The Diaries of Dr. Horatio D. Phillips

Pluto, 2414 (Age Twenty Seven)

People made jokes. It was arguably the greatest act of terrorism man had ever seen - arguably not on account of the magnitude and the horror of it, but because some people already considered it a war.

Some still do not consider it a war.

Others considered it a war long before human beings of any kind had set foot on either world.

It was a sobering disaster for most, and fatally so for many, even years later when I was nearly among them. But by the time UniServe took action, some could not resist the comic relief offered by the irony of sending humanitarian aid to a world that had been completely and utterly destroyed, an event that was seen as a blaze of light in the night sky of nearly every planet in the solar system. Of course, it was not the hapless citizens of Charon that Uniserve and the Institute were concerned with, but rather the no less unfortunate survivors on the sister world of Pluto.

In my mind, there were no survivors on either world. So few in any time and place are truly survivors.

When the tragedy occurred, I was already enroute to Pluto as part of a medical detachment sent to help the victims of the already raging civil war, and I can call it nothing less; once The Bridge was destroyed I cannot see how anyone was able to convince themselves otherwise. Consequently, our transport arrived only days after the event. The Plutonians had already received as much digital aid as could be transmitted, but our bodies and our supplies were sorely needed.

Unfortunately, there were forces at work on that distant, cold, and desolate world that were still at odds with our purposes. The environment was fiercely hostile; we could scarcely approach the planet from the far side of the explosion, and once we landed, meteor showers were a deadly and daily threat. Any Charonese stranded away form home had nothing left to loose, and we arrived – we embarked from Mars even – with full understanding that an attack against us was highly probable. Plutonian authorities allowed us to move only in restricted areas and only under military escort. But, within a day of landing, I knew that the Charonese and Plutonian militants were not our true enemies. Something darker, and far more disturbing awaited us in those tunnels, something that made our fear of the ever falling debris a mere child’s nightmare in comparison - and remember the dark dreams of my childhood were not the sort that my parents.. or my doctors.. could assure me they had feared when they were my age.

Tara was with me at that time, and…