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        Fifty-four years have passed since the infamous Shivan destroyer, the Lucifer, had been decimated.  Furthermore, while everyone was certain that the Shivans were still searching for new worlds to conquer, and thus very much alive, they had still failed to locate Sol.

        Or maybe they didn’t.  Maybe they know exactly where the Sol System is.  After all, the Lucifer had seen Sol, if only briefly, before its death.  If the Lucifer had still managed to beam back any visual information before its destruction, the Shivans would have definitely seen Earth.

        But Devon Accolade really didn’t care.  Spending the last days of his life in the cramped confinements of a nursing installation orbiting somewhere near Mars, he reminisced on the past.  He knew he wouldn’t be alive to see the Shivans strike again.  And, moreover, he hoped that he would never see anything as distinctly alien as the Lucifer again.

        Almost every night, Accolade dreamed of the Lucifer.  How he piloted that Ursa bomber and launched a payload of Harbinger bombs at the mechanical beast of a capital ship.  Yes, he remembered the images as if they happened hours ago.  The trip through the spiraling worlds of Subspace, with helpless Shivan fighters completely shieldless, going all-out to protect the Lucifer.  The thrill of destroying the first reactor on the Lucifer, and hence realizing that this monolith was not invulnerable.

        He remembered that bright explosion that left him partially blind in both eyes.  When his wing, followed by 10 or so other ships, came blasting out of Subspace, the Lucifer followed.  The mighty ship was paralyzed, so much so that it failed to complete the return into Hyperspace.  The hole closed in on it, instantly slashing the ship in half; the front end to explode with unprecedented brilliance, and the back end to forever drift in the endless bounds of Subspace.

        And, last in sequence, he would remember that view of Earth.  It made him very proud to be a soldier for the Galactic Terran Alliance.  Looking upon the planet that gave birth to the Terrans, his very homeworld, Accolade was at the pinnacle of his career.

        Those dreams were the good ones.  What would forever disturb Accolade was what would happen after the encounter with the Shivans.  Had the Terrans not learned their lesson?  By absolute chance, contact was re-established with the Vasudans.  And, together, the two species would reconstruct what was lost after The Great War - the Jump Nodes.

        Accolade was outraged.  The very means of travel that brought the Shivans so close to destroying his homeworld were being implemented once more?  Preposterous, totally absurd, and downright moronic if you asked him.  Virtually everyone he flew with on that day when the Lucifer was destroyed agreed with him.  Virtually everyone who didn’t have a role in the war, disagreed with him.

        And, after all, how could Accolade and company argue?  The Vasudans provided such a valuable boost to the Terran economy, once the two races were allied, of course.  The same proved true vice versa.  Corporations became reliant on the Vasudans, and Terrans marveled at Vasudan ingenuity, tools, and other equipment.  The relationship was a completely symbiotic one.

        So, with the complete cooperation and funding of those huge Terran and Vasudan corporations, the Jump Nodes were reconstructed.

        You might be inclined to ask how the nodes were reconstructed - since it seemed that only the Shivans knew how to reconstruct them.  Explorations to far reaching systems found a method, in the form of ancient Vasudan lore, finally located after eons had passed.  When communications between the Terrans and the Vasudans were finally re-established, the latter told of their amazing discovery.

        Sure, the records were ancient.  But if you combine the expertise of two hyper-intelligent creatures, couple them with remnants and records of The Great War, and have enough legal tender, the past would be renewed.

        After the Jump Nodes were set back up once again, Accolade and his team were banished to relative obscurity.  Some people, who really only knew of Accolade and his squadron through the media, considered him to be nothing more than a “geriatric fool.”  “Living in the past,” others said.  They never lived through The Great War, Accolade thought.  They never realized the downright hellish experience that these dying veterans had to play out.  They never realized how close the Terran race was to extinction.

        Had the Terrans not learned their lesson?

        At the end of his life, Devon Accolade already knew the answer.  And, obviously, that answer was no.  No one cared what a cantankerous old “antique” thought.  But, somewhere inside, Accolade knew that they would learn their lesson.  Some visceral and instinctive feeling told him so.

        Accolade died that night aboard that filthy installation.  His death went relatively unnoticed.  His negative feelings were not missed by anyone except the veterans.

        Most of the Terran race would die that night too, as a Shivan capital ship lumbered towards the Sol System at pace beyond human comprehension, seeking revenge.
 

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