By the time Aurelian's fleet was finally starting to take proper shape, Larkspur Haven's situation started to turn for the worse.
It started with the meteor shower.
At first, people thought it was strange, but not terrifying. The colony had seen falling debris before and had ways to deal with it.
The far rim was full of unstable lanes, dead rock, broken ice, and all kinds of junk that drifted where it shouldn't.
But this time, the number was wrong.
The warning stations picked up too many incoming objects at once, and worse, they had not seen them early enough.
They seemed to appear almost out of nowhere, dropping into the colony's local space in a tight spread that made no natural sense.
The alarm went out fast.
Larkspur Haven was still young by interstellar standards, but it was not helpless. Ever since contact with outside civilizations became a real threat rather than a story, the colony had built layered defense lines around the planet.
Interceptors were launched.
