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

by Chad Spencer

  Amanda was also observing their surroundings. She commented, “The more important people are down here, where the action is and where they can be seen. Everyone else is higher up. Probably the higher up your seat is, the less important you are.” Jeff nodded his agreement.

  “Look,” Amanda said, pointing her shackled hands around them. “We’re on TV.”

  It was true. There were cameras around them and above them. “This is more entertainment than anything else,” murmured Jeff.

  Shaking his head, Tolool responded, “No. Propaganda. We’re the grandchildren of a Great Proctor. They’re going to show everyone in the country that no one escapes their Inquisitions, not even the families of important people. They want everyone to be afraid.”

  There was a lot of pomp and ceremony as the dignitaries filed in and took their seats surrounding Jeff and the others. Tolool and Joonen were terrified. Jeff wasn’t impressed.

  “When should we leave?” whispered Amanda quietly.

  Jeff shrugged. “Maybe we ought to stay and be on TV. I mean, these people aren’t very nice. But they deserve to know that they’re being invaded by the tahkti. Let’s stay long enough to tell them. Then we’ll take Tolool and Joonen out of here and meet the Shadow Eagle.”

  Amanda nodded her agreement.

  So they waited. The Inquisitors marched in, all dressed in red. Pretty much everyone in the huge domed room looked at the Inquisitors with a mixture of fear and awe.

  A guy that Joonen told them was the Grand Inquisitor stepped forward pretentiously and unrolled a scroll he carried. He read out the charges against them, talked about who Joonen and Tolool were, and recounted the fate of their parents.

  Then the Grand Inquisitor, whose name was Dunkeens Rechor, practically screamed at Jeff and Amanda, “I am the Grand Inquisitor of this trial. Your fate is in my hands. I demand to know who you are and where you are from. If you are truthful, I will have mercy on your people at your home island and only kill you two.”

  A microphone on a long boom swung out over the four prisoners. Jeff glanced up at it. ‘Looks like they want to hear us grovel. Thaaaat’s not going to happen.’

  “Hello!” chirped Jeff brightly. “You’re Dunkeens Rechor? In our language the word ‘retch’ means to vomit. So to us, your name means someone who vomits.”

  A gasp went through the entire assembly. Jeff heard Amanda chuckle quietly. Tolool and Joonen nearly fainted.

  “You wanna know who we are?” continued Jeff, feeling full of himself. “We’re aliens from outer space.”

  The crowd erupted into laughter. Dunkeens, who was not amused, silenced them with a gesture. He glared at Jeff as if he could shoot lasers from his eyes.

  “You think you’re funny?” hissed the wrinkled, potato-shaped man. “I’ll have your skin cut off while you’re still alive.”

  “Good luck with that,” Jeff shot back. He levitated himself above the Inquisitors. Amanda followed suit. A gasp went through the entire gallery. Then there was silence

  “It’s a trick!” screamed Dunkeens contemptuously. “It’s some kind of trick!”

  Jeff demanded, “Aren’t you supposed to be a scientist? Well then you explain how we’re doing this.”

  “I don’t waste my time with two-bit magic tricks designed to impress the weak-minded,” retorted Dunkeens.

  “Ok,” challenged Jeff, “then explain this.”

  Jeff burst into flames, burning away the restraints that held him. Amanda gathered light around herself until she was shining so brilliantly it was nearly blinding. When the light subsided, her restraints were also burned away.

  Dunkeens seemed like he was about to melt into a pile of lava. “It’s a trick!” he screamed again. “There are no aliens from outer space. These two are just humans. That’s all!”

  Glaring down at Dunkeens, Jeff responded, “Well that’s true enough. We are human. We’re humans with advanced technology. We come from a planet called Earth. Well, I do. Amanda was born in space.”

  “Lair!” accused Dunkeens as he jabbed a stubby finger at them. “I am an evolutionary biologist. I have spent my life proving that all of the old religions are wrong. Mankind did not originate beyond the sky. We did not fall from the heavens. We were not saved by the Old Gods who dwell in the abyss below. It’s all silly old tales told by delusional, frenzied minds. I myself have proven that humans originated on this planet. We are the descendants of the monkeys that dwell in the telerent plants. There is no such place as Urt!”

  “It’s pronounced ‘Earth’ not ‘Urt.’ And yes, that is exactly where I am from. The human race originated there, not here. We have an advanced civilization and we can travel among the stars.”

  Crusty old Dunkeens was nearly purple with rage. “So tell me, Urtboy, which of the five stars does Urt orbit?”

  “Earth orbits a star in another universe. This tiny universe is what we call a pocket universe. It's a small piece of the main universe and the main universe contains more stars than we can count. There’s a tunnel from our universe to this one. We came through it. You can see it in the sky every time a ship comes through. It flares up and looks like a star.”

  Dunkeens dismissed, “That’s just a normal interstellar variance in the fabric of space. It means nothing.”

  Still floating over Dunkeens, Jeff shot back, “Well it is a variance in the fabric of space, that much is true. But that variance is a tunnel to the universe that your ancestors came from. And the only reason we’re here today is to warn you and your people that your universe is collapsing. In about 2,000 years, this universe will collapse in on itself and crush everything inside. If you don’t leave through that tunnel, you’ll all die. And we’re also here to tell you that an intelligent, non-human, alien species is invading this universe. They will capture every human and use mind control to turn you into slaves if you do not leave here as fast as you can. We can provide you with the technology to go back to the main universe. They’re coming. And this is the only warning you’re going to get. My friends and I are done now. We’re leaving.”

  “Guards!” shouted Dunkeens. Dozens of military-looking types pointed oddly-shaped rifles at them. The three closest soldiers shot a volley of electric blasts at Jeff, which did absolutely nothing.

  Smiling, Jeff responded by zapping the three soldiers with lightning. They weren’t strong blasts. But the three soldiers were knocked flat on their rear ends.

  “Don’t use your weapons again,” commanded Jeff. “You might hurt someone in the room. But it won’t be us. Your weapons don’t work on us. And as you can see, we can defend ourselves just fine.” He didn’t bother to tell them that electric weapons could work pretty well on Amanda, Tolool, and Joonen. He just let them think their weapons were completely useless.

  Ignoring everyone around them, Jeff and Amanda returned to Joonen and Tolool. Jeff asked, “Amanda, could you use light to cut Joonen and Tolool free? They can climb on our backs and we’ll fly out of here through the roof.” He pointed to the dome above them.

  Amanda gathered a thin blade of light from the sunshine that beamed down through the many windows in the dome. She quickly freed Joonen and Tolool, who were visibly relieved.

  “Hey, Jeff!” a familiar voice shouted from above.

  Turning his gaze upward, Jeff was stunned to see Akio and his friends standing in a balcony high over his head. Akio was waving.

  “Nice show you’re putting on,” continued Akio. “But we gotta leave. Something’s up. There’s a ton of jet aircraft headed to this continent from another continent up north. It looks like an invasion. They’re going to be here any minute.”

  Akio was speaking in the local language, so a gasp went up from the crowd when he mentioned the invasion. Immediately, Dunkeens exploded.

  “We are NOT being invaded!” he screamed. “There is no such thing as Urt. There are NO aliens from outer space.”

  A crash resounded from the dome above them. Glass showered down, cutting many of the people who
were sitting to Jeff’s left. They scattered in panic.

  Jeff observed that a large floating platform was descending through a gaping hole in the dome. About a third of the dome had been shattered to make way for the platform’s entry into the vast room. And riding the platform were about a dozen tahkti.

  The locals were in a near frenzy, however the soldiers in the room stood frozen at the sight of the aliens, their weapons dangling uselessly in their limp hands. Dunkeens and the other Inquisitors were too stunned to move.

  As the platform descended, most of the people on the floor of the great hall fled. Much to his surprise, Jeff saw that the cameramen were still broadcasting. ‘I guess the whole continent is seeing this.’

  As the platform landed not far from Dunkeens, most of the other Inquisitors fled in terror. But poor Dunkeens couldn’t seem to move. ‘He looks like his brain is going to overload,’ thought Jeff.

  The tahkti disembarked the platform. Four of them were carrying an odd-looking machine with an obelisk-like structure that jutted upward.

  “Jeff!” hissed Amanda quietly. “My powers won’t work. Will yours?”

  Startled, Jeff tried to levitate himself. Nothing. He tried to summon both fire and lightning. Still nothing. ‘This can’t be good.’ He cast around for a way out through the teeming mass of people who were trying to escape. ‘I can’t see a quick way out of here.’

  Amanda had more bad news. “My earpiece radio is offline. Something’s suppressing both our korei powers and all advanced tech. Only simple tech like those TV cameras is working.”

  Jeff thought, ‘Things can’t get any worse than this.’

  At that moment, a dairei came out of one of the tahkti and entered Dunkeens. A horrified expression passed across Dunkeens’ face momentarily. Then he seemed to regain his composure.

  Turning to Jeff, Dunkeens calmly intoned, “And so we meet again, Jeff Bowman. You know who I am. Don’t try to attack me. Your korei powers won’t work. Neither will any technologies based on advanced electronics. I have a way of suppressing them.” He gestured toward the device that the tahkti had brought with them.

  The dairei spoke with Dunkeens’ voice, but to Jeff, it did not sound like Dunkeens at all. The dairei was calmer. And for some reason, he sounded older–much older.

  Not sure what to do, Jeff played for time. He wanted to get the dairei talking so he could find out what was going on.

  “What do you mean?” asked Jeff. “We’ve never met before.”

  The dairei chuckled and responded, “Well, that’s half true. You haven’t met me yet. But I’ve met you, both in the future and in the past. I’ve been around for a very long time, Jeff. And I’ve learned a few things. One of them is that we don’t have to be enemies.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Instead of answering, the dairei gestured upward. To Jeff’s surprise, another platform was descending. And aboard it were Harriet and her missing crewmembers. Behind it was another platform carrying some of the missing colonists.

  As soon as the platform landed, Harriet calmly walked to Jeff and Amanda with Sebastian, Kenji, Ai, and the rest of her crew close behind.

  “Hi, guys,” she greeted tightly. “This dairei wants to make a deal. So when he captured us, he didn’t do anything ugly like he has in the past.”

  “So … so you’re ok?” stammered Jeff.

  Harriet nodded warily. “We’re ok. But I don’t know how long we’ll all stay that way. We’ve had some pretty bad experiences with him in the past.”

  “Quite true,” agreed the dairei. “But as I’ve told you, we don’t have to be enemies. We all know we need to leave this universe. We can help each other. And to demonstrate how cooperative I’m willing to be …”

  Another platform drifted down through the gash in the dome, driven by a human. ‘He’s probably mind controlled,’ speculated Jeff as the conveyance descended.

  On the platform was a cryostasis unit that was almost through its reanimation cycle. It opened, and a human guy about Jeff’s age sat up.

  “Leo!” squealed Harriet in surprise. As Leo climbed out of the stasis unit, Harriet bounded to him and hugged him tightly. Jeff wasn’t sure why, but that really bothered him.

  Tearfully, Harriet released Leo and questioned, “How are you alive? How did you live through being blown into space?”

  Gazing down at her in a way that made Jeff madder, Leo said, “My powers let me manipulate the elements. I changed the carbon in my skin to a material made from carbon nanotubes. Basically, I turned my skin into a space suit.”

  Harriet wondered, “Where were you? We scanned everywhere for you.”

  Leo responded, “I was blown out of the ship and through a wormhole, the same wormhole that the dairei’s ship went through. We both fell onto a tahkti planet 300 years backward in time. He took one of the tahkti as a host and then started putting cyberbrains in all the others. He kept me around for a few months until my korei reproduced. He needed them to feed to his churei. He’s actually breeding churei to make up for his missing churei, the ones we killed. He’s had 300 years to work on it. Now he’s even more powerful than he was when we first met him.”

  “Exactly,” the dairei agreed. In a tired-sounding voice, the dairei continued, “It’s really useless to fight against me. What’s coming is coming. You just need to accept it.”

  Wanting more information, Jeff demanded skeptically of Leo, “If you landed in tahkti space 300 years ago, why are you still our age?”

  Harriet started. Apparently, in her excitement at seeing Leo again, she had forgotten that Jeff was standing right there. A look of guilty embarrassment passed across her face. Jeff noticed it and wondered, ‘Why is she embarrassed? She can have that guy if she wants him. She and I aren’t together; Amanda and I are.’ But he still felt irritated by Harriet’s obvious affection for Leo.

  In answer to Jeff’s question, Leo responded, “He put me in cryostasis. Apparently he thought I’d be useful later. Now I see why. He wants to improve his bargaining position with you guys.”

  Jeff turned to the dairei and demanded, “What is it you’re after?”

  Calmly, carefully, the dairei explained, “All I want is a ship seed. I don’t want to attack you or your friends and families. I just want a ship seed and I’ll be on my way.”

  With greater intensity, the dairei said, “I know you have at least one Living Fighter. You can bring your ship here and have it eat all the materials it needs. It will repair itself and produce seeds. One seed for me is enough. If you give me that, you can go your way in peace.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Jeff demanded. “We can’t use our powers. We don’t have weapons so we can’t fight back. Why are you trying to make a deal with us? Why don’t you just force us to give you a seed?”

  Sighing deeply, the dairei answered, “Because I don’t know where your ship is. Even if I were to do something violent to you, my experience with you in the past and the future tell me that it’s not going to work. Or that if it does, it will take a lot of time. You and your friends are … headstrong.”

  Wanting to keep the dairei explaining things, Jeff queried, “Why do you need one of our ships? Can’t you use a tahkti ship?”

  “No, Jeff Bowman. Their ships, like almost all of the Living Fighters, were all destroyed when they came through the wormhole to this universe. Very few of the tahkti survived. I know you can project a shield. So I know your ship was able to survive. As far as I know, it’s the only one that’s ever come through the wormhole intact. I’ve been in this universe for tens of thousands of years. I want out. I want a ship seed. I have an entire invasion force ready to capture every human on this planet and put cyberbrains in them. But I won’t touch a single one of them if you give me a ship seed.”

  “Wait,” stalled Jeff. “You’ve been here for tens of thousands of years? How is that possible? How long does your kind live?”

  “We don’t normally live nearly that long. But I’ve foun
d that when I take beings from this universe for a host, the remaining years they have in their lifespans become mine. My kind can live forever if we take your kind as hosts. Those of you who can steal others’ lives are the same. You are immortal.”

  The dairei continued, “In your time, the tahkti and I entered the Bowman system the day before the invasion started. You didn’t even notice us. I had a force of about a thousand ships. We fell into this pocket universe and became marooned. But the unstable wormhole threw us backward in time tens of thousands of years. I’ve lived on, taking host after host and extending my life. At one point, I was able to build a spacefaring civilization and I tried to leave here. But your friends Mark and Barbie stopped me. They formed an advanced civilization as well. Their korei lengthened their lives enough to do that. They gave me quite a bit of trouble. Our two civilizations had a long war. I won, but it cost me a lot. I lost my ability to leave this planet. Your friends made sure of it. And my continent got shoved into an airstream that took it far to the north. We’re locked in an eternal winter. It’s not been pleasant.”

  The dairei paused, as if collecting his thoughts. “Then Mark and Barbie took their people and fled this universe through a wormhole that leads back to the Alliance, trapping me here. But now you’re here. And I’ve prepared for you. Your tech and your powers won’t work. Only my biologically-based tech will work while these machines function. My entire invasion force has these machines. You can’t fight me, so don’t try. I’ve had a message from the future, just like you. I know I’ll win no matter what you do. So just make it easy on yourself and give me what I want.”

  Jeff was horrified. ‘He’s had a message from the future too? And he knows about the other wormhole! I’ve got to stop him somehow. I can’t let him get back into space.’

  Diffidently, the dairei commented, “I know you don’t like what you’re hearing. But be reasonable. If your species cooperates with mine, both can benefit. We do this with the churei and it works very well.”

  Jeff was appalled. He had heard Nuraiyana describe being taken by this dairei when she was just a child. He retorted, “Do they think it works well? Don’t you come along when they’re just children and put them under your mind control? Don’t you just steal their entire lives?”