CHAPTER ONE

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Strange that freedom involved freezing her butt off in the middle of absolutely no-where. A cutting wind whipped from the inky darkness of the desert, scouring her skin with fine grains of sand. She couldn’t see more than a metre from the light of her hand-held lantern but freedom always came at a cost.

Mia crossed her ankles, settled on the bonnet of her car, and leant back on the windscreen. She adjusted the blanket around her already well-layered body and drew her beanie over her eyebrows because the desert at night was that cold.

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Who would have thought more than a stinking forty five degrees Celsius during the day would leech away to below zero at night. Yet, here she was partly because she wanted to be and partly because she was being paid, although if truth be told she would have done it for free.

 

Her job as a freelance photographer took her around the world. She’d gained a reputation for her eye for detail, her ability to spot things that others just didn’t see and her willingness to go where others wouldn’t dare. She lived for the adventure.

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She’d traversed farther into that volcanic crater in Hawaii than the guides recommended, trekked deeper into the amazon jungle than was advised and sailed into a hurricane to photograph what it was like in the eye of the storm. The risks had always paid off.

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Not only could she just about name her price for her services but she got to go on adventures, taking photos that magazines and travel companies screamed for. It seemed that she’d grown a following of daredevils who wanted to copy whatever she did. That was alright in her book. It meant she got to do what she loved.

 

Which was why she was huddled in layers of clothing and a thick blanket in the middle of nowhere. She’d set up several cameras around the car and had all of the controls in her hand. She’d been employed to take photographs of the Nullarbor Plain, and a photograph of the night sky without the obstruction of city lights would be spectacular. She’d driven six hundred kilometres into the desert to get just the right one.

 

Mia drew a breath of fresh air into her lungs. The wind ruffled some dry grasses and other than that slight sound, the silence was thick. No matter where she went or what she did, she loved being in the middle of an adventure.

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The final frontier twinkled above her, bright and intriguing. How many worlds were out there? How many other races? Was there someone like herself on another planet looking at the night sky and wondering exactly the same thing?

 

A satellite flashed overhead. Only it grew brighter, quickly dropping from the sky. She didn’t think satellites did that. They usually trekked over the arc of the Earth imprisoned in orbit .

 

This one zigzagged in fast movements that didn’t make sense. Right, then left, then right again as though it couldn’t make up its mind. The pin prick of light burst over her, now the size of a car, blinding her. Her heart hammered in her chest. Her body screamed run, but her limbs were frozen in a state of shock. Her mind fumbled to find reason and came up with nothing before sharp claws reached for her and everything went black.

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CHAPTER TWO

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For the hundredth time, Xzion checked the coordinates on the jet and scanned for movement. Nothing but a few non-life planets spinning around a single golden sun and a lone comet showed in his scanners. He didn’t expect anything different. Nothing much happened out here in the absolute outskirts of the known universe.

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He’d come farther than was necessary. Completely off grid, to be honest, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. He’d travelled for days in the inky blackness, becoming lost in the smudge of crystalline white dust that stretched from one end of this unexplored galaxy to the other. It was beautiful, and different, and something he just had to see.

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He’d always been the first to jump to a mission, often did so without thinking, but he didn’t care. If the limits weren’t pushed, then what was life all about? He didn’t want to be someone’s bodyguard on travel a supply run, trading between planets. He needed more than that.

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It was that same attitude that females did not like. They preferred safety. Routine. Someone home-minded to raise children in a place where they would set down their lives. Thus, the life of a pilot in the Interspecies Council was a solitary one.

 

Where his friends had settled and even started their families, he didn’t have the inclination or the heart to do that to a female or to a child. If he couldn’t be there, it would be better if he never went down that route. It didn’t mean that he didn’t get lonely on occasion, but usually the thrill of doing something new kept that at bay. For how long he would think that way, he had no idea, but for now he sought the adventure.

 

This time he’d gone too far from his route but he’d deal with the flack later from higher up in the chain of command. Something had drawn him out here. He passed a planet with a glittering ring of dust surrounding it and pointed the nose of his Star Jet towards the jewel of a green, blue and white planet. His heart pumped a little faster with the discovery. This type of planet was one that could sustain life. Extremely unusual for one so far away.

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The greenery indicated definite plant life, and the blue water might even hold animal life. The clouds above the landmasses suggested a weather pattern and the light blue skin surrounding the whole planet signposted an atmosphere. This would be the discovery of a lifetime. Maybe they’d name a bacteria after him if one was discovered here. Xzionastobia. Definitely a name no one would remember.

 

He pressed the button on the dash that would record his progress and charted his course toward the planet, running diagnostics to calculate the gasses. He would be the first Hexonian to step foot on a newly discovered life-sustaining planet in quite some years if it came back suitable for oxygen-based life.

 

His eyes bugged out as the scans came back. It seemed there wasn’t just bacteria on this planet. It was teeming with sentient life! Billions of life signals were encoded into his jet systems. Differing species from miniscule to—he forgot to breath—bipedal. Beings with complex structures similar to his species.

 

He forced his eyes from the scans to see machinery circuiting the planet. There wasn’t just an abundance of sentient life. It was intelligent life. Life that had never before been discovered, and no wonder too. No one came out this far. They were light years away.

 

He forced his hands to stop shaking as he adjusted the controls to slow the Star Jet, just so he could admire the planet below. This was beyond an amazing discovery.

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A glimmer of light shot upwards from the atmospheric barrier, but once it had cleared orbit, it appeared to be a craft. It went much faster than the satellites that circled the planet, suggesting space-faring technology that was too advanced. Species generally did not use a mix of very old and advanced space-faring technology.

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Xzion checked his logs, scanning for other known craft in the area and that craft definitely was a foreign design. The craft shot away from the planet, almost as though it didn’t want to be discovered.

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His gut told him to follow. He skirted around the huge green and blue planet and then behind a red planet. A glimmer of light began to prickle in the darkness, and grew into a large spiral of light. Xzion drew in a sharp breath. It was a wormhole. They were making their own wormhole!

 

It should have been impossible, and yet the evidence was right in front of his eyes. Normally wormholes were created and held in existence by powerful gates that kept them stable for interstellar flight, created by the best minds from the Interspecies Council. Some took light years to build. To create one, even a little one like this and so quickly, was beyond any species’ current knowledge.

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He didn’t just suspect this craft was doing something illegal—he was sure. He was also one hundred percent certain if he didn’t follow them, he would lose their trail forever once they went through the wormhole.

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Xzion engaged the stealth mode of the Star Jet and engaged transmission to his commanding officer.

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“I’ve discovered illegal activity on a newly discovered class five planet. Discovery of wormhole technology. Following unidentified craft. Purpose unknown. I’m pursuing. Will report further when I’ve reached their destination.”

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The craft disappeared into the glimmering wormhole. Then the wormhole began to shrink. A return transmission began, but he cut it off. There was no time to waste. To think if this was a good idea or not. Xzion ended the transmission with a lock on his trajectory and hurtled into the wormhole just as it closed behind him.

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