The destruction of the large moon Ophillias had been intentional. The ignition of its mineral mines did just what the planners of the final solution had intended. The enemy fleet and their devilish mechanized invasion troops were blotted out in a nanosecond of stunning violence. Only things didn’t go as planned; they seldom do in wartime. Instead of the eruption taking out only the mineral mines and the enemy saucers in orbit around the moon and their home world, the moon had been shattered. First the mineral deposits ignited. Then the core of the moon, rich with energy, had exploded, slamming the nearby home world and this, the lone surviving moon. First one world and then its larger twin were hit so hard with debris from the exploding Ophillias that their orbits had been ripped apart, while the home world was sanitized of all life and pushed deeper into space. Entire cities, oceans, and continents were wrenched into the vacuum. The other blue and still burning world with its small moon, Phobos, was nearly thrown into the sun. It was now the third planet in orbit around the large star.
***
The large man thanked the heavens above him that this desolate and barren rock was only a brief stop before the planned jump to the giant blue and green colored world 240,000 miles away. The new orbit taken by that world and its moon was still unstable, but the survivors of their race had little choice in the matter. They were going to call it home, volcanic environment or not.
The helmeted man, standing on the edge of an enormous crater, stared upward into the face of what would be their new home. The days it had taken for the surviving warships to follow this rock and the giant volcanic world below to their new orbit had been harrowing, but the new orbits had finally stabilized just as their scientists had said they would.