Arc of The Immortals — a continuing series Book 1:

Pursuit — Chapter 4.1 The Impossible

Science-Fiction/Fantasy/Thriller

Arc of the Immortals — a series beginning with Pursuit — the first book

Chapter 4.1 — The Impossible

Harry and Touzdae carried Jac below. The chamber was sixty-six feet in diameter with a hole in the middle. Both its ceiling and floor were concave. They placed the crumpled Jac into a large reclining chair. The communicator and video monitors came up automatically. The chair disappeared through the hole at the center of the room.

“Harry, I need you to watch the jump tube from the bridge. If the gauges go over 65 give me a shout on the com-link, and I’ll transport up.” Touzdae said with pressured speech.

Harry signaled in the affirmative with his thumb and departed. Touzdae climbed up from the catwalk after securing Jac at the center of the machine. She slipped into a glass booth mumbling to herself.

“Pendragon where are you? Arthur? Why do this myself?” Touzdae cried to the Spirits above.

She worked the controls. The lights dimmed. A deep purple and an electric blue glow saturated the room. A ghostly misshapen spirit body appeared inside Jac’s body. Eel-like cords came out of his throat, liver, and navel areas of his body.

Jac startled and awakened with a snort.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Touzdae remarked without effect.

She continued to work the controls. Three Golden Spirits appeared and began working on Jac at a very fast pace until they became blurs. The eel-like cords faded out of existence. Golden seals healed his heart, throat, liver, and second chakra.

“The pain is gone. Now it’s your turn — ” Jac awakened. He looked into Touzdae’s eyes.

“The tube is collapsing!” Harry’s alarmed voice came through the speaker on the wall.

The tube began collapsing and narrowing around the Fish.

“Inner transport for two Nez,” and as Jac said the words Jac and Touzdae transported to the bridge. Jac materialized within the melding chair.

Smaller asteroids vaporized in the field. As the tube narrowed the Fish rolled over asynchronously wobbling forward in a blurred spray. The shattered asteroids sprayed into the tube in a spiral for millions of miles in every direction.

The ship emerged into ordinary space in the midst of the Ice Rings of Purgje. She drilled through three ice rings before slowing to a halt in front of a very thick ring.

Jac fell out of the melding chair.

“Oh God, I’m sick,” Harry put his large pudgy white paw over his orifice.

“Restoring internal equilibrium ratios now. Damage Report… stand-by…” Fish sang a Frank Sinatra tune from Terra Earth Prime circa 1940s — I’ve Got You Under My Skin. She paused to make report. “All maneuvering jets and main thrusters are impacted with asteroid dust and congealed with ice.”

“Can’t you blow them out? You’ve done it before,” Jac queried.

“Can’t this time. The risk is a thermal blockage in all my outer systems. My heart would fail. You wouldn’t want to kill me now, would you Jac? The time is not right for that. Maybe later you can kill me. But not now.”

“Not so funny Fish. We’ll have to go outside then.”

“Well that shouldn’t be a problem, because you destroyed Pursuer back in the Asteroid Density.” Harry.

Jac closed his eyes for a long moment.

“He’s not dead,” Jac began thoughtfully. “His ship is damaged in a similar way as is the Fish. The good news is, that even if he makes the repairs quicker than we do, we’ve got a twelve-hour lead on him.”

The small disked Repair Pod exuded out of the docking bay. It drifted aft with puffed white plasma as it jetted to a near standstill. The rear hatch slid opened and a hard environmental suited Jac emerged in a jet pack equipped with a tool case. The Pod jetted aft under Touzdae’s helm. Jac moved forward towards her bow.

Touzdae sat at Pod controls working a robotic arm. The arm scooped material and sucked it out with an exhaust jet.

“How’s that, Fish?”

“Good. Thank-you. I’m sending you the schematics on two more jets and six intake valves. Jac and I will be able to handle it. Please transfer them to him and come back inside. Thank you, dear.”

- I heard that and I approve, Jac reiterated through telepathy. Then he continued: ‘As soon as I’m done out here, I’ll come, and will finish clearing your EM field. Besides I want you to keep an eye on Harry, so I can work faster out here. Pursuer is on the move again.

The Needle Craft morphed a new exterior skin. It created a new jump tube and jetted inside.

Harry sat down next to Touzdae as she monitored two view screens.

“Is it my imagination, but have you been getting younger, since I came on board?”

“Yes, that’s true. It happens.”

“Really? Why does it happen?”

“I’ll put it to you with honesty. And I will be blunt, so you’ll get it. Your desire is good for me. I am in love with Jac, so don’t get any actionable ideas.”

Harry fumbled with his hands. Awkward, he stood and sat.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no intention of stealing you from Jac. So I don’t know what you mean.”

“Okay, but let’s talk about it some other time.”

Touzdae returned to checking the monitors and fell to the deck. A white foam effervesced around her neck.

Harry depressed the com-button and leaned into the microphone:

“You’d better get in here right away. It’s Touzdae. She’s collapsed.”

“On my way. See if you can get her down to the EM spherical disk. No transporting.”

“Oh, you mean the EM disk chamber,” Harry said.

“Yeah…”

Jac and Harry put her in the chair, which lowered into the hole at the hub. Jac led Harry into the screened booth and started the process. The room flooded with deep purple and electric blue. The control panel view screens revealed a growth on Touzdae’s heart and throat chakras. Six beings of Golden Light entered and they began to work.

Jac sat down.

“Uncle, you might want to sit down. This could take a while. But, no talking from here on out. If you have any questions, I’ll answer them later.”

An hour later Jac and Harry helped Touzdae to a small bed near the pool of life beneath the tree of knowledge.

“This Pursuer is very good. He used the explosion that the two jump fields created to access a dimensional doorway and slow time. He came through the portal with his spirit self and implanted a virus inside Touzdae’s heart. That’s why it took so long to remove it. Also, we had to clean up the foam. In it were cross-dimensional virus mutations that could have infected Fish. It would have shut her down and us along with her. Then I did a sweep of the ship for any residue of the foam.” Jac explained.

“You didn’t find any, I hope.” Harry.

“No, I didn’t. And it’s a good thing too,” Jac sighed.

“Why is that?”

“It might mean that Fish would be infected interdimensionally. When Pursuer gets close again he would have been able to use it to take control of the ship. There’s no way to fight an interdimensional virus like this kind except to let it run its course.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that EM Tank before. It’s amazing.”

“It’s unique to the Fish. I know, I built it.”

The Pursuer morphed again. His head began to resemble Jac’s head. A control panel light flashed.

Asteroids converged around the Needle ship. They pierced the field and created a stall.

A small suited figure (Jac) continued the cleaning of the maneuvering jets. He began where he left off. One by one he cleaned the clogs until he finished.

Harry smiled as he gazed at Touzdae sleeping. He was thinking, imagining. It would be so easy, he told himself. He was thinking that he would lift her up into his arms and take her back into his cabin and make love to her. He couldn’t help but feel the desire for her welling up inside ever since he saw her. And he was no fool, he could see that somehow she was feeding off his desire and her aging process was reversing. Jac doesn’t deserve you, he thought.

“Hmm…’ she stirred. “What did you say, Harry?”

She blinked at him.

“I was wondering if Jac is a saint. Seems like saints who repudiate the flesh. He seems so good, maybe too good.”

“Yeah…” she said wistfully. “I know what you mean. I wish the old Jac were back.”

“You mean from before the accident. How long has it been?”

Touzdae sat up and changed the energy. She took control of her space and Harry.

“Your memory is failing Harry. It’s been too long — years. You should know. I mean if it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t have any Jac at all.

“There was a rumor at that time that you had killed yourself because Jac had died.”

“Gata was ripe with rumors then. Besides, that’s the past and I don’t want to talk about it,” She stood.

The com-link crackled on:

“I’m done. I’m coming in. How’s Touzdae?”

“I feel great, Jac, thanks. Uncle Harry’s been on the frisky side.”

“Gata, Gata, Gata…” Harry muttered under his breath

The Needle Craft traveled in a transdimensional jump tube. “Jac, your ass is mine,” Pursuer cackled.

The Fish maneuvered between the two rings that at had shattered upon their arrival. They had re-crystallized; frozen solid.

A wide particle beam shot from the forward weapons array and fashioned a hole in one of the rings.

“ — -Just use the blasters to make a bigger hole,” Harry yelled.

“ — -We can’t go the same way back,” Jac yelled back from the bubble chair turret in the upper forward end of the bridge

“We could make another jump tube.” Touzdae injected.

“Sh…” Fish whispered as a crescendo of white noise flooded the bridge.

The deafening sound ceased.

“Now that I have your attention I want you to BE QUIET and listen,” Nez used her command voice. “I’ve been alive for many thousands of years. And I do have some experience in tight situations, especially here in the Purgje Ice Rings. I’ve been with the Kristos Kin since they saved my life and I’ve always been there for you. And you Jac, know this to be true. I can get us out of here,” Nez — emphatic, firm, clear.

Jac smiled sheepishly. The melding chair hummed as it lowered slowly, turning 180 degrees down to the bridge deck.

“Nez Fish, when you’re right, you’re right. My apologies.”

“Accepted.”

“I’ll check on the whereabouts of Pursuer. Touzdae, maybe you could run a systems check? Harry, sit tight.” Jac.

Pursuer, bathed in green light peered at screen. It displayed several possible routes of the Space Fish maneuvering through the ice rings. He jerking, he turned and removed a mirror from a side pocket. He looked at his reflection.

“Not a bad face, Jac. Now it’s my face,” he smiled. Pursuer’s beak was gone replaced by an exact duplicate of Jac’s face.

The Fish began to move through the field with more speed.

“Shit, Pursuer is getting close. Touz, do a weapon systems check, okay?”

“Jac, we’ve got to jump out of here.” Harry.

Touzdae activated all the weapons into standby as she spoke: “There isn’t enough room in here to make one. If we did now there may be a hull breach in the metallic parts of the ship which could wound Fish.”

“But we could fold-space,” she suggested.

The Needle Craft plowed through several rings as it popped out of the transdimensional jump tube. Large chunks of ice flew forward.

“Aggressive shields — Battle Stations, now!”

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A nod to DL Nemeril for the modernization of the Holy Grail. Thanks DL.

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