Chapter 1 12 June 2180 As the weapon detonated on the surface of the Earth, a collective, wordless moan of despair sounded from the crew of the Unified Fleet heavy cruiser Pyrenees in orbit near the Moon. Lieutenant Selene Genji stared, unable to accept what she was seeing, as the initial burst of weird, hideous light expanded with horrible speed, growing and racing across the surface of the planet. Oceans instantly evaporated, the surfaces of continents vanishing, billions dying in the blink of an eye as the weapon consumed all of human history and art and hope. The Spear of Humanity had won. Earth had been "cleansed," destroyed in the name of saving it. "We''re getting odd readings on all of our instruments." The voice of the weapons officer sounded strange, choked by grief. "Light is being bent," another officer gasped.
"Like space-time is being distorted. Energy release is off every scale we''ve got." Boring beneath the surface, the destruction reached Earth''s core. What remained of the planet exploded. In the seconds remaining to her, Genji watched the enormous oncoming shock wave, part of her wondering at how the image warped mysteriously in places. More free quarks than the universe had seen since its birth, invisible to the human eye, and the remnants of the outer atmosphere driven outward by inconceivable energy, the death throes of Earth formed a tsunami of brilliant blue shading into ultraviolet as the explosion expanded at incredible velocity. Earth''s dying moment was beautiful in a very strange and extremely frightening way. She only had time to form two words in her mind before the shock wave hit.
If only . 6 February 2140 Ninety-nine watches out of every hundred were boring and monotonous, and often the one hundredth one was as well. Lieutenant Kayl Owen realized that he had managed to snag the watch with something "interesting" happening. Hazards to navigation were not supposed to pop up out of nowhere. That sort of thing could happen on Earth, but not in space, not where the instruments aboard the Earth Guard ship Vigilant could spot everything within literally millions of kilometers. Something could pop out from behind the Moon or from behind the Earth, but in this orbit the Moon was nearly twenty-five thousand kilometers away, and the Earth almost ten times more distant, so nothing should suddenly appear less than a thousand kilometers from the Vigilant. But there it suddenly was, stubbornly refusing to abide by common sense and experience, which said it couldn''t be. "Turn off that alarm!" At the best of times, Captain Garos seemed to regard the universe as a perverse thing dedicated to making his life difficult.
He always seemed to regard the crew of the Vigilant, and Lieutenant Owen in particular, in the same light. "Why didn''t anyone report that object to me before it got within a thousand kilometers of us?" Everyone else on the bridge either tried to look busy or looked at Lieutenant Kayl Owen, who was the officer of the watch. Knowing the captain''s wrath was already focused on him, Owen tried to keep his voice professional, calm, and assured. "Captain, the object did not appear on any of our instruments until now." Captain Garos''s glower grew deeper. "Meaning you didn''t notice it until now!" Sometimes, Owen let the captain''s rants slide off him. But in this case, his whole watch team might also catch blame. He had to stand up for them.
"Captain, the system backup records will confirm there was no indication of that object being there before the alert sounded." "Then where did it come from and why didn''t our instruments see it?" Garos demanded. "I don''t know, Captain." "Of course you don''t!" Garos switched his attention to Lieutenant Francesca Bond, who had just arrived on the bridge. "What is it? Maybe you can tell me something." Bond squinted at the readouts. "It''s definitely artificial, Captain. Uncontrolled tumbling.
Visually, it looks like a wreck." The executive officer, Commander Ilya Kovitch, had also arrived, and shouldered Lieutenant Bond aside to personally study the images. "A piece of a wreck, you mean. It looks like part of a larger ship." "Where did it come from? What is it?" Captain Garos shouted. Everyone looked at Owen again. "I don''t know, Captain," Owen repeated. "Find out!" Garos pointed a rigid finger at Owen.
"Take a boarding party, examine it, and give me a full report! Don''t screw up!" Kovitch gestured to Lieutenant Bond. "Take over the watch." Owen rapidly filled Bond in on everything she needed to know about the ship''s status. Normally, he and Francesca got on without too much friction, but right now she was on edge because of the captain''s rant and because she knew he and the executive officer were watching, so she got through the turnover as quickly as possible with no wasted chat. Before leaving the bridge, Owen called the deck division head. "I need the ship''s boat ready to go and a boarding party assembled." "That''s going to take an hour," Ensign Vivaldi complained. Owen took a quick glance toward the fuming Captain Garos.
"The captain wants the boat to go without any delay. Would you like to tell him it''ll take an hour?" "No," Vivaldi said quickly. "Umm . we''ll get it ready as fast as possible." The Vigilant was a Defender-class cruiser, and at thirty-one years old was about the average age of Earth Guard ships. Because the Universal Space Treaty hadn''t been challenged for longer than the Vigilant had existed, her main armament of four Penetrator particle beam weapons and two Shrike missile launchers had never been used for any purpose except target practice and the removal of obstacles to safe space navigation. Three hundred meters long, the Vigilant resembled a cylinder with a rounded bow and a big bulge amidships, as if the ship were a snake that had swallowed a massive meal. Most of the Earth Guard personnel aboard Vigilant were younger than their ship, and equipment improvements over the last few decades had been incremental, so they could have been using the same devices their mothers and fathers had worked on.
Though technically a warship, in practice the Vigilant (like every other Earth Guard ship) was basically employed in search and rescue and keeping orbits cleared of dangerous debris. Boredom was the worst enemy her crew had ever battled. None of them, Lieutenant Owen especially, had any idea how much that was about to change thanks to a piece of wreckage that had appeared out of nowhere. "Get it moving, Vivaldi." Lieutenant Commander Singh had come down to hurry along the launch of the ship''s boat. "We''ll have it ready for you pretty soon, Kayl," he said. Owen nodded gratefully, trying not to fume over the tongue-lashings Captain Garos had given him during the half hour so far already spent getting the boat ready. "Boat launchings are supposed to be scheduled," Vivaldi grumbled.
"Ensign Vivaldi," Singh said, "what''s the purpose of our patrol?" "Uh ." Harry Vivaldi struggled with the question. "Safety, security, uh ." "Protect the Earth and its people against all events and actions that may threaten them," Lieutenant Commander Singh stated. "Carry out search and rescue, and support law enforcement actions whenever possible. There''s nothing about a schedule in there. You need to be able to react quickly when unscheduled things happen." Singh shook his head at Owen.
"Too many officers think the purpose of a patrol is to simply carry out the patrol. Anything that causes us to deviate from the preplanned schedule is a problem, rather than being the reason why we''re patrolling in the first place." "Like this wreckage, sir?" Owen said. He liked Singh, who had more than once stuck his neck out for him out of a simple sense of duty. "Like this wreckage," Singh said, shaking his head again. "It''s the weirdest thing I''ve ever encountered, appearing out of nowhere like that. We ought to be jumping at the chance to find out as much as possible about it. But after you''ve carried out the inspection of the wreckage required by Guard regulations, I have no doubt it will be handed off to someone else as fast as possible so we can get back to our routine activities and continue on the patrol so everyone can celebrate another successful completion of a patrol on schedule.
Find out as much as you can, Kayl." "I will, sir." It was the closest Singh could come to openly complaining about Captain Garos''s attitude to a more junior officer. Fifteen minutes later, Owen sat in the pilot position of the ship''s boat, his arms crossed over the front of his Suit, Space, Exterior, Mark XV Mod 2. He wasn''t really driving the boat, which was running on automatic pilot, but he was supposed to be ready to take over control if the autopilot glitched. Next to him, in the co-pilot position, sat Chief Petty Officer Gayle Kaminski from engineering, and behind them, two sailors. The boat couldn''t hold much more, and room had to be left in case any survivors were found, though no one expected that to happen this time. "Out of nowhere?" Kaminski asked Owen.
"Out of nowhere," Owen confirmed. "It wasn''t on any instruments, even visual, and then it was." "I''m pretty sure that can''t happen, Lieutenant." "I''m pretty sure you''re right, Chief. Somebody forgot to.