Symbiotica - A Matter of Time (Book 4)

Symbiotica: A Matter of Time (Ultimate Edition)

The First Book in the Arbiter's Journey Saga

Second Extended Edition

Copyright 2017 / 2018 Alexander Nassau

Published by Alexander Nassau at Smashwords

ISBN: 9781370983513

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

"For D.

Without you, Verish wouldn't be quite as barking mad."

Please Note: This book was previously book 6.

Due to changes in the first five books becoming a trilogy, the numbers have been reordered. Also note that this book has been significantly reworked to create the Ultimate Series.

If you already own this book you can download a fresh copy for free from your retailer.

See More from the Author on my Blog

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One - What's the Point?

Chapter Two - Sleepy Town

Interlude - Laughing at Astronomers

Chapter Three - Filling in the Blanks

Chapter Four - Calculating the Odds

Interlude - Bad Case of Beans

Chapter Five - Rude Awakening

Chapter Six - Diversity

Interlude - Explosive Staring Competitions

Chapter Seven - Needles and Haystacks

Chapter Eight - Ghosts

Interlude - Interdimensional Practical Jokes

Chapter Nine - The Impossible Island

Chapter Ten - A Matter of Time

Chapter Eleven - The Last Outpost of Alphius Prime

Chapter Twelve - It's Life Jimmy

Epilogue

Preview of Book 5 - Dystopia

More Books from the Author

Proteus Unhinged - Winds of Change (Mini Story)

Setting the Scene - The City of New Oxford

The Return of Symbiotica - Authors Retrospective

About the Author

PREVIOUSLY

This is a story that needs a little background before you can start to understand it.

Realistically it should only begin roughly two years ago, but its roots lie back in the mists of time, over three hundred years before on a world far from here.

That world was Alphius Prime, a world not that dissimilar from Earth really, but there were some differences. The biggest one was that the dominant intelligent life there was not of a singular mind, but that of a partnership between two species, a host and a symbiote. Now I could explain how this partnership worked and about the history that led to this union between these two races, but suffice to say it was a fair and peaceful relationship that saw their world over thousands of years turned in to a utopia.

Right up to the terrible moment they discovered their sun was on the verge of collapsing which would lead to all life being extinguished. As you can imagine that bit came as a nasty surprise.

Still, with time against them they all pulled together, created a fleet of living ships to carry their population to safety and to find a new world they could call home. To everyone's deep surprise they actually succeeded and with only days left, the fleet was nearly ready to depart.

Right up to the moment the planet closest to the sun was torn apart by tidal forces from their star which led to the sun collapsing ahead of time. Maybe you are starting to see a pattern here.

Of the five ships created only the smallest escaped, a ship called Koli which had only ten bonded individuals onboard. Those individuals never gave up hope, but everything was against them. They searched the stars, found a new world they called Beletrix and started the process of building a new home for their people in the hope that someone survived, but as the years passed their people never came. In the end they went back to the stars as their need grew desperate.

The symbiotes lives were long, thousands of years but their hosts were a different story. Even with their healing abilities, they could only live for five hundred years at the most and for some, time had already run out as they found themselves alone and resigned to synthetic life giving bodies.

With things at their darkest and their lives almost over, their quirky ship, Koli did something naughty. Using the last of her energy, she jumped them to a small world on one of the galaxy's spiral arms where they found what they had searched for. A race of creatures not only capable of accepting them, but also within their population a small number who had the telepathic gift they required to survive.

The survivors with the last of the energy almost gone travelled down to this new world in hope that the humans they had chosen would accept them and that is where this story, on Earth at least, starts.

Kind of depressing in a way, but don't worry, things get better.

It didn't take long for them to track each other down, reunite and much to their surprise their ship survived and was brought down to their new home, a facility called the Foundry. Thanks to a little bit of forward planning, these Vu'kno as they called themselves had ensured their human hosts quality of life, selling technological advances to a dozen companies globally, giving them more money than they knew what to do with, but as the last two survivors came home, they came with a message from Alphius Prime, sent three hundred years before. The message was a distress call from Terrik, the flagship of their fleet. They had beyond reason survived and were stranded in their home star system, most of their crew having been put in to stasis.

Finally knowing there were survivors they mounted a desperate rescue mission back to their home world where they found Terrik heavily damaged with over three hundred survivors on board. Using some pretty mind blowing technology, they got the survivors back to Earth and to a new facility they had created on an abandoned Island in the Caribbean, a place called Myra Island. There were tragic costs to their actions though but overall they were proud of what they had achieved. With the help of the United Nations, they rehomed their people, but things never go that easily.

With the cat out of the bag, and an alien species with mind bending technology now living on Earth, some governments around the world started playing shadow games, trying to steal their technology for their own sinister ends. They put up with it for a time, but eventually they could not ignore these incursions and a plan was made to return to the world Koli's crew had settled on for a time, the world called Beletrix.

However as the dust settled after Alphius Prime mission Koli revealed a secret that changed everything. Although they had assumed all their ships had been destroyed by the plasma storm, it seemed one of their Titan class ships may have escaped, a ship holding a third of their population, over twelve thousand souls aboard however they had no idea where this lost ship could be, even if they survived.

With pirates raiding their home world, Koli in critical condition following her rescue efforts and Terrik now resigned to an avatar body, the survivors realise that they needed to form a plan, one which would see Koli restored to heath and able to reach for the stars once more, but also to give Terrik a new body and a new life. They got a little more than they expected though in the wonderful and unexpected miracle they named Lunar, Terrik's twin sister. They returned to Beletrix and started to relocate their people and also defend their former home world from these pirate and everything was progressing as expected.

Then out of the blue a brand new Proteus ship arrives on Earth they realised to their surprise that survivors from the lost Titan class ship had found their way home. Further to their surprise this new ship, Saya was the first naturally born member of the Proteus family and they were begging for their help to cure a plague that had afflicted their people and rescue them from the world they had settled on.

Cutting that very long story short, they succeeded, curing the plague and relocating the survivors to the great city of Verlon on Beletrix. With thousands of survivors now restoring their civilisation, things were not so bleak as they start the long process of rebuilding their world.

Which only left what was still happening on Earth.

Earth for those who had taken human hosts was their home and while there had been tension, they could not deny that humanity had a lot to offer them, so roughly forty survivors bonded to their human partners remained here along with Koli, the eldest of the Proteus ships, who had adopted Earth as her home.

With Beletrix and Earth having a vibrant trade, these alien are living amongst us, unseen by most.

While the great and the good of the Alphians on our world do their business, some of our friends may be getting a little bored though and has been often said, there are some people who should definitely be supervised.

PROLOGUE

Take a quick look at planet Earth and you will find it quite a beautiful world from space. With two thirds of it water, only broken by the various land masses, it shines in as a crystal blue sphere almost peaceful as it orbits the sun.

If you were to examine the continents though you would quickly realise this world is quite important in our galaxy in that it not only does it have life, but intelligent life although perhaps some could argue the intelligent part. Focus in on the Northern Hemisphere you will find a slab of land the local intelligent life call the United States of America.

In this United States of America, it is not hard to see that dotted around this mass of land are centres of population, sometimes referred to as cities and if you were to look a little closer you would find these usually centre around the coast lines of which there is quite a lot and on the left side of this slab of land is a place called California.

This California, from a visitor's perspective is a beautiful place with a diverse selection of life and terrain ranging from mountain to fields of plant life, deserts to forests and everything in between. It is why many of the local intelligent life enjoy this place. Looking down though you also start to realise just how they have managed to change that pristine natural landscape to their own purposes. Their cities centre around the coast lines, sprawling out with their geometric shapes and fascinating structures where they go about their business. Their influence does not stop there though as you see the tell tale signs of their feats of engineering, things they call roads that cut through nature and connect their cities together, place where machines stalk their way through the landscape carrying them to where ever they need to go.

This intelligent life refers to themselves as 'human' for the most part. Odd fleshy little creatures with a biped body and a sizeable brain often capable of far more than they realise.

Looking down and taking in this California, you will find these humans give names to the places they live. If you were to look almost in the middle of the state by the coast, you would find a city called San Francisco. It is certainly a very interesting place with so much to see, but not really the focus of where we want to be. Travelling north on one of their roads you will soon hit the land locked city of Sacramento, again a nice enough place but not where we want to be either.

Follow what they called Interstate Highway Five and keep going north through that blissful and beautiful countryside for quite some time and you will eventually see a sign for one of the lesser known Cities in California. A city called New Oxford.

That city is much like any other city, with buildings, businesses and a centre for the local human life to populate as they live their brief and usually uneventful lives. That city however has a secret.

Not all the intelligent life there is human or even from this world.

Of course these humans are so self assured in their superior beliefs that they could not fathom the fact that aliens were living in their midst. Humans would whole heartedly believe the moon is made of cheese more than they would the person who just walked past them on the street is an alien.

See why I said the intelligent life premise is up for debate?

While these aliens may be of interest, their exploits have already been fairly well documented. Refugees from a long dead world, they have settled in to their lives on this world quite well and while really they shouldn't be here anymore having founded a new home world, they now see this strange world as their home and are most happy here.

They are only part of this story though and if you were to look down on the city of New Oxford and move to the north east a little, far beyond the limits of the city you will find yourself in beautiful open countryside mostly devoted to producing the human's food. Dotted around these expanses of agriculture are smaller cities often called towns.

Roughly eighty human miles outside of New Oxford there is one quite special town called Wyvern. In the grand human scheme of things it really does not amount to much. There are shops for the necessities, local amenities and recreational facilities and on its outskirts some industrial areas.

For humans travelling through to their destination, this town is unremarkable and easily forgotten, but it is unique for one reason. One of the humans living in this town believes the moon is not made of cheese and that there are aliens walking amongst us, and to that end is making noises about it, attracting the wrong attention.

As for this moment though, that is where the story starts, but if you were to head to the outskirts to an industrial complex near the highway you would find yourself looking at a quite peaceful scene in the early hours of the morning.

Look closer you would find fairly generic businesses. Farming equipment suppliers, vehicle repairs and the a few other fairly faceless business centres. One such building would be a maker of human food, the Cupcake Emporium.

For all their flaws humans are quite creative and while cupcakes are nothing more than an indulgence food, the owner thought that they would embellish their business with a grand gesture in the shape of a ten feet tall giant pink cupcake on the roof. It wasn't a real cupcake as that would be silly. No, it was a fibreglass item designed to visually show what the business did.

And tonight, if you looked closely enough up to the roof of the building you would see a single lone figure working away in the dead of night. This is what humans would call a crime in progress as this figure was unbolting the said cupcake and preparing to steal it.

If you looked at this from a human perspective this was again unremarkable. Crime seemed to be quite prevalent amongst the human population which is why they employed people to investigate acts like this and bring criminals to justice.

However as this solitary figure freed the giant emblem from its mooring, disconnecting the light inside it, something quite unusual happened.

A large door appeared out of thin air, the room beyond it bathed in a blue glow. It was most peculiar as if you looked hard enough, you would realise the only thing you could see was the door, nothing more. It was like this door magically opened up in thin air.

You would then see this figure dragging the cupcake towards the door, pulling it a ramp and inside this phantom room. Then with one last glance, the figure walked over and pressed something before the door started to close until there was nothing there but dark sky, no sign of the door or the cupcake.

That would be what had happened, if anyone had been watching. There would be nothing to see on the various security cameras and the night watchman across the street was unable to comment because he was snoring although he would never admit that to his employers.

Humans would call this a mystery that defied explanation, but the truth was this was going to be insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

In less than a week, the town of Wyvern for most of its population would be pretty much as it had always been, but for one person, it would never be the same sleepy town again.

That is where this story really begins, except when it comes to the story, we have to go back in time somewhat. After all, every story has its origins.

CHAPTER ONE

What's the Point?

A little over six months ago, New Oxford

Looking around the Stationhouse it was the usual hive of activity as she paused her work. The building was underfunded and far too old, the plaster crumbling on the walls as she looked around feeling the decay almost seeping in to her. It was just another average day as the relentless grind continued, criminals being brought in for interview, the business of keeping the city safe always ongoing. This was not what she had dreamt of when she entered the academy all those years ago.

Lofty, Ramirez shouted out as she looked up from her desk scowling at him, Best break out the tea and crumpets girl. Some sexy British chick is in the waiting room asking for you.

May want to drag yourself in to the twenty first century there Ramirez, she snapped back at him, Sexist remarks, misogyny and generalisations don't look good on you.

Screw you, he replied before heading off as she had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach.

A British chick? Sarah asked from across the desk, Didn't you mention that one of the victim's friends on the Gangbanger's case was British?

She glanced at Sarah hesitantly. Of course she had told her the basics, but she knew far too well there was more to this than even she wanted to admit. She remembered it clearly, the night she had arrested Brandon Tan, watching him running towards them, his face sheet white almost begging to be taken in to custody, but he was completely out of his mind. He was screaming that the monster was going to get him, something only backed up by the fact both his index fingers were broken twisted back horribly. It was clear by the sheer look of terror on his face that someone had done a number on him. One thing had haunted her though. He kept repeating over and over that whatever attacked him had an English accent and by sheer chance, or perhaps not, one of Eve Paulette's friends was British.

That was not the worst of it though, not by far.

As they had bundled him in to the car she had visually swept the scene, trying to make sense of what had just happened. She had fully expected a fire fight, been prepared to use deadly force to take this piece of work down only to find him scared out of his mind begging to be arrested. Something had attacked him. Something had put the fear of god in to this loser and that was when she saw it.

On the roof of the abandoned building there had been a figure. It was like looking at a shadow, but one the light reflected off, almost like it was water. She wanted to dismiss it as a trick of the light, a mirage in the darkness and the truth was, she had been unnerved and confused by what had happened. She knew in her heart though that as she was watching it, it was watching her.

She had a job to do though and taking this idiot in had not gone as planned. He was hysterical, raving as he repeated everything that happened to him, over and over. He was out of his mind and in fear of his life. The only problem was what he was saying made zero sense, unless of course you had seen what she had seen. A jet black creature he described as an octopus with thick vicious tentacles had turned this man in to a simpering coward, terrified of the darkness. She realised at that moment that what she had seen on the roof was not a trick of the light. There was substance to his deranged rantings. They