Descend- Seeing Stars

by Sean Oswald

  “It is almost as difficult to explain. You know I had dreams in the past, well I had another one and I was screaming while surrounded by light that ripped the heavens apart. More significantly, I was all alone. Do I know what the dream meant? No. It was too short. But I do know better than to disregard those dreams.

  Then there is the fact that I have a strong premonition or precognitive sense that something unbelievably bad is about to hit us. Imagine if you will that a normal precognitive warning is a light slap across my face. This feeling is more like having a piano dropped on me and then a bomb exploding all around me. This is the big one. I either prevent it or it ends us all,” Jay said.

  Silence settled over the room. Jay braced himself for more arguments but one by one he could feel them resign themselves to accepting what he was saying. Eventually Amelia said, “We will follow you, but don’t think you can handle this by yourself. We won’t be left behind. For now, we will go and talk to our pods and find out who is willing.”

  “Thank you all. I will do all that I can to save us all.”

  “We know you will, my heart,” Mia said. We will see if we can prepare a few more of the big bombs but they take time to sync up all the powers.”

  “No, please. It is going to take me a while to fuse properly with these girls depending on how many are willing. Please use that time to finish upgrades on as many of the Tamoori starfighters as possible. We will need them to act as distractions,” Jay said.

  He glanced over at Eesa and said, “Don’t worry, we won’t put them in any more danger than necessary. I will treat every life as precious.”

  “My people are not prey to die old and sick in bed. Use their lives wisely, that is all a warrior can ask of a huntmaster,” she replied.

  Jay nodded and then continued, “Beyond the starfighters please work on as many smaller charges as possible. Use create dense clusters of PSI crystals and I can use those to explode ships from the inside out. If I can get them past the shields, it won’t require nearly the same payload.”

  Then as everyone was getting up, he called Trudi and Ava over. “I have one other project for you. Please create a pocket dimension device in my nanium armor and fill it with as much nanium as we can spare.”

  Ava said, “Yes, Master.”

  But Trudi raised an eyebrow and asked, “What do you have in mind?”

  “Just another surprise,” he said with a wink for her.

  Then he was alone as they all went to do his bidding. Jay sat down. He was resigned to this, but that didn’t mean the weight wasn’t still heavy on him. He had fought expanding the fusion too far. It was already far beyond what he had ever expected, but he had seen it. He was powerful. He doubted any one Forlorn ship could stop him. He now had some sense of how powerful their big guns were and knew that he could hold up against them for at least a while.

  What he knew down to his core was that he wasn’t strong enough or fast enough to protect those he loved. It didn’t matter if he survived but lost all of them. Soon though he was lost in grim thoughts. He connected through his implant to the leviathan’s long-range sensors. From what he could tell the major battle at the A’snkarnt home world was over.

  The only Forlorn ships that he could be sure were headed in their direction were the fifteen thousand or so that had survived what he was calling the prismatic bomb. He had definitely been a rainbow of effects and colors. The danger was that the enemy was already adapting. Their ships were far more spread out. No single bomb even as powerful as the prismatic bomb was going to be able to take out the rest of these ships.

  Jay’s approach to fighting one ship at a time was simply too slow. He might be able to take them all out but even at his speed, it would take hours. Hours during which they would have been firing on the leviathan and certainly at least some of Team Jay and their allies would have died.

  He was roused from his thoughts by Huong. She was speaking to him telepathically. “So, we got fifteen who would agree. They will start showing up at your room every two hours. I know it doesn’t take that long but I also know that you will want to make each of them feel welcome and truly part of us. That and the fusions have been taking more and more out of all of us since each one adds an even bigger jump in stats than the one before it.”

  “Thanks, no man could ask for a better Madame,” Jay replied trying to keep it light.

  “Some of them will be well known to you, but there were a couple that you won’t know very well as they are part of the new clusters. There will also be one that I hope is a pleasant surprise to you. I know you have a thing for Rosa and when she heard the situation it must have pushed her off the fence because she decided she is ready. I think part of the holdup honestly was that she wanted to be a wife, but there won’t be time for that now. Sorry, you are just gonna have to work them, fuse them, and move on to the next one,” Huong said.

  “Yes, Madame,” Jay said laughing.

  Huong had of course even made a list of them in an order that would most benefit those who were willing in terms of stats, so he just had to go to his room and be the universe’s most important lecher. All he could do was shrug his shoulders and teleport to his room.

  The first girl was named Bethany. She was a newcomer yet like all the women around him she was a beauty. He had slept with her once after he initially refined her, but she wasn’t combat oriented, so he had to wonder why she was willing to do this. She convinced him that she just wanted to do her part to save humanity.

  Bethany might not ever end up being the love of his life, but this was a good test to his commitment right out of the chute. He had to be willing to do this for power not because he wanted to be permanently one with her. And he had to accept that she felt the same way, well maybe for security rather than power. Besides, she had a useful power that would benefit him.

  Long Range Viewing allowed her to see things a great deal away, but her skill level and Awareness stat was barely over one hundred. With his skill and power, he might be able to spy on the enemy fleet from far away. Either way, it wasn’t like he was about to get his teeth pulled. He was just going to make love to a beautiful woman and get stronger for doing so. He laughed; this was what they called a first world problem if ever there was one.

  Fusing with Bethany produced more change than that in him though. He passed the last threshold and his level now showed as Unregistered. He also got the perk of PSI and Stamina Generator. He now gained thirty PSI for every stat point and his regeneration rate had gone from empty to full in five minutes to empty to full in one minute. One minutes might be an eternity in combat, but it still allowed for him to recuperate at an astounding rate. No more holding back for him.

  His body underwent other changes as he now hit 8’8” and weighed in at around one thousand pounds. He found that without even trying streams of PSI poured out of him and into every one of his fuses whenever they got close to him. The impact of that was something he would have to explore later. Now he had to buckle down and keep going.

  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, he had gained the ability to push all of his skills to a sixth level of amplification. The PSI drain was significant, but his pool of available power would only grow as he continued to fuse with the rest of the girls.

  Olivia was next followed by Bella. He knew both of them relatively well. They would add helpful powers, but it was more their willingness to join the whole that would make them all stronger.

  After that, Rosa showed up at his door. The mother of one of his children, and a woman that he had found himself thinking about far too often. This was one time that it was no struggle. In fact, the hardship was finishing in time for the next girl. Jay was even more reassured about his decision today after the fusion. He could feel the doubts and uncertainty that Rosa felt, and then could feel it washed away as she gained a better understanding of him. They were one now.

  It started to become a blur after that. Next was Skylar with her ability to create matter out of pure PSI, then An
gel with her power to create bursts of light. Next came Kenzie, who he had known since that first day on the beach. She could be as cold as her power, but he knew that she had wanted this for a while, and now she was getting her wish.

  Niamh’s power of Augmented Form intrigued Jay, but he didn’t have time yet to experiment with it before he was on to Zuri’s Energy Conversion power and then Jade’s Acid Creation. After that came Deja, another newcomer that he didn’t know well. Her power was to interface with technology. Jay wasn’t sure how he would implement that, but he hoped it would come in handy.

  Each fusion brought him to ever increasing heights of power. He was swimming in power and felt stretched more and more. But he kept pushing on. This was hardly torture even if the strain of increasing his power this quickly was testing him.

  Sage’s Bio-radiation Absorption and Generation was just another type of energy manipulation for him to learn as Ellie’s Telekinetic shielding, Willow’s Aerokinesis and Aurora’s Light Control. If he had enough time, he was sure that each power would have been another deadly arrow in his quiver, but now his brain felt crammed full to the point of exploding. For once since he had learned the Tempus Fugit fields, time did not seem to be on his side.

  Thirty hours of lovemaking with fifteen women and repeated surges of power had him worn out. He didn’t think they had more than another eighteen hours or so. He really needed to go check on the progress being made in the science division but someone else was at his door. He knew who through his bond with her but wasn’t able to understand why.

  He opened the door before Eesa could even knock. Then she dropped to the ground in the prostrating bow of her people. Jay pulled her up and asked, “What can I do for you, wife?”

  “I want to join with you, my lord husband,” she replied with her eyes on the floor.

  “Oh Eesa, I don’t think that is possible,” Jay said. His mind was swarming with the emotions of all the new women he had just fused with, but he still had only one Tamoori wife and even if he had only met her a short time ago in the normal timeline, he still had come to value her.

  “Is it because I am not human, my lord husband?”

  “Yes, but not in the way that you are implying. It has nothing to do with me wanting you less. In fact, I want you more than many of those women I just fused with. Some of them I barely get along with and others I barely know. But you don’t have a PSI core. The way I fuse lately is all about merging my core with the woman,” Jay replied.

  “Oh…, I understand,” Eesa said and turned to leave, but then at the last second turned back and said, “You said that is how you fuse now, but is it always how you fused?”

  Jay thought back over all the missteps in fusing. The first time had been completely accidental. He certainly hadn’t tried to connect their cores. He barely understood what those were back then. “No, it wasn’t always like that but as I learned how to do it better, I understood what needed to happen.”

  Eesa had the most peculiar way of being aggressive and yet bashful all at the same time. “How was it done then, lord husband?”

  “I guess it was all about need and desire,” Jay said slowly.

  “I need you. I desire you,” Eesa said. The unspoken question hung in the air.

  Jay wondered if it could be that simple. He certainly had been trying to control everything lately. He felt so much responsibility for everyone. All of humanity, what was left at least depended upon him. “I need you too, Eesa. I could never have imagined that a savage, blood thirsty cat girl could fill a gap that was missing in me, but you bring out the beast in me and in a good way. You remind me to be present in the moment.”

  He let his own words sink in for a bit and then said, “What the hell, no promises.” Then he grabbed her and shut his door with a quick kinetic push.

  What followed was a redefining moment for Jay but also for the future of evolved humans. Passion and desire met with compatibility and need. They desired each other but certainly not just in a physical way. Jay had just had his fill of that and more for some thirty hours. There was a point at which another trip to the buffet line was nothing more than gluttony.

  This was more natural. It was like in the early days. Responsibilities were there. He could never forget that. He certainly hadn’t been able to forget it in the early days. In fact, he had often taken on himself more than was his responsibility. But in this moment, he was able to relax and forget anything but the person across from him.

  His power was great, but he couldn’t make her into a human. It turned out however that wasn’t the basis for fusion. Fusion was two minds meeting together and combining their strength. He could force a fusion by merging cores, but this was purer.

  The effects of this fusion were different though. Parts of Eesa’s predator mindset fused onto Jay and all the other parts of himself in the fusion. In turn, Eesa’s body became a receptacle for PSI. She might not be able to generate the power, but she could now hold as much as he could. That meant that she now contained more PSI than all the Tamoori starfighters put together.

  At first it seemed like Jay had gotten the short end of a fusion for once, but then he saw that his brain had been altered to accommodate aspects of Tamoori thinking. His adaptation pushed all of his physical skills to their max. Maybe he was not approaching true superman levels of strength and speed.

  His peak speed was now 29,699 miles per second, assuming that he was traveling in a straight light. He might not be able to travel at the speed of light, but it was just boggling that he could now say that his speed was only just shy of 16% of the speed of light.

  As for strength, he could now bench press over nine hundred thousand tons, if it were somehow possible to create a scenario where that much weight could be brought to bear while he was pressing up with his arms. He chuckled, it still wasn’t anywhere near what the peaks were for Hulk or Superman, but skyscrapers or aircraft carriers would be light weights to him now.

  He looked at his status sheet one last time and then determined not to worry about it. He noted that the powers he had received had been mostly fused into other powers. His partitioned mind was getting good at combining things.

  M1789

  Level: Unregistered

  Awareness: 903,971

  Long Range Sensory Precision Mastery: 84,292

  Organic and Cybernetic Telepathic Mastery: 46,891

  Durability: 838,844 (1,006,612-crown)

  Augmented Body Mastery: 838,844

  Astral Vector Step Mastery: 109,023

  Kinesis: 874,493

  Energy Generation and Absorption Mastery:83,130

  Genesis Modification Mastery: 59,283

  Metalmancy: 62,512

  Summon Object: 19,012

  Metabolism:742,458 (891,033-crown)

  Primal Speed and Adaptation Mastery: 742,458

  Duplicate: 80

  Formation: 797,404

  Psionic Construct: 127674

  Evolved Temporal Sensory Manipulation: 75765

  Evolved Veil of Illusion:12690

  Psi Pts: 124,657,7200 (134,145,432 -crown)

  Chapter 30- The Battle to End all Battles

  Despite the short time left, Jay knew down into the core of his being that he needed some sleep. His body had just undergone changes on a scale beyond anything he had experienced before. For all the comparison to superheroes, he knew this was no joke. He held great power and he was about to be called upon to use it.

  The fifteen thousand Forlorn ships were out there waiting a tenth of a light year away. Yet they hadn’t moved in more than a day. The enemy wasn’t as fast as their ships with spatial jump drives, but they could still cross that distance in nothing flat. Yet they held off. To Jay that suggested that they were going to wait for reinforcements.

  So, he decided to trust in his senses and instincts. Maybe it was Eesa’s influence, but he knew that what would be would be. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t prepare and fight, but simply that if he was going to b
e effective, he needed to allow himself time to adapt to this. With that in mind and knowing that each of the fuses had also undergone tremendous changes too. They were still only a fraction as powerful as he was, but they were all likely equal to what he had been before this latest round of fusions.

  That meant they were demi-goddesses in their own right. Of course, they had always been that to him. Now they just had the power to match their beauty. Jay grinned, thinking he was funnier than he was, but soon he drifted off to sleep while trusting in the non-fuses to watch for them.

  Six hours later, Jay woke up alone in his bed. It was an all too rare occurrence in the last year or decades if you factor time dilation. He reached out with his mind and felt all of his fuses. They were all either waking up or already up, all forty-eight of them.

  He didn’t waste any time but teleported to the science lab. Seeing Huong surged over to her, kissed her and then said, “Status report.”