It’s hot on Pluto. Maggie and I used to maintain the fusion reactors that heated the planet and generated the force shield that held the heat in. That was before we were conscripted into the Plutonian trenches. More people have died in the Plutonian trenches than died in Earth’s World Wars I, II, and III combined, including their coincident genocides and pandemics. That’s not counting the millions who have died on Charon.

Now it’s just Maggie and I. We haven’t seen a living human since we slaughtered the last small wave that attacked our position last year. There has been no response on either our planetary or off-planet radios for months. We have to believe humanity is nearly extinct, destroyed in the solar system-wide war over the artifacts discovered on Nix and Hydra.

Two of Pluto’s six fusion reactors have failed. We don’t know how long we can keep the others running. We pray for contact through our radios but we receive none. We have one hope: Maggie is pregnant.

But it’s beginning to cool on Pluto.