When Zaph woke again, he was not alone. Though he couldn't quite make out who it was, he had an awful feeling it was… "Crezcs? How are you? Sleep well?"
"Shut up idiot. You've been in and out of consciousness for the past week. Do you have any idea how seriously injured you are?"
Zaph tried again to get up, accomplishing nothing but a hard thud onto the floor.
"Nice. You're legs are broken. You also won't find your arms much use either. That pain in your head, that's from the gash across your forehead."
" So, why am I still alive?" Zaph looked down at his legs, bandaged.
" Why should you be dead?" Crezcs still wore that impassive face.
" Well, for one, I will do all I can to kill you while I have breath in me. Do you even need a second reason?" Zaph started come back to his senses, feeling the control of morphine numbing his limbs.
" You really don't remember what happened do you?"
Zaph stared at his unemotional nemesis. " What are you talking about? Do you even know?"
Crezcs studied the pathetic lump before him. " You are hopeless. Do you remember attacking the colony?"
" I remember my forces tearing yours to pieces…" Zaph tried to laugh, didn't make it.
" That's where you're wrong. Your forces, as far as I know, were destroyed. I lost nearly all of mine. But it wasn't our fighting that did this."
" What do mean?" Zaph was already drugged, this was too much to understand.
" We were attacked by some unknown group. They took both our forces by surprise, destroyed everything." For a split second, Zaph could have sworn he saw Crezcs flinch.
" Do you know anything about this group?"
" Since you've been…out of commission, we've received reports of related attacks on various colonies throughout the solar systems, but not on Earth or Mars. We don't really know who it would be, but the technology is advanced. They destroyed both our forces, with maybe six frames." Again, a momentary emotional reflex.
" You can't be serious, only six?!" Zaph sat, unable to conceive how anything could be so powerful, as to take out an entire colony, two battalions, and with only six frames.
" I don't understand it either. For now, the most we can do is wait and prepare."
"So, where are we now?" Zaph looked around, getting more familiar with the room.
" Aboard the Morpheus. It's a battle cruiser. Your frame is being prepared. None of your force was found…" For the third time, Crezcs had a split second leak of emotion.
" They fought well." Zaph felt a the lump grow in his throat.
" Very." For a short time, Crezcs and Zaph had something to identify on.
"Where have the attacks been centered." Zaph added one more thing to do in his life. More revenge.
" That's the thing, we haven't found any real pattern in the attacks. Some on mars, some on Jupiter, even a few on Pluto."
" Pluto? That can't be right, Pluto is neutral, isn't it?"
" It is. Besides it being far from the rest of the colonies, it has no real strategic value that I can see."
Zaph scratched his head. " Where are we going?"
" Right now, we are just waiting in the middle of nowhere. Any Ideas?"
" Pluto. There's got to be something there…"