Phoenix in Flames

Watching Pluto and Charon rotate around each other is a very fascinating sight. Technically Pluto is the planet and Charon is just one of its five moons.

However looking at it from this close, the two basically resembles two bodies dancing around each other.

Pluto has a lighter red hue and its surface is covered in glass like ice. Charon is about half the size of Pluto and it has a grayish color too.

It's been almost a year since they got here and the sight is still mesmerizing.

..........

Adam's ships are currently doing formation and weapon drills on top of the highest mountain on the small planet.

Pluto is a lot smaller than the earth's moon but it's still a shit loads bigger than any of Adam's ships.

For the past eight months, Adam and the girls along with all the other ship's captains and crews are busy preparing and familiarizing themselves about their ships and its capabilities.

When they learned about the reason why Adam have to stay away with his ships, they all volunteered to come and even pro-actively offered to conduct the exercises to make their combat capabilities better.

They've been traveling the space, that's commonly called the Kuiper Belt. It's the ring of space debris, asteroids and small planetoids like Pluto beyond Neptune's orbit.

Adam's fleet is testing their weapon's full capabilities on some of the wondering asteroids.

..........

The reason why their stay in this far away space is a bit bearable is mainly due to their new base.

The people in this world have the necessary technology to build huge space stations before the apocalypse happened.

Since they decided to stay long term in this place, he asked Alice to learn the technology and see if they can build a base here.

Due to the current state of this world's infrastructures, there's a small chance that the technology has already been lost.

However, Alice announced a few hours later that she was able to acquire and learn the technology; she also added that she not only has that tech now but also all the technology this earth has ever achieved.

It seems like Adam has unlocked one of Alice's hidden talents. As long as information is connected to electronics and as long as electronic equipment still exists, then she can syphon information from it.

Although this planet is in ruins, Computer systems and terminals still do exist.

It took Adam and his forces to gather the necessary resources and build a sizable base on Charon.

They originally thought of building it in Pluto but decided later that Charon is a better place. They discovered that Pluto's surface is generally made of very thick and very solid ice.

According to Alice, the probes are showing that some of the ice is as thick as six miles down.

Charon is more solidly built. They found some solid bedrock as foundation for their base.

The base can house all of their ships inside it. The base was built to have enough armor and shielding to keep them safe from the environment and even from possible attacks.

The living quarters were positioned at the bottom of the base to make them as safe as possible. The base also has all the amenities and recreation areas to make sure that all personnel are in good mental condition.

Since they are in Pluto's domain, the base was aptly called, Hades.

.............

During one of their live fire exercise, Alice informed Adam that the orbital probes back on Earth have just detected an unknown ship.

It just appeared from the north then suddenly accelerated. Alice told him that it is currently heading towards the Phoenix City. Its speed is quite comparable to Adam's Frigates but this ship looks at least three times the size.

Following their original plan, Adam sounded the general quarters for all the ships. But they stayed inside the base.

At this point they're hoping that the enemy won't suspect their existence.

A few minutes of stressful suspense, they watched as the enemy ship stopped above the city, it stayed motionless for a few minutes then a single beam was fired from the ship down to the ground.

In the next instant, the center of the city was engulfed in flames. After then hundreds more of the beams were fired until the whole city is burned completely.

............

From the Hades base, everyone watching the scene was initially in a state of horror, then it turned to loss, then indignation set in, then it finally turned to anger.

The attack was clearly a declaration of war and Adam's people are in the mood to shove it up their ass.