Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (2 page)

Wake up
.

Again the whisper was lost in the midst of the chaos, dust and debris rolling over the city like the wall of a massive desert haboob engulfing everything in its path. The city was reeling from one shock after another, but it was a city that had some experience with emergencies, and it was waking slowly but surely to the events.

On the west side of Central Park, the
Odyssey
’s forward and command habitat came to rest, rocking gently on an uneven surface of fallen trees and crushed automobiles. The wails of sirens and aftershocks of impacts punctuated the local silence that descended as those who survived witnessing the crash stared in shock at the punctured, scarred, and crushed cylinder that had once controlled the greatest vessel ever built by human hands.

Inside the module, nothing moved.

Now! Wake up, now!

Eric Stanton Weston gasped, sucking in air as he awoke from a nightmare of being trapped in his ship after it had
explosively decompressed. He flailed around momentarily, but was unable to move an inch, and he quickly realized why.

He was strapped firmly into the command console, which was now apparently attached to the ceiling. He hung there for a long moment, upside down and deeply confused, as he tried to take in what had happened and what was, in fact, happening.

Where?
Eric couldn’t think straight. He felt like he’d just been beaten into the ground by a particularly heavy battle tank, or maybe had just plowed his fighter into some poor bastard’s field.

He blinked, looking around as memories returned to him, and realized just how close that last thought really was.

“Oh my lord, I hurt,” he mumbled, licking his lips and spitting out a piece of his helmet face shield.
Shatterproof my ass
.

Slowly he reached up and began picking pieces of the glass shield from his face. Then he detached the helmet and let it drop to the ceiling below him.

Realization was sinking in slowly, fractured memories of what led him to his current predicament filtering with agonizing ponderousness. He had a headache that felt like someone was pounding on his skull with a pickax from the inside, and he couldn’t quite manage to blink the blurred vision away.

Eric was no doctor, to say the least, but he knew the signs of a concussion. He likely needed medical help in the worst way, but considering the fact that he hadn’t really expected to wake up at all, he couldn’t say that he was feeling all that bad.

This is going to suck. Yup, no doubt about it
.

He couldn’t stay where he was, that was clear, and he had no idea where he’d managed to land . . . crash . . . so he couldn’t count on help.

Besides, the world likely has enough on its plate just now. I’ll have to take care of myself
.

Eric looked up, or down he supposed, and barely could make out the ceiling of the bridge a few feet below his head.
Yeah, definitely going to suck
.

He took a breath, closed his eyes, and then slapped the quick release on his straps.

Eric fell ten feet, twisting as best he could, and hit the ceiling shoulder first in a clumsy roll that sent a sickening stab of pain through his bones and skull. He skidded to a stop, curled around the extruded housing of the now dead lights, and just lay there until the pain began to subside.

I’ve felt better after being shot,
he thought grimly to himself as he actually sobbed quietly, praying for the headache to subside.

Eric didn’t know how long he’d been laying there, but after a time the pain again dropped to manageable levels and he got to his knees and pulled himself over to the door. It was sealed shut, of course, and with no power he had to do things the hard way.

What else is new?

Eric got painfully to his feet, having to reach up to open the panel that was normally only four feet off the ground, and he got hold of the manual level for the door. A hard yank opened it enough for him to wedge his hands in and pry it open, not a lot, but enough to work with. Eric slipped out of the bridge and into the corridor beyond, where he had to pause to get his bearings.

Wait, do I go left or right to get to the closest armory locker?

He blinked, trying to clear the double vision from his eyes while he was wrapping his mind around that. Normally it wouldn’t be a problem: Step out the door, walk right around the curve of the habitat, and he’d get to a security room.

At the moment, however, standing on the ceiling of the corridor with double vision and a splitting headache, Eric couldn’t remember what direction right
was
without making a signing gesture with his right hand to confirm it.

He finally worked out that he had to go left, and that was when he realized that he had a bigger problem.

Oh shit. The drum isn’t rotating. I’m in Earth gravity and that means this whole damn thing is more of an amusement park ride than habitat section
.

He sighed, looking over the situation, and slowly shook his head.
This is going to
suck
.

He got down onto his hands and knees and turned around, slowly lowering himself down the curving corridor until he began to slide. Eric quickly latched on to the frame of a door to stop himself, feet kicking around until he found another purchase, and then he began to ease himself down.

He had made it about a quarter of the way down when he lost his grip, slid off the ledge he was balancing on, and pitched into the black of the unlit corridor, swearing at the top of his lungs the whole way down.

Lyssa Myriano was having the mother of all bad days.

It had started with a fight that led to a breakup with her boyfriend, and now the whole damned solar system had apparently decided it was time to pay a visit to the Big Apple.

Just fucking peachy
.

“Get down!” the NYPD patrol officer snarled as a dozen people came screaming in her direction.

They scattered as she pumped the old Remington shotgun she’d pulled from the truck of her cruiser. The twelve-gauge slugs were old school, but they still put down damn near anything short of straight-up MilSpec armor, and so she’d never felt the need to change over to the high-powered stuff.

Now she was regretting that decision.

The shotgun roared six times as she pumped and fired as fast as she could, emptying the weapon into the oncoming horror that the crowds were running from. The creatures looked like something out of a movie, only maybe a little less realistic, lumbering on insect-like bodies that appeared to weigh as much as a large truck.

Or small tank
.

Lyssa swore some more as she tossed her twelve-gauge and drew her service pistol. That was a little more high tech, a ten-millimeter armor piercer designed to turn civilian-level body armor to Swiss cheese. She fired as she fell back, really just trying to delay one of the invaders so people could clear the area.

All she was really doing was attracting its attention to her.

Great. Just what I needed to top off my friggin’ day
.

She glanced around and changed direction as she started to run, leading the thing into the park and away from the crowds. The ten-millimeter autoloader reloaded easily, her hands moving on muscle memory as she ran for her life. The park was large enough that the things on her tail would have room to move without knocking over buildings or, hopefully, people, but it also meant that she was about to be a nice wide-open target.

That was about the time that a sizzling sound made her throw herself to the left as a beam scorched the grass ahead of her. Lyssa rolled to her feet, stared for a split second, and started running again.

Great! Ray guns too!

She tapped the ear set she was wearing. “Central, this is Kilo One Nine calling in a Code . . . Central, what the fuck is the code for alien invasion anyway?”

NATIONAL GUARD COMMAND POST,
INTREPID
SEA, AIR, & SPACE MUSEUM