October 9, 1492

  From a great distance, the asteroid belt appears to be an orchestrated and elegant waltz around the sun. In fact, it’s a congested superhighway of collisions and chaos. It’s a hunting ground where the small and weak are reduced to dust by the mighty.

  Deep within this battleground roams an asteroid of legend. It’s a sleeping giant without a name or human classification, a planet-destroying Goliath among peasants.

  Veins of ice scar the crater-pocked crust of black ore and appear to pulse with life in the glow of the distant sun.

  As the asteroid rotates in the cold, nothingness of space, the sun’s light washes over the surface and floods into a yawning cavern.

  Shadows retreat into the deep recesses and reveal an ancient temple carved into the rock.

  Statues of frightening, unearthly beasts line the road leading to the temple. The surfaces of their pedestals, covered in detailed relief, depict humanoid figures tracing paths through a maze of asteroids between planets Mars and Jupiter with spools of gold thread.

  Two obelisks flank the temple entrance. Hieroglyphics similar to Ancient Egyptian, but with the brushstroke elegance of Chinese calligraphy, scar the stone on all four sides to their hollowed out cores.

  Blue crystals crowning each obelisk absorb the light of the sun, reflect it down through the hollow bodies of the objects, and project it out through the hieroglyphics. Mirror images of the symbols mar the gilded arc of a ship’s hull, its stern buried under a slide of rock and ice.

  As the shadows reclaim the cavern, a gleaming sphere of chrome rises like a hot air balloon from behind the temple. Its surface, like a blemished antique mirror, reflects the cliffs around it and the trapped arc below.

  The sphere launches out from the shadows of the asteroid. Sunlight pours through a silvery dome in the metal and illuminates three insectoid creatures with the features of black wasps. They sit in a ring of glowing displays and pulsing red lights.

  The alien craft stops abruptly and then accelerates without the use of any apparent propulsion-based engines toward the edge of the asteroid belt. As it spins toward Mars, centripetal force transforms the sphere into a flat saucer.

  A second ship, far less lustrous and far more battle-scarred than the chrome saucer, launches into space from behind the temple.

  The back-to-back-seated fighter, teardrop in design with a gaping intake on the nose, rockets after the disc.

  Thirteen curved blades of glowing blue plasma propel the ship through the asteroid belt with the silvery quickness of a fish darting through a coral reef.

  “They’re heading for the skirt, Nozus,” a woman reports through static in the lone pilot’s helmet.

  Nozus, a young roughneck with the stare and steadiness of a man born in battle, locks onto the retreating saucer.

  The rear-facing gunner’s seat is empty, but numbers and text in an alphabet not found on Earth project up from its control panel, displaying the distance, speed, and trajectory of the chrome disc.

  “Luci, contact the ground crew on Mars and have the skirt shut down.” Nozus orders. “We can’t let these chaking bugs reach Earth.”

  “Our transmissions are being reflected. I can’t get through.”

  “Power up the cannon.”

  The projected displays move aside as a wire-frame animation of the fighter slides in from the right and indicates that the single cannon mounted above and behind the cockpit is armed and hot with five rounds.

  Luci reports, “We’ll be on them and in weapons range in three, two…”

  “Cannon site up.”

  Crosshairs appear on Nozus’s helmet visor.

  “Hold until I say,” Luci says.

  The disc skims the lip of the Stickney impact crater on Mars’s largest moon, Phobos.

  “Clear!”

  “Firing!”

  A ball of glowing white gel launches from the cannon. It comets toward the disc, white at first and then yellow.

  The disc increases its speed.

  The gel, now orange and glowing more brightly than ever, closes the gap.

  The disc maintains its speed and course.

  Orange turns red.

  The disc dives.

  The gel implodes in space, creating a miniature black hole. The intense gravity snares and pulls the disc toward it like a lassoed steer, reverting the disc to a chrome ball.

  “Miss,” Luci relays.

  “I saw.”

  The black hole destabilizes and disintegrates, releasing its hold on the alien sphere.

  “Luci, where’s the skirt?”

  “On the dark side of the planet,” Luci answers. “Coordinates: 1-9 south, 354-5 east.”

  “Got it.”

  Nozus checks his levels—thrusters at full and four remaining rounds charged in the cannon.

  “The skirt is six luxites ahead,” Luci informs the pilot.

  “They don’t have the angle to enter the skirt. What do these chakers think they’re doing?”

  “Two luxites, and I couldn’t tell you.”

  The disc corkscrews down toward the surface of Mars.

  Red dust kicks up in its wake as the disc levels out mere meters above the desert. It skates the steep outer embankment of a coliseum-sized impact crater like a surfer on a wave.

  The fish-finned fighter is less agile but just as quick. It remains in orbit, tracking its prey from above.

  “The skirt has been activated,” Luci reports. “But they flew right past it.”

  The disc banks hard right and then launches straight up from the planet.

  It blurs across the fighter’s bow.

  “Chak!” Nozus curses. “Give me our surroundings in a fifty-pull radius. I want to see what they’re thinking.”

  A three-dimensional sphere projects from the pilot’s console and displays the space around them in every direction.

  Deimos lies dead ahead. One large crater behind the fighter on the red planet is circled in blue.

  Nozus peers over his shoulder.

  Down in the heart of the crater, a lightning storm swirls around the edge of a spinning vortex. A cyclone tunnels through the red planet. Glowing in space on the other side, behind a veil of mist, is Earth.

  The alien disc whips around Hygiea.

  “They’re going to slingshot through the skirt!” Luci’s voice pops and squelches through the static.

  “Then so are we,” Nozus responds. “Shield the charges in the cannon. I’m taking their ship out as soon as we clear the skirt.”

  “They’re through. Our systems are braced. Skirting in three, two…”

  The vortex licks the belly of the fighter with whips of blue-green energy.

  “Clear!” Luci shouts. “We’re within weapons range.”

  “Firing!”

  Alarms sound.

  “What’s going on, Luci?”

  “Two more enemy ships, a luxite ahead.”

  The discs, identical to the other, cross in front of the fighter and lay down a wall of pink droplets.

  Nozus fires maneuvering thrusters.

  The fighter flips backward, dives, and rolls underneath the wall, but not low enough.

  The bottom of the ship skims the droplets, which eat through the metal hull like acid. The plasma fin on the belly disintegrates.

  “Eject the skid-wing generator,” Nozus orders.

  A display of the fighter pulls up in front of the empty gunner’s seat. The damaged wing is highlighted, then cut loose.

  “Keep an eye on those two, Luci. I’m going after our target.”

  “I have them. They’re holding back.”

  Nozus activates the crosshairs. They lock onto the disc.

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  He fires.

  The gel streaks through space.

  Yellow.

  Orange.

  It sticks to the edge of the disc.

  Red.

  The disc spins and wobbles in a desperate attempt to buck the charge.

  The gel implodes.

  A third of the liquid-metal ship is consumed by the black hole before it destabilizes.

  The ship is tossed end over end toward Earth.

  The alien pilots attempt to reestablish the spin and retreat, but it’s too late. Gravity grabs hold of the crippled ship and pulls it down.

  The teardrop fighter reverses thrusters and holds a position in orbit as the enemy sphere burns through the atmosphere.

  “Launching reconnaissance drone.” Nozus keys in his order and fires. “Where are the others?”

  “One approaching on our six. The other…”

  A disc whips around the planet and sprays the space in front of the drone with pink liquid.

  “Chak!” Nozus shouts as his drone disintegrates.

  “Both ships are retreating to the skirt.”

  Nozus holds their position and watches as the damaged ship disappears beneath the clouds over the southeast corner of North America.

  “Did you hear me, Nozus?”

  “Yes, Luci. Calm down. The EM fluctuations are interfering with guidance.”

  The plasma wings flare and launch the fighter at one-fourth the speed of light toward the skirt on Earth’s moon.

  The discs exit the vortex above Mars and continue toward the asteroid belt.

  Seconds later, the fighter rips through the skirt, disrupting the circling storm and pulling the cone of gas and dust away from the crater.

  The wormhole destabilizes and collapses in on itself, sending a shock wave over the surface of Mars that pulverizes a stone fortress and watchtower in its path.

  “You passed through too hot,” Luci reports. “The gel cannon is down.”

  “Switching to magnets!”

  Nozus targets a rogue, peanut-shaped asteroid and fires.

  A black puck launches from the nose of the fighter and attaches to the iron-rich rock. The magnetic pull grabs hold of the enemy ship and slams it into the asteroid.

  “Target destroyed!” Luci reports.

  The other ship escapes the blast and enters the asteroid belt. It emits a tone, which vibrates the space within the field. Strands of energy are stimulated by the vibrations and create a pathway from the edge of the belt to an unseen point elsewhere in the galaxy.

  The disc connects with the string and flashes away.

  “I have their singer frequency,” Luci reports to Nozus.

  “No need. We’ll make it.”

  The fighter makes contact with the string and vanishes just as the fibers pull apart and return to their inert state.

  Calm returns to space.

  +++

  On Earth, the glow of the moon illuminates a caravel ship with a belly of tarred wood, iron embellishments, and sun-bleached sails. The ship slices a clean line through the universe of stars reflected in the still water of the Atlantic. Two similar but slightly smaller ships follow in a staggered formation.

  The flag of Spain waves high above the vacant deck on the center mast of the lead ship.

  A young officer dressed in a long coat adorned with patches and medals of valor emerges from the captain’s quarters. He clutches a leather logbook under one arm while struggling to straighten his hat with the other. The clicking of his boot heels on the wooden deck echoes from the sails and harmonizes with the creaking hull and rattling chains.

  He climbs to the forecastle and comes to attention behind a statuesque man with his concentration fixed on the stars.

  “You called on me, Admiral?”

  “Yes, Pedro.” The admiral glances back but does not turn. “They have returned.”

  “The lights, sir?”

  “Yes. Do you see that one glimmering in the distance? To the southwest.”

  “I do.”

  “It has vanished and reappeared several times this evening.” The admiral uses his spyglass to direct Pedro’s gaze. “I need you to make an entry in the log. Date, October 11, 1492.”

  “Aye, sir.” The officer flips the book open.

  The Admiral dictates, “They appear as light of a wax candle moving from the heavens to the sea, then back along the same path toward the moon.”

  “Perhaps it’s an indication of land?”

  “Don’t be so quick, Pedro. I do not wish to arouse the hopes of the crew.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir.”

  “Look there!”

  “I see it, sir. A shooting star?”

  “Not like any I have ever witnessed, and it is not like the other lights seen this night. It falls to the north. Perhaps the sign from God we have been praying for.”

  “Shall I order a change of course, sir?”

  “Signal the Nina and Pinta. Tell Vincente and Martin to slow and follow behind the Santa Maria. This desert we travel is still uncharted, and if we are to be wise men, we must proceed with caution.”

  The admiral raises the spyglass to his eye and twists the brass ring around the lens to focus in on the spark from the heavens as it vanishes on the horizon.

  July 7, 1947

  The voices of Earth’s ambassadors — the Green Hornet, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Harry Truman, Bing Crosby, Moe Howard, Howdy Doody, Groucho Marx, and Superman — transmit from Earth’s surface and journey 238,857 miles to a lone outpost near the north tip of the moon.

  The waves of laughter, song and costumed adventure continue through millions of miles of cold space. They drift like ghosts over three suited engineers struggling with a coupling on the positive-ion limiter of the Mars skirt and past an orbiting alien freighter loaded with cargo containers stacked ten high by twenty wide.

  Two humanoid aliens with reptilian features and amphibian skin, one four times the size of the other, sit at the controls of the lumbering transport.

  The lights on the bridge flicker, and the speakers are choked with hundreds of nonsensical voices and tones. The fuel needle fluctuates from empty to a quarter-tank full and back to empty.

  “What the chak is this interference?” The larger pilot taps his beefy, froglike finger on the glass of the malfunctioning gauge.

  “Low-band transmission waves. I’ll shield ‘em,” squeaks the copilot. “Ah, jak!”

  “What now?” the pilot booms.

  “They’re closing the skirt.”

  “Who is? What the chak for?”

  “They’re not saying, but I’m guessing it has something to do with them.”

  The copilot points out the side window and leans back for his crewmate to see.

  “Boundary Patrol,” the pilot growls. “So, we could be stuck here for who knows how many rotations.”

  “That’s a CSC unit,” the copilot adds.

  “A crash is holding us up?”

  “I haven’t received a report of one.”

  The pilot sinks back into his seat and flops his arms onto the armrests with a groan.

  “It’s always a chaking deal when we have to stop on Earth. Do we have enough fuel to get us to the station without the skirt?”

  “We barely have enough to get there with the skirt, but hold on. Let me check something.”

  The copilot opens a small compartment on the console and retrieves a folded map.

  “Maybe there’s another station on another planet we can sling to.”

  He opens the map, which releases a holographic projection of the universe. Three-dimensional stars and planets unfold from the page and flood the entire bridge.

  “Put that away!” The large alien grabs the map and throws it to the floor. The holograms fold into themselves and disappear. “We’ll just wait.”

  The small alien shifts uncomfortably in his chair, puts his head in his hand, and stares out into space.

  +++

  The Boundary Patrol’s Crash Site Containment ship barrels through the skirt and plots a direct course to North America’s southwestern desert region.

  +++

  On Earth, the CSC ship cools at the bottom of a rocky slope. The sandy soil is speckled with insect-gnawed cactus and sun-toasted, prickly leafed weeds.

  Three uniformed patrol officers walk through a field of untarnished metal debris partially buried in the ground.

  A mountain of a man with dark brown skin and eyes so green they seem to glow in the daylight bends down behind a slender woman with long, dark hair and plucks a jagged shard out of the dirt.

  Symbols similar to those found in crop circles are etched into the metal.

  He scans the writing with the palm of his hand. Sensors implanted in his skin analyze the sample and display a name spelled out in a language not found on Earth.

  “Harpoon, right square between the eyes of your Moby Dick, Nozus.” The large man says.

  “Finally,” the woman adds.

  She flips her hair back as she turns to the mission leader. Her tan skin sparkles, as if dusted with green and blue glitter. A deep scar runs from above her left eye to her cheek.

  “You’ve been sifting through this desert for centuries, Nozus,” she says.

  Nozus, a quarterback in build and swagger, approaches his team.

  “There should be three bodies, Leo.”

  “I’m only finding two, and there’s not much left of them.”

  “Ryna.” Nozus addresses the woman.

  “I’m way ahead of you,” she responds. “I’m wrapping the site and tagging all alien material, but it’s difficult to identify the debris. Copper deposits in the soil are disrupting my scans.”

  “We’ve got a tube on the ridge,” Leo reports from the edge of the debris field.

  “Threat?” Nozus asks.

  Leo reaches out with an open hand toward a middle-aged man dressed in overalls.

  “Name, William Brazel, a local laborer for the Foster family. No threat.”

  “Make sure he stays on his side of the dome.”

  “I think he’s spotted some debris,” Leo warns.

  Nozus turns to Ryna. “I thought you secured the entire crash site.”

  “The dome has its limits,” she shoots back.

  Leo reads the information displayed on his hand. “It’s only sheet insulation. No marking. No tags. 99.6 percent indigenous materials.”

  “Leave it then,” Nozus orders. “Focus all efforts on finding that missing body.”

  Ryna and Leo circle the crash site with their hands out to their sides, palms down.

  The air between their outstretched arms and the ground ripples with heat as focused X-rays penetrate the Earth.

  “We’re scanning to a depth of thirty-six meters,” Ryna says. “There’s nothing else here.”

  “I agree,” said Nozus. “I’m not detecting any vibrations from the Arbalest String.”

  “It’s been over four centuries,” Leo says. “Maybe this isn’t the ship you shot down?”

  “It’s the ship.” He points to the low-lying hills in the distance. “And the pilot is there.”

  “How can you be sure?” Ryna asks.

  “I feel it. Hand me a bag.”

  “Chak! I knew it,” Leo spits. “We came in too hot. The military spotted us on radar.”

  “What are they saying?”

  Ryna turns to where the human stood. He’s gone.

  “Bunch of reports coming out of Roswell of a UFO sighting. Aircraft and ground forces have been deployed. They’re fifteen kilometers out.”

  “Are we done here?” Nozus asks.

  “We will be before it gets dangerous,” Ryna assures him.

  “Grab the ship’s operation archive, atomize the rest, and get to the station. I’ll contact you as soon I have the Arbalest String.”

  “Rally will be eighty kilometers southwest of the approaching circus,” Leo says. “Watch your ass.”

  “Always do.”

  +++

  Nozus tosses stones concealing a narrow cave entrance over his shoulder and squeezes into the darkness just as an Army helicopter passes low and fast on its way to the alien crash site.

  Using the glow from the computer implanted in his left hand, he illuminates the subterranean world.

  The cave, carved by an ancient underground river, churns with excitement. The walls crawl with insects. Reptiles and small animals retreat to nests and borrows dug into cracks and behind boulders.

  Native American pictographs decorate the smooth walls; one in particular catches Nozus’s attention. A group of hunters stands before a thin being with an oversized head and black, almond-shaped eyes. A circle, four inches in diameter, floats above its head. Thin lines crisscross within the circle like yarn in a dream catcher. Where the lines intersect there’s an eight-pointed star, which form a crude “S.”.

  Nozus’s footsteps echo down the chamber and return from the depths on a breeze fouled with rot and decay.

  He pulls a vial full of metallic powder out of his pocket, pours some into his hand, and blows it into the air.

  The powder drifts along the walls, ceiling, and through the many corridors and chambers of the underground.

  As the cloud disperses into the unknown depths, Nozus studies a three-dimensional map of the cave system rendering section-by-section on the screen in his palm.

  He moves his thumb like a joystick to scroll through a map.

  A red light blinks on a location a few meters ahead.

  Nozus rushes over to the spot and places his right hand on the rock. The image on his left palm shifts to a thermal X-ray of the wall and a hidden corridor behind it.

  “Found you.”

  Nozus scans the rock face and locates a thin belt of metal with luminescent fiber within, framing a one-meter-by-one-meter-square entrance. Connecting the two ends is a pulsating device about the size of a wristwatch.

  The pulse, like a beating heart, feeds energy through the wires, and that energy radiates out toward the cave, creating the hologram of a seamless rock wall.

  “EM pulse,” Nozus commands into his left wrist. “Biobender. Class three.”

  He aims his open palm at the concealed device.

  “Kill it.”

  A beep is followed by a burst of focused electromagnetic energy, which extinguishes the glowing heart. The illusion of rock within the confines of the metal belt liquefies and spills to the ground.

  The passageway off the main cave is smooth and banded with veins of white and pink quartz. At its end is a round den.

  Sprawled out facedown in the middle of the floor are the skeletal remains of the missing UFO pilot. Its black bones support the tattered uniform of a decorated pilot. Bloodstains on the shoulder and another on the upper thigh, along with two stone-tipped arrows, a shattered tibia, and a broken collarbone, paint a clear picture of the alien’s final moments.

  Locked in a cage of calcified finger bones rests a flat silver box the size of a deck of cards. Stamped into its lid is the dream-catcher design seen in the pictograph.

  Nozus reduces the bones to dust with a flick of his finger and recovers the box. He slips it into the bag and tightens the straps.

  “You deserve what you got, bug.”

  He flips the skeleton onto its back, dislodging the lower jaw from the almond-shaped head. With it falls a chrome marble. It hits the ground and snaps open. A single, red light begins to blink.

  Nozus looks down at the marble and then into the alien’s hollow eye sockets.

  “Chak me.”

  +++

  The entrance to the cave erupts with an explosion of rock and black smoke.

  Nozus’s footsteps are erased, and all evidence of him ever being there is buried.