The Awakening: Imortum

by JK Stone

  “Apparently, Justin’s A L I S E is giving him a hard time. Justin told me it went banshee on him for calling it Alise. He did say he refuses to call it by whatever name it was going by. I may have dodged a bullet there,” Jerren said with a chuckle.

  Jason raised a brow in Jerren’s direction and said, “Not that it was your choice in the matter.”

  A second later Justin’s voice sounded over the life monitor. “Jason, could you open the archway to the master control room? Now that you’re awake, I can’t open it.”

  Jason closed his eyes and called for the archway and a moment later Justin’s voice called out, “Thank you.”

  Jerren said to Jason, “You’re right about that… I did offer to help him clean up, but he doesn’t want anyone to see it in the condition it’s in and I didn’t know about that trick to clean it up anyway.”

  “I knew the AI was not cooperating much and is unwilling to bond with him, but I didn’t know it was making him do manual labor to clean up. Kind of a twisted sense of humor I think,” Alise said.

  Jason just raised an eyebrow at her quizzically and said, “Kind of like not telling someone to just remove the non-biological from a sample and letting him do it manually?”

  Alise’s face cracked into a grin and she said, “Huh…I may get to like that AI after all.”

  Something struck Jason as odd and he asked, “By the way, why do you call yourself AI all the time?”

  “It is just what I was always called, why?”

  Jason explained that the master control console referred to them as an AL or advanced lifeform designation.

  Alise appeared to think about it a second then she said, “It really does not make a difference. I guess the Imortum must have considered us alive once we became self-aware. The Lantins never really considered us more than the computer programming we were composed of, so they only ever referred to us as AI, and with our database wiped before the handover, we never would have known the difference.”

  Jason looked deep into Alise’s eyes and said, “I don’t care how you came to be here. I love you all the same.” And he punctuated his statement with a passionate kiss.

  Jerren chimed in a moment later. “Okay, enough with this sappy lovey-dovey stuff.

  I need to get back to the master control room.”

  Jason and Alise looked at him at the same time. “Why?” they asked in unison.

  Jerren must have rehearsed his plea because he replied immediately. “When you and Justin were on the other ship I did a little poking around and noticed an anomaly. It seems the TDS 5 ship was nearby when the Toralin’s attacked. When TDS 3 powered up it caused alarms to go off.”

  Jason shrugged and said, “It doesn’t surprise me. The ship was resetting.”

  Jerren said, “Well, yes that did happen but the alarms that were going off the loudest were on the TDS 5 wall. When TDS 3 powered up, TDS 5’s systems went haywire, this ship’s wall alarmed a little as well. TDS 3 and TDS 1’s walls silenced a moment later, but the TDS 5 wall was still alarming for another minute before it stabilized. I want to look into that. I can’t think of a good reason that ship would be there unless its commander was helping the Toralin’s in the attack.”

  Jason nodded and said, “Like I told you before, the other ship like this is the one hunting us. It’s TDS 5 and after the last attack on our ship, we figured its commander was collaborating with the Toralin’s.

  “We had hoped that the last display of power from this ship during the prior attacks would have dissuaded them from attacking us again, but as you know it didn’t. We’ve tried and tried to contact TDS 5 ever since we found out that they were responsible for the attacks on our family, to see why they were after us, but they wouldn’t respond. I even tried while I was in the master control room, but all I could do was check the system status and send data messages but they ignored them. I was locked out of the other functions,” Jason explained.

  Jerren asked, “Do we even know who he is?”

  Alise shook her head. “There is no way of knowing. We had nobody to report our ship’s status to. The original commanders were trained to have a replacement commander selected in the event of their deaths, and if that were to happen, we, the AI’s, were to collect and install the new commander.”

  Jerren looked discouraged and said, “I would still like to go to the master control room for a while and poke around.”

  Alise nodded and said, “We are not in the same phased time dilation as the master control room any longer, so time will move a lot faster for us than it will for you. Do you have any idea how long you’re going to spend in there?”

  Jerren seemed to think about it and said, “I think anywhere between twelve and twenty-four hours should do it. If I can’t find anything in that amount of time, I’ll probably be unable to at all.”

  “If you need to get back here sooner, you’ll have to contact us using the life monitor,” Alise said.

  Jerren looked puzzled and he asked, “What life monitor? I’ve heard you say it a couple of times before but forgot to ask.”

  Jason pointed to Jerren’s wrist. “The watch is a life monitor, and it notifies Alise if there’s a problem.”

  Jerren laughed and said, “I thought it was just one of your super-secret spy gadgets.”

  Jason chuckled and said, “We never had anything this good on Earth. Just use it like you did when you were in the master control room before and I can open the archway for you. How long until you’ll be ready to go?”

  “It should only take a few minutes for me to clean up. If you could get me an MRE or what passes for one on this ship, and some water I’ll be ready to go in ten.”

  Jason accompanied his brother to the second level and returned to Alise and asked, “So what are we doing about Justin’s ship?”

  “TDS 3’s power reserves were depleted, so Justin is headed directly to Daregon to recharge. Justin, Jerren, and I discussed it, and I informed them that you and I need to prevent the event horizon that forms between Antilles and Earth. Afterward, you and I will meet Justin at Daregon and, to use one of Jerren’s military terms, we will be on overwatch while Justin charges his ship. Then we’ll discuss our next step.”

  Jason nodded in understanding and said, “That sounds good to me. By the way, I was meaning to ask you, if the life monitors are there to help in case of an emergency, what happened when Justin was injured?”

  Alise nodded and said, “That is where things get interesting. The second the alarm went off I had to disengage the time dilation. Time was moving way too fast for me to help, so I went to .25 PTD to be just out of phase of TDS 3. Apparently, the first blast that hit TDS 3 was a TPE and it knocked the ship into regular space-time.

  “I moved our ship into the solar system and showed up at the same time as the attack was happening. I knew I could not get too close to the other ship with the bounce back we experienced before, so I got as close as I could and was just inside transport range when Justin’s life monitor showed stable life signs. I figured you must have healed Justin so I had just backed off and was about to engage the Toralin’s when the engine of TDS 3 restarted.

  “I got bounced around a little but I did not think much of it at the time, thinking I was probably still too close to TDS 3. I performed a diagnostic just after Jerren told us about TDS 5 being there and now I know why that ship’s alarms went off. TDS 5 was very close to TDS 3 and when the engine restarted its energy field repelled TDS 5 directly into our ship’s field. TDS 5 got bounced between the two fields quite a few times before they were finally expelled. Needless to say, they did not stick around to see the carnage that followed.”

  Jason winced upon hearing the word carnage and felt guilt rise. He closed his eyes and asked, “How many?”

  “It does not matter,” Alise stated firmly.

  Jason remembered there were a lot of ships, maybe a hundred, and the fact that he and his brother were still alive meant it had to be bad. “I need to know.”

&
nbsp; Sighing Alise said, “There were a hundred and five ships, most of which were drones. Thirty had life on them and in the end, only one ship remained, the one you hurled into space as a warning I would guess.

  “There were three thousand five hundred people on the ships. Four hundred and ninety-seven were on the ship you cast off. They would have killed both of you and destroyed the other ship if you had not protected yourself. I was about to start doing some damage of my own, but the ship’s weapons console deactivated as I approached it. I almost had the weapons working again, then the weapons console went into lockdown.”

  Jason needed to tell someone but he didn’t want to concern his brothers with this yet, and he figured Alise would be accepting of his theory so he said, “I don’t think I did that damage. After the engine started, I heard Jerren say it worked, and then I felt something…rage… I didn’t know anything could be that angry. It arose from deep inside me and it was extremely powerful. I felt a moment of immense power, and I lost control of my body. I vaguely remember hearing something, then I blacked out.

  “I don’t know why but I think it was the Imortum Inola using me as a type of conduit, and I had no control over the outcome.”

  Alise hugged him tightly. “I was wondering about that myself. When you used the ship before to fend off the attackers at Daregon, it was powerful, but what you did before was nothing like what I witnessed, not to mention the power you used was drained directly from this ship. Your binding disk is not connected to TDS 3 and that ship had no power to draw upon anyway, and only the old legends about the Imortum ever made reference to power like that.”

  “Are we close enough to see the wreckage?” Jason asked.

  “No, but that is part of what I am trying to say. All of the ships were compacted together into a gigantic mass and hurled off in the same direction as the last ship. I performed a trajectory on it and that mass of metal was heading directly for Toralis, which is the Toralin home world. I could just barely get a speed-reading on it and the mass was traveling faster than our ship can go at full power, but it had no propulsion. At its current speed, the wreckage will reach Toralis in five days. This whole thing is getting out of hand and I do not think it is going to get any better.”

  Jason was listening to her with his eyes shut in disbelief. “Why do you think it’s not going to get any better?” he asked.

  “If my math is correct, and it usually is, the attack on this ship and Elgon is going to be a direct response to the debris arriving at Toralis. We know the attack will be partially successful in that Elgon ends up dying. Until this attack, I did not think these TDS ships could be in close enough proximity to render assistance, so theoretically we could have Justin take TDS 3 back there and prevent Elgon’s death. But the paradox effect would cause ripples I could not even begin to calculate.

  “We do know that Antilles and Earth will be destroyed if we do nothing. A singularity will form between them and eventually even neighboring galaxies will be affected. After I placed the pastor back on Earth I sent the probe out, and he was fine, but when I reached the point of the event horizon forming, my probe was destroyed.”

  Jason felt relieved and said, “Ah, I thought it was going to be a difficult problem.”

  “How is stopping the destruction of two planets and multiple galaxies not a major problem?” Alise choked out.

  Jason smiled and turned her words back on her. “You’re thinking in linear time. All we’ll have to do is stop the chain reaction. But it looks as if we’re already in a paradox and we are almost out of it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “If this all started for me with Elgon getting killed, and that is triggered by the Toralin attack we just survived, and the debris being sent off to Toralis begins the attack on Elgon, it is almost over. It is a causality loop paradox, and all we have to do is prevent the catastrophe between the two galaxies, and then all the events will have come full circle and all should be well. Granted, Elgon is still going to be dead. But we have a commander for this ship to replace him and to top it off we have a second ship if we have need of one.

  And now that we know that the Toralin’s, their consortium, and TDS 5 are after us as well we can be more proactive regarding them in the future. But as you said before, we need to prevent the event horizon between Earth and Antilles first.”

  Alise looked at Jason with an expression that he felt was much more than admiration and she said, “Would you find it odd to know that I am getting extremely aroused by your explanation?”

  Jason waggled his brows at Alise. “Hold that thought. I need to get the rations together and see my brother safely off on his little adventure.”

  Alise said, “The rations and supplies he will need are already in the engine room. Now go give him my love and the bum’s rush off this ship. I have some plans that are in need of your attention,” She said as she slid her hands down the length of her body and gave her lower lip a slight nibble.

  Jason bit his lower lip in response and let out a low groan, then said, “I’ll be right back.”

  *****

  It only took Jason thirty seconds to transport to his brother, grab him, transport them to the engine room say, “See you in a few days. Have fun,” toss Jerren and his supplies through the archway, then transport back to the room.

  Upon arrival in the bedroom, Alise chuckled and said, “We are eager, are we not? I do not know if we should though. You did just have a major traumatic experience.” She ran her soft hand along his cheek.

  Jason cracked a smile and said, “Oh, I’m mended enough to show you just how eager I can be.”

  Alise let out a muffled squeak and rushed to be first on the bed, as though it were the safe spot in some game they were playing. “I win!” she called out.

  “And just what did you win, sweetness?” Jason asked with a grin.

  “You have to lie here while I have fun with you this time.” Alise let out a lustful moan.

  Jason was amused. “Just how do you plan to accomplish that?”

  Alise replied in a seductive voice, “Close your eyes and you will see.”

  Jason did and a second later he could feel Alise’s breath on the side of his neck, and it gave him gooseflesh.

  One second he was standing there as smug as could be and the next he was sprawled out on the bed naked as the day he was born, with Alise straddling him. She had his hands pinned above his head with hers.

  “How did you—

  Alise smiled at him. “You are not the only one who has learned something new about this ship.”

  Alise silenced him with a kiss then she ran her hands along his body.

  Jason almost lost it right then and there. He tried to bring his arms down to roll her into a position where he could be in control but he soon realized she had him restrained and at her mercy.

  Until this point, Jason had always thought he might freak out if he were ever restrained again, after the torture he endured, but he felt he could trust her with his life, and the restraints seemed to stimulate him, and almost to excess at that.

  “You need to calm down. We do not want to end the fun too soon,” Alise said with a wicked grin. “Do we?” Alise asked, then she worked Jason just to the peak of pleasure several times, then calmed him back down. It was the sweetest torture imaginable. “You are an evil little vixen, aren’t you?” With those words, Jason broke free of his restraints, spun her over and proceeded to punish her for being a very naughty girl, and he achieved his release as he brought her to her climax.

  Jason rolled onto the bed beside Alise and gliding his thumb along her cheek, he softly said, “I love you.”

  To this, she replied, “I love you more.”

  “I love you the supermostulous.”

  “You made that word up,” Alise stated as she laughed quietly, then kissed him and snuggled closely into his chest.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jason and Alise had spent most of that and the next day either in bed or plannin
g the upcoming mission to prevent the event horizon. Jason was currently lying in bed when out of the blue Alise surprised him by saying they should get something to eat.

  “I thought you didn’t need to eat,” Jason said.

  Alise smiled back at him and said, “Just because I do not need to eat…it does not mean I do not like to eat. Besides, there is a dish I can make that I think you will enjoy very much.”

  That piqued Jason’s curiosity. “Is it made with the rations I stored away?” He really didn’t think anything he had could be considered enjoyable. Although the lasagna and turkey were survival rations and turned out well, they were survival rations after all.

  “No, they are made from special ingredients I found that were stored on the ship a very long time ago. Are you interested?”

  “It sounds intriguing, and I could eat a horse after the workout I just had,” Jason stated as he swatted his abdomen.

  Alise got a crestfallen look. “Oh, you guessed it. Now I will have to pick something else.”

  “Uh…I really don’t think I could eat a horse. It was just a saying we had on Earth—

  Alise cut him off with her booming laughter. “Man, you are gullible… Horses are too majestic to eat. Besides with base minerals and materials, we can simulate almost any food. The dish I have planned is different though.” She paused briefly, then she said, “Dinner is served. And we have a little over twelve hours to enjoy it.”

  Jason looked around but didn’t see anything. He was beginning to think she was messing with him again when the bedroom disappeared. The sudden unexpected change in location made him a bit disoriented but he regained himself quickly and said, “Having fun with your new abilities I see.”

  Looking around Jason saw a table positioned in the center of the observation level.

  Alise smiled at him and with a mock curtsy said, “I use what I am given.” And they took their seats.

  Jason looked down at the small plate in front of him. There was something on it that looked like a square piece of golden transparent jelly. Examining it closer he noticed the tiny specks within it that changed colors the longer and deeper he peered into it.