Void’s Psionics (Book Two of the Star Pirate Legends)
Published by H. Lee Morgan at Smashwords
Copyright 2015 H. Lee Morgan
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Chapter 1
“Come on already, Olly! I Fractured in the first two weeks and it’s already been three months since we left the downed ship. Focus ya moron. Pull the lever again.”
Normally her soft, sultry voice would set Oliver’s blood afire and make wild thoughts of her naked bouncing breasts appear in his mind, but recently Renee’s already limited patience was wearing him down.
And irritating.
Sitting cross-legged out on the spacious deck of the Dorgenox, a gigantic starship in the shape and appearance of a triple mast freighter sailboat of the fifteen hundreds, Oliver was wearing just a pair of loose, short shorts and was having trouble in the hardest part all individuals had to undergo through when learning the more difficult and intricate aspects of utilizing psionic efficiency. Psionics was the ability and cornerstone to harness the electrical impulses of the mind and focus it throughout the body to achieve a purpose. By focusing it further to a point through ones intent, a person could levitate objects through what is known as telekinesis. If one had the innate fortitude to do so. Some people given the psionic gene were naturally limited to need lower gravity to lift so much as a cup of water whereas others were exceptionally gifted to the point they could raise entire cities at regular Standard gravity.
Classes were established in numbers ranging from One to Twelve, One being the correctly assumed lowest a person could get. Classes One to Four could barely do much at all, but in a category Four a person could just be able to create a visible discharge of electricity with enough power to equal a constant stream of static shock like what happens if a person in wool socks builds up enough of a charge on carpet. They can levitate small things as well. Power truly manifests best in classes Five and higher. On humanity’s average, people are roughly category Six and can make shields or barriers through solidifying telekinesis. Class Sevens can condense their powers to a point in their palms to create a concentrated ball of electrical plasma and in releasing it can detonate what is called a kinetic blast. Classes Ten and up are rare and the highest number of the category is rarest of them all.
And Oliver sat facing the strongest woman in existence with a temperament that could make Beasts turn tail for their lives.
Yet despite his love for her he struggled under her harsh methods and snide comments. And still he sat alone with her after more than seventy hours of sleep deprivation, lifting a training puzzle cube using nothing other than raw psionic capabilities. He was a mountain of bulky lean muscle and even sitting on the ground was no pushover. On the ground to his left thigh laid an onyx black, meter long cutlass and a large mug of half consumed caffeinated coffee just to remain awake. He was roguishly handsome to the female population and ever since being found nearly six months ago in the belly of an extinct volcano he had let his originally bald head grow out a thick mane of dark brown hair. It was roughly eight centimeters long and handsomely brushed back, but not now. Dark rings under bloodshot eyes showed how long he had gone without a wink of sleep. He was beyond tired and struggled with an effort few possessed to not snap and go on an overwhelmed rampage or just collapse into slumber.
But focus he did. Oliver was a unique entity that had had his memory and entire life wiped away tens of thousands of years ago, long before humans had even conceived traveling the cosmos. He was of a people human’s entitled Solarians, but currently he was the only pure one left. Renee, his sole reason for living, was genetically made into a Solarian by the greatest minds of two great parents, but had lost her mother soon after childbirth from a culmination of deadly circumstances. Since being discovered and brought aboard the Dorgenox, Oliver’s psionic strength had increased from Class One to Five through eating the essence of deadly Beasts. Eating them combined with his own DNA to thereby increase his own limitations. Quite a symbiotic relationship.
Imagining a mental lever allowed Oliver to let loose his energy so as to collect together a mental reservoir of power he had yet to experience filling completely. Called ‘gathering’ the release of energy made a person’s body resonate to their own frequency and always felt wonderful, like an adrenaline rush that didn’t require danger or fear to express. It felt so good that people strived to continuously let it flow, but it also served to keep telepathic people and electrical discharges from taking control of one’s own body.
And right now Oliver sat with a hand out, palm upraised to levitate the puzzle cube. It was eleven and a half centimeters long in all three dimensions and made completely of silvery steel. The puzzle itself was made up of one hundred and fifty wholly different pieces. Each piece of the brainteaser had a certain way to be fitted together to be cohesive. Any incorrect variation and it would fall apart. Done properly and it would hold true. And now it hovered centimeters over his hand, sometimes making arcs of the bluish-white lightning on a small scale whenever anger, frustration and loss of patience did too much and struck the metal since metal conducted so well.
Relax. Just relax. He mentally reminded himself again as he watched and made the partially disassembled cube rotate in six individual pieces. Open the valve? Check. Gather? Check. Focus the energy to the surface of my left palm? Check. Keep the distance close to lower the cost of distance? Check. Okay, let my senses infuse through the telekinesis, like an extension of my own body. Feel the individual pieces as if they were part of me. He closed his eyes and it helped some, like when sensation is more acute when losing one primary sense. Through the output he began to mentally picture the puzzle parts and one at a time he pulled it apart, but kept it levitated.
Renee watched his progress closely on a cube every child learning to harness their inner power used. The cube was hardly easy to reassemble even for adults, but there was a purpose. It built a foundation that would allow the individual to conserve their power and not waste too much since each individual had limits. The more effort put in, the faster said person grew fatigued. Simple Gathering could be held for hours, days or constantly, but using outside the body was increasingly more demanding the further an object got. The reason for this method encouraged what is commonly known as Fracturing.
Fracturing was what happens during times when the body is pushed beyond it’s normal capabilities. Sleep deprivation is the standard method. When a person’s mind finally Fractures, it is said it is like cutting a constricting rope keeping someone from fully realizing just what they could do. Fracturing would let the person to mentally multitask better than they can do anything physically.
She sat in front of him, watching as individual pieces pulled from the larger chunks. Plus she watched his thick mane standing up as if caught in a breezy wind, but was a result of using his power. Like Oliver, she was hardly diminutive or slender like other women. She was full bodied, curvy and tall, but not thin. Short, ripe strawberry red hair was styled cutely on her pixie-like face. High cheekbones enhanced emerald irises as well as full rosebud lips. She was a vision of ginger beauty having adorable freckles sprinkled ove
r her nose, cheeks, shoulders and cleavage. She also barely looked beyond the age of late teens like nearly all human women since the discovery of the immortality chromosome gene therapy that is joined with the psionic one, but in reality is thirty years of age. Oliver though was in appearance of late twenties to early thirties like men everywhere, but had discovered three months prior he was actually closer to eighty three and a half million years old according to a standard Earth calendar year.
Sitting on the edge she watched the cube and all the pieces when it finally happened.
Oliver was covered in sweat, grimacing and completely pissed off. He was tired and in desperate need of sleep. He couldn’t think straight and Renee’s constant pestering was fraying his few remaining nerves. Losing count weeks ago doing the same drill over and over had his usually calming demeanor buried so deep he didn’t know if it would ever return. Delusions haunted him and drinking more caffeine than advisable made for some wicked hallucinations. He had dreamed of a full night’s sleep, but when his brain shut itself down he’d be awoken by someone after no more than an hour or two and there was nowhere to hide aboard, not with biometric scans that show where every living creature aboard is at any given time and a ball busting female who knows how to administer chemical stimulants.
Power output was steady, but he could practically see the forty seven pieces shaking without his eyes as the struggle to maintain them individually took more and more effort.
Frustration and anger suddenly overstretched their lengths and Oliver could practically hear something inside his head snap and shatter though no actual sound was made. All of a sudden, clear as day, the puzzle burned bright in his mind, cocooned in a network of invisible electrical impulses only he could view within the imaginary conscious or inner eye.
Amber irises returned to view his object of loathing and blinked as the nervous shaking became perfectly still and rotated through the air in a quarter meter wide area. “Whoa.” He breathed as the clumps disassembled part by part into a hundred and fifty shiny metallic pieces that would make a whole.
“About damn time!” Renee sighed. “I was getting worried I’d have to take drastic matters.”
He didn’t want to know how drastic she would go and didn’t want to know. He had problems as it is being this exhausted. Imagining her cruel side was hard enough to deal with. So he didn’t ask. Instead said “This feels good.”
“After suffering three months on no sleep it would. You’ve finally Fractured. I knew it as soon as you stopped making them shake like nerves when someone is scared or who breaks a bone.”
“Is it over?” the haunted hope was barely there as her heart broke at seeing him suffer for so long when most people Fracture it in month one. Three months was practically torture. “Will it come back? I don’t want to do it again.”
“No, once you Fracture it doesn’t go back. At least not to me or any human I know. Let’s get you in bed.”
The pieces rained down on the deck as a monumental yawn surged through him and lost concentration. “Sorry, but I won’t make it that far. Good night, Red.”
Before she could stop him, he leaned back and was out cold before hitting the wooden planked deck. Legs remained pretzel crossed and arms spread out wide. The abrupt slumber had her eyelids blink a dozen times before she gave him a soft smile. “You earned it ya idiot.” She admitted and looked down at the puzzle and with a wave of her hand she reassembled it perfectly in almost no time before setting it over by his sword and a two liter volume capable mug. From there she grabbed his legs to uncross them and lay each flat before staring at her right wrist’s black bracelet.
The bracelet being an advanced piece of technology so powerful, it had few limitations. Her clothes weren’t really clothes, but a malleable armor the bracelet can control. From it she modified her long sleeved white shirt, blue jeans and casual running shoes into a thin, but wide brown bed sheet and an airtight pillow. The material stayed connected to her body, but could be extended through the bracelet. She looked down to find her lacy black bra and lacy boy-shorts still on to then lift his head and put it on the inflated pillow before she snuggled in close and threw the sheet over them both. She was tired too, but not to his extent. The hard ground was cold, but she knew Oliver’s body heat would take care of that soon enough.
“Nah, let him sleep, Steven.”
“You said he’s been asleep for thirty hours straight, Mrs. Void.” Came the male voice of Steven Metts. Hunter and explosive fanatic extraordinaire.
“So would you if all you had was twenty three hours sleep in a three month timeframe.” She retorted. “Let him sleep some more.”
“Too late for that.” Oliver groaned in a bit of stiffness and pain.
He opened his eyes straight up into a wonder of wonders. From his position sprawled the great Sapphire Nebula, the unofficial home of the Dorgenox mostly as it traveled through space. Dust and gas made the nebula have a varying blue color from light baby blue to dark purple. It was aptly named for a stellar nursery that would become another star system in fifty million years if all goes well. Right now it was so stunningly beautiful and peppered with further starlight behind. It’s soft color contrasted with the blackness of space perfectly and was a very welcome sight to behold.
Then he thought Wait, why can I see so much? To turn his head and see the largest of the masts jutting up through the deck. He sat up in nothing but a pair of boxers that hid his prized jewels to ask “What am I doing out here?”
Amber eyes turned as he followed movement of Renee in a pair of sinfully tight jeans and a skin tight white shirt beside Steven Metts and his Golden Eagle called Visor, perched on his shoulder. Steven was hardly a small man being a hundred and ninety centimeters tall, but next to Oliver’s two sixteen, he was short. The man stood taller than Renee’s one sixty seven point six. He also wore standard Hunter armor that was top of the line in human technology protection, but like a badge of honor, it had scars and markings from many deadly fights since humans no longer scar. Thanks to a program though it was shiny silver. The program was made based of his own armor’s ability to clean itself. The man was seventy one and still looked around Oliver’s age. In his right hand was a simple spear that could collapse, but normally he used it as a walking staff. Hung on his left hip though was a flail, a metal handle upon a shaft and spiked ball connected together by a chain of rings. He was tan, had lighter brown hair than Oliver, often had a smile on his face and was always ready for action though he lazed around when things were boring. And right now the man was smirking. “Brother, what do you last remember?”
“Uh, hold that thought, got to take a leak.” In an instant Oliver was standing, using natural inhuman ligaments to do so. In the lower gravity environment he found the nearest access hatch in three bounds, lifted the lid and moved down a stairwell to go a level down.
Level three of the ship held a lush forest underneath the deck and as soon as Oliver could leap over the spiraling hand railing he did. He dropped fifty meters and landed lightly before diving into the brush, whipped it out and let the pressure-pain loose. ‘Ha’ he breathed in total relief to help water the forest, passing the nearest toilet over a kilometer away. Since urine is recycled like all waste aboard anyway, Oliver simple skipped a step and watered the forest directly.
When the final drops were gone he sniffed and wrinkled his brow. Heightened smell allowed him to realize just how bad he smelled and tapped a communication crystal imbedded just underneath the skin in the soft area behind the ear canal. “Renee, I’m going to our room for a much needed shower. Tell Steven I’ll meet up with him to apologize for leaving so rudely.”
“We’re actually outside the bushes, Idiot.” She said loud enough to be heard and Steven added “I feel bad for the tree he just drowned in piss.” She snorted a small laugh.
Oliver looked down and willed a set of pants and a long sleeved shirt from within the vambrace attached to his whole right forearm. Rippling like warm water, armor was e
xtracted and grew over his body to change. Boots clad his large feet and suddenly realized “My sword!” and bulled through the brush.
“Must have been an emergency.” Steven spoke, holding said blade. “Here, Brother.” Brother being a term Hunters call one another or Sister if female. All others are called by last name.
The thick handled cutlass fit perfectly in Oliver’s dominant left hand, but the moment it touched the warmth it always gave off, its dull blackness flared to life with thousands of twinkling stars throughout the blade and hilt. It wasn’t too bright, but when it gets too dark to see by it gives off plenty to navigate safely. From the belt rippled and grew a curved sheathe which is the only housing the star-saber could be held in. When the sword is alight it is sharp enough to cut through any material by separating the very molecules it passes through. And as a safety feature it cannot cut the wiElder. When dull and untouched be the owner it creates a barrier only the most accurate and minute scans can detect it. As a special function it also adjusts its own gravity so the weight remains the same no matter the environment. He sheathed the perfectly balanced cutlass saying “Thank you and sorry for leaving like that.”
“Not needed.” Visor the regal eagle clicked his beak. “We all have forgotten things when those particular priorities make us a slave.”
“Except when you crap intentionally on someone.” Steven chuckled to his companion, a neutrally enhanced animal bound to one individual.
“Don’t blame me! Your baby sister scared it out of me. How was I supposed to know she would open her mouth at that moment I was aiming for the top of her head and…” Visor could not hold back anymore as the memory sent him into a fit of feather shaking laughter. It was infectious and the three people joined it, Renee wiping a teary eye.
When it settled Steven leaned on his spear to ask again “So what do you remember last, Brother?”
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