2321, "Ant Swarm" Plan (Part 1)
"Hey, Joseph, what are you thinking about?" An Imperial Army soldier walked over and asked another, taller soldier.
Under the cover of night, Joseph looked toward the enormous V-150 Planet Defender cannon. Against the occasional flashes of red fire on the horizon, the massive cannon resembled a towering mountain—heavy, dark, steady, and suffocating.
"My hometown, Duka Planet, has beautiful red sunsets like that too," Joseph said wistfully. "I was thinking that maybe in a few days, once those officers surrender, we'll be able to go home."
"Haha, don't get it wrong. That's firelight, not a sunset," the imperial soldier said. "Haven't you seen enough of that kind of firelight already? There was a meteor shower all night yesterday. It was all fragments from space stations destroyed in outer space."
"A meteor shower is good. Once they can't hold this place, they'll naturally surrender. I heard the Duchy of Dawn treats prisoners pretty well. Maybe I can even apply to return to my hometown," Joseph said.
"If you really become a prisoner, you might as well settle in the Duchy of Dawn. They're taking in immigrants on a massive scale," the soldier said.
"I still want to go back and see my wife." Joseph pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket, took one for himself, and tossed the rest to the other soldiers.
The Milky Way Galaxy had things similar to cigarettes, but theirs were rolled with trace amounts of spices. By comparison, this kind of cigarette, a specialty of Dawn Star Planet, had become extremely popular among rank-and-file soldiers and civilians over the past decade or so.
One soldier caught the cigarettes, pulled out a flameless lighter, lit one, and took a drag. "Have you ever considered this? If you're no longer