Drex rose from his vigil at the monitors. It had been two days since the arrival of the Coellum and it remained unclear how safe it might be to make any moves. Katherine had learned a new name, Commander Tavon Voss, who seemed to be the leader of the landing force. His addresses over the…
The dust and debris continued to swirl and fall after Amnon’s grenade exploded. For a long time, all Saw Yatha knew was the high whine of a siren in his ears. He lay still amid chunks of wall and ceiling motivating his mind to remember how he ended up in such a state. The ground…
Katherine paced the floor of the safe house. Drex raked his hair and stretched as he eyed the surveillance monitors. “Any word from Amnon?” Katherine muttered. “No.” Katherine continued to pace. It had been a long day and she felt it in her in every bend of her joints. Katherine’s mind retraced the moments of…
A bag suddenly blocked Amnon’s vision, and his wrists were bound to each other. Then, with a harsh jab in his spine, he lurched forward. Unable to see where he was going, Amnon received several jabs to his back to keep him going. It was one thing to be captured, but it was a whole…
Amnon Saxe sprinted away from Katherine’s transport and aimed for the thickest grouping of people. It wouldn’t be impossible for the guards to pick him up from a crowd, but it would be a lot harder than if he headed for the fringes of the plaza. His chest pounded and his nerves were on edge….
Evan carried Lillian out of the Processing Unit’s room, past the guards still incapacitated by the door, and out to the floor’s main passageway. It was then that he began to realize that building was no longer empty of activity. There was the sound of a low beehive in the atrium below. Evan risked a…
Amnon pushed the transport to its limits across the outskirts of the city, through the snaking neighborhood streets, all the way to the center of the plaza. Every moment forward caused Katherine’s anxiety to increase. The plume of smoke she saw when she exited the tunnel had divided several times as the city center drew…
The smell of musty, wet dirt hit Katherine in a pungent wave. It stopped her breathing momentarily as if her body rejected the impure air. Katherine’s mind’s eye immediately invented a vision of the tunnel as covered in a carpet of black and green mildew crawling with any number of space bugs. She was only…
Evan paused when he stepped into the Central Processing Unit lobby. The ceiling went higher than any building in Athens, Kansas, and every surface reflected a pristine gloss. Much to his surprise, there was no one in the lobby to stop him, so he walked briskly toward the opposite side of the space where a…
“What is that?” Keetha asked staring wildly at Evan. “The princess. She’s… we’re trying to keep a low profile.” “That’s probably a good strategy.” Keetha grabbed Evan by the shoulder and tugged him to follow her. “Look around the corner and tell me what you see.” Evan did as she said and what he saw…
