Ten Colonies Monitoring Station.

“They woke it up.”

That’s a hell of a thing to see on your monitor first thing in the morning. Even before you figure out what it means, even when it’s just four little words staring right at you, it makes your blood run cold. At least, that’s what it did to me.

Little red warning lights are flashing on nine different panels. Nine? How is that even possible? Nine separate catastrophes in one night?

Monitoring station offline. Power grid offline. Atmosphere failing. Temperature settings reading off the scale. What the hell?

I looked back to the message on my main terminal, to those four words. I knew who it was from before I even opened the header. Gillen. That crazy old bastard on Jupiter Station. He’d been right all along.

And now New Austin was gone.

What about the other colonies? My station was only connected to the one colony, the others all had their own monitors. Were they all gone, too? Would we all be making the same call back to Earth this morning?

I knew the answer was yes, down in the pit of my stomach, I knew. And I felt the coldness pass through me as I reached for the phone.