Worlds Apart

Heiress to the legacy of her father’s throne, Jennifer Hendricks fled a life she had no desire to inherit, staging her death with the aid of her mother’s most trusted agents in a highly publicized terrorist attack upon the royal estate where she grew up. Amid the chaos, Jennifer was secretly smuggled aboard the Fulcrum, a colonial starship preparing for a 137-year voyage to the Opalla colony safely hidden in a hibernation pod as one among the thousands of colonists within the starship’s hold. Jennifer slept through the passage of time, hoping to awaken in a future with the freedom to begin a new life. Fires burned, charring the soil down the length of a long depression carved into the land by the rock’s impact. A lone hunter watched spellbound in the darkness as a strangely clothed figure awkwardly climbed out of the smoldering rock that had fallen from the night sky. Controlling his fear, the hunter approached and knelt beside the figure. He was astonished to see a young girl’s face with pinkish skin, green eyes, and fiery red hair inside a hard shell that covered her head. The hunter’s eyes gazed up into the darkness of the spirit realm of his ancestors and wondered if she had returned to the land for another life. Jennifer awoke to find herself alone in a firelit cave lying within a warm bed of soft furs. Her leg, broken during the pod’s impact, had been reset and wrapped in a stiffening animal hide. She was curious as well as afraid to learn the identity of her benefactor. But when he stepped into the cave, she stared in a wide-eyed wonder feeling as if she had traveled back to a place in time she knew nothing about. With the hunter’s help, Jennifer began a new life far removed from the horrors of her dark past and accepted her life’s unforeseen twist of fate. Unbeknownst to her, the passage of time and the vast distances of space would not diminish the hatred of her father’s many enemies or permit her from escaping their vengeful wrath.