Empire's Son: An Epic Science Fiction Novel Series

No one told me we were going to visit a desert planet. As I stepped out of the shuttle that had ferried the Admiral, Dur-rele, Master Kiev, and I to the planet called Sora X, a harsh wind and heat blasted my body. Thankfully, it seemed the royal blue long coat I wore really did adjust to its environment, because I felt a cooling sensation almost instantly against my skin.

If only it could do something about the harsh light. I blinked against the brightness of the red-yellow sun, and shielded my eyes from it with a hand. If I squinted I could make out the landscape around, not that it was much to see. Stretched out before me as far as the eye could see was a vast wasteland of burnt orange sand and dunes. All except for a cluster of squat adobe looking buildings that rested off to the right. There might have been a dozen or so, and they all looked rundown and barely serviceable as lodging.

“Is that the College?” I asked in disbelief.

“It is,” Master Kiev said coming up to stand beside me.

I didn’t want to be rude. Honestly, when everyone had been going on about the Protectors and how awesome they were and the fantastic place they learned their trade, I was expecting… well, more. So I went with a simple, “Oh.”

Master Kiev chuckled as he clapped me on the shoulder. “Oh, don’t let appearances deceive you, Highness. Sometimes protection can come in the guise of deception. Come, I will show you.”

Dur-rele, Master Kiev and I stepped from the ramp of the ship. Admiral Vang was already gone. He had exited the ship, walked around me, and started a sturdy march across the desolate place all while I’d been glued to the top of the ramp getting a lay of the land. He disappeared behind one of the closer buildings before we had even hit the sand.

“Guess he’s in a hurry,” I laughed making light of it a little, but I actually felt relief. The sooner he was off this planet, the sooner I would feel at ease.

I had barely seen the man during the three day trip from Dyniss, but his presence could be felt everywhere on the battle cruiser. The Zahians on the ship were as stiff and unwelcoming as their Admiral. It was like Vang was a contagion that effected everything he touched.

Normally, that was bad enough. I remembered it well from my trip from Earth to Ethia, but this time it felt more intense. And I knew why. The Admiral still thought I meant the Emperor harm. What with me attacking my birth father’s guard outside his room one evening, and then the very next morning defeating the Emperor’s personal Protector. Yeah, pretty sure he thought I was enemy number one.

Honestly, I couldn’t blame him. I looked guilty as hell. At least, my father didn’t see it that way. He saw it as me having a hard time adjusting to being ripped from my life on Earth, and then being plunged into my Ethian one, especially since I couldn’t remember my Ethian life, or that I had actually been born here.

I had grown up on Earth, thinking like all the other people there that it was a solitary planet in an endless ocean of stars. That our little corner of the universe was the only place harboring sentient life. What a shock it had been when that delusion had been ripped from us by the arrival of Admiral Vang’s hulking battle cruiser in the calm Georgia sky. Let me tell you.

Now I was in a completely different galaxy in an Empire that spanned that entire galaxy, and I was expected to be its ruler one day, to replace my birth father as Emperor. Yep, no pressure there. None at all.

So yeah, maybe I had been a little upset. Okay, fine. Maybe a lot upset. At the sudden revelation by the man I had thought of as my dad who had actually taken me from my true father twenty years before. That he had also locked away my memories of that life. And then before I could even come to terms with that, I had stepped in to give myself up so they couldn’t take said man away, a man I had deeply loved for years, and still did, in spite of all that he had done.

I did managed to forgive him all that, because the more I had learned about Ethia and the role I was expected to play here and the dangers awaiting my return, the more I realized that my dad’s actions had been a mercy. He had been trying to protect me like any true Protector would do.

And here I was now on the world that birthed new Protectors to find my next one, because my birth father demanded it. Though he had good reason to. I had been attacked three different times in the last month since Admiral Vang had picked me up from Earth. And since my Protector was still on that planet billions of light-years away and also forever on the Emperor’s bad side, I had come to find a replacement.

Yes, I had mixed feelings about that, but as I had quickly learned after meeting my birth father, if he wanted something, you were better off just giving in and giving it to him. Or else.

I tried my best not to think about the three mark 12’s he had shown me when I had burst into the Emperor’s room in a fit of anger my second day at the palace. They were patiently waiting behind the dark side of the moon for any time I stepped out of line to destroy the planet I once called home, reminding how serious my birth father was about me doing my duty to the Empire and becoming his successor. He wasn’t messing around.

I was glad it wasn’t up to the Admiral when those bombs were activated and sent down to Earth, even though he had put them there and currently held the ability to set them off at any moment. No, that was up to the Emperor. He was the one I needed to keep happy. So if the Admiral wanted to think the worst of me, so be it.

Though truth be told, I had thought some very unpleasant thought’s about my birth father when he had revealed those mark 12’s to me. And I realized maybe that was why the Admiral was so against me. He knew the lengths the Emperor had to gone to secure my cooperation. The Admiral had done it by proxy for him.

I sighed and shook my head. Yep, the sooner he was off planet chasing after ghosts, the better. I allowed Master Kiev to lead the way as the three of us made out way across the shifting sands.

As we moved closer to the sad looking collection of buildings, I realized that something was happening. It was like the air in front of us was rippling like the surface of a pool of water when a rock was thrown into it. I also happened to notice a strange pulling sensation in my navel. And as if a switch had been flipped, the scene before us change.

I was in absolute amazement of the transformed world around me. No longer was I standing in a desolate desert with abandoned looking buildings. Before me rose a tall terra-cotta colored wall, and in that wall was a large archway spanning a wide tightly packed street. Master Kiev walked right for it, and I followed sure that I looked like some wide-eyed tourist.

Master Kiev nodded at two men standing guard just before the arch. They wore the same dark brown, short coat uniform as Kiev along with the same dragon crest on their shoulders, and they gripped guns that looked a lot like a rifle, except they were a gleaming silver and had a pulsing blue light that ran across the entire bottom of the weapon. They gave a slight nod to the Master, and to me a deep bow of the head, then they went back to standing like stone statues and their guard duty.

As I walked through the archway beside Master Kiev, a city of buff colored buildings opened up before me, as the street itself bustled with people. Some of them wore the same uniform as Kiev, but a great many more wore a lighter brown, short coat uniform. I also spied several among the crowd who wore no coats at all, but a variety of muted colored long sleeved and high collared shirts with loose pants that seemed well worn.

Most of the people seemed preoccupied or in a hurry and didn’t notice our small entourage. But those who did, stepped to the side to let us through, and then gave me a bow of the head as I passed. Dur-rele had gone over this particular protocol with me, saying that I was free to give a slight nod back to acknowledge their presence, but that was it.

And so, I returned each bow with a nod and no smile, because apparently, randomly smiling at people in Ethia could be taken as rudeness. I didn’t really follow that logic, but then I was finding many customs in Ethia didn’t match with the ones I’d learned on Earth. So like a great many things that had happened to me in the last month, I rolled with it.

As we traveled down the street, I noticed that each side of the street had short one story buildings that with a closer look revealed that they weren’t full buildings at all, but open courtyards. I looked through the archway door to one of these courtyards I passed to find the ground covered in brown stone with no roof at all. In the center of the court, many people in light brown pants and simple black shirts were in varying stages of hand to hand combat. I then noticed in bold blue cross the top of the arch the words Combat Three. On the other side of the street, the courtyards were labeled with Cadet, and then each one numbered down the line.

It wasn’t long before we passed a large three story building that spanned four times the street front as the courtyards. It had a large archway at the entrance and across the top were the words Cadet Residence Hall. There were several light colored uniformed men gathered at the front chatting and seemingly laughing about something, but when they saw me, they quickly stopped and gave me a bow of the head. Once we passed, I could hear their banter start up again.

I was surprised at the sharp stab of jealousy that rushed through me. There was no doubt about it that I missed my carefree life on Earth. I deeply missed having normal conversations with people. Just hanging out and having fun. I had taken it all for granted, not thinking that one day it wasn’t something I could do if I chose to. Now I was wondering if I would ever be able to just relax and enjoy myself with a few friends, because if I went by Dur-rele’s lessons so far, my social future looked as bleak as the desert outside this College.

I could feel the dark mood threatening to over take me, but Master Kiev spoke to shake me out of it. “I do hope you can forgive me, Highness.”

I blinked as I pulled myself out of my thoughts, realizing I had missed part of the conversation. “Forgive you for what? Sorry, I was preoccupied taking it all in.”

Master Kiev chuckled. “It is something to behold, isn’t it? I was asking for your forgiveness, because I should have warned you of the displacement cloak, but most Ethians know about its existence. I wanted you to see its full effect for yourself.”

I was still having a hard time believing that from the outside, this bustling place looked liked a few sad abandoned buildings. “So you can hide an entire College with a cloak?”

“Oh, no. An entire planet can be hidden with a cloak, but it takes an immense amount of power to do something like that. A small place like this is far more manageable.”

I wanted to laugh at the idea that cloaking an entire College was easy. But then I was learning that Ethians had a different mindset about such things. Their technology and capabilities were far more extensive than what I was used to on Earth.

“If everyone knows you can do it, then what good is the cloak?”

Master Kiev smiled. “There is a difference from knowing and actually experiencing something for yourself. Sure, if someone really wanted to find this College they could just walk right in like we did, but you have to have an idea of where to look in the first place.

“There are several dozen abandoned clustered buildings much like what you saw coming into the city scattered about this planet. You can loose a lot of time searching them out to find the right one. In the meantime, our security monitor would have picked up the intruders long before they found us.

“In addition to that, only specially cleared pilots who come to the College can land their ships manually. Once in orbit around Sora X, a pilot submits a request to land. For those with special clearance, they can pilot down the flight path provided by traffic control. All others must hand off flight to control. If any ship lands without clearance or auto pilot, an assault team is dispatched to immediately intercept the ship.”

“Is there really that much need for security for the College?”

Master Kiev nodded solemnly. “It is. The College wasn’t always on Sora X. It was on an entirely different planet and kingdom for the first eight hundred years or so, but it was constantly raided by those who wanted the knowledge and prestige we were gaining.

“There had once been rival organizations that had tried to do what we were doing, and figured if they sabotaged us enough, they could close us down. Instead, the Directors of the College of that time decided to relocate and begin using a displacement cloak. Since then, the College itself hasn’t been breached. That’s been well-over five hundred year ago.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That’s impressive.”

Master Kiev nodded. “It is indeed. Come there are some people who wish to welcome you.”

Kiev continued down the street until we reached a massive circular building this one at least six stories tall with a wide russet dome, and it sat on the corner of a cross roads. The front facing the street I was standing on sported large curved windows big enough for a person to step through them, and the front arching doorway so wide that ten people could walk through it side by side. Along the top of the door were the bright blue words Protectorate Auditorium and Lecture Hall.