Miracles still happen. Sometimes. And then the ugly duckling - an ordinary St. Petersburg doctor Lika - meets her fairy-tale prince - old, really old, Comintern member Max, and exciting adventures begin on Earth, in parallel realities and in the distant galactic empire of Ahan. Before you is a space opera, which is not for nothing called “Quest” empire". This is a quest in which there is a place for space battles, and hand-to-hand combat, and magic (a little bit), and an alternative history with its sister, cryptohistory, and a detective story, and images of a Gothic novel. There is everything here: love and war, military clashes in Geneva and St. Petersburg, galactic aristocrats and insidious leaders of human and non-human intelligence services and, of course, true friends. So, the quest begins, and the prize in this journey for happiness is an empire. It won't be boring.