ARC OF THE IMMORTALS — Book 1

Pursuit: Blood Debt

Chapter 1.1

Arc of the Immortals

Pursuit — Chapter 1a: Blood Debt

An oddity, this spaceship appeared as a dot in a liquid-marbled wormhole. It had a slight asynchronous weave in its trajectory. She cascaded at faster-than-light speeds through the jump tube. The ship was an odd design of metal and corralled flesh. The organics resembled an ocean fish. The metal mimicked the shapes of sailing clippers. It was like many hulls of fast ships that navigated the ancient seas of Earth. It was the time of the Sixth World — 16th through 18th century AD.

Jac Kristos scratched his head and stared into the view screen to his left. He was a lanky, boyish figure with a casual demeanor, sharp piercing blue eyes, and blondish hair.

“Well, Jac, what is it? Can you fix it?” Touzdae asked. Touzdae and Jac were soulmates. Although she appeared ten years his senior, she was a year younger, with white hair and very beautiful.

“Unfixable as far as I can see,” he mumbled.

“What does Fish say?”

“I’m fine,” a sultry female voice exuded from the walls. “I’m at my peak.”

“I’ve been able to make a correction in the weave as I did a thousand light years ago.” He pulls Touzdae aside and whispers in her ear: “I used the Mauvé Computer.” He pulled away and continued. “But it’s been unfixable and I’ll have to make a correction in another thousand light-years or so.”

A chime sounded at three to six-second intervals.

Touzdae slipped her chair from a stationary float and flew along the port control panel, checking gauges. One data screen revealed lines of messages.

“How long have we been gone, six months? “Ten,” Jac shot back.

“Three million messages from Relay Beacon 87639 Kappa.”

“Calculating,” Fish said. “Ninety-six percent spam. Updating spam screeners. Filtering…”

The wormhole ended, and the Fish spaceship hurtled into ordinary space.

Jac climbed down through the hatch from the bridge into the main salon. He stepped off the ladder and turned towards the Pool of Life. A holographic tree appeared with a wrap-around blue sky and distant red-tailed hawks riding the thermals.

He rode the lift pole up to the first landing, where he lingered gazing down at the holographic tree.

The aft hatch slid aside. The sensor had detected his presence. He strolled down the passageway. A hatch on the starboard side of the ship had a governor with monitor and life-support gauges. The screen flickered into life as Jac said:

“On…”

Crul Bahj was the captured grey Crupean. The creature was thirteen feet in diameter. It was in repose, Jac decided. It opened its three eyes and hurled itself across the hold. Halted and stunned in one move. It was the restrictive force field that impaled the creature in the cramped space.

“I’d be careful of that field,” Jac spoke into the mouthpiece. “Each time you attempt to break free, the field’s tensile strength increases and the shock delivered is well — stronger. So be careful.”

Bahj grunted. It opened another orifice near his mouth and blew out a yellowed mist, which suspended itself around it in the center of the cargo hold.

“Off,” He snapped. He checked the field strength with a finger flick against the dial. The screen flashed: “Optimal x 10”

He walked aft. He passed through the clear alley surrounded by three EVA (Extra Vehicular Action) craft. Onward passed the food and hardware stores into the threshold before the Captain’s Cabin. As he stepped into the cabin, the jump tube faded. Normal space appeared outside the ship.

He looked out the aft plasma portals at the depth of space and the distant star clusters and galaxies. Lost, he felt part of his being floating out there. He had left his body. He floated in the curved spaces bent by dark matter, drifting.

“Jac…” it was Touzdae on Nez’s ship-wide communicator.

He continued to drift…

“Jac? Are you there?”

He turned forward.

“Yes,” he answered half-there. “What?” he snapped into the present.

“I’m clearing glitches in the receiver. Twenty-one minutes to full download of all the messages, except the spam.”

“I’ll be meditating. You’ll call me if we have any important messages?”

“Yah. You’ll be contacting Bhantu?”

“I hope so.”

He sat in a cubby alcove in a large oversized chair and closed his eyes, legs crossed.

Bendel swam through the murky grey soup towards a whitish cylindrical form. It took on a finer definition as he neared: a sarcophagus with a window revealing a female face — eyes closed. He wrapped his legs around the container and pressed his head against the faceplate.

“Luna, my love, are you there?” He sent energy with his consciousness inside the sarcophagus.

He traveled through more of the murky spaces. Her crumpled body curled as a reaction, attempting to grip a small boulder. Gnarled roots blackened with death and decay threaded through the rocks and created splits in the boulder. Bendel held a white bottle with a respirator to the orifice of his mouth and inhaled. He whispered the sacred words finishing in his native tongue:

“Lead into gold in my soul where her stuff of dreams resides

“I take with elixirs bold through recombinant I make the life and blow it… there…” The slumped, and ashen tree resurrected itself with the blossoms of spring. Luna opened her eyes and looked up at him.

“I was almost dead. You arrived; perfect timing.”

“Don’t speak, save your energy, my sweet.”

She rolled over, stretched, and took in the sun from overhead.

“Did you find that bitch of a sister that took my life yet?”

“Almost, we’re very close.”

“Good,” her chest heaved. “I want my life back.”

Jac stepped up into the temple. Atlantean columns stretched skyward, fingering the refined light. Golden rays of the sun saturated the air with riches. A woman materialized out of the light in a long white flowing robe and long hair down to the small of her back.

“Do you have a message for me, Nez?” He asked her.

“Hello, Jac. It’s good to see you like this, face to face. Ask me anything. If I can answer, I will.”

“Will I see Bhantu?”

She stepped aside and gestured with her arms and hands.

“I hope so.”

A man in a golden orange robe appeared.

“Bhantu,” Jac whispered.

He approached the figure. The robed man turned, and the robes collapsed and faded into the light.

Jac transported to the Levelz on the asteroid Gata.

“I’m back here, again?” He watched his younger self with Bhantu and Bendel. Bhantu adjusted the wings fixed to his shoulders. Jac morphed into his past self. He soared downward into the pit towards the labyrinth known as the Levelz.

As he touched down into the ancient ruins, the ground quivered as it collapsed into a sinkhole.

A silent scream ripped across his being.

As he opened his eyes:

“Jac, you have a priority Red-Blue Message from your Uncle Harry,” Nez Fish cooed. “By the way, it was lovely to see you….”

A red-blue streamer from the wall lit up, and a muted bell gonged.

“Jac, we have two priority messages. One from — ” Touzdae began

“ — Uncle Harry. And the other one?”

“The Blue Crupean Minister of Justice wants an update from you.”

“I’ll be right up.”

Jac climbed up through the hatch onto the bridge. He fell into a floating chair and skittered into the communications alcove. The priority Red-Blue Message flashed on the screen.

“This is a pain,” Jac retorted to Touzdae and then laughed with a perverse cackle. A strange golden light fluttered through the cabin around him and evaporated.

Touzdae smiled, her face flashing into a youthful beauty, remembering her old Jac.

He turned his attention to the screen and depressed the response buttons. A standby screen flashed a waiting signal.

The older, flabby, balding image of Uncle Harry swam into focus.

“Hello, Jac. I’ve come to claim my blood debt.”

“This couldn’t come at a worse time. We’ve got Crul Bahj in custody. We’re just back from System Taū.” (pronounced Tav)

“This won’t take long, it’s on your way. Twenty minutes to do the scan and another hour to deliver the information. That’s all. It’s a blood debt, you can’t refuse.”

“Agreed. Sending coordinates, out.” Jac pushed away from the console.

“So that’s your Uncle Harry. Is he still with the Genetics League?” Touzdae asked.

“No one ever leaves that place.”

“What position does he hold now?”

“Used to be Chancellor, but now — — some sort of special envoy, and maybe more powerful than Chancellor.”

Jac sighed.

“The rendezvous is eighteen minutes from now, mark,” Nez Fish stated with precision.

Bendel paced back and forth on the balcony glancing at the casino below. He gazed out through the clear dome into the swirling fog vapors of the Netherworld. He adjusted his headset.

“You found them?” the AI AG-E voice asked.

Bendel nodded a ‘yes.’ He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Yes, the vision holds,” Bendel said quietly.

“Now it would be good if she can be separated from Space Fish ship as much and as often as possible,” said AG-E.

“You must be daft. Two reasons, as I said before. She is in a symbiotic relationship with the ship, the only living ship of its kind. Separate her and she’ll die. You know our deal, so stop it,” Bendel raised his voice slightly, suppressing irritation.

©2023 F. K. Ontario

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