Interstellar

by Bob Mayer

  It had taken a day’s journey from Mars, at a blistering speed of 1,750 miles per second. This was after they’d destroyed the Airlia FTL array and prevented an emergency message from being sent to the Airlia Empire.

  Turcotte landed on a pad next to Groom Mountain at Area 51. Huge hangar doors cut into the mountainside had been blasted open, revealing bays where classified aircraft had been hidden over the decades, including Airlia atmospheric craft called Bouncers, also known as MDAC.

  A hatch on top of the craft opened and Turcotte climbed out. He moved slowly, climbing down the side of the aircraft to the pitted concrete. Of average height, he was solidly built with dark skin, the legacy of a Canuck/Native American intermingling. He wore a grey coverall stained with sweat and hadn’t shaved in several days. His short, dark hair was uncombed and disheveled.

  He was followed by the other survivors of the Mars mission: Yakov, Quinn, Kincaid and Leahy. Once on the ground they automatically turned to him. Lisa Duncan was not among their number, her mission finally achieved at the cost of her own life.

  Turcotte faced the others. “We don’t have a mothership capable of FTL travel so we can’t help other worlds,” he began, referring to the recent disclosure by Kelly Reynolds, one of their team, that humans had been seeded on Earth, and over a dozen other planets, as cannon fodder for an interstellar war the Airlia were engaged in against a species called the Swarm, also known as the Ancient Enemy. “We don’t have the Grail or master guardian either. Both went down with Lisa Duncan on Mars when she destroyed the array. We are free of the aliens, though. Which was her goal. And ours. And it must remain our goal. We know there are Airlia artifacts still here on Earth, hidden away. Some discovered by governments and kept secret, some not found. And we know for certain there is life out among the stars. The Airlia. The Swarm. Neither of which wish us well. And undoubtedly other life forms.”

  “What about telling the world the truth?” Yakov asked. The burly, bearded, Russian had been a member of Section IV, the Russian version of the U.S.’s Majestic-12, formed to secretly monitor alien activity on Earth.

  Turcotte, former US Special Operations who’d been brought in to provide security at Area 51 at the very beginning of all of this, had put aside his differences with the Russian and they’d joined forces to battle the Airlia, recognizing the greater threat to the planet.

  “Could the world handle it?” When no one responded, Turcotte continued. “If you had asked me that question yesterday, I would have said the truth must be told. But now? What good would it do? The world knows there are aliens. That they threaten us. Telling people that we were ‘grown’ to serve as soldiers for the Airlia will destroy all the faiths. People will also know we destroyed their chance at immortality with the destruction of the Grail.

  “Duncan’s people developed enough to overthrow the Airlia on their planet without the aid of the Grail. We did the same here. And beat the Swarm scout ships. Who knows what the future holds for mankind if we are uncorrupted by alien influences?” He looked at Professor Leahy. “Tesla invented his weapon on his own. Our future is ours.”

  Leahy was an older, tall woman with shoulder length gray hair. An expert on Nikola Tesla, she’d rigged a version of a ‘ray gun’ he’d invented and used it to shoot down a Swarm scout ship in 1908. The craft exploded just above Tunguska, causing widespread devastation in the Siberian wilderness. Her modern version had helped them during the Mars mission.

  Turcotte continued. “The original charter of Area 51 was a wise one. It worked until Majestic was corrupted. I say we pick up that charter. We join it with that of the Watchers.” He was referring to a secret, small group of humans founded by Lisa Duncan and her mate, who’d been observing the aliens and their minions ever since the destruction of Atlantis. He held out his hand, palm up. “Are you with me?”

  The others reached forward and placed their hands on top of his.

  “We know the aliens were here,” Turcotte said. “We know they changed human history. Their presence and their technology almost destroyed the human race many times in the past and will in the future if we do not prevent it. We must guard the truth and the planet. We will watch. And we will act when we need to.”

  AIRSPACE THE UNITED STATES,

  A SHORT TIME LATER, BUT STILL THE PAST

  “I don’t know who is on what side,” Turcotte said from the pilot’s depression in the Fynbar as he flew the craft. “All I know is I’m on the human side.”

  “But the humans seem to have many sides,” Leahy said. “Something about all this bothers me.”

  “All what?” Quinn asked. “The fighting?”

  Leahy shook her head. “No. I’ve been thinking about what Kelly Reynolds told us. The truth about the humans and the Airlia.”

  Yakov reached into a pocket and produced his flask. “It is almost empty, but enough for each of us to take a sip.” He handed it to Leahy. “Tell us. What bothers you about it, my friend? Because I too am troubled but cannot pinpoint the root of my discontent.”’

  Kincaid spoke up. “For me it’s pretty disturbing to realize that all we’ve believed about mankind is pretty much false.”

  “That’s not it,” Leahy said. “I’m a scientist. I deal in facts. First, I don’t think the Airlia are immortal. We’ve killed them.”

  “All right,” Turcotte allowed. “But they live a really long time.”

  “Yes, but they also spend a lot of that in deep sleep,” Leahy said. “Why else did Artad and Aspasia need their Shadows to take their place? They were waiting things out. There’re too many pieces of this that don’t fit. That we know too little about.”

  “What does it matter?” Turcotte asked. The flask had made it around to him.

  “Facts matter,” Leahy said. “Truth matters.”

  “Finish it.” Yakov indicated the flask. There wasn’t much, but Turcotte did so.

  Leahy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never met Kelly Reynolds. I don’t know her. But she gleaned that information from her contact with the guardian computer on Easter Island. Which means it’s the Airlia version of things.” She looked at Turcotte. “You couldn’t even trust Lisa Duncan’s version until the very end. How do we know what Reynolds got from that alien computer was the truth?”

  Anger flashed across Turcotte’s face, but he reluctantly nodded. “All right. You have a point.” He handed the empty flask to Yakov. “But I trust Kelly Reynolds.”

  Leahy nodded. “Understandable given what you went through with her at Area 51 and Dulce. But we’re still basing this on her contact with a guardian. Which was programmed by the Airlia.” She pointed up. “There’s a bigger war going on. Interstellar between species. Reynolds said we were seeded here to be soldiers for the Airlia. But we’ve been here over ten millennia at least, according to the Airlia version of our history. Yet, they’ve never activated us to fight in that war. And the Swarm has visited this planet twice that we know of with scout ships. Once in ancient Egypt that the Master Guardian shot down and one that Tesla blew up over Tunguska.”

  Yakov nodded. “The Nazis recovered a Swarm body from that crash. My people got it at the end of World War II. Ugly beasts.”

  Leahy looked around to see if anyone else had anything to say, but they were listening. “Lisa Duncan said she came here near the very beginning, right?”

  Turcotte considered that. “She said she arrived on this ship about ten thousand years ago, when the Airlia ruled the planet from their base in Atlantis. How long the Airlia were here before that, we don’t know.”

  The Fynbar was heading east but his hands had pulled back on the controls without conscious decision and the craft was going slower.

  “She did the deep sleep for much of the time and also regenerated,” Leahy said, indicating the tubes behind her. “But this craft isn’t capable of going faster than light speed, right?”

  “Right,” Turcotte said.

  “So how did she get here?”

  “She and her partner
were dropped off by a mothership her people took from the Airlia when their home world successfully rebelled,” Turcotte said.

  “And the mothership kept going,” Leahy said. “To drop other teams. So, if that is true, there are other human worlds out there. Maybe that should be our focus.”

  WARDENCLYFFE, SHOREHAM, NEW YORK,

  A SHORT TIME LATER, BUT STILL THE PAST

  Leahy headed toward a door on the side of the lab facing the tower. Her counterpart automatically came behind her. She opened the door, revealing iron stairs descending into darkness. She flipped on a switch and muted bulbs lit the way.

  She heard him following as she went down.

  An iron mesh gate blocked the stairs twenty feet down. A large warning sign proclaimed:

  WARNING: HAZARDUOUS WASTE

  EXTREMELY DANGEROUS

  EXPOSURE IS FATAL

  Leahy pulled a skeleton key from a pocket and inserted it in the old padlock. The lock, well oiled, opened without a sound.

  She walked down a tunnel lined with old brick until she came to a round, vertical shaft. It was twelve feet wide with a circular staircase in the center, wrapped around a metal shaft six inches in diameter. This was directly below the surface tower.

  The shaft descended into darkness. From a hook on the wall, Leahy took a safety helmet with a light attached in front. She turned on the light and donned the helmet. She crossed the iron grating to the staircase and checked behind her once more.

  The man turned on the light underneath the barrel of his automatic rifle. Leahy headed down, the thud of her boots on iron echoing up the shaft. She glanced up, but he was there, several steps higher. He had his weapon at the ready.

  Getting oriented, Leahy went to the tunnel heading due south. The brick walls were damp but there was a low, rhythmic noise indicating the pumps she’d had installed when they’d re-occupied Tesla’s old lab years ago were working.

  The guard was to her right rear as they entered the tunnel and the flashlight on his rifle shot a powerful beam of light directly ahead. An old wooden door appeared. Leahy held up a hand. She tapped a code into her wristpad. “I just deactivated poison gas canisters.”

  She used a different skeleton key on the lock. The door grudgingly opened. Leahy reached inside and flipped a switch. There was a crackling noise, then tubular phosphorescent lights flickered with a green tinted glow.

  “This was Tesla’s secret lab,” Leahy said. “You’re the only other person to see it since it was sealed in 1935, other than Mister and Mrs. Parrish, and me.”

  They walked in. The lab was twenty meters long by ten wide. Several work benches crowded with instruments, pieces and parts, crowded the space. The lights were placed randomly about the lab, some lying on the floor, others leaning against the wall.

  “These are original Tesla bulbs?” the guard asked.

  “Of course,” Leahy said.

  “Amazing. No wires.”

  “The power is all around us,” Leahy said.

  “That was your grandfather’s dream,” the guard said. “Wireless transmission of power.”

  “One of his dreams,” Leahy said. “You saw the end result of another of his dreams in the control center. He made that weapon. Fired it in 1908.”

  “It was impressive,” the guard allowed.

  “What’s interesting to me,” Leahy said as she walked around one table, “is that people often don’t think to ask the obvious questions.”

  “Such as?” the guard asked.

  Leahy stopped in front of a two-foot high equilateral pyramid resting on a table. The surface was smooth black.

  “Is that an Airlia computer?” the guard asked. “A guardian?”

  “It’s based on one.”

  The guard was surprised. “But aren’t they all linked? If it was here, then didn’t the Airlia know about it? Was Tesla a Guide?” He was referring to humans who’d been mentally corrupted by touching a guardian computer, the way members of Majestic-12 had been.

  “No,” Leahy said. “He was a Watcher. Like Mister and Mrs. Parrish. From the line of Merlin. This—“ she indicated the pyramid—“was built by my grandfather. After he saw the master guardian.”

  The guard’s weapon was hanging by the sling as he looked at the pyramid. “Where did he see the master guardian? How?”

  “He went to Mount Ararat,” Leahy said. “Into the mothership.”

  “But how could he make a copy? Wouldn’t he have had to make contact with the guardian? And doesn’t that corrupt you?”

  “I don’t know how he did it,” Leahy said. “But he wasn’t corrupted and he made this.”

  The guard stepped up to the table, staring at the artifact. “Is it inactive? I thought they were golden?”

  “The Airlia ones are,” Leahy said. “Except the master. It was red.” She indicated the pyramid. “You can touch it. It’s shut down.”

  The guard shook his head. “No thanks.”

  “You know we have to relocate,” Leahy said.

  “Yes. The government will be here soon. They must have tracked the Tesla cannon firing. Not just the US, either.”

  “I’m sure there are police surrounding the grounds,” Leahy said. She pointed to the far end of the lab. “There’s a tunnel. It leads off the grounds where I have a van waiting. We take that to the airport where there will be a plane. But you know all that, correct?”

  The guard nodded. “What about the people upstairs?”

  “You’re asking me? Isn’t that your department?”

  “I apologize,” the guard said. “That was rude. Yes, it’s my responsibility. I was concerned you might try to stop me.”

  “Could I?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I know Mrs. Parrish. The Strategy. The people in the lab are dead, one way or the other, aren’t they? If you don’t do it, someone else will.”

  “Yes.” He pulled up the sleeve on his black shirt, revealing a wristpad. “The Strategy determined they are collateral damage. As in North Carolina, their bodies will make people believe the trail ends here.”

  “And the Tesla cannon?”

  Steven frowned. “Collateral damage. It’s not needed any more according to my instructions.”

  “Remember what I said about people not asking the obvious questions?”

  The guard turned toward her, belatedly lifting his rifle. He didn’t finish the move as current surged up from floor, arcing into a receptor on the ceiling, completing the circuit.

  Leahy removed her foot from the trigger.

  He was dead before he hit the floor.

  Leahy knelt next to the body. “The question you should have asked was why I was showing you this most sacred of places and telling you things you didn’t have a need to know. I believe your order was to also kill me. If not now, soon. Mrs. Parrish allows no one to know too much. Her pride won’t allow her to accept others might not only know as much as she does, but more. Her goals are noble but misguided.” Leahy frowned, realizing she was talking to a smoking corpse. She peeled open his body armor and reached under his shirt. She grabbed the Myrddin medallion and pocketed it.

  She rolled his body out of the way. Then pushed the table the Tesla computer was on into the same position. Hit the switch and current flowed into it. The dark surface glimmered and turned silver. Leahy put her hands on the surface and closed her eyes.

  She entered Ethos, but in a manner in which the system wasn’t aware. That was relatively easy to do for the person who’d programmed this Myrddin version of the World Wide Web. She checked the latest actions, noting Mrs. Parrish’s orders. The seizure of Area 51. The progress on the Danse project to get into Vampyr’s vault. The Chosen in the Facility.

  The order to the guard was to destroy Wardenclyffe and all personnel except herself and to kill her if her capture was imminent. Leahy had half-expected the order to be to kill regardless. So Mrs. Parrish still felt a need to keep her around. Leahy shifted from Mrs. Parrish’s orders to other pertinent data.

 
; Leahy made a few adjustments. Then moved on.

  Turcotte and the Fynbar were leaving the mothership, heading toward Colorado. That was a high probability in the Strategy. Nosferatu? Leahy shook her head at the order to the cell in Paris to kill both Nosferatu and Nekhbet. A mistake, even though the Strategy gave it a 56% advocacy rating.

  Leahy believed Mrs. Parrish relied too much on data. If she ever told her boss that, Leahy knew Mrs. Parrish would be surprised since Leahy had helped design the Strategy.

  Up to speed on what was developing, Leahy directed Ethos to tap into something that no one else was aware it was capable of doing: up-linking to an Airlia Msat. The reason no one else could be aware was because her subroutine in Ethos was untouchable and no part was capable of doing it via any other mechanism than this Tesla computer.

  Since the master guardian was gone, the uplink was of limited value, reaching only the net of small Msats around the planet. They revealed nothing of interest and Leahy cut the connection.

  Leahy then brought up the Strategy, not on a flexpad, but inside her head via the Tesla computer. While Edison had been an advocate of bench experimentation, trial and error, Leahy’s grandfather had worked out most of his inventions by thinking. Allowing his brain to study the problem, analyze options, and come up with the solution.

  The Tesla computer required a human mind. A special one. One similar to the inventors.

  What Leahy was ‘seeing’ in her mind’s view was the Strategy, but not the same as Mrs. Parrish’s. This was Leahy’s version, programmed slightly differently.

  She examined nodes, paths, possibilities. All within a minute. Then shut down the Tesla computer. As the surface faded from silver to black, she removed her hands.

  Leahy retrieved a plastic case mounted on wheels. Opening it revealed a pre-formed cushioned space designed to fit the pyramid. She put it in the case. Snapped it shut and then slid the case off the table and onto the floor.

  She left the lab, leaving the lights on and smoke wafting from the corpse.

  BROOKHAVEN AIRPORT, LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK