Chapter 13Serena couldn't take her eyes off the splendor in front of her.
The galactic core, the blazing violent inchoate mass, the engine of creation.
Or, as Princess Mariko Mitsubi had often called it, the ultimate prize.
Her neuralink-fed visual cortex dancing with its brilliance, Serena understood now why civilizations had risen and fallen with a single goal as its founding principle: Control the core, and the galaxy is yours. She looked upon the core through her neuralink and she knew why Princess Mariko had striven relentlessly to conquer it.
Inside the flimsy shell of the small black yacht, Serena knew she could venture no closer. Vessels with far more resilient defenses had plummeted to their destruction from further out than she was. The density of space junk—just the flotsam
