Bill in Space 3: Bill and the Sprisi! (Erotic Fantasy) (7 page)

Bill shrugged.  They were talking about how to proceed.  He
wanted to capture a Sprisi and study it.  It wouldn’t take that long after all,
maybe fifteen minutes?  They also needed to find a home world location.  The
only way that was happening was if they could get the information from a
Sprisi.  That wouldn’t be possible if they went straight to destroying them
all.

Plus, he wasn’t sure he could just start killing them all
without understanding.  In his mind they had to make sure, check the source
first.  Larissa and Tiffani were against waiting, and he kind of got their
point.  A lot of beings were suffering right now, and it would continue for
longer if they followed his plan.  Gabe seemed neutral and despite her people
suffering Gwen was satisfied to follow his lead for the most part.

Maybe it was the empathy?  She could feel his doubts
clearly.

He said, “Look, let’s just go grab one, if I don’t get
anywhere with it we will go kill all the ones we can find.  But I have to try. 
We need to find their home world anyway.”

It was hard for him to believe two hours ago he was filled
with joy.  He hadn’t needed to do much.  He could see conception happen before
his eyes, but the life essence wasn’t quite compatible, it didn’t form a viable
life.  But it was really close, all it needed was a nudge and it formed before
his eyes.  He couldn’t help but smile at the thought, even in the midst of the
argument.

He was going to be a father.

Tiffani said coldly, “Fine, I think it’s a bad idea, but do
what you have to so we can start getting rid of them before more of my subjects
die.”

He sighed as she stormed out.  Trouble in paradise.  He
probably wouldn’t need to find a couch, but he was sure she would arrange it so
there were two or three bodies between them tonight.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the signature of a
Sprisi and found himself aboard a ship.  He studied it for a moment, but
couldn’t tell anything else really, he would need to be in the same room.  He
waited for Ariella’s tap on his shoulder before returning to his body.  He
needed to wait until she got a fix from his mind.

When he felt the tap he returned to his body.  He found he
didn’t need to concentrate to return like he did the first time.  It was a
simple thought to go back where he belonged.

When he got back and looked up he heard Larissa growl out,
“How long to intercept?”

He thought she sounded mad at him too, her growl a bit
deeper and angrier than normal.

Ariella said, “About 2 hours we will overtake the ship.”

Larissa said, “Perfect.”

He was alarmed at first, when Larissa picked him up and
threw him into the center chair.  But he relaxed when she mounted him and
pulled him into a hard kiss.

Larissa growled softly, “Two hours sounds perfect,” as she
released his hardening cock from the suit…

------------

Bill wasn’t sure what got into Larissa, but the last couple
of hours were amazing.  Maybe him standing firm behind what he believed turned
her on?  He wasn’t sure, all that he could see was she was wildly turned on by
him when she took him, but not the thoughts that had led to it.  He finished
donning his suit. 

By the time he was ready, Ariella had the enemy’s ship
disabled.  The three of them transported over to the disabled ship and made
their way to the bridge.  They were meeting stiff resistance but they had the
suits, and they were careful not to take too many on at once.  As soon as they
got to the bridge he surrounded their target with the golden energy, while
Ariella and Larissa knocked out the rest of them.  His golden energy kept the
Sprisi trapped within its host.

This one was Angilli, and he again noted that the essence
seemed darker.  Still sort of whitish, but grey and dirty.  He immediately saw
the same part of it that he could use to kill it, but that wasn’t his goal.  He
was here to get information, and figure out what drove the Sprisi to feed on
misery.  As he studied it, it felt wrong.  He could see its hunger, it was
almost all hunger and hate, driven to seek out and feed on misery and the
darker emotions.

For some reason Brendon popped into his mind, but he failed
to see why.  Rather than dismiss it he mulled it over for a moment, hoping it
was part of his new and enhanced intuition, rather than random thought. 
Suddenly it hit him.  Even though he had known Brendon was good for being
advanced and compatible for Anise, when Bill first saw him he had a slight gray
tinge to his life essence.

Nothing at all as bad as what he was looking at now.  But it
had been there, nonetheless.

It had gone away, the gray tinge.  He had seen Brandon’s
essence turning pure white after his spine was healed.  To the same bright
white he saw in everyone else.  He stopped studying and trying to interpret its
essence and looked for damage instead. 

When he knew what to look for it was obvious.  He saw
something that reminded him of an atrophied limb, sick and useless.  Without
thinking it through he immediately reached out with his golden tendrils, not to
destroy, but to heal.

He watched as the Sprisi’s essence slowly changed to a pure
white color.  The Angilli’s screaming threats started to taper off and stopped
altogether when it was healed.  He watched as the Sprisi was filled with regret
and horror, the emotions mirrored on the face of the Angilli as he sat down
heavily.

The Angilli said in a helpless voice, “You should kill me. 
I may be okay right now, but it will just happen again.  I will become the
twisted horror, nothing can stop it.”

Bill said, “Why?”

The Angilli shook his head in despair and said, “A billion
years ago, give or take, we, the Sprisi, were as you see me now.  Our star was
unlike any other we have ever found.  It had natural radiation, not unlike the
energy you just created to heal me.  It wasn’t harmful or inimical, but life
giving.  There was a species on my world that was symbiotic.  We gave them
longer life, higher intelligence.  They gave us the ability to interact on a
physical level.  We shared the body together, living as one being.  We could
even leave the planet.  The radiation soaked into their body’s cells was enough
to sustain us for years away from our sun, before we had to go back and feed.

“We searched the universe and saw nothing, no life, or at
least, only the beginnings of it.  Even the Dravii were primitive reptiles at
the time.  They are the oldest intelligent race after us. 

“Our galaxy was one of the first formed.  When your world burned
in fire, and the beginning of life on your world was a protein soup, we were
already an ancient and mighty civilization spanning across many star systems.”

Bill waited patiently as the Sprisi composed his thoughts
before continuing, “Then, like I said, it all changed about a billion years
ago, our star moved into its next cycle of life.  We desperately searched the
universe when the radiation died out, but we couldn’t find anything
nourishing.  As we slowly withered, it was discovered that we could feed off
the energy of misery, but it still left a gnawing hunger within us.  All it
really did though was prevent our death.  We devolved.  Our partners became our
victims, as instead of sharing control we took it, and actually tortured
ourselves, to feed our dying energy.“

He looked down at the floor and said, “Then a hundred
thousand years ago an Angilli ship found our system and made contact.  We were
all starving, merely surviving for a billion years.  When we found out there
was now a universe full of life to feed our hunger.  Well, you know the rest of
the story there.”

The Sprisi looked up at Bill and said, “We couldn’t help it
as we slid into brutality, our nature not letting us die.  Much like a physical
life form will fall back on cannibalism if pushed too close to death, we lost
our souls so long ago.  So please, kill me before it happens again.”

Bill was shocked, “You mean you were there?  You are over a billion
years old?”

The Sprisi nodded, “We all are, we haven’t had the energy to
reproduce in all that time.  Our energy forms don’t age, we aren’t physical. 
But when we have lived long enough we give our lives in the mating, two of us combining
and breaking up into five or six offspring.  The only other way for us to die
is a lack of energy to fuel our forms.  You understand now don’t you?  We are
the past, our time is gone, ran out with our sun a billion years ago and now we
are shadows and monsters.  You must kill us, free us from our nightmare.”

Bill thought about it, and couldn’t really see anything he
could do.  He could hardly feed a whole race constantly.  But then, he didn’t
know nearly as much about energy as a Dravii.

He looked at the Sprisi and said, “You are coming with us.”

The Sprisi looked like it might object so Bill said, “I will
kill you if I have to, but let’s see what we can do, I am assuming you haven’t
searched for that energy for a billion years.  I imagine a lot of suns have
changed their age in that time.”

The Sprisi sighed but nodded, getting up.

Ariella said, “What are you thinking.”

He said, “I am going to give you a taste of the energy I
created to feed and heal, and you are going to search the universe to see if
it, or anything close to it, exists anywhere else.  You can do that right?  Or
maybe figure out some technology that will artificially create it?”

He knew he was asking a lot of Ariella, but really, asking
him to commit genocide was asking a hell of a whole lot as well.

The Sprisi said almost accusingly to Bill, “Why are you
doing this after all we have done.”

Bill’s voice was low when he answered, “Because what you
said earlier wasn’t true, you are wrong, you didn’t lose your souls.  I saw one
and it was beautiful.  It’s the reason I bothered boarding in the first place
instead of just killing you from a distance.  Well that, and I needed to know
where your home world is.  But my main motivation was to find a way without the
killing.”

The Sprisi looked up at Ariella and spoke a series of number
coordinates.  At least they knew he was sincere about killing them all.

---------------

Ariella was fighting with herself.  These beings had almost
completely killed her race.  Their attempted genocide only fell short by just
three.  They had driven her to perform a violent attack to make sure their race
survived.  That Dravii male had been a subsumed and controlled slave, his life
stolen and he was unjustly branded a traitor.  Then she had come along and
violated him right before he died at her hand.  She did not want to save them.  She
wanted to kill them, all the Sprisi.

Not just for what they had done, but for what they had
caused her to do.

She felt guilt at the thought, remembering Bill’s feelings
at seeing the Sprisi’s soul.  Maybe she couldn’t forgive them, but she wouldn’t
become like them either.  She had no choice.  Plus, she didn’t think she would
be able to lie to Bill, just the thought of deceiving him left a bad taste in
her mouth.  Perhaps one day she would grow beyond her hate, she would be around
a long time.

But not today, and she wouldn’t advise anyone to hold their
breath until it happened.  But today she would save a race she despised, simply
because her love asked it of her.  Maybe in the end, that would save her.

Bill took a deep breath.  He had realized it was much easier
for him to do the right thing.  After all, the Earth was doing fine.  The rest
of the crew…  Well, the Sprisi had almost killed off all the Dravii, and they
had enslaved the Elvii for the last two thousand years.  He couldn’t imagine
that Gwen or Ariella were very happy about the direction he was taking things
in. 

Then of course there was Tiffani, and although they didn’t
enslave the Angilli, then did enslave her entire family line, which makes it
even more personal.  And Larissa, the honor that she treasures, that she holds
onto tooth and claw.  Well, the Sprisi had pretty much destroyed the honor for
most of her race.  Leading them into committing atrocities out of boredom as
the centuries went on.

Forget the couch.  He was surprised they hadn’t jettisoned
him into space.  Told Sally or Brandon he died and have them take over kill the
Sprisi duty.  Okay, he knew that thought was a little over the top, but still,
it was a lot to ask them.  To not only forgive the Sprisi for doing all that,
but to even help them survive.

He watched as Ariella walked in and waited to see what she
would say.  He had given her the energy to scan for yesterday.  He wasn’t sure
how long it would take her to scan the universe.

Ariella said neutrally, “Well, bad news and good news.  The
Sprisi was right about that radiation being rare.  I was unable to find it
anywhere.  The good news…  I was able to figure out how to create it artificially,
but it will take a lot of power to run.  We will need to create a large solar
array in their orbit to make it self sufficient, but we can use the core of a
heavy cruiser to get it running in the meantime.

“We should go to their home planet now.  They have a few
cruisers in orbit, just in case we found them.  Plus…  It might not be wise to
make their position generally known, at least not for a long time.  There will
be a lot of people wanting revenge…”

Bill winced, he hadn’t even thought of that.  Stupid of
him.  He pulled Ariella into a hug.

“Thank you, and I am sorry.  I just can’t kill them.  They
are insane in their current state, if we have the choice to heal them…  I just
hope you can forgive me for it one day.”

He felt her resist for a moment then she melted against
him.  He heard a sob rip from her chest as she broke down and cried.  He
shielded the thought carefully as he felt sorrow for her, but also relief, he
didn’t want her to sense the latter.  This is the first time he had seen her
grieve her people, perhaps she could start to heal now.

------------------

A few hours later they hovered at the edge of the Sprisi system. 
Instead of the killing energy, he fed her the healing energy and felt Ariella
multiply it and send it out in a huge pulse.  Every Sprisi in their home system
was healed and properly fed for the first time in a billion years.  It didn’t
take long for Ariella to figure out it was the sun that blocked his ability to
find the planet, the radiation hadn’t stopped, it had shifted.  Although
worthless now as a food source, it was doing just fine hiding the life
signatures in the system from his ability to detect.

Things moved extremely quickly after that, the Sprisi did
not have the same knowledge of energy that a Dravii did, but they were
extremely good at making things.  They were not content to sit and wait for
Bill to go system to system to stop their people from being monsters.  They
worked with a vengeance, their shame pushing them to work hard and fast to stop
the nightmare of their making.  They created several thousand copies of the
device Ariella had designed and headed out to the stars.

What would have taken Bill months to do alone, took weeks as
they swept through the universe together.  A secondary benefit from the device
was they could survive in their energy forms on ship.  That meant they could
immediately abandon the bodies and lives they had stolen, joining the ship that
healed them.  The Sprisi retreated to their home world when the job was done,
promising they may join the universal community at some time, but felt it was
better to heal wounds first.

Plus, they had more than enough to do at home.  They had to
somehow make amends to the host species on their home world.   They had abused
them far longer than the Elvii, Angilli, Dravii or Demonae.

Bill was quite sure it would happen though, and in his
lifetime, after all he had quite a long life ahead of him.

---------------

Eventually his mates came around, actually becoming glad how
it worked out in the end.  They all saw the guilt and horror the Sprisi
expressed at their crimes.  Their souls were better off without the weight of genocide
staining them.