My Homemade Spaceship 4

Dear reader, If you enjoy my novels, please consider joining my email newsletter or following my author page on Amazon. Then you will be notified when my next novel is released. Chapter 1 The sight of the demonic, serpentine ship slithering through the expanse beyond was enough to take anyone’s breath away. We all stood in horrified silence as we watched the image of the Karaak ship get closer and closer to the Fermentum Colony, and the Lilacrons’ safe haven that didn’t seem all too safe anymore thanks to the murderous aliens’ arrival. Somehow, the creatures had hunted the Lilacrons down. The Karaak had destroyed the Lilacron homeworld and forced the survivors to flee to their farming colony on the other side of the galaxy, but even that distance wasn’t far enough to escape the Karaak’s reach. The Karaak were brutal and thorough, and they were here to finish the job they had started. I glanced at Rayne, my green-eyed companion, and she looked just as stunned and horrified as the rest of the Lilcrons in the room did. Even Bob, the little robot that traveled with us, looked nervous, and his yellow body hid behind a chair at the sight of the ship. We’d had more run-ins with the Karaak than I would have liked, and I knew I wasn’t the only one who had been hoping that we would never have to see them again. It appeared that our wishes hadn’t been granted. For a moment, nobody moved. Some of the Lilacrons had their long-fingered hands over their mouths, and their almost translucent skin was now even paler. The purple veins that crisscrossed their bodies like lightning burns seemed to pulse as the horror of the Karaak’s arrival sunk in. A few of the Lilacrons clutched one another, while others sat down to stop their knees from buckling underneath them. But all of the aliens had their eyes glued to the screen as the eel-like, bionic ship swam ever closer to the colony. And then suddenly, as though a switch had been flipped, everyone burst into adrenaline-fueled action. Anyone who wasn’t considered essential personnel started to leave the room in an organized but frantic fashion. They bundled through the doorway and disappeared down the long corridors beyond the room in order to get to their assigned station, or for the lucky ones, to reunite with their family members one last time. In a few moments, the leaders of the colony were the only Lilacrons that were left in the room, and all of them were able to shelve their blind panic long enough that they didn’t run around the main room like decapitated chickens. However, the nervous energy that descended on us like a suffocating smog was practically palpable, and everyone’s eyes were wide as we began to discuss how we might be able to survive round two against the Karaak. We gathered around the large conference table in the middle of the room with serious expressions and a sense of impending doom creeping up on us like an icy hand on our backs. “Seeing it this close, is something I will never get used to,” I said in reference to the Karaak’s half-organic, half-metallic ship. “I had hoped we would never see it again,” General Occana, the Lilacron soldier that had met us at my ship, replied. “Can’t we just fire at it?” Rayne asked. “It’s out of our range,” one of the Lilcaron leaders said. “That image has been enlarged so that we could see if it was the Karaak or not. That’s how we saw your ship coming.” “And this is also a farming colony,” another one of them snapped. “It’s not exactly equipped for battle. We have only very basic defensive weapons available, so our military capabilities are low.” “William Ryder, what can you tell us about the Karaak?” Occana asked. “You have come up against them more times than we have, and you have lived through your encounters.” “Barely,” I replied honestly. “I went to Lilacron to find you all, and when we got there, we saw the destruction that was done to your homeworld. I truly am sorry for all that you’ve lost.” “Thank you,” one of the leaders said. “I wish you could have seen it in all its beautiful glory before it was destroyed.” “At least most of us were not conscious for the attack,” another said, and they all nodded. I had almost forgotten that most Lilacrons had been in stasis during the attack, since Lilacrons’ advanced AI managed the planet. I knew how smart the AI was because it had been a Lilacron AI, that I had dubbed Francine after my first truck, that had helped me build the spaceship that had launched my space adventure. But even all that AI hadn’t been able to stop the Karaak from wiping out the planet. At least most of the Lilacrons hadn’t had to witness the total destruction of their world, but the loss and grief of being forced off their planet wouldn’t have felt lessened by any means. Every survivor in the room knew someone who had died in the attack, and it was awful to think that Earth would suffer the same fate if the Karaak managed to get there. “Of course, we didn’t stick around for too long to chat when the Karaak came after us,” I said. “But we have learned a few things about them. First of all, both their ships and the Karaak themselves are made up of a sort of combination of organic and machine parts. You can see that the ship used to be a creature of some kind, but they have since added a lot of bionic parts in order to make it stronger and more deadly. I’m not even sure if the creature is alive anymore.” Some of the Lilacrons shuddered at the thought of it. “The Karaak themselves are just a mess,” Rayne said. “How so?” Occana asked. “We