The sun was shining. And then it wasn’t. On what should have been a warm fall morning, it suddenly became cold and dark like a storm coming over the horizon – except there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. As the four million colonists of Vespara Prime gazed up at the sky, they saw something they couldn’t make sense of. The K-type orange dwarf at the center of the system was dimmer, and it was flickering. At the Vespara Academy, researchers identified something equally disconcerting. At this time of the year, the planet should have been in the midst of its match towards the aphelion, but now, it was racing back towards the perihelion, and to make matters worse, the orbital degradation was accelerating rapidly. Unable to explain the phenomenon, all they could do was forecast what would happen if it continued.

A dozen light years away, Polaris Squadron was enjoying some much-needed shore leave when the call came in. Something was happening in the Vespara system, and in mere weeks, a catastrophe of planetary proportions was about to unfold. Their orders are to evacuate the planet, but with only a handful of ships at their disposal and four million to save, the impossibility of this task is clear to all. And that means the only hope for the survival of the Vesparan people is if the specialists of the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity can accomplish a miracle.