The Expanse - J.M. Dillard [2]
The gulf began to grow warmer than the smoke-filled air. Liz’s impulse was to replace her mask and breathing gear, and dive down where it was cooler—but a strong current kept her pinned to the surface, trapped near other unwilling victims: a pair of chattering dolphins, the school of now-thrashing tarpons, a struggling barracuda.
Get in the boat, her mind finally told her, cutting through her shock. Get in the damned boat and get the hell out of here.
White-foamed waves crashed against her and the small power-boat as the wall of flame neared. The current was so strong by this time that trying to find the ladder, clinging to it with her arms, took agonizing effort. She managed to pull herself up—just enough to try lifting her leg up, stepping into the boat ...
A great wave came along, and capsized it, forcing Liz for an instant beneath the waters surface. She bobbed up again, coughing, and opened her eyes, stinging from the salt. The boat was designed to right itself instantly—but another wave caught it, and overturned it again, and a third swept it away from her reach. By this time, the sea was so rough, she could do nothing but tread water.
Liz began to sweat, despite the fact that she was submerged up to her chin. She had hoped, up to that point, that the water would protect her—but it was beginning to roil from the heat.
She watched, amazed, as the stream of fire from the sky devoured the shore and any creature hapless enough to remain there.
Then it found the water’s edge. A deafening hiss followed as steam rose high beyond the clouds, mixing in with the smoke; as Liz watched, the ocean disappeared, foot by foot, replaced by an ugly, fathomless crater.
Her skin grew red, scalded, as she watched the fire come closer. Her first thought, the more maudlin one, was that if she had to die, at least she was dying in the place she loved best.
Her second and last thought was, Bet Trip has seen nothing as wild as this, even out in space ...
Chapter 1
He was a Xindi warrior, of his culture’s highest class, and out of a sense of decorum he had worn his ceremonial armor on this, his last mission, though he would not need it, and though it could not protect him from his fate.
He had already attended his own death ceremony, already been honored for the heroic deed he would perform on behalf of his people, his homeworld, against the Enemy-to-come. Then, he had felt only a sense of pride. He had been accorded every pleasure, every desire: his kin were left behind with great prestige and wealth. They would build monuments to his memory.
Now he sat in the Enemy’s home system, at the controls of the destroyer/probe. It was a handsome craft: two concentric spheres, each as perfect as his world, each rotating within the other. It had two functions: the first, to send information to his leaders; the second, to destroy.
The warrior passed through the alien solar system without difficulty, and sped toward his target: the planet where the Enemy-to-come dwelled, unaware as yet of its future crime. The world itself—Earth, an ugly word, bitter on the tongue—was not as hideous as the warrior had imagined, with its swirls of blue and green. There was, in fact, an odd beauty to it. For an instant, the warrior permitted himself to consider the life-forms dwelling there, on the green landforms, in the blue oceans: They were unaware of the crimes that would be perpetrated by their heirs, and therefore not guilty. The Xindi knew nothing of their culture: perhaps they were not so different from his own people.
He censored the thought at once: Such reflection was dangerous, and could only hinder his mission.
He slowed his vessel, and dropped down into the lower atmosphere, confident that he would not be detected, given the primitive science of the natives.
He programmed the targeted area—a peninsula and island in the western hemisphere—into his weapon’s sites. All went as he had practiced in the hundreds