In the beginning, but not really, a millennium after the final and fairly impossible and yet all the more interesting occurrence, in a wonderful expanse abound with strange, eccentric worlds, is a plague that extends its pronubial paw over her collection of intricately fabricated baubles. Pronubial, because each is a doting couple that sings to her in a tune only her blobby, bulbous receptors could discern. And baubles, because each held an impossibility inside their quantumly situated existence.

Immortality, the priceless, riskiest escape known to anyone, is only a simple matter of professional courtesy in the case of the many royal families in the galactic neighbourhood of the Hub. That’s if their natures don’t make immortality redundant. Each of a dozen or so families equip themselves with royal guards. And to those most elite, most capable guards, immortality binds them. It binds them to their royal employers, it binds them to their duties, their eternal watch and unending chores and relentless missions. To them, the idea of immortality is like the idea of watching the waves of time crash against the chests of every living being in the galaxy, crushing every breadth of life till the faintest exhale last reaches their ancient ear.

On the other hand, they’re immortal to the richest families in the galaxy, and to them the greatest benefits granted come in the tools of their trade: ships, suits, implants, favourable treatment under duress or capture, and more. For them, a century is a long day, and a long day is a stressful sigh during conflict with pirates who live to target royalty.

That’s what a guard does most of the time, for most of the royal families. Requests bring them planetside out to the great expanse of nothing, and farther out to the metal, constructed ornaments of rich systems. These space stations floating lazily and certainly in low planetary orbit, conduit transport vessels of various shapes and purposes as they scuttle heavily in weightless space from station docks through to the mass sucking pull of a planet’s gravity to surface ports. In orbits of most habitable planets neighbouring the Hub of the galaxy, there aren’t many days where dozens of misshapen, crude, or sleek, and prestigious space faring crafts arrive and depart at low thrust allotted by each authoritative station as to not rip holes in the planet’s atmosphere.

Pirates of many tribes and organizations in equally as many outfits and costumes sit upon broken ships, derelict station banks that swing out in to quiet space and hold sensors, small storage attachments, power couplers, and abandoned ferry channels, waiting patiently in rotations for royal ships to pass through. Protected only by the frail stretched shielding inches away from pushing them into the expanse. Beside them or in their laps sit balls of thick metal that will hug them tightly, allowing them to fly about in the vacuum of space like a tiny craft. Immediate raids on royal ships attract every active guard on a station, so instead pirates, mercenaries, thieves alike wait for the royal ships to pass through towards the planet’s surface before donning their special suits built for the blackness of empty space, and careening off to attach themselves to the hull, magnetically sealing their small forms until the ship lands. Suits worn by pirates for this reason are powerful, thick, sets of armour that allow the wearer to dive from the docks of a planetary station, to the ports below. Managing themselves through atmospheric pressures are simple feats. Ferrying on actual craft allow them time to relax. Ships themselves handle this task of breaching a planet’s outer atmosphere towards the mass below as easily as carrying their cargo and crew through space, entrance forces mitigated by various valves, fields, and energy deflectors that even the poorest trader can afford. Once landed, the hardened shell worn by pirates falls useless, too heavy for gravity, and too thick for active pirating. It collects into a ball by the ship, which normally makes it a simple enough task to retrieve once their job concludes. They normally pick them back up as they commandeer the royal’s ships. Mercenaries usually have a back-up spaceship close by, and thieves most likely tend not to go about such complicated matters, instead heading to the nearest liquor hall planetside, spending some of their stolen bounty on vibrant, piercing wines and thick, sturdy spirits before renting (or occasionally stealing, if still in the mood) port-to-station capsules to head back to their own ships or hidden chambers on the space platform where they wait in lusting anticipation for news of another royal vessel routing through. They continue doing this until the Galactic Police on station at the time, or some other uniformed authority tires of their good fortune, and decides to actually do their duties as enforcers of galactic laws and statutes and treaties and the like.

So, a pirate, in fact the six or seven pirates, demagnetized from the hull, used their suit’s reverse engine compartments to not gently bring them to solid ground but instead to expulse rivers of fluid energy like a pillar of punctured reality used to pull them towards as if by invisible hands, and pointed their trusty stolen ordnance at the pilot of the royal ship, who happened to be having a terrible day. Really, it was the morning on Huvar, the home world of his employers, that wasn’t the problem. He woke early from short rests as he does so only to pass the time, his implants and nanobots restructure his body to a fully rested state within a few blinks of his eyes and some focus. Nor was it the noon, and early afternoon hours since then. Those were fine, as he took time to read annals and books on a projected display while stepping slowly by the starlit rivers that connect to the silver lipped thickly swirling waters of Iolu bay, pacing steadily down and back towards a series of stone crushed roads between golden half-fields and pastures of blue and purple flowers, passing through the web of brooks that lead to another lake a full kilometer east of the royal house, until he last reconnects through the energy conducting walls of the house of Huvarian royalty. Retreating inside into one of the houses that the royalty on Huvar’s ancient tradition states is used for general open meetings with the public. He spoke with the head of the house, an old Huvarian named Cayswen, about something that has been bothering him for years. Cayswen in his aged wisdom and usual boredom of personal matters abated the guard’s frustrations with a much-needed dismissal for vacation. He only had to complete a delivery request in which another royal family required some insignificant item for something the guard cared very little about. All he knew was that the item belonged on R43 immediately. To the Rekkel species own royal house.

Before dipping away from the public discussion building from the fibrous, purple patched, tree-like alien with his antique hollow reverberating voice marking his old age, he patted his chest with the royal insignia, and smiled. In Huvarian custom, a smile is a more beaten expression that resembles a smile as much as a terrifying scream resembles happiness.

Diligent, and grateful, the guard took the item, dressed by way of palming his chest’s implant to transform the thoughts of a certain outfit into light constructed solidity, readied the ship the size of a small one bedroom condominium the likes of Earth’s long-gone urban sprawls, and departed three hours prior to the situation in which he now found himself. Urban sprawls of a moderately pricey city, rather than the old fashioned, decrepit half-updated buildings of urine stained spattered concrete and ill situated neighbourhood. For the inside of the ship was a lot like those old, intricately fitted buildings, with smooth interiors sanitized in their yet-to-be-used state, reflective surfaces, lonely hallways, and expansive rooms with low ceilings that fit a house much less than they fit a vehicle meant for sitting in. The small bridge with minimal seating – of the most exquisite Finhen leather of course – and plentiful displays and computer terminals for all needs sat in a semi-detached cockpit slightly swiveling at the bow of the ship. This near egg shaped chamber dipped into the vent of the partition, and grew up along to the aft engine compartments where the plasma converter coils and containment modules sat securely away from the meddling hands of royals who tended to drink brilliant sparkling wines on their trips. The under keel stripped along from the aft engine compartments down and around until it met the dip section of the bow. Its wings slid upwards like tongues lapping up the minute space dust that passed around their sharp, thin trim. They fastened halfway down the length of the ship, upwards and then straight down just short of the engines.

Space travel is quick for royals. Because of that looting royal ships on a schedule of one or two or even three ships per day is what makes some pirates comfortably rich, and then uncomfortably excised by incompetent, bored station security with Galactic Police back-up who only show up just so the security personnel couldn’t budge their way into the police force by way of insufferable, inflated confidence. Even though that would never happen, as Galactic Police officers are strictly of a certain species, and never anything else. The only other professions inside the headquarters and recon quadrant police platforms in the Hub were taken up by smaller species, even quietly permitted sub-species, who in fact aren’t inferior in any quantifiable way other than they haven’t joined a forum, or board, or other such distinguished voice in the Hub. Therefore, they’re not allowed positions of employment in almost any profession.

In scenarios where pirates, or thieves, or mercenaries forcibly borrow a royal employee’s items of significance, ship, weapons, or other expensive material, the guards give up the cargo freely, most are apathetic to their jobs, as none but the most elite, most capable, garner more impressive gadgets and remunerations. Guards eager for promotion meet the long truth often, as lowly guards defending royal ships have very little ability, or gadgets at all to help. Thus, they fall easily against the assault of greed, and inconsequence.

Some might make conjectures on how to advance in their careers, without understanding that only the rarest, or strangely impeccable species, or the rarely in peak form and impeccable of the species of royal assembly tend to become a part of the elite. A Human, for instance, is rare. If one were a Human, one would only wait maybe a day or two to become an elite guard with all the benefits awarded.

Humans, however, are gone – whisked away, vanished. In their Earth’s wake lay only the absence of something. Humans having to wait one to three days is itself conjecture, as only one remains. That Human was tasked with bringing an item to a planet called R43, a royal family’s home world of the Rekkel species three hours from his own royal employer’s planet. Relatively, of course, as three hours by almost any other ship would not be sufficient. Especially those of the traders of black markets from Scervius 5, or the Federation of Tarnished Treasures and Trinkets many small city sized vessels dozens of kilometers in length, or the frigates of intersystem ferries utilized by the Tourist Board of Strange and Infantile Worlds, even smartly sized reconnaissance craft piloted expertly by Quipalians of Eeran Bo, rich via royal association and powerful of their own accord, can’t swiftly traverse the elegance of the monotony of space. Though the sleekness, and sharpness, of his ship is vastly superior to nearly any other royal ship. Sharp arm tips rising like a cosmic tongue lifting gases of a nebula up into a curve. With its iridescent dyed-silver alloy of metals both light, and powerful. The insignia rests delicately across the ship’s port side and starboard side, of elegant browns beneath a radiant of blues, both light and dark, like those of blinking pulsars, and still, frozen nebula – eternal, if only for a while.

Augmentations allow him to dress himself in pure hard light, through holographic clothing styled from his thoughts. Underneath the constructs of his mind, his short brown hair sits high above his tessellated forehead of a middle-aged man. The rest of his face hidden by advanced visors, protectors from flashes, and minor projectiles, expresses little beyond subdued solemnity between bouts of spirit-instilled half-smiles and dumb wandering eyes reserved for moments drowned in emerald spinning wines of citrus notes and thick, woodsy scents, and confrontations with Huvarians who hate small talk. Nanobots and a long life of activity keep his body well-toned, and heavy with history and smooth muscle.

This, is where that terrible day begins.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2