Gideon let his knees fold. Both he and Lydia fell to the dusty surface and then they sat that way, holding each other for long minutes.

It was twenty minutes after the explosions subsided that Lydia stopped crying, and with effort raised her head. She saw the blue planet, which was just starting to set. Half the world was covered in fine white clouds and the other half lay in darkness. She turned away after a moment and clung to the major even tighter than before.

“What were they calling the planet?” she asked. “I mean, were they still going to use the same name as the one we were brought up with and learned in school?”

“As far as I know it was still the same,” Gideon answered. He looked at the blue planet, setting for the lunar day. He suddenly stood and pulled Lydia to her feet.

“Come on, we have a lot of work ahead of us! Those downed saucers might have those mechanical sons of bitches on them. Soon they’ll activate-and they don’t negotiate.”

Lydia didn’t question the large man as he pulled her along toward the crumbling crater where the science facility once sat. She did turn and watch the last of the blue planet sink away to nothing.

“We need to name our new home something, maybe the essence of what it really is,” Lydia said in her quiet and disillusioned state.

“We have to get there first, and then you can name it any damn thing you want.”

It was almost two full months after the last surviving members of the human race left for the new world below that the war pods embedded in the destroyed superstructures of the downed enemy saucers activated. They came alive only because their programmed brains hadn’t sensed any movement from the saucers that had crashed on the lunar surface. Designed as storm troopers for a race of cowardly yet advanced aggressors, the pods started dropping free of their modules into the lunar dust.