Navigating through the dimension of space and time, the cosmic highway deposits its travelers in a region of the galaxy located along the inner edge of Orion’s arm. Looming ahead—a solar system containing nine planetary bodies, governed by a single yellow-white star.

Sailing by way of the star’s gravitational field, the immense iridium vessel closes quickly on its intended target—Venus—the second planet from the Sun, a world of intense heat, enshrouded in a canopy of dense acidic clouds and carbon dioxide.

The smaller vessel closes from behind, revealing its presence to its enemy.

Immediately, the iridium transport alters its course, increasing its velocity by tapping into the gravitational pull of the system’s third planet, a watery, blue world containing a toxic atmosphere of oxygen.

With a brilliant flash, the smaller ship expels a white-hot burst of energy from an extended fin-like antenna rising from behind its bow. The charge streaks through the ion stream of the sphere’s electromagnetic tail like a bolt of lightning coursing along a metal cable.

The charge ignites upon the iridium hull like an aurora, the electrical blast short-circuiting the vessel’s propulsion system, knocking the behemoth violently off course. Within moments, the damaged mass is seized within the lethal embrace of the blue world’s gravitational field.

The asteroid-size projectile hurtles toward Earth, out of control.

With a sonic boom, the iridium sphere violates the hostile atmosphere. The mirror-like outer hull cracks and pits, then blazes briefly into a blinding fireball before plunging into a shallow, tropical sea. Barely slowed by thousands of feet of water, it strikes bottom in a fraction of a second—causing, for one surreal moment, a cylinder of ocean to empty to the seafloor.

A nanosecond later, the celestial impact detonates in a brilliant white flash, unleashing 100 million megatons of energy.

The thunderous explosion rocks the entire planet, generating temperatures that exceed 32,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface of the Sun. Two gaseous fireballs ignite at once. The first, a dust cloud of hot, powdered rock and iridium coming from the disintegrated outer hull of the vessel, followed by billowing clouds of highly pressurized steam and carbon dioxide, the gases released as the sea and its limestone bed are vaporized.

The rubble and superheated gases rise into the devastated atmosphere, drawn upward through the vacuum of air created by the object’s descent. Enormous shock waves ripple across the sea, giving rise to monstrous tsunamis that crest to heights of three hundred feet or more as they hit shallow water and race for land.

Southern Coastline of North America

In deadly silence, the pack of Velociraptors closes around its prey, a thirty-one-foot-long female Corythosaurus. Sensing danger, the duck-billed reptile raises her magnificent fan-shaped crest and snorts the humid air, detecting the scent of the pack. Trumpeting a warning cry to the rest of the herd, she crashes through the forest, galloping toward the sea.