CHAPTER 3: The Present
EASTER ISLAND
The bouncer raced through the tunnel, up into the water of the lake in the Rano Kau crater and into the air. Aspasia's Shadow was at the controls and once he cleared the rim of the crater he directed it to the west at maximum speed.
He left behind the most remote island on the planet, with over ten thousand former "slaves" now freed of the nanovirus with which he had infected them. Naval personnel mingled with those who had been led to the island by Guides to follow Aspasia's Shadow. With the humans gaining control of the Master Guardian, he had lost control of his guardian computer and consequently lost control of the nanovirus.
But he was immortal, having partaken of the Grail, which now rested on the floor of the bouncer next to him. No longer would he continuously have to reincarnate himself via the ka. He also left behind the handful of guides that had been corrupted by guardian computers and come to him when he had called. Those they had misled fell upon them with a vengeance. Every Guide on Easter Island was dead within minutes, torn to pieces by the newly freed.
Aspasia's Shadow cared nothing for those he abandoned. Being free of the ka he could finally be free of this planet and this island on the forsaken planet. Though the humans now controlled the Master Guardian, Aspasia's Shadow had fought the humans too long not to have emergency plans prepared for every contingency he had been able to imagine over the many years he had prepared.
QIAN-LING, CHINA
The four metal dragons carrying Artad and his Kortad exited the mountain tomb and headed west. Millennia after entering the tomb, Artad was ready to resume his mission to Earth. He had slept for over ten thousand years in the lowest chamber under the mountain, waiting.
The alien sat in a tall seat, his seven-foot frame melding into the contours. Six-fingered hands manipulated the controls while his red cat eyes scanned the displays. That he was abandoning the Chinese government with which he had allied concerned him not in the slightest. The humans, against all odds, had recovered Excalibur and taken control of the Master Guardian, and in turn his mothership. His plans foiled, he knew he had only one option: Get to Mars.
He'd seen what the surviving Airlia there had been building. And he knew it was the answer to all his problems. Then there would be time to put the humans back in their place.
CAMP ROWE, NORTH CAROLINA
The Eleventh Airborne Division had trained at Camp Rowe during World War II. The Son Tay commandos had also conducted their preparation for the raid into North Vietnam at a mock-up built next to the long runway. And the Delta Force commandos who had later conducted the ill-fated hostage rescue mission into Iran had also done their training at this spot in the North Carolina pine forests to the west of Fort Bragg. It was also the site of Phase I and Phase III training for Special Forces recruits.
Now the remnants of those who had operated out of Area 51 called the remote site their headquarters. Given that Yakov was in Turkey and Turcotte was on Everest, and Che Lu and Mualama were dead, the only ones left here were Major Quinn and Larry Kincaid.
The two worked out of a pair of communications vans that had been brought here from nearby Fort Bragg by the Delta Force commander, an old army buddy of Turcotte's. The vans were linked into the military's secure MILSTAR communication system. With access to this, both men could try to stay on top of the swirl of recent events.
Larry Kincaid checked the latest imagery from Mars relayed from the Hubble Space Telescope. Kincaid had worked at JPL the Jet Propulsion Laband NASA for decades. He'd been drawn into Area 51 when it was discovered that the Airlia had an ancient base at Cydonia on Mars. Since then he'd been monitoring activity on the Red Planet, specifically at Cydonia and the recent construction on the high slope of Mons Olympus.
Prior to Yakov gaining control of the Master Guardian, the construction on Mons Olympus had seemed to be progressing swiftly. A series of black struts crisscrossed the massive bowl that had been excavated in the side of the volcano near the summit. By the shadows Kincaid could tell the struts were lifted above the ground about ten meters. On top of most of the struts, latticework was completed. It reminded him of a spider's web with the spaces between filled in with shiny material. Looming over the bowl and latticework he could see three inward curving pylons, two apparently finished, twins of each other, the third slightly shorter, not yet done. Their scale was staggering, even given Mars' lower gravitational field, only three-eighths that of Earth. Each one had to be at least fifteen hundred meters high, well over three times the height of the Empire State Building in New York City. And they curved toward the center of the bowl, coming within four hundred meters of each other.
Even given the massive size of the construction, it was still dwarfed by the extinct volcano near whose peak it was located. Mons Olympus is the tallest mountain in the solar system. The peak is over fifteen miles above the surrounding Martian landscape. The base is 340 miles in width. The volcano, along with its smaller comrades that comprised the Tarsis Bulge, was so massive that it actually affected the rotation of the planet.
The mech-machines that had been working on the construction had been forced to dig partially through a four-mile-high escarpment surrounding the mountain and build up a hundred-mile ramp to clear a path to the peak. The mechs had come from Cydonia, carrying scavenged material from the "face" that had long been noted from Earth at that location.
Something had been destroyed there at Cydonia, Kincaid had concluded. And now they were rebuilding it at a much higher location. Yakov's control of the Master Guardian had shut down the control the Cydonia guardian had exercised over the mechs and construction had been halted. So close to completion, Kincaid could tell, but completion of what?
Something was nagging at the edge of Kincaid's mind he was certain he had seen something like this before. Where? When? And more importantly, what had it been? He cleared his mind. If he had seen something like it, then it had to have been somewhere here on Earth. He ignored the Mars angle and simply thought about the construction.
A deep dish. Towers around the edge. Latticework.
Then it suddenly came to him. Where he had seen something like this on Earth. In Puerto Rico. The Arecibo Observatory the world's largest single-dish radio telescope.
Over a thousand feet in diameter and covering twenty acres. Kincaid had visited it several times while working for NASA. It had taken three years to build, from 1960 to '63, if he remembered rightly. The Airlia had this thing almost done in that many weeks and it was so much larger.
He grabbed the imagery for a second look and had no doubt. What was being built on Mons Olympus was very similar, yet on a scale that dwarfed what had been done in Puerto Rico. He quickly did some measurements and came up with the astounding fact that the Mons Olympus array was going to be over a hundred times larger than Arecibo.
Why would they need something that large? Kincaid wondered. Arecibo was designed to pick up radio waves from deep space. Were the Airlia at Cydonia looking to receive a message? If so, from whom? And Kincaid stopped his runaway thoughts as something frightening occurred to him Arecibo, while primarily a receiver, could also transmit. Of course, it had never really been used like that because who was there in the heavens to transmit to? And radio waves were relatively slow when measured against interstellar distances. Even the first radio transmissions made on Earth were still making their way to the nearest star.
Unless he felt a chill run up his spine unless the Airlia had a way of transmitting that was faster than radio waves. Perhaps faster than light? After all, the mothership was suspected of faster-than-light travel. And if they did have a way of communicating at a reasonable speed given the distance between star systems
Kincaid spun in his seat toward Quinn, who was on the radio monitoring events. "I need to get ahold of Mike Turcotte ASAP."
Quinn pulled the mike away from his lips. "I'd like to hear from him, never mind get ahold of him. I don't think he's coming down off the mountain."
THE GULF OF MEXICO
Garlin walked down the corridor and stopped in front of the elevator doors. They slowly slid to the side, revealing the second set of doors. He ignored the blood coating the floor from the Israeli agents who had brought the Ark and were subsequently killed. Their bodies still littered the floor, sliced in half at the waist. He walked up to the far side, stepping over a bloodless torso. The doors slid open, revealing a smooth, black, slightly curving surface. A rectangular outline appeared, then that section opened from the top, lowering to the floor. A very short passageway was beyond the hatch, ending at a metal door. Garlin walked to the door and hit a code on a panel to the left. The door slid aside, revealing a spherical chamber about fifteen feet in width, filled with gear and lit with a dull green glow. In the exact center was a thick pedestal on which rested a bizarre creature. It consisted of a gray orb, four feet in diameter with numerous eyes spaced evenly around the body. One gray arm, six feet long, extended upward, wavering in the air like a cobra ready to strike. The tip of a second tentacle was inserted into a square black box. Out of three other knobs, smaller versions of tentacles were growing, none yet at full maturity. Several eyes turned and watched Garlin approach. It was one of the Swarm, and the last thing the Israeli agent Sherev had seen when he brought the Ark of the Covenant here, believing he was delivering it to a new Majestic-12 committee.
Garlin knelt in front of the pedestal and leaned his head back, mouth opening wide, pointing directly up. A gray tentacle appeared in his throat, slowly slithering out, until all six feet of it was free of the human's body, which remained still. An identical arm on the orb reached forward and grasped the three fingers on the end of the tentacle. It lifted it free of the human body and the tentacle bent, the thick end coming toward the orb and attaching itself to a knob on the front side. Within seconds the two were reconnected.
Data was relayed from the one-hemisphere brain at the stem of the tentacle to the four-hemisphere brain inside the Swarm scout: The Ark of the Covenant was working but slowly. The mental shield around Duncan's real memories had been pierced in places. Penetration and retrieval into Duncan's real memory was progressing but there was a long way to go, particularly with regard to her real identity, purpose, and origin, which were of utmost importance to the Swarm, as was the secret of her immortality.
The details of the planet's surface that had been displayed on the Ark's screen were sent to the black box, which was a mainframe computer. The images were analyzed for a match. The result came back within seconds. Duncan's home world was pinpointed along with the information that the Swarm had already harvested it thousands of years previously. And they knew a mothership had left there prior to the fleet arriving. The assumption had been that the Airlia had abandoned the planet on board that mothership. That assumption appeared to be in error. Not Airlia, but Duncan's people had been on board. Which raised a new issue.
The Airlia were a known enemy. Humans had been encountered, but by themselves had always been easily overwhelmed. But humans who had defeated the Airlia? Not once, but twice, as recent events on this planet indicated. This was something unknown. And the Swarm, with hundreds of thousands of years of experience in battle against other species in the universe, believed the unknown to be the most dangerous threat of all.
The Swarm considered the problem. Time would normally not be a concern. After all, it had spent decades here in isolation slowly developing and putting into effect its plan to infiltrate and study the humans and counter the Airlia presence on the planet. It had even tried to destroy the key to the Master Guardian many years ago and again just recently, but been thwarted both times, losing two tentacles in the process.
Thwarted by humans.
Most strange and unprecedented.
Which brought it back to the issue that time was now a problem.
The Swarm had battled the Airlia and other intelligent species for almost half a million years on a front that stretched over dozens of galaxies. The Airlia had superior technology, but the Swarm had countered with numbers. The time and distances involved in this interstellar war were beyond anything humans could comprehend.
However, the luxury of time here on this planet was now being denied because the Master Guardian had been reached and activated by the humans. And the few Airlia left on the planet were moving. And a human from one planet had contacted others across a great distance and defeated the Airlia once more.
The Swarm needed a way to relay information to its fleet so this planet could be targeted for infiltration, harvesting, and destruction. The escape pod that was attached to the oil rig could move through the planet's atmosphere but could not make orbit or communicate on an interstellar scale.
If the humans had the mothership, the Swarm knew, then the surviving Airlia factions faced the same problem it did. What were they going to do now? The answer came to it almost as quickly as the question was formed. On the screen in front of the Swarm, a planet was displayed, along with data stolen from the humans watching the Red Planet. Mars. The construction on Mons Olympus was highlighted. The Swarm had seen such an array before and destroyed every one it ran into. It knew what it was. On Mars was the means to contact its fleet.
But to get to Mars a craft capable of spaceflight was needed. The humans had control of the only means of interplanetary travel on the planet the mothership and the Talon warcraft attached to it. Even as the Swarm considered this option, it suddenly realized that those weren't the only interplanetary spacecraft on the planet the information gained indicated that Duncan had come to Earth on a spacecraft that at the very least could get to Mars. That craft was secreted on this planet somewhere. The decision on the next course of action was not hard for the Swarm to make.
The tentacle separated from the main orb and extended across to Garlin's mouth, which was still open. It slithered into his body, wrapping itself around his spinal column while microscopic probes on the ends of the three fingers extended into his brain, taking complete mental control while other probes infiltrated his spinal column, taking command of his body. The body shivered and twitched as the connections were made, then became still.
Garlin got to his feet and left the room. He walked out of the escape pod to the room where Duncan lay on a metal table, the crown on her head and thin cable looped over to the lid of the Ark of the Covenant. He typed into the control panel once more and resumed the probing of her suppressed memories with a focus on discovering where the craft was hidden.
On the table, Lisa Duncan writhed in distress. Any pain she ever remembered feeling was nothing compared to the agony that was tearing through her mind as the Ark of the Covenant battered through the mental shield with which she had been programmed and searched out her true memories, from which even she had been blocked for this very reason.
The truth was in there, buried deep inside her brain. And the small part of her that was able consciously to think despite the pain wanted to know it as badly as the Swarm. But there was also the terrible fear that she might give up the truth to the Swarm and doom billions in the process. While her past was blocked from her inside her own brain, she knew her mission, and she knew that the fate of this planet and everyone on it hung in the balance.
Garlin's eyes watched the screen, the data traveling to his brain, the information then tapped by the Swarm tentacle. Whoever he had been before being taken by the Swarm had retreated to a small part of his essence, unable to take action with his own body, his own mind. The Swarm had perfected the art of manipulating and consuming other species over the course of its existence. It was the ultimate parasite, subsisting not just on physical replenishment from other species but mental and emotional as well. Unfortunately for the Swarm, it always eventually destroyed those it subsisted on, requiring the race constantly to search out new sources of sustenance.
The Swarm was pushing the Ark to probe in the same direction it had earlier, to track where the spacecraft let off by the mothership had gone. It had to have landed somewhere on Earth. The memory was shielded, but the Swarm knew that a shield indicated something worth protecting, so it was confident the information was somewhere inside her brain.
A new image appeared on screen. A large plain of tall grass beneath a gray and rainy sky extending in all directions as far as could be seen. A river meandered through the plain, cutting deep into the ground.
A saucer-shaped craft appeared, hovering just above the plain. The skin of the craft glowed bright red from its journey and deceleration through the Earth's atmosphere. It flew over the plane, crisscrossing. Then it moved to the north to mountainous terrain. It halted above a jumble of large boulders on the side of a mountain. A powerful beam flashed down, cutting into stone, shaping three of the boulders into large rectangular shapes. Then a tractor beam on the bottom of the craft was activated and the three stones were lifted off the ground.
The spaceship flew back to the plain, the stones in tow. The screen went dark, the mental shield cutting off the view.
Garlin's hands touched the controls and the probe resumed where it had left off.
The craft was over the river. The stones were laid out on the plain about sixty feet away. The craft dropped altitude to just above the surface of the water. Steam hissed up from the river at the craft's proximity.
The forward edge of the craft touched the riverbank. The two pod engines whined with exertion as the narrow forward edge of the craft dug into the ground. Ever so slowly, the craft dug into the dirt and rock, angling down and burying itself until only the engine pod and the rear edge of the craft were visible. It rocked back and forth, widening the cavity it had dug in the earth. The heat from the spacecraft's surface fused the limestone, creating a cavern. The craft then backed out of the large hole it had created and landed on the plain above.
A hatch near the front protrusion opened and a man and woman dressed in black jumpsuits climbed out. They both stood on top of the ship, faces turned up to the rain, letting the fresh water stream down their bodies. The woman was the exact image of Duncan, but younger. The man was of average height and well built, the same man from the earlier images.
The woman raised her arms and twirled about, dancing, feeling the rain on her face. The man watched her dance with a slight smile for a few moments, then opened a cargo door. He pulled out a bundle, which he opened to reveal red web netting. He carried this to the rear of the ship and draped the netting over one of the engine pods. Then he went back to the cargo bay and removed a similar bundle. He put that netting over the other pod, connecting the two with wire loops along the edge.
As he retrieved a third bundle, the woman finally stopped dancing and joined him. They worked without a word, completely covering the craft in the red netting. The woman climbed down the slope of the craft and onto the plain while the man reentered the ship.
The craft lifted and went back over the plain. The stones were lifted by the traction beam and placed on the plain above the cavern that had been dug. Two were placed upright, set deep into the ground, while the third was placed across the top, forming a lintel.
Then the craft carefully edged forward into the cavern it had dug, sliding along the bottom of the opening so the netting would not be disturbed. At last, after its long journey, the craft finally came to rest.
The screen once more went blank.
And once more, Garlin pressed the Ark of the Covenant to probe.
Standing on the plain, the woman was watching the stones. Steam began to rise out of one of them. This went on for several minutes. Then the woman stepped forward toward the structure when the outline of a door appeared on the left stone. It slid open and the man exited, a large pack on his back and another in his arms. The door slid shut and the outline disappeared. The two looked at the structure for several moments, then the man gave the woman the pack he had carried. He pointed in a direction and they set off across the plain, leaving the strange marker behind.
The screen flickered and went dark.
The craft was indeed on Earth and buried. But where exactly were these strange stones that marked the site? That was what the Swarm still had to discover.
MOUNT EVEREST
Turcotte was blindly following the furrow in the snow that the SEALs had made earlier and that he and Mualama had trudged up. He reached Morris's body and paused for a moment, looking at the frozen blood and mangled flesh of the medic. A man dedicated to saving lives, Morris had given his own so Turcotte could make it to the sword. He knelt next to the body and removed the Special Forces crest from his parka and placed it on Morris's chest.
"De Oppresso Liber," Turcotte said as he stood back up. To Free The Oppressed. The motto of the Special Forces. Turcotte realized it fit the war he had been fighting against the aliens perfectly. He felt a surge of guilt, standing over the dead man. He had almost given up. He stiffened to attention and saluted. He held his position for several moments, then his hand fell to his side. He spun about and faced downhill.
With some renewed vigor he made his way down the ridgeline until he arrived at the two climbers' bodies frozen in the snow. They had died years previously in a vain attempt to make the summit. Turcotte stared at them for a few seconds, wondering why people would give their lives for such a selfish pursuit. Was it for the glory, he wondered? Over the course of the past few months, while battling the Airlia and their minions, he had never really stopped to consider how humans might be viewed by other intelligent species. Besides physical appearance, how were we different than the Airlia, he asked himself. Which brought him back to the same question he'd had from the very beginning, once he realized the Airlia had been here so long ago: Why had they come here? What did they want with the planet and with us? The Airlia had had plenty of opportunities to wipe mankind out, but had never followed through completely. Indeed, what he had learned was that it seemed as if both factions of the Airlia had gone out of their way to keep humans around.
Turcotte shook his head, his mind too tired and oxygen-starved to delve deeply into such issues and questions. He used the ice ax to tear the climbing rope from the top of one man's pack. With great effort he anchored the rope through the harnesses on both bodies, then tossed the end over the side of the ridge, down the southern slope, where the bouncer was. Since both were frozen to the mountain, he felt confident they would serve as a good anchor. He peered down. The end of the rope reached the top of the alien craft.
He looped the rope around a snap link in the front of his harness and turned his back to the open air on the south side of the ridge. He pushed off, rappelling down toward the golden craft wedged into the mountain. He barely had enough energy to pull his rope arm in and brake as he descended. He slammed into the side of Everest, his bulky clothes breaking the fall a little, his body too numb to notice the pain of the impact. He pulled his knees up to his chest while supporting his weight with the rope, then pushed out and away, pushing out his rope arm at the same time so it would slide free through the snap link.
His knees buckled as he landed on top of the bouncer and he continued through the fall, collapsing on top of the alien craft. He lay there for several moments, futilely trying to catch his breath. With great difficulty he unhooked the rope from the snap link. He crawled over to the open hatch and fell inside. He didn't have the energy to climb back up the ladder and close it. He slid into the pilot's depression and pulled back on the controls.
The bouncer shuddered and vibrated, but didn't move. Turcotte leaned on the controls, not accepting defeat now. Ice cracked and very slowly the craft began to break free of Mount Everest. Then with an abrupt snap it was airborne.
There was none of the loss of power he had experienced arriving here. He directed the craft up the mountain toward the location he had just come from.
The magnificent north face of Everest was before him. Even in his exhausted, oxygen-starved state, he couldn't help but admire the mountain. The peak was above, twenty-eight feet above twenty-nine thousand in altitude. Adjusting the controls, he directed the bouncer back up the mountain, retracing his route down.
Turcotte gasped for breath as he edged the front end in toward the narrow cave where the scabbard rested. Touching the mountain, he released the controls. He clambered up the ladder, out the hatch, and carefully made his way down the top of the bouncer. He stepped onto the ledge. Working as quickly as he could with the ice ax, out of breath and fighting the cold, he dug the scabbard out of its icy tomb, then retraced his steps into the bouncer, putting the scabbard down next to him, leaving the sword's blade exposed.
Turcotte pulled the bouncer away from the mountain. He pointed the forward edge down and to the southwest, accelerating away from Everest and the resting place of so many who had tried to conquer the mountain and failed.
With his shaking free hand he reached for the mike to the satellite radio. "This is Turcotte," he whispered.
There was no answer.
"Turcotte here."
There was a burst of static, then Quinn's excited voice. "Major! Where are you?"
"In the bouncer. Coming down."
"Thank God. You've been off the air for a while. We thought you were dead."
"What's happening?" Turcotte asked. "Easter Island? Qian-Ling?"
"The shields are down in both places. As near as we can tell from tracking their craft, Aspasia's Shadow and Artad are fleeing."
"Fleeing to where?" Turcotte asked. "Uh well, we don't know. Artad is heading southwest and Aspasia's Shadow to the west across the Pacific." "Duncan?" Turcotte asked. "Nothing on her location."
Victory is fleeting. The thought came unbidden to Turcotte's mind and he knew he had heard it from someone. Someone important.
There was a voice in the background, yelling something. "Kincaid's here," Quinn said. "He says he has to tell you something."
The hatch on top of the bouncer was open and Turcotte could feel the level of oxygen inside rise as he descended over India. The sun streaming in through the skin of the aircraft brought welcome warmth. It was probably just around freezing inside the craft now, but to Turcotte it was beginning to feel like being in an oven. Snow that had drifted in was beginning to melt, forming puddles of water on the floor.
"Mike, this is Larry Kincaid."
"Go ahead."
"Mars. What the Airlia from Cydonia are building on Mons Olympus. I figured it out. It's a transmitter/receiver of some sort. A very, very big one. I assume it has some way of sending and receiving a message across interstellar distances. Possibly faster than the speed of light. I can't be sure of that, but who knows what technology they have in that area. We assume the mothership was capable of faster-than-light speed, so we have to assume they have some way of communicating like that. I think they had an array at Cydonia, but it was destroyed long ago. Now they're rebuilding it on Mons Olympus."
The words seemed to resound in Turcotte's mind, a jumbled, confusing mess for several seconds before the pieces fell into place. "So." He drew the word out as the implications sank in. "We've won the battle of Earth. But if Artad gets to Mars and gets a message out to his people, we can end up losing everything."
There was no response to that.
Turcotte glanced down at the green fields flashing by below. He was feeling a bit dizzy. And much too warm. His body felt as if it were burning up. He was nauseous and he twisted his head to the side as he retched, but nothing came up. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. He'd survived for too long on too little. Now he was overwhelmed by too much oxygen, too much warmth, too quickly he realized. He let go of the radio and tried to unzip his parka.
"We need to finish this once and for all," Turcotte muttered, and then passed out, his hand dropping off the controls.