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  It was time to put the final piece of our plan into motion. I toggled the ship-to-ship comms.

  “Gentlemen, put operation ‘Dog Catcher’ into motion.”

  “Roger that, Admiral.”

  The speaker was none other than one of our ace pilots, a rogue by the name of JM Robison, a.k.a ‘the Jam man’.

  “We have our net out and waiting for a little doggie to stop by.”

  The net in this case was a set of cloaked microsatellites that each contained two components: a radio and a powerful Higgs Field generator. Rather than inhibit a Higgs Field, they operated like our smaller enhanced KEWs and increased the effective mass of anything that came within their effective field of operation. To make things more exciting for any little doggies that fell into our trap… the field generators were set to toggle on and off at the rate of about ten times a second.

  Imagine sitting in a metal wheelbarrow being pushed down a rough gravel road while having a couple hundred pounds of cinderblocks resting on your chest. Think… uncomfortable. Our goal was to incapacitate whoever or whatever was piloting any Defiler craft we were fortunate enough to catch.

  My biggest worry was that we were constrained by the clock. I had given the planetary destruct order once the Gilboa cleared the space dock. That gave us a hard deadline to vacate the system in thirty minutes. We had already burned through twenty of those. In forty minutes, the Beta Cancri system was not going to be a place you wanted to be.

  I told Mike to get his Marines back on the boat or they were going to be left behind. Five minutes from our deadline everybody was back on board except for the Jam Man. It seemed at the last minute he had a stray wander into his trap. What the Higgs Field Inhibitor taketh away… the Higgs Field Enhancers giveth back.

  Eight minutes later a very concerned Admiral was pleased to hear that both dog catcher and little doggie were safely onboard. I issued the final order I ever would in this particular star system.

  “Punch it Chewie.”

  We entered Skip Space shortly before the biggest explosion to ever occur in this region of space consumed an entire world and slightly over one-hundred ships belonging to an enemy we had never met face to face. But, that at least, was about to change.

  ***

  “Crack ‘er open,” Colonel Morrison ordered. I was watching the grand unveiling from behind a class three force screen. Mike had flat out refused to let me get any closer. Mike and his team were geared up in Combat MEUs.

  Mitty, being a hologram… at least for the moment, was safe to watch from a position right next to the Marines. Through the magic of technology, that I wouldn’t even have been able to dream of when I graduated from the Space Academy, a group of us beyond the force-field watched the events unfold through Mitty’s holographic eyes. This group included Lori, Whiskers, Shella, Shelby and myself.

  The Defiler craft had been secured. A second, far more powerful forcefield, isolated the alien fighter from the rest of the ship… on the off chance it blew up.

  Every effort to communicate with the occupants of the ship was met with silence. With no other choice, the decision was made to force an entry into the ship.

  Mike’s team had been trained in this type of operation. Two of his bigger guys brought out what was affectionately called the can-opener. Think of it as a ‘jaws of life’ on steroids. They made short order of the singular man-sized hatch that we had found in the ship.

  With a clang that could be heard throughout the hanger, the hatch fell away. Mike quickly entered the craft with his weapon drawn.

  The longest two minutes of my life later the Marine exited the craft and walked over to my position.

  “They’re all dead,” he said dryly. “And Admiral, they’re human.”

  Epilog

  Three weeks later, the Gilboa was finally completely operational. Mitty had a new organic body and we had solved one great mystery only to have discovered a bigger one.

  Where had the Defilers come from? While it was true that they were originally of human stock, analysis of their genome showed a thirty percent hybridization with Neanderthal DNA.

  Somehow, in Earth’s distant past, aliens had visited our planet and made off with some of her inhabitants. The whys and hows remained a mystery. From our perspective, uncovering our enemy and discovering we were distant cousins was sobering.

  In some ways the news was good. I had every expectation that we would have a much better idea of how our adversaries thought… knowing they probably thought and reacted like us. On the other hand, it was disconcerting to learn the depths of depravity to which our kind could stoop.

  Of course, the final question… the one that would take me the better part of a year to even ask was… Who was pulling the strings behind the scene? I wouldn’t like the answer.

  *** This ends book one of the Boneyard Dog series ***

  Dog’s Adventures will continue in book number 2, “Mad Dog”

  Note to readers: Did you enjoy this book and want to see more of these adventures? Toss a positive Amazon review my way (as well as a bunch of stars) and let new readers know about my books. Positive reviews and ratings make a huge difference so please help!

  Copyright © 2018 by Andrew Beery. All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author. First Electronic Edition: March 2018

  Check out my other SCIFI series:

  The Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles (9 books)

  The Infinity Brigade (3 books)