Dunak: The Inter-Terrestrial Volume 3

By Chad Descoteaux

Scientist, diplomat, college professor and loving father Bloxnor is being targeted...by a Triton terrorist named DUNAK. Dunak seems determined to stop the work Bloxnor has been doing to integrate Earth into galactic society. By why would Dunak target Bloxnor AFTER he retired to his home planet of Neptune to raise a family? And what will Bloxnor learn about the ugly side of humanity when his attempts to continue his work are violently opposed? The thrilling final chapter of The Inter-Terrestrial trilogy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chad Descoteaux
• Release date: Jul 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463697696

Chad Descoteaux

I am a self-published, mildly autistic science fiction author who combines quirky sci-fi elements with issues that we can all relate to. Check out my official website www.turtlerocketbooks.com

Book preview

DUNAK:

THE INTER-TERRESTRIAL

volume 3

by Chad Descoteaux

Copyright 2019

All the characters in this book are either fictional

or used fictitiously.

READ the first two books in this series…

THE INTER-TERRESTRIAL

and

DOOKIMON:

THE INTER-TERRESTRIAL volume 2

on turtlerocketbooks.com

PROLOGUE

The desert moon of Triton.

The Neptunian-Lunar War.

Trudging through one of the smelliest tunnels this seasoned Neptunian soldier had ever been in, Blichnor stomped through ankle-high squishy goo. He took big steps to avoid having to do this disgusting task all day. He had a small computer console under his right arm and a high-powered laser rifle strapped to his back, his path illuminated by the lamp on his helmet.

And the only thing keeping Blichnor sane during this difficult mission was being here with his best friend, also trudging through a horrid mix of whatever Tritons for miles around had flushed down their toilets, rifle in hand. This square-jawed soldier’s name was Drachma.

That’s gonna be the most lasting effect of this war. Drachma was sharing his thoughts on his planet’s current military skirmish. All the Triton refugees back home, the ones who escaped their homes to help us out.

The ones who gave us these codes, Blichnor added, using his head to point at the computer under his arm. Squinting with his purple eyes to see into the dimly lit tunnels ahead, Blichnor saw a large stone cylinder with a lot of Tritonese writing on it. It was towering over them into dingy, cobweb-infested shadows. Thanks to his briefing, Blichnor knew exactly what this was. It was the largest, most central support column for the desert castle inhabited by Triton dictator Ghus Ral. Jackpot, he thought silently, blissful that his mission was moving forward.

All the racist treatment they’re going to have to deal with, for years after. Even the ones who helped us, Drachma continued, sounding sad as Blichnor perused a series of boxes and wires attached to this column. Unpleasant, unnecessary side effect of war time propaganda. Generalizing a whole race of people instead of just hating the enemy, a tyrant who tortures his own people, in this case.

True true true that, Blichnor agreed, thinking as he always did about his wife Tarooma and his son Bloxnor back home. The spies who gave us these codes have a son about Bloxnor’s age. If I don’t make it back, I would hate to think our kids couldn’t play together, y’know?

Why wouldn’t they? You think someone at Bloxnor’s school might pump his head full of that stuff?

Could be. But, actually, I was more worried about my wife. She’s…uh, kind of racist.

Really? Drachma seemed surprised, as Blichnor’s wife had successfully kept this side of her personality under her hat during the many dinners they had together.

Yeah. I heard her say some stuff. Long story short, her dad got robbed by a Triton a few years ago. Behind that shop he owns, next to Sand Claw Park.

The deli?

"Yeah. I heard her use the cyke word more than once, in front of the kid too," Blichnor shamefully admitted, fully aware that the word ‘cyclops’ or any reference to a Triton’s monocular state was considered a racial slur. This included referring to a Triton as Uno, Mono, Scope, Telescope or any variation of those phrases.

That’s terrible, Drachma replied, disappointed to hear this news as Blichnor connected his underarm computer to wires hanging from this enormous support column. There was a red one and a purple one. Gotta teach the kids better than that. Your boy is only eight. He doesn’t need to start hearing that crap now.

Flicking an eight-eyed, snake-tongued, armored centipede off the computer screen, Blichnor proudly held it up as countless lines of Triton computer code blipped past it. Security cameras all over the above castle became compromised, allowing the computer to map out the entire fortress by cross-referencing each feed that was stolen.

Mission accomplished, Blichnor remarked somewhat sarcastically, as there was still the pesky matter of getting out of this underground tunnel alive. The moment Blichnor handed Drachma the device, there was a splash. The splash came from the goo they were standing motionless in, so both Neptunian soldiers knew these footsteps were from someone else. Someone who had just arrived.

We’re not alone, Drachma whispered urgently.

Turning his head left to right, pushing aside the shadows of surrounding tunnels with the light on his helmet, Blichnor slid his laser rifle off his back and into his hand. He saw shadows moving around. And some sloshing noises. Someone was definitely here. Drachma guarded the device, rifle at the ready, while Blichnor stepped forward to investigate.

It didn’t take long for Blichnor to get ambushed. A shadowy figure dropped from an overhead pipe and clubbed Blichnor in the kneecaps with whip-like speed, making him collapse face-first into the gooey refuse. Blichnor watched his gun seep into the sludge, disappearing quickly from view. As Blichnor dove to retrieve it, his leg was slashed by a cold, unforgiving, jagged blade. As he sank into the slime, clamping his leg wound, Blichnor’s gun was retrieved by a limber Triton female who backflipped over him with the grace of Earth’s gazelle.

There were soon three Triton females surrounding him, looking down at Blichnor with both disdain and bladed weapons. He did not know these were the oldest of Triton dictator Ghus Ral’s harem of forty-five wives, the only ones he trusted to head up his palace’s security team. Blichnor did know the one who retrieved his gun was now pressing said weapon against his head. The translator chip all Neptunian soldiers had been fitted with before the war translated her tapping-noise language into Blichnor’s brain, so he could understand her threats. Something about blending his brains with the ooze at their feet.

Looking past these women, Blichnor saw Drachma fighting with a fourth Triton female. She had gotten his rifle away from him and was matching his skill in hand-to-hand combat. Drachma reached into a sheath, pulling out a knife to aid his battle, one with a very fancy, crafted handle in the shape of a Triton sand worm. It was a family heirloom, bequeathed to him right before the war by a superstitious uncle who believed it would bring the family good luck for him to use it in war.

With a gun pressed to Blichnor’s head, the sweat on his brow represented the realization that Drachma was currently preoccupied and in no position to rescue him before this woman pulled the trigger. Especially when the other woman managed to kick Drachma’s prized weapon away from him. The knife sank into the muck, the carved head of a golden sand worm poking above the slime as the blade sunk.

And the glowing orbs in Blichnor’s sizable, segmented eyes represented something else altogether, a very strange, very impulsive survival trait unique to the green-skinned residents of the planet Neptune.

When a Neptunian male feels the dreadful twinge of their own inevitable death, a complex chemical reaction in the treina part of their brain generates a form of telekinesis that impregnates the nearest female with the male’s biological code. This is commonplace and common knowledge on Neptune. Government agencies have been formed to make sure that Neptunians who are conceived this way are cheerfully taken care of by a welfare system that looks out for their well-being, immune to budget cuts. And the Neptunian army separates male and female soldiers into different platoons to avoid situations where soldiers impregnate each other in the heat of battle, whenever they fear for their life, which would be often.

After knocking his attacker into the slimy floor, unconscious and sucking slime, Drachma watched as the three Triton women surrounding Blichnor were knocked airborne by an invisible ball of energy. They hurtled away from the frightened soldier, limbs flailing before hitting cement walls. They landed in the sludge hard, unconscious, leaving Blichnor safe, alive and astonished.

Drachma and Blichnor looked at each other with prolonged gazes as their brains attempted to process what just happened. Their joined eyes made a silent, lifelong pact. They did not know whether or not the treina cortex would work on a non-Neptunian female. There were legends that stated this might be possible, but those stories were too old to verify and not considered divinely-inspired by any credible Neptunian religious scholar.

Wiping tears from his eyes, Blichnor seemed to think it had worked. He could feel it. But as he looked down at these three females, picking his slippery gun back up, he realized he didn’t know which one he had mind melded with before the telekinetic blast.

And there was still the pressing matter of armed Tritons flooding these tunnels and killing them both. So, after the pact was made, with Drachma silently promising never to tell anyone about this, the two best friends escaped these sewer tunnels in a prompt and orderly manner.

Once outside, Blichnor and Drachma snapped the necks of a few more Triton palace guards before establishing a high ground position in the surrounding rocks. This allowed Blichnor to assassinate the ruthless Triton dictator, riddling his body with laser bullets and frightening a few of his wives. Blichnor ended the war with one pull of the trigger and both soldiers immediately envisioned a blissful reunion with friends and family. But upon their escape, a powerful thertak bomb ripped apart a partially-cracked stone border wall, killing every member of Drachma’s team, leaving a lone survivor.

Surviving this blast made Drachma think that, maybe, all the superstitious nonsense about his uncle’s sand worm knife bringing him good luck might have had some merit. Until he realized he had left it behind, in that Triton sewer, to be picked up by one of Ghus Ral’s widows when she regained consciousness. Small price to pay for my life, he reasoned. My uncle will be mad, though.

On the spaceship ride home, Drachma remembered his promise to his old friend Blichnor that he would always be there for his wife and son. And he kept this promise, as he was the loving mentor of a young boy who grew up to be a well-known scientist, diplomat, husband and father. Drachma also kept his other promise. When Bloxnor, at age 15, was worried about a treina cortex incident with a human female during his time hiding out on Earth, Drachma remained Bloxnor’s calm, wise mentor without telling the boy what happened to his father in that Triton sewer.

And Bloxnor’s greatest accomplishment, opening up the possibility for planet Earth to interact with surrounding alien worlds, would not have happened if Drachma did not help him overcome the negative influence of his mother’s irrational hatred against Tritons, amplified by her husband’s death on that desert moon. Bloxnor would come to learn that such feelings are vile monsters that can be difficult to conquer.

And that vile monsters can pop up anywhere, even after they have laid dormant for so many years.

CHAPTER ONE

PARTY CRASHERS

27 years later.

Earth.

Human civilization came to a grinding halt when the United Scientists Guild landed on Earth. Humans were in awe of the amount of ships that entered Earth’s atmosphere all at once, the wide variety of countries these aliens visited and the amazing gift they offered to prove they had come in peace. No matter where a human stood on the planet, they placed their jobs, hobbies and livelihoods on the ground, embraced their loved ones and watched the interactions (on TV and online) with eyes, mouths and hearts wide open.

When thirty-six-year-old USG scientist Bloxnor landed in a midwestern United States woodland, eager to see the son he never met, the result of his own treina cortex being triggered twenty years prior, his half-human son Charlie would not truly realize the impact he made on his birth planet just by existing.

It was a study of Charlie’s DNA, the flawless merging of human and Neptunian DNA that shattered the centuries-old taboo that humans were inferior in the minds of every USG scientist that saw it. Their minds being logic-fueled, seeing proof they were wrong obliterated their prejudice against humans in an instant.

The USG was here to let humanity know they were not alone in the universe and to offer them the benefits that interaction with more advanced worlds would grant them. But millennia of being excluded from the society the other planets and inhabitable moons in their solar system had created resulted in some behavior problems that concerned these diplomats.

Earth was the only planet in the solar system that had countries, separate governments operating on the same planet that sometimes warred with each other. True, other planets had wars, even with inhabitants of their own moons, but warring with inhabitants of the same planet and destroying the environment they shared was seen as laughably-primitive by some. Others saw no difference between different kinds of war. But this was the kind of behavior the USG found concerning and it informed the gift they gave to the Earth leaders they met with.

Each leader received a box with a brilliant Saturnian crystal in the center, rotating under its own miniature force field. These boxes had small plugs on the side that allowed them to be connected. Once connected, the minerals in these crystals had the potential to turn a sprawling wasteland, like the Trobi desert in southern Ikrajii, into a breathtaking garden filled with towering trees. These trees would be teeming with a genetically-modified, watermelon-sized alien wonder fruit with countless times more nutritional value than anything found on Earth.

The USG left these Earth leaders with a promise. They would return in five Earth years. If there was one human being on their planet who was in any way malnourished, without some genetic defect to explain why their body wasn’t processing the food they had been given, the USG would go back to excluding Earth from galactic society, sabotaging their scientific endeavors so no human would ever truly know what is out there. Earth would go back to being a planet full of mammal-like insects who had barely made it past their own moon.

It seemed like a no-brainer. A number of Earth nations, some of whom were allies and others who had warred in the past, had the opportunity to come together in peace and produce food that would feed every person on the planet. They would open their eyes to a form of diplomacy unlike anything they could have dreamed of otherwise, with beings who could solve global problems humans had failed to fix. A pleasant contrast to warring over natural resources? A way to weaken strong military