ARC OF THE IMMORTALS: Book 1 — Pursuit

Chapter 5 — Kilo*

“Twelve minutes to kilonovae*. I sure hope you know what you’re doing Jac.” Touzdae paused. He was absent, gone. “Jac? Jac?”

Jac stood atop a hillock of green grasses. The sun was an orange-purple in a late afternoon sky, which was a partial mirror for the lake and the river below. He looked down at the lake from the sky’s landscape above. A woman in a long flowing dress rose from her chair underneath the tree and glided to Jac. She moved up beside him and took his hand in hers. They were on the ground. He was disoriented, having been in the sky. The sky became only the sky again.

“Jac? Jac? Where are you? Jac…” Touzdae called from a faraway place.

“You didn’t have to come here, I would have come to you. You should be fully there,” Nez said to Jac.

“I know Fish, but I want to talk to you about what we’re about to do.”

“Die?”

“I hope not. But… I will have to put you into stasis while we’re inside the kilonovae. For your protection, of course.”

A tiny dot appeared within the purple sun. It emerged and blossomed. It became larger revealing itself as an elegant sail vessel on the river reflected in the sky. Jac laughed, Fish has a sense of humor, he thought. It descended out of the sky and landed on the hillside like a gigantic fish whose mouth had opened.

Fish took Jac’s hand and lead him through the mouth of the fish. They rose up out of the Pool of Life in the main salon and became crows flying upwards into the sky around the tree of life. Jac’s spirit re-materialized in his body in the melding chair. Fish’s spirit receded into the surrounding space.

The edge of the two stars’ merging corona appeared. The transdimensional warp tube formed. The Fish elongated as Jac’s melding chair stretched. Time and the Fish slowed in their approach to the corona. As the two stars exploded time began to resume its normal pace.

Jac sank deeper into the melding chair, which grew sleek, and a huge bubble appeared over the chair.

The Fish burrowed into the edge of the jump tube. The guppy-shaped fish grew thin. Gelatinous globe-looking material embedded in a viscous liquid swallowed the thin Fish. Sparkled vibrating flecks covered the gel and the Fish.

The melding chair returned to normal and Jac reappeared. The windows in the bridge dimmed with the shields as the heat outside increased.

“Heat shields are holding. This is working so far.” Touzdae.

“I thought this was a nova. Wasn’t it?” Harry asked nervously. Touzdae, “Not now Harry.”

Jac turned to Touzdae:

“We may have to inject the entire cooling system into Fish’s Shield to survive the heat.” Jac.

“Won’t that kill Fish?” Touzdae.

“Not if she’s in stasis”.

“Oh, my Spirits. That means we’ll have to run the ship manually. We’ll never keep everything going.”

“It won’t be as difficult as it sounds. We’ll cut life support and wear O-Two packs. Gravity support will be nil on the ship except here, and gravity boots for the rest of the ship. I want you to go to the Central Hub with your pack and get ready to execute that order if I have to give it. Okay?”

“Assuming this all works and you have to eject the water, what will we do once we’re out of the kilonovae’s field? Won’t we need water for Fish then?” Touzdae.

“If it doesn’t evaporate in the outer shield we can pump it back in using the emergency backup generators. If it evaporates then we’re in trouble. But I have a couple of ideas in the clouds of mystery. Solar sails for power until we find a water source.”

“What about Pursuer?”

“He’ll have to go around the kilonovae, which will give us a four to six-week lead. Then we’ll have time to make a strategy to capture him.”

Jac opened a locker in a bulkhead and began to remove the O-Two and Gravity Boot Packs.

“Can’t you just look into one of your futures and get a good one for us?” Harry asked.

Jac snorted and laughed.

“This is the one place where Jac’s powers don’t work.” Touzdae.

Harry grunted.

Jac handed a pack to Touzdae and one to Harry. She slipped it on.

“Put this on. The Communicator is active as soon as you fit the mouthpiece. A bubbled visor will release automatically in an emergency.”

Touzdae disappeared through the hatch. Jac and Harry fitted themselves with the mouthpieces. Jac positioned himself at a locked control box.

“At last, sleep… Take care of me, Jac. Ah…” Fish joked.

Jac opened the box and punched in the code on the key path and the lights dimmed.

Fish’s prerecorded voice announced: “Sleep Mode on. Autonomic functioning online.”

“I’m at the control hub. Everything is fine here. Everything within normal limits,” Touzdae’s voice came through the com-system.

“Got it,” Jac clipped.

Large glowing orange spheres surrounded Nez Fish as she skimmed through the skin of the warp tube. The inside of the tube began to glow red.

Harry looked at Jac sheepishly:

“So what happens now?”

“We sit tight and wait.”

The Fish yawed and jerked. Jac shot down the hatch as he “heard” Touzdae “yelp”.

“What was that? Where are you going? What’s happening?” Harry’s voice jerked out.

Touzdae screamed as a short thin slimy creature attacked her. The brown eel-like creatures swarmed the central processor-brain of the Fish.

A brown eel-like creature penetrated her arm and impaled her to the wall. Her body yanked free of the deck, her veins turned purple beneath her skin. She vomited green liquid, struggling against the creatures.

Jac slowed time as he entered the passageway. He was overcome with thousands of brown eel-type creatures. They milked out of Crul Bahj’s cell through molecular holes dug through the metal. He moved through them like a liquid jet in one swift light streamer to the end of the passage. He slipped through the atomic structure of the sealed hatch into the central hub in one movement. It closed behind him. Jac flew into the room examined the hub in one sweep and exited. He slammed the hatch shut as one of the creatures went for his neck in altered time. Jac’s visor shut and the creature blocked. He examined the hatch for molecular holes.

“Ah.” He activated a green beam from his third eye and altered the structure of the hatch. “It’s electrostatically sealed. That will keep them from burrowing.”

Jac pressed his hands together in a meditative pose and time slowed again close to a stop. He looked at the hatch to Crul Bahj’s holding cell and the surrounding bulkhead. He saw the structure as too weak to seal using light.

Instead, he unlocked the hatch into Crul Bahj’s holding cell with a manual turning key device. Using all his strength the hatch opened into the hold. It was almost a solid brown mass of creatures inside. He removed two charges from his backpack and suspended them in the weightless chamber. And he set the timers. He stepped out into the corridor and sealed the hatch.

In a second, he entered normal time releasing the first timer. He ducked back into a variable flux time step-down. He oscillated began between wave and particle. Crul Bahj hunkered into stasis a microsecond before the first charge detonated. Bahj eluded destruction. It remained balled in stasis.

The first charge exploded. The blast sprayed a mist that coated the entire inside of the room with electrostatic foam. The second timer activated. It exploded and killed the brown eel-type creatures inside the chamber.

Jac moved back through the corridor to the Hub. He opened a locker and fitted himself in a hard-shielded exo-space suit. He checked the hatch as time started to speed up. He pressed his palms together and slowed it again. In the weightless chamber, Jac swam through the stilled swarm of creatures. Grabbing the handholds he made his way towards Touzdae.

She floated limp and lifeless, covered with brown eel creatures. Her flesh pierced in many places. Jac examined her blackened and bulging skin.

*Jac forced two neutron stars — already close to merging to collide when he induced neuron bursts from the Fish. A kilonovae is when two neutron stars collide or one neuron star goes into a black hole.

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