First Immortals Ch. 11

"Is she still OK?" I asked Anastacia.

"I think so," she replied, "but I think you have blown Flipsy's fuse."

I looked at Flipsy and she was still quivering and moaning softly, looking up with unfocussed eyes.

"She did well," I said.

"I can see why you needed a fluffer," Anastacia said, "and to be quite honest there were times there when I really wished I had said I would do it. That was awesome."

We did it right," I replied, "and I hope it will be worth it for Epsilon."

"At least now she has a chance," Anastacia said, and I nodded.

"Do you need to clean up?" Anastacia asked, "we have a Doorshower."

"Point me at it," I said gratefully, "do you want help putting the others through?"

"No," Anastacia replied, "Epsilon needs to rest and if Flipsy is able to walk after the pounding you gave her she will probably want to feel it herself."

The Doorshower was pretty new back then, and the idea of being able to just walk fully clothed through a doorway and come out totally clean was still a novelty to most people. This was the first one I had seen that had the cloth cleaning function too, and the extra thirty seconds I spent going through was well worth it. I felt much more prepared for whatever the future held.

"If I survive this war I will be back to check on you all," I promised, then I kissed all three of them. Epsilon seemed to be breathing a tiny bit better and Flipsy was now fast asleep with a dreamy smile on her face. I thought of walking her up, but I asked Anastacia to pass on my appreciation instead, and then I left. I still had a very daunting job to do.

The trip back to Hinchlet was surprisingly easy. On two occasions I felt the chirping and I changed direction to avoid it. I never saw a YW but I was pretty sure I was getting some sort of interference from their telepathic signals, and by avoiding it I avoided them. It was very helpful.

I bypassed the main entrance to the base and went to the small guardhouse that was nearest to my private hanger. The guards were relieved to see me and they promised not to let anyone know I had been there until I announced it myself. I really didn't want to waste my time justifying my planned actions.

I went to my Stellar, and looked at it, trying to memorise it. I was pretty sure neither of us was coming back, and this craft held some very special memories for me. I got into my specially customised off planet flying suit, and I climbed into the machine. I flipped the lever that set the craft on total manual control, and without further ado I prepared to launch.

"Leader one, request immediate clearance for take-off," I said.

"Leader one, are you OK?" the dispatcher said. It was a complete breach of protocol, but I could understand it in the circumstances.

"Immediate," I repeated.

"Immediate clearance granted," the dispatcher said.

"Thanks," I said, breaking protocol myself as I launched, "and yes, I'm fine."

"Good luck Sir."

I got as far away as I could in the next minute and then I turned my communicator on.

"Flimsy, this is Poster, are you there?" I said.

This was a secret code for me to call Neale Chuang. Neale had not re-joined the Intergalactic Navy, preferring a quiet retirement, but we had discussed this situation and agreed on the correct response. As part of his package we had given Neale his own Stellar.

"Scabbard is airborne quadrant fourteen. Units three to eight intercept and destroy," the words arrived in my head without using my ears.

"Got you Poster," Neale's voice came through the speakers.

"Situation warewolf on a bicycle, proceed Jack Russell," I said. This told Neale that there were two targets out of atmosphere, and it also told him which plan we would use to destroy them.

"Bald Eagle. Good luck," he responded. That meant he understood and agreed.

"You too," I replied.

"Target sighted, tumbler released," a voice in my head said, and I looked around desperately. My flight computer looked like it had been shut down by the YW's so I had to manually spot the threat.

I saw a light which I realised was a YW craft at a very long distance. It had fired some sort of projectile which was rolling through the sky toward me. I tried an evasive manoeuvre, but it changed course to follow me. I hit the power and broke all the speed rules for in atmosphere flight, but it accelerated too, and was still gaining at the same rate. Then my computer turned back on and I saw five more aircraft in formation ahead of me. They were obviously letting me see this because they were trying to intimidate me, and they weren't being too unsuccessful. But I didn't have time to panic, I slowed my Stellar right down, but the missile stayed at the same speed, and was now only seconds to impact. Moments before it struck me I flipped the Stellar down and hit maximum power. The back blast from the drive pushed the pursuing missile off course, and I plummeted in a screaming power-dive towards Earth. It was now just down to which target the missile would follow, and with relief I saw it head for the bigger target of the formation of YW craft. I felt a brief scream and then all of the five craft disappeared from the screen. I didn't know what the bomb was, but I knew it would have easily taken me out. I pulled out of my headlong dive at the last possible moment, with trees brushing the underside of my Stellar.

"Unit seven withdraw immediately, do not fire, repeat do not fire."

"I have him in my sights now."

"Do not fire; we cannot risk losing more craft. He is unarmed."

"Acknowledged."

For a moment I wondered why I could suddenly hear the YW's communications, but then I worked it out. The chirping I heard earlier was the same communications, and I must have been 'tuned in' to telepathic communication as a result of having sex with the YW's the second time around. When I had turned on my communicator the translator that the Eriguons had put on it took care of the rest. This could be very handy.

This realisation left me with a dilemma. Should I who was suddenly, as far as I knew, the only human capable of telepathic communication be heading out on a suicide mission? The tactical advantage I had been given with this ability had already proven itself. But in the long run my mission was to ensure survival of the planet, and there was no point to a tactical advantage if the entire planet was overrun by YW's and we were unable to fight them.

I turned the Stellar to the sky and went to keep my date with destiny.

The plan was simple, basic, and as I said earlier, suicidal. We were no longer allowed to have energy weapons, but the Eriguons had not actually banned energy drives. My Stellar was a flying bomb. I had originally named the mission 'kamikaze', but with the enemy having access to our computers this would have given the game away, so I chose 'Jack Russell' instead as they are small dogs who firmly believe they are big, and they act accordingly.

"Arbour," Neale said, indicating he was in position and ready to start the operation. I waited for about a minute until I was also in position.

"Arbour," I repeated, "break a leg". This was an old show business term for 'good luck'.

"Goodnight and may your God go with you," Neale said.

I did some research later and found out the reference. Neale had been watching and listening to comedy shows from the beginning of recording, and this was a common sign off line from a comedian named Dave Allen. I watched a lot of it myself later, but it was very dated by then.

Knowing that Neale was doing the same I turned my Stellar towards the YW mother ship, but approached at minimum speed. I set up an elastic band on the tiny throttle lever, and inserted a small piece of wood to prevent the elastic band giving me full speed. The thing I used was once called a matchstick, back when it had sulphur on one end and was used as a primitive method of making fire. I felt my limbs slowing as the YW's in the mother ship all started to freeze me. I sealed my suit, put my free hand on the eject lever and took out a small applicator. With a silent prayer I put a drop of acid on the wood.

"What is he doing?" I felt the question.

"I don't know. Prepare to fire tumblers, but wait for my command. He is frozen now so he can't hurt us."

My movement was almost entirely stopped now. I saw the wood sizzling as I struggled to make the final move, and about twenty agonising seconds later I finally pushed the eject lever, and shot out into space.

"He has ejected, how?"

"His craft must have malfunctioned. Shall we shoot him?"

"No, he will suffer more like this. Tumblers stand down."

I was still frozen, so I could only see the Stellar once per rotation as I tumbled through space. This happened about a dozen times and I was wondering if the simple mechanism had failed. Then finally, just as I was about to lose vision again the drive lit up and the Stellar shot towards the YW mother ship at maximum speed.

"Emergency, prepare..." I felt a howling, communal scream of terror, and then another larger one of pain.

I didn't see the impact, I was facing in the wrong direction, but I sure as hell felt it. It was like I had been slapped by a massive hand and I was suddenly propelled towards Earth. I instantly had my movement back, but with the wind well and truly knocked out of me I was still very much a passenger.

Some scientist had told me that in space, without any atmosphere, the percussion from an explosion would be negligible. If what I had just experienced was negligible, I just couldn't imagine what it would have been like inside the atmosphere.

On my next turn I saw that the YW mother ship had disintegrated. The only thing left was fragments hurtling in every direction. I watched carefully over the next few minutes, but luckily none were coming straight at me.

I wondered how Neale was. Had he achieved his part of the mission? I tried to raise him on the communicator, but it was silent.

I could feel sympathetic screams from more YW's, but I had no way of knowing if they were from the other mother ship or from Earth.

I used the tiny but powerful propulsion unit in the suit to stop my tumbling and set the most oblique course that I could for re-entry. Nobody had ever attempted re-entry in a suit before, it was guaranteed to be fatal, but my only hope was that was only for normal people, and I was far from normal.

Most of the sympathetic screams stopped suddenly, and with relief I realised that Neale had taken out the other mother ship. For the moment at least, Earth was safe. Well, only if the YW's still trapped on Earth could be destroyed. I still couldn't raise Neale, so I gave up and turned off my communicator, because I reasoned that if I did survive this trip I would be in no position to defend myself from vengeful aliens.

Then the heat started as I reached the outer atmosphere, and I wondered if I would survive this. I used the propulsion unit to slow my descent as much as possible, but the heat increased rapidly. Not only was my suit was modified with this trip in mind, but also I had an unusually resilient body, but even so just to attempt this was insanity.

You might wonder why I had not arranged to have another craft pick me up after the mission, and I pondered it too in the planning stages. But the Stellars weren't built to do mid space pickups, it just wasn't possible, and the shuttle craft from the Mayflower had developed some serious structural faults, so it was currently inoperable. We had no craft available to do this.

I prolonged my own agony for as long as possible by slowing my speed down to the lowest possible, and this certainly did assist with keeping the temperature down, but eventually my propulsion unit ran out of power. I had considered solar collectors on the suit to extend the time I could use the propulsion unit, but they didn't have enough thermal insulation, and would have just burned off anyway.

So I was mostly in the upper atmosphere when the propulsion unit finally ran out of power and gravity decided to get involved.

As I accelerated toward Earth the temperature increased exponentially. I could feel the coolcapsules breaking inside the suit, one at a time, but still it got hotter and hotter and my mind started to get more and more sluggish.

My last clear thought was that the arrester chute would automatically deploy at three thousand metres, but only if the suit was below the maximum rated temperature.

I didn't lose consciousness, even though that would have been a mercy, but my mind started to wander as I plummeted toward Earth. At one stage I thought I was trapped in a Sauna that was steadily increasing in temperature, way above the safety limit, at another stage I thought I was in a huge pot being boiled, at another I was running from an erupting volcano, and being slowly engulfed by the lava. You get the picture. Anything that involved extreme temperature, my mind pictured, with graphic detail.

I must have eventually cooled down a bit, and I vaguely noticed the arrester chute opening and apparently dragging me upwards, but by that stage I was well into meltdown, and I had totally lost the ability for coherent thought.

It was luck that dropped me into the Atlantic Ocean, both good and bad. The good luck was the soft landing, because I was completely incapable of taking an active part in the process. The bad luck was the fact that I was suddenly immersed in one of the most dangerous and unpeopled parts of the planet.

The flight suit floated. Eventually. And that demonstrated even more good luck on my landing point because, as it turned out, the arrester chute was only partially functioning as sections of it had fused in the extreme temperature. As a direct result of this failure I landed at a far greater velocity than was safe. Had I hit land I would most likely broken just about every bone in my body, but because I hit water I only damaged my lower body. I also sunk very deep into the ocean before the positive buoyancy dragged me back toward the surface. Fortunately the breathers also work underwater, so all I had to do was wait, and vaguely hope that I didn't meet any hungry sharks.

According to the data I was in the water for almost seven hours, but I have very little recollection of that time, or of the first four hours after I was rescued. When I did come back to my senses I was already pretty well recovered physically, but there was an argument underway over me.

"Dammit Wasme, the rules were clear, no men on this trip," an irate female voice was shouting.

"I'm sorry Miss Shelby," another voice answered, "but it is maritime law that we respond to an emergency distress signal." At least, I thought, that had still worked.

"Couldn't you have just ignored it?"

"No Miss Shelby, it gets logged on our electronics, we have to respond."

"We can't have a man running around this yacht; this is a girl's only trip."

"He won't be running anywhere for some time Miss Shelby," the woman called Wasme replied, "he has two broken legs and spinal injuries, he might not survive."

"Well then, just throw him over the side and let nature finish him off."

"We can't do that." Wasme sounded scandalised.

"Why not, who would know?"

"His condition is logged too." I knew for a fact it wasn't, and I made a silent vow to help Wasme with pretty much anything she wanted if I got the chance.

"Well, if you value your job you won't let any of my guests know he is on board. When can we dump him?" I decided I really didn't like Miss Shelby; by I kept up the pretence of being unconscious as I listened to the conversation.

"I think we can get to Miami in a day and a half, but the weather looks..."

"Can't we just get him picked up by someone?"

"I'm sorry Miss Shelby, there are no other vessels nearby and we aren't equipped for an emergency medical transfer anyway."

"Make for Miami then."

"There's a storm..."

"Then go through it. It would be good to get Meghan out of the way with seasickness again anyway."

"Yes Miss Shelby," there was a gap and then I assume she spoke into her communicator, "Sammy, make for Miami, full power."

"Yes Captain," a cute young voice replied.

"Oh, and Wasme?"

"Yes Miss Shelby?"

"If you have to feed him take it out of the crew rations, not ours. And don't waste any of our medical supplies on him."

"Yes Miss Shelby."

There was a slight tilt as the yacht changed course, and a slight elevation of the bow as the power was applied. It was barely noticeable and I wondered how large a vessel I was on.

I heard footsteps leaving, and then a door opened and closed. Then there were more footsteps from the far side of the door, fading to silence. There was a pause for a few seconds and then Wasme spoke again, this time gently.

"You can open your eyes now, she's gone."

I grinned and opened my eyes. Wasme was a larger girl, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, and she was squeezed into a tiny sailor suit that looked about three sizes too small for her. She had short dark blue hair under a little peaked cap that matched her clothes.

"Hi Wasme," I said, smiling, "I'm Josh." She smiled ruefully.

"Hi Josh, I'm sorry you had to hear that."

"I'm not," I replied, "at least I know the situation."

"How are you feeling?" she asked, obviously concerned, "do you need something for pain?"

"No," I replied, I'm good." Wasme looked confused.

"Wasme," I asked, taking a deep breath, "what do you know about Josh Scabbard?"

Wasme was the theoretical captain of the good ship Vindication. There was a crew of four sailors on board, Doriss, Siobhan, Sammy and Wasme. They ran the ship in shifts with two on duty at any given time. In reality the computers ran the ship, and the crew watched the computers to make sure everything was trouble free. There was also a service crew of eighteen girls who dealt directly with the guests, providing food, drinks, laundry and other more personal services as well.

Miss Shelby was actually Roxette Shelby, better known as Roxy, and she was the youngest and wildest child of a computer systems magnate. With money being so trivial back then you had to be really filthy rich to be called a magnate, but Bryson Zane Shelby sure as hell qualified. He was rich, but more than that he was very powerful.

Roxy was using her father's yacht for a twelve day trip across the Atlantic and back, and had five guests on board. She was not specifically a lesbian, not specifically straight, but more a bisexual trophy hunter. She would choose a difficult target, male or female, and then use her father's power, her genuine good looks, and her totally fake charm to find a way to have sex with that person. Once her goal was achieved she would then select her next target.

The whole purpose of this trip for Roxy was to try and bed the delectable, Verginia Daves. This was quite a challenge because Verginia was a very famous actress, who was in a strictly monogamous relationship with Meghan Khan, the daughter of Sam Khan who was another magnate. Meghan had so far managed to keep her girlfriend out of Roxy's grasp, but Roxy had not given up.

The Vindication was cutting edge technology at the time. It was a one hundred and fifty metre cruiser that had an energy drive that would put my recently departed Stellar to shame, and a price tag that would have got us three more. It was a state of the art luxury ship which, regardless of the 'yacht' name, had absolutely nothing in the way of masts, sails or manually operated equipment. In reality it could have easily been run from a remote location, but Roxy liked having a crew to boss around, and was sometimes in need of some personal attention. Hence the ridiculous sailor girl uniform, which I later found out were worn by all of the members of the crew.