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

by Chad Spencer

  Striding sternly toward them again, Tiffany demanded of Hugh, “When do we leave?”

  “You …” stuttered Hugh, “you want to go with us?”

  “Of course not!” Tiffany snapped. “But anyone can see that the colony isn’t safe while we’re here. It’s only obvious that you guys are going to sneak away before George’s family can stop you.”

  Jeff corrected, “Uh, it’s Jeff actually.”

  “Yeah, ok. Anyway you guys are standing here thinking of a way to trick me to get onto this ship so you can leave.”

  Jeff saw Hugh go deathly white. “Uh … er,” he stammered.

  “Don’t think I’m stupid,” huffed Tiffany. “I know what’s going on. And I’m not leaving without my stuff.”

  “But Tiffany,” Hugh managed to say, “how did you know you needed to load up your stuff and come here?”

  “Don’t think I’m stupid!” Tiffany repeated, shouting. “A bunch of aliens show up asking for Josh by name? Then we find out there’s going to be another war? You think I don’t know what that means? Of course it means I’m going to be dragged across the universe to fight some stupid battle that I don’t even care about. How could I not see that one coming? So I called back to the colony and had my androids load everything up.”

  Tiffany paused. Her expression changed. Suddenly, she almost looked like a small child. “Of course it means we can’t stay someplace where we might make a life for ourselves. Everywhere were go, we make it dangerous for the people around us.” Amazingly, Jeff saw that she was beginning to cry. Her voice quavered as she added, “Like we did to Nalani and Paki. We can’t let people we care about get hurt. It seems like there’s no place in the universe where we’re safe. Everywhere we go turns into a war zone.”

  Tiffany sniffed and wiped her tears. “Anyway, I’m taking an extra cabin. There’s not enough room for all my androids and stuff in just my cabin. The colonists can just double up.”

  Hugh quickly agreed, “Sure, Tiff. You can have both cabins.” The colonists in the crew looked like they were about to object. Hugh shushed them without Tiffany seeing.

  Gratefully, Jeff told Tiffany, “Hey Tiffany, thanks for making this easier. I really appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome, Jack,” Tiffany replied with surprising gentleness. “I know it’s hard to leave your family.”

  “It’s Jeff, actually.”

  “If you say so,” sniffed Tiffany as she shuffled despondently toward the rear of the ship.

  Jeff watched her go in amazement. Hugh said, “I think we’d all better get some training in the AR programs while we can.” Jeff nodded and everyone but Tiffany followed him to the AR suite.

  26

  Jeff gazed at Asiel as it silently rolled underneath the fighter. He could see in any direction as if he were the ship. He scanned downward to see if he could detect the freighters that were hiding deep within the green gasses of the planet’s atmosphere. There wasn’t even a blip. For now, the colonists were safely hidden. For now.

  Lifting his hands from the blue orbs in the arms of the pilot’s chair, Jeff looked around at his crew. Danae was going over the computer system while Amanda was busy at the engineering station. She chatted over the comm system with Kurt Hyde and Milford Chan, her assistant engineers that were at auxiliary positions in the aft of the ship. Both had been on the way to engineering jobs in the colonies when the wormhole collapsed.

  Tiffany was instructing Mamsen Cotton and Sirsen Suzuki on how to use the target movement prediction system on the ship’s guns. The other gunners were all twentysomething men who had been on the way to the Colorado for mining jobs. They had been introduced to Jeff as Chandresh Johal, Joe Lau, Shane Ratcliff, Ethan Joyner, and Kareem Chase. Jeff noticed that every time Tiffany turned toward the controls, all of the young miners focused their attention on looking at her rather than at the gunner’s controls she was pointing at.

  Smiling inwardly, Jeff thought, ‘Well there aren’t enough girls and she is really pretty. But I’m pretty sure that Tiffany would zap them all a good one with a blast of lightning if she knew they were ogling her like that.’

  Sitting at the tactical position, Hugh reported, “The invasion fleet is still outside the system. They’ve probably already seen us and the other fighters. The Lethbridge Drift is starting to move.”

  Jeff set his hands on the blue control spheres and said, “Falling into formation.” He eased the ship close to the three remaining freighters in the Lethbridge Drift as they slipped from orbit. The plan was to take the battle as far away from the colonists as possible. So the three freighters in the Drift, still connected together, were programmed to move together away from Asiel. Like the other fighters, Jeff positioned his fighter quite far from the Drift in a spherical pattern around the three massive freighters and followed as the entire group departed as one.

  ‘Forty fighters,’ he thought. ‘How can we fight an invasion fleet with forty fighters?’ But Akio had assured him that he and his crew had been up against those kinds of odds before and come out of it ok.

  Twenty minutes went by uneventfully, then another ten. Jeff was tense, almost as if he’d prefer it if the tahkti just went ahead with their attack. But he knew that the longer the delay before the attack, the farther the battle would be from his friends and family. So Jeff wasn’t sure whether he should feel impatient or relieved at the current quiet. But either way, he started to hate each minute that ticked by with the knowledge that he and everyone he cared about could die soon.

  An agonizing hour passed with each minute of the clock acting like a hiker sloshing through deep mud, laboring too long to move forward, and yet still leaving too soon.

  ‘This is driving me crazy,’ thought Jeff. Then he had to chuckle nervously as he thought, ‘But for me that’s a short drive, I guess.’ He liked his little joke so much that he decided to use it later on Amanda to see if he could get a laugh. But he grew grim when he thought, ‘I’ll use it on her if there is a later.’

  “Wormholes!” exclaimed Hugh. “Lots of wormholes. They’ve realized we’re moving away from the planet, so they’re not limiting the number of wormholes they’re opening.”

  Piloting the ship, Jeff could see in every direction. Flashes appeared all around them. Jeff saw that ships were pouring through.

  “Incoming transmission,” Danae announced.

  Akio’s voice sounded from the main viewscreen. Jeff didn’t lift his hands to see if Akio’s image was there too.

  “Stick with the plan,” Akio instructed. “We’ve done stuff like this before. Just stick with the plan, everyone. And if anyone goes directly up against the enemy, let the Hiryu, Jeff’s fighter, or Harriet’s fighter attack first. The rest of you stay back and provide support. Move into the formations we planned and stay together, you’re stronger that way. You might see us doing some pretty strange stuff. Just go with it. Like if you see a dragon, don’t shoot it. The dragon is your friend. Stay away from it and don’t shoot it.”

  Across the radio link, Harriet called out, “The tiger too. If you see a flying tiger, don’t shoot it. I know it’s not something you see every day, but I’ll be riding it and I don’t really like people shooting me. I’m nice and it’s not fun to be shot.”

  ‘Why don’t I have one of those?’ Jeff wondered silently. ‘I’m supposed to be as strong as Akio. Why can’t I make a flying gorilla or something?’ It seemed very unfair.

  Hugh announced, “Ships! Hundreds of ships. Get ready everybody!”

  “Wait for it,” Akio instructed. “Don’t move too soon.”

  “They’re approaching firing range,” Hugh declared.

  Akio cautioned, “Not yet. Not yet.”

  “They’re in firing range!” Hugh pronounced.

  “NOW!” Akio yelled.

  Jeff broke from the formation and arrowed his ship straight out at the oncoming horde of golden spheres. The ship’s computer displayed small red squares around each one. There were more than Jeff cou
ld count.

  Energy blasts barreled toward the ship. Whirling and weaving, Jeff dodged the first barrage easily. “Fire all guns!” he commanded.

  All eight guns let loose with everything they had. Jeff saw some spherefighters get hit and careen away into space. But it didn’t even make a scratch in the golden onslaught coming at them.

  Jeff heard Dirk’s voice yell out over the radio link, “We’re taking fire!”

  ‘Really?’ he thought sarcastically. ‘In the middle of a war? Who’d have thought?’ Then Jeff remembered that Dirk was a pretty big coward. This was the first time he’d stood up to anyone in his life. And the only reason he was doing it was so he could be the captain of his own ship. ‘Well,’ thought Jeff, ‘that and he wanted to impress a bunch of girls with being a hero. Guess he didn’t think through what being a hero really means.’

  Continuing to weave, roll, and dodge, Jeff vectored the ship back around toward the Drift. Energy blasts were coming from everywhere. He heard Amanda say, “We’re taking fire too, but we’ve got repairs underway already.”

  Ahead, he could see a wormhole forming. ‘Great work, Goot,’ he thought as he dove straight for it.

  The wormhole formed quickly, very quickly. Jeff knew that the only reason that the four Free tahkti could make a wormhole that fast was because it was an in-system jump. A wormhole across interstellar distances would take much longer to make.

  The other 39 fighters were also zipping to the wormhole as fast as they could go. One after another they disappeared inside while Jeff’s, Harriet’s, and Akio’s fighters circled protectively. The golden spherefighters closed on them fast. They were taking heavy damage. Jeff was beginning to wonder if the plan would work.

  At last all of the other fighters were through. Akio ordered, “Go, Harriet.” Her fighter moved to obey. When she was into the wormhole, Akio directed, “You’re next, Jeff.”

  As fast as he dared, Jeff lined his ship up with the entrance of the wormhole and ploughed inside. The familiar dancing blue of hyperspace engulfed them for nearly a minute, and then they emerged into normal space. Jeff rotated his view around behind the ship and waited. Akio’s ship appeared, followed by the four tahkti’s spherefighter. Their short wormhole closed. Almost immediately, an intense flash appeared.

  “YES!” shouted Hugh. “The gravity bombs detonated as soon as they got near the Drift. I don’t see any working ships left on the scanners. I think it worked! A thousand ships destroyed without much of a fight.”

  A whoop went through the ship as everyone cheered. It was echoed by voices on the radio link. Jeff heard Amanda say, “That was a great idea, Hugh.”

  “Well,” he agreed, trying unsuccessfully to be modest, “I just figured that the rogue dairei probably put cyberbrains in the enslaved tahkti like he did to the Normans back in the Alliance. From our experience, that limits their ability to think freely and makes them act in predictable patterns even though they don’t even know it. I figured we could pretty much count on them acting the way the Norman invasion fleet did. So our little surprise worked perfectly. They were all bunched up together and the gravity bombs we put in the Drift were able to take out the whole invasion fleet at once.”

  Relieved, Jeff declared, “I’ll take our ship down into Asiel’s atmosphere and tell the colonists as soon as we’ve made repairs. Our radio transmissions won’t get through to them down there. Goot, can you open another in-system jump for us so that we can get there fast?”

  But Goot clicked gravely, “You must not do that, Jeff Bowman.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we are not yet safe.”

  “Why?” repeated Jeff.

  “Our scanners show that there are new wormholes forming all around this system–several thousand of them. We estimate that the next wave of the invasion will be at least 10,000 ships.”

  Jeff heard Akio choke out, “Ten … thousand … ships? Ten thousand? Goot, can you get a wormhole open so everyone can get out of the system right now?”

  “No. There isn’t time. We must fight. That is the only way.”

  Dirk screeched across the radio, “We can’t fight ten thousand ships! What are we going to do?”

  “WORMHOLES!” shouted Hugh. “Wormholes all around us! Thousands of them!”

  It was true. Jeff could see bright flashes in every direction. Ships of all sizes were pouring through the wormholes as fast as they could. They immediately began firing at the human ships.

  “Return fire!” yelled Jeff as he attempted to dodge the incoming blasts.

  All of the other human ships sprang into motion, shooting at tahkti ships with everything they had. Jeff could see that they were rapidly eliminating the first wave of tahkti fighters. But it didn’t make a bit of difference. For every ship they blew up, two more appeared, and then three more, and then four. It was like being on the business end of a tidal wave.

  Blast after blast hit their ship in spite of Jeff’s best efforts to keep moving and avoid being a target. “Hugh” he shouted. “Can you make our ship invisible?”

  “It’s too late, Jeff,” responded Hugh. “There’s too many ships. Even if we’re invisible, they can still hit us if they just shoot randomly.”

  “Jeff,” Amanda called out. “We’re taking heavy damage. We can’t stay here for very long.”

  Akio’s voice came across the radio. “We can’t keep this up. There’s just too many of them.”

  “WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?” screamed Dirk.

  “All fighters, regroup around us!” shouted Jeff. “NOW! Our only chance is to form a tight group and shoot outward at anything that comes through the wormholes.”

  Hugh called out, “Jeff! Something weird is happening here. All the new wormholes are pulling some kind of gravitational distortion toward us. I think … it might be … scanning … yes! It’s a wormhole fragment from the original explosion. And it’s big! Really big! It’s absorbing the wormholes that the tahkti are creating. And it’s coming right toward us. We’ve got to get out of here! That thing is big enough to swallow all the ships in this area!”

  Casting about wildly in every direction. He could see no escape. Enemy wormholes were opening up in every direction.

  “Find me a way out, Hugh!” he shouted. “Find me a course to follow!”

  Suddenly, the inky blue of hyperspace swallowed the ship. Jeff knew that it was too late.

  Part 3

  The Other Sky

  “It seemed like the more we fought against the invasion, the worse things got. Everywhere we went turned into a war zone. The decisions we made affected more and more people as we went along. We never knew what would happen next.” First Contact, An Eyewitness Account, Hugh Benson, p.277.

  27

  “STATUS!” Jeff screamed as he desperately tried to control the spiraling fighter.

  Hugh shot back, “We’re falling into the atmosphere of a gas giant!”

  “Our engines are still partially functional!” Amanda added. “But lots of systems are down, including internal gravity and life support. We have gravity from the planet pulling us in.”

  “Can’t … get … control,” Jeff hissed, grimacing.

  “We’ve lost some of the smaller gravity mirrors that are used for attitude control,” explained Amanda. “Kurt and Milford are working on them now. There! I’m showing one mirror back up. Does that help?”

  Wrestling the ship to keep it from being flipped around in the increasingly thick atmosphere, Jeff growled, “Not much. Keep on it.”

  Amanda warned, “Our external temperature is climbing fast! We’re not going to make it, Jeff. We don’t have any shields.”

  “Who else can pilot?” Jeff demanded.

  Joe Lau, one of the gunners, responded, “I can. I’ve got a commercial license.”

  Quickly setting the ship on autopilot, Jeff commanded, “Take the helm, Joe.” Joe darted into the pilot’s chair and took over.

  “Amanda,” he questioned, “where is the shield proj
ector lens?”

  “The projector lens? Why?”

  “WHERE IS IT?”

  Recoiling, Amanda answered defensively, “You have to open that access hatch right there in that wall at the back of the bridge.” She indicated the appropriate hatch. “Then you have to follow the access tube all the way to the back. There’s a small engine room back there. The shield generator and the projector lens are behind everything else. The lens looks like a big sphere. But Jeff, what are you going to do? There’s no way you can fix the shield generator in time.”

  Jerking the access hatch open, Jeff asserted, “I am the shield generator.” He dove into the tube and crawled to the back of the ship as fast as he could. Finding the shield generator’s lens and using it to project his shield around the ship was easy. Hanging on to the lens while the ship pitched violently wasn’t.

  “I seem to end up in this situation a lot lately,” he muttered as he clung to the lens. Resounding like a chorus of heroically deep-voiced men, the functional gravity mirrors strained to slow the ship down and keep it from falling into the gas giant below.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the noise of the gravity mirrors subsided and Amanda’s voice erupted from the compartment’s comm panel. “Jeff,” she announced, “you did it! We’re ok for now. We don’t need shields any more. You can come back.”

  Clamoring through the access tube as quickly as he could, Jeff returned to the bridge and took the helm. When he laid his hands on the pilot’s control spheres, he found that they were jetting through a seemingly endless blue expanse. Dotted here and there in the empty sky were fluffy, friendly-looking clouds. Above was a gorgeous blue sky and the gas giant’s delicately-arching rings. Below, far below, was a maelstrom of yellow, brown, orange, black, and red storms.

  “Where are we, Hugh?” he asked as he stabilized the ship and set it to hold its position.

  “We’re in the gas giant’s atmosphere,” replied Hugh. “This gas giant’s atmosphere is different than most. There’re only a few like it in the Alliance. The different gases are all in layers. Right now, we’re flying through a breathable layer that actually could support life. Which is a good thing because Amanda says our life support system still isn’t working.”