Chapter 1
General Rai Razook
“It is up to us to get this virus to as many humans as we can. We could save millions of them from the Clenok cyborg armies. We need the humans of Earth and they need us,” King Karik said to me as I stood at attention in front of him.
“Yes, I understand, my King. It is important that we do this mission as quickly as we can. You can count on me,” I said to him with a salute.
“You will be one of the few heading south. Be careful. We do not exactly know how powerful these cyborgs are. When will your army be ready?” he asked.
“The brigade is getting ready now and preparing. We will be ready to leave at sunrise,” I said.
“Good. Get all the supplies that you need while you are here at Haven Brook human colony. Take some human food with you as well. I will see to your departure at sunrise,” he said.
“Yes, thank you,” I said and gave him a salute. He was my king. He was the King of the Veruka. We had come from our planet called Tivoso many galaxies away.
We had come with good reason. It was because a plague had started to make our race sick. We did not know why. We simply called it the blackness plague. It was because of this plague that the king decided to leave our planet with a very large army in order to go to a planet called Earth.
We knew of this planet, and we knew of the humans that lived on it. The king wanted to visit them to see if their advances in medicine could help us to defeat the blackness plague that was killing us.
It was only after we arrived on Earth that the king discovered the cure to the blackness plague in a human colony called Haven Brook. He mated with a human female and somehow her DNA combined with his. Somehow, it cured him of the plague. We now knew the cure, having sex with human females. But there was a problem.
There weren't very many humans on Earth because the humans were at war. It seemed sometime in the recent past that cyborgs had taken over Earth and killed most of the population of humans. Now they only lived in small secret colonies of human refugees. They fought the cyborgs as hard as they could, but they weren't good enough. Therefore, they needed us. We were a skilled and vast army of weredragons. We could do things that the humans couldn't. Our weapons were advanced, and we had already proven successful against them at Haven Brook.
But the human female that the king mated with also brought hope. She was a medical doctor and a scientist. She had invented a computer virus. It was tested on the cyborgs and shown to defeat them. Now our king was sending out small bands of armies to human colonies far and wide to distribute the virus. I was in charge of one of these armies, and we were leaving at sunrise.
At sunrise the following day, we left the safety of the human colony Haven Brook. We headed south, while most of the other small bands headed north or east. We were going based on outdated information. Haven Brook had not had contact with these human colonies in years, but they knew where the colonies were, and we were going to try to find them. If they still existed.
“General Razook, we have reached flight altitude. We will be at the destination of the human colony known as Orlando in three hours,” my lieutenant said.
“Thank you, Lieutenant Qon,” I said as I listened to the report. He saluted me and walked down the hall. I walked out onto the flight deck. I was on the main ship with about ten other soldiers.
We had three ships with us, and each one carried twenty soldiers. It was a small army of less than eighty, but it would do. We were sort of on a scouting mission, scouting for other human colonies that we could take the virus to, and maybe even possibly mate with the human females. Doing that would make sure that I was vaccinated against the plague. It was part of my own mission. I might as well do something to protect myself, and the humans owed us, whether they knew it or not. We were there to save them with the virus as well as with our strength. The least they could do was mate with us. It wasn't too much to ask for. The Veruka had sex with Veruka females all the time, a different one every week. It was just the way of things. Being with a human female should not be any different, I assumed.
“We are coming upon the human colony,” Lieutenant Qon said to me a few hours later.
“Let's go to the flight deck,” I said. He followed me to the flight deck. Lieutenant Qon was a new lieutenant working under me. This was my first mission with him. But he did not seem to like taking orders, even though I was his superior. Still, he was a Veruka, and we had tempers.
“Do the heat scan,” I said as soon as I got to the flight deck and looked out the window. This human colony looked strangely deserted.
“Yes, General,” my pilot said.
“I don't see any sign of life. It looks to be deserted unless the humans are hiding,” I said looking out the windshield.
“So far not picking up any life,” my pilot said.
“Keep looking. Let's do a slow flyover. Keep prepared for any hostile activity,” I said.
Outside the windshield were the ruins of a small city. Buildings were only half standing. They seemed to be long ago bombed and destroyed. The walls were black with smoke and smudge. We couldn't see any movement. No humans were walking; no vehicles were being moved. It was just completely deserted.
“Report,” I said.
“Still no heat signature,” my pilot said.
“I want the fleet to hover at a safe distance outside the city. I am going to take the smaller scout ship with a band of ten. We have to make sure before giving up on this colony. Maybe the humans are underground, hiding from us. Remember: they think of us as aliens. They don't know that we are friends,” I said.
“General, is that wise? You are too important to be on the ground. Let me go,” Lieutenant Qon said.
“No. It has to be me. I need to be the one to have the first contact with the humans. You might say something that could turn them hostile. You will stay here,” I said walking away from him. I heard him groan as I did so. He did not like what I said to him. But I didn't like that he was questioning my orders in front of everyone on the flight deck.
Minutes later I was on the ground with ten soldiers at my back. I thought that maybe we should shift and fly over. But if there were humans, I did not want to give them cause to be alarmed. When we were shifted into weredragon form, we looked less like them with massive five-foot emerald wings and scales. So I decided against it.
“Find any signatures?” I asked my engineer who was searching for any sign that humans might be hiding underground.
“No, nothing. There is a network of drain systems, but they are not registering with any human activity,” he said.
“Then it is truly deserted. Either the humans that were here left, or they have all died as a result of cyborg activity. Let's get back to the ship,” I said.
We headed back to the scout ship them back onto the main ship of my fleet.
“What do we do now?” a soldier asked.
“Let me see the map that we were given of the human colonies,” I said. The soldier nodded and brought up the map that Haven Brook had given us. He projected it on the wall.
“It seems there is a concentration of human colonies to the northeast. That is where most of our army has gone. I think we should head there and support them in the outlying regions. We will see if we find any human colonies near these that are plotted. Humans tend to stick together,” I said.
“So we had north?”
“Yes, just outside of this one. The one called Willow Springs that I believe Jex was assigned to. We will go thirty miles to the west of it to see what is in that area. Plot a course for right here,” I said pointing on the map.
“Yes, General, ” the pilot said.
“Send a message to the king that we are headed to that region and give coordinates. But remember to send the message in short burst when we are getting on the same line with Haven Brook. Do not keep the transmission running. The cyborgs could pick it up,” I said.
“Yes, General.”
So we left the south and headed north. I wasn't going to give up on this mission. I wasn't going to be the only general to give up simply because the human colony that I was assigned was deserted. I wasn't going to go back to Haven Brook with my tail between my legs. No, I wasn't going back to Haven Brook until I had successfully given the virus to a human colony and defeated a band of cyborgs with it. I wasn't going to go back to Haven Brook empty-handed. I was going to have victory in the one hand, and a human female mate in the other. That was my vow to myself, and I wasn't going to break it.