Adam and Eve had found themselves abducted by the aliens. They were towed in the middle of the flotilla, back towards Earth

Together, they all took the hit of the long range laser beam, without seeing it coming. Obviously...

From the point of view of a hypothetically still galaxy, it happened 429 years or so after the selenic ambassador delivered its speech. If anyone had travelled at the same speed they would have considered the journey was instantaneous. But no one travels as fast as the light. Only at above 80% of the light celerity, usually written simply c, one would experience a travel duration reduced by more than 20%.

The exact duration was irrelevant to the lives - and death - of the characters on either side of the beam which originated from the moon and extended to the small flotilla surrounding the new frontier, Adam and Eve's ship.

Anyway no one travels on a pure energy beam able to split an asteroid in half or more accurately a ship into star dust. Fortunately for the flotilla, such disintegration was only foreseen for objects as far Mars.

The hull of the spaceships all sustained the blow. But many were damaged to the point of jeopardising any foreseeable re-entry into an atmosphere. Most of them lost their external apparatuses like scanner and antenna. The new frontier took most of the hit because of its solar sails.

The 10 square kilometres of fragile material were optimised to capture individual particles flowing out of a star core maelstrom. Despite the amazing precision of the Cerberus aim (which relied on a constant speed of the flotilla), the beam which had emerged as a 10cm thick laser out of the Moon was then a 1000 km wide cone of light, and was only partially stopped by the encounter of solid material.

The solar sail was built to catch occasional particles but not coherent beam. It was torn away instantly.

Fragments of the solar sails blasted out towards the alien ship of the rear guard. The vanguard therefore escaped almost unscathed. Three of the rear guard ship actually exploded, unable neither to avoid the debris nor to neutralise it in time. Among the casualties were listed the flagship of the commander Igor as well as the prison ship where Grishka was waiting for his time.

Adam was sleeping at the time - one chance out of three. Eve was not so lucky. Not only was she awake, but she had the unfortunate urge to do some gardening on that day. That meant she was in the greenhouse, at the front of the new frontier. The glass withheld but let pass a fraction of the light. That was too much, too quick for the plants, which all died eventually.

Eve survived despite the burns and the loss of her sight. Nevertheless, she nearly passed away as her metabolism stopped functioning properly. The shock had instantly sent her into a coma. Her heart stopped for one minute out of the four it took Adam to rush to her.

Nevertheless Adam managed to bring Eve back to life. The ship had spelled out the recovery procedure to Adam but it hadn't been able to provide a robomedic ahead of him. The ship felt guilty. But it was nothing compared to Adam who could feel for real.

Adam cried for hours, waiting for her to come back to him. That day, he collapsed out of tiredness without having seen a single move from her.