The Dragons of Nibiru

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER 1

Earth

24,000 B.C.

Huge billows of dust rose from the desolate eastern shores of what would one day be known as the Caspian Sea. Birds of several species took wing, fleeing the roiling maelstrom. A small antelope herd scattered in terror.

High above—but descending rapidly—roared the source of all the commotion: a massive ship, its hull streaked with the friction-flamed scoring of countless planetary landings. Slowing, it came almost delicately to rest in the patch blasted clean by its landing jets.

Moments after touchdown, the aft cargo bay gaped silently, revealing a bewildered mob of Humans, all naked or nearly so. Herded none too gently by tall figures uniformed in gleaming white, the mob shuffled dazedly down the ramp.

A young boy of perhaps eight or nine years tripped on the dangling rope which held up his oversized shorts. Landing hard on his knees and hands, he stifled a cry. The woman closest to him was burdened with an infant, but managed to stoop and help the waif to his feet. She held him close, murmuring comfort. A trickle of blood made its way down thin, white shins to bare, dirty feet. Still silent, scraped and bleeding hands clutched to his chest, he allowed the woman to guide him down the ramp.

Blinking at the sudden brightness and puzzled by the strange planet’s unfamiliar smells, the Humans stumbled off the ramp onto the alien surface and dispersed across the scorched ground. Nearly a thousand of them. Mostly young men and women, with a sprinkling of children and elders. Shuffling, zombie-like; few speaking, a few more weeping.

All were pale-skinned, many with blond hair and blue eyes—features that would one day be deemed “Caucasian,” in reference to this very region. The five men herding the hapless immigrants were of the same physical type, tall and athletic, but their uniforms and imperious bearing set them clearly apart from the bedraggled crowd.

“They’re all planet-side, captain,” the tallest of the wardens spoke into the comm pickup at his left collar. He turned to another uniform standing at the top of the ramp; blast pistol held negligently at his side, he called, “Coca! Tell Clapa to get the dust out of his shorts and offload the container!”

Coca turned, shouts were exchanged, and soon an enormous metallic container floated, humming, up from the bowels of the ship, down the ramp and out to the southern edge of the landing zone. The exiles scrambled to escape being crushed as it grounded in a whoosh of hot dust.

“Better let them have a couple more, Clapa—this lot’s supposed to survive,” yelled Coca. Then, turning, he strode down the ramp toward the huddle of frightened, whispering Humans, waving his pistol randomly their way in half-hearted menace.

Soon, two more containers lumbered out of the craft and settled next to the first. The crowd backed nervously away from the hulking gray boxes, eying ship, crew, blasters and containers with well-founded suspicion. They backed off even further when the tallest warden stepped forward to release the boxes’ seals.

Catching a glimpse of commotion off to one side, he turned and shouted at one of his crew—“Tatsu! What in all space do you think you’re doing? Get the hells away from that girl, you bloody idiot!” He stormed over to the offending spacer and shoved him away from the young exile who’d been struggling to escape his groping grasp. Relieved but still fearful, she rushed headlong into the crowd.

“We’ve got zero time for your crap. Get the hells back aboard and prep for space. You too, Coca. It’s time to get out of here.” The warden leader turned back to the ship and spoke to another of his crew, halfway down the ramp.

“Quan, give them another blast of memory-wipe. We’re under orders to make damn sure this batch doesn’t remember a blessed thing about who they are, where they’re from or why they’re here. Hells, hit ’em with two blasts. If we screw this up, we’re ash for sure.” He stalked up the ramp, Coca and Tatsu close behind.

Quan hurried down toward the confused crowd, then addressed them using a hand-held loudspeaker. “All right, everyone! Closer together! That’s right. No stragglers at the edges. Move in, move in! Thaaaat’s right. Closer! Come on, closer than that. Everyone’s got to get a good dose of this. Without it, you’re dead meat once this planet’s diseases catch up with you. And they will—don’t doubt it. You grown-ups will die first, leaving the poor kids all alone ’til their turns come. Nobody wants that, eh? All right—that’s good. Hold still, now. I’m going to let this stuff go. Get as many deep breaths as you possibly can. And make sure those kids do it, too!”

The crowd crushed even closer together, eyes wide and eager for the precious “medicine.” Quan donned his helmet, double-checked its seal, then reached around and brought up the long tube-gun slung across his back.

Locking a yellow, melon-sized cartridge into place atop the gun’s barrel, he commenced spraying a cloud of yellow vapor out over the heads of the waiting crowd. All stretched upward, desperately gasping in lungsful of the gas, parents enforcing the drill on younger children who hadn’t quite gotten the idea.

The whole charge released, Quan counted down a full minute on the timepiece at his wrist, exhorting the throng all the while. “Good. That’s it. You’ve got it. Good, good. Deeeep breaths! That’s it.”

Now he could see signs of the memory-wipe taking effect. Time for dose number two. He sent a second yellow cloud billowing over the crowd, swinging the tube-gun from side to side so the vapors enveloped every last one of the sorry lot. He smiled; everyone had followed orders. Those that hadn’t fallen to the ground, asleep, were utterly blank-faced and glassy-eyed. The whole dosing had taken less than a minute and a half.

Dashing up the ramp, Quan shouted back to his oblivious “patients:”—“Good luck, you poor slobs! You’re gonna need it.” As soon as he’d entered the cargo bay, the huge ramp-door hissed shut. Seconds later, the massive vessel rumbled briefly, then lifted skyward and was gone. A great gust of air rushed in to fill the space it had vacated, buffeting its erstwhile Human cargo and dispersing the last of the yellow vapors.

A moment later, the boy who had fallen on the ramp stepped away from the oblivious crowd, still clasping his battered hands to his chest. Seeing that the ugly yellow fumes had cleared, he gasped his first breaths in nearly two minutes.

CHAPTER 2

Planet Cugini

2016 A.D.

Celine was seated near the back of the theatre when the commotion began. She saw Professor Pent slump over his podium, mid-sentence, his several jointless arms gone limp. At the same time, cinnamon-maned Prof. Grout toppled off the edge of the stage. The prestigious instructors, each of a different race, looked ridiculous, mouths agape and sprawled at odd angles.

At once Celine spotted wisps of orange mist drifting across the stage floor and out into the audience. Now students nearer the front of the hall were keeling over, row after row, like a slow tide flowing steadily up the gallery.

Grabbing her sister’s arm, Celine hissed out an order, quiet but deadly urgent. “Mia! Mia, listen to me. Clamp your nose and hold your breath as long as you can.”

Annoyed at the interruption of an ever-so-vital text-chat, Mia shot back her best scowl of annoyance. Celine shook her; “Do it now! And act unconscious, or you’ve had it.” Turning the older girl by the shoulder, she pointed fiercely at the scene below—and the squad of uniformed Repts that had just burst through a side door.

Mia gasped at the sight of the brutish soldiers—and succeeded in knocking herself out with a stiff lungful of gas. Without even time to despair at her sibling’s pig-headedness, Celine slumped to the floor in feigned unconsciousness.

Her quick response had spared her a telling dose of the creeping vapor, but she had no idea how long she could hold out. She skirted the edge of oblivion, then felt her head begin to clear. The gas had dissipated quickly.

The Repts, unaffected by the species-targeted fumes, made their way among the sprawled cadets, examining each Human female. Boys they ignored. Now and then a Rept would point out one of the girls to the humpbacked Rawkls who followed at a respectful distance. As soon as a Rept indicated a body, one of the Rawkl minions would heft it and drape it over a muscular shoulder. With a pair of sleeping students aboard, he’d trundle them out of the hall.

“They said she’s in here. Keep looking,” ordered the Rept in charge. He was distinguished by dozens of garish badges and buttons spangling his tunic, and a gaudy blue-and-gold lanyard looped over one shoulder. He stooped to turn over a brown-haired girl, then spat, swore and kicked her twice before moving on to the next cadet.

***

Less Than An Hour Before, cadets had filled the benches of Lecture Hall 45, chatting as they awaited the start of the advanced cryophysics seminar. It was only one of the hundreds of educational events featured at this year’s Draco Advancement Convention. More than just a superb learning opportunity, these conventions afforded cadets from different worlds and academies the chance to network, socialize, and catch up on the latest fashion trends.

Vendors strutted the concourses and plazas, even the corridors between lecture halls and conference rooms, pitching the latest and trendiest this and that. All were vying for the attention—and credits—of the multi-system mélange of cadets. Especially the wealthier and more self-absorbed of the lot, like Mia.

When they’d arrived a few days earlier, Mia and her girl-crew had decided to score matching outfits: sheer bodysuits with a saber-cat theme. Mia had hatched a scheme to top everyone, though: she’d tracked down the same outfit in a shimmering gold fabric—the only one available in the entire sector. She had made the purchase and taken delivery, just hours before the rest of the girls had theirs. Basking in her own craftiness, Mia knew she’d be a total knockout. And just the perfect notch above the rest of her crew.

After classes on the day they’d purchased their outfits, the girls had gathered to prep for the evening’s social whirl. Hair and makeup fine-tuned, they’d dressed and set out to stun the convention. As the first order of business, Mia led her purring, preening posse to parade before her sibling—all set to savor some sisterly envy.

Celine’s reaction was disappointing at best. “You look ridiculous,” she snorted. “You’d never be allowed to wear anything that outrageous on duty, or even at official social functions—so I’ve no idea why you wasted Dad’s money on it. That goes for all the other glittery nonsense you’ve been grabbing up. We’re supposed to be cadets, preparing for service. Not a pack of ditzy fashion hounds. Are you serious about anything that’s going on here?”

Mia just huffed, gave her hopelessly stuffy sister a dismissive wave and led her giggling entourage away, hunting more sophisticated targets.

Celine was right—the convention was serious business and a priceless opportunity for aspiring cadets. Yet, if they were honest, a solid majority of the attendees would admit that much of their attention was focused on the business of landing a mate. For most, the major interest before and after each day’s official proceedings, and the total concentration at Convention Week’s rich array of social events, was scoping out the field and deploying their flirting skills. This was expected, though, with things as they were in these times. Careers and lives depended upon the mating game.

Each regional academy had its own social events through the year, most with competitions and selection processes to find and rank the most eligible, desirable guys and girls. In terms of looks and pure sex appeal, Mia was one of the hotter prospects from her academy. So was a young man named Hyatt, from another school—the hottie Mia had been plotting for months to make her own. She chattered about him endlessly, much to Celine’s exasperation. Celine was convinced that capturing Hyatt was the only thing Mia had any real interest in at this convention. Everything else was superfluous. Worse, the young man had little to recommend him beyond looks, money, swagger, and a conventionally cute ass.

Two years earlier, Mia had left the convention with a fine mate, Tuck MaTuc, a talented kid from a prestigious academy on Pastro. Mia was devastated when the young man was killed just a few months later, during a routine sparring match. Celine suspected that her sister’s devastation was at her personal loss, though, more than anything else. Now Mia was back, and obsessed with landing her newly chosen mate. Next semester would begin her final year as a cadet, so she had no time to lose.

By any practical measure, Mia was a terrible cadet; but, thanks to her looks and megawatt femininity, the faculty (nearly all Human males) were more than lenient with her. Having a well-known father in the prime of a distinguished military career added still more to professors’ willingness to pave Mia’s academic path. Finally, everyone knew (though never discussed) that she was a “delicate”—unaffected by the pandemic infertility that had cursed Humankind since the Seeyorg invasion some 275 years earlier. Her status as a delicate added significantly to the special considerations she received. Few delicates lived past the age of two anymore, so Mia was a rarity, held in near-reverence. She managed to slide by each year with a grade-point total which, though largely undeserved, was just adequate to move her up to the next echelon and on toward marriageable status.

Mia considered being born delicate a blessing; Celine thought it a curse. Delicates were born perfect, in the reproductive sense. Perfect genes, perfect blood and bloodline, perfect reproductive system—not sterile. Before the invasion, humanoid births had gone on as usual. Afterward, the birthrate to anyone but delicates was low. By the time many non-delicate girls reached full adulthood, they were sterile. No one was certain why.

Cultivating delicates was a temporary solution for saving many advanced species—Human and otherwise—from extinction. For some reason, Human bodies made the very best hosts for soul transfers, even if the transferring soul had been inhabiting a non-Human body. And among Human host bodies, primitives from Planet 444 (called Earth by some of its inhabitants) were the finest that could be had.

Years earlier, it had been decreed that all delicates were to be taken from their parents at an early age and raised in special institutions. This had proved utterly unworkable, as far too many died before even reaching puberty. It was determined that removing them from a loving home environment drastically reduced their chances of survival. Thereafter, all precious delicates remained with their natural parents until they reached marriageable age. They were also well protected, at state expense. Occasionally, some desperate criminal had managed to kidnap a delicate or two, but capture and capital punishment were so close to a certainty that attempts had become rare in the extreme.

Adding to nature’s already-powerful reproductive drives, fear of being shamed fueled Mia’s mate-hunting obsession. Unmatched cadets entering their final year faced even tougher odds in the mating race, since most pairings occurred during the first few academic years. And to graduate unmatched carried the most mortifying stigma of all—in Mia’s view, at least: assignment to the Finishing School for the Unmatched (FSU). Mated academy grads were assigned to a Matched Finishing School, where they went through the final half-year of preparation for service, learning the elaborate etiquette, rules and basic protocols of military service.

The nightmare of receiving an FSU assignment on graduation day haunted Mia. Ordinarily, she’d have had no cause for concern, being a delicate, but she had another reason to worry. After Tuck MaTuc’s death, the boys at her home academy—a superstitious lot—had looked on Mia as jinxed. It had also been widely whispered that Celine, Mia’s strange, magic-obsessed sister, had cast a spell on her. All the more reason to avoid her, at least as a mating prospect. Mia had heard the whispers about Celine, too, further stoking her resentment of the girl.

Fortunately, few convention attendees were from Mia’s academy; the rest were from other planets, other academies. Many knew of Tuck’s tragic death, but didn’t share the superstitions of Mia’s academy mates. Almost no one here knew anything about Celine, or that she was Mia’s sister. What they did know was that Mia was hot, fashion-smart, damn sexy and a delicate. Highly desirable mate material. Not just for the trophy factor, either. Matching with a delicate almost guaranteed there would be children—and once in service, those with children were consistently favored for promotions. The capper on Mia’s hot-commodity status was the fact that her father held high rank and was racking up an impressive military career.