Cosmic Encounter

Time had collapsed. For a brief instant, like hte sudden reopening of a disused mineshaft forty million years deep. The strata of millennia upon millennia had compressed, bearing their fossils of the future, impacted, and pressed down irresistible on one spot. AD 1704.

The ship Orinda, outward bound on piracy, dipped through the caribbian swell. Intent only on its murderous rendezvous with a fat ripe merchantman, it noticed nothing. Never saw the man from the future who climbed aboard. Only saw too late the alien bulk of the Lantellan battlecraft that loomed and filled the eastern horizon. Could not know that Lantella was at war and would live in a universe of total hostility.

But, uncomprehending and terrified, did see the boarding craft that was skimmingtowards them...