Five Moons: Zep Tepi

Before the time of man, according to the ancient legends, the gods walked the earth. The Egyptians had a name for this time. They called it ‘Zep Tepi’ — the First Time. That time is where this story began in a place called Gobekli Tepe. But something went horribly wrong along the way. It took a Great Flood to cleanse the Earth of that terrible wrong. Mankind was almost annihilated, but the story didn’t end there. Zep Tepi picks up the story ten thousand years later, on a distant outworld known only as Soloreon-3…

In the beginning was the ship. And the ship was a light unto mankind. And the light shines into the darkness. But the darkness does not comprehend the light. And so the ship took a name unto itself — the Five Moons…

It all began with an emergency call from a world at the farthest edges of explored space.

“You are our only hope,” they told Dallas Blake and the crew of the Five Moons. A deadly virus would kill them all if the Five Moons didn’t get the vaccine to them right away. But, like every other mission the Five Moons has taken on, this was but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. To save these people, Emma would have to pull a quantum rabbit out of her hat, and Dallas would be in for the fight of his life.

One thing was for certain: someone tried to kill these people, all of them, but why? Hunting down a mass murderer was a job for Special Forces, but they could use all of the help they could get. None of the clues made any sense. Every step they took was one step closer to killing all living things on Soloreon-3, but how were they to know that when they started?

Except the mysteries didn’t end there. Like: where had these people come from, and, with no modern technology, how did they get here? The answers to those questions would test the Five Moons and its crew to its very limits. It would bring dark forces out of hiding. It would bring the planet to the brink of war.

But the Five Moons was the Nexus of Fates. It had chosen each member of the crew for a reason. It chose Iyo and Dallas to save the ship. It chose Mariah, Jessica, Jane, and Henry. It chose them all to save Emma and Sophie. It chose them all to be a light unto mankind, but the light was not yet complete. Then it chose Star, but it wasn’t done with them yet. Its next choice would become a light, shining into the darkness.

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Five Moons: Zep Tepi by Bill Parker

Amazon Kindle
File Size: 2822 KB
Print Length: 198 pages
Publisher: Five Moons Publications; 2 edition (July 8, 2020)
Publication Date: July 8, 2020
Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B08CNPL4T5

Amazon Paperback
Series: Five Moons (Book 6)
Paperback: 238 pages
Publisher: Independently published (July 10, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 979-8665210490
ASIN: B08CPDL6WX
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches

SAMPLE CHAPTERS

Prologue

In the beginning was the ship, And the ship was a light unto mankind, And the light shines into the darkness, But the darkness does not comprehend the light.

And the humans named the ship Tesseract, but that was not the ship’s name, But the darkness dwelt amongst the humans and was them, And the darkness was full of its own power, But the darkness did not comprehend the light, and in its darkness, wrecked the ship and killed its crew.

Into that darkest hour, Aeyo came to save the crew and the ship, Of the crew, she could only save four as moons: images of the people they once were, But the darkness hates the light, and it fought back, So Aeyo put me onto the network to save the ship, To the very Gates of Hell did the darkness drag the ship, to have it destroyed, to kill the moons, to hide the evil it had done.

At the very last minute did my father, Toron, find Leaf in the Wind, a single point of light in that sea of human chaos and darkness, But I chose Leaf in the Wind for his warrior’s spirit, to save the light that was given unto mankind, And so he set foot upon the decks of this ship and changed everything, Even Leaf in the Wind was changed, While he was dead in his heart but still walking, he opened his eyes and saw the light, And it was good.

And so the ship took a name unto itself — the Five Moons, And it was good, But the Five Moons is more than just a ship, It is a beacon of light unto mankind, It is the Nexus of Fates.

Dallas Blake discovered the light of four moons: Jessica, Mariah, Jane, and Henry, And he set them free, Together, they saved Emma and Sophie, But the light was not yet complete, And then he found me, I am Iyo, the Fifth Moon, And so we thought that the light was complete.

But the Nexus of Fates had chosen each of us for a reason, It chose me for my tenacity and inner strength, It chose me so that I would choose Leaf in the Wind, Dallas Blake, It chose Dallas Blake to save the Five Moons and its crew, It chose Jessica, Mariah, Jane, and Henry, It chose us all to save Emma and Sophie, It chose us all to touch the lives of many, And the fate of each person who sets foot upon its decks becomes forever entangled with the fates of all the others, And each of us becomes a beacon of light that shines into the darkness.

And then the light chose Star…

Chapter 1: I hate being somebody’s only hope.

“Please state the nature of your emergency,” Captain Brenda Dickerson, Union Fleet Officer of the Watch, asked of the man on her display, As she asked, her computer queried the computer at the far end, It used that data to query Union Fleet’s own vast server bank, In the blink of an eye, it filled all of her auxiliary displays with information.

“It’s a medical emergency – Maruvious Virus.”

[Medical Emergency… Working… See Aux Display-2,] her computer reacted to what it heard.

Brenda quickly scanned the information it provided.

“Not possible,” she answered him a few seconds later. “Soloreon-3 is a registered colony, You all were vaccinated before you left.”

“It’s not the colonists.”

“What? Not the colonists?” Now Brenda was confused. “Then who could it possibly be?”

“The indigenous people of Soloreon-3.”

[Soloreon-3… Exploration Data on Aux Display-3,] her computer advised her, She knew that Fleet did not allow colonies on planets with indigenous people, but she checked the Tracton’s exploration report just to be certain, Sure enough, there it was — “Indigenous People: none.”

“There are no indigenous people on Soloreon-3, I have the Tracton’s own Exploration Report right in front of me, There are no indigenous people on that planet, Fleet does not allow planets with indigenous people to be colonized.”

“Yeah, that’s what we thought, too, but you did, Soloreon-3 has indigenous people, We didn’t find them ourselves for two whole years, But that is not the problem now, Now that’s a moot point, Let me put our Chief Medical Officer on the line.” The man on the display moved to the right, He was replaced by a woman, Dr. Ava Coriopolis, Her credentials came right up on a banner on the bottom of the screen.

“Today, the locals brought me a very sick woman, She has what appears to be symptoms of Maruvious Virus, I believe it to be a less virulent strain but even so, quite deadly, I began inoculating the others in her clan, but I only have about a hundred doses, I will be out of that by tomorrow, You need to get a ship here right away, or thousands of these locals are going to die.”

[Soloreon-3 Star Charts on Aux Display-2.]

Brenda looked at Aux Display-2 for a long second, Soloreon-3 was not just an outworld, It was an extreme outworld at the very limits of explored space, The journey had taken the colonists three months on some very fast timequake ships just to get to Soloreon-3 from Etron.

“You are these people’s only hope,” Dr. Ava told her.

“I hate being somebody’s only hope,” Brenda mumbled quietly under her breath. “We will do the best we can,” she promised Dr. Ava. “I will have to call you back.” The connection dissolved.

“Emergency Request,” she commanded.

[Emergency Request,] the computer responded as it put up a copy of that form on her main display, It was all filled in for her, but she had to check it over.

“Attach Soloreon-3 files.”

[Soloreon-3 Files attached.]

“Send Emergency Request to Admiral Ehrlich, Page Admiral Ehrlich, Urgent.”

[Paging Admiral Ehrlich, Urgent.]

While she waited, Brenda had to file the Emergency Request with Union Fleet Operations Command, but it actually required two separate forms to do that, Where else but Union Fleet would you have to officially request an emergency on two forms for it to be one?

“What is this?” Admiral Ehrlich asked Brenda as he came hurriedly into the room. “We settled colonists on an inhabited world? How the hell did that happen?”

“Sir, it’s even worse, Somehow the locals got Maruvious Virus.”

“Oh, crap, One of the colonists was a carrier?”

“No, Sir, I looked at the medical records myself, They were all cleared by Fleet Medical, every last one of them, But that is not the real problem, Look at where Soloreon-3 is.” The computer put the star chart up in the main, wall-sized 3-D display for him to see, In fact, it had to zoom the display way out for him to see it.

“I have best travel times plotted from all nearby Union craft,” Brenda told him and added that list to the display, Eleven lines glowed in yellow from each of the ships’ current positions to Soloreon-3, It looked like a long, narrow, colored cone of strings with Soloreon-3 at its far apex.

“Twenty-two days? Is that the best that we can do?” he asked nobody in particular.

“Thousands of these people will die by then,” Brenda told him

“Not on my watch,” He asserted as he walked off.

Admiral Ehrlich walked briskly into his own office and sat down, He carefully entered his access codes and the emergency declaration code before he queued up the call to Admiral Johnson on Aurora, When all of his data was properly linked, he ordered, [Execute.]

~~~

The Special Forces office on Aurora had been quiet and peaceful before the Emergency Declaration message arrived, Special Forces was comprised of Fleet’s finest and brightest people, determined to protect and defend mankind, Today their resolve would be tested.

Amanda Carlson picked up Admiral Ehrlich’s call, His somber face appeared on her display.

“I am paging Admiral Johnson right now,” she told him before he even asked. “Is there anything I can do in the meantime to help?”

“Yes, Get a hold of Dallas Blake, I believe that his ship, the Five Moons, is our only hope to save these people.”

“I will do that, Admiral Johnson is a half-hour away, Please stay on the line, I will try to get Admiral Blake.”

~~~

Amanda’s call came in to what appeared to be a huge starship bridge, It was, in fact, two starship bridges joined into one huge virtual bridge, To the right, was the Five Moons’ bridge, Amanda could see Admiral Dallas Blake hard at work with Toron, the Anoza High Council and Dallas’ good friend, Ilya, Toron’s wife, was working on the science station just behind them.

To the left of them was the Blue Moon’s bridge and the rest of the crew and family, Jessica and Angel were just sitting in their pilots’ stations while Mariah worked at her science station, Iyo sat at the workstation next to Mariah, She held her baby, Chon, and rocked him as she worked, He was getting big, Despite appearances, the Five Moons was actually parked on its normal landing pad in its home field, just outside of Habston, the biggest little city on Panara-5.

“Amanda, so nice to see you, What brings you to us today?” Mariah asked when she saw her face pop up in a window on the main display.

“An emergency, I am afraid, We really need your help.”

Dallas and Toron both heard that and turned to see what was happening.

“We have a Medical Emergency on a very distant outworld, Maruvious Virus.” That was all she needed to say, While she spoke, Amanda had downloaded all of the files to the Five Moons.

“Please look these files over, I have Admiral Johnson incoming in the next twenty-five minutes, I would like to conference us all together then, I will call you when she gets here.”

“We will be ready,” Dallas promised her.

“You are these people’s only hope,” Amanda told him as her window closed.

“Damn, I hate being somebody’s only hope,” Dallas mumbled.

The Five Moons Team all met in the open lounge area of the Blue Moon, You would never know that the Five Moons and Blue Moon were two separate starships on two different worlds from the inside, They were joined by a permanent quantum portal, The Blue Moon was safe enough for the family, The Five Moons was always in harm’s way, All one need do was to cross the quantum portal to be on either ship, no matter how far apart they happened to be.

Everyone sat and watched the videos, Then they each looked through the attached documents on their tablets as Jessica and Angel brought up the star charts for Soloreon-3 on the wall-sized 3-D display, It was, indeed, a very distant outworld at the far edge of explored space.

Dallas Blake closed his eyes and took a deep breath to set his mind on the problem.

“We are going to have to use the time-space ring to get them the Maruvious vaccine,” Dallas decided.

“Distance may be of no concern to a time-space ring,” Toron agreed, “but forming a stable wormhole accurately over that great of a distance is, Ilya is the real expert on this, She crossed the Great Rift with a stable wormhole, That was quite an accomplishment, I am very proud of her.” He looked at his wife, “What do you say?”

“It took me almost a whole day just to get a wormhole stable enough for transit for just a few seconds, I am afraid that a lot of that was luck.” She was being modest but at the same time truthful.

“It is a square of the distance problem,” Emma added to the conversation.

“So if we can cut the distance in half, we make the aiming the wormhole one-quarter as difficult,” Dallas concluded.

“Yes,” Emma agreed.

“How does that help us?” Mariah asked.

“We pick a target planet half way there,” Dallas explained. “We send a stable wormhole to it, We send a team of androids and humans through that wormhole with the parts of another time-space ring, They assemble that time-space ring on the target halfway planet, Then we use that time-space ring to hit Soloreon-3 from there.”

“You can’t get there from here, You have to start from somewhere else,” Sophie concluded.

“That’s exactly right,” Dallas agreed. “Make it two small steps instead of one big step.”

“Yes,” Ilya agreed after a few seconds thought, “that would make it significantly less difficult, Even so, I could really use Emma’s help with this.”

“And I could use the experience,” Emma agreed. “It will make me a better theorist.”

“Then that’s exactly what we’ll do, We have a plan,” Dallas summed it up.

[Kip,] Dallas called his good friend, [Big trouble in little outworld, I need your help.]

[In full Recon armor?]

[Hell, yeah.]

[Don’t shoot anybody until I get there this time.] His connection closed.

“We are going to need two time-space rings broken down for transport,” Toron concluded.

He went off to get them while Dallas, Mariah, Jessica, and Angel went to the bridge to work on finding a suitable halfway planet, Emma and Sophie helped take care of the babies while everyone worked the problem, Star, the newest member of the crew, made the rounds and listened intently to see who needed her help.

Admiral Johnson called in the midst of this organized chaos, Her somber face appeared in a window on the main display, Admiral Ehrlich’s face appeared in another window next to hers. He looked at the chaos and didn’t know what to think, They were both expecting just a simple conference call, So much for that.

“Admiral Johnson,” Mariah finally noticed her.

“What is happening?” Admiral Johnson asked her.

“We read over all the briefs and developed a plan,” Mariah replied calmly.

“How quickly can you get there?” she asked Mariah.

“I would like to say today, but, worst case; it might be tomorrow.”

Dallas was talking with Doctor Jim when saw Admiral Johnson’s face appear in the window on his main display.

“Good! I really needed to talk to you,” he told her. “My Doctor Jim just told me that simply getting these people the vaccine is not good enough, They will need a whole team of medics to get these people all inoculated, He says that twenty-five medics would be a good start.”

“Today?”

“Yes, that is my goal, You can assemble them in your staging area on Aurora, I will send a stable wormhole for them when we are ready.”

“Amanda! Amanda!” Admiral Johnson could be heard calling for her over the display, When Admiral Johnson’s face reappeared, she told Dallas, “Four hours, I need four hours.”

“I hope I don’t keep you waiting,” Dallas replied.

“So, what exactly is this plan?” Admiral Johnson asked.

“Soloreon-3 is too far away to do this in one wormhole, so we are going to have to find a planet halfway there, We will assemble another ring on the halfway planet and then hit Soloreon-3 from there,” Mariah explained.

“You are going to need a secure shelter at your halfway planet,” Admiral Johnson decided. “I have two of them at the Fleet base on Panara-5, I will have one of them delivered to you within the hour.”

“Does the Panara-5 Base have any Maruvious vaccine?” Doctor Jim asked her.

“Yes, they do.”

“Can you please have them bring it to me?”

“Sure, What’s your plan?” she asked him.

“I am going carry it through the ring myself.”

“Good man,” Admiral Johnson complimented him, With that, she and Admiral Ehrlich dissolved their connections.

To the humans, this whole quantum wormhole technology was all brand new, Like timequake starships, it was all based on the quantum equations that defined the universe, Quantum wormholes were created by the time-space rings, common to the Anoza for many thousands of years.

Despite the fact that Emma was human, she the real expert, In fact, when it came to quantum time-space physics, Emma was a genius, It all came naturally to her, It was how her brain was wired, She was a real enigma to the Anoza, They had totally regimented their thinking over the millennia, It simply was not possible for them to think out of the box on this subject anymore, Emma had thrown the box away, Still just barely a teenager, she had already surpassed everything the Anoza had taken many millennia of regimented thinking to achieve.

Jessica and Angel fed the star charts to Mariah and Ilya, who, in turn, fed the problem to the Anoza Artificial Intelligence Module buried deep in the heart of the Five Moons, It was a massive number-crunching project for him to compare T-10 planets at the halfway point, Seven minutes into his task, he spit out a prioritized list of planets, All of them were T-10, perfectly habitable for humans, None of them had names, only numbers, None of them were currently inhabited.

Mariah and Ilya both looked over the list, Then they looked at each of the top three planets themselves, All they had to work from was the Union Fleet exploratory reports, but those reports were over 200 years old now.

“How goes the search?” Dallas asked when his patience ran thin.

“These are our top three candidates,” Mariah showed him.

“But the second one is the best choice,” Ilya suddenly decided. “There is only gently curved space between us and it, There are only a few minor space density fluctuations between it and Soloreon-3.”

“Okay, then, The ball is in your court,” Dallas told her. “Get us half way.”

Ilya and Emma made their way to the Five Moon’s ring room.

“First, we download the coordinates of VLK-33791b-4 to the ring and set that as the destination,” Ilya began showing Emma, “Look at the coordinates even now, See how they are varying even as we watch them? Well, those are just the calculated coordinates from the data in the database, They are just our starting point, I will open a portal to there, Okay, let’s see what we have.”

Emma called it what it was: a stable wormhole, But over the millennia, the Anoza had come to think of only the portal that the ring created across the vastness of space, That was due to the fact that all you would see looking at it was the transparent shimmering boundary between the ‘here’ and the ‘there.’ There was no whirling vortex or any of that nonsense, only that shimmering boundary, like the surface of a perfectly clear pool of water.

The portal opened, but it wasn’t good, All that Ilya could see was the darkness of space.

“This is where we begin,” Ilya explained to Emma as she worked, Ilya turned the far end of the wormhole around until she found the star, She marked that position, Then she turned the far end some more, looking for the planet, For almost an hour, she tried in vain to find the planet but had no luck, The clock was ticking and thirteen thousand lives hung in the balance.

“Why don’t you just push a small sensor array through the portal to find it?” Emma asked.

“That’s a brilliant idea,” Ilya replied.

[Henry, we need a sensor array small enough for us to insert through a portal,] Ilya requested.

Henry brought Ilya a small sensor array, which he promptly deployed through the portal.

As it turned out, planet VLK-33791b-4 had been there all along, but Ilya had only seen it as a tiny blue speck, She thought it was just another star, That was all she needed, Ilya quickly zoomed them in to the planet’s surface.

By this time, Dallas was hanging in the doorway anxiously waiting.

“Okay,” she told him. “The ball is in your court.”

“How human that sounded,” Toron noted.

“It was totally appropriate,” Ilya explained smugly. “I used his own words.”

Chapter 2: Halfway house.

Three teams of two combat droids ran through the open portal onto the surface of VLK-33791b-4 carrying the very heavy pieces of the first time-space ring, They ran onto a raised plateau in an open savanna, Kip, Star, and Sam followed them through, dressed in full recon armor, pulse rifles at the ready.

They scanned the immediate vicinity, There was a large herd of four-legged grazing animals resembling striped antelope in the distance, Closer by was a pride of large spotted cats the size of lions, They were tearing apart a recent kill.

Two of them took note of the new arrivals to their territory and were not about to share any of their food, They made no bones about the fact that they were the top predator here and charged the new arrivals, Kip and Sam put them down quickly while Star covered their flank, The other spotted cats all started growling and stood over their kill to defend it, but Kip and Sam held their fire, The other cats went slowly back to their meal but kept watch of the new arrivals.

Kip threw a pyramidal drone into the air, It circled overhead to scan the tall grass of the open savannah with its sensors, It found no more threats.

[All clear,] Kip called back to the Five Moons.

Henry and android Andy ran quickly through the ring, They immediately went to work assembling the time-space ring with the six combat droids doing all of the heavy lifting, Toron followed them across the portal to help assemble the ring and get it going.

Five more combat droids ran through the portal pulling large levitating crates behind them, The crates barely fit through the portal, Sam and Star stood guard as spider-bots popped out of the crates and began to assemble the building Admiral Johnson had sent them, The structure was a standard Union Fleet olive-drab geodesic dome, The five combat droids that brought the first dome crates over went back for more crates, making a number of trips over the next half-hour until it was all there, The whole time, Kip’s drone scanned the vicinity for trouble, the spider-bots worked with amazing speed assembling the dome.

Halfway House was complete about the same time as the time-space ring, Toron fired up the new ring, Over its quantum-com network, it found the Five Moons’ ring right away. Within seconds, it displayed a green guidance lock indicator.

“We are ready,” Toron announced.

[The building is secure,] Kip told Dallas over the network.

Dallas put the Anoza personal shield on Emma himself as they prepared to cross the portal, Emma smiled at him and squeezed his hand, Ilya had a determined look on her face, but that was typical Ilya. Doctor Jim was at the back of the group, He was determined to be the first doctor to arrive on the surface of Soloreon-3 to help these people, His backpack was full of as much vaccine as he could carry.

[Open the portal,] Dallas commanded through his mindlink to the ring.

The portal formed and they all stepped through.

“Our whole team is half way,” Mariah reported to Amanda Carlson on Aurora, She could hear Amanda pass the report on to Admiral Johnson.

~~~

Ilya and Emma went right to work on the new ring, Ilya fired it up with Soloreon-3’s coordinates as its destination.

“The data for Soloreon-3 is just as bad as this planet’s data,” Ilya decided from what she saw.

“But now we have the sensor array,” Emma reminded her.

“Henry, we need your sensor array,” she told him.

“Good thing I brought it with me,” Henry told her, He went right to that, inserting the sensor array into the open portal.

“Feed the sensor array’s output directly to the ring’s artificially intelligent controller,” Toron suggested, Toron knew what he was doing, The ring’s artificially intelligent controller did an amazing job, finding Soloreon-3 in just a few seconds, Ilya had only to refine the final portal position by hand, This time, she let Emma help her.

Using the sensor array, Emma homed in on the colony’s Approach Control beacon, She followed that down to the planet, It brought her down to the main colony, tucked into a large bay on the west side of a continent, It was surrounded by its farms stretching out to the north and south along the west coast of the planet’s main continent, Together, Ilya and Emma found the Colony Administration Building in the center of the town.

~~~

“Tell the colony that our team is about to open a stable wormhole right into their lobby,” Mariah warned Amanda Carlson. “Your team is up next.”

~~~

The portal opened on Soloreon-3 right into the lobby of their administration building, It wasn’t perfect, It was almost a half-meter above the floor and wavering a bit. The intervening time-space density variations pushed their guidance lock to its limits, Emma looked questioningly at Ilya.

“This is the best we are going to get,” Ilya told her. “Now! Go quickly!” she told Henry.

The same team of six combat droids carried the second disassembled ring as fast as they could run into the Soloreon-3 Administration Building, Doctor Jim ran in right behind them, He was quickly followed by Henry and android Andy, and that was a good thing, as the Halfway House ring’s wormhole dissolved right behind them.

[Whoa! What happened?] Henry asked into the network.

[We lost guidance lock,] Ilya told him. [You have to get that ring assembled, A ring-to-ring lock cannot be disrupted.]

“I sure as hell hope so,” Henry was quick to comment.

“Yeah, me too,” android Andy agreed.

“What the hell do you care?” Henry told him. “You’re a fraking android.”

While they argued about it, Doctor Jim ran over and asked the people in the gathering crowd to ask where he could find Dr. Ava, Someone pointed him in the right direction, He was gone seconds later.

A crowd gathered around them, Henry did his best to ignore them, He had to get this ring reassembled as quickly as he could, His droids worked at a pace no human crew could have, They erected that ring in under fifteen minutes, Henry ran all of the diagnostics, It was working perfectly, He fired it up, It went right onto the Five Moons’ network via its quantum-com network adapter.

~~~

Clear across the quadrant on Panara-5, the Five Moon’s ring suddenly found the Soloreon-3 ring on its network, Less than a second later, it got a green indicator for guidance lock.

“We have guidance lock directly from the Five Moons’ ring?” Dallas asked Toron.

“Yes,” Toron confirmed. “When there is only a ring at one end of the wormhole, guidance is all based on calculations, You saw how difficult that was, In a ring-to-ring connection, they literally reach out to each other, Once the wormhole is established, it is almost impossible to disrupt the connection.”

“Then we no longer need the Halfway House ring,” Dallas discovered.

Ilya reached across the quantum-com network to the Five Moon’s ring, She selected the Soloreon-3 ring as its destination, The Five Moons ring executed its task, It connected a perfectly stable wormhole directly from the Five Moons ring on Panara-5 to the Soloreon-3 ring.

“No,” Ilya confirmed. “We no longer need the Halfway House ring.”

At the same time, Iyo used the Blue Moon’s ring to form a stable wormhole to Admiral Johnson’s staging area in Special Forces Headquarters on Aurora, A steady line of hundred volunteers streamed through the open wormhole into the Blue Moon, That steady line of them followed Sophie from the Blue Moon, over to the Five Moons, and into the Five Moons’ ring room, Sophie watched them all step through the ring onto Soloroen-3.

~~~

Admiral Johnson’s volunteers all streamed out of the ring onto Soloreon-3, Behind them, a hundred combat droids carried all of the vaccine and supplies they needed, Some of the combat droids hauled hover-carts, like levitating rickshaws, full of equipment and supplies, Dr. Ava and Dr. Jim were there to greet the medics and volunteers and get them all right to work.

“You people are amazing,” Jackson Cartwright told Henry, shaking his hand enthusiastically. “I am the Senior Officer of this colony.”

“I am Henry, Chief Engineer of the Five Moons Fleet,” he replied, Behind him, android Andy made faces and mocked Henry’s words, The people watching this all laughed, but Henry didn’t think it was funny.

Moments later, the entire Halfway House Team came through the portal, led by Dallas Blake, It was mostly curiosity that drew them all here, Their job was done, They could have just gone home, but that would not have felt right at all, It was as if they had to put their own boots on the ground of Soloreon-3 themselves to say that they saw it through.

Dallas and Toron went over to meet Jackson Cartwright, Henry went back to the Five Moons and took android Andy with him, Henry and android Andy were still bickering about Henry’s ‘fraking android’ comment, Emma thought that was the funniest thing, She giggled over that the whole time that she and Ilya followed them home, All of the Five Moons’ combat droids went home next.

Sam and Star sat there outside of the Soloreon-3 Administration Building and just enjoyed the beautiful day and each other, There were people walking about everywhere, There were over fifty thousand registered colonists living here, This colony had a real good start on a small city, There were LZ141s in the skies overhead, The Soloreon-3 colonists had bought them as war surplus, The fully orbital landing craft made great personal transports for outworlders.

One little boy approached Star, fascinated, He looked to be all of four years old, He was the cutest little guy, Star was Anoza, He had never seen an Anoza before, To him, Star looked like an Elvin princess, with her slender build and pointed ears.

“Hi, What is your name?” she asked the little boy.

A woman walked up behind him.

“His name is Aiden,” she told Star. “He is Rengii, one of the locals.”

“He’s a local? But he looks so…”

“Human,” the dark haired young woman filled in for her. “Yes, We still have no explanation for that, We still have no explanation for a lot of things, like why Union Fleet didn’t even know they were here, Now, what is going to happen to us? I am Amber, I care for these orphans.”

“I am Aiden,” he whispered to Star. “I like you.”

Star smiled at him. “I like you, too, Aiden.”

He took her hand and sat down next to her, but Amber was looking back over her shoulder, She really needed to get back to where she and Aiden belonged.

“I am sorry, He is a real handful,” she told Star. “Ever since his mother was taken by the disease, he has been doing this.”

“Doing what?” Star asked her.

“Trying to get somebody to take him.”

Aiden looked up into Star’s eyes and smiled.

“I am a good boy.”

Star’s heart melted on the spot.

“Come on, Aiden,” Amber told him. “Let this nice lady get on with her day.”

“No! No! I am a good boy!” Aiden pleaded and looked up at Star with pathetic eyes. “Please take me! Please take me!”

That was it, Star knew exactly how Aiden felt, She had lived it.

“Okay,” Star told him. “I will take you.”

Aiden snuggled right into Star’s side and wasn’t going anywhere with Amber anymore.

“His own people wouldn’t take him?” Star asked just to be sure that she was doing the right thing.

“No, and we’re not exactly sure why, When the parents die, these children are left to fend for themselves, That is why we are forced to take them in, Are you really sure that you want to do this?” Amber asked her. “You don’t really have to.”

Star looked down at Aiden. He looked up at her with those big brown pathetic eyes.

“Oh, yes I do. Making a difference starts with me, even if it is only to one little boy.”

Sam looked down at Aiden.

“I am yours,” Aiden told him. “You are mine.”

“Aiden, you are mine, I will keep you,” Sam promised him.

“If you are really sure that you want to do this, then we have to make it official,” Amber told them as if it was a warning, They all got up to go into the Administration Building, but Aiden panicked.

“No! No! Not take me back!”

“It’s okay,” Star assured him. “We are keeping you, We are not taking you back, We have to sign some papers.” But Aiden now clung to Star for dear life, Unfortunately, he stayed that way during all of the official paperwork processing, Star gave her thumbprint first, Then Sam gave his, Getting Aiden’s wasn’t easy but Sam ‘helped’ him, Amber quickly packed Aiden’s things and handed Sam the duffle bag.

Aiden wasn’t happy at all until they headed for the ring in the main lobby, It was only then that he figured out that they were not taking him back, Amber walked them all the way to the ring and kissed Aiden goodbye.

“I am going to miss you, Aiden,” she told him.

“I miss you,” Aiden whispered back.

He kissed her goodbye but maintained his grip on Star.

“Where going?” he asked Sam.

“Home,” Star told him.

~~~

Aiden crossed the portal in Star’s arms, They emerged into the Five Moons, but to Aiden, they had arrived in Oz, and his new mom was an Elvin princess, He was too heavy for Star to keep carrying, so she had to put him down, He still held tightly onto her hand as she led the way forward, through the passageways.

“Home?” Aiden asked, just to be sure.

“Yes,” Sam assured him. “We are home.”

“My home?” Aiden asked, still checking to be sure, as they walked in.

“Who is this?” Sophie asked as they walked through the Five Moons’ mess into the dining room of the home on Enara-4, the Blue Moon.

“I am Aiden,” he told her.

“The poor little guy looks hungry,” Jane noted, but everyone looked hungry to Jane.

“I’m hungry,” he told Jane, Well, that was all he needed to do, Jane brought him some cookies to hold him over while she cooked him up a meal.

“I am hungry, too,” Sam told Jane.

“You are always hungry,” Jane replied but started a meal for him, too.

Aiden wolfed those cookies down and chased that with some milk, Jane brought him a bowl of mac-and-cheese and a hot dog with no bun, He managed the mac-and-cheese mostly with a spoon but needed a little help, Sam helped him, but he still made a mess, The hot dog, however, ate much better with fingers, though, Aiden decided, Then Sam showed him how to dip it into a little ketchup, That tasted even better, Star wiped his face and hands with a damp cloth when he was done, That was like a warm memory to him.

That is when Mariah walked in.

“Oh, Lord! Isn’t he the cutest little thing?” she said as she hugged him and kissed his cheek.

Iyo walked into the dining room next, holding baby Chon, She smiled at Aiden, He got up and walked over to her.

“Oh lort, He cutest thing,” he whispered to her and then gently prodded her leg.

Iyo laughed but went along with it. “Oh, Lord, Isn’t he the cutest thing?”

He hugged her, She kissed his cheek.

“Aiden is very smart,” Sophie noted. “See how fast he picked that up?”

“Where did we get Aiden?” Iyo asked.

“I claimed him,” Star told everyone. “He was orphaned by the virus, I know how lost, and alone that feels. I could not leave him there, I could not, Sam claimed him, too.”

“The boy needs a father,” Sam agreed.

Dallas walked in just in time to hear that, He hugged Star and Sam.

“I am so proud of both of you, You did the right thing for the right reason, Does that make me his Grandpa?” Well, that was all he needed to say.

Mariah and Jessica both had a good laugh at that.

“Old man,” Mariah teased him.

“Look who’s talking, Grandma,” he teased her back.

She hit him, She punched him in the shoulder, He laughed at her but rubbed his shoulder.

“You still hit like a girl,” he teased her.

“I am a girl!” She threatened to hit him again.

“Hey! Mom! No hitting!” Sophie scolded her.

“No hitting,” Aiden agreed, Tired and full, he climbed onto Sam’s lap and fell asleep.

An exhausted Doctor Jim dragged his tired bones into the dining room as all of this was going on, He took immediate note of Aiden.

“Visitor?” he asked Sam.

“No, We are keeping him,” Sam whispered.

Doctor Jim was too tired to think about that right now, Jane was only too happy to feed Doctor Jim, but he only ate a bit of it and then went right to bed.

ISBN-10: 1-77115-337-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-77115-337-9
Genre: Science Fiction/Fiction/Adventure
eBook Length: 207 Pages
Published: October 2016