It took another couple of weeks after Amber returned before she was given a real mission.
Amber had pitched five different missions, including three that would take a significant amount of time to complete. The shortest mission was the one to be approved.
Amber wasn’t happy about that since she wouldn’t be assigned an Alia to watch her children. If she could, she wanted to save one of those young girls.
John wished he could see things that altruistically. Amber was too soft-hearted. The plan to ditch the Meleua wouldn’t work for an Alia, and he didn’t want one of those devil witches, even a child version of one, around his pregnant wife and kids. He wouldn’t always be there to protect them.
It wasn’t easy for John to contain his excitement. He would be a father again. His wife carried four of his children. Two boys and two girls.
Only one other Peerless had spent credits on his wife in those two weeks, and John was grateful for that. He was also grateful that now all the cuckoldry was over and done with. Every time credits were spent on his wife made him feel so low. It was like a knife was plunged into his heart that drank some of his soul and left him less of a man. It made him feel so small and without honor.
John boarded Jim knowing his wife was now his and only his.
Marbrouk, Hux, Abe and the rest would be fine until the Peerless were defeated. Nothing could be done sooner for them.
Kauwa Mara Pi was being sent on an infiltration mission. Or an eventual one. For the mission to work, John and Nine needed to receive refugee status on Umpani. He hoped he’d have time to check out the arena controlled by the Heaven’s Mandate sect while there.
It would’ve been perfect if John and Amber could escape now, but that was impossible. When being deployed, the Meleua was the first aboard and the Alii the last.
Amber had planned the best and only way to escape while having a second tier Transcended as part of her kauwa. A Transcendent that was extremely intelligent and saw far too much.
Once on the ship, through the CSL, Nine said, “Welcome aboard, Five-three.”
“Thank you, Oliua,” replied John. He headed straight to the brig, the only place on the ship where he could neither see nor hear Amber’s highlights. It wasn’t really the only place, but all the others free of screens looping the highlights were restricted areas.
The brig was large and had four glass cages, two of which were rated for Transcendents. Jim was one of the first ships with a holding cell capable of containing Transcendents past the bottleneck. Or it was thought to be capable of holding such. It would depend on a lot of factors, the first of which being why a Transcendent past the bottleneck would enter one of the cells. No one in this kauwa could force one to do so.
Since he wanted to wait as long as possible before his eventual showdown with Betrayal, John had held off on ranking up. Per SOP, he couldn’t any longer without being forced into an Advancement Chamber. That was something he didn’t want, so he ranked up to mid-high Gold last week to avoid it. At level 23, he was now a higher level than his wife. She was still mid-low Gold.
While meditating, John felt Amber board Jim. They’d be getting underway shortly. He smiled knowing his wife and children would soon be safe.
----------------------------------------
Gateway Station was impressive. Since Jim wasn’t visibly a Peerless ship, Amber could go where other Peerless couldn’t, such as Gateway Station, where John and Nine debarked and spent a fortune to take a portal to another station run by an umpanian sect named the Great Divine.
Gateway Station was nothing compared to the Great Divine’s station. John wished he had more time to look around and explore it, but it wasn’t to be. He and Nine rushed to a terminal and purchased the cheapest tickets they could to Umpani.
Both tickets were for something called hop-pods, a way that only the desperate and poor traveled through the depths of space.
Captains rented out the surface of their ships to the owners of hop-pods, detachable housing units capable of fitting five to twenty people, depending. These pods weren’t heavily shielded or insulated, making space flight in them risky for anyone below Salt.
The option for the poor and desperate was usually a hop-pod or nothing at all, so hop-pods were very popular.
The humongous ship had thousands of hop-pods attached to it. Nine and John wouldn’t be traveling together. Two former Kahaka arriving on Umpani on the same ship was coincidence enough. Sharing a hop-pod would be a bad idea and hurt their refugee claims. They also dismissed the party they shared in the NCS.
John’s pod fit 20 and had an environment suitable for vorns. It wasn’t close to Earth’s own environment, but he could easily tolerate it. And since no one liked the vorns, the ticket was very cheap and helped with the poor refugee claim.
Nine’s ticket was even cheaper since the biosynth could survive in much harsher environments than John could.
The pod did look to be in very bad shape. Nine inspected it and said it only looked that way but every part of it that mattered was in good condition.
Since the ship’s captain wanted everyone to be situated well before getting underway, the two companions bid each other farewell and headed to their own hop-pods.
John didn’t think the inside was so bad. Because vorns were poorer than most, the pod was half empty and John had all the room he could want to stretch his legs or rest.
On Umpani, John and Nine would pretend they didn’t know each other. If anyone recognized either from Thecla, they’d say being slaves together caused them to have a falling out. Either way, they’d be applying for refugee status separately and wouldn’t talk again until after they had it. Then they’d travel together to the neutral Ryicci Station where Amber would be waiting for them.
After introducing himself to the vorns in his hop-pod, John wondered why no one liked them. They seemed decent enough. Then he settled in for a long flight.
When the ship was still days and days out from Umpani, long after the ship had started to decelerate, John’s gut told him something was off.
Half a day after the ship decelerated below FTL, an NCS notification told John he had received a message just as his hop-pod detached and sped away from the ship, tumbling through the empty void of space.
John’s first instinct was to remove his CSL from his bracer and inform Nine, but he glanced at the screen showing an outside view of the pod. The ship was no longer in visible range. There was nothing for the CSL to connect to.
When John went to send a message to Nine through the NCS, he saw that the biosynth had been the one to message him as the hop-pod detached.
“John,
My dear and only friend, I am sorry I must do this to you. I am spending a stupendous amount of essence on this message, so please read it carefully.
My actions must seem contradictory. They are. For my whole life I have been Yellow and Yellow has been me. I never questioned where Yellow ended and I began because it was irrelevant. We were one and the same. Until you took my Thirteen from me. My princess. My reason for being. My function.
Since then, I’ve had to learn of myself and make decisions on my own. I let you in, and I am glad I did. I now know of true friendship. You are a good man. In a lot of ways, you are an amazing man. I am glad I have gotten to know you. I am glad we became such good friends. I cherish all the time we’ve spent together.
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Many believe Yellow to be emotionless. In some ways that is true. In some ways that is very false, and my emotions are far too strong to feel so I must not.
I am uncertain if I or Yellow decided you must die. I only know you must. And I truly regret that. Since Princess Thirteen died in agony, so shall you.
You will soon enter an invisible and hard to detect phaltrionic radiation cloud that spans a great distance. You will be dead long before exiting. Your pod, no longer connected to the ship, will lose power and life support. Even if the phaltrionic radiation doesn’t kill you, deep space will. You are strange and powerful, but you cannot survive long in the vacuum of space.
My original plan was to kill you with a thousand cuts. To take all that you care about and destroy it. And once you were a broken man with nothing, I would let you know that I orchestrated it all. Then we would fight.
After getting to know you, I now know you are already a broken man, and the thousand cuts I made would hardly be noticeable among the millions of gushing wounds your life has already inflicted upon you.
I’ve put great effort into leading you to believe I am much weaker than I am. All calculations agree that I would stand the victor in any battle between the two of us. It would not be a close competition. And I know that last and final insult would be intolerable to you, so I am sparing you it.
I also know you love my Alii, and she loves you too, in a way an Alii isn’t allowed. A possessive and greedy type of love alien to both Yellow and Peerless. I know you planned on escaping with her.
The way to hurt you the most would be to kill her, and your children along with her. I asked myself why she should pay for your sin. Why your unborn children should. I had no good answer. So now you die and those five will live. She will be my Alii, and I, her Oliua. I will give her many children.
Yes. She and your children will live. Unless you contact my Alii, directly or indirectly. I doubt you can, but you’ve surprised me before. In the event you can, don’t. If you do, or if you contact or inform anyone else that tells my Alii the means of your death, I will kill her. Even if that is ten or twenty or a hundred years from now.
Just accept the death I’ve condemned you to or condemn your wife and children to the same. Die as I’ve arranged and know your wife will be safe and cared for, as will your children. And die knowing that I love you as you have loved me – truly.
Farewell, my dear friend. I shall miss you a tremendous amount. I hope you understand that.
With my greatest respect,
Formerly Nine of Yellow, current Oliua of Heiau Koa, Kauwa Mara Pi”
Right after John finished reading the message, the vorns in his pod started throwing up and bleeding out of all their orifices. He could feel his skin crawl with strange energies. His stomach churned and he suppressed a gag. No matter what Nine said, his wife was in danger, and he would not have it. He started to panic.
John thought of what he knew of phaltrionic radiation. It was invisible and hard to detect without special means, but so were many forms of radiation. It was on the tertiary EM band. Its interaction with biogenic material was destructive and quickly so.
On a fundamental level, all radiation was energy.
Seeing no other option, John began to cultivate. His meditation was like a magnet for the radiation, and he was drawing too much in too quickly. He had to use the modified cycling-meditation he had first used out of desperation when taking the substance Sunshine gave him to help fix his soul, and had used many times since, including while draining the many statues of Kathzun on Isb.
John expelled essence through one hand to empty his dantian while madly cycle-meditating. Then focused on controlling, harnessing, and cycling the strange energy and the essence it produced. He did so in such a frantic and desperate manner, he had no idea how much time passed. Words appeared in his eyes he quickly suppressed as he could only focus on his mad task. And that mad task consumed his full focus for a long while.
John honestly expected to die. He felt like he would at any second. The radiation was destroying him. He threw up and dry heaved many times while cycle-meditating, but went right back to it, ignoring everything else.
Then cycling the deadly energy became easier and easier. He still felt sick, but he was in much better shape than all the dead vorns in his pod. He could finally spare attention to notice the lights were off and the machinery was no longer humming. Every breath was harder than the last and did less. The oxygen was almost gone. He had to ignore that and continue to cycle-meditate until the pod exited the gigantic radiation cloud.
The screens were dead and without energy so John couldn’t see outside the pod. The freezing pod without oxygen. He felt awful and sick as a dog, but he was alive. He had no idea how long he had gone without oxygen, but, surprisingly, he didn’t seem to need it. He technically never did, but too long without it, and his body would enter a coma. That wasn’t true any longer. His vital essence was stabilizing and no longer draining.
Having nothing else to do, John entered his Mind’s Eye. “Quite the pickle you’re in, my silly boy,” stated Avatar.
“This is serious,” replied John. “My wife and children are in grave danger. I need to settle down so I can think. I don’t need oxygen now?”
“You mostly haven’t since the [Stalwart Vessel] [Perk], silly boy. You’ve mostly been space worthy since then. Now you fully are. And with the new [Perk] you just got, you could go deeper into the inner and outer galaxy than is safe for first and second tier Transcendents.”
Surprised, John asked, “What [Perk]? I got a new one?”
“Sort of. You’ve been getting it for a while. Toying with it. It’d start going in one direction and my silly boy would push it in another. This [Perk] just replaced an old one. [Mutating] changed to [Mutation – Energy Leech]. It was ‘energy-sponge’ originally, but I requested it be changed to ‘energy-leech’ to fit your theme. They said no since there’s no leeching going on at all, so I just went ahead and changed it myself. I like when things fit a theme.”
John wondered if Avatar making her own decisions was good or bad. He thought it could be bad for him, but good for her. He couldn’t be mad at the people of Earth for being so sheeplike and obedient and dislike Avatar becoming less so.
Too much time passed without John replying, so, after glitching once, Avatar continued. “I’m guessing my silly boy wants to know what his new [Perk] does. Looks like you cultivated too many strange and different things. Substances, poisons, Nether, lots of different types of radiation, etcetera. Kind of a weird hobby but it paid off, especially draining those Kazthun statues. That really turned out to be a fantastic idea.
“Now my silly boy passively absorbs energy and converts it to essence. It’d happen even if you stopped your breathing technique. And you’re way more…well, not resistant, we’ll say you can tolerate a much wider range of deadly energies. Tolerate it, absorb it, and convert it to essence. Your [Min. Power] saw a decent jump. It went up by 14 points. Not too shabby.”
“Thank you, Avatar.” The [Perk] sounded great, but it wouldn’t help his wife. John started to think about whether he should send a message to Amber. Nine wasn’t with her. She could try and inform the authorities on Umpani that Nine was a full Peerless and have him dealt with that way.
Amber’s Meleua was a second-tier Transcendent. He could protect her against Nine. But only if she was told before Nine returned. Nine wouldn’t hesitate to attack. The Meleua would have to try and figure out what was going on before he attacked.
Nine was inflicted with some sort of strange rational insanity. If John’s death would truly keep his wife and children safe, he’d gladly accept it, but he couldn’t and wouldn’t trust an insane man being around his pregnant wife. And not just around her occasionally – as her Oliua, a position that would place him constantly by her side.
John wrote out a message and went to send it. He couldn’t.
Avatar said, “The designated recipient isn’t anywhere near you, silly boy. You’d need much more powerful essence, and far, far more of it, before sending a message over such great distances. You barely have the essence to send messages to users located on the same hemisphere of a world as you.”
The pod was traveling at great speeds through the depths of empty space to who-knows-where. With little hope, John asked, “Is anyone I know in range?”
“Hmm, let me check something. Nope, no policy has changed. Every user’s an island still.”
Anger infused John’s heart, and he quickly suppressed it. This wasn’t Avatar’s fault, and he didn’t know if she had the capacity to understand or care that his wife and unborn children were at risk. He didn’t need her to answer anyway. He was in deep space. No one was anywhere close to him.
John wished he had paid closer attention to the mission he was on. He hadn’t since there was no real mission. Once he and Nine received refugee status from the umpanians, they were to make their way to Ryicci Station together, one of the few independent stations in the sector.
The station even allowed Peerless to dock, though Amber wouldn’t let it be known Jim was a Peerless ship. That station was necessary for her and John’s real plan, as she didn’t want her Meleua to come to any harm.
During their journey to that station, John was supposed to test the waters and see if Nine was receptive to hints and the possibility of leaving the Peerless and escaping along with him and Amber. Nothing would be mentioned to the Meleua. That’d be too risky.
Regardless of whether Nine would accompany them or not, Amber had a rock-solid plan of how to leave the Meleua behind at Ryicci Station. If Nine wasn’t receptive to John’s hints, the biosynth would’ve been left behind too.
So, John had to somehow make it to Ryicci Station before Nine now. If Nine was with Amber when and if John returned, his wife and children would be at great risk.
Then John realized he didn’t need to make it back to Amber before Nine. He just had to make it within an affordable message range before Nine returned to Amber. Then he had another worrying thought. He asked, “Avatar, are members of a party all notified when an NCS message is received?”
“Depends on settings. It’s an option.”
John cursed. The Alii, Meliua, and Oliua were always in the lead party together, and they had access to all other parties attached to their own. Now he knew why Nine dropped the Oli party.
John really couldn’t risk a message unless he knew for certain it’d reach Amber before Nine. He was tumbling through the depths of space at great speeds and had to figure a way out of his current situation before anything else.