The Atlantis Origins

by S. A. Beck

  They’d nearly hit the Humvee in a head-on collision. It had appeared out of the swirling sand in the blink of an eye. Grunt’s hand had wrenched the wheel and missed it by inches. Dr. Yamazaki, at the wheel of the other vehicle coming right behind, had managed to miss it too and had seen from her rearview mirror that the Humvee was actually the lead vehicle in a convoy.

  Machine guns were mounted on the tops of some of the vehicles. That wasn’t a good sign. Dr. Yamazaki said the convoy had disappeared into the swirling dust within seconds, but the newcomers must have seen them.

  Half an hour later, the wind died down and the sun poked through the last bits of haze. Within a few minutes, it was as though there had never been a sandstorm. The desert looked as it always had, a bleak brown landscape of gritty plains interspersed with hilly areas of sand dunes. The only sign of what they had been through was the fine layer of grit that covered every square inch of them, their vehicles, and whatever bits of equipment they had managed to salvage.

  That hadn’t been much. All the tents were gone, as well as a couple of the guns and much of the food. They still had plenty of water—Dr. Yamazaki had been smart enough to leave her supply in her Land Rover—and all the computers, but they were missing the topo map and the solar stove. That meant no cooked food until they got to civilization, and without the topo map, they couldn’t find civilization.

  Of course, they could always fix up the satellite transmitter and log into the GPS, but Edward, the computer hacker working for the Atlantis Allegiance back in Marrakech, had warned them not to do that except as a last resort. Someone might be watching. Someone almost certainly would be watching.

  Otto had decided Edward was paranoid. The guy believed in a bewildering array of conspiracy theories. The problem was, in the past few weeks, Otto had discovered so much about how the world really worked that conspiracy theories were beginning to sound a bit tame.

  Grunt and Otto were talking about the GPS at that moment.

  “We only need to know one thing, Pyro,” the hulking mercenary said. “Only one location matters right now, and that’s where that convoy is. We need to know where it is and where it’s headed and make damn sure we’re somewhere else.”

  “We need to know where Jaxon and Vivian are too.”

  “I know how to get back. The sandstorm didn’t change the terrain that much. It’s getting there that’s the problem.”

  When they’d fled the sandstorm, they had crossed a flat, open area before entering another cluster of dunes. The convoy was parked right in the middle of the open area, right between them and the camp where they’d had to abandon Jaxon and Vivian, shooting up flares that sizzled in red arcs high into the sky. There was no way for Otto and the rest to get back to their old camp without being spotted.

  “Who do you think they’re signaling?” Otto asked. He found himself whispering even though the cluster of Humvees and jeeps was parked a mile away.

  “More trouble,” Grunt replied.

  The mercenary moved down the back side of the dune. Otto followed. Their two Land Rovers were parked in the swale between the dunes. The two scientists sat inside, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

  “Looks like they’re going to hang out for a while,” Grunt told them. “We should be safe enough if we sit tight. Whoever is going to come meet them will probably drive in that flat area between the dunes. I checked the topo map yesterday, and it runs for a good thirty miles.”

  “We can’t just wait here!” Otto cried. “Jaxon and Vivian might be hurt.”

  Dr. Yamazaki put a hand on Otto’s shoulder. “I told you before, they’ll be fine. The wind was blowing from the west, which is why the dune to the west of us moved over and almost buried us. Jaxon and Vivian were on the western slope of the next dune over. They would have been blown around pretty badly, but they wouldn’t have gotten buried.”

  Otto shook his head. “You’re a geneticist, not a sand expert.”

  “An arenologist,” Dr. Yuhle said, adjusting his glasses.

  “A what?” Otto and Grunt said together.

  “An arenologist is a sand expert, although I suppose if you wanted to specifically study sand dunes and their movements, it would be better to use the term ‘arenological morphologist,’” Dr. Yuhle replied.

  “Whatever,” Otto said, rolling his eyes.

  The distant sound of engines made them all perk up.

  Dr. Yuhle looked toward the sound of the engines, growing pale as it grew louder. “They’re coming for us. They spotted us in the sandstorm, and now they’re coming for us.”

  “Most likely, it’s whoever they were waiting around to meet. Sit tight while I have a look,” Grunt said, hurrying back up the sand dune. Otto followed.

  When they got to the top, they saw Grunt was right. The convoy remained where it was, no longer sending up flares and only barely visible as a dark cluster of rectangles against the pale desert. To their right, about half a mile off, the lights of a second convoy moved along the flatlands. Otto counted eight vehicles.

  “When they get together to do whatever they’re doing, should we risk trying to sneak past?” Otto asked. He realized he was whispering again.

  “Tempting. Let’s see how it plays out.”

  “You don’t seem very worried about Jaxon and Vivian.”

  “I am worried, Pyro, more than you, because I know more about what’s out here. But being panicky and getting into a rush ain’t going to help them. If we get caught or chased out of the area, where will Jaxon and Vivian be then? Stuck in the middle of the desert with hostiles close by and no way to get out. I don’t know how much water they had in their tent, but it probably won’t last through tomorrow. We’ll wait all night and all day if we have to, and so will Vivian. She’s probably having the same conversation with your girlfriend right now. Whatever these guys are doing out here, they’re not going to stick around. They’ll clear out soon enough.”

  A strange rushing sound came from behind and above them, and yet they felt no wind. Otto turned, wondering if another sandstorm was kicking up.

  He spotted something in the air, a dark shape moving across the sky and blotting out the stars.

  Grunt swore.

  He shouted down to the scientists. “Get out of the Land Rovers and run as far away as you can!”

  Dimly, Otto could see the pair leap out and run off into the night.

  “What’s going on?” Otto asked.

  The shape flew right over them. Briefly, Otto saw the outline of a plane, swooping all but silently through the night. It continued out across the desert. The newcomers had already made it to the convoy. Their headlights were still on, and Otto could see a bunch of trucks illuminated, as well as various tiny, distant figures hauling what looked like boxes.

  Suddenly, twin jets of flame shot out from the airplane’s wings, and the entire combined convoy exploded in a ground-shaking explosion.

  The desert lit up as the vehicles detonated, their gas tanks bursting into flames, each sending up a mushroom cloud of fire.

  Otto stared in awe, all fear gone as he witnessed the most beautiful fire he had ever seen. The barn he had burned down, the car of those government agents going up a few weeks ago, even the firebomb he’d thrown once—all were nothing compared to this exquisite sight before him.

  Otto’s breath caught as the plane, catching a bit of light from the scene below, made a sharp turn and came around for another run. It fired two more missiles, shooting into the clustered vehicles and shaking the desert once again.

  Guilt welled up in him. He was seeing a bunch of people die, and all he could think about were the pretty flames. What a sicko he was!

  But, damn, those flames were so pretty. Like a painting in some museum. Like a brilliant sunset.

  “Who...” His voice came out as a croak. “Who was that?”

  “The United States Air Force, most likely. None of the North African air forces have planes like that. Those poor bastards down there were proba
bly a terrorist group.”

  “Probably? What else could they have been?”

  “Smugglers.”

  “The Air Force goes after smugglers?”

  “No, they go after terrorists, but accidents happen. Here’s hoping they don’t come for us.”

  Grunt cupped his hands and shouted, “Hey! Yamazaki! Yuhle! Wherever you are, get farther away from the vehicles. Our flyboys just wasted whoever was out there, and if they see the Land Rovers, they might decide to share the love. Yuhle, change your underwear. I know you made a mess in them.”

  Yuhle’s voice came up to them from the darkness. “Very funny!”

  Grunt snickered. “It’s always fun to make fun of eggheads. Hey, Pyro, you okay?”

  Otto couldn’t stop staring at the flaming vehicles. There had to be twenty or more, each one a little volcano of gouty fire. Smaller fires burned between them. Otto didn’t want to think about what those were.

  “I want to go home,” he murmured.

  Grunt walked up to him, his hands on his hips, and looked down at him curiously.

  “What, back to your parents?”

  Otto snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. That was never home.”

  “Back to the group home?”

  Otto shook his head.

  “Then where?” Grunt asked.

  Otto let out a frustrated sigh, finally turning away from the flaming convoy. “Nowhere, I guess.”

  Chapter 3

  August 1, 2016, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

  3:00 P.M.

  * * *

  General Arnold Corbin paced around the laboratory of the Poseidon Project, waiting for Dr. Jones to finish the latest round of injections on his test subjects. It had been a hell of a week. Even in his eventful, dangerous career, he’d never kidnapped a fellow general before or gotten shot at by one.

  Thank God his office was soundproofed and Meade’s shot had gone unheard. There were still people at the Pentagon who would stop him, and could stop him, if his plans got out. Nabbing Meade and taking over his operation had gone well so far, but still, the general felt surprised that he had gotten away with it all.

  He’d had that feeling several times over the past ten years, ever since he realized that America was going downhill and the only way to keep it the world’s most powerful nation was if he got to call the shots. Briefly, he’d toyed with the idea of running for president—until he realized that presidents had to compromise too much. They were beholden to the special interests that paid for their campaigns, their political party, meddlers in Congress, and occasionally even the voters. No, the only way to get real power was to take it with a gun, not ask for it with a ballot box.

  And that had led him on a long, dangerous road to here.

  He knew that the American people wouldn’t sit by for a military coup. Such a thing had never happened in American history. He needed the people to welcome his taking power. But how? He’d studied the great dictators of history—Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Their stories had taught him what he needed to make the people volunteer to give up their rights. He needed an external threat, chaos in the elected government, and an army that was unquestioningly loyal to him and him alone.

  He’d been working on the external threat for years. Ever since he was a kid, nutcases had been blabbing about flying saucers and alien abductions. It was all nonsense, of course, but even a cynic like him always had a kernel of doubt. What if they really were out there? Not all the photos could be faked, could they? Then he’d risen in the ranks, gotten security clearance, and began to learn the truth.

  The military had studied the phenomenon intensely for several decades and found that most of the sightings were of secret military aircraft, either theirs or the Russians’, while most of the rest were by clueless people who didn’t know what a meteor looked like. Some witnesses had simply made the UFOs up just to get attention. UFO nuts always talked about the few cases that couldn’t be explained, but that didn’t mean there were alien spacecraft buzzing around Earth’s atmosphere.

  Inspiration came when he’d read about the famous Roswell case. Back in 1947, the military announced they had retrieved a UFO that had crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, during a thunderstorm. A day later, they’d retracted that statement and showed the remnants of an army weather balloon, telling reporters that the initial announcement had been incorrect.

  Not everyone bought that story. Surely the military could recognize one of their own weather balloons? Rumors of a cover-up began to spread, with wild tales of burnt alien bodies, strange writing on some of the crash material, and metal that didn’t act like anything ever seen before.

  Later, he learned the truth. What had actually crashed was a top-secret high-altitude spy balloon from Project Mogul. The classified project designed special balloons to fly all the way up into the stratosphere with a sensitive microphone to listen for Soviet and Chinese atomic bomb tests. The strange writing was actually some code written on the side for identification purposes. The unusual metal was actually a prototype of “memory metal” that could be bent out of shape and would spring back into its previous form, quite a new material at the time and something most people would have never seen or heard of back in 1947. He had no idea where the stories of alien bodies came from. Probably some drunk rancher with a bad case of sunstroke.

  So the US government had allowed the public to cook up a conspiracy theory in order to protect a military secret. In 1997, fifty years after the crash, they’d revealed the truth about Project Mogul. By then, it was old tech, and Project Mogul had no strategic value anymore. That revelation had only encouraged the conspiracy theorists, who claimed that if the government changed its story, then it really must be hiding something. While the government had never intended to encourage the conspiracy theorists, it had given General Corbin an idea.

  So he had started planting evidence for UFOs. Slowly, over the years, he had built up a cadre of assistants, both military and civilian, to spread misinformation. At first he’d played it safe and only faked photos and sightings for the general public, putting them in magazines and Internet forums. All of it had had a sinister bent—horrible experiments on abductees, cattle mutilations, UFOs hovering over nuclear missile silos, secret underground and undersea bases being set up in preparation for an alien invasion.

  The public had lapped it up, and as Corbin predicted, the idea gained its own momentum. Soon, he didn’t even have to add any more abduction stories. The mentally unstable and those out for a quick buck took care of that and turned out to be far more creative than his underlings. There was this one fellow in Nevada who’d made brilliantly faked photos of alien bases on the moon and Mars. General Corbin had considered hiring him, but why put someone on the payroll when they already worked for free?

  So while his people still put out a few photos and articles into the public sphere in order to keep up interest and control the direction it was taking (he sure didn’t want it to turn into some hippie religion where good aliens were going to come down and save everyone), he’d turned his focus to the military. With infinite care, his team had begun to fake top-secret UFO reports and plant them in the files of the US government.

  His main target was General Hector Meade, whose interest in UFOs was well known in military circles. The man was perfect, just the right combination of intelligence, resourcefulness, and gullibility. It hadn’t taken long before he had Meade hooked.

  The original idea had been to bring Meade aboard as a second in command once he had convinced Meade that the invasion was imminent, but then history had thrown Corbin a curveball. One of General Corbin’s assistants, who monitored the scientific press to come up with plausible ideas to add to Corbin’s ever-growing conspiracy theory, had come across the work of leading geneticist Dr. Akiko Yamazaki. This woman had actually found evidence that the lost continent of Atlantis existed and had the genetic data to prove it!

  At first, Corbin had thought he was being played, just as he was playing th
e public. He’d checked on it, though, and found the research was legit. He’d gotten a hacker to break into Dr. Yamazaki’s computer and found that those with the Atlantis gene had incredible strength, speed, and ability to heal. They also appeared to have special individual powers.

  He had already been working on the external threat he needed to take over the government, and now Dr. Yamazaki had handed him the means to create his own private army. He’d secretly hired Dr. Jones with some CIA money he siphoned off from a project for monitoring terrorists in Africa, and after some research, Jones had assured him that he could probably replicate Atlantean traits in a regular human being.

  So instead of bringing General Meade on as a second in command, Corbin had used him as a tool. He’d fed this information to Meade through a go-between, and Meade had done exactly what Corbin hoped he’d do—he’d set up the Poseidon Project to study the Atlantis gene. He’d even hired Dr. Yamazaki.

  Corbin watched it all from a distance, allowing Meade to work undirected. Corbin was having enough trouble keeping all his projects secret, funneling money to his own people, and fulfilling his legitimate duties for the government. It was best to farm out this work to someone else.

  At least until Meade had proved too inefficient. His strong-arm tactics had alienated Yamazaki, and the idiot had induced a stroke in the scientist to shut her up. Then Corbin had had to take over. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why a general in the United States Army had so much trouble dealing with a few mercenaries, their flunkies, and a sixteen-year-old girl. He suspected Meade had gone soft like his agents. Hadn’t been in a war in years. That was bad for a soldier.

  Well, Corbin would settle affairs with that kid and her friends quickly enough, and as for wars, well, there would be plenty once he took over.

  He paced over to Dr. Jones, impatient to know the results. General Hector Meade and Brett Lawson, a teenager who had been a friend of that Atlantean girl they had been monitoring, lay side by side on operating tables.