The probe exploded violently, no more than a hundred meters behind Lu. The entire wavefront was already coming at many times the speed of sound before the explosion, and there was no warning at all. The probe managed to explode itself in such a way that most of the fragments would miss both of the humans. It calculated that both would still be damaged by the impact blast, but there was a slight chance that they would survive.
The ejected outer core pieces missed both humans. Most of the rest of the probe exploded forward, in a final burst that used the majority of the probe’s remaining energy. It not only destroyed its main structure, it slowed the inner core down enough that it could miss the human in the middle of the clearing and survive impact with the ground. As most of the probe blasted past and all around Lu in a fiery wash that just missed her, the inner core, about the size of a stick of butter, thumped into the ground below her feet.
A few pieces were blown backward along with the inner core, thrown away from the point of impact. It was one of these last few pieces that broke apart unexpectedly. The fragments had lost most of their forward momentum, but they were still moving toward the ground, and they had a lot of momentum left.
One of the larger fragments, made of crystal harder than steel and sharper than any razor, hit Lu in the center of the back of her skull, moving at better than three thousand kilometers per hour.
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I Will Love You Forever
RomanceA 2016 Compton Crook Award Finalist! Available in paperback and for Kindle at http://amzn.com/1507663684 Ken and Lu have repurchased the land that was cheated from his grandfather, and look forward to living happily ever after. But their dream is cu...
