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 |  Preview Chapters to Book 3 of The Hannaria Series (Sci-fi) Published June 2010 |
| Novel Description: While scrambling to protect their human allies on Earth, Jernard and his family race to find evidence against another Hannarian with intentions to kill them--and who has manipulating the EIP in order to accomplish his larger goals. Introduction by Jernard December 6th, 2300; 4:23 A.M. Chicago, Illinois “Hey,” Keith Fynn said in a quiet tone as he opened his townhouse’s front door. “Do you want to come inside and warm up a minute? Katie’s still trying to decide on some last-minute things, but we have the essentials packed.” I hesitated for a moment, looking around at the snow-covered sidewalks and listening for anything suspicious. Other than the early morning traffic, the neighborhood seemed peaceful. With the way things had been going however, this meant nothing. We didn’t have a lot of time. “Maybe I can help,” I replied as I stepped inside. “If she’s debating about which toys to take with her, I think there’s enough room in the trunk for—“ I stopped, startled by what I saw. Their entire living room was a wreck—all the furniture overturned and everything that should have been on the walls now scattered across the floor. Keith’s stereo system was busted into shards, and the room’s two inlaid monitors had cracks in their screens like they’d been hit with a baseball bat. “I take it you did your own redecorating?” I asked, noticing the broad smile on his face. “Clever idea, but I still have one question.” His smile faded as I walked over to the couch, shaking the glass free from a broken picture frame and taking out a wedding photo of him and his wife Kim. “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” he said. “Not in front of Katie.” “Keith, if she doesn’t come with us now, I can’t guarantee—“ I started, but just then Katie came around the corner. “Hi!” she said, holding a pink duffel bag in one hand and some kind of fluffy yellow stuffed animal in the other. “I think I’m ready now.” I couldn’t help but feel happy just at the sight of her. About an inch of her own thick black hair was sticking out all over her head, and she looked alert and healthy compared to the last time I’d seen her. “She’s been in remission for almost a month now—no complications,” Keith said as I crouched down to where I was eye-level with her. “I can’t wait to thank the rest of your medical team in person.” “Do you remember me, Katie?” I asked, and she pointed a finger toward my eyes—almost poking me in the eye in the process. “Sorry, but I don’t have an on/off switch for those. Who’s your friend?” She held up the stuffed animal again, and an involuntary shudder rippled through me because it had eight legs. “It’s Spivey,” she replied like she was appalled I didn’t already know, but then she laughed at my confused expression. “Spivey the Spider eats all kinds of bugs. Spivey the Spider gives you lots of—hugs and kisses...” She shoved the thing toward my face, and part of my brain started to track its plastic eyes like it was a legitimate threat. I leaned back and caught myself on my fingertips, making sure I was calm before I moved again. “Oh, that’s very nice,” I replied, jumping up as fast as I could and backing away from her. “Spivey is going to ride in the trunk where there are a lot of bugs for him to eat…” She frowned at this, and when I turned around Keith was giving me a strange look. “Let me get this straight,” he said, trying to hold back from laughing but not doing a good job of it. “You can go up against an entire army of reptilian monsters without a trace of fear, but you’re terrified of stuffed animals? You do realize it isn’t real, right?” “Keith, I don’t like spi—“ I started to say, but Katie was now staring at me with a hurt expression “Spies—I don’t like spies, so we need to get out of here. What can I carry?” “I think we’re good if you could just get the door,” Keith replied, slinging a large duffel bag over his shoulder and grabbing Katie’s booster seat. “You want me to drive? You look kind of tired.” I held the door open as he exited and kept watch on Katie as she followed behind him. “I was in a coma for over a week, Keith. If I could be any more rested, I’d be dead.” He nodded but smiled again. “All right. I just figured if you were asleep that you wouldn’t have to worry about…” He started humming Spivey’s theme song, and I rolled my eyes. “I used to believe it was odd that a nice person like you could have so many enemies,” I said, reaching into my jacket pocket and tossing him my car keys. “Now I don’t wonder so much.” “I think I inherited most of my enemies,” he replied, opening the back passenger door and leaning inside to install the booster seat. “If it wasn’t for—“ I heard the loud click come from a rooftop across from us, and I pushed both Keith and Katie down to the sidewalk just as the shot hit the back glass of the car. Katie shrieked, and Keith had to hold on to her as she started to reach for the stuffed spider—which was now a foot beyond what little protection we had with the car. “They’re going to shoot him, Daddy!” Katie cried in frustration, trying to squirm out of Keith’s grip like it was her best friend in danger. “I—“ “Look, I’ll save him,” I interrupted, worried she was going to break free. “Just stay with your dad, all right?” I took a deep breath as I crawled under the car then grabbed for Spivey’s closest leg—pulling my hand away just before the second shot almost hit it. I managed to grab it while the sniper reloaded for a third try. “EIP?” Keith asked, but I shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I replied, handing him the toy. “I hate to say this, but they tend to be better shots. I don’t know—“ Just then I heard the crack of someone being punched, and a man groaned. “I got him, Jernard!” Wynn shouted down to us, and I was able to rise up enough to see him on a rooftop breaking the man’s rifle apart. “Hang on—I’ll be down there in a minute!” Instead of taking the stairs, he opted to climb down the building’s exterior—something I would’ve done at his age but that made me uneasy watching him do. I kept glancing around until he reached us, thankful that the sniper had been alone. “Are you all right?” I asked Keith, noticing his grip on Katie was now almost as tight as her grip on Spivey. “Come on. We’ll take your truck until we can switch to something else.” Keith’s new truck was a quad-cab and bright red—problematic because it stood out. The four of us hurried and piled into it, Keith and me taking the front while Wynn figured out Katie’s seat on the way. “Why did you risk doing that?” Wynn asked me in Hannarian not long after we were on the road and settled. “It was just a toy.” “It isn’t to her,” I replied then turned around in my seat to face him. “Now if it’d been real, I’d have shot it myself. I—” “For what it’s worth, thank you,” Keith interrupted, taking his eyes off the road a moment to look at me. “It’s good to have friends—even if they’re not human. I just wish Kim could understand that…” “She doesn’t like Spivey either?” I asked, but he shook his head like he wasn’t in a joking mood. “Look, if Kim has a problem with us, just let me explain everything. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her just because—“ “She won’t be coming with us no matter what you say,” he interrupted, and I decided to drop the issue until I could talk to him alone. “Where are we heading?” I brought up his truck’s GPS and programmed Olemdi’s location. It was stationary since Fost knew we were on our way. “We’re going to need your help with something—but only if you want to do it,” I replied. “Would you be up for it?” “To stop these people?” he asked as he pressed on the gas pedal. “Anything.” Introduction by Paronis December 6th, 2300; 5:32 A.M. Washington, D.C. “So explain to me again why we’re doing reconnaissance in a food court?” Andrew asked in a skeptical tone, holding up the pretzel I’d just bought him. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with these, would it?” I grinned and nodded, and he laughed. Even though he looked a lot like his father, Andrew was a very different kid to train compared to Jernard. Considering he’d never known a time when our lives weren’t in danger, Andrew was much more obedient—almost to the point I wanted him to relax a little. “I also got word that the EIP has a new headquarters in the Pizza Palace across the street,” I replied, spotting us a table with a decent vantage point. “We can go verify that around lunch time.” This made him look down at his DMR, and he glanced back up at me with a concerned expression. “You only have about forty-five minutes,” he whispered. “If you need to go early, I can wait here until—“ “Ashner will be here soon,” I interrupted, but his expression didn’t change. “I’ll feel it coming if it hits earlier, so don’t worry.” He nodded and forced a smirk at we both sat down. “Have you ever scared people on purpose?” he asked, and he looked somewhat disappointed when I shook my head. “Have you ever scared people by accident?” “Just your parents, but that was a long time ago,” I replied, but he leaned forward on the table like he wanted more details. “I don’t know if they want me telling you that story yet. Maybe another time.” He took a bite of his pretzel and grew quiet—for an entire two seconds. “Do you think Yonus and Wynn will ever be able to cure you?” he asked with his mouth full. “The fact that you can change back at all is a good sign, right?” I took a bite of my own pretzel in the middle of his question and took my time chewing. The saltiness of it was very concentrated but not unpleasant, but I went for a drink of soda to buy myself more time to think of a response. “I believe I won’t be like this forever, even if it takes some time to find a cure,” I replied, wishing we were on another topic. “Let’s just eat before you get the name ‘Question Boy’ for the rest of your life, all right?” He half-smiled at the idea, but then he frowned like something was still bothering him. “I do have one more question I want to ask you before you leave,” he said in a serious tone, glancing down at the table for a moment then back up at me. “I overheard you and Dad talking about Glaven this morning. Do you know why he wants to kill us? Mom and Dad won’t tell me, but I just want to understand why he hates us so much.” I hesitated, debating for a moment on how to explain it to him without getting too graphic with the details. “It’s really not a personal issue with us,” I replied, but this seemed to confuse him. “Have you ever been angry about one thing, but you take it out on someone or something else just because it’s nearby?” “Yeah,” he replied, but he hesitated for a moment. “So you’re saying Glaven is really angry about something else, but he’s trying to kill us because we’re in his way?” I nodded. “Ashner and I were both younger than you when it happened, but Glaven’s entire family was killed by an infected creature during one of the first attacks on the colonies,” I replied, and Andrew cringed. “He was on Hannaria at the time—some kind of diplomatic meeting—so when he came home…to be honest, I think the same situation would’ve broken something in my mind, too.” Andrew stared at me for a moment then sighed. “Can someone just help him like you helped Dad?” he asked, but before I could answer I saw him glance past me. “Hi, Ashner.” “Hey, Andrew,” he replied then turned his attention to me. “You’d better get out of here before people start asking for our autographs.” “What?” I asked in confusion, but Andrew started laughing. “You two look like you’d be the world’s tallest twins if you were human,” he explained, and I nodded that I got it. “Did you spend all night thinking that one up?” I asked Ashner as I stood up and let him have my seat, and he handed me his truck’s keys. “One day you may even work your way up to completing an actual joke without Andrew having to explain it for you.” “The tank’s full, and everything’s in working order,” he replied in a firm tone, ignoring my entire comment. “Please return it the same way.” “All right,” I said, hanging my head down like I was disappointed. “I was planning on running out the fuel and driving it off a cliff, but if you insist…” He rolled his eyes at me then turned to Andrew. “The terrifying thing is he used to outrank me,” he whispered like I couldn’t hear him. “I believe the promotion was to get him behind a desk so he’d stop breaking things faster than our enemies.” By this point, Andrew was giving us both strange looks—wondering if Ashner and I disliked each other as much as we seemed or if it was all just banter. I took my DMR out of my jacket and looked at the time. “Well, I need to go,” I said, holding my hand out to Ashner. “Try not to bore the kid too much, all right?” “At least I’ll keep him out of trouble,” he replied then grinned for a brief moment. Be careful, Brother. You, too. I turned and started toward the spaceport’s exit, and Andrew realized that the ‘no more questions’ rule no longer applied. “So what would happen if Paronis read your mind the same time you were trying to read his mind?” I paused around the corner, wondering how Ashner was going to answer this one. “It would create an endless feedback of mind-reading that would result in our brains exploding,” Ashner lied but in a serious tone. “Now finish your pretzel, Question Boy.” “How did you know—“ Andrew started, but he got out of range where I could hear him. I found the truck and made it back to our nearest safe house with plenty of time to spare, but I still felt a wave of dread hit me as I sat down on the couch and waited. Turning on the monitor as a distraction, I kept surfing the news channels until I found one that caught my interest. “—that the army of ships the Hannarians stopped was hostile,” Dr. Ryan Duka said in a firm tone despite the smug glare the interviewing reporter was giving him. “The overall situation is very complex—considering these reptilian creatures have been warring among themselves as well. Not all of them have bad intentions toward us, but there’s a core group with plans to take over Earth and the rest of this sector if they can gain the opportunity. What happened with those ships just delayed the conflict—maybe even for our lifetimes—but I don’t believe this is over.” “That’s according to the Ambassador,” the reporter added then leaned forward in his chair. “In the millions of years that we know about, these creatures have never shown any indication of wanting to cross over into our region of space until the Hannarians made their own move toward Earth—and toward their border line. Who’s to say they weren’t attempting to defend their families and got slaughtered by the Ambassador for their trouble?” Duka was quiet for a moment then rose up out of his seat. “This isn’t news, Gary,” he said in an angry tone. “It’s bull—“ The station went blank then cut to a commercial, and I sighed and closed my eyes as the scales began to overtake me. About the Author: Sci-fi novelist Patricia Gilliam is the author of The Hannaria Series: Out of the Gray (2009), Legacy (2009), No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (2010), and Something Like the Truth (2012). She has also written over 1,000 non-fiction articles and 40 fiction short stories since 2006. Outside of writing, she operates a broadcast camera for the Christian television show "Power of the Word" in the Knoxville, TN area. She and her husband Cory have been married since May 2005. They have two dachshunds (J.D. and Turk) and adopted a retired racing greyhound named Lucius Malfoy ("Mal") in 2009. Book 5 in The Hannaria Series, Where the Oasis Blooms, will be available in ebook and paperback format in early 2013. Links: Amazon Author Page  Facebook Author Page Shelfari.com Page for The Hannaria Series Product Links: (Note: Buying any book through these links also helps support Writing.com as opposed to going to Amazon directly. Also check for sale prices, which aren't always reflected because of how these links are generated. Thank you!)
Description information and preview chapters for Books 1 and 2 can be found at these links:
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