ARC OF THE IMMORTALS Book 2

Time Rifts-31: To the Sphere and —

Faster-Than-Light?

[scenes of violence]

Recap: TR30 — Search for Touzdae — Outside: Jac and the surviving team member, sniper — Simm, move away from the ship in a small pod. They are fired upon. Jac dives down close to the hull in an attempt not to get hit by laser fire. Two of the fuel tanks are hit and they skid to a halt. The tiny two-person sphere careens to its side.

They try to open the bottom hatch. It opens an inch and stops. Power goes out. Their suits open lights on their shoulders. Simm orders Jac to blow the top hatch with explosive bolts to avoid possible fire. They blow the hatch and fuel droplets catch fire and explode the craft and absorb Jac and Simm in the explosion.

The Entu monks pressure DKr. Malley to reconnect the dimensions. He says he can do it, pleads with them to stop the torture of his wife. They ask how long. Malley says at least one hour.

The pod fire explodes outward in a 50-foot diameter.

The Captain is informed that the FTL Faster-Than-Light drive is repaired. Tommalar wishes Jac was there to help set a destination. The COS (Chief of the Ship) says Jac is outside the Mu in a craft on fire.

The forcefields are holding inside the explosion. They run across the deck with smartmag boots on. They drop into a groove in the ship and wait 90 seconds for a spray to obscure their run for a puker-pod where there will be more cover.

Touzdae sends telepathic messages to Jac feeling he is getting close. She works on how to get out of the forcefield.

Jac and Simm jump into a pod. There is a vibration in the surrounding metal. Simm identifies it as flying bots with laser weapons, out to kill them. The bots arrive and try to short out the forcefield, while Jac and Simm fire their guns into the center of the pucker. It opens as the bots disable the forcefield. Simm and Jac jump through the hole they opened followed by the flying bots.

Current Episode: Jac and the sniper, Simm, slipped down the tube which separated into two. And back into one. They reconnected their force field. Jac re-modulated the field every 18 seconds on a loop changing it randomly. This prevented the bots from penetrating the field.

We’re coming to an end — a chamber with a pink viscous fluid. Jac sent the thought to Simm. Thrusters? Jac added/asked.

Fire Thrusters now! she emphasized the thought.

They both activated their thrusters. The descent slowed. Before impact into the liquid, the thought came through from Simm to cut thrusters. Both sets of thrusters stopped. They fell into the pink goo. The suits shorted out for a few moments and rebooted. The bots descended on them firing. The atmosphere of the goo pulled the bots into the stuff en masse. Simm and Jac submerged themselves into the goo for protection. They waited for the suits to reboot. Once functional they stood. On impulse, Jac grabbed the last flying bot and aimed its laser at the undulating walls of the chamber.

A slit opened and the goo spilled out. The bots fried in the heat. They died, but not before the heat from their tiny engines burst the goo into flames. Simm pulled Jac out as the once slow-moving flames began to spread. They ran out of the basin away from the burning ooze.

“We got to get out of here,” Simm was frantic. No need for the smartmag boots here — the artificial gravity is working. She sent the thought. Jac switched the smartmag boots off. They ran up along the sides of the outer basin and through a wide hatch to the next level.

“That was close,” Simm said relieved.

“What?”

“Is that hatch sealed?” She asked.

Jac scanned it with his eyes and instruments in the suit. He nodded with a strong Yes.

“Oh, I see,” Jac said. He saw a flash of it before his eyes.

“See what?” Simm asked.

The bulkheads shook from the explosion in the basin below.

“Oh. You see the future a minute or two before it happens, Right?” she was agog in wonder. The inside of her helmet visor fogged up for a second before the suit defogged it. She dropped her chin and her mouth moved out of the visor.

“Yup. Though it’s a recent development,” Jac said. “Touzdae is two or three decks above this one,” he paused to ‘look’ again.

She’s caught in a complicated force field, he thought to Simm.

Let’s go, Simm thought back.

Wait, Jac thought. He sent a thought message to Suke.

“Phorae, can you guide us through a large jump into the next galaxy or not?” Tommalar was impatient. “Put chief navigator Ko-Ak on the line.”

“Captain, Captain,” Suke interrupted.

“Hold,” Tommalar put his hand over the microphone. He turned away from the view screen.

“What?”

“Received a brief message from Jac, empathic and telepathic combined. He is on board and relatively safe.”

“Thank you Suke. Could you look at transporting him here?”

“Yes, I will remote view if possible,” she said.

Jac and Simm crawled through a wide air vent along the top of the chamber. The forcefield inside a forcefield held Touzdae.

A strong current in the vent diminished.

What did you do? Jac thought.

You could see that? Forget it. I released a swarm of nano-surveillance bots. They’ll go through that vent about 20 feet ahead and give us a good view of what we’re up against.

How is it that you have a suit gun with bullets and I have no bullets? Jac forwarded the thought.

Gorshoff doesn’t trust civilians. I mean he didn’t trust you. You haven’t been trained for suit use. Simm answered with the thoughts.

Understood.

Tommalar conferred with Suke and her band of remote viewers. Ko-Ak and his team of navigators used the remote viewing data to plot three jumps. Tommalar decided on the twelve-minute jump. Those with medical conditions had to be secured before the jump. The engineering team specialists could not guarantee differential compensators† could hold beyond fifteen minutes. They were working on the problem.

Simm and Jac dropped into the wide chamber. They shared a heated telepathic discussion about the forcefield surrounding Touzdae. You can’t just shoot the forcefield at the primary node, Jac thought. I know that — Simm replied.

Twenty minutes passed. “All secured,” the COS announced. The Big Jump.

“Begin countdown for engaging the FTL,” Tommalar ordered. “Start the clock.”

A buzzer sounded throughout the ship.

Both Simm, Jac, and Touzdae knew what that meant.

Simm continued to fire at the secondary node.

They heard an audio countdown at 30 seconds…

“Prepare to jump,” the COS pronounced.

Three, two —

The forcefield fell.

On the bridge the COS and the Captain shouted the command:

“Jump!

…one.

Touzdae disappeared.

† Note — a device with components called “differential compensators”. This will be explained in an addendum world building story.

Addendum Data About Light-Drives:

the next chapter:

previous chapter:

Contents:

Thank you for joining me in the adventures that span lifetimes and worlds. Blessings, Passion, and Grace on your journey. May whatever your looking for — find you.

[This is a fictional story. Like all fiction, elements of truth are present.]

(If you do NOT wish to be tagged, let me know, and I’ll tag you not):

Alison Hollingsead | Rebecca Romanelli | Joseph Lieungh | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Kris Bedenian | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | Blaine Coleman | DL Nemeril | Rip Parker | Annelise Lords | Barbara Murray | K. Pearson Bradley | Libby Shively McAvoy