I am alone on a strange and forbidding planet. The surviving inhabitants are of no help to me; they cower in mortal terror behind closed airlocks. No word, no thought, no action escapes the malignant notice of that which hovers above all: The Dark Tower.
I see it now, looming on the distant horizon, thousands of meters above the blasted landscape. The elements do not disturb it. The brightness of twin suns does not illuminate it. It harbors a threat and guards a fearsome secret. For within The Dark Tower resides the Council of Nine, merciless rulers of all they survey, cruel overlords of a conquered world. This is their base. This is their prototype. The Earth is next.
The anti-matter engines of my Stealth Starfighter hum reassuringly as I cruise low to the ground, avoiding their radar, maneuvering through a hostile terrain of spewing volcanoes and deadly negative-energy fields. I know not what grim discoveries await me in the Dark Tower. I know only that I must somehow reach it... and destroy it.
But the Council has protected itself well. Robot-controlled photon tanks stalk me. The sky is alive with warp-fighters, closing in from all directions. The landscape bristles with automated radar towers firing heat-seeking projectiles of doom. High-energy laser artillery vectors anticipate my every move. Outgunned and outmanned, I have only my stealth to rely on.
I cannot turn back. The Tower beckons. Either it, or I, shall not see another dawn.