The Dark of the Stars

Chapter One

So this is my first story on here. I've had this story in my head for many years but never really gotten it down on paper. 

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The rebellion started many years before I was born, and the tyranny of my family long before then, but the war didn’t officially begin until my fourteenth year. Even with battles raging on my planet, I had the privilege of childhood. A privilege fate allowed few others of my generation. Now it was only royalty that could grow up at the rate normal for our race. 

Tau was a great and powerful planet; a jewel in a desolate galaxy full of either the pretentious or ignorant savages. We were the best. This was the story we were told every day at breakfast. Every day at lunch. Every day at dinner. Every night before we slept. Then we dreamt of our how much better we were than everyone else. As the royalty, we were the best of the best. The smartest, most beautiful people on the planet. We were taught that our people were nothing compared to us. 

My mother did the teaching. Better said, my mother did the “teaching”. She would smile at us in the morning, tell us how much better we were than everyone else and then leave the servants to instruct us on why. Perhaps she didn’t have an answer, and it had simply been drilled into her mind the same way it was being drilled into ours. 

What my mother did was much more than my father, however. My father, the King. Of course he was too important for us. Of course he couldn’t teach his own children why they were so much better than everyone. That wasn’t a job worthy of him. Strange, because apparently I was supposed to be the next king, but teaching me didn’t qualify as a job worthy of him.

Although the servants taught us well, apart from the obvious propaganda (which wasn’t always obvious when constantly surrounded by it). They taught us about the geography of our own planet, others in our star system, and prevalent systems all over the our galaxy and the Milky way, which was the capitol galaxy. Capitol over the entire Augustan empire, consisting of over thirty galaxies. 

Naturally we were better than all of them. Even the scum of our planet, which after the war started, consisted of the majority of citizens, were better than people from any other planet in the universe. My younger sister, Mosa, was particularly interested in learning of all these other planets and systems. It was her dream to visit them all, especially the famous ones. I never got the chance to ask her if she believed all the propaganda about how much better we were.  

Mosa was the typical princess. She wore dresses with so much fabric they could clothe an entire village. They varied in color, and she never wore the same dress twice. She had dark brown hair like mine and most Tauns. It was long and always done in impressive dos, which sometimes took hours to prepare, but it was essential every day. Mosa, however, had a side to her that few saw. I was lucky enough to glimpse her scholarly side, which peeked out during our lessons about the galactic empire. 

She learned the names of thousands of planets, and species. She’d spill them all out to me when just the kids were alone. She told me that when I was king, I was going to have to take her to be the representative for Tau in the Augusta Supreme, the loose government that rules over the entire empire. I always agreed, when in truth, I didn’t even think about it, I tried not to think about being king. It was always so far in the future. 

My one brother, Hans, was a misfit, even more so than I was. He never seemed to earn father’s approval, and unlike me, he tried so hard to win it. But there was nothing he could do, it was as if Hans was not father’s son. 

Before the war, and in the early stages of it, the royal family would throw balls so dazzling, they were unreal. Hans had planned to impress father by learning the names of the entire guest list. A stunning feat considering that there were over two thousand socialites in attendance. At the entrance to the ball, we all stood in a line next to father greeting the guests as they arrived. I allowed Hans to take my place next to father, and I stood in between him and Mosa, who was wearing a galactic blue dress, and stood next to our mother the entire night, hardly saying a word. I knew that she chose not to say anything, because she tended to ramble in conversations with people. Mosa was good at everything except keeping a conversation short and formal.