"Yes. It broke off easily for me, too. Maybe it's some kind of alien artifact." Lord knew he'd run across plenty of those on that last planet he was on. He still didn't like it, though. He kind of preferred understanding what the hell was going on and weird glowy rocks that made you sprout wings sort of defied understanding.

He resumed his search. "There's nothing to defend ourselves from. After we abandoned Earth, we had bigger problems than blowing each other up. Colonies need to work together... more or less." Maybe once they had a little while longer enjoying peace, they could resume trying to kill each other.