I sat in the cockpit of the Star Dragon despite the craft having an automatic pilot system that would navigate flawlessly through the Blue Planetary Nebula and past the "Jewel Box" cluster into M83 before I would need to make any kind of navigation check.

The inky darkness of space mesmerizes many a star traveler with its limitless depths punctuated by violent explosions of stars spewing their very essences into the void. Stars flaring and dying, leaving behind new elements and vanishing into the infinity of space are the rules and ultimate end for every star. Idly my mind wanders and ruminates on what would happen if one died in the pulse beam of a pulsar. Would there be time to realize what hit you? Would you even know? The pulsar in the Crab Nebula has a gamma ray emission that exceeds 100 billion electron volts, and I cannot even begin to imagine just how much energy that truly is, nor what it would do to me if the Dragon flew through that pulse.

The flight path is taking me past some well-known pulsars?J0617 first, and then past PSR B1509-58, with a close flyby of the wobbling Vela Pulsar. The computers compensate for those stars, plot the path to remain safely out of the path of those gamma rays. I love the challenge of pulsars, probably because they are so very dangerous and so powerful.

I do not have to study the star charts to know that Beta Orionis is just a small detour once the Dragon reaches the ecliptic. The path I?ve chosen will take me across the ecliptic near Monoceros and then on toward Galaxy 1637 to pass within 6 degrees declination of Rigel.

The Kaiser would be apoplectic over this bypassing of Rigelian space after so long away and with so much silence in diplomatic communications; but I am weary of politics, and I have no emotional desire to face the arrogance and artifice of Court. The glitter of the royal demesne holds no allure right now, and I am comfortable in my flight clothes. Yes, I will breach every protocol in my world to slip past silently and hopefully undetected by Gabrielle.

I slouch further into the captain?s chair. Silence is golden as the adage goes and right now, I could not agree more for what better solace than silence after so much betrayal. Silence ensures that there will never be closure nor resolution. Silence means there will always be a void as vast and impenetrable as space itself.

I sigh. Perhaps I should send Mikhail a message, but I do not know what to say just yet. I have not been to see him in over 20 years. I have not seen him since shortly after my investiture into my father?s titles, yet he had traveled to be there. He had come to warn me that the Kaiser would never grant me anything unless there was something significantly greater in the deal for himself. So far, I?ve survived the attentions of two Kaisers, and truer words were never spoken.

His words would have been deemed treasonous were he a member of the Rigelian Court, but Mikhail was not bound by the dictates of Rigel.

I have been traveling for some weeks now, the distance between the Star Dragon and Nu Ceti grows greater with each moment. The console glows softly in the darkness of interstellar space. It is a pale mirror of dots of starlight that pock the skies surrounding us. So many places to go, and yet none appeal to me, so for this reason, I seek out Mikhail.

What do I expect from him? The question elicits a wry smile even to myself. I do not know what I expect. Perhaps I am hoping for time to heal in his company. Or perhaps I am seeking direction from him, when direction isn?t usually his goal. He guides without judging or coaxing, and perhaps it is guidance I seek. My own choices have left me shattered and broken to the point where I do not know for the first time in my life where I should be, nor what I should be doing. I mislike this sense of drifting. Purpose, goals, targets, achievements ? these have been the mainstay of my life for as long as I can remember. But now, there are no goals, no purpose, not even a target for me to aim at or strive to accomplish. Why do I seek Mikhail? I do not even have an answer to that simple question.

Do I have need of finding gods? Why delve into mythology and mystery at this point in my life? This is an excuse only; a rationalization for going to the far reaches of space, far away from anyone who knows me. A new beginning? No, I do not believe it is even as simple as that. A new beginning implies knowing what one wishes to change about their lives, and I cannot even lay claim to that knowledge.

I slouched in my seat surrounded by darkness inside and out. My thoughts ebbed and advanced like the flotsam of oceans; wrapped in the currents, and till going nowhere.

Most people think of space as a lifeless void - vast regions of emptiness punctuated by a bit of dust and tar; all of it colder than life can survive in.

They could not be more wrong.

Darkness, coldness, soundlessness

The Star Dragon flight path has taken me uncomfortably close to Rigelian space. From RhyDin view point, the flight path flew between Bellatrix and Mintaka as we negotiated around Alpha Orionis enroute toward Gemini.

The red supergiant known to most as Betelgeuse forces the Dragon more toward Mintaka, which puts me much too close to Beta Orionis, or Rigel. I suppose I could have taken the route around the nebula, but that would have added days to my trip. The nebula is a reflection/emission nebula, and covers a huge area of sky. This is a stellar nursery, and generates a phenomenal amount of turbulence and photo-ionizing effects that test the shielding of any spacecraft.

Photo-ionization is the process whereby light is transformed into other forms of energy. Believe me when I say the amount of energy in the nebula is indescribable! The most prevalent forms of ionization result in huge shifts of electron excitation. The electrons absorb the photon and gains all of that energy. Then there is photoexcitation which occurs when the energy of the photon is too low to cause photoionization, but is sufficient to cause isomerization instead. This usually results in luminescence or glowing. The nebula is one of the most visible nebulae from RhyDin that exist in the night skies.

The nebula has a distinct greenish tint, along with regions of red and blue-violet. The reddish color comes from Hydrogen alpha recombination line radiation at a wavelength of 656.3 nanometers. The blue violet color is the reflected radiation from the massive O class stars at the core of the nebula. The green hue is caused by a low- probability electron transition in doubly ionized oxygen, which can only occur in deep space and nearly collision free environment (vacuum). This phenomenon is impossible to recreate in a laboratory. For many years, no one could explain the green coloration.

There is not only the star formation and photo-ionization to worry about, but the stellar winds are much stronger than anything experienced in RhyDin. The wind forms shock waves when it encounters the gas in the nebula and they too play a large part in star formation by compacting the gasses and creating density inhomogeneities that ultimately lead to gravitational collapse.

This nebula extends across a 1 degree region of sky from Rhydin, and includes neutral clouds of gas and dust, an association of stars, ionized volumes of gas, and the reflection nebulae. Combined, these things are called a stellar nursery where new stars are being born. There are approximately 700 stars in various stages of formation within the nebula. This is no region to attempt to navigate in any spacecraft known today. So, skirting the nebula would be necessary, and entirely too costly in terms of time.

Gavri?el laid unmoving within his cocoon of rich soil, but that stillness belied the intense brain activity as he threw his senses outward, seeking the source of his abrupt awakening.

His acute senses quickly sorted through a barrage of close beings, but none of them would have reached him through his deathlike stasis. Despite eliminating every entity around him, the sensations persisted. He was missing something crucially important, and THAT was something he never did. It gnawed at him even worse than his hunger as he ruthlessly shoved away the agonies of slowly starving to death.

Moments passed, yet the nagging sensation persisted. He forced his mind to calmness, letting the disquiet sweep over him, through him, and consume him. He tried to become part of this feeling.

Remorse ? that was the first clearly resolved thread of thought he could pick out from the nagging unease he sensed.

He resisted the impulse to focus on that; rather, he drifted with the morass of emotions that were so foreign to him. He couldn?t ?feel? per se, but memory told him what the emotions were, and he assigned them appropriate names as he waited.

Confusion ? the entire disturbance seethed within the matrix of confusion. It would be easier to follow confusion back to its source since it was the bulk of his intruding thoughts. He grabbed onto the threads of that and melded his thoughts to it.

The moment he seized the thought, he felt it try to jerk free. That was usually the first reaction of someone he was psychically hunting, but his quarry could never elude him now that he had locked onto it.

With the single minded determination of his kind, he began to hunt the source, little caring that his quarry was well aware of him now.

Shock slammed into him when a psychic barrier was slammed into place, cutting off his tracking momentarily. There were only a very select few who could do that to him. Now he knew who awakened him.

Azjah?s heart skipped a beat as she slowly let Gav?riel back into her mind. Shock still coursing through her veins at the power he commanded. She knew there were few who could create a psionic link over such distances, but not only was he doing so across several astronomical units; he was doing it during daylight on Rigel!!

?Gav?riel, you have given me quite a surprise.?

If the Aurigan could have had an emotion, it would have been wry mirth. ?Clearly Marchioness, yet still you evade the question.?

Azjah had the grace to blush slightly at being called out so clearly. Most people would not dare such an affrontery. ?Gav?riel, I am lost. I am not ready to come home, to face the Ton, or the Kaiser. I am not certain where to turn, nor even what direction to move.? There were only 2 people she would ever admit such weaknesses to, and Gav?riel was one of them.

?I shall come to you Marchoness. There is no need for any here to know that you have passed by them for now.? And then he was gone. Very simply, she was alone once more in the vastness of space.

He would come. She knew not how h would know hwere or when, but the Aurigan would show up as her protector within the day.

Gav?riel growled out a low, menacing snarl. If ever his path crossed the swine from Cassiopeia, there would be little left of his body. Eternal torment was too good for the feckless worm.

Sun would set in 2 hours, 14 minutes. Until then, he would resolve his transportation needs from his haven. Rigelians were easy to ?suggest? to when he needed things accomplished. To Gav?riel, time had always been irrelevant. Days, weeks, minutes, they simply did not matter to him. However, now, as he lay immobile and weak, time mattered. He mused on that for long moments. He could detect no direct menace to the Marchioness. Nothing felt out of sync for the moment. But that could change in less than a heartbeat.