PROLOGUE: Lunar Strike
"...it's a work in progress."
* * * * *
12 June 3055
Target System: CLASSIFIED
Concordat Constabulary Detachment B
Flag Bridge, Union-class DropShip *DANZIG*
Tranmission Record: CLASSIFIED
*khzzzzt*
"Passing local lunar ecliptic. Ninety-six minutes to atmospheric interface, all units reporting ready. Still no response to planetary hails, no apparent radio chatter."
"Send again. If anyone down there is picking up, I want us to be on record as having given proper notice of annexation."
"Yes, ma'am. Signal away."
[pause]
"Still no response. Final approach data is in; no change to assessments."
"So they've got primitive rail lines, an agriculture-based society with next to no industrial capacity, and limited stonework fortifications. Oversight'll love this one... another 'lost and backwards colony of humanity' in desperate need of benevolent supervision."
Yes, ma'am, I'm --- wait. Wait, what? WHAT?!"
"Report!"
"Magnetic readings off the scale! Literally! All my instruments have - "
*KZZZZZZZZZZZHHHHHHHHHHHHHSSSSHHHHHHHHT*
"What in God's name was that?!"
"MA'AM! Prometheus, Vandal and Escalation are gone! Just... GONE! They've got some kind of orbiting defense station --- "
[pause]
"That's no space station... that's a moon."
"Ninety degrees starboard yaw, give us full thrust, Mister Fletcher! All hands, brace for acceleration... GOD HELP US! BRACE FOR IM- "
*khzzzzt*
***TRANSMISSION TERMINATES
* * * * *
15 September 3055
New Samantha, Taurus, Taurian Concordat
Offices of the Colonial Oversight Committee
1635hrs
Five men sat, evenly-spaced, at a long table of polished walnut draped with three evenly-spaced banners of solemn red and gold. Each of these depicted a bull’s head, its exaggerated horns curled downward to encompass three gold stars, each bearing five evenly-spaced points.
The men, and the bulls, seemed to glare in unison at the sole witness standing before the Colonial Oversight Committee. As "even" as everything else seemed to be, he did not get the impression that "-minded" was on the agenda.
The center committeeman, with carefully-maintained hair of Irish red, slowly removed the needless affectation of his eyeglasses. All the better to stare at his intended victim --- it was actually easier that way, given that Taurian medical science had long ago made nearsightedness almost as rare as polio. The glasses were purely for the press cameras, quietly watching the proceedings from the hall's back row of otherwise empty seats.
"Am I to understand, Professor Fishmonger, that over five hundred valiant Concordat troops and support personnel lost their lives because someone threw a moon at them?"
The small, balding professor of astrophysics (University of Tharkad, 3027, emeritus) stood up and shook his head firmly. "The name is Fassenbinder. And no, that would be an incorrect statement, Minister Jeffries."
"Oh, good, because I - "
Fassenbinder interrupted, continuing. "It is more correct to state that the moon in question was wielded like a fly-swatter. If they had merely 'thrown' it, the moon would have continued on its deviated course, subject to the usual laws of motion."
Minister Jeffries allowed a dangerous tone to flavor his response. "Perhaps, Professor Fenderbender, you would care to elucidate on how that load of *horseshit** is even possible...?*" In a less libertarian society than that of the Taurian Concordat, dropping such language into the record of official business would be scandalous --- here, done to illustrate a strongly-held opinion and in moderation, it was almost a necessary part of political theater.
No one understood that better than Fassenbinder, the "outsider egghead" with the slight but noticeable German accent. The little man drew himself up, as though preparing to lecture a class --- which, for all intents and purposes, he was.
I might only be here to provide an intellectual veneer to this farce, but I will never stand down from a chance to EDUCATE.
"I completely agree, Minister; it certainly seems like horseshit to anyone with a basic grasp of orbital mechanics. Yet the Concordat's experts on the subject, including myself, have a much stronger grasp on it, and we have not limited ourselves to hashing over video recorded by JumpShips more than fifty astronomical units distant. We also took care to pore over everything from thermal readings to background radiation static. If you would care to explain how to fake the albedo of a moon-sized object, so that it noticeably blots out part of the system primary even when seen at such great distance, I should be greatly obliged."
Minister Jeffries turned his best white-toothed smile on the professor --- with just a slight leftward angle so the cameras could best catch it. "We do have such things as expandable solar sails, sir, by which our JumpShips routinely power the drives carrying them from star to star. I can readily imagine one being deployed at the precise point between the planet and our JumpShips as to create just such an effect."
Fassenbinder shook his head, almost sadly. This is a representative sample of my adopted nation's political leadership? Better to have stayed in the Commonwealth...! "There are no fewer than three major problems with that, Minister."
He ticked them off on his fingers. "First, solar sail deployment is in no way instantaneous. A kilometer-wide sail takes more than an hour to deploy, or it will tear itself apart under the stress. They do not simply appear from nowhere with a cartoonish 'pfoomph' sound effect, Minister Jeffries."
That first "finger" elicited several chuckles not only from the loyal opposition on the Committee, but also some of the press in attendance. Jeffries' face turned downwards with annoyance, to which Fassenbinder paid only passing notice as he continued.
"Second, this world's inhabitants --- or any allies it might have, given their apparent lack of any local spaceflight capacity --- would have had to know exactly where to position such an array. Given that JumpShips Stuart and Forrester of Constabulary Detachment B could have arrived at almost any position within the system, even separate ones, the locals would have required exact knowledge of where they would appear, days in advance, in order to pre-position any such arrays. The crews of the Stuart and Forrester, however, using the limited data provided by the original ComStar Explorer system survey of earlier this year, did not even begin to plot their arrival points until several hours before committing to the jump itself."
Then came the final digit, this one upraised so the cameras could easily see the gesture.
"Third, nothing we know of can so totally block the emission of a system primary in the same way a planetary or lunar body can. Even fifty solar sails, stacked one atop the other, would have little to no effect on the bending of light, on gamma radiation, or on the detection of dozens of other key particles which all simply disappeared behind the anomaly."
Jeffries visibly scowled, still stung by laughter having been brought into the proceedings at his expense. "Okay, fine, but a moon? An asteroid with an old WarShip engine on it, maybe I could believe, but - "
Fassenbinder cut off his recalcitrant student with a dismissive wave, prompting a brief flurry of gaveling and harrumphing. Someone from the press corps shouted out, "Yeah, what about that idea, Doc?" and suddenly all the lenses were zoomed in on the "expat egghead". Jeffries knew when to fold a bad hand; he waved back to the professor as though granting the permission which the newsies had already effectively asserted on his behalf.
The professor continued as though nothing had happened: "No trace of a drive plume appeared either visually or thermally, even when the object moved laterally. Not to mention that it was still moon-sized; had it little enough mass that ship drives could have moved it so readily, its density would have been roughly that of shaving cream. In absence of any better explanation, Minister, the only working hypothesis left to us is that the locals hit Detachment B with a moon."
As murmuring from the press began to rise, he signaled for quiet once again --- and, miraculously, got it.
"There are also the crystals recovered by the original ComStar survey teams to consider, samples of which were obtained by the Constabulary in April." He held up a large folder, stuffed to bursting. "The initial experiments are in, and I am pleased to report upon them here, for the first time."
Jeffries slammed the gavel down. "That's enough, Fassenbinder! You're to report upon that material in closed-session only!"
Fassenbinder turned directly to the ranks of cameras arrayed behind him and grinned widely. "According to the notice I received to appear, Minister, this IS a closed session! I can't imagine who thought to clear the esteemed Fourth Estate to be present here today...!"
Suddenly, all those zoomed-in lenses were on Jeffries. A few panned back and forth, clearly trying to get the reaction of the other panel members --- all of whom had gone completely stonefaced and found reasons to examine their papers, or personal computers, or the veneer on the walls.
Jeffries' teeth could almost be heard grinding from across the room. He'd clearly meant this event to embarrass Fassenbinder's team, even if it wasn't readily apparent why. "Please, Professor. Kindly continue."
Fassenbinder nodded genially enough. "Of course, Minister." He cleared his throat. "Our primary discoveries were twofold: firstly, when cut, these minerals re-stratify into the most perfectly symmetrical pattern possible. Cut a single gem in half, any way you like, and you will end up with two smaller but structurally identical gems. This property seems to extend down to nearly the molecular level. Secondly, and completely in violation of the laws of thermodynamics, any power source fed through such a gem is magnified by a factor of three-point-five-seven, mean average."
He looked up and blinked once at the cameras, still smiling. "That's rounded down."
* * * * *
By the end of the hour, interstellar communications made possible by hyperpulse-generation technology had spread the findings of Fassenbinder's team across the whole of the Taurian Concordat.
By the end of the first day, every evening news report and talk show, on every Concordat world, was awash in speculation about everything from cheap energy to domestic applications. The onset of a Golden Age seemed to be imminent.
Then everyone remembered the destruction of Constabulary Detachment B, the event that Jeffries had meant to highlight as justification for a larger military expenditure in his Colonial department.
By the end of the first week, outrage had spread, fostered more than a little by Jeffries' presentation of the unit's obliteration being an unprovoked act of war by "unknown means" against "humanitarian efforts". He deliberately obfuscated and silenced Fassenbinder's complex arguments on the point, while quietly arranging the destruction of the mission's records. In particular, he ensured that no one would remember Constabulary B's original objective: seizing a garden-class planet to provide the Taurian people with more land, even if at the expense of whomever happened to live there already.
By the end of the first month, every intelligence agency of every interstellar realm encompassing humanity's collective reach across the Milky Way knew what the mysterious gem-like minerals could do. The security considerations of each demanded the military possibilities of a resource which magnified energy input. Fusion reactors could be made smaller, BattleMechs more nimble, lasers more powerful. Whomever obtained monopoly over the gems could seal the fate of the Inner Sphere, either as king or king-maker.
And if the locals, clearly capable of destroying a combined-armed battalion and its DropShips in transit, could not be bothered to answer a radio to engage in honest trade (or at least allow themselves to be threatened and extorted), well...
By the end of winter, the first small DropShips thundered through Equestrian skies using steep polar entry angles, avoiding the lunar ecliptic altogether.
By the end of the following year, Professor Emeritus Seigmund Fassenbinder was found hanging in the basement of his home.
His suicide note, addressed to the Princesses of Equestria, was an apology.
