British Columbia, Canada
Local Time: 1025
The sun beamed down overhead, washing the long road that, at its end, led to the Alenko family orchard. Temperatures so far this year promised a warm season and hinted that a bountiful harvest season might be in the wings.
It was never safe to assume, of course, but those were the indications.
But speaking of indications…
Peter Alenko glanced over at his wife, placidly reading something as she tuned out his choice of radio programs. He turned the talk radio off with the push of one sturdy finger. After a long moment of silence, "You heard from Kaidan lately?" In many ways Peter greatly resembled his son, though he usually insisted that 'the boy took after his mother.' It showed most prominently when his brow furrowed in deep thought, as it was now.
Jia Alenko looked up from her reading. Anyone who knew Kaidan would have recognized immediately that he had inherited her eyes, both in shape and color. "Not since last week. He's very busy." With what, she didn't know, but busy he was. Not too busy, though, to drop her a message every so often. It was unlike him not to visit while he was planetside.
She glanced out the window, wondering. He'd come to them some six months ago with a warning to get off-planet, that trouble was coming. Well, that was not really an option, and he'd recognized that almost before Peter pointed out that they couldn't live off-world indefinitely.
But forewarned was forearmed, and whatever had Kaidan spooked—she had the impression that 'spooked' was no longer the word—still had him spooked. Whatever was coming was bad, and it was all they could do to brace themselves and hope to weather it—
Suddenly, up ahead, something dropped from the sky, smashing into the road.
Traffic stopped, screeched to a halt, vehicles clipping one another as they swerved to the sides of the marked road.
Peter stomped on the brakes, bringing the truck to a screeching halt, narrowly avoiding another car following too close.
"Was that a-a meteor?" Jia asked, her stomach going cold with fear.
Kaidan hadn't been able to describe how this 'invasion' would occur, but he'd been adamant about one thing: 'you'll know it when you see it.'
If meteors were expected, it would have been on the radio.
"I dunno. Stay here." Peter reached into the back of the truck, his fingers finding the rifle that, along with an emergency seventy-two hour pack, had reposed there since Kaidan brought the warning home: brace for invasion. Since it wasn't like Kaidan to be hysterical (or delusional), and since it wasn't asking much to 'just be prepared,' he'd followed his son's insistences.
He climbed out of the truck, leaving the vehicle in park with the engine running.
He wasn't the only one, but he was the only one armed. "Get back in your cars!" he barked, for all the good it did him. Some, seeing the rifle and hearing the sharp tone of command obeyed, but most did not.
He didn't like going up to investigate, but at the same time he did not want to take the truck up close if there was trouble. Trouble would come crawling out of a crater.
Jia rolled down her window, glancing about, first to her husband, then to the surrounding area, back to Peter, back to the landscape. Several more 'meteors' dropped from the sky, like afterthoughts. She nervously reached into the back, found the pistol under the seat. It was only at Kaidan's and Peter's joint insistence that she had learned to use one at all.
Still, she remained in the truck disliking the way the crater drew observers towards it.
Peter got no more than thirty feet from his truck when a figure lumbered out of the smoking hole. His mind couldn't identify it, but he certainly recognized when a weapon was being leveled in his direction. He shouldered his rifle just as the creature released a stream of light that turned the woman caught in it into a cinder and melted the car beyond.
Three round bursts peppered the thing—which was promptly joined by a second. They did not seem particularly intelligent, but they were definitely hostile.
People panicked.
It was all he could do to continue offering suppressing fire as he backed towards the truck. Vehicles pulled away from the crash site, slammed into one another, or took hits from the invading force—Peter knew that was what these three things represented.
Kaidan's expected invasion was here. And didn't he, Peter, know it when he saw it!
"Peter!" Jia, upon seeing the initial damages, had climbed into the driver's seat and brought the truck up as quickly as she could without wrecking it.
Peter pulled the door open, climbed in, and rolled down the window. "Take us around!"
Jia hit the accelerator, swinging wide around the knot of traffic, her knuckles white on the steering wheel as Peter leaned out the window, ready to open fire if need be.
He felt like a bit of an alarmist, riding shotgun with a rifle at the ready, but better an alarmist than dead.
"Where am I going?" Jia demanded, her voice low and taut as she clenched her jaw muscles.
For a moment Peter considered having her turn around, to run back to Vancouver…but he dismissed it almost immediately. "To the Orchard!" Vancouver was a strategic target. If a few monstrosities were beginning to wander around the countryside, he could only imagine what kind of hammering Vancouver was taking. "It'll be safer!" Whether this was true or not was up for debate, but he had no intention of terrifying his wife. Current circumstances would take care of that soon enough, he was sure.
And, as he watched more of the strange meteors dropping from the sky, for the first time in a long time, Peter Alenko felt a deep-running stab of fear for his son.