The Star Dweller Saga The Long Way Home

By Rod Scarborough

A quick trip around the solar system turns into a study of survival and adventure for a group of young kids and their intrepid pilot when their ship is sucked into a wormhole and they end up on the other side of the galaxy. they encounter possible friends, foes and aliens which they ahd never seen before. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.A. Scarborough
• Release date: Jun 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223034834

Book preview

1.

Juno-Sul watched the three science ships prepare to lift off into space as he stood at the window at the port. He remembered how long ago it seemed to get from an eager boy learning the basics of history and other things his parents felt he needed to know so when he grew up, he knew what he wanted in life. As he looked up into the light blue eyes of his mother he smiled and said in the impatience of youth, I already know what I want to be. He said, he had told her dozens of times at every opportunity. I want to be an explorer... a space explorer his mom smiled at him and nodded. She knew what he wanted, but like children often do they want to be one thing one day and the next something else. His siblings were already out and doing what they wanted.

He was the younger of three children in the family Sul. Of his family he was the only one who wanted to explore, exploration teams had explored the oceans and almost everywhere on their planet.

When he turned the age of 18, he signed up for the space program, he saw a short list of openings for space explorers, most were for flying scout cruisers for the small colonies on one of the moons or manning orbiting satellites above the home world as his brother and cousins had done.

He wasn’t interested in either one of those jobs, there was one on the bottom of the large screen, it wanted a few brave souls to fly private vessels to study phenomenon farther than anyone else. He had been hearing about odd phenomenon going on in the asteroid field surrounding the dead star called Heshon, he had been reading up on it and studied all the research. 

Juno-Sul of the world Heraan had been studying a dead planet from a small ship, there were two others with him, Kron Ohm a skilled pilot and scientist from the science guild and Norm Mot a young cadet who wanted to see the stars as badly as Juno they were friends through school, where Juno was more outgoing and curious Norm was shy and careful. Juno had run several scenarios as to how asteroids could have disappeared.

He speculated that either something had gone through the field and picked off a few or they spun off beyond where they were supposed to be and broke up into smaller bits.

How far can we go? Juno asked Kron as they went farther away from the home world. Norm glanced out of the windows and watched as their home world began to get smaller in the distance.

We aren’t going to go very far, only to the outer marker then back. The pilot said. Kron knew how curious his young explorer was but didn’t want to get too far out, he was concerned about fuel and the fact that high levels of radiation were detected in the outer rim.

The science ship was just big enough for him, the crew, a living area and science probes.

He was eager to see everything outside the usual places he had already seen and heard about.

The science counsel on his planet had seen small moons and dead planets disappearing through their space and his team went to investigate, most of the scientists speculated that there might have been a black hole or some form of wormhole which was sucking up the stellar matter.

Probes were sent out to study and record whatever was gobbling up the stellar matter. His people felt they were the only intelligent life in space, but Juno-Sul thought differently. He wanted to prove there was intelligent life and he was determined to find it and show his people.

They had been here orbiting this dead planet for nearly four weeks and so far, nothing had come by, he had seen what looked like a meteor flying by the planet and then disappear into a wormhole but that was two days ago, and he was getting bored and was starting to wonder if he was wasting his time out here.

Norm glanced out the wide windows and was a little nervous, he hadn’t been in space very much and didn’t know what to expect. Juno saw his friend was finally starting to relax. But he was hoping for more, Juno walked to the pilot and looked out the window in the front. The pilot, a tall older man who had a disappointing look on his face glanced at him and pointed to the sensors. So far nothing is out there, sorry. The pilot rechecked the sensors and shook his head.

Kron was in contact with another science ship, The Phoebus, captained by a man named Wynn Kor. Juno didn’t know him very well but Kron did and they kept in touch every chance they got.

Years ago, long-range travel was considered very hazardous without a crew and another ship to watch your back and provide supplies if needed.

The Phoebus was theirs.

It looked like a longer version of the ship they were in. Juno had counted the boxy segments attached to the Phoebus making it look like a flying caterpillar except for the narrow command section in front and the long, thick engines in the back.

So far, he counted ten. The ship they were in was easily smaller. It didn’t need to be bigger.

Juno brushed a strand of short, dark hair from his face and was about to change course back home when the ship lurched sideways and was nearly pushed into the gravity well of the dead planet. A loud warning klaxon sounded across the ship causing Norm to clap his hands on his ears and shudder. At first, they thought the ship was under attack.

The pilot corrected the ship as it dipped low into the dead world. Kron didn’t know by who or even why he was an explorer, a scientist not a fighter and besides who would attack them the ship wasn’t an attack cruiser or armed with anything resembling a weapon.

Kron was about to turn around and head back to the home world when another siren screamed, it was a proximity detector something big was nearby.

Alarms rang out as he attempted to right his ship, or it would be destroyed as it smashed into the planet below. As he began to pull away, he scanned his surroundings and his breath caught in his throat a massive ship nearly as big as the planet itself appeared and began to rip the planet apart by using dozens of small spidery constructs which tore chunks from the planet and brought them into a massive, churning maw.

Kron knew the two in the back were checking out the sight through the windows, at least he knew Juno would be, his friend Norm would be cowering under something. Kron wasn’t sure which would be a better idea right now as he flew his ship through the planet as it was breaking up and began recording it all.

He saw in the corner on his eye Juno taking the console to his right, the rarely used copilots’ seat and activated the communications system. Kron mentally kicked himself for not activating the distress beacons and calling for help earlier but in the heat of the moment you do what you can at the time and hope you have time to call for help when you can.

Kron felt a certain pride for Juno as he took over the con and reached out for help, until Juno opened his mouth.

"This is Juno-Sul of the independent science vessel Icarus I am recording this from sector Seventeen-J I have discovered the source of the disappearing dead planets, I am following it."

Kron was speechless, he had assumed Juno was calling for help but instead wanted to follow this thing. He didn’t want to, but he saw the look on Juno and felt curious too, it was getting infectious. His sense of responsibility seemed to slip as he plotted a course around the looming object.

Kron thought he had heard the Phoebus call out to them before the signal was cut off.

The sensors detected metal he had never seen before with organic material wrapped around it, the area of the ship they were scanning was only a small portion of the craft. Immense wasn’t close to the words he would’ve chosen, He didn’t know why he had decided to follow it he could’ve been satisfied with a simple recording and brought it to the science counsel, but his dogged curiosity wanted to know what it was and where it came from.

He didn’t wait for someone to answer the message, he felt the need to see what it was.

He flew his ship above one of the oblong, spider-like ships and scanned it. It was a drone a robot programmed to fly into a planet and take bits of it and stores it inside a large container behind it after the planetary debris was broken down.

Along with the drones were larger, longer support ships which used weapons to dislodge chunks of material from the dead planet and with long mechanical arms put the material in a large container in the back of the drone.

Juno-Sul decided to call the bigger support craft swarm ships since they seemed to swarm everywhere, they seemed to be automatic as well, no pilot was detected within the swarm ships.

Juno-Sul could see it moving within the ship and could see something was wrong. The small ship began flying erratically and then suddenly crashed into the planet and was destroyed.

Other small ships flew toward the crash site and began clearing the debris. When Juno-Sul scanned them, those ships began to spread out and away from the site.

Juno-Sul didn’t understand why his scanning beams were disturbing the ships. Kron watched the swarm ships as they seemed to be more interested in flying away from them then attacking.

They heard a gasp behind them and almost forgot about Norm, he must have been hiding all this time and when he decided to come out and saw this, he