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  The excitement took a nosedive in the next instant as his vision, instinctively following the object his ship had collided with, took in the blossoming explosions of the terra-formers as they landed.

  * * * *

  Anya Dupris was tired as she pointed her car toward home, gripping the steering wheel in a death grip as she negotiated the awful Atlanta traffic. She’d thoroughly enjoyed DragonCon, loved every minute of it. She was glad she’d let her sister talk her into going, but she was just as anxious at this point to get home as she’d been to get to the conference to start with.

  She could see, now, why so many people made the pilgrimage to Atlanta every year to attend.

  And maybe she’d make plans to go back next year, she thought as she finally began to leave Atlanta traffic behind?

  It really hadn’t been as bad as she’d expected it would be when she’d thought about the headache of negotiating Atlanta traffic to find her hotel—mostly because once she’d reached the hotel and parked her car in the parking garage, she hadn’t left it, by car, again, hadn’t had to deal with the traffic. The hotels where the conference took place were connected by walk bridges. The foot traffic had been horrendous, of course, since upwards of fifty thousand people attended, but that hadn’t been stressful or frustrating. Everyone paraded around in all sorts of costumes from the time they arrived until they left and everyone was in a cheerful, holiday mood. She thought that part had actually been the most fun, getting out to see the costumes. And most of them had been simply amazing. Hollywood couldn’t have done any better. They didn’t require special camera angles or lighting to make them seem realistic. They were just that well done.

  She was pleasantly exhausted, she decided. Unlike most vacations where she was just exhausted, period, and ready to get home and back to her routine—to get into her ‘safe’ little rut.

  The traffic didn’t actually thin appreciably until she was south of Macon. She was halfway home by then, though, and her mind had begun to seesaw back and forth between conference highlights and formulating a list of the chores she needed to take care of before she went back to work.

  The sun sank toward the horizon as she passed Macon. She was glad of it. The glare through her side windows had been bothersome, but then she began calculating how far she still had to drive and what the possibility was that she’d manage to get off the interstate before it was completely dark. After checking her gas gauge, she realized she needed to stop for a fill up. She didn’t think she could make it home with what she had and she definitely didn’t want to start hunting a gas station after dark—or risk running out of gas on the interstate because she’d tried to make it home without stopping.

  Irritated at the necessity, which practically guaranteed she wouldn’t get off the interstate before dark, she watched the road signs until she saw a gas station and pulled off. There was a choice of two stations, she discovered, and no sign of a town. She debated briefly on which to stop at but settled on the one that wasn’t as busy. The gas price was the same. The smaller place just wasn’t as appealing because it was small and didn’t have anything to tempt travelers but a tiny convenience store.

  Well, she wasn’t looking for supper. She could wait to eat until she got home. There were plenty of restaurants to choose from in Valdosta.

  When she’d filled her tank, she went inside to pay and grab a drink and a snack to tide her over until she reached her destination.

  As she reached her car again, she looked up at the sky to try to gauge just how much daylight she had left. Pleasure wafted through her when she caught sight of a falling star. Smiling faintly, she watched it, her smile fading as she discovered the damned thing looked like it was heading straight for her. Instead of fading as it burned out, the light got brighter and brighter and the ball of light bigger and bigger as it got closer and closer.

  Disbelief and uneasiness replaced the pleasure of watching a shooting star along with the growing conviction that it wasn’t a shooting star at all. Crashing plane, she wondered, feeling her heart leap uncomfortably?

  She squinted her eyes, trying to pierce the light surrounding the thing to see the object itself. She could see something that looked dark and cylindrical—she thought.

  Missile?

  Couldn’t be.

  It looked like one, though, and the conviction settled inside of her that the damned thing was getting way too close for comfort. In fact, it seemed to pour on a tremendous burst of speed as she watched.

  Dropping her purchases, Anya abruptly whirled and began to run. She was dimly aware that several people emerging from the convenience store at that moment gaped at her like she’d lost her mind. There were cars on the road, heading back to the onramp of the interstate. She leapt the shallow ditch and dodged one as she raced across the road, scared, and yet more than half convinced that she was just making a fool out of herself.

  She’d barely cleared the narrow two way road when she heard a roar of sound that nearly drowned out the sudden chorus of screams and yells behind her. She wasn’t certain afterwards if it was the blow of the concussion that threw her to the ground or if it was the fact that she twisted her ankle as she leapt from the asphalt. Everything happened too fast for her mind to process it. One moment she was convinced she was going to be horribly embarrassed for acting like an idiot, the next she heard what sounded like a sonic boom and then she felt a sharp pain in her ankle and found herself rolling down the steep embankment on the other side.

  There was a sound in her ears that was almost like the roaring of the ocean when she finally came to a stop. Her head was spinning and dull pain was rolling through her body from every direction. Dizzy, completely disoriented and convinced she was dying, Anya closed her eyes and lay where she landed, trying to throw off the dizziness and disorientation.

  Muffled sounds penetrated the roaring in her ears but between her inner focus and the partial deafness, she couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was hearing. Slowly, the dizziness and disorientation subsided. Once it did, she began to feel a multitude of aches and pains but, to her relief, nothing intense enough to suggest that she was seriously damaged. Realizing that she was just bruised and that she’d probably been too shocked, and limp, to sustain anything serious, she opened her eyes, slowly pushed herself upright, and looked around.

  The light around her had dimmed enough that she realized she’d lost a good bit of time while she lay stunned on the embankment, but there were no cars moving on the interstate and no lights—anywhere that she could see. In point of fact, the interstate looked like a parking lot, or rather more like an untidy child’s car collection. There were cars on top of cars, crushed cars, cars and trucks laying crazily on their sides. Clouds of steam were rising from busted radiators. The smell of burned rubber was thick in the air.

  For many moments, Anya merely stared open mouthed at the pile up, searching with her gaze for any movement. Where were the people, she wondered blankly? As horrendous as the pile up was, everyone couldn’t be dead.

  Unable to process what she was seeing, Anya’s mind abruptly leapt backwards to the falling star, her conviction that it was going to land on top of her, and her race to escape. Grunting, she heaved herself to her feet, looked around to get her bearings and began climbing up the hill she’d rolled down. Slipping and sliding on the grass, she finally managed to reach the top again. Shock rolled over her when she took in the sight that met her gaze.

  Both gas stations appeared to be intact—basically. Most of the cars were gone and despite the fact that it was almost completely dark by now, there were no lights—and no signs of any people.

  Blinking a couple of times, Anya scanned a wider survey. From her vantage point, she could see up and down the interstate in both directions. The entire highway, as far as she could see, looked like a parking lot. There were no lights anywhere. In the distance, she could detect some movement and thought it was the people who’d abandoned their cars. Most of them seemed to be running.

>   From what, she wondered blankly?

  Her heart skipped several beats as the primal instinct to run from threat went through her in a rush that seemed to sap every ounce of strength from her muscles for many moments when her mind abruptly answered the question—missile.

  She whipped a look around, but there was no sign of an explosion—nothing except the glass blown out of windows everywhere and toppled signs.

  That brought the memory flooding back of the forceful concussion that had helped her down the embankment.

  There were no emergency lights. There was no sound of sirens. There were no planes overhead.

  She spied the obelisk then.

  She didn’t know how she’d missed it before—except maybe her mind had simply dismissed it as something that belonged. It looked to be made of metal. It was almost the same dull silver color and size of the massive high power towers she was used to seeing, but there all similarity ended. Part of it, she was certain, was buried in the ground from impact, and yet it looked taller than the towering high power poles she was used to seeing and beyond that, it seemed … almost sculpted. It reminded her of pictures she’d seen of totem poles, except this was made of metal, she thought, not wood. It wasn’t painted and the odd sculpting didn’t feature a series of mythological monsters. It looked—more like some sort of modern art, or alien glyphs ran the length of it.

  The moment the word ‘alien’ popped into her mind, certainty sank through her.

  It wasn’t a missile or a misplaced rocket from NASA. This wasn’t something from any place on earth!

  Almost the moment that thought sank in, she heard a whirring noise and saw cracks begin to open along the length of the strange missile. Her heart hit her chest wall and dropped to her feet.

  “Oh my god! It’s about to blow!”

  Weak with terror, she looked around frantically for some sort of protective shelter, but both of the buildings within easy reach were way too close to the thing for comfort. Ditto her car. She looked at it longingly for a moment, but she realized she had no idea where her purse or her keys were.

  A sound drew her gaze back to the strangely alien obelisk and she saw that it was slowly opening …almost like a flower extending new stems. There were posts now sticking out from it in different directions and more opening.

  Uttering an animal noise of terror, she raced across the road, instinctively running in the direction of home even though she was still miles and miles from that safe harbor. Mindlessly, she ran down the embankment on the other side. The urge to scream ‘wait for me!’ struck her as she pierced the darkness in front of her and saw tiny, dark shadows of people running away, probably several miles from where she was by now.

  Cringing with the expectation of feeling a blast from behind at any moment and fire melting her into a puddle, Anya ignored the pain that developed in her side and her breathlessness and struggled to reach safety before the bomb went off.

  Chapter Two

  Aidan lost sight of the artificial satellite as it pierced the planet’s atmosphere and the fire from its entry went out. “The object! The satellite we collided with! Follow it! I need it!” he commanded the onboard computer.

  Instead of responding immediately to his command, the computer continued its damage report.

  It was unfortunate that Aidan wasn’t technical minded enough, or familiar enough with interstellar craft, to understand a word of it. “Is the ship capable of landing?” he demanded impatiently.

  “Unknown.”

  That response shook him. “What the hell do you mean by that? Are you suggesting we’re going to crash?”

  “Barring other breakdown from 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?” There was no point in worrying about repairing the damage to his ship, he reasoned, until they’d landed. It wasn’t as if he could repair anything quickly. Even with the computer’s assistance in repairs it was likely to take him a while to figure it out.

  “Calculating the trajectory of the object in question.”

  Aidan drummed his fingers impatiently on the armrest of the control chair while he awaited the answer.

  “The object has crashed. I’ve located a potential landing site for this craft within 15 kilometers.”

  Aidan frowned. That sounded like a long walk—particularly considering it was an alien and totally unfamiliar landscape and the fact that the terra-formers had already landed. Even with the accelerated evolution, though, he thought 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 to the object.”

  “Affirmative. Might I suggest that you abandon ship? You have ten seconds to enter the escape pod.”

  A jolt went through Aidan, but he was out of his seat and racing toward the emergency escape pod almost before the computer began the countdown. He leapt inside and secured the hatch just as the computer announced, “three!” He was only halfway into his safety harness when the pod was ejected. Aborting the attempt to get the last two straps into the locking mechanism, he merely gripped the two straps frantically and gritted his teeth as his stomach lodged itself into his throat. It was as well he did. The pod almost immediately began to bounce and shake with so much violence that he was relatively certain his teeth would have perforated his tongue pretty thoroughly if he hadn’t had his jaws clamped together.

  The deployment of the chute sent a hard jolt through his body that traveled up his spine and gave him a splitting headache. It was his cue that the pod would be slamming into the planet’s surface very shortly, however, and he unclenched his eyes and fought another round with his safety harness, finally managing to get the last two straps secured seconds before impact.

  Feeling a little outdone when the actual contact with the ground paled by comparison to ejection and freefall, he unfastened his harness and looked around for the hatch release. The pod was tilted crazily and rocked unnervingly as he struggled out the hatch once he’d opened it. When he emerged and looked around, he saw why. The pod was perched precariously on a rather steep drop off.

  No doubt the trees between his position and the bottom would halt its progress even if the pod did begin to roll, but that thought didn’t particularly comfort him and Aidan eased the remainder of the way out of the pod with great care. His knees were a little wobbly, he discovered, once he was on solid ground and he sat down to allow the weakness to pass, studying the terrain around him with a good bit of dismay.

  He hadn’t expected to find himself in the middle of a jungle, on the dark side of the planet, and he had the uneasy feeling that it was going to take him a lot longer to find what was left of the satellite than he’d anticipated.

  * * * *

  Physical distress superseded fear after a time. Anya stopped to catch her breath when she realized she was in danger of passing out and turned to look back at the threatening obelisk, mildly heartened that it hadn’t blown up … yet. As she stared at it in the gathering gloom, however, she thought she detected a dark plume of smoke rising out of it and forming a shifting cloud. She stared hard at that shifting cloud, huffing for breath and trying to figure out what seemed strange about it.

  There was no wind to account for the shifting, she realized after a moment, instinctively looking up at the tops of the trees to see if there was wind higher up that might explain the phenomenon. There seemed to be a slight wind ruffling the tops of the trees, but it didn’t seem to be enough to explain so much movement.

  Transferring her gaze back to the obelisk, she realized the movement seemed more purposeful than random—like a swarm of insects.

  Bees.

  She didn’t stop to consider the unlikelihood that it would be bees swarming from something that seemed so alien—or in fact a missile or rocket of earthly
origins. Swarm connected in her mind with danger and she whipped a frantic look around for cover.

  There was a virtual sea of smashed and crumpled cars on the highway. Not only did they look to offer little in the way of shelter in their current condition, however, the thought instantly leapt into her mind that there could be a body or bodies in any of them.

  All of them weren’t wrecked, she saw now that she was close enough for a better view. Quite a number of them appeared intact or relatively intact, as if the drivers had skidded to a halt and merely leapt out and abandoned them but the possibility of finding a body was enough to instantly redirect her mind to some other shelter.

  That stretch of highway seemed bereft of human habitation, though. Nothing but woods and more woods bordered the highway without a sign of a friendly light to indicate the presence of people. There was an overpass behind her and another that looked like it might be a mile or two away.

  A culvert caught her eye and she rushed toward it before she had time to consider what might be inside—besides water. She’d had time before she reached it to consider slithering things, though. Bending down, she grabbed a handful of dirt, grass, and rocks and pitched them inside. When there was no telltale rattling, she crawled just inside and curled into a ball.

  It was uncomfortable but at least dry and she felt safer as soon as she thought about the fact that it was made of reinforced concrete and buried under asphalt and dirt. Surely, even if the thing blew up, she was far enough away by now and had enough protection to be relatively safe?

  She was still working on convincing herself when she heard a sound similar to the sound she’d heard before the obelisk landed. The world outside her cramped hiding place brightened. A fireball shot through the trees within view and then disappeared.

  Anya tensed. Another one of those things? Or something else?

  She heard an impact, like distant thunder. Faint vibrations traveled through the culvert.

  A shiver ran along Anya’s spine.