Chapter 1

Mark had come a long way. Starting at the bottom, he learned everything that he could. As a child, he had been considered tall and clumsy. Many of his classmates had made fun of him when he walked as he wasn’t able to walk in a straight line. It had something to do with his inner balance and the fact that it had been thrown off ever since his parents had moved the family to the furthest corners of hell, as he put it. His mother and father were diplomats and went where they were sent by Earth’s government.

So Mark suffered in silence; his only solace was the fact that his mother and sister loved him as much as they did; if not for them, Mark didn’t feel he would have made it. Moving forward, he was surprised when the government of Deplofina asked for him in particular (he felt his parents had a hand in that). When he went for the interview, it was as he had expected. The government had only offered him the job as a ploy to get his father to side with them in negotiations they were having with their long-time enemy that they were still at war with.

So Mark had politely told them no and then had been threatened that he would never find a job now. How they had laughed at him as he had left the building. He knew, though, that they would have been begging him had they known what he had seen, hurrying away. He didn’t want to be near when the main power failed, and they would be looking at him as the easiest target to blame for their own incompetence. Mark hopped the fastest shuttle he could find and was at the spaceport in line to board a freighter when the news came in that the power grid for the capital building had shut down.

Switching to hyperspace, the ship accelerated as Mark sat back and enjoyed the feeling; it was as he had remembered it. Three hours later, they were many, many days from the planet when the hyperdrive shut down, and the ship was a drift. The captain came over the loudspeaker and informed all the paid passengers that they were having mechanical difficulties. Mark smirked. He knew what was wrong, at least what he had felt before the shutdown. He remained calm for the 4 hours that saw everyone rushing back and forth. Finally, after 10 hours with everyone panicking on board, Mark made his way to the captain’s cabin.

Speaking to the engineer who passed him, he told him that he wanted to see the captain and that he was a maintenance man; the engineer’s eyes got huge as he rushed into the cabin, and only moments later, the captain came running back to him.

“Are you really a maintenance man? Can you repair or maintain the engines? I really don’t want to die this far from a planet,” he whispered to Mark. Mark calmly walked to the engine room with the captain and engineer in tow, looked around, and reached out to tap a panel. The board lit up, and Mark stared at the readings. He walked to the other side of the room, grasped a cable that was barely connected, and pushed it back in. The reactor started to come to life.

Next, he moved to the reactor itself and looked at another panel; he noticed that the air purification system was already working again, and the heat was back on, as the room became much less stuffy. Looking at the power supply, he saw that it was only halfway filled, which was odd, so he went back to the reactor, and then he noticed the REAL problem: half of the fuel had NOT been loaded into the reactor core. Mark started to laugh; it wasn’t even that elaborate of a sabotage. He had learned to fix things like this the first year he started. The captain and the engineer looked at him like he was crazy, but they knew that he might be their only hope.

Mark loaded the rest of the energy rods as the reactor started to hum back to life. Mark walked away, looked back at the captain, and told him that the ship had been sabotaged. He needed to have it looked into. Mark told them that he was a first-class maintenance man and his license number and repair coding number. As they scurried away, he shouted that the ship was ready to go and that he wanted to get where he was going as soon as possible. Sitting back in his seat a few moments later, he waited. Soon, the ship was moving again as Mark waited, and the ship jumped again.

The captain walked back half an hour later and motioned for Mark to come forward. As he neared, the engineer shook his hand and thanked him as he hadn’t known about the power supply or how to fix it.

“You are probably the only engineer who does now; remember, it isn’t always something complicated. In this case, it was an undone power connector, and half of the material for the reactor was not loaded. This was very simple, but now you know more than most engineers.” The captain had a very interesting story for him.

“Your passage has been paid in full, your credits refunded, and 30,000 more added to your account. This was a new ship, and they are glad it wasn’t lost, and they are starting an investigation,” he gruffly whispered. “They would appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to anyone, and the promise of another 40,000 credits has been marked to go into your account.”

Mark was a little surprised for being paid for something this easy, or that they even thanked him, then he remembered that they didn’t know that the engineer he had shown the repairs to was probably the most mechanically knowing person here (and that was bad because there were a ton of other things that could go wrong) So he sat and enjoyed the crew coming by and thanking him every few seconds. Nearing their destination, the captain pulled him aside and told him that the company had offered him a job. Mark thought about it for a few seconds, then declined as he said that he had made promises to others.

Leaving the shuttle after the freighter here, Mark walked to the tall building ahead of him. He looked down at his comp again and shook his head. This place was a disaster. The machines that repaired the building were idle, and the trash bots were idle; oh my god! Did nothing work here at all? Walking in, he was greeted by a brand new aid bot, and even if it was not at full capacity, Mark shook his head at the state of disrepair. He was led to a small man sitting in an ancient-looking throne room. As the man sighed, he looked Mark up and down. “Sooo you are the maintenance man, and you really think you can fix things here?” he sneered, “as if you can do better than the best engineers in the world.”

Pissed off, Mark grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck and stared into his face as he calmly said, “OK, you little pompous little prick,” he almost spit in his face, “I can repair almost anything not set it up REPAIR it, so far everything I have seen on the way in I CAN repair, but if you are going to be a piss ant about it, then I’ll just let this place fall down to hell, with you in it!”

Shoving him back into his seat, Mark turned and started to storm out. The man quickly ran after him and dropped to his knees in front of him, begging Mark to stay. Mark was about to kick the man in the face when a vision of a goddess walked out from behind the throne and asked Mark not to.

“You have to forgive father. He isn’t used to people being what they say they are. As you can see, the last few almost brought down this place.” Pausing, she looked intensely at him, “I am the king’s assistant; he won’t listen to me, but maybe he will to you.”

“For you, I will stay and fix this place, not this,” he motioned to the man on the floor, who was now a quivering, blubbering mass of flesh at his feet, “but it will cost you a lot more.”

“Done; as long as you do the work, you will be very handsomely rewarded.” As she grabbed his hand and stared at his rapidly growing erection, “Very much so.”

Mark turned blood red with embarrassment, “I apologize for that; I don’t usually have this problem,” he said as he turned to hide his erection. The assistant leaned over his shoulder to watch as he adjusted his cock.

“It’s OK, you are a man. It happens,” as she smiled at his naivete, she almost thought he was a virgin.

“Wait, you said farther, then you are a princess,” he said, shocked.

Laughing, she looked at him as he slightly shrunk from her; oh my god! As old as he was, he was a virgin! She would never have thought that. “No, I am not; we all call the king father. It’s just something he wanted us to do,” she stated as if it was a well-known thing.