Earth has become a dangerous place to live. The infectious disease agency has decided the best way to slow the spread is by taking the firstborn from each family. Dannon and Alayna Higgins and Judah and Bekah Greenberg are expecting the first, and have already joined the Space and Science Experiment Agency to help settle another planet. Their commander's time transporter broke several hundred years in the past, and another takes his place. It is believed by most that the planet is unpopulated. They were wrong. War breaks out. Only the friendship between the Higgins, Greenbergs, and the planet's native races and a return of the commander will stop annihilation of both sides.

Invaders on Akron

Alayna, Maz, Rowan, Ashyn, and Scion knelt around Maz’s implant. Alayna’s wrist communicator blipped numerous times, and she looked down to see numerous messages from Dannon asking when she was coming home. She snoozed them, but felt a twinge of guilt for doing so. 


Story and Alec crouched behind equipment and storage units in the ship base. 


“Ty sent down the tractor beam,” Story reported. 


The tractor beam reappeared, and humans filed past Story’s and Alec’s hiding spaces. The scruffy teenaged tech that had questioned the triplets earlier walked with his head bowed and his hands deep in his pockets. Men and women followed. Alayna had seen them all at some point, but she didn’t know them well. 


“We’re supposed to direct them to their cells,” Alec said to the viewers back at the dome. 


There was a break in the line of captives. Then a sound penetrated the distance. Kaylin and Ethan strode in, shoulders slumped. 


Ethan’s gaze fixed with Story’s, and Kaylin’s with Alec’s. 


Chapter 23: The Captives