OUT FEBRUARY 2026
Get an advance preview of chapter 1 here.
1. A Second Chance
Observation Vessel B801, 400km above Planet Geo-84A
Zark slumped forward onto her control panel, knocking an empty cup onto the floor. She rolled her large black eyes at the shattered mess on the shiny grey tiles and glowered. Stupid cup.
She gazed past the buttons and flashing lights and through the enormous glass window. She scowled at the planet filling the view—a mass of purple seas and red land, dotted with orange patches and shadowed by swirls of bluish clouds. It was certainly a pretty planet to look at—perfect dorm room- poster material—had she known it existed during her academy years. But almost no one knew Geo-84A existed because it was boring, and even fewer cared.
The orange patches might have looked pretty, but they were just masses of bacteria. Geo-84A was home to nothing more than single-celled organisms.
Zark sighed. The sound of a hatch zipping upwards broke the silence in the ship’s control room. She rolled her eyes toward the hatch, watching as a small droid emerged and floated towards the broken cup. It hovered over the shards, vacuumed up the mess, then vanished back into the hatch.
Her gaze slid to the poster above the hatch. She knew it was childish to have posters on her ship, but who cared? She was alone, and this poster made her smile. It was a picture of the planet she used to study, Aura-14G—a world with advanced lifeforms and a magic field. A smile crept across her small, lipless mouth. She sat back in her chair and dropped her arms on the armrests.
‘Ship, show clip 1 from my favourites file,’ she ordered.
A holographic screen materialised above the control panel.
‘Clip 1 from My Favourites, playing now,’ the ship’s artificial intelligence replied.
The black screen erupted into colour. A cobbled street crowded with people appeared. Terracotta roofs crowned whitewashed buildings that hemmed in the throng of cheering humans. Guards in red uniforms formed a chain, holding back the crowd and making space for the gold-plated carriage that trundled down the street.
Zark flicked a switch on her control panel, and the room filled with noises. Cheers erupted, hooves clattered, and a man’s voice bellowed. ‘Make way for the king!’ The speaker, a man in pristine livery with a silver belt and polished sword, strode ahead of the carriage. Four white horses, their hooves oiled and manes plaited, pulled the gilded vehicle.
This video originated from a Zargon observation drone, one of many assigned to monitor interesting specimens on the planet she’d once studied. Inside the carriage sat the king, his wife, and his daughter: the precious young princess who had brought Zark both joy and strife.
The princess waved to the crowd, her dimpled cheeks and sparkling brown eyes delighting every citizen who saw her; their cheers exploded at the sight of the girl.
A red circle appeared on the screen. The ship’s artificial intelligence had picked up an anomaly. A label appeared; it was a dwarf. Hooded and cloaked, he was hiding amongst the crowds of cheering humans.
Zark read the caption at the bottom of the screen. Non-native specimen detected amongst human crowds. She had typed those words herself as she’d watched the scene unfold live all those cycles ago.
Her attention shifted to the queen. Zark watched how she studied the crowd without waving, her eyes darting from face to face, searching for something. But Zark hadn’t noticed back then. Why didn’t I suspect her? Zark kicked the control panel.
‘Ship, report aura of Specimen Lila.’ Zark heard her own voice play over the sound of the crowds.
‘Specimen’s aura is seven point three and rising,’ replied the AI from her previous ship.
‘Ship, aurometer on screen,’ her younger self ordered. A red bar appeared on the bottom corner of the screen. She watched as the bar continued to grow, seven point four, seven point five. The aura is rising, for Zarg’s sake, if I’d just put an isolation field around the queen!
With resigned indifference, Zark relived the moment the queen locked eyes with the dwarf, the moment her vital signs jumped, the moment the dwarf launched the blue orb over the heads of the crowd. The aurometer bar surged as magic shot from the queen’s hand and collided with the orb with a mighty blast.
‘Abduction successful,’ her old ship announced.
Zark’s stomach clenched; this was the moment she had destroyed her career.
The screen filled with dust and debris as the blast shredded the carriage. Shards of wood and chunks of mangled horse shot from the explosion. Humans screamed, soldiers shouted, and chaos consumed the view.
Zark slammed her fist onto a red button. The holographic screen vanished.
She slumped back onto the control panel again and resumed staring at the pretty, but boring planet.
A musical chime pulled her from her daze. Zark sat up with a jolt.
‘Ship, answer call,’ she ordered.
A new holographic screen appeared above her control panel. The beaming face of her old captain filled the display.
‘Captain Darkle!’ Zark straightened her back, tugging at her blue and green uniform and suddenly wishing the creases in it away.
‘Zark, how are you?’ Darkle leaned forwards and scowled. ‘You’ve not been eating properly, have you?’
Zark looked down at her baggy uniform, then back at her previous captain, her rounded white teeth nipping at the rim of her mouth. Her large eyelids blinked with a quiet popping sound.
‘And your uniform is a mess. It takes very little effort to have the droids iron your uniform.’ Darkle slipped her hands to her hips.
‘But there’s no one to see me,’ Zark muttered.
‘Does your supervisor not check in on you?’
‘Um, only every so often.’
Darkle sighed. ‘And to think the Intergalactic Discovery Institute wants you back on my ship …’
Zark shot to her feet. ‘The IDI wants what?!’
A wide grin spread across Darkle’s small mouth.
‘But you have a first mate!’ Zark felt her heart pound in her chest.
‘Ah, I did have one, but I’ve been without one for a while now. The Zargon who replaced you was nice enough, efficient enough, and competent enough, but her heart wasn’t really in fieldwork. She went back to the IDI’s head office for a desk job.’
‘So why haven’t they sent you a replacement? You surely can’t be managing on your own.’
‘Mmm,’ Darkle adjusted her pearl captain’s brooch and cast a mischievous look at Zark. ‘I might have been delaying a little.’
‘Why?’ Zark scratched her bald, grey head.
‘To give them time to conclude I needed you back, of course.’
Zark’s jaw flapped open; her words choked as she tried to take in what she’d been told. ‘Why would they conclude that?’ she managed to blurt.
‘Well, do you remember Specimen Lila?’
There was no way Zark could forget that human. ‘She’s the queen of the colony of Vorn on your planet.’
It would be Zark’s planet again soon—she could barely believe it.
‘Correct. She’s also a human with a genetic profile that suggests she’s actually from Geo-33G.’
Zark knew that too—she could hardly forget the details of the specimen who was the primary reason she’d been stuck studying amoebas for two decades. She shuffled to the edge of her seat. ‘What about her? What has she done? Has she murdered more people?’
‘I suppose you could say that; she’s um, launched a genocidal campaign against the goblins.’
‘What?’ Zark’s small mouth stretched wide. ‘She’s trying to wipe out an entire race?’
‘Correct. She never forgot her encounter with them as a young woman, the one where she—’
Zark cut her off. ‘She wants to kill an entire race because a small group of them killed her lover?’
Darkle frowned at Zark’s interruption.
Zark shrunk back into her chair. ‘Sorry, Captain.’
Darkle pursed her mouth rims. ‘It’s okay, Zark. You have been alone for a while. I imagine it’s easy to forget to be polite at times.’
Zark’s face flushed a deep shade of blue.
Darkle cleared her throat. ‘As I was saying, it seems Specimen Lila has long held a grudge against the goblins for that particular incident and now seems determined to kill them all as a result.’
‘It’s so sad that she never let go of her anger,’ Zark said.
‘Indeed. I often wonder if her extraordinary magical powers have exacerbated her hatred.’
‘Quite possibly,’ Zark replied. ‘And perhaps her hatred has been amplified since the death of the king. Without him to challenge her, she is alone to stew in her own hatred.’
Darkle tapped her chin. ‘An interesting hypothesis, Zark.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve missed your observations.’
Zark beamed. ‘So what has Specimen Lila’s attack on the goblins got to do with the IDI agreeing to let me return to your ship?’
Darkle straightened. ‘It seems that Specimen Lila does not plan to stop at the goblins; she aims to wipe out the elves and dwarves too, and the IDI aren’t terribly keen on that happening. They want to interfere, Zark.’
Zark almost fell off her chair. ‘What?’ Her head began to spin. ‘The elves and the dwarves too? And the IDI want to interfere?’
‘Correct. It appears Specimen Lila’s historic grudges do not stop with the goblins.’
‘But what about the IDI’s interference? They have a strict no-interference policy. It was my unauthorised interference that saw me put on punishment duty!’
‘You are again correct. However, in this instance, the IDI see their proposed interference as a simple reversal of a previous abduction.’
Zark gasped. ‘They want to send the princess home?’
‘They do. She is the rightful heir to the throne Specimen Lila occupies. If the princess returns, she could supplant her stepmother and halt her genocidal campaign.’
‘Right.’ Zark furrowed the space where her eyebrows would have been, if Zargons had them. ‘But the princess is just an ordinary Aura-14G native. How the heck is she going to defeat a powerful sorcerer?’
Darkle smiled. ‘We send her with backup.’
‘Huh?’
‘She’s married to a Geo-33G native. If he goes to Aura-14G, he has the same magical potential as Specimen Lila.’
‘What? This doesn’t make sense. This isn’t just reversing previous interference; it’s interfering further. How has this been authorised?’ Zark leaned forwards, propping herself up on the control panel.
Darkle’s face turned grave. ‘Let’s just say things in the IDI are changing …’ A mischievous smile crept up her cheeks. ‘And I’ve been pleading non-stop for months for this to happen! I was also insistent that I’d need you to help me if we were going to make this work. You were very good at your job, and I can’t risk having a substandard first mate at such a critical time.’
‘I’m returning to your ship? Back to study Aura-14G?’ She could still barely believe it.
‘Yep. The IDI agreed that you had been punished long enough and decided to give you a second chance.’
‘I-I don’t know what to say.’
‘Say you’ll start eating again and sort out your uniform. Then get your behind to Geo-33G. You’ve a princess to collect.’
Zark slumped forward onto her control panel, knocking an empty cup onto the floor. She rolled her large black eyes at the shattered mess on the shiny grey tiles and glowered. Stupid cup.
She gazed past the buttons and flashing lights and through the enormous glass window. She scowled at the planet filling the view—a mass of purple seas and red land, dotted with orange patches and shadowed by swirls of bluish clouds. It was certainly a pretty planet to look at—perfect dorm room- poster material—had she known it existed during her academy years. But almost no one knew Geo-84A existed because it was boring, and even fewer cared.
The orange patches might have looked pretty, but they were just masses of bacteria. Geo-84A was home to nothing more than single-celled organisms.
Zark sighed. The sound of a hatch zipping upwards broke the silence in the ship’s control room. She rolled her eyes toward the hatch, watching as a small droid emerged and floated towards the broken cup. It hovered over the shards, vacuumed up the mess, then vanished back into the hatch.
Her gaze slid to the poster above the hatch. She knew it was childish to have posters on her ship, but who cared? She was alone, and this poster made her smile. It was a picture of the planet she used to study, Aura-14G—a world with advanced lifeforms and a magic field. A smile crept across her small, lipless mouth. She sat back in her chair and dropped her arms on the armrests.
‘Ship, show clip 1 from my favourites file,’ she ordered.
A holographic screen materialised above the control panel.
‘Clip 1 from My Favourites, playing now,’ the ship’s artificial intelligence replied.
The black screen erupted into colour. A cobbled street crowded with people appeared. Terracotta roofs crowned whitewashed buildings that hemmed in the throng of cheering humans. Guards in red uniforms formed a chain, holding back the crowd and making space for the gold-plated carriage that trundled down the street.
Zark flicked a switch on her control panel, and the room filled with noises. Cheers erupted, hooves clattered, and a man’s voice bellowed. ‘Make way for the king!’ The speaker, a man in pristine livery with a silver belt and polished sword, strode ahead of the carriage. Four white horses, their hooves oiled and manes plaited, pulled the gilded vehicle.
This video originated from a Zargon observation drone, one of many assigned to monitor interesting specimens on the planet she’d once studied. Inside the carriage sat the king, his wife, and his daughter: the precious young princess who had brought Zark both joy and strife.
The princess waved to the crowd, her dimpled cheeks and sparkling brown eyes delighting every citizen who saw her; their cheers exploded at the sight of the girl.
A red circle appeared on the screen. The ship’s artificial intelligence had picked up an anomaly. A label appeared; it was a dwarf. Hooded and cloaked, he was hiding amongst the crowds of cheering humans.
Zark read the caption at the bottom of the screen. Non-native specimen detected amongst human crowds. She had typed those words herself as she’d watched the scene unfold live all those cycles ago.
Her attention shifted to the queen. Zark watched how she studied the crowd without waving, her eyes darting from face to face, searching for something. But Zark hadn’t noticed back then. Why didn’t I suspect her? Zark kicked the control panel.
‘Ship, report aura of Specimen Lila.’ Zark heard her own voice play over the sound of the crowds.
‘Specimen’s aura is seven point three and rising,’ replied the AI from her previous ship.
‘Ship, aurometer on screen,’ her younger self ordered. A red bar appeared on the bottom corner of the screen. She watched as the bar continued to grow, seven point four, seven point five. The aura is rising, for Zarg’s sake, if I’d just put an isolation field around the queen!
With resigned indifference, Zark relived the moment the queen locked eyes with the dwarf, the moment her vital signs jumped, the moment the dwarf launched the blue orb over the heads of the crowd. The aurometer bar surged as magic shot from the queen’s hand and collided with the orb with a mighty blast.
‘Abduction successful,’ her old ship announced.
Zark’s stomach clenched; this was the moment she had destroyed her career.
The screen filled with dust and debris as the blast shredded the carriage. Shards of wood and chunks of mangled horse shot from the explosion. Humans screamed, soldiers shouted, and chaos consumed the view.
Zark slammed her fist onto a red button. The holographic screen vanished.
She slumped back onto the control panel again and resumed staring at the pretty, but boring planet.
A musical chime pulled her from her daze. Zark sat up with a jolt.
‘Ship, answer call,’ she ordered.
A new holographic screen appeared above her control panel. The beaming face of her old captain filled the display.
‘Captain Darkle!’ Zark straightened her back, tugging at her blue and green uniform and suddenly wishing the creases in it away.
‘Zark, how are you?’ Darkle leaned forwards and scowled. ‘You’ve not been eating properly, have you?’
Zark looked down at her baggy uniform, then back at her previous captain, her rounded white teeth nipping at the rim of her mouth. Her large eyelids blinked with a quiet popping sound.
‘And your uniform is a mess. It takes very little effort to have the droids iron your uniform.’ Darkle slipped her hands to her hips.
‘But there’s no one to see me,’ Zark muttered.
‘Does your supervisor not check in on you?’
‘Um, only every so often.’
Darkle sighed. ‘And to think the Intergalactic Discovery Institute wants you back on my ship …’
Zark shot to her feet. ‘The IDI wants what?!’
A wide grin spread across Darkle’s small mouth.
‘But you have a first mate!’ Zark felt her heart pound in her chest.
‘Ah, I did have one, but I’ve been without one for a while now. The Zargon who replaced you was nice enough, efficient enough, and competent enough, but her heart wasn’t really in fieldwork. She went back to the IDI’s head office for a desk job.’
‘So why haven’t they sent you a replacement? You surely can’t be managing on your own.’
‘Mmm,’ Darkle adjusted her pearl captain’s brooch and cast a mischievous look at Zark. ‘I might have been delaying a little.’
‘Why?’ Zark scratched her bald, grey head.
‘To give them time to conclude I needed you back, of course.’
Zark’s jaw flapped open; her words choked as she tried to take in what she’d been told. ‘Why would they conclude that?’ she managed to blurt.
‘Well, do you remember Specimen Lila?’
There was no way Zark could forget that human. ‘She’s the queen of the colony of Vorn on your planet.’
It would be Zark’s planet again soon—she could barely believe it.
‘Correct. She’s also a human with a genetic profile that suggests she’s actually from Geo-33G.’
Zark knew that too—she could hardly forget the details of the specimen who was the primary reason she’d been stuck studying amoebas for two decades. She shuffled to the edge of her seat. ‘What about her? What has she done? Has she murdered more people?’
‘I suppose you could say that; she’s um, launched a genocidal campaign against the goblins.’
‘What?’ Zark’s small mouth stretched wide. ‘She’s trying to wipe out an entire race?’
‘Correct. She never forgot her encounter with them as a young woman, the one where she—’
Zark cut her off. ‘She wants to kill an entire race because a small group of them killed her lover?’
Darkle frowned at Zark’s interruption.
Zark shrunk back into her chair. ‘Sorry, Captain.’
Darkle pursed her mouth rims. ‘It’s okay, Zark. You have been alone for a while. I imagine it’s easy to forget to be polite at times.’
Zark’s face flushed a deep shade of blue.
Darkle cleared her throat. ‘As I was saying, it seems Specimen Lila has long held a grudge against the goblins for that particular incident and now seems determined to kill them all as a result.’
‘It’s so sad that she never let go of her anger,’ Zark said.
‘Indeed. I often wonder if her extraordinary magical powers have exacerbated her hatred.’
‘Quite possibly,’ Zark replied. ‘And perhaps her hatred has been amplified since the death of the king. Without him to challenge her, she is alone to stew in her own hatred.’
Darkle tapped her chin. ‘An interesting hypothesis, Zark.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve missed your observations.’
Zark beamed. ‘So what has Specimen Lila’s attack on the goblins got to do with the IDI agreeing to let me return to your ship?’
Darkle straightened. ‘It seems that Specimen Lila does not plan to stop at the goblins; she aims to wipe out the elves and dwarves too, and the IDI aren’t terribly keen on that happening. They want to interfere, Zark.’
Zark almost fell off her chair. ‘What?’ Her head began to spin. ‘The elves and the dwarves too? And the IDI want to interfere?’
‘Correct. It appears Specimen Lila’s historic grudges do not stop with the goblins.’
‘But what about the IDI’s interference? They have a strict no-interference policy. It was my unauthorised interference that saw me put on punishment duty!’
‘You are again correct. However, in this instance, the IDI see their proposed interference as a simple reversal of a previous abduction.’
Zark gasped. ‘They want to send the princess home?’
‘They do. She is the rightful heir to the throne Specimen Lila occupies. If the princess returns, she could supplant her stepmother and halt her genocidal campaign.’
‘Right.’ Zark furrowed the space where her eyebrows would have been, if Zargons had them. ‘But the princess is just an ordinary Aura-14G native. How the heck is she going to defeat a powerful sorcerer?’
Darkle smiled. ‘We send her with backup.’
‘Huh?’
‘She’s married to a Geo-33G native. If he goes to Aura-14G, he has the same magical potential as Specimen Lila.’
‘What? This doesn’t make sense. This isn’t just reversing previous interference; it’s interfering further. How has this been authorised?’ Zark leaned forwards, propping herself up on the control panel.
Darkle’s face turned grave. ‘Let’s just say things in the IDI are changing …’ A mischievous smile crept up her cheeks. ‘And I’ve been pleading non-stop for months for this to happen! I was also insistent that I’d need you to help me if we were going to make this work. You were very good at your job, and I can’t risk having a substandard first mate at such a critical time.’
‘I’m returning to your ship? Back to study Aura-14G?’ She could still barely believe it.
‘Yep. The IDI agreed that you had been punished long enough and decided to give you a second chance.’
‘I-I don’t know what to say.’
‘Say you’ll start eating again and sort out your uniform. Then get your behind to Geo-33G. You’ve a princess to collect.’
Path to Power is out on 20th February, 2026, with its sequels following soon after.
