Lokians Book One By Aaron Dennis
Intelligent races travel through wormholes to explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Thewls inform Humans of a looming threat. Lokians are a ravenous race of space bugs. They harvest technology from advanced civilizations and integrate with it to mass produce living ships, dangerous vanguards, and formidable legions.
Captain O’Hara of Phoenix Crew travels with Thewls to retrieve an ancient vessel from a mysterious race simply known as travelers. Can a single craft be the key to saving the galaxy? Why do Thewls believe the travelers once visited Earth? Does O’Hara and Phoenix Crew have what it takes to obliterate the space bugs?
Read on or download free from Smashwords
Prologue
Man yearns to explore, learn, perceive, and break beyond the bonds of limitation. Great, philosophic minds pondered such implications, giving rise to questions with no answer. Who are we? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Are we alone in the universe? Can we reach for the stars?
A decade into the Twenty First Century, a space exploration program known as NASA retired their shuttle, stating their space station, the ISS, was sufficient to advance man’s knowledge of space; no more flights to the moon were needed, probes were built to reach other planets, yet a question arose; was NASA truly marooning their scientists in Earth’s orbit? Was there, really, no shuttle in reserve for emergency protocol?
What no one knew was that a new vessel had already been designed and produced. A drone shuttle carried equipment to the ISS, building materials, and there, the engineers constructed new probes. Launching them from beyond Earth’s gravitational pull allowed the tiny machines to explore without immense fuel requirements. New studies had commenced.
Survey satellites were then built and released to specified coordinates. Their role was to relay any information gathered by probes back to Earth. It took little time to obtain great findings. Less than a year into the program, the probes detected abundant deposits of precious minerals in asteroids both inside and outside the solar system. The next step required mining probes to retrieve the deposits. A new age began when humans no longer needlessly harvested their own planet’s resources.
A few decades down the road, survey probes revealed more than just resources; asteroids, moons, and planets were deemed acceptable for colonization with little cost or effort, however, there was always the obstacle of time. A journey from Earth to the closest sites meant decades of travel. Great minds set their combined efforts on the task, and a solution was proposed; send colonies to midway stations on small asteroids.
It was no surprise to NASA that very few volunteered. Many citizens of Earth were comfortable and happy in their lives. A move to a colonial life in space was practically permanent, and traveling for years only to live in the desolation of space was frightening. Then, the military stepped in, looking to soldiers for support. Project Safe Haven was announced.
In the year 2111, almost fifty years after the first successful colony, Admiral John Lay, the overseer of Safe Haven, commissioned Captain Riley O’Hara to lead a team of scientists and engineers aboard the Phoenix, a vessel orbiting a planet called Eon. The new ship and the new crew were set to break new ground; The Horizon Project was employed to begin colonization of the first planet outside the Sol system. O’Hara was beyond psyched.
Chapter One
O’Hara sat in crew quarters, little more than rows of beds, tables, chairs, and lockers utilized by eighteen military occupants, which included O’Hara. There were also ten scientists aboard the Phoenix—a mixture of geologists, engineers, climatologists, and biologists—and additional ship hands contracted by the Navy. Of the soldiers, O’Hara found the ship’s pilot, Sara Day, the more pleasant for conversation.
“Excited? This is our big break, Captain,” Day said, beaming.
She was short and fair. Her light skin blended perfectly with her flowing, blonde hair, and glimmering, green eyes. O’Hara smiled back, looking her over; she was a young, pretty Lieutenant at twenty one years of age.
“Bursting at the seams, Day. I still find it hard to believe Admiral Lay put me in charge instead of Rear Admiral Shaw,” the captain replied as he furrowed his brow.
He was rather tall, and of a darker complexion, older, twenty four, and though he lacked real world experience, his intelligence and determination shone through almond colored eyes.
“I heard he’s assisting Lay with the next step,” she remarked.
“Colonizing a planet…we’re really doing something here.”
“Yeah, I can’t believe they think we’re ready to do this,” Day sighed.
“First thing’s first, we need to determine the cause of those magnetic disturbances.”
“Swain’s working on it?”
“Yeah. Logically, it’s some sort of magnetized metal deposit, but there’s always the risk of radiation. There’s just as much we don’t know about Eon as we do know….”
A voice came over the Phoenix’s intercom. The Automated Monitoring System, or AMS as it was commonly known, stated in a robotic voice that entry into Eon’s atmosphere was taking place in two hours.
“Better hit the chair, Miss Day,” O’Hara smiled.
They stood. She saluted, he returned it then she ran to the bridge. It was not uncommon for a ship to have such a young pilot. All colonial children were enrolled in military schools, receiving the best of education. Once they excelled in a certain area, they were trained specifically for that field. Day was no exception. She also had the added comfort of the AMS assisting with small calibrations. At the bridge, she sat in the helmsman’s chair.
The Phoenix’s bridge was a cold, steel structure. The only decoration in the room was the burgundy carpeted floor. From the suede chair, Day checked the screens mounted in the console before her. She looked at the large monitor displaying their surroundings.
A tri-sectional screen calibrated to three cameras revealed a 180 degree perspective of the ship’s environment. A fourth camera revealed the vessel’s six, but the bridge officers marveled at the beauty of the purple and green sphere on display. Day smiled to herself before brushing a few strands of blonde hair from her face as she double checked the landing coordinates. Everything was in order, so she took manual control.
Maneuvering the Phoenix under atmospheric pressure was simple, especially since a location had already been programmed into the AMS. It was set to land about three miles away from a dig site. Any closer and the ship ran the risk of damage by magnetic interference, the same interference Swain was studying. While the Phoenix had its own anti-magnetic field generator, O’Hara preferred playing it safe, ordering a three mile trip from the site. He was anxious to set foot on the surface and lead the scientists to the dig.