"This duty stinks."
"You're telling me? First the old fish disappears for a few days, and now he comes out demanding that we search high and low for this stupid missing planet. Can't use FTL 'cause we might miss it, and it's bloody boring traveling sub-light between systems."
"Yeah ... you want a beer?"
"Sure. Arus brand, if it's there."
"Nope, only Ikfeld. Yuck."
"Ikfeld's not bad."
"If ya like your beer tasting like roses."
"Chocolate-covered roses are good ... "
Crown Prince Lotor idly listened to the chatter of his pilots, Arvis and Janfyld, as he leaned back in his command chair. The book he had been reading lay open up one knee, balanced by a lazy hand. A glass of spicey green Ulaver wine was held loosely in his other hand. He could agree with them on at least one thing, in that this duty was incredibly boring. Why had his father insisted on this? What did the old fish think he could find?
He knew he should reprimand his pilots for calling his father an old fish, but since there was no chance of Zarcon overhearing them, why ruin a little of their freedom? And his father had never earned their respect. Not as he had.
"M'lord?" Arvis's still young voice scattered Lotor's thoughts, drawing him back to the here and now.
"Yes, second pilot Arvis?"
"We have found a planet that may be the one we have been sent to search for."
"Put the visuals on the main screen." The continents matched the description that they had been given, but more than any one thing, the planet's atmosphere, it's clouds, shimmered like pearls in this view of it from space.
" ... and shone within the eternal cold of space like a pearl within the heart of an oyster newly revealed to the sun. And it's own sun gleamed a gold far beyond any I had ever seen."
Lotor quoted softly, the passage written by the young explorer echoing through his mind.
"But when I stood upon the planet's surface, the daytime sky was as blue as a young Drule's skin, and the nightime, as deep blue-purple as a hag's heart. And there, a race calling themselves humans stood side by side with three other sentient races, the Mazoku, Ryozoku, Anczoku, and Hi' Itar. The Mazoku were beings of power, and did not truely age. But they did not own forms of their own, and took shape from a mortal's deepest fears ... and could still die. The Ryozoku, and the Anczoku, two races of close kin, had two forms, on large and winged beasts, one much like the humans. Of these two large ones, the Anczoku were larger still, and deep blue in color, unlike the smaller one's golden hue. The last race, the Hi' Itar, I never saw, but only heard about in legend. It was said they never aged or died, and were forever young, beings of immense power."
Lotor gazed at the planet in silence for a while. "At the very least, this is going to be interesting to conquer."