“Do you think our hard landing did something to the navigation system?” Jon asked. He could not help but stare at the beautiful planet far beneath them. The swirling of the clouds was mesmerizing as the land appeared and disappeared beneath them.
“I think you may have the answer, Jon. Unfortunately, the crystal compartment is not part of the pressurized cabin, so I won’t be able to check on it to see if it requires repairs. I’m going to try the radio to see if we can get anyone to assist us.” Juila dialed as many frequencies as she knew and none of them produced any results other than static.
“This isn’t looking good, is it, Juila?” Valentina asked as her breathing came faster as she imagined the air was getting thinner the further they floated away from Earth.
“No, it’s not good, Val.” Juila ran her hands through her hair, and she tugged fistfuls to help her focus her mind on solving the problem. It was possible there was a manual override to the crystal drive allowing her to use mental coordinates. She began tapping on different selections on the glass panel as she searched for the manual selection. “Ah, I found it!” she announced triumphantly.
“What? What did you find?” Valentina asked urgently.
“The manual override section. I can use this to have the crystal drive take the coordinates from my mind rather than from the computer system. Give me some quiet for a few minutes while I mentally guide us back home.”
Juila closed her eyes in concentration and recalled all of her lessons on the older telepods which required only mental navigation. This should be a simple matter of thinking their destination into a reality. She took a deep, calming breath, and then she pressed the activation button on her mental destination.
Everything went black inside and out of the telepod as it shifted through space. Only three seconds passed before they appeared back in space. Juila stared in disbelief as she realized they were further off course than they originally had been.
Jon said it best when he declared, “I can’t see Earth anymore out of any window. I think we have a problem.”
“You think, Captain Obvious?” Valentina shouted at him.
“Stop it, you two, I need to think!” Juila studied their new coordinates and groaned. They had doubled their distance away from Earth instead of moving closer. The crystal drive had to have a loose connection in order for it to behave in such a manner.
She could almost kick herself for being so hasty and confident when they were leaving Tuala. Any good pilot knew to check all of the equipment and fuselage before departure. She had been feeling so anxious to get away that she had neglected to heed the most basic lesson on safety. Now they were stuck in space without any form of communication and no way to fix the crystal drive without losing the vacuum inside the cabin. The situation was hopeless to say the least.
Chapter Eighteen
JENA INSTANTLY KNEW that there was a problem. The part of her brain which was always in contact with Juila was suddenly gone. “No, no, NO!” she yelled as she stood up and ran out of the library.
Behn stared after her and wondered what could have happened to make her act so strangely. He began to get a terrible feeling inside that something bad had occurred and it would most likely involve Juila. He jumped up and raced after her.
“I can’t feel her anymore, Dad! Juila is gone!” Jena kept calling out.
Riccan stood up from the couch and held out his arms to Jena even as he tried to make sense of what she was saying. He spotted Behn as he came to a halt in the hallway and he yelled at him, “Go get Amanda, quick! I think she’s upstairs in our room!”
Behn nodded and changed direction to go through the foyer. He took the stairs three at a time and pounded on the bedroom door twice before flinging the door open to a startled Mrs. Stel. “Something bad has happened, and Mr. Stel needs you downstairs straightaway.”
“What is it?” she asked as she brushed past Behn and flew down the stairs without any conscious memory of touching any of them. She took in the scene ahead of her as she bolted into the living room and took Jena’s face into her hands. “What happened? Tell me what you know!”
“I can’t feel Juila with me anymore; she’s gone! She’s gone, Mom!” Jena’s eyes were huge with fear.
“Come, sit down, Jena. Let’s go over this very slowly. I remember this happening before when the two of you were separated.”
“Mom that was in a dream, it wasn’t real! This is real, Mom, Juila is gone!”
“My dreams have all meant something before. Maybe this was to prepare us to look at this situation differently and not to panic. Tell me everything you felt up until you could no longer sense Juila.”
“Behn and I were in the library studying, and everything was normal. Juila was getting ready to come back home. She was feeling anxious, almost as if someone were watching her. She wanted to come home as fast as possible. I don’t know anything after that because the link just vanished.”
Amanda looked up in horror at her daughter’s revelation. It sounded as if there had been a problem with the telepod transfer home. If the aircraft had malfunctioned, then it would mean their daughter no longer existed in any dimension, she would be lost forever from either side. She looked over to Behn as she realized it also meant that both of his siblings were also lost.
Riccan sat back in stunned silence. He had thought there was something wrong with the telepod when he had landed at his parents’ house, but he had dismissed it as being the tracking device attached at transfer. How could he have missed something so basic? Had his negligence just cost him one of his daughters and two other teenage lives?
An idea struck him, and he abruptly stood up and left the room. He went into the office and pulled out the patil from its secret cubby. He tapped in a few commands and sat back in his chair as he realized the transmitting beacon was still operational, if not faint. They were still alive, but the question of where remained a mystery.
He pondered the implication as he returned to the living room where everyone stared at his abrupt exit. “I was able to confirm the aircraft is still functional. The beacon is still functioning, but the tone is very distant. I don’t know where they are, but they definitely still exist.”
“Then why can’t I feel Juila anymore?” Jena cried.
“I have an idea,” Amanda offered.
“What is it?” Riccan asked.
“This scenario happened in my dream, remember? Rasa was able to help Juila re-link with Jena when she had been taken to Earth. Maybe we should go see Rasa and see if she can do it again for Jena.”
Riccan looked at his distraught daughter and said, “Unless anyone can come up with a better plan, then I think Rasa is our only option. Let’s go!” He helped pull Jena up from the couch. Her limbs seemed limp and uncooperative as she began to shiver and cry as if in pain. He picked her up and carried her out to the garage. He gently placed her in the back seat of Amanda’s telepod and buckled her in. He waited for Behn and Amanda to board the aircraft before he closed the door and activated the flight to Manzanit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Several tense hours passed and still they were no closer to finding a way to return home to Earth. Juila had reviewed every screen on the glass panel and yet there was nothing to be done for their free-floating in space. She was afraid to attempt another transfer for fear of taking them further out into space.
Juila was thoroughly sick of hearing Valentina’s comments about how they were going to die, and they were going to run out of oxygen. While Valentina did have a point about the finite amount of air available, they were by no means in any imminent danger of suffocating. Juila attempted to put Valentina to sleep using her skills with her birth crystal only to find out there was no elemy accessible.
She had a moment of panic herself as she searched in vain for any traces of elemy only to come up empty-handed. She took deep breaths to focus her mind and tried again, with the same negative results. Juila finally had to admit the idea of being so far away from the Earth
’s energy source was impeding her abilities. It was not an idea which sat easily with her since she had always relied on being able to use her gifts whenever she felt the need. Now she felt absolutely ordinary; she almost chuckled as she realized this was how people from Earth felt all of the time: helpless.
For once Valentina had something constructive to say. “I think we’re moving,” she said as she pointed to the display screen.
Juila confirmed Valentina’s suspicion as she watched the X and Y coordinates begin to move in a synchronous line rather than the random fluctuations they had been performing as they drifted in space. “I think you’re right, Val.” Juila swiveled her head in every direction trying to see what could be causing them to change course so suddenly.
Jon cried from the back, “I think I see something off of the port side. Juila, do you see anything out there?”
Juila stared intently and finally made out a small smudge in the distance which seemed different than the surrounding stars. “I do see something. I have no idea what it could be, but if it has the ability to draw us in, then it must be sentient.”
“What?” cried Valentina in increasing panic. “What do you mean sentient? Are you suggesting we’re being drawn in by aliens? Could this get any worse?”
“I’d say this was a lucky break because they probably have communications for us to contact Earth and arrange for help. If nothing else, they would have a place with gravity and compression where I could fix the crystal drive so we could use our own telepod to get back home ourselves.” Juila nodded her head at her own ideas; this was going to work out just fine. She felt confident they were on the way to being rescued from a potentially deadly situation.
Several minutes passed by, and they were able to make out the shape of a large spaceship in the distance. Juila had never heard of anyone actively pursuing space travel in Tuala, but she could not rule out the idea of some of the Elders probably entertaining the idea. It was possible Elder Vargen’s Old Soul Engineering Facility had created something space-worthy in all of the time they had been amassing ideas from Earth’s people.
The closer they came to the foreign ship, the more anxious Juila became. Not only was the vessel a good fifty times larger than their own telepod, but she also did not recognize any part of its design. The structure was oblong with very few windows, a dull silver finish, and a very large opening on the side they were approaching.
“It looks as though all of our questions will soon be answered,” Jon stated as their telepod began to pass through the entrance of a large internal cavern.
Valentina glared back at her brother’s obvious comment yet refrained from further comment. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the arms of her chair. She failed to find anything comforting about this new turn of events.
Several things happened all at once, the forward motion of their telepod stopped, the opening behind their ship began to close, and the darkness around them began to change as a circle of lights began to turn on around the perimeter of the cargo bay in which they were floating.
Juila imagined the gravity would be restored as soon as the external door shut, so she put her hand on the manual control to ease the telepod down onto the cargo room floor. The last thing she needed was to crash the ‘pod again. As if on cue, Juila could feel the telepod regaining spatial control as gravity returned. She set the telepod down with ease and powered down the systems.
“What are you doing?” Valentina asked of Juila as she watched her friend unfasten her seat harness and jump out of her chair.
“I’m going to go check on the crystal drive to see if I can fix the problem. If it can be repaired, then we can get out of here.” She had not stopped her movement through the telepod, but she did come up short from her task as the external door was opened and she came face to face with a strange, terrifying-looking man holding a gun up and aimed at her.
Chapter Nineteen
“HOLD IT RIGHT where you are, missy. Now be a good girl, and walk on down this ramp. We’re going to check out what business you have out here so close to us. You there,” he pointed to Jon and then to Valentina, “come on out and join your friend. If you cooperate, then nobody will get hurt.”
Soon enough they were all three standing on the cargo bay floor beside the telepod and watching as a swarm of unwashed men entered their vessel and pawed through everything. Another man had taken over the duty of guarding them, and he kept leering at Juila and Valentina. Jon put his arm protectively around Valentina and pulled her closer to him to offer whatever protection he could give her.
“The ship is clear,” a man said as he stepped out of the telepod. He turned to the three kids and asked, “Who sent you and why?”
Juila cleared her throat before she answered, “Nobody sent us, sir. We had a system malfunction, and we were unable to navigate back to Earth.”
“Earth, you say?” the man raised his eyebrows and tilted his head with interest. “Come with me.” He turned and began walking toward a door they had not seen before.
The three of them held hands as they walked behind this fierce-looking man. He led them through various dimly lit hallways and up a short ramp. He pointed to a room and said, “Leave the other two in here. Bring the girl who spoke to my room.” With the tone of voice, he used it was clear he was used to being obeyed at once.
Jon realized what had been said and he spoke up, “She stays with us. If you want to talk, then we’ll all be going together.”
The man turned on his heel and stepped right up to Jon until their noses were nearly touching, “You do not call the shots around here, boy; I do. If you value your life at all, then I suggest you do exactly what I say and keep your mouth shut. When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.” He looked him up and down and sneered, “I doubt you’ll be talking much from the looks of you.” He chuckled, turned, and walked away. “Bring the girl now!” he spoke loudly without even turning his head to make sure his orders were being followed.
Valentina grabbed Juila’s arm and said urgently, “Don’t go with them, Juila. I’m afraid.”
“I don’t see where we have a choice in the matter at present. I’m going to get to the bottom of this and be back as soon as I can. Stay with Jon; keep believing we’ll be fine.”
Juila’s words were barely finished before another man grabbed her by the upper arm and began pulling her in the same direction the leader had taken. She jerked forward and released her arm from his grasp as she continued to walk forward. “Don’t touch me,” she spoke with as much authority as she could muster and straightened her shoulders to give herself as much confidence as she could gather.
To her surprise, the man did back off and followed her two steps behind. She had seen the other man turn at a doorway up ahead, so she knew where to go. Once she stepped into the room, the man behind her shut the door, and she thought she heard a snigger of amusement from him as the door clicked shut.
Without any preliminaries, the leader said, “My name’s Viceroy Blair. You can either call me by my full title or Viceroy, but you will not call me Blair. Do you understand?”
Juila nodded.
“Good! Now state your name, rank, and where you’re from.”
“Juila Stel, I am a student of Jehoban. I’m from Acaim, Tuala.” Juila wondered if she should claim Tuala or Earth as where she had come from. She opted to go with the most influential place and hoped it would be enough to gain some respect, and possibly help, from this Viceroy Blair. Where better than the home of the creator of the universe? she thought to herself.
“Yet you claimed to be trying to return to Earth. Which story is it, girl?”
“Both, Viceroy. I was taking my two passengers home to Earth.”
“I see. How did you come to be acquainted with your passengers?”
“I met them in school on Earth.”
“I thought you said you were from Tuala?”
“I am.”
“I see,” Viceroy said even though he failed to underst
and the situation. Regardless of their reasons for being out in space, he had a problem, and he believed they possessed the solution. “You do realize you’re now indebted to me for rescuing your ship, right?”
“I am, Viceroy. We’d be glad to repay your kindness once we’re safely returned to Earth.”
“I think you will be paying long before then, Juila,” Viceroy quietly said as he turned and fiddled with some of the paperwork on his desktop. “Will you be able to repair your ship to fly again?”
“I’m not sure what the exact problem is with it, Viceroy Blair. If you’d allow me to go back to the telepod, then I can give you more details.”
Viceroy pretended to consider her request even though his mind was already made up in the matter. “I think not at this time,” he replied as he turned back around to face her. “I have more pressing matters at present. Do you have any experience with aquaponics?”
“Yes, I do. Is your system down as well?” Juila began reviewing all of the lessons she had ever learned on the subject. She hoped to be able to offer her assistance so the Viceroy would be more accommodating to their situation.
“Unfortunately, yes. Everything began to malfunction after we picked up our last shipment in Tuala, actually.”
“If you can take me to your grow-room, I can see what I can do to help,” Juila said reasonably.
“Perhaps, perhaps. Sit down for a bit.” He gestured to a chair and remained standing. He hastily reviewed what he knew of Tuala and wondered why the place she said she came from worried him. “Tell me about Acaim.”
Juila clearly had not expected the request and remained silent for a few seconds. “It’s the home of Jehoban. The people who live on Acaim are all there by Jehoban’s invitation and are His special students.”
“And who is this Jehoban?”
Juila’s eyebrows rose, and her eyes widened as she replied in astonishment, “He’s the creator of the universe.”
“Hah!” Viceroy tipped his head back and laughed out loud for several seconds before he looked back down at Juila and asked, “Who is he really?”
Ascension Vision- The Levels of Ascension Box Set Page 11