Major Dana Sterling of the United Nations Army had been waiting.
The Evacuation had only been a week ago. The Plenipotentiary Council, which was the successor to the old General Assembly, had ordered the hasty evacuation, prioritizing those who would best lay the groundwork for humanity to defeat this mysterious enemy known as the Invid Regency.
The major was temporarily domiciled on this planet called Glorie, the first planet colonized by people born on Earth. She was assigned of course, to assist with post-evacuation issues.
UEF Supreme Command had prioritized certain people to be evacuated, of course. Not just military leaders like the Joint Chiefs and their families, but certain high-priority civilians like the leadership and engineers of corporations like General Galaxy, Stonewell Bellcom Aircraft, and Toyota Motor Company.
For Dana, her high priority civilian was her younger brother.
And after all this time, after she and her teammates had asked around, she could no longer deny it.
Steven Michael Sterling did not make it.
His evacuation shuttle, piloted by one Lieutenant Shelby Porter, never arrived.
She had another meeting, with her parents.
She had not had that much time to spend with them, due to the organized chaos of the Evacuation.
She went to a cafe at Joint Forces Air Field Glorie, a cafe where servicemen go for meals if they do not feel like eating what is offered in the mess. There were only a few people there at the time.
She recognized her parents.
"Hi," said the Army major, still dealing with the emotional fallout of having to accept that Steve was left behind.
"Hi there," replied her father, max Sterling. "We need to talk."
"Steve's still on Earth," said his daughter.
"we need to introduce you to someone."
Dana noticed a girl, about four feet tall, looking to be maybe eight years old or so.
"I'm Maia," said the girl.
"Hi, I'm Dana."
"Maia is our daughter," said Miriya. "Maia Aurora Sterling."
Dana's eyes widened. "Your...daughter?"
"Yes."
"You had your own family while Steve and I were on Earth?"
"Listen.." started Max.
"No. you left us and you decided to make a new family."
Dana walked away, not looking back.
ooooo
"There's been an accident!" yells Admiral Rick Hunter.
The emergency lights are the only lights illuminating the fleet command center. Most of the people are shrouded in shadow.
"Everyone all right?" asks Colonel Dana Sterling.
The others nod. A beep comes from a plastic-cased electronic device mounted on the wall.
The Army colonel runs towards it.
"Is Admiral Hunter all right?" asks Third Lieutenant Ernest Johnson, speaking from the bridge.
"Yeah, we're just a bit shaken up," answers Dana. :"What about the captain?"
"He's busy now handling the situation. Just standby."
Inside the bridge, Captain Rodrigo Ramirez is more alert than ever.
"Propulsion's down, fold drive's down," says a corporal. "Life support's off-line on Decks 4 through 16."
"Casualties?" he asks.
"None reported yet, sir...wait, Sick Bay is reporting two casualties."
"We're still in one piece," says Ramirez. "Do we have sensors?"
"Aye, sir."
Captain Ramirez presses a button next to his chair. "Engineering, everything okay."
"Engineering to bridge," says a voice. "Minor injuries here. Systems are off-line."
"We need to check on the fold drive. Make sure it's at least repairable."
"There is no response from the Deukalion, Captain," says Lieutenant Johnson.
"do we have hyperspatial comms?" asks Ramirez.
"They appear offline, sir. Engineering has already deployed repair crews to take a look."
Admiral Hunter soon receives this information.
"Listen up," the commander of Expeditionary Command informs his staff. "the most important thing to remember is that General Reinhardt has standing orders to begin the attack without us in about nine hours or so. They don't need us.
"All we can do now is trust in Captain Ramirez and his crew and his Space Marines. He hasn't ordered all hands to abandon ship yet. Once we get hyperspatial comms back, we can contact headquarters an d they can send a tow to take us back to Space Station Liberty.
"Aside from General Reinhardt's staff, only Supreme Command and Sentinels Alliance Command know where we are now. For now, we in this room can only wait for further updates from the captain. Dismissed."
Dana leaves among the others. There is not much she can do at this point.
Ooooooooo
Four the past few hours, Captain Ramirez had stayed on the bridge, hearing various reports. He smiles a bit at the thought of his well-trained officers, crew, and Space Marines. He had heard power and water to the senior officers' staterooms are offline, though that will have to wait until hyperspatial communications are restored and they can contact the fleet or their Sentinels allies.
A sergeant calls over the captain.
"Yes?" he asks.
"This is the planet," she says, pointing at the console screen. "Or what was left of it."
"So the Neutron-S can destroy an entire planet," says the Pioneer captain. He immediately goes to his seat and presses a button. "bridge to fleet command group," he says. "The planet...was destroyed."
"We can not let the fleet deploy these missiles under any circumstances," replies Admiral Hunter.
"I agree, sir." Captain Ramirez presses another button. "Bridge to Engineering, all efforts must be focused on restoring hyperspatial communications. Suspend all repair efforts to the fold drive and the thrusters for now."
"Here is something you might want to know," says the sergeant. "Here's the visual."
The captain looks and sees what looks like a disc of dust and gas swirling around. From the readouts he can tell that this disk is about one hundred miles wide. "That's an accretion disc," eh says. "Spiraling into something really tiny."
"I have maximum magnification," says the sergeant, pressing buttons on the touchscreen.
There is a hole, like an eye of a hurricane, in the middle of the accretion disc.
"I'm guessing the center, where that hole is, is about one eighty millimeters. We need to scan this thing."
Everyone on the bridge presses buttons and flips switches.
Lieutenant Johnson stands up. "Captain, it appears that the mass of the planet is now concentrated in a tiny point in the middle of that disc."
"it reinforces what Admiral Hunter was thinking," says Ramirez. "We need hyperspatial comms restored!"
oooooooo
Colonel Dana Sterling had seen videos of black holes taken by scout ships orbiting as close as one million miles.
Looking at a monitor screen while sitting at a makeshift desk, she looks at the disc of debris of what used to be an ice giant planet. The black hole is tiny- less that the length of a human pinky finger- but it contains a mass seventeen times that of Earth. And the SDF-3 Pioneer is only about ten thousand klicks from it.
I'll get to tell Em and Nick I'm closer to a black hole than any Terran has ever been.
Then she thinks of her younger brother, who never escaped Earth when the Invid invaded. The final battle should be starting right about now.
The Army colonel had worked with Gunther Reinhardt on and off over the past ten years or so. She had no doubt he would use those weapons if there was no other way to drive the Regency off the planet.
To actually destroy Earth, would make it feel as if Steven Michael Sterling never mattered.
Oooooo
"Detecting gravitational waves,' says a Spacy corporal. "it's a defold!"
Captain Ramirez becomes immediately alert. It could be the Expeditionary Fleet or their Sentinels allies.
Or it could be an flotilla, armada, or even fleet from the Invid Regency.
"It looks like one of ours," says the corporal.
"Receiving hail," says Lieutenant Johnson. "It's the Icarus. Its captain wants to speak with Admiral Hunter."
"Connect them to the command group," says Ramirez.
"Aye aye, sir," replies the lieutenant.
Dana overhears it.
Admiral Hunter had ordered the Icarus to send a message to General Reinhardt to not use the Neutron-S missiles, and to recover the Deukalion.
She supposes she can wait a few more hours for the Expeditionary Fleet to send another ship to tow them home.
Captain Ramirez is then informed of more hyperspace defolds.
"We don't know what they are, sir," says Johnson. "Not us, not our Sentinels allies, not the Invid."
And then the bridge, the whole ship, shakes.
"We're under attack!" yells a sergeant.
"Mayday," says Ramirez. "We need help him."
"I ordered the Icarus back," he hears Admiral Hunter say. "It's more important."
The Pioneer captain has not forgotten the sight of the black hole which used to be an ice giant planet. "I understand, sir."
They are helpless, with no weapons, no propulsion. They will be space debris by the time that Expeditionary fleet can send a rescue flotilla.
"Bridge to Engineering, status," he says.
"We were almost done with taking the fold drive back online."
Ramirez's heartbeats make the captain feel as if time has slowed down. He had commanded this vessel for two years, served on board for a cumulative total of eight years.
Just sitting here, waiting to be blown up, is not something he would want for his crew.
"Do a hyperspace fold now!" he yells.
The bridge crew press buttons and flip switches. That they are only ten thousand klicks from a black hole is beside the point. Their subatomic particles will probably be scattered across the Milky Way; not attempting a fold means a virtual certainty of being destroyed
The double-vision effect permeates the vessel.
Dana knows what is happening, and knows this is the only narrow chance of seeing her daughter and son again.
The SDF-3 Pioneer is surrounded by a glow.
And it folds into hyperspace.
Gravitational waves rock the mystery enemy, crippling their systems.
Power, propulsion, and weapons are knocked out.
One of the captains realizes in horror that they are falling into a black hole.
The vessel is abandoned, with escape pods being ejected. Some are ejected beyond the reach of the black hole.
But others, like the ship, is caught.
Soon, the vessels are torn apart by tidal forces, soon becoming a stream of particles that disappear from the physical Universe forever.