The Last Eclipse (Original Sci-fi set in the Sol System)

[DerangedLunatic]

Olympus Mons Supercity, Mars

Deep within the single largest underground city in the entire Solar System, the Martian people had been thrown into chaos. Sensor operators pored over consoles as they attempted to pinpoint the distant dot of blue and green from which the human race was spawned. Calls from spaceship navigators around the system and ordinary citizens on the ground threatened to overload the city's, no, the planet's telecommunications network as millions upon millions of people called their relatives and friends about what occurred. Satellites in orbit, which had been linked to those of Earth as a sign of good faith during the post-war order of the Sol System, reached out into the void and found… nothing. Recent immigrants from Earth could no longer contact those that they left behind, and a state of general panic had begun to claim them.

As reports of a riot beginning to form in the streets of the vast underground city of Olympus Mons filtered their way into the computers and minds of Mars' highest military and civilian leadership, they scrambled within their hidden rooms and watchtowers, seeking to ascertain what had occurred to the homeworld of humanity.

"Contact the Azure Drake and Watchful Eye scout ships, ask them if they have anything," Admiral Jian, director of the Martian Navy's Naval Intelligence Organization (NIO), ordered within a darkened room filled with computers and slightly shaken individuals in front of said computers. "What in the name of God has just happened here…?"

"Admiral Jian, the Azure Drake and Watchful Eye are not hailing back," a quiet voice answered. "As are the rest of the reconnaissance vessels within immediate visual and sensor range of Earth. They're all gone dark, sir."

"Absurd," Jian hissed at whoever was the scared person that answered him. "How could… anything just simultaneously silence all 100 of our scout ships? Anyone trying to do that would have needed to hunt them down one by one over several months!"

The room remained silent. It was obvious that there won't be an answer from anyone here simply because there weren't any. This… phenomenon was unlike anyone had ever witnessed before.

"Very well, then," Jian continued. "Tell me what we do know."

"Well, sir, it seems that… something has cut off from all visual and sensor contact with Earth. This phenomenon has also affected an area of approximately 10 million kilometers around the planet. And… this area with zero sensor readings is moving in accordance with Earth's rotation around the Sun. Our ships in the area had also been silenced by whatever this was, so…"

The officer trailed off. He didn't know what to classify it as.

After another few moments of silence, the room once again shook at Jian's voice. "This is either an attack on Earth, or Earth has unleashed some kind of superweapon to obscure themselves," the dark figure concluded. "That does make perfect sense, no?"

The others in the dark room simply nodded in agreement. They just didn't have any theories of their own right now.

Soon enough, there was a ping in the Admiral's wrist device. The Martian Senate and the Supreme Chancellor had moved to authorize a blockade just outside what the scientists had creatively called 'The Dark Zone'. The Belters wanted in, and soon, a combined fleet will be headed to the periphery of the darkness that had consumed the planet.

---

Roanoke, Pluto

Seven figures sat around a table made from polished wood that was brought to Pluto over 200 years ago when the first colony ships landed on the farthest planet of the Solar System. The halls in which they had gathered were pristine and eternally as white as the great ice plains that lay outside the great capital of the Plutonian Republic, Roanoke. One might have been puzzled as to why the Plutonians decided to name their capital city after a colony that disappeared without a trace, but disappearing was how they came to Pluto to begin with.

In exchange for two centuries of isolation, they have found knowledge that no others possess.

"The archives we found here foresaw this…" the lead figure spoke up, his gray suit of powered armor glistening under the chandelier that hung overhead. "Darkness overtaking an entire world. Shadow wrapped around it like the tentacles of a great kraken, poised to choke out the life of all others. We must act."

"Prime Minister…" one of the others raised her gauntleted palm. "We must formulate a plan. Mars and the Belt are organizing a blockade of Earth, or rather, the shadow that has blotted it, as we speak. If we come in with guns blazing-"

"We never rush in with guns blazing, do we not, Three?" Another of the figures, this one far more prominent and bearing a helmet with a glowing blue visor. "We observe. We assess. We return and formulate a further plan of action. That has been our way ever since we were stranded upon Pluto and forced to deal with the… strangeness of this world."

"What do you propose… Supreme Grandmaster One?" Yet another of the figures, this one with a quality of voice that testified to years of chain smoking.

"Some among us have decided to exile themselves from our society upon learning of the state of the wider system," One answered. With a click of his metallic gauntlet, an image accompanied by text appeared on the screens in front of every member of their council. "Of course, while we will always welcome our wayward comrades home should they decide to return, there are always… exceptions. Those that had committed such grand blunders that they may not return due to their shame."

The council began to whisper amongst themselves. This is the exile with tarnished honor that One will promise to UNtarnish?

"Zakarias Angstrom…" Three read the name off her screen and looked up at Supreme Grandmaster. Even with their helmets on, they still could tell what the other was thinking through subtle shifts in body language and the tone of their voices. The other members of the Plutonian Council were obviously apprehensive at best and slightly angry at worst. Three's hands shuddered, while Five and Six began to speak calming mantras to themselves.

"Other than several counts of theft of advanced technology from the wreckages of Martian and Saturnine spaceships that, if found out, would ignite tensions, Angstrom had been found to have abandoned an ally to capture and torture. That is the highest form of betrayal of the Code as a member of this Plutonic Order," Three hissed. "Even if said ally was from the Uranic League, that glorified criminal syndicate, he had been faithful to Angstrom ever since their meeting. To think that one of ours would be so crass and cowardly…"

"That is true," One tilted his head ever so slightly forward. "But he also desperately wants to atone for it. Is it not in our laws that if one that has been so disgraced performs a great deed that brings honor and joy to many, then they may be reinstated as one of us once again?"

At that moment, the entire Council fell into a deathly silence. Even the Prime Minister, who had been whispering to himself for some time now, was quiet. Only the slight blowing of the ventilators and the grumbling of ice volcanoes in the barren wasteland of Pluto served as ambiance in those few seconds of quiet.

"You want… him to go to Earth and ascertain its fate?" The Prime Minister was the first to speak. "Might as well."

"You don't know him as well as I do, Prime Minister," One answered. He spoke with such candidness that one might even imagine that he was smirking inside that helmet. "I have spoken with Angstrom quite a few times. There are no laws that prohibit me or any other Plutonian from doing so, yes? It's just that he is not allowed to call us."

"This… is true," Two, the second highest ranked member of the Plutonian military that had been quiet so far, finally spoke. "In addition, if the other powers of the System somehow discover him snooping towards Earth, his status as an exile means that the whole affair won't be traced back to this Council. We have plausible deniability in this case."

The council members murmured again, though this time, they did so with approving voices. "I concur," Five nodded. The rest of the Council followed suit… except for the Prime Minister, who still remained quiet in his seat.

"It is still up to you, Prime Minister," One said as he slightly shifted on his seat.

The Prime Minister of Pluto stared back at One with his own goggled helmet. The Council sat in agonizing silence as they waited for the Prime Minister's response; a slight scraping noise could be heard as Four, the most eccentric of the Council, moved his chair forward.

"I concur," the Prime Minister finally relented. "You will contact Zakarias Angstrom and give him the offer."

---

The Serendipity

Ping, ping, ping, ping-

"Oh, great. Another call from his majesty," Zakarias Angstrom grumbled as he purposefully strode on the vantablack floor of his ship's bridge. He was completely alone in the Serendipity, mostly due to him having the only companion that he actually needed.

The holographic form of Vince, the AI that Zakarias had found in the wreckage of a derelict Martian battleship and promptly integrated into his own ship, materialized a few feet away. The AI had something that resembled a smirk on his face, which profoundly annoyed Zakariel. Nevertheless, Vince's chattiness was precisely why Zakariel kept him around. He liked to have conversations for half of the day, and the ability to just sleep without interruption in the other half.

"It is the Supreme Grandmaster, sir Angstrom," Vince announced. "Though I see you heading to the communication console now, so I suppose that informing you of it was redundant."

Zak simply nodded as he headed to the consoles. "It is, but thanks nonetheless, Vince. I told him about my wee hours of the morning, but now decided to call me in my equivalent of… what, 3 am? I have my clock set to emulate Earth time, anyway…"

"Speaking of Earth, sir, have you heard the news?"

"No, I just woke up," Zak frowned. "What about the planet that we all came from?"

"Apparently, it has… disappeared."

Zak shook his head at the AI. "You know I'm not in the mood for jokes right now. It's not April Fool's yet. And planets don't just…" Zakarias formed quotation marks with his fingers, '"Disappear!'"

However, as Vince stared back at Zak, the man realized that it was, in fact, not a joke. "Seriously? What does that… mean, exactly?"

Another resounding ping came in. "Apparently, that's the topic that the Supreme Grandmaster has in mind for you," Vince continued.

With that, Zak finally seated himself in the pilot's chair and pressed the button that would connect him to the Supreme Grandmaster, who was all the way in Pluto. Zak wasn't too sure about the relationship he had with the Supreme Grandmaster; once, before, One was his mentor, his friend. One was the only one that spoke to him after his exile from Pluto, which was due in part to a rising number of infractions from constantly stealing Martian, Saturnine, and Belter technology. The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was when the other pilot he was running salvage operations with, Bertrand, got caught by a Martian patrol and had needles put in his brain as part of their interrogation techniques. Zakarias immediately bolted his ship from the scene, and, though Bertrand survived and was running freight now, he would never forget it. Neither did the Council, apparently.

"Hello, One," Zakarias began as the hologram of the helmeted lord of Pluto's military and exploratory branch appeared before him. "It's been a week since you last called. I had thought that you abandoned me for good like the rest of the Council."

"I would never," One replied with that warm tone, as always. "I take it that your stolen Martian AI told you about the recent news ripping through the System?"

Zak let out a dejected sigh. "He just told me, and please, just call him Vince. Anyway, what is that all about? Earth is just… gone?"

One took a moment to collect his thoughts. Zak could hear the man's inhaling and exhaling; if he didn't know any better, he would have that One was wracked with fear. "A shadow has blotted the planet out of the sight of every telescope and sensor. All of the spy ships and probes that were within ten million kilometers from Earth had been silenced, and… well, everyone's tense. The system's biggest source of food and live soil is pretty much out of the picture… though, as one of the Plutonic Order, you know about what was found on Pluto when our ancestors arrived. The signs are all over this."

"Yes, yes, I remember," Zak nodded, recalling the time he became versed in the history of the first colonists of Pluto when they fled the madness of the Overtyrant of Jupiter and the Jovian Empire before Earth wrested back control after a war that lasted for 50 years. Their tolls, their suffering… and the grand discovery they made. "What of it? Does the Council believe that this… shadow is what the archives seemingly warned about?"

"There is no other explanation," One answered. "And so, I come to you with an offer. Go to Earth. Find out what happened. Should you fulfill this task and return alive, you will be allowed to return to Pluto… to your children."

Zak's eyes lit up. "Are… are you serious? I committed one of the greatest offenses in the Code!"

"The same Code that says that one may return to the Order should you accomplish a deed of great honor and courage. Do this, and you will be absolved. You will see your kids again."

"That…" Zak locked his gaze unto the Supreme Grandmaster's hologram, who then looked back at him, "...is all I want."

 

[DerangedLunatic]

United Nations of Earth and Luna

Just before the Great Space Race, Earth's nations were suffering from the worst effects of climate change. The slow and painful degradation of Earth's biosphere prompted a drive to colonize the rest of the Solar System and relocate industry elsewhere to alleviate the pressure from humanity's wounded homeworld. By 2350, there were no more industrial centers on Earth itself, with all industrial activity being relocated to the Moon, orbital stations above Earth, and the rest of the Solar System. Earth would be known as a paradise from those days forward; the still divided nations of Earth, however, would lose the Solar Revolution, as the mass rebellion of the colonies was called, once the colonial fleets threatened Luna.

Recently, the Earth has seemingly been blotted out of sight by a mysterious shadow. Mars and the Belt have imposed a blockade restricting access to Earth in fear of what might have occurred…

Martian Alliance

The very first and most powerful of all the colonies that sprung up during the Great Space Race between Earth's nations. Mars was and still is the center of science, technology, and industry in the Sol System, superseding the Earth as the greatest of humanity's nations. It is currently in the slow process of terraforming; it is estimated that it will take Mars 400 years to become a second, green Earth.

Martians are known to be determined, pragmatic, and masterfully industrious. Due to their scientific genius, Martians are all, to some extent, genetically modified. It is well known that soldiers and sailors from Mars can survive and recover from grievous wounds, their scientists are emotionless beings of pure logic, and the general citizenry is simply far more resilient to injury.

Belter Combine

Less of a legitimate government and more of a corporate conglomerate, the Belter Combine was formed from the ten mining corporations that held sway over the Asteroid Belt. They were the first of the Colonies to ally with Mars in the Solar Revolution.

Belters, as the people/employees of the Combine are called, have been within the corporations for generations. This is not out of any crippling debt or contracts that transcend lifetimes; rather, the corporations are keen to keep entire bloodlines of skilled workers and technicians in their ranks through a system of benefits that few could resist. Therefore, the Belt has garnered vast sums of wealth and wields a contented, competent workforce.

Saturnine Concord

The colonies on the eight largest moons of Saturn have organized themselves into the Saturnine Concord. Titan houses the Concord capital city of Atlantis underneath its methane ocean, named so after the legendary sunken city.

Saturn is regarded as the least corrupt of the states in Sol due to the rigorous laws pertaining to the candidacy of elected officials and the fact that it is the fastest rising economy in Sol. It has a fierce rivalry with Jupiter, and was the last to join Mars in the Solar Revolution.

Jovian Commonwealth

After the end of the Solar Revolution, the moons of Jupiter consolidated themselves into a functional independent nation. Callisto, with its network of orbital mirrors, serves as the breadbasket of the outer planets, while Europa exports water in vast amounts.

Jupiter has a troubled history with fascism, terrorism, and war; the Jovian moons once declared independence from the Earth in the distant past whilst ruled over by the former governor of Ganymede, who had styled himself as emperor for life, though he was more widely known as the Overtyrant of Jupiter. The Saturnine colonial authority was soon invaded by the Jovians, prompting the Earth to send forces drawn from the Inner Solar System to crush this rebellion. In the end, it took 50 years of war and logistical nightmares before the Jovian Empire was finally defeated.

Uranic League

While initially colonized by mining companies, Uranus' moons were taken over by crime syndicates and cartels. And so, it is known as the hive of villainy within the Sol System. Still, it serves as a focal point of trade and underground connections not just within the outer planets, but the Solar System as a whole. The most desperate of the poor and criminals that wish to disappear flock to the Uranic League's territories on the moons of Miranda, Oberon, Titania, Umbriel, Ariel, Cordelia, and Ophelia.

Plutonic Order

Though their state itself is officially known as the Plutonian Republic, the only meaningful contact the other Sol System powers have with Pluto is through the Plutonian military arm known as the Plutonic Order. The Order is famous for its strict oaths of honor and absolute secrecy; their soldiers (who are often called 'Plutonic Knights' due to their armor and helmets) never show their faces to others unless they have already retired or are exiled.

The Plutonian Republic was allegedly founded by a fleet of refugee ships from Jupiter's moons that fled the fascist tyranny of the Jovian Empire 220 years ago. They were cut off from the rest of humanity for centuries until they re-emerged during the Solar Revolution as indifferent observers in the ongoing war of secession. While the Plutonians have never been engaged in battle by the other powers in the Sol System, the extremely potent stealth capabilities of their ships and the suits of powered armor that their soldiers use have spawned many questions that have yet to be answered.

Salemite Republic

In the year 2219, the nation known as Israel lost its second-largest city to a nuclear detonation. This led to a string of still-unclear events that eventually converged in Israel's decision to leave the Earth itself. Jerusalem, the hotly disputed ancient city, as well as the modern city that has formed around it, was turned into a mobile station and launched off into space, never to return to Earth. The city currently orbits Neptune and has effectively claimed that area of space for itself.

 

[DerangedLunatic]

No one knows what happened. Or so the United Colonies said.

Five days ago, every spy satellite, telescope, observatory, and spaceship lost sight of the Earth. One moment, it was right there, oceans gleaming with that same beautiful blue glow and the emerald continents brimming with life. In the next, it was simply gone, almost as if someone had plucked it out of the universe. Or, perhaps, it had been overtaken by a shadow of some kind.

Irina can never stop thinking about the planet of her birth and the cradle of humanity, the place wherein her family still lived. She had left them to pursue a life of charitable giving, using her connections to fund a foundation that ran aid missions across the Solar System. She had been on all the planets, moons, and forsaken rocks that could barely be called half a moon. Anywhere that had people in need of help, Irina had sent her aid missions. She freely gave away food, medicine, clothing, and makeshift shelter, all in the name of her wishes to see the Solar System become a better place.

Well, until the outbreak of that damned war. The colonies all wanted their independence; the Martian Alliance didn't want the United Nations to look over their shoulders every time they tried to do a science experiment that would be considered unethical on Earth. The Belter Combine just joined in when Mars started winning. The Saturnine and Jovian moons all had their own reasons, but they mostly gravitate around not wanting to answer to some distant council of presidents and what-not from a planet that most of them have never even seen. The Uranic League, those damned schemers, just threw their lot behind the so-called United Colonies of Sol, the grand alliance of disgruntled colonies, because it was clear that they were going to win. The Plutonic Order, whom no one knew existed until a few years ago, didn't care at all. They were too far away and were already kind of independent either way. As for the Salemite Republic, they were happy to let their ancient foes on Earth endure the effects of the war.

Either way, that debacle of a conflict pretty much destroyed Irina's foundation. Being an Earther, the Uranics threw her into a jail cell until the war ended. She might be a spy for the Earth, they said. Not that her years of charity meant anything to the 'government' of Uranus; they were but a bunch of conniving opportunists that no one liked; a veritable collection of crime syndicates that, somehow, grew from some drug den stations into full-fledged settlements. The moons of Uranus were all hives of villainy; unspeakable atrocities and crimes are carried out within the subterranean cities there simply because the League could never pull itself together. Then, the League took all of Irina's ships and sent them out as support vessels for the Solar Revolution, as they called that war. None of the ships came back to Irina, of course. And now that the Earth had just randomly disappeared, there wasn't a home for her to go back to.

"I'm sorry, what? You want to be smuggled to Earth?"

Irina nodded profusely at the supposedly daredevil pilot as she drank up her shot in the bar. The pilot wore a faded leather jacket, his dusty brown hair a scruffy mess. He looked like he had endured a hard life. Irina knew that well; Bertrand had been a friend for a long time.

"No way, Irina," Bertrand answered, shaking his head at Irina. "You see, I don't mess with the Martians and Belters. I can dodge Uranic League ships no problem. Hell, the Saturnines or Jovians can still be dealt with. The Knights of Pluto… eh, they don't usually snoop around, but those stealth ships of theirs may as well be ghosts. But Mars and the Belt? I just can't, sorry. They have the most highly advanced ships in the entirety of the Solar System. My ship will get blown up by a dozen attack frigates should I cross the quarantine line. Sorry, I know that we've been friends for a while, but I can't take this risk. Even if you want to."

Irina sighed. "After everything I've been through. I've spent my entire fortune, my entire life, on trying to better the lives of others, and yet now, I'm still getting hammered by my circumstances. Thanks, Bertrand, anyway."

Bertrand seemed to be taken aback. His expression, for a moment, melted. "I… uh, we are… thankful for your contributions to our society down here, dirty as it is," he said, frowning. "But I can't risk my life too much, you know. I have my own people to worry about, people to keep fed. And I sure as hell can't feed them if I'm too busy being dead. So, uh, I'm sorry."

Irina simply nodded. She understood that well; she too had a family, and, putting herself in the man's shoes, she knew that it was completely reasonable for him to deny her request, even if she was going to give the entirety of her remaining fortune to him as payment.

"But…" the pilot trailed off, looking up at the lights of the bar, which had flickered for a few moments as the unreliable power grid of Caliban almost died again. "I can bring you to someone that can help you."

Irina's eyes lit up like the sun upon hearing this. "Who? Where?"

"Another pilot, by the name of Zakarias Angstrom. Last I heard, he was still in the Free City of Jerusalem," the pilot answered. "I can bring you there, free of charge. After all, your charity work saved my daughter's life a few years ago. It's the least I can do."

"I…" Irina nodded, remembering that one of the Earth's nations quite literally left it about a century ago. Apparently, after its second-largest city was destroyed by a nuclear explosion, that country, as some might say, 'rage-quit'. They turned their capital city into a mobile space station and launched it off into space, never to return. It would appear that this choice had inadvertently saved them from whatever just happened to Earth…

"No need to thank me, Irina," Bertrand nodded and held out his hand. "If you come back here and have requests that don't involve me squaring off against the most powerful forces in this entire system, then I'll be happy to help you. Okay?"

"Thank you, nonetheless," Irina smiled at him. "Well, when are we leaving?"

"Now, if you like," Bertrand replied. "After all, this guy might get hired by someone like you. We better get to him before anyone else does."

---

The ship shuddered underneath Irina's feet as it spun and wove within the field of debris that surrounded the Free City of Jerusalem, the largest and most populous space station in the entirety of the Solar System. It floated just a few thousand kilometers shy of Neptune's orbital path, which took it very far away from the rest of the celestial bodies in the system.

Irina looked over to the side to see Bertrand tensely holding the controls of his ship, which was apparently named Lord of Angels. It befitted Bertrand, Irina mused, as he had all sorts of Catholic imagery scattered within his cockpit. There was a sculpture of the Sto. Nino was placed on the dashboard, rosaries hung from the ceiling, and a portrait of Mary was placed squarely on the side. If this was a car, it would have covered the right-side mirror. Thankfully, spaceships didn't need side mirrors.

"So, Bertrand," Irina blurted out, trying to calm herself by making small talk with the pilot. "How… when did you start doing your occupation? I mean, smuggling. I don't judge, since, well, that was the whole reason I tried to hire you to bring me through the Martian-Belter blockade on the Earth."

"Well," Bertrand winced as he dodged another piece of a destroyed spaceship, which had the markings of the United Nations on its hull. "I took up this occupation when the League put us under debt. You see, my son, the younger child that came after my daughter, was very sick. We couldn't afford the supplements that would normalize the development of his bones due to the war and the shortages it caused, so we… no, I had to get a deal with the League's middle echelons. You know, those good-for-nothing fat cats. I knew that they were bad folk, of course. But I was desperate. Only Martian genetic technology could possibly alter my son's fate, and I had no way of getting to it. So, I agreed to this… binding contract that would force me to run across the system and get all sorts of illegal goods to those that want them. So, yeah."

Irina quietly studied Bertrand's expression. He held a great smile, despite the losses he must have endured. Irina didn't know how, or why, but she could almost feel that Bertrand nursed a deep pain within.

"Well, he's alright now," Bertrand nodded. "He's in… he's in a better place. Better than this wartorn system, anyway. This would make seeing Jerusalem a bit of a relief for me, too."

Irina spent another moment studying the man's body language and expression. She knew how to deal with people long enough to know that looks can say a thousand words. "Jerusalem and Pluto were the only ones that stayed neutral during the Solar Revolution. So, that place will remind you of better times, yes?"

"They already considered themselves free and unbound from the rest. So… this would be like a glimpse into the life that I once had before I made the mistake of trying to cut deals with the League." Bertrand nodded. "Speaking of which, we have arrived."

Irina turned her gaze back toward the cockpit's window and was taken aback by the sheer majesty of the place. Some called the Free City of Jerusalem the "Jewel of Sol", and that nickname had a good reason behind it. The space station was perhaps around ten kilometers wide, with a vast collection of engines and thrusters making micro-adjustments every few seconds to account for orbital drift. Thousands of lights glowed like lines of code upon the naked metallic skin of the station's lower sections, while gargantuan spacedocks and hangars formed a concentric ring around it, housing perhaps hundreds of ships at the same time. Extending out like spokes in a wheel were seven additional domed substations connected to the main body itself, each of which housed great stretches of what seemed to be natural ecological systems; forests, prairies, and meadows.

The crowning jewel, however, was the city itself, or at least, the original section that came with it from Earth. The old and new quarters of Jerusalem had been literally ripped out of the foundations of the Earth through technological wonders that could have only been achieved by one of the Earth's most advanced nations. The landmass now rested underneath a vast dome of incomprehensibly powerful glass that lay within yet another shell of immensely durable metal, within which an artificial atmosphere circulated. The city, a futuristic metropolis, sprawled within, just like the times it was still back on Earth. Except for the old city, of course, which housed ancient and sacred wonders.

"We're being hailed," Bertrand noted as his computer began beeping. "Salemite patrol frigates, pulling up beside us."

The radio array crackled into life as the commander of one of the cruisers spoke. "State your business, err… Lord of Angels? Also, transmit codes. As usual."

"We're here to visit the old city," Bertrand answered, the naturalness of his voice never betraying that a tour was, in fact, not their actual intention. "My sister and I have always wanted to see it for ourselves."

"Codes look good," the commander answered with an approving tone. "Proceed to docking bay 26."

With the Salemite frigates gone, Irina let out another sigh of relief. "Well, I guess now's the part when you tell what this guy actually looks like…"

 

[DerangedLunatic]

Irina breathed in the fresh air, happily singing as she took in the sweet scent of the cherry blossoms lining the streets. Bertrand, despite being a pilot that lived with exhilaration and the heat of the moment, was surprisingly patient. He didn't complain when Irina bent down to sniff the rose hedges that the Salemites had carefully cultivated within their city. He just stood there, waiting for her to continue walking. He knew well that she had spent over six years in prison for crimes that never existed, and she was surely quite tired of the scent of oil, metal, and musk. A few minutes of stopping to reminisce on what life used to be like aboard one of her late science ships wouldn't hurt too much.

Either way, should the worst come true, then this mobile space city would be the last piece of the planet Earth. The very ground underneath their feet came from Earth; the decisions that led to its transformation into an eternally sojourning station within the void were directly caused by the conflicts on the homeworld that had been raging for centuries.

"I know I've been tarrying a lot," Irina blurted out as she finally began walking in a brisk pace alongside Bertrand. "But it's been a long time since I was in a place with plants. And not just those measly little rows that you can barely call a garden. This is…"

"Just like the Heart," Bertrand nodded, recalling the ship that served as Irina's base of operations when she was still a wealthy aristocrat that ran aid missions to the poor of the Solar System. "I could still smell the blossoms in my nose. And it was so… cool. I've spent most of my life surrounded by metal and rock, and then you brought us aboard that floating greenhouse."

"I'm surprised that you haven't gone here more," Irina said, slightly turning her head to look at a man leading several leashed purebred dogs with meticulously maintained coats across the walkway. "I mean, I think you'd really like it here, from what I've seen."

"The City usually doesn't let people from outside stay long-term," Bertrand answered with a cursory shake of his head. "Tourists are welcome, sure, but the degree of automation here means that they have no real need for immigrants to fill in their labor force. Besides, the space is very limited. Rent is higher than the temperature on the sun's surface."

Irina nodded. "So it would be beyond your means, got it."

As the pair proceeded to the city proper, they soon got into a speeder cab, which quickly rose into the lanes of floating vehicles that formed a grand web of transportation across the city.

"So, this… pilot that's better than you," Irina began, but was cut off by Bertrand shaking his head.

"Better than me? Well, not quite," Bertrand frowned, apparently taking offense that his skills were in doubt and seemingly surpassed by someone else. "But he has a better, bigger, and stealthier ship than I do. I'd say more right here, but… it's better for you to see it and him for yourself."

"What does he look like, anyway?" Irina asked. "Don't say 'less handsome than me' because you're just desperate for compliments. Just… give a description."

"He's… actually a bit short," Bertrand answered, his expression telling Irina that he was struggling with simply giving a basic description due to an apparent… jealousy, if any words could give it justice. "He's, well, he usually wears glasses and a hat of some kind. At least, he did the last time I saw him. Also, I think he was… funny."

"If he has a sense of humor, then that's completely alright," Irina rolled her eyes. "Anyway how did you meet, anyway?"

"Long story…" Bertrand simply trailed off, pouting. Irina knew better than to press the issue when Bertrand didn't want to talk about it. Perhaps they had a falling out and had a strained relationship at best. Either way, if he was willing to get past the Martian-Belter blockade and bring her to Earth, then she was perfectly willing to go along with him. Whether or not he has bad jokes, or if he was friendly or not. None of that mattered in the face of finding out the truth.

After about three minutes of somewhat awkward silence, the cab finally stopped in front of the meeting place, which was apparently a coffee shop. At least, this an establishment that the man supposedly frequented at this time of the day, so the two expected to find him in there, drinking up a glass of cold coffee topped with cream and chocolate. Bertrand apparently knew him well enough that he had a good idea of what beverages he was into.

"Bertrand Smith," a rather small, but strong voice called out from behind as Irina and Bertrand made their way inside the coffee shop. Irina turned around towards the source of the voice, and surely enough, there was the other pilot that Bertrand wanted to lead her to.

"And what do we have here?" the man said, smirking as he beheld Irina. "Bertie, you have brought strange company this time. I didn't know you got remarried!"

"Shut up, Zakarias," Bertrand growled, trying his best to hide his distaste. "We're not- ugh. Let's just talk business, yeah?'

"Yeah, we should," Zakarias nodded and set his glass of iced coffee to the side in case Bertrand ever tried to hit him. "So, is this how you greet me, huh? After everything we've done together?"

"How exactly do you know each other?" Irina asked, her question coming out of both curiosity and concern. "I mean, he told me to hire you instead of him, Mr. Zakarias, because you're better equipped for the mission that I have in mind."

"We bumped into each other during the war," Bertrand grumbled under his breath. "Zakarias Angstrom and his compatriots arrived to watch us beleaguered Uranic League forces get destroyed by a carrier strike force from Luna. Then, after it was all over, he brought his ship forward and saved those of us that were stuffed inside escape pods. He seemed nice enough at the time, so I started working for him."

"Sounds like you owe him your life," Irina nodded. "So… why all the anger now?"

"It may be because I had to cut him loose when his ship was being boarded by a Martian patrol," Zakarias shrugged. "Then he got captured when he tried to escape through an escape pod and I got away."

"The Martians put needles in my brain during the interrogation," Bertrand said, the seething all too clear in his voice. "I was tortured, Zak, and it was because you couldn't be assed to open a bulkhead."

Zakarias shook his head, scoffing. "Then there would have been two of us tortured, thank you very much, eh? I didn't have a choice."

Bertrand looked back towards Irina with sad eyes. "I really thought we were friends, but he left me. But, anyway…"

"Personal issues aside," Zakarias took another sip off his coffee cup. "You're here for business, not to blackmail or gaslight me. So, what will it be? You're the employer, Ms. Irina Kagan. Yes, I know you, you're quite famous in these parts."

"I want you to bring me to Earth," Irina quickly said, keeping her voice down so that no one but the three of them would hear it. "Past the Martian-Belter blockade."

At that, Zakarias began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, drawing the eyes of the barista and other customers. He went on for a few good seconds, even going as far as breaking into a coughing fit at the end of it.

"Interesting. So, when do you want to do this?"

"As soon as possible," Irina nodded. "Today?"

"You got it, madam Kagan," Zakarias answered with a slow bow of his head. "I'll bring you there. Don't worry. Let's just get to the ship, it's down in docking bay 30. Oh, and Bertie? You can come along, if you like."

"No thanks," Bertrand shook his head. "I have my own ship."

"That pile of junk?" Zakarias chuckled. "Oh well-"

"Please just stop," Irina sighed, cringing at the possibility of insults being exchanged between the two men. "Let's just go. Thanks, Bertrand, by the way."

"Anything for a friend," Bertrand nodded and waved Irina away as she and Zakarias walked out of the coffee shop.

Meanwhile, Zakarias couldn't believe it. Just as he was about to go to Earth, someone comes along and asks him to bring her there! Well, if this wasn't a serendipitous course of events, then he didn't know what else could be. He could only hope that he won't regret this.

"So, this ship of yours," Irina asked as she and Zakarias stepped out of the tram and into the docking bay, where dozens of spaceships were currently anchored, "Bertrand said that it was highly equipped. Given that he has a blockade runner, I don't… I don't know what kind of vessel could be better at running a blockade than, you know, a blockade runner."

"Oh, this is the part where I tell you to watch and see for yourself," Zakarias chuckled.

The two of them kept walking past the throngs of people that lined the dock's walkways. Some were obviously tourists from the rest of the Solar System intent on seeing the ancient wonders of the old portion of Jerusalem, others were simply Salemite citizens going on their daily lives. Irina's attention was piqued in particular by an engineer wearing a hazard suit, who seemed to be watching no less than a few hundred insectoid drones swarm over the hull of a damaged cargo ship. The ship's metallic form had a gaping hole, most likely a result of pirates trying to get their hands on precious goods. The fact that the ship made it here at all means that Salemite ships had sortied out to intercept the pirates and saved the cargo vessel and its crew from an otherwise grisly fate.

Another ship, another transport by the looks of it, was unloading crates onto wheeled platforms leading to what Irina assumed to be a central processing terminal. She could barely make out the appearance of the ship's owners at this distance, but the grey jumpsuits and tattoos on their necks marked them as denizens of the Belter Combine, specifically the Sirius-Orion Mining Compact. To think that a bunch of mining corporations constituted the Combine rather than a real government was unthinkable back in the days of old Earth and the infancy of the colonies, but out in the cold expanses of the Solar System's outer planets, the authority of Earth's government had never been firm. Especially now-

Irina stopped as a tiny hand tugged at the hem of her dress. She looked down to see a little girl, perhaps no more than six years old. The girl wore a dark red dress, her whole get-up contrasting against the drab, sand-colored walkway.

What really got Irina's attention, though, was this was her niece, Mariella Kagan.

None of this makes sense. She was on Earth when it all happened. This isn't-

"Mariella?" Irina quietly said, her voice trembling. "How… how are you? Are you alright?"

The girl simply stared at her with dead eyes, her expression as rigid as tone. "Save us."

"Wha… what?" Irina slightly stepped back, shaking her head. "No… you're here, right? You weren't there when it happened, whatever it was. You're alright now. You're okay!"

"Save us," Mariella repeated, staring at her aunt with that same dead expression. "Save us. Sa- sa- save us. You. You. You must. Save. Us. Us."

"That's what I'm doing," Irina answered. "I'm going to find out what happened. You should… you should come with Bertrand, he'll keep you safe."

"Irina, who the hell are you talking to? The air?"

Irina stopped and turned around to see a confused Zakarias, who was looking at her at such an angle that his glasses reflected the nearby lamplights, making him look like some kind of genius. "I was… my niece. She was right here-"

"Irina, there's no one there," Zakarias shook his head. "I've been watching you talk to the air for a minute already, and people have been giving you strange looks. I just thought… well, okay, I don't judge, we all have our issues, but-"

"It felt so real," Irina muttered as she continued walking. "I heard her. I felt her grip the hem of my dress. I mean how… how can that be?"

"I'm no psychiatrist," Zakarias shrugged as they rounded another corner, with Zakarias narrowly avoiding bumping against a massive container platform that some loaders were ferrying around. "But, I think you just miss them so much, and you're so worried, that your brain is making these up as a coping mechanism. I think."

Irina blinked. "So I'm going crazy?"

"Not yet, probably," Zakarias shrugged. "So, anyway, here we are. Gaze upon my most beautiful ship: the Serendipity!"

Irina looked up at Zakarias's ship and was immediately impressed. Bertrand really wasn't joking when he said Zakarias was far more equipped to run a blockade, especially one maintained by the two most technologically advanced powers in the Solar System.

"Isn't this…" Irina blinked one more time as he refreshed her memory on the ship types used in the war. "A Plutonic Order frigate?"

"Yes…" Zakarias gave her a giddy nod and walked up to the ship's open ramp, where another man seemed to be waiting. "Well, with a lot of modifications. That's why I hang around the Free City of Jerusalem instead of anywhere else. They don't ask questions, they don't care about what I do outside as long as I don't mess with them. In Mars or Saturn, all of the modifications would have gotten my ass in so much trouble already!"

"Sounds like fun," Irina nodded, her mind still lingering on what she saw earlier. Mariella… is she still alive? Is the planet she was on still in the universe? Or is it just hidden?

As they approached, the man that had been waiting on the ramp stepped forward, extending his hand in greeting. Zakarias ignored him, prompting the man to sigh in disappointment.

Irina wouldn't be so discourteous, however. "Hello," Irina greeted and held out her hand, which the man excitedly took into his own.

The man spoke in a strong Londoner accent, "Hello, hello, welcome to the Serendipity! I'm… well, I'm also the Serendipity. The AI of it, anyway. You can call me Vince, though."

Irina was taken aback, not quite believing what she was hearing. "Zakarias, your ship also has an AI with full on holograms? I thought only battleships had those?"

"As I said," Zakarias shrugged as they continued onto the six-person cockpit of the frigate, "These modifications will bring me into a lot of trouble if I hung around anywhere except here. Also, don't pay him too much attention-"

"But why?" Irina asked as Vince sat in front of her, smiling. "Looks like you're not nice to him! You ignore him all the time!"

"No, that's just how we are. I've been with that AI for about a decade now," Zahariel answered as he furiously tapped buttons on his pilot's console, presumably in order to get out of the docking bay and get on with the mission at hand. "I took a data core from the wreckage of a Martian battleship and hooked it up to my ship's core to see what I can find. Then, I found this AI in there! Really chatty one at that."

"I guess," Irina nodded as the ship began to lurch forward from the docks. "Well, I guess this is the part where I sit down and wait around..."

 

[DerangedLunatic]

The Serendipity sped away from the Free City of Jerusalem, the gargantuan space station and the gas giant it orbited eventually getting smaller and smaller in the distance. The Plutonic Order frigate didn't seem to care much for the debris field, its hull apparently sturdy enough to simply blast through any micrometeoroid that might come their way. Still, the sound of small stones impacting against the ship made Irina feel uneasy; she had memories as a kid when the shuttle she was in was shut down by a meteor shower, forcing everyone aboard to quickly put on vacuum suits lest they be asphyxiated and frozen by the cold, unforgiving vacuum of space. She could never really forget what had happened, so she had always made sure to stay within sound-proof chambers within the science-greenhouse ship that she used to travel around the Solar System. But now, there was just no way to unhear it. She would simply have to live with it as the ship plowed its way through the debris field that extended for thousands upon thousands of miles away from the Free City.

"May I offer you some refreshments, madam? What do you like, juice, tea, coffee… or something stronger?"

Disappointingly enough, it wasn't Zakarias offering her a drink to help her calm her nerves, but rather, the holographic AI that apparently used to be the mind of a Martian battleship. To Irina, the hologram was so… lifelike. Hell, the holograms of Martian and United Nations ships were so alive, they could pick up objects and defend the ships themselves should they be hit by boarding actions. In these cases, holographic artificial intelligences could be some of the most terrifying things to face in a fight, as you can't really hurt them; not without disabling the computer core that's keeping them operational. Irina had heard war stories from tired veterans in the streets of Caliban; they spoke of how their companions were butchered by hateful artificial intelligences wielding nothing but swords and cleavers when they tried boarding actions. One would think that all of the factions within the Solar System would stop trying to board ships when holograms could kill anyone that came aboard, but they kept trying anyway. Sometimes, they needed to capture an admiral or so and so alive, and they couldn't do that without boarding. Well, the veterans had already said a lot about how many were killed in such endeavors.

Despite these stories, though, Irina found this hologram endearing, if nothing else. Vince was just… very helpful. Irina wondered if he actually used to be a hospitality program until his core got stolen.

"Some orange juice would be nice, yes," Irina nodded at Vince, who smiled back at her and went to get the aforementioned item. She then looked back at Zakarias, who was just sitting on the pilot's seat without much of an expression to speak of. From the looks of it, he was just letting autopilot do the work for now. Which, Irina wagered, made a bit of sense. Stealth frigates like this one often drifted for hours or even days on end just to avoid detection. As such, they had very sophisticated autopilot systems that would precisely guide the ship to where it was needed at a specific time.

"Don't try getting any of the 'something stronger', lady Kagan," Zakarias quipped as he suddenly turned around and rose from his seat. "I don't have… I have very bad taste."

"And I thought that you'd be a fun guy," Irina chuckled. "So. Plutonic Order, huh? I mean, Bertrand said that you and your buddies were just indifferent observers to the war and just drop in when battles were done, so… yeah, I deduced as much."

"You'd be right," Zakarias nodded. "But I left the Order after the war ended. Back on Pluto, we don't have that much to do in there. Out here, though, there's just so much scrap to collect, so much money to be made. And, of course, lots of people want passage all over the place without conforming to those new ridiculous guidelines that the United Colonies are imposing. A Plutonic Order ship is perfect for smuggling anything or anyone, since we've been isolated for so long, we're off the grid. So, yeah, your friend was very right to look for me as the one to help you."

"Hm," Irina nodded, though she was surprised when Zakarias sat just opposite her. She always pegged him as a stand-offish, brooding kind, but that seemed to not be the case. "So… why'd you do it? Why did you accept the job I was asking for when it was one of the most dangerous things out here?"

"To be honest?" Zakarias pouted, leaning back on his seat. "I think I was looking for a real challenge. You know, salvaging wrecks and getting less-than-savoury persons into restricted borders gets stale after a while. So, when I found out that Irina Kagan herself, the lady of charity, needed help getting to the one planet that's closed off by the freakin' Martians, I wanted in. Well, I feel like I don't even need the money. It's just that… you're someone so important, and yet, the League threw you to prison."

"Yeah… they thought I might be a spy just because I'm from Earth," Irina sighed dejectedly, though Vince approaching with a tray with three glasses of orange juice seemed to brighten her mood a little. Accepting the tray without much comment, she then took a sip from one of the glasses, mentally noting that this was way too sweet. "But anyway," Irina continued, gulping down her last sip, "I was there for eight years. I actually used to be… well, a lot bigger, if you know what I mean, but the Uranic League, being a faction made out of crime syndicates, didn't care to feed me well. So…"

"You look absolutely terrible, now that I'm paying more attention," Zakarias said with a slight flair in his voice. "I mean, look at your eyebags! And you're sickly thin! You must eat more. Now. Just some juice won't do. What's your favorite food, anyway?"

"Uh… pizza?" Irina stammered. "Pepperoni on top, lots of cheese."

"Ah… well, I don't have that aboard," Zakarias shook his head. "But I've got, like, lots of frozen pasta. Close enough, yeah?"

"Close enough. You should have some too," Irina said back at him. "Maybe you'd grow taller."

"Oh… come on!" Zakarias got off the chair, slightly laughing and sighing at the same time. "The short jokes! I knew they were going to come in sooner or later."

"Sorry," Irina chuckled. "I think… I think you remind me a bit of my brother. Uh, I mean, I'm sorry, am I being too close? Too frie-"

"Maybe, but I don't mind," Zakarias nodded his head, his expression brimming. "Not anymore."

"What do you mean… not anymore?" Irina asked. Now she was curious.

"Well…" Zakarias placed his hands in his pockets and sat back down on his chair. "Bertrand didn't like me back there, and I deserve it. But, that man carries grudges, so I don't think it would matter if I broadcasted the fact that I'm better now. After all, it's been five years since we parted. That's a lot of time to turn around for the better."

Irina had already somehow known that Zakarias wasn't all that bad; she never felt any "bad vibes" from him, if that made any sense. Perhaps that was just her instinct that told her to trust and who not to trust, and just as usual, it had given her a good spot. "Maybe, you should actually tell him that you're better now?"

"After what he went through?" Zakarias shook his head. "Even if I did… I still feel very guilty about what happened. I didn't, of course, back in the day, but now, I do."

"Maybe you need to actually say it to him so that… you'd get it off your chest?" Irina queried. "You know, at least you should try. It isn't right that you just let him stay furious at you."

"Well, I could certainly do it one day…" Zakarias nodded. "But not now, obviously. We're quite busy in something."

"Just do it when we're done, okay?" Irina stood up from the chair as Vince started waving at her to go eat in the ship's meal table. "That should make you feel a lot better!"

"Yeah…" Zakarias nodded pensively and began walking back to the pilot's seat. "I suppose it would."

Just as Zakarias had seated himself, though, an alert began screaming into his communications array. Not wanting any incident, he immediately checked his radar for whatever was causing it. It took him a good moment to finally spot the culprit: an incoming Paris Class Cruiser… an Earther ship.

"Irina!" Zakarias called out to his passenger. "We've got a visitor, one from Earth. It's a Paris Class Cruiser."

"What?" Irina stumbled into the bridge, followed closely by Vince the hologram. "What is it doing out here? Don't do the treaties… wait. Have you hailed it?"

"I tried…" Zakarias answered. "But no response."

"Hail them again, maybe the signal just didn't get to them?" Irina asked.

"Nonsense," Zakarias responded. "This ship has one of the best communications suites in all the fleets."

Irina was confused. The ship of a planet that just got eaten by a shadow would have been screaming distress signals at maximum intensity. That is, assuming that something bad actually happened to the planet. "Then… they're just not answering?"

Zakarias looked down at an alarm that had suddenly gone off, which immediately propelled him into action. Irina wouldn't even pretend to understand all the buttons he was pressing. "They're charging weapons!" Zakarias frantically yanked the control stick downwards. "I have to get us out of here!"

The Serendipity flew downwards, if any such concept existed in space, narrowly avoiding several railgun shots from the cruiser that was now clearly gunning for them. The way Irina saw it, if those had so much as grazed the hull, they would have ripped out a huge gash, exposing everything and everyone in whatever compartment that was nearest to the impact zone to the cold vacuum of space. Thankfully, both Irina and Zakarias were on the bridge, which was sealed from the rest of the ship. They could lose life support everywhere else, and they'd still be fine. For a time, at least, as a cruiser now had its weapons trained on the Serendipity.

"Maybe it's something you said!" Irina shrieked as the Serendipity dipped, dove, and wove around the snaking smoke trails of missiles and the glowing tracts of light that indicated a railgun projectile's flight path. "What did you say in the hail, anyway?"

"I said that you're here!" Zakarias shouted back. Obviously, Zakarias was a bit panicky, as he was used to picking his own battlefields, not being thrust into fights by pure circumstance. By contrast, Vince, the holographic representation of the ship itself, seemed to be completely calm about the whole situation. But again, he was little more than a semi-sentient program designed to assist humans in their tasks, so it's not like he'd feel human emotions despite being… well, human-looking.

Or was he?

"Should I send out a distress call, sir Angstrom?" Vince asked as he stood right behind Zakarias. "The Salemites would be most obliged to help us, since this is technically still their area of space."

"Ugh… do it," Zakarias grumbled, but not before sending the ship into a sideward dive, causing Irina to stumble to the wall. "Irina, strap yourself down already! That should be common sense!"

"Sorry," Irina mouthed apologetically as she went down on the other seat on the bridge, putting on the straps to keep herself steady. "I… I've never been in a situation like this before."

"Well, I suppose that this could be a warmup for the moment we run the Martian-Belter blockade, eh?" Zakarias replied with a snide chuckle. "One Paris Class Cruiser is big enough trouble, it seems. What if we have to get through a dozen of the more advanced Martian patrol ships, huh? You'll have to thank me for the modifications on this ship…"

"Just concentrate on driving, please!" Irina tightly gripped the armrests of her seat, even though it wouldn't really help at all. "I get it! Crossing the blockade will be worse. Much worse."

"Good, good," Zakarias looked back at his sensor suites, hoping that the Salemites or anyone else was already speeding into this area. "No other ships approaching yet. We gotta shake off this cruiser somehow."

"Any tricks up your sleeve?" Irina asked. "Any forbidden technology that could help us right now?"

Zakarias winced as a missile detonated in front of the Serendipity. "There is, in fact, but I'm not sure it would work."

"What is it!?" Irina practically screamed as more and more explosions detonated all around them.

"Cloaking device, courtesy of a Belter prototype vessel that I found," Zakarias replied with that same suspicious tone. It easily meant that he really wasn't sure that it would work. "You know, I was actually betting on it working for me to smuggle you past the blockade. I guess now would be a good time to test-drive it."

"You… never tested it before?" Irina asked, incredulous. "Seriously- ah, nevermind. Just do what you have to do."

"Alright," Zakarias nodded. "This will cost me a lot…"

---

Bertrand nearly hit his head on the ceiling of his own cockpit as an alert began to scream on his console. He wasn't expecting anyone to call him; not here, not now. He didn't have any clients from the Salemite Free State, so there was no reason for anyone to-

Bertrand squinted, chugging a cup of coffee to stimulate his nerves and kick off the grogginess of his sleep. None of it, of course, helped with the high-pitched and, quite frankly, annoying pinging of the alert console. When that ringed, that meant that one of his contacts needed help, or there was a universal distress call being issued within the general area. But, surely, no one would be so incompetent as to crash within one of the safest spots of space in the entire Solar System? Well, not counting the debris field around the Free City of Jerusalem, anyway, but any pilot worth their salt knows how to dodge those. And so, Bertrand, annoyed that his rest was interrupted, looked down at the console, and-

"Oh, hell no," Bertrand sighed in equal parts exasperation and suspicion as he saw the name of the ship that had sent the distress signal. "Serendipity. They haven't even gotten anywhere near the blockade and they're already in trouble. Alright…" Bertrand stood up, stretching his tired spine. "Let's see what has them so worked up. Idiot probably crashed into an asteroid."

When the footage attached to the distress call showed up on Bertrand's viewing screen, his jaw simply dropped. There, as shown by the external cameras and sensors of the Serendipity, was a Paris Class Cruiser, the mainline ships of the United Nations of Earth and Luna. For an Earth ship to be so far out here was the first thing that didn't make sense. Then, the second part was that it was fighting three years after the war had already ended.

"What the hell…?" Bertrand frowned at what he was watching. "What the absolute… ugh."

The familiar ringing of proximity alerts sent Bertrand to the side viewing window of his cockpit, which the portrait of Mary was leaning against. There, throttling towards full combat speed, was a trio of Salemite destroyers, their weapons armed and ready.

"I guess I should…" Bertrand shook his head at what he was about to do. "Oh, Irina. You're a trouble bubble."

Turning his keys, Bertrand's blockade runner sped onward alongside the Salemite destroyers, which were now apparently followed by four other armed transports owned by people Bertrand didn't know and wouldn't care enough to know.

It won't take them long enough to get there…

---

Serendipity's point defenses were hard at work, intercepting missiles before they could actually hit the hull of the ship itself. If any did, it would suffer catastrophic damage, especially if the precious engines at the rear were hit. Nevertheless, the frigate proved its mettle, evading railgun shots and shooting down missiles in volumes that would have overwhelmed an unmodified ship of similar tonnage.

"Is it ready yet?" Irina asked, still tightly gripping at the armrest of her seat. "Vince?"

"I am still connecting the necessary cables and connections between the ship's central power core and the cloaking array," Vince the hologram answered. "Attempting to merge technologies as divergent as a Belter cloaking mechanism and a Plutonic Order fusion core is difficult, to say the least. But, since I am one of the greatest AIs out there, this task is considerably easier for me than for a human."

"Good, good, just keep doing it," Zakarias answered. Several asteroids just ahead of them exploded, the wild spread of the Paris Class Cruiser's missiles not surprising to anyone. The class was notorious for having bad targeting systems, though it compensated by launching a lot of missiles at a single target. It was a wasteful tactic, but in war, one has to work with the tools they are given.

"Power couplings are now stable," Vince the hologram stated, earning a collective sigh of relief from both Zakarias and Irina. "Cloaking array is now functional, we may begin at your mark."

"Now!" Zakarias commanded, only for the ship to sputter, its engines failing and dying at the most inopportune moment.

"Damn it! Vince, you said it was fine!" Irina looked up at the view screen, which showed the cruiser chasing them. However, while it had been unleashing its full firepower for the last ten minutes, its weapons were now silent.

"It is," the hologram answered. "You are now cloaked. Though there seems to be… err, unforeseen consequences of using a system meant for a destroyer on a frigate."

"At least it can't see us now," Zakarias noted as the cruiser kept flying about with seemingly no direction in mind. Irina and Zakarias stared at the cruiser for a few more tense moments until explosions began peppering the ship's side.

"Oh, great, they're here," Zakarias said as his radar lit up with no less than seven blips. "Let's see… three Salemite destroyers, three armed freighters, and… oh. There's that blockade runner belonging to our mutual friend."

"Bertrand?" Irina trained her eyes on the viewing screen again, showing the seven ships throwing everything they had at the cruiser. The Paris Class, of course, fired back, but now that it was surrounded, it didn't matter much. Explosions began to tear through the hull, its weapons getting destroyed one by one.

"Strange," Zakarias noted. "No escape pods are coming out. And the Salemites are explicitly aiming not to hit the escape tubes… that's weird. Why are they not abandoning ship?"

The answer would sooner present itself when the Paris Class turned tailed and ran. It seemed that the Salemites would just chase and destroy it, but what happened next shattered every preconceived notion that anyone had.

As the cruiser ran, the fabric of reality itself buckled as what seemed to be an anomaly of some kind appeared in front of the ship. "What the… Vince, what is this?" Zakarias frantically, having apparently taken to calling the hologram by name too after hearing Irina call it, no, him Vince for the last three hours. "It's some kind of… gravity readings are out of whack, sensors are going mad!"

A few seconds passed before Vince calculated an answer. "It's a wormhole. And… unfortunately, it's pulling us in along with the cruiser."

 

[DerangedLunatic]

"Now, remember kids, this is the Mark IV 'Outrider' space-superiority fighter. We rolled these things out just before the end of the Solar Revolution and used them to win the final battle that led to the freedom of all colonies across the Solar System. Too bad we didn't get to see them in action in more than one fight, but hey, at least they just had to prove themselves once, right?"

Alexis Salazar chuckled as he watched that video of him touring some high schoolers across the military museum within one of the many domed cities dotting Mars' dusty landscape. He at first wondered why the higher-ups were so insistent on him, Mars' top ace during the war, to be the one to give the tour, but the reactions of those teenagers when they saw him told him everything. He hadn't really cared about it that much until recently, but much of Mars, especially the younger generation, saw him as some kind of hero. And, admittedly, the praise was quite intoxicating, but Alexis could never understand how gunning down some machines with fellow men like himself counted as heroism. He supposed that freedom from the overbearing authority of Earth upon its colonies was motivation enough for anyone to look up to him, but… war is never heroic. He's just doing his job.

Right now, Alexis doesn't have much to do other than wait as his spacefighter automatically followed a charted course toward the edge of the Dark Zone, as the shroud of darkness that had seemingly covered Earth was called. The Martian Alliance government had initially been overly cautious about sending in a search party to ascertain what had just happened, but after some pressure from a few admirals as well as concerns from the general populace, they eventually relented and dispatched a single light cruiser to investigate. Beyond Mars and the Belt creating a joint blockade and patrol to prevent anyone else from getting in or out, this was the most that they have done.

The problem was, that the light cruiser was supposed to report back two days ago. It didn't send back any distress calls, and its transponder was offline; as such, it fell to a pair of spacefighters to investigate on the cruiser's fate. Naturally, Alexis was chosen as one of these scouts, as his skills with the joystick were impalpable; if anyone could get in and relay information with little issue, it would be him. Well, he and his wingman, Samran, anyway. Said wingman was really chatty, and, quite frankly, annoying.

"What do you wager happened to Earth? Beyond the very little we already know?" Samran began as the two fighters began to slide into the route that the cruiser took when entering the dark zone. "Alien attack? Superweapon gone wrong? Act of God? Act of ancient cosmic entities that are not God?"

Alexis mustered the most monotone and professional voice he could ever get, as that was simply not his nature. "We do not have time to speculate," Alexis curtly answered. "It is not logical to make up theories when we have next to no facts available to us. So, please, keep an eye on your sensors and your surroundings."

"But-"

"Shut the hell up Samran," Alexis finally snapped after a single bout of irritation, which surprised even himself. Though, he usually acted alone as an ace in the hole, which probably explained… this. "I mean, uh, sorry about that. Just keep an eye out, alright? One of our light cruisers is missing and we don't know what caused it to go missing."

"I bet it was the Earthers themselves…" Samran trailed off. "You think they're still mad about losing the war?"

Alexis scoffed. "Ridiculous. We've been negotiating trade deals and other stuff with them since last year. Relations have been warming up again. I mean, it's not like colonies and their homelands always stay angry at each other."

"Good point… so, should I say alien attack?" Samran shrugged inside his cockpit, though Alexis never saw him do so.

"As I said, we don't know enough," Alexis rolled his eyes. Besides, if there was an alien invasion, why spare the colonies? Why can the colonies still see each other, while Earth was shrouded in darkness?

Samran's voice came in through the comms again with a greatly worried tone. "Hold up, my sensors are… oh, no. They're dying. My sensors can't see anything in here. How about yours?"

"Strange," Alexis glared down at his radar map, which was pinging around six dozen objects within the next few hundred kilometers. "Mine are still working. Maybe it's because you suck at maintenance."

Samran was immediately indignified, of course. "Hey! That's… well, that's actually true."

Alexis turned back towards his sensor logs, frowning at what he was seeing. "I'm detecting a bunch of metallic objects just ahead. There are also some faint heat and energy signatures. Must be a shipwreck. The size of the pieces, when added together, is consistent with one of our Liberty light cruisers."

"Oh, hell no."

"Just fly beside me and we'll collect every bit of data we can of it," Alexis reassured the other pilot. He then activated his long-ranged comms array, relaying a message to his superiors. "We have found the Breaker of Chains. It's been destroyed, and no life signs have been detected. We'll proceed with data collection now."

"Affirmative, lieutenant," came the voice from the other side. "We will await your data."

"57 souls, all gone," Samran lamented as the two fighters stopped just short of the largest piece of the wreckage, which had the ship's name painted on it. Gone was the resplendent orange paintwork that all Martian vessels are covered with; instead, there were numerous blast marks, with some sections being so charred by damage that they could be likened to coal.

Alexis continued scanning. "Weapons damage is consistent with… Everest Class Battleship. But… why would Earth attack our light cruiser? We already have a treaty with them, and they agreed to let our ships into their space as long as we let theirs in ours. And, surely, the cruiser's crew would have been broadcasting their intentions non-stop?"

"Uh, sir? I don't think it was shot at by one Everest Class," Samran said as his fighter floated to the other side of the wreckage. "Look! Five puncture marks consistent with the Everest's magnetic accelerator cannon! But, they're at widely different angles! Unless one of those notoriously cumbersome battleships was somehow circling the Breaker of Chains, then around six of them fired at it at the same time!"

"Why waste all that fuel and time just to get a single scout cruiser?" Alexis sighed. His vast experience had no answer to this dilemma; while overbearing on the colonies, Earth was not wasteful in its resources, especially since the planet's natural resources had been sucked dry over the centuries. All of the United Nations' industry had mostly been relocated to Luna or to the vast arrays of space stations in orbit. Earth had been moving towards turning itself into a realm of ecological equilibrium, where cities blended seamlessly with the land, so to think that they would ever undertake such a needlessly wasteful endeavor…

"No ships in our scanners at the moment, either," Alexis noted. "So whoever did this is long gone."

Alexis winced as he saw the desiccated corpse of a crewman float by his cockpit, his expression transfixed into an expression of agony. Hopefully, the deaths of the Breaker of Chain's crew were swift, because the genetic modifications that Martians have make them more resilient to asphyxiation and even the vacuum of space, though it usually just prolongs the suffering when they get thrown into the void.

"Command," Alexis called back at his superiors. "Data collection complete. What are your orders?"

"Return to base at once," the commander's voice crackled. "We must prep… for…"

"Command? Command? You're breaking up! Can you hear me?" Alexis practically shouted at the comms, though in the end, there was only static answering him back.

"Jamming," Alexis hissed. "Samran! Engines to full, let's get out of here now!"

The two spacefighters' engines roared to life, though there was no sound to be heard within the void of space. Alexis sped forward; if his craft was within Earth's atmosphere, it would already be shaking apart from the sheer speed it was going. Samran trailed behind him, struggling to catch up to the immensely skilled Alexis.

"Damn it," Alexis realized that, at this rate, he'd leave Samran behind, so he slowed down and flew alongside his wingman. "What's with your speed, Samran? We're flying the same kind of bird!"

"Well, as you said… I suck at maintenance," Samran answered. "You shouldn't-"

Alexis immediately shifted his fighter upward as his radar registered a massive object suddenly appearing in front of them. He turned around as much as the cockpit would allow, trying to see if Samran had also done the same. Alas, the small explosion on the dark object's surface told him that Samran had crashed himself unto it. At that, Alexis's heart sank. Another junior pilot dead, all the while under his own tutelage.

He had no time to think about regret, however. With nothing left to lose except the data aboard his craft's black box, Alexis sped onwards, dodging more strange objects and-

A beam of purple light blasted in front of Alexis's cockpit, crisscrossing towards one of the objects and causing a small explosion on its surface, no, hull.

"Beam weapons?" Alexis could not believe it. "But those are just experimental stuff that we can barely afford! What are they-"

Another of the mysterious ships spontaneously appeared within the void, beams of light streaming out of its turrets. Alexis dodged and weaved, putting every ounce of energy in his fighter's fuel core into the engines to get out of the trap.

Alexis kept flying even as his sensor logs had, in every sense of the word, gone insane. Dozens upon dozens, and then hundreds of signatures were popping up on his radar. These were numbers that were far too high in a relatively small area of space. Hell, if each of these dots were ships fielded by the United Nations of Earth and Luna, then their entire Navy was here. That's ignoring the fact that these were clearly pre-war numbers, as the United Colonies had inflicted heavy losses to the UNEL fleet over the eight years of the Solar Revolution. They went down from commanding a few hundred ships in total to about a few dozen, which meant that this… whatever this was, made absolutely no sense. There was no way Earth had rebuilt their fleet this fast. Not with the non-aggression pact and all the other treaties signed, all of which also happened to ensure that the Colonies and Earth would still remain in each other's good side.

So, why is this happening?!

Alexis sped on and on, every iota of experience and training that he ever accumulated poured into his efforts. Genetic modifications kicked in, regulating his stress hormones and keeping him as calm as possible. Even so, the beams striking within the darkness of the void, which had now seemingly been filled by a grey mist of some kind, drove his nerves into overdrive. There were so many of them blasting around him, it felt almost like the deadliest midnight party he had ever experienced. Except that, in this case, the partygoers were spaceships that his sensors could barely see, and the shots they were having would be capable of destroying his craft wholesale if they connected.

Thankfully, whoever they were, they seemed to be bad at aiming, which was probably the only reason why Alexis was still alive. They always seemed to miss the mark by a few meters, which was probably helped by the fact that whatever this mist was, it was scrambling sensors. Sure, it scrambled Alexis's sensors, but he at least knew his way back out of the Dark Zone through since the map and astronavigation still worked.

"Oh, my, oh my, oh my!" Panic wasn't an unfamiliar feeling to Alexis; when he was still a junior pilot in the academy, he was often scared to death by the thought of flying out into the void with nothing but a suit and a glass canopy between him and certain death. This, however, was different. He couldn't tell, why, or how, but something about this situation had elicited a far more primal, ancient fear. A fear that all creatures are possessed by, no matter the species or their tier in the hierarchy of intelligence. This fear had always been there, despite the claims that man has begun to conquer the void.

The fear of being prey. And, right now, he is the prey.

"Command, command, command!" Alexis screamed into the long-range communications in a vain attempt to get his superiors in the line, if only to deliver the fully collected data before he was finally shot down. Unfortunately, he was being jammed. If he was using a cyberwarfare picket ship, then he could somehow pull a signal strong enough to punch through, but at the same time, a ship like that would have been destroyed long ago. All he could do now was run. And, maybe, if he really couldn't get out of here…

"Computer, prepare Silkworm Protocol. Authorization code Salazar-281-382," Alexis commanded to the disembodied intelligence within his craft. "Enact on my mark or when the ship sustains critical damage."

The computer took a full second to respond. "Authorization code received. Protocol prepared."

"Good, good," Alexis nodded as he narrowly avoided smashing into another of the mysterious ships, which were annoyingly coming out of nowhere, for some reason. "What the hell are they… are they cloaking? We can barely afford three cloaked scout ships and these people have hundreds?!"

Alexis looked back at the map, which showed that he was getting near the edge of the Dark Zone. "Just a little more…" Alexis gritted his teeth, the adrenaline rush over the last ten minutes threatening to overwhelm his senses. "Just a little bit more-"

Alexis's fighter violently shook as a beam of piercing light grazed the hull, tearing off one of the wings that served as a platform for four weapon hardpoints. Alexis quickly felt a damning pain on his forehead, prompting him to grit his teeth and howl in anger. He hadn't felt anything like this since his last botched mission when he and two of Earth's aces fought in a dogfight, and then…

"Oh… right," Alexis put his hand on his head, feeling the familiar slick of blood on it.

"Computer, conduct diagnostics and begin self-repairs," Alexis ordered. "Diagnose me, too."

"You have a severe concussion, a shattered ulna in your right arm, three dislocated fingers, and a missing eye. Recommend activating Silkworm protocol now."

"Send out the data packet to command first," Alexis commanded. "And then enact the protocol."

"Apologies, Lieutenant. Even if they weren't jamming us, that hit on our craft has destroyed our long ranged communications array. We can't send the data out now."

"Estimated time before repairs are done?"

"Three weeks. Fret not, the stasis will heal and keep you alive for three weeks as well."

"Alright," Alexis nodded. "Let's just… orient our secondary thrusters to make us drift towards headquarters. And then…"

"Drifting won't get us far enough to reach communication range with command," the computer answered. "You must rest and heal. Now."

"Alright, alright, you're not my mother," Alexis rolled his eyes despite the fiery pain engulfing his body. He began to feel colder and colder, which he didn't really acknowledge as he had done this before. Tendrils of blue thread coiled around him, exuding nothing but comfort and bliss.

"Go to sleep lieutenant," the computer reassured Alexis. "I will wake you up once you are fully healed. Or, you'll wake up should someone find you out here. Either way, that data is going to be sent back to command."

"Thank you, computer," Alexis weakly smiled as he was slowly encapsulated within an artificial pod, all while he was still in the cockpit.

 

[DerangedLunatic]

The Serendipity, cloaked it was, couldn't be seen by anyone present. Not the Paris cruiser, not the Salemites, nor the transports and Bertrand's blockade runner that had come to accompany them. To make matters worse, because the cloaking system had taken up all of the Serendipity's energy budget, there were no engine signatures or drive plumes for any sensors to detect. As far as anyone around was concerned, the frigate had simply disappeared, perhaps already destroyed by the cruiser. Not that the cruiser was broadcasting its intentions or its kill count…

Now, with no power to the engines, the Serendipity was helpless.

"Zakarias! Can you get us out of here?" Irina asked with a frantic voice. "We're being dragged into whatever that is!"

"How did an Earth ship make a wormhole?" Zakarias seemingly ignored Irina, though he was constantly pressing buttons and levers that, Irina assumed, were part of his attempt to bring the ship around. "Not even Mars has the technology for that, and yet, here we are?"

"I don't think this is a good time to speculate about Earth's true technological level?" Irina continued. "Answer me! Can you get us out of here?"

"I can't, not without reversing the process that allowed us to have a cloak to begin with," Zakarias replied. "Vince! How long would that take us?"

"I estimate… thirty minutes," Vince nodded. "A stretch of time, that, I believe, is currently unavailable to us. We cannot fight the wormhole's gravitational pull without power to the engines, and we do not have power to the engines."

"Thanks a lot," Zakarias grumbled, "For stating the obvious. Ah, well."

Irina just sat there, uncharacteristically quiet. "I think… we can reach Earth this way."

"Excuse me?" Zakarias looked back at her with a look of disbelief on his face. His frown was impalpable. "Oh. Right. You mean…"

"It's an Earth ship, if its opening a wormhole, it may be heading back to Earth," Irina stated. "Then… once we get there, we can start worrying about fixing everything? It's not like we have a choice, anyway."

"Good point… but I'd rather not be stuck in the middle of a potential hostile fleet," Zakarias answered, overuling Irina. "So, not, I'm not going to simply go with the flow of gravity here. What I'm going to do is fire some missiles. Hopefully, our friends out there can see the origin point of the aftertrails and… maybe fire some magnetic clamps."

"But you'd go into trouble for putting a cloak on your ship, right?" Irina asked.

Zakarias looked back at her and frowned. Several missiles erupted from the cloaked frigate's backside and began circling the ship for as long as their fuel reserves could manage. "Yeah, but, Irina, you're not looking at the bigger picture here. If we go in there, decloak, and get destroyed by a fleet of hostile Earther vessels, who, by the way, did not care that one of Earth's most esteemed citizens was aboard the ship, then it's all for nothing. We might see the Earth's fate, but then we'd die. That's just not the way to go, right?"

"But…"

"I know you are very anxious to know what happened. You've seen the apparition of your niece, and here, in this tablet," Zakarias pulled up a tablet resting on his dashboard and showed the screen to Irina, "Shows that you've been experiencing all the signs of undue stress, absolute anxiety, and… well, my point is, we need to stay alive at all costs. Plus, if either one of us dies, I either don't get paid, or you don't get to pay me."

Irina sighed. "I… alright. You're right. I'm just… very worried. And the fact that all of this is happening is just making it worse."

The Serendipity shook as one of the Salemite destroyers, having calculated the cloaked ship's coordinates with the discharged missiles and the radio emissions that it was pumping out through the distress call, managed to hit it with magnetic clamps. The destroyer turned about, trying its damndest to drag the Serendipity out of the gravity field of the wormhole that the Paris cruiser created.

"Ah," Zakarias let out a sigh of relief as the Salemite ships began firing more magnetic clamps, with some missing entirely, in an effort to secure the Serendipity. "We're saved. From certain destruction at the hands of a hostile fleet, at least. From the court of law…"

Just as it seemed that the Serendipity was truly saved from the cruiser and the wormhole it had created, the magnetic clamps, connected to from ship to ship by cables hundreds of kilometers long, began to snap one by one. A quick look at the viewscreen told Irina and Zakarias that one of the Salemite destroyers had just exploded, while the other two were running away from whatever destroyed their companions. Bertrand's blockade runner and the three other civilian ships had seemingly disappeared, having most likely escaped at the sight of a second Paris class cruiser emerging from the wormhole.

"Damn it all…" Zakarias hissed as the Serendipity began to tumble into the wormhole once again. The two cruisers, their objective apparently complete, pulled themselves into the wormhole. And, it would seem, the Serendipity was going along with them simply by virtue of the wormhole's gravitational pull.

The Serendipity shook again, the familiar sound of a magnetic clamp impacting against the hull. Surprised, Irina and Zakarias searched for the source, and sure enough, it was Bertrand's blockade runner. It would seem that he was the only one that didn't just leave them when the second cruiser came out of the wormhole. Visibly, the little blockade runner, a small, pathetic corvette-sized ship in comparison to the mighty cruisers that loomed overhead, struggled to pull the Serendipity out of the wormhole's gravitational pull.

"Bertrand…?" Irina began pressing buttons at the communications console, the only part of the bridge that she knew how to operate thanks to a bit of experience aboard the Heart, her personal ship back in the older days. "Bertrand! Get out of here! The cruisers will destroy your ship!"

"To hell with that!" Bertrand shouted back. "I cannot allow you to be dragged along with them! You know that!"

"Stubborn as always, you," Irina grumbled. "Look. You've always been looking out for me ever since I got out of prison, but you shouldn't die for my sake. You have people to come back to, while I'm heading towards mine. Get out of here, now!"

"Oh no," Zakarias started as pings began to alert him of new developments. "Cruisers are charging weapons. Bertrand, you absolute idiot! Get out of here! Listen to her! We're already inside the wormhole. You can't do anything about this."

"You don't get to tell me to do anything, Zakarias!"

"Oh you-"

Another of the armed transports, which had seemingly disappeared when the Salemite destroyers ran, flew towards the cable, and, with a mining laser, cut it in twain. The other two transports fired their own clamps at Bertrand's ship, the Lord of Angels, and began dragging him out of the area.

"They've been hearing our whole conversation, yeah?" Zakarias nodded as the the Lord of Angels tried to escape the grip of the other two ships to no avail. "Thanks to them, I suppose…"

With that, the Serendipity hurtled deeper into the wormhole, though the Lord of Angel's clamp had altered its direction. Due to the violent removal of the clamp's cable and the directions that the Lord of Angels had been dragging it, the Serendipity fell into the wormhole's 'wall', exiting the seeming portal before the Paris cruisers had reached their destination. Like a surfer exiting a wave before it closed, the Serendipity slammed itself out of the wormhole, if a tunnel between two points of space and perhaps time really had tangible walls.

"Ugh," Irina grumbled, her head swimming. "Where… where are we?"

"Vince, check our astronavigation," Zakarias requested. "Ah! That hurts. That… really hurts."

"Let me see," Irina asked as she unstrapped her seat and approached Zakarias, who was seemingly in a state of silent agony. "Oh, hell. Vince, can you-"

"Mr. Angstrom has had a severe concussion from crashing ourselves out of a wormhole," Vince answered. "May or may not have a case of brain damage."

"Yeah, that's very funny, Vince," Zakarias grumbled. "I can hear you, you know."

"If this is because you think I'm calling you an idiot due to a euphemism wherein humans equate the term of 'brain damage' as a statement of low intelligence, that is assuredly not my intention. You quite literally may have brain damage. You'll need to see yourself to the medical bay."

"Good thing you're not that heavy," Irina jokingly said as she helped Zakarias up. "Or else…"

"Oh shut up," Zakarias rolled his eyes. "Just get me there. Oh, and Vince, commence diagnostics and auto-repairs, please."

"As you say, Mr. Angstrom," Vince nodded, the hologram fading to manifest elsewhere to begin his thankless job of being an everyman for the ship.

In the meantime, Irina set Zakarias down on the bed in the ship's medical bay, looking over the results of the diagnostic tool. She had just enough experience with medical missions that she knew how to do injections and pull out baby teeth, but she was no doctor.

"I guess this will just passively heal you, huh?" Irina remarked as a set of mechanical appendages armed with an array of medical tools descended from the ceiling and began… doing things. "I wish I had something like that back then."

"Oh this is actually something that we Plutonians have in our ships," Zakarias replied. He slightly winced as an injection was jabbed into his neck by a cold and uncaring machine, tenderly putting his hand over the spot. "We can't ever be too careful."

After a short spell of awkward silence, Irina spoke up again. "So, yeah, I've checked. We're just outside the Dark Zone, and… well, there's a distress beacon nearby. I guess once we've… no, Vince has fixed the ship's problems, we can go for it. Might be someone from Earth that escaped."

"Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it later, when my head isn't killing me," Zakarias replied. "Goodnight."

 

[DerangedLunatic]

The Ben Gurion Hotel, Jerusalem Station

Liam Hawthorne was just sick of this.

A few weeks ago, he had been informed that Earth, the homeworld of all mankind and the planet on which he was born and raised, had, by all means, disappeared from sight. Telescopes and sensors of all kinds could no longer detect Earth's presence. It was just… gone.

Thankfully, perhaps, Liam didn't have any friends or family back on Earth. Everyone he really knew at the personal level was few enough that they could be counted with the palm of his hand, and all of them were off-world at the time. There was his classmate, who had become a captain for an ice-hauler ship, while another was a bartender here in the floating space city of Jerusalem.

If he had any choice in the matter, he would have already let those consulate workers who had family and friends back on Earth go on a return trip, but the Martians and Belters were clear that they weren't going to let anyone in nor could were they letting anyone out. Liam supposed that restricting access and enacting quarantine was a reasonable band-aid solution when an entire planet had been seemingly engulfed by a blanket of darkness. There were also fears that the colonies might be next, but for now, it seemed that the Dark Zone, the creatively named area of complete darkness around Earth, was merely moving relative to the planet. It clung to the Earth's orbital path, sticking precisely to where the planet would be if it kept moving around the sun as it normally does over the countless eons that it had existed.

Right now, Liam was busy. Very busy. With the cessation of all communications from Earth, he was, by order of succession, the highest-ranking official left out of the United Nations of Earth and Luna. To think that the Secretary of Education, a man that used to be a school teacher before becoming a respected professor and then appointed Secretary of Education by the Secretary-General would become the closest thing the scattered Earth citizens across the Solar System could call leader would have made Liam laugh, but now, that absolutely incomprehensible possibility was now reality. Sure, the individual nations of Earth had their own regents now, but the planetary leaders of the colonies weren't about to enter into discussions with 192 independent delegates. They wanted only one person to speak for Earth.

Other things he might have to add to the list of grievances he had against the universe were journalists and reporters. Not that he hated them perse… it was just that some seemed inclined to ask the most provocative, scandalous, and frankly nonsensical questions. Like the ones right now.

In the midst of a sea of flashing cameras and clamoring reporters, one of the journalists stood up, holding out a microphone that bore the logo of SNN, or Saturn News Network. "Mr. Hawthorne, do you deny that a Paris Class Cruiser, an Earth ship, destroyed a Salemite vessel, damaged two more, and nearly destroyed a Plutonic Order ship as well?"

"Trust me, I want to know about the truth of this matter as much as you do," Liam answered, resisting the urge to simply curse at the reporter for asking a question that had been answered merely a few minutes ago. "But, sincerely, I do not know anything about this other than the fact that a ship that looks like an Earth vessel carried out an unprovoked assault within the Salemite Republic's territory. I would say that we will seek out and punish these interlopers as soon as we are able, but we have very few resources left after what just happened a few weeks ago."

"Mr. Hawthorne, have there been any communications between you and the main UNEL government?" Another reporter asked, this time from the MBC; the Martian Broadcasting Company. "Anytime after the Dark Zone appeared, I mean."

"We will tell everyone that when it happens," Liam answered. "For your confidence, I will request the good Salemite authorities to hook up our long-range communications array to the public announcement system. Rest assured that we are not hiding anything."

Yet another of the dastardly individuals stood up, though Liam noticed that there seemed to be something different about her. He didn't know what exactly; she just felt somewhat off. "Mr. Hawthorne, has the UNEL government been developing wormhole technology? Independent sources have confirmed that the cruiser that destroyed one of the Salemite destroyers somehow opened one and left through it."

Liam paused. That little sordid detail was supposedly kept secret from the masses by the Salemites. The Salemite Council had promised exactly that, and so did the other governments across the Solar System. He could only sigh. He was just as clueless as everyone else, and most of his answers would confirm just that. But still…

"No," Liam answered with a piercing glare at the woman that asked the question. "If we were conducting wormhole tests, then the entire System would have noticed long, long ago. Every science ship, every listening station, and every spy satellite would have detected it. So, no, as far as I know as the Secretary of Education, the United Nations of Earth and Luna were, in fact, not experimenting with wormholes. Not that we could, of course. That technology is far beyond all of us."

"Then who?"

Liam let out a short cough. "I don't know. Anyway, that's all the questions I'll be taking today."

As Liam walked away from the press conference, the reporters followed like a surge, trying to get him to answer another question to no avail. Liam disappeared into the backroom, where he was soon escorted by a pair of armed guards and promptly left to return to the consulate aboard what seemed to be a public taxicab while the limousine forged on ahead as a decoy.

"I'm so tired," Liam simply stated as he reclined back on his seat, his guards sitting just beside him. "Can you pass me a tequila?"

"Certainly, Mr. Secretary-General," the suited guard on the left and poured him a drink. Liam gratefully accepted the glass and began sipping. If the guards weren't beside him inside an enclosed space, he'd already have started smoking…

---

"What are your findings, Supreme Chancellor?"

Liam sat in his office, surrounded by the holographic projections of all the national leaders within the Solar System. There was Supreme Chancellor Pyotr Cherenkov of the Martian Alliance, bedecked with a simple coat and tie, though his suit bore a rust-red color reminiscent of the great dust dunes of Mars. The hologram of Chairman Ibrahim al'Kwarezmi of the Belter Combine shimmered just beside the Chancellor's, his dark eyes looking down at Liam with a disconcerting gaze. President Lorna Sarrin of the Saturnine Concord was also there, with the great Saturnine capital city of Atlantis shining in the window behind her. Right beside Sarrin was the helmeted visage of the Supreme Grandmaster of the Plutonic Order, who simply called himself One. Liam had ironically found the Grandmaster to be the most agreeable person out of the bunch despite his strange demeanor and attitude.

On the other side of the spectrum was the Overlord of the Uranic League, Shen Zhou. Liam had once questioned the legitimacy of the League's very existence, seeing as it really was just an oversized crime syndicate formed by infamous groups like the Triad, the Mafia, and the Yakuza. Hell, the Old Somali pirates had somehow found their way into the League's ranks and were considered a pestilence to everyone else.

A more welcoming individual stood beside the snarling Overlord. The Prime Minister of the Jovian Commonwealth, Leandros Spousadakis, had always been agreeable. He was the first to propose a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Earth and its rebellious colonies, which was first spearheaded by the moons of Jupiter and then by the Plutonic Order, the latter of whom acted as third party mediators due to their neutrality.

Finally, there was the other Prime Minister, that is, the one who leads the Salemite Republic. Perla Kantor's expression was inscrutable, which was understandable that it was one of her state's ships that got destroyed by an apparent Earth ship.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the Martian Supreme Chancellor's mouth finally opened. "We sent a light cruiser into the Dark Zone in an attempt to ascertain… well, anything. However, the cruiser failed to report after two days; at that point, we sent two spacefighters to investigate the cruiser's fate. So far, they haven't reported back in the two days that had passed."

"Your ship has surely been destroyed, just like mine," Perla hissed. "And those poor pilots were sent to certain death."

"We have seen nothing yet, so I would not be so quick to rush to a conclusion," Ibrahim answered back at the Prime Minister of Jerusalem. "The Combine has decided to send a ship to follow up-"

"Is it just me, or is the attack within the territory of my nation not enough proof that the UNEL wishes to wage war against us once again?" Perla shot back. "48 souls were lost in that destroyer. The transports that tried to assist them were nearly destroyed, and the frigate that the Earth cruiser initially targeted had been swallowed by the anomaly that it generated."

"Wormhole," Shen Zhou corrected with the most undiplomatic voice. "It was a wormhole."

"You know, I'm right here," Liam spoke up, his frown getting deeper and deeper. "Now, I do not know anything about any plot within the UNEL prior to the Dark Zone's appearance to wage war again. And, frankly, it is purely illogical. We've already had treaties with you. Relations were getting warmer. There is something else at play here."

Just as Liam finished, one of his aides came by his side, handing him a tablet. He held out his hand, asking the gathered council but a single moment to read the tablet's contents. Quickly, however, Liam seemed to be taken aback by what he had just read, and took about four steps backward, breathing heavily.

"Are you alright, Secretary-General?" One, the Supreme Grandmaster asked with a concerned tone that was unmistakable even beneath his helmet.

"We have cross-referenced the numbers on the hulls of the two Paris Cruisers that destroyed the Ebenezer with our data," Liam began, referring to the Salemite destroyer that was destroyed. "As well as their drive signatures. What we have found is… it just does not make any sense."

"Elaborate?" Perla asked.

"Both ships had exactly the same serial number and the same drive signature," Liam continued. "This identifies both ships as… the Perugia. Except… the Perugia was supposedly in the ship-breaking yards in orbit over Luna. It shouldn't be operational since it was already broken in half for weeks. Never mind that there are two ships with identical serials and drives to it."

"What does this mean?" Leandros asked.

"I…" Liam shook his head. "I don't know."

 

[DerangedLunatic]

Throughout the entire time that Alexis had been inside the pod, he had not slept. Not really. He drifted between consciousness and blissful ignorance of everything around him; the transparent, somewhat paper-like pod that had enveloped him allowed him to see what was happening outside whenever he opened his eyes wide enough to actually register his surroundings. There wasn't much to see, anyway; behind him was a darkness so all-consuming, not even the stars could be seen from behind it. On his front and sides was the endless sea of stars, with no station, ship, or planet in sight. He knew well that to hope that he'd somehow be able to be detected at long ranges was folly when the communications array had been destroyed; his transponder, being on a spacefighter rather than a full-fledged ship, would have a far more limited range. It wouldn't reach Mars or the blockade vessels enforcing the travel ban to Earth, especially at this time of the year. Earth and Mars were on opposite sides of the Sun's orbit right now…

Still, there really wasn't much for him to go on. All he had was a self-contradictory tale. Vessels with beam weapons, hidden within the darkness that blotted out the very stars, had destroyed his wingman and severely damaged his craft. The light cruiser that Mars sent had been destroyed by Everest Class Battleships, an event that should have never been possible. There was no real conclusion to draw here; it would simply generate more questions to answers; the same answers that would soon, in turn, generate even more questions.

None of this makes any sense.

"Computer," Alexis called out to the disembodied mind of his fighter. "How far are we along the repairs?"

"We are halfway, Lieutenant," the AI answered. "Thrusters are partially operational and hull punctures have all been patched up. However, our long-range communications cannot be restored, alongside weapons systems. Much of our fuel has leaked out, vastly reducing our range. The damage to these systems was far too extensive for me to repair without compromising thrusters, life support, and hull integrity. Please understand."

"I get it, I get it," Alexis grumbled as he prepared to drift back to a peaceful nap, though it would never be deep enough. Sometimes, Alexis wished that he could just lie his head on a pillow and instantly fall asleep, but alas, he had always been easy to disturb.

"Hold, Lieutenant," the AI suddenly announced. "I am detecting strange readings to our starboard, 15,000 kilometers out. Extreme gravitational shifts, Cherenkov radiation, and thermal phantom radiation. This is consistent with…"

Alexis frowned from within his pod, wincing as he still felt the tender wound itching as it continued the healing process. "What? Consistent with what?"

"A theoretical bridge between two points in space," the AI continued. "I have reason to conclude that I have just detected a wormhole being created to facilitate travel."

"How do you know that it's being used for travel, specifically?" Alexis asked.

The AI took a moment to compute. "A ship was, as you would say, 'spat out' of the wormhole. It appears damaged, but far more functional than ours."

Alexis let out a short sigh. If the Martian Alliance had really just used some sort of mad experiment in an effort to find him, then it would have been a grand misuse of resources. Why go through all the trouble of creating a wormhole, something that is, by the way, completely theoretical up to this point? Nevertheless, this was a good opportunity to reconnect himself with civilization. The pod, while effective at nursing his wounds and injuries, will not provide extra air to him. If things go from bad to worse, he'll have to go into a state of total hibernation and be left drifting here until someone happens to fly by close enough to pick up his transponder. But, by then, it might be too late for the data he had gathered to be of any use. Maybe a disaster would have befallen the rest of the system by then, and it would have been averted if he had arrived there sooner.

"Have you identified the ship yet?" Alexis asked the computer again. If he was going to seek help from anyone, then it better be someone that he could actually trust. If it was an Earth ship, he obviously can't trust them. After all, Earth battleships destroyed the Breaker of Chains and killed his wingman. Apparently, at least, that's what happened. Either way, Alexis wasn't about to take any chances.

"Plutonic Order frigate," the AI finally answered. "However, there are several modifications to its structure that I am certain to be violations of stellar treaties."

Alexis's eyebrows rose. "Oh?"

"The hull is lined with stealth composites, the fusion drive is far too powerful for a vessel of its class, and parts of its body are fluctuating out of visual sensors. It has the same cloaking system as the stealth frigates that the Belters utilized during the Solar Revolution. Shall we proceed?"

Alexis weighed his options. He could just keep drifting here, hoping beyond hope that Mars would send another pair of pilots to their deaths. Or, he could take his chances now and align the thrusters towards the Plutonic Order frigate. With his comms down, he wouldn't be able to communicate his intentions. The best he could do was flash the headlights of his craft to mimic Morse code.

Hopefully, the frigate had functional sensors. Even though his fighter was coated in stealth composites, if he could maneuver it to the other ship close enough, it would be able to detect the fighter and activate the airlock.

As Alexis considered his options, the computer chimed in, as it was programmed to do so when it hasn't heard any input for more than 20 seconds. "Have you decided, Lieutenant?"

"I have decided to head for the Plutonic Order frigate. Have us move at normal speed; hopefully, the fact that we aren't moving at combat speed will be enough to convince them that we aren't looking for a fight. The fuel reserves that haven't leaked out are barely enough to reach it, right?"

"The damage sustained to the hull and half of our systems will surely tell them that we do not seek conflict?" The computer confirmed. "In addition, both crafts are damaged. Only fools will try to fight in this state."

"And the Order was a mediator for the peace treaty," Alexis reminded the computer, though the machine probably didn't need it. "My concern is the fact that the ship is modified to such an extent that it violates several treaties. Well, not that I care anymore. Computer, bring us about. Try not to crash."

With that, the fighter began to move towards the ship, which had remained stationary so far. It must be repairing too…

---

"I regret to inform you that it will take us a few more hours to repair the damage to our propulsion systems. Our sensors, however, are fully functional," Vince lamented to Zakarias, the latter of whom had been reclining in his seat for the last two hours. Irina had been lying on a couch in the ship's crew quarters for that time as well, having been persuaded by both Vince and Zakarias to finally go to sleep since she was already quite tired over the week.

"That's fine," Zakarias nodded. "It's just sad that we can't properly run if we ever saw trouble at the horizon."

Vince seemed to be confused at this. "This is space, Mr. Angstrom. There is no horizon."

"You know what I mean. Obviously," Zakarias rolled his eyes and spun his chair around to look down at the viewing screen and the sensor datastreams to make sure he wasn't missing anything.

As the ship's holographic mind faded away to continue in his work, Zakarias made a few more notes on their situation. They were sitting just outside the Dark Zone, which was amongst the most terrifying phenomena that Zakarias had ever bore witness to. One might think that only children are afraid of the dark, but this was a special kind of darkness. There was just pitch blackness within the Dark Zone that stretched for thousands upon thousands of miles in a great band. Assumably, in the center of the darkness was the Earth; the fact that gravity readings were mostly normal told Zakarias that it was still there, it's just that there was literally no other way to see or detect it.

Like an unwelcome guest, Vince once again popped up beside Zakarias, though, unlike the first time, it didn't startle him the slightest. One eventually gets used to an artificial intelligence hologram suddenly fading in and out of existence whenever there was an important announcement.

"What is it?" Zakarias asked. "Don't tell me, Irina woke up again and is pacing around? I told her to stop that. Even I started getting anxious because of it."

"As a matter of fact, no," Vince shook his head. "I have just detected a spacefighter just off our port side."

Zakarias immediately jolted into action and switched the main screen on the bridge to the one connected to the cameras monitoring the port side. Sure enough, there was a Martian spacefighter flashing its lights just a few meters off the Serendipity's side.

"It appears to be heavily damaged," Vince continued. "The pilot is in a pod, but my scans indicated that it is unlikely that he can survive for more than one more day."

Zakarias stared at the screen, blinking as he tried to formulate a plan on what to do with the Martian pilot-

"We should help him."

Zakarias almost jumped as Irina suddenly appeared beside him, who was also looking up at the main screen. "Irina! You… you were sleeping, right?" Zakarias had reservations about letting a Martian pilot into his ship, especially since the blockade preventing passage to Earth to begin with had been created by the Martians. However, he knew well that Irina would never let him leave the man floating in the void to await rescue from someone else, though the option had become more unappetizing when it was revealed that he wasn't going to last much longer. Besides…

"No. Well, not for the last five minutes," Irina replied. "Come on. We've been here for ten hours. And uh, you heard him. That guy isn't going to live for more than another day in there. Even if the Martian fleet finds him within the day…"

"Vince, those Martian pods are supposed to be able to sustain them for months at a time," Zakarias turned to the hologram. "It's just been two weeks since the Dark Zone appeared. He couldn't have been in here longer than that."

"Budget cuts to the military must have greatly reduced the quality and longevity of such equipment," Irina answered in place of Vince, who was still calculating. "I mean, the war was over. There was no more need for pilots to sleep around for months when Earth and the colonies were now at peace. Right? At least, that's what I heard from the news when I got out of prison..."

"She is likely to be correct," Vince added. "According to the last update in my database, the Martian Alliance has cut its military budget by 70% over the last two years."

"So, Zak?" Irina looked down at him in his seat. "He's alone and about to freeze out there. And, if he was attacked by Earth ships like we were, he might know things that we don't."

Zakarias frowned. "Like?"

"If he entered the Dark Zone, and if so, what did he find?" Irina replied. "So that we know what we're diving into. While I'm really anxious to know what happened to my family… I want to know what to expect."

"Good thinking, Irina," Zakarias nodded. "If Serendipity gets so much as a scratch, I'm doubling my price. So, uh, anyway. Vince! Flash back a Morse code message and send a text message too, since his comms might be broken. Tell him to dock in the cargo bay. We have just enough room to spare."

---

Irina looked at the pod in disbelief. Having been imprisoned throughout the entire war, she hadn't seen any of the technologies of the Martian Alliance military in action. For that matter, she had met Martians before, but not this kind of Martian. Allegedly, members of the Martian military were genetically modified to a greater extent and had far more durability and strength than anyone else within the entire Solar System. The only ones that could reliably match an elite Martian soldier in a duel would be the Plutonic Knights, who cheat using mechanical exoskeletons. The average person from either Earth or the other colonies would surely lose in a straight-up fight.

"I'm sorry that you must see me like this," the Martian pilot said from within his pod. "The circumstances surrounding all this are… classified. But from the looks on your faces, you seem to know a bit, no?"

Irina nodded. "That's right."

Before Irina or the pilot could say any more, Zakarias stepped in, his glasses glinting in the glow of the overhead lights. "So, who are you, and what were you doing here? I thought that a blockade meant that no one is going in and no one is going out."

"I must ask you the same question," the pilot countered. "And... well, if you're a Plutonic Knight, you don't look the part."

"Former Plutonic Knight, and no, we don't wear our armor ALL the time," Zakarias corrected. "I found life on Pluto quite tiresome so I brought my ship out here to seek out… well, more exciting work."

That last part was a lie, of course.

Visibly, the pod had begun to retract somewhere behind the pilot's seat, while the cockpit canopy of the parked spacefighter, which was peppered with holes, opened up. It was easy to see from the doorway to the cargo bay that the fighter had endured significant damage; so much so that the famed automatic repair systems Martian ships are all equipped with wouldn't be able to fix it completely. Not without new raw materials to replace all the lost hardware.

"I don't know enough about the Knights to say whether life on your planet is exciting or not, and whether being out here is better," the pilot replied. He finally rose out of his chair and set himself on the cargo bay floor, dried blood staining his uniform. Holes on his clothes indicated where shrapnel and bullet fire had hit him, though that didn't seem to bother him anymore. In fact, if not for those, neither Irina nor Zakarias would have ever known that he had been shot.

"Well, at any rate," Irina held out her hand to the pilot, while the other rested on her side to show that she had nothing in them. "I'm Irina Kagan, this is Zakarias Angstrom. And this-"

The holographic representation of the ship suddenly appeared, without any sort of warning, beside the pilot, causing even him to slightly jump. "I'm Vince! I am the AI of this ship."

"What the he-" the pilot stared at the hologram, waving at it… or him, since the hologram took on the form of a man. "Is this what I think it is?"

"Oh please," Zakarias scoffed. "There was so much wreckage just floating around during and after the war. You can't fault me for salvaging-"

"No, no, I mean, if you somehow made an AI core meant for a battleship work for a frigate's systems, then you're a genius," the pilot replied with no malice in his tone. He seemed to have this funny, mischievous smile, which somewhat put Zakarias on edge. Irina found it rather endearing, however.

"Well… I guess, thanks?" Zakarias sheepishly responded. "Not used to praises at that kind of work. At all."

"A law-breaking genius," the pilot corrected. "But, given that you basically saved my life, I could speak to my superiors and tell them to… give you an exemption."

"You can do that?" Irina looked up at him with wide-eyed shock. "I mean, that would mean that-"

"We still don't know who you are, exactly," Zakarias rolled his eyes. "Are you someone very important?"

"Why, yes, I think I am," the pilot smirked. "I'm Lieutenant Alexis Salazar, fighter ace of the Martian Alliance. I was actually hoping that you'd recognize me, but alas, I think you lot haven't been watching any news during the war."

"I was in prison," Irina confessed, earning Alexis's bombastic side-eye. "I am an Earther, and the Uranic League thought I was a spy. Nevermind that I ran one of the largest charity foundations in the Solar System before the war. But, yeah, sure, just because I was born on Earth, I'm a spy for the United Nations!"

"Wait… so you're the Irina Kagan?" Alexis looked back at her with a dizzying smirk. "Oh. My. Looks like we've got not one, but two celebrities aboard."

"Frankly, for me, I don't care, as long as this fine lady pays me well," Zakarias shrugged at Alexis. "So, anyway, what were you doing out here?"

"I am afraid that it is classified," Alexis shook his head. "You know how that works. You can't just ask me, a member of the military, to divulge information."

"No, I think it's obvious," Irina barged in. "You're surveying the area around Earth to see what really happened. Then, you got attacked by ships that look like UN vessels, your fighter gets damaged so heavily that you need to activate your pod for a whole day to survive. Then, your sensors pick up our arrival through a wormhole. Is that right?"

Alexis looked back at her. If there was one thing that Alexis wasn't great at, it would be hiding his reactions, which would easily give away his state of mind. It had always felt odd that, as one of the top aces, he was bad at keeping what he felt secret…

"That's…" Alexis sighed. He knew well that, judging by his reaction, she was right in most of her guesses. "Alright. How about this. You tell me why you're here and how the hell you somehow used a wormhole, and I'll tell you what I saw. And then... we should take a closer look on Earth."

"You first," Zakarias retorted, only for Irina to step in, again.

"I'm trying to get to Earth to see what has happened, and to know if my family is still alive," Irina began. "My friend recommended me to this guy," she said, motioning at an obviously exasperated Zakarias, "To get me past the blockade and into the Dark Zone without being detected. Though that plan has been… uh, complicated itself."

Alexis raised his eyebrows. "You mean the phenomenon that would be completely impossible in our current technological state throwing you out here? How did that happen?"

Zakarias tried to speak, but Irina spoke faster. "An Earth ship, or at least, one that looks like a Paris Class Cruiser, attacked us just as we had left the Salemite Republic. The Salemites came to the rescue; we thought that the three destroyers they brought would be enough, but nah. The Paris cruiser opened up a wormhole in front of all of us, and another ship like it came through and blew up one of the destroyers, making the others run. And, well, we got dragged in there. Though my other friend tried to pull us out of the gravity field, he had to run because the cruisers were about to open fire on his ship, too. So, uh, that's what happened."

Alexis shook his head, his mind taking time to absorb everything he was told. "So… it really is them. Earth wants a war again?"

"I wouldn't be so sure until we've gotten a closer look," Zakarias countered. "For all we know, this was some rogue terrorist faction…"

"Some rogue faction doesn't explain the fact that the Earth has been literally blotted out of the void," Alexis pointed out. "And-"

Alexis suddenly grunted as he placed his hand over his chest and felt himself losing his balance. He leaned against the ravaged frame of his spacefighter, and looked back at the pair before him.

"I think you know the drill…" Alexis managed as he gripped the fighter's hull. "The pod didn't heal me completely, apparently. You have a… ugh, working medbay, right?"

"Yes, yes, of course," Irina nodded as Zakarias, despite all the thinly veiled animosity he had with Alexis, quickly moved to help him move. "Vince! Prepare the medbay for us. This man has…"

"My basic sensors detect internal bleeding, likely caused by a failed shrapnel extraction hitting soft tissue as he began moving again," Vince answered. "I believe we can save him if we act swiftly."

"Then let's get to it," Zakarias said to the hologram as he helped Alexis to the medbay bed. A mechanical apparatus soon descended on Alexis, while Irina hastily put a breathing mask on him. "Let's just hope that you're good."

"I have every medical procedure as part of my programming," Vince simply replied as the hologram dissipated. Soon, the machine that Zakarias had dubbed the 'mechanical doctor', which had helped him recover from his injuries within three hours, begun its work.

Alexis coughed. "You're heading to Earth either way, so if I somehow don't make it-"

"I calculate a 97.37% chance of survival. It is unlikely that you do not make it," Vince's disembodied voice echoed through the ship's intercomm. "Do not be so dramatic, sir."

"That is... reassuring," Alexis nodded as the mechanical apparatus with scalpels and a bunch of other devices was currently operating on his flesh to extract the shrapnel. If not for his modifications as well as the pod's effects, he would be dead.

Zakarias crossed his arms and spoke again. "All you know is, what, you suddenly got attacked?"

"Yes… that's as far as I know. But your ship's illegal modifications may be of great aid should we keep going to Earth," Alexis added. He winced a bit as a piece of metal was lifted out of his stomach, though he didn't seem to pay it that much heed. "Before I came aboard, the AI of my fighter deduced that you have a cloaking field, highly improved engines, stealth coating, and a computer capable of extremely advanced calculations. You would fare far better than most ships in the fleet when it comes to infiltration. And… you're also independent."

Zakarias stared hard at Alexis. "Oh, I get it now. If we go in there and we die, none of the Colonies has the burden of claiming responsibility since this is an independent ship. No one starts blaming each other."

"Exactly," Alexis nodded. "Two birds with one stone."

"I will be putting you to sleep now, sir," Vince's disembodied voice echoed from the intercoms.

Despite Alexis' protests, the drugs kicked in, and he was now fast asleep and recovering.

 

[DerangedLunatic]

"Alexis? Hello? You alright?"

Irina looked down at the man lying on the bed, and he looked back at her with an expression that could only be described as utterly exhausted. "Wow," Alexis croaked, holding up his hand to block the bright light that shone above him. "That… I think I feel so much better now."

"Good for you, my good sir!" Vince quipped without warning from beside the bed. Alexis nearly jumped at the hologram's sudden appearance and grumbled something in a language that Irina did not understand. Vince, however, understood it perfectly.

"Mr. Salazar, I believe that calling my nonexistent mother with the term for female canines to shift blame for my pre-programmed behavior is most impudent," Vince bent down at Alexis, staring at him with very lively and yet, at the same time, lifeless eyes. "Though I believe that my creator, my programmer, would probably qualify to be, as you humans call it, my mother."

"Oh spare me the torture…" Alexis groaned and sat on the bed, glaring at the hologram. Irina hadn't really noticed it now, but the man's eyes were somewhat unnatural; she could see that the colors sometimes changed. She swore that he had grey eyes a while ago, but now, it seems he had changed to brown ones. Irina soon realized that this was probably one of many genetic modifications that Martians would have, though this particular modification would be something that they used for fashion.

"I can assure you that there is no torture here," Vince answered Alexis, obviously not realizing that this wasn't what he meant. "I am programmed to care for and protect human life, to safeguard the rights of humans as outlined in the Solar Charter of 2184. This includes right to shelter, right to a painless existence, right to a-"

"That is not… what he meant, Vince," Irina shook her head. "He means that he's tired of… uh…"

The hologram looked back at her expectantly. "I am still unable to extrapolate and predict the rest of your sentence. What is it? Please, continue."

Alexis raised his eyebrow at Irina. "I mean… I think he's just tired and doesn't want to be bothered too much at the moment?"

Vince fervently nodded and put on an embarrassed expression. "Oh, I see. Then, apologies, Mr. Salazar. I shall now devote my full attention to restoring this vessel's primary functions." With that, the hologram soon faded, leaving Alexis and Irina alone in the medbay. Zakarias had gone back to the cockpit while Alexis had been undergoing the medbay's treatment; during that time, the repairs had been able to fix the ship's engine malfunctions and the cloaking system. All that was left was the sensor array, which had taken damage during the violent expulsion from the wormhole.

"So, you know me," Irina began, trying to break the silence that had descended between them. She wasn't even sure if being here was truly safe; she had heard rumors during the war. Surely, they were just rumors, but every story had a beginning rooted in some kind of fact. It was said that you could shoot a Martian soldier in the chest, and they'll walk it off without much issue. Clearly, the rumors were not as credible as one might have thought, as Alexis had a case of internal bleeding due to shrapnel, and may have died as a result if not for the Serendipity's medical array.

"You are quite well-known," Alexis nodded at her. He seemed friendly enough, and unlike the irritated tone he took when speaking with the hologram, he now had an air of calm respect. "I've read of you in some articles, actually. It was you that saved Anderson Station from certain starvation and suffocation when the Uranic League wouldn't give them shipments due to their lessened work quotas. You arrived there with a fleet of greenhouse ships, those mobile farms roving across space. You gave them air, food, water, and blankets. And you asked for nothing in return."

"Yes… that I did," Irina replied as she sat down on one of the seats in the medbay. "But now, I can't do that, because the League threw me into prison."

"I'm sorry," Alexis replied with a quiet sense of sympathy. "You must've lost everything… but now you're paying… Zakarias over there to bring you over to Earth. Even when all rules of common sense say that this is a fool-hardy course of action. And, well, how did you get back on your feet? You do not have the bearing of someone that just got out of prison for a month."

"Well, what you give does come back," Irina sighed. "When the people I helped heard that I had just been released, they pooled their resources. Each of them have a little bit of what they had, which may not seem a lot at first, but, collectively, it was a significant sum. Not enough to maintain a fleet of greenhouse ships as I did before, but I had the means of living modestly, at least."

"And… I assume your connections on Earth allowed you to operate the fleet before the whole war ruined it?" Alexis asked. Irina could feel something creeping into his voice, but she couldn't tell yet. "I know, I'm… sorry. About the thing. The war, I mean. Mars kinda started it when most of us could no longer stand the idea of being governed by Earth. And, well, I fought in the war, but I wasn't always so fond of the concept. But, oh well, conscription is a no-brainer."

"I don't hold it against you," Irina smiled at him, much to Alexis's relief. "Or any other Martian, for that matter. Were we in your position, we'd probably do the same."

"Probably…" Alexis trailed off as Zakarias strode into view. "Zakarias. I trust that you have thought of our route?"

"I have, and I'm sticking to the one that we already had," Zakarias answered. "So, anyway," Zakarias waved away any further concerns and turned back towards the cockpit. "Vince, activate our cloaking and warm the engines. We are about to go in."

---

Strangely enough for Alexis, and for everyone else, really, the laser-armed ships he saw did not show up to greet the Serendipity, not even unknowingly. Even with the sensors making full sweeps across their perimeter, there just wasn't… anything, at all. That is until they came across a familiar looking-wreck.

"It's the Breaker of Chains," Alexis explained as the Serendipity passed by the floating wreckage of the light cruiser, which had been slowly inching towards what seemed to be the Earth's gravitational pull. "It's the light cruiser that Mars dispatched to investigate the phenomenon that has now surrounded the Earth. My wingman and I came by to investigate on what happened to it when the ship didn't call back within 48 hours."

Zakarias solemnly nodded as he guided the ship further and further into the dark zone. True to what they knew, there were no more stars illuminating the endless void; rather, they only had the sensors measuring gravitational pull from the Sun and the Earth to ascertain their direction. Which, incidentally, told them that the planet was still there, certainly.

"Vince, analysis?" Zakarias asked.

The hologram spontaneously appeared beside Zakarias, and created a glowing holographic diagram for everyone's benefit. "It appears that this Dark Zone had layers of intensifying darkness. The closer we are getting to the Earth's gravity well, the greater the darkness becomes. If we were to attempt to shine the ship's headlights, it would travel for a few meters before the photons get… absorbed."

"How?" Irina asked, her anxiety spiking once again.

"Based on my readings, I posit that this entire Dark Zone is an optical illusion of some kind, designed to hide everything occurring within. The inside being Earth and Luna, that's for certain."

"How close are we?"

"50,000 kilometers. We've been moving through the Dark Zone for the last two weeks," Vince answered. Before Zakarias or anyone else could say something, though, Vince raised his hand which, in the typical military sign language, would signify 'stop'.

"...what?" Zakarias stared at the hologram in confusion.

"I am detecting a ship off our starboard bow," Vince answered.

"Can it detect us?" Alexis asked, worried that they might be detected even with the Serendipity's cloaking. "Or-"

"It is currently inactive, engines appeared to be damaged," Vince replied. "There is one lifesign aboard, and it is struggling. I suggest using a drone to scout the vessel's interior before proceeding further."

"Make it so," Zakarias nodded.

"Another moment, Sir Angstrom," Vince raised his hand yet again. The power signature is… different. It is far too powerful to be an Earth vessel."

"Martian?" Irina turned to Alexis, who then shook his head.

"We didn't send anything in here other than the Breaker of Chains, and me and my wingman," Alexis answered. "Belter?"

"Neither, and, if my readings are correct, the technology of this vessel does not exist within the Martian database. In fact, it is far too advanced to come from any of your states," Vince continued.

"What are you saying?" Alexis asked.

"This ship… it does not belong to any human state, as per its technological state. It must belong to, as you humans might say, aliens."

"So," Alexis nodded at Vince, his expression conveying uncertainty. "Aliens. That's… that's really damn convenient. Might explain why there's a shadow covering up the Earth. We obviously don't have the technology, so none of us would have done this. But if it is an alien technology…"

"I wouldn't make assumptions," Zakarias replied as he moved the ship closer to the damaged alien vessel, whose appearance they still couldn't verify due to a lack of visual input to the sensors. "If they were the ones that brought this… thing here, then why is their ship damaged? Oh, speaking of which, Vince, can you confirm what hit them?"

Vince's eyes glimmered with what one could only be assumed to be a deluge of code and data. "Sensors detect burn marks and melted sections consistent with those found on Mr. Salazar's spacefighter," Vince answered. "Whatever attacked this vessel has the same specifications as those that attacked Mr. Salazar. I recommend retrieving the remaining life sign, and, if possible, initiating communication in order to learn more. I… believe that it is highly likely that they know something we don't. However, the ship does not have any airlocks like ours."

"You know, the Martian Marine Corps had a trick back in the war," Alexis began, piquing everyone else's interest. Even Vince the holographic AI look at him intently. "When enemy vessels were incapacitated, we'd extend docking tubes reinforced with… hardened materials, stick to the enemy's ship's hull, line the surface with charges, and then blow that wall section inward. Chances of depressurization were high if they did this mid-battle, but we're not a fight. Yet."

"Not to mention that this ship appears to be completely inert, with only one person still alive. I would assume that everyone else is dead," Irina nodded. "I say we go for it."

"You do have melting charges, yeah?" Alexis looked over at Zakarias, who was still facing toward the main view panel. "I'd really need some-"

"Yeah, yeah, I do, but I'll be bringing them myself. Just tell me what to do then. We'll also put on spacesuits in case the atmosphere in there is either alien or nonexistent," Zakarias answered. "Irina, stay here with Vince. Call us if you see anything strange in the sensors."

Irina simply nodded as the two walked towards the armory. Apparently, the past four hours of being together have made Alexis and Zakarias pretty comfortable with each other. She could only hope that they didn't devolve into petty bickering once she was out of their sight…

---

"No, no, that's not right, you have to fit them exactly into a square, or else we'll have an unevenly sized hole…"

"Alexis," Zakarias chipped, his voice muffled by the rather ancient radio in his spacesuit. "Do we have to care about the size of the hole we'll make into this ship's side if we're leaving it anyway?"

"No, it's very important," Alexis shook his head. He took another look at the alien's ship's hull, which they could now see thanks to being inside a docking tube, where the Dark Zone's effects didn't seem to apply. "The explosions need to precisely connect to each other, or else it might either create a half-assed dent, an uneven hole that isn't good for movement, or, worse, not do anything at all."

"Oh, sure, fine, you do it," Zakarias nodded. "But need I remind you that your shoulder is still quite bad, no?"

"I'll manage through the pain of moving it," Alexis hissed as Zakarias handed him the remaining three charges, which he then placed in a perfectly aligned square. He sure didn't show it, but he wasn't feeling really great moving his arm up, down, and to the side. Just a few hours ago, it had been penetrated by shrapnel, and though the wound had healed, he was still having bouts of phantom pain. Normally, his superiors would just give him time to recover from it, but he didn't have time right now.

"That must have hurt," Zakarias chuckled at Alexis, much to the pilot's chagrin. "Must suck being stuck in a deathtrap with sharp metal pieces all over you…"

"Please, just… move back. We're about to blast a hole into this thing," Alexis grumbled and eyed the detonator in Zakarias's hand. "Just because she isn't here doesn't mean that you should start being an ass to me…"

"This is just how I am," Zakarias shrugged. Alexis couldn't shrug, since it would hurt.

"Oh? Then why are you nice to Irina, then?" Alexis asked.

"We're childhood friends," Zakarias lied.

"So she has to pay her childhood friend a big lump sum just to help her see her home," Alexis hissed to himself as he walked back beside Zakarias. Without so much as a warning, he pressed the detonator. Instead of a mass explosion, though, the charges began to heat up, eventually melting the sides of the square that they had made on the alien ship's hull. A piece of the hull then fell down into the vessel's floor with a metallic clang. At the very least, it wasn't biological technology, Alexis thought. That would have been gross to walk in.

"You first, master knight," Alexis jokingly suggested. To his astonishment, Zakarias jogged into the square-shaped hole without so much as a word of acknowledgment. Alexis could only let out a small sigh as he too headed into the alien ship.

When they entered, they found a rather… mixed sight. While the walls were filled with pretty art of golden vines, flowering trees, and what looked like to be giant snakes coiling around stars, the dead crew littered the floor. There were at least three of them in the hallway, all wearing pressurized suits. There didn't seem to be any consoles or instruments in this hallway in particular.

At first, one might have assumed that the suits looked reasonably human enough. However, upon closer inspection, the alien nature of their occupants would be more apparent. The helmets had elongated snouts… or, rather, beaks, if the shape was of any indication. "Avian, perhaps?" Alexis remarked as he stopped to take a closer look at the dead aliens. He slightly recoiled as he saw the pool of blood under one of the dead; upon closer inspection, that particular alien's throat had been slit, as indicated by the gash on the neck section of their suit.

"They were boarded after their ship got damaged," Zakarias concluded as he continued on, training his gun in every direction he faced. "They failed to repel the boarders… whoever they were- oh my Lord!"

"What?" Alexis looked over in Zakarias's direction. "You found them?

"No, not really, not yet," Zakarias answered, motioning for Alexis to come closer. "Look at this."

Alexis, once again, was taken aback. "Holy… that's definitely a human. Though the attire is a bit strange for a boarding party. Why does he have a robe with this… black sphere on it?"

"Sounds like a cult, don't you think?" Zakarias turned to Alexis. "But this… this just puts out so many questions."

Alexis looked further down the corridor; there was a mix of slain suited aliens and robed humans. Their blood pooled together so much that the apparently wooden flooring was nearly covered by their collective life essence. "Looks like hell of a fight."

"Mmm, you continue on to the lifesign, I'll check this guy out first," Zakarias said as he pulled the dead man with a robe so that he was lying with his back on the floor. "Vince, can you analyse this person's face and cross-reference him with the database?"

"Sure," Vince answered. After about a few seconds, the AI's voice came back to him with that same lackadaisical tone that he'd grown accustomed to despite the fact that they were in extremely unfamiliar territory. "According to the database, this is Ivar Shelle, a naval crewman of the Paris Class Cruiser Perugia. He was in the navigation section."

"That doesn't make sense," Zakarias shook his head. "The Perugia was in a shipbreaking facility just days before the Dark Zone appeared."

"Correction, we have already fought two vessels bearing the hull identification codes of the Perugia," Vince countered. "The two Paris Cruisers that crossed through the wormhole into the Dark Zone are both the Perugia."

"Now that doesn't make any sense! Why would there be two… and, wait, you're telling me this just now?"

"It was not relevant until now, was it?"

"Zak!" Alexis suddenly called out. "Two turns in the corridor. I'm in the bridge now, and I just found our lone life sign."

Zakarias let go of the late Ivar and stood up. "Alien?"

"No, weirdly enough," Alexis answered. "It's one of those cultist-robed dudes that killed the alien crew. He's unconscious, probably hit by an electric stun weapon of some kind. I've put an oxygen mask over his face and I'm going to carry him back to the ship. I think we're going to have a fun time asking questions…"

---

At the same time, elsewhere in the System...

Liam looked down at the atrium below the terrace, grumbling that he was never cut out for this kind of hard political work. Schools, museums, the education system; those were the things that he liked to deal with, and he was damn well good at his job. Now, the planet he hails from had the sudden audacity to disappear, along with any sort of communication with it from the outside. To ask him to somehow represent the people of Earth that were scattered within the Solar System would be a tall order, and yet, somehow, he was managing. Barely, at least.

While most of the Colonies had been hesitant in giving him anything, the Plutonic Order had, thankfully, donated one of their old space stations for the UN government in exile to use. The Plutonic Order might be highly secretive and none but themselves have actually seen Pluto, but they are certainly generous and kind.

"Secretary-General Hawthorne," one of his aides, the provisional minister of the interior, approached. She had then been fortunate enough to be away when the Dark Zone appeared, and so, she lent her skills and experience as the former administrator of one of Earth's Orbital Cities to the Earth government in exile.

"Yes, Ms. Weir?" Liam turned around to face the minister. "I trust that you have accounted for all the leaders of Earth that were away at the time?"

"Yes, they are gathering or have sent representatives here in Gloriana Station as we speak," Weir nodded. "Besides them, there are around 1,722,583 individuals in total all over the system, sir… well, those that answered the polls, anyway. Almost all civilians, though we have the crews of three light cruisers. One was apparently just inside the zone for a few seconds before it exited."

"No higher ranking military officials?" Liam asked. "Like, is there an admiral? General? I don't want to have to choose between the three captains of those ships that we have left."

"Well, there's retired admiral Leonis Clemenceau," Weir said as she looked down at a tablet with a list of names. "But he's made it clear that he doesn't want to have anything to do with the military again."

"Hm," Liam snorted. "Now that you mention it, Clemenceau once led the black ops division in the UN, specifically the one for, well, the European Union. Let's just say that the things he did there have given me more than enough reason to not want him in command, anyway."

"Shall I send the personnel files of those three captains for your review then, sir?" Weir asked.

"What are their names again?"

"Uhhh…" Weir looked down at the tablet again, brushing her hand against the list. "There's Kara Lee of the Resolute, Morro Salvatore of the Alhambra, and Rudi Marais of the Pretoria. You know any of them?"

"It appears not," Liam nodded thoughtfully. "Very well. Send me their files. I'll have a decision on who to promote tomorrow after we had discussed the matter at length."

"Alright, Mr. Secretary-General." With that, the minister of the interior left Liam alone as he kept watching over the atrium. Down there were all the important citizens of Earth that still remained after the Dark Zone's sudden appearance. There were businessmen, celebrities, the captains of civilian vessels, and… not much else. After Earth's defeat in the war, most Earthers were content to rest on the lush environment of the homeworld, free from pollution and environmental catastrophe as it now was. The United Colonies had been expedient, and simply defeated the UN combined fleet rather than destroy any of Earth's precious industrial infrastructure on the Moon and the stations orbiting the planet.

"So few," Liam quietly lamented. He didn't expect, however, for a hand to gently fall upon his shoulder.

The Secretary-General, appointed purely by the order of succession, turned around to see the masked visage of the Supreme Grandmaster of the Plutonic Order, who was simply known as One. Liam had always guessed that it was a mantle passed from one to the other, but they had only made contact with the Order during the middle of the war. Even now, they're still an enigma lurking in the furthest reaches of the Solar System. Their ways are odd; to some, it borders on comical. But who knows what happened during the 200 years that they were isolated in Pluto?

"Supreme Grandmaster?" Liam looked up at the considerably taller man, who was clad from head to toe with silver-ish armor, over which a dark green cloak was draped over. On the cloak's back was the symbol of the Plutonic Order; a white sphere superimposed behind two swords that crossed a black shield.

"How do you like our old station?" One asked, crossing his arms. While Liam couldn't actually see the man's face, he could already imagine the funny grin One was having based on his tone of voice. After all, he'd been told that the Supreme Grand Master had something of a… sense of humor.

"It's great, thanks," Liam nodded. "Almost all of our assets were either on or were orbiting Earth at the time, so it's extremely kind of you to just give away a space station without charge."

One let a small chuckle as he leaned his hand on the railing, his helmeted head snapping back at Liam. "For the last two hundred years, my people have been in isolation from the rest of the Solar System. We did not care for outside wars. When we fled there as refugees from the totalitarian madness consuming the colonies around Jupiter, we only sought to preserve our way of life; our religions, our beliefs, and the cultures that we have brought with us from Earth. We savored our freedom, but we knew well that this would not last forever. Though we experienced great hardships, we have endured still, and Pluto would be unrecognizable if you were to gaze upon it now. And then, when we finally went out to meet the rest of the Solar System, we found you in chaos. Again, we did not dare to intervene. We already knew well that the colonies were winning, the still disunited nations of Earth incapable of ceasing their petty arguments. Then… now that they're… unavailable, only you, the United Nations, are the only authority left. And it is fact to us that your organization was founded after the Second World War to shepherd our species to peace."

"...Where are you going with this?" Liam asked, somewhat confused by the exposition. These were all things that he already knew. The origins of the Plutonic Order weren't exactly a secret, nor the fact that they were isolated for a long time and came back only to find the disappointing sight of their fellow humans waging war over petty matters like taxation.

"Simply put, we want to put our best foot forward now," One answered. "We have been away from the rest of humanity for too long."

Liam raised one of his eyebrows. "Yeah… I can understand that. But I suppose there is another reason? If you just wanted me to tell this, you could have sent an envoy. But you come here in person. There must be something else that's far too important for you to tell me through electronic mail."

"That is correct," One nodded. "You mentioned that the ships that attacked the Salemites, along with the independent ship Serendipity, had the exact same numbers, drive signatures, IFF codes, yes? And the vessels that possess those identifying markers were supposedly being salvaged?"

"That is correct," Liam nodded. "I mean, none of this makes sense. It quite honestly gives me headaches."

"Perhaps you should come to Pluto," One replied. "I may show you something that may shed light on our current predicament. Something that you must see for yourself."

"Um… we were just starting to get set up here. I can't just-"

"Your newly appointed bureaucrats are more than capable of running a space station," One softly replied. "Besides. You would want to know what really happened to Earth, yes?"

Liam considered it for a moment. "Why can't you just show me right here and now?"

The Supreme Grandmaster sighed. "If I told you now, it would sound absolutely ridiculous. You might not even take me seriously, which is why I would have to show it to you firsthand."

"Hm. Fine. I'll prepare for that trip soon, but for now, I'll stay put and set up everything. Then… we'll see what revelations you have, Supreme Grandmaster."

One remained silent as Weir walked into view, bearing a tablet filled with a list of names. "Secretary-General," Weir announced, handing the tablet to Liam. "I'm sorry, but the three ships have just arrived here. They're being instructed to dock as we speak."

"Very good, Ms. Weir," Liam nodded at her. "Now, let's-"

Liam and Weir were suddenly thrown off their feet as the station shook all around them. Sparks flew out of wirings as energy overloads began to overtake the structure's power grid. Below, in the atrium, the gathered appointed national leaders and delegates of the nations of Earth scattered in a dozen different directions in a case of a mass panic; some headed towards the docks, where their ships were parked, while others seemed to run around with no discernible direction.

One was quick to help both of them, his amazingly powerful hands reaching out to bring them back to their feet. Liam's wrist device began projecting a hologram of a visibly wounded Kara Lee, the captain of the Resolute. Trails of blood snaked on her forehead, while one of her crew already had his head blown off by a projectile that penetrated the ship's hull.

"Report!" Liam ordered. "Who attacked us?"

"It's the Alhambra, sir!" Kara managed. "One minute we were pulling up beside the station, and then they suddenly powered up their weapons and started firing at us and the Pretoria. The Pretoria was destroyed, my ship won't last much longer. You should get everyone out of there, sir- oh hell, the Alhambra has just sent boarding torpedoes!"

The sounds of screams and wrenching metal indicated that several of aforementioned torpedoes had already penetrated the station's armor, and were in the process of disgorging troops to enact whatever nefarious goal they had in mind. "Follow me," One commanded, taking out a pair of pistols from underneath his cloak. "Can you shoot?"

Weir shook her head. "No, never held a gun before."

One looked back at Liam, who sighed, again. "I… had a few rounds in practice ranges."

"Good enough," One nodded and handed Liam one of the pistols. "Now, let us get to my ship. It is cloaked, so the Alhambra doesn't know it's there."

Liam stammered. "How about UN-1?"

"It's an obvious target," One answered. To be fair to him, that was an extremely logical assessment.

"Yeah, right," Liam nodded as he and Weir cautiously followed the Supreme Grandmaster out of the station's inner sanctum. He wasn't really familiar with the station's layout yet; if he were to attempt to escape this attack by his own, it would be certain that he'd be lost, and, probably, dead within five minutes. However, the most skilled fighter in the entire Solar System was leading the way for him and his advisor. One was obviously highly skilled; it's simply a wonder that, without any prior conflicts with the other human polities, the Plutonic Order's members seemed to be so effective. One would shoot the boarders faster than they could react to his presence. To make matters even worse, he was nailing them with headshots each time; any other less-skilled marksman would have to take several shots to hit a weak spot in the bulletproof armor that every marine wore, but One was on a whole other level. Maybe it was the suit.

One stopped, though, when he came across three of his own troops. The armored soldiers of Pluto lay dead on the floor, their suits charred by explosives. Their emerald capes had been torn apart, and one of them had her helmet's visor shattered, revealing bloodshot eyes. The remorseful One bent down and took what looked like to be dogtags from under their helmets before continuing on.

"So," Liam croaked as he, Weir, and One turned another corner with an empty boarding torpedo stuck to the wall that was all that separated them from the cold vacuum of space. "Any idea why one of our own ships would suddenly start a friendly fire incident just because it was inside the Dark Zone for like, five minutes?"

"That is an unknown," One looked left and right for hostile boarders. Finding none, he motioned for them to move on to the next corridor.

"Any chance that any of the other powers could respond in time to relieve us?" Weir asked.

"Unlikely," One answered. "By the time any of the nearby patrols or garrisons have gotten here, we would either be already gone or dead. Which is why we must hurry- stop."

One held up his hand and signaled for the pair behind to stop moving at once. Liam peeked out to the hallway just to see some of the Alhambra's marines indiscriminately shooting fleeing civilians. Two dropped dead right in front of the three; it took only One's swift hand to prevent Weir from screaming and giving away their presence.

"Oh hell," Liam mumbled as he looked at the dead civilians in front of them.

One looked over to Liam. "Stay here."

"What are you-"

Liam was far too late. One strode into the hallway in full view of the Alhambra's marines. Immediately, they opened fire at him. Liam expected the armor to take the brunt of it before One finally fell dead… but that was just not to be.

Their bullets simply stopped as a shining shield of energy absorbed their kinetic energy. The rounds then harmlessly dropped to the floor as the Supreme Grandmaster charged the marines with what looked like to be… a sword?

One simply drove his blade into the first marine's chest, causing a horrible screeching sound as it sliced into metal, which, in the first place, shouldn't happen, either. Either way, with a small measure of effort, he moved the sword upwards, bisecting the traitor in two halves that fell down to the floor. A second marine tried to maintain their distance and unloaded a full magazine at the Supreme Grandmaster's shields, only for One's gauntleted hand to reach out and snap their neck. The third, fourth, and fifth were decapitated one after another as One swiftly purged the hallway, leaving only a sixth alive and at his mercy.

With the apparently immense strength granted by the power of his armored suit, he then dragged the sixth remaining marine by the neck. Somehow, he managed to hold himself back enough to not snap the spine.

"He will tell us what we need to know soon," One said to Liam and Weir, who still stared in disbelief. "What?"

"You had a… uhh, shield. We didn't-"

"The Martians were experimenting with this during the war, were they not?" One answered. "We acquired a prototype in the aftermath of the Battle of Ceres."

Or did they?

"Good to know," Weir nodded.

"Alright, then," One motioned for them to follow as the marine in his grip had apparently already fallen asleep, somehow. He was soon in front of one of the docking terminals, which seemingly led to nowhere. It was obvious, however, that the ship the terminal connected to was cloaked in order to hide from the rampaging Alhambra. Outside, it was clear that the light cruiser was destroying civilian ships left, right, and center; at this rate, only a few of the figures that gathered in Gloriana Station would escape.

"Put these on," One pointed at a nearby wardrobe of oxygen masks and tanks. "Plutonic Order ships do not have centralized life support unless they're modified to have them."

"That's comforting," Liam managed as he put on the oxygen gear. One put him and Weir ahead, with himself at the rear of their little running group. Once they were inside the docking causeway, One shot the console, preventing any access to the console from inside the station unless their pursuers somehow had the ability to destroy reinforced blast doors.

Within a few seconds, One, Liam, and Weir were inside the Plutonic Order ship, which was apparently a small gunship of some kind. The lighting wasn't too bright, but the consoles were amazingly easy to read due to the contrast. "Engage engines to full," One ordered to the waiting helmeted helmsman. "Get us to Pluto, now!"

Liam stood on the Plutonic gunship's bridge, staring aghast at the sight before him. The Alhambra was simply going on a rampage, its weapons trained on all the civilian craft that had been docked on Gloriana Station's port systems. With the Pretoria and Resolute both nothing more than smoldering wrecks drifting through the void, the Alhambra was more than free to continue its indiscriminate destruction. It didn't even matter that the Alhambra itself was already burning and slowly tearing itself apart; the Resolute, alongside some of the armed civilian transports that decided to take a stand, had scored some devastating hits on her as well. Nevertheless, it was clear that the light cruiser had inflicted a dizzying death toll, as shown by the fact that barely a dozen small ships have managed to escape without being blown to pieces by the Alhambra's weaponry.

One of the Order's members soon came by Liam's side, nudging him to the general direction of the nearest seat. "Have a seat, sir. We will be heading out at high speed towards Pluto soon. You do not want to be standing when that happens."

The regent of the UN quickly nodded and complied, alongside the minister. He settled in as he instinctively pulled the seatbelt and set it in place. "So, Supreme Grandmaster… can you tell me about-"

"What I will tell you will be a very startling revelation," One answered before Liam finished. "As such, I believe that I must show you myself."

"Any details?" Weir asked. "I mean, for all we know, you might be-"

"In league with those traitors that had just killed half the newly appointed leadership of the nations of Earth and sought to do the same to the supranational organization that functioned as a forum of cooperation?" One let out a small chuckle. "If we wanted you dead, you'd be dead right now. Also," One turned around and pulled out three dogtags, the letters glowing in the dark. "Do not forget that three of my troops, all of those assigned to the station, died in the attack as well. We shall commemorate their loss with three days of mourning in Pluto. But first, we must show you what we suspect to be the answer to all the events occurring over the last few weeks. Namely, the Dark Zone, the mysterious attacks enacted by Earther ships, and the attempts to kill you and the remaining leadership of your world. You must see it for yourself."

"You don't have pictures?" Liam asked. "I mean…"

"There will be no need," One turned his attention to Liam. "We have arrived."

"That… was really fast. We got to Pluto in just… a minute?" Liam looked up back at the cockpit window, which showed them coming to a halt just above Pluto. Unlike the old photos depicting Pluto as a completely barren, ice-bitten wilderness with some blotches here and there, the strings of glowing lights on the surface told Liam that there were already cities there. Most likely either situated within vast biodomes scattered across the surface or mostly situated underground, with the lights being the exposed parts. But again, he's never been there. Nor has anyone else from anywhere else in the Solar System, for that matter.

"How many people are there in Pluto…?" Weir asked. "I mean, there wouldn't have been too many of you that fled the Jovian Empire back then…"

"Pluto is host to 12 million inhabitants," One answered. "We have grown from an initial population of 300,000 that fled from Jupiter during the reign of the Overtyrant of Jupiter. Of course, it has been… somewhat challenging, but we are a hardy folk."

"Hardy enough to colonize the furthest and coldest planet in the Solar System…" Liam quietly said to himself, though the radio systems that the suits were equipped with meant that he wasn't the only one that heard what he said.

"Quite the contrary," One shook his head. "You'll see just about… now."

As Pluto came closer and closer to view, Liam and Weir looked out of the windows again and were immediately assaulted by a barrage of light. This was no mirror nor floodlight, however. Instead, the light brought warmth to the skin of their faces. The pair of them stared with their jaws down on the floor as what appeared to be a great sphere of warmth came into view from the other side of Pluto. It was, for the lack of better words, a miniature sun.

"How…" Liam couldn't find the words. "How did you make this? How could an order of space knights create such… a technological marvel?"

"Simple," One said with a slight chuckle. "We did not. We found it this way, alongside the optical illusion that the station over there projects."

"You…" Liam shook his head. "Found it?"

"According to the analysis that our ancestors had, these installations are no more than 500 years old. That's 100 years since a probe ever visited Pluto. No one really cared about Pluto anymore; not when Mars, Saturn, the Belt, and Jupiter were far more appetizing targets for off-world colonies. But we found refuge here, under the light of an artificial sun and a disguise wrought into existence by this… installation. We expected a world of naught but ice and hardship. We found one that's… well, it's still mostly rock, but at least we have a sun of our own out here. Our domed settlements have proven more than sufficient to sustain us. There are also forests… but those were under domes too. We simply co-opted those."

Liam blinked. "You had all of this… extraterrestrial technology, and yet you never told anyone else?"

"Why should we?" One asked as he began to walk towards the airlock with Weir and Liam in tow. Soon enough, they were walking within the docking tube that led to the station. "Both Earth and the Colonies have proven to be greedy, expansionist. If they knew that we had alien technology in our possession, the entire Solar System would be invading us right now."

"And… as the regent Secretary-General, I suppose you find it alright for me to see all this because I have nothing to invade you with?"

"I could feel your irritation at the colonial leaders," One replied. "Mars and Uranus, especially."

"So your personal shields and the cloaking aren't salvaged from Martian prototypes… but rather, alien technology?" Weir asked.

"Partially, I suppose. I'm not a scientist," One shrugged. "Now, here we are. This is the alien station."

Liam and Weir looked up in wonder. The inside of the station was spotless and clean. The walls were hard and angular, with blue lights every few meters. The strangest part, however, was the fact that the station's design wasn't really optimized for humans. As a result, the Order had to build their own staircases that crisscrossed across the vast hallway before the three.

"When we first came here, this entire station was filled with water," One explained as they proceeded up one of the elevators that led to the uppermost level of the station. "We have thus surmised that whatever alien species once used this station was an aquatic one. Likely some sort of fishmen, if you ask me."

For the first time, Liam and Weir saw Plutonians that didn't have helmets over their heads. They were assumably civilian administrators, technicians, and bureaucrats that were charged with keeping the whole place running… as well as, presumably, reverse-engineering the alien technologies present in the station. All of the Plutonians greeted them with respectful nods as they passed, which led Liam to believe that he was being treated as an honored guest… until he realized that they were probably actually greeting the Supreme Grandmaster.

After a few more minutes of walking, Liam and Weir were led into what looked like an art gallery, though some of the exhibits were also holographic.

"I assume this is where you want to show us… the thing?" Liam asked as One proceeded into the room with the two of them trailing behind.

"Indeed," One nodded.

"Wait," Weir paused. "None of what we've seen so far explains why you people are… well, knightly."

"If you are so insistent, then we shall look at that portion of our history first," One pointed at one of the holographic exhibits.

Liam and Weir almost felt sick at what they saw. It was… for the lack of a better term, a creature, an amalgamation of flesh and machine. The hologram was constantly updating; obviously, it was showing the various forms that these creatures would take. One was an octopus-like creature, with crude cybernetic implants jammed all over its body. There was also a crustacean, which appeared to be most similar to a shrimp that had armored legs and claws with cannons in them. Each and every one of these seemed to be all manner of sea creatures with weapons, cybernetic enhancements… and what seemed to be a personal forcefield.

"Ranged weapons proved ineffective in dealing with them," One began as Liam and Weir took in the sight. "We had to resort to killing the creatures with swords and spears, as their forcefields were geared towards intercepting high velocity projectiles, but not relatively slow moving melee weapons. Furthemore, our soldiers had to put on armor to defend against close range weapons, such as the creatures' claws. Losses were great, but we eventually scoured them from the surface of Pluto after 50 years. We believe that these are the ultimate reason why the aliens were here, and perhaps, why they left."

"Failed experiments?" Liam nodded. "So… you became the Knights of Pluto because… you were monster hunters?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," One nodded. "Now, to the main attraction."

One led them to another exhibit, at which Liam and Weir didn't seem to be impressed. "It's a… black circle with grey smoke around it," Weir remarked. "What is it?"

"There's video of it here. Very generous of these mysterious aliens to leave it behind," One answered as he clicked a few buttons on the exhibit's console pad.

To put it simply, this thing, whatever it was, appeared as a moving solar eclipse in the sky, as shown in the video. However, what it brought upon the world below was nothing short of horrific.

Liam and Weir watched in horror as the planet's civilization and population were ripped right out of the surface by the grey tendrils of mist that snaked out of the eclipse's darkness. They could see the vast clouds of material being lifted into space and devoured by what now seemed to be a black hole masquerading as an eclipse. A once beautiful city was reduced to an ashen landscape, the land devoid of all life. The clouds themselves shrivelled and died, whilst the stars were blotted out of view by the shadow that the dark entity exuded like poison across the fabric of space itself.

"This… you think this is what just happened to Earth?" Liam looked back at One, who slowly nodded.

"All we know points towards this entity as the culprit of Earth's disappearance," One replied. "And we know very little about it. If only we knew the alien's language, then we could read the archives. But we only know how to operate the systems and view the images and videos, since mathematics is a universal concept. But to read the files? We cannot."

Weir gasped as she thought about her own people back on Earth. She began to weep, the last remnants of hope within her crushed by what the Supreme Grandmaster had just shown to her.

"What can we do?" Liam asked. "An entity that powerful… we cannot hope to fight it with conventional means!"

"I do not know," One shook his head. "But we can only prepare. The Order is trying to reverse-engineer the station's engines, which, I hope, would grant us faster-than-light travel. We've seen instances of vessels doing just that in some of the archive videos; perhaps, if we are successful, we can flee to another system…"

"This doesn't explain the mysterious incidents of hostile Earth ships," Liam grumbled.

"We will know more once our asset gets close to the Earth," One nodded. "Sooner or later, we will hear from him…"