As the captain watched the scene with quiet patience, her co-pilot remained busy with double checking coordinates for the return trip home. As she waited, she thought of the sentient beings on the moon base they now observed. The numerous species had gathered together for another peace treaty attempt, one intended to end the war that spanned the quadrant of the galaxy they shared. The termination of their war was not something that could be left to chance.

With the introduction of the package now waiting to be discovered, the odds of the warring factions negotiating peace was nearly ensured. Even as the thought crossed her mind, the view screen indicated that the meteor was now in motion, meaning that someone had just found it. With the exception of the base and the gathered ships surrounding it, the moon was unable to sustain life on its surface. This meant that no matter who took it or where it went, the internal timer of the artificial asteroid had begun its countdown. When completed, there would be damage on a massive scale.

The captain knew that no price was too great to pay for galactic peace. The species that had assembled at the moon base were interested in settling their disagreements but they were all savage in nature, having warred for millennia. As long as they were filled with hate, distrust and contempt, they would attempt to destroy each other, if only because of their differences. Over time, their combined technological advances had grown rapidly and would soon reach the point in which one of them could attempt some sort of mass genocide.

There was only one thing that would force them to put aside their differences and work together: a common enemy. That was exactly what the special meteor provided – something that would unite the diverse species in a common goal. The biological gel contained within the artificial asteroid was designed to consume technology and infect living organisms. Only the combined knowledge and technology of all the warring factions would be enough to combat the mindless, destructive force.

The captain knew the gelatinous mixture was a finely crafted piece of bioengineering, something akin to cancer. It was a macro-virus that fed on both biological and technological matter, feeding off anything that provided the correct mixture of carbon based elements. It consumed refined matter, such as copper, gold, steel and aluminum, almost as soon as it made contact. It affected biological matter as well, though much more slowly since antibiotics attempted to fight the advance of the alien virus.

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