“Why are we at a baseball stadium, Atlas?” Peter asked as he kicked a small rock off the batter’s box area.

Peter, along with Angelique, Atlas, and the Ship of Atlas, were all on a planet called Chrysalis. It had been seven months since the attack on Titan, and Atlas had been working away in secret for the last six.

Chrysalis was one of the moons in one of Angelique’s hidden systems. It was the original location she’d transformed when she’d first set up the system. But once the terraforming project was complete on the chosen planet in the system, everyone had migrated, and they’d left the moon as a museum and research facility.

Which Peter realized sounded a tad odd, given they were standing in the middle of a university-campus facility that was left dormant and unused for many years. But when a K2 civilization had the power to create or transform almost anything, designating an entire moon as a museum turned research facility wasn’t that far-fetched.

“Are you all connected to the local Starnet using a secure connection?” Atlas asked instead of answering Peter’s question.

The road to recovery for Titan had been long—and wasn’t yet complete. But there were a number of massive learnings throughout the process. Firstly, the security on all the colonies was woefully out-of-date. Too much reliance on automated systems, and almost everything was accessible digitally.

This made sense given that all the beta explorers, the people who’d set up the planets, were digital. They needed to have access to everything digitally. But this also left everything open to remote hacking attacks, which the Atua were very experienced in. Their knowledge of human-designed programs was immense. It was well-known that the Atua had given New Zealand an AI that had completely transformed the world. But there was now a working theory that the Atua’s influence was more prevalent than that.

It was now suggested that many of the human-based programming languages and design were created by the Atua and given to humans. That way they always had a way through the back door.

Humans were focused on building applications on top of the operating system, while the operating system was left wide open.

Even on planets like Neuropa, where they assumed they were building things from scratch, they weren’t. There was always a kernel taken from previous systems.

One of Angelique’s planets had developed several completely different computer architectures. These were assumed to be safe—well, as safe as they knew was possible.

“We’re both connected via the Stealthnet connection,” Peter said looking toward Angelique, who nodded.

“Well, as you know, I’ve been working here in secret,” Atlas said. “Working on something that I could use to make sure we never end up in a similar situation again.”

Peter was interested in what Atlas was going to share. He thought it might be a weapon. He knew that Atlas was angrier than he had ever seen him. He’d never seen Atlas want revenge so badly.

But as Peter looked around the park, he began to second-guess Atlas’s intentions. He was beginning to think he was here to share something else.

Angelique smiled at Atlas. “The suspense is driving me crazy. Spit it out, old man.”

Atlas pointed to the pitcher’s mound, to where a machine was. He walked toward it and gestured for the others to follow.

Atlas stood in front of what looked like an automatic ball thrower. He turned it on, and the two rotating wheels began to spin. And they spun quickly.

Atlas picked up one of the balls and loaded it into the back of the machine. It rolled down a small track and then as soon as it hit the spinning wheels it shot out the front and slammed into the net behind the batter’s plate. “Any idea why we’re here?”

Peter knew this was all spectacle. He knew Atlas was putting on a show. “You’re going to build a giant version of this and shoot an object out of a rotating rail gun?” Peter asked sarcastically.

“Well, kind of,” Atlas said. “There’s one more piece of the puzzle I need to explain to you before I show you what this is.” Atlas looked at both Peter and Angelique. “How efficient is dynamite at turning matter into energy?”

Both Peter and Angelique shrugged.

“Not very powerful,” Peter said. “I don’t think you could create a dynamite stick big enough to punch a hole through one of our spacecraft.”

Peter looked at Angelique, who said, “Don’t look at me. I have no idea about some ancient technology.”

Atlas bit his lower lip. “Okay, the analogy obviously doesn’t work.” Atlas picked up his notepad and started racing through the pages.

“Use the energy analogy,” Ship offered. “That’s your strongest example.”

Atlas became animated at that prospect. “The fusion energy that powers our spacecraft, how efficient is it at turning matter into energy?”

Angelique raised an eyebrow. “Are you talking about something to do with E equals MC squared?”

“Correct,” Atlas replied.

Peter and Angelique both shrugged because they had no idea.

“If you’re like me, you probably think it’s really efficient,” Ship said, helping Atlas out. “The amount of material we need to power this entire moon’s energy requirements is tiny.”

“Exactly.” Atlas held up one of the baseballs. “If this baseball was the matter used in fusion power, it would power this entire moon and more.” Atlas placed the ball onto the ramp, and it rocketed out the front and hit the wall behind it. “But it’s still tiny. Roughly one percent of the energy trapped inside of this ball would be converted into energy.” Atlas pointed up toward the star. “The star in the sky is the universe’s most powerful fusion reactor, and it’s nowhere near as good as the designs we have now.”

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“Okay, so what’s more powerful?” Peter asked, guessing the direction Atlas was heading.

“Black holes,” Atlas said matter-of-factly. “Rotating black holes will turn forty percent of the matter they’re given into energy.”

Peter thought about that statement and realized he wasn’t fully understanding it. “I’m struggling to visualize that.”

“It means,” Atlas said, picking up another baseball. “If we turned forty percent of this object into energy, this entire moon would explode. We would probably cause so much violent destruction to the moon that the nearby planets would be thrown off course.” Atlas turned a knob on the ball-throwing machine, and it started to increase its speed. He dropped the ball down the track once more. This time it rocketed out the front at such a speed that Peter nearly missed it.

The ball quickly traveled through the net on the other side and slammed into the wall behind. It exploded on impact against the brick wall.

“So what are you saying?” Peter asked. “We’re going to move a black hole to outside of the Atua’s home world?”

“Even better,” Atlas said. “We’re going to create black holes. It’s actually quite simple.” Atlas pointed at each rotating circular wheel. “Imagine each of these was a black hole.” Atlas held up a ball. “And this was a small payload.” Atlas sent another one of the balls through the machine. “If we sent billions of light particles past two rotating black holes, we’d impart enough energy to blow a hole right through any Atua planet.”

“But how?” Angelique asked. “How are you making this all work?”

“Creating the black hole wasn’t that hard.”

Peter noticed a sense of pride in the way Atlas said that statement. Peter knew him well enough to know that it was the kind of thing only Atlas could accomplish. It had probably required him to learn a massive range of other fields of knowledge just to come up with a theory of how it would work. Then to actually complete the work in less than a year was incredible.

Atlas continued. “I’m using a much more powerful version of your tractor beam, Angelique. If you combine that with the hapticgraphic technology, it’s possible to condense a gas so much that a micro–black hole is created.” He pointed at one of the spinning wheels on the machine. “The biggest hurdle is they evaporate so quickly that they need to be created at the exact time I send the particle right by them.”

“So you’ve built a weapon that uses a particle accelerator to fire a special kind of particle out the front of it?” Angelique asked. “And then you create two micro–black holes right at the exact moment that particle passes by so that the amount of energy that it has is multiplied massively.”

“Massive would be an understatement. But yes, that’s essentially what happens.”

“What about the black holes’ spin?” Peter asked. “Surely we don’t have the technology to spin the black hole fast enough to do what you’re wanting?”

“Well, that’s the fun part,” Atlas replied. “The intense spin directions happen naturally.” Atlas looked at Ship as if to say, This is your cue.

Ship began to rise off the ground. He had his arms stretched out in what looked like a biblical pose as if he was about to be loaded onto a cross.

Atlas walked over and used his arms to spin him around. Almost like a top, Ship began to turn around. It was a slow and steady spin.

“The great thing about spinning objects is the smaller you make them the faster they spin.”

Ship began to pull his arms in toward himself. As he did, his rotational speed increased.

“It’s the same principal that happens with figure skaters,” Atlas explained. “While their arms are stretched out, they spin slowly. But as they pull their arms closer together, they increase the rate of turning.”

The conversation with the team went on like that for quite some time, everyone asking Atlas and Ship questions to fully understand how the weapon worked.

Peter couldn’t help but be impressed. Atlas’s mighty brain had worked hard to create something so simple yet extremely powerful. In theory, what he’d built a laser weapon so powerful that it could blow an entire planet apart in a second. It was essentially a Death Star weapon on steroids.

All they needed to do next was test it.

“But how are we going to test it without blowing up a planet?” Peter asked. “It’s not like we have a spare planet just lying around that we can blow up.”

Atlas waved his hands up in the air, and everything around everyone began to stretch and fold. Suddenly Peter found himself standing outside of a spacecraft floating in space.

Peter looked to his left and noticed a large spacecraft with a strange-looking nose cone.

“With this,” Atlas said.

The nose cone of the spacecraft glowed red for half a second. Then a bright light shot out the front of it.

Peter hadn’t realized it until that moment. But there was a planet out in the distance. It was quite far away. It sort of looked like they were as far away from the planet as the moon was from Earth. It was a blue-and-green orb out in the distance. It had white clouds.

Thirty seconds must have passed before anything happened.

In an instant, the planet began to move and shake. It started to crack open, as if it was an egg that had just been cracked. The insides of it exploded outward in a red lava-looking yolk.

Then an explosion, and the planet completely ripped itself apart.

“This is what would happen if we fired this weapon at Earth,” Atlas said.

Even though there was no sound in space, Peter felt like he was hearing the crackle of tectonic plates on the surface of the world being displaced.

Again, Peter was amazed at just how much energy had been pumped into that planet in such a short amount of time. It just didn’t seem possible. But then he was watching proof of what it was capable of doing right in front of him.

Peter thought a bit more about how humans would respond if an alien showed up and told humanity to leave them alone, otherwise they’d blow up Earth.

He was almost confident that there would be a lot of people angry. A lot of people would suggest they shouldn’t be pushed around. But ultimately, he knew the leaders of Earth would understand that a war was a no-win situation. If the only demand was “Leave us alone,” then humanity would leave them alone.

Peter thought more about their current situation with the Atua. It was simple game theory. Right now, the Atua believed humanity was not in a position to fight back. They believed humanity had no way of truly hurting them. So it made sense that they were happy to attack one of their planets. Peter knew that human history was littered with dead civilizations, killed by stronger kingdoms just because the attackers had known there were no consequences.

Again, it was game theory. The only way to ensure humanity would not be attacked again was to show the Atua that there would be consequences. Humanity had a means to defend themselves.

Peter did not think using the weapon was the right thing. Even if they got a critical hit on the planet and utterly destroyed their home world, it was impossible to prove that the Atua didn’t have another way of attacking back—retaliation. Atlas so far was confident they were confined to only one world. But the risks of an all-out war were too high.

But Peter knew they needed to show the Atua that they had the capability of causing immense destruction. And then, under the rules of game theory, the Atua should rethink their approach with humanity. An all-out war, where both sides could utterly destroy one of the other’s planets, was a war not worth having. No one would win.

Peter understood that. And he hoped that the Atua would, too. He also knew the Atua were alien. Alien in thought and alien in culture. So there was a possibility that they didn’t see it this way.

Peter decided then to study their behavior and make sure his assumptions were correct. He wished Icarus was around at that very moment.

“Has there been any word on Icarus?” Peter asked.

Angelique shook her head. “He’s not online yet.”

Icarus had configured his backups so that no one could turn them on remotely. They were triggered to periodically scan the systems for a key. If Icarus didn’t provide that key, then one of his backups was switched on.

Everyone assumed that Icarus would have come back by now. But obviously the time between the backup checks was longer than anyone had anticipated.