The sun dawned over the blue-white earth, shining on Lunar Fragment 15 and the space station next to it. The fragment had been there many years since the nuclear explosion that had created it. Now it was slowly being drained of its valuable minerals.

Lenore, a state-of-the-art mining station, had finished its last assignment on Fragment 23 well ahead of schedule.

The year was 2099 of the Common Era, but few alive knew that. For the common worker, it could just as easily have been 2199 or even 1999. On earth, in the civilized hemisphere, it was spring. The long, hard winter had finally yielded to flowers blooming and birds chirping.

But in space it was just as cold as always, with no way of measuring the seasons. The four men and three women, who were now leaving the station for the small asteroid, were all prisoners of war. Their captain, a cruel woman, was rarely generous, especially with a day of work left unfinished. She and her son enjoyed playing with the prisoners of the forced-work station for sport.

This time, though, she was serious.

And at a word, a blast of searing heat reduced all seven prisoners to radioactive ashes. A heartbeat later, a small explosion turned Lunar Fragment 15 into a rapidly expanding sphere of dust.