After billions of years of gravitational pulling and aggregation, the dense core formed through impacts and high-temperature fusion was shattered in an instant by the devastating collision. Frost and clouds of dead rock erupted like a fountain from the center of the several-kilometer-long asteroid. Hard, gigantic scales scraped against rock in the void, raising patches of frosty mist, while the dense iron core burned beneath its wings before cooling again. What followed was utter emptiness. No giant beast, no impact—everything vanished once more. This place was filled with deathly cold. Starlight could not warm the rock strata here. The asteroid, knocked off its original orbit, began drifting slowly toward the Solar System, where it would eventually be torn apart completely by gravity as it passed the planets.
This was a silent war. Only when his Power Armor sounded an alarm, or when fragments of rock struck its surface at high speed, could he hear anything. He did not need sound to judge danger. The Mental Energy of his wide-area Mind Communication spread out like radar, detecting any intelligent life-form nearby that experienced emotional fluctuations. Threads of fate tore apart before him into strands as fine as filaments, revealing special futures shaped by different influences in every second.
He was bleeding. Blood was drawn out through the soft seals of his Power Armor by the low pressure, freezing into rubies in the void.
A fist-sized planetoid traveling at high speed had struck his thigh, nearly shattering his leg bone. A multicolored feather had pierced his abdomen, and that piece of protein-based Organic Matter was still lodged between the front and rear armor plates. Beads of blood flowing from the wound in his neck floated inside his helmet. Before long, the programs carried by the Power Armor responded. The life-support system, designed