Precious Cargo

Chapter 1

Inside a make shift home lab that was previously a cellar, a lone female figure was seen working. She was surrounded by plants of all kinds. On the tables beakers and lab utensils were strewn all over. The female figure is looking through a microscope, deeply engrossed in her work.

'C'mon. C'mon,' she said quietly to herself, eyes scanning the magnified image through the scope. 'Yes!' she let out a triumphant cry and a wide smile formed on her lips. She stepped back from the scope and took a couple of steps backwards. She allowed her slender figure to slump onto an old sofa that she knew was just behind her. Her long dark brunette hair settled into a messy heap on the head rest. She looked up at the old dirty ceiling of the dimly lit basement that she was in, unable to stop from smiling. Her green eyes sparkled with delight before she closed them and heaved a long, deep breath.

She had succeeded. The formula worked. Her hard work had paid off. She pumped both of her hands into the air and let out another victorious cry of 'Yes!'.

After a couple of minutes of idleness, she picked herself up from the sofa and headed to her desk. She flipped on her tablet and set it onto the docking station. She started to type rapidly. She needs to document down her steps before she forgot. As she was typing, a red icon flashed on her tablet and an urgent beep was heard. It was a danger alert.

'What the..?' she uttered, puzzled.

Quickly she hit the icon and another app appeared on the screen. Her eyes widened in horror when she saw what was displayed. Her sensors had detected an unknown spaceship entering the earth's atmosphere almost directly above the house she was in. She jumped up from her desk, grabbed her binoculars and ran up the stairs.

She bolted out from the cellar into the backyard and her eyes frantically searched the clear night sky. Nothing can be seen with the naked eye.

She raised her binoculars and scanned the sky with it. Inside the binoculars, the HUD signalled where the craft was. She quickly centred the scope on it and pressed a button to magnify the view.

Her eyes widened in horror as she recognized the craft now shown on the magnified view.

'Ethereals!' she muttered to herself. 'How did they find this planet?' she voiced the question in her head. Just as she was about to lower the binoculars she saw a bay door on the UFO opening. As she watched what emerged from it, she gasped.

'An anti-matter missile? It's not possible!' she screamed as she watched the missile being fired and raced directly towards her.

'No! No! No!' she cried as she lowered the binoculars. She could see the bright streak of the oncoming missile with her bare eyes now. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her knees crumbled and hit the ground. She had to brace the ground with her hands to keep herself from falling flat onto the soil.

'I was so close! So close!' she screamed at the ground, tears dropping uncontrollably.

Then the explosion hit. A bright flash of light shot past before the sonic wave hit and all around her turned to hell. She was flung into the air. She shielded her eyes with her right hand and screamed as she was tossed through the air like a rag doll. Then she felt the searing heat from the explosion and she fell. Just as she was about to lose all senses the whole thing went quiet and the air became still.

She quickly opened her eyes and saw her room ceiling staring back at her. Her eyes darted left and right. It was her room. No doubt about it. She noticed her breath came in short gasps. She took a second before realizing that it was all a nightmare. With her breathing still ragged, she ran a hand over her face, wiping beads of sweat off it.

Having slowed her breathing, she sat up on the bed and took another look around. Her room was quiet and peaceful. She leapt off the bed and ran to her desk across from the foot of her bed. She quickly picked up her tablet and turned it on. Her usual tablet wallpaper greeted her. She scanned the device for any alert icons. There were none.

Heaving a sigh of relief, she pulled out her chair and slowly sat down. She replaced her tablet onto the desk and turned off the display as she sank onto the desk, resting her head on her hands.

'It's only a nightmare, Tia,' she consoled herself quietly. 'Only a nightmare...' and she sobbed quietly for a few minutes.

Tia then sat up straight and flicked on the table lamp on her desk. The light fell on the numerous pieces of paper scattered on top of the wooden desk. Tia sighed. She slowly collected the papers and returned them to their files. It was her work and it was unfinished. In her dreams, she had always finished the task. She had always found the solution but that was in her dreams. In reality, she had gotten close. So many times she thought she had succeeded but the final piece of the puzzle still eluded her.

She sighed. 'Patience Tia,' she said quietly to herself as she organized her desk slowly. 'You will find the solution. It's just a matter of time,' Tia went on as she picked up the pens and pencils, returning them to the holder. Her hand brushed onto the clock that was lying face down. She picked it up and it said the time was 5:53 AM. The sun will be rising soon.

Putting the clock back to its rightful place on the desk, Tia got up and walked towards the window. She spread the curtains apart and a beautiful country side landscape greeted her. The skies were just starting to brighten. Streaks of orange were leaking out from the horizon, slowly turning the dark skies to a shade of deep blue.

Tia looked towards the woods some distance away from her country side house. She smiled. The forest of earth reminded her so much of the forests back on her home planet Skooria, half a galaxy away. Skooria was a planet with lush forests but that was before the great war with the Ethereals started. The war lasted a better part of a decade when the Skoorians finally won. The price of victory however was very high. Apart from the death of countless soldiers and civilians, Skooria had become a barren planet. Her lush forests were completely decimated. That was because the Skoorians unleashed their most powerful weapon, the anti-matter bomb. It wiped out Ethereal's invasion force but it also wiped out most of the plant life on Skooria. Only tuffs of rough grass could grow. There were no more trees. Skooria had become something of a savannah planet. It was no longer an ideal place to inhabit. Most of the Skoorians have left the planet and ventured to other parts of the galaxy.

Tia or T'aala, had vowed to restore Skooria to its former glory. She had scoured the planetary systems to find a suitable planet that had forests that are similar to those of Skooria and she had found earth. The earth trees are a little different from those found on Skooria but their DNA is compatible. Tia had settled on earth and started her research to modify the plants on earth to suit the conditions on Skooria. That was decades ago. She had come a long way and her research was almost complete. Tia knew that she could crack the code. Then she can bring the newly genetically modified plants back to Skooria and they can start the process to re-populate Skooria with plant life.

The sky was brightening. Tia inhaled deeply as she watched the sun rising. Earth was a beautiful planet. In some ways Tia found that earth to be more beautiful than Skooria. 'If you can't crack the code, you can always stay here for the rest of your life,' she mused to herself. She then shook her head as if to shake the crazy thought out of her mind.

She headed for the bathroom for a shower. Although Tia was hundreds of earth years old, under the Skoorian aging scale, Tia was still a young adult not much different than humans in their mid-twenties. Her body reflected it. She had a curvaceous body of a fit female human and can be considered to be well endowed when it comes to the mammary glands or boobs, as the humans had taken to calling them.

Skoorians were not too far apart anatomically from humans and having some shape shifting abilities, Tia could easily blend in with the humans and raised no suspicions whatsoever.

After undressing, she turned on the shower and stepped in. Tia liked the feel of water running over her and she took her time. She knew she had another long day of research ahead of her but she was in no hurry. Little did she know that as she enjoyed her shower, a small scouting UFO had entered the earth's atmosphere on the other side of the globe. It was an Ethereal craft.