Goddess, p.1
Goddess, page 1
GODDESS
by: David Wind
A Forerunner Story
This is a work of science fiction. The names,
places, and events are fictitious. Any similarity
to persons living or dead is coincidental:
and, unless you are a time traveler, impossible.
ISBN: 979-8-9871841-3-4
Copyright: 2023 by David Wind
A ColSaw Publication
Cover by: Steven Novak
Editing by: Lacie Redding
What the early reviews are saying about GODDESS.
BOOKBUB REVIEW:
"l just finished reading the above book and WOW! I received my copy yesterday and I couldn't put it down. I really enjoyed it and felt a if I was actually part of what was happening. This book pulls you in right from the beginning and keeps you on the edge of your seat. I really liked the inclusion of the Navaho Nation. I can't wait to start reading the Tales of the Nevaeh. I am hooked! If you are looking for a new author, this one is golden!" M.P.
"Another epic read from Wind. It packs so much: Space-exploration.; set in the future, humans have colonized various planets & galaxies; Military vibes; Fresh start / adventure / discovery; Epic world-building; (Evil) fun with genetics, psi abilities and Aliens; Strong, brilliant, relatable male lead / Hero; Snarky AI; Completely twisted villain; Laugh-out-loud banter. Written in multiple POVs ... mostly we get the POV of the hero, Roke, but at times the reader is provided with others as well, and it's fun to have the insight. Before long, I found myself submerged in this world and I feel like I could never get enough. The book wrapped up nicely, but had a sort-of cliffie, if that makes sense. Wind brilliantly ties up the most immediate issues, but makes it clear there's more to come. I don't want to spoil anything, so you'll have to either take my word for it, or read it & see for yourself. Beautifully done—as someone with a very visual mind, I was treated to stunning landscapes and basically traveled in time and space. I could read this book over and over again." L.R.
GOODREADS REVIEW:
...[GODDESS] is very easy to read and it is entertaining. I had a hard time putting it down last night to go to sleep. It is full of twists and turns that I didn’t imagine until I read it. It is kind of scary in a way. It is a page turner for sure. Some might think it is romantic, but I didn’t think so. It could trigger some people, but the power play is from the female instead of the male. There are a few adult scenes in it, but they are essential to the story and not just to fill in pages to make the story longer or titillate you.
What I like most about this book is that it is a complete story and there is no cliffhanger like books from years ago. It does leave open the possibility for more stories to come in the future and I hope to read more in this universe. If I could give this story 10 stars, I would, but since I can’t, I will tell you I loved it and would highly recommend this book..." W.J
DEDICATION
This one’s for Colby Levi
Who will have to wait until he’s at least eighteen to read this.
GODDESS
a forerunner Story
By: David Wind
ONE
SWOOPING DOWN FROM the sky like oversized bats out of hell, they dove straight at the running figures, firing weapons, and blistering whatever moved below them. Roke dove behind a thick tree, pressing his back to it. Several voices went off in his ears from those lucky enough to survive the initial attack.
One in particular was the panicked voice of the youngest of the apprentices, Jami, on his first exploration mission. The Guild always put a new apprentice with the more seasoned veterans and apprentices. The kid was at best twenty-two and scared shitless. One of the other scouts, Garon Prince, was talking him down.
Roke Stenner, the most senior of the scout apprentices, and on his last mission as an apprentice, swiped across a button on his EXO suit. A map hologram projected above his forearm displayed the area and each scout’s position. Red showed the injured, black the dead, and the blue were those still alive and unhurt.
There were seven black, three red, and six blue, including himself and Caruso, the master scout to whom he was apprenticed.
“There were no signs of Scav here. Where the hell did these Scav come from?” shouted Sarina Gomez, a senior scout. She and her apprentice, Albin Walker, were off to Roke’s left. Jami was alone, his scout dead at his feet. Prince was ten feet from Caruso.
“Up there,” Caruso said sarcastically. “Who has a looksee?”
Roke glanced quickly to where Caruso hid in the thick grass before turning to look from behind the tree. The three Scav he spotted were hovering about a hundred feet up, their wings buzzing as they maintained their altitude, an altitude Roke knew they could not hold much longer.
“Three above me, hundred feet high, and ah ...” He paused for another quick peek. “Seventy yards south. There have to be more. They don’t come in with only three.”
“I’ve got them now,” Gomez called. “They’re just north of me.”
“Anyone volunteering to be bait?” called Caruso.
Roke looked across to where Caruso hid. He didn’t see his mentor, but knew he was there. Before offering up bait, they had to locate the other Scav. “Jami, focus! Take a breath, a deep one.” He waited a few seconds before saying, “Look at your screen. Tell me what you see. Anyone else as well.”
The green apprentice was silent for several seconds. “I’ve got five dots on my screen. West. Three hundred yards. On the ground, moving at us.” His words clipped and precise, the panic gone.
Roke looked around. A Scav ship held a crew of between three and eight. There were eight surrounding them. They were all there and no one was manning the ship’s weapons. It was time to put some of his Diné ancestry to work. “Caruso, I’m bait. Keep me alive.”
“Gomez,” Caruso called, “You’re with me. Prince, you take the apprentices and get ready for the Scavs on the west flank. Take as many down as possible.” He paused to look in Roke’s direction. “Anytime—hero.” He drew out the word ‘hero’ until it sounded like wind blowing through a hollow tree.
Caruso was riding him as he always did; and he was the only member of the landing team who could. He was the strongest runner of any of them, having been trained from birth to run as part of the tribal heritage his planet, Kryon-Three, was bound by. Kryon’s surface—the whole surface—was a mirror image of Old Earth’s section of the Western United States, Rocky Mountains, and all.
Bending his head, Roke drew in a deep, preparatory breath, closed his eyes, and pictured the three alien Scav flying above. Their bodies were long, seven feet at average, fully humanoid with scale-like skin, two legs and two arms and hands with opposing thumbs. That’s where the similarity between human and Scav ended. Scavs had claws for nails, and the bald circle on their heads, ringed by short, feather-like hair, looked exactly like the Old Earth pictures of birds— more specifically the scavengers of Old Earth—vultures.
It was a uniquely unappealing look at another supposedly intelligent creature—one that sent shivers down almost any human being’s spine. They should be the stars of a Tri-D horror projection, but sadly, Scavs were far from fiction, and they were most definitely set upon ending the ever-spreading human race in favor of their own expansion.
Their bones were like earth birds: hollow; but, unlike earthly creatures, titanium-like fiber ran through their bones, giving them far more strength than human bones. Although it wasn’t exactly titanium, it was close enough on the spectrum to be labelled as such.
Human scientists had discovered that the Scav, as babies, matured within a sealed egg, which contained an ammonia-based atmospheric supply until they were mature enough to be weaned from the gas, which was then slowly converted into an oxygen-rich atmosphere. The ammonia compound gas is what produced the metal fibers in their bones.
Once the surviving offspring in the egg were ready to be released, the shell opened. How they were able to move the infant from ammonia to oxygen was still beyond the scientists’ understanding; yet, it was because of the oxygen they became our competitors for those planets capable of sustaining human or Scav life. There were plenty of planets out there, but only one in two or three hundred would support human life.
The most frightening aspect of the Scav, was their intelligence. Their DNA was as close to human as any scientist had ever seen in an alien, and they’d already conquered one galaxy, our neighboring galaxy, Canis Major. Some scientists believe they originated in Andromeda. Now the Scav were making inroads into the Milky Way. The Scav, unlike most humans, left no survivors to threaten their own race.
“Not today,” Roke whispered. He stood, keeping his back to the tree. “On my count.” Pausing, he took another breath. “Three, two, one ... now!” The instant the word passed his lips, he spun to his left and ran straight at the three.
He went fifteen feet, waiting for their knee-jerk response. The instant they reacted, he zagged left, ran another ten, and zigged right. When his left foot came down for his spinning turn, the first whispers of their sub-sonics spattered the ground bare inches from his feet, the dirt spraying him from the waist-down. A microsecond later, the louder hard-shell firing of Caruso’s large-caliber antique repro of a twentieth century S & W fifty-millimeter hunting pistol boomed.
Behind him, a body fell. He zigged right as more shots peppered the ground where he’d just been. Another shot rang out, this one from Gomez’s burst gun. The stream of laser fire hit the second Scav, tearing through a wing, and sending it plummeting to the ground three feet in front of R
Roke kept running. The nape of his neck was suddenly pricked by a thousand needles, as his inner warning went ballistic. Then from behind and above, the wings of the third Scav beat heavily, as it raced toward the ship. Roke took another three steps before Caruso’s big boom went off for the second time. Two strides later, a heavy thud signaled the third Scav’s body striking the ground.
Behind him, the battle raged on. A hundred yards in front sat the Scav ship with no one guarding it. Because their ships could only hold a max crew of eight, he was confident there were no Scav onboard.
He didn’t slow as the battle raged on; rather, he ran even faster, until he reached the ship. There, he spun toward the sounds of fighting, and saw flashes of laser rifles flashing through the trees.. “Take them out. Do not let any get away. I’m at the Scav ship.” The urgency in his voice was not lost through the helmet’s mic.
With that, he slid the knife into its sheath, hit a button on the hip of his EXO suit, and drew his stunner from its extended holster. He flipped the switch from stun to lethal and waited in case one of the Scav escaped the other scouts.
“Four down,” Prince called. “Fifth wounded but flying at you.”
Roke watched the sky. He spotted the Scav cutting through the thinner high branches of two tall trees and heading directly toward its ship. He waited, kneeling in a firing position while the wounded Scav flew erratically toward him.
The instant the Scav spied him, it raised its weapon. Roke didn’t hesitate. He pulled the trigger and released a lethal pulse. The shot hit the Scav’s bird face point-blank. The flying alien tumbled downward through the air, and crashed into the ground, its headless, metal, heavy body rolling for ten feet before it stopped a foot from Roke.
Not taking any chances, Roke fired once more to be sure. He stood and released his held breath. It was over.
Turning to the hatch, he pressed a button. As he expected, nothing happened. “I can’t open the hatch. Unless someone has a better idea, we’ll have to blow it.”
“No,” Caruso responded. “The Scav fingers may work. Do it before the body cools.”
Roke turned to look at the dead Scav. Shaking his head, he went to it, lifted its arm, and dragged it to the ship, not an easy task given the alien’s body was three hundred pounds of dead weight. It was slow work, and just as he got the body to the ship, Caruso reached him to help him lift the Scav. With Caruso holding the Scav, Roke pressed its hand to the switch plate’s surface.
The plate flashed a series of colors; the hatch opened. “Go,” Caruso told him. “First in honors, Stenner. Go!”
Unable to hide his grin, Roke climbed into the ship. He went to the bridge, squeezed into the narrow and deep pilot’s seat, and stared at the instrument panel. Having been fully trained in Scav tech, he hit two switches.
A screen rose from the center console with a star map centered on it. He stared at the map, and at the three highlighted planets, all seemingly in a row The first was the planet they were on, the second was in a system eighty light years distant from here, and the other planet was close to a 150 lightyears from this planet.
Even as he shook his head, Caruso’s low voice echoed behind him. “This is not good.”
TWO:
THE EXIT FROM HYPERSPACE kicked them about until Caruso steadied his scout ship, maneuvering out of the path of the moons, while gentling the ship into a smooth orbit two thousand miles above the planet.
The first sight of the planet hit Roke like a punch to the solar plexus, making his heart twitch. “Damn,” he whispered, calming himself as the blue, white and green planet came into full view.
“You found a beauty.” Caruso reached across the distance to grasp Roke’s shoulder and squeeze. “A beauty.”
Glancing at Caruso’s face, he studied the master scout, whose pale, blue eyes were framed by deep grooves radiating from their corners to spread down along his cheeks. His thick, blond hair was cropped short, which accented a strong face and jawline. “Only if it’s habitable,” he finally replied.
“If the Scav marked it for exploration, it will be. And it should have a good climate, at eighty million miles from the sun.”
“And we’d better hope they haven’t gotten here yet.”
Apprentice Scout Roke Stenner looked at the instruments, then, without a word, hit three switches on a panel of twelve. He pushed the red button beneath it. There was a light, triple thump as three bots shot into the atmosphere, each going its own preprogrammed way. “There’s no Scav ship in orbit, but we’ll know soon enough if any landed.”
Caruso set the ship into high orbit. Then they went about their normal duties and two hours later, the ship’s computer had synched the three bots’ reports into one and projected on the center of the cabin.
When the report closed, Caruso turned to Roke. “Think hard about what to name it, because this is your find.”
Roke stared at the planet, his mind almost but not quite rejecting the thought that this was his first planet.
“When do we go down?”
Caruso laughed. “You know when.”
The apprentice shook his head. “I don’t want to wait ... but I will.”
The Guild’s third-highest ranking master scout surveyed him with an intense gaze. “This is only the first of many, Roke. Enjoy the feel, and the flavor of naming it, because it will never be the same, not in this way.”
Yet, Roke sensed it would be repeated in the future, but like old lovers reacquainting themselves. He looked at his mentor for several seconds. “I hear you, boss.”
<<>>
The next day, they sent the bots out again, and had them crisscross the planet in a different pattern than the first flyover. One bot traced each line of the north-south longitude, while a second bot flew the east-west lines of latitude. Both bots flew at an altitude of 200 miles, their instruments plunging deeper into the surface with each revolution of their routes.
When the bots returned, and the sun had set on the landmasses below, the ship’s computer integrated the combined reports and opened a Tri-D projection. The two Exploration Guild scouts sat glued to their seats watching the large projection in the center of the cockpit give a three-dimensional view of the planet, while Adrianne, the computer’s female voice, analyzed the report.
The computer spat out facts and figures, as the two scouts scanned the single ocean covering thirty- percent of the planet. They saw fish and larger water creatures swimming fearlessly before the camera’s scene shifted to the land masses of the northern hemisphere. Amazing amounts of animal life wandered the planet, but they found nothing to indicate any life forms of sentient, intelligent beings.
“It’s an old planet,” Caruso half-whispered, concentrating on the instrumentation beneath the images.
The planet’s two circular mountain ranges formed unusually perfect lines of demarcation dividing the east from the west,, which followed the equator, while the north-south mountain range bisected the east-west mountain range at zero degrees longitude and zero degrees latitude began and ended at zero degrees longitude, marked it as the prime meridian..
There were no cities, no construction of any kind, and no ruins. Only animals, reptiles, and birds populated the planet. “Adrianne, confirm no sentient life forms.”
“The instruments detect no evolved life, no sentient beings.”
Caruso shut the report down and stared at Roke for a few seconds before saying, “It’s strange, and surprising that there’s been no intelligent evolution, not with the amount of animal life here.” He paused, stared at the screen, and then looked at Roke. “It’s unusual, but there’s only one way to verify. Tomorrow, we take the sled.”
Roke stood, and stretched. He’d been up for almost thirty hours. “Watches?”
“The ship will warn us if there’s anything. I’ll send out more bots to run nighttime sweeps as a safeguard.”
