Return to Eden (2 page)

That determination to
ignore ‘bad luck vibes’ suffered a setback when he made his first
fold/jump. He’d experienced the jumps before. As a linguistic
anthropologist in a time when very few ‘new’ discoveries were made
of ancient civilizations, most of his living was made following the
lecture circuit and most of his studies involved the evolution of
language and culture on the outpost colonies. He’d never
actually
performed
a jump himself, however, having previously traveled via
commercial transportation and it made him extremely uneasy to hold
his own life in his hands when he wasn’t trained to pilot a ship—at
least not an interstellar one.

As he had from the moment he’d
conceived the hair-brained notion to investigation G-1493 himself
since he couldn’t convince the scientific community to do so,
though, he merely gritted his teeth, closed his mind to the
possibility of disaster, and did it.

He was a man on a mission
and he wasn’t going to allow
anything
to deter him, certainly not
the minute possibility that the computer might malfunction in the
antiquated ship he was using or miscalculate the jump exit in
uncharted space and emerge in the middle of a meteor
field.

A little shaken but relieved when the
first fold was performed flawlessly, he was able to put disaster
from his mind and focus on his goal as the ship performed the next
three jump/folds as flawlessly as the first. Particularly since he
emerged from the last with his goal in sight.

That was when he discovered the
bastards at the forum had kept him out of the loop.

Chugging along at sub-light speed since
it wasn’t safe to fold within a system, he was nearing the first of
the trio of planets that were the targets for the terra-formers
when he saw hundreds of bursts of light that indicated impacts on
the planet’s surface. Shock held him in its blank grip for a
handful of minutes, his mind struggling to decipher the explanation
for the explosions.

Then comprehension hit him.

He was too late! The fucking bastards
had sent the terra-formers!

That was when Aidan did something
impulsive for the first time in his life.

He shot toward the surface of the
target planet in a desperate attempt to collect data of some kind
before it was lost forever in the dust of reconstruction. The
landing was a hard enough jolt to jog his mind into gear—to a
degree. He was scrambling into a suit while the ship performed the
landing maneuver and out the hatch so fast upon contact that he was
pitched by the lurch of the rough landing down the gangplank and
landed hard enough to knock the wind out of him for several
moments. Struggling for breath, he pushed himself to his feet and
looked around—realizing several things at once.

Theoretically, his ship was safe from
the terra-formers since it was made of an alloy that the nanites
weren’t programmed to break down.

That was only a theory, however. Once
the terra-formers were sent out to do their job, no one landed on
the target colony until the terra-forming was completed and the
cycle of breaking down suitable materials for terra-forming and
accelerated evolution was terminated. In other words, it hadn’t
actually been put to the test.

Secondly, he’d been in such a rush to
get out and actually see the planet that he hadn’t thought to grab
his equipment to record what he might find.

And third, even he could see this was a
dead world. If any higher life-forms had evolved they’d long since
vanished.

The sinking feeling that he was going
to find the same thing on all three planets hit him like a wrecking
ball and visions of incarceration for his actions, to say nothing
of the death of his career, filled his mind.

There were still two more worlds to
check! Since there were no visible signs of higher life on the
planet he’d landed on and he didn’t think he had the time to look
for more subtle signs, he scrambled back into the ship and, after a
very little thought, programmed the ship to head directly for the
third planet from the sun since it sat in the most desirable orbit
around its parent star. The other two, he told himself, had always
been the least likely since they both sat at the outer edges of
what was considered the habitable zone—at least for life-forms
similar to what could be found on his own world and therefore
easily recognizable as life-forms.

Aidan wasn’t technical minded. He knew
how to use the very limited equipment necessary for his work. He
knew how to use the very limited technology he could afford for his
home, but he was no techno geek. For him, technology was a tool,
not a toy. He used what he needed, learned what he needed to know
to use what he needed, and otherwise had no interest in the
electronics he depended on. If they broke, he either replaced them
as he could afford to, or he sent them out for repairs if that was
possible and more affordable than replacing them.

Like everyone else, however, he
depended completely on the technology that surrounded
him.

He was, therefore,
completely taken off guard when his onboard computer suddenly
squawked out the warning ‘imminent collision!’ about a nanosecond
before the actual impact. He’d been in too big of a rush to get to
the next planet before the terra-formers could begin to destroy the
evidence he was seeking to strap his safety harness on and the
impact threw him to the floor of the cockpit. By the time he
managed to get to his feet, the computer was screaming out the
damage report—distracting to say the least—but he managed to
stumble to a port to see what the hell his ship had managed to hit
in what
should
have been open space. All the while his mind was trying to
figure out how the ship had managed to hit anything at all when it
was equipped with sensors from nose to tail that should have
detected and either evaded or deflected whatever the object was and
he struggled with the unhappy, unnerving possibility that the
landing—controlled crash—on the previous planet just might have
damaged a few vital components on the ship.

What he saw now barreling planet-ward
faster than his own ship so stunned him that it was many seconds,
maybe as much as minute, before it clicked in his mind what it
was.

The ship hadn’t collided with a rogue
meteor as his mind had instantly concluded.

The object racing away from him wasn’t
a meteor or a rock of any kind. It wasn’t a natural body that had
been orbiting the planet that his ship’s sensors had failed to
detect and deflect.

It was artificial. It was
manmade.

And it had been orbiting the
planet.

His breath froze in his chest as the
implications sank in. His heart leapt against his chest wall
painfully.

It took his mind a bit longer to catch
up to his body’s instinctual reaction.

This planet didn’t just
harbor higher life-forms! It was the home of
intelligent
life-forms advanced
enough technologically that they weren’t planet bound!

“
Good gods!” Aidan
exclaimed, feeling a momentary high generated by the excitement
that leapt in his veins at that discovery.

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.