The Delta Chamber had blamed him and Operator Charlotte for the disaster. But he knew what the real cause had been for the Timeline reverting to a time before Delta had started meddling in the past.
It was Delta itself.
The Chamber should have realized why the human’s timeline didn’t exist beyond 2773. And why the Varons wanted and had managed, to reset the human’s Timeline.
After all, the humans were Delta’s ancestors, and humanity should have been allowed to develop naturally.
Javon felt the buffers go, and his consciousness finally left him.
The Varons said that they would keep an eye on the humans’ progress. But, in reality, they would leave humanity to slowly die out.
Epilogue
Earth, December 2108
The News Flash lit up on the public information panels across the world.
Humanity’s darkest hour.
Reports are coming in that the Settler ship, Acarea, which four days ago commenced its long voyage to Procyon, 11.4 light years away, has exploded.
Telemetry has indicated sabotage. Optical observations have confirmed that the ship is in two pieces, and we understand that there cannot be any survivors.
From Acarea control.
The news flash would be repeated every thirty minutes, for the next twelve hours.
Judith Morante was in an office on the twentieth floor of the government building. She was standing at the window looking down on the crowds congregating around a massive public information panel far below.
She wore a pale top with a V-shaped plunging neckline that almost ran down to the top of her skirt. The V shape just managing to support her firm breasts, while leaving virtually nothing to the imagination.
The over-tight skirt she was wearing looked as if it would split open at any moment. Her shoes were in a color that matched her blue-green eyes. With her short coppery colored hair almost matching the color of her perfectly painted fingernails, and her full lips completing her female armory.
However, Judith had no idea why she was standing in this room and dressed like…. Like, what?
Judith was confused. She was supposed to be at home preparing lunch, now.
Her husband, Graham, was collecting their only child, Candy, from her grandparents and would be home in ten minutes.
She was starting to feel uneasy. How did she get here? She had no idea. Yet, here she was, standing in a room that looked familiar, but wasn’t.
Then, another thought hit her. Like this room was familiar to her, and she also felt as if she might indeed be an assassin.
“Never,” Judith muttered. She was one-hundred percent sure that she’d never killed a living soul, and there was no way she was an assassin.
“Judith,” a man’s voice bellowed from the office across the corridor.
“Coming,” she said without thinking and walked into his office.
“Close the door and lock it,” the man ordered.
The man, already dropping his trousers, was scruffy for a CO, and his body odor and greasy black hair made her shudder. All in all, he looked like a thoroughly unpleasant person.
The name Tex came to her, she didn’t know why. Then she suddenly glimpsed herself laying back over the edge of his desk, her feet touching the floor and him inside her.
“No, No, No… Do it yourself… Pervert,” she snapped, turned and hurriedly unlocked the door as she tried to get out of this frightening place, and home.
But, she never made it outside.
Where have you been?” Judith’s husband Graham asked, seeing Judith appear from nowhere, and looking like she’d just been through the wringer.
Judith was bewildered, she wasn’t sure just where she had been. It was as if one set of memories had been replaced by another.
“Mummy, mummy,” a child called as she ran up to Judith and tried to hug her.
“I’m here now, Candy,” she soothed.
Doctor Hanson watched in dismay, as the news reports on the Acarea came in.
He had been working on the Acarea project at Cebro for nearly fifty years. He was old now, but he was still able to feel the pain of the Acarea’s loss.
The Nuclear Pulse Engine for the Settler Starship had been his baby. Its development and testing had been a dream project. Yes, everything had worked the first time, but now, with all those years of work and material down the drain, it would probably take another hundred years for humanity to attempt another colonizing trip to a Star.
In the back of his mind though, like an irritating itch, he still thought that the Acarea had launched successfully.
Then, even that thought slowly ebbed away until the only reality was the here and now. One in which the Settler-ship, Acarea, had been destroyed.
Then, that irritating itch was back, as the telemetry readings from Acarea returned but seemed to be continually changing.
No, that can’t be right, he thought.
The Varon’s afterthoughts.
“A brilliant operation. We’ve finally fulfilled the Varons dream. We are now the Galaxy’s dominant race.”
“True. But, if the humans should ever find out what we have done to them, they could still be a threat to us in the future.”
“Never. The Time Crystal has been destroyed.”
“You should never have saved those six humans.”
“I had to give them an incentive. It was the right thing to do.”
“I hope you are right, Tamar.”
21st century
Frank could see the amusing side of Tamar’s action as he, Susanna and Charlotte materialized together. With the three of them still having the memories of their previous lives intact, as Tamar had predicted.
Charlotte was surprised to find herself in the 21st century with Frank and Susanna. She noted that all three of them looked younger.
This should be interesting, she thought. This must mean that Frank will father both sets of children. I bet that won’t go down well with Susanna.
Frank didn’t see any sign of Gerry and Cindy or Anton, so he assumed that they must be on their own, somewhere else. Though, he hadn’t a clue about where, or when.
However, his last-minute jitters brought about by Gerry’s outburst, worried Frank. He hoped that they had all made the right decision in destroying the Time Crystal and were not being tricked, as Gerry had claimed.
He thought about the Acarea. That had been a critical point in time for humanity, he decided. Because, although Micky Sanderson had come from a future that no longer existed, and the Delta crystal that had formed a Temporal shaft between Uptime and Downtime, had been destroyed, Acarea could still have survived.
This would mean that at least part of the human timeline would still exist.
Suddenly, they were somewhere else.
Earth, 2300.
The boy was sure that the massive crystal wasn’t there a moment ago. To him, it felt as if it radiated a field that made him tingle, and that this field encompassed everything around him.
Suddenly, five people appeared from nowhere. After a few seconds of looking around, they seemed to look in his direction. He was sure that they were aware of him.
This scared him, so he moved as stealthily as he could further back into the shade cast by an overhanging rock formation. Then he wondered if they had really seen him, or perhaps they weren’t really here, and it was all a trick of his imagination.
Something else he’d missed seeing that wasn’t there earlier, was a strange enormous dumbbell shaped craft over four hundred meters away. Although the craft seemed dark and dead, it looked evil and frightening to him.
This time, all six humans were moved through time by the final Time-Quake and materialized together. The Varon trackers had done their job.
The humans finally understood that they had been tricked, and no doubt the Varon’s were now the dominant race in 2330, the time period that the six humans had just come from.
It had been the Varons objective all along. But, th
ankfully, it seemed that Gerry had done the impossible and had saved the six of them.
“Brilliant, Gerry,” Frank congratulated.
“I have to agree,” Gerry smugly replied.
“I altered the time crystals destruction procedure. And made it, and the Time-ship, follow our Varon trackers instead.”
“Even so. the Varons tricked us,” Cindy bitterly stated. “We were puppets alright.”
“Maybe so,” Frank agreed. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can sense all of you. So, we must have retained our mental abilities.”
“Agreed,” Cindy acknowledged.
Anton, the Delta Time ship’s technician, and pilot joined them.
“Well, we now have a Time-ship and the Time-Crystal with its control and interface disc intact,” he told them.
“Yea, but no way to use them,” Susanna pointed out.
“Maybe. But it’s not all bad,” Anton cautiously said.
“The ship’s date still reads 2330. So, the Timeline-matrix is still functional. And, luckily, the matrix in the ship is protected by a temporal shield that is still operational.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Frank said.
“It is, Frank. Don’t forget, we had to protect the matrix in case of a power failure, or a Temporal-shaft interruption. Otherwise, any ship still traveling in the shaft, or at a Spur’s end, would be lost in time.”
“So, we could move the crystal inside the ship,” Gerry speculated aloud. “Connect the control disc to the predictor's interface. Then, once active, it would generate a new temporal-shaft with the ship itself being its new Temporal Anchor.”
“That makes sense,” Anton agreed. “And, since there’s only one-time ship involved, then there’s no reason why our Time ship can’t be the Anchor.”
“Does anyone know if the old Timeline-strand is irretrievably lost. If not, how the hell do we reconnect with it?” Charlotte asked.
“If it is still in existence, then we can program the matrix to search for it,” Anton suggested.
“But, even if we find it. By the look of the Time ship’s dullness, it must be virtually out of power,” Susanna remarked, “If so, instead of going to sometime closer to 2330, we’ll be going nowhere.”
“No. The Time ship still has enough power to run systems and is already charging her power unit from the Sun, and Earth’s magnetic field,” Anton said and pondered a moment.
“Susanna, you are an Encryption and Data Analysis specialist, aren’t you?” Gerry then asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you could assist me in re-writing part of the search algorithm.”
“Really? I think you’re much more advanced than me,” Susanna stated.
“Sometimes, a second opinion is helpful.”
“If it’ll help, then yes.”
“Good.”
“Did anyone else see that boy watching us?” Charlotte then asked.
“Yes,” Frank replied. “And this doesn’t look like the 24th century we all knew. I’ve not seen any hi-tech so far.
“Me neither,” Gerry agreed.
Anton looked back at the Time ship. “I reckon it’ll be about two hours before the food replicator comes back on-line. Then another six hours before the ship’s power level is high enough to move her somewhere safer, and away from prying eyes.”
“Ok, then we can start our computations,” Gerry excitedly added.
But, it had finally come home to Frank Susanna and Charlotte that they would never see their children again.
And even though all six wanted revenge on the Varons, no-one really believed that they could ever leave this place or this time period.
Could they really risk believing?
The End
.
About the Author
I started writing my first book many years ago, but fate then conspired to point me in a different direction.
Although my career in electronic design was both exciting and fulfilling, especially with the fast-moving pace of the technology employed. I never lost my love of space. Or, of the possibility of man one-day traveling in Space and colonizing planets.
It wasn’t until 2013 that I had time to continue writing my book. Then I kept writing until finally, I had completed my SpaceFed-Starships Trilogy. I was then drawn to write a fourth book, Death of Time. Followed by my fifth book, Acarea A Triumph or Disaster.
In my sixth and seventh books, The Garoden War - Into the Fire, and Military Gamble. We saw the build-up to the first real Military action, as the Garoden Fleet engaged the Earth’s new Space Navy.
Now, my eighth book, Galactic War, concludes the SpaceFed saga.
Or does it?
Gerry A. Saunders
Dedication
I would like to thank my wife for her support in helping me complete this book. I hope you have enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Other Books by this Author
SpaceFed StarShips Trilogy.
Book 1. Battles at Zeta Reticuli.
Book 2. Battle for Delta Pavonis.
Book 3. An Alliance at Kepler.
SpaceFed StarShips Series.
Book 4. Death of Time.
Book 5. Acarea. A Triumph or Disaster.
Book 6. The Garoden War. Part 1. Into the Fire.
Book 7. The Garoden War. Part 2. Military Gamble.
Book 8. Galactic War.
The Definitive StarShips Trilogy in one book.
http://www.spacefedbooks.com
Some Links back to relevant events in other Books.
The Varons.
Book 2. Chapter 2.
Cazer’s impurity Warp crystal.
Book 3. Chapter 33.
Cebro.
Book 4. Chapter 22.
Acarea launch.
Book 5. Chapter 7.
Early Enhanced Brain Cell use.
Judith Morante. Book 5. Chapter 11.
Frank and Susanna. Book 1 Chapter 2.
Ships
Andromeda
Illustrious class
Argonaut
Crillon Battle Cruiser
A Solveron Battle-Sphere
A Garoden Battle-Star
The Carrier Lexington
WEP Weapons Drone
Ronin. The ship from 2620
The Arrow
A Varon ship
Galactic War Page 17