Temporal Manipulation  is the main theme of this story.  

   Two Martians, Exo and Xik, who have been around for 95,000 years, made their home on Earth after the environmental system of Mars desisted around 92,000 BC, and to attain as much power over Earth and its civilization as possible, they affected manipulations via time-travel throughout the planet’s history.

  Mars was not alone, however; there was another planet that coexisted with it in ancient times. The planet was composed of those fragments of stone which are presently known of as the asteroid belt.  The planet was known as Tranqua and like Mars,  it had a civilization and people.

  But the two planets were very different.   Mars was very dry, mostly desert, and its people were very war-like.   Tranqua, on the other hand, was more Earth-like; with plentiful seas, flora, and fauna, and its people were peaceful and spiritual.

  Mars enslaved the Tranquans and exploited its resources, for almost 3 thousand years.  Eventually,   the Tranquans fought and won independence and freedom,   but wars between the two planets continued, until finally,   Mars used atomic weapons and through a miscalculation, caused Tranqua’s destruction.

  Soon after, Mars also lost its ability to support life.  Exo and Xik fled to Earth, and had their way with it, free of the Tranquans, for 90,000 years.

  Then, in 2086, a space-pilot named Ron Querzo crashed on an asteroid and discovered some ancient relics of Tranqua, including a ‘temporal transverser’, a space and time vehicle much like the one that Exo and Xik owned and operated.

  In 2093, the Third World War occurred on Earth and Querzo took the space-time vehicle to Earth to provide help.   In 2094, reunited with some old friends at one of the last out- posts of civilization, Querzo discovered that the Martians were manipulating Earth’s history and had a major hand in the war.

  He also discovered that a warlord known as Nxtl, a puppet of Exo and Xik, had been transported from an alternate Earth, and was a parallel counterpart of his own grand- father.

  By transporting Nxtl across ‘tem-lines’ to an alternate Earth, Exo and Xik had violated an ancient taboo and upset the natural course of  Earth’s history.  Nxtl had been taken from AB3 Earth to AB1 Earth. After Querzo managed to solve the crisis on AB1 Earth, he returned Nxtl to AB3 Earth.

  The extraordinary circumstances of Exo and Xik’s manipulations had turned a poor, powerless misanthrope,  Querzo’s grandfather’s parallel-counterpart,  into Nxtl,  a powerful warlord bent on conquering the world.

  Because this was a ‘temporal violation’  that never should have occurred,  Querzo had to return Nxtl to his own tem-line and time, on AB3 Earth, in an attempt to restore the original order of Earth’s history.

  But he also had to help Nxtl in such a way that would provide enough incentive for the man to never work with Exo and Xik again. So he gave the poor, misanthropic man about 20 thousand dollars, in gold and platinum, to help set him on a more virtuous path in life and told him not to play with the Martians ever again.

  But Querzo forgot about how evil the two time-traveling Martians could be and Nxtl’s hands were forced again, this time, to act on his own tem-line, on AB3 Earth.
  This is that story, from Nxtl’s viewpoint.