Soon he would be prepared for his neglectful Father’s return and would greet him with a smile and a probably not bloodless coup. He had been pawn of his Father’s machinations one too many times. Soon, the young ambitious Prince would be master of the game.

Jacob started as his Mother called at him loudly from the door. He had been wrapped up in his play time again, not listening. His Mother’s voice sounded harsh, she did not like food left to cool on the table. Jacob sighed and put away his toy prince and chancellor, and with large sweeps tumbled the knights and militia back into their castle box. His Mother watched over crossed arms as he scuttled inside with a mumbled apology and placation. Jacob was quite the project, but she could see he was learning the lessons she imparted well enough. He would grow to be a good man.

Peter listened tensely as Janet and Jacob did their nightly dance downstairs. Judging by the quips that floated up through the cracked open door he was safe to continue his report. His cover was as intact as ever. A secure link carried the message of his progress. He worked for a chemical plant as a plant, stealing secrets discovered while working on top level government contracts. The computer link connected him through a series of relays and mis-directions back to his native country. In the impending conflict those secrets would give his beloved homeland the upper hand. Over a decade of work was painfully close to paying off.

Nichol received Peter’s communication, decrypted it and added it to the database for custom built virtual laboratories to analyze. The information would indeed have given this Godless country the upper hand were it not for Nichol and his program inserting specialized errors into the reports as directed by the agency he served back in Peter’s country. Once the v-labs were thoroughly on their way to completion Nichol placed a call back to his superiors and made a terse coded report in complex double speak. Anyone listening would have learned no more than that two friends managed to keep contact over long distances and years of separation.

The communications were monitored, along with every other scrap of information energetically transmitted by a ship floating in orbit over the spinning blue planet. N’gak’lii and Rep’su’sus’lin hissed in conversation about the N-Grav Ball tournament being hyper-cast to their monitors from the Home System as their sub-brains controlled limbs to work at categorizing the massive data flow. Soon the disparate tribes of the world spinning below would erupt into the conflict the two had helped design. It was N’gak’lii’s sincere hope that the resultant radiation levels and chemical changes to the biosphere would give rise to more interesting life forms. Rep’su’sus’lin was just in it for the laugh, it had been a boring few centuries for her.