Weredragons Of Tivuso: The Complete Series

by Maia Starr

  Chapter 2

  Hannah Maven

  “What is our distance?” I said looking over at Scott.

  “We are fifty miles to the east,” he said looking at his gadget.

  “This is farther than we have ever gone. I think we should dock soon,” I said.

  “There are some houses on the shore,” Jared said pointing to the shore. We were all in a boat; there were eight of us going on a supply mission. This was how we kept our colony going. Most houses in the area were abandoned and were abandoned with haste. So food and resources were left in the homes. We raided these abandoned homes and took what supplies we could find, like canned food and bottled water. We did these supply runs about once a month, but we had never gone this far before. But it was necessary because we had hit all the houses near the human colony that we lived at.

  “Looks good to me; let's start paddling toward the shore,” Scott said.

  I looked at the shore looking for any sign of activity. By activity, I meant the Clenok cyborgs. They had taken over the Earth in a quick sweep. None of us were expecting it. My sister Helen and I were twin sisters. We were vacationing on Long Island in a cute little bed and breakfast at the very tip of the island when the first wave of attacks happened. The cyborgs had amassed armies without us even realizing it. The first city they hit was our home city of Atlanta Georgia. Because of this, we knew that we couldn't go home, so we stayed on Long Island as we mourned the loss of our family and our home in Georgia. The city had been shut down while the Earth armies tried to fight the cyborgs. So we decided to just stay where we were at the bed and breakfast. During that time, we thought that the cyborg army would fall, and everything would go back to normal. But it never happened. We were all wrong, and I underestimated The Clenok cyborgs. The battles went on forever and spread from Georgia. The machines were hitting every major city, and people were in a panic. Society as we knew it had collapsed. Before we knew it, we had been staying on Long Island for several weeks, and eventually, it turned into years. The bed-and-breakfast owners had abandoned the place, and soon we were on our own. That was when we set out to find better shelter, and fast, because we knew the machines were coming our way.

  We stumbled across a human gathering at an old nineteen-twenties Art Deco estate called Willow Springs. They were setting up a fence and some protection. They were setting up resources like a garden and gathering water and food from other houses to keep it going. For my sister and I, it was better than being out on our own, so we joined the Willow Springs gathering of humans.

  But before we knew it, a couple of years had passed, and we were still living in Willow Springs, and we were still fighting the cyborgs. But most of the human armies had been decimated. As far as we knew, there were only human colonies like us spread out in what used to be known as the United States. We were all on our own, trying to survive.

  Now, I was on one of those supply missions to bring supplies back to the people of Willow Springs, including my twin sister, whom I had talked into staying at the estate while I went out on a run.

  “We are approaching,” Jared said.

  “Everyone be on guard,” I said. Finally, the boat reached a pier. We tied up the boat and walked down the pier on to the lawn of the first house that we saw. It was the only one on the shore. The rest of them were set back in the trees a little, and I could only see two.

  “Let's check this house out, and if it's empty, we got to keep going into those trees,” Scott said.

  We spent some time looking through the house. The refrigerator was empty. There was nothing to be found. So we went through the trees to the other two houses set back far from the shore. Those two houses also did not have anything.

  “We are not having any luck here. We got to keep going,” Jared said.

  “We are heading toward a main road. If we keep going through the forest, there should be a main road with more houses,” I said pointing to the trees.

  “All right, let's do it,” Scott said.

  We hiked into the wooded area for about fifteen minutes. The forest was getting dense. I was starting to get nervous. I pulled the handgun that I kept in a holster around my thigh and cocked it.

  “What is it?” Scott whispered to me.

  “Nothing. I just have a bad feeling,” I said.

  “You and your sister with those feelings. Just because you are twins does not mean you have some sort of superpower,” he said rolling his eyes and then continuing to walk ahead of me.

  But five minutes later, I was proven right.

  “There! There!” we heard someone shout from a far distance. It wasn't any of our people. We stopped and looked at each other. Suddenly we heard the sounds of blaster guns; they weren't human guns. They were cyborgs.

  “Clenok! Get back to the boat!” I shouted. But all of a sudden, we found ourselves in a battle. On one side there were Clenok coming through the brush. On the other side, we could hear humans. I felt a blast from a gun go by me, and I dove to the ground. I looked up to see cyborgs coming through the trees. I couldn't believe it. We were suddenly being assaulted by the things we feared the most.

  "Clenok! Grenades!” I heard a man shout. I turned to the other direction to see a group of people I had never seen before. They were dressed like they had been in the army. Then I saw what they were doing. The man pulled the pin from a grenade and was about to chuck it in my direction. I quickly got to my feet and ran. Everyone was running in all different directions, and I couldn't see anyone that was with me on the supply run.

  Boom! The grenade went off. I caught the tail end of it as it launched me into the air. I fell to the ground. I blacked out. I thought that maybe I had died.

  But when I woke up, I wished that that were true because I had suddenly found myself in a fate worse than death. I opened my eyes. I could see the leaves of tall trees over me. They were passing over me as though I was on a boat floating down the river. But then I felt the searing pain around my ankles. It took me a while to shake off the sleep.

  I looked toward my feet and began to panic. But I didn't dare scream. My ankles were bound together by a rope being pulled on by a cyborg. I looked around me, and I was surrounded by them. They were marching forward together in unison. My heart was racing. What the hell has happened? Why are they taking me? Where are they taking me? I cannot believe this was happening. Fuck.

  I looked over to my right. That was when I noticed a woman being jerked forward. She was walking. Her wrists were tied together and a cyborg was in front of her pulling her along. She looked at me with wide eyes filled with fright. I had never seen her before. She was not from the Willow Springs colony. I wondered if she were part of the human group I saw in the woods. But she gave me a look as though she was happy that I was awake, and not dead. She looked relieved to not be alone with the cyborgs. I found no relief in it.

  I looked at the cyborg in front of me. They were terrifying. They had the same shape as a human, if a human was a weredragon. They were a shiny silver color. They were machines. The legs were long metal poles that looked like human bones, like human legs without the skin and muscle. It had been revealed a long ago that the machines copied the human form. They walked just like us. Even the head looked like a human skull, but with glowing eyes and no emotion. They continued to drag me across the forest floor, and I felt the sting of the brush on my back.

  Chapter 3

  General Rai Razook

  We made our way into the northern territories just east of the Willow Springs human colony. Our fleet was moving slowly high in the sky so as not to be detected by cyborgs.

  “I think it is time that we lower our altitude. Let's go low and scan with the heat radar,” I said to the pilot.

  “Yes, General, ” he said. The ship started to fly lower and lower until we were over a wooded area.

  “I am detecting a significant amount of heat in this area,” he said.

  “Good, take as many readings as you can. Get the smaller scout ship ready for
me. I am going to go down there and see if there are humans. I will make contact,” I said.

  “Yes, General, right away.”

  I went to the back of the ship and unplugged my gun where I had it charging. I put it in my belt. I checked my weapons belt for all of the fun toys I had at my disposal, like bombs. I was good. I was ready. I was going to make contact with a human colony no matter what.

  “The scout ship is ready, General,” Lieutenant Qon said to me.

  “With the ten?” I said.

  “Yes, they are waiting for you by the ship,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “Pilot, I want you to take the fleet five miles outside of this heat signature and wait for us there. You ten soldiers, let's go to the cargo bay and get in the scout ship. We have work to do,” I said.

  “Yes, General!” they shouted in unison.

  Minutes later we were in the smaller ship headed toward the heat signatures. I set the ship down outside a vast complex of houses. There looked to be a lot of gray stone walls in the area surrounding the complex. On one side was a wooded area. I set the ship down near the trees.

  “Remember, they have not seen anything like us before. It is possible they may have a reaction of shock. Be prepared for it. No matter what, you do not shoot the humans,” I said to the soldiers. “We are here to establish contact and have a friendly conversation.”

  “Yes, General.”

  The door of the ship opened, and I stepped out. It was strangely quiet for a human colony. We stepped out onto the ground covered with leaves.

  “Humans! My name is General Razook! We come in peace!” I shouted very loudly. There was no answer.

  “If we get separated, the first of you to get back to the ship will start the ship and put it in the air. The rest of us will shift and fly to the ship; is that understood?” I whispered it to them. They all nodded their heads, sensing my tension.

  We continued walking away from the ship. We walked past large houses. I gestured for a team to go around to the left and one to go around to the right. Then two soldiers followed behind me.

  “Hello! Anyone here? We bring you news from the human colony Haven Brook!” I shouted. Still, there was no reply. We continued walking.

  “Now!” we heard a shout from a human voice.

  Boom! A bomb went off somewhere to our left.

  “Don't shoot the humans!” I shouted as we all ran for cover. It was obvious these humans were hostile, but even though they were hostile toward us, the king had ordered that we could not be hostile back. He said to expect this kind of reaction. We were invaders to them, after all.

  “Shift! Shift!” I shouted.

  We all shifted into weredragon form. My wings spread out from my back. “Get on the roof!” I shouted into my radio communications.

  I flew up onto the roof along with the two soldiers that were with me. I could see other weredragons getting on the roof.

  "Get our ship in the air. Retreat! Retreat!” I said into the radio. I looked behind us to see a large group of about thirty human men coming toward the houses, and they were armed.

  “Fly into the woods. They have an army!” I shouted into the radio.

  “I am in the ship. I will hover it over the woods,” I heard a soldier say.

  “Good, retreat, retreat!” I shouted.

  I ran and jumped off of the roof, spreading my wings wide and flying into the air towards the woods. I could feel my other soldiers doing the same thing. Shots were being fired at us.

  “Shots! Spread out!” I shouted.

  We are all spread out heading toward the woods, going different directions so that the gunfire would not be concentrated in one area. I flew low between the trees. I flew fast and hard, perhaps faster than I should have been. To the human eye, we were nothing but a blur when we wanted to move at our top speed. So it wasn't necessary for me to be so fast. I was sure that I was already out of the range of the humans. It did not go the way I had wanted it to. Of course they were frightened upon seeing us. They had every right to be.

  Then I remembered the strategy that the king had used. He had revealed himself to one human female while she was alone. Then once he convinced her that he came in peace, she was the one that then spoke to the humans on his behalf. It was a subtle move that made all the difference. That's what I needed. I needed to speak with one human that would be able to speak to the other humans.

  As I flew, something caught my attention. There was a bright reflection, and then another, as though the sun was hitting shiny metal. I suddenly realized that I was coming upon a band of cyborgs. Shit. I stopped and hovered in the air. I landed on a branch high in a tree. There were about thirty of them, and they were marching away from me. Then I noticed something else: they were dragging a human female. I couldn't believe it. I had to save her. It was my responsibility to do it. But I couldn't take on thirty cyborgs. I would have to use my super speed skills. It was now or never. I grabbed my dagger from my boot.

  I flew toward her and landed directly beside her. The cyborg that was dragging her stopped. But before it turned completely toward me, I had the human female scooped into my arms, and I cut the rope at her feet. The cyborg was grabbing his blaster gun and turning to face me.

  With superspeed I flew straight up into the air and then over the trees. I could hear the sound of blaster guns, but it was too late. I was already far away from them.

  “What are your coordinates, ship?” I said into my radio.

  “What the hell is going on?” I heard the human female say in my arms. But I didn't pay any attention to her.

  “I see your position on radar. We are straight ahead of you. Keep going in that direction,” a soldier said from the ship.

  “I am coming. Do not come towards me; I just ran into a band of thirty cyborgs.”

  “Copy that, General,” he said.

  “What the hell are you?” the human female said weakly. I didn't have time to look at her or to answer her. I was scanning the area for hostile activity. It could be from the hostile humans or the cyborgs.

  A few moments later, I saw the ship. The door was open. I flew directly inside of it and landed.

  “Is everyone accounted for?” I asked.

  “Yes, ten soldiers on the ship. You were the last,” the pilot said.

  “Good, get us back to the fleet,” I said.

  “Copy that,” the pilot said.

  Then I set the human female down on her feet. I squatted down next to her and cut the rope around her ankles. I pushed the dagger back into my boot and then I stood up to face her for the first time. Looking at her face took my breath away. She was the most beautiful human female I have ever seen. She was breathing hard. She was looking around with her eyes very wide; obviously, she was completely confused by what was happening and who we were. I didn't blame her.

  She had brown hair that was tied in a braid down over her shoulder. She was very slender and petite with a very tight shirt with no sleeves hugging her ample breasts. She had on pants and boots that were tied very high. Her brown eyes looked at me with confusion, and her delicate mouth was trembling in fear.

  “Do not be alarmed, human female. I do not wish to hurt you. My name is General Razook. We have come in peace to speak with humans. We were sent here by other humans from a colony known as Haven Brook. Are you hurt? Did the cyborgs hurt you?” I asked.

  “What… What are you?” she said looking at me.

  “Can I get some water,” I said to one of the soldiers looking on.

  “Yes, General.”

  “We are called the Veruka. We come from another planet called Tivoso. We are a race of weredragons. I do not want you to be frightened of us. You have no reason to fear us,” I said.

  The soldier returned with the water and handed it to her. Her hand was shaking as she opened the container and drank the water. She looked at us and was silent. I could tell that she did not trust us. My plan to use her to talk to the other humans was not going to work i
f she didn't trust us. But the poor thing had just gone through hell being with the cyborgs, so I didn't doubt that she was still shaken. Now I was putting her through this.

  “General, we are approaching the main fleet,” the pilot said.

  “Good, land in the main ship at will,” I said.

  “I don't understand. Is this really happening? Am I dreaming? Have I been drugged by the cyborgs?” she asked.