October 18, 2567 AD, Inner Icy Bodies Belt, Gliese 556

  The end did not e swiftly.

  On the trary, the data taining its discovery y dormant on some astrophysicist's solid-state memory for more than 30 years, gathering digital dust, before any human ever id eyes on it. When they finally did, what they found there ged the fate of the Terran race forever.

  No one kly when the primordial bck hole had passed through the core of Soris. No one even knew for certain if that was what had happened, but it usible a theory as any. Something had disrupted the fiuned fusion processes in the core of the sun, and its energy output was no longer what it had been before. In essehe engine of the star had stopped running.

  From the outside, you wouldn’t even notice the ge—the outer yers were still glowing from the heat released by the thermonuclear fires millennia ago. Perhaps the summers on Mars had grown colder by a degree or two over the past tury, but this was Mars, after all—even after turies of terraf, cold summers were still the norm. If you looked at the sun, it still seemed to be the same star that had once warmed the primordial seas of Old Earth, the same yellow light that, for eons, had greeted the dinosaurs, and the same disc that had risen in the east over the first empires of Man. Granted, during this time, it had slowly moved along the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, but for all practical purposes, the sun had shone stantly for billions of years.

  It would not tio do so.

  For the ey of its existehe outush of the radiation released by the fusion processes in the sun’s core had been equal to the inull of the star’s immense gravity. But now, with the fusion engine no longer running at full speed, gravity had taken over, slowly colpsing it. The vast yer of hydrogen was now falling toward the ter of the sun, increasing the pressure and temperature in the core every year. Eventually, the ditions would be hot enough for the fusion process to restart.

  To the untrained ear, that might have sounded like a good thing. It was anything but—in fact, it was immeasurably worse than the sun just slowly growing cold. The day the che fusion engine would not begin to burn slowly over the course of billions of years, as it had previously. Instead, a signifit fra of the hydrogen in the core would ignite all at ohe resulting thermonuclear explosion would throw off the outer yers of the sun into space, essentially swallowing the inner sor system. Mercury, Venus, Terra, and Mars—all would be gohe racial home of Mankind erased forever; all the pces, artifacts, and history of humanity obliterated in the nuclear fire to e.

  It wouldn’t be a supernova explosion, of course—nothing so spectacur could ever happen to a simple G-css main-sequear, not even with the help of a primordial bck hole. The astrophysicists simply cssified the event as a humble nova, albeit an irregur one. But even a nova is enough to sterilize a sor system, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it from happening. Within a few hundred years, the end would e, no matter what mankind did.

  For the sed time in half a millennium, the Terran race faced ain event. But uhe Fall of Old Earth, this time it was not a cataclysm of their own making, and now the race was on to move as much of the Terran people and their heritage to other stars before Nova Soris eventually cimed the sun’s children as its final victims.

  Some would say the Terran Federation had grown pt during the turies following the Fall. But Pax Lupi—three turies of unbroken peace, guaranteed by the military might of the Sunguard—had brought with it a period of unpreted prosperity. After the initial iion of the four races, the Federation had stopped its expansion 23 light-years from Soris, tent with the territory it already trolled. It had then turs focus inward, improving and strengthening itself without having to spend time and manpower on izing the stars.

  Now, that was all about to ge. In a mad scramble for resources and new worlds, the Armies of the Sunguard had bee out on expeditions up to 50 light-years from Soris, charting the often dangerous worlds orbiting distant stars. For the past tury, the needs of the other three races had had to take a backseat, allowing the Terrans to grab as much territory as they could before it was too te.

  It hadn’t beeirely without dowhough. Despite its name, of the 70 billion people in the Federation, only 35% were actually Terraain limitations on the way votes were ducted among the non-Terran members had been put into pce to ehe other races didn’t interfere with the prioritized Terran expansion. It was all just temporary, of course. The home worlds of the other three races were still perfectly safe—Alpha tauri A and B, as well as Tau Ceti, would tio burn for eons to e. Thus, the Etarians, the Ker, and the Jerrassians could afford a few turies of curbed rights—they had all the time in the gaxy to catch up ohe whole Nova Soris business was over. For now, the priority of the Terran Federation had to be the survival of the Terran people.

  Despite being Jerrassian himself, Captain Balmar Lok didn’t really mind. What were a few lost civil rights when you had the opportunity to make more money in a year than your parents had been able to acquire in a lifetime? Disasters such as this teo be virtual money-making maes if you knew how to properly take advantage of the situation.

  The Sunguard had sent their expeditions across space to discover new worlds to ize. But ohe ization process was started, there was more work to be dohan the military had the resources to provide. That’s where civilian tractors such as the crew of Peretti's Legacy came into py. Right now, their job was to survey the makeup of the icy bodies orbiting in the inner etary belt of one of the retly ized systems. No one cimed it was aing job—just days upon days of measuring the ratios of water, carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia i the primordial ets here ier Gliese 556 system, 44 light-years from Soris. The work wasn’t gmorous, but it paid more than well.

  MvonStz