From a Prince to a Duke- betrayal on Xybar

It was another bitter cold night on the planet xybar home of house Lron, It has been 7 days since the death of  late Grand duke Mingyu and his eldest son had taken up his position as Duke of House Lron. 

“Holy crap, is this true?” he muttered to himself as he read through the document, which already bore his fathers sigil making it effective immediately on his passing.  His state of shock was shattered when the door opened and someone walked in, it was his advisor Hyunjin. 

“Hyunjin! What brings you here?”  Jeong-in asked, walking over and hugging his friend. 

“My lord, I’m happy to see you after all those years you spent on the capital planet” Hyunjin replied, his tone neutral as he stepped out of Jeong-in’s arms and  pulled a holo-pack out of his pocket.

The holo-pack’s screen lit up and displayed what looked like a massive maze that was labeled ‘Kyron city’. 

 “The people of our house live underground due to the sub-zero conditions of our planet and our house specializes in Natal farms” Hyunjin spoke, without cutting any corners and getting straight to the point.    “Natal…farms?” Jeong-in replied, confusion lacing his voice.

 Hyunjin then went into a long winded explanation about how Natal farms are where the Arthraxian Republic grows its slave labor force, because while they are a war making society and do take prisoners they do not take the risk of soldiers leading slave revolts so they harvest DNA from their prisoners before decimating them and  make clones out of their DNA. 

 Jeong-in listened quietly as Hyunjin continued, stating that Xybar was the only planet which had the correct environment that natal farms can function effectively on.  

“So you’re telling me that the entire Republic's logistical practices rely on me now?” Jeong-in asked in complete disbelief. He never knew that his family had secured the rights to the natal farms, he’d heard of them during his stay in the capital of Mo Wol but never enough to precisely guess what they were and where they were located. 

“That would be all my lord, I suggest you go to sleep for I have much to show you.”. Hyunjin spoke curtly, before placing his arm over his stomach at an angle in salute and  muttering something in the language of house Lron before departing, leaving the young duke in his quarters alone. 

[time skip]

The next day Jeong-in was awoken at the crack of dawn by the Duchal guards bursting into his room, with Hyunjin walking inside calmly. “My lord, i’m sorry to wake you but time is of the essence as you must learn the ways of being the duke quickly before the other houses make moves to seize Xyrba”.  Jeong-in got out of bed and begrudgingly dressed himself before following the group of soldiers out of his bed chambers, and down into the depths of Kybra city where his people lived and worked in maintaining the vital natal farms of the Republic. 

“So what do we start with?” the young duke asked, as he looked around the massive underground  metropolis of the planet.

The city was massive with citizens moving about through the streets of Kybar city's luxurious economy, most of these people were off their shifts in the massive natal farms.   The slaves toiled in the agricultural greenhouses that harvested the food the planet ate, these slaves were all cloned from DNA taken during the Republics conquests and grown in the natal farms.  

“Woah…..I never knew the cities were like this” Jeong-in whispered to nobody in particular, he was just awestruck at the elegance of the city.  House Lron was truly magnificent and this was all his to rule from now on.

The natal farms were massive buildings, its perimeter patrolled by troopers of the Duchal guard.

“The Duchal guard is instructed to shoot anyone spotted outside of the natal farms at all times” Hyunjin told him, but was cut off when the towering colossus orbital  guns of the patrol force opened up on a smuggler aircraft, Jeong-in watched in silence as the smoldering wreckage of the ship hit the planet's icy surface where it was swarmed by troopers.

“That’s what happens” Hyunjin muttered before directing the pilots to land the craft inside the hangars of  one of the natal farms.  

“How many of these are there?” Jeong-in asked as the gargantuan  doors to the hangar opened and the craft descended, Hyunjin replied “I believe we have about 650 natal farms on the planet”. 

Once the craft had touched down on the hangar, the door opened and the two men stepped out. 

The head scientist of the natal farm was waiting with an entourage to greet the young duke. 

“My lord! What an honor to have you come to our humble natal farm. We are thrilled to show you how our systems are running”. 

 Hyunjin bristled silently as the man tried to suck up to Jeong-in, clearly trying to get into his good graces.

“Ah, yes. Now could you show me around?” Jeong-in put on his best tough ruler voice, which made Hyunjin snicker inwardly. 

The group then took a tour through the natal farms and Jeong-in saw the thousands of  large tubes that grew all the slaves of the empire,  the place itself was a massive forest of tubes with the only empty spaces being where the  staff would move to and from the control room into where they ate lunch and took breaks.

 The clones were created  from the  harvested DNA of conquered worlds. He learned of the 4 categories of slaves which each had a specific marking on their bodies.  The agricultural slaves had scythes, the gladiatorial slaves had shields, the pleasure slaves had hearts while the manual labor slaves had a mask.    He already knew that the Republic’s citizens were first and foremost soldiers and not laborers but he hadn’t encountered any other type of slave besides gladiatorial ones in Mo Wol during his youth. 

As he walked along a corridor he saw a section where 6 tubes were separated from the rest, inside were 6  clones who bore the mark of pleasure slaves.  “Why are these separated?" He asked, curious about the separation. The reply came swiftly “These 6 are bound for the capital world”.   

[time skip] 

Jeong-in was in the main building of the  Duchal palace, he stood in front of the mirror as he looked upon his duke’s uniform. This was supposed to be his first official act as Duke of House Lron; to give his official approval to a new batch of clones to be processed and sent out into the Republic's work force. 

But his quiet contemplative moment was ruined when a massive explosion rocked the building, he ran to his window and saw the defensive guns being destroyed by orbital ordinance.  Only one house had this much firepower, it was house Manjida. 

   He heard the alarms go off, as the Duchal guard scrambled its starfighters and groundtroops rushed to defend the city. But it was too late, Manjida ships were already in the atmosphere and were deploying their weapons of war.

 Hyunjin ran into the room and grabbed Jeong-in “He’s in here!” he called out, a squadron of troopers rushed in to protect him. They began leading the Duke towards a safehouse,  Jeong-in looked around as he saw a large battle as guardsmen of Lron fought the elite  Varangians of house manjida and in the skies above  starfighters and warships dueled up in the atmosphere, the manjida had destroyed the orbital defense guns so the only aerial defense was the small fleet of starfighters and warships.  Jeong-in’s hand clutched his blade as a Varangian appeared around a corner, raising his blade the duke quickly dispatched the Varangian who fell to the floor.

  “Quicky! We must get to the bunker now!  we can access the communications array and contact Mo Wol”  A trooper called out as they all began sprinting towards the bunker just in the nick of time because a second orbital strike had hit the planet's surface.

Hyunjin locked the door once the group got inside, and they all breathed a sigh of relief. 

The group moved further into the bunker, where they found a group of troopers guarding the 6 tanks of clones bound for the capital world, “Trooper, how many troops did we lose?” Jeong-in asked the trooper with purple stripes on his helmet that  identified him as an officer.  “My lord, we lost about 150 in the initial assault  before pushing them back and the enemy is preparing to  atta-”.  The trooper was cut off when the plastoid walls of the bunker door began to be cut open, everyone grabbed for their blasters and blades and ran for the door.   The room was silent as all 30 Lron men readied themselves for the onslaught, the cutting stopped and for a moment they let their guard down but the door was blow open, flying into the room crushing 6 troopers as a Varangian battle mech burst into the room peppering everyone with lazgun fire. 

Troopers dove for cover but we cut down as more Varangians poured into the room. 

Hyunjin and Jeong-in sprinted deeper into the bunker, but a blaster bolt took Hyunjin down  and Jeong-in was left alone to fend for himself. 

Jeong-in was chased through the corridors of the bunker, making it  to  the room where the capsules were located when he was finally shot in the back.   The Varangian had fired two bolts, one hitting Jeong-in, the other missing  and slamming into  one of the capsules causing the fluids inside to spurt out and cover the dying duke's face.   

Jeong-in laid in a puddle of crimson, his vision was glowing blurry………………the duke of house Lron was no more.