PROLOGUE
The energy released in the first impact was an impressive 4,000,000,000,000,000 joules, the equivalent of about a million tons of TNT, or about enough energy to power the modern United States for a few days. Had the impact happened in the twenty-first century, it would have been an exciting day for the world’s astronomers. Instead, the only observers were groups of nomads in the deserts of North Africa and Central Asia, who happened to be under clear skies and in the Earth’s shadow. What they saw was a brief flash coming from the Moon, which would have been mostly ignored as if they were seeing things had it not been followed in quick succession by five more flashes, each producing approximately the same energy as the first. Legends were born that night on Earth, legends of gods building huge fires upon the Moon to show their displeasure with the ways of men. On the Moon, it was definitely a scene of anger unleashed. Anger older than humanity was being rained upon a newly established base there.
Keeper-of-the-Way survived the first impact, as did most of her fifty-one crew members. They knew the attack was coming, they just didn’t know when—until about twenty terrestrial days before when their telescopes spotted the incoming asteroid swarm headed their way. Had it been one one-hundred-foot-diameter asteroid coming toward the Moon, the Observers in the lunar base might have thought it to be an unlucky coincidence of nature and dispatched one of their kinetic interceptors to deflect it. But it wasn’t alone. A sequence of twenty-five similar sized asteroids were coming out of the glare of the Sun with predicted impact points within a few miles of each other—all on Earth’s moon and near their base. This was not an act of nature; it was an act of war.
The Observers launched their limited supply of interceptors, propelled by compact matter/antimatter drives capable of accelerating them to nearly ten percent of the speed of light. At impact, each antimatter interceptor released approximately fifty megatons of TNT equivalent energy, enough to deflect the asteroid away from the base toward impact elsewhere on the Moon. They had only twenty interceptors . . .
Keeper-of-the-Way moved quickly, using her three squid-like tentacles to pull herself across the moist floor toward the control panel from which she could determine the full extent of the damage to her base. From the control panel display, she determined that devastation following the first impact was crippling, but not fatal to the Observers’ outpost. The damage was restricted to the new construction on the equatorial side of the base, leaving much of the control station and habitat untouched. The atmospheric generators were functioning as were the water-effusing systems. Good, she thought to herself, we won’t yet suffocate or desiccate. But for how long? She knew that more impacts were coming, and unless a miracle occurred, death would soon be upon them all.
Keeper-of-the-Way was startled by Defender-of-All’s reedy voice beside her. She hadn’t noticed his sliding approach until he spoke. “We will not survive much longer. The battle in the outer system must have been lost or the Bringers-of-Death would not be able to mount such a strike.”
“I fear you are correct,” she said with great sadness. She so wanted to see the star of Homeworld again from the shores of the lake in which she spawned. That, and she feared that the species they were sent here to observe would be destroyed by the Bringers-of-Death before they had the opportunity to hatch into their own as an advanced civilization and technological society. “Is there nothing more that we can do?”
“Nothing. We used all the interceptors we have available. If the supply ships hadn’t been caught amongst the fleet battle near the ringed planet, then we might have had a chance.”
Keeper-of-the-Way looked at the radar return showing the imminent impact of the next asteroid, took Defender-of-All’s middle manipulator tentacle into her own, performed the ceremonial clutching of suckers, and bowed her head.
Defender-of-All returned the clutching and also bowed his head.
Fifteen seconds later, the second asteroid struck the command center and vaporized it and all within. Before twenty minutes had passed, there were several new craters on the lunar surface where the base had once stood. Pieces of the base, the Moon, and the impacting asteroid gained enough energy from the collision to escape the pull of the Moon’s gravity and fly off into space. Some flew toward the Earth and caused a spectacular meteor shower visible only to those residing in the northern part of Asia at the time. Other pieces entered a low lunar orbit and remained there for almost a year before the asymmetric tug of the lunar gravity field caused them to spiral in and impact the Moon themselves. Still others were kicked all the way around the Moon and managed to fly back to almost their point of ejection, causing only minor additional damage from what was, by any means measurable, a catastrophic attack from which there were no survivors.
It was a scene that had been played out for millennia across numerous stellar systems, on or near numerous worlds with indigenous life, and had determined the fate of intelligent, tool-using species too numerous to count.
On Earth’s moon, there remained almost no trace of the alien base that had once resided there.