by Stone,Kord
Justin chuckled and said, “I love seeing that expression. And we’re not offended.” Justin knelt down and said, “To answer your question, no we aren’t clones. We were born triplets.”
Jerren looked over at Jason and asked, “Could you bring us to Earth date April first Two thousand five.”
Jason closed his eyes a moment and the ship blurred then he opened them and said, “We’re here.”
Jerren turned to Spatium and asked, “How do we contact your parents?”
Spatium looked shaken and said, “Couldn’t you just drop us off?”
Jerren shook his head soulfully and said, “They need to be made aware of what happened. I’ll be contacting the leader of your planet as well, so he or she can make sure no others like you make this same mistake.”
Spatium dropped his head and said, “Very well, you will only have to contact our father then… He’s the leader.”
Jerren turned to his brother, “Jason could you open communications with the planet and request a meeting. Tell them it’s in regard to his missing children.”
A good minute had passed, and then Jason said, “I sent the message, I don’t know how long… Never mind, they sent coordinates for you to meet him. Jason brought up an aerial view of the location on the display and added, “It appears to be a large courtyard in front of a building in the middle of the largest city.”
“That’s the Capitol building where my father works,” Viaxar said excitedly.
Spatium said, “That’s the courtyard where dignitaries can land their ships for trade negotiations with our planet.”
“Alright, send us to that location.” Jerren saw Justin whisper into Jason’s ear, and Jason nodded.
Jason smiled at the children saying, “It was nice meeting all of you. Try to stay out of trouble,” Jason said with a smirk then he transported them to the surface.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jerren and the children appeared on the planet a moment later and Viaxe shouted, “What?! How did we get down here so fast?”
Jerren chuckled and said, “We used matter transfer to get down here, the ship is still in orbit.”
Jerren saw people approaching from a distance, and he turned to the children and said, “Let’s get this over with; I’ll do whatever I can to help.” Viaxar took his hand and Jerren and the children began walking toward the approaching crowd.
They made it to within ten feet of the oncoming group when the men in front of them halted their approach and drew weapons on Jerren, and they shouted for him to release the children. To Jerren’s surprise, the children stepped in front of him to shield him from injury.
Spatium announced, “He’s not a threat, he rescued us!”
At this proclamation a man stepped from behind the guards and approached. Apparently the man was their father, because the children immediately ran to give him a hug.
Jerren noticed the guards silently fanning out, and he almost jumped when he heard a voice from beside him.
“I have your back, one would think you abducted the kids,” Justin’s voice sounded unamused, “Their weapons are energy based at least.”
Jerren let out an almost inaudible grunt and waited for the family to remember he was still there. The leader looked up with tears in his eyes and looked as if he were about to speak when the nearest guard shouted for Jerren to drop his weapon.
Looking toward the guard, Jerren stated, “I can’t, it’s part of the uniform. None of you are in danger from me however. I’m just here to enlighten their father as to what happened, and then I will depart.”
The guard didn’t seem to care and restated his demand. Shaking his head disgruntledly, Jerren drew his weapon and vanished. Jerren peered around and saw the look of shock on the guards faces, “Untrusting lot these people… I’ll give it one more attempt and if it doesn’t work we can return to the ship and send the explanation via messaging,” Jerren said to Justin, before Jerren holstered his weapon and said, “See… if I try to remove it I phase.”
Spatium must have convinced his father Jerren was not a threat because the man commanded his men to lower their weapons and approached him.
Jerren extended his hand to shake and the children’s father took hold of it and bowed touching his forehead to the back of Jerren’s hand.
The moment his head made contact with Jerren’s hand, Jerren experienced the same flash of imagery as he did with the children, only a lot more this time. When the man stood up he said, “My name is Plaxian V’trell, I’m the High Chancellor of Daregon. I welcome you to our planet and wish to thank you for returning my children home safely.”
Jerren gave a partial bow and said, “My name is Jerren Stone, and it’s a pleasure to meet you. I don’t have much time, is there somewhere we can speak quietly?”
Plaxian had nodded then ushered Jerren and the children into the building and up to his office. Plaxian sat his children down on a couch just inside his office and gestured for Jerren to have a seat in front of his desk as well.
Plaxian looked over at his children then back to Jerren, “Where did you find them?” he asked with concern etched in his voice.
“First off I would tell you that they were enticed to the planet. I don’t know the full of it yet… but I will be looking into it,” Jerren saw Plaxian’s irritation was rising and Jerren continued, “I found them on Earth… you may know the planet as Terra. Their ship had crashed and they were almost dead when I transported them to my medical unit.”
When Plaxian heard Earth, it looked like he was about to explode. But when he heard the children’s condition he seemed to focus intently on Jerren.
Jerren hurried with his explanation. “As I was saying before, the children were enticed there by a message saying Earth is no longer a banned planet, and when they approached the planet their ship lost power and crashed.”
Plaxian looked intently at Jerren and asked, “Why didn’t you bring them right home? How long have you had them?”
Jerren thought over what to tell him. Looking at Plaxian, he asked, “may I?” as he reached over to Plaxian’s forehead.
Plaxian nodded and Jerren placed his hand on the man’s head and took his measure. The people of Daregon were peaceful and honorable, and Jerren knew he could trust the man, “You must keep this information to yourself understood?” Plaxian nodded and Jerren continued, “I found them on Earth a little less than an hour ago, one of our ships was in orbit over this planet several years from now and I used the passage between our ships to bring them here. Once they were on that ship, that commander brought us to this date.”
“You mean time travel?” Plaxian asked.
Jerren nodded and Plaxian asked, “If you could bring them back to any time, why wait so long… why not bring them back to just after they left, or stop them from even leaving?” Plaxian asked sounding a bit put out.
Jerren thought over his response, then said, “Temporal ramifications notwithstanding, I’ve a couple of reasons, but the one that concerns you, is that this is a lesson learned, I don’t wish to cause grief, but sometimes the thought of loss is the best teacher. Not only for the children, but for you and your people as well,”
Plaxian didn’t look like he understood but nodded all the same. So Jerren continued, “Like I said a message was sent from Earth encouraging this incident, I want you to think about how you felt and imagine how other families would feel if it were their children.”
Jerren paused a moment to let it settle in then said, “What I need from you, is for you to put out a warning for your people to ignore any signals from that planet. I’ll try to repair the re-directional beacon or beacons that allowed the signal to get through, but the people of Earth are still too immature and dangerous to approach. Are we agreed?”
Plaxian nodded in agreement, and Jerren looked over at the children then back to Plaxian, take care of them, they’re good kids, they were just led astray,” Jerren stood and took the leader by the hand and shook it, “It was a pleasure meeting y
ou,” Jerren walked over to the children and said, “You kids try to stay out of trouble. I may not be around to save you a second time.”
Jerren was just about to call to Jason to transport both he and Justin back to the ship when the door to Plaxian’s office was flung open and a woman maybe five feet tall at best came rushing into the room, and after seeing the children on the couch, she ran to them, pulled them into a tight hug and began sobbing.
Jerren felt it rude to just leave before at least speaking to the woman so he waited patiently, and it took the woman a good ten minutes before she realized Jerren was there.
The children had explained to her what had happened, and she hastily made her way to Jerren and pulled him into a tight hug telling him her name was Marris, and he would have her unending gratitude for returning her children safely. After which she informed Jerren that there would be a celebration and she tried and tried to get Jerren to agree to come.
Jerren apologized profusely, and informed both Marris and Plaxian that he had pressing duties he needed to see to. And after Marris stretched up and kissed Jerren’s cheek, and Plaxian shook his hand, Jerren activated his communications and told Jason he was ready to return, then a moment later he was back aboard TDS 1 in the Decontamination room.
Justin sniggered from behind him and said, “That was kind of mean of you.”
A second later there was a static zap, “How do you mean?” Jerren asked with a knowing smile.
The passage opened and he and Justin made their way back to the control room as Justin explained. “We could have dropped them off just after their ship left for Earth and they wouldn’t have gotten into that much trouble.”
“Yes, but we still dropped them off in the same year they left, they told me it took thirty cycles to travel to Earth, so I added the return time and then an extra month for their parents to worry. It’ll make them more cautious. Besides there was no getting out of the trouble from crashing their father's space ship. Hopefully I lessened the punishment they’ll receive.”
Jerren got Jason’s attention as they entered the control room, “could you bring us out of phase and take us three months three days and five hours back now and get ready to track a signal.”
Jason didn’t even ask why. A moment later there was a blur and they were there, “I need you to sit here until you receive the message and track it then you can return to our current time. The signal will originate on Earth, which should help you with the tracking. I need to get back to my ship, Justin can fill you in on what I told their father.”
Jerren looked over at Justin and said, “Three months of disappearing didn’t kill us when we were eight years old and I doubt it will with them either. Besides Teens are expected to rebel a little. I read Plaxian’s mind and he already forgave them for the most part, he was just happy they were home safely,” Jerren said with a chuckle.
Justin snorted and said, “And now you have the unending loyalty of Daregon,” Justin ended with a laugh.
Jerren shook his head and said, “I need to get back to my ship and probe Earth a few hundred years and see if and when it will be safe to drop the family off. I’ll see you later. And thanks again for letting me do all of this through here to get them home.”
Jason had a grin plastered on his face and said, “Not a problem.”
Jerren then made his way into the engine room and exited the ship.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Eneria sensed that Jerren had reentered the ship and she called out, “so, how did it go?”
Jerren came up behind Eneria and said, “Not too bad, the children were in trouble but their father forgave them. Plaxian is going to inform his people to ignore any signals from Earth. What did you do while I was out?”
“I told you the probe we had out before malfunctioned, but the diagnostic came back not showing any issues, so I was waiting on your return to launch another.” Eneria said with a smile.
“Is there any way to send a probe around this solar system to find which re-directional beacons are in need of repairing first? I think it best to extend the status quo.”
“Yes, it will take some time though. If we time jump to just after we set off with Terrah’s ship for Daregon, I can launch a probe then and put it on an automatic spherical orbit. The scan should take a little over twelve years to complete a detailed scan of each probe. Then we can jump to that point in time and see which beacons need to be repaired.
“That sounds good, how long will it take in our time?” Jerren asked
“About fifteen minutes… there, we are back a month after we left the solar system with Terrah’s ship.” Eneria set course to just outside of the Kuiper belt and launched the probe. Then set the time jump for twelve years later.
Once they arrived, Eneria examined her monitor. She was at a loss as to why the probe was not where it should’ve been, and she let out a, “Humph.”
“What’s the matter?” Jerren asked.
“The probe should have been at this location by now,” Eneria then widened her scan for the probe and waited for the results.
A few seconds later Eneria sighed and said, “I found it. The probe appears to have been knocked off course by three million kilometers,” Eneria reacquired the probes signal and moved their ship closer. Once in range she transported it back and uploaded the data.
A few minutes later Eneria turned to Jerren and said, “These are strange readings. See here, there was a gravitational anomaly emanating from Earth, it appears to have started eighteen months linear ago… I’m taking us back into Earth’s orbit.”
A few minutes later Eneria was taking in the sight of Earth, and didn’t really know what she was seeing at first. Eneria performed a surface scan of the planet, and it showed extremely high levels of radiation as well as pyroclastic ash in the upper atmosphere.
Jerren had a hoarseness to his voice as he said, “Launch another probe and see when and where this all began.”
Eneria launched the probe and set it up to perform a wide spectrum scan before reversing the time dilation. It was traveling backward and Eneria gasped then said, “There is a CEMPS in orbit.”
“A what?” Jerren asked.
“CEMPS, it is a Cloaked Electromagnetic Pulsing Satellite,” Eneria explained.
“Did it melt the polar caps and do all of that damage to Earth?” Jerren asked with his eyes never leaving the monitor.
“Not directly no, that kind of weapon would be used to knockout technology and destabilize a planets magnetic core, kind of like the GMP’s you performed on Serqalin and Toralis, only over an extended period of time.
“In this case I would say the nuclear power plants on Earth had their cores melt, and that along with the increased volcanic activity resulted in an extreme thermal variant. I have scanned for life forms, and those I could detect on the surface are all suffering severe radiation contamination and starvation.”
Eneria watched as Jerren ran his hands through his hair and said, “Could this be consortium retaliation for those… never mind let’s just find out how the CEMPS got there and prevent it.”
Eneria accelerated the probes progress and a moment later she said. “The CEMPS was launched from Earth’s surface.”
Eneria enhanced the image and played it back. “It blasted through the roof of that building… that is strange, that is the location of an ancient Imortum Portal.”
Jerren must have heard enough, because he said, “take us to just before the launch and we can destroy the CEMPS before it activates.”
Eneria was just about to fire on the CEMPS when Inola’s weakened voice sounded, saying only one word. “No!”
Eneria looked at Jerren, and a moment later Jason’s voice sounded, “What was Inola saying no to? We weren’t doing anything.”
“I think she was saying no to me, all of you need to come over here.” Jerren said with pain in his tone.
Jason’s voice once sounded again, “We just tracked that message you wanted, and I’m phasing our sh
ip. Justin and I will be right over.”
A minute later Eneria heard, “WHAT THE… What happened?!” Alise’s voice sounded from behind them.
Jerren turned toward Alise and said, “When everyone’s here,” Jerren turned back to Eneria, can you scan the Satellite? I don’t think anyone from Scotland would have had that technology. It launched too fast for anything we had on Earth.”
A moment later, Eneria peered back at Jerren and said, “You were right. This technology is not from these Earthlings.”
Eneria heard a commotion from the engine room and looking back she saw Jason, Justin, and Calia grasping hands with Saleria, Terrah and Vellia
Calia said, “Alright now focus like you were practicing, and try to build a mental wall to protect yourselves.”
Eneria realized that the girls were trying to get control of the Multi-Phasic Neural Associations. She knew it would take at least a few more minutes so she turned her focus back on her console and waited for them to finish.
Ten minutes later, Jason, Justin, and Calia made it into the control room with Saleria, Terrah and Vellia following closely behind them, holding one another’s hands.
Jason must have gotten a good look at the monitor, because he barked out, “What the hell happened?”
Eneria looked around and saw Jerren motion for them all to gather closer, and he explained the mission he had just completed, then he went into detail about scanning for the damaged beacons, finding the probe was off course then retrieving the data from the probe then returning to Earth. Jerren got to the part where he had asked Eneria to scan the satellite and he let her continue.
“I performed the scan of the CEMPS,” Eneria peered around the group and explained, “It is a Cloaked Electromagnetic Pulsing Satellite. Anyway it confirmed what Jerren suspected. These Earthlings did not make it.”
Jason said, “What do you mean these Earthlings?”
“That is actually a misnomer, the people of Earth now are referred to as Earthlings, and this CEMPS was created by one of the prior civilizations back when the planet was called Terra.