Prologue: 3104 AD: The Moon
"Our forces are engaging the Moon Kingdom outer perimeter, milord."
"Bring the ship around to face the front line, lieutenant."
"Aye sir."
The Star Cruiser Black Helm slowly turned towards two gigantic starfighter forces converging a thousand miles above the moon. As the opposing fighters entered missile range, each side let loose a barrage upon their enemies. Bright flashes of light appeared through space, as ships exploded all about the moon defense perimeter. The ships engaged, and the bright orange plasma blasts from the fighters’ cannons erupted all around.
Lord DarkStar, commanding officer of the Black Helm, watched the view from the bridge. He paced back and forth, issuing orders to the bridge officers. "Captain, bring the fourth wing around to destroy that cruiser out there. The seventh wing should be in range of that point defense turrent, see if they can knock it out. Helm, full power. Bring the Black Helm within 20 miles of the battle. We still have four wings that haven’t launched yet."
Each officer acknowledged and relayed DarkStar’s commands around the extensive communications network. An officer on the lower bridge turned from his post and shouted, "Sir, the Moon Kingdom’s perimeter defense is at 75%."
"Good, the battle is proceeding well," said DarkStar more or less to himself, as he returned his view to the large screen in front of the bridge. "Poor little Queen Serenity, with her pitiful forces. She cannot withstand my power." He smiled cruelly and continued his commands.
Outside the battle raged. Hundreds of ships darted in all directions, firing orange plasma bolts at any enemy who came within range. Missiles flew through the vacuum of space, as hundreds of pilots fought, and died.
An exceptionally talented pilot flew through space at fantastic speeds in a tiny jet-black starfighter. He dodged and weaved with precision, firing plasma bolts with deadly accuracy. DarkStar noticed this fighter fly past the Black Helm’s bridge windows, dangerously close, and blast a Moon Kingdom fighter to dust.
"Impressive, Xerik," DarkStar said into the comm link. "Most impressive."
The fighter pilot dove back into the fray, firing swarms of missiles at his enemies.
"The outer perimeter has been eliminated, milord." The lieutenant said looking down at a small screen.
"Very nice. Prepare to approach the central perimeter."
"Aye sir." The Black Helm slowly approached the moon, as Lord DarkStar’s black fighters dove closer to the moon. Several flights of ships launched from the Moon Kingdom’s starbases, and were almost instantly thrown into the fray. Swarms of black fighters shot across the starbases, firing into vulnerable gun turrents and personnel carriers. Out of the corner of his eye DarkStar witnessed the destruction of one of the Moon Kingdom’s starbases. Apparently its energy core had been corrupted, and the resulting fusion explosion annihilated the entire base and any ships within a mile of it instantly. "Good work," DarkStar said into his communicator. "Whoever blasted that energy core is up for a promotion."
"It was Commander Malik who destroyed the core, milord." A pilot answered through the comm.
DarkStar chuckled. "Scratch that promotion bit. He can’t rank much higher than where he is right now."
Another starbase was engulfed in a nuclear blast, and several Moon Kingdom ships flying too close evaporated in the blast. "Ha!" DarkStar clapped his hands once. "You’re mine now, Serenity!"
"Sir, we’re ready to begin the assault on the inner perimeter."
"Good to hear, lieutenant." DarkStar stopped momentarily. He looked out over the growing battle scene before him, miles away.
"Uh, lieutenant, where’s the twelfth wing? They should have engaged the inner perimeter by now!"
"Sir, the twelfth wing has just… disappeared, sir. I’m not picking up any debris or jump paths out there."
"What?!" Shouted DarkStar. He rushed to the officer’s chair and glanced at the readout. It reported that all twelve ships had suddenly disappeared without a trace. DarkStar looked back up on the battle raging on in the windows circling the bridge. He noticed a strange occurrence, something like a blue flicker of energy around the entire moon. His eyes widened behind his sunglasses. "Oh, shit," he muttered.
"All fighters approaching the inner perimeter, pull up!" He shouted into the comm link. Suddenly hundreds of bright explosions fired up all around the moon, in a perfectly concentric circle. DarkStar shouted to the helmsman. "Full reverse! Back off! Back off!"
The Black Helm’s massive main aft engines shut down and the tiny fore maneuvering engines came to full power. The ship shuttered and began to back away from the moon. The tiny black fighters previously attacking the moon’s defenses suddenly peeled off, back towards their mothership. Those that lagged behind were vaporized by an unseen force.
DarkStar was furious. "Damn! Get us out of here!" He shouted. The Black Helm and its fighter support quickly backed away from the moon, while the remaining moon defense forces staggered back to their bases.
- ***
The captain quickly replied, "No sir, there’s no enemy forces for two hundred million miles."
DarkStar switched off the comm without replying, and took a drink from the glass. He was in disbelief in how arrogant he had been. Why didn’t he see the shield coming?
All around DarkStar’s quarters lay old books, notes, and data tapes. They contained stories of the Sailor Scouts from the last three thousand years. They had faced many perils, fought many enemies, and every time they triumphed. Once or twice nearly all of them had been killed, but somehow they managed to pull through every time, defeating their opponents again and again. Queen Beryl and her generals. The two aliens searching for energy for their pathetic plant life. The weakling Prince Diamond and his forces from the Negamoon. That strange professor and his search for the Holy Grail. The list went on. On each occasion, the Sailor Scouts managed to protect the earth from destruction, invasion, or whatever their enemies planned. But why the earth? Why would they fight for the earth and not the moon?
And the most important question, how did they continue to win? In all of his studies DarkStar had never uncovered any proof that the Scouts fought well. In fact he found that Sailor Moon was particularly clumsy. The Scouts relied on their powers and their weapons to defeat their enemies. Thus, he realized, the best way to eliminate the Sailor Scouts was to deprive them of their powers, rendering them helpless before him.
For many a night DarkStar had pondered these thoughts. Now he had a new dilemma, a totally impenetrable force shield around the entire moon. The sensor scans reported that the shield’s power came from the Crystal Palace, home to Neo-Queen Serenity and her Sailor Scouts, but DarkStar didn’t need that to know what was happening. It had happened to Diamond a hundred years ago. His attack on Crystal Tokyo had been all but crippling, the entire city was nearly destroyed. The only place left was the Crystal Palace. Diamond tried to attack there as well, to take the city fully, but his attempt ended in disaster. The Sailor Scouts created a shield around the palace, and no barrage had been able to even dent it.
Lord DarkStar took another long drink. He was tired. He had come to a stalemate with Neo-Queen Serenity and the Moon Kingdom. Diamond dealt with a tiny shield around a castle. Now DarkStar was dealing with an enormous shield around the entire moon, with no possible way to get in. He could do nothing. He stood up and walked towards his lavish bed aboard the Black Helm.
And tripped over one of the books lying on the floor.
He came crashing to the ground, his face landing in an open page of a particularly old book. He lifted his head up, rubbed his nose, and scanned the page. He hadn’t noticed this before. Prince Diamond had sent several of his servants, Rubeus and the Four Sisters, back in time to take over the points of Crystal Tokyo on Earth. That was old information, but it suddenly gave DarkStar an idea. If Rubeus could use a ship to travel through time, why couldn’t he? He stood and walked towards the door to his quarters, the book he fell into in his hand.
Moments later he appeared on the bridge, straightened his black jacket, and took a seat in the captain’s chair. "Helm, set a course for the remains of the Negamoon. Maximum jump velocity."
"Aye, sir," the helm replied, never questioning the orders of his lord. DarkStar was only 21 years old, barely an adult, but his vast powers and rather destructive nature kept him in control of his fleet. He ruled through fear and intimidation. And no one cared.
The helmsman punched in the coordinates, and engaged the engines. "We are underway, milord."
DarkStar nodded to the helmsman, and looked at the open page in the book. "The Time Streamer…"
The space outside swirled and opened into the empty blackness of jumpspace.
DarkStar had studied this war sufficiently. The ruler of the planet, Prince Diamond , had dedicated all of his forces to the invasion of Crystal Tokyo. An attack from a totally unknown enemy had descended upon them after the loss of most of the royal family. They stood helpless against the massive attack that reigned down upon them. Some say Prince Diamond himself took to a starfighter and attempted to stop the attack, only to be shot down and killed by the enemy forces. Shortly after they took the Negamoon, and ravaged it completely. Most everything had been either stolen or destroyed.
A rather farfetched story, and the part about the Prince was wholly untrue (he had in fact died at the hands of the Sailor Scouts months before, but few knew this), but still, one hundred years later, almost nothing was known about the Negamoon’s fall from grace.
In fact, DarkStar's sources were very inaccurate in the matter of the Negamoon. Some reports said that an even stronger force eliminated the entire Negamoon royal family, in order to take the future for itself. DarkStar thought that maybe he could harness this power to assist in his conquest, but no one in the entire galaxy could tell him more. At least, none that DarkStar had found.
The Black Helm settled into an elliptical orbit around the planet, and scanning began. The scanners told Lord DarkStar what he already knew: The place was trashed. However, the scanners did pick up a secret underground complex with a unique energy source underneath the planet’s capital city. DarkStar took a small group of soldiers and took a dropship to the planet’s surface.
They landed outside a massive dark castle, giant spires rising thousands of feet into the sky. All around the tales of war showed. Buildings were toppled, streets were destroyed, the wreckage of a thousand year’s work drifted dead through space. DarkStar and his soldiers entered the castle through the main gate, the door previously knocked down by the first, and last, attackers of the Negamoon.
Inside the castle the main hall stretched hundreds of feet in all directions. The ruins of a powerful kingdom laid here, and its greatest secret was still hidden somewhere underneath the castle.
One of DarkStar’s companions approached his master. He had long white hair, and dressed in a black uniform similar to DarkStar, along with a pair of impossibly dark sunglasses. "Milord, I believe I’ve found how to enter the underground complex."
"Have you now, Terrak?" DarkStar faced his highest ranking officer, Commander Terrak.
"We must find the throne room. It should be at the end of this entry hall." They continued for what seemed to be at least a mile down the foyer, past giant pillars lining the halls and old banners that once hung proudly. They all held the mark of the Negamoon, a black crescent moon on a white background. They were once feared throughout the galaxy. Now they were only a legend shrouded in mystery.
Finally the group reached the throne of the Negamoon, an ornate chair laced in the most expensive metals and cloths in the galaxy. "Whoever destroyed the Negamoon," Terrak remarked, "was not looking for monetary gain."
DarkStar nodded and approached the throne. "One hundred years ago, Prince Diamond sat here, as he ordered so many of his followers to their dooms," DarkStar announced. "His end was fitting, no?"
"Indeed, milord," Terrak said. "Now press the indentation of the crescent moon directly above your head."
DarkStar looked up, saw the carving in the golden metal, and touched it. Instantly it jarred awake, and pulled backwards. A small door to the right of the throne opened, darkness shrouding where it went.
"Follow me," DarkStar said, as his sunglasses adjusted to night-vision. He could see perfectly down into the depths. A long staircase wound down into the darkness. DarkStar and his followers descended deep into the underground complex beneath the Negamoon’s capitol.
At the bottom DarkStar found his sunglasses did not perform well, as there was simply no light to amplify. He groped around for a torch, a light switch, anything. His hand came across a small button on the wall. He pressed it, and was greeted by an awesome sight.
The lights came on all around inside a gigantic chamber, holding an enormous black ship, nearly as big as the Black Helm itself. Plasma guns bristled all about the hull, and spikes came in seemingly random places along the entire length of the ship, nearly a mile long in length.
DarkStar smiled. "The Time Streamer," he whispered.
"I am impressed," Terrak said, staring up at the giant time machine. He and his lord began another long walk, towards the entrance to the ship.
A small ramp led up to a closed door on the hull of the Time Streamer. There was no indication of how to open it, but a small note was left on the door. It was in Negamoon script.
Terrak read it. He was well-endowed in languages through the entire galaxy. "’We have lost,’" he began. "’The power of the Negamoon will fall. The evil that will overtake us cannot be stopped. To whoever finds this Time Streamer, congratulations are in order. Use this formidable weapon to the best of your ability, and crush your foes before they can attack you. We could not use the Time Streamer to stop our foes from the Moon Kingdom or the forces that are now destroying our cities. Perhaps you will be more successful. But beware, only five beings can exist the passage through time at once. That is the boundary, and the price of time travel’. It’s signed ‘The Time Streamer Lead Scientist.’ That’s all, milord."
"Well, I suppose they’ve invited us to take it. Let’s just hope they left the keys in the ignition."
"Uh, no sir, they’re down here," shouted one of the soldiers from below. He held a small control device in his hand.
DarkStar reached out and called the device to his hand. It flew through the air and landed in his palm. It contained more Negamoon script. "Press the red button on the top right," Terrak said, after glancing at it.
DarkStar did so, and the door to the Time Streamer opened with a hiss. Terrak stepped inside first, and said, "I might have expected a larger space inside the ship."
Indeed, the only place anybody could go aboard the entire ship was into a large central chamber, and ten smaller chambers all around the walls. Mirrors hung about the room, and a pedestal stood in the center. It was all outlined in black. "Nice color," DarkStar remarked.
All the rest of the ship was outfitted with the incredible engines needed to pull the ship through time. DarkStar wasted no time. "Terrak, call the other three commanders, they will go with us. Have the Black Helm blast the debris out of the way so we can haul this ship back to the earth. And get to work deciphering how to operate this thing!"
"Right away, milord." Terrak disappeared in a glint of pale green light, to carry out his lord’s orders.
"Prepare yourself, Sailor Moon. Soon you will face Lord DarkStar."
