They arrived at his door. Jhahnahkan pressed his access code and it swooped open. The two entered his room and the door whisked closed.
“Computer, seal the cabin and cut off all communication from the others,” He ordered.
“Room has been sealed Jhahnahkan,” the computer responded.
“What’s this all about my love?” Kate asked holding his forearm.
He reached into his cloak and removed a green colored crystal fragment that seemed to have a yellowish tine to it and showed it to her.
“Ah,” she stated nodding her head, “I understand now.”
“I took this crystal fragment from Rivynon,” He said soberly.
“How did he obtain an infected crystal?” Kate said as she took the crystal from him. She lifted it up to the light and peered inside. She turned it and inspected every side before giving it back.
“We must cleanse the infection from this fragment before we reach Zelinite.”
Kate nodded in agreement, “Yes, I believe the Rune will be able to sense our approach and could jeopardize our mission.”
“You remember how we cleared the infection from the fragment back on Earth?”
“Yes!” Kate answered, “I do, but that also ended up nearly killing the entity within. You had to Ack’raamon the fragment into your power crystal to salvage it.”
“Yes, I know,” Jhahnahkan said. “Now we must do this again.”
“Can you merge a crystal with a sphere?” She asked.
“I do not know,” he said, “No one has ever possessed a crystal sphere before now.”
“This crystal that the ancient one forged for you is very special Jhahnahkan.”
“I know. I do feel privileged, but at what price?”
“Did you pull any memory of how he obtained this?” Kate asked.
“Yes, that’s the part that is puzzling me.”
“Oh?”
“It came from Helen.”
“Helen?!” Kate exclaimed.
“Yes, it was Helen. The Helen that Tamika took from us. She took her into the future.”
“Why would she give Rivynon this infected crystal, she must have known that it would cause him to become infected.”
“Maybe that’s what she intended.”
“What do you mean? She infected Rivynon on purpose?”
“No, I do not for one moment believe she has done this for the Rune,” Jhahnahkan said with total resolve, “This can only mean she did it knowing that it would cause enough of a commotion that we would investigate and discover this crystal shard. She gave it to me without giving it to me directly.”
“If what you are saying is true, then she gave us this crystal fragment for the specific reason of you joining your sphere and fragment together.” Kate said nodding in agreement.
“Yes, this crystal is from a thousand years from now.”
“This also means that the fractured timeline has made it to her time or this crystal would not be infected, am I correct?” Kate asked.
“I do believe you are correct. I think she intended for this, she must be giving us a message…”
“…Or a gift,” Kate added.
“You are getting more perceptive my wife,” Jhahnahkan smiled.
“Ok. Let’s get this thing healed and see what message awaits us,” Kate said taking the crystal fragment from Jhahnahkan.
The two stood and Kate took her place on the opposite side of the cabin and held the crystal fragment high above her head while Jhahnahkan stood and held his crystal sphere.
“I, Jhahnahkan, son of Qiaoshan of the house of Sö’, now perform the ritual of Ack’raamon! Let these two crystals now become one. It is written, so shall it be done!” he said using as much authority as he did on Earth.
He approached Kate and took the fragment from her and held it in one hand while suspending his sphere high over his own head. The two crystals began to glow a brilliant golden glow, and then an energy transference began to occur. The smaller fragment began to become absorbed by the larger pure crystal sphere. He took the fragment in both hands and lifted it up to the floating sphere and shoved the tip of the fragment into the clear crystal sphere. The greenish yellow fluid rushed down to the end of the crystal fragment as Jhahnahkan pushed it further into his sphere.
Kate cupped her hands under the crystal fragment as the substance dripped down and splashed into the palm of her hands and pooled up. She held her hands in place until the dripping infection had completely left the crystal fragment. Jhahnahkan finished pushing the last piece into the crystal sphere and he watched as the clear sphere swirled with a strange color; colors that neither of them had ever seen before. They were beautiful, but Kate still had work to do, she had to absorb this infection. She knew that her newly found power she had discovered on Ackturra would be what she needed to use here. Using her empathy strength, she closed her eyes and allowed the substance to enter into the pores of her skin. She began to wince and shudder and shake as it entered her body.
With the completion of the joining the two crystals together, Jhahnahkan turned his attention to the struggling Kate. He could see that she was having some trouble with dealing with this unusual substance.
He focused his energy and formed a bubble around Kate using the force of his sphere in hopes to transfer enough power into her to help her dissipate this infection. Fortunately, she was immune to the Rune by carrying her son and the substance was a small enough amount of Rune matter that it quickly vanished from her skin.
She began to turn an ashen grey color and her eyes sunk down into her head. She fell to the floor and lay on her side. Jhahnahkan sat next to her and cradled her in his lap and looked into her eyes.
She opened them up and smiled at her lover and slowly closed them again.
“Kate, don’t leave me!” Jhahnahkan panicked.
“It’s alright my husband,” she said softly, “I will be alright in a few more minutes.”
He smiled back at her in relief, “I thought I was going to lose you there for a moment.”
Her eyes opened and they appeared normal once again. Her skin quickly returned to normal and she sat up with a big smile on her face, “See, I told you I would be alright.”
He helped her off the floor and began to inspect his crystal sphere, now joined with a fragment, to see what changes may have taken place.
From the other side of the room a familiar figure appeared and stepped over to see what they were looking at as if nothing was wrong.
The two looked over with a start at the surprise of who they were staring at.
“Rex!” They shouted in unison.
* * *
Chapter 10
Cold as Ice
Orbiting Terra Firma
Year: 16,011 BC
The young Roth’stavous and Jhahnahkan looked on as they watched Uttarak vanish through the vortex that had opened beneath him before they could even react as to what had happened.
Jhahnahkan grabbed his crystal and focused on the current sector. After a moment of meditation he turned to Roth’stavous, “I do not sense him here in this time any longer.”
“Where did he disappear to then?”
“I do not know, I must find him and stop him at whatever he is doing,” Jhahnahkan said, “You must tell me all you know and then I must bury this vessel in the polar ice cap of this planet. I will use this vessel in the corrupted timeline, but if this ship is not where it has to be, a time paradox will occur.”
“You came here to stop our war and prevent us from finding this Ackturra,” Roth’stavous said, “but you are not able to prevent destiny from happening. You’re being here proves that we find Ackturra.”
Roth’stavous reached out to the crystal and touched it as it glowed in the hands of his grandson. The glow traveled down his arms and encompassed his entire body and then the power field around Roth’stavous vanished as it absorbed into his skin.
“What just happened to me?!” he exclaimed.
“
The power of the crystal traveled into you. Your life has just been extended and I understand how you could be as old as you are back on Scorpii.”
“What do you mean, how old I could be? Roth’stavous asked with puzzle, “I’m only 40 years old.”
“I have told you too much already. You must find these things out for yourself, and as you said; destiny will prevail.”
“I see this is so,” Roth’stavous agreed. “We must travel to Ackturra. We will form a truce with the Southern fleet in light of this new information. Then we will assemble our star ships and travel to this distant place to seek the power crystals of Ackturra.”
“I will give you this power crystal as a gift. Use it as a beacon; it will guide you to the places and times you need to be.”
“Why the sudden change of heart?” Roth’stavous said as he eagerly accepted the gift.
“I see now that no matter what I do, nothing will change. The outcome will always be the same, I cannot affect destiny. So I must give you this as a way of helping destiny along.”
“How will you access this time-helix without your crystal?”
“A wise old man once told me that I would not need a crystal, and that I would learn how to access the powers that are within me already. I no longer need this crystal, besides, it belongs to you anyway.”
“I will tell you of our people,” Roth’stavous said. “You must remember us as we once were and not as what we have become.”
“Signal your ship that we are departing to the polar ice cap. You can return to your people using this crystal,” Jhahnahkan said. He then plotted the course to where his ship would rest until the time it would again be needed.
Roth’stavous gave the signal to his ship and they flew away and returned to the Northern fleet in high orbit over the northern hemisphere of Earth.
“We came from another planet other than Terra Firma.”
“I know grandfather,” Jhahnahkan said.
“I am beginning to understand. Yes, as a matter of fact I do get this.”
“Tell me what happened to bring you here from you’re your home world Mars?”
“I can see that legends have either been exaggerated or forgotten over the many millennia.
“You do come from Mars. That is what the ancient scroll said in the crystal caverns.”
“Well… sort of,” Roth’stavous began, “You see there was another planet in this solar system called Astra. It was the fifth planet from our star. Mars was another planetoid body that was in the same orbit as Astra.”
“Go on,” Jhahnahkan said as he flew his ship down into the planet’s atmosphere.
“Astra is our home… or was,” Roth’stavous said with sadness.
“What happened?”
“It was the war and our war machine that caused a cataclysmic event. We had always fought; we were a warring people. We never could not even agree to disagree. We would have wars because we knew no other way of life.”
“This seems to be something common in our blood,” Jhahnahkan commented.
“Because of Astra’s close proximity to Mars and the weapon that was devised, a technology so powerful and so overwhelming, that neither side dared to fire the weapon.”
“But someone did…” Jhahnahkan added, “…at least it seems like they did.”
“Yes, about fifteen years ago,” Roth’stavous explained, “We all warned of the possibility that it could damage the planet’s core. Both sides built the weapon and both weapons were tied directly into the planet’s core for its power source. Once the switch had been fired, there was a design flaw… something that our scientific community warned us of.”
“You couldn’t shut it down.”
“Yes!” Roth’stavous almost cried. “It fired up and began draining the planets core to charge the weapon. It would hold so much energy that when it discharged at the target, it would vaporize our enemy. Not just one weapon building up a charge began; the South discovered the North’s weapons were building up and they turned on their weapon and aimed it at us. The drain on our planet’s core was too great once the weapons fired. There wasn’t anything anyone could do. Those of us that barely made it into space or resided on the northern hemisphere of Mars would be the only ones to survive.”
“The weapon destroyed the entire planet?” Jhahnahkan exclaimed.
“Yes, the resulting weapons discharge broke the planet apart and exploded sending a blizzard of asteroids into the Mars’s Roche limit.”
“Roche limit,” Jhahnahkan said, “That’s the distance from the center of a planet that a satellite can approach without being pulled apart by the planets gravitational pull, right?”
“Yes, correct.” Roth’stavous said as he pointed out the front window. “Might I caution you, you’re getting fairly close to that ice.”
“Yes, we are going down into the ice cap. The computer will dig us a grave for her to rest. Please continue,” he said casually.
“Well, Astra completely disintegrated and slammed into Mars at twenty-five thousand miles per hour. The rain of planetary debris that impacted Mars only lasted fifteen minutes. Then it was all over. Mars was left without a magnetic field and a leaking atmosphere. None of us would be able to survive. We took everything we could and formed a pact to never build such a device ever again. We were able to put aside our differences to survive. We made our way to the third planet, a relatively new planet that was fresh and alive. We thought we could make a new start here. We had left a monument in the area on the Mars surface that would have survived in the non-strike zone; an area called Cydonia.”
“Monument?”
“Yes, it looks like the face of our people as it stares up into the heavens; it’s a place where all beings can be aware of what happened there. We want to ensure others would not make the same mistake as we. To ensure that we never forget, we are building a new monument on the surface of this planet. It will provide a link to our ancestry. We thought that if we did survive on this planet, our offspring may one day visit Mars and discover their heritage.”
“Our heritage has been discovered,” Jhahnahkan said as he positioned the ship over the spot where he would descend into the ice, “I only have one question.”
“Yes?” Roth’stavous asked as he prepared himself to return to his people.
“How many survived the event?”
“Fifty-thousand, maybe a few more...” Roth’stavous said shaking his head.
Jhahnahkan fully understood now why it was imperative that these factions leave each other. They no longer could afford to be at war, but each side would continue to blame the other until there would be no one left.
He ordered the computer to activate the phosphoresce shielding to heat up the hull of the ship. He would use his ship like a hot poker and with its engines; he could burrow beneath the ice cap nearly one hundred feet, only to be found later, by himself, from another timeline.
“I am not surprised that my son, who I must have had from that altered timeline, has gone insane. All of the things I have done and seen are enough to make any man go insane.”
“Good luck my grandson.” Roth’stavous said.
“Yes, good luck to you as well Roth’stavous.”
Just before Roth’stavous could turn to open a vortex and return to his ship, Jhahnahkan touched him on his young grandfather’s temple and transmitted the thought on his meeting. He caused him to understand that he was only a visitor and that he could never tell the other Jhahnahkan of these events.
Roth’stavous nodded his understanding and allowed the visitor to block his mind of his real identity. He raised his new prize crystal before him and opened a vortex as if he had this knowledge already. He calmly nodded once more and left the bridge of Jhahnahkan’s ship.
Jhahnahkan continued to burrow down until he was at the correct depth and then used his weapons fire to cover the ship with the ice above.
“Computer,” Jhahnahkan began, “prepare for core shut down, you are going to go to sleep for
a really long time.”
“Understood Jhahnahkan,” The computer obliged as systems around him dimmed, making the ship turn to silence beneath the icy grave.
He then programmed the computer to awaken at only his voice and removed the memory of how this ship came to be in this place before setting the computer into its long slumber.
Jhahnahkan turned off the last panel and stood on the bridge of the ship and looked out at the frozen grave that his ship had laid at rest deep down beneath the ice.
He reached in his cloak for his crystal, merely out habit, before he realized he no longer had one. He thought to himself, I know I will be able to open a vortex, I am the chosen one.
He closed his eyes in the darkness of the bridge and focused on where Uttarak had gone. He used adrenaline and channeled that emotion into the needed energy to invoke a vortex. He knew there were high stakes and failure was not an option. He thought about all the things he had experienced and what he must do.
He began to hear the echoes of sparks making noise as a vortex opened almost taking him by surprise at his accomplishment.
He opened his eyes and looked at the vortex as he stood before the entrance. Something appeared different than the others he had seen. This one was not showing anything on the other side; it appeared dark.
Unable to resist staying back and knowing he must begin somewhere to find Uttarak; he trusted his instinct and cautiously stepped into the vortex and closed the opening behind, leaving a cold and damp vessel to lay at rest deep in the polar ice cap for the next twenty thousand years.
* * *
Leif Erikson
En-Route to Zelinite Year: 2983.9
“What’s the matter?” Rex said as he looked at Jhahnahkan and Kate, who now had turned five shades of white, “It looks as if you have seen a… a… ghost.” He finally managed to snicker.
“How… you were…” Jhahnahkan began.
“In the crystal sphere.” Kate finished for him.
Secret of the Crystal - Omnibus Edition Books 1-3 (Time Travel Adventure) Page 66
