Knights of King *HIATUS*

Chapter 6

Director Palace sits in a dark room, illuminated only by the small communication device. Whoever he was talking to was wearing a mask to hide her face.

"You, Palace, are coming to me for help?" She chuckles, yet her body doesn't move with the laughter.

Palace leans back in his chair. "Regretfully so."

The woman's laughter stops. "What's happened, dear one?"

Palace smirks. "My children have been frozen for later use, I've been kicked out and I'm sitting in an escape pod in the middle of the Messier Sea."

"You've been de-throned?"

"It seems so." Palace hums.

The veil shifts, her large grin visible beneath the covering. "What will the price be?"

Palace frowns. "What are you asking for?"

There silence before the woman chuckles. "The first born."

Palace stands. He walks around the room for a few moments before leaning towards the hologram floating about the communication device.

"I don't have a first born." He mutters. "No children for us, remember?"

"I remember." She snaps. "I mean the first born to the Zodiac, I want the child."

Palace falls silent. There was no telling if the Zodiac could produce children. Barely half were even considered adults in today's society. Their ages were not in question here, their DNA was. They'd been mixed with alien DNA that no one knew what would happen. Which reproductive organs would last and which would die off. If they did have children, the child could be the first of its kind, a miracle. A weapon.

"I agree." Palace breathed.

No one would ever have that kind of power, Palace would make sure of it.

"Sending a retrieval team to your location. Hold tight, brother dear."

Palace sat back down.

No one would touch those children.

                                                                      *YEARS LATER*

The classroom was filled with young adults all roughly the ages of 16 to 18, they were nearing the end of the schooling years and were more than ready to escape the walls of the classroom. The woman standing at the front of the room was pretty, minimal makeup and her hair pulled back in a tight bun. She wore a uniform top with a matching skirt, as did most of the instructors on the ship.

The teacher leans back against her desk looks out over the room of students. "In this course of study we will be going inside the GCA and figuring out just how such a large and complex fleet of military is able to operate as smoothly as they do. Questions?"

Hands from more than half of the students in the lecture room lift their hands up. Their instructor chuckles and points to someone on the first row.

The student tucks pieces of her blonde hair behind her ears. "What kind of things will we be learning while we are inside the GCA? With there being so many branches such as Military, Medical, and Farming just to name a few."

"Good question!" The instructor pushes off of her desk and crosses her arms. "We will be splitting up into smaller groups, probably somewhere between four or six in a group. Each group will be in a different location of the remaining four weeks of classes that we have. Every week, we will switch around locations so that we can all get a feel of what different stations on Battleship King do to keep it running."