“¡Dios mío, no!” Joaquin hollered unthinkingly.
Thrace bounced off the rock and crashed to the ground. Astoundingly, Joaquin saw him struggling to rise. If he had any doubts left about whether or not Thrace was really an alien, they vanished.
The mechanical monstrosity spun around until Joaquin was quite certain that he was in the horrible creature’s sights. A port opened and a golden light washed over Joaquin, bathing him in a series of grid lines. It was over in a second and the next thing that appeared out of the monster’s silvery body was a new, larger cannon. This one was not glowing a festive green, though. It blazed a fiery, ominous red. The only reason Joaquin could imagine for getting his own special color of laser blaster was that this one was designed to kill him dead.
Joaquin looked for cover, but the nearest boulders were a football field away. He would never make it in time. He started to run anyway, flying over the dry landscape like he had a ball in his hands and the rocks were the end zone. As he pelted across the desiccated ground, he also dodged from side to side, hoping to stay alive for another second, a few more feet….
He heard a high-pitched whirring behind him. It was over. He was going to die. In that moment, with safety out of reach and death a moment away, something occurred to him that he had not been aware of before: he wanted to live. All of his nihilism and antipathy burned away in that moment as he realized that there was so much more he wanted to do in this world.
For the first time in a long time, he prayed to God. Since the death of his father, Joaquin had refused to speak to God. After all, if the world He had created was this unjust, then He was hardly worthy of Joaquin’s faith. But here in what he was sure was his final moment on Earth, he found himself begging for forgiveness for his sins.
Instead of a blast of deadly energy, though, it was a hard, muscled body that slammed into him. Joaquin had been sacked by some gargantuan linebackers in his time, but Thrace put them all to shame. It was like being hit by a truck. The young man cried out and went crashing to the earth even as the deadly energy blast took Thrace in the chest.
Joaquin already suspected the red energy was more dangerous than the green, and the way Thrace cried out when he was hit seemed to confirm that. For all of the Elf’s apparent invulnerability, the single blast of energy had clearly hurt him badly. Thrace was still moving, writhing on the ground and moaning pitiably. Joaquin feared to think what that cannon would do to his own comparatively fragile body. He wanted to go to his rescuer, but the creature was targeting Joaquin once again. He had to run.
He reached the safety of the rocks just in time. A blast atomized a boulder that was as big as his pick-up truck. Joaquin scrambled to get down further, terrified out of his mind. It all might be for nothing, he realized. The robot might simply obliterate the entire pile of rubble with him in it. But he had to hide and hope for the best.
The next blast exploded the rocks in front of him, flinging him backwards. Stunned and barely conscious, he couldn’t even move. The brief reprieve he had been granted had come to an end. Dimly, he comforted himself with knowing he would see his dad soon.
But the killing blast did not come. Joaquin groaned and shook off his daze. He was covered in bruises, but he wasn’t dead. Cautiously, he crawled up the pile of rubble to survey the scene. Every movement caused him to wince in pain, but he was used to pushing through that barrier. He had to know what was going on.
The hope that Thrace had regained consciousness and dismantled the mechanical beast down to its nuts and bolts was immediately foiled. The robot had turned its attention away from Joaquin. Whether it was so damaged that it didn’t sense that Joaquin was still alive or that it didn’t care enough to be sure, Joaquin couldn’t guess. But for the moment, he was out of the monster’s crosshairs.
Thrace was being bound up in some sort of webbing. Joaquin didn’t know what the creature (or, presumably, its makers) wanted with Thrace but he was ready to bet it wasn’t for anything good.
Joaquin found himself confronting the same choice his father had made, and the irony convinced him that God really did have a sense of humor. He could run, save his own hide and leave Thrace to his fate. He could tell Sylvia it really had been a joke. No one would ever need to know this weird night ever happened. He could go back to his life, to school, to what was normal.
He thought of his father. The helicopter had been full and ready to take off. His men, wounded and battered, had been pulled out after a protracted firefight. They had stayed to give some villagers time to escape. When they did finally evacuate, they had arrived at the chopper to discover that one man was missing. Joaquin’s father had decided to go back for him. It had been that simple for his father—you never left a man behind.
Had it not been for the mortar shell, he would have succeeded. They had been ten yards from the chopper when they had been hit. Had his father left when he had had the chance, only one member of his team would have died that day.
Joaquin had struggled to understand his father’s choice. Now, though, he began to see. Thrace had saved his life. Joaquin couldn’t just abandon him.
He needed to distract the creature for a minute or two. He couldn’t just leap from his cover and holler—that would just result in his death and take all of about three seconds. No, he needed to be more clever than that. He needed an actual plan. He needed to look at the creature as an opposing team and come up with a play to defeat it.
Remembering the sensor the machine had used on him, he got the germ of an idea. The robot wanted him dead. If it thought he wasn’t, it would abandon Thrace to finish the job. If he caused a noise some distance off, the creature would scan that area and, not finding anything, would be forced to investigate. Or, at least, that was what Joaquin was counting on.
He picked up a rock and took aim at a point many yards away. The former quarterback drew his arm back and threw his projectile with all the skill that made him a hometown hero. Though heavier and more awkward than a football, it still sailed in the arc he had predicted and smashed into the rubble in the distance.
The mechanical monstrosity turned and scanned that area with its peculiar golden light while Joaquin waited anxiously. Seconds ticked by. Then, to his immense relief, the creature floated over to investigate the noise, leaving its captive behind.
Joaquin snuck out and skulked over to where Thrace lay prone and helpless. The Elf looked immensely relieved to see him. He beamed up at Joaquin, apparently not caring that he was bound up while a murderous robot lurked just a few yards away.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I’m going to be if we don’t get you out of this thing.”
The webbing was made of some strange black material whose composition was a mystery to Joaquin. It was glossy and rubbery to the eye, but hard like steel cables to the touch. He wished he had brought his knife along.
“It shouldn’t be authorized to kill you, though,” Thrace murmured, looking perplexed.
“We can ask it about that after we get you loose.”
“Earth and its denizens are protected by general order—”
“Thrace! Stop screwing around!”
“I’m not,” Thrace told him in an injured tone.
“How do I get you out of this?”
“Huh? Oh! There should be a button on it—probably the back.”
Joaquin spared a nervous glance in the direction of the mechanical monster, which was blasting rubble to dust just to be sure it eliminated the spy. Grimacing, he rolled Thrace onto his belly. There, at the small of his back was a big red button. Joaquin tapped it and the webbing withdrew, slithering into the disk with the button on it.
“Much better,” Thrace approved and got up. “Now, please get under cover while I crush the automaton.”
Joaquin nodded and scrambled to get back behind the boulders. Thrace took to the air and soared up into the starry sky until Joaquin could not even make out his silhouette. Then, just as the mechanical creature—the automaton—st
arted noticing its prisoner was missing, the heroic stranger rocketed out of the sky like a meteor.
The collision created an explosion so intense that Joaquin was blown backwards. When he scrambled back up to peer over the rubble, he saw the automaton laying in broken pieces all over the landscape. Some of the bits were twitching spasmodically. Others were sparking and popping in their death throes. Some even burst in smaller, successive explosions.
Thrace was lying amidst the wreckage, making pathetic groaning sounds. Joaquin rushed over to him convinced he must have seriously hurt himself at last. None of the Elf’s limbs were twisted at strange angles, however. It was hard to see much else, though, with all the dust and smoke in the air.
“Thrace?”
The Elf coughed and rolled onto his back. “Did it work?”
Joaquin nodded, his eyes wide with shock. “You nailed it this time.”
Thrace struggled to his feet. “There, see? No problem,” he said, grinning like a lunatic.
Joaquin gaped at him for a moment. And then, for no particular reason, he found himself laughing. The whole situation was, after all completely ridiculous. Even his dreams never got this strange.
His laughter ended abruptly when Thrace’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he pitched forward. Joaquin caught him and nearly buckled under the Elf’s surprising weight. He grunted and supported the strange visitor under his arms.
“Thrace? Come on, wake up.”
Thrace only groaned in response. He apparently had limits and he had reached them. Joaquin was somewhat relieved by that because it humanized him a little bit. But at the moment, it wasn’t really convenient.
“Seriously, dude, you weigh a ton.”
Thrace made a valiant effort to right himself, but his trembling muscles couldn’t manage it. The Elf was barely conscious. Joaquin decided it was better to get him back to the mine before he completely turned into dead weight.
With Thrace’s arm over his shoulder, he half-supported, half-dragged the Elf back to the mine. By the time they got there, Thrace was barely moving. Joaquin struggled the last few steps until he was able to lay the Elf down next to his campsite. Not knowing what else to do, he retrieved his sleeping bag and rolled Thrace up in it.
Then he sat back and watched the alien visitor sleep. His mind was awash in confusion. What was he supposed to do now?
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
About the Author
Also By Chris O’Guinn
Coming Soon!
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