War for Orion: Ghosts from the Past

Smashwords Edition | Copyright 2015
Conner Walworth

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War for Orion Copyright © 2015 by
Conner Walworth.

All rights reserved. Printed in
the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical
articles or reviews.

This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and
incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For information
www.connerjwalworth.wix.com/author-page

Book and Cover design by Conner
Walworth

ISBN: 123456789

First Edition: January
2016

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Donnchadh grinned, finally besting his old
friend. "Now Armino, all we have left is you and your worthless
son, Anlon."

Before he was able to utter another word, the
front door came crashing down and the house was swarmed with
police. Donnchadh clenched his fists and silently cursed to himself
before turning the Arachnid and Darza.

"Get to the cruiser now!" he yelled. "I'll
finish these two!"

Donnchadh pulled his pistol out fired a shot
at Armino, hitting him in the head, and fired another shot at Anlon
as he ran out of the house. Anlon slouched down in the chair,
breathing quickly from the excruciating pain of the bullet entering
his abdomen.

A young woman ran to him and put her hands on
his shoulders. "We need a medbot! Go get MB-398 right now!" she
ordered a hovering robot.

"Yes ma'am," The robot replied, before
turning to leave.

A tall, black, human officer came up behind
her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Looks like he's the lone
survivor here. Let the medbots take care of him while we take a
look around."

"Who would do something like this Giustino?
You can't tell me that this was some random homicide."

"Someone very pissed off. And by the looks of
the dead bodies, it was someone who knew what they were doing with
more than enough resources to get the job done without getting
caught."

"They left this one alive, they can't be too
smart if they left behind a witness to the crime."

"Mistakes were definitely made here Kanti. We
just need to make sure we find who did this before they come back
for their biggest mistake."

MB-398 came into the room. "What can I do
Officer Kanti?"

"This man has been shot. I need you to take
care of his wound immediately," Kanti ordered.

"Everyone was killed by very advanced
weaponry, except for these two," Giustino continued. "I can tell
you these two were shot with a regular handgun, like our ancestors
would've carried during Exodus Era, but the rest were killed with
much more advanced weaponry."

Kanti walked over to a pile of ashes and bent
over to examine them. "You think that this was a person
before?"

"I have no doubt in my mind that those ashes
were once a person."

"Any idea what kind of weapon would turn
someone to ashes?"

Giustino nodded. "It was a highly advanced
laser weapon, but that's all I can tell you. There are too many
different models to know what exact one, but I know for a fact that
some of the higher end pistols have the ability to turn people to
ashes, though I've never actually seen it until now."

"Okay, what about the skeleton? What could've
done this?" she pointed.

"I have no idea Kanti. I've never seen, or
heard, of anything like that. I haven't seen anything like the boy
next to the skeleton either. All I see on him is red bubbly skin,
but other than that there are no other apparent wounds, so I'm not
sure how he could've died," Giustino rubbed his hands over his
face. "This is going to be an extremely hard case to solve."

Kanti looked away from the dead bodies.
"MB-398 appears to be almost finished with the wounded man, so
maybe he could tell us something about all of this."

He shook his head. "Not too much right now.
Let's get him to a hospital to be checked for anything else before
we drill him with questions. After seeing some of these bodies, who
knows what may have been done to the kid. In the meantime,
forensics will come and start doing their thing which will give us
some time to piece some other things together."

"Alright, I'll go see if he's able to come
with me," she replied, walking towards Anlon.

Anlon slowly regained consciousness and
squirmed in pain as something pricked inside of his abdomen. A
large robot was bent over him working diligently to heal the bullet
wound he had taken. He had only witnessed a robot like this once,
but was relieved it was here to remove the bullet.

"Hey that hurts you stupid robot!" Anlon
swatted it.

"Sorry sir, I will give you some more
anesthetics," It pulled out a needle, inserting it in Anlon's side
and releasing the clear liquid.

The pain instantly subsided and Anlon gave
the robot a thumbs up. The robot continued to work at getting the
bullet as Anlon watched it closely, amazed at when it finally
pulled the small piece of metal from his insides.

The robot looked at Anlon. "You will be
alright. The bullet didn't damage any internal organs and came out
in one piece. The anesthetics will wear off in a couple of hours,
at which point you will feel a little bit of pain from where the
bullet was extracted," The robot typed something in its arm and
pulled a red container out of its chest. "Here are some pain pills
to help you when the anesthetics have worn off."

Anlon looked away from the robot and saw the
female officer coming towards him. He slowly pushed himself off of
the ground and walked towards her, noticing that she was about the
same age as he was. She was human with bright blonde hair and
stunning blue eyes that pulled him in to her.

"Hey, I'm Kanti Cordula. I'm going to get you
to the hospital to make sure that you're okay," she said. "There's
some weird stuff here and we don't know if you have been more than
just shot."

"I'm Anlon Valens," He took her hand. "Don't
you want to know what happened here before you take me? I promise
I'm fine. Your robot took really good care of me."

"No, my partner thought it would be best if
you were double checked at the hospital by an actual human and some
better machines. We haven't seen anything like this before and we
don't want you to die from wounds we may not see."

"Once we know you're better and there is
nothing wrong with you, then we will be questioning you," A deep
voice boomed from behind them.

Anlon turned to see the voice had come from a
large black man with his hand placed on his hips. Unlike Kanti, he
didn't look inviting in the least bit.

"My name is Giustino Ignace. From the looks
of it, this was more than just some random homicide."

"Yes it was," Anlon nodded.

"We'll go over it in further detail later.
With some of the special weapons that were used here, I want to
make sure that you're okay before we start questioning you, as
Kanti has already told you. She'll take you to the car and escort
you to the hospital."

Anlon nodded and followed Kanti to the car.
Thoughts raced through Anlon's head about everything that had just
happened, still not fully grasping that it had actually been
reality. He didn't know very much except that those races had known
his father, and had hated his him for some reason. He had never
seen the hate and rage that filled the black Malak's eye's that had
led the attack.

There were still a few things for sure:
races, names, and a planet that they had mentioned traveling from.
Anlon knew the types of questions that he would get from the two
officers, but he wasn't sure how he was going to answer them.

The things that he had just seen done to his
family infuriated him and he knew there was only one thing he could
do now that would make him feel better; find out who killed his
family, why they killed his family, and get vengeance for their
murders. In order to do that, he would have to leave out some very
important details. Deep down he knew it was wrong, but he could
feel the rage he saw in the Malak's eyes boiling somewhere from
deep down within himself.

"So what all went on back there?" Kanti
interrupted his thoughts.

Anlon turned to face her. "Ummm. I'm not
really sure, to tell you the truth. These races just broke in and
used all these different kinds of weapons to kill my family."

Kanti nodded. "I'm very sorry for your losses
Anlon. I've never seen anything this horrific in my life. When I
came to Gaea a couple of months ago from Demeter, I was told this
was a very peaceful planet with very little crime, especially this
District."

Anlon looked at her puzzled. "You came from
Demeter?"

She smiled. "I grew up there, but I never
really fit in since humans aren't the dominant race. The family
that raised me was part of the Kaneen race so I grew up farming on
the land, like most everyone else on the planet. I was ready for
something different though, mainly to be with a race that looked
like me for a change. I was tired of being the odd one out."

"Oh. So I'm taking it you never knew your
real parents?"
"No. My Kaneen family told me I was dropped off as a baby for them
to raise. They never told me who my real parents were, but to tell
you the truth, I don't think they even knew who my parents
were."

"Sorry to ask. It must have been weird
growing up on a planet where you were the outcast race."

"It wasn't that bad. Most of them seemed to
accept me and didn't ask questions. Not knowing who my real parents
were is what bothered me the most. I thought coming here and
becoming a police officer might help me find them, but I know now
it won't," Kanti sighed. "There aren't any human families in Orion
with the last name Cordula. Unfortunately, I'm one of a kind."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Anlon tried to
comfort.

Anlon knew he had to ask Kanti more
questions. If she had come from Demeter to find her family, that
meant there was something in the police station that could search
for races.

"How exactly did you find that out that no
humans shared your last name? The Galaxy is a big place, there's
bound to be at least one human with your last name, if not another
race."

Kanti kept her eyes on the road. "There's a
database at the station where you can search names and races.
Someone on Demeter told me about it, though I'm not completely sure
how they found out about it. Anyway, you can limit it by ton of
criteria. You can find almost anyone with it unless they're trying
really hard to stay hidden. In which case, they have to be really
good because this can find literally any race on any planet that
they're hiding. I've tried everything, and I promise you, I'm the
only Cordula in all of Orion," She looked over at Anlon. "Don't
tell Giustino I told you that though, because only races with
official clearance are supposed to know about the database. I was
able to sneak down there one night using Giustino's key. He'd flip
if he knew I had broken into his office to get into the database
without permission."