Prelude

The Core World of the Empire:

Palace of the Emperor, Laomedeia, on the Planet Cassiopeia.

“We are delighted to welcome all of you back after your triumphant campaign,” said Emperor Cassius, Jason’s favorite uncle. “Jason have you met all your children yet?”

“You have got to be joking!” said Jason, “I am completely frazzled and feel as if I am being torn by so many contrasting demands I don’t know what to do next!”

“How is Philippa?” Empress Alana, his aunt asked.

“I haven’t spoken to her for a few weeks.”

“I thought Philippa was going to chop off my head when she saw me. She was so emotional during the pregnancy and I had solemnly promised that I would be back for the birth of the baby. I am more than a month late in seeing my own children. I don’t know how I can physically see all of them,” said Jason.

“Jason, I am going to introduce an important concept I think you should know about. You will need to listen to me very carefully, because I believe that what I tell you may assist you. I have an idea that will help you solve your problems and will provide a way for you to move forward.

“Are you following me, Jason?” Empress Alana asked.

“Aunt Alana I follow what you are saying, you have a concept you want to teach me?” Jason replied looking at her quizzically. “The way you are talking about it leads me to think it is a very difficult concept or I will have great difficulty understanding what you tell me. In matters of the heart I am somewhat early in my development.”

“I admit I am talking slowly for all those reasons. How does Cassius speak to his subjects?” Alana asked rhetorically grinning broadly. “I am not sure you are familiar with the concept of the use of broadcast technology, so I did not introduce the idea too quickly in case you became even more frustrated.”

“Alana, that is very good advice and it is very clever. I am reluctant to admit you have a good idea. I feel I have to say, sometimes even for an Empress you are too big for your boots!” Jason remarked, kissed his aunt on the cheek, then hugged her tightly. “I need to think and I need to discuss what I do with Porquenta. He has a bigger brain than me and I am sure he can suggest a good way to go about this task.”

Cassius turned to speak to Jason with a frown on his face, “Jason, I’m going to need to talk about a serious matter. Your favorite Tyrannosaurus Rex Queen, Lynas Parayekt of the Parzool is frantic to speak to you.

“Even though I am dying to hear about the urgent matter Porquenta spoke with you about earlier, you must call her.

“Too late! My secretary is waving and tells me Lynas wants to speak to you right now. She knows you are back,” said Cassius. “I have no idea what this is about, she refused to tell me, but she sounded frantic.”

The hologram formed, flickered a few times and then firmed into the image of Queen Lynas Parayekt. Jason noticed she looked agitated and was nervously fiddling with her fingers. He was surprised to see her in her human form. She began to speak without any preamble or any greetings, which was very unusual for her as she preferred lengthy formalities.

“Jason, I need your help with a pressing matter. I have a problem and it is a very serious one. I have a large group of dinosaurs who are threatening civil war. I cannot recall if I told you previously, we are divided into two totally distinct types of sentient dinosaurs. We are the Dymonix and...”

Jason interrupted her. “Let me guess they are the Gromelix.”

“How in heavens name did you know that?” Lynas asked.

“Lynas you continue to underestimate the powers of my mind, I know many things about this universe that are inscrutable to others. That is the characteristic of those who feature in prophesies,” Jason grinned as Alana moved back from the table out of Lynas’ vision and looked up at the ceiling and then put out her tongue at Jason.

“Carry on, explain the problem, I apologize for the interruption, but I will explain why I said what I said when you finish!” said Jason enigmatically.

“Jason, you continue to surprise me. I will continue with the sorry tale. We first encountered the Gromelix when our Empire was expanding. We were delighted to find more sentient dinosaurs, predators like we were, but they were smaller than us. We were friendly and unthreatening to them. They were not pleased to meet us, they were not keen to have anything to do with us. However, for reasons we do not know, even to this day, they decided to become part of the Kingdom but they tend to be paranoid, grumpy and generally irritable and often behave emotionally and irrationally.

“They do their share of everything without complaint, but they have limited involvement with us. They pay taxes without complaint and receive all the benefits our planets receive including defense. They are represented in our Parliament, participate in the Armed Forces and meet the expectations of their obligatory involvements elsewhere. They even contribute scientific findings. They supplied their quota of soldiers for the war, but otherwise had no interest in the intergalactic conflict until recently. None of their soldiers will serve for longer than a hundred years. They leave service when many of them are becoming good leaders. Not one of them has a rank higher than a captain. They simply lack commitment to anything that is part of the Kingdom and do not even broadcast our news.

“Two weeks ago, they saw a communication from you about you studying with the Azayal and then you noted the impending war with the Ghouls. I don’t know why they reacted to that particular communication. We had previous communications with you about the impending conflict and a potential role for us, but I suspect they simply did not notice and did not attend until they saw your brief communication. I don’t think they are even aware of who you are. They obviously missed all the discussions in parliament and they evidently don’t watch our news.

“Suddenly, they wanted all the background on who you were and how you came to be associated with us. They were outraged we hadn’t told them about you and had told them nothing of the war between the universes. We showed them the broadcasts of your fight with the cockroach general, the subsequent alliance with our partners, previous communications in parliament, and finally the intergalactic conflict. I noticed they watched the fight with the cockroach in parliament over and over for a week. They subsequently became more agitated and angry. They complained that no one informed them directly of these important events. They said electronic documents do not constitute information in a valid form. Events of importance needed to be told to them face-to-face.

“I had the most frustrating conversation I have ever had, with their ambassador, who threw a tantrum in front of me. He has refused all previous invitations to the palace including the one when you met many of our important people after you fought the cockroach general. The ambassador insisted they had been insulted as they had not been invited on their own to discuss the important impact you had made and the fact you had met the Azayal and were waging war on the Ghouls. They want to know why they were not invited to participate in that conflict. We reassured him there were Gromelix troops fighting Ghouls it was not enough. That was when he had his tantrum and stomped around my office shouting, then he left in a rage. My advisors and I struggled to understand what his problem was.

“They know everything about us, but we know nothing about them. We are only allowed in one restricted area on one of their sixteen planets. They do not allow tourism. They have free passage anywhere in our kingdom. They have their own king; who has had nothing to do with us. If I have spoken fifty sentences to him in a hundred thousand years it would be a lot. He has called me every day for the last two weeks and is upset. He has told me his people are not happy with us. We can no longer land on their planet.

“Yesterday he warned me of an impending declaration of war. He will declare war in the next week if we do not do the right thing. None of us here have any idea about what the right thing may be. I would like you to go and visit them. There is nothing more we can think of doing, I am feeling desperate and I need help. You are somehow involved and I hope you can end this trouble,” Lynas said. “I have tried everything I can think of and my advisors can think of to resolve the problem. We still don’t understand what the problem is we are trying to resolve and why the problem we can’t understand is leading to a declaration of war.

“Let me confirm a few things about the Gromelix if I may?” Jason asked.

“Please ask and I will do my best to answer,” Lynas said.

“They can create lightning?” Jason asked.

“Yes, no-one knows this other than our military,” Lynas said.

“They have an EMP like attack that drains power?”

“Yes, that is true, they are of enormous value in boarding ships. They drain all AIs, defensive sensors and armament,” Lynas said.