Richard: Federaton Attacks

Prologue

A Dragon’s Despair

Richard sat in the mouth of a cave, gazing down at a valley blanketed in a forest of multicolored trees stretching five hundred feet into the sky. The cave was set into the sheer face of a mountain cliff, preventing wild animals from making it their home. A fresh coat of snow covered the mountainside.

Just a few years ago, Richard had been a typical boy from the hills of Ohio, tall, with blue eyes and long blond hair. Now he was eighteen, and in a few days, he would turn nineteen. He’d spent the first fifteen years of his life on Earth, but everything changed the day when, while lying on a sofa in his basement, he heard, I am your gift.

The corners of his long mouth turned up as he recalled being kidnapped and taken to the moon. Once on the lunar surface, he had been told he was heir to a vast kingdom spanning the Milky Way.

Richard had been taken to Krel, the capital world of the kingdom, and proclaimed the rightful king. His claim had been proven by a special marker in his DNA, unique to his family. What his subjects did not know was that he was not fully human. Even worse, he was part dragon.

Soon after, he met Amber, a slim, golden-eyed, red-furred humanoid fox from the planet Beowulf, now his mate and the love of his life. She’d borne him twin cubs, a boy and a girl, and was now pregnant with a third child. The twin boy, Raider, looked like a human from the waist up from the front. The rest of him looked like a white fox with a long fluffy tail, fox ears, golden eyes, and paws for feet. His sister, Kit, looked like her mother but with her father’s blue eyes.

Richard and Amber had adopted two other sons, Andreas and Zeus. Andreas came from the ocean world of Okeanos, which had two types of humanoid life. One race looked like a dolphin but with two arms and legs. The others lived on a single continent and looked like humans. Andreas was a hybrid of the two, and neither race wanted him. He had a small rostrum, a fin between his shoulders, and one on the back of his head. Zeus was a satyr, the son of Jupiter, who was killed protecting his son as the palace was attacked.

Steam rose from Richard’s nostrils as he watched several air dragons fly over the forest below. The forest trees and dragons soaring over them were of every color imaginable.

It was unusual for a human to be sitting in a cave on the side of a mountain on a world of dragons, but this was no ordinary human. Richard was the king of the Milky Way galaxy.

He closed his eyes and sighed, sending plumes of steam rising from the corners of his mouth.

The king of the Milky Way had been changed into a large golden dragon.

There were two types of dragons in the kingdom. The first were massive, reptile-like creatures with leathery wings, sharp claws, and spiked tails. They were covered with tough scales. These wing dragons once ruled over the Milky Way and enslaved all races they came across.

The other dragons were as sinuous as snakes. Though they had no wings, they could run on the air. They were seventy-five feet long, and their bodies were eight feet around, tapering down to a tail with a flat end. Thick manes haloed their faces, stretching from their heads down their long, sinuous necks. These snakelike dragons lived in the trees, but Richard was too large for that and had to live in the cave. One of these dragons, Shenlong, had died protecting Richard in the battle to save his cubs. Before his death, he had told Richard that he and his kind were called air dragons because they could run on the air.

Both types of dragons could spray fire and shoot fireballs. They could also travel by blowing fire rings and flying through their black centers. The rings would instantaneously take them to wherever they wanted, even another world.

Richard was larger than the other dragons, a good three hundred feet long from the front of his muzzle to the tip of his tail, and his wingspan was nearly twice his length. His scales were golden, he had a golden mane, and the end of his long tail was flat. As with all dragons, Richard had horns that curved from the front of his skull, curled behind his eyes, and swept outwards and backward to sharp points. Like the air dragons, he also had a forked tongue and could taste the air. He lived on the world of the air dragons because it was the only planet in the kingdom he could call home.

Normally, Richard could change himself into anything he wished. He had previously changed into a humanoid fox and could make himself invisible. He’d also been able to transport himself anywhere in the universe with but a thought. As a dragon, though, his powers had been stripped from him. For some reason, he felt that someone who knew him had forced him into this dragon form.

But why? Who would want to take me away from my family? he wondered, not for the first time.

AAL had taken Richard to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, where, using the black hole’s energy, he had made `Richard undergo two hundred thousand years of evolution.

AAL knew Richard was going to face many challenges in his life and wanted to give him the ability to protect himself. Later, Amber was also evolved, but neither she nor Richard realized she was pregnant with their cubs then.

The only ones who could have changed Richard into a dragon were Amber, AAL, whose name stood for Artificial Alien Life, or the mysterious Olaf, but none of them would have wanted to see him suffer like he was now.

He missed his family terribly. They needed to live on the kingdom’s capital world of Krel. The kingdom did not know he was changed into a dragon.

Long ago, Richard’s ancestors had banished the wing dragons to another dimension and freed the Milky Way from their terror.

Every thousand years, the barrier between the dimensions would thin above Mount Ascension on Krel, allowing the wing dragons to escape. To stop them, the king would ride on a pure-white pegasus and carry a silver scepter. As he and his pegasus flew over Mount Ascension, the energy of Krel would flow from the mountain into them and out the scepter. With this energy, the barrier would be resealed for another millennium.

Richard was brought to the kingdom less than a year before the barrier’s fall. AAL had educated him as quickly as he could. Richard did not know that AAL had manipulated him into having a double made of himself. This way, if Richard succeeded in sealing the barrier but was killed before fathering a child, his double, Henry, could father a son with Richard’s sperm. This would ensure that Richard’s line continued for another thousand years when the barrier would once again fall and allow the wing dragons through.

AAL took Richard to the planet of the Makers, where they met Dolores. She took Richard through the process of making a double of himself. In one stage of the process, she extracted Richard’s sperm and placed it in Henry’s testicles, where the sperm would be held in stasis until needed.

After Amber became pregnant, there was no need for Henry to father Richard’s children. This was good because Henry had fallen in love with Brenda, a girl in his high school class on Earth.

Brenda wanted to get married and have children, but Henry could not produce sperm on his own. She was brought into their circle of friends who knew Richard and Amber had special powers.

Brenda did not want to have Richard’s children, so Richard and AAL took her and Henry to the planet of the Makers and asked Dolores if she could fix him so he could produce sperm. Dolores told them she could.

A month later, Brenda was pregnant with twins.

Henry had taken Richard’s place a number of times before. Now that Richard was a dragon, Henry would have to do so again, perhaps even permanently.

When the barrier thinned, it was Richard’s turn to fly on his pegasus, Olympus, and seal it. Before he could close it completely, a golden dragon tail pushed through it, whipped around him and Olympus, and pulled them into the other dimension. The barrier closed behind them.

Olympus’s wing was broken. Until it healed, Richard and the pegasus would be trapped in the wing dragons’ dimension. Before Askook, the emperor of the wing dragons, could find them, two black wing dragons helped them escape. One of them, a male named Drake, healed Olympus’s wing by touching it with a claw.

Now that Olympus could fly again, the two returned to their own dimension, bringing Drake and his mate, Frostine.

A third black wing dragon, a female, followed them through the barrier before Richard could seal it. The wing dragon blew a yellow fire ring, and just as she entered it, a royal ship blasted the ring, causing it to explode. Drake told Richard that the dragon could not have survived, but for some reason, Richard thought otherwise. In fact, she had.

The female wing dragon, Aine, appeared over Aries Prime with the end of her tail missing. Soaring into the mountains where the wing dragon race had once ruled, she flew into the cave from which her mate, Askook, the golden wing dragon and the emperor of the wing dragons, had lived. After laying a clutch of eggs, she curled around them.

I will find that human king and kill him and all he holds dear, she thought before falling asleep.

A prophecy had predicted that a friend of the dragons would one day be transformed into a dragon representing both races. This new dragon would become the leader of the air dragons. Unfortunately for Richard, he was the “friend” the prophecy predicted.

Lucky me, he thought.

The air dragons never took part in ruling over the Milky Way. They had always stayed on their world, keeping their existence a secret.

The kingdom was at war with parts of itself for the first time in its twenty-thousand-year history. The human race had formed the kingdom and ruled over it all that time. Long ago, Richard’s great-grandfather King Dolloff and his family were killed by Dolloff’s brother, Julian. The kingdom survived, but a power vacuum was created.

The humans in the Senate took advantage of this to rule over the non-humans, and they did not treat the non-humans as kindly as Richard’s family had. Richard saw this mistreatment and vowed to change it. The humans did not agree with his way of ruling, but the non-humans, who vastly outnumbered them, backed the young king. The humans left the kingdom, along with the Gnomish Empire, and formed the Federation.

Richard was concerned about this exodus of humans, which cut off their sectors from badly needed resources. The Federation could not rapidly bring manufacturing facilities online to meet the human sectors’ needs, so they ran low on supplies. In response, King Spartacus ordered his fleet to raid non-human planets and ships ferrying supplies to the kingdom’s planets.

Under Admiral Warren’s command, the Royal Fleet sent ships from sectors far from the human worlds to guard non-human planets and shipping lines close to the fighting.

The humans began to lose the war, so Spartacus devised a plan to abduct Richard and Amber’s young twin cubs, Raider and Kit. His scientists devised a device that could detect the smallest changes in the flow of time. No one could figure out why such a device would be needed, but Spartacus knew Richard would surrender to him and make him king to save his cubs. The one thing he did not expect was Richard’s transformation into a dragon.

AAL, Richard’s long-time friend and mentor, had saved Richard and Amber’s lives by slowing time on more than one occasion. Once the Federation had the twins, the cubs were strapped to a platform, bands were placed around their small heads, and an antimatter device was embedded in the platform. If time slowed around the platform or Richard came close, the bands would crush the cubs’ skulls, and a moment later, the platform would explode, taking whoever was close along with it.

The kingdom’s scientists could not find a way to circumvent the device. AAL was also unable to stop it from killing the cubs. In desperation, Richard traveled to the air dragon world. He knew the air dragons could travel by fire rings, and he hoped that if enough air dragons appeared over Aries Prime, the diversion they created would allow him to save his cubs. Richard asked for their help, but Shenlong, the leader of the air dragons, refused to help.

As Richard begged Shenlong, he fell to the ground and was painfully changed into the golden dragon he is to this day.

After he was changed, Richard rallied the air dragons into a force of millions and led them to Aries Prime, the capital world of the Federation. Using their fire rings, they appeared all over the planet. After destroying any military assets they could find, they would go back to their home planet. Moments later, they would return to Aries Prime to repeat the process. They did this repeatedly.

Unfortunately, the air dragons did not discern between military and civilian targets. Many people were killed, and the world was set ablaze.

***

As the attack on Aries Prime began, the noise awoke Aine. Creeping to the mouth of her cave, she looked out over the night sky. To her surprise, red fire rings were blossoming over the valley as far as the eye could see.

One of her hatchlings trotted to her side. “What is it, Mother?” he hissed. A year and a half old, he was small for his age, likely due to the sparseness of game in the mountains. The valley, though, had plenty of food, and some nights, Aine would fly over it and snatch up one or two of the beasts the humans were raising. She was not ready to reveal her or her hatchlings’ existence and hid her family well in the many caves.

Every now and then, a human would climb the mountains, and Aine could not resist picking them off and bringing them back to her cave. They would scream in terror as she dropped them, bloodied but still able to move, before her hatchlings. The young wing dragons would play with them for a while, learning the important skills of pouncing on prey and catching it up in their claws, before finally feasting on them.

Aine pointed at the valley with her muzzle and smiled. “Do you remember me telling you of our cousins, the air dragons who could run on the wind?”

Her hatchling nodded.

“They are attacking the city in the valley.”

“Why?”

“I do not know. They have always stayed on their planet and would not help us enslave the inferior species.”

Aine’s eyes widened, and she raised her head on her long neck. Her hatchling, Firestorm, saw what had caught her attention. “There is a golden dragon in the valley,” he said. “Could that be Father?”

Shaking her head slowly, Aine said, “No, that dragon is not nearly as big as your father.”

“Then who could it be?”

“I do not know, but he and our cousins are setting the valley ablaze.”

“Is it time to come out of hiding?”

“Perhaps. For now, we will wait and see the outcome of this battle.”

“We are hungry, Mother.”

Looking at the valley again, the corners of her long mouth turned up. “We will eat soon, my hatchling. Go tell your brothers and sisters.”

***

After AAL and Amber rescued the cubs, she confronted Spartacus and Senator Warren. Amber killed Spartacus, tearing his beating heart from his chest. Before he died, he watched her rip into it with her fangs.

Warren begged for his life as he lay on the ground in front of Richard. Amber wanted to kill him, but Warren said it was Spartacus’s idea to abduct their cubs. He told them he could be a liaison between the humans and the kingdom.

To Amber’s irritation, Richard allowed Warren to leave, but not in the way Warren expected. Lowering his massive golden head in front of Warren’s, Richard said one word: Run!

Warren ran, and as he looked back, he saw the golden dragon blow a yellow fire ring in front of him. Screaming, he fell through the black center of the ring, and a moment later, he was in the relaxing room of his estate on the planet Pleiades, in the sector with the same name.

He had better keep his word to me, Richard thought.

Richard’s family was safe, but he was separated from them. Now a wing dragon, he was not allowed to live on Krel—or anywhere else in the kingdom. The air dragon world was the only place he could call home.

His heart heavy with longing for Amber and his children, Richard turned from the mouth of the cave. He wanted to weep, but his dragon body would not allow him. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut and buried his head under his wing, sighing so loudly that it seemed to shake the walls around him.

***

On the planet Pleiades, Warren met with the Federation’s senators to inform them of the new dragon threat.

Most of them did not believe him. The fact that he had been on Aries Prime that morning but now was back on his homeworld in the Pleiades sector gave them pause.

“I know much of my story seems beyond belief, but it is all true and just as terrifying as it sounds,” he said.

One senator stood. He was the same height as Warren, six foot two, with black hair and dark eyes. Warren sneered when he saw him. It was Senator Yoxall from the Arvalene sector. Yoxall was Warren’s rival, and the two men had always disliked each other. Yoxall’s hatred for Warren had only grown since King Spartacus picked him as his adviser.

“As all communication with Aries Prime has been severed, we have no proof that any of this is true. However, if Spartacus is dead, we will need a new king. I wish to be considered for the position.”

Warren frowned so deeply at this that his brow seemed to nearly split in two.

Yoxall boasted to the senators that he would be able to kill the boy king, unlike Spartacus, who had failed.

Warren wanted his sector to rejoin the kingdom. But before he set the wheels in motion, he would obtain evidence to support everything he had told the senators.

***

Back on his estate, Warren entered the hallway just as Chadwick walked out of the privy. “Chadwick, have my fastest ship readied. I wish to leave as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir. May I ask your destination?”

Warren strode past Chadwick, who turned and followed him. “Aries Prime,” said Warren. “I must show the Senate proof that what I said is true.”

“Is it safe to travel there? I fear for your safety, sir.”

“Fear for yours as well. You are coming with me.”

Chadwick stopped abruptly. Then, with a shake of his head, he hurried after his master again.