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of wrangling on Dira’s part to convince those at her mother’s bedside to allow such alien technology to come anywhere close to the dying queen’s frail body. In the end, reason, and the all too imminent death of their beloved queen, made them grant Dira permission. Her mother soon recovered and immediately went to work changing the monarchy to a more democratic form of government. Not interested in politics in the least, Dira was then free to return to the Alliance—to Jason—and resume her work as a medical doctor … a job she truly loved doing.
    They wasted no time getting aboard the shuttle. Grimes took her seat in the cockpit while Dira and Jason sat in the front seats, directly behind her, in the cabin. With the cabin open to the cockpit, Jason watched Grimes at the controls. She entered in the coordinates—to an area directly above the scrapyard on the surface—and activated a phase-shift. Everything flashed white. Jason looked out the observation window to his left and now saw the scrapyard a hundred feet below them, and his house nestled on the east side of the vast property. Grimes pulled back on the controls and the Perilous rapidly headed away from the surface. Within seconds, they’d reached Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Chapter 2
     
    Alchieves System
    Pharlom Command Warship
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    The Pharloms, as a race, were distinctive in looks and mannerisms. Even the Craing, who had come across thousands of different species and races over the centuries, had placed the Pharloms at the very top of the list—as one of the most bizarre.
    Leon Pike, a human, was born to two Earth parents who’d joined a younger Commander Perry Reynolds, some twenty-seven years earlier, to crew aboard an amazing Caldurian vessel named The Lilly . Leon’s parents were now long dead … and his home had always been open space. At only twenty-six, he went by the title of Merchant Trader, but in truth he was up for hire for any number of trades: intergalactic guide; bounty hunter; even a trader of black-market goods … on a rare occasion—if the terms were acceptable. But that didn’t mean Leon lacked a strong moral compass. Yes, he was a man with few personal allegiances, but the ones he did possess were quite strong. Leon didn’t steal from or cheat his friends, and he did his best not to sleep with their wives. He may have broken the latter rule several times lately, but he had made a conscious vow—a decree—to never, ever, let that happen again. That was four days ago.
    Leon held no allegiance to the Pharloms—none whatsoever. Being here now, on the command vessel’s bridge, sitting next to Mangga, the fleet’s Grand Overseer (equivalent to the rank of admiral), had been one big error in judgment.
    Leon wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought Mangga was looking at him. The Pharloms did not have faces, per se, in terms of the typical two eyes, nose, and mouth. They did have a head, but it looked more like a piece of granite than something organic. Composed of hundreds of sharp ridges, and just as many valley-like indentations, there simply was no way to know where, exactly, a Pharlom was looking. Although, of late, Leon thought he saw an eye, of sorts, located in the mid-section of Mangga’s head. So, nodding in that general direction, he gave back a tight-lipped smile and a curt nod.
    Leon tried to remember the course of the events that had put him here. That hiccup had come about using Dirinian middleman Jericho Goll, another human, but obviously one lacking any semblance of a moral compass of his own. Jericho had set the whole thing up—had come to Leon with what he’d described as a quick, in-and-out, two- or three-day planetary guide gig. An unnamed third party needed to traverse the ten-world Alchieves solar system. Not a simple process. Leon, though, had done it several times—mostly smuggling bendalli weed to the locals. The Tromians, who’d been raided many times over years past, had