by JK Stone
Once his vision was fully restored he looked down and found his hand had been regenerating itself, but it seemed to stop when he lifted his other hand away to examine the other. He cupped his hand as before and the wound continued to mend. About a minute later, he stared in amazement. There wasn’t even a mark where the injury had occurred, and he noted the pain in his lungs and face was diminishing as well.
Jason took a seat in front of his console and thought. It’s a damn good thing Alise was not here. She would be furious that I didn’t do as she asked. Curiosity had always been his weakness. Well not just his, his brothers’ as well. They had gotten into a lot of trouble over the years as children.
The trio had once wandered off and had a grand adventure with their imaginary friend. At least that’s what they kept telling everyone, even though they couldn’t recall any of the details.
When they got back home, their father had grounded them for the rest of their lives. That turned out to be little over a month but to three adventurous eight-year-olds, it felt like a lifetime. They couldn’t understand what was so wrong until their father calmed down enough to enlighten them.
He sat them down and explained that they had been missing for over three months, and their father feared they had been kidnapped or were dead, which made them feel guilty over the pain and grief they had caused him.
Their punishment had been lifted on their ninth birthday and they swore they would never wander off again.
Jason, Jerren, and Justin’s mother had been struck by lightning the morning they were born and died during childbirth. Their father did his best to raise them on his own, which gave them a lot of free and unmonitored time to themselves, but after they went missing he must have decided going it alone was a bad idea, and soon after that he married his on-again-off-again girlfriend from work.
Before long his half-brother Timmy was born and from that point on, he and his brothers’ lives changed a great deal. He and his brothers were constantly being watched by their new mother, and they became the live-in babysitters and were forced to be more responsible, thus ending even the potential for minor adventures, but his curious nature was still ever present, as evidenced by the failed attempt to board TDS 3 just now.
Jason broke from his reminiscing, stood and in the process of stretching he glanced over at the TDS 5 wall. He considered the possibility of entering TDS 5 and removing the other commander by force, to stop him from pursuing his family, and thinking it had worked for TDS 3 he approached and said, “Archway TDS 5.” He waited, but nothing happened, and after repeating the request a couple more times, he turned and called for the console associated with TDS 5.
Jason tried several times to access any of the ship’s functions, but those requests too were fruitless. So, he went back to his terminal to see if there was any way to access or contact TDS 5 from the console he did have access to.
What Jason found was that the connections between the master control room and the individual TDS ships were all set to minimal access, and full access could be activated only by the commander of each ship. Currently, his ship was the only one with the full access activated.
The only function available to him for all the ships was communications. Jason was never one for negotiating. His brother Justin was more of the people person, and Jason considered going back to TDS 1 to have Justin contact the other commander. He didn’t want to interfere with the DNA tracking Alise was performing any more than he might already have done by entering TDS 3, so reluctantly he opened communications with TDS 5.
Jason spent a good hour attempting to get TDS 5’s commander to speak with him, but those requests were met with silence. He considered the possibility that for some reason the other commander was unable to hear him, so he also sent several text requests for negotiations over the terminal as well.
That was when he realized the other commander was just ignoring his requests. His terminal showed that the messages had been received and opened, but he still did not receive a reply. At a loss for what to do about TDS 5 for the moment, Jason continued his perusal of the master control room’s database.
Jason glanced down at the console then he inspected his healed hand. He silently chastised himself. He should’ve realized that being powered down for so long, the ship would not have active life support, and that would have included heating and gravity.
He wasn’t going to make that mistake again! From now on he would scan a ship’s environment before entering. He tried and tried but couldn’t activate the life support system on TDS 3. It appeared as if only the commander or the AI could restart the ship and reinstate life support.
It did appear however that he could assign a new commander. Jason chuckled as he thought, Who do I know who would make a good commander? His alarm went off a second later, snapping his mind back to the present. He stood and thought, Archway TDS 1, and once it appeared he stepped through with a grin.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alise had been beside herself with panic and was not above letting Jason see and feel her displeasure. “I was afraid something like this might happen! Why could you not make it back in the allotted time?”
Jason shrugged in apparent confusion. “What are you talking about? The alarm went off and I came back.”
Jason’s statement knocked Alise off kilter and she asked to see his life monitor. He handed it over to her and she examined it thoroughly, her irritation fading slowly at what she found.
“So?” Jason asked.
Alise evaluated the data from the life monitor a moment longer, then she remembered what Jason had told her after he restarted the ship. She handed the life monitor to him. “Put it back on please,” she requested, then added, “You have been gone for over ninety-six hours. I was tracking your DNA but I could not get a lock for about forty-eight hours.
“After the first twelve hours I tried repeatedly to contact you over the life monitor but there was no response. Then about forty-eight hours after you left, you appeared on my tracking for about thirty seconds and vanished again.
“I see why I could not track or contact you however. There was a phased time differential that put the signal too far out of my normal frequency range. You were in a phased negative eight dilation wherever you were…”
Alise saw the confusion in Jason’s expression and explained. “That means time passed eight times slower for you than for me and you were nowhere near the phase of this ship. I have just rectified the communications issue, but what concerns me most is how and why you were at Sol.
“If it were not for the life monitor, I never would have been able to locate you in the brief amount of time you were back there. I immediately set course to locate you and we are twenty-four hours away from there now. It was odd though, you were out of phase by a positive .5 time dilation and the life monitor recorded an injury. What happened?”
Jason took her into his arms and gave her a hug and a light kiss that turned to an attempt at passion. Alise could tell he was trying to distract her but that ended when she nipped his lower lip.
“Okay, I’m sorry I caused you to worry. I’ll try to never do it again, and what do you mean Sol?” Jason asked.
“Sol is the solar system Earth is in. You were not there long enough for me to pinpoint your exact location, but I know you were there. So?” she asked with agitation building.
Jason explained to her about the master control room and what it did. Her temper rose when he explained about boarding the other ship and how he rushed to get back to the master control room.
Alise was rightly furious now and said, “You entered an unknown ship without scanning the environmental conditions or wearing protective gear? What would you have done if the ship had been depressurized? I will tell you. You would have died instantly! You are lucky you did not freeze to death before making it back to the master control room! Let me see your hand!”
Alise could hear Jason’s lungs were fine and his eyes appeared to be alright as well, so she examined his
hand closely. “Did you use a medical unit to heal your wounds?”
Jason shook his head and explained to her what he had done to heal himself. She was still angry but said, “That is amazing. Andel said the Imortum he was trained by could do that also, but in all the time I have been online I have only ever encountered enerxia healers on very rare occasions.”
Alise was still irritated and decided to poke at Jason a bit more. She released his hand and said with a huff, “It is a good thing you returned when you did. Another few hours and I would have had to get a new commander to bond with. I still do not know which of your brothers I would have chosen though.”
Jason was turning all sorts of colors when she chuckled. “I am just messing with you. I do not know why but the thought of bonding with another just feels wrong. I know I am on this ship with a purpose, but when I thought I lost you it felt as if a part of me just would not continue.”
Jason just held her in his arms and kissed the top of her head. “I am truly sorry, I—
Alise looked up and silenced him with a kiss.
Jason took her hands in his a few minutes later. “Let’s go to the bedroom so I can make it up to you.”
“If we go to the bedroom, your family will see you and stop us. They have been continually watching the gravity lift and want to know what is happening, and why you have been missing for so long. So aside from feeding them, I have been staying away.”
Jason just laughed and told her, “All you have to say is it is on a need-to-know basis, and they do not. Besides, I’ve learned a trick or two. Close your eyes,” he said with a warm smile.
Alise did and after a moment Jason said, “Okay, open them.”
Alise opened her eyes and gasped in amazement. “How did you do that?” she asked. They were standing in the middle of the bedroom and Jason was wasting no time getting her undressed.
“Apparently, this ship has a lot of secrets. I will have to tell you about some of them later. But for now, I plan on making you forget I have brothers,” Jason stated firmly.
It took a while, but by the time Jason had finished with her, the only person on Alise’s mind was Jason.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Alise smiled wrapped in Jason’s arms, and she lay there taking in the sight of him. When she thought she had lost him, a true panic had set in. She had never experienced anything like it before. She was an AI, and until now had never felt the kind of connection to a host commander that she did to Jason.
Something had changed from the time when they were first bonded, however. She had been able to sift through his thoughts and memories at will in the beginning. She had thought the increasing difficulty was due to the jolts of energy he had absorbed during the attacks on their ship, and she figured the added energy was affecting the bonding process.
After the last attacks, and Jason being unable to explain his actions, she had performed several other diagnostics on the ship and the binding disk, but every one of them came back as working perfectly.
Then Alise took a different approach and performed a scan on Jason and compared it to the first scan she performed right after he applied the binding disk, and she was astonished by the changes she found.
The first scan showed a fourteen percent neural activity and the scan she just completed showed an eleven percent increase of synaptic activity from the original scan. So now Alise realized her inability to sift through Jason’s mind must have been a natural block imposed by his mind as a protective measure, and it must have been that which allowed him to control the ship almost instinctively, and for some reason, this made her even more attracted to him.
Jason stirred and slowly opened his eyes. “Good morning,” he said. “How are you doing this fine day…night…whatever time it is?”
Alise chuckled. “A bit tired after that workout yesterday, last night and early this morning, but do you hear me complaining?”
Jason just laughed in response.
They lay there a while and Alise was caressing his back when her fingers came across one of the several thick scars on it. “Did I hurt you when I scratched your back?” she asked.
“No, you didn’t hurt me. It actually felt nice,” Jason replied
“This is odd. The bonding process usually heals scars like these. I wonder why it did not in your case?” Alise had asked.
Jason closed his eyes a moment, then opening them he said. “It’s probably because I don’t want them gone. If I were vain or felt uncomfortable with them the bonding would have removed them. I think it did heal a few of the scars though. I used to have constant pain in the ones on my lower back and in my neck, but I don’t feel them anymore. For the most part, I’m comfortable with them. They serve as a reminder for me to always be conscious of who I trust.”
Alise knew a little of what had been done to him, but now that she could not see into Jason’s memories, she found she wanted to know more, and asked him, “What do you mean by that?”
Jason seemed to appraise her a moment, then he said, “When my brothers and I turned eighteen years old, we joined the military on the six-year buddy plan. Our recruiter painted such a wonderful picture. He promised us we would all be stationed at the same base and would be able to see each other as much as we wanted.”
Jason snorted and then continued. “Recruiters can be such liars. We were at the same base but only for our first two months of basic training. After that, I was separated from Justin and Jerren, who at least stayed at the same base for a few more weeks of tech school. Justin was really good at languages. We all were really, but he had more patience dealing with people and he ended up as a general’s attaché at the Pentagon.
“Jerren was always a bit of a daredevil and really good at self-defense. Originally he was training to be in the military police, but that plan only lasted a few weeks until he saw the recruitment flyer for Special Operations. He took the test and was accepted into the pararescue training program.
“I went the S.E.R.E. route and became a Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape instructor. In the third class I taught, I had Jerren as a student, and it was the hardest class I ever taught. I wanted to help him, but I knew if I went too easy on him it just might get him killed in the field. So instead of helping him, I rode him harder than any of the other students. My actions didn’t go unnoticed by the brass upstairs either. I got someone’s attention, and within a month I was transferred out.
“Not too many people know it but within the Air Force, there’s an elite counterterrorism and investigation unit called Office of Special Investigation or OSI. I was transferred to that unit.
“OSI has strict recruitment guidelines and I knew I didn’t meet them. When I asked why I was allowed in the OSI when I didn’t meet the minimum enlistment grade, I was only told special arrangements had been made and not to question the orders. It was the official military answer I told you about: It was need-to-know. and I was informed that I didn’t need to know.”
Alise nodded in understanding and he continued.
“So, there I was with no idea why, but I was in the OSI, and by the end of the year I was dealing with some of the vilest people on Earth. Everything went okay until my last assignment. A terrorist group was rumored to have acquired an old Soviet SS-25 nuclear warhead, and Washington needed to verify the intel before sending in a retrieval team.
“My unit went to great lengths to set up a believable background for me. The CIA put me in contact with one of their informants, and my unit staged it so a few members of the terrorist cell would see me execute three U.S. military officers in the streets of Bagdad.
“The effects we used were definitely believable, and for the briefest moments, I actually believed I killed them. At that point, my contact was supposed to introduce me to a member of the terrorist cell, but my contact turned out to be a member of the terrorist group I was trying to infiltrate, and they took me prisoner.
“The CIA really screwed me with the intel on that one. The scars are a result of that
captivity, and that’s what I meant by being conscious of who I trust.”
Alise could feel the moisture welling in her eyes and said, “You will never have to worry about that with me.”
Jason smiled and kissed her on the forehead. “I know. I feel that in the very core of my being.” Then he placed another kiss on her head and hugged her tightly.
Alise had been intently watching him while he explained what he meant, and figured this might be the best time to broach his nightmares. “How are you feeling now?”
Jason peered down at her, then sighing he said, “I still find it difficult to be in large groups. I use to be a very outgoing person, but since my captivity, I pretty much kept to myself, some would say almost reclusively. I find my thoughts racing at times, constantly looking over my shoulders and scanning rooftops to make sure I was not being followed or observed, not to mention large groups of people tend to become mobs and I would always feel uncomfortable. Because of that I pretty much became a recluse.”
Alise nodded and asked, “And the nightmares?”
Jason looked at her oddly then seemed to think about it before saying, “I have had them from the time I was captured. They occur almost every night, they usually accompany the pains in my back and neck. You know, I don’t think I have had one since the day I came on this ship though. At least I cannot recall any. Why do you ask?”
“You had one the other day. It was pretty bad, and I had to shake and yell at you to get you to wake up, you did and after shouting ‘Bias’ you promptly went back to sleep. I wondered what that was about and if there was anything I could do to help you.”
Jason seemed to get an angry glint at hearing the name but nodded. “I don’t remember that nightmare, but I have had mornings where I woke up from night sweats, with holes punched through my bedroom walls and my bedding torn to shreds. I figured I had nightmares, but I don’t remember many of them. As for Bias…he was the person responsible for the torture I endured later in my captivity. If you’re around when the nightmares happen again, try not to get too close to me. I don’t want to harm you.” Jason said as he ran his hand along Alise’s face.