I think the main problem with this is that you don't catch the reader's interest fast enough. Ideally, your very first sentence or two should make the reader hooked. Various collections of good opening lines have some great examples of this: 1 2 3 If that doesn't work, at least make them interested by the end of the first paragraph.
In your piece, by the end of the first paragraph we know that the main character is the crown prince of Mars in what seems to be a rather generic sci-fi/space opera setting. That was still pretty much all I knew by the end of the fourth paragraph, at which point I started skimming. If this was a book I was looking at in a store (or reading a sample of on my Kindle), I'd have put it away at that point.
The main issue seems to be that the characters seem quite bland. If you look at those collections of great opening lines, nearly all of them say something about the characters that make them seem fascinating enough that even if the author doesn't always do a good job of keeping the story interesting, the reader is willing to tolerate that because they want to find out more. Like the my second link describes the opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude, "that’ll buy at least a hundred pages of curiosity." Simply knowing that the crown prince is bored isn't enough to make me curious, nor to make me care about him - which means that I have little interest in reading forward. By the end of your piece we start to find out things about the characters, but it's too little, too late.
Of course, in sci-fi you can substitute interesting characters with an interesting setting, but there was little in the setting to make me curious, either.
I hope this doesn't come off as too harsh. Hooking the reader from the start is difficult, and I struggle with it myself.
It doesn't come off as harsh--but it does sound as if this story falls into the broad category of "not for you".
This community has a recurring interest in "rationalist fiction," and several members who are writers. I wonder if it would be useful to create a space where Less Wrong members could provide each other constructive criticism and encouragement on in-progress original writing projects?
Disclosure: I'm working on a sci-fi novel right now, and my regular circle of "beta readers" are fantasy fans and aren't providing much feedback on the new project. I am much, much more productive as a writer when I get steady feedback, so I have a personal interest in looking for something like this. Less Wrong came to mind as a community of intelligent, creative, forward-looking types who are likely to enjoy sci-fi.