Qi Ling Ice Giant System, Li Ming System

Kong Zi Outer Defense Headquarters

One Month After The Reactivation of the Zhuque Node Jia

Zhongjiang (Admiral) Lu Sha hacked up a goopy mess of blood and tissue into his usable hand, wincing and knitting his eyebrows in response. He estimated he had no more than 48 hours left to live. His liver was failing, his bones were breaking as he stood, yet, somehow, he has never felt more clarity in his mind. Unfortunately, it gave him a full picture of the carnage around him, as if a torturer kept his eyes open as they disemboweled him.

All around him were the dead, dying, and wounded. There no longer was any strength in the personnel to properly dispose of the bodies, instead left where they fell, with white cloths unceremoniously draped over them. Men and women fell unconscious without rhyme or reason: heart failure, asphyxiation, fractured skull puncturing their gray matter. Even the Kongjian stationed on the moon base, the elite, bionetically enhanced marines; weren’t spared, as if something was tearing them apart from the inside.

Lu Sha remembered the sequence of events clearly. One month ago, satellites and voidcraft in the Qi Ling system simultaneously reported errors, timekeeping desynchronization, before the error was swiftly eliminated. Four days after that, one of the SLE satellites that squeezed the space lane towards Sol malfunctioned, prompting repairs to be made, but the FTL operations to continue; they were in the middle of a war, shipments needed to be delivered.

However, in quick succession, in a matter of days, the SLE satellites failed, one after another. Before FTL operations could be completely halted, eight cargo vessels and their escorts were caught in transit, now burning through normal, unsqueezed space, condemned to the void, tens of light years away from rescue. Afterwards, electronics and computers on voidcraft in the area failed as well at an exponential rate, along with human crew. Quarantine measures were put in place to no avail.

As the Admiral slumped down along a wall, his breaths growing short, he wondered what crimes he committed in his past life to deserve this slow, unknowable death. Maybe he was a fucking Communist of the previous Chinese empire, a man who massacred the Aos Si. In which case, he was truly sorry now. His only wish now was that enough ships with working fusion torches escaped the Qi Ling system so that their crews could live to tell what happened here. As the lack of oxygen in his blood addled his mind, pushing him towards hopeless thoughts, he spotted a science officer under his command, walking with crutches towards him.

“Zhongjiang,” The science officer… her name was Ji Liang… Lu Sha listened to her own uneasy words as his ears rang. “The data reports, they’re in. We’re detecting a surge of protons and electrons all moving in the same direction… they’re all moving towards the SLE satellites. Everything is converging… something is growing.”

The Admiral grunted, “What… is?”

Suddenly, his vision went black, steadily filled with stars. Then, a ring, made of material as dark as the void itself, pulsing with eerie blue light through cracks. Within it, a familiar star system, one that he was reminded of time and time again from his studies, now his work: two ice giants, two gas giants, four terrestrial worlds closer to that yellow G-type main sequence. Had he gone insane? No, he felt too much pain to have gone mad yet.

“It’s so clear now…” Lu Sha mumbled to himself, then used the last of his strength to look Ji Liang in the eyes. “Officer, this is my final order to you. Transmit that data and a message to Zhuque: under no circumstance are any living beings to approach Kong Zi space until the event has passed.”

“Sir… consider it done.”

“Not yet it’s not.” The Admiral hacked up one final spout of blood, then returned to the Balance.

The last molecules of oxygen were consumed inside the military installation, killing anyone still alive. Mere days passed before the metallic skeleton itself failed. With great upheaval, rock, metal, glass, and organic tissue were torn from Kong Zi's surface, joining the ring of debris that now orbited the ice giant's moon, coalescing into two separate groups. The two amalgamations of exotics, metallics, and organics first formed spheres, then toruses, before finally stretching and thinning out into great rings, like a pair of watchful eyes, always staring towards two distant stars.