Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Olivia held on for dear life as the entire compartment she was confined in shook like a tin shack in a hurricane, the section of the destroyed alien spacecraft plummeting toward lord knew what at a terrifying velocity. Had Olivia not been clinging onto the bent and buckled framework of one of the sleeping spaces molded into the bulkhead, she would have been pinballing off the walls—walls that were turning orange from the heat of the descent.

In a fluke of bad fate, the alien ship she’d been held captive aboard fell under attack. It had been blown to pieces, but not before jettisoning the many compartments it was comprised of. A clever design, actually. One that allowed much of the cargo to survive any such attack. Cargo that could be retrieved at a later date once the hostilities were over.

Or as they continued to rage on, as the case sometimes was with combat.

But that wasn’t anything Olivia knew. Her understanding of her captors was basic, provided to her by the others she was held with upon her arrival, the translation rune forcibly tattooed behind her ear making it possible to understand their alien tongue.

They’d all been taken by a race known as Raxxians. Brutish, green-scaled, lizard-like creatures who abducted all manner of life forms to be cataloged, distributed among their kind, and, eventually, eaten. No anal probes or little gray men here. This was an entirely different sort of abduction, and one they had no hope of escaping.

Or so they thought.

The attack had triggered their unlikely flight, and for a moment all five occupants of the compartment—two human captives and three alien ones—felt something unfamiliar for so long. A glimmer of hope.

The turbulence was sudden and fierce. Olivia was one of the few close to the walls when it happened, affording her the split-second opportunity to dive for cover and hold on. It was dumb luck, but it was dumb luck that had provided her a modicum of safety as everything went to shit. Her alien companions were not so lucky.

The artificial gravity snapped off just as the compartment started to tumble, sending them hard into the unforgiving metal of their prison. By the time the vessel leveled out into a somewhat stable, albeit bumpy ride, their broken bodies lay strewn about the chamber. Before Olivia could move to check on them—though even in her shocked state she had a sinking feeling they were almost certainly dead—a massive jolt slammed her back into the bunk she’d sheltered in. It was accompanied by a new sensation.

Heat.

Heat and a different sort of vibration. This wasn’t normal for space. Space was a vacuum, cold and lacking resistance. But this? It was familiar, though not from personal experience.

Somewhere in her mind, she realized they were entering a planet’s atmosphere. She’d seen enough movies in her day to know what sort of temperatures that could produce, and everything around her was confirming that fact. Of course, after being abducted by carnivorous aliens and held as livestock, the fear of planetary re-entry was, shockingly, one of her lesser concerns.

A loud ping rang out through the compartment. Something had just sheared off from the stress. She hoped it wasn’t anything vital. If it was, they would find out soon enough.

“What was that?” the only other human she’d seen since her capture shouted over the noise.

Harper was her name. A woman the Raxxians had abducted at roughly the same time as Olivia. More likely than not, that was how the two humans came to be held in the same section of the alien ship. They’d been living aboard the Raxxian vessel for over a month, along with the trio of very scared and very alien women with whom they shared a compartment.

A compartment now threatening to shake apart.

The strangest sound echoed through the metal walls, almost like some sort of demented whale song. But this was not a sea creature serenading its mate. This was the metal structure barely keeping them from a sudden and violent demise, buckling and bending from the strain it was somehow enduring. Olivia wondered how much more it could take.

She glanced all around, trying to make sense of it all, but despite traveling on a more or less level descent, the compartment was still anything but stable, a fact made abundantly clear when it hit a patch of extreme turbulence that sent it spinning like a top, the centrifugal force tossing the broken and battered alien occupants from the floor to the walls with a sickening splat.

“Hold on!” she called out to her friend. “Don’t let go!”

“What the hell do you think I’m trying to do?” Harper shot back through clenched teeth, her fingers white from the effort, her hands slowly peeling back as she inched closer to losing her battle with physics.

A second later it became too much to overcome.

“Fuuuck!” she screamed, her hands grasping wildly at the air in search of anything to hold her in place.

It was a valiant effort, but one that ultimately failed. Harper was sent flying.

Olivia watched helplessly as she lost her grip, spinning off and crashing hard into the wall before being unceremoniously redirected to the ceiling, where the increasing g-forces pinned her in place.

Olivia saw stars forming before her eyes, and she wasn’t even the one who had slammed against hard metal. In a moment of absurd thought, she mused that this must be what fighter pilots and astronauts have to deal with in the course of their dangerous jobs. But she was not either of those things, and she was in no way prepared for this.

The craft abruptly shifted in its fall, increasing the forces exerted upon her body even further.

The pressure was unlike any she had ever experienced before, the speed of their descent making her weightless at first, then painfully squashing her against the compartment’s structure. Faster and faster they plummeted, the orange glow disappearing as the atmosphere cooled the hull. A piece of the vessel ripped off, cold wind replacing the smell of hot metal.

The ship was falling apart.

We’re going to die , Olivia realized, a strange, calm acceptance washing over her. We’re going to smash right into the ground, and there won’t be anything left of us.

No sooner had the thought passed through her mind, when a loud roar filled the compartment as the emergency deceleration thrusters kicked on.

Harper slammed down from the ceiling onto the deck with a sickening crack. Whether she was unconscious from the impact or the forces pushing all the blood out of her head was anyone’s guess, and not something Olivia would ponder for long as she too succumbed, her consciousness fading out to the sound of straining metal and the faint sensation of cool air the last thing she felt buffeting against her skin.

Then it all went black.