Cyberneural Symbiote
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CYBERNEURAL SYMBIOTE * ONE * Etteerrmmoohh Taallnnoorr slid from the grasp of his opponent, twisting around to avoid Goorrbbooss' recovery attempt. Taallnnoorr reversed direction as his opponent lunged, then wrapped his arms and legs around Goorrbbooss from behind as that one's momentum took him past. He gripped tighter when his opponent increased his own struggles in an attempt to dislodge Taallnnoorr. When he was sure of his deathgrip, Taallnnoorr tipped his head back, extending his feeding ring of teeth and let out his victory scream, then slowly lowered his head to his victim's neck. He relished the warm lifeblood that flowed down his extended feeding tube tongue and after a few moments he relaxed his deathbite, raising his head enough to whisper into Goorrbbooss's hearing tuft. 'Do you yield your will to me?' 'Never!!' Came the scream from Plliittoobbuu Goorrbbooss. That one then renewed his struggles in Taallnnoorr's deathgrip and Etteerrmmoohh Taallnnoorr gave his defeated adversary the honorable deathbite. As he drank his prey's lifeblood, Taallnnoorr kept a firm grip on Goorrbbooss's twitching body. It would not do to embarrass himself or his Family by allowing the prey to break his hold with the involuntary thrashings of death. With the blood of his kill coursing down his throat he knew that after many sixes of days of planning he had finally set himself above any other for control of this new Empire he hoped to create. As the conqueror in this final battle to the top of his people's government he must give his vanquished adversary every honor that was his due. To do otherwise was to give Family Blood Insult, the Baylorian version of Family Feud, and conceivably jeopardize his bid to be Emperor. After a few minutes his victim's blood took on the taste that identified imminent death, but Taallnnoorr continued to feed. When Goorrbbooss's heart ceased pumping, Taallnnoorr extended the Plliittoobbuu Family Head the final Honor by continuing to maintain the Deathgrip until the body ceased twitching and lay death still. When he was sure an obscenely twitching corpse would not embarrass the Plliittoobbuu Family, Taallnnoorr rose from the body and spoke in a loud voice as he gestured towards the still form. 'My friend has given all he possessed to help me prove the battle worthiness of my claim! Are there any who dispute this gift or its meaning in our recently lost traditions?' His words fired resentment for his people's recent concessions to a Prey species of grasseaters who just happened to have a much higher level of technology than the Baylor. When no one of those present spoke, Taallnnoorr completed the ritual phrasing. 'I am now the First Baylorian!!' After finishing the new wording that had replaced what had been millennia long tradition until the coming of offworld aliens, he added that old tradition ritual phrasing. 'I have disputed my opinions with all who have the means to enforce their own opinion over mine. After proper discussion and battle won rights of conquest, I now claim myself Star Emperor, Taallnnoorr the First of the Etteerrmmoohh Family.' The ritual was many twelves of twelves of years old, but the phrasing was different from any in Baylorian history. No other had ever claimed more than Emperor of the homeworld, and since the arrival of their alien 'benefactors' his people had been ruled by an Alliance of Families, led by the First Family since the death of the last Emperor.
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About the Book
The Baylor are a carnivorous race who, although advanced enough to launch orbital craft, were kept planet-bound due to constant tribal warfare and Family blood feuds. They were discovered, befriended, and given advanced technology by a well-meaning race who are now known as the Lost Race. The Baylor rewarded their benefactors with genocide then conquered and enslaved the other member races of the Lost Race's budding space Alliance. Renewing their traditional governmental form of 'the rule of the strongest,' the new Baylorian Empire then begins to expand its boundaries star by star.
Years later, one of the survivors of a half plant, half animal race whose world is destroyed by kinetic and nuclear bombardment uses his race's nanotech based abilities to leave his clan's refuge beneath the crust of their destroyed world to study the expanding Baylorian Empire. After four Terran centuries of study, Sy'Byt arrives on Earth where he befriends the human native Draco Moon and presents him with a nanotech based, cyberneural implant.
With the help of his alien mentor, Draco constructs duplicates of his nanobotic implant and presents one to every member of his family and a few close friends who wish to join him. In this way he builds an army of cyberhumans whose goal is twofold.
Covertly feed advanced technology into the data systems and research notes of Earth's scientists to 'push' the pace of advancement into space. The second major goal of the Cyber Warlocks and Witches is to remove a large number of human refugees, plants, and animals of Earth in case the Baylor openly invade before humans can advance enough to defend their world.
Both of these goals must be done in complete secrecy for if the Baylor suspect that nanotechnology (which they do not possess and fear greatly) exists on Earth, the planet will suffer the same fate as Sy'Byt's world. Complete surface destruction by kinetic and nuclear bombardment from orbit.
About the Author
Hi. My name is Rick Mullins. I was born in Madison, West Virginia on the tenth of September in 1952 and grew up in New London, Ohio. After graduation in '71, I spent four years in the Air Force working with special weapons. I then flipped McBurgers while attending Ohio University, drove a truck for an oil industry cement company in Wyoming, labored for another oil company in Louisiana, and was a self employed carpenter/remodeler in a small town on the Ohio River, among other jobs. Still heavily infected with a travel bug, I then joined the Navy, doing shore duty in San Diego before traveling the Pacific on the carrier Midway. Four years later I tended bar in Ohio, then carpentered in Florida before settling down to a factory worker's life in Ohio.
Just before my teenage years, I became hooked on fantasy and science fiction with my first books; The Hobbit immediately followed by my older brother's collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs stories. For the rest of my life, when I wasn't writing my own stories, I was attempting to read every science fiction book ever written as well as every issue of Astronomy and Scientific American I could get my hands on from cover to cover. I'm still trying, but I now read less and write more. I've fallen way behind on the former and can't keep up with the latter.
Over the years I have combined nearly all of my stories into a single worldview that I call the Cyberneural Universe. This first book, Cyberneural Symbiote and its two upcoming sequels, Star Blockade and Liberation, are designed to introduce the reader to the initial history of my Cyberneural Universe. So dig in! I hope you enjoy your journey through my universe as much as I do.