The interior became a mixture of strapped-in, bruised people and vomit. When the pod finally came to a halt, the four occupants looked at each other. Leahy, the newest member of the Area 51 team, was the first to break the silence. “What do we do now?”
Yakov unbuckled from the seat and wiped off the front of his shirt. He shrugged. “We wait. There is nothing else to do.”
“Wait for who?” Leahy demanded. “For what?”
“Those are both very good questions,” Yakov acknowledged. “Most likely we are waiting to die.”
• • •
“Mike.”
Turcotte paused on the lip of the array as he heard Duncan’s voice. “Yes?”
“The Talon is here. I’ve locked it to the mothership so it can’t get away. I can see them boarding through the airlock on the display. Artad is with them.”
“He’s there?” Turcotte had hoped that Artad would try to regain the mothership before sending a message. That’s what most generals would do—improve their situation before reporting back to higher command.
“Yes. I recognize him.”
“Are you pulling him out of orbit and away?” “No.”
Turcotte frowned. The plan was for Duncan to get Artad away while the drop team—now down to just him—destroyed the array. Turcotte could see several large-tracked vehicles off to his right along with some prefab structures, which he assumed currently contained the Airlia who had finished the array. Along with the controls for the transmitter.
“What are you going to do?” Turcotte checked the upward view. He couldn’t see the mothership against the dark sky, although he knew it had to be getting closer.
“Where are you?” Duncan asked instead of answering. “On the lip of the array.”
“Move away. Fast.”
“Why? I’m supposed—” “Do it.”
Then it came to him. What she planned to do. He choked back the words of protest because as soon as he understood her plan, he also knew it was the best course of action. Turcotte turned away from the array and activated the jets, leaning forward and moving away quickly.
“Mike?” “Yes?”
“The others are on the surface. In an escape pod. About five kilometers from the array.” She rattled off some grid coordinates.
“I’ve got it. But—”
“The Fynbar was shot down by Artad’s Talon. It’s damaged but I think it will still fly.” She quickly gave him some instructions as he bounded away from the array.
When she was done there was a moment of silence. “Lisa.”
“Yes?” She sounded distracted. “I’m sorry it had to go this way.” “It’s for the best.” “I know.” “What I did to you was wrong. But I was so lonely after so many years. And I needed help.” Turcotte was heading down Mons Olympus, although the grade was so gentle there was very little angle of descent. “It’s all right.”
“I have to go now. They’re cutting into the control room door.”
Turcotte paused, checking the upward view. “What is the truth behind all this, Lisa?”
“Kelly Reynolds is transmitting from Hawaii,” Duncan said. “She knows. She’ll tell you. Then you need to decide what to do with that knowledge. Good luck.” There was the sound of an explosion and the link went dead.
• • •
A piece of shrapnel from the breached door hit Lisa Duncan in the shoulder and ripped through her body and the seat she was in, smacking the wall behind her. She hardly noticed the pain after all she had been through recently.
A seven-foot-tall Airlia strode through the hole. He paused when he saw her sitting in the command seat. She knew he was searching his memory and she saw the expression cross his face as he recognized her.
Duncan smiled and hit a red hexagonal button in the arm of the chair. Everyone staggered as the mothership abruptly accelerated.
Artad dashed forward, ignoring her and running his six-fingered hands over the control console. To no avail.
Lisa Duncan closed her eyes and thought of her husband and son. Of her planet. Of her people.
• • •
Turcotte saw the mothership—a black form flashing through the sky—coming straight down and accelerating so fast he almost lost sight of it as it went into the array.
The concussion from the impact hit him with a tidal wave of red dirt, rock, and Martian air. Turcotte was lifted from the ground and “rode” the front of the wave over two kilometers, before being unceremoniously deposited on the surface.
He scrambled to his feet and looked up. Where the mothership had crashed into the array there was nothing but a huge gaping hole in the side of Mons Olympus.
CHAPTER 21: THE PRESENT
Tripler Army Medical Center, Oahu, Hawaii
“Mike? Are you there? Is anyone there?”
“There’s nothing,” the radio specialist said. “If they were listening, they’d have heard you by now.” He reached forward to turn off the microphone.
“Don’t you touch that,” Reynolds rasped.
“Ma’am—” the specialist began, but Nurse Cummings reached across her patient, pinched the young man’s ear between thumb and forefinger, and gave a slight twist.
“Listen to the lady,” Cummings said.
The specialist carefully removed Cummings’s fingers from his ear, stood, and left the room. The radio stayed.
“Mike Turcotte?” Kelly Reynolds whispered. “Anyone?”
Mars
Turcotte was on the edge of where the array had been. The mothership had punched a hole in the side of the mountain over twenty times the size of that created by the work of the mech-machines. He could see pieces of debris far below, most appearing to be pieces of the mothership. He could see nothing of the array, the pylons, or the Airlia vehicles. All destroyed.
They’d won the final victory.
Turcotte found it hard to believe after all that had occurred the past several months since he had arrived at Area 51. Aspasia’s Shadow. Artad. The Swarm. All dead. Both motherships destroyed. Mankind was free.
Turcotte checked the TASC suit oxygen level. He had two hours of air left. He’d come this far, he’d give it two more hours of effort. He headed toward the location Duncan had given him for the Fynbar.
• • •
Yakov reached into a pocket and pulled out a flask. He unscrewed the lid and offered it to the others. Quinn and Kincaid shook their heads, but Leahy grabbed it and took a deep swig.
“Ah, a woman after my own heart,” Yakov said as he took the flask back from her and had a drink. “This wasn’t a very good plan,” Leahy said.
Yakov chuckled. “You should have seen some of the plans we’ve implemented in the last few months fighting these aliens.”
“How much air do we have?” Quinn interjected.
Yakov looked at the small display panel. “I have no idea. I don’t know the Airlia word for oxygen so I don’t know which of these indicators is the one to read. However”—he flicked a finger against the panel—“this one looks very low, and given our luck I would guess it is the one.”
• • •
Turcotte was circling Mons Olympus, staying at the same altitude. He saw a trench in the soil ahead a couple of meters deep and cutting laterally across his path. He looked up and saw an impact point five hundred meters up, near the lip of the volcano. Looking to the right he found Duncan’s spaceship a kilometer downslope.
Turcotte turned in that direction. His walk changed into a full-out charge downhill, as he took large bounds in the lesser gravity. His last bound carried him on top of the Fynbar. He did a quick exterior inspection. It was dented and battered, but the most critical damage was on the upper, right-front deck, where plating had been ripped open by the Talon’s blast.
He went to the rear of the deck and opened a compartment as Duncan had instructed. A large cylinder with a hose and nozzle was inside. He removed it, went forward to the hole in the hull, and turned it on. A red spray spewed out of the nozzle and b
egan filling in the hole. As it hit, it hardened. It took the entire cylinder, but after a few minutes Turcotte felt satisfied he’d sealed the breach.
He went to the hatch and entered the ship. The instrument panel was still aglow, which meant there was power. He continued to follow the succinct instructions Duncan had given him. Preparing to take her own life along with the Airlia’s, she had given him the way to save his and the others’. Whatever she had done to him, Turcotte knew they were more than even now.
A light went green—the one Duncan had told him to watch for. Turcotte unsealed the suit and took a cautious breath. The air was breathable. He sat in the pilot’s seat and took hold of the controls.
The ship lifted.
• • •
Everyone inside the escape pod jumped as there was a loud bang. Yakov stood. “It is about time.”
“What the hell is that?” Leahy demanded. “I believe it would be Mr. Turcotte.”
“But—” Leahy was confused, as were Kincaid and Quinn.
Yakov shrugged. “Who else could it be?” He went to the small porthole in the hatch and peered out. “The ship is here. The hatch is open. I say we hold our breath and make a dash for it.”
“Are you crazy?” Quinn asked. “You want to stay here?”
“How do you know it’s Turcotte?” Quinn demanded.
“If it was an enemy, they would not be, how do you say, knocking. They would just blow us up. I think Ms. Duncan had something more in mind when she told us to get in this pod, then jettisoned us.” Yakov looked at the other three. “We have no airlock on this thing. Once I open this door, we lose our air. And we all must go together.”
Leahy nodded. “Just give me a countdown.” Kincaid edged closer. “All right.”
Quinn was shaking his head, but Yakov ignored him. “Three. Two. Exhale hard. One.” Yakov threw the lever and the hatch blew out.
• • •
Inside the Fynbar, Turcotte saw the four dash across the short space between the ships. He heard the clang of the outer airlock door shutting and watched the gauge on the console as it quickly pressurized.
There was a light flashing on the high-frequency radio the Space Command team had placed on board. He’d seen it as soon as he’d taken the seat. He knew who it was. And while he wanted to know what Kelly had learned while merged with the guardian, he did not want to hear it alone. He felt a tremendous sense of foreboding.
The pressure equalized, and Turcotte hit the button to open the inner airlock, then stood and faced the door. Yakov, Kincaid, Quinn, and Leahy entered the ship.
“My friend!” Yakov threw his arms wide and wrapped Turcotte in them, lifting him off the floor and spinning him about once. “We heard and felt a large explosion.” He put Turcotte down and peered at him. “Since you are here, I assume it was not nuclear.” “Lisa Duncan crashed the mothership into the array.”
Yakov let out a deep breath. “You were right about her ultimately. That was most brave.” He took out his flask and held it up.
Turcotte accepted it and drank deeply. “And Artad?” Yakov asked.
“He boarded the mothership just before she did it. She locked the Talon down and took him with her.”
“Ahhhh.” Yakov nodded. “It is done then.”
Turcotte knew it wasn’t a question. Yakov, even more than he, had fought the aliens and their minions for decades. The Russian sat down in one of the seats. Turcotte greeted the other survivors of Area 51. So few left. He sat back in the pilot’s chair, next to Yakov. The green light flashed, beckoning.
Yakov saw it also. “A message?” “Kelly Reynolds.”
Yakov’s bushy eyebrows arched. “She can speak?” “She knows the truth. How all this started.” Turcotte waited. Yakov was the first to nod. “We need to know.”
“Why?” Turcotte asked.
“In order to decide what to do next,” Yakov said simply.
Turcotte glanced at the others. Leahy seemed a bit confused. Quinn and Kincaid both looked back and he could tell that they would let him make the decision for them.
Turcotte picked up the mike and transmitted. “Kelly. This is Mike Turcotte.”
Tripler Army Medical Center, Oahu, Hawaii
Kelly Reynolds was just about to call for the thirtieth time when Turcotte’s voice sounded from the speaker.
Kelly Reynolds looked at Cummings. “I think you had best leave for now.”
Cummings reached down, made sure the pillows were stacked correctly behind Reynolds, filled her cup of water, and left the room.
“Mike. This is Kelly. It takes two and a half minutes for my transmission to reach you and the same amount of time for me to hear back from you. I’m going to pause. Let me know if you, and whoever is with you, want to hear what I have to say. Because once I start talking, I’m not going to stop.”
Reynolds halted and glance at the clock. The second hand slowly made its way around the outer circle.
Mars
Turcotte had used the time waiting for a response to lift the spaceship up and do a flyby over Mons Olympus to check one last time that nothing had survived Duncan’s last mission.
The hole in the side of Mons Olympus where the array had been was huge, the devastation complete. Then he looked at Yakov. “Home?” “Home,” Yakov concurred.
Turcotte turned the front of the ship away from Mars as Kincaid began plotting the trajectory to return them to Earth.
When Reynolds’s message came over the speaker, Turcotte replied immediately. “We’re ready. Go ahead.”
By the time they heard Kelly’s voice again, they were clear of Mars orbit and heading inward toward the sun. The words from the small speaker sounded tinny and distant.
“It all makes sense if you think about what we’ve learned recently,” Reynolds said. “You know now that Lisa Duncan came from another planet. And she is human.”
Turcotte glanced at Yakov, realizing that Reynolds was using the present tense because she didn’t know what had just happened. “Which brings up the issue of how humans could have developed on two worlds.”
Turcotte tensed, sensing what was coming next. Knowing that Kelly was right, that it had been there in front of them all along.
“When I accessed the guardian underneath Easter Island,” Kelly continued, “I found traces of the past. Before Atlantis. When the Airlia first came to Earth.
“Mike, they brought us with them. We were planted here by them.”
Turcotte leaned back in the seat. He didn’t have time to feel the full impact of those last two sentences as Kelly continued.
“Just as Duncan and her people were planted on their world. We were not put on this world to colonize it, although in effect that is what we have done. We are a genetic cousin to the Airlia, which explains why we both breathe oxygen and subsist essentially in the same manner and look roughly the same. We’re similar to them because they developed us. They made us. And in the process of doing that they placed specific inhibitors on us as a species. We’re mortal with short life spans, while the Airlia live hundreds of times longer than we do. The Airlia made us mortal by blocking the growth of telomeres among our cells which causes us to age and die.
“And we cannot consciously use our minds to their full capabilities. The Airlia placed blocks on how well our two hemispheres could work together and how much of our brains we can access.
“The Grail, as you know, is the key for removing both those blocks. Accessing one side of it not only allows our telomeres to regenerate, it also infects our blood with a virus that can grow cells and heal illnesses and wounds. The other side, the one Duncan did not access, allows the human mind to function to the full extent of its capabilities.
“Why? That’s the question you’re probably asking now and the one I immediately asked myself when I discovered this.
“We’re an experiment. Designed to be cannon fodder. For the Airlia in their war against the Swarm. The Airlia developed us to be soldiers, then seeded planets aroun
d the perimeter of their empire with us. On each planet they put a contingent—here led by Aspasia—in charge of maintaining order and controlling the Grail. If we were needed to fight, we would be given access to the Grail and sent off to war to die for the Airlia and their empire.
“From what I could gather we were a relatively new experiment for the Airlia. They seeded about a dozen worlds with humans in a remote part of their empire. Duncan’s world was one. Ours was another.
“It didn’t work quite the way they thought it would. Aspasia grew fearful of being involved in the war, which was nowhere near Earth. He cut off communication with the Empire and began to rule from Atlantis like a God. He set up a cadre of humans as priests.
“Eventually, Artad arrived with the Kortad, who were Airlia police. They were under orders to bring the planet back into the empire. However, something else occurred that neither side had counted on—the arrival of Lisa Duncan and her companion.
“Their world had been like ours, a vassal of the Airlia. It was the first to be seeded. They revolted and after a bloody war, managed to defeat the Airlia caretakers on their planet. In the process they essentially destroyed their own world. They sent out a captured mothership with teams like Duncan and her partner to find the other seed worlds and help them to overthrow the Airlia.
“Duncan and her partner manipulated both sides when Artad arrived, causing civil war that ended in stalemate, the best any of them could achieve. They gained us time. For us to develop enough to be able to finally fight the Airlia.”
There was a pause. “That’s pretty much it,” Reynolds finally said, an understatement if ever there was one. She paused. “Did we win?”
Turcotte reached forward and picked up the mike. He pressed the transmit button. “Kelly. We’ve won. We’ll be home soon.” He released the button.
Silence reigned in the spaceship as each digested the import of what Kelly Reynolds had just told them. All four were so deep in thought they were startled when her voice came out of the speaker.
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