Saving Armont
Saving Armont is a trilogy and you can't possibility know what the cause of all the chaos is unless you read the last volume to the end. I bet you will not be able to guess what is causing the problems. It's worth reading to find out.
Total Annihilation
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It’s fifty-three hundred years in the future, and the human race has expanded throughout the galaxy. Thousands of planets that were colonized in the twenty-second century, and then left to develop on their own, are just reaching their 5th millennium, and the civilized maturity that will make them eligible for membership in the Galactic Federation. But there is evidence that these colonies are being systematically destroyed, leaving no trace of human presence.
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5th Millennium tells the story of the crew from the Planetary Observation Department. Their mission is to find a colony planet that is in the midst of a catastrophic loss of population -- and go down to the surface and find the reason. They find G8467, known to the inhabitants as Armont, and crash land in the Barcal Sea region, by the village of Comrix.
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The survey crew from the Galactic Federation are products of the most sophisticated technological society in the galaxy. But the world they are thrust into is filled with myth and magic. I struggled with the concept of showing their technological know-how without them having all of the power they normally would have at their disposal. Thus the crash, and Darryl Fong’s knapsack. He has a few items, but constantly wishes he had his full deployment of weapons.
Speaking of Darryl, I had no idea that he would meet the person he hated most of his life before I started the story. This piece in the story line was not part of my outline. And for him to be so closely connected to this person for the group’s survival is something that just came out of a conversation. It was as much of a surprise to me as it was for them.
And the secret held between Lou and Phil came as a surprise to me also. Lou is not what she appears to be. While she looks like a young girl in her early twenties, Lou is a scientist who has performed numerous planetary evaluations over many decades. She and her fellow planetary observer, Dr. Philip Bender have a secret very few people know about - not even Spaulding and Fong. This secret could mean the difference between success and failure for this mission.
And for Philip Bender the secret will mean his own death. Locked in his body is a strange metabolic process that is slowly killing him. Bender is far more than he appears in many ways. He holds the key to the success of this mission and his inner strength will be one of the keys to overcoming the malevolent forces that strangle Armont.
“Annihilation” is the first of the trilogy, “Saving Armont.” There is far more to freeing this planet from the evil that engulfs it than simply killing the Evil One that now controls it.
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Retired Galactic Fleet Commander, Henry (Hank) Spaulding, has come on this survey as a favor to a friend at Galactic Fleet HQ. Not happy about being there in the beginning, he seeks the truth of the situation on Armont and becomes the group's true leader, and the champion of the people of Armont.
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Dr. Philip Bender the Planetary Anthropologist for the survey is a small man, dying of a strange physiological phenomenon resulting from too many hours spent in hyper space. He looks like a young man in his early twenties, but in reality is over a hundred and forty years old.
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Dr. Lou Landers is a Medical doctor and Dr. Bender's close associate for more than forty years. Lou is the planetary physiologist charged with analyzing the changes in human and animal life on the planets. Lou also looks like she is in her twenties, but is actually over ninety years old.
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Major Darryl Fong is a member of the Galactic Stealth Force. He was assigned to this mission by his commanding officer, and is the warrior of the group. His small backpack of necessities contains the only high-tech items the team is able to save from their crashed, burning ship.
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Jesta is a mysterious woman of Armont. She possesses strange powers of magic that help the team from POD challenge and conquer the evil menace of Armont.
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Orran is a giant of a man, in both size and heart. He works as the blacksmith/armorer, but is in reality the duke of SpiritHeart, and becomes the leader of the people of the Barcal region.
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And Then Cam Daug
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It had been two months since the battle at Hemlar. Life was getting back to normal. Lou frowned as she stared down the hill at a small figure in the dirt. It was some type of rodent! Life was starting to return. She jumped to her feet and ran toward the creature as it darted into a hole a half foot away. She stopped and gazed down at the hole, and broke into laughter. The animals were coming back. They had never left.
But then they realized there was a problem. These were rodents and they were breeding fast. She told the other members of the team what she had seen and then it hit her. Using the ship's computer system she calculated that they only had three or four months before they would be completely overrun by these rodents . There was no food chain between the rodents and the humans. The larger animals had not come back. They were the ones that had been mutated into the beasts. If they couldn’t create the chain, the human population would be overwhelmed. They must find a way to create that food chain.
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Klempt says he knows where the the genetic tissue bank is for the entire animal kingdom. After a long search they finally find the bank. They start the long process of regenerating the first plants and animals. Klempt follows the process for regeneration explained in the data files for three plants. It takes two days before he and Lou are able to study the specimens. Klempt shakes his head, smiles. They are all progressing just fine. What they needed to do next was find an animal they could regenerate.
Klempt found a group that he thought would do fine. They were called daugs. He knew what a daug was because he had one when he was a young boy. He read the descriptions of daugs and found one that fit their experiment. It was a small daug that would only grow to be ten pounds.
When the daug had broken free of its sack and Lou was able to examine it she found differences from what she would have expected from other dogs she had known, but then she was a medical doctor, not a veterinarian.
Lou watched the daug grow much faster than she could have imagined and finally decided to leave the lab and watch the daug’s progression by way of the monitor they had set up in the lab.
When the daug developed hands, with fingers that could manipulate the lab equipment it opened the cryo storage units and searched the vials. It pulled certain ones out and started them in the regeneration unit. Finally satisfied, it turned and walked toward the door. When it walked out of the lab it put everyone at risk. For the team had just created an intelligent monster. Now they had to stop it from destroying everything in its path.
Tyranny Brought to a Halt
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It had been six months since Daug had threatened Armont and two weeks ago Phil and Lou Bender had decided they would visit the city to the west of Barcal. On the way they were met by a man calling himself Daniel Morse. He claimed to be the gatekeeper for the barrier that surrounded the area that had been infected with mutant life.
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Morse told Phil and Lou that they had to return home and that they would never be able to go outside of the barrier the World Council had created around the area. That’s when Phil contacted Darryl and sent him a copy of the vid he had made during their interview with Morse.
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The trio had been through much together. They had faced two powerful predators on Armont - Gyllu and Daug, both somehow controlled by an entity known as The One. Now they found they were prisoners of a body called the World Council, whatever that was.
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They needed to find a way through the barrier and confront the World Council. Darryl find the way through the barrier and they group moves into Lommar, only to find that the small rodent have started mutate. It was starting again. Who was behind this change?