Chapter 1: Introductions

A young-ish woman, apparently in her late twenties, early thirties, awoke. Groggily at first, but she became fully alert as she took in her surroundings. This was not downtown Madrid…nor was it Mexico City. Nor was it any place she could recollect. She twisted her head to look behind her and to her sides. Her eyes locked on the one window, which was ovular and currently showed a star field. That was bad. That meant that she was on a spacecraft that she had no memory of boarding. She tried to remember anything before falling asleep, but she didn't even remember going to sleep. Last she could recall, she was about to crack the neck of her target…no, she did crack his neck… and then there was a blinding white flash. She could remember nothing from between the flash and now. She started to get up from the spot where she was lying, but she found that she was tied to a table. A blow to the back of her head let her know that whoever had put her there hated the fact that she had woken up. The blow knocked her unconscious.

She awoke again to the sound of rushing wind. She looked down and saw a jungle soaring up at her. She immediately calculated that she was already at terminal velocity. So, unless her situation changed, when she hit the ground, she would become a neat red smear on the forest floor. That was when she noticed the device on her chest. It was certainly not human in origin. It was also beeping; slowly at first, but gradually growing more rapid. She closed her eyes and prayed that, if the device was a bomb, it would go off first; if it wasn't, she prayed that she wouldn't feel the impact with the ground.

She suddenly began decelerating, but, when she opened her eyes, she saw that she hadn't hit the ground. She looked up and saw that whoever had kidnapped her had given her a parachute before shoving her out of the ship. She also noted that the parachute had deployed too late for a perfect landing as she came down hard against the ground. She could not stop herself from crying out in pain as her right leg shattered and her left dislocated from the impact. She managed to relocate her left leg before blacking out from the pain.

She woke up a couple of hours later. Her situation had changed without her approval while she was out. She was sitting against the wall of a cave, a small fire was in front of her, and a Russian soldier was sitting in front of it, his back mostly toward her. She took in his equipment and his features and spoke to him in Russian. "Spetsnaz. I'd guess about ten, fifteen years of service so far."

He whipped around in surprise, and she could understand why. She looked Native American, and, as such, she would not be expected to know anything about the Russian military. "How could you know that?"

"Your equipment told me what you were. AS VAL 9x39 mm silenced assault rifle and Dragunov SVU sniper rifle. Weapons assigned only to Russian special forces units." She pointed at him. "Your scars and the state of medal tell of how long you have served. Long enough to have earned a few commendations, but too long to care about them anymore."

"Not bad. I will have served twelve years this February, if I had not been dropped into this godforsaken jungle," he replied as he looked outside the mouth of the cave. He then looked at her, held out his hand to shake and continued, "I'm Grigori. Grigori Petrenkov."

"Isabella Sesenta," the woman replied as she shook his hand. "I've heard of your family. Supposedly, your great-grandfather planted a Russian flag on the roof of the Reichstag near the end of the Second World War."

"Indeed he did. We still have the Bosch assault rifle he captured at home, mounted on the fireplace mantle." They were silent for a moment; then Grigori began to reach toward Isabella's legs. Before he could get his hand near, a curved sword was at his throat. "I was just going to check on my attempt to patch up your leg." That appeared to smooth her ruffled feathers, as she replaced her sword to a sheath hidden up the back of her denim jacket.

As he peeled back the dressing he had made around her shattered leg, Isabella saw exactly how severe the wound had been. Shards of bone projected out of her leg in at least three places. Even with a quick visual inspection, she could tell that her right leg was still useless; at least, it was useless for walking. "Damn."

"It seems to be healing rather well. Still, here." He held out a makeshift crutch made out of a tree branch. "Made it for you while you were out cold."

"Thanks," she replied as she accepted the proffered crutch. She stood, slowly, and tested the crutch's ability to hold her up. It did so nicely.

Picking up his weapons, Grigori said, "I saw a couple of other people get dropped nearby. Let's see if we can find them, and then we can try to find out where the Hell we are," as he began walking toward the mouth of the cave.

"On another planet," Isabella mumbled as she began to limp after him. Incredibly, they found a larger cave that was more a hollow in the wall of a cliff overlooking a river. In that hollow, several other people from diverse backgrounds were gathered and talking amongst themselves. When they noticed the two new arrivals, they all swung weapons into line with Isabella and Grigori. "Whoa! Easy boys, we're all friends here," she cautioned in English as she held up her hand in the "stop" signal.

The leader, an American armed with an AA-12, put his weapon in a patrol pose and stated, "My name is Royce. If you want to live, come with me. We're being hunted…"

"By large humanoids armed with plasma-based and melee weapons, right?" Isabella supplied.

"How the Hell do you know?"