Young Mizu stirred, feeling the comforting warmth of her mother. It seemed she had fallen asleep. After a moment she opened her eyes giving her a view of the endless night she had yet to get used to. Night never ended up here among the stars. They didn’t even flicker like she was used to. Pulling her gaze she looked up at Mommy, a smile graced her lips at Mother’s sleeping face. She snuggled deeper against her mother and simply enjoyed the moment. There was just something about this simple experience that she enjoyed. The world beyond melted away leaving only peace and tranquility. The silence stretched on, but in moments like these, she knew words would only disturb the moment. A moment she didn’t want to end since it was in moments like these that she could pretend everything was still normal. That her world hadn’t fallen apart. 

How everything had changed when the floor shattered beneath her with her father turning into some foul creature to haunt her dreams and everything she had known being torn down around her. Leaving her without the friends she knew nor the certainty of a sunrise. Everything seemed dark these days with these endless nights. The only light she had was right here with her mother and she was more than happy to relish in it while she could.

The moment may have lasted a minute or an hour she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that the moment ended suddenly with a chime over the intercom. Followed by a voice, “Good Morning. We are glad to announce this morning that our destination is in sight, if you look out your viewport there is a chance that you will get to see Eshra Seven before we land. It’s quite the sight.”

She blinked and then looked towards the window into the dark. There she was greeted with light shining down on an alien world like a beacon in the dark. From here she could see a large landmass of gorgeous greens, reds and purples set against a shimmering sea of azure water and shrouded by a few clouds swirling below. The sight seared into her memory as she watched it shift slowly in the void. Beyond that alien world she could see another, smaller world, a moon covered with its own violet sea and dotted with hues of red and gold. It was a mesmerizing sight.

From behind she heard her mother’s gentle voice, “That is our new home sweetie.”

All she could say was, “It’s pretty.”

Together they watched the view as it grew, eventually taking up the whole window. Eventually the speaker crackled and another announcement came through. The ship was landing and they would soon be at their destination.  Mizu smiled at the thought. Already looking forward to seeing this new world. Thankfully she wasn’t going to have to wait much longer.

Niase Sector, Titari High Command:

The High Admiral leaned over the board, “Are these reports accurate?”

Her aide replied with a solemn note, “Unfortunately yes. The core worlds of Telna, Mirak, and Seridis have all been overrun. The fifth, ninth, and thirteenth fleets are missing in action, presumed destroyed. The thirty-third fleet was decimated at Seridis with less than thirty ships escaping the battle. A new line of defense is being organized at Tiranoak with the surviving ships from the 33rd, along with the surviving elements from the 22nd after their action at Mirak. The fourth fleet is still engaged at Telna, reports from the system are not encouraging. Admiral Ro’arn was killed when his flagship the Dusari was destroyed. A Commander Anai Tomis has assumed command of the fleet and is attempting a fighting retreat.”

The admiral sighed, these new aliens were a menace. They had no known name, no known motives and even their technology was in question. Worse, their ships were becoming increasingly difficult to destroy. She glanced to the side where an analysis of an alien cruiser was displayed. With its distinctive double triangles interlocked around a central sphere was shown on the monitor. Detailed notes were added about what kind of weapons and defenses were known to be on these cruisers. Multi-adaptive structural integrity fields focused on the hull plating. Semi-organic regenerative hull plating. Hyperphasic subspace shielding with redundant secondary shield matrices. In other words, these alien ships were highly resilient, worse they learned from previous engagements. Any attack that didn’t outright destroy the alien vessels would become increasingly ineffective.

That was really the big problem, virtually every conventional weapon they had was now ineffective. Even weapons of mass destruction were proving less than effective. Projectile weapons would simply impact or detonate on the alien shields with minimal effect and energy blasts would be dissipated by the barrier with equally minimal effect. Resorting to WMD’s had helped for a while, but now they were fielding ships with more powerful shields and stronger armor. It seemed increasing the power of their weapons was only going to help so much and she had to wonder for how much longer. Naturally that wasn’t all they were trying, there were entire labs full of the best scientists in the Coalition working on devising a method to bypass the alien defense systems. Some of the weapons they had devised had already proven useful, for a time anyway. The aliens quickly learned and adapted to those weapons as well. It was a losing war, but she didn’t know what else to do.

She had seen the projections. If things didn’t change they were facing total defeat within six months. They had managed to keep things quiet here at home, the war being little more than rumor, but now that was going to be much harder. Dealing with the morale crisis and a seemingly invincible enemy was going to be problematic at best. Mentally she was already planning for that, when her door burst open. One of her other aides came rushing in.

Frowning, “What did we lose this time?”

“It’s not a defeat sir,” replied the woman as she plugged a data chip into the monitor. Which lit up with a new display, “Long range probes in the Velka sector picked this up half an hour ago.”

The admiral blinked and stared at the image, “Is that what I think it is.”

“Analysis confirms it, the hyperspatial waveform geometry and multispatial matrices conform to the previously observed structure of menace conduit technology. Some factors are different, most notably the energy scale. This one is about a million orders more powerful and it seems to have been anchored in a structure.”

“A structure what kind?”

The aide adjusted the controls to reveal a massive structure floating in space with the conduit centered within its ring. “It’s a massive ring-shaped megastructure approximately 150,000 kilometers across. As you can see on either side of the ring are a pair of massive star-fortresses anchored to either side of the ring, both of them proving equally massive. Long-range probes have confirmed numerous defensive systems some of which we can’t identify, but we did note multiple heavy beam arrays and a shield grid, configuration unknown.”

“It’s the size of three gas giants!? How the fuck did someone build that without us knowing?”

The aide replied, “Gravitational scans, and stellar chart analysis indicate the structure has been here for approximately one million years.”

“And we never saw it? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Star charts of the area previously placed a small black hole where that structure is now. I’ve reviewed previous probe scans of that region, they never detected any structures there. This suggests that the megastructure was cloaked in some fashion.”

The admiral froze. Cloaked? A structure that huge? The energy requirements alone...

Her mind switched tracks, “How many ships? How fucked are we?”

“One ship was seen, but it vanished from all sensors before we could get anything on it. Aside from size, the optical images were extremely fuzzy. It measured twelve kilometers long, we think.”

She blinked, “An invisible fleet?”

That wasn’t good news, not good at all. They were already having difficulties here, but if an invisible fleet came upon their rear? They would be in a lot of trouble. Forget six months, total defeat might be sooner. “Status on the Project Starlight?”

“Projections indicate we are still five months from viability.”

“Make it a priority, and drop the secrecy if needed. I want it done in two.”

“...Yes sir.”

Mizu followed her mother down the ramp. She had joined a stream of young girls, mothers and adventurous men seeking new lives. Many of them carrying packs and equipment to aid them in their new life on this unsettled rock. Greeting her eyes as she took her first steps on the soil of another world was a vast forest of towering trees in the distance. They seemed to reach for the sky with thick sturdy trunks and huge canopies of golden red leaves, occasionally dotted with shades of purples. Wherever the green she had seen from space was, it was nowhere to be seen here. The grass beneath her feet was an alien shade of purple interspersed with shoots of red.

Not far from here was a tower ringed by metal walls, set by an azure river that split the untamed grasslands in two. The waters seemed calm, and almost inviting. Turning her gaze to follow them, she could see where the river widened before dumping into the sea itself. They were on the coast.

She didn’t stick around long before her mother led her to the tower. The others were heading there. The gates were open as people filed in, seeking the only shelter here. It was a pretty tower, a gleaming white that stood out in morning light.

Entry into the tower proved swift as the lines moved rapidly. Past the gates of the wall, she spotted a few small shelters, built of the same white metal as the tower. Next to the river were a few piers with small boats tied to them.

At the tower itself, they were led into a reception room, where Mom went to talk with some pretty lady at a desk. Mizu didn’t bother to pay much attention to that and instead took advantage of the playroom off to the side. Several other girls her age were there and she much enjoyed playing with them.

When Mom came back to pick her up, Mizu was happy to see a smile on her face. “We are all set! I bought us a nice piece of land and hired a few strong lads to set up a temporary house for us. In the meantime, would you like to do some exploring? We could walk the beach, or check out the forest?”

Mizu jumped up, a walk sounded fun, “Let's do both!”