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  Chajux was not as old as Ophelia, but she didn’t mind. He was not of Quewythian blood, but half human that had blended with the southern Quewythians from the planets Slatoid and Sheodel. Chajux was from Slatoid. He had long wavy blonde hair and was tall and muscular.

  He had met Dvora and her daughters at a social gathering that had been held at a nightclub Dvora now owned. Her daughters ran the nightclub. Valenza, Kyn and Kathara now were in touch with all of the planet’s drug lords. Hallucinogenic and mind manipulating narcotics were outlawed by The Subjugator’s new regime, unless they went through him first.

  Dvora’s scheme that put her daughters in charge of the nightclub was primarily for the purpose of discovering where all of the sorcerers and sorceresses were hiding out. She realized that she had been trying to gain control of one sorceress, when she could now have as many as she wanted She just needed to find out where they were and make them an offer they could not refuse; compliance or death. Sarita and Emedria were posing as dancers, but Dvora put them up to being spies for her to locate men she could hire to kidnap the wizards and sorceresses when she did find them, if they did not comply with her proposals.

  Ophelia and Yeralai had the most time on their hands and went around trying to find a way to escape from Togaran and The Subjugator’s clutches while doing errands for Dvora. They knew that their sister Emedria was on the fence. They needed to pull her their way. The other four sisters were too far-gone and too much like their mother to even care what happens to anyone but themselves. They also knew that their stepfather the king was sending attack vessels to do battle with Subjugator’s inferior spacecrafts.

  Sure, he had conquered thus far an array of under privileged galaxies with planets that were either baby planets or well on their way to being swallowed up by nebula storms. Others were in the direct path of asteroid showers and were doomed. Still he moved closer and closer to the Twelve Galaxies Cluster, which was his real goal. He now had the king’s former queen and her sly, conniving daughters. Whether or not they would stay loyal to their mother still remained to be seen.

  Under the darkness of night Chajux Motwreq had come for the daughters. Ophelia was his contact. Yeralai would follow her. Emedria was yet to be persuaded, but when she saw the handsome young muscular squad leaders Chajux brought with him for protection, her dreamy eyes soon made the decision to go with the men who in her eyes looked like the greatest heroes she had ever seen.

  Dvora had been out at the club coaching her other daughters. She gave Emedria the night off since she complained of a stomach ache. The streets amounted to cobblestone and slate and were narrow. Most of the city had been built on hills. Buildings had been painted in various colors but the tenement section buildings were all cramped together; they were dark and foreboding.

  Wires of all kinds and colors hung out of windows and down the sides of the outside walls. Chajux Motwreq and his comrades had to climb the cobblestone steps that were ornate and decorative, but very ancient, being eons old. Doors and windows had been closed and the dark metal correlated shutters embossed with decorative designs had been shut. Wind and rain had made it difficult to see, but they found their way to the ancient abandoned warehouse where Ophelia, Yeralai and a sceptic Emedria had been waiting.

  “When are they going to get here? I’m shivering,” complained Emedria, as they sat in a leaky room just off the main hallway of the building.

  “I think I hear someone coming now,” replied Ophelia.

  “I hope it’s not our uncle’s soldiers,” said Yeralai. “Ugh, I hate saying ‘uncle’.”

  All three lit up when they saw Chajux Motwreq and his fellows; especially Emedria.

  “I didn’t know they were all going to be so nice looking,” she said as she ran her hand over the wet jacket of one of the ten men Chajux brought with him. Ophelia expressed her gratefulness by kissing Chajux on the cheek. The rest of the soldiers teased him about it, but two of them were especially interested in Emedria and Yeralai.

  “Shall we go, ladies?” said Chajux. He promptly produced black cloaks for the women to wear to protect them from the storm and to hide their identities. They made it to the other side of the city. The twin suns would be rising again in several solar phases so they needed to get to their spacecraft and clear their take off with the control center. Chajux and his men were transferring medical and building supplies and also seeds to plant for food to another nearby planet. The women would be taken aboard hidden in crates filled with building supplies. The crates had already been inspected and were cleared, but last minute security wanted to make sure there were no stowaways. Seeing that their plan would backfire, Chajux thought fast.

  He went to where the girls were and opened their crates. “Quick, come with me and don’t talk.” He scurried them to the maintenance section and the closets. He opened one of the doors and hanging there were crew uniforms. “Quick, put these on. The ones on the right are for female crew members.”

  The crew consisted of fifty able-bodied males and females. Emedria, Ophelia and Yeralai changed into the uniforms and put their hair up just like the other female crewmembers. Each of them went with one of the men, and did just what he did, checking the crates, doing inventory, checking the instrument panels all looking like they knew that they were doing.

  The transport vessel was cleared. It was not a fighter vessel and only had a minimal of defensive weapons, and so it was cleared easier and faster than a vessel that had more weapons. Ophelia, Yeralai and Emedria had successfully escaped Togaran and were on their way to another planet at the other end of their star system.

  Chapter 11: Earth II

  Infinity had landed and everyone disembarked after a briefing about the planet’s atmospheric conditions and its current inhabitants. The inhabitants were somewhat challenged scientifically compared to the Quewythians, but had some good scientists who had invented many useful machines.

  The leader Pauleos was human as well as everyone else. They were a pure human breed. No other space beings had come there to roost or mingle. They only passed by and did trade. Pirates had tried to take people for their slaves, but due to the strong defensive measures and techniques passed down by the ancients, the pirates were running scared and left never again to return.

  “We used both real and holographic images,” said Pauleos, “and they couldn’t tell the difference. There are dinosaurs, hideous and dangerous ones, and we know where they are. We let the pirates chase us and led them right there. Our scientists invented a type of material from some thread-like vegetation that we weaved into all of our clothing, see?” He grabbed his collar for Cruise to get a closer look.

  “Yes, I see the difference. It looks the same from back where I was standing,” responded Cruise. “So what does it mean?”

  “This material keeps those dangerous and carnivorous creatures from attacking us. It puts out a very strong smell. We can smell it just a little bit, but it’s overwhelming to them. To them we smell like a vegetation they hate and is disgusting to them.”

  “So then anyone who lives around this area would need to wear clothing made with this thread?” Cruise reasons.

  “Not only this area, but all of the equator zone. The beasts never leave the equator zone. They never venture north or south or they would starve,” says Pauleos.

  “What is your life span on this planet?” Asks Millennia.

  “There is thirty five percent oxygen in the air,” replies Pauleos. “We are protected from the sun’s rays and cosmic rays by the thin layer of clouds you probably saw when you approached. Also the electromagnetic field from the core creates an energy field that repels any further invisible rays or solar winds and radiation. Believe it or not, Captain, I’m three hundred and forty five of Earth’s years, which is about the same here on this planet we call Earth II.”

  Pauleos warned that people disembarking should stay close to Infinity, and also the only other vessel from the original fleet, Fortitude, unless they had very strong weapons a
nd knew how to use them, or they changed into clothing like they were wearing.

  Cruise believed they were safe for the time being, after checking the area with his scanner, which is directly connected to Infinity. It showed that the landings had frightened the beasts and they went deep into the jungles miles away. It would be months before they would start venturing back over to this section again. Cruise assured them that by that time they would have built a barrier more than strong enough to keep anything out.

  He was curious, though, as was Millennia, about what the rest of the planet looked like. As they were approaching the globe, Infinity’s intense computerized cameras and sensors scanned every inch of the planet on the surface as well as the inside. Data about the planet would be made available upon request.

  That night He and Millennia talked with Yerne about the situation of Pauleos and his people. “It’s strange that they never moved to more temperate zones”

  “Yes, it’s true, my love,” says Millennia. “They stay in this hot and humid equator zone as if they’re afraid to venture out.”

  “Pauleos says,” adds Yerne, “that the greatest concentration of their people is around the equator. He says they’re approximately three billion strong”

  “That’s making it pretty crowded,” says Cruise.

  Cruise had another talk with Pauleos. He voiced his concern about them being so bunched up in only one zone when there was plenty of room on the planet to spread out. Pauleos said that he left that up to the people. Those who wanted to go elsewhere did and that’s how the whole diameter of the planet was populated. People who left the Torrid Zone were never heard from. Pauleos suspects they met with disaster.

  Cruise showed Pauleos Infinity’s read outs, but he didn’t believe him. They showed that at least forty percent of the planet’s surface was the Tropical Zone. The heat marks showed where humans were living. Larger heat marks were the large animals and dinosaurs. From the read outs, people had migrated north and south as well as east and west inside the Tropical Zone. People were living in almost every habitable zone, but they were sparsely scattered in cities. How they communicated with each other, or if they even did, was yet to be known.

  Pauleos understood what Cruise was saying. People need hope and inspiration. The people on the planet needed to be connected. They agreed to work to in unity bring the people of Earth II together with communication. Using shuttles from the accompanying spacecraft, Pauleos’ army could team up with Cruise’s people and they could send out teams to find the other settlements and decide on how to get them connected to each other.

  Once communities were located on Cruise’s map, he had Infinity print out copies for all the teams with the locations and coordinates. Cruise had Infinity create and print out 4-D GPS satellites and also send them into orbit around the planet. Pauleos had never been so impressed.

  After the teams went out, they located one hundred and fifty communities spread out over the globe. More than half of them were destitute, ten percent were barbarians, one percent cannibals. The communities that had made the most progress were in the temperate zones where they experienced four seasons like the data shows Earth did, and countless other planets in the Twelve Galaxies Cluster.

  The mapping of the globe began and schools were set up to teach the illiterate. After doing all they could to help Pauleos and the people he led, seeing he was a good man and only looked out for the good and prosperity of the people, Cruise and Millennia decided they would choose a place in the Temperate Zone to set up their own cities.

  “In time, darling,” Said Cruise, “The people of this planet will multiply and they will find each other. We can’t legislate how that happens.”

  “You are a wise and compassionate leader, my love,” replies Millennia.

  According to Infinity’s data, from what she learned after scanning all the people and creatures on this planet, Earth II was similar to the original Earth in many ways. It had oceans, mountains, rivers, lakes, glaciers and much more. There were jungles, forests, woods, and a myriad of species of both animal and vegetation. Much of it was like Earth.

  Cruise and Millennia said farewell, and took Infinity, the seven hundred other ships, and the smaller vessel Fortitude to an area where some had settled. It was a continent similar to what was called North America on Earth. The shores looked rounder than the maps Infinity printed out of Earth, but the land mass was almost the same. Mountain ranges kept some of the settlers from contacting each other there.

  The whole East Coast had not been populated, though there were colonies and cities, villages and outposts. Some communities had farms and ranches, raising whatever animals they could. Cruise also learned from the archives and libraries Infinity had scanned, that many thousands of eons before that besides Earth, Venus and Mars also had sent out space vessels loaded with samples of every species of animal and vegetation on Earth. Many planets had been terraformed to resemble Earth, and he wondered if this had been the case with Earth II.

  “But according to historical data, giant reptiles had been extinct for millions of Earth years before humans came into being,” Cruise told Millennia, who also marvelled at the data that Infinity had been collecting from all of the outposts and communities on the planet.

  “Maybe they somehow had fossilized DNA from some of them,” Millennia suggested.

  They both decided they would leave the geological and scientific conjecturing to their own scientists. They had laboratories built in the Northeast and Southeast for the scientists and supplied them with residential housing for them and their families.

  Everything else concerning the inhabiting of Earth II Cruise and Millennia left up to Yerne to work out with his aids and advisors, who thought it would be wise to break up the one large population into smaller cities and districts.

  “Let the people choose their own leaders and decide where they want to live,” Said Yerne, who would continue to be their paternal leader until the main centers got set up. He was wise and intelligent. Cruise was proud of his firstborn son and felt that the time had come to work on the new communications power revelation.

  Chapter 12: Lebag Kralc

  “I called you here today,” cried The Subjugator,” because we have been betrayed.”

  “Can you tell us the details?” asked Wathesan-Fla-Fla. “I got here as soon as I could. I’m a busy man I’ve got a planet to run.”

  “Who was betrayed?” asks Boa.

  “The Alliance was betrayed,” replies Bor.

  “No, I was betrayed,” insists Subjugator. “My future queen’s three youngest daughters flew the coup.”

  “Subjugator,” says Trag Yurphma, “Calm down. Who is it exactly that betrayed you?”

  “I don’t know, but the daughters are not here,” replies Subjugator.

  “But there are still four left,” assures Boa, “aren’t they?”

  “I want them back,” says The Subjugator, “or you lose your clubs and all that you have.”

  The chase was on now. They all know that somehow the three youngest daughters of Dvora had managed to escape the planet. Subjugator knew not where. He sent spies to Cassiopeia disguised as merchants. He also sent Trag, Bor, Boa and Lali-Matha-Nun, his universal martial artist, to track down the three sisters who fled his iron grip. The Subjugator could not let that information leak out. He closed the Interstellar system and no one had access to the planetoid social communication cyber space.

  Wathesan Fla-Fla returned to his planet and had a complete search done.

  Although all was being done to contain the slip up, word still leaked out and the planet drifter freelance writer Lebag Kralc; renowned snoop, journalist, photographer, wine connoisseur and Ace Private Investigator was hot on the trail to find out what happened to the three youngest daughters of Dvora. His privately owned spacecraft was waiting at the transport terminal. Lebag Kralc had space immunity and clearance to go anywhere. All was well with him and no one bothered to question him; they all knew who he was. He wo
re his occupation on his sleeve, and never left any stone unturned to get his scoop. He was a secret agent for the king.

  Unknown to Subjugator, Lebag had his own radioactive transmission regulator on board his space vehicle. Being part Lamenec and part Sheebith, he was able to read the thoughts of beings that had a weak will and character. He scanned the galaxy with his devices, but the galaxy, being irregular and a baby galaxy, had not yet fully formed. Thus gamma rays, alpha and beta rays plus radioactive meteorites along with plasma displacements all played a part in his failure to locate the three fugitives.

  “Where did you see them last?” Lebag asked Dvora, who wondered why he was there at all.

  “Maybe at the club.” She disclosed.

  Riding to the club in his shuttle, Lebag ordered a drink and looked around.

  “Who’s that guy over there?” questioned one of Subjugator’s henchmen. He was Crivean.

  “Have no idea,” said the barkeep, “but he sure looks like he’s not from here.”

  And well said too, since Lebag Kralc did look quite different from everyone else. His straight black hair was combed down on both sides. He had a wide face with two large eyes that he kept half closed. His eyebrows made a half-circle around both eyes and one of them seemed to be always raised.

  His nose was prominent and his thin moustache was neatly trimmed and stopped at the corners of his mouth. His species, at least the males, had a small indentation right in the center of their rounded chin. His large rounded ears stuck out from under his Fedora, which was popular in Earth’s early twentieth century.

  How he ever got a hold of one, or got the information leading to getting one was beyond fathoming. He was a tall man, not thin but filled out. He had broad shoulders and always wore a brown long coat. Some said he was a time traveller. Others said a wizard. One thing was for sure; he had a job to do and was doing it. What no one knew or could possibly guess was that he was working for the king of the Twelve Galaxies Cluster, and answered directly to Daxu Korth. Not even Dvora knew. No one knew what he was capable of because the way he threw his weight around, everyone thought he was a rich tycoon, or the law.