Category: Science Fiction Publisher: Whiskey Creek Press
ISBN-10: none
Type: Fiction
Pages: 208
Copyright: Feb 15, 2013
ISBN-13: none
Where did the Human race actually come from. Did we really evolve from Apes and Gorillas, or were we brought here from somewhere else - to survive?
When all hopes of peace were shattered, Pilot Aaitt’Kaz was assigned to a new style of ship. It was built for speed and maneuverability, but Kaz had no time for admirations. Everyone was scattering, scrambling to get back to their command before being shot out of the sky. The ship had coordinates for him—and then she had sleep for him—a very very long sleep.
A hundred thousand years later, after leaving his refugees to their best devices on a green and blue miracle of a world, Kaz woke again. The last thing he expected to do was fight to protect the descendants of his refugees from the carefully-cultivated warlike nature that had led to the destruction of his home world. The only way he could protect them was to prevent the military scientists from learning the secrets of his DNA.
Excerpt
Kaz took pictures of everything and everyone around him, even total strangers, all laughing, drinking, and dancing—celebrating the peace. Strangers introduced them- selves, or not, and toasted along with everyone else. Everyone was giddy with the prospect of peace and freedom so close. Rumor had it that the negotiations were going well. There was going to be peace for the first time. He’d never heard of there being no war. What would they do with themselves if they stopped fighting? But this moment, this possibility — he wanted to record every second.
The long, triangular spaceships were everywhere he looked — the eye of his camera allowing him to see the guns that bristled from every vantage point along their surface. The small two-man surface-to-space scouts and fighters were scattered across the ground or on the lower horizon at any of a hundred different levels, and the cruisers that shipped thousands were very visible as they hung low in the atmosphere. Everyone waited for the outcome of the peace talks. They all kept an eye on the single earthbound complex in the center of the valley.
A runner came up to him with a sheaf of flimsies. “Aaitt’Kaz?”
Kaz waved and took pictures of him as he approached, and the runner danced a jig for the camera before handing Kaz one of the sheets from his file. Using a runner was an unusual occurrence, but what with all the ships gathered around, communications and single man runabouts may have been curtailed.
Kaz glanced at the flimsy he’d been handed; he was being assigned to a new ship.
“Where is it?” he called after the man as he danced off to find someone else.
“It just arrived.” The runner pointed to a ship now resting on the hill behind him; it had found one of the few patches of green grass. Each ship was keyed to the pilot’s orders and would have been simple to locate, but following a pointed finger was easier, and it gave Kaz a chance to take another picture of him.
Kaz looked up at the new ship with admiration; it was sleek, made for speed, though not defenseless by any means. It might hold a crew of ten, or even twenty if they were cozy. It looked like a new design, so after adding its image to his growing collection, he panned his camera around, looking for more. He found a few, maybe twenty or more, but ships littered the horizon. It would be impossible to tell how many new ships there were without careful analysis of the crystal some other time, definitely, some other time. Right now, it was time for a beer, if he could find some still in a bottle.
His sub-dermal receiver came to life. “Bad news, people; Ssark left the table. The talks have failed. Get to your ships; this is going to be bad.”
Stunned, all thoughts of a beer were wiped from his mind, shattered on a rock along with someone’s dropped bottle. “No!” Many of the gathered ships were beginning to shoot at each other already. People ran. At this range, it would be wholesale slaughter. Had it all been just a trap?
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