ARC OF THE IMMORTALS Book 2

Time Rifts: 13 / Extraction

From the Obz Station — Location of the Time Rifts

Recap of TR 12 (previous episode): Touzdae wishes there was a “Great Hivbrit” to watch over Jac as she travels to the end of the time rift. She observes future Jac and her self’s contact with Po and has a sublime light-filled experience of conception. For observer Touzdae she receives emotional bliss and a cosmic-consciousness experience. As does Jac.

It’s disrupted by her observing herself in a maze of inert machinery. She feels wronged.

New episode begins:

Jac swung back at Bendel.

“Stop it. It’s me, Geordae,” Phorae exclaimed retreating.

Jac gave Bendel a one-two punch. Geordae stumbled back, fumbling through his pockets. As Jac hit Bendel a third time, Bendel’s face morphed into the face of Tau. Geordae stepped forward through the ghost images of Tau and Bendel. Phorae discharged his stun-gun and Jac went down.

Jac awoke; groggy. Restrained in a crash seat and surrounded by a flexible “crush-suit” with an O-2 value for his safety. He had the harnesses in place and his hands roped and taped to hand-holds above his head. His mouth taped to the O-2 valve, was dry and his vision blurred. He had two heart defibrillator pads adhered to his chest, and an IV drip in his left arm for medications and fluids. He meant to escape but a wave of energy hit him. He felt something flowing into his arm and he passed out.

Phorae fitted a helmet on his space suit as he strapped himself into the cockpit. Parts of Touzdae’s Hopper collided with the station. Shards of metal bounced around in the streams. They reigned over the front engine cone and the cockpit. The spray of materials shorted out the shield.

A plasma image of Tau shot through the airlock into different parts of the ship. The Tau image caused electrical discharges in his wake. Phorae depressurized the cabins and sucked the Plasma-Tau out.

Jac saw a wild and chaotic kaleidoscope of images from his contact with Touzdae’s time bubble. He went into her world.

Phorae depressed the thrusters. The ship backed out of the station. The airlock did not release. The cowling broke off fusing the cockpit hatch shut. The forward engines coughed and stalled from the debris trail and died. Geordae used attitudinal jets to rotate the ship. It inched backward into the corridor. Rotation ceased.

The forward thrust cone and engine manifold continued under the reign of debris. The crumbling Hopper continued to disintegrate. The aft engines moved into alignment. He engaged the final countdown for ignition.

He gave a full ninety second burn. Immediately after the burn he shut the engine down. And he erected shielding around the cone. The ship bumbled along the lane, stretching and groaning with cracks and tears. Phorae looked at the holographic map on his main view screen. It was tight. He crunched fuel ratios for each turn.

Hivbrit merged with Jac’s inner consciousness in dreamtime. Jac/Hivbrit focused on one of Touzdae’s time bubble sequences.

They slowed the rate of the images and went inside one.

Hivbrit separated.

Jac was fascinated by an inside look at the time streamers. There were many multicolored bubbles. The bubbles surrounded him a kaleidoscope of liquid moving shapes. The sky was a liquid rainbow of twenty-four changing colors…

A familiar voice thought, focus on your intent. Jac looked straight ahead inside Touzdae’s time bubble. He saw what she had seen — the scene of the Ola valley at night with streamers of light.

Phorae applied breaking thrusters for the first turn, the shear was intense. The cockpit cowling cracked and shattered, the air — sucked out. His suit switched to the on-board air tanks. It took a minute to recover from the explosive decompression of his cockpit. Immediately he checked the aft cabin for integrity and Jac’s vitals. He was relieved that the cabin appeared untouched.

Outside the ship the damage revealed several small fuel leaks.

Jac felt he was in an old fashioned medi-tube as had existed aboard the Nez Fish.

“I’m breathing, so I am not dead,” he said inside his head. The tube opened. He heard an Entu Monk chanting in the distance and his body seemed to float free.

Phorae’s ship turned and progressed with painstaking inches by inch motion. One long corridor toward open space remained. Half way through a three-minute burn the engines spurted and died. He put out a rescue beacon.

At least there’s forward momentum, he thought.

Geordae began checking oxygen reserves between the aft cabin and himself. He made adjustments. The ship lost momentum and was adrift, but moving along its trajectory and slowing.

The support vessel arrived twenty minutes after Geordae’s reserve oxygen was nearly depleted. They immediately determined that docking was impossible. Two space-walkers arrived accessed and transferred oxygen to Phorae’s tanks. They used outer ports. The aft cabin appeared intact. They worked to free the unconscious pilot from the cockpit. They applied medical equipment while waiting for the service craft.

Within three hours Geordae Phorae was restored and cleared for full health in body, heart, mind, and spirit.

Jac awakened surrounded by two medi-techs, and a healer-physician.

“It seems clear, by observation that Jac is not here with us,” Geordae noted as he moved up behind the three.

The healer-physician read the data on her epad and spoke. “You are correct, Jac’s body is present while his emotive and cognitive bodies are elsewhere. In a different time and space.

“Also he appears to be sharing parts of his consciousness with another being. I will need some more tests to confirm this,” she said.

Aboard the inner station the small damaged ship moored to a docking port. It crashed into the catwalks on either side of the moorings. Pieces of the ship were being jettisoned into the bay and out into the surrounding space.

Phorae joined the dock master at his post.

“What’s going on?”

“I was about to enclose the ship when this started,” he gestured at the three monitors.

“Proceed with the closure.”

“Yes sir.”

They both watched the monitors as the electromagnetic coupler drew the decimated craft forward. The cocoon-like doors closed and locked. The dock master looked at the boss quizzically. The lights flooded the interior of the bay. They waited.

“Oxygen-Nitrogen at saturation,” the dock-master reported.

Phorae descended the metal stairs and opened the hatch into the closed bay. He saw the outline of a humanoid figure on the catwalk freeze directly in front of him about twelve feet. He stepped on the catwalk with caution. The figure disappeared. He walked out to the place where figure appeared to vanish and peered at — nothing. He walked back. The open hatch was vibrating as he touched it. He shut the hatch and locked it.

“Have a scanning crew run a level five EM scan of the ship, and report to me as soon as they’re finished,” Phorae told the dock master. “I’ll be in the medical bay.”

Techs were installing the communication array for the half-life link.

Jac watched as Touzdae wove her way intuitively through a maze of defunct greasy-brown machinery. He saw the cloaked observer watching Touzdae. The cloaked observer seemed amused. Jac felt alarmed.

A message came from Jac’s Hivbrit — Touzdae is neither alive nor dead.

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