Eternal Horizon: The Chronicle of Vincent Saturn (Eternal Horizon: A Star Saga Book 1) Read Free Page A

visions that passed before his eyes like frames of a broken film reel. He saw millions of people crying in agony… he felt a sudden poignant pain—the kind he’d never felt before… a mechanical pyramid floating in the starry sky... a young man kneeling on a large flight of stairs with a dead woman in his hands...
    Complete darkness swept over him.

    *

    Alex fell back, and the door of the shuttle closed; it was as if some unseen force shoved him out.
    “ No! ” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “ Vincent! ” He jumped up and began slamming the door with the butt of his gun and his fist.
    The soldiers rushed down into the crater, but a loud noise from the vessel forced them to reconsider. They stopped, weapons drawn, a bewildered look on their faces as the ship exerted out of the ground and began floating above them, tilting its bow towards the sky.
    “ Shoot it! ” one of the soldiers shouted, opening fire.
    “ No! ” Alex cried out amidst the discharge.
    The giant engines opened, and blue and orange flames burst out, sending the ship straight up into the sky in fractions of a second.
    The soldiers continued shooting.
    “ Cease fire! ” Alex yelled out again, trying to grasp what happened. “My God…” he whispered. “Vincent.” His heart meagerly beating, eyes filling with tears, he ran up the crater wall and fell but continued nevertheless, clambering up. He hurried to one of the troops inside a military van. “Soldier, what do you see on the radar? Where’s that ship? ”
    “Sir,” the man replied, “it disappeared from our radar, and…” He paused, wiping the sweat off his forehead.
    “ And what? ”
    “It’s gone out of the atmosphere, sir,” the soldier finished with a shrug.
    “What do you mean, gone? ” Alex grabbed the lad by the collar. “Where is it, then?”
    “That ship moved too fast for us to calculate its speed, sir. At that velocity, it might very well be on the other side of the solar system by now.” The soldier cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, sir.”
    Alex felt weak in the back of his knees. He dropped his pistol and stumbled back, trying to maintain balance. “How will I explain this,” he mumbled, sitting down on the ground. He stared up into the evening sky, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Damn it, Vincent! You never listen to me!” He smashed the dry soil. He then took out his cell and dialed his friend’s number in a desperate attempt, but to his own dismay reached the voicemail recording he’d heard countless times, “Hi, this is Special Agent Vincent Saturn…”

    *

    Vincent awoke with the biggest headache he had ever had. His entire body ached as well, his left leg was cramped up, and drool covered the bottom portion of his face. It felt as if he had been asleep for days. Without pondering where he was, he rolled on his back and realized he was lying on a cold metal floor instead of his comfy bed. Opening his eyes to total darkness, he began peering at the shadows, trying to distinguish his whereabouts. He could gradually make out the shape of a chair and a control panel of a large vehicle. He stared at it for a few seconds and then promptly sat up, retracing his steps.
    He realized where he was.
    In complete panic, he began brushing his hands around the floor for the flashlight.
    “ Alex! ” he cried out. He got up and took a staggering step into the darkness, noticing—much to his surprise—that the floor of the ship was level. He supported himself on the wall and looked behind. The windshield was covered in a thick layer of dirt from the impact, yet some light escaped through the cracks. Apparently, the vessel was out of the ground. But how is it out? was the more important question.
    “What the…?” he said. He then turned towards the stern and saw a source of light emitting from the ship’s doorway. “ Alex! ” he repeated, limping towards the light alongside the wall. But just as he took several steps, he saw a moving shadow and