On Mars, work had already begun in the hundreds of already-completed buildings on the surface, and in the thousands of rooms beneath. One of those rooms was a cavernous chamber that housed Mars Central Command, or CENTCOM.

“Tenth ring is coming up on schedule... now,� one of the technicians announced from his console. He was an ST1, or Sensor Technician First Class, and his current task was to monitor the ongoing construction and activation of sensors throughout the Sol system.

The entire front wall of CENTCOM was an enormous display, about the size of the screen in an IMAX movie theater. It was currently displaying a map of the solar system as seen from above the ecliptic, with points of interest labeled in colors denoting their operational status. Mars, for example, was surrounded with a yellow ring to highlight its partially operational status.

And with Sol as the center, nine green rings surrounded it, each of them a tenth of an AU--about fifteen million kilometers--from each other. A tenth ring was blinking in yellow, and there were dozens more rings that were still red.

The rings were sensor networks that the exploration fleet had been busy laying after completely mapping the system. Nine of them were already active, and now, with the technician's announcement, the tenth ring was finishing its self-test cycle and would soon be fully online. And with that tenth ring coming online, everything between Sol and Earth would be visible to anyone who cared to see it with the same fidelity as Nova could see it inside the universal simulation.

But the final red ring, which would be just outside Pluto's orbit, wasn't the end of the sensor network. The exploration fleets had been laying buoys as they traveled, and those buoys were seed colonies of sensory nanites surrounded by a block of material the size of a pre-empire cargo ship. Though they were radiating out in straight lines now, they would soon become new extrasolar sensor rings, expanding the empire's reach beyond the Sol system.It was a futureproof system that the researchers in Lab City had developed. The power requirement for q-comms was prohibitive, but within the Sol system, that could be overcome. However, outside the system, they were still limited to light speed transmission... for now. The rate that technology advanced in the Terran Empire could not be underestimated, and the developers of the system were sure that they would be able to solve the problem in the future.

And right NOW, at least, they had the perfect delivery vehicle to drop off the seeds of what would become an omniscient sensor network outside the Sol system: the five exploration fleets that had crossed the Oort cloud months ago on their journeys to explore distant stars.

The extrasolar sensor rings would take years to come online, but the empire currently had those years, thanks to Aron's foresight.

Within the Sol system, the already-activated sensor rings served a dual purpose. For ARES, they tracked all traffic and events within their sensor ranges. And for civilian traffic, they acted as a navigational aid, displaying their location on a convenient map so they didn't have to know anything about astrogation or celestial navigation to plot courses within the system.

Within CENTCOM, the analysts and technicians could see all of the traffic, while civilians were much more limited in what they could see. That was in part because their shipboard computers didn't have the processing power to track everything, but also because they lacked the clearance necessary to display certain things--like TSF ships.

On the main screen in CENTCOM, the tenth ring stopped flashing yellow and began glowing a solid, bright green. The ring's self test had successfully concluded and the “eyes� of humanity had reached out beyond what they could see yesterday. Normally, that would be cause for celebration; the network was only months old and the newness of the process had yet to wear off. But just as someone wondered aloud about the lack of champagne, the soft chime of a priority alert rang out at the traffic control workstation.

lightsΝοvel The traffic controller for the current shift spun his chair around and quickly donned his headset. “Unidentified priority traffic, this is CENTCOM traffic control. Please advise your destination.”lightsnovel

“CENTCOM traffic control, this is Imperial One, currently en route to CENTCOM carrying Imperial Actual and retinue.”

“CENTCOM copies, Imperial One. Sending approach vector and assigned landing now. CENTCOM out.”

……

Earth, a few hours ago.

“I can’t wait to visit another planet,” Rina said, practically bouncing as she boarded the shuttle hovering above the roof of the Cube. Aron followed close behind her, wearing casual clothes.

“I don’t really get why you want to come. It isn’t like there’s anything to see there at the moment. A couple of domes, some cubes, and a whole lot of tunnels,” he teased as he stepped into the spaceship behind her. A full team of Emperor’s Aegis was waiting for him inside, and two more Aegis members—his and Rina’s close guards—followed behind him.

“What’s the point in having a security clearance now, if I don’t actually use it?” she joked as she strapped herself into the acceleration harness on her seat.

Rina’s security clearance had been upgraded since the wedding. Previously, she’d had a high clearance, but no need to know. But now that she was married to Aron and had taken her proper seat as the official Empress of the Terran Empire, her clearance was second only to his.

That said, it wouldn’t have mattered before regardless. If she had really asked about something, Aron would never have hidden it from her. She simply hadn’t had any reason to do so. Now, though, she not only had the reason to know, but also the duty to know. After all, if something were to ever happen to Aron, she would take over his reign as Empress Regent of the Terran Empire until the new heir (which was currently Henry) was able to take over.

“Let’s go before Henry shows up,” Aron said to the pilot as he strapped in as well. “He’ll make a mess if we leave him behind and he actually sees us leaving.”

The pilot lifted off without a word, even before Aron finished strapping himself in, and less than two minutes later, the small shuttle entered the kilometer-long vessel waiting in high geosynchronous orbit above Avalon Island.