On moving day, Josh and Sen were the last to get their 'move on’. Ishan, Lobo, Alysa, and the thousands of Hegemon-4 crew ‘transitioning’ to the Brigantine, had already made the switch days before. Some even weeks earlier, if they were necessary to prepare the ship for departure. Josh had wanted to be the first of the Hegemon-4 crew aboard, but cooler heads—namely Alysa, had vetoed that idea.
"You'll only be in the way. I'm not even going until three days before we depart, and that's just to integrate our internal security with the Brigantine's forces. Getting a city ready to fly is a big job." She looked him dead in the eye and impeccably raised one eyebrow. "Be patient, Josh."
So they compromised.
He did exactly as she told him to and he and Sen stayed aboard the Hegemon-4. After all, until they reached Transcendence, training with their swords and Cultivational skills would be a never-ending exercise. It also had the benefit of definitively filling most of their ‘waiting’ time.
Surprisingly, during the long hours of practice, Josh found that he missed his sword. The ship's training weapons were functional and he had been able to increase his skill with them... But it wasn't the same as when he could call the weapon his own.
Hearing this, Sen had smiled with pride and told him that missing his sword was, "An excellent sign you are advancing your skill beyond the novice level!"
Checking his status proved Sen right.
Weapon: Mundane Practice Weapon
Skill Level: Jr. Student (1%)
Damage: Mundane: Average
Quality: Mundane: Average
Activate with 100 Essence to Accelerate Strike for 250% damage.
Allows interface guidance for optimal usage.
100% Probability of 3,400 → 5,600% Hand-to-hand Damage. If safety protocols disengaged.
After Josh's routine and much too-public beati—err... training with Sen, he had also researched where to find "spirit beings worthy of expungement," as the Clone had advised them. Priming their Cores for absorbing the Spacetime Attunement they had received from the Kotei was a top priority.
“Once we’ve found a good location, it needs to be our first official stop once the Brigantine is underway.” Both Sen and Alysa had agreed with Josh’s statement.
Jishin had been particularly valuable in meeting this concern.
"Core Essence m'lord? Oh, aye! I've got just the place for you. His Eminence Dezain, may his soul rot for eternity—" Jishin leaned to the side of their table and spat, drawing the attention of several of the wait staff serving in the officer's lounge. Though, to be certain, none dared call out the towering pirate captain for his breach of etiquette. Snorting, Jishin adjusted his tricorne hat and continued. "Many cycles back, his Eminence Dezain needed to fill his Core out for his own Force Attunement. This was back when he was a fresh young buck in the Kotei's service, and we all thought, m’self-included, that there was a bright future for him— but you know how he ended..." Sad memory shaded the helmsman's eyes for the briefest of moments. "...At any rate, we were killing creepy desert crawlies for months on Noha-3. It's close, and I think it be just the place for you both— More than a few times, his Eminence needed to call down air strikes to get h'self and his bodyguards out in one piece. You'll get what you need there. Of that, I'm sure!"
Somehow, Jishin's wide smile, promising Josh that they would be buried in giant piles of burrowing, sand-crawling monsters was less reassuring than the helmsmen seemed to have intended.
Josh turned to his brother with a nervous smile. ~Sen, you think we might be biting off more than we can chew?~
~Don't we always, brother?~
Josh closed his eyes in resignation. ~That doesn’t reassure me.~
Sen replied with the serenity of the Buddha and the smile of a wolf that whispered to Josh ‘little pig, little pig, let me in’. ~It wasn’t meant to.~
Josh sighed and gave up. For sure, being knee-deep in swirling masses of man-eating monsters was a great Saturday night for a combat specialist...
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Just take a deep drink from this cup and go with it Joshy... Acceptance means one less problem to worry over for the present.
So he did, smiling a wooden smile back at the pirate captain and leaving the thoughts of bug holes caving in around him surrounded by an endless expanse of sand for later... much later!
They also used their non-training time to work on Ishan's revelation of his origin and that very unique Clan inscription seeming to have a place for... well something that Josh couldn’t think of... but something! Regardless, it was without question that the senior chief was a child of the Sundai, but Josh could tell that the inscription wasn’t Myrina's work.
Probably someone before her? But, unless my memory is playing games with me, Myrina told me she has been serving as the Clan's Inscriber for around sixty thousand cycles. At a conversion of 2.5 Earth years to cycles—that was about one hundred and fifty thousand years!? How could Ishan be that old? And what did the symbol at the end of Ishan's membership inscription mean: SUNDAI–O–?
Josh could only guess. He had never seen such a mark on anyone in the Clan.
We're just going to have to get Ishan back to Gusti and ask him about it.
But disturbingly, he and Sen realized they had absolutely no idea how to get back in contact with the Sundai. Aside from Gusti's offhand comments that the Clan would be leaving Baroo-7 for "the galactic core" after the Blessed One's Race, they didn't know where the Sundai were or would be. So, he and Sen had searched the Hegemon-4's database of star systems for any places with the Sundai’s name prominently endorsed. They drew a blank there as well. Next, they asked Symbal if he heard of the Sundai as a trading group. He hadn't. Similar results were obtained when Symbal reached out to contacts on the edge of his trading network. The Clan seemed not to travel in the same circles as the Hegemon-4. Not really a surprise as the Hegemon, at least in this stage of its travels, was a mostly mundane affair. The Sundai were a tight-knit group of advanced Cultivators.
Not the kind of folks who ended up throwing lawn darts together at weekend barbecues, Joshy.
Josh had finally asked Intelligence.
"Greetings, Joshua Elias Tanner. Of course, I am aware of the Sundai Clan."
A relieved look came over Josh's face. Why didn’t I think to ask Intelligence in the first place? It's only been around for over two billion years! "That's great news, Intelligence! Can you tell us how to call... err... contact them?"
The slightest of pauses occurred before Intelligence replied.
"Negative, Joshua Elias Tanner. The Lord Clone has restricted knowledge concerning the Sundai Clan to himself only."
"What? Ahh... Why?"
"His reasoning is also restricted."
"Can you give us the location of Baroo-7?"
"Restricted."
"The moon, Mwezi?"
"Restricted."
"The last known location of Ip'pul fruits?"
"Re—"
"I get it... Restricted." Josh copied Intelligence's androgynous voice and crinkled his brows in unsurprised frustration at the Clone's lack of assistance. He's never made anything easy. Why would this be any different...
Josh paused as he stood in the passageway and tried to think of another way to ask Intelligence the same question while busy crew members streamed around his unmoving body.
After several seconds of fruitless thought, Intelligence made it plain that it was ready to move on.
"Is there any other way I can serve you, young Cultivator? I only have a ship as large as your continental Africa to control and monitor along with the 4,998,654,201 spirit beings aboard her to safeguard..."
Josh gave a soft chuckle at Intelligence's not-so-gentle reminder of the ongoing stakes while he was taking time to play word games with a cosmically powerful Immortal's Clone through an inhumanly knowledgeable artificially intelligent being.
He puffed his cheeks and snorted. "No Intelligence... Sorry to have bothered you. I know it's not your decision. Thanks anyway..."
"My pleasure, Joshua. And, if I may offer you some advice. Karma's eye is upon your actions. Necessary information will present itself... When it is truly needed."
"And if it doesn't…"
"Then you didn't truly need it, did you? Defy Karma at your own peril, young Cultivator. It is a lesson well learned, if you are able. Even old monsters have forgotten such fundamental truths to their own folly…"
Josh hung his head and shrugged his shoulders in surrender.
"You're right. Thank you again, Intelligence."
"Of course, I am. You are welcome. May your Cultivation be without bounds, young Cultivator."
The last thing Josh tried was the Stellar Atlas they had received with their Confirmation of Marque from the Kotei. If the Kaizuko had ever been there, Josh might find Baroo-7 within it.
Stellar Atlas available. Review?
Josh selected YES, and a cloud of stars billowed from the platinum medallion the Kotei had given him. Billions of points of colored light swirled slowly around his room producing the overall shape of a spiral galaxy with him at the focal. Multiple sweeping limbs filled with that twinkling gold, silver, blue, red, and every color between stars. Josh couldn’t help but be reminded of the library scene from the Jedi Temple, in Lucas's second batch of three. The ones where Earth’s CGI had grown to the level deserving of the maestro’s work.
But this is sooo much better!
Josh looked over the amazing display.
This is not the Milky Way Galaxy... Where are we?
His science mind spun thoughts up from his cortex. Assuming to scale accuracy... It would be easy to take a few measurements of these stars' precise movements and orbital ellipticals. I could get a head start by identifying their composition with spectroscopy. Let's try that big red one—
Josh reached out his right hand to tap the closest red giant and his interface interrupted.
Error.
You lack the requisite Spacetime Attunement for Stellar Atlas functionality.
Error.
Nuts! What happened to ‘Stellar Atlas available’, you stupid—
Lastly, Josh had also spent too few but precious minutes laughing with Sophie on their nightly visits. Apparently, Mr. Snipps had turned out to be Mrs. Snipps and had a litter of kittens. Now they all came around and stared at Hammy, her hamster, in his backyard cage.
"But don't worry, daddy. I'll protect him!" Sophie had sworn to him with a determined gleam in her eye.
Josh's laughter had gone on for days, thinking of the poor cat that tried to get through Sophie's guard when a fourth-level Spherically Attuned undead energy drainer and four of Alysa’s high-yield Oganesson nuke cookies had already failed!
Time continued on, and Alysa ‘transitioned’ herself and departed the Hegemon-4. The next three days had all been nail-biters for Josh as he waited for his and Sen’s move to get back to Alysa and Sophie.