Epilog
INTERSTELLAR SPACE—.5 LY BEYOND OORT STATION PRIME
The lone Marauder spacecraft hurtled through the interstellar void toward its homeworld 87 lightyears distant. The spacecraft was traveling at 99.9, followed by five 9s percent of lightspeed—a flattened oval disk twenty-five meters across and invisibly thin seen from its edge. It would arrive in its home system in four days and eleven hours subjective time, although 87 years would have passed back on Earth.
The spacecraft was carrying a critical message. The incipient civilization from the star system they had set out to raid 175 years earlier by local time had completely destroyed their 5,000-starship fleet.
The Dark Forest had turned on the Marauders.
