by Bob Mayer
A SHORT TIME LATER, BUT STILL THE PAST
The pilot looked at Leahy, past her at the empty van, then back to her. “Where’s the second person I’m to pick up?”
“He couldn’t make it,” Leahy said. She indicated the case holding the Tesla computer. “Give me a hand with this please.”
The pilot carried it up the stairs into the jet. “Does Mrs. Parrish know you’re alone?” He asked as he shut the door behind her.
“Mrs. Parrish knows everything,” Leahy said.
That satisfied the pilot. “All right. We’ve got a three-hour flight time to Dreamland. Looks like you’re the only passenger. Help yourself from the galley; there’s no crew other than me and my co-pilot.”
“That’s fine,” Leahy said. As soon as the twin-engine jet was airborne, Leahy brought out the Tesla computer and placed it on the table in front of her. She powered it up. Entered Ethos, went to a subroutine that monitored Mrs. Parrish’s flexpads and command chair. Replayed her conversation with Turcotte. Leahy shook her head, knowing that Mrs. Parrish didn’t understand what made Turcotte tick. The information about the regeneration tube she’d long suspected since the Myrrdin had spent centuries tracking down Airlia artifacts. When Mr. Parrish became ill five years earlier, he and Mrs. Parrish had made an off-the-books, off-the-Ethos, trip to Turkey. Leahy was certain they’d visited the mothership hidden under Mount Ararat, where Mr. Parrish’s consciousness had been copied onto a ka. He’d died just two weeks later. All of this just so she could bring her husband’s essence back in a new, young body.
Mrs. Parrish’s speculating about the existence of another ruby sphere with Turcotte was almost humorous. Leahy had learned there was one on Mars under the FTL transmitter control center at Cydonia a long time ago.
Leahy checked her version of the Strategy and it was a bit different than the official one. The critical factor right now was whether Turcotte would allow them to use the Fynbar to get to Mars and retrieve the sphere.
Leahy checked across the array and zoomed in on a bit of news: the Paris Watcher cell had gone dark. Leahy nodded, eyes closed, hands on computer. Foolish to try to take out Nosferatu and Nekhbet, the half-Airlia, half-human renegades. That was Mrs. Parrish’s anal desire to close out loose ends; in reality, Leahy suspected Mrs. Parrish was focused on simplifying the possibilities in the Strategy. It’s always easier to make decisions when there are less choices with less variables. There was also Mrs. Parrish obsession with ‘confusion and misdirection’.
A new blip on that thread appeared. The London Cell had gone dark. Leahy smiled. Nosferatu was working his way up the structure. But the cut outs were already being implemented and his next target up the chain connected to London would be gone by the time he—Leahy paused the projection.
Nosferatu had to know what he was facing. He’d been in too many wars, too many revolutions, met too many spies. He knew a triangular cut out arrangement.
What would he desire more? Revenge for the abortive assassination attempt or knowledge?
She instinctively knew the answer: knowledge.
Leahy accessed her own database on the ‘Undead’. Nosferatu’s recent purge had narrowed the Elders to just him and Nekhbet. There were ‘quarters’, of course, the descendants of the Elders, but they weren’t anywhere near as powerful or long-lived. It didn’t appear Nosferatu’s partner, Nekhbet, was in very good shape after all these years. There were descendants of the Elders in various places around the world, but none as pure as Nosferatu and Nekhbet. The Watchers had kept tabs on Nosferatu for thousands of years, but the timeline was sketchy. She wasn’t concerned right now with what he’d done, it was more what he knew. And he knew of the Watchers, the Myrddin and, most importantly, he knew where the Watchers had been created by Donnchadh/Lisa Duncan.
That is where he would go.
She shifted back to Mrs. Parrish Strategy and wasn’t surprised the quantum computer had come up with the same likelihood. Great minds think alike, Leahy thought. But there was more to this than thinking. She noted Mrs. Parrish’s pre-emptive decision on that thread.
The old lady couldn’t leave well enough alone. She didn’t understand—
Leahy froze as an alert intruded. From the Airlia Msats. The last time that had happened was 1908, when her grandfather had picked up the alert of the inbound Swarm scout ship.
Leahy ignored everything and focused on the alert.
This wasn’t a Swarm scout ship. The image, forwarded from a Sentinel, was something she’d never seen. It took her a few moments to grasp the scale of what she was seeing, based on the accompanying Sentinel data.
It connected with data her grandfather had learned from the guardian.
The Ancient Enemy was inbound. A Swarm Battle Core.
Leahy closed the official Strategy.
Then she opened her own via Ethos subtext, adding in the Swarm Battle Core.
Her Strategy disappeared and a pulsing line of electricity, almost a heartbeat appeared in her mind.
This variable, given it most likely meant the end of all life in the Solar System, was going to take some time to factor in.
Leahy examined it in her mind, as her grandfather had envisioned his inventions.
The present and near future was a massive junction. The largest probability? The complete extinction of mankind on Earth. At first it seemed it was the only probability, so large was that branch.
But there was a thread, a tendril of hope, also coming out from the junction. Another possibility.
TESLA LAB, CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN, COLORADO
A SHORT TIME LATER, BUT STILL THE PAST
“You had to kill them all? You couldn’t save one for me?”
Turcotte glanced over at Yakov in the co-pilot’s seat and rolled his eyes. Nekhbet had been complaining about the lack of fresh blood since they departed the ambush site in the Fynbar. Nosferatu, Nekhbet and Colonel Mickell were crowded behind them as Turcotte followed the directions sent by Leahy via flexpad.
He was keeping the Fynbar low, zipping along the foothills. He saw the unique chapel for the Air Force Academy and banked right, going around Cheyenne Mountain.
“And that is fresh blood on your collar,” Nekhbet added. “I can smell it.”
“I tried saving the one wounded man for you, my dear,” Nosferatu said. “But he was gone by the time I could get you.”
Yakov made a small noise, but didn’t say anything.
Turcotte landed the Fynbar in the designated place. Leahy was waiting for them at the tree line.
“Easy,” Yakov said as Turcotte led the way toward her. “Let’s hear her story. And she did send our Undead friend to help us.”
“Right,” Turcotte said. “Anything else?”
“Not at the moment,” Yakov said.
Leahy held up a hand both in greeting and defense. “Major. Colonel. Mister Yakov. Nosferatu and Nekhbet. Welcome to my grandfather’s Colorado lab. If you’ll follow me.”
Turcotte was going to say something, but Yakov waved a finger.
They trudged up the path, entered the tunnel and made their way to the lab. None of them were quite prepared, even Nosferatu, when Nekhbet leapt upon one of the brain-fried pilots and tore into his throat.
“They work for Mrs. Parrish,” Leahy said, making no move to stop Nekhbet. “I juiced them. They’re essentially brain dead so she’s just putting him out of his misery. I left them alive for you and your companion,” she added to Nosferatu.
“Such compassion,” Turcotte said.
“That’s ironic coming from you,” Leahy noted. She looked around. “We’ve all done some rather ruthless things to end up in this place. Together.”
“And why are we together?” Yakov asked. “You said it was urgent.”
Leahy turned a large flat screen monitor on.
“What is that?” Mickell asked.
“That is a Swarm Battle Core,” Leahy said. “It’s heading into the asteroid belt. I estimate it will arrive at Earth, perha
ps with a brief stop at Mars, in around three days. Hard to calculate exactly as it’s slowing down.”
Yakov muttered some curses in Russian.
“The Ancient Enemy,” Nosferatu said.
“I don’t understand,” Turcotte said. “It can’t have just showed up. It had to have been coming here for a while. Why?”
Leahy shrugged. “Who knows? The fact is it’s here. We have to deal with that fact.”
“Hold on,” Turcotte said. “Who the hell are you exactly?”
“You know my name,” Leahy said. She spread her hands. “This lab was built by my grandfather, Nikola Tesla.”
“Tesla did not have children,” Yakov said.
“I’m proof he did,” Leahy said. “My mother was born illegitimate in 1937. Her mother, my grandmother, died in childbirth. My grandfather kept my mother a secret, passing her off to—“ Leahy stopped. “I’ll give you the entire family saga when we have time. Which we don’t at the moment. When that—“ she indicated the screen—“gets here, it’s lights out for everyone.”
Turcotte was shaking his head. “We need something. Something solid to put our feet on. Too much has happened since we got back from Mars.” He glared at Leahy. “You were part of the deception that killed Kincaid and Quinn. And—“
“I explained that,” Leahy said. “And I avenged their deaths. I killed their assassin. I saved your spaceship, Major. I warned you and I diverted our friend to help.” She indicated Nosferatu. Then she pointed at the corpse and soon to be corpse as Nekhbet moved from the first to the second to dine. “They worked for Mrs. Parrish. Do I care? No. I do care though, about Mrs. Parrish’s Strategy and that’s why I’ve asked you to be here, Major Turcotte. And you, Mister Nosferatu.”
“My friends call me just Nosferatu. Or Prince.”
“Whatever,” Leahy said.
Everyone paused as Nekhbet’s teeth ripped into the second man’s neck and she began drinking, loudly. Then they turned back to Leahy.
“Listen, please,” Leahy said. “Give me a minute to explain what is happening. Because it’s all connected. Or going to be connected. I was raised by the Myrddin. It’s all I’ve known. They groomed me. Sent me to the best schools. I am the foremost expert on Tesla in the world. The real Tesla. The Tesla who was a Myrddin. The Tesla who traveled to Ararat and went inside the mothership. Who examined the master guardian without being corrupted. Who shot down the Swarm scout ship in 1908.”
Yakov interrupted. “Will your weapon work on that?” he indicated the image.
“That,” Leahy said, “is a Swarm Battle Core.”
“Get to the headline,” Turcotte said. “What can we do?”
“Do what the Airlia do,” Leahy said. “Run.”
“How?” Turcotte shook his head. “The Fynbar can’t do FTLT. There’re only two regeneration tubes.”
Leahy pointed up. “Do what the Airlia do. Take the mothership and run.”
Turcotte poked a hole in that. “It has no power for the FTLT drive. No ruby sphere. We used the one recovered from the Rift Valley to kill Aspasia on board the mothership in orbit. The second crashed into Mars with the other mothership.”
“There’s a third,” Leahy said.
“Where?” Turcotte demanded.
“Not on Earth,” Leahy said.
“A third one?” Turcotte said. “On Mars? There was a green crystal in the center of the array on Mons Olympus, but that was destroyed. Cydonia?”
Leahy nodded. “That outpost has been in existence for over ten millennia. It was the site of the original Airlia FTL array before Artad destroyed it when he arrived to find out why Aspasia had gone silent. When my grandfather infiltrated the master guardian he learned quite a few things.”
“Where in Cydonia?” Yakov asked.
“Underground,” Leahy said. “But it has to be accessible. Whatever is put in place can be retrieved.”
“Are you sure it’s the same as the ruby spheres that were power for the FTLT drives of the motherships?” Turcotte asked.
“Sufficiently sure,” Leahy said.
“What does that mean?” Nosferatu demanded.
Leahy turned to the Undead. “It had better be or there are no survivable options.”
FYNBAR ON THE WAY TO MARS
A SHORT TIME LATER, BUT STILL THE PAST
“If Mrs. Parrish has her husband’s essence uploaded into a ka she can bring him back to life in this body?” Yakov asked.
“That’s the theory,” Turcotte said. “Duncan and her husband did it for millennia. But, as you saw, she didn’t recommend it. Her husband’s ka was destroyed at the battle of Camlann. And she took hers into Mars.”
“A form of immortality,” Yakov said. “What was offered with the Grail. Also what many religions offer. Life beyond death.”
“Getting philosophical?” Turcotte asked.
“Nothing else to do until we get to Mars,” Yakov said. “Honestly, I’d rather be here than back on Earth.”
Turcotte nodded. “Yeah. I don’t understand people. Even after all my deployments and seeing the worst of people. I also saw some of the best. But it looks like the worst are winning out.”
“In Russia we take that for granted. It is why we could live with Stalin. With Putin. Yet the people still have spirit, My mama for instance—“ he was interrupted by the buzz of the flexpad.
Leahy’s face appeared. Her backdrop appeared the same as at Colorado Springs.
“Where are you?” Turcotte asked.
“Another lab not far from where you dropped me off,” Leahy said. “And not far from where Mrs. Parrish is headquartered. She calls her place Dreamland. It’s where she’s launches her rockets.”
“What is the great Strategy you’ve been hinting at?” Turcotte asked, sitting on the edge of the pilot’s depression and angling the flexpad so Yakov, sitting on the edge of his, could see.
“The Parrish’s are the latest generation of the leaders of the Myrddin,” Leahy said. “They’ve been around since the time of Merlin. And—“
“Don’t you mean we’ve been around since the time of Merlin?” Turcotte corrected.
Leahy shrugged. “We’re past the point of arguing. Do you want to know what her plan is? Her Strategy? Because once you hear it, you’ll know why I’ve been working to suborn it for over a decade.”
Turcotte acknowledged the rebuke. “Go ahead.”
“The original Strategy was to cleanse the world,” Leahy said.
“I do not like the sound of that,” Yakov said. “Very Hitlerish.”
“No shit,” Leahy said. “As humans we tend to be irrational. Ignore harsh realities when they don’t fit into our worldview. Mr. and Mrs. Parrish, indeed the Myrddin throughout history, have always held a very practical view given they knew about the Airlia and that humans are not the center of the universe. You might object to what I am going to tell you, but understand it is based in cold, hard, reality.
“The Strategy is actually very practical and logical if you have zero empathy for other human beings. The Myrddin have always believed they are acting for the greater good of mankind. Lisa Duncan and her partner gave the original Watchers the mandate to observe, but take no action. Merlin violated that.”
“And it didn’t turn out well,” Turcotte said. “Duncan’s partner was killed, his ka destroyed. Neither Arthur or Mordred won.”
“It actually turned out as it should have,” Leahy contradicted. “The truce between Artad and Aspasia was restored. And Merlin sacrificed himself by taking Excalibur, which controls the master guardian, to the most difficult place on Earth to recover.”
“Yeah,” Turcotte said. “Been there. Done that.”
“You did,” Leahy said. “Please. Let’s not get bogged down in arguing what happened. You want to know the Myrddin Strategy. I am telling you it. For centuries after Merlin we were little different than the original Watchers. Waiting. But we also fought our own battles. George Mallory was one of us. He sacrificed his life on
Everest to stop his climbing partner, Irvine, who was infected by a Swarm tentacle, from claiming Excalibur. There are other times—“
Turcotte interrupted. “You just said let’s not get bogged down in history.”
“We had no overall plan though,” Leahy said. “Because we did face the reality that we could not overcome the Airlia. But then my grandfather got into the mothership inside Ararat. He managed to infiltrate the master guardian without being corrupted and—“
“How do you know that?” Yakov demanded.
Turcotte reached across and put a hand on Yakov’s arm. “My friend, I agree with you, that we don’t know much of anything. But let us deal with the immediate situation.” He turned back to the flexpad. “Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Leahy said. She pointed over her shoulder at the Tesla computer. “My grandfather made that. You can consider it a forerunner of the quantum computer. I must admit I actively worked with the Parrish’s years ago when we began to consider a plan. But, initially, the problem we posed to it was how to defeat the Airlia? We fed the data in and it was analyzed. The result? Wait. Let the truce stand.”
“Do not repeat Merlin’s mistake,” Yakov pointed out.
“Yes,” Leahy said. “So.” She took a breath. “So, we decided to analyze strategies if something changed in the truce. If one side or the other won. Or, beyond our wildest hopes, both Airlia sides were defeated.”
“You’re welcome,” Turcotte said.
“And I do thank you,” Leahy said. “Sincerely. You, and Lisa Duncan and Yakov accomplished—“
“And Quinn and Kincaid,” Turcotte said. “They were part of it.”
“As was I,” Leahy said. She pressed on. “The Strategy of Mrs. Parrish was first formulated over ten years ago. Initially by my Tesla computer, but then we developed the first quantum computer; in conjunction with that, a separate, world-wide-web exclusive to Myrddin was developed. This was able to tap into all parts of the Internet, but only in one direction: taking. The computer and the Myrddin web merge together into what is called Ethos. It was kept secret of course. It gave the Myrddin not just a leg up on the Strategy but in making the Parrish’s the richest people on the planet. We were already rich, but now we were far ahead.