Page 1 of Tears of Tungsten
Prologue
It was the year 2153. The war with the heliovore apsids had claimed more than eighty percent of Terra’s population. The numbers of losses would’ve been even higher, had chimeras not taken over most of the fighting.
With the massive, tachyon-fueled mechas as their allies, humans had a mild edge over the apsids. It didn’t help as much as they wanted.
One of the final battles was held near the planet Mercury. In the clash between the Terrans and their foes, Mercury was almost destroyed, large parts of it turning into an asteroid belt. The true extent of the damage to the apsids was unknown, but after the battle, they stopped their attacks, retreating to their mysterious homeland. Over the following decades, incursions in Terran territory were few and unremarkable.
It was this retreat that ultimately led The Hyperion task force to attempt a mission in the depths of The Apsid Quasar. Terran forces suffered a devastating loss, and apsid activity increased again.
Another war was coming and, this time, the chimeras were nowhere near as prepared to handle the apsids as they had been before.
