The Zar finally arrives—and with it the astonishing truth about Angels and Demons! As The Stellar grapples with profound revelations and prepares to take its throne as the Queen of Guliana, Kitara and Marika’s newly acquired friend Kimura Takinara is forced to walk a lonely, thorny road called vengeance. The duel atrocities of her father’s murder and mother’s rape at the iniquitous hands of Yakuza boss Tojo Tokugawa has Kimura picking up the sword and heading back to Japan. But she, along with Kitara, Marika and The Stellar, shall quickly learn that pursuing even what may be the right thing can still bring unexpected consequences.(Adult themes)
Excerpt
Somewhere out in the vast bleakness of space a small spaceship slowed to a stop beside another. The second ship, a product of a planet called Japhor, had become lost due to a faulty navigational system. Furthermore the pilot was incapacitated. The arriving ship, from a planet called Guliana, had been sent as a rescue effort.
The rescue ship docked and two creatures wearing special suits disembarked into the second vehicle. Both creatures had a body, two arms, two legs and a head—like humans, but that was about as close as any resemblance went. Definitely they were not homo-sapiens.
However, there upon the floor of the lost ship were two humans—and both were female.
Kneeled next to them was another of the same species as the two that had just boarded. Like the kneeling alien, the other two stared incessantly at the two unusual—that is, unusual to them—creatures on the floor. Never before had they ever beheld beings from Earth, though they were not necessarily amazed to see them. They’d seen or met humanoid beings from other planets, either directly or indirectly, before. In many ways the two sprawled on the floor resembled the Japhorians. But experience also taught them that no two humanoid races were ever exactly the same.
Since neither of the new arrivals was knowledgeable in human physiology or what ailments may befall such species, they began busying themselves with the navigational system. The unit needed replacing, but there weren’t any spares aboard. Therefore, one alien decided to stay behind to pilot the ship while the other went back to the rescue craft. Together the ships cruised to Guliana, a beautiful, crystalline planet which surrounded an inner star, and to the largest city—their Royal City, which they called Guliatlanta.
The ships landed amid a great throng of Gulian citizens who immediately surrounded the crafts, cheering the arrival of their queen by hailing telepathically, “The Queen is the sun! The Queen is the sun!”
Gulians had no mouths, noses or ears. To communicate they used telepathy.
They did not possess lungs or other internal breathing apparatus (the atmosphere of their planet was the vacuum of space). Taste, hearing and smell had no meaning to them.
To nourish themselves, they absorbed their food through their skin. The vegetation and liquid flowing on Guliana (the liquid was not the “water” of Earth, and was nearly black as oil) were their sustenance and the only part of the planet that they could absorb.
Unfortunately, anything that was not of their planet could also be absorbed—no matter what it was. This, of course, was not to their nourishment, but their detriment. It was why whenever any Gulian left Guliana, he or she wore a special suit that included boots, gloves, and sometimes armor.
The Gulian crowd cried out for their queen to present itself, but there was a problem. The queen could not exit.
Two suited guards, who’d once been security for the recently murdered Royal Family, boarded the Japhorian craft.
“Where is the queen?” they asked the pilot and other Gulian who was named Vylimpo. Then upon seeing the humans on the floor they paused and then approached them. Believing the gloves they wore would protect them from absorbing the human aliens’ skin, they reached for them.
“Do not touch them!” shouted Vylimpo telepathically.
The guards stopped short.
“You may harm them,” he added. “They cannot leave the ship until they awaken and join again.”
The guards knew what he meant. Everyone on Guliana was aware that their queen was something they called a stellar.
A stellar was created when non-Gulian creatures who possess the Gulian life-forces that had once been conjoined inside an orb by a device called a Pieorior come together themselves. It was a spectacular, amazing and complicated process of transmutation, and the creature produced was just as spectacular and amazing.
The recumbent human women upon the Japhorian ship possessed the life-forces of a former king and queen of Guliana. As a result, the stellar they created was Xiree, a direct heir to the throne. Presently, there were only two living members of the Royal Family, Xiree and Xour. However, Xour was a prisoner on an enemy ship somewhere in the galaxy.
That ship was the mothership of a race called the Utiains, and it was presently leading sixteen other ships toward Earth’s closest neighbor—the planet Venus!
Vylimpo continued, “In their present state, they would die if they left the ship. They cannot survive on our planet as these beings. They need the proper atmosphere to intake. They would also require shielding from the radiation of our inner sun.”
A guard nodded with understanding. “Then we shall remain and guard them until they are able to join again,” he said. “And when they are able to depart, they shall take possession of the throne as our queen should.”
“Yes,” returned Vylimpo. “And I shall remain also.”
It was nearly seven Earth-hours later when the human aliens Kitara Littlehawk and Marika Anderson awoke and were able to re-join and re-create the creature they called The Stellar.
The entire BetterWorld cyberpunk trilogy plus added material is now available in one ebook! In the trilogy, an unemployed bipolar journalist, her VR-addicted younger sister, and a teenage hacker try to stop a giant corporation from controlling the wo
