"Is it happening again?"
In the Dark Domain, night fell over Daren Star. Ernst, the new owner of the planet's best-known cybernetic implant manufacturer, looked up with a worried expression.
A dozen or so streaks of light, like blazing meteors, suddenly shot across the distant sky.
He knew full well they weren't meteors. He'd seen something like this just a few months ago.
They were spaceships!
Yes, spaceships—the kind that, as far as they knew, existed only in works of fiction!
The first time he'd seen that enormous, cold-silver ship break through the clouds and appear beneath the blood-red sun at dusk, Ernst, like everyone around him, had thought it was a mirage or some other natural wonder.
It wasn't until the ship landed and a white-haired girl in an advanced combat suit stepped lightly out of the open hatch that he finally realized the world was about to change.
"Is Daren Star going to be in trouble?"
Ernst quickly called a friend who held a position in the newly formed united government to ask what was going on.
"You guessed right. Those really are spaceships. There are seventeen of them. The aliens aboard contacted us just now. They claim to be the Imperial Guard of the Taim Civilization, and say they've been ordered to capture the criminal who tried to assassinate the Head of State."
Ernst's expression changed. "Could the criminal they're talking about be the woman who arrived on Daren Star a few months ago?"
His friend shook his head, anger hidden in his eyes. "I don't know. Those people are far too arrogant. The foreign affairs officer hesitated for only a few seconds before they forcibly dragged him onto their ship. Carter tried to rescue him, but some unknown energy crushed him into a pile of flesh."