The hypnotic plumes of color and raw energy made the planet look like some gas giants she had seen; but instead of pure swirls of gas, flaming cities and boiling oceans broke through the surface. With a hiss the transmission cut off, leaving the two people in the small command center stunned. They watched the images of their homeworld going up in a storm of nuclear fireballs as the government went to war with itself over an issue that had plagued their world for several generations. Collapsing back into her chair, Egyn of House Heritage watched the images from the remaining satellites over Mesinas showing the hundreds of nuclear mushroom clouds erupting as the two sides of the newly triggered civil war let loose with every weapon under their control.

  As the satellite rounded the orbit of the planet, Egyn spotted the small city where she had been born and raised on the holoscreen in front of her. At first, the city seemed to be intact as it appeared through the radioactive clouds. It drifted closer to reveal the massive crater in the center of the city where the forest of chimneys that had once made up the massive dura-steel mill and the mountain of a dome that had been the space engine manufacturing center had been. With a sliding finger on the holo-pad she took control of the zoom function on the satellite uplink and focused on a small community on the edge of the city, locating the street where her parent’s home had once stood.

  The entire block had been replaced with the remnants of a massive smokestack; its massive cement cylinder fractured but still mostly in one piece despite the eight homes that laid crushed beneath it. Still top professional to give into the urge to cry, she hid her face in her hands after turning off the small screen at her desk. A strong hand rested softly on her shoulder followed by the low, commanding voice that warned of the arrival of her manager, Nizagi of House Law.

  “I wish I could say something to make it better, My family was at my compound just outside the capital. That was one of the first targets for the Chief Minister and his nuclear crusade. To make things worse, we were able to get a view of the Primary Soul Sphere.”

  After using the only physical button on her desk to reactivate her holoscreen, he keyed in a location code to show the most holy site in all of the Axves Empire. The shimmering spherical structure that had once towered over the city used to stand, remained only a broken egg. Where once the past and future souls of every Axves had been housed was now just cold steel and stone.

  Despite the pure terror that she felt at the loss of the Primary Soul Sphere that held the souls of every Axves that had passed on, waiting to be cycled back into the next available infant’s body, she did her best to remain in control because her boss was clearly barely holding his panic in. Running her fingers through her sweat slicked silver hair, Egyn turned to look into the haunting red eyes of the man that had become her mentor.

  “I… Is there any word from the three colonies? Maybe we will get support. Or maybe, you’ve heard from your cousin in the fleet? There’s no way he could have gone along with this.”

  Dropping on one knee beside her, Nizagi placed one powerful blue hand on her much smaller bronze one, looking her squarely in her shimmering purple eyes as he spoke.

  “Unfortunately no. It looks like the minister ordered the most loyal sections of the fleet to attack the colonies as well, but many ships have rebelled. We have lost contact with all but a few ships nearby that were either on their way to resupply us or the other observation posts in the sector.”

  Taking a deep breath, he glanced away as he struggled to put his thoughts into words.

  “Our species is over…Now we will be forced to sit back and watch the rise of another race of beings while we fade into obscurity, trapped here in the only remaining Soul Sphere until it breaks or our souls fade.”

  Tears of panic pressed out of her eyes despite the fight against the feeling that a starship was sitting on top of her, Egyn hugged Nizagi tightly before climbing to her feet and turning back to make sure that he knew that she was okay as she spoke.

  “I think I’m going to need to walk this out and process or I’m not going to be able to function. Maybe I will even visit Krituna and get something to help with this headache.”

  Rubbing the bridge of her nose to fight down her swimming mind she stumbled out of the anthropology lab and made her way to Med Bay where Krituna of House Remedy ran the station's clinic as well as the biology research. . Not wanting to hear more of the galaxy’s madness, she kept moving down the whitewashed corridors that had been her home for the last decade, ignoring the news being piped out of the communication center as she passed.

  At the steel double doors marked with the red cup covered in a web of blue veins that was the symbol for medicine, she pressed the glowing white button. Stepping into the empty medical bay, she glanced around and tried to locate a friend. Moving slowly through the rows of beds and medical devices, she checked for the snow-white-skinned woman in every corner and in the various computer or specimen filled offices and labs that lined two of the walls.

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  The medical communications center where they could exchange information with the hundreds of biology labs, hospitals and research centers on Axves controlled worlds, was filled with noise and light that was jarring after the silent hospital. Seeing the screens all blank and every other sound drowned out by the hissing of dead connections, Egyn stepped into the room and turned off the computers. A soft sniffle behind her caused Egyn to spin around, finding Krituna of House Healing curled up in the corner behind a rack of servers and communication equipment.

  Egyn pulled her best friend in close for a hug as she stroked the woman’s loose red curls like a mother with a hurt child, after sitting down beside her.

  “I know that this is a lot, but I need you to focus. Nizagi said that we are going to be taking in refugees. We are the last location with an intact Soul Sphere and people are going to start coming here to try and rebuild. You are the only doctor, so if we get wounded we could get some nasty stuff.”

  Pulling back from her hug, her normally very bubbly friend pushed herself to her feet and used a small handkerchief to wipe her eyes before doing her best to straighten her back in order to look more in command of her situation.

  “Do we have casualty estimates yet? How much time do I have to prepare?”

  Relieved to see that she was pulling out of her funk to focus on the work that was about to come, Egyn squeezed her arm. “No actual information right now. The first refugees will be joining us via supply ships in the area and other civilian ships in the sector. Nizagi will be considering logistics. We can’t help anyone if he can’t find a safe path to reach us. Yviv must be our new home if our people are going to survive.”

  The suggestion triggered her biologist's mind. She began to plan out the supplies and beds needed to make that possible in a base that had been designed for a maximum of two hundred people for short term use. Leaving her to make the preparations for the potentially wounded and their new reality, Egyn accepted the small pill that Krituna handed her and took it as she left the room. Forced to breath deeply to keep her emotions tamped down, she continued down the long white plastered hallway.

  She spotted the door to the geology lab wide open as she stepped around the final bend in the long corridor that angled towards the sections of the compound that were still under construction. Hard music blared from the room alongside the sound of rocks being hammered. In the back of the cavernous room, Thihana of House Foundation slammed a vibro-pick into the exposed stone wall, her cement gray arms bulging despite her small frame. Egyn located the computer that was playing the music through the dozen speakers around the room and worked her way through the scattered debris and tools to turn it off.

  Throwing the pick into the air with an exasperated growl, the small woman spun her obsidian black eyes to glare at Egyn. Shivers fought to take control of her spine from the disconcerting sight of the other woman’s eyes, Egyn stepped forward and looked at her squarely. Egyn intended to silence the rant that she knew was coming.

  “I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but we are about to have a lot of company. Do you know any other caverns that we can connect to? We need to expand our living space.”

  Still furious, but doing her best to stay professional like she had been working on, Thihana crossed her arms and leaned against the exposed stone wall behind her. “Scans have shown several caverns, but I’ve been too busy exploring these veins of minerals to get us what we needed to expand our compound here and keep the reactors running. I’m doing a test now to see if I can find the vein of iron again before I let the drones get back to work, so I don’t have a lot of time right now. When do we need this done by?”

  A little confused at her blasé reaction to the request, Egyn decided to see if she was really that cold about this situation. “Well, the first refugees will be arriving tomorrow when the supply ship that was just here yesterday doubles back.”

  Rolling her eyes at me she walked towards the computer to turn back on her music. Despite her fear of the uncontrollable woman Egyn stepped in front of her to open the feed coming from the command center on the computer, Egyn pressed a few buttons and pulled up the footage of what had happened. Turned to stone by what she saw, she watched the nuclear explosions rip across their capital world, Thihana’s face grew hard as she pushed Egyn out of the way and killed the feed.

  “What kind of faded joke are you trying to pull? This isn’t funny.” Taking a couple of steps back, Egyn resisted the urge to reach out and comfort the girl with an arm on her shoulder, but seeing her fists clench as she approached, she backed off again.

  “I’m sorry… I assumed you had heard because this happened about an hour ago. We are still trying to figure out exactly what happened, but we are already broadcasting as a safe haven to the injured and to those who are close by. I know that you are extremely busy and I’m more than happy to help if you have a Geomapper kit that I can borrow. I can take care of it, if you can point me in the right direction.”

  Thihana’s rant was cut off before it could get started when the muscular onyx-skinned engineer stuck his head into the room, clearly stuck in his logical work mode.

  “Sorry to interrupt, I heard you say that you are going on a scouting trip Egyn. We just got the first estimates from the ships close by and it looks like it is going to get really crowded in here if we can’t find a few good caves and get access to them. I would love to help, but we need to sink our Soul Sphere deep into the core to keep it powered and safe if we are attacked.

  Egyn nodded, trying not to roll her eyes at the almost comical request as she added the new requests to her mental checklist.

  “Sure, is there anyone else hiding behind that door with other requests for things I need to magically find without really knowing what I’m looking for?”

  Chuckling to cut the stressed tension of the room he stepped aside and held out a datapad.

  “Good luck! Try not to fall into a sinkhole or get murdered by an Echi Hunter.”