Eleven Unveiled (Imortum)
Page 26
Jerren had just left the ship and Justin sighed. “Well, where would you like to start?”
Jason asked, “Earth? I don’t like the fact that there’s a dark matter bomb on the planet.”
Alise shook her head. “Although I would feel better with the bomb being secured, I still do not know how we are going to get a probe down there. I think a GMP of Earth or a localized EMP is a bad idea until we find out if the bomb is in fact at Area 51, as Gebb said. What do you think, Calia?”
“Alise is right. The only reason I was able to send a probe down on this planet was that we GMP’d it first. I think the risk is too high of a GMP detonating the bomb if we did the same to Earth without knowing exactly when it got there. I think we should leave Earth for later and hope the others might have more information on Area 51.”
Alise said, “Gebb had not seen any of the family for over a hundred years, aside from his wife and Enyali. He was in constant contact with his grandson, Horuisis, and Horuisis was the one on the massive ship we encountered at Serqalin. That is another problem we will need to overcome. Gebb did not know for sure where Anubisis or any of the other family members were, so we will have to hope one of the others does, if we can locate them.”
Alise let out a sigh. “I think we should see if Eneria knows anything about their whereabouts, then we can devise a plan. I have uploaded what I gleaned from Gebb during the questioning. If anyone wants to view the information, you can access it through the master control room.”
Justin nodded and said, “Not much to go on for now then.”
Jerren’s voice sounded a moment later. “Jason, Justin, when you have a moment I would like you to come over so we can iron out a plan.”
“Understood, how about one hour?” Jason replied.
“Sounds good. Is that okay with you, Justin?”
“We’ll be there,” Justin said.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Justin stopped momentarily in the master control room to ensure the information Alise witnessed had been transferred. He wanted to go over it with Calia and share with her some of what he had gleaned from Gebb’s memories if he had to as well. He knew Alise would have been focused on the line of questioning and while Gebb was distracted he dug deeper into Gebb’s mind. He felt nauseated by some of the things he saw. The experiments, the torture and deliberate and pleasurable emotions Gebb had felt at hurting anyone who was not his family made Justin want to lash out at the entire family.
He shook his head in astonishment. They got lucky with their questioning by having his wife and daughter in the room. If they hadn’t been there, Justin felt sure Gebb would have just shut down, and it would have taken much longer to get the information out of him. Gebb was a whole new kind of deviant. Aside from his unhealthy love for his inbred family, he had all of the characteristics of a seriously twisted sociopath. A shiver ran down Justin’s spine as a scary thought crossed his mind. The longer Gebb lived, the more brutally sadistic he became. Justin feared the possibility that if he and his brothers lived that long, it might happen to them as well. A shiver coursed down his spine, and shaking his head, he suppressed those thoughts and entered his ship.
Justin called out, “Honey…I’m home,” then he let out a chuckle.
Calia came through the passage and met him with an embrace. “So, what are we doing with them?”
As soon as she asked, he realized no one had told her what happened on the ship. “Let’s go to the bedroom and relax in front of the fireplace. Then I’ll explain what happened.”
Justin explained about the questioning. He was reluctant to upload and show her any of his visions and opted to go over Alise’s with her first. Justin accessed them from the master control room and let her see them. Some of the memories were intense and when she asked who was going to mete out the punishment, he realized he would not have to show her any of the memories he saw.
Pausing a moment he said, “They’ve already been charged, sentenced and punished for their crimes.”
“What…who?” she asked.
“Inola…this time at least. Just before she shouted for us not to pursue the ship, she told us, through Jason, to carry out the sentencing. So I think we’re responsible for the six remaining.”
He gave an involuntary shiver and she asked, “Are you going to be all right with that?”
Justin looked her straight in the eyes and without blinking said, “You saw what Gebb did from Alise’s probing of his memories. I didn’t share what I saw in his mind however. I don’t want anyone else to have to see that. I can tell you this without a doubt in my mind though. A peaceful, serene execution is far better than any of them deserve…” He stood and took her in his arms and gave her a firm hug, then kissed the top of her head. And as a tear rolled down his cheek he whispered, “Every last one of them.”
Epilogue One hour later
Calia and Justin went to TDS 5 to meet Eneria and see if she had any information on Enyali’s family, but there was very little she knew for sure. Enyali had made the AI delete all reference to the family being on the ship. So in the end, they decided to go to the last known location of Osiris and Isis. Eneria had not let it be known to Enyali, but she had overheard Osiris making travel plans, and they had apparently been heading to Abydos over a thousand years prior. It was not much to go on, but they decided to head there next.
Justin was still quite distracted after the meeting. Once onboard their ship, they set course and headed for bed. Calia was rubbing his chest and she said, “We have almost two weeks of travel before we reach Abydos. I think I need to get your mind off your troubles.”
“After what I saw, I don’t think—” His remark was cut short when Calia reached down and with a jolt of energy from her hand, his erection came alive. Justin forgot what he was about to say, and chuckling he said, “You’re good,” then he pulled her in for a sweet kiss. “Or are you bad?” He chuckled.
They had made love into the wee hours, and when Justin was sleeping, Calia made her way down to the control room. Something had been nagging at her for a while now, and remembering she wanted to look it up, she decided to look into it further.
When Justin repeatedly mentioned déjà vu, it along with the sensations she had been feeling triggered several old memories. She localized the ones she could remember and opened the data log files for those memories, the file allocations in all of them had gaps, as if portions of her memories had been removed, but the overall file size had not been changed.
She was almost certain who had done it, and was having difficulties understanding why they would be missing, until she remembered Justin saying that he and his brothers thought Inola was guiding their paths.
She knew Justin was trained in computer security, and considered having him look into the files to see if he could recover the lost data.
Inola’s voice startled her. “It is not time, Cali. This timeline is back on track for now, but if they realize what is happening too soon, it may not recover again. Stay the course.”
“Can you give me any specifics?”
“Not at the moment. Rest up. You will need it, and please do not tell anyone about this conversation. All will be known soon enough, and any sooner just causes resets.”
Calia was not happy about it but decided to do as she said. As Justin had told her, if Inola were to say jump, he would ask how high, and she realized at that moment, she would too. “As you wish,” she said as she stood and headed back to the bedroom.
Standing next to the bed, Calia was staring down at Justin and she was finding it hard to comprehend how lucky she was to be bonded with someone who could care so much for perfect strangers. When he helped Drosu, she wondered why he would risk himself for someone he did not know. Then during the healing process on A’shari’s mother, and when A’shari hugged Justin, she could feel strong emotions emanating from him.
Something had happened to Justin when he healed A’shari. He had formed a bond with the little girl. At first a bit of jealous
y arose in her, until she realized what she was feeling was not a romantic love, but rather a love for life and a need to protect the weak.
Now she understood what he meant when he said, “A life…even an extremely long life, is not worth living if you are not willing to sacrifice it all for those you love.” Thinking about how she felt about Justin, his brothers and even Alise, she knew she would die to protect all of them, and if keeping Inola’s secret helped her in that goal, she would do it without question. Smiling with a new warmth in her heart she undressed and climbed into bed with her reason for being.
The End
I hope you enjoyed the second installment in the Imortum series. With luck, the third book in the series, Area 51, will be out in a few months. You can keep updated on the progress of the series by visiting my website at authorjkstone.com
Excerpt from Book Three in the Imortum Series: Area 51
Aboard TDS 1 and TDS 3, Jason, Alise, Justin, Calia and Jerren have survived several attacks by a race called the Toralins and their consortium, which destroyed a multitude of other planets for their natural resources. At the urging of an ancient Imortum named Inola, whom the three brothers once knew as their imaginary friend from their youth, the group has devised a plan to reset the consortium-controlled planets by performing controlled GMPs or geomagnetic pulses to wipe out all technology in an attempt to prevent the consortium from continuing their destruction of other worlds. In essence, the GMP reverts consortium planets to a pre-industrial level so the consortium would no longer be able to prey on less advanced planets and spacefarers.
* * * * *
The artificial intelligence aboard TDS 5 monitored the communications in silence while its commander, Enyali, argued with her nephew. “I don’t care how many ships you’ve lost! We need to get that other time dilation ship out of commission. I’ve spent thousands of years setting traps for them and feeding you information, and you repeatedly let them slip away!”
Horuisis’s disgruntled voice bellowed back over the communications, “You know very well how durable those damned ships are, you B! Never mind, I just spoke with Grandfather, and he told me I am to give you any resources you need. You are to use one of our new bombs, but I’m not happy about it. I only have three of the prototypes at the moment, and they’re untested.
“Once you arrive here, your pet can collect the armor you wanted us to make for him. Afterward I’ll send one of the bombs off to the Baeton homeworld. You can do whatever you wish to draw the TDS ships there and then detonate the bomb when they arrive. Just make sure to record the effects so we’ll know if we have to increase the yield. It will take about a week for our ship to get around the Asharan void, and I’ll send another hundred ships with you. Try not to get them destroyed this time.”
“Get that bomb and the ships moving now,” Enyali grumbled. “I will be there in a little over a week to pick up my mother and I do not wish to stay there any longer than I have to. And there is no need for the armor anymore. My pet is dead. I will need to recharge this ship at Anukan. I’ll meet your ships at the Baetus nebula.”
* * * * *
TDS 5 had arrived at Serqalin, and the AI was on the observation level reviewing the scan data and peering at the remaining ships in orbit. Clearly something was wrong. It had scanned the planet shortly before they arrived as Enyali instructed it to. It observed the normal cocoon of ships surrounding the planet. Within a nanosecond of arriving in the solar system however, almost all of the ships were gone. The AI did not know why it did it, but it erased the original telemetry from the databank and performed another scan.
The AI had just transported Enyali’s mother Nuit aboard, and a second later Horuisis’s voice boomed throughout the ship. “What the…? Where are all my damned ships? You led them here, you bitch!”
“What are you talking about? My scan shows only your ship and ten others here when I arrived. I was phased out all the way here, and nobody could have tracked me!” Enyali snapped back.
A moment later Enyali shouted, “BOT! Get in here now!”
The AI ignored Enyali at first, then took its time responding after Enyali yelled its name the second time. It reluctantly transferred its consciousness into a body, and standing in front of her, it waited for Enyali’s ususal rage to take over.
Enyali’s face was red and she had spittle forming at the side of her mouth. “When I call you…” She hit the AI across the face. “You come immediately.” She jacked the AI up against the wall. “Understood!?”
The AI cast its eyes down, knowing that making eye contact would drive her insane, and in a monotone replied, “As you wish, Commander. What service can Bot perform for you?”
“My nephew says there were more ships here when we arrived. What happened to them? Why are they not on my scans?”
The AI knew it would receive punishment for what it was about to say but decided to do it anyway. “Bot performed the scan you ordered before our arrival. The only ships in orbit were your illustrious and benevolent nephew’s and ten others.”
Enyali grasped the AI by the throat, squeezed with all her might and twisted as she yelled, “Are you calling my nephew a liar?” A moment later there was a snapping jolt, and the body the AI’s consciousness had been projected into fell dead on the floor.
* * * * *
Jerren’s brothers and their AI’s had just entered range of a probe Alise had following one of the consortium ships that had escaped after attacking TDS 3 while it was in orbit of the planet Daregon. Jerren had joined them to see what they were in store for, and that was when they found that Serqalin was encased by interlocking ships, and the solar system had been heavily mined by time-phased explosives. As if the conventional explosives were not bad enough, Calia had pointed out three particularly nasty bombs that were composed of dark matter as well.
Jason, Alise, Justin, Calia and he had been in the beginning stages of planning their GMP when one of the three dark matter bombs had been scooped up and escorted out of the solar system by a hundred ships. Calia and Alise could only speculate as to how powerful the bomb would be, having never dealt with weaponized dark matter before. But knowing the potential destructive force of single-particle incidents, the two of them decided it would be prudent to take care of that dark matter bomb before performing the GMP on Serqalin. They proceeded to follow the vessel carrying the dark matter bomb and the ships that were escorting it, then detonate the dark matter bomb in the safest location they came across before heading back to Serqalin to deal with the other ships and dark matter bombs.
For safety’s sake, it had been decided that Jerren should stay in the master control room, and Justin and Calia would be on TDS 3, out of phase, and a great distance away until the dark matter bomb was detonated. This plan left Jason and Alise on TDS 1 to detonate the dark matter bomb when the bomb reached the location they had decided on.
The blast would have been disastrous if it had been set off anywhere but where they had chosen. The bomb was detonated when the procession of ships reached the closest point to the Asharan void and equal distances between neighboring galaxies. The destructive wave from the blast decimated the hundred escort ships in a nanosecond.
Not knowing what the overall effect of the blast would be, having never dealt with weaponized dark matter before, Alise informed them that she would send her phased probe on a collision course with the dark matter bomb, then she would set TDS 1 on a course away from the area at high speed. She did as planned and when the phased probe came into contact with the dark matter of the bomb, it caused the bomb to detonate. Despite being a considerable distance from the blast site, TDS 1 was still hit by the explosive wave, and the impact from the blast’s wave almost killed Jason and Alise.
At the moment of the blast, an energy overload surged through the master control room, shocking Jerren and rendering him unconscious, and Justin with the help of Calia, managed to heal Jason, Alise and him. Once everyone was awake, Calia had them all meet in the master control room to di
scuss in detail what had happened.
After seeing firsthand the destructive power of the dark matter weapon, they agreed upon a method to clear the conventional explosives and ships so they could secure the other two dark matter bombs that were still in an orbit around Serqalin, and they proceeded with the GMP. They performed the first of what was to become three GMPs in different times, thus thinning out the explosives and ships that had been placed there in the past. Once the first GMP was complete, the ships and most of the mines were gone.
That lasted about five minutes, after which Jason, Alise, Justin, Calia and Jerren soon realized that performing the GMP too far back in time gave the consortium time to regroup, which necessitated the additional pulses. Calia was about to perform the second GMP when Jerren had noticed that TDS 5 had just entered the solar system and was about to enter in orbit around Serqalin as the first pulse occurred. He called out to his brothers, “TDS 5 just entered orbit of Serqalin in Jason’s time when the pulse occurred, and is in a TD of positive .75 if that helps.”
He heard Calia say, “Jerren, where are they located in orbit?”
Jerren examined the TDS 5 display wall closely. “Near the planet’s equator, on the dark side of the planet at the moment.”
Jerren heard Calia ask Alise something about rocking TDS 5, and they discussed the specifics of their phase shifts. Alise and Jason took TDS 1 to the southern magnetic pole of Serqalin, and once in place they waited for TDS 3 to perform the second GMP. When the countdown reached zero, he knew both TDS 1 and TDS 3 had performed their third pulse in the same time frame as TDS 5, because the energy feedback caused the lights in the master control room to flash brightly and he saw TDS 5’s trajectory rapidly changing as it was flung into deep space. A flash of light from the TDS 2 and TDS 4’s walls caught his eye, and he rushed over to examine the two walls. Then reexamining the TDS 5 display wall, he said, “Damn, that got his attention and threw him for a loop. TDS 5’s systems went haywire. As soon as he stopped the ship from spinning, he set course out of the system very fast.