Bringing Stella Home Read Online Free PDF

brilliant bursts of light across the sky.
The explosions faded slowly, reflected in eerie, nebulous hues
against the twilight crescent of the night side of the world. He
zoomed in and found the remnants of broken and destroyed ships,
split hulls and falling debris.
    James’s stomach rose in his chest, and
a wave of nausea nearly made him vomit. There had been people on
those ships—real, living people. Now, they were all
dead.
    Were Ben and Stella among
them?
    He activated the feed controls and
zoomed in, tracing the field of battle until he came to the Hameji
ships. They had regrouped and were flying in formation now, despite
all the chaos of the battle zone. As he panned out, the camera fell
on a massive tube-like ship nearly twenty kilometers
long.
    James caught his breath. Blue light
flared from the engines behind the enormous vessel, lighting up all
the ships and debris behind it. He zoomed out as a massive asteroid
shot out the end of the tube. At that resolution, the rock must
have been at least half a kilometer in diameter—an awesome size for
something moving so fast.
    With wide, horrified eyes,
he followed the giant chunk of space rock as it hurtled towards the
planet. It struck the center of one of Kardunash IV’s domes—one of the
continent-sized urban centers, full of billions of
people.
    He gasped. A giant brown splotch rose
up into the atmosphere like mud from the bottom of a stream bed.
When it hit the upper atmosphere, it began to trace a teardrop band
across the rest of the world, the muddy blackness tainting the
white clouds a dirty gray. Not far from the first, a second
asteroid struck, kicking up another black cloud of destruction.
Down near the equator, a third plume billowed out—and then a
fourth.
    James felt the blood drain
from his face, leaving his skin cold and clammy. He could hardly
believe what he was seeing. The mass accelerators, the asteroids—it
was Tajjur V and Belarius III all over again. The Hameji were slagging the planet,
annihilating everyone and everything on the surface.
    Ben, James thought despairingly to himself. Stella—I’m so sorry. His eyes burning
with tears, he clenched his teeth together and balled his hands
into fists.
    No, he told himself. They’re not dead.
They can’t be!
     
    * * * * *
     
    For nearly a minute, Ben hardly knew
where he was or what he was doing. Sweaty bodies pressed against
him on all sides, battering him with unintentional blows as
everyone pressed toward the airlock at once. He shoved his way
through the panicked crowd, taking care not to let go of Stella’s
hand.
    He held onto her until they
passed through the freight airlock of the Sierra Vista . The corridor opened up significantly, allowing them to move
much faster . Together, they ran with the
others down the dim, windowless hallway.
    “ Will we be safe here?”
Stella asked, keeping pace.
    “ Not here,” said Ben.
“We’ve got to get deeper.” He didn’t tell her that if the Hameji
boarded them, no place would be safe.
    The Sierra Vista was a mid-size sublight
freighter, built for cargo, not for passengers. The walls were dark
and drab, made from industrial grade durasteel. The air was chilly,
and the halls below decks were barely more than oversized duct
work.
    They followed the crowd into a large,
dimly lit cargo hold. Except for a few large boxes and piles of
crates strapped against the far wall, the room was empty. A few of
the frightened refugees pulled up some loose crates to sit on, but
most remained standing, still in shock.
    This was the end of all they could do,
Ben realized. Either the pilot got them out, or they’d all die—or
worse.
    “ Come with me,” Ben said,
leading Stella into an empty doorway where they could speak more
privately. He stopped and turned to face her.
    “ If the crowd panics again,
I want you to stay calm,” he told her. “We can’t do anything about
the Hameji, so there’s no sense worrying about that. Just stay
calm, and stick with