ARC of The IMMORTALS — Book 1 —

Pursuit: Blood Debt

Chapter 1.2 | Action, Suspense, Mystery

[Note: This chapter contains graphic violence]

In the black void of interstellar space, the Space Fish, Nez, was a guppy next to Harry’s Frigate. The Fish slid up, aligning with ease to the airlock of the more giant ship.

Harry entered the semi-transparent tube into the Fish’s lock.

A green light flashed.

“All bodies appear within acceptable limits. Cleansing two disembodied entities now — realigning chakras to my parameters. Detailed scans stored. Cleared for entry,” the Nez Fish soothed.

Large geared wheels rotated clockwise, and smaller wheeled locks counterclockwise. The wide hatch split one side to the left and one to the right. Harry sauntered inside and tossed him a memory strip.

“How quaint. Air locks. I know you have a transporter, Jac… But we haven’t much time.”

“Touzdae!” Jac shouted in the direction of the communicator. “Up coming M-Strip.”

Jac tossed the strip up into the Nez Stream. It was a stream of compressed air, part of her voluntary circulatory system. Thirty seconds later, Touzdae’s voice came through.

“Got it,” She shouted back.

“Welcome aboard, Uncle, we best get under way.” Jac shut down the airlock, and they made their way through the ship.

“It’s good to be back here,” Harry said as he climbed the ladder to the bridge. Jac followed Harry.

“Nez, disengage airlock, prepare a jump.” Touzdae ordered.

The Fish engaged the jump via the coordinates from Fish’s central processor.

“Corvallis Space Station, ETA twenty minutes, mark,” Fish soothed with efficiency.

“Cripe,” Jac shook his head. “I don’t like that place. Nothing but trouble.”

“Then it’s a good thing that you won’t be there very long.” Harry couldn’t help displaying his nervousness; he licked his lips. Jac placed his two hands on Touzdae’s shoulders for a moment at the helm.

Harry removed a half-palm-sized device from his side bag and handed it to Jac.

“This is a new genetic scanner.” Jac stated. He flipped open the interface and turned the small device on. He scanned Touzdae and then Harry. He tinkered with the controls and examined the data.

“That’s right. One clean scan at the torso area, picks up all mutated genetic material.”

“Exactly. Seems simple enough,” Jac said, staring at the data.

“One thing though… You scan him and duck down right away. You have to scan him while he’s pursuing the Caducean. If you wait until after he’s killed the Caducean, you increase the chances that you’ll be scanned.”

“Increased by what odds?”

“We don’t know exactly, it varies.”

“We’re ten minutes out,” Touzdae announced.

Nez lurched and deposited herself from the jump tube into ordinary space.

Jac flipped the scanner closed and slipped it into his holster.

“Docking permission granted. Beginning an approach, now,” Touzdae kept them abreast.

“Good, let’s get this done.”

“We’ll be pulling into a docking port in a few minutes, switching to co-manual now,” Touzdae remarked. “Meaning Nez will be helping if necessary,” aside to Harry.

All screens revealed the multi-disk structure of the medium-sized space station. The Fish slipped through the force field perimeter. They navigated into a docking slip, the jets fired, and the Fish angled into the bay.

Jac started down the ladder and stopped.

“And I don’t want to know what happens if he scans me right?”

“He won’t scan you. You’re too good for him,” Harry said with bold confidence.

Jac disappeared into the interior of the ship.

The thin one-person EVA disk emerged through the hull. It glided into one of the arrival ports of the station. Small plasma jets fired. The disk placed an invisible electromagnetic foot onto the deck and locked down. Jac emerged and stood next to the craft and secured it with a remote.

He held his hand to his ear and clicked on his communicator.

“I have the back-up trans-locator up and running in case we need to pull you out of there in a hurry,” Touzdae was on it. Procedure.

“Got that,” Jac said, blinking his eyes and shut them.

Can you hear me? Jac said in his mind to Touzdae.

Yes of course! I-am-schooled in telepathy. He absorbed her sarcasm before releasing it.

Apologies, Sweet One. Jac thought to Touzdae.

I took a closer look at Harry. He’s got implants I can’t see behind. And he’s strange in a way I don’t recognize. I did get some access codes that need checking. Before you do that, ask him if he’s had anything medical, even routine. He may be traveling with a ghost or a being of some kind. An echo-being, I don’t know.

Here’s the codes…. Jac concluded his thought-stream.

A blur of data is transferred into Touzdae’s prefrontal cortex. She shunted the codes aside.

Jac entered the outer corridor of the station. The stream of alien humanoids overwhelmed his senses. When he adjusted, a large number of non-humanoids assailed him.

Whew, he thought to himself and adjusted.

A Caducean with its one pincer claw and biotech arm leapt over the aliens in the central causeway. It knocked over kiosks, trash cans, and some smaller aliens. Full-tilt, it hurtled down a service alleyway. A second Caducean identical to the first, except for a human-ish hand and arm with a laser blaster, was faster. It rocketed higher and longer than the first. It shot with wild abandon along the path of the first Caducean, lobster-like biped. Jac sprinted through the crowd to keep up with the pair. Uncle Harry predicted the one of three places. It was the infamous — Crossroads Saloon. It was easy to read the mind of the first Caducean. Uncle Harry was right.

Jac entered the saloon and walked up to one end of the bar. As he eased himself in, a laser blast shattered the overhead mirror into a torrent of glass shards. He ducked along with the patrons, and they huddled under the overhanging bar.

The Caducean descended through the shattered mirror. It exploded into the bar crushing a huddle of alien humanoids at the center of the room. Pursuer Caducean leapt down with his claws spread on top of Caducean number one.

Yellow goop squirted out of the downed Caducean as their claws both snapped the air. The First Caducean’s claw snapped at the Pursuer’s head and missed. Pursuer Caducean severed the arm of his enemy and flung it across the room with a snarl.

The biotech arm of the First Caducean flailed at the Pursuer.

The patrons of the bar froze in place. Jac eased forward. He made his way around the fighters and positioned himself near the door.

More yellow blood shot up towards the ceiling in a sudden explosion of light. The biotech limb, severed, shot upwards. The mouth of the weakened First Caducean snapped upwards towards his enemy. Pursuer fired his laser blaster into the chin of the dying alien blowing off his head.

Jac scanned the torso of the Pursuer Caducean. He holstered it and started for the door. Pursuer cackled, yellow blood dripping from his beak.

He turned and scanned the room: procedure.

Pursuer’s sensor eyes scanned the space identifying and eliminating possible targets. It caught Jac in a holographic freeze frame. The frame rotated 360 degrees for analysis and assessment.

A resonant voice spoke inside Pursuer’s head, both foreign and familiar:

“Target Locked.”

Pursuer whirred. He clicked on Jac exiting and began his sprint.

The Com-device crackled in Jac’s ear:

“Harry wants to know if you are successful?” Touzdae asked.

“Yes… and no. Do I have the scan? Yes. Was I scanned by Pursuer? Yes.”

Jac sent on a telepathic wave:

Ready the tele-porter, code red.

Jac turned the corridor onto the main promenade. He leapt over the banister to a lower tier and sprinted away. Pursuer Caducean dropped down, ripping a hole through the causeway in front of Jac. Pursuer took a misstep and tumbled backward into the hole that he had made. A shard of metal pierced Jac’s hand. He stopped time and froze his injured hand in an ice crystal freeze.

The Pursuer Caducean cackled from below, crouched, and leapt up; pincers opened. In the cybernetic eye, he envisioned a precise decapitation. At last second, Jac let go. He flipped backward and up onto the main promenade. He activated the electromagnetic points in his suit and depressed two remote buttons. The force hurtled him a few thousand feet flying like a small missile toward the disk EVA craft. One button more, he morphed through hull to the interior of the craft.

The Disk rose three feet and started to turn. Pursuer’s pincer claw sliced into the hull of the ship and started to pull it down.

the next chapter:

Derelict Genetics Station

Chapter 2.1

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