The Fall.

One day... One day people would live under other suns.

They would be born, caressed by the light emerging from other stars. They would grow, breathe... Struggle, Suffer, Befriend, Love, and Die. Somewhere far, far away.

That gave us hope. It was a deep longing humans had to visit other stars, but it was simply not feasible. Instead, we sent our seeds and watched them disappear into the vast expanse of space.

Seedlings of future men and women who would one day fuse to give birth to a new earth. Men who would learn to repeat the endless story of humanity, and hopefully one day expand beyond their star and repeat the process.

To let life flourish somewhere else than below this tiny star. Humanity passed its torch to future civilizations...

...

Now, that hope was all gone.

[ THIS IS NOT A DRILL. REPEAT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. AN UNIDENTIFIED FLEET IS CRUISING AND DECELERATING WITHIN OUR DOMAIN. ALL CITIZENS, SEARCH FOR THE NEAREST UNDERGROUND PRESSURIZED SHELTER. ]

The warnings blared across the busy hallways of the pressurized cities. Each and every powered device had been switched to emit the same communication.

From the people inhabiting the darkest, lowest slums, to the highest classes leaving within the cord. They all heard the same dooming message.

News communications, radio emissions, and holo display all halted their function as the United Government issued one last marshall order.

Take shelter.

Just like everyone else around me, I halted on the spot.

The not particularly special hallway I found myself in had halted by the point I realized. I could feel the breathing of people around me falter as they almost forgot to breathe.

We all remained eerily quiet. Not because we could not move, but because no one else did.

In times of confusion, the masses fused together. Becoming a single entity. A single, unmoving, paralyzed entity.

"What in Christ's name..."

Uttered someone from behind. A man dressed in expensive attire, probably a shareholder living in some of the higher levels. His purplish eyes were glued to the view outside.

The wide crystal panels installed along the corridors glinted with fresh-born fear.

The beauty of Pluto's pristine white surface was a sight to behold. Its frozen mountains, seas of oxidated dust, and cliffs expanded as far as the human eye could see.

And yet in their day-to-day lives, none of us really did stop to admire it. I myself felt this had been the first time I had truly understood the beauty of the world I had grown so used to calling home.

It was not just me though. At that moment, we all had to gaze at death with our very eyes.

Long shadows elongated along the planet's landscape, born from the scorching glowing plasma of roaring fusion engines.

"Those- those are ours!"

Said another man in a broad voice. This one fat, casually dressed, thin traces of gold decorating his body... Dangerous, probably a big name in the undergrounds.

...

For a second I cocked my gaze behind me. Before I realized it, the immense window that ran along the corridor had become a popular attraction. Still, as if the warning had never been issued in the first place, no one seemed to show a hint of fear, or cowardness.

Chr-- Chst-

"So it was not my imagination..."

I muttered. Realizing that the ground was really trembling.

The lethal firing of the minor kinetic cannons installed along the surface of both moons was not unusual. Shooting down dangerous debris was of utmost importance for maintaining the safety of the people. Still...

This was not simple debris.

We had to be reminded again.

[ THIS IS NOT A DRILL. REPEAT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. AN UNIDENTIFIED FLEET IS RAPIDLY APPROACHING OUR DOMAIN. ALL CITIZENS, SEARCH FOR AN UNDERGROUND PRESSURIZED SHELTER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. ]

...

The gazes of the people, who had been long lost in the void of space were lit in flames. No one moved yet. No one really understood what moving meant... Not for a couple of seconds.

Then someone stepped back.

The sound of shoes clacking against the ground was the trigger. A simple instinctual response, soon became heavy marching, then rumbling. Soon, a horde of terrified steps flooded those crowded hallways.

That was the moment hell broke loose.

Within seconds, what had been a peacefully ordered crowd of people, had now become a maddening, rampaging creature. Men and women of all ages, standings, and varieties ran for their lives, allowing the instinct of the crowd to rule their actions.

The crazed, neverending river of people fled in the direction of the flashing green lights that directed them toward supposed safety.

| How strange that everyone seems terrified all of a sudden. |

I said to myself as I admired the scene in complete silence. The crackling of glass intensified a hundred-fold as the immense, ancient coil guns protecting the embassy turned active, sending lightning-fast rounds toward the expanding blue sun on the horizon.

My feet felt glued to the ground, but that did not concern me. The clacking of footsteps had subsided, but there were people still running away. The weak had been thrown to the floor and walked on. It smelled like blood, there were probably injured... perhaps even dead.

| They won't make it though... All those people. Were they deliriant? |

I asked myself in a low mutter. Judging by the distance... We shouldn't have even minutes by this point.

How had this happened? I wondered.

Was this the beginning of a new war among humans? Was it a crude miscalculation? Or, perhaps, was it... something beyond?

My eyelids lifted open. The temperature inside the room started augmenting ever so subtly. The fire of the engines was getting nearer, if it didn't halt the hallway would become an inferno in seconds.

I was going to die, and yet I was not fighting for my life? Was I not sad that this was it? Shouldn't I be disturbed at this very moment? Shouldn't I be running with the crowd too?.. Shouldn't I refuse fate until the end?

| Damn- |

So many questions, and so little time to search for answers.

...

Phrang!!!

It was a silent explosion.

In the vacuum of space, nothing was heard. Not even death.

The first of the torches had traversed the sky like a bolt made of incandescent fire. Blinding the people below and beyond.

As the ships rapidly neared the surface of Pluto, layers of ice melted creating rapidly evaporating seas as its motors struggled to shut down.

The brutal heat of its engines did not leave witnesses behind, it annihilated everything on its path. No matter what it was.

...

One of the coil guns managed to land a shot on the nearing craft, halting the process of fusion and transforming the interstellar vehicle into a ball of incandescent flames.

Still, not even that... Not even that was enough.

Millions of broken pieces and scraps of metal rained down along Pluto's surface at ballistic speeds. The biggest ones were systematically taken care of by the secondary kinetic defense systems, but the smallest ones did not.

Most of them landed on the empty surface of the planet, simply leaving holing craters on its surface. Some hit secondary infrastructure, destroying production lines, abandoned launch pads, or minor electricity supply lines, and a few...

It was those few, that made true hell.

...

The bright detonation was seen from everywhere.

Hundreds of bits of shrapnel tore through the reinforced plates and thick pieces of machinery like butter. They dag holes inside the barrels, injectors, and batteries in equal measure, letting their contents drip out and combust.

Coil turret three had ignited with the force of hundreds of kilos of TNT, such was the force, that the colossal bulkhead of its cannon was immediately catapulted in a suborbital trajectory, landing on the opposite side of the city.

And it was only just beginning.

A bulk of debris impacted the cord that joined Charon and Pluto. Severing the bond between them, and forcing the two severed segments into an abysmal fall toward the surface of both planets.

The interstelar hangars. The launch platforms. The fusion reactors. The farming compounds. One by one, they all fell before our very eyes.

The Mule had yet to be fully loaded, but no one did anything.

We could only observe as the onslaught happened from afar. The bombardment of both twin moons continued.

Thousands of torches rained down onto the land that had given birth to them. On the horizon, the city we so revered had died. Its lights had been shut off as fire hungrily devoured the oxygen inside the pressurized atmospheres.

Another explosion. More material rained down from the skies, and somehow the worse had yet to arrive.

The cannons had targeted and destroyed the suicidal attacks directed at the main population nuclei, possibly saving the lives of the people that resided inside them.

However, for the ones that were not near the bubble of protection...

Kilometrical clouds of solid ice and snow were catapulted into the air as the erratic interstellar javelins sank onto the earth all around us. Burying whatever was before them under dozens of meters of material.

...

A miner's intuition never failed.

A chill ran down my spine as the edge of my vision was consumed by nothingness. A looming shadow consumed the day. It shallowed the stars, and the world together with it.

The ground trembled with enough force to send the unanchored devices onto the air.

[ UNDER COVER!!! ]

Kevin shouted his lungs out as he sprinted to push the nearby Mack and Martha under the body of the sturdy mule. The headlamps on their suits shone light onto the impending chaos, revealing a massive snow wall collapsing onto us.

It was an avalanche... A flood of deadly ice.

| What..! |

I said, my eyes opened whole. Shallowed along with the stars, doubt had seemed to leave my mind, everything suddenly felt clear.

A sudden awareness of every movement around me. Everything.

My heartbeat, my breath, my muscles. The cold outside, the death that would soon rain upon us, and every single element that comprised it.

PAng!

Ice banged against my helmet, producing a large crack in the reinforced glass. That was enough to awaken me from the sudden overflow of information. My gaze settled back on them, remembering what had just happened.

Kevin had sensed death approaching in time...

He was safe. So too were the younger pair.

...

| That's very good. |

It began then...

The feeling of expanded awareness was further augmented by the sensation of utmost lightness.

Time seemed to slow down as hundreds of boulders of solid ice barraged against the ground.

The oncoming weight made the earth crack and tremble, forcing me into a fall. Still, at that time, for some reason, all I cared about was them.

I gazed at the reflection on Kevin's visor one last time.

I couldn't help but feel disappointed.

What did I expect to see? Relief?

I was proven wrong again. Kevin, Mar' and Mack... Their faces, I still remembered them.

Their eyes locked onto mine as they trembled under the sturdy mechanical cover of the mule, their legs doubted.

They were scared stiff. They were terrified. Shaken.

It had been a split second, but in that split second they had managed to save themselves. That's why they didn't move.

[ Damn it- ]

That was ok. It was all fine. Our lives were short, and fighting with death was of no use.

I didn't have much time to think, so I just smiled. I accepted death with calmness, and vanished under that mountain of solid ice.

Everything turned cold and quiet.

...