by Sean Oswald
Jay was a small target but made much larger by the tentacles. He started taking more fire and his focus was stretched thin, so his shields weren’t always perfect. One by one the nanium tentacles took too much damage to continue. By the end of half an hour he had destroyed over eighty thousand of the smaller ships but that still left four hundred and seventy thousand enemy ships of which almost a fifth were battleships.
In frustration he teleported back to the leviathan. He expected to be balled out for staying behind so long but more than one wife smothered him with a quick kiss only to be pulled away by the next one in line. They all told him they had been watching and that it was amazing what he had done.
He didn’t want to let them down. He needed to protect them. “Ava, will the leviathan be able to stand up to this many ships for long?”
She looked at him glumly as she said, “Master, I’m sorry but no. If we go all out on shields, maybe five minutes. If we go all out on weapons, we can maybe last a minute and take out another few thousand of them depending on how closely they are clustered together.”
“Can we evacuate everyone to the ship we came in?” He asked, kicking himself for not thinking of that sooner.
“Yes, but not in time. Not before they are here. The best we can hope for is to get about a third of the Tamoori on board,” Huong answered.
“Lord husband, we cannot leave that many innocents to die. I will lead the starfighters out to buy time for my people to evacuate,” Eesa said.
“I agree, and besides, I am tired of running. From what I have seen the Forlorn will just grow in number and come after us again. I would rather go all in now,” Jay said.
A seed of an idea started to blossom in him, and Amelia said, “I know that look. You’ve just thought of another bone headed idea haven’t you.”
Jay answered her by saying, “You know you love me.”
Then he telepathically shouted out, “I need all fuses here now.”
Most had already been there but a few more popped in. He sent instructions for the rest of Team Jay to help the Tamoori get evacuated to the ship in the event this didn’t work.
Once they were all there, Jay started forming a circuit beginning with Amelia and working his way down the line till he hit Aurora. He only got about a third of the way through before his head felt like it was going to explode. The girls in the circuit were all on the ground whimpering as the amount of PSI flowing through them was slowly cooking them from the inside.
Jay telepathically said, “Protect them, to the fuses outside of the circuit.” With trillions of PSI in him, even the casual instruction carried so much force with it that the girls were all either knocked out or those with high physical durability or willpower skills were only knocked to the floor with bloody noses.
He wanted to apologize but was afraid that would hurt them again. He was like a star about to go supernova and he wanted to direct that power at his enemy. The fleet was already bombarding the leviathan and it felt like the estimate of five minutes was overly generous. So, he sprang into action.
The first thing that they needed was more time. He had been warned and had felt himself the dangers that manipulating time could produce but he also owed his life to messages he had sent back through time. So, he lashed out and froze the entire armada in a single second.
He was stuck with them, but it was like he was a fish who had been on the shore but was suddenly thrown back into the water. He felt perfectly at home. He directed thousands of PSI blades edged with temporal power to go spinning out and ripping up the enemy ships. His attacks were so powerful that he was ripping holes in the continuity of the universe.
The enemy ships were blasted to tiny fragments or cut into pieces or sometimes simply swallowed whole by a gray abyss that was on the other side. Jay didn’t know what he was looking at but knew it wasn’t part of this universe and it was a domain where time held no sway.
He kept forcing ship after ship, fragment after fragment through the slices in time and space into what he had begun to think of as the void. His body even in the nanium enhanced form was dissolving from wielding power beyond anything he had imagined. His mind was scarred, and pain was taking over but he pushed on.
He created the strongest walls of will he could imagine and pushed more. Nearly half a million ships, and hundreds of millions of fragments. Jay was not going to allow any part of the Forlorn to remain in his universe. So, he fed them to the gaping maw of the void which seemed endless and hungry.
Jay felt the PSI draining out of him. From trillions to billions, then millions until finally he was filled with only thousands and someone, he was barely able to focus on pulling back his energy from the thousands of ruptures in reality he had created. He sealed them as he pulled back, but the light around him was intense. The energy was pouring out of him and he screamed. It was all he knew and then a bright white light.
Chapter 32- Chasing Fire
Jay’s body floated amidst the void of space. He wasn’t breathing. All around him was emptiness. Where there once had been thousands of enemy starships, now there was nothing but dust, maybe not even dust. Perhaps it was fitting.
His mind flickered to consciousness. He had been made from dust as the saying went and now, he was going back to dust. Not dust in the wind, but dust in the void of space where it would float forever.
The incredible power that had been surging through him had scoured his being. He trembled, unable to move, unable to think clearly. He had never felt this empty. His power was completely exhausted.
Then a voice spoke to him. Was it a dream? He remembered dreams, but he hadn’t dreamed much of late. Yet hadn’t all of this started with a dream. Yes, there had been a voice in his head. A voice and pretty face that would haunt him.
This voice wasn’t his though. It was, well, it was part of him. He felt the connection, but it wasn’t him. As he listened it wasn’t just one voice. There were many. They were calling out to him. There was something in the voices, some sentiment, or feeling that he was too tired to process.
By this point had he been a normal human or even any other evolved human, he would have been dead, a victim of the void of space. His nanium armor had drifted into so much dust once his body had been reduced to zero PSI.
His core was void and even the faint residual electricity in his body that allowed him to have these last thoughts of his life was fading. It had been worth it though. He had created freedom and the opportunity for life for his wives and children.
Children. Something about the word stung his mind. The cold was beginning to permeate even his perfectly refined body. If he had still needed to breathe to live, he would have already been dead. But without movement in his core, no new PSI was being generated. The effect would be all the same.
But that voice or voices kept pushing at his mind. Blowing back the cloud of darkness that threatened to swallow his mind. He felt a surge of power strike him as it ran up his channels. It hit his core but was too weak. It wasn’t enough to start the spinning again.
Again, he was hit by the power. It had flavor to it. Not just one but dozens of flavors. They exploded through him and he felt pain. Once he would have thought that pain was something to be feared, fled from, or even vilified, but now he was glad for the pain. It showed that he was alive.
The charge hit his core and caused it to turn over once. It spun once and then again. A solitary PSI point was created, and it went into turning the core again. One rotation led to another and soon it was producing thousands of PSI per second.
The energy which was the very source of his life spread out into him and he began to truly wake up. A smile crossed his lips. He was naked and floating in space. But not for long. A simple thought triggered his metalmancy and the pieces of nanium which had either been blasted off of him or which had simply fallen off once he was completely drained, all came back and formed up his suit.
He grinned that he didn’t need a helmet in space. At least this time he was struggli
ng to try and draw breath into lungs that he no longer had. Now with his bearings gathered again, he heard what the voices were saying, “She has found him.”
No further explanation was needed. He focused on where the majority of his fuses were on the remnants of the final leviathan. In an instant he was there.
Jay looked around and found Amelia. He could talk to her from anywhere, but call it a bad habit, he still liked to look at those he spoke to with his physical eyes. He may have shed his internal organs, but he wasn’t sure he would ever part with his sensory organs. He still enjoyed perceiving the world in such an imprecise but primal way.
He had to put his questions in the right order. “How is everyone? Did we lose any of our people?”
Amelia was sad and had clearly been crying but she said, “All of the fuses are still alive. A few are unconscious from the strain but that is to be expected. Seven girls from Team Jay who were not fused, died, but we were able to save all the children. I will give you the names of those that died later, or you can take them from our minds.
Right now, though we need to focus on Meikiyo. He reached out with his mind but couldn’t find her anywhere.
Trina said, “Meikiyo is cut off from us. I don’t believe she is dead but can’t prove it. She found where Higen was being held but the battle was still raging. We made the decision that she should go after him.”
“You were too busy for us to ask, obviously and we felt the loss of one fuse wouldn’t matter,” Huong said.
Amelia then added, “The last place that we were able to connect her was the A’snkarnt home world. Her ship is still there but there is some type of PSI interference which is keeping us from reaching her.”
PSI interference. The expression made Jay grimace. Their biggest advantages against the Forlorn, truthfully the only reason they had stood a chance at all was the enemy’s inability to stop attacks made with PSI. He had just quite literally scoured the heavens of them, and they hadn’t been able to resist. Sure, it had nearly killed him but to hear that whoever had taken Higen might have some way to interfere with PSI was terrifying.
It wasn’t like this would keep him from going after his wife and son, not for a second. But he still needed to prepare. Especially given how his body ran completely on PSI now, it was essential for him to be able to win this encounter. They had come too far to stumble at the finish line.
They had to know what he was planning but it was Mia who said, “You need to rest, Jay. It won’t do you any good to find them but then be too weak to save them.”
“I can’t afford the time and don’t dare use another Tempus Fugit field now, for fear of causing damage to myself or the universe even. Besides, I’ve been tired before, but my PSI regenerates quickly,” Jay replied.
“This isn’t about being tired, what you did… there just aren’t words for it,” Jessie said.
“Like I said, I’ve pushed myself before.”
“You’ve never done anything like you just did. I still don’t know how it was possible and I’m fused to you. No one has ever done anything like that. You were fucking glowing like a star, husband,” Huong said.
Jay started to protest again but was suddenly pushed down into a chair behind him by small soft hands pressed against his chest. He was caught off guard as Ava said, “Master, she is right. You overextended yourself. I could feel it. Your soul or mind or whatever you want to call it was fractured and sent out into a million million different directions. You were somehow connected with everything around you.”
He sighed wearily, then said, “I simply did what had to be done.”
Ava was clearly worked up and for her to have pushed him she must want him to take her seriously. “Master, you say that so flippantly, but it was more than that. It shouldn’t have been possible. You cracked the space time continuum. You undid what happened and rewrote history to suit yourself, but you also spread PSI out into the universe in a way that it never had been before.
Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out just how this is going to affect things. I don’t know that the impact will be limited to the here and now. It may have assorted impacts throughout history.”
“Maybe what he did always happened, and we have lived with the results our entire life without realizing it until this moment,” Jessie said.
“My people have known about PSI long before we met you, as I told you, mate. PSI has always been as long as we have been aware as a people,” Eesa said.
“Yes, that is exactly what I mean though. If he cracked time to save us, then what is to say that he didn’t spread PSI through the universe in that instant,” Jessie said back.
“I’m sure that all of this is particularly important, but as soon as one of you points me in the right direction, I am going to teleport to where Meikiyo was last seen. I have a responsibility to her and our son. You all know I have to go after them just like I would for any of you.”
“The boy scout can’t be himself if he isn’t risking his life trying to save us. White knight syndrome for sure,” Amelia said.
“And you love it as much as the rest of,” Huong said.
Amelia smiled and snapped back, “Shut up slut. Stop giving away my secrets.”
“I for one won’t stop Jay from being who he needs to be. He has won at every turn,” Trina said.
Jay was surprised given how overprotective of him she could be, “Thank you, Trina.”
She looked at him and put her hand on his shoulder as she said, “That doesn’t mean that I am going to let you go alone. You may have to be you, but I have to be me too.”
Jay shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “Fine, I’m too tired to argue with you. You can come with me, but you have to teleport us there.”
“Mate, that would be unwise. I would not like for my cub to grow up without knowing his sire and I would be most displeased with you if you died before showing me more of this tickling that you are always threatening me with,” Eesa said.
“You have a better way, I suppose,” Amelia said.
Eesa bared her sharp teeth at Amelia and said, “Yes, first wife I do. I shall transport Jay and Trina in one of the extended starfighters. They are equipped with the spatial jump drive and the subspace dimensional drive. If PSI is being interrupted it also has more conventional fusion propulsion engines.”
Amelia nodded and said, “Good thinking fur-bag. But I am coming with you.”
“Me too,” Jessie said.
Eesa shook her off. “There is only room for four in the ship, maybe five if we squish. If we are unable to bring back the ship that Meikiyo took then we may need to bring them back with me. These two humans are all that I can bring besides my mate.”
Jay tuned out the brief argument that followed. Each of his wives and many of his fuses wanted to go, but Eesa was right, no matter how coldly she delivered the truth. Amelia, Trina, and he would be going with her. There was a part of him that wanted to bring Huong.
He reached out to her with his mind, “Huong, I wish that I could bring you along. It would feel appropriate to have you and Amelia at my side as we are fighting with Meikiyo to free Higen, but you know as well as I do that in battle, Trina is a better choice.”
“I do know, husband. I wish that I could go but I would rather have you come back in one piece and Trina is better able to ensure that. Just know that I want to have a long life with you after this,” Huong replied.
“I wouldn’t dream of anything else.”
After that they gathered any gear they might possibly need, Jay put Huong in charge while he was gone and assigned Jessie to liaison with the Tamoori to see what could be done to save those that had survived the damage to the leviathan. He noticed Eesa staring at him as he gave that order, but she didn’t say anything. Her gratitude was obvious in the fusion, yet the words didn’t pass her lips. It was just another reminder to him that he had a lot to learn about his newest wife.
Mia placed new fully charged PSI crystals into the ship and Ava went over the
instructions for the spatial jump drive with Amelia and Trina even though they both knew how to make one run. Finally, he said his goodbyes. Many tearful hugs were had, and he was kissed passionately enough times to chaff the lips of a normal man.
The love of his wives and fuses along with the faith that Team Jay had in him was a good reminder of how much he had in his life. There was so much that he could lose, but it was also an anchor securing him to this life. He wasn’t ready to give up.
When the back of the craft closed and they all sat on the two benches in back, Jay said, “Time to bring our family home.”
Even Eesa growled in approval.
Chapter 33- Battlefield of the Mind
The ship jumped to orbit around planet #1, the A’snkarnt home world. Well, the home world of a now dead race. Jay scanned the surface and found one A’snkarnt. One who he knew and owed a debt of pain to.