The Guardians - Episode One Read online



  The Guardians

  Episode One

  a Science-Fiction Serial by

  Linell Jeppsen

  and

  J Bryden Lloyd

  Wolfpack Publishing

  48 Rock Creek Road

  Clinton, Montana 59825

 

  © 2014, Linell Jeppsen & J Bryden Lloyd

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an addition copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please contact the authors and purchase your own copy through the recognized channels.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organizations, places, events and incidents portrayed within this story are either born of the imagination of the authors, or an element of fiction necessary for the story.

  Any resemblance of any character herein, to any person either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To all our friends, families and loved ones.

  We dedicate our first collaboration to you all.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  About The Authors

  1.

  The Bruattam System; a huge, orange star with seven orbiting worlds.

  Beyond the yellow and blue gas giant in the nearest orbit, three of the remaining six were life supporting. The sulphur-rich atmosphere of the second planet had allowed the development of a plethora of seaborne creatures. The icy third planet contained an abundance of cold-blooded birds and creatures, mostly predators; living a dangerous dance of hunt and survival.

  The fleet had gathered above the fourth planet, where temperate climates and an oxygen-rich atmosphere allowed forests and seas to rise, teeming with life. They concentrated their scans on the equator, where the largest group of life forms seemed to reside.

  They scanned for several days, making their plans. Deciding their next move.

  *

  Pippa straddled a branch and peered down through large, fan-shaped leaves at the two people who followed her progress. She grinned when she saw her younger brother, Nantu, and his newest fem-mate looking up at where she hid, unseeing and oblivious to her presence. Carefully prying a seedpod from a cluster of leaves, she pitched it at Nantu, hitting him squarely between his wide green eyes. He let out a howl of rage and started climbing up the tree to where Pippa squatted, waiting.

  She smirked as she watched her brother’s progress until a strange movement caught her eye. Squinting against the sun’s dappled glare, she focused her eyes on the leaves, branches and vines that made up the landscape of her jungle home. Many creatures shared this land with the Loranians, some benign, many of them predators. Pippa’s heart beat fast as she pulled her blow stick from her tunic and prepared to kill what stalked them with a poisoned dart.

  Nantu saw the look of fear that came over his sister’s face and hissed, “What is it?”

  Pippa shook her head, and muttered, “Get Lini up here… now!”

  Wrapping his long, blue and green striped tail around the branch on which he crouched, Nantu hung upside and down and whispered, “Lini! Get up here… hurry!”

  Lini did not like her lover’s sister and was in no mood for being told what to do. She leaned against the Pile Tree’s mossy trunk, and drawled. “If your sister wants to give me orders, she can come down here and do it herself.”

  Nantu glared at Lini and started to say, “Don’t be stupid,” when he looked past her shoulder and saw something step out from behind a large stand of wri-wri trees. His mouth fell open in shock. It was a man, but unlike any man the young Loranian had ever seen before. This man was at least three times taller than the largest man in Nantu’s village, and as big as a mountain.

  The man’s skin was as white as the glass sands of Loran’s seas, and his eyes were as deep and black as the tar pits of Midu. He had long, white teeth that glittered in the jungle’s gloaming, and he carried an enormous metal crossbow. As Nantu watched, mesmerised, the man’s eyes glowed red; he hefted his weapon and let loose an arrow. The shaft flew through the air with a metallic howl and pinned his new fem into the side of the tree. Her blue blood flew through the air and she sagged against the tree’s trunk with a sigh.

  Nantu clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming, but the alien’s eyes looked up into the tree and landed on the Loranian. Grinning, the creature pulled another arrow from the quiver on his hip and drew the string back, but young Nantu snapped out of his paralysis and bounded up the tree to where his older sister crouched.

  “Run!” Pippa screeched, scrambling up and out on the Pile tree’s sturdy black branches, her brother in hot pursuit. The Loranians often made their homes and villages in the uppermost treetops, away from the toothsome and always hungry animals on the ground below. The trees’ long limbs overlapped, lacing their leafy fingers together and where they did not touch, the people built bridges and platforms.

  The brother and sister raced across the treetop highway, howling and chittering in warning, but their cries were in vain. The paths and bridges were bereft of people and the youngsters were alone. They ran as fast as they could to their village and then paused, staring down at the fenced plateau on which their town resided. The ground was blue with blood, and Pippa’s bladder let loose with fear and shock.

  The village teemed with aliens. There were at least a hundred of the huge, white creatures and every one of them tore and bit the Loranians they grasped in their powerful hands.

  Pippa and Nantu watched aghast, as the creatures sank long, white fangs into the blue and green skin of their family members and tribe-mates. Then they sucked upon the flesh of their captives until their small bodies held no more substance than that of a dried-out Drudu carcass.

  The victims cried out in fear and pain as they died. They prayed and sang songs to the Goddess of deliverance while Pippa and Nantu watching from above, wept in sympathy. The aliens were aggressive and deadly, but were indifferent as they soothed the ache of starvation in their bellies. The Loranians death songs sounded like nothing more than the screech of slaughtered animals. They did not know, or care, that the creatures they killed were a sentient species, registered in the Intergalactic Guild lists as transplants from the larger mother planet known as Loraneille.

  Pippa winced as she saw her mother and two of her younger siblings carried out from behind the village’s cooking house. Nantu started and began to cry out, but Pippa’s strong right arm seized him. One hand held him tight, while his sister’s other claw-tipped fingers clapped over his mouth, stifling his shouts of horror and rage. She leaned in close and whispered in his ear, “Don’t shout, brother. They will see us!”

  Nantu’s green eyes blinked frantically, but he nodded. Tears welled up and fell down his mottled blue cheeks as he saw his own mother bitten and sucked dry by the monsters that held her captive. He closed his eyes as the same fate befell his two youngest brothers.

  Pippa shook with sorrow and tension, but managed to keep her wits.

  “We must go to the shaman’s village, Nantu. We must warn them about these aliens so they can signal for help!” she hissed.

  Nantu nodded, and the two young Loranians made their way down and to the left, away from their village and toward the shaman’s holy huts; the place where scientists and priests cont
rolled the mysterious machines and contrivances that had brought their ancestors to this world a century ago. Only the most learned, the most exalted amongst the tribes were allowed access to the strange and exotic equipment which sat humming in the temples of Austara.

  Pippa had often spied upon the holy temples. Constructed out of metal, they gleamed madly in the pink and yellow illumination of Austara’s double moons. Strange, multi-coloured strobe lights blinked off and on, and occasionally, strong beams of hot, violet particles shot out of the biggest temple into the heavens above. Once, Pippa had crouched too close to the structure when this happened and for days after, her eyes held purple stars and moons and her skin turned grey and ashen with burns.

  That was a few years ago, but even now Pippa’s heart filled with fear. The temples were sacred and for good reason, but she sensed instinctively that this was her people’s only hope. The youngsters leapt, swung and ran as fast as they could through the treetops. Often they paused, hiding amongst the tree’s large leaves as flying machines whizzed through the air above them.

  The ships were huge and hideous with large, ridged, bird-like wings and glowing snouts that shot balls of fire into the trees, etching the ground below in pulsing rivers of green light. Once or twice, the flying machines paused above the branches, as if scouring the ground below. Heated waves of air from their exhaust systems caught the trees aflame. The two Loranians yelped in fright and leapt out harm’s way, jumping onto smaller, lower trees with less travelled branches, in order to make it safely to the shaman’s temples.

  Finally, Pippa and Nantu reached the outskirts of the village. They sat and stared in horror through the leafy canopy. The holy village was all but destroyed, and what little remained sat in smouldering ruin as hundreds more of the large, white aliens danced and shouted in the rubble.

  Pippa gasped when she saw priests and scientists lined up in front of a makeshift altar. One by one, the white-robed Loranians stepped forward as the large aliens poked and prodded them from behind with long shafts of shiny metal. She wept as the much smaller blue and green holy men smiled enigmatically, even as their bodies were seized and sucked dry by the terrible white monsters.

  Pippa had learned in school that members of her species were quite small compared to other sentient beings in the universe, and it was never more apparent than now as she watched the slaughter of her people. The tallest of the priests in the clearing below barely reached the alien’s belts, which bristled with tools of murder, like knives, long silver whips and devices that resembled guns; a weapon she had only seen before in a drawing.

  Her people’s soft blue and green skin contrasted sharply with the alien’s white complexions, and their long flexible tails worked as a tool against them when the aliens picked them up sometimes and swung them around and around in the air for sport.

  Nantu elbowed his sister and whispered, “Pippa, look!”

  Following her brother’s claw with her eyes, she saw one young priest sneak around the back of the largest temple, the dangerous temple that had shot purple moons into her eyes. The brother and sister watched as the young man looked both ways and then crept silently into the building’s entrance portal. The aliens were oblivious, too caught up in their frenzy of destruction to see what had become of one of their puny prisoners.

  Suddenly, there was a shout from one of the horrible aliens. Looking down, Pippa and Nantu saw that they had been spotted. They tried to flee, to run back the way they had come, but a smaller version of the flying craft glided up into the air above them. Then the fiery snout at the front of the craft belched a ray of sunshine over the children, encasing them in a freezing light, so they too could be recovered by the aliens.

  The last thing Pippa saw before her eyes grew dim and closed forever were the holy purple moonbeams shoot out from the top of the temple into the vast, deep blue of the sky above them.

  2.

  AR-OOOOOOOOOO! AR-OOOOOOOOOO!

  Melody Carver sat up in bed with a gasp. The horns of Sasquereen were bellowing and that meant only one thing; her husband, Onio, was going to war… again.

  Staring about her bedroom in the early morning gloom, she saw Onio tighten the ceremonial belt around his waist and watched as he paused for a moment before placing the cloak of office over his mighty shoulders. She saw the tears that dampened his moss-green eyes and knew that he grieved anew at the death of his grandsire, Bouldar.

  Onio, Melody, and what little remained of the Sasquatch tribes on Earth, rode the Sasq spaceship to this planet, Sasquereen. The trip was long and took many months to complete. It was also harrowing for Melody, who, due to her pregnancy, was advised to spend most of her time in the Cryo-pods. That was ten years ago, and although it was a strange and worrisome time, it was worthwhile. Melody smiled as she looked into the corner of the room and saw her children piled together on the sleeping mats like puppies.

  Her son, Lumos, was born on Sasquereen just two months after their arrival. Her daughter, Angel, was born four years later. They were the light of the moon and stars to their parent’s eyes, but Melody noted with a gentle smile and shake of the head, they could sleep through an earthquake.

  “Shall I wake them?” Melody asked softly.

  Onio shook his head, “No, let them sleep. Even if we leave this morning, the Commanders will give us time to prepare and say goodbye.”

  Onio watched his wife as she struggled to keep from weeping. This was the fourth time since they had come to Sasquereen that its soldiers had mustered for war.

  The first time had been to a machine-run planet called, Bio-Axol 969. The doctors, scientists and computer-engineers who invented the machines that maintained the planet’s biosphere were being targeted as germ/biohazards, and the Sasquereen warriors were tasked with rescuing the humans holed up in science labs, scattered across the planet’s rocky surface, from their own technology. Twenty-two Sasq warriors died in that engagement.

  The second time was when the Dizoramuli moved against a pre-industrial outpost called Nuncy — named after the astronaut who first set foot on the planet. Rich in gold and heavy metals — the Dizo ore-miners moved in and started drilling from the upper atmosphere, not caring that their drills were burrowing into cities and villages. The Dizo’s killed over a million colonists before they tucked tail and ran when the Sasq army appeared on the scene. No warrior lost his or her life during that mission, but the sorrow etched on her husband’s face when he finally came home from the first aid and clean-up of Nuncy was almost more than Melody could bear.

  Onio had been excused from the third muster call, which was a failed coup attempt on the planet Tran, when his grandfather, Bouldar, passed away. The funeral was an important time for the Sasquereen; not only as the time to grieve the loss of one of its leaders, but the subsequent crowning of Bouldar’s grandson, Onio.

  This in itself was not without political ramification… Onio was quarter human, which on Sasquereen was perfectly acceptable, as many of the planet’s inhabitants were a mixed breed of Sasquatch and Human. Some of the rescued Sasq warriors from the planet Earth, however, felt the need to strengthen the bloodline, rather than compromise their place in the Sasquereen royal hierarchy any more than it already was.

  Their supreme ruler, the high queen, Leona Hammerhand, dismissed their concerns with a sniff. “Those Sasq need to grow with the times and put their silly prejudices aside, now that they are home where they belong!” she had said.

  Two days after Onio anointed his grandfather’s body with the sacred waters, Leona placed the crown of king on Onio’s long, dark curls.

  “Be a good leader, First Son,” the old queen murmured, “Carry the responsibilities of our race with pride and courage.”

  Two weeks later his daughter, Angel, was born. Angel was six-years-old now and slept, snoring softly, with her big brother and idol, Lumos, as their father prepared to leave.

  Melody dashed a tear from her eye, “Do you know what’s going on, Onio?”

  He pa
used for a moment and walked over to where his wife sat up in bed, trying hard to be brave. He gathered her in his arms, “I think it is one of two things… There are pirates terrorizing the shipping lanes in Sector C-N. This is a powerful band of criminals who do not hesitate to kill everyone on board the ships they seize. If the trade-guild cannot get control of the situation, we might need to deal with the outlaws in our own way.

  “But there is another threat, my love,” Onio sighed. “We have only just begun to hear tales of a new species’ incursion into the Eight Galaxies region. They are called the Crulla, or the Ve’empeer. Apparently, their planet is dying, so they seek a new world. You and I both know that there are worlds available for colonisation, and if they only asked, the League of Eight would do everything within their power to help.” Onio’s shoulders slumped in frustration.

  “Although the League has sent beacons, podcasts and every other conceivable form of communication towards the Crulla fleet, they are routinely ignored. It is not out of ignorance either… it is quite apparent that the Commanders of this fleet know they are being hailed, and we have every reason to believe they understand our transmissions, but they have chosen to ignore the League’s messages and warnings.”

  “Why can’t the League just let them settle somewhere, and send diplomats, communication bots and builders when they’re done?” Melody studied the new lines of worry that were etching their way across her husband’s brow, since his job as king and military Commander began on Sasquereen. She had secretly wondered, many times, if their decision to come here was a wise one, or just a way to be killed faster than they would have been back on her home world, Earth.

  Onio shook his head. “This is the problem, wife. It seems that the Crulla drink the blood of the populations they conquer. It is as if they do not want a world of their own, where they can settle down, but only want to harvest and kill the people and creatures on every world they find. It is madness and they must be stopped.”

  Melody stared at her husband as he stood up and put his sandals on. “Onio, they sound like vampires!”