Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (17 page)

The skyscraper thundered into the ground, sending smoke and dust billowing out to cloud the vision and lungs of everyone for a mile. In the aftermath of the crash there was an eerie silence that seemed to echo as heavily as the crash itself, the shock of the moment outlasting the violence that caused it.

As the dust slowly settled, visibility improved until those who hadn’t been smart enough to take serious cover could see the rubble littering downtown. The collapsed building had taken out one of its neighbors and severely compromised
three others, but it seemed that it had also taken out the
things
they’d been fighting.

Unfortunately, what seemed to be wasn’t what was.

The rubble moved, shifting as things crawled out from under it and began moving around again. The Guardsmen watched, dismayed, as the creatures began to crawl over the next building, tearing chunks out and literally
eating
the debris as they went.

NEW DELHI, INDIA

THE CITY WAS so thickly populated that even after millions escaped, there were still a hundred million people within the danger area as the alien menace tore through the eclectic mix of old slums and new high-rises that marked New Delhi’s skyline.

Tens of thousands had died in the initial impacts, conservatively estimating the numbers. A hundred thousand more in the hours since, but the fighting raged heavier in this place than anywhere else on Earth. Few had the weapons needed to make a real impact on the aliens, however, and with each passing minute ten thousand more lives were ended.

The Block military tried to move in, but if a city like New York had congested traffic then New Delhi lived life at a standstill. Even with tanks plowing through the mess, they were literally being stopped as the number of cars being pushed aside came to rest against the next few abandoned cars behind them, eventually forming a bank of wrecked vehicles that had to be pulled down with winches.

So instead they had men running ahead, moving the cars out of the way one by one to let the tanks through. It was
slow, tedious work, and they had miles to go before they even reached the hottest points in the battle.

The Block Air Force was already on site, and airborne troops were dropping into the city from all sides. They had only light weapons at the moment and little enough ammunition that for the immediate future they provided a minimal threat to their foe.

The City of New Delhi was burning as it was being eaten slowly from within.

For Gaia the experience of invasion was sickening, somewhat like being down with a particularly virulent infection she supposed. At the moment it was light, merely the beginnings of what was to come. She didn’t feel sick the way humans did, never had, but were she human she supposed that she would now be feeling chills and light-headedness
.

Instead, all she really felt was disgust
.

CHAPTER FIVE

“SO THAT’S THE
Odyssey
, is it?”

Out across the sound from where they stood was a slab of metal, steel blue with white lettering, sticking out of the water like a sword rising from the lake. This sword, however, would never be drawn again, and that made the scene a pitiable one.

“It used to be,” Eric told his companion soberly, only half paying attention to the conversation.

The wreckage of the
Odyssey
was in better shape than he’d expected, though he knew from the data ping he’d gotten that significant parts of it had to have survived. He knew that the only way the ship could be in the shape he was seeing was if the counter-mass generators had survived right to the moment of impact.

With most of the mass of the ship hidden from the real-world universe, the
Odyssey
’s structural integrity would have been much more effectively strengthened. It was still a near miracle that his ship was in as few pieces as it was, but at least there would be things they could salvage, things they could use.

“So how are we getting over to that?” Lyssa asked from where she was sitting on a cement embankment.

Eric glanced across the waterline and nodded to the south. “There’s a marina. We’ll steal a boat.”

“Commandeer.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m a police officer, I don’t
steal
boats,” she told him simply. “I commandeer them.”

Eric snorted but nodded as he gestured. “Whatever you say, Officer.”