Earthfall: An Introduction and Prologue

                       
                                                   A word, if you will.

  In 1988, when I was in second grade, a superhero came to my school.
 He was RAY CYCLE!! The Recycling Superhero!!(and you thought Captain Planet was lame). He even had a comic book about his(one equally lame) adventures!
 The real life Ray wore a Hawaiian shirt and shorts instead of a superhero outfit to the gig. I believe it was the first time an outraged "What the hell?" entered my young mind. Ray was a bit of a letdown. 
 But nearly every other boy in my class grabbed tracing paper and began to trace out the picture on the cover of the comic he dispensed to us young, impressionable youths. I followed suit. Eventually, they got bored.
I, however, did not.
  I soon switched over to regular paper, and started seeking out more sources to draw and read.
This stage of my life coincided with an growing appreciation for horror, ignited by a set of books in the school library about the Universal horror movies of the 30's and 40's. This was approximately the beginning of my life long love affair with both horror and comics.
   As time passed I created my own heroes, and throughout my life, many of those heroes and their stories I created in my youth have always been in my head, growing and evolving as I met more people, gained more life experience, and read more comic books. 
 The story I'm writing now has been in my skull around for almost a decade. It's gone through many changes as I worked it into something that felt right. The three main characters are an amalgamation of some of my earliest superhero concepts and the interesting and unique friends that I've made throughout my life and grown quite fond of since. This story was meant to be a comic book itself, but fate has decreed it otherwise. I'm just glad that I hopefully have found a way to get it out of my skull.

 I'm no Stephen King or Alan Moore. This won't be a grand tragedy, or the greatest story ever told. 
All I'd like to be able to do is give the inhabitants of this little universe I've created a decent voice, that is properly expressed through this medium. I believe my friends have earned it.    

Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to Mum, Dad, Eileen, Ricki, Artie, Amy, Mike J, Ted, Melanie, Jack, Jim, Ken, Jeanne, Mike M, Dan, Kim, Cora, James, Debra, Dave, David, Andrea, April, Shane, Mary, Steph, Jess, Danielle, Kelly, Bethany, Brody, Melody, Izzy, Scott, Chris, Phil and Eric. These folk all had a notable hand in the creation process from all the way back in second grade to now, whether they know it or not.
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                                                           EARTHFALL                                       


                                                     

                                                               ...Before...





       The ship folded back into real-space, took a second to orient itself, and felt true despair. 
 Instead of emerging near the star of the system, they had emerged near the third planet. The guidance-brother had died in-transit, his system had malfunctioned, and they had left netherspace too soon.
   The ship tried to consult it's surviving crew. But there were none left. The attack had been swift, and the few survivors had used all of their powers to make the final, desperate leap. The ship was all alone. Its few remaining sensors picked up a burst of brief information pouring from the nearby planet, although nothing indicated a level of technology advanced enough to detect the very presence of the ship. But that lack of technology meant that the inhabitants were utterly defenceless if the Arthronids had managed to follow the ship to this sector of the galaxy.
 The ship knew that if they had, it would lead to the enslavement of an entire civilization. Or worse. It simply would not allow that to happen. It was an affront to its very existence to not take every conceivable action to prevent this outcome. If it could destroy itself in the core star of this system, there would be no trace for the Arthronids to possibly find and follow.
  The ship quickly realized that it would be possible to utilize the gravitational pull of the planet combined with it's thrusters to fling itself back in the proper direction and achieve its goal. It maneuvered itself closer to the planet and began to calculate the proper course. The task was far more difficult without the system-brothers to help, but not impossible. The problem was that while the ship was concentrating on this task it required the processing it usually used to monitor other systems.
 It literally never saw what hit it. A cloud of meteorites, caught in the planet's orbit, tore through the ship's weakened shields and punched holes into its hull. Several sections violently decompressed, and the ship was nearly sheared in half.  Destabilized, it was pulled into the planet's gravity well with no way to stop itself.
 The ship knew that it had a window of only seconds to reassess a new course of action. It pulled out of its damaged sections and allowed them to be torn away. They would be incinerated in the fall, along with the bodies of it's system-brothers. There was one last task, one last hope. It checked the remaining matrix reserves, where the extra nano-tech had been stored.  It found that between the initial attack and this calamity only three of the proper crystal devices were intact. It quickly drew them into it's chamber. They would have to be enough.     
 Undetected by it's inhabitants, the ship fell towards Earth.