by Kyle Larson
“That throne should be yours, Lord Earlos,” Lunar Guardian Rewill said.
The loyalty the other Lunar Guardians had towards Earlos gave him a sense of security, but he knew it could also be very dangerous. They would do whatever he said and that gave him more power than he’d ever wanted. Power like that was what got his ancestors in trouble and what kept he and his fellow Lunar Guardians confined to this rock. Earlos only wanted the power to negotiate with King Erelm about either restoring Moon City, or allowing the few people that remained to return to Earth. The only ones left were distant ancestors, like himself, that paid the punishment for what old men they’d never met had done.
“No, the throne should have been my niece Aren’s. It should be my nephew’s. I’m a tired old man who just wants to walk the fields of his family’s farm on a summer day. I’m an old man who wants to stand on top of a mountain or swim in a cold lake. That’s all I want, and that’s all you should want too. If anything, our banishment to this place should prove there’s no more need for wars or fighting for thrones. Young Kelvin will make a good king, and hopefully, a forgiving one.”
“Of course, Lord Earlos,” Lord Rewill echoed, backing down.
Earlos turned and left his fellow Lunar Guardians standing in the glow of Earth, as it loomed over them. The white clouds seemed to taunt the Lunar Guardians, along with the blue oceans and the green continents. As all in the Nine Kingdoms had discovered, Earth was a paradise. All the kingdoms were magnificent, but when it came down to it, Earth was what they wanted to be. All the atmosphere changing technology the other kingdoms developed only mimicked the natural paradise of Earth and it’s perfectly balanced climates. There was hot, cold, and everything in between. The other planets were not so lucky.
Despite the envy Earlos and the other Lunar Guardians felt, he had always taken comfort that his sister escaped the moon and had a life on the blue planet. For a long time, that had been all he ever wanted. Now, he wanted to touch paradise for himself, and spend the last years of his life in peace.
Earlos had never forgotten his family farm in the mountains. The memory had given him comfort, but it also caused him great sadness when he thought of the possibility of never being able to return there. There were so many questions he had for his sister, whose ship he could hear touching down in the hangar he walked toward. Earlos was sure the other Lunar Guardians were nervous King Erelm would be with her, but he wasn’t worried. Earlos knew the king was no doubt shaken he’d returned to Earth. It was the first time the king had been defied by someone not of Earth. Earlos considered the king spoiled and he thought it was very irresponsible the king had broken off contact with the rest of the Nine Kingdoms of the Sun after Aren went missing.
The hangar doors opened, and Queen Eleyn, a Lunar Guardian herself, stood in the hangar. She was alone, save the pilot he could see sitting in the cockpit of her sleek shuttle. It had been decades since they’d seen one another, but Earlos could tell that his sister was very angry.
“How dare you?” Queen Eleyn hissed.
“Kelvin Sellwood is your son, Eleyn. How dare you send him out there? There are other ways for him to complete the Traditions of Service.”
“It’s his choice! When will you men understand that? He might be a child, but it’s his choice! You think I wanted him to go out there? You think I wanted to let my child go?”
“Did Erelm send you?” Earlos said, in as calm a tone as he could. His sister looked a little older than he remembered, but seeing her now was as if no time had passed. They might as well have been children back on their family farm, arguing over the last piece of dessert.
Queen Eleyn, on the other hand, barely recognized the old man her brother had become. He had once been a dashing lord in the court of King Erelm, sent to govern Moon City, just as their ancestors had. When she looked at him now, his hair was long, greasy and gray. A tangled beard masked his face and there were dark circles around his eyes. Queen Eleyn was angry Earlos had interrupted Kelvin’s ceremony, but as she looked back at her brother now, she pitied him.
“No, Erelm didn’t send me. In fact, you’ve upset the king so I haven’t seen him since Kelvin’s departure,” Eleyn growled at her brother. She wasn’t going to allow him to see her sympathy just yet. “What do you want, Earlos? And you can save this whole act about being concerned for Kelvin’s well-being. You want something from me or Erelm or Kelvin. What is it?”
The accusation that Earlos didn’t care about Kelvin angered him. It wasn’t even the accusation that made him mad, just the thought that his sister would have such a low opinion of him. All his life, until he was forbidden from returning to Earth, Earlos was told he should be King of Earth. And, all his life he had rejected that notion. The only reason Earlos tried to make the Moon his own kingdom was to satisfy the other Lunar Guardians. He had always tried to do right by his sister and King Erelm.
“I’ve never met my nephew. I’d never seen his face until yesterday,” Earlos began. “The Pirates of Mercury are real. They are out there and they are waiting. Whatever happened to Aren…I’m sorry to say this, sister, but they will come for Kelvin. Out of respect for the king, the Lunar Guardians have remained on this rock because he asked us to. We respected his wish to remain cut off from the Nine Kingdoms and have never done anything against his will.”
“Until yesterday,” Queen Eleyn cut him off.
“Until yesterday,” Earlos admitted. “I have made a decision and I come to ask your blessing. All I ask in return is for you to ask your husband for his forgiveness. What I want is to protect my nephew. The Lunar Guardians and I, in secret, will follow the Monarch. We have a battleship, we know our way through the asteroid fields between here and Venus and Mercury. We can catch up with the Monarch and we can be there when the Pirates of Mercury attack. I promise you, sister, we will be ready. The Monarch is a capable ship, but they can’t fight pirates. Riz is able, but they don’t have the ship we do, or the firepower.”
The notion that the Lunar Guardians would act as a secret guard to Kelvin and the Monarch seemed like a good idea to Queen Eleyn, but she knew King Erelm would never approve. Erelm was a good man and king, but his biggest problem was forgiveness, especially when he felt someone had questioned his authority as king. Earlos and the Lunar Guardians had and the queen knew if Erelm had his way the Lunar Guardians would never leave Moon City. Queen Eleyn knew why the king had hidden himself away. It was not because he was sad, but because he was angry, and he never liked the queen or anyone else in the Royal Tower to see him angry. If there had ever been a chance for Earlos to earn the king’s forgiveness, that had been wiped away when he interrupted the royal ceremony for Kelvin.
But, if there was ever a chance for her brother to find forgiveness, it would be by protecting Kelvin from whatever was out there. Queen Eleyn did not doubt Riz’s abilities as captain of the Monarch, but it would be even more protection if the Lunar Guardians were behind them. Against what she knew the king felt, Queen Eleyn decided to protect her son. It gave her great sadness that her brother had become the tired old man he had become, just like her husband. Perhaps, the queen thought, this was a chance to help them both, even though neither knew it.
“You have my blessing. Try to go unnoticed. Please keep my boy safe,” Queen Eleyn said. “When you return, I will arrange and audience with Erelm. I will do what I can to help you and your Lunar Guardians come back to Earth. I know that is what you want and it is what I want too.”
“Thank you, sister.”
“There’s something else,” Eleyn said, hesitant.
“Anything.”
“The Monarch has picked up transmissions in the Antioch Belt. They’re from Aren,” Eleyn said, her voice shaky. She’d made the difficult decision to keep Aren’s transmissions from Erelm, in fear of upsetting or confusing him. Eleyn knew as well as Riz did that Erelm would send the entire Earth Navy into the Antioch Belt, putting thousands of lives at risk for the sake of one. It would be a disaster for h
im and would give the Royal Council all the reason to potentially remove their family from helping govern Earth. “If she’s out there, the Lunar Gale and the Monarch are the only ships that should go looking. This has to be discreet.”
“Have you considered that they may be ghost transmissions, sister?”
Eleyn had some of Earth’s top scientists and navy officers examine the transmissions. They concluded they were ghost transmissions, but the source of the transmissions was still active. Whatever was sending the transmissions was still functional, so if it was a wrecked ship, there were still survivors aboard.
“Whatever’s sending the transmissions is still out there, Earlos. Aren might still be out there. We can’t risk Erelm finding out and sending the whole fleet. I need to ask you to help our family, and once you’ve made sure Kelvin’s safe, try to find Aren. Try to bring her home. If she’s alive, this could change everything for Erelm and maybe bring him back to the person he used to be.”
“When would you have us depart?” Earlos asked.
“We have to wait until Kelvin gets to Mercury and what Queen Evet asks him to do. Her request for Kelvin’s Tradition of Service will affect everything. Once Queen Evet’s made the request, I’ll contact you again and we can go from there.”
“Of course, sister. The Lunar Guardians stand ready to assist.”
With that she turned and walked back toward her ship. Queen Eleyn did not want to be gone long, as there was much for her to do back on Earth, and she didn’t want the king to find out where she was.
“I promise, sister,” Earlos said. “Sister, wait.”
Eleyn stopped and turned to Earlos slowly.
“The years have not been kind to our family, but we can still have one. I want to know my sister, her husband, and my nephew. I hope this will give us peace.”
“I hope so too, brother. I hope so too.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT HAD BEEN a month of traveling and Kelvin was starting to get bored. There wasn’t much to see in transit and the giant dome of the Royal Cabin lost some of it’s magnificence, since the stars didn’t really seem to move. Space was so big that even the large distance the Monarch crossed between Earth and Mercury didn’t affect Kelvin’s perspective. It felt like they were just floating along, even though the Monarch was probably moving faster than most things in the Nine Kingdoms, at all times.
Kelvin sat alone, staring out into the unmoving infinity of stars above the dome. The radio lab workstation in front of him cast it’s net across the gap between Earth and Mercury. Kelvin listened patiently, like he did everyday, for a repeated transmission from his sister. Whether it was a ghost transmission or echoes from the past, Kelvin wanted to find out what happened to his sister. It was what he did each day after his lessons were complete.
The lessons from Holloway had picked up right where Kelvin and Amelia’s regular studies left off. They were primarily focused on math and science in this year of their schooling. It was dry calculations and memorizing chemical formulas. Amelia was more interested in it than Kelvin. She knew that in order to achieve her goal of becoming captain she would have to master all the different stations of a starship’s bridge. Science and math would be the most difficult, so Amelia often asked Holloway for advanced tutoring.
Amelia knew Holloway was one of the most brilliant minds in the Nine Kingdoms, so she intended to learn everything she could from her teacher. Holloway insisted that they take the lessons slower than Amelia wanted, but her student absorbed everything at a rate faster than even she had. Holloway was impressed by Amelia’s ambition to become a captain in Earth Navy.
Most of the crew in the Monarch had given Kelvin his space. There were times when Kelvin would cruise the streets of the Monarch on his float-cycle and dozens of kids would tag along. Some adults, too, since it was their chance to ride next to a future king. Kelvin didn’t really know what to say, he just tried to be as nice as he could. The crew could tell he was shy and that the scale of his journey were probably overwhelming. Riz had advised them to try and give Kelvin space, as well.
Kelvin looked at the circular panel that adjusted the satellite array of the Monarch to pick-up transmissions where he could. He touched the tip of his finger on the panel and moved it, as he watched the antenna adjust it’s to scan any part of the solar system he wished. Kelvin was still fixated on the Antioch Belt, so like most days, he stayed right there. Occasionally, he would listen further out into the solar system, but as the Monarch got closer to the Antioch Belt each day, Kelvin’s hopes of getting another transmission from his sister grew.
Kelvin heard the door to the dome slide open, as he’d just given his sore earlobes and eyes a break from the large headset of the radio lab. The headset was complete with earphones and glasses. The glasses gave Kelvin an advanced display and could show him a computer representation of the area he was listening in on. That way he knew if he was listening to a planet, a rock, or a chunk of ice; or, nothing at all, just passing space debris. Kelvin set the elaborate apparatus aside and turned to see Riz standing in the dome.
“Hey Riz,” Kelvin said, quickly shutting down the workstation. Kelvin felt somewhat embarrassed about how obsessed he’d become with finding another transmission from Aren. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been hearing Amelia’s spending a lot of extra time studying with Holloway,” Riz said. “Seems like you’ve been spending a lot of time on your own. Is everything okay?”
Kelvin hesitated to respond. There wasn’t anything wrong, but Kelvin wouldn’t exactly say he was okay. There were a lot of things on his mind. He missed his parents and his home, but the Monarch started to grow on him. The idea of his sister lost in the Antioch Belt, trying to signal for help, made him very nervous.
“Has there been any report on the Earth Navy’s search for my sister?” Kelvin asked, a daily question for Riz.
Since the transmission had been received, King Erelm had dispatched a dozen Earth Navy ships to search through the Antioch Belt. It had been quite an undertaking, but the ships were not able to get close to where the transmission had been detected. Several times they had gotten lost and everyday it seemed more unlikely that they would find Princess Aren. Not only was it a difficult task for them to search throughout the belt, it was starting to become unsafe.
The ships had taken on much damage, as the transmission came from one of the more volatile regions of the belt. The Earth Navy fleet admiral, Raha Enner, had been expressing her displeasure with King Erelm’s orders to put that many lives in danger for a transmission they didn’t even know was real. The Queen Eleyn and the Royal Council were rumored to be preparing for a vote that would overrule King Erelm’s orders for the fleet to remain in the Antioch Belt.
Kelvin didn’t imagine things were very pleasant back at his home on Earth. He couldn’t imagine how difficult the position his mom must have been in. She had to abandon the hope of finding her own daughter and go against the will of his father, but Kelvin knew his mother would do what she could to protect the hundreds of people aboard those ships. His mother loved her daughter, but she knew just as Kelvin did that it was selfish to risk that many lives for one person. Kelvin expected to hear about Earth Navy leaving the Antioch Belt and calling off the rescue mission any day now. He prepared himself every morning he woke up.
“That’s what I came here to talk to you about, Kelvin,” Riz said. Kelvin had asked him to stop calling him ‘lord’. Since Riz didn’t go by it, Kelvin didn’t want to either. “Your mother and the Royal Council put out an order this morning for all the ships to return to Earth. The ships took too much damage and the risk to search for your sister was just too much. Admiral Enner promised to have another convoy of ships ready to depart if anyone picks up the signal again. Earth’s scientists have focused some of the most advanced telescopes and detection instruments on the Antioch Belt. I’m sorry, Kelvin.”
“It’s okay. I knew it was coming. Admiral Enner’s right – there’s no reason to risk
all of those lives when it might not even be where Aren is,” Kelvin said, trying to hide his disappointment. “I’m still listening. We’ll find her. I know she’s out there.”
Riz gave a sad smile and wished he could tell Kelvin the truth. Soon enough he would learn what happened to his sister, but Riz knew now was not the time to tell him. There was too much at risk. Riz had come to Kelvin for a different reason.
“Since Amelia has been getting some extra lessons and spending all that time in the combat simulator, I wondered if you wanted to get some of your own. It’s a little less book-learning though. You interested?”
Kelvin subtly powered down the radio lab workstation before he responded.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Zero-gravity, space-suit thruster piloting, for starters,” Riz said, with a smile. He saw Kelvin’s eyes go wide with excitement.
Zero-gravity simulation was usually something only officers in training got to experience. Because zero-gravity generators were so difficult and expensive to produce, there were only a few available to use in Earth Navy. Kelvin heard there was a zero-gravity simulator on the Monarch, but he hadn’t bothered to ask about it. He figured it was off-limits.
“Are you serious?” Kelvin asked.
“Well, unless you want to start taking lessons in the star-divers, but I don’t think that’s a good idea while the Monarch is traveling this past. We’d probably get lost,” Riz said. He motioned to Kelvin to get up. “Well, that’s where I’m headed, and if you want to come, the time’s now.”
