“Location?” As Cartwright moved in alongside her, he hoped this third flare event would be like the previous two that had struck the Sol system over the past fifty-two hours. Both flares had lasted nearly five hours and had grown to encompass a volume larger than the Earth itself, yet both had appeared in empty space, in keeping with the probabilities. The first affected zone had contained nothing of note besides a navigational buoy and a small Earth-crossing asteroid. The second flare had been in the path of an Earth-Mars shuttle with nearly two hundred passengers aboard, but far enough ahead that they were able to decelerate and avoid it; the only casualties had been a few missed appointments. Mercifully, Admiral S’rrel’s fear of all the flares appearing at once had not come to pass. But that meant the threat would continue to hang over Earth and its neighbors for an unknown time to come. How long before their luck ran out?

Not long at all, he thought as he saw the location marker appear on the system overview display on the rightmost wall screen. Kexas spoke, confirming and adding detail to the display. “Flare zone is in the orbital path of the L5 Lagrangian community. Projecting growth rate and longevity… estimating sixty-two minutes before the first L5 facilities enter flare zone. Estimate fourteen percent of L5 facilities at risk of direct flare contact.”

Commodore Song had called it. The L4 and L5 Lagrangian points—islands of gravitational stability leading and trailing Earth in its orbital path by sixty degrees—were natural places to locate space stations. The first wave of L5 habitats in the twenty-first century had tragically been lost in one of the early warp experiments, but the Lagrangian points had been too valuable to leave unoccupied for long, and thus they had eventually filled up again with asteroidal ore-processing facilities, repair and refueling stations, research outposts, and the like. Over the past two centuries, they had grown up into sizable space-based communities, orbital cities in their own right comprising numerous space stations spread out in wide orbits around the Lagrangian points like satellites around invisible planets. Given how wide a volume they occupied, it was no surprise that they would be the first targets hit.

“That fourteen percent. What’s their total estimated population?”

A Zaranite ensign answered through his breathing mask. “Two hundred eighty-four thousand, Admiral.”

And barely an hour to evacuate them. “Order all available ships to converge on L5. Ground all civilian traffic, and authorize in-system warp travel for the task force. Alert medical facilities to prep for incoming casualties.”

The control room personnel moved briskly to comply with Cartwright’s orders. This was what they’d spent the past few days preparing for, and they had it down cold. Cartwright was sure the captains and crews of the task force ships were equally ready.

But how well would the civilians of L5 cope with what was now bearing down on them?