My book, The Spi-Corp Series, Book 1 - A First Love Never Dies is in the Science Fiction - Mature Category down toward the bottom of the page and it would sure appreciate some love!
Now, to the fun stuff...
The camera opens on a newsroom and sitting behind a desk is Laytak Draza, a very handsome Borgla from the planet Yerod. He is tall, with broad shoulders, a barrel of a chest and his long arms are folded on the desk. His face is a muted grey with high cheekbones and a strong, defined chin. He has no hair but the ridges that begin at his hairline, could almost be braids. His brilliant red eyes glow with underlying knowledge and his full lips split into a grin as he speaks...
Good Morning and welcome to the Galactic News Network. I'm Laytak Draza. On today's show we're speaking with Amena Wharry, Captain of The Patrick Henry.
Welcome. Why don't we start by with who you are, tell my audience a little about yourself...
Hi, thanks for having me! I’m Amena. I
explore. Well, I do more than that. You see, I lead this small team, and we
travel to these other planets—turns out these other planets are all other
Earths, at least the inhabited ones are. We stop by, see what’s there, and if
there’s a day to save, we save it. I admit, at first, I was really disappointed
that we didn’t find any actual alien life, like alien-alien, bug-eyed little
green men and all that. But this is pretty cool, too. It’s like journeying to
alternate realities, only without punching holes in the space-time continuum.
As for my background, I used to be a sheriff’s deputy, all about serving and
protecting. Yep, that’d be me.
Interesting. And what's your current mission...
We’re between missions right now. Our ship needs some repairs from our last outing. We went to this Earth that was at the end of its life. It was about to explode, and this crazy woman tried to trap us on there so we’d die with it. She was really crazy. So yeah, escape from a dying planet. That sure was something. As for our next mission, we’ll pick a planet off our list, hop over there, and see what’s what.
*Laytak looks at the camera.* How quaint. So, you’ve been tasked with evaluating these other Earths for threats. What gives you the right to judge an entire planet as a threat though…
No, no, no. We don’t judge entire
planets as all good or all bad, and we’re not out to nuke anybody. But if we
come across some interplanetary Napoleon looking to add us to his empire, his
life is going to get tons more difficult, courtesy of us. And me personally, I
don’t want to find threats. I just want to meet cool new people doing cool new
things—new to me, of course. But the unfortunate reality is that some people
aren’t as wonderful as I might like them to be. So we keep an eye out for that
sort, and we sort them out.
Very Interesting. So, as a once small-town Sheriff, you feel you have that ability?
Bad guys are bad guys, no matter where they are, and they give you all these helpful hints about their badness. Like, for example, if they’re trying to kill or conquer you, then there’s a very high probability you’ve come across a bad guy. But no, I can’t save worlds single-handedly. As fantastical as it would be to be Superwoman, I can’t do it all by myself. I got my people.
Oh, so you rely on your team as well. Why don’t you tell us about them?
I’d be delighted to! There’s my dear friend Kaden. We worked together in the sheriff’s office, and we’ve been best friends since we were like >this< big. He’s this big-time martial arts expert. He even owns his own school, and he’s taught so many people how to defend themselves. He backs me up as our group’s moral compass.
Then there’s Sela, who’s this super-genius. She invented our spaceship, this octahedron that can bounce across the universe. She creates the most amazing things. She even cobbled together a shrink ray recently. Unfortunately, I missed it when she shrank Ballard…
Oh, Ballard, he’s, well, he means well. He’s a former Navy SEAL. I’m not at liberty to discuss what happened there, but he’s very skilled, and, uh, maybe a little paranoid, and, yeah…moving on!
Mariana. She’s great. She’s a brilliant detective. She spots the things that 99.99999 percent of people will never see. And you will never meet a more honest person. Really. It’s no contest.
Gilmore holds our octahedron together. He’s a former NASA engineer, and—hopefully he’ll never hear I said this—but he’s a genius when it comes to anything mechanical. He knows it, too, regrettably, but he’s a good guy.
And then there’s Jem. She’s an acrobat, gymnast. Competed in the Olympics and got the gold, and, uh, yeah, she’s got a lot of potential. Kind of young, but potential, definitely…
And Whit funds the whole thing. That’s Dr. Whit Banville. You know him as the guy who cured the common cold. Once you do that, you can pretty much do whatever you want, and he wanted to check out the stars. So he recruited all of us, and here we are, hopping from Earth to Earth. It’s a fun life.
Enlightening. Now, tell us about the planets you’ve helped.
We’re just getting started. First one, we met these narcissists from another Earth. They were posing as Roman gods, which is kind of interesting how we share some of the same mythology with these other worlds. But yeah, they took their tech to a younger Earth with a less developed civilization, and they decided to rule and coddle everyone, which I thought was kind of rude. We had a little something to say about that.
The next Earth we visited was the one that was, um, blowing up. Sadly, that Earth was beyond anyone’s help.
And finally, I read somewhere you consider yourself an exemplary marksman. Why do you say that?
Because I never miss a shot. I don’t like to brag about it, but I really just don’t miss. Doesn’t matter if it’s a laser gun, old-fashioned gun, or my trusty bow and arrows—I do love my bow and arrows, especially the special arrows Sela cooked up for me. Mariana once asked me how I compensate for the different weights of my grenade arrows, my acid arrows, and so on, and I was just like, well, how could I not compensate? It’s all very intuitive with me. I just know how to shoot.
Well, thank you for your time Ms. Wharry.. I am quite sure we will be hearing more of your adventures soon enough.
*Laytak turns back to the camera.* If you would like to know more about The Prince Henry and his crew, you can find him here
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Excerpt:
This space was larger but stuffier. The lights were dimmer, and the folks were quieter. Just as many people sat at the long wooden tables, devouring that same pasty food. Yet no one said a word. All Amena and Kaden could hear was their chewing and slobbering.
“Hey!” Amena said. “We’re strangers, so maybe you can kick us out, show us the door? Kick us out the door?” She informed Kaden, “They don’t like strangers, really don’t.”
No one even glanced at them.
“Okay, the last ones didn’t like strangers,” Amena added. “I promise.”
Kaden approached the nearest table. Several men and women sat in a row, chomping away. They stared down into their food, oblivious to their neighbors.
“Excuse us, sir,” Kaden said. “Ma’am? Hello?”
Amena extended a finger to poke one guy in the head and neck, several times. She gently knocked on his head. She even pulled out an arrow and waved the sharp tip in front of his eyes. He apparently had no reflexes whatsoever.
Obnoxious
static filled their earpieces, followed by a haughty voice. “Welcome to your
new accommodations.” They recognized it as Ceres’. “You’ll be here a long
time.”
“What
have you done to these people?” Kaden asked. “And why?”
“You
have something in common with them. They, too, challenged our divine
authority.”
Amena
rolled her eyes. “Excuse us, Fakey McFakerson, you seem to have missed the wee
little fact that you never fooled us for a second.”
“In
the context of this world, we are divine,” Ceres said. “We’ve eradicated war,
famine, and pestilence. What have you accomplished?”
Kaden
waved his hand at the face of a non-responsive woman. “That’s not all you’ve
eradicated.”
“What
you’re looking at represents a fraction of a percentage of the global
population. Elsewhere, more than one-hundred-million men, women, and children
are content, with all their basic needs attended to. A couple thousand
dissidents is a small price to pay.”
“One-hundred-million
people,” Kaden said, “all depending on, what, the three of you and your
technology? Must be nice to feel needed.”
“The
people before you have been injected with microscopic machines that suppress
their higher brain functions and render them generally more malleable,” Ceres
said. “Here is what will happen. You will beg us to give you the same
treatment.”
Amena
chuckled. “Fascinating theory you’ve got there. How’d you come up with it?”
Ceres
said, “Past experience.”
The
brainwashed people rose from their tables, and each one turned to Amena and
Kaden.
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