Chapter 1
General Azlo Bron
“I am counting on you, General Azlo Bron,” King Karik said to me.
“You can count on me, my king,” I said as I stood at attention.
“You, Jex, and Moxor will distribute this virus to the other communities that Vanessa has shown you,” he said.
“Now each of you has chosen a community. But you must be warned; we have not had contact with these isolated human communities for more than a year. We do not know if they are still there, if they have been abandoned, or if they have simply been taken over by the Clenok cyborgs. Go on your mission with caution,” Vanessa said as she pointed at a map rolled out on the table.
“I have chosen the human community of Providence to the north,” I said pointing at the map.
“It is cold there. It is the winter season, and it will be a lot colder there than it is here. Be warned of snowfall and winter storms,” she said.
“I will be cautious. We are dragons; we burn from within. The heat will not bother myself and my army,” I said.
“And I will be departing to Willow Creek to the west,” Jex said.
“I will be departing to Gainesville to the south,” Moxor said.
“Each of you carry many copies of the virus with you. If you come across other communities on your way to your destination, you will hand over the virus. If there are humans in the community that are departing to other communities, give them the virus to take with them. Do whatever you must so that this spreads to all human communities,” King Karik said.
We nodded in agreement and saluted our king.
“Then it is time for you to prepare for your departure, my good Veruka soldiers. Each of you will take a fleet of ships with you as well as two hundred soldiers. Use your resources wisely. I wish to see you all returned to Haven Brook so that one day we can all return to Tivoso together after we have help to humans defeat the Clenok cyborgs,” King Karik said.
“I will return,” I said to the king.
The weredragons at my side agreed with my sentiments.
“Then go prepare. Each of you leave at sunrise tomorrow,” he said.
I saluted the king and his human female, Doctor Vanessa Lopez, and then was on my way to prepare for departure with my fleet of weredragon soldiers.
“Remember: we can't use the long-range communications. The cyborgs will receive them as well,” Jex said to me as we walked toward the Veruka army base camp we had set up inside of Haven Brook, a human community isolated with a large wall around it and an electric fence.
“Yes, we will each be on our own once we are out there,” I said.
“Good luck to you, Azlo,” he said as he grabbed my forearm in a Veruka handshake.
“And to you, Jex,” I said.
The next day I departed the human community with my fleet of ships and two hundred weredragons. We headed north toward the snowy region of what used to be called the United States, before the cyborgs took over.
The cyborgs were called the Clenok. They were ruthless artificial intelligent machines that had one mission: kill all humans. They meant to take over the Earth, and there were billions of them spread out over the planet. The humans built the predecessors of these cyborgs. They had built machines that could run themselves for manufacturing and products, but eventually, the artificial intelligence machines grew smarter and smarter, and before that humans knew they were under attack by these machines, they had created armies of cyborgs.
Now only small isolated communities of humans remained throughout the Earth. We, the Veruka, were glad that the humans still existed. We had come to Earth in order to seek out the human knowledge of medical expertise. Our species had to come down with something we called the blackness. It was a sort of plague that was infecting the male weredragons. We did not know how to cure it, but we thought that the humans might. That is why we came to Earth to help the humans fight the Clenok cyborgs. We needed them to survive because we needed their knowledge. But when we came to Earth, our king stumbled upon something that we were not expecting: he found a cure for the blackness. But it wasn't based on human medical knowledge; it was based on the humans themselves. Our king found that if you mated with a human female, you bonded with them. The human DNA of the female was absorbed by a Veruka male and was then able to heal the body from the blackness plague; we didn't understand why or how. We only knew that mating with human females was the answer. Therefore, we needed as many human females to survive as possible. Our mission went from leaving Tivoso and coming to Earth for medical advice from the humans, to needing the human females to save our species. We were figuring it out along the way, and now the mission was to disperse a computer virus to as many humans as we could. Haven Brook had successfully used it to infect what it was known as a keddle. It was a large machine that controlled a regional army of cyborgs. Once you brought the keddle down with a virus, the cyborgs it controlled would fail. So this was my journey now: my mission spread the computer virus.
So I made my way north looking for the isolated mountain community known as Providence. I only hope that when we arrived, the humans would greet us with acceptance instead of hostility. They did not know that we existed. They had every right to be suspicious of anything that was not human; it was a complicated situation.