Clash of Galaxies - Book 1 - A New Planet

CLASH OF GALAXIES BOOK 1: A NEW PLANET (SHORT READ)   Michael Wrhen     Copyright © 2022 Michael Wrhen     All rights reserved.     The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.   No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any for or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author and the publisher. Cover design was done using Canva. Cover background from pixabay.com/users/geralt-9301/. CONTENTS   Title Page Copyright Clash of Galaxies: Book 1 – A New Planet   CLASH OF GALAXIES: BOOK 1 – A NEW PLANET   Quietly floating in space with the fuel running out, the ship where a large group of humans are aboard, is slowly approaching an alien planet which they call Gwadora. The ship is able to transport up to 300 people and the humans aboard are in individual pods where they are put into a deep sleep in order to survive for centuries while traveling from one galaxy to another. This alien planet is very similar to Earth but has 20 times its size. It has the same gravitational pull, and climate is also similar to earth depending on the area’s position to the nearest star. Daytime, and night time however, will last for 2 weeks equivalent to Earth, as the size of the planet is a lot bigger. As the ship entered the atmosphere of the planet, it experienced heavy turbulence. When the turbulence stopped, an alien life form flew its way into the ship. This creature is in liquid form so it is able to enter a hatch located at one portion of the ship which slightly opened due to the heavy turbulence. While inside the ship, it is able to sense the humans aboard the ship and starts creeping towards the deep sleep pods. Once it reached the location of the pods, it was able to make its way into a pod and entered the human body thru the ear. This creature is a Parasitra, an alien life form from planet Diedris located in the Corvus galaxy. It is one of the species occupying this planet. By entering the body of a host, it is able to control it and slowly transform its body into its new form twice as big as the original body, completely taking over it. It normally feeds on the same species it originally was, which means when the host is a human, it will feed on other humans once it completely transforms. It will devour most of its victims flesh and organs except its heart which will eventually transform into its offspring in liquid form and will try to find another creature to become its host. Once its food supply runs out, it normally leaves the hosts body and find a new one, however, it is also possible for it to reproduce when it eats other creatures. Once it leaves the body, the host turns back into its original form and dies. Once the ship landed, the alarm went off, and the pod is programmed to wake up everyone from centuries of sleep. Every couple is assigned to their respective rooms, complete with all the necessary amenities found in a residential apartment. With all of them unaware of the alien life form infecting one of them, it might be too late when they find out. Together with their leader, some of them were given the task to scout the new planet and look for possible places where they can start their civilization. The leader of this group of humans, Juan, is a former soldier who fought a number of wars back on Earth, their home planet. Along with a few other soldiers, their task is to start a new civilization in this alien planet for the survival of the human race. They brought along with them, plants for crops and animals for livestock, advanced technology and knowledge in order to survive in space, start a civilization in a new planet, and defend themselves against possible alien attacks. They need to find a new place where they can build their roads, infrastructures, and other essential structures for a civilization. There should be adequate water supply for the people, this will also be used to plant their crops and raise their livestock. The alien-infected human, Xavier, starts to experience high fevers and vomiting. He starts to look pale and lose his appetite. His wife, Marie, started to worry and looks for a doctor aboard the ship. However, Xavier stops her and pulls her into their room, and started whispering to his wife, “Don’t tell anyone, but ever since we arrived in this planet, I started to have bad dreams of strange creatures that I have never seen before, and myself eating other humans. I think I’m starting to crave for human flesh.”. Marie replies, “No! Don’t say that! You are scaring me! You would never do that!”. Marie shuts the door of their room so that no one else can hear them. Xavier’s hands are starting to get darker and bigger as he continues to experience high fever and starts to shiver. “I will never leave you, I will take care of you.”, Marie tells him and hugs him tight. Suddenly, Xavier stops shivering and starts to bite Marie’s neck as she shouts for help. No one can hear them since the doors of each room is sound proof. Xavier starts to devour his own wife as he loses his mind. Marie’s heart, which Xavier did not devour, then started to melt as it transformed into the Parasitra’s offspring. The newly transformed Xavier opens the door and let its offspring out of the room as it tries to find its host. Xavier then shuts the door and stays in the room to avoid getting caught as he waits for his kind to increase in numbers. As Juan and the others get tired from scouting the area outside the ship, they set up camp a few kilometers away from the ship. They assigned 16 men (8 men for each shift) to guard the camp from all sides in case someone, or something attacks them. The remaining 4, including Juan, start to discuss what they plan to do next and their contingency plans in case they fail to complete their task once they run out of supplies. They are still not sure what kind of critters live in the planet. So far, they were only able to see strange, harmless insects flying in the air. They are wearing high-tech armor and brought with them advanced weapons for protection. They ate whatever food they brought with them and slept in tents that they set up. It’s a good thing that daytime lasts for weeks so they won’t have the problem of guarding the camp in darkness. The guards will change shift every 4 hours so that the first 8 guards can take a rest and regain their strength. As the guards are resting, Juan starts to plan their next strategy. He divides the men into 2 groups of 10 in order to cover more ground, yet still maintaining a large number of soldiers per group in case they encounter trouble. Their goal is to find a lake, river or a large waterway that they can use as a source of potable water. As they prepare to pack-up their things and prepare to leave, they encounter a huge critter looking at them, it is as big as an elephant, looks similar to a dog but with spikes on its head and spine, has 6 legs with sharp claws. It looks very hungry and ready to attack anytime. Juan and the others stops moving as the critter starts sniffing each and everyone of them. Some of them are afraid and start trembling. Suddenly, one of them starts running and eventually, the critter attacks him and eats him. The soldiers start firing at the critter but it starts to run towards the vegetation and hides. They were able to wound the critter but were unable to kill it. They were also unable to save one of their comrades. Everyone of them are still in shock and froze until Juan started shouting at them saying, “Men! We just lost one of ours! Are you just going to stand there and let this beast get away?! I won’t! I will not let the death of our comrade be in vain! I am going to kill this beast and reach our goal for our fallen comrade, and for our people waiting for us at the ship!”. Juan starts following the blood and the trail left by the wounded critter as the others follow him. They walked for 6 hours following the critter’s blood and reached a cave. Jack, one of Juan’s comrades says, “Juan, I think this is where that beast lives. Watch out, there might be more of them in here.”. Juan, not wanting to put his men into more danger, decides to set up camp, “Let’s wait for the beast to come out, it has to come out for a drink and lead us to a body of water that we are looking for.”. They set up their camp in a semi-circle, blocking the entrance of the cave while they wait for the critter. Again, they take turns to wait for the critter and guard the camp so each one of them is able to get enough rest. They waited for hours and start to lose patience. Juan decides to go inside the cave but Jack stops him saying, “Juan, don’t do it! Our men need you alive. Let me go inside and check. I will use the radio to contact you if I find something.”. Juan allows jack to go in with 2 other men. The rest of the men continue to wait and guard the camp. As Jack and the 2 soldiers are deep into the cave, they hear the critter growling, one of the soldiers was able to see it with his flash light pointing at it. It started to run towards them and attacked them, Jack was slashed by its claw and his arm was wounded, the claw was able to pierce into his armor. They started shooting at the critter but was unable to hit it as it was very dark inside and the critter was moving very fast. It started to run towards the exit of the cave. Jack informs Juan that the beast is on its way out. Juan and the others get ready to fire their weapons the moment the critter comes out. As they hear the beast running towards them, they start firing into the cave. The critter starts growling and is ready to kill but once it came out of the cave, a spear-like weapon is thrown and pierced the critters neck, killing it. A net made of an unknown material starts to come out of the weapon and wrapped the dead critter. As the critter was wrapped with the net, something pulled it from where it is and catches it. Jack and his men looked at the critter as it flew to the air. They knew something caught it but they are unable to see what it is as it is invisible to the eye. Suddenly they saw a pair of eyes flashed for a while, then it disappeared with the dead critter. They did not know and could not understand what they just saw. Jack and the 2 soldiers came out of the cave and asked Juan where the critter is. Juan told them that something killed it and took it away. “What?! How?”, Jack said. “I don’t know Jack, I still could not figure out what just happened a while ago.”. Jack then asked one of the men to apply first aid on his wounds. Juan and his comrades called it a day and rested in the camp that they set up. Meanwhile, back in the ship, the Parasitras are already growing in numbers and many of the people are either dead or infected. Xavier opens the door and goes out to meet his new army of infected humans. Juan’s wife, Agatha, goes outside of their room and finds Xavier and the others talking in a different language with deep, scary voices. She also witnessed their bodies to be a lot bigger than a normal human being. She knew something was wrong, so she went to the other rooms to inform the others. She does not know that some of these people are already dead. When she tried to open one of the doors, she finds blood on the floor and the walls. She was able to inform those that were still alive, and they started to hide into a safe room within the ship. They started to put on their armor and arm themselves with high-powered weapons in case Xavier and his newly formed army find them. Agatha tries to contact Juan with the ship’s communication device but there is signal interference. They wait patiently for Juan and the others to come back as they also get ready to defend themselves in case Xavier and the other infected humans attack them. While Juan and the soldiers were resting, he could not stop thinking about what he just saw during the time they were trying to kill the critter. What he understood was this alien life form who killed and captured the beast that they were hunting is dangerous and they might be more of them on that planet. He worries that the next time they meet that alien creature, they might need to battle with it. Worried about what might happen, Juan approaches Jack and asks for advice, “Jack, we might need to put this mission on-hold and get back to the ship. This alien life form that killed that critter… It’s dangerous… We might lose a lot of men if we encounter it again.”. Jack does not agree with Juan saying, “Juan, Do you realize that we lost a soldier because of this mission? Do you want his death to be in vain? We need to find water, and we need to find it fast! If we want our friends and our families to survive in this planet! I know that you are worried that we might lose more men but they all agreed to this! They are all prepared to die for this! For the survival of our kind!”. Juan starts to realize the importance of the mission and agrees with Jack to continue searching for a body of water to convert it as a source of water. They packed up their things and continued to their journey into the new planet hoping they are on the right track. The planet, which is 20 times as big as the Planet Earth, also has big land masses surrounded by its huge oceans. Juan and his men, traveled across its huge jungles. Luckily, he and his men only encountered non-aggressive critters after the beast that killed one of their men was killed and captured by the unknown alien creature. They walked and walked, stopping only to rest, eat, and drink. After days of walking, it starts to get dark. It has been 2 weeks since the beginning of daytime. During this time, Juan starts to worry, there might be critters during the night that are aggressive and might attack them. They set up camp and assigned some of the men to guard the camp while the others are resting. They need to endure 2 weeks of darkness since it is only the beginning of planet’s night time. A few moments later, Juan notices something moving nearby the camp, it is invisible to the eye but Juan can sense its presence. He knows that someone or something is observing them while they were resting. Unknown to most of them, Juan starts to approach this creature who was observing them. He starts to talk to this creature as it shows itself to Juan. “Who are you? And What are you?”, Juan says. The creature replies, “I am a Dardorian from Planet Dardora, a planet from the Andromeda galaxy. We are here to hunt our enemies that destroyed our planet and to claim this place as our home.” Juan was amazed by the fact that this alien creature knows how to speak human language. “How can you understand me?” Juan asks, then the creature tells him that there were humans on the planet centuries ago, “Humans were our allies, they fought and died with us, fighting a common enemy, but after a while, they left us and went back to their home planet.”. Juan tried to convince the creature to help them find water, to which it replied, “It is dangerous to stay near the waters, the enemy is there!”. But Juan said, “But we need water to survive, we need to find a source of water to build our new civilization and for humans to thrive.”. The creature tells Juan, “Then your kind will not last long in this planet, the enemy is strong, and they will kill everything and everyone that goes near them.”. Juan tells the alien creature, “I am willing to risk it, for our survival, we have nowhere to go anyway, our home planet is destroyed!” The creature then tells him to do what he needs to do and vanishes into the jungle. As Juan and his group continues their mission to find a water source, another 2 weeks have passed and the planet’s sun starts to rise. The group is exhausted, they miss their loved ones back at the ship and they are starting to run out of supplies. They normally keep food inside food capsules that expands once the food is taken out of the capsule. They can only last a few more days before all their supplies run out. If they do not find a water source in 2 days, they will need to go back to their ship to resupply. As they continue walking, they stumble upon a huge lake. This lake is so huge that it is as big as the Arctic Ocean. Finally, they are able to find a huge body of water where they can start to build their new civilization, and thrive in this new planet. Juan sends back 6 men to go back to the ship to get more supplies and inform the others regarding the good news. They will need to transport their engineers, and the other builders from the ship to the location of the lake in order to construct the basic infrastructures and the dwelling places before they transport everyone from the ship. They will also need to construct the water treatment plant before they can utilize the water from the lake. The other men left with Juan start to setup their camp near the lake. They need to defend this camp as they wait for the others from the ship to come. As they are waiting for the others from the ship to arrive, they hear something coming from the lake. Small waves start to form, and eventually these waves increase in size. Juan and his men start to worry as it might be dangerous staying near the water. Juan remembers what the Dardorian told him about staying away from bodies of water. After a few moments, alien creatures start to emerge from the water, slowly moving towards the shore. It was like a huge army of strange-looking alien creatures, approaching towards the group. Juan and the others are stunned, as they watch the alien creatures move towards them…