Chapter 3

The command center of the Starfall Imperial Empire was a vast fortress of black steel and glowing data streams. The air turned heavy as lead, and every hardened general and technician froze in place. On the central warp-comms display, Quentin Starfall's bloodied face flickered across the light-years. Empress Eleanor Starfall gripped the edge of the console until the metal groaned under her fingers. Beside her, Richard Starfall placed a heavy, grounding hand on her shoulder. His dark gaze never left the trembling scientist on the screen. "Repeat that," Eleanor whispered, her voice shaking with twenty years of unshed grief. "The genetic map is a one-hundred-percent match!" Quentin sobbed across the stars, his tears streaking the grime on his cheeks. "It is the Princess! She is alive!" Eleanor's knees buckled as twenty years of frozen grief shattered into burning tears. Her lost baby was alive, breathing beneath an alien sky. She caught herself on the console with a trembling hand, stepping closer to the screen. "Quentin, look at me. How much does she weigh? What have they been feeding her in that place?" Quentin hesitated, his voice choking with rage. "She... she is severely malnourished, Your Majesty. Her charts classify her as an E-grade dependent. They restricted her rations to standard bio-slurry." "Who signed those charts?" Eleanor demanded, her breath hitching in raw fury. "Where are the medical logs? How many days was she left alone in that room?" "She gave birth entirely alone, Your Majesty," Quentin replied, his fist slamming into his console. "Her partner, Commander Vane, was absent on Capital Star with another female. He left her to rot and offered money to suppress her divorce petition." A suffocating psychic pressure detonated from Eleanor's body, forcing veteran fleet commanders to their knees under her imperial wrath. "He. Dares." Richard stood motionless, his heavy ring slipping from his numb fingers and clattering against the deck. He turned to his adjutant, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. "How many hours was my daughter left alone in that room?" The officer could not answer. Richard turned back to the tactical grid, his eyes hardening into black voids. "Initiate Project Eclipse. Warp the First, Third, and Seventh Star Destroyer Fleets immediately. Total blockade of the Vane medical planet." "Your Majesty, that is equivalent to declaring interstellar war!" the adjutant gasped, trembling in terror. "My daughter is bleeding there," Richard growled, his voice carrying the finality of a planetary execution. "This is an interstellar war." "Activate stealth fields," Eleanor added, wiping her tears as her gaze turned to lethal ice. "I want to see with my own eyes who dares to bully my flesh and blood." Light-years away, aboard the flagship Iron Fang, Kaelen was reviewing routine naval logs when an agonizing, hollow spasm tore through his chest. His silver wolf pupils contracted into needle-thin slits. A violent tremor ripped across his mental sea, leaving a freezing abyss of biological starvation. "Commander!" his adjutant lunged forward in alarm. "Your bio-readings are spiking dangerously! Are you experiencing mental sea turbulence?" Kaelen shoved the officer back violently, wiping cold sweat from his brow. "I am fine," he snarled, forcing his elongated fangs to retract. "It is merely fatigue from the matching hearing. Bring me the patrol roster now." He barked orders to drown out the gnawing ache, arrogantly dismissing the phantom pain. He had no idea his wolf biology was screaming over the permanent loss of its true sovereign mate. Back in the quiet outer orbit of the Vane medical planet, two patrol ships drifted lazily through the void. In the cockpit of the lead vessel, the operator blew gently on a lukewarm cup of synthetic coffee. An unread text from his sister glowed softly on his personal datapad. Suddenly, the radar console shrieked with screaming red static. All long-range communications and local relays severed simultaneously. Before the operator could drop his mug, the black fabric of space tore open like dry parchment. Out of the hyperspace rift slid one colossal dreadnought, then ten, then hundreds of pitch-black Star Destroyers. Emblazoned on their massive hulls was the golden crest of the Starfall Imperial House. Each behemoth was ten times the size of Vane's flagship, locking heavy particle cannons onto the medical facility below. The facility staff below continued their shifts in ignorant bliss, completely unaware that an apocalyptic armada hovered over their atmosphere. Aboard the imperial command vessel, Empress Eleanor looked down through the reinforced viewing deck, her voice echoing across the fleet comms with absolute finality. "Whoever dared mistreat my daughter... the entire Vane Fleet shall be buried with them."