Blinking a couple of times, Anyascanned a wider survey. From her vantage point, she could see upand down the interstate in both directions. The entire highway, asfar as she could see, looked like a parking lot. There were nolights anywhere. In the distance, she could detect some movementand thought it was the people who’d abandoned their cars. Most ofthem seemed to be running.
From what, she wonderedblankly?
Her heart skipped several beats as theprimal instinct to run from threat went through her in a rush thatseemed to sap every ounce of strength from her muscles for manymoments when her mind abruptly answered thequestion—missile.
She whipped a look around, but therewas no sign of an explosion—nothing except the glass blown out ofwindows everywhere and toppled signs.
That brought the memory flooding backof the forceful concussion that had helped her down theembankment.
There were no emergency lights. Therewas no sound of sirens. There were no planes overhead.
She spied the obelisk then.
She didn’t know how she’d missed itbefore—except maybe her mind had simply dismissed it as somethingthat belonged. It looked to be made of metal. It was almost thesame dull silver color and size of the massive high power towersshe was used to seeing, but there all similarity ended. Part of it,she was certain, was buried in the ground from impact, and yet itlooked taller than the towering high power poles she was used toseeing and beyond that, it seemed … almost sculpted. It remindedher of pictures she’d seen of totem poles, except this was made ofmetal, she thought, not wood. It wasn’t painted and the oddsculpting didn’t feature a series of mythological monsters. Itlooked—more like some sort of modern art, or alien glyphs ran thelength of it.
The moment the word ‘alien’ popped intoher mind, certainty sank through her.
It wasn’t a missile or amisplaced rocket from NASA. This wasn’t something fromany place onearth!
Almost the moment that thought sank in,she heard a whirring noise and saw cracks begin to open along thelength of the strange missile. Her heart hit her chest wall anddropped to her feet.
“Oh my god! It’s about toblow!”
Weak with terror, she looked aroundfrantically for some sort of protective shelter, but both of thebuildings within easy reach were way too close to the thing forcomfort. Ditto her car. She looked at it longingly for a moment,but she realized she had no idea where her purse or her keyswere.
A sound drew her gaze back to thestrangely alien obelisk and she saw that it was slowly opening…almost like a flower extending new stems. There were posts nowsticking out from it in different directions and moreopening.
Uttering an animal noise of terror, sheraced across the road, instinctively running in the direction ofhome even though she was still miles and miles from that safeharbor. Mindlessly, she ran down the embankment on the other side.The urge to scream ‘wait for me!’ struck her as she pierced thedarkness in front of her and saw tiny, dark shadows of peoplerunning away, probably several miles from where she was bynow.
Cringing with the expectation offeeling a blast from behind at any moment and fire melting her intoa puddle, Anya ignored the pain that developed in her side and herbreathlessness and struggled to reach safety before the bomb wentoff.
Chapter Two
Aidan lost sight of the artificialsatellite as it pierced the planet’s atmosphere and the fire fromits entry went out. “The object! The satellite we collided with!Follow it! I need it!” he commanded the onboardcomputer.
Instead of responding immediately tohis command, the computer continued its damage report.
It was unfortunate that Aidan wasn’ttechnical minded enough, or familiar enough with interstellarcraft, to understand a word of it. “Is the ship capable oflanding?” he demanded impatiently.
“Unknown.”
That response shook him. “What the helldo you mean by that? Are you suggesting we’re going tocrash?”
“Barring other breakdownsfrom damaged navigational and landing equipment due to the impact,I believe I can achieve a controlled crash.”
That didn’t sound good, Aidan decided.“Can you control it to crash close to the object we struck?” Therewas no point in worrying about repairing the damage to his ship, hereasoned, until they’d landed. It wasn’t as if he could repairanything quickly. Even with the computer’s assistance in repairs itwas likely to take him a while to figure it out.
“Calculating the trajectoryof the object in question.”
Aidan drummed his fingers impatientlyon the armrest of the control chair while he awaited theanswer.
“The object has crashed.I’ve located a potential landing site for this craft within 15kilometers.”
Aidan frowned. That sounded like a longwalk—particularly considering it was an alien and totallyunfamiliar landscape and the fact that the terra-formers hadalready landed. Even with the accelerated evolution, though, hethought he might be able to make it there, collect what he needed,and return to the craft before anything truly terrifying evolved.“Alright. When you’ve set the ship down, I’m going to need a map tothe object.”
“Affirmative. Might Isuggest that you abandon ship? You have ten seconds to enter theescape pod.”
A jolt went through Aidan, but he wasout of his seat and racing toward the emergency escape pod almostbefore the computer began the countdown. He leapt inside andsecured the hatch just as the computer announced, “three!” He wasonly halfway into his safety harness when the pod was ejected.Aborting the attempt to get the last two straps into the lockingmechanism, he merely gripped the two straps frantically and grittedhis teeth as his stomach lodged itself into his throat. It was aswell he did. The pod almost immediately began to bounce and shakewith so much violence that he was relatively certain his teethwould have perforated his tongue pretty thoroughly if he hadn’t hadhis jaws clamped together.
The deployment of the chute sent a hardjolt through his body that traveled up his spine and gave him asplitting headache. It was his cue that the pod would be slamminginto the planet’s surface very shortly, however, and he unclenchedhis eyes and fought another round with his safety harness, finallymanaging to get the last two straps secured seconds beforeimpact.
Feeling a little outdone when theactual contact with the ground paled
