The Split Skies (The Possessor Wars, Book 4): The Possessor Wars, Book 4

by Chad Spencer

  Knowing that everything he had just seen actually happened over half an hour ago, Jeff stood numbly before the blank viewscreen unable to move.

  Quietly, Rick informed them, “I’m pushing the engines as hard as I can. It’ll get us there in five hours. If I try for anything better than that it’ll burn out our entire drive system.”

  Nuraiyana interjected, “I’m getting a message from the Amsterdam. Displaying it on the screen.”

  Amanda’s image appeared. Immediately she said, “Jeff, I’m at the Implantation Site. We just brought out a load of supplies. We saw the transmission from your dad and we’re on our way out to him to see if we can help. If you’re on your way too, then let’s meet and I’ll ride with you. Message ends.”

  Hugh explained, “She hasn’t heard our message yet. She’s too far out. Akio, we should pick her up and bring her with us. The Amsterdam shouldn’t be out there if there’s a fight. And we may need her.”

  Akio agreed. “Call the Amsterdam,” he directed Nuraiyana. “Let them know we’ll meet them on the way out and pick up Amanda.” Nuraiyana nodded and sent the message.

  Before Jeff really knew what was happening, Harriet was standing beside him. She soothingly clasped his hand and softly instructed, “There’s nothing more that you can do for your family now, Jeff. We’ll get there when we get there. No one can make the ship go any faster. It’s just physics. Jeff, come with me. Please. I’ll stay with you until we get there.” Gently pulling on his hand, Harriet led him from the bridge.

  23

  The four crab men stood before Jeff gazing down at him with their expressionless bug-like eyes. They had made no aggressive moves since they had emerged from their golden spherical ship that now floated in a hanger aboard the Libertad. The aliens stood passively with Jeff and his friends, Señor Otero and some of his crew, Kent, and Governor Connors and some of the colonists from the Council. All of the adult humans were armed with plasma rifles.

  Jeff wasn’t sure what to do or say. After a short hesitation, he finally asked, “Do … do you understand English?”

  One of the four aliens rasped out, “Chesssss.” Jeff took that to mean yes.

  “How do you know my name?” he asked.

  The crab man tilted its head, but didn’t answer. It extended a hand toward Jeff’s head and held out two fingers. Alarmed, Jeff jumped back.

  Kasumi broke in, “It’s ok. I think I know what it’s trying to do. It wants to teach you its language. I have the same power.”

  Jeff stepped forward again and waited before the alien with considerable trepidation. Slowly and gently, it reached out two fingers to touch his forehead. A blur of sights, sounds, and impressions flooded over Jeff, leaving him a bit woozy.

  The crab man clicked and hissed at Jeff. But Jeff could understand it perfectly. “I am Ktvat(click) Vshpe(pok) Kovast(hiss)mee Kex. I realize that you can’t pronounce that. So please call me Kex.” Indicating each of the other crab men in turn, it told him, “You can call these others Goot, Maat, and Kshank. We are the last of the tahkti, the race that once controlled this section of the galaxy.”

  “Last?” Jeff asked. “Why do you say that? I’ve seen others that look like you.”

  The four tahkti started in apparent astonishment. Jeff wasn’t sure because their expressions were hard to read. Seemingly agitated, they demanded, “Why did you not tell us this last time we met you?”

  “I’ve never met you before. I’ve never actually talked to your kind. I just saw them on a planet inside this star system.”

  Before Jeff could continue, Señor Otero interrupted and reminded him, “Jeff, we can’t understand what they are saying. We want to know their language as well.”

  Kex understood and moved to comply. Going around the room, he briefly touched the forehead of each human. Then Kex asked, “Jeff Bowman, are you telling us that there are more tahkti like us?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “They live on a planet we call Akio. It’s named after my friend right there. That’s why we live out here in space. We were marooned here with no way to get back to our own people. But we couldn’t stay on the planet because it belonged to your people who already live there. But I’ve got to warn you; they don’t have any advanced technology like you do. Just knives and spears and stuff.”

  The tahkti chattered to each other so quickly that Jeff couldn’t understand. Finally Kex said to his companions, “Did I not tell you that we should come? Did I not tell you we could trust this human? Jeff Bowman told us we would have a reason to join his fight and now you see that it is so. He told us that things could be better for our people and we see that it is true. With the population here, we can rebuild the Throng.”

  The other three hissed their agreement.

  “Why do you keep saying stuff like that?” interrupted Hugh. “You act like you’ve met Jeff before.

  “We have,” affirmed Kex. “We met him in the yet-to-come.”

  “The yet-to-come?” Hugh asked. “You mean the future?”

  “Yes,” Kex replied matter-of-factly.

  “In the future?” gasped Jeff. “You met me in the future?”

  “Correct,” stated Kex serenely. “We would not have come at all, but we met ourselves in the yet-to-come as well. They were most insistent that we make this journey.”

  Jeff didn’t know what to say to that. But Kex continued, “We did not come to know you well. But our selves told us we could trust you and that we should come to the has-already-been to help you. Kshank was sure it was some kind of trick. But we see that all we told us and all you told us is true. Together, we must save this universe.”

  “Save this universe? Wait … what? No seriously. What?”

  Kex told them, “There is a dairei. He is travelling here from the yet-to-come. This star system was the furthest outpost of our Throng. In a nearby system there is a gate through the above. He will use the gate to go to a far planet called Urth.”

  “Earth?” barked Governor Connors. “Why does he want to go to Earth?”

  “He will attack it. We must hurry if we are to save the hoomens. All of them.”

  “All of them? Do you mean every human alive?”

  “Correct. He wants all of them–just as he wanted all of us. He will enslave them just as he enslaved all but us. And others will come.”

  “Others?” questioned Señor Otero. “What others?

  “Other dairei. They will come. We have a message that explains all.”

  “A message?” Jeff asked. “A message from who?”

  “From you, Jeff Bowman.” So saying, he extended his hand, his palm upward. Around his wrist was a gold band with symbols on it. The wristband began to glow and the symbols on it danced and spun. A golden globe with more symbols appeared above Kex’s palm. He twitched his fingers and the symbols changed. Then a hologram of Jeff appeared.

  “It’s you!” exclaimed Amanda. “So these aliens really met you in the future?”

  The hologram said, “Jeff, you’re probably wondering whether these four aliens really met you in the future.”

  “Hey!” Amanda yelped. “That’s creepy.”

  “The answer is, they did meet you and they’re telling the truth,” explained the holographic Jeff. “Kex, Goot, Maat, and Kshank just came from about ten years in the future to find you. They came into your time period by following a wormhole fragment from the collapse that stranded you. The fragment is in a star system near yours. The tahkti’s ship is small, but it’s a gateship. So they opened a wormhole and jumped to the Bowman system. They brought this message from me with them. I am you. Or I was. Now I’m me.” Holographic Jeff appeared confused for a moment. He scratched his head and then continued, “Anyway, I got a message from my future self too. Then I acted on it and I changed the future and the past.”

  Akio interjected, “He changed the past? You can’t do that. Can you?”

  “Right now, Akio’s is saying that you can’t change the past. I remember him doing that. Future Me
said he does that every time.”

  “You’re right, Amanda,” commented Akio. “That’s definitely creepy.”

  Holographic Jeff said, “If you can travel in time, you can change both the future and the past. Listen, here’s what happened to me. I got a message from myself just like you’re getting one from me. The message told me that the dairei that’s been causing all the problems you’ve had is from the future.”

  Hugh wondered, “How is that possible?”

  As if in answer, Holographic Jeff explained, “He did the same thing that the four tahkti did. He passed through a wormhole fragment from the original collapse. He followed it back to your time and ended up in a star system near you that has a really powerful tahkti hypergate in it. He was going to use that hypergate to travel back to Earth’s past somehow. I don’t really now how. Future Me didn’t tell me when I was you. Does that make sense?”

  Jeff replied, “Not really.”

  Holographic Jeff shrugged and went on. “When I was you, Future Me told me to stop the dairei from going through the tahkti hypergate. He said we needed to change history or all humans and all tahkti would be taken over by dairei when they invaded this universe.”

  Pausing, Holographic Jeff’s face darkened. “We stopped him,” he stated. “But it only made things worse. And from what Future Me told me when I was you, you and I have had this conversation over and over again. It’s a loop. The dairei comes from the future to take over the human race. Somehow, he uses the tahkti gate to time travel into the past. Then he just lives his life moving forward in time like we all do. That’s what happened the first time, anyway. But I stopped him and changed all that. Even though everything was different, he took over the human race anyway. And then he takes over all of the tahkti except the four that are with you. That’s when I send the message back to you and we start it all again.”

  “Here’s the thing,” the message said. “You and I try everything we can do to stop him. And we actually do stop him from going back into the past. We stop him every time. But it gets worse so we try it again. Every time we go through this loop, I send you a different message. You take a different action. Everything changes–both the future and the past. But the result is always the same. He always wins. Tons of dairei come into our universe and take over the bodies of every human and every tahkti. It comes out the same every time.”

  Holographic Jeff grew somber, “Every single way we try to change history only messes it up worse. There’s only one answer; you have to put it back the way it originally was. You can’t let history change at all. You’re at a point in time where history is the way it was before I changed it. Pretty soon you won’t be. All of human history will change right around you–the whole past. And it will get lots, lots worse. You guys and the four tahkti will be the only ones who remember the way history is supposed to be.”

  The hologram heaved a sigh. “The only way to save the human race and the tahkti–the only thing you and I haven’t tried–is to put it back the way it originally was. You’ve got to make sure that human and tahkti history happen exactly the way you and the tahkti remember them. The dairei has to go back in time. You have to go too. You have to keep him from changing history. Then somehow he escapes and ends up in tahkti space. He has to take over the tahkti Throng. The only ones who can escape are the four tahkti with you and the ones on planet Akio. The dairei has to use the tahkti Throng to build a huge fleet of gateships and they have to go to the red giant system where the portal is. All of the events in human and tahkti history have to happen this way because that’s the way it happened the first time. You can’t change them at all. Even the smallest change will make it worse than it was when we started. You’ll have no hope of stopping the dairei invasion.”

  Hugh wondered, “If we put it all back, won’t the dairei invade anyway?”

  “You’re probably thinking,” Holographic Jeff said, “that if you put it all back, the horde of dairei will invade anyway. The answer to that is maybe. I don’t know. But here’s the thing. You can take everyone whose got korei and go to the red giant star system where Eden is. You can kill the rogue dairei when he gets there. Or you can find way to stop him from opening the portal to his universe. Or you can find a way to stop them once they get into this universe. The one thing you CANNOT do is stop him from going back in time. If you do, you fail. It’s just that simple. After he goes back in time and then lives his life and arrives in the red giant system where Eden is, you can do anything you want. You’ll be beyond where the time loop started, so you can change things without messing up the past.”

  Almost as an afterthought, Holographic Jeff added, “Oh, and by the way, he knows you’re in the Bowman system. He knows where that is. He doesn’t seem to know exactly when you get there. But he knows where you are. He’s sending an invasion force of mind-controlled tahkti to capture you all and put cyberbrains in you.”

  “WHAT?” the real Jeff shouted. “WHEN?”

  Holographic Jeff said, “He just barely got total control of the tahkti Throng–that’s what they call their empire, a Throng–he just got complete control of the Throng. They were fighting a big war among themselves between the free tahkti and the mind-controlled ones. The mind-controlled ones won. A small group got away and they hid for about ten years. But they were hunted down and killed. The four tahkti with you now are the last of the free tahkti.”

  “Right now in your time period a fleet on its way to you,” continued the hologram. “They’ll use the tahkti hypergate that’s closest to you right now. Their ships are gateships, but they can’t jump far on their own. So they jump long distances through the gates. Anyway, you have to have to stop them from getting to the Bowman system. Or you have to stop them from invading the Bowman system. Or you have to take everyone, including the tahkti on the planet Akio, and run away and hide. I don’t know which you need to do. When it was me facing this, we just let them invade. We waited for the invasion fleet to pass by and then ambushed the dairei when he came from the future. We thought that if we stopped the dairei from going into the past, it would stop the invasion of the Bowman system too. It didn’t. Like I said, it just made everything worse.”

  “So you have to save everyone in the Bowman system. Then you have to find a way to put history back the way it should be. Then you have to go to the star system where Eden is and stop the invasion of this universe.”

  Holographic Jeff chuckled sadly and added, “And if you get time, you might want to get yourself an extra guitar. Your gonna need it. Good luck. You’re gonna need that too. Message ends.” The hologram disappeared.

  Jeff shouted, “WAIT! That CAN’T be the end of the message! What happened to my guitar? Tell me about my guitar!”

  “Jeff,” Governor Connors interrupted, “I think there are more important things to worry about than your guitar.”

  Dejectedly, Jeff agreed, “Yeah, I know. But where am I going to get another guitar like that one?”

  “I’ll make sure you get mine,” Governor Connors consoled. “If you save the universe, you can have my guitar.”

  “Deal,” replied Jeff quickly, causing a chuckle to ripple through the room.

  The tahkti, waiting silently, seemed puzzled by the exchange. Then Kex solemnly told them, “So you see, Jeff Bowman. You must help us. And we must help you. We must not let history change until the dairei from the future actually comes here from the future. Once he leaves, we can do anything we want because causality will be preserved.”

  Jeff didn’t really understand that part. But he told himself that it was ok with the thought, ‘I’m new to this time travel stuff.’ In any case, he decided that the least they could do was protect the colony and the planet Akio.

  Governor Connors spoke up first. “This is serious. Very serious.”

  “Yes. They know where we are,” stated Señor Otero gravely. “We have to consider the possibility that they got the information from the dairei that your children are in contact with.”

&nbs
p; “What do you mean?” asked Kent.

  “I mean that as a species the dairei have mind control,” Señor Otero replied. “There’s a male dairei running around the galaxy starting wars. There’s a female dairei that your kids have been in communication with. Do we know whose mind control is more powerful? If it’s the male’s and he finds the female, he could force the female to tell him all about us. That could be how he found us. Which means that we have to leave and find someplace that the female dairei doesn’t know about.”

  Jeff interrupted, “But that’s not possible, Sirsen. Anywhere we go, she’ll know about it because she’s in contact with us.”

  A sad but resolute expression passed across Señor Otero’s face. “Yes, son. I know. That’s why we have to go someplace you and your friends don’t know about.”

  Jeff was shocked. “You … you want to leave us behind?”

  “No,” countered Señor Otero. “I don’t want to. But we don’t really have a choice. We need to be someplace you’re not. It’s the only way we can be sure we’re hidden from all the dairei.”

  Governor Connors asked, “Are you saying you don’t want to be in the same colony as us anymore?”

  “No. I’m saying we don’t want to be in the same colony as these kids here. Some of your people have korei and so do some of ours. There’s no reason we can’t form a colony somewhere else and study these creatures. We may be humanity’s last hope. We can build our defenses together–but only if we can stay hidden. And as long as these kids are with us, we can’t do that.”

  Silence fell. The Colony Council, the Argentineans, and Kent all stared at Jeff and his friends.

  “We’re not leaving my children and their friends behind,” asserted Kent angrily. “No matter what happens, I’m not leaving them.”

  Nodding, Señor Otero responded, “I can see why you feel that way. But the Libertad is leaving.”