Voyages of the White Skull Book 1

by Jason Alan Jones

  “What is he doing?” Heather asked Monica over the radio. Monica stopped firing.

  “I d…don’t …know,” Monica said in disbelief. Jesse’s ship was pulled in sideways by the gravity of the wormhole. He put his thrusters on full reverse to make it look like he was trying to get away from the wormhole.

  “JESSE!” yelled Monica. She clutched at her breast in disbelief.

  “He’s not going to make it!” Heather yelled over the radio.

  “JESSE! Turn your ship away from the black hole!” Monica sobbed. Jesse sent her static from his radio, for dramatic effect. He felt guilty for what he was about to do. She had left him no choice.

  “He’s not responding. The wormhole must be interfering with his radio. Oh, my God, I’m going to lose him,” Monica said in a panic.

  “His engine is smoking; I don’t think he has enough power to make it out. No one has ever survived a wormhole. Its gravity is too strong. If you go in there, you’ll die, too,” explained Cinnamon.

  They watched as the Black Ice slowly circled around the wormhole trying to fight its way free. With each pass, Monica felt herself die more and more, as her love was circling to his death. Tears began to steam down her face. She was overrun with guilt, since she knew it was her own fault that he was being sucked in. Her persistence was his downfall, and she wished she were dead. She desperately wanted to talk to him, but couldn’t get through. Her streaming tears had now turned to sobs of pain. She couldn’t believe that he was going to die. Monica fell to her knees as she cried, held herself, and watched Jesse circle around the wormhole. She didn’t know what to do, except watch, as if for some reason a miracle would happen, and he would break free.

  “JESSE! JESSE! MY LOVE!” she screamed, while reaching out to him. Then he was gone. He had been completely sucked in by the uncaring spatial anomaly.

  The Haven sisters watched in disbelief as Monica continued to sob. She was crying so hard that she couldn’t see. Monica’s crew kept their distance from her, and let her grieve in peace, as they left her alone on the deck of her ship. They understood her pain. All of the women aboard the Huntington were in love with Monica, and were sad that she was in pain, even though they didn’t understand how she could be in love with a man in the first place. The Haven sisters held off on contacting her for a little while. They decided to fix their engines the best they could until they could make it into a space station. Jesse had seriously damaged their ship. The Haven sisters also felt sympathy for the White Skull, since they knew that he could have destroyed them, and because of that, they had a lot of respect for him. One hour later, Monica managed to gather herself together and pull alongside the Haven sisters.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Cinnamon called over to Monica on the ship’s radio.

  “Let me know when you fix your engines. I will wait for you, and then you can follow me to a space station. I know of one that is nearby. Until then, I wish to be alone,” Monica said, weakly.

  “We understand,” said Cinnamon. Monica had become a close friend to the Haven sisters about seven months ago, when they had joined her large female cult. They had become her right and left arms, traveling around with her wherever she went. Since they had proved their loyalty to Monica, she had promised to help them avenge the death of their parents. The Haven sisters had heard that their parents’ ship was boarded, and then they were tortured by the Red Cardinals. Their parents had been missing for the last three years, but they had only recently found out that it was the Red Cardinals that had taken them. Monica had been helping them during the last seven months discover the mystery behind their parents’ disappearance. Their parents were also bounty hunters, and they were all from Detroit, Michigan. Monica had found out that the Red Cardinals boarded their ship while they were pursuing a criminal on the run. The Red Cardinals tried to get them to convert to Catholicism, but they refused. So, the Red Cardinals tortured them until they died.

  Since then, the Haven sisters had vowed to get their revenge on the Red Cardinals, especially the head of the order, who went by the name of Archbishop Blackwell. Rumor had it that he personally conducted the torture of their parents. But, he too had disappeared three years ago, apparently in hiding, leaving Cardinal McNeil in charge. Monica promised them that she would find the evil Bishop, and the others responsible for their parents’ death. The Haven sisters continued working on their engine, as Monica wept for her love, while lying on the deck of her ship. Although she had a crew of five hundred women, they didn’t dare disturb her in her moment of grief. Monica had felt as if she had died as well, and didn’t know how she would get over the loss of her one true love.

  Chapter 5

  "Everything I learned I learned from the movies.”

  Audrey Hepburn

  Meanwhile, while laughing his ass off, a happy space pirate traveled through a chaotic wormhole with feelings of freedom.

  “She’s going to kill me when she finds out,” he laughed. Jesse didn’t want it to come to this, but she had lost her mind, and would not take no for an answer. He realized he would have to stick with his plans and start his deep space exploration after these last two jobs. Otherwise, Monica would find out he was still alive, and continue her hunt, or just kill him in a rage. Jesse knew that his trip through the wormhole was going to be four hours long, but it was quite fascinating. Since he had already made the trip before, he took eight painkillers and downed a couple of shots of Absinthe. He put on a few classic rock songs, like Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” and a few others by David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Sex pistols and his favorite rappers Fifty-Cent, Snoop Dogg, and Eminem.

  The wormhole was almost psychedelic in nature. The inside of the spatial anomaly was filled with different streams of swirling colors. Sometimes, the inside would even flash like lightning. The Black Ice slowly rotated, as Jesse leaned back in his flight chair. He put his feet up on his flight console and relaxed as he stared out into the wormhole. A multitude of colors, like blues, black, greens, and dark reds, swirled and swayed, giving the spatial anomaly the appearance of a piece of living artwork. Jesse turned up the volume of the music, then turned off the lights, and enjoyed the ride.

  After four hours of complete relaxation, Jesse exited the wormhole. He then plotted a new course to Nemtox 8 so he could make his first drop off. He thought he should check on the frozen woman in his cargo hold. He stood before her once again with his heart beating harder from her hypnotic beauty. Jesse pulled up a chair, sat down, and looked at her. He wondered what her voice sounded like or how her hair smelled.

  “Fuck, I think I’m going to do it,” he said, as his heart began to pound with excitement. He wasn’t sure if it was the drugs that were still in his system, or his honor, which was set against transporting someone to their death. The pirate walked over to one of his utility shelves, picked up a rubber mallet, and sat back in his chair. From his chair, he eyed the buttons, and tossed the rubber end of the mallet, attempting to hit them.

  “Whoops,” he said, smiling, knowing that this was entirely against his own rules of messing with cargo he transported for a client. He missed, wondering if he should continue.

  “Whoops,” he said again, still missing. After five more ‘whoops,’ he finally hit the buttons. Immediately, the buttons came alive, flashing quickly from green to red. Faster and faster they flashed, until finally the metal doors from the back, now closed in the front, concealing the woman. Steam began to blow out through the crack of the obelisk.

  “Ah shit!” Jesse said, as he ran to the lift and slid down the metal ladder. He ran to his room, grabbed a couple of thick blankets and then ran back to the cargo room. The metal object was still dispensing steam. After several minutes, the metal doors contracted, releasing gallons of hot water in every direction. The woman was now curled up in a ball on the base of the obelisk. Jesse ran up to her with the blankets and checked for a pulse. He could feel her heart beat through her jugular vein on the side of her neck. The woman’s stomach was moving,
indicating that she was alive and breathing. Jesse wrapped her up the best he could in the blankets and carried her to his room. He gently placed her on his bed and then wrapped a couple more blankets around her.

  He nervously paced back and forth, as if he were an expecting father. The space pirate didn’t know much about the medical field, and wasn’t sure of what to do. The only thing he could think to do was to keep an eye on her until she woke up.

  “Oh God, what did I do?” He doubted his decision, and hoped she would be okay. After placing a towel around her wet black hair, he sat in a black leather couch, which was placed against the wall near his bed. After several minutes of waiting, he decided to put on the Solar News to see if anything interesting was happening.

  “This is Rich Romeo with the Solar News, reporting live from Mars, with my co-host Betty Steven. It has been two days since the discovery of the spatial rift in the Antares Sector, and the UPG has failed to comment, other than that it is a possible doorway to another system. The UPG’s science team has, however, begun to construct a type of base next to the anomaly. Apparently, before all access had been blocked to the spatial rift, sources say that the UPG had placed a type of star portal over it. That, unfortunately, is all the information we have at this time, until the UPG provides us with an update. The UPG has issued a warning to all space travelers to be careful while traveling through the Antares Sector, and to have your ID badges, licenses, and ships ready for inspection. Do you have anything to add Betty?”

  “Well, Rich…”

  Jesse turned off the news and continued to watch his sleeping guest. The space pirate was curious about the UPG’s new discovery. The Antares Sector was a very busy sector. One of the biggest space stations was built in the sector, the Rockfield Space Station. On the other end, there was a UPG military station.

  “Strange,” Jesse commented to himself. “With all of the traffic going through that sector, how is it that an anomaly is discovered now? The UPG is up to something.” Jesse had a suspicion that maybe the UPG had possibly created the anomaly themselves. It would explain their strange advanced technology.

  “They must have more advanced technology than we are led to believe, but why the secrecy? It is a star system of one government, why keep things a secret? What are they afraid of? What other kinds of discoveries are there which they have kept us in the dark about,” he commented to himself. It disturbed him. The space pirate did believe that not everyone in the government was bad, and that there was an important need for one. He just didn’t like the fact that they always hid the truth from its people. He wondered that the reason may be, that if they gave us all the true information of what was going on in the world, that they would lose that power over the people. The White Skull wasn’t an anarchist, he was just tired of being lied to.

  Jesse continued to watch the woman for several hours. He left for an hour to sit in his lounge, behind his flight room. He sat at the bar for a while, and had a couple shots of Absinthe. After a few hours, Jesse checked on the woman, and luckily, she had stopped sweating and began to dry. Jesse put his feet up on the leather chair, and propped some pillows behind his back for comfort. He split his video screen so he could once again see the outside of his flight window and his radar at the same time. The space pirate looked out into the stars and began to think on his childhood. Jesse deeply loved outer space, and remembered when his father had bought him his first telescope. He would spend hours outside looking up to the moon and the stars. He also remembered that he would look for so long that he would have a terrible headache afterwards. When he was a child, he dreamed of flying and exploring the far reaches of the universe looking for adventure. Jesse’s father and stepmother were still alive, and he would visit them from time to time. He loved them both very much, but he wasn’t good at keeping in contact. It was his own fault for being that way. It was a habit he had formed when he was a child. It was probably because his mother and father had divorced when he was three.

  After his mother was murdered, he moved back in with his father. He was happy to live with his father again, because he loved him very much. Unfortunately, his father had to work two jobs to support them, and when he got home, he was usually very tired. Jesse began to watch a lot of TV in his room, and after a few years, he had gotten used to secluding himself from the rest of the world. If he had any problems, he would turn to the TV, to lose himself in the movies he would watch. Although he always thought of himself as being anti-social, he always had friends, and could blend in with any type of crowd. That is one of the reason he never minded the seclusion of space, it was relaxing and peaceful to him. Of course, to Jesse, there was nothing better than having a girlfriend. It was just a matter of finding the right one.

  Ever since his break up with Monica, he had steered clear of woman. He needed a chance to recuperate. The young space pirate hadn’t been lucky in finding the right woman yet. The type of woman he was looking for had to be laidback and down to earth. He didn’t like women who felt they had to complain all of the time. They would have to be very affectionate and have a positive attitude. Jesse liked clingy women, the type that would not want to be away from him more than a second. He knew he would never find her, but he was looking for a woman who would love him with all of her heart and would do anything for him, the way he would for them.

  As far as beauty was concerned, he thought that all women were beautiful in their own way. It didn’t hurt if they were beautiful, but Jesse was more concerned with a beautiful personality. Monica had a couple of those qualities, but she was too ambitious for him. Having nice things, and living comfortably is one thing, but having the universe subjugated under you is just crazy. When Jesse had first become a pirate, he momentarily wanted great wealth and power. Those feelings only lasted a year, and he realized there was more to life than the materialistic possessions.

  Now, all he wanted is to find the right woman, get married, and settle down on a large starship, space station, or possibly a secluded spot on a planet. A blinking light on his radar woke him from his daydream. It was a small ship coming his way at top speed. He hoped that it was a merchant ship, or possibly a passerby. Jesse didn’t want to take any chances, so he powered up his weapons and readied himself. To his relief, the small green ship quickly passed by without even attempting to communicate. It passed on his left side, ninety feet away. He relaxed, but kept an eye on his radar to make sure the ship didn’t double back. After keeping watch for a couple of hours, Jesse checked on the woman. She seemed to be completely dry, and was resting soundly. Since she wasn’t going anywhere, he took a nap in his flight chair. He rested soundly for five hours.

  Jesse felt something touch his shoulder and sprung to his feet with lightning speed. It was her. “I’m sorry I startled you, but where am I?” she asked in a sweet voice. He was surprised that she didn’t try to knock him out or something. She seemed quite calm.

  “You’re on my ship. My name is Jesse. Don’t worry, you’re safe,” he explained.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “My name is Jaime. How did I get here, and where are we?”

  “How you got here is something we have to discuss, as far as the location, we are close to Nemtox 8,” he calmly explained. Jaime was still wrapped up in one of his blankets. She held it close to her.

  “Why am I here? I don’t understand. The last thing I remember was that I had just gotten off of work and was on my way to my apartment,” Jaime explained.

  “Where are you from?”

  “I live on Rockfield Space Station in the Antares Sector. How did I get here?” she asked, seeming to be in a daze, probably caused from being recently thawed out.

  “You should sit down.” He pressed a button on his console and a chair appeared from the floor next to his flight chair.

  “Thanks.”

  “All right, first, what was the last date you remember?” Jesse asks.

  “The date was June 12th. Why?” she asked, not liking where this was
going.

  “Do you have any enemies that you know of, or anyone who may want you dead?” Jesse asked.

  “God no, I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I don’t have any enemies that I know of. You’re scaring me,”

  “Okay…Jaime…listen. Today is the 5th of May. Someone has had you frozen in an obelisk for the past year.” Jesse wasn’t sure if he sounded crazy. Jaime shot up in horror.

  “What? Oh, my God. You can’t be serious. Who would do such a thing? I’ve never done anything mean to anyone. What…you…huh. Is this some kind of joke or something? Did Pauline put you up to this? Please tell me you’re joking.” Jesse didn’t blame her for being scared. It was eerie just thinking about someone being frozen alive.

  “No, I assure you it’s not a joke. I’m a smuggler. I was paid to transport the obelisk you were in. I had no idea I was transporting a human being. I discovered that I was carrying you when my ship was hit by something, and the object you were in malfunctioned. It took me a few days wrestling around with my conscious, but I finally decided to free you,” he said, trying to calm her down.

  “Frozen? Who in God’s name would want to freeze me? I haven’t done anything wrong, have I? It was on my birthday when I was walking home. As I got to the hallway where my apartment was, I felt a pain in my shoulder. It seemed like yesterday. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year. I’ve missed a whole year of my life. My birthday was going to be next month again. Who were you transporting me to?” Jaime asked.

  “I was supposed to drop you off at the Trading Post, a space station just outside of the rim. The contact, I’m not sure of. All I know is that this has something to do with the UPG.”

  She cut him off, “The UPG? Why would they have me frozen?”

  “I don’t know if it was them. All I do know is that someone who works for them loaded you on my ship. But, you don’t have to worry, Jaime. We are far from the drop off point, and I promise I won’t give you to whoever’s expecting you. I may be a smuggler…but I’m not evil.” She slightly relaxed at his comment.