The sentinels had been waiting at the edge of the system, monitoring and protecting the colony since the seeding. 40,000 years they had waited, watching the initial deployment, the loss of technology, the fall to barbarism, and the climb from almost failure to the beginnings of technology again.These inhabitants of the third world called themselves humans.Still unstable from the onset of their nuclear age and the onslaught of technologies, they were reaching for the stars.They were noisy, though. An ancient enemy had noticed.Sentinel-9 broke its orbit and folded space just after the alien probe left the system, bringing news of the discovery of the colony by an ancient enemy to its founders..