The tail end of the party went wild fast. Kane stayed on the couch as a service drone continuously brought him drinks. Just as I expected, he insisted on sorting through the daily reports and spreadsheets on his tablet. Kane was always a bit of a workaholic, so who was I to stop him without being a hypocrite here? After all, I shouldn’t be complaining, considering neglected paperwork wouldn’t stack on my desk overnight.

  Seras unsurprisingly wound up flirting with every woman in the room. When he showed me the list of contact information he’d racked up, I didn’t even bother reading it. It was pages long, and I was pretty sure he’d go down the entire list within the next five years.

  I spent the rest of the party trying to meet as many people as I could. Everyone there; except for Kane, Seras, and I, either worked with Tanaka directly or was a personal friend of his. I mentally filed that away as another entry in the rapidly growing list of suspicious festivity-related occurrences. Admittedly, it was rather unexpected considering how the partygoers reacted to my public grilling of the Raijin Sector Prefect. Either way, his absence let us actually enjoy ourselves. I ended up with a winning streak in eight consecutive drinking contests and two arm wrestling matches.

  One of the guests brought their family, which led to an awkward situation where I was challenged to an honor duel by a twelve-year-old boy with a katana. I swiftly disarmed him, helped him up, and signed the blade before returning it. Seras gave the boy a hug while delivering a boisterous speech about “fighting spirit.”

  After asking around a bit, I found out that Tanaka never left the bathroom. Again, another item for the list. It was around that time when the party came to a close, and I needed to return to my second home.

  The ILS Izanagi was an absolute beast of a vessel, designed to serve as a mobile self-sufficient fleet base. The main hull clocked in at thirty kilometers long, with gigantic, bird-of-prey style wings stretching out to thirty-two in span. Hundreds each of plasma lances, coil batteries, and point defense guns stood in ranks on meters thick nanolaminate hull plating. Rows of hangars and torpedo silos stretched across the sides of the main hull. The main event, though, was the paired primary weapons arrays mounted on the sides of the forward section. Each array held five absolutely enormous mass drivers, mounted to fire either straight forward or up to a one-hundred-twenty degree arc off to its respective side. Each barrel was one-sixth as long as the entire ship. As expected for such a large and unsubtle flagship, the design was courtesy of one Praetor Mira Ashburn, and I couldn’t thank her enough.

  Even a single hangar was absolutely massive. It was a cavernous, multi-level space that was always busy with some combination of drones and crew. Stacked docking tiers held ships, assorted vehicles, and maintenance equipment. The whole space was connected to the exterior of the ship by a giant array of magnetic launch tubes, which served as the only way in and out of the colossal chamber. Either way, there still wasn’t enough room to fit Prefect Tanaka’s massive ego. I looked back at Kane, who was glued to his tablet, and stepped out.

  The second my feet hit the deck, I was greeted by the simultaneous thumping of fists over chests by at least two dozen crew and a handful of legion warriors. I returned the gesture, and just as I was about to speak, I felt a presence behind me.

  My head snapped to the side as I looked over my shoulder, warrior instincts surging. Adrenaline and reflex boosters spiked. The world seemed to slow down. Everything sharpened. As it turns out, my warrior instincts weren’t needed, because the figure standing behind me was my daughter, Kiyana.

  Her slender arms had already pulled me into a hug before I even finished coming down from the reflex surge. I returned the favor, pulling her closer and patting her back for what, in hindsight, must have been a little too long. A few seconds in, I heard her speak as I noticed she’d let go.

  “Uh, dad, that’s… way too much, ya know.” Kiyana looked up at me with a warm smile.

  I let out a soft laugh as I released her and stepped back. “Oh, you think I know, huh?” I teased. “Last time I checked, there aren’t any studies on optimal hug length.”

  Kiyana stuck out her tongue at me as I continued. “Hold on.. I think you grew exactly one millimeter.”

  At that, Kiyana tried to stick her tongue out even further, but she’d already hit the limits imposed by biology. Before I could reply, Kane walked past and shoulder-checked me. He was one of the few people that I let get away with that without getting launched into the nearest wall. “Knew it. Raijin’s got some weird budget stuff going on,” he commented with his usual emotionless monotone.

  I turned to Kane, who was still walking over to the nearest omni-lift, and nodded. “Knew my instincts were onto something. I’ll look into it.” I began to follow, but alas, fatherly duties called.

  “Hey, wait-” Kiyana exclaimed as she grabbed my upper arm.

  I glanced over my shoulder and looked down at her. “I need to get some work done, so it better be important.”

  She gave an awkward grin and scratched the back of her neck. “I mean… kinda? How was the party?”

  I didn’t waste any words answering. “It sucked. You’d have hated it.”

  At least that got a rise out of her. Her eyes lit up and she shook her head, her long black hair flowing with the motion. “No wonder I wasn’t invited. Hey, can we-”

  I cut her off immediately. “Something up with your ears? Just give me an hour or two, alright!” I smiled and patted her on the shoulder, leaning down to make contact with her deep purple eyes. “Just go and do your normal Kiyana stuff for a bit. Have you practiced any Kinesis lately?”

  Kiyana snorted like she was a second away from laughing. “You’re the only person I know who doesn’t call it magic.”

  I groaned and pinched the bridge of my nose. Of all people, of course she’d know what buttons to press. One of my greatest achievements, the most advanced and esoteric field of science, reduced to superstition. “It’s not magic, it’s a complex interplay of biology and physics based on the unified field.”

  “Oh yeah? What do you call… this!?” Kiyana grinned impishly as she lifted her hand. Purple lightning surged, voltage crackling. I smelled ozone and felt the hairs on my neck stand up.

  My hand grabbed her wrist, firmly but gently. “Not in public, Kiki.” Her hand went limp as she pouted. The lightning faded away. “And especially not around the fusion ordnance.” I gave a slight nod over to a torpedo storage rack that was just a few meters away.

  Kiyana went even paler than she normally was. “Oh… yeah, my bad. Uhhh, I’ll leave you alone now!”

  I sighed as I turned to walk away. “Just don’t kill anyone, and don’t blow up the ship. I love you.” I really did want to spend time with my daughter. It had been months since we’d done anything really meaningful together at all, but I wasn’t going to put off work. I didn’t exactly want to get arm-grabbed again, so I flash-stepped into the omni-lift. To anyone looking, I’d have basically blurred and teleported with a quiet, low pitched pop and whooshing sound. The technique actually involved a focused burst of energy to dramatically boost the user’s speed for a tiny fraction of a second. Telekinetic air manipulation suppressed the shockwave and sonic boom, allowing the user to effectively appear as if they teleported.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I slammed my finger into the selection screen, and the lift tube’s doors responded in kind. The omni-lift snapped shut as magnetic rails engaged. The trip itself took only seconds before I stepped out into a hallway large enough to fit a truck through. Two of my elite Stormblade Guard, both wearing bulky Dai-Majin pattern power armor the size of a fridge and holding massive bearded axes, flanked the huge blast door leading to my quarters. Even through the armor, they both looked tired, not to mention that they didn’t even ask how my day was. I smiled as I returned the gesture. “Guys, take the next shift off,” I said as I stepped into my quarters. “Don’t let me see you guarding my door tomorrow.”

  As the blast doors slid closed, I collapsed on my couch and spent some time just taking in the room. A massive display screen, linked to the ship’s sensor feeds to mimic a window, took up the front wall. The left and right had personal memorabilia from millennia gone past. Photos with family and friends and of the Empire’s greatest victories and achievements, ancient relic weapons that still worked, and dozens of flashy art pieces from the worlds I visited the most. A large doorway to the left led to my kitchen and dining area, and a door behind me led to the bedroom and office space. It wasn’t nearly as large as the Imperial Suite on Xarra, but it was still more than I needed on a starship.

  I took a deep breath, shook my head, and sighed. “Coffee drone. Now. Please?” The floating machine glided from the kitchen door over to the couch, and I grabbed the oversized mug it held and immediately took a sip. Not black, but extremely strong with a rich flavor. I was about to go down a seriously deep hole, and I needed something to get my blood flowing. Data flickered in my vision again as I dialed up the bridge. “Shipmaster, set a course for Xarra,” I ordered as I stood from the couch.

  “Aye, sir,” the gruff, battle hardened voice of Niko Shadowkin, the Izanagi’s commander, replied through comms.

  “Thanks.” I acknowledged and cut the channel. I vaulted over the couch and walked into my office, taking a seat in what I jokingly referred to as the second throne. It was a large, reinforced chair which sat at my desk. Thick coolant tubes and interface cables ran from the robust seat. I got to work immediately, pressing my palm as the desk’s holographic display lit up. At the top of my inbox sat the report from Kane. The Raijin Sector’s annual budget. I opened a second window and hit shuffle on my classic heavy metal playlist. For this kind of work, music helped a lot.

  The report was annotated with enough notes to triple the size of the file. At the top was Raijin’s usual budget distribution. That hadn’t changed in the past hundred years, except for the ten percent shift from shipbuilding to local infrastructure. The five percent figure at the bottom, next to the row labeled “surplus”, stood out like it was mocking me. Under it was a note from Kane: “Your instincts were right, this wouldn’t pay for that party.”

  I sighed and muttered to myself. “More than five percent of the whole Raijin Sector budget was spent on a party.” I start looking through the other sections. “What was that guy up to?” I mused as I scrolled down.

  That’s when I noticed it. Raijin, the planet, was home to Kin-Taiyo Plasma Systems, a large fusion reactor manufacturing company. For the past year, they had exclusive contracts to energy infrastructure in the sector. That wasn’t suspicious on its own, but what I saw next pretty much confirmed it. Tanaka Consulting LLC. My jaw nearly dropped. The company had wired him five billion Ish as a “consulting fee.” The last time I’d spoken with Prefect Tanaka, he’d literally thought helium-3 was a brand name. Next to this, in huge red runes, was another note from Kane. Apparently, it got worse. Figures.

  As much as morbid curiosity tempted me to dig deeper, I’d already seen enough. The “consulting” situation was already enough on the financial end, but I still suspected there was more to it. Judging by the performative, obnoxiously overpriced party earlier, he wanted something to do with me specifically. I’d have to see what my eyes dug up.

  I leaned back and downed another sip of coffee as the ship vibrated for a few seconds. The wormhole drive was engaged. From my estimations, the trip back should take around thirty minutes. The planet where the party was hosted, Kinako-IV, was around fifty light-years closer to Xarra than Raijin itself was, and I had been to Raijin dozens of times.

  That was thirty minutes I could spend doing something else.

  I stood up and immediately chugged the rest of the coffee before leaving my quarters. The same two Stormblade Guard were flanking my door. I turned around as I stepped out, resting my right hand on my hip as I addressed them. “Hey. It’s been an hour and a half.”

  The two armored guards looked at each other, and then back towards me. I nodded once as I raised my voice slightly, speaking in a more serious tone. “I said earlier that you two needed a break. Go hit the mess hall, take the next shift off, and don’t come back until you’re well-rested. That’s an order.”

  I wasn’t leaving until these two overly enthusiastic guards actually listened, but it didn’t take more than a second for them to get the message. They both nodded, thumped their fists on their chests, and made their way down the hall. Still no conversation, or even a hello. They were either just that tired, new members, or had sticks up their butts so large that the finest surgeons in the galaxy would struggle to remove them. I turned my head to the large, ornate blast doors leading to the bridge and pondered stepping in just to check, but I didn’t want to interrupt whatever the shipmaster was doing unless I had to be there. I gave my inbox and daily reports another quick check. More mundane stuff, which Kane had already filtered out and handled. Thankfully, nothing required my attention yet, so I could make good on my promise. I really needed to do something with my daughter.

  A quick text to Kiyana, and a few seconds later, she responded that she was in my training room. I already knew what we would be doing. The room was in the next sector over on the command deck, so only a few minutes walk or a completely unnecessary omni-lift ride. I took the third option. With a flicker and that distinctive low-pitched boom, I appeared in the doorway, already leaning against it and smiling. As I looked over at Kiyana, my first thought came out loud. “You look like a mess.”

  Kiyana did, in fact, look like a mess. She was wearing her usual training outfit, a black gi with purple trim. It was, in fact, the only outfit she ever wore more than once a year. She was covered in so much sweat it looked like she’d just gotten out of the ocean, and her black hair was messy and tangled. She leaned against the wall, taking labored breaths as she looked up at me. “You think?”

  Of course she’d inherited my sarcasm.

  I stepped into the room, narrowing my eyes as my feet shifted. “Alright, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Kiyana’s eyes widened like she’d seen a dead body or something equally disturbing. “Seriously? Now? When I look like… well, this?”

  I stepped forward as my power slowly built. The air felt heavier. Warmer. Electric. “On the battlefield, your enemy won’t wait for you to rest. You say that for real, they’ll just laugh and kill you.”

  She stumbled back, taking a fighting stance, the best she could considering her exhaustion. Even then, the form was surprisingly good. Purple lightning arced off her hands as she tensed them up. “Dad, I’m not a warrior! That’s not-”

  I cut her off as I tightened my fists. “Doesn’t matter, you’re a high value target either way. You need to hold your own.”

  “But can’t you just protect me? Or… the Stormblade Guard or something?” Kiyana’s question sounded sincere but desperate. I shook my head.

  “I won’t always be around and neither will they. We may not age, but eventually, someone’s gonna take my head. Might be tomorrow, might be a million years from now, but you can’t rely on others to protect you forever.” I stopped at arms length, fully focused on the spar but not in a proper fighting stance yet. “I want you… to try to kill me.”

  Kiyana stepped back, arms shaking as she shook her head. “What? No, I can’t…”

  I smiled, warmly and reassuringly. “ Trust me, you couldn’t even if you wanted to.”

  She brought back her hands, the purple lightning arcing with immense power, spreading across the room like tendrils of pure energy. “That doesn’t make me feel any better about it, dad.”

  Just as she was about to try and blast me, three loud knocks resounded from the blast door. I turned around, sighing. “Seriously? What now?”

  A figure stepped through the door. Literally. He phased through the closed door as if it wasn’t there. Tall, messy white hair, red eyes, and a third purple cybernetic eye in his forehead. He was dressed in a black and white kimono with a black nano-weave bodysuit underneath, and held one of the rare few paper sketchbooks in the empire under his arm.

  Grand Master Adryx Kalyn. Head of Imperial Intelligence and the Shadowfall special forces. He didn’t even make eye contact as he spoke. “My contacts found some stuff on Tanaka. Figured you should know.”

  Kiyana sighed in relief as our training session was interrupted. I looked over my shoulder and gave a stern glare for a second before I responded. “We’re in the middle of something. Tell me later.”

  Adryx pulled a data-drive from his kimono and tossed it to me. I caught and inspected it, eyes narrowing. “What’s this?”

  “Sensitive data,” Adryx answered. “Dirt on Tanaka I don’t think we can put off. If we do, people could die.”

  The kickbacks were bad enough, but this went straight into crisis territory. I shook my head and let out a low growl before speaking. “Just my day, Adryx. Just my freakin day…”