THIS IS A ROUGH DRAFT. SEE NEXT CHAPTER FOR OFFICIAL PROLOGUE

Prologue

First Contact

January 29th 1986, Russia

The MH6-Little Bird's rotor thrummed dully overhead, muffled mainly by the headphones that Max was wearing. 3,000 meters up the scenery was beautiful; Dalnegorsk spread out below them in the valley, surrounded by hills covered with the skeletons of trees. This place would look magical in the fall, Max mused to himself. I'll have to visit when I'm on leave and try the local cuisine.

The hum from the Little Bird's rotors decreased as the helicopter began to arc towards a hill adjacent to the town. Max could faintly see the fires burning from the crash. Some object had fallen from space, landed near a Russian town and their team had received orders to investigate and assist the Soviets. Why only a team? Why had they been deployed? Special Reconnaissance wasn't usually deployed for peacekeeping, clean up or recovery. Max flipped his collar up and huddled further down into his cold weather flight jacket, trying unsuccessfully to prevent the wind from biting into his neck. They would find out soon enough.

Phil's voice crackled through the headset, "ETA 10 minutes. Are ya' nervous Tennyson? Don't worry kid, you can hold my hand if you get scared." His CO's good humored mockery already had started to get old even though he had already been a member of the team for 6 months. At 18 he was the youngest member of the SR and this was his first mission with this team.

"Old age make it hard for you to see?" Max retorted, "Need someone to lead you around?"

"Only if it's you." Phil replied and made a smooching sound over the radio.

Max snorted and shook his head, ignoring the banter. He hitched his M16A2 into a more comfortable position. They'd apparently been deployed at the request of the Soviet's, which made it all the more confusing technically they were at war. Perhaps they were just overwhelmed, with the fall of the Berlin Wall the Soviet Union seemed to be struggling.

Max looked over to Donovan who was fiddling with a colored cube. Donovan always had like puzzles and was determined to solve the Rubik's Cube. He was a smart man and want to own his own business when he got out of the military. He definitely had the smarts for it although Max never had liked the idea of running a business. Too risky.

When the Little Bird finally landed, Max jumped down and adjusted his gear. They had landed a little ways down the mountain from the lip of the crater. The smell of burning wood assaulted his nostrils. With the snow and cold air the smell was very pervasive, especially with the dying rotors of the Little Bird pushing air down onto them. Smoke drifted slowly along the hillside though it wasn't suffocating. Probably hadn't been too long since the crash. A couple hours at the most.

As the rotors were slowing, a soviet soldier was making his way down the slope. The pilot, Jack, who was also the interpreter met him and held a brief conference. Max couldn't understand what was being said but Jack's face slowly morphed into one of astonishment. Max and the rest of his team were double checking and tightening their gear. It was marginally warmer here on the ground but not by much and the movement helped to stretch out the muscle and warm them up slightly. Donovan had stowed his Rubik's cube and was shifting from foot to foot trying to keep warm.

Jack and the Soviet separated and Jack approached Phil. They started talking quietly enough that Max couldn't hear them. Phil was nodding through most of the report but as Jack finished he looked at Jack with an eyebrow raised as if to ask if he was joking. With no further explanation forthcoming, Phil turned to the rest of the team.

"All right, single file on me." He turned and they made their way up the slight incline to the crash site. The Soviets were already there, moving rocks and cutting down burning trees; clearing a space around the crater.

As they crested the hill, Max got his first good look at the crater. It was disappointingly small, only about 20 meters in diameter. Very undisappointingly, a white structure rose in the middle of the crater about the size of a shed. It was still smoking and was the obvious cause of the crater. So it had been a satellite after all.

"Hold position here, we don't know if this thing will explode or not." Phil commanded. "Donovan with me." Phil and Donovan made their way towards the satellite as the rest of the team set up position behind some rocks. Max shuffled impatiently in the cold. Heath, another team member, walked over to Jack and asked, "What did the Red say?" Max, and the rest of the team inched closer to hear the reply.

"The object landed at about 2000. No attempt to approach has been made. They-" He was cut off by a loud scraping sound coming from the center of the crater. Phil and Donovan ran back and dove behind the rocks. The guns of both the Soviets and the American trained on the satellite as what appeared to be a hatch opened on the top of the structure.

A voice shouted from the structure in Russian but none of the Russians moved.

"What did he say?" Heath whispered to Jack.

"'Please lower your firearms.'" Jack replied. "I have no idea why the Russians aren't complying. This must be a cosmonaut who fell from space and miraculously survived impact. I see no parachutes and landing on the water is much safer than the land. Why aren't they rushing to his aid?"

A soviet soldier yelled back in Russian and a brief reply came from the structure. "Huh?" Jack said but before he could translate anything further a small head poked out from within the satellite. It looked remarkably like a frog with massive green eyes set into a tiny head. It's skin was grey and it wore a white jumpsuit. It climbed up onto the now horizontal hatch and remarkably it was standing on two legs; it couldn't be more that 4 inches tall. It wasn't like any frog that Max had ever seen. The frog opened it's mouth and Max froze in astonishment as the thing yelled some Russian at the Soviets.

"It says it's a species known as Galvan from the planet Galvan Prime." Jack whispered.

"Huh?" Donovan said.

Max's brain finally caught up and he knew what Jack was going to say even though he could barely wrap his head around it.

Without looking away Jack barely managed to say, "It's an extra-terrestrial. An alien from outer space."