it on the frontier will earn me a lot of credits and make a name for my outfit."

Maybe he shouldn't be squeamish when the only person he knew from Bayman was their selfish princess, Ryana, so he might be able to stomach a battle with the freighter if all they were doing was lifting their goods.

The control panel of the craft distracted him and he realized he didn't recognize anything about it. "Hey, are you expecting me to figure out how to pilot this thing through trial and error?" he asked with a stiff laugh.

"You?" Newt snorted. "You would probably detonate it the first time you tried to operate it. Strap in and I will teach you enough so that you don't kill us both."

Duo didn't remind him that he was the pilot of a gundam and that he knew everything there was to know about it. The Deathscythe was a hell of a lot more technologically advanced than this craft.

The other man pointed to the strange symbols on the control panel. "It's Baymani script, and you're going to have to learn to read it. The Calabrians are bunch of primitive thugs that have good trade contracts with Bayman to get these ships. I took a few," Newt snorted with laughter, "I took all of the warbirds as a parting gift for helping the new emperor. Too bad I didn't think about grabbing some imperial warriors. Something on that planet makes them hyper fast and strong. After this job we should pay a visit to Edgeland Fortress to round up a few of them to take to the frontier to sell in the markets. We could spend the rest of our lives living in comfort on Varoonya on what we would make in such a transaction."

Duo shook his head vehemently. "I agreed to join your crew, but I draw the line at slavery." He remembered the slave auction in the Wastelands where Trey had desperately bid to buy Arora who had been captured and was being treated as if she were a mindless animal. Duo did not want to have anything to do with selling people.

"Are you sure you don't want to be dropped off on Calabria?" asked Newt skeptically. "I don't think you have the stomach for being a pirate."

If Newt took him to the planet, Trey would put him on a ship and send him right into the wormhole without listening to his explanation of why he had remained behind. Duo could not return so soon. Trynity had to be established in her studies before he showed up in her life again.

"Hey, I can do whatever you want me to. I just don't want to hurt any innocent people."

Without responding Newt smiled, a curl to his lips that had Duo wondering if he would end up being chucked out an airlock.

Imperial Palace, Calabria

Apolo of house Dax shifted in his sleep and found it difficult to move, and when he opened his eyes he saw that he was not alone. For a moment he was disoriented until he detected the scent of a female and realized that an arm was flung over his chest, and a leg, not the leg that matched with the arm, was nestled between his own. He did enjoy waking to find females keeping him warm, and despite all the activity from the night before and an anxious feeling that had awakened him shortly after first sunrise, he knew how to spend the time before the second sun crept over the horizon. The females' moans of protest at being deprived of sleep soon turned to whimpers of pleasure. A perfect way to start the day.

A few hours after second sunrise, he took his time in bathing, well, in being bathed and fed by the lovely young women who reluctantly left him when a messenger interrupted with a summons from the emperor. He felt disoriented to be addressed with respect by the men that he passed in the corridor after they had viewed him with scorn in all the years he had spent at Trey's side. Zeno's sycophants had not believed that Trey could defeat him, that the spawn of his terran female would never take his place.

After walking for several minutes through the winding corridors, he realized that he had not seen any women except the females that had been keeping him company, helping him recover after healing his sister's mortal wound. He checked his step and came to a stop, wondering what had become of the serving women. Trey was expecting him, but he turned on his heel and headed towards the wing of the palace that had once been ruled by Lady Xuxa, concubine of the emperor.

Apolo had never stepped into the female quarters, and when he did now, he was surprised to see other men inside. He supposed that with Xuxa's exile and Zeno's death, the females no longer had a protector, and Apolo was angry now to see the men moving among the helpless women, probably planning to take advantage of the powerful female's absence.

He seized the arm of the nearest male. "What are you doing here? Where are you men taking these women?"

The young guard wearing the colors of house Vaan grinned. "The emperor himself sent word that the house guard may take the females kept by his father provided we give an oath to make them our mates."

Looking again at what was happening, Apolo realized that the males were not being aggressive and that females were flirting with the imperial warriors. He wondered whose idea it was to dispose of them so efficiently. His sister surely had no reason to fear that Trey would make use of the females his father kept. Apolo recognized the signs that Trey was bonded to Arora more and more as his body purged the dulling effects of the drugs he had abused in the terran solar system. As a Guerani healer, Apolo could not be bonded to a female, but there was one particular woman that interested him.

Sidling up to one of the females, he remarked, "I do not see the female, Larya, here."

"She is gone," the woman said, giving him a winsome smile. "Are you looking for a mate?"

"Has Larya been claimed by a male?" Apolo did not want to hear that she had. The beautiful, personal slave of Lady Xuxa had tricked him into taking her to his camp in the Wastelands, and she had reported the location to her master so that her son could abduct Arora and her child, leaving Trey no choice but to surrender to his father. Apolo had unfinished business with Larya, so he did not want to hear that she had the protection of another male.

"We sent word to the emperor days ago that she was taken to the prison," she said with a curl to her lips. "That bitch deserves what happens to her after what she did." She smiled. "Have you come to fetch her for her punishment?"

"Punishment?" he repeated dumbly. Apolo had been bedridden for several days following his own stay in Zeno's prison and then saving Arora's life. Now he wondered if he should have risen from his bed sooner.

"She attacked the crown prince with a blade! She tried to kill his mate!"

Apolo could not believe her. He refused to believe her. She must be repeating rumors, and he would find out the truth from Trey. As he left the female quarters, his steps were faster, and he did not stop to acknowledge any of the men that greeted him as he headed directly to the emperor's apartments. Servants were busy cleaning under the supervision of Lady Virinea, Trey's mother, but Trey and Arora were not there.

Holding the infant Princess Shamara in her arms, bouncing the fussing infant, Virinea was obviously relieved to see him and she thrust his sister's baby in his arms before he had a chance to speak.

"You have an amazing talent with females," she said by way of explanation when he looked at her in question.

Apolo looked down at the baby and saw that she was smiling at him, her eyes glowing, and he could not resist grinning back down at her. Reaching up to tickle under her chin, he chided her. "Are you not behaving for your grandmother?"

The baby waved her arm and Apolo allowed her to catch his finger in her tiny fist. His heart swelled with joy as he remembered bringing her into the world, how she had not breathed until he had given her his own breath. Arora had been disappointed by the female child, and angry at him for not warning her that she did not carry a male in her belly when he had known all along.

After sending Shamara a warning about behavior by linking their minds, he gently placed her back into Virinea's hands. "She will give you no more trouble."

Virinea smiled down at Shamara who blew a bubble from her spit and gurgled with delight. "After all the terrible things that have happened, this precious child is a blessing." She raised her head to look at him. "She symbolizes the hope of the future. I am so proud that my son had the courage to save her life."

"As am I," Apolo admitted. He had been dismayed when Trey had taken Shamara away from Arora and left the camp to leave his infant daughter in the Wastelands according to imperial tradition where she would have died by the end of the day. Raised as an imperial, Apolo had understood the necessity of his actions, but his Guerani ancestors cried out in horror at what the Calabrian would do to one of their own. Apolo never would have let Shamara die. Although recovering from injuries received when Trey had come in disguise to his Wasteland camp to take Arora, if Trey had not brought her back, Apolo would have gone into the Wastelands to find her, to take her into the mountains to raise her alone if he must. But Trey had proven himself a man of honor, a man worthy to sire a new generation of Guerani.

"Are you looking for Trey?" Virinea asked him. "He has been meeting with his father's warlords all morning."

"I should be with him," said Apolo, voicing his thoughts aloud.

"Arora is with him, and I have already heard that they protested vehemently the presence of a Guerani female although she is his mate and his imperial guard." Virinea made a sound of disgust. "Many of them refuse to believe that Dax was Guerani, that he hid it from them all."

"Regardless, I will join them." Apolo nodded to her respectfully, then left her to head to the reception chamber where the emperor met with his council.

The guards at the high, wide doors did not hesitate to open them for him, and Apolo entered to hear Lord Waescop whose extensive holding was far to the north. He had been a longtime crony of Emperor Zeno and his imperial guard, Apolo's father.

"You have not consulted any of us before sending proclamations that will turn this empire upside down!"

Trey was sitting in the chair where Apolo had only seen Zeno sit, Dax standing behind him, stoically glaring at the lords that now faced Trey. In Dax's place stood Arora, her chin raised defiantly as she rested her hand on the hilt of her sword. Gods help any man that challenged her or her mate, and Apolo noticed that the men in the hall cast furtive glances towards her, probably gauging their chances at getting past her. But many of them had watched her training and had witnessed her killing Zeno not so many days ago to protect her lord and mate, so they knew they would be fools to make any move to threaten the emperor. More than half of the warlords present had already pledged to Trey, so any attack would end in a bloody fight, and Apolo sensed that none of the dissenters wanted to be the first to fall to her blade.

"I am your emperor," Trey reminded Waescop, his voice calm. "I will make the laws and you will enforce them."

Waescop was clenching his hands at his sides, one of them moving towards his sword, and Apolo tensed, lowering his own hand towards the hilt of his own, but when Waescop did not take his sword in hand, Apolo remained alert.

"Your father listened to our counsel," Waescop told Trey.

"My father did nothing to improve Calabria," stated Trey with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"He did not destroy it either," snapped Waescop. "Have you given any thought to the disorder that your proclamation will cause?"

Other than freeing the females of the palace and giving the palace guards the right to woo them without spending a fortune to acquire them, Apolo did not know what Trey had been up to while he recuperated from healing Arora.

"Of course I did," said Trey with deadly calm as he stared unblinking at the older man. "I will not pretend to feel any sympathy for you, Waescop, when you have amassed a fortune selling innocent women and children."

The northern lord gasped in outrage. "Do you think you and your followers can shut down my markets? I dare you to try."

"I will be arriving at your holdings within the month," Trey told him. "Either your markets will be shut down or I will shut down you."

Waescop stared at him with incredulous fury, then spun on his heel, turning his back on the emperor, and he walked away. He paused briefly when he drew even with Apolo and as their gazes met, Apolo felt the rage the surged through him because the other man believed that he and Arora had murdered Dax, the man that had helped him gain the power that Trey was taking away. Apolo did not use his magic to intimidate him, nor did he touch his sword, and after a tense moment, Waescop stomped past him. Several other lords followed him, and while only a handful remained, they comprised some of the most powerful houses of Calabria.

As Trey frowned and rubbed his face with his hands, Arora reached out to put a hand on his shoulder and he put his hand over it. Arora did not yet have the power to give him any but the comfort of a wife for her beloved husband, but that comfort could be as powerful as any Guerani spell.

One of the remaining warlords, Lord Chasek grunted. "Caron is not here," he observed. "Perhaps you should have waited …"

"My lord is not at Caron's beck and call," interrupted Lord Wattan.

Apolo was not surprised that Wattan would speak out against Caron. His father's lands in the south bordered Caron's and the two had fought intermittent wars during Zeno's reign. Zeno had sided with Caron more often than not and carved more land from Wattan's father to reward to his most powerful warlord. Lord Jansec had long since refused to come to Zeno's court, so Apolo had been surprised when Wattan, his son, had arrived to complete his imperial training. He had done so well that Zeno had not hesitated to appoint him as his imperial guard, choosing him over Raemon of house Caron.

"Settle down, you young hothead!" snapped Chasek. "I meant to point out that it would have been more convenient to have them all in the same place. I would not have minded spilling Waescop's innards in this room along with Caron's."

The other men voiced their agreement until Trey put up his hand to silence them. "I will not condone removing my opponents using such dishonorable tactics."

"They would not have balked at doing the same to you," remarked Lord Vaan, another of Zeno's more moderate warlords.

Trey noticed Apolo standing near the entrance. "Apolo, I see that you have left your bed."

The other man turned to look at him and Apolo saw the suspicion in their eyes. Not only was he Guerani, but he was Dax's acknowledged son. He moved forward, ignoring their open distrust and focusing on Trey. "I am well enough."

Trey turned his attention back to the warlords. "Chasek and Vaan, return to your holdings and gather your men. Waescop will not peacefully give up his markets, so I will have to take them by force."

Chasek rubbed his hands gleefully. "I have been looking forward to this day. Waescop supplied Zeno with his choicest females for many years and benefited from his favor."

"I don't need to be reminded of my father's corruption," said Trey with annoyance. "I was as aware of it as the rest of you."

"The gods favor you," said Vaan with a quick glance at Arora. Apolo knew he was thinking of the legend that foretold the return of the rains to the Wastelands when a sorceress won the love of a prince. Apolo had not believed the legend until the storm that had begun after Dax's death in the trance he had shared with his sister.

"We would not back you, my lord," continued Vaan, "if we suspected you would continue the practices of your father and his father before him."

"I am honored by the confidence you have in me," said Trey. "I will make Calabria better or die trying."

The men bowed to him, and when Trey signaled to Wattan to stay behind and he took his arm to lead him away to speak in a low voice, Apolo went to his sister to hug her.

"You are not feeling any ill effects?" he asked, referring to the blade that Zeno had thrust through her body and which would have killed her had Apolo not risked his own life to save her. He would have gladly died for her, but the ancestors, including his own father, lent their power so that she could live. Saving her had not come without a price and he had spent the last few days in his bed recuperating in the best way he knew how. The females had been more than happy to help him heal.

"You would be able to tell me better than I would know," she told him with an apolegetic smile.

He reached out to take her hand, then moved closer and laid the hand on her belly. "Close your eyes, Arora." When she did as he asked, he guided her so that she could feel the life forming in her womb. The child was too young to acknowledge them, but by the time he would be, Apolo will have taught her how to communicate with her unborn son.

She opened her eyes and he saw both wonder and sadness. "You learned these things from our mother."

"And our father," he told her with a sigh. "I never knew that he taught me in the hours when I slept because he would not even trust me with the truth of what he was." Dax had been a very powerful Guerani.

Arora put her hand on his cheek. "He did not abandon you, Apolo, not as he did me."

The pain of his rejection was easy to feel through his connection to her, and he knew that she wanted to know why Dax had rejected her when Guerani revered their females, but Apolo did not understand why their father had done so. Nor did he know why he had bound Trey to Arora when they were only children, knowing even if Zeno did not, what the consequences would be for the crown prince when he had mingled their blood in an imperial oath. When she returned to Calabria carrying Trey's child, Dax had labeled her a whore and put her in the Wastelands to die. What had he expected would happen between Trey and Arora? Why had he thrust them together and then pulled them apart? Apolo would probably never understand his father's erratic behavior.

After Wattan left, Trey came to stand with them. "I wasn't expecting bloodshed, but I am glad that you showed up when you did or I think Waescop would have challenged me and I don't know what would have happened."

"I do," muttered Arora, fingering the dagger tucked into the belt of her tunic, her brows drawing together in a fierce frown.

Trey leaned down to touch his lips to her forehead and Apolo felt the strong love that they shared. His own heart began to beat faster as he considered sharing such a love with a woman which led him to broach the subject that he had wanted to discuss with Trey.

"I have been to the women's quarters," he began.

Arora laughed and slipped her arm around Apolo's. "I am not surprised. I hope that you are not displeased that Trey has removed your limitless supply of beautiful females."

Apolo forced a smile although his sister's teasing was irritating him now when he had something important to discuss with her mate. "No. I could see that both the men and the females were happy with your order."

"Good. Xuxa, with my father's approval, dangled those females before the palace guard as rewards for their unquestioning loyalty. That practice is over now." He raised a brow. "I suspect you have something else that you wish to speak to me about."

If what he had heard about Larya was true, Apolo knew that Trey would not be happy to hear even her name mentioned, but he forged ahead anyway. "I was told that Larya was put in the prison."

As he expected, Trey's brows drew together in a frown and his eyes grew dark. "That female tried to kill us in our bed."

Apolo could hardly believe that Larya would do such a thing, but a glance at Arora told him that Trey's accusation was true.

"If we had slept in my bed, she would have succeeded," added Trey.

Arora now frowned at him. "You have so little faith in my ability to protect you?"

Apolo raised a brow. "Where were you sleeping if not in your bed?" he asked.

Both their faces flamed, so he did not want to know what they had been doing or where. They were mates, so he had no reason to judge them for carrying out a fantasy they shared concerning the mat on which she had slept at the foot of his bed for many years.

"Larya tried to kill me and then she tried to seduce me," Trey told him. "I have exiled her to the pirate satellite."

Apolo could not believe what he was hearing. "You know that since your mother has left, it has probably become a lawless, dangerous place."

Trey shrugged. "I could have sentenced her to death by informing my father what she had done. Since she was Xuxa's creature and Xuxa wanted my mother dead, I thought it fitting to give her the same sentence that Xuxa gave my mother."

"Larya is not your mother!" he exclaimed without thinking. "She has been a helpless slave all her life!"

Trey glared at him. "Did you not hear me, Apolo? She tried to kill us. She earned the headsman's ax and I spared her."

"Why do you care?" asked Arora suspiciously.

He did not pause in responding. "She entertained me." Let them think that his only interest in her was physical. He wasn't sure if it was more since he had never felt anything more than the pleasure of the moment with other females, but he had felt something with Larya that he wanted to explore further.

"I suppose she is talented enough to amuse even you, Apolo," said Trey with a bemused shake of his head. "But I am not changing my mind, even for you. Wattan is taking her to Edgeland Fortress. There are a few pirates still on Calabria and he will be convincing them to leave and paying them to take Larya with them before he takes his men into the Wastelands to tear down the markets."

"And the females at those markets?" asked Apolo with a frown, putting aside his concern for Larya for the moment. "What will become of them?" Not belonging to a house, they would be without shelter and protection.

"They will be taken to Edgeland Fortress until they can make suitable matches with males that will give an oath to them."

Apolo was relieved that Trey was not leaving them to an uncertain future. He would have been happier to hear him show mercy to Larya.

"Forget about Larya," ordered Trey as if he could read Apolo's thoughts. "She knew when she raised a blade in my presence that the only possible consequence would be her own death. After what she has done to me and to Arora, and let me remind you Apolo that she played you for a fool, she is getting better than she deserves in the slim chance of surviving among the pirates. I do not ever want to see her on Calabria again."