cover picture was kindly produced for me by my brother
Andrew Wood
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Copyright
Copyright Richard Wood 2012 all rights reserved
This novel is a work of fiction. Names characters and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead within the last 500 years is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
The Author
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Dedication
I would like to thank the following for their invaluable assistance while I wrote this novel.
My partner Petronella. For standing by me, through thick and thin.
My Brothers
Joseph. For his help, with the initial editing.
Gerald. A true sci-fi buff, for his invaluable help and advice. That caused me to revise extensively the beginning of this novel.
Andrew For his work on the revised book cover.
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Preface
In the event of war do not call us. We will call you.
Light-years from home, about to carry out a survey of their designated star system. The crew of a survey vessel learn they are now at war with an unknown adversary who has destroyed a sister vessel in another quadrant. All that is known of the enemy is the side-view shape of their giant vessel. Shaped like a letter Z, they are henceforth designated as Zedds, by the Central Command War Council. This then is the prelude to the adventures and the horrors of fighting a war of survival, within a war, on an alien planet. Which would ultimately cost the lives of millions of beings. That has yet to unfold for the unsuspecting crew.
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Prologue
The jet-black ship comprised of two flattened ovoid a kilometre wide connected by a diagonal strut, which from the side looked like a Z had been travelling for two years from its home planet of Taltala.
It was passing the nearest solar system to its home star when it happened. None of the three watch-keepers aboard the ship noticed anything untoward as it passed through the tenuous cloud, but this cloud was alive. It had evolved in space for a billion years, and had formed a co-operative intelligence, that had culminated in its present form, of a collective sticky mat that trapped free-floating atoms and used them as energy fuel enabling it to grow. It had spread to be 100,000 kilometres wide and was frenziedly sucking the life-giving atom feast, blown its way on the solar wind from the nearby sun. The ship tore a hole in it and continued on its way, oblivious of the sticky mass that now enveloped a large part of its lower portion.
At first, the sticky mass on the ship was shocked at the severance from the main collective mat then realizing it was on a food source so rich it became delirious with joy. It had never dreamt such food abundance could exist and set to work eating the atoms of the ship and procreating.
Fourteen years later when the ship was close to its target solar system and its crew were revived from stasis, only then did they begin to realize that something was terribly wrong when they found the ship was blind, had no communications. The three watch keepers were missing, and the airtight doors throughout the ship are closed.
His engineers were telling Lord Ravana the ship's commander, that a sticky acid, which had already eaten its way through the deck hull in several places, was, slowly eating the lower engine deck.
He sent out a team of men in space suits to investigate. They quickly returned and went through the decontamination chambers, so they could safely remove their suits. They reported that the acid was all over the exterior of the ship, but the lower deck was the worst affected. All the escape pods are damaged beyond immediate repair, as the top half of each pod protruded through the ship’s hull, and the acid had damaged them all. However, the most pressing worry is; they are heading toward a planetary system sun at nearly half the speed of light.
Lord Ravana acted immediately and reversed the thrust on the drive, but in his heart, he knew it was probably too late to save his ship, he ordered the fighters readied to evacuate the crew, and a distress buoy with all the information they had on this disaster to be programmed to return to their home system.
The twenty thousand warriors aboard in stasis tanks could not be revived as there were not enough ships to transport them to the nearest habitable planet, it was better if they remained in stasis and never knew they had died, thought Lord Ravana.
There was now a rush to service the twenty-five fighters aboard and bring them back up to operational readiness, as they had been mothballed, for the long journey across space.
The crew worked frantically around the clock but not all the ships are prepared in time, only five ships made it the remainder of the crew are charged with getting the distress buoy away and saving themselves if they can.
The ship has slowed down considerably but not enough to give the remaining crew many chances. They have even less time than they had originally thought as they are now on a collision course with a planet that is traversing their ship's course as it plunges headlong toward this system's sun. Two extra-overcrowded ships make it out of the hangar deck.
They watch in awe as the giant ship hits the red planet's thin atmosphere burning off the live sticky net of acid that enveloped it, then glowing as it streaked onward across the planet at an oblique angle, to disappear into a massive canyon system that stretched for 4,000 kilometres across the planet’s surface.
If its trajectory had been only five thousand kilometres higher, it would have missed the planet completely thought Lord Ravana watching the inglorious end of his ship.
The seven surviving vessels turned and began accelerating toward the distant third planet that had oxygen and water so their instruments told them. Only three would make landfall the rest would be lost in the planet’s atmosphere burning up on entry.
Two ran out of oxygen being crammed to over capacity with a crew trying to flee the ship. One had suffered a control engine failure that had resulted in a runaway reactor core. The crew had already died from heat and radiation before the reactor melted its way through the vessels hull. The fourth one almost made it but its command control computer system was incorrectly calibrated, when it entered the third planet’s atmosphere, it was at too steep an angle and burnt up before the crew could correct the problem.
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Chapter One
In the event of war do not call us. We will call you.