Huana Marsh was ready and eager for an assignment off world as a seeker for the star Dekkar. Imbued with his power, she sets off to find the lost world of H’skar, origin world of the Hashka. Yaedo, the security officer for the temple is her chaperone and bodyguard and after a few days in his company, Huana knows why. Dekkar has selected her perfect mate and has locked him in a shuttlecraft with her. Since her body is demanding the attentions of its mate, their assignment is going to get a lot more complicated before it simplifies.
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Caress of the Stars
Copyright © 2011 Viola Grace
ISBN: 978-1-55487-940-3
Cover art by Martine Jardin
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Caress of the Stars
A Hashka Chronicle
By
Viola Grace
Prologue
The darkness of space had been filled with searching minds.
Having left their bodies behind, the minds of the newly evolved race experienced everything by watching the races that their group consciousness drifted past, millions of minds acted as one. For thousands of years, they watched species grow and flourish, simply remaining in their invisible cloud until a growing dissent appeared in their midst.
Three thousand of the gathered minds were tired of their aimless existence and wished to take a more active role in the lives of the species around them. An unseen civil war took place and two thousand five hundred minds separated from their energy mass, taking up residence in a quiet star system.
Now that they were alone, they had time to plan for what they wanted in a species to call their own.
The stars planned out a sturdy race, blue skin that was sensitive to the touch but difficult to pierce. They could survive on any of the occupied worlds without requiring life support, their lungs able to process a number of gasses into a usable form.
The minds of the species was a matter for some debate and finally, they came upon the idea of creating a lobe in the brains that would allow the stars to visit any of their people at any time.
One of the females brought up the problem that while they had designed an intelligent and worthy people, there was no guarantee that they would not die out in less than a generation, so they needed to work in an incentive to mate.
They discussed the remembered senses that they used to have and it was in agreement that they would create signals that the males and females could not ignore. The females would go into heat and receptive males would scent it. To let the female know she had found a good match, the voice of an appropriate male would intensify her heat.
With their list of what they did and did not want in a species, they now needed to craft it. Their thoughts and attentions turned in two directions. One group sought technologically advanced species who would be able to create the race. The others sought a race of sufficient population that a few thousand folk plucked at random would not be noticed.
A human colony abandoned in a dead sector contained a population that was trapped and slowly dying, using up their supplies as time passed, fit the bill for building blocks of their ideal race.