Note: Since I've written an entire book for my daughter Elissa, I knew I would also have to write one for my son Elisha. This is how his story begins. What do you think? D*W*Cooper

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Twenty-Three Days in December

Prologue

Riathnon checked the readings again but it was no use. Nothing would save them now. They had but one choice. They must find a stable place to put their ship down on and go into extended hibernation mode. It irritated Raithnon to know his mission would be delayed so long, but really, he wouldn't even be aware of the time that would pass until a droid ship could come and make repairs.

He told the bad news to the four other crew members including his mate Miathh that was carrying a large egg sack with her. Miathh was worried that the hibernation mode might effect the eggs, but it shouldn't be a problem as long as the repair ship made it in a reasonable time.

Riathnon scanned the sector for possible locations to land and soon found an excellent candidate planet that even had a stable atmosphere on it. It did have some primitive life forms on it, but as long as they buried their ship in a desolate location, there should be no problem of being discovered.

It didn't take long to land the ship in a desert area of the planet and bury it deep in the ground. As Riathnon prepared the hibernation tubes he wondered how long it would be before they would be able to continue on with their mission. King Errg would no doubt be disappointed at this delay as well.

But Riathnon didn't know that the king would soon have his own problems to worry about. The Karnuck empire was about to face a devastating counter-attack by the robot alliance. There would be no droid repair ship. There would be no rescue for Riathnon and his crew.

They would soon be the last of their race.

But they didn't know it.

Chapter 1

Elisha couldn't believe what he found. He had just been playing with his friend Joel in the wash behind his house, and while he was hiding behind a mesquite bush with his airsoft rifle in hand he had noticed something out of the ordinary.

It didn't look like much, but then Elisha had been out in this wash many times and he was well used to the assortment of junk and trash that littered the sandy floor of the wash. But this was no old washing machine or tire rim sticking partly out of the sand.

No, this had almost an iridescent look to the metal fragment that was showing above the surface. Elisha pushed on it to see if it would move any, but it was quite solid and didn't move at all. It clearly seemed to be something very big, but he had never seen anything like it.

"Hey Joel!" Elisha yelled to his friend. "Look at this."

"Yeah, right. You're just waiting for me to come out in the open so you can nail me."

"No, really. There's something very strange here. You gotta look at it."

Joel finally decided that Elisha was serious after all, so he put down his airsoft machine pistol and walked over to where Elisha was standing.

"This?" Joel said dismissively when he saw what Elisha was pointing at. "You wanted me to see this?"

"Don't you see? It's really big. Have you ever seen anything that looks like this?"

"No. But so what. There's all sorts of junk in this wash. Who knows what it might be. Let's not waste our time on it, okay?"

"But I'm telling you, I have a really funny feeling about this. I think we should dig it up and see what it is."

"Dig it up. You got to be kidding! I'm not going to dig up some old piece of junk laying out here in this wash. Let's get back to our airsoft game."

Joel went walking back to where he had been positioned, but Elisha just stood there looking at the strange metal object. He didn't want to make Joel mad and he did like playing airsoft, but there was just something about this thing. He just knew he had to find out more about it.

But he could save that for later. If Joel didn't want to dig it up now, he'd just come back later on and have a look. It wouldn't hurt to dig it up by himself and if it turned out to be something valuable -- well then he could keep it for himself!

He went back to playing airsoft for now, but he would be back soon. And very soon now, what had laid buried in the desert for so many thousands of years would finally be exposed.

Little did Elisha know that he was just five hours away from starting a countdown that would see Earth destroyed in twenty-three days. Little did he know his life -- and all of human life -- was just about to be changed forever. Little did he know the evil he would be awakening.

After all, he was just a teenage boy playing airsoft.

What did he know?