Five years. At light speed, you wouldn't even be a tenth of the way to Jaspitus in that time. Jaspitus was located at the far edge of an imaginary three-dimensional cube, each side of which was 625 light-years long. This cube was known as the Space Block. Jaspitus, along with other nearby planets, formed the so-called Alliance of Planets until 2034. It was an Alliance because it had someone to fight against – specifically, the planets at the bottom edge of the Block, where the Birox Empire then held sway.

Earth was situated between them, near the geometric center of the Block. It was a habitable planet with resources and a civilization that, under capable leadership, could produce new warships for one side or the other. And that's exactly what happened. Earth sided with the Alliance and, in exchange for knowledge, supplied them with what they needed.

In return, the members of the Alliance taught humans their science to a limited extent, and also taught them to build warships almost as advanced as their own.

But those times were gone. After the armistice was signed, warships were either destroyed or disarmed, and that applied to all planets that wanted to be members of the new, peace-loving Community of Planets.

The entire Space Block was then overseen only by small security units, a kind of space police. Entry was open to all planets, but the largest representation was held by Jaspitusans and humans, due to their physiology and natural predatory instincts. This grouping was called PCP, Protectors of the Community of Planets, and they were based, as you might expect, on Jaspitus. Naturally, many planets had a problem with this, and so the PCP were soon to relocate to a newly prepared base named Haskar. Its position was near the center of the Block, right next to the problematic planet Ugholt.

However, the base wasn't yet ready, and so the PCP still had to launch all their interventions, even those in the former Birox Empire, from distant Jaspitus. This impacted arrival times. Even with all the technological progress over the years, it still took a little over 12 hours to travel from one side of the Block to the other. Space, as they say, is big. The PCP were also underfunded, because nothing much had happened in this Space Block for the last 70 years. So even their ships were small – even a little shorter than ordinary twelve-meter buses. Their components had to be adapted accordingly, resulting in slower transport. And because there was little money, there was no rush with Haskar either. It was, therefore, clear as day that they were asking for trouble. And that trouble arrived in 2108.

In the middle of the futuristic city stood a faded 12-story building that didn't stand out in any way. On the contrary, compared to the others, it was more ordinary and rather ugly. It was essentially just a plain concrete block with windows. However, its outward appearance was irrelevant; what mattered was what was hidden inside. Inside was the PCP operations center. Near the roof, operators and personnel monitored probes and satellites scattered throughout the Space Block. Below that was the command, headed by Ogdirad Katlin. Then came a few development departments, an armory, gyms, and training rooms. Only then, on the bottom two floors, were the field units stationed. When nothing was happening, teams without assignments remained in the local common room. And because nothing often happened, there were usually at most two teams there, each with only three people. The rest were at home, in reserve. They received a salary constantly and therefore had to be readily available in case of a problem.

Another five three-member teams were then off-planet, flying here and there, maintaining monitoring satellites and searching for anomalies that the satellites might have missed. You're calculating correctly: a total of 21 people actively oversaw the entire Space Block during one shift. But, as already mentioned, why pay more people when nothing particularly dramatic had happened for decades? And even if something did, the others would still have nothing else to do but fly around and burn fuel. That's not a very efficient use of resources. And the Council of the Community of Planets was well aware of this, and so it kept the PCP on a short leash.

The Council of the Community of Planets was something like an interplanetary government, and although it had limited influence on the politics of individual planets, the PCP was one of the few organizations that fell fully under its control. It was the Council that always appointed the PCP's civilian commander after a joint vote. So, although the PCP was a paramilitary organization, the command was always civilian and reported directly to the bureaucrats of the Council. And it showed. In 80% of cases, the PCP tried to settle tense situations between individual planets to prevent internal conflict, rather than focusing on defense against a possible external threat.

And it was from one such diplomatic mission that Commander Ogdirad was just returning in his ship, accompanied by three PCP assault vessels as guards.

At that time, somewhere on Kalvira, in the middle of the former Birox Empire, a couple of Kalvirans went out of town. The night was still young. The sky still held a dark blue hue, and only a few of the brightest stars were visible.

The two Kalvirans looked like blue devils. Small, pointed horns on their heads, blue skin, and a humanoid-animalistic appearance reinforced by the presence of a thick, meter-long tail. Both of them lay down together on the ground in the grass, which had disproportionately wide blades. As they lay there, they slowly took each other's hands, and even their tails approached each other, touching at the tips. They watched the night sky together, waiting for even more stars to appear, one of which would be Earth's Sun.

Suddenly, a huge silhouette entered their field of vision. It was a large black triangle. All sides were the same length, and inside that black silhouette, three yellow glowing circles shone, and in the middle of them, a tiny hollow red triangle. And that wasn't all. On the right and left sides, it was accompanied by far smaller ships, which were more rectangular and had two engines on each side. The same small vessel then appeared a third time in tow behind the large triangle.

All the ships emerged from the nearby city. They flew slowly and very low. But that was about to change. Once the city was far enough away, all of them turned slightly, then suddenly faced upwards and shot away. It looked like an inverted falling star, falling from the ground towards the sky.

When a misty and unevenly glowing space of a collapsed fermionic dimension, popularly called a space tunnel, was already surrounding the mentioned ships, PCP Commander Ogdirad said to all the remaining ships:

"Thank you for your assistance today, you are now free. As you know, it remains for us to Jaspitus by synchronized time approximately 10 chapers, and we will arrive there at noon. I will gladly set an example for everyone and use that time and get some sleep. I urge you to do the same. In other words, I explicitly tell you, get some sleep if you want. I allow it. You must also be tired of it. Ogdirad out."

Ogdirad's words resonated just as much in all the surrounding ships as they did in the left escort ship. Inside this ship was a three-member crew consisting, in this case, only of Jaspitusans. There was Lirin Bopir, Oril Krailot, and Drainer Noier.

It would also be good to mention that each of the trio was there for a specific reason. Lirin was in charge of decision-making, Oril was tasked with using technology to remove any obstacle that stood in their way, and Draine was a fearless guy who was ready to intervene where diplomacy failed.

Both Oril and Draine looked the part, reflecting their specializations. Oril was gentler, more thoughtful. He had light turquoise-blue hair, cut short just enough to keep it out of the way, without forming any specific hairstyle. His eyes were brown, and at first glance, he gave off a kind of harmless and defenseless impression. You probably wouldn't guess at first glance that he worked for the PCP.

On the contrary, if you met Draine somewhere at a bar, it would be clear to you that you didn't want to be nearby when he got drunk. His hair was completely black and very short, yet curly. He had small flames in his eyes, and a thin, clean scar ran from his chin across both lips to the tip of his nose. The joke was that with the technology on Jaspitus, no one would know the scar had ever been there after a few hours, but he didn't want to have it removed. He was proud of it; he took it as a badge of courage and proof of his own toughness. And given his job, all he had to do was show up somewhere, and everyone immediately knew that he wouldn't be afraid to intervene physically, whatever the nature of the conflict might be.

The three were good friends and colleagues in one. Now, however, on the recommendation of their commander, they were planning to go to sleep. In the square, all-glass cabin of their ship, where Lirin sat in the back, three steps higher than the men, dark filters were already being drawn over all the triangular and parallelogram-shaped windows, darkening the cabin.

For a better picture, their entire ship looked, with a little imagination, like a large, black, and above all, angular beetle. The huge head of that beetle was precisely that cabin composed of thick glass of various geometric shapes. The body of the beetle, in turn, was completely black and shiny, and inside it was a space for cargo with seats along the sides facing each other and red bars all around, almost like in a subway. Finally, on each side of the ship were two large adjustable engines, like the thick legs of a beetle, which from the side had the shape of an elongated and inflated hexagon in the middle. They were so large that they had a height of seven meters in a purely vertical position, and were thus a meter taller than the entire ship. Officially, these ships were called Vegas.

Lirin's unit then indulged in sleep inside the Vega, and indeed everyone slept for about the next four hours. Then, however, the intrusive sound of an alarm woke them up. Lirin squinted, and as soon as she realized the potential seriousness of the alarm, she forced herself to wake up immediately. She jumped up from the reclined seat to her console with a screen and watched what was happening. It was a call from Jaspitus. Lirin immediately accepted the call. By then, the men were also waking up. Everyone was then surely awakened by the pink dragon face of the Osktylan Berindr:

"Lirin, Lirin, I have a crisis for you. I'm getting strange anomalies from the satellites. Energy islands in the middle of nowhere. The wavelength and its distribution across the spectrum correspond to energy emissions from Gorinium."

"Well- okay. So where do you want to send us?" Lirin asked him.

"That's the thing. There are suddenly 19 of them," Berindr replied.

"Damn it," Lirin assessed.

"Indeed. Now, now I just sent a call to the reserves. This is going to be big," Berindr agreed.

"What does Ogdirad say?" Oril asked.

"In a moment. Bonrek is already calling him," he told them. "I assume he'll let you go, though. So you can choose a target right away. Immediately. Here's a map," Berindr told them.

A star map appeared on the display of Lirin's desk, with red dots on it.

"So we'll logically take the closest one. This one," Lirin said and tapped on it.

Berindr looked somewhere to the side and said: "Yeah, I'm reserving it for you."

The map with the red dots disappeared, and the navigation was already lit up in front of Lirin. The navigation was set, but it was still red, waiting for an electronic signature. Berindr's face shrunk, and a second window popped up next to it, where Ogdirad Katlin was. It was only audio. Ogdirad apparently didn't want to show himself in his sleepy form.

"Ogdirad here. I have been informed of the situation. You have a new task. Investigate all anomalies. You will carry out the task immediately, I can manage to fly to Jaspitus with my crew myself. Choose a target and go. Good luck."

And the window with Ogdirad's name disappeared. The navigation turned green; Ogdirad had signed the change of flight order.

"So you see, hold on," Berindr told them and also disappeared.

"Okay, then. Everyone, full alertness, let's get right to it," Lirin commanded, "Window darkening off, seats to normal, seatbelts, and we're jumping out of the space tunnel." She herself immediately tried to fully wake up and did everything to be 100% aware of what was happening around her. The cabin windows undarkened, and the seats returned to their normal position on their own. Lirin then prematurely ended the flight with a swipe across the entire screen. The Vega dropped back into the black emptiness of space. But then, according to the autopilot, it turned in a different direction and immediately took off again and jumped back into the space tunnel. This time, the journey took them only about 12 minutes, and they were at their destination.

When they arrived at the location, nothing much interesting awaited them there. There was only one dwarf planet made of stone and ice.

"Okay, something closer?" she asked her colleagues.

Oril replied: "A little something. Newer data from the nearby satellite already shows a fairly precise position from where the emission came."

"Take us there, Draine," Lirin ordered.

Draine took manual control of the steering and guided the ship around the planet. "It's from the other side, from the surface," he told them.

"So probably suits. Unless it's something extra conspicuous," Lirin said and already got up and was going to the back of the ship. Where on eight other seats, four on each side, sat more massive, completely black suits. It looked like modern armor. Lirin waved her hand in front of one, and its insides lit up.