Star Child

Book 3

S
TAR
C
HILD

R
INGS
OF
P
OLARIS

S A G A

PAUL ALAN

“Give a kid a book, and you change the world. In a way, even the universe.”

– Neil deGrasse Tyson

© 2015 by Paul Alan Gober. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by Rebog Production 10/31/2015

ISBN: (sc)

ISBN: (hc)

ISBN: (e)

Library of Congress Control Number:

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Star Child, book 3 in the Rings of Polaris SAGA, is strictly a work of fiction and any characters within this book resembling any real persons is purely coincidental.

D
edicated to
A
lexander

Note:
This should only be read after Rebel Lexis (book 1), and Giants of Mars (book 2) for full understanding of the sequence of events in the Rings of Polaris SAGA.

P
ART
1
B
LACK
S
TAR
D
ESCENDING

T
HE
D
ESCENT

The vertical airshaft descended for miles, nothing spanned the huge divide but a howling wind. Jason stood at the very edge of the abyss, and wondered if the boosters had enough juice to catapult him over the expanse. They were designed for lower gravity environments such as the outer moons of Saturn but not Earth.
“It’s not the fall that’ll kill you but the sudden stop,”
he thought before turning around. He needed to create plenty enough space between himself and the approach; traversing the concrete gap would require the Ersatz Suit’s top speed.

Jason’s heads-up display gauged the void’s distance to 49 feet when he leaned forward and pushed off on his back foot. His body mechanics flawlessly moved within the military grade exoskeleton. Grunting heavily to a sprinting speed of twenty-five miles per hour, he quickly closed in on the edge. Fog began developing on the inside glass, hampering his visibility but he was too close to abort the jump. He activated the suit’s four lift boosters, launching magnanimously over the airshaft, and down the horizontal service tunnel straddling the other side.

“BONG!” echoed throughout the service tunnel. Jason’s skull rang like a bell when his helmet struck the concrete wall. The airshaft’s strong updraft had significantly enhanced the suit’s flight characteristics, sending him much farther than planned. He was a bit shaken on impact but otherwise unaffected from the blow. Albeit, he wished he had previously calculated the upwind prior to hurdling himself across the dead fall.

Ahead was the access door he had been searching for. Surprisingly, the entrance looked very simple, and nothing complex about the door said difficult; no rail guns guarding the entry, or any other type of security measures were visible.
“Mitchell Thacker’s INTEL was good, the service door was forgotten in the bureaucracy of things,”
he thought.

While wearing the Ersatz Power Suit, Jason’s super strength was evident when the door buckled under his strain. “HISS,” pissed the ventilated air when the compression seal broke free. “CLANK” slapped the air after pulling the heavy metallic door from its hinges, and tossing it to the concrete floor.

The door opening led into another cavernous airshaft; there was only a small iron-grated platform for him to stand on. Metal ladder rungs descended along the shaft’s wall.

Eying the long treacherous drop, Jason spoke into his visor. “Well, I can’t complain too much, Thacker did get me inside as promised.” Jason had made a deal with Mitchell Thacker and Rengar Falger. If they helped him out, he would not kill them, simple as that.

Despite being dangerous, climbing down in the large suit would be slow, and cumbersome. Although, there was no way he was going to leave the Ersatz Suit behind. The planned mission would not succeed without its cloaking ability.

Nervously searching for the first metal rail protruding from the concrete wall, he insecurely stretched his leg into the black bottomless pit. A stomach tightening sensation gripped Jason’s midsection. Something maddening inside of him was calling out, and driving his sinister processes into the black empty void. Pure veridical hatred carried his emotional weight into the darkest of descents.

Matching his black visceral fortitude, a blind drunken aversion welled up in the eyes.
“I will avenge Lexis’s death,”
he thought while climbing down in the shadows.
“There is a saying:
When you go seeking revenge, dig two graves.”
He thought,
“Am I to become the righteous executioner for vengeance’s sake?”

After descending for several hours, his muscles twitched and burned. Not only by the climb. He was physically exhausted from his journey, for the last several days he had traveled one-third the breadth of the Earth’s surface to get to this point. Overwhelmed by several factors; sleep deprivation, Lexis’s death, and an all-consuming rage had effectively eroded his physical and mental stamina. He was in a motley state when he decided to stop and rest.

Locking the Power Suit’s arms through the rungs of the ladder, he would get some badly needed sleep. The exoskeleton outer-skin or otherwise known as Ersatz Suit System is comprised of a very complex polysynthetic fibrous blend of materials. Designers amalgamated Synthetic Spider Silk, Chromatophore Threading, and Reactive Smart Fibers to achieve military desired specifications. The inventers intertwined them all within artificial Dermal Denticle’s lattice.

Also, the Power Suit could disappear in all spectral wavelengths. To do this, engineers first looked at tackling the visual range, and despite the extinction of Earth creatures, Mother Nature’s past held the answers. When they peered in the dead history, they marveled at the once ocean found cephalopod’s camouflaging ability. The extinct sea creatures could easily change the patterns of their skin to match against any watery background. SYNTECH was able to synthetically copy the biological functions of the creature, thanks to the vast genetic database the Polaris Corporation coveted; hence, the Chromatophore Threading was born, and used for the Ersatz Suit’s very most outer layer.

To give the suit’s skin strength, regenerative properties, and the famed sharkskin feel, engineers looked at another extinct sea creature because of its incredible protective functionality against errant environmental factors. A synthetic selachimorpha dermal denticle structure was developed, creating the perfect matrix for the skin.

Next they added more strength. The tensile strength of spider silk was nearly five times stronger than that of steel. However, SYNTECH people genetically improved this by a factor of two, improving the armor protection immeasurably.

For full cloaking ability, and integrated skin control, Reactive Smart Fiber was meshed to govern functionality. Not only did the Reactive Smart Fiber control the Ersatz Suit System’s skin but its gold infused fibrous conductive properties helped generate the electromagnetic force field needed to shroud the wearer in a veil of spectral diffusion, causing the suit to literally disappear under infrared, radar waves, and any other type of electronic sensor.

Resting in a near exhausted state, Jason began weeping over the death of Lexis. When he closed his eyes, images of her beautiful face momentarily entered his mind before her head exploded from the plasma rifle Learner had pulled the trigger on. The whole scene haunted him. Psychological, his status was nearing the breaking point in the darkness. Sleep would help remedy his psychosis.

Jason dozed off and as long as the protective suit’s arms remained locked into the ladder’s rails, he had no real fear of falling. Weaved over the exoskeleton’s integrated Nano-carbon chassis was a super strengthened fibrous Muscle System; it would easy hold his weight over the pitch-black drop.

Oceans of stars speckled at the emptiness around the spiraling galaxy, and drifting below the visual enormity Jason passionately kissed Lexis in a trance-like state. The immense stellar beauty glimmered down on them in an incalculable blaze of cosmological splendor, all paled in comparison to her warm touch. Her sweet embrace calmed his inner demons as the astral light show surrounding them became oblivious.

They tenderly aroused one other’s passions; obsessively challenging the deep love they shared. Desires intensified with every tender stroke.

Her legs encouragingly squeezed around his muscular frame when she said, “You can find me!”

She then passionately moaned in succession, frantically pivoting her waist.

Jason was vehemently transfixed on her desire when she said again, “You can find me, Jason!”

Their naked physiques began encouraging each other, and Jason fervently looked into Lexis’s eyes, and he so much wanted to tell her that he loved her when she blurted again, “Find me, Jason!”

              Snapping out of his dream in a state of despair, he wondered about his dream’s message.
“Find me, Jason. What’s my subconscious trying to tell me?”
Nothing made any sense. He was lost, and felt that all his pain would disappear if he could once again, look into her eyes.
“I could easily vanish in the iris of her love.”

Jason gathered his composure, and decided to resume his downward descent. His muscles tensed when he detached his left arm from around the ladder rung while gripping the steel with his right. He then reached down searching with his foot for the next ladder rung but when he tried transitioning his right hand down, his Power Suit would not let go of its hold. Something was wrong with the Ersatz suit. Jason began panicking in a sweaty rush of knee jerking movements; he pushed and pulled with all his might but ominously there was nothing he could do that would unfreeze his right arm from the ladder. Perilously, he now hung more than ten miles over what seemed like a conniving bottomless pit. He surmised he must have damaged the suit’s mechanics on his jump.

“OK, what do I do now? Think.” Jason talked to himself trying to resolve the hairy situation he found himself hanging from. “What are my options? A: sit in this fucking suit and die, or B: I can disengage from the belly of the suit and carry on my objective.”

He was now feeling the pressure of a potential failed covert mission because he needed the suit for stealthy movement. To leave the Ersatz Suit behind would be disadvantageous. Jason took a deep breath, and then gave the voice command to disengage.