Enroute

[burningpainting]

Karolina leaned back against the communications console, arms folded over her chest. She'd thought coming back to earth after a few months in space would be more of a happy thing; she'd been looking forward to seeing her friends, though a second goodbye was bound to be painful. In between her chronic worrying that she'd somehow manage to mortally

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[princeoftarnax]

Xavin leaned back in her seat and looked at Karolina. "The heir to the Skrull empire has been found on Earth, but he doesn't want to leave. I'm to convince him to return with me." She didn't bother to hide the grudging tone in her voice. Here she was being sent to take another earthborn alien away from their home. Xavin was all ready feeling guilty for removing Karolina from her friends, and now she was supposed to bring Dorrek VII, Theodore Altman, back. And she doubted the skrulls would give him the choice to decide where he would remain after being shown around, as she had offered Karolina.

But she could not deny, there was a great need for unity in the skrull worlds. If they could be gathered under one leader they could all recognize. But then it could cause another war with the Kree... It seemed more trouble than it was worse.

[burningpainting]

Karolina sat back down in the comm chair. The cabin was small enough that there was only about six feet between them, much like talking across a dinner table.

"The heir to the Empire?" she asked in surprise. She wasn't sure how Skrull ranking worked. If Xavin was a prince, did that mean that princes/kings were beneath an Emperor? It certainly wasn't the way she recalled things working in earth's feudal history. "How did they lose him?"

[princeoftarnax]

"I don't know exactly, I was only a hatchling when it happened, but I heard rumors that the the Empress Anelle had a hatchling before she was ruler, and that her father ordered the hatchling's execution because his father-" That's where the rumors differed, but at least now he had been told the truth as a warning for who to look for. "was Kree." How that had happened he had no idea. "Apparently the hatchling's nurse escaped with him to Earth."

[burningpainting]

Okay, she could follow most of that. She'd gone through the ship's files on Skrull history and culture so that she might not be totally in the dark when they arrived, so at least she understood the implications of the young Empress having an affair with a Kree. Still, trying to have him killed was insane! The last Emperor must have been a real asshole.

"So he grew up on Earth?" she asked, mostly to herself. "A human, like me?"