ARC OF THE IMMORTALS: Book 1 — Pursuit

Chapter 6.1 — Through

‘This is bad. This is bad,’ he thought. He ripped open a panel and pulled out installation batting and wrapped it around Touzdae. Using the electrical wiring he tied the batting loosely around her lifeless body.∞

ARC OF THE IMMORTALS: Book 1 — Pursuit

Chapter 6.1 — Through

[scenes of violence]

“I can’t hold this much longer. I can’t hold this time-space continuum much longer.” He caught himself — talking to himself as he had before the accident in the Levelz. He smiled.

He made his way through the sea of brown eel creatures to the bottom of the Brain of the Fish. He lifted a heavy circular grate and put it aside. He opened two panels and placed the electrical charge detonators.

The charges fired as he put himself into an alternating phase between dimensions to avoid electrocution. Thousands of bolts of lightning flashed out killing the creatures in great numbers. Jac phased rapidly in and out of the space-time continuum. The batting around Touzdae’s body absorbed the strikes and fried the creatures. The chamber filled with their screeching deaths. Jac felt regret and sadness.

It ceased abruptly. The creatures were dead.

Touzdae’s body twirled from the strikes. The metal space suit smoldered from the lightning hits. Jac pushed up off the bottom wounded, his shoulders, burnt from the excessive heat inside the suit. He floated upwards in the zero gravity environment towards Touzdae. He ripped open some of the batting. He pulled her lifeless body close. Both of them drifted towards the hatch at the top of the chamber. In the passageway he removed his suit, the O-2 pack and the visor and gravity boots remained.

He carried her down the alleyway in the low gravity field. Jac lowered her lifeless body with chard batting burned to her skin into the pool of life. A pocket of atmosphere-breathable air formed around them. He pushed her under the water.

She kicked and he lifted her out of the water as she started to cough. The charred padding fell away from her healed skin and body. It loosed three healed brown eel creatures.

They attacked Jac’s throat. His eyes bulged as a black liquid shot into his body. Touzdae sputtered, clawing for Jac’s laz pistol. She fired at two of the creatures and they exploded. The third creature disappeared inside Jac’s body through the wound made by the laz pistol. She leapt to her feet and rolled Jac into the Pool of Life.

He plopped in and sank to the bottom. Immediately the water boiled black. Jac’s body bobbed to the surface, lifeless. Touzdae pulled his head into a position on the deck and gave mouth-to-mouth.

“Speak to me Jac. Jac… Jac! Come back, Jac,” She yelled.

Jac breathed weakly. His eyes opened oozing with goo.

“Thank the Spirits, you’re alive.”

“Listen to me — carefully,” He spoke haltingly. “You’re — in — command — now.” He rasped at the air. He opened a telepathic channel. ‘You have to put me back in the Pool.’ he wheezed trying to catch his breath. He coughed and wheezed. Black sludge flowed from the corners of his mouth. His breathing slowed.

‘I go to-the-Inner-World. Healing-from… Bhantu…” green and black bile erupted like an oozing snake of lava from a volcano’s mouth, Jac’s mouth, ‘Or die.’

Touzdae worked to hold back tears, as she let him slide back into the water.

Harry stared out a window of the bridge as Fish’s shields are starting to catch fire.

“We’re on fire. Help!” He depressed the Com switch.

“Jac, Touzdae. The shields are on fire. Help!”

As Touzdae started away, Jac slid into the Pool of Life and submerged.

The envelope that the Fish was moving through began burning.

Touzdae, scrambled aft, pulling a hand communicator from a wall panel.

“We’ve got to give Jac enough time to get into the inner world or he’ll die,” Touzdae shouted.

“If you don’t eject the water into the field, that won’t matter!” Harry.

Touzdae unlocked and entered the open hatch into the Central Hub Brain of the Fish.

“I need you to monitor the situation with the independent on-board computer just aft of the Melding Chair, port side, The CU-E Two.”

“I’m on it!”

“Give me reports every minute.”

The fire was beginning to eat through Fish’s shields.

Harry switched on the CU-E Two. A data stream with digital read-out appeared:

“1 minute 50 seconds,” Harry reported through the com.

“One minute forty-six seconds… mark to total shield failure.”

Touzdae floated weightless in the zero gravity circular chamber moving halfway up on the far side. She cleared dead creatures away from the control panels and opened the panel. Under the two switches, it read:

“EXTREME CAUTION — VITAL FLUIDS”

Touzdae closed her eyes and looked within.

“He’s almost in,” Touzdae muttered to herself.

Jac’s body twitched below the surface of the pool.

In the blackness, Jac’s Spirit stood up inside himself and rose out of his physical body. He stretched.

“Light,” Jac said the word and there was light.

A small globe of light appeared out of Jac’s index finger, right hand, and momentarily blinded him. The finger-light-globe illuminated a wall. Jac traced a groove in the wall with the fingers of his left hand.

“Twenty-five seconds,” Harry’s voice trembled, “ — to shield failure.”

Touzdae’s hands rested on the two switches.

Jac found the handle and pulled on the door without effect.

‘Come on! Open…’ he shouted at the recessed door in his mind.

“Ten, nine, eight…” Harry was weeping

Jac yanked the gate open.

“Six, five, four…”

Touzdae depressed the two switches as the gates of the inner world exploded into flames.

“Now,” she yelled.

Crash shields smashed shut all over the ship.

Jac dove in. The flames were extinguished by a forced gush of water. The gush took him through the Atlantean temple towards the cliff. He grabbed hold of a column as the water passed through in a torrent and subsided.

The crash shields banged shut throughout the ship. Smaller shields shut through the portals around the Bridge. Harry looked at the monitors with intent. The space revealed charred portions of the ship within the transdimensional membrane. A kind of fluid gauze re-inflated the shields.

“It’s working,” Harry mumbled.

Then the fluid began to turn to steam. A warning buzzer sounded. Harry stared at the read-out and fumbled for the Com-switch.

“Oh, my Spirits! Ten seconds to shield implosion!”

“Got it,” Touzdae said as she armed the explosive bolts under the sign that read:

EMERGENCY FLUID RESERVES

She turned the two swing values and pushed them in.

Vital fluids burst into the shields and threw the firestorms back.

The ship ejected from the transdimensional jump tube, and tumbled end over end out into space. A second identical Fish, in halos of white light, absorbed the tumbling ship and vanished.

“I wish I could talk to you. I wish I knew what was happening out there,” Jac looked down at Nez Fish’s sleeping body…

The Light changed into a purple — orange dawn through the columns of the temple. A butterfly lit on Jac’s shoulder then flew out through the columns. He followed it.

The sky churned dark with clouds turning purple and golden yellow like the sun. Images of planets burst into flames and exploding in the sky. Volcanic eruptions appeared.

Jac stared up at the sky in wonder and shock.

“Spirit! The sky. If the sky is a sign, then the Fish is dying.”

∞”the electrical wiring” aka Nez Fish’s nerves, would grow back. Nez had told Jac, repeatedly that when “the batting” would be damaged and taken-out that she would regrow her own superior material in its stead. He meant to do this but was always too busy with something else.

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