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First Contact

First Contact

Upon This Rock: Book 1

David Marusek

When a shooting star plunges through the atmosphere and touches down in the Alaska wilderness, only two earthlings are around to witness the event. But they see two utterly different things. What park ranger Jace Kuliak sees is a UFO and the arrival of a dangerous alien species from beyond the solar system. What Poppy Prophecy sees is the star called Wormwood, as recorded in Scripture, and the arrival of a an archangel of the Apocalypse.

The thing is -- they're both sorta right.

Poppy Prophecy is the despotic patriarch of a large End-Times prepper family that is busily converting a depleted copper mine into its own private doomsday bunker. Their copper mine is a century-old relic from territorial days when East Coast robber barons ruled Alaska and plundered its mineral wealth. Today the abandoned mine sits in the middle of the largest, wildest, most majestic national park in the United States. But Poppy isn't impressed by mere natural beauty, and he doesn't mind bulldozing federal land when it suits his purposes.

Backcountry Ranger Jace Kuliak does mind, and he and fellow rangers confront the fundamentalist family in an armed standoff over the construction of an illegal airstrip. It doesn't help matters when Ranger Kuliak falls hopelessly in love with Poppy's second daughter, the lovely, innocent, and totally clueless Deuteronomy.

An uneasy truce between the Prophecys and the park service is shattered when the falling star lands in their back yard and is claimed by both sides. What is it? Who is it? Better yet, of all the pit stops on all the planets in all the galaxies, why did the Visitor choose this particular rock to screw with?