Page 1 of Star-Born Anomaly
Prologue
File# B11482CX72
Secure communication
100 days after theCalypso’sreturn
General Inger:Omega Stationis lost, and any ambassador we send turns into one of these automatons, insisting we stop sending negotiators, but they will not return home themselves.
General Dorse: I wouldn’t want them too.
Inger: These are CORE officials, some related to the Chancellor. We can’t abandonthem.
Dorse: They’ve started calling themselves Calypson like the others. There is no doubt that these… people are no longer human.
Inger: Do we understand what has happened to them yet? Or if it’s reversible?
Dorse: Top scientists have been on the task since the very beginning, and none of them will make a solid hypothesis. They’re demanding test subjects and access to theCalypso’slogs. But all ships entering Sector Ten are absorbed without fail, just likeOmega Station.
Inger: Do we declare war? Send a warship to obliterate the entire colony?
Dorse: The crew of theCalypsoare obeying our directive and not advancing into our space. But they’re creating some sort of gaseous barrier. Our scientists don’t know what to make of it. Plus, there are children on board.
Inger: Children die every day from a wide range of hazards, including war.
Dorse: As long as they don’t advance toward Jupiter, we have no recourse in launching an attack.
Inger: No one of influence agrees with one another. There are those with their fingers on the trigger just waiting for an excuse, and those not willing to destroy one hundred years of history because of fear.
Dorse: We also have the benefit of distance. They would need to pass through Tellusian space to get to CORE territory.
Inger: My spies tell me the Tellusians are just as nervous and threatened by their presence as we are. There may come a time when doing nothing is no longer an option.
Dorse: Public sentiment—
Inger: Can only last so long. If they become a threat, we will do what we must to exterminate them.
Chapter one
Earth: Sector Three
New Asia Continent
The unforgiving sun beat upon her back, relentless, lethal on this dead world. Wynn sank her glove into the tilled earth and pulled, creating a hand-shaped valley for her seeds. She reached into the bag at her hip, grabbed a fistful, and plopped them into the groove a centimeter apart. Gently, she covered them with soil.
These suckers are going to live.
She wouldn’t fail. Not this time. Couldn’t afford to. Her days at this outpost were numbered. Either they would replace her with two other scientists, or they would give her a new partner and she’d beforced to quit.
She wouldn’t be able to handle working with someone else after everything.
The sound of her exhales echoed loudly within the helmet of her UV-suit. Sweat trickled down her spine to settle in the groove of her ass. Taking the pulse rifle at her hip with her, she shuffled back a pace, and scored another valley into the fertilized soil with her hand. Her seeds fell silently into place before she covered them. Again and again she repeated the process, moving centimeters backward at a time, making room for more seeds. More potential.
A crick in her neck throbbed, and Wynn straightened, rolling her shoulders to get rid of the ache. The landscape spread endlessly before her. Beyond her cultivated fields, dry cracks in the earth reached elongated fingers westward. The wind turbine atop her outpost, the size of her fingernail at this distance, remained motionless, no breeze for relief as she toiled through the dirt. Farther out, the thin line of the supply tether shot through the stratosphere, equipping Research Station 214 twenty kilometers away. And to the south of that, moody clouds formed in shades of purple and black.
She squinted. The bulbous shapes looked bloated with rain. How much acid would they contain this time?
Sun glinted off the solar panels atop the greenhouse connected to her outpost—her favorite place on the planet. Inside, rows of seeds, sprouts, and saplings lived protected from Earth’s toxic conditions. With every crop, they’d been making them stronger, more resilient to withstand radiation and acid rain. And one day they would see results.
