"Then why not just kill me."
"They can't," says Marconi. "Not until you put up a fight, run, or challenge them." I imagine playing possum while a full-grown Baird sniffs around my crotch, trying to get a rise out of me. Marconi has tiny holes cut through the dirt where I can look down over the alien city. It's far greater than I could have imagined, which is why I have no idea where it is. When I was writing book two, I couldn't come to grips with introducing the Baird, because they're not in that story line. I had grown bored with them and written them out of the novels, but they had come back with a vengeance. They've been hiding here amongst the Marangetti all along, living somewhere in the massive Deadwalker Subdivision. The Marangetti, the citizens who live here are harboring a deadly fugitive. I doubt they even know what the Baird are about, but now, in book three, the one I'm writing in my mind now, they have come back to exact their revenge on Ketty and Pon-shea. And they've come to exact their revenge on me.
Their home base is a sprawling complex of houses and buildings stretching down towards the ocean. Twin suns of an obscure solar system are midmorning above what I can only imagine is the Eastern seaboard. This is an alien world, and the planet could be in any orbit, but for my sanity, I call that east.
"Why don't they live in nests here?" I ask Marconi who has shoved the young cock back into the end of his small cave. He has a few grubs and a dry spice salad for us to snack on, plus a small cup of water collecting from a drip in the wall.
When viewed from space, it would appear a friendly civilization lives here," is his best guess.
I look to the sea port and notice fortified towers and a massive wall surrounding the lower half of the hill, as if invaders were an everyday occurrence. It doesn't seem like a typical Baird city, but I never imagined one. There are strange ships floating about, with translucent sails that must be driven by more than air. These over a mile away, and far to the left, I see what I'm looking for. The spaceport. Besides large hangers and a glass terminal, there is a fleet of Inter-dimensional cruisers.
"Those are the ones, right?" It's a rhetorical question. Even at this distance I see they're unlike anything I've ever imagined. I know there's a at the core of each ship. It's the bread and butter of the Galaxy, but somehow, the aliens have re-engineered the infinite gyroscope that usually hangs off the back like a bloated slug. They have a hint of the original bird like design of their first-generation ship, but there the similarity ends."
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Science FictionIn a desperate attempt to sell a novel, David Masterson gives up everything to become famous. When his dream finally comes true, he finds himself on the set of his first movie, the camera's start to roll, and his creation comes to life before his ey...
