Orbs

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ALSO BY NICHOLAS SANSBURY SMITH

FROM THE ORBS SERIES

Orbs II: Stranded

Solar Storms

White Sands: An Orbs Prequel

The Biomass Revolution

Squad 19

A Royal Knight

For those in the armed services, and everyone else who puts their life on the line for freedom. Thanks for keeping us safe.

If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.

—STEPHEN HAWKING

CHAPTER 1

YEAR: 2061

LOCATION: SOMEWHERE ABOVE THE COLORADO WASTELANDS

SOPHIE awoke to the thrumming of helicopter blades. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she craned her neck to stare out the oval window. As the drowsiness faded and her vision cleared, she fixated on the weathered dunes below, her eyes glued to the infinite monotony of the sand. If the landscape hadn’t been a light shade of brown, she would have thought they were flying over the ocean.

“How far out are we?” she yelled over the sound of the thumping blades.

“We’re still at least an hour from the site. You should go back to sleep, ma’am; the scenery isn’t going to change for a while,” the pilot said without taking his eyes off the controls.

Sophie had no idea where the site was, and she certainly wasn’t going to ask. She pulled her long blond hair back into a ponytail before reaching to adjust her headset. There was no way she was going to fall back asleep with the increased turbulence and the vibration from the chopper’s blades.

Settling back into her seat, she focused on the view. Below, the dunes extended as far as she could see, the crimson horizon slicing the panorama in half. She squinted for a better look, imagining she was peering through the thick glass of a visor at the harsh landscape of Mars. The fantasy was one she had daily. It was mystifyingly realistic, so vivid she would sometimes reach out as if she could touch the sand of the red planet.

Sophie blinked and returned to reality. She was still on Earth, where more than 15 percent of the surface had been baked by the solar storms of 2055. Areas affected were rendered uninhabitable due to the radiation. Scientists had argued for years that a solar storm wasn’t capable of that level of destruction; that a coronal mass ejection would never break through the Earth’s atmosphere. But something about the storms of 2055 had been different—unnatural. Now the planet was dying, and there was nothing science could do to stop it.