Star Blockade
by
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Draco stood at the window of Erriimmaannohh’s office, make that his office now, and watched as the sun neared the horizon. It had only taken one day to take his world away from the alien invaders.
Not counting the years of preparation.
But they weren’t finished yet. He had cut off the head of the invader, but the body still lived. And that body would not thrash around long looking for a new head. All of the baylor scattered around the planet would be competing in ritual combat to select their new leader while entrenching themselves into wherever they found themselves when the cyberhumans had retaken the planet.
In addition to the scattered aliens who had been here for years, there were several newly arrived baylor roaming around in other countries because of the resent influx. To care for these future overlords was a lot of mind controlled human slaves as well as quite a few wolfen and a much smaller number of individual examples of the other baylorian slave races. Every single one of those would be causing mischief until they could be found.
There was a knock at the door. "Come in." Draco said as he turned away from the window.
Jason Ocean entered with the wolfen, Ghlorr. As Ghlorr faced Draco, Jason watched the alien suspiciously.
Draco extended his hand and the alien looked at it. "It’s a human form of greeting. You’re supposed to grasp my hand with yours."
Ghlorr did so. The hand was structured exactly like the human hand with only two major differences. Besides the extra hair, or fur, was that it was adorned with a clawtip fingernail that extended the last half of the last joint in the finger instead of on top like a human’s fingernail.
Being from a heavier gravity world than Earth, the wolfen had a surprisingly strong grip. "Now let go." Draco chuckled after a few seconds.
"Forgive me master." The wolfen said contritely as he quickly released Draco’s hand, then leaned toward Draco as he dipped his head down and to the side, exposing his neck veins.
"You’re going to have to get used to not saying master or tipping your head like that my friend." Draco said as he empathetically projected friendly sincerity toward the furred alien. "And call me Draco."
Ghlorr quickly stood back erect, and started to open his mouth, then bit back the habitual ‘yes master’ phrase. Closing his mouth, he waited for Draco to continue.
"The reason I asked you here was to thank you. If not for your actions yesterday it would have taken me at least a minute to gain entry to the sealed control room. I’m sure several of my people would have been killed if the heavy defensive weapons had been activated."
Quietly waiting off to the side, Jason continued to watch the wolfen suspiciously.
"Jason. Have you checked on the Wilson kids in the last hour?" Draco asked casually.
"Not yet. I was watching him." Jason gestured at Ghlorr.
"I’ll watch him. You go check on the kids. They’ve been through a lot. I want to make sure they feel safe."
Jason gave the furred alien one last, suspicious glare and left the room without a word.
When Jason was gone, the alien asked him. "Did you tell the truth to the baylor? Are you going to free my people’s worlds?"
"If I can, yes. It will be a while though. I still have to make sure I secure my own world first."
"I would like to help." The alien said softly.
"That’s good. I’m going to need all the help I can get. Today’s battle was just the start of a long, hard task." Draco gestured at a chair. "Sit down my friend. I need to know all you can tell me about the baylor and your two worlds."
Later that day Draco stood at the front of the new conference room full of cyberhumans. "OK people. Let’s get this meeting started. Tom, have we closed off the island?"
"Yea. We’ve got Dragon Warriors on jet skis in a ring up to 500 yards out. We’ve also got all of our larger boats at the dock at this time, including the Sea Dragon."
"I wanted to err on the side of caution because of the racket we caused, but it doesn’t really seem necessary. This place must have a pretty bad rep, because nobody’s come within a couple miles since we’ve been here. I’ll cut back on watch numbers tomorrow if things stay as quiet as they are now."
Draco nodded then turned to his cousin’s husband. "How about the prisoners Pago?"
The massive Samoan towered above the rest of the room’s occupants as he rose to speak in a musically deep voice. "We have five living baylor and have recovered seven bodies. Four of those were killed by their own slaves, two at their own hand rather than be captured, and the last was the loser in some sort of rivalry duel before we attacked."
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About the Book
Draco Moon and his cyberhuman family have driven the Baylor from Humanity’s home system, but must now take the battle to their enemy. To keep the Baylor from turning to the immensely powerful Baylorian Empire for help, Draco’s cyberhuman forces must blockade the Renegade Family in the Centauri system. To do this, they must occupy every Gravity Vortex Gateway around the twin Centauri suns with enough defenses to repel an Imperial Space Fleet. Fast If they fail in this task of blockading the Renegade Family within the Centauri system, the rest of the Baylor will find out that Humanity has nanotechnology. If that happens, Humanity will face a centuries old Star Empire that will stop at nothing to utterly destroy the bearers of technology they fear. Compounding their task is the fact that Draco Moon followed through on his promise to grant freedom to the entity that was the Artificial Intelligence program within his implant, as well as the AI’s of all the implants of all other cyberhumans. There is considerable adjusting to be made by both cyberhumans and soon to be freed AI programs as human hosts are trained to take over the operating functions of the implant’s departing artificial mind. All seems to be going the way of the cyberhumans when the Baylor of the Centauri system begin advancing their technology themselves instead of confiscating it from conquered races. With the Imperial Baylorian Space Fleet probing the blockade around the Centauri system, and the super weapons developed by the Centauri Baylor, the freedom of humanity is the prize that two Baylorian Empires are fighting for.
About the Author
This is a harder task than letting my mind tell me a story. What about the author? Read the A.T.A. for one book and you know just about as much of the dry facts such as birth date, what they’ve done, where they’ve gone, and where they now live, as you care to know. But what if there’s more than one book? Do you want to read the same dry facts over and over again? I’m having that problem now. There are a few other facts not included in book one’s A.T.A. that I could tell. Such as the fact that I’ve been writing since I was in seventh grade and I’ve never let anybody see my stories till a few years ago. Being mostly self-taught, I’ve made the inevitable mistakes but they’ve remained out of sight of critical eyes. That stopped as soon as I published my first novel. Now my mistakes are sculpted in ink. For example, in another of my novels published by 1st books, I stated in the A.T.A. section that books have grown large over the years as authors included ‘sociological messages of great importance’. Then I wrote two half-novels that were full of my own versions of major sociological issues. Now, coming full circle, I have the second of a three-part story that I have trouble keeping as short as it is. In addition to what I said in the A.T.A. of my second novel Universal Magic, when a story reveals itself several different perspectives, and a story can grow so big that the author has to divide it into three parts. I’m only on book two of the cyberhuman trilogy and I’ve cross-referenced till my head hurts, but I bet I’ve still made major goofs. If you ‘the reader’ find any, let me know through 1st Books. I would like to thank NASA and STScI for most of the images that my nephew, Craig Mullins assembled into the cover. What they didn’t supply, he made during hectic hours of intermittent computer work while taking his turn with the attentions of an almost two-year-old.