This is a work of fiction and any similarity between the characters and events depicted and any people/events in real-life, past or present, is purely co-incidence. A number of the characters and events portrayed are inspired by, or based upon, existing works of fiction. Although I have made every effort to keep plagiarism to a minimum, I must acknowledge a debt of thanks to the many artists and writers who have shared their talents with the public.

I've released my stories to the public domain to make sure that as many people as possible who share my interest in this type of fiction can enjoy them. Please feel free to re-distribute them by whatever means you like, provided you respect the following points: (1) The stories will be re-distributed exactly as they are - unchanged and unedited. (2) No other person will claim authorship of any of these stories or any part of them. (3) The stories will not be distributed for profit, either on their own or as part of a group of other works.

Lastly, thank you for your interest in this story. I hope you enjoy it!

Foreword

It began with the assassination of the Emperor. Immediately, an official period of mourning was declared for all of Prytkon and every one of the planet's inhabitants was instructed to behave accordingly. But as news of the Emperor's death spread, the mood amongst those inhabitants was joyous, if a little nervous. The old tyrant was gone; not only that, he had been killed by an ordinary citizen, smashing the widely-held myth that the royal dynasty was untouchable. A wave of tentative excitement swept across the planet.

Seizing on the wide-spread confusion caused by the temporary power-vacuum, a host of underground organisations began to mobilise their supporters. The promise of a chance of freedom from the centuries-old yoke of oppression was too tempting to pass up. A series of secret meetings was held between the many rebel leaders and a plan was formulated. The great uprising was scheduled for the day of Princess Ria's inauguration as Empress.

Meanwhile, in the Imperial Palace, Ria shed few tears for her murdered father. To her he had been a distant figure, too obsessed with crushing any resistance to his rule to have any time for his only child. Rather than mourn him, the Princess was secretly thrilled at the prospect of becoming Empress much sooner that she had expected. She had barely reached the age of maturity and there were still traces of childish excitement in her behaviour. On countless occasions, she had seen her father enjoying the excesses of his reign, now she was to have her opportunity. She could not wait to assume the throne. After all, it was in her blood. She was descended from generations of dictatorial rulers.

But then, on the day she was to be crowned, the revolution came. It was remarkably swift and bloodless. Seeing the ragged army charging towards the palace, the imperial guards, who had not been spared the harshness of the old Emperor's reign, abandoned their posts and fled. Within a few hours the entire palace was occupied by rebels. Princess Ria was captured and held prisoner by the renegade army, and the rule of Emperors was declared over. Prytkon was gripped by a mood of jubilation.

It was not long before a new governing council was elected. Its members declared that no individual would ever hold absolute power on Prytkon again. In a symbolic gesture designed both to illustrate these sentiments and to punish an entire dynasty of rulers, the council decreed that the former princess should be sent away from the planet and forbidden from ever returning. Accordingly, a small space ship was built with sufficient fuel and life-support systems to sustain a single passenger for an indefinite period. It was programmed to fly endlessly into deep space until either its resources ran out or its lonely passenger died.

Steps were taken to ensure that the craft's automatic guidance systems would steer it free of any dangers; the people of Prytkon wanted Ria's agony to last as long as was possible. The tyrant's daughter would be forced to see her homeworld shrinking from view in the knowledge that she could never go back there. Then she would be forced to spend the rest of her life in unbroken isolation. So, when all the necessary preparations had been made, the former Princess was roughly dragged towards the ship. In a final humiliation, she was stripped of her clothes before she was thrown inside. She was to be allowed to take as little of Prytkon with her as was possible. Then, the ship was sealed shut.

The exile-ship's departure was greeted with wild celebration. It was seen by the population as the precise moment that Prytkon broke away from its dark past into a bright, free future. No-one on that world had any way of knowing that it also heralded the beginning of a new tyranny for another planet far across the galaxy. None of them had ever detected the presence of the worm-hole in space that lead from the edge of the Prytkon system to a distant group of planets orbiting a weak yellow star. Similarly, no Prytkonian was aware of the effects of radiation from a such a golden sun on their species. Of all the countless sons and daughters of Prytkon, only Ria would ever make that particular discovery.

Chapter 1

Ria watched her homeworld shrinking in the viewport until it was too small to be visible any more. Her eyes were moist with tears; she would never see Prytkon again. She would never be Empress. She was a floating prisoner, trapped alone in a tiny spaceship headed for unknown regions of space. The true horror of her situation had still not sunk in to her mind as she fell into an uncomfortable sleep. She did not notice the jolt as the craft fell into an unchartered wormhole, nor the shudder of its weak engines as it emerged from the 'hole on the opposite side of the galaxy.

The former Princess awoke a short time later as if from an extraordinarily deep and refreshing sleep. She felt strangely wonderful. She had expected to wake up as drawn and miserable as she had been when she fell asleep. Yet her entire body seemed to be gently tingling with energy. Her mind was surprisingly clear. She sat up in bed and stretched her limbs. It was unreal; she felt absolutely fantastic. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, preparing to stand up. She planted her right foot on the ground exactly as she had done thousands of mornings before. But something was different this time.

Ria watched in detached shock as her foot seemed to slowly sink into and through the floor, tearing a large, jagged hole in the thick, supposedly ultra-resistant metal. Her heel brushed against the outer shell of the ship itself, nearly half a meter beneath the floor. She hardly felt the contact on her foot yet through the hole ripped in the metal floor she could see a deep heel-shaped dent in the shell.

Panic gripped her. Obviously, she thought, the hard metal of the ship had somehow become soft. If the craft was about to disintegrate, then her life sentence was about to be dramatically altered to a death penalty. Tentatively, she reached out her hand and gently pushed against one of the main side walls of the cabin. Her hand went straight through it, almost as if it didn't exist.

Ria kept her arm extended for a few moments, too surprised to retract it. Slowly, she became aware of a slightly cold sensation on her hand. She peered through the hole she'd made and saw a ridge of total darkness surrounding her fingers. Suddenly she realised what she had done: she had pierced both the interior and exterior walls of the ship. All the material on board had been affected by the mysterious softening force.

She looked around herself. She saw the floor, the ceiling and the walls all buckling slightly. She watched cracks appear and spread in length and width. She knew that the breech of the outer walls meant the inevitable explosion of the craft. But she was perplexed, as all her knowledge told her that the destruction should have occurred the instant her hand pierced the shell. She was too confused now to be frightened. It was all somehow happening unreally slowly.

As if triggered by her thoughts, the ship suddenly broke into an uncountable number of pieces around her. Chunks of torn metal flew away from her into the vacuum of space at great speed. She panicked as the craft disintegrated; wishing at that instant that the pieces of ship would not disappear from view so quickly, as if she would somehow be able to reassemble them if they stayed close by. For the second time, as though on her mental command, the speed of the world around her seemed to change and the debris immediately stopped racing way. Now, the bits of craft seemed to be leisurely floating in space.

Stunned by this change, she decided to find out whether or not her thoughts really were the cause of it. She tried to empty her mind in preparation for her experiment and noticed that the remains of the ship immediately began moving with incredible speed once more. When she concentrated on the thought that she wanted to see them travelling slower again, they instantly appeared to do so. With a bit of practice, she soon found she could exercise an astonishing degree of control over the apparent speed of her environment.

After a few moments, a realisation crept over her: it was not the speed of the universe around her that was changing; it was the pace of her thoughts. Somehow, she could see things happen - she could even react to them - at unbelievable velocities. She did not know why or how, but she was suddenly certain that this was the correct theory. And then it occurred to her that if she could think about, observe and respond to events that were actually taking place within the blink of an eye, then she must have acquired - impossible though it seemed - the ability to operate at fantastic speed. Again, mysteriously, she felt immediately as if she knew for sure that this was true.

What was happening to her? She tried to think back over the past few moments. She was certain now that the ship had been destroyed in a tiny fraction of a heartbeat; only her new ability to function at incredible speed had made it appear to her that the craft had slowly broken up. Then, with a jolt, she remembered why the ship had exploded: her hand. She had thought at that instant that the metal had somehow become soft, as if its very atoms and molecules had rearranged themselves, altering the wall's physical characteristics. But what if the metal had become soft in the same way that the universe had momentarily become slow? What if it was her atoms and molecules, not the metal's that had been altered - if the materials of the ship had remained unchanged and had only seemed fragile to her?

Ria's train of thought stopped dead as the shock hit her. Her petite, delicate hand had pierced right through the interplanetary craft's internal panels and its thick external armour as though they were made of nothing more than water! If her reasoning was correct - and something in her mind was convinced that it was - then along with her fantastic speed-related capabilities, she now also possessed unimaginable strength. She studied her hands and her slender, feminine arms. They looked exactly as they had always done; there was no sign of bulging muscle - in fact, nothing to show that they now had the power to tear a hole in a spaceship in a thousandth of a second. The incredible change that seemed to have taken place did not appear to have left a single trace. Could it really all be true?

She decided to examine her whole body. As she looked down towards her feet, she suddenly became aware for the first time of the night sky all around her. She was completely surrounded by space and stars. Until that moment she had not realised that she was floating, utterly exposed, in the vacuum. Another wave of panic shot through her: what little science she know told her that her blood should have been boiling, her skin exploding and her lungs collapsing. Why was she not dead? Was this yet another amazing development? Had she gained some sort of invulnerability to the cold and vacuum in addition to incomprehensible strength and speed?

The anxiety inside her began to subside. Once more, she felt the peculiar sensation in her mind that told her that she was right: she had nothing to fear from the absence of air or warmth. Somehow, she could now survive in a vacuum at temperatures marginally above absolute zero. Somehow, she could now tear metal with her dainty fingertips. Somehow, she could now think and act faster than an exploding spaceship. What force had done this to her? What other unbelievable qualities had she acquired? Was the change permanent? She desperately wanted to test out her new found capabilities, but how could she examine her strength, her speed, her invulnerability and (she thought) whatever else besides, when she was here in the vacuum of space? And without a ship, how was she ever even to move from this spot?

As she wondered what she should now do, she could not help but luxuriate in the feeling of floating free in the universe. She closed her eyes to heighten her enjoyment of the new sensation. When she opened them again, she found she was gently tumbling head over heels. Fearing that she was out of control she tried to stop the movement by tensing her legs and arms. Instantly, she was immobile once more. She knew straight away that she had discovered yet another new ability.

She decided to experiment; she tensed only her left arm and was delighted to find herself moving in the direction in which it pointed. Very soon, she found that she could propel herself in any direction simply by tightening various muscles around her body. With a little practice she was soon able to control her movements with immense precision. She found that by altering the degree to which she tensed herself, she could also affect the speed of her travel. Just as she longed to experiment with her other new-found capabilities, she felt a strong desire to put self-propulsion to the test. For that, she realised, she needed to find a fixed point of reference.

She looked around, marvelling at the novelty of circumspection in space. She quickly realised that she had to look up and down as well as left and right and in front and behind. Eventually, she did manage to spot a yellowish star whose brightness and colour convinced her that it was the nearest to her. As she focussed her eyes on the distant sun, it suddenly seemed to grow dramatically until it over-filled her vision. Soon, she could make out the details of its flares and see the texture of its violent surface. She relaxed her gaze and the view returned to how it had been a few seconds before. So this, she assumed, was what had happened to her eyes - like the rest of her, they too had miraculously improved beyond all rational limits.

She was amazed by how easy it was to use her new abilities and assumed that a vast enhancement in her judgment and self-control must have occurred as part of her inexplicable transformation. She wondered to what extent she had changed and craved to know what other new or improved capabilities she possessed. She considered the possibility that the alteration was permanent. By now, she was desperate to test out her new abilities. She stretched out her arm and set off in the direction of the foreign yellow star, impatient to discover more.

She could not believe it. As she tensed her leading arm, her travel became faster and faster seemingly without limit. She knew that the golden star had to be a long, long way from the spot where her prison-craft had been destroyed. If she had made the journey in that ship, she would have been forced to sleep part of the way as it would have taken so long. But sleep was the last thing on her mind now - she had never felt more refreshed, more healthy, more alive. Not just alive, she thought, something more than that. She felt... powerful. That was it. She was so close to the yellow sun now that the giant fireball was blocking the rest of space from her view, and yet she had been travelling for what had seemed only the shortest while. She had propelled herself, using only her body, through space at hundreds of times the maximum speed of the quickest spaceship. And she had survived the journey. Unscathed. She wasn't even a little tired.

She calculated that she was now close enough to the star to become trapped in its gravitational pull, but she was sufficiently confident in her new abilities not to be alarmed by the idea. She decided that this was the moment to begin testing those abilities. She relaxed and felt herself "falling" towards the enormous fireball below her. Soon, she was within range of the huge flares as they were hurled from the sun. She found that she enjoyed the sensation of the discharges of burning gas and energy as they licked against her body and was amused to note that she was barely aware of the fantastic heat the star must have been producing. Remaining relaxed, she allowed the incredible force of the sun's gravity to pull her ever nearer to its turbulent surface until she was submerged in swirling fiery gasses. She felt a smug satisfaction grow within her as she played with the thought that she was withstanding temperatures that would instantly vaporise most substances in the universe. Gradually, she began to delight in the knowledge that her very flesh was now far more resistant than all those countless materials.

Still under the influence of the pull of the yellow sun, she luxuriated as she sunk deeper into its raging bulk. She knew that she was now enduring pressures and temperatures that would have tested even her imagination before her recent transformation. Yet although she was aware of feeling much warmer than a few moments previously, she was experiencing no significant discomfort; in fact, she was enjoying the sensations she picked up all over her body. She opened her eyes and discovered to her surprise that she was not dazzled by the flames, explosions and brilliant light all around her. Then, she noticed that much of that glare seemed to be coming from her skin rather than from the star around her and a moment later she realised that she was now as hot as the sun itself!

Although she felt no pain, Ria was apprehensive about subjecting herself to any more extreme heat: she had established that she was virtually invulnerable and she had no wish to determine once and for all if she had become completely indestructible. It was time to discover whether or not her propulsion abilities could drag her clear of the formidable pull of the star. She tensed all of her muscles and within a few dozen heartbeats she was so far away that she could see the whole of the yellow sun's circumference over her shoulder. She had not even noticed any resistance as she left the star's gravitational field. She had bathed inside a sun and had escaped its crushing gravity with ease. Now she understood just why she felt so potent. Somehow, she had become inconceivably powerful.

Ria turned her head away from the yellow star and scanned the universe. After playing in the gases of the sun, she was eager to find some solid matter with which she could test more of her enhanced capabilities. Soon enough, her vastly improved eyes picked out a chunk of space debris trapped in orbit around the star that had just served as her playground. She concentrated her gaze, instantly bringing the object into clear view and revealing its rough, rocky surface. Clearly, it was some kind of asteroid or meteor.

It looked ideally suited to her purposes so she tensed her arms, enjoying the effortlessness of this new kind of transport. After only a few moments' relaxed self-propulsion she reached the rock. To her surprise - especially given the fact that she felt as if she was travelling at a leisurely pace - she almost shot straight past it. The asteroid was moving through space at astronomical speed and yet her easy pace was many times faster. Exercising her remarkable physical judgment and control, not to mention her lightening reactions, she slowed to a halt and studied the meteorite. It was at least a hundred times her size, with jagged edges and traces of metal ores visible on its surface. It had to weigh many hundreds of times more than her.

As the former Princess was trying to estimate the mass of the asteroid, an idea dawned on her. Having discovered her phenomenal invulnerability to heat a short while previously, she realised that the huge space rock provided her with an excellent opportunity to find out whether she was equally resistant to impact. She slightly tensed her arms, allowing her to easily accelerate past the rock and steer herself gracefully into its path. Slowing to a stop, she turned herself around so the she was facing the on-rushing mass. Carefully, she aligned her body with the meteor as it hurtled in her direction, trying to maximise the area of impact.

A few instants before the collision, with her anticipation reaching its peak, she suddenly realised that the enormous object's momentum would inevitably knock her clear of its path before she would be able to judge the full effects of the crash. To counter this, she instinctively tensed herself. She figured that if her muscles could propel her through space, they might well be capable of performing the opposite task - holding her still. Her idea was to try to tense her arms and legs inwards, as opposed to away from her body as she did for travelling. And, having summoned enough power to escape a star's gravitational field, she reckoned she would be able to use that same power to resist an asteroid's force.

It worked. She did not budge so much as a hair's breadth when the huge meteor smashed into her. In fact, to her utmost delight, she was not in any way physically affected by the mighty collision. The same, however, could not be said of the enormous ancient ball of space rock...

Ria watched it all in amused fascination, in awe at her own body, using her new gifts to make it all appear to be taking place incredibly slowly. She saw how the uneven surface of the asteroid initially met with four areas of her naked skin. One jagged bit of rock touched the front of her leg, just above her knee. Another met her flat, smooth abdomen whilst a third protrusion from the meteor hit her top lip close to her nose. The final point of contact between naked girl and asteroid was not caused by anything jutting out from the inanimate entity so much as from her: the position she had chosen to adopt made it inevitable that her breasts would bear the full brunt of the impact.

As she stared, she saw how her flesh momentarily appeared to be yielding to the much larger object. She saw how the skin on her leg, stomach and face dimpled very slightly where the points of rock pushed into it whilst the naturally softer parts of her body yielded considerably more. She observed as her flesh seemed to reach its maximum point of give as the huge rock pressed against it, remaining utterly impassive under the unbelievable pressure bearing down her. She continued to watch in amazement, stretching a tiny fraction of a heart-beat into an aeon, as the momentum of the meteor proved no match for her slim, lithe body.

It was incredible! Her very skin seemed to be resisting the force. The points were the rock first pressed into her - the tiny indents in her leg, belly and lip - became flat once more as her flesh seemed to respond, restoring its former evenness. Her breasts, which had flattened ever so slightly as the meteor smashed against them, soon regained their normal pert round shape, pushing outwards as they did, propelling the rock away from their now fully curved femininity. It was although her chest had disdainfully dismissed the efforts of the enormous meteor. She could hardly believe what was happening; her firm, young breasts, supposedly amongst the softest and most vulnerable parts of her body, had easily absorbed the full power of the impact and had effortlessly responded with a far greater power of their own, utterly unaffected by the asteroid.

In real time, as the meteorite made full contact with her, it instantly disintegrated. But to Ria, using her time-stretching abilities, the asteroid seemed to push into her body for a while before being momentarily pushed back and then slowly breaking up into a billion pieces varying in size from as large as her head to microscopic particles. The areas of rock that were pressed up against her crumbled into a fine dust, utterly unable to withstand being crushed between their own momentum and her flawless, smooth skin. With glee, she noticed the surviving chunks of meteorite crashing into one another as they spread in every conceivable direction. Quite a few pieces of space rock ricocheted back into her body only to be smashed once more as they impacted with something many thousands of times harder than mere rock - the bare skin of the daughter of the last Emperor of Prytkon.

Ria was unable to suppress a smile. After all, the first, massive impact had felt to her like nothing more than walking into a stiff breeze. And as for the subsequent smaller knocks, well, they were as insignificant to her as gentle caresses. There was not a single mark on her smooth skin. Her body showed not a single trace of the enormous collision it had endured only moments before.

Once again she felt as if a surge of power was ripping through her entire body. She had never felt so wonderful. She reached out and grabbed a fragment of meteor as it passed. Although the shard was travelling many times faster than her prison-ship had been able to, she had no difficulty plucking it from space. She brought the rock close to her and pressed it against her smooth flat belly, grinning now with satisfaction as she watched it turn to dust, utterly unable to resist her strength and her invulnerability. Grabbing another, slightly larger, chunk she placed it carefully between her thighs. Slowly, she began to squeeze her legs together. A crack appeared in the rock, then another, then, inevitably, it too was dust.

The former Princess was unable to suppress a wicked smile. For an instant, in her mind, the shard of meteorite she had crushed between her thighs had become the head of one of the main revolutionary leaders back on Prytkon. She imagined the asteroid she had smashed against her slim, feminine body as the rebel army that had risen up against the Imperial dynasty, preventing her from becoming Empress and exiling her to deepest space. In her dream, the sun whose burning gases had failed to have any effect on her smooth skin was all of that army's firepower and the spaceship she had torn to shreds with her slender, delicate limbs was its armoured vehicles. If she had had the abilities she now possessed, she could have resisted the uprising single-handedly.

It was the most wonderful thought. She loved the idea of using her new, incredible abilities against other beings; to subdue, dominate, humiliate and destroy them using nothing but her body. If only she could go back to Prytkon with her current capabilities! She could avenge her father's death and take her rightful place as Empress. She wouldn't need an army to enforce her rule - she was far more powerful than any army. Similarly, she would have nothing to fear from any rebels - their weapons would be useless against her.

As Ria lost herself in her day dream, a feeling grew within her unlike any she'd ever known. It was a mixture of arousal and power, a feeling of supreme well-being, confidence and vitality. Fluidly - almost lazily - she extended her arm and closed her slender fingers around a passing shard of debris. It fit comfortably in her hand. Still fantasising about using her new abilities on the population of Prytkon, she brought her hand to her chest and pressed the hard chunk of rock against her young, firm breast.

Her arousal reached new heights as she watched her flesh seem to momentarily yield before reaching its point of maximum give. The solid rock was soon ground into powder, pulverised between the immeasurable pressure exerted by her delicate feminine palm and the invulnerability of her large round breast. She felt a new thrill explode within her. Her breast - the very essence of her femininity - had effortlessly crushed a meteorite. The softest part of her anatomy was far, far harder than stone.

The dead Emperor's daughter looked down at her now invulnerable body. She thought wistfully of the amusement she could have found if she had possessed her incredible new abilities whilst she was still on Prytkon. But her dreams of home were futile now. She was in another corner of the universe. She could never use her new abilities against the people of Prytkon. It angered her to think that her father's death would go unrevenged. Most of all, though, she was frustrated that she would not be able to live out her developing fantasies. It seemed such an injustice that she had been given such an incredible gift and then denied the opportunity to make use of it. In each and every tiny part of her body, she possessed more power than she or her father had ever dreamt of. And there was no-one to use it against.

Then an idea occurred to her. True, she could never return to her homeworld, but perhaps somewhere in this unknown part of the universe there was another planet similar to Prytkon. Maybe there were many other planets with beings similar to those back home. Maybe the galaxy was full of her species, living on a thousand planets like Prytkon. Perhaps somewhere not far away, there was a world for her, where she could use her incredible new capabilities to fulfil her birthright. A world were she could be Empress.

What Ria was looking for was a planet like her own; a world with oceans of water and an atmosphere. By now she was confident that she herself needed neither liquid nor air for survival, but the type of beings she was seeking most certainly did. She wanted to find a planet whose inhabitants shared her race's physical appearance, but none of her new abilities. If she was to fully enjoy all this power, she had to be amongst beings who did not possess it. They had to be weak. They had to be vulnerable. They had to be utterly powerless against her.

She hung in space, turning slowly, allowing her remarkable eyes to scan the universe. There were ten planets orbiting the star she had just visited and countless other smaller objects. She used her enhanced sight to reveal incredible detail of each one in turn, until she found a globe that reminded her in many ways of Prytkon. It had an atmosphere with clouds and weather. Concentrating intently on the gases swirling around the small world, she found that she could pierce them with her eyesight and see the surface below.

Her delight at the discovery of this new vision-ability did not occupy her for long. For there, on the planet's surface, along with oceans and continents and other familiar shapes, she saw what she immediately knew had to be population settlements. Some of them even seemed to resemble the type of settlements her distant ancestors on Prytkon had built. Her mind filled with excitement. Had she found her world already? Were the builders and inhabitants of these cities the creatures she so desperately sought? She was already heading towards the mysterious planet, her arms fully tensed so that her amazing self-propulsion abilities were carrying her at incredible speed.

The girl who would be Empress was soon close enough to make out more details. There were a number of tiny, artificial devices in close orbit around the planet, clear evidence of a primitive technology. Then she saw other, larger objects travelling through the white clouds that shrouded the planet. Were these the life forms of this world? They seemed to rigid to be alive. As she got a little closer she saw vapour trails behind the objects and realised they had to be machines of some kind. A thrill of excitement ran through her. If the creatures of this world had had to build machines for that purpose, then they must have lacked a self-propulsion ability like hers. What other abilities did they not possess?

Unconsciously, Ria increased her pace of travel, moving almost as fast as the laws of the universe allowed. Closer now, her enhanced vision penetrated the outside of one of the travelling machines and revealed its contents. For the first time since her father's assassination, she felt true joy. It was unmistakable. There, inside the device, seated in neat rows, she saw people. People with the same anatomies as those on Prytkon. People who needed a huge machine to transport them through the air. People who did not have the incredible abilities she had mysteriously gained.

There were males and females, adults and children - just like on her homeworld. They were wearing strange clothes; very different from the ones torn from her as she was exiled from Prytkon. It was easy for her to adjust her gaze to see the flesh underneath those clothes. Ria let her eyes linger on one or two of the males who had impressive physiques. These beings were so similar to her own people that she wondered if the populations of both planets were descended from the same ancestors. Perhaps they were distant cousins.

She was getting ever nearer to the blue-grey world and her excitement was building accordingly. She relaxed her eyes, losing sight of the people in the air-bound transport device and looking now at the entire planet. It hung so peacefully in space, seemingly utterly unaware of the lone girl streaking towards it. A girl who had been a Princess and a prisoner but wanted to be an Empress. A naked, young girl who possessed unimaginable power in her stunning, slender frame.