Tell him to get in here right away. We have a huge problem.”

Chapter 1

They have to get me up there. Captain Warren Miller struggled to remain calm as he sat in a terrible traffic jam behind countless civilian vehicles. They were all desperate to leave the city but none so hungry for it as he was. If he could get to the Space Agency base, arrive in enough time to make a difference, he had a solution for their current problem.

Dirk Reidel’s voice filled the radio, rambling on about what they knew and what they thought they knew. Most of it was bullshit guesses. They read far too much into Colonel Jacks’s comments but that was probably the point. It kept them fixating on the larger object that was impossible to hide.

The smaller ones, those were a concern. Space Agency people knew about the object for the better part of a day. It arrived near Saturn and moved directly to the Earth, pausing in its current position by the moon. A research buoy picked up and conveyed a great deal of information back to base.

That’s how they knew about the tempered metal, the shape and the fact it was definitely not naturally occurring. All attempts to communicate had been met with silence but additional efforts were underway. They called in every department head, putting them to task on finding some way to speak to the object.

If anything caused the power outages, it was likely those smaller things coming down, masking their presence perhaps. Or, it may have been a side effective of them entering the atmosphere. Warren didn’t believe that or it would’ve impacted greater areas. Power dropped in targeted places.

Warren had been on leave and joined the secure conference line after Jacks contacted him. It didn’t take long before he got in the truck and floored the gas … then promptly found himself stuck. People threw out theories but the one that concerned Warren the most was the idea that they might be dealing with an unmanned device, a robot sent to observe.

Another person took that theory to the next logical conclusion: that they might be dealing with a hostile device which could cause untold destruction. Had it crashed into the Earth, the sheer size of it would’ve been enough to cause unimaginable destruction.

Jacks stated early in the call that the men who discovered the item initially believed the Earth was doomed. Considering the speed at which the device approached the planet, there was no time to react, no way to intercept it before it made contact. When it stopped, a collective sigh of relief washed through the Space Agency headquarters.

I have to get our ship up there and confront this thing. Warren didn’t want to bring it up on the call. He needed to have a private conversation with Jacks, to bring the point home in person. They had the ship for the job. A battleship that definitely held the punch required to put some hurt on an invading vessel.

It would take time to prep and launch, however. To that end, he contacted Lieutenant Commander Carlos Delgado, his chief engineer and had him go about getting everything online. By the time Warren arrived and spoke to Jacks, they should be about ready to take off. Providing he got the rest of the crew in place … and clearance.

Jacks terminated the call, bringing everyone into a room at the Agency headquarters. Warren was asked to join them the moment he arrived just before they killed the line. Damn it, Jacks.