Ayaka stood panting in her dojo, wiping the sweat from her brow that threatened to drip down into her eyes and blinking away the sting of some that already had. She bowed to her virtual sensei, then racked her naginata and began the logout procedure to return to the real world.She had been in the middle of an intense sparring session when a soft, but insistent chime had sounded to inform her that someone was at the hatch of her quarters aboard the TFS Proxima. At first, she had been confused—why would someone be looking for her? She was basically just glorified cargo with no duties, after all. But then she remembered... him. And she thought, ‘Yeah, it’s definitely him.’The “him” to whom she was referring, even in her thoughts, was the only downside to the otherwise almost fairytale she had been living since escaping from her overbearing father and too-soft mother. Lee Joon-ho, also known as the bane of her life, was an eighteen-year-old awakener from what used to be North Korea, and

Mars, ARES main base.The Sol system’s fourth planet, if seen from a higher orbit, was completely different than it was in the past. Just two years before, it’d only had a population that could be counted on one hand... if you counted unmanned exploration vehicles, or “rovers”, as population, that is.Mars had always fascinated humanity ever since the species had first looked to the stars and asked themselves what those lights in the sky were. It was represented in close to a century’s worth of science fiction tales, with greats like Ray Bradbury, Orson Welles, and Edgar Rice Burroughs some of the more recent people to look to the red planet and think, ‘I wonder....’So once human technology reached the barest minimum level that would allow them to explore Mars, whether in person or not, they had immediately built exploration drones, strapped rockets to them, and threw them at the planet until one successfully survived the landing. Nobody knew what they would find, though everyone was

The moment the imperial ship received the emperor’s shuttle, the captain brought up the shields and began heading to Mars.Aron and Rina stepped out of the shuttle into the boat bay and met the side party that had been arranged to greet them. The ship’s executive officer, Commander Shannon Robinson, came to attention and saluted. Aron returned the salute and asked, “Permission to come aboard?”“Permission granted, Your Majesty, and welcome aboard Imperial One,” Commander Robinson replied.The bosun announced, “Terra arriving!” Then he pulled an old-fashioned bosun’s pipe from his hip pocket and whistled the tune for arriving royalty.“If you’ll follow me, Your Majesty, I’ll show you to your quarters. The captain is currently on the bridge, but he should be with you shortly,” Commander Robinson said.“The side party is a nice touch, Ms. Robinson.” Aron smiled at the competent officer as she led him down an impeccably decorated passageway to the imperial quarters.“Tradition is importan

If someone were close enough, they would be able to see a golden glow in Rina’s eyes. At least if they were looking at her from the front, anyway; she still had yet to develop literal eyes in the back of her head. The golden glow was coming from magic circles surrounding her pupils that acted like mana lenses, and they were currently zooming in on the runic construct that Aron was carving.Ever since receiving her blessing, she had been putting at least five hours, Earth time, into studying it and practicing its usage. And with the time dilation factor in Aron’s private “sandbox” in the simulation, that equated to five HUNDRED hours each and every day. So, in effect, she had spent more than a decade within the simulation doing nothing but learning from Aron and various virtual instructors, having the theory of magic pounded—sometimes quite literally—into her.She had long since begun putting the theory into practice, and following that, begun developing new theories of her own and eve

As the colony ships carrying the first diaspora were beginning their journey, another journey was coming to an end. The TSF Proxima was coming out of its final stretch of warp travel just a few AU outside the heliopause of Proxima Centauri.(Ed note: AU stands for “Astronomical Unit”. It’s the average distance between Earth and the Sun at any given point, as Earth also has an aphelion (the furthest distance from the Sun) and a perihelion (the closest approach to the Sun). All of the planets orbiting the Sun are on elliptical orbits. One AU is about 149.6 million kilometers and change. For normal purposes, since I doubt any of us—Agent and myself included—are either astronomers or astrogators, it can be rounded off to 150 million kilometers.)The inside of the Proxima was choreographed chaos as people who had chosen to spend the entire journey either in stasis or in their personal VR spaces woke and rushed to their assigned ships. The only people who had remained fully awake for the en