The Shattering of the Moons

Chapter One – The Crowded Sky

The sky had always been crowded.

Not with clouds or storms but with moons - half a dozen of them, silver and blue and copper, glowing softly above the planet like patient lanterns. The largest, the golden moon with its shining plateau, carried a colony of miners and dreamers. The others drifted in measured orbits, serene as pearls on invisible strings.

Fred adjusted the eyepiece of the Grand Array telescope, his hands steady despite the late hour. The brass fittings hummed faintly as he tuned them, aligning the Array to sweep across the great smear of stars. And there it was: the Big Twist Nebula, a curl of violet and crimson suspended forever on the edge of sight. Its arms wound around themselves in patterns so hypnotic that first-year apprentices sometimes forgot to breathe when they looked too long.

“You talk to it more than you talk to me,” Emily teased.

Fred glanced at her. She was bent over the logbook, curls dangling into the lamplight, a smudge of ink on her cheek.

“The Array listens better,” he said with a grin.

“The Array doesn’t share its breakfast,” she replied, and he laughed softly.

It was comfortable, the rhythm of their nights. Fred the pragmatist, Emily the dreamer, both of them bound by years of stargazing together. They had made the Observatory of Shifting Skies their home, perched above mist-choked valleys and endless mountain ridges. Here, the world fell away, and only the heavens mattered.

So when the knock came at midnight, sharp and insistent, it startled them both. No visitors ever came this far.

Fred unlatched the dome’s iron door.

Bruce stood there, tall, travel-worn, his cloak streaked with dust. His eyes were fever-bright, his jaw set. He carried a leather case stuffed with rolled charts and crystalline data cubes.

“I need your help,” he said without preamble. “It’s the Big Twist.”

Chapter Two – The Stranger’s News

They cleared the desk in haste, pushing aside star maps and empty mugs of bitter tea. Bruce unrolled his own charts, hands trembling with urgency.

“The nebula is moving,” he said. “Its arms are twisting inward, reaching toward us. I’ve checked thrice. The distortion is real.”

Emily leaned over the parchment, her breath catching. “But the Twist has been stable for centuries. The whole planet navigates by it.”

“Not anymore.” Bruce jabbed a finger at the numbers. “Gravitational anomalies. Emission lines bending. The nebula is pulling. And it’s pulling toward the planet.”

Fred frowned, folding his arms. “That would be catastrophic. Extinction-level catastrophic.”

Bruce’s eyes glittered. “Exactly. That’s why I came. We must confirm.”

Fred opened his mouth to object, but Emily was already leaning closer to Bruce’s charts. She asked questions quickly, eagerly, her eyes lighting with interest at his daring leaps of logic. Fred felt a twinge of irritation. She had never looked at his careful calculations with that kind of excitement.

Still, when she lifted her head and met his gaze, her voice was steady. “Fred, we can’t ignore this. We need to verify.”

Fred swallowed his pride. “Then let’s get to work.”

Chapter Three – Signs in the Sky

For nights they worked without rest.

Fred checked alignments until his back ached. Emily’s ink-stained fingers filled page after page with careful numbers. Bruce prowled the dome, muttering equations aloud, barely sleeping, barely eating.

Strange signs multiplied.

On the copper moon, shadows rippled where shadows should not. The golden colony-moon began to shimmer with faint auroras. Instruments in the Array trembled with interference. Even to the naked eye, the Big Twist Nebula seemed brighter, alive with colour that had never flared before.

Emily whispered once, “It looks like it’s twisting the whole sky.”

Fred said nothing, but something cold had begun to unfurl in his chest.

Tension crackled in the observatory. Bruce pressed closer to Emily as they compared notes, leaning over her shoulder, his voice low. She didn’t push him away; in fact, she smiled faintly at his boldness. Fred noticed - and noticed too that Bruce seldom looked at him except with faint contempt.

One evening, after Bruce left the dome to fetch more equipment, Fred muttered, “Don’t let him charm you.”

Emily raised her head. “Charm me? Fred, this is science. He’s brilliant. He’s seen something no one else has.”

Fred clenched his jaw. “Brilliant, yes. But reckless. He’ll say anything to make himself right.”

She held his gaze for a long moment. “Or maybe you just don’t like that I’m impressed.”

Fred had no answer to that.

On the tenth night, the numbers aligned.

Emily laid her pen down with a trembling hand. “Fred. Bruce. You need to see this.”

Chapter Four – That Which Falls Apart

Emily’s calculations sprawled across the logbook. She pointed to the figures, her eyes luminous.

“The planet is safe,” she said. “The nebula isn’t pulling on us at all.”

Bruce scowled. “What nonsense is this?”

Fred leaned over, scanning the work. His brow furrowed. Then slowly, terribly, he understood.

“She’s right,” he whispered. “The pull isn’t aimed here. It’s aimed at the moons.”

Emily nodded. “Their orbits are unravelling. Look: the copper moon drifting into the path of the blue. The silver tugged towards the golden colony-moon. They’re not stable anymore. They’re going to crash into one another.”

Bruce stared. “But that would…”

“Shatter the skies,” Emily finished softly. “Once the first two collide, the chain reaction will be unstoppable. The colony… the others… gone.”

Fred’s throat closed. He had always loved the moons, their serene procession above the world. To imagine them falling, shattering, was unthinkable.

The nebula had not aimed for the planet at all. It had aimed for the moons.

Bruce gave a sharp laugh, part awe, part despair. “Do you see? This discovery will change everything. We’ll be remembered forever!”

Fred bristled. “People will die, Bruce. The colony…”

“Science demands clarity,” Bruce snapped. “History won’t care about casualties.”

Emily’s face hardened. “History begins with the truth. We have to warn them.”

Fred’s chest swelled with quiet pride - but still, a shadow lingered. Emily was siding with him now, but when Bruce spoke of glory, her eyes had glimmered before she turned away.

Chapter Five – That Which Takes Shape

Dawn found them still at their charts, hollow-eyed. Could they warn the colony? Evacuate? Was there time?

Bruce raged at the walls, scrawling frantic equations. Fred pored over trajectories until his vision blurred.

It was Emily, silent at the Array, who saw it first.

“The moons aren’t just breaking apart,” she whispered. “They’re… aligning.”

The men turned.

“After the collisions, after the fragments settle,” she said, pointing to the model she had drawn, “their orbits converge. Not random chaos. Order. They’ll form a single new body, larger than any moon we’ve ever had. Balanced perfectly between the planet and the nebula.”

Fred felt ice in his veins. “As if someone arranged it.”

Bruce’s face went pale. “As if the nebula planned this.”

The Big Twist blazed suddenly brighter, its curling arms luminous, deliberate. It did not look like a storm of dust and gas anymore. It looked like a hand, pushing pieces into place.

That night, as they stared in horror, the golden colony-moon flared with sudden light.

“An explosion?” Bruce gasped.

“No,” Emily breathed. “That’s a transmission.”

The Array chimed, receiving a signal not meant for human ears. The translation engines crackled, then spat out words.

Fred read them aloud, voice hollow.

“Do not resist. The moons are ours.”

The message repeated, again and again, as the Big Twist glared like a great, watching eye.

And beyond the observatory dome, the first of the moons began to drift off course.

Emily reached for Fred’s hand under the desk. He held it tightly.