Face to Face: Episode Seven in the Star Song Series

By Bill Gregg

Four delegates from the planet Eden are transported to Hestia on the Shirrah warship Saber of Heaven, the same vessel that once rescued Temozar from an execution pod and took him to the refuge planet. Temozar has a reunion with the warship's captain, and another alien friend, lieutenant Re mi fa sol. Before their departure, Temozar explains to Artemis and Mingus how they will travel the millions of kilometers to Hestia in only five hours! At the alien command center, the three humans and their dekapod companion all have interviews with Do ti fa sol, the Shirrah officer who was freed from captivity by Temozar during the late war between Earth Extraterrestrial Command and the Grand Council of Shirrah Republics. Do ti fa sol has since been chosen to be the Great Mother of Shirr, empress of all space occupied by the alien race. The delegates from Eden hear the unwelcome news that the Khaozians have destroyed Earth Three and its ten million human inhabitants. The Shirrah are transporting about three thousand survivors to the planet Eden. Temozar and the delegates realize they will have massive responsibilities trying to govern the new arrivals and preparing to defend their planet against the invaders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill Gregg
• Release date: Mar 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215352281

Bill Gregg

I write fiction from some subconscious compulsion rather than a desire for financial gain or adulation. Even though my bookish inclinations led me to a position as the editor of my college literary journal, then to five years work for a small avante-garde publishing house, I didn't pursue my desire to write fiction until later in life. I had poetry published but no stories or novels. Now, after a lifetime filled with amazing experiences, I sit down to write every day. I decided to issue the resulting science fiction and fantasy short stories on Smashwords in case there are readers for my somewhat antiquated and literary style. In addition to shorter fiction, I'm currently publishing a serialized science fiction novel, “Star Song” on Smashwords , with a new 10,000 word installment posted every month.Much of my science fiction shows the influence of my experience in military intelligence with the US Navy's Naval Security Group (NAVSECGRU, now NETWARCOM). During my tour, I flew on numerous reconnaissance missions with VQ-1 (Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One) in the Far East. After that I worked for a few years in publishing, then as a traveling folk musician. Finally, I settled into a career in biotechnology. I retired from scientific work to teach music at a fine arts academy in Upstate New York. All my life I've been an outdoorsman, and my love of nature shows through in all of my fiction. I live in the scenic Finger Lakes area of New York State where I enjoy hiking, gardening, archery, and the company of my beautiful wife and our wonderful dog, Dash.

Book preview

Face to Face

(Episode Seven in the Star Song series)

by Bill Gregg

Face to Face

(Episode Seven in the Star Song series)

By Bill Gregg

Copyright © 2023 by William Richard Gregg

Published by Bill Gregg on Smashwords 2023

Edited by Bill Gregg

Cover Illustration by Storn Cook

Cover Design by yourebookcover.com

First Edition March 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the author, except for the purpose of reviews.

This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

Three human passengers and their dekapod companion lay securely strapped to the reclining seats in the robotic shuttle. Temozar Alkabah looked over at his companions: Artemis Katsaros, former medical officer in Earth Extraterrestrial Command, Mingus Twombe, former fire control officer on the battle cruiser Bellerophon, and Eema, an intelligent, mobile plant known as a dekapod.

Alkabah, a linguist, fluent in the musical speech of the Shirrah, had been invited to a conference at an outpost established by that alien species on a nearby planet. The Shirrah asked that Temozar bring two other humans and a representative of the planet Eden’s native sentient plant species, the dekapodi.

Far above, outside of Eden’s atmosphere, a Shirrah warship, the Saber of Heaven, orbited, waiting for the pilotless shuttlecraft to ferry the passengers up from the planet’s surface. The Saber of Heaven would convey them to the alien outpost on Hestia, where the four representatives from Eden would meet face to face (so to speak) with the Shirrah leaders.

The agenda of the interspecies meeting was to discuss the looming threat of attack by a powerful and dangerous species from outside the Milky Way Galaxy. The invaders, known as Khaozians, demanded absolute submission from all intelligent life forms they encountered as they spread from galaxy to galaxy. Effective resistance to the invaders would sometimes lead them to completely destroy a star, associated planets, and all life therein. Widespread and successful opposition to the Khaozian invasion by several numerous and highly intelligent races of beings in the small neighboring galaxy drove the Khaozians from Triangulum in disarray. Suddenly, all Khaozian spacecraft retreated, evacuating the entire galaxy by dropping into the deformations in spacetime that humans called channels.

But the native Triangulans had little time to celebrate. As soon as the Khaozian warships were gone, the invaders triggered their doomsday weapon. A relatively small number of Khaozians remained behind as suicide bombers. The suicidal invaders detonated themselves, creating what were known as gravity bombs. As far as the Shirrah intelligence could determine, the Khaozians turned their bodies into gravity bombs inside the channels that were woven throughout the galaxy. The result was that the spiral galaxy, known as NGC 598 by human astronomers, collapsed instantaneously into a supermassive black hole, extinguishing all life in that vast collection of dust, gas, and stars. Such was the fate of all who had the temerity to resist the invaders.

There was no doubt that the Khaozians