The Third World War had been brief, but what it lacked in length it made up for in savagery and devastation.
Seoul, South Korea, was a ghost town, having been struck by both Chinese nerve agents and American nuclear weapons. The best estimate was at least three million dead and four times that displaced.
Half of Taiwan had been scorched by a nuclear blast in a desperate attempt to stop the invading mainland forces supported by Artad. Scattered fighting was still raging as Taiwanese troops sought out and destroyed remnants of the invading forces. At least two million had died in fighting on that island.
Muslims in western China were rising in revolt, seeing their opportunity as Beijing’s backing of the alien Artad had backfired. That battle was still raging.
In the Pacific, the US Navy’s Task Force Eighty, centered on the super-carrier Kennedy, was linking up with Task Forces Seventy-eight and Seventy-nine. The latter two had been released from alien control and their crews once more had free will, as Aspasia’s Shadow’s nanovirus had been rendered inert without input from the Guardian computer. The US once again ruled supreme in that part of the world.
Iran and Iraq were still fighting, and other Middle Eastern countries continued to stand on the edge of war as diplomats desperately tried to avert disaster. Israel had its nuclear arsenal fully deployed for the first time in history and it was only that threat that kept the surrounding Arab nations from invading.
Still, the world was slowly backing away from the precipice of complete disaster and the two alien sides were fleeing.
With the aliens and their followers defeated, the Third World War was officially over, although the world was far from peace.
The toll: at least twelve million dead with twice that many wounded and countless more displaced from their homes.
If the First World War had started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the Second World War with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland (although many would argue that the Second was actually begun with the end of the First and the Treaty of Versailles), then the Third World War had begun at a remote desert site in the United States called Area 51, with the discovery of an alien mothership by the United States government. That event started a low flame boiling underneath an uneasy truce that had spanned millennia. It took over fifty years for the lid to blow off, but in terms of millennia, that was a relatively short period of time.
Unfortunately, while the Third World War was over, the First Interplanetary War for Earth was looming as a very real possibility, a fact known only to a select few. And this danger was not currently known by the man who had retrieved Excalibur, the key to the Master Guardian, from its hiding place near the top of Mount Everest, and who now sat there, unconscious, slowly freezing to death.
CHAPTER 1: THE PRESENT
Mount Everest
Mike Turcotte muttered irritably, wanting nothing more than to be left alone. He was wrapped in a warm blanket and felt very comfortable. A Sunday morning in Maine, the one day of the week he was home from the logging camp and didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn. He was wrapped in his mother’s handmade comforters. He so badly just wanted to continue sleeping. A dream kept intruding, an insistent, irritating buzz in his subconscious. A woman with dark hair, dressed in a white robe, standing on a beach. Looking at him. Her mouth was moving, saying something, but he heard nothing. There was something wrong about the place though. The shadows, the water. All wrong.
He focused on her lips and he knew he had tasted them many times. They were thin and pale, her face angular. He had known her—
“Get up.”
He didn’t hear as much as knew that’s what she was yelling at him. “Get up.”
Turcotte didn’t want to. He could never remember feeling as secure and comfortable as he did right now. He’d been so tired, he knew that, and however long he had rested, it wasn’t near enough.
“I need you.”
She had saved him; he knew that, although he could not recall details. Beyond that, he knew they had done much together, and been many places. And he had loved her fiercely. That emotion roared through him, shaking him out of his stupor.
Turcotte opened his eyes but all he could see was white. He blinked, feeling something wet on his face. He shook his head, slowly realizing it was snow on his skin. Panicking, he sat up abruptly, six inches of snow falling off the upper half of his body.
He looked about. Open air directly in front. Rock behind.
He was flanked by bodies. Frozen solid. One dressed in a black robe with silver fringe. Another in ancient leather armor. And a third in early-twentieth-century climbing gear — Sandy Irvine, who had disappeared in 1924 while attempting to summit with George Mallory. With a smile frozen forever on his face. That shook Turcotte. He knew he’d have died with a smile on his face also if he hadn’t woken. He could feel the cold throughout his body now. It was excruciatingly painful as his nerve endings came awake.
He looked down and could just make out the sword across his knees. Excalibur.
The key to the Master Guardian that he had freed from its scabbard, activating it.
Reality came rushing back to him. Yakov had to be in the mothership with the Master Guardian. Duncan was missing. And he was high on Mount Everest.
Next to the sword was a SATPhone, its surface frozen and covered with ice. With stiff hands he reached out and picked up the phone, shoving it inside his parka. The cold made even the slightest act extremely difficult.
Mike Turcotte forced himself to get to his feet, Excalibur gripped tightly in his right hand, an ice ax in his left. He knew he had passed the peak of power the amphetamines had given him and that the oxygen richness of the blood doping was fading. How long had he sat there, he wondered. It couldn’t have been too long because he still had some feeling in his hands and feet. He checked his mask, but there was no oxygen flowing. The tank on his back had to be empty by now.
He knew, as surely as he could feel the sword in his hands, that he could not make his way along the ledge or down the mountain in the same manner he had climbed up. He glanced down once more at the three bodies frozen next to him. They had known the same thing. And they had never woken from whatever their last pleasant dreams had been.
He closed his eyes and tried to force his oxygen-starved brain to think through the overwhelming exhaustion and pain. He’d trained in high altitude and the cold many times in his Special Forces career and he tried to recall what he had learned. He was higher than he had ever been. His instructors had beaten one thing into him about working in the mountains — gravity could be your friend or your enemy, depending on which direction you were heading and how fast. He considered those words of wisdom. He needed to go down, and do it quickly. He looked below at the Kanshung Face on the north side of Everest. Gravity could be bis friend, but one slip and he would fall for a very, very long time.
There was one option. In a way Turcotte was glad he couldn’t really think it through and figure the odds of success, because he had no doubt they would be very low.
He hooked the ice ax onto his harness and grabbed the nylon strap attached to the front of it. He clipped the snap link on the end of the strap to the safety rope. He paused for a moment, amazed that he had succeeded against the other groups that had raced to this spot to try to claim the sword. The corrupt SEALs from Aspasia’s Shadow; the Chinese and the Ones Who Wait, sent by Artad; and his climbing partner and former watcher, Professor Mualama, who had been corrupted by a Swarm tentacle — all were now dead, their bodies scattered about the mountain.
Turcotte took the end of the rope, where the one SEAL had cut it, and laboriously tried to make a knot, thick enough so that it would not fit through the snap link. It took him several attempts and almost ten minutes of work before he achieved this simple task.
Taking the ice ax in his free hand again, Turcotte put his back to the mountain and faced outward, staring out over the Himalayas below him. It was dark, dawn still hours off. The star
s glittered overhead and the moon was low to the west, its beams reflecting off the snow-covered peaks. Other than the nearby bodies, there was no sign of mankind as far as he could see. The silence was overwhelming, not even the wind, which had been his constant companion on his way up the mountain, was blowing. It was the most peaceful scene Turcotte had ever witnessed. It was serene and it was deadly.
Turcotte jumped outward with all his might.
The first piece of climbing protection — a piton — already weakened by Mualama’s fall, tore free of the mountain. Like stitching being ripped apart, the rope popped succeeding pieces of protection from their perch and Turcotte fell, swinging to the west as each piece held for just a moment, the effect jarring him slightly and curving his trajectory before free-falling again. His climbing harness dug into his thighs and waist, but the pain was barely noticeable.
Turcotte slammed against the side of Everest, on the sheer Kanshung Face, still falling, still being swung to the west. The impact knocked what little breath he had out of his lungs and he gasped for air. He came to a halt for a moment as a piton held for a few seconds. He twisted and looked about, mouth open, lungs straining. The northwest ridge was twenty meters away. So close, yet so out of reach.
Then Turcotte dropped abruptly as the next piton holding him pulled free. The pendulum effect swung him toward the ridge and he reached the last piece of protection, where the ridge met the face. It held for the slightest of moments. Enough for Turcotte to get his bearings — he was less than two meters from the ridge. Very close, yet still too far. He braced his feet against the Kanshung Face and as the last piton gave way, he pushed off, leaping to the side, swinging his ice ax, arm fully extended.
The tip of the ax caught for a moment in the ice at the very edge of the ridge, holding him in place as the rope hurtled by. Then the ax gave way and he slid, desperately slamming it at the ridge time and time again. It caught once more and he hung there, dangling from the ax. He twisted his body to face the rock.
Dully, he realized the rope would now be heading down and when it reached its fullest extension, the weight would pull him off the mountain and he would follow the equipment to his death.
Maintaining a one-hand grip on the ax handle, most of his weight on the strap from it stretched taut around his wrist, with the other hand he swung Excalibur. The blade severed the rope a second before it was fully extended. Turcotte followed through the swing and jabbed Excalibur at the ice and rock of the ridgeline. The sword cut through the ice and into the rock, penetrating a few inches. Using the leverage of sword and ice ax, Turcotte slowly maneuvered himself off the sheer face and onto the ridge. He pulled the sword out and held it against his chest.
He rolled onto the almost knife edge of the ridge and lay on his back, gasping for air and staring up at the stars. Only twenty-nine thousand feet to go.
The Gulf of Mexico
Three hundred feet under the water, an undersea habitat was joined to the leg of an abandoned oil rig platform. Inside the habitat, strapped to a steel gurney, was Lisa Duncan, former presidential science adviser and the one who had initiated the investigation into Majestic-12 and Area 51. She’d been kidnapped from Area 51 and brought here where she met Dr. Garlin, who claimed to be a member of a new Majestic-12 committee. This had occurred after it was discovered that Lisa was not who she appeared to be. Who she really was, however, remained a mystery. While under the control of Aspasia’s Shadow she had partaken of the Grail, and was now immortal, something that was doing her little good in her present predicament.
She was a slender, dark-haired woman, covered with a white robe. On her head was a crown made of three bands of metal, an ancient artifact that had been carried out of Egypt by the high priest during the Exodus. Leads from the crown went to an object on a gurney next to her, something else that had been carried across the desert millennia ago: the Ark of the Covenant.
The Ark was three feet high and wide by four feet long. Gold plating covered the surface. On the open lid were two sphinxlike objects with glowing red eyes. The wires from the crown ran into the inner lid of the Ark. A thin, previously hidden screen had been pulled down, revealing a slightly curving, black surface. Just below it was a series of two dozen small hexagonal buttons with a rune on each one.
Silver-haired Garlin stood next to the Ark, wearing a white labcoat. He stood perfectly still, watching the black surface as colors flickered across it. His face was expressionless except for a slight twitching on the left side, a muscle out of control, but it didn’t seem to bother him in the least. A thin trail of blood was seeping from his left ear, but that also was ignored.
The black shimmered, flickered, then came alive with an image. Garlin leaned forward to look at what was displayed: a scarred mothership lifting off a planet’s surface. The area around the launch site was crowded with people, troops holding them back. For a moment the vision focused on a small child near the front of the crowd, then it swept back. As the mothership rose, the planet’s landmasses came into focus. Garlin noted the details.
Then the view shifted to the mothership moving through the vastness of space, going from one jump point to another at faster-than-light speeds.
The screen went black and then the mothership appeared again, this time looping into the edge of a planetary system at sub-light speed, but still traveling at a tremendous velocity. A cargo bay door opened and a smaller craft edged out as the mothership passed just inside the farthest planet. The craft was saucer-shaped, with a bulge in the forward center rising up and two large pods in the rear providing power. Like the mothership, its surface had also been damaged in battle. Unlike the mothership, its surface was not black metal, but rather a grayish compound. While the mothership headed back into deep space toward a jump point, the saucer flew on, toward the inner planets.
An image of Earth appeared. The craft was heading for it. Garlin took a step closer to the screen. Duncan moaned and twisted, fighting against the restraints and the invasion of her mind. The vision of the craft and Earth blanked out.
A man appeared on the screen. Stocky, muscular. Dressed in a one-piece black jumpsuit with some sort of insignia on his chest. He was standing on a shoreline. His shadow was diffused by two suns overhead at slightly different angles. The air was tinged with yellow mist. The water was perfectly smooth with a purplish tint. The man was reaching out toward the viewer when the screen flickered again.
The man appeared once more, this time dressed in antiquated armor. The metal was dented and bloody. A wound across his forehead dripped blood. And he was smiling, his eyes dancing with battle lust. In this scene, he only cast one shadow. The trees in the background were bright with the fiery colors of autumn.
Garlin frowned. Duncan’s connection with this man was strong, very powerful, overriding his inputs to the Ark of the Covenant. Garlin wanted the location of the craft that had just been shown — where it had landed on Earth and where it was now secreted.
He reached forward and tapped a command on the keys. The saucer appeared once more, heading toward Earth.
Duncan’s back arched, the restraint stretching slightly, then pulling her back onto the gurney. Her head twisted back and forth. She moaned, a low keening sound that a sleeping dog in the midst of a bad dream might make.
The craft disappeared and the man reappeared. This time he was dressed in camouflage fatigues. Garlin leaned forward. There was something different about the man. A brief smile crossed Duncan’s face.
Garlin leaned forward and tapped on the keys once more, directing the Ark to probe for the information he needed.
The man disappeared.
CHAPTER 2: THE PAST
Atlantis, Earth
10,600 B.C.
The magnificent City of the Gods, set in the center of the island in the middle of the great ocean, was surrounded by concentric rings of land and water. On the large hill in the exact center was a golden palace over a mile wide at the base and stretching over three thousand feet into the s
ky. As magnificent as the building was, it was dwarfed by the large black mothership now descending upon it. The ship’s surface was unmarred, a flat black that seemed to absorb the sun’s rays.
The land in the surrounding rings had once boasted bountiful crops and many villages, but much of the land was blackened and blistered from the ravages of war. The human population was depleted, as many men had been ordered by the Gods off to distant battles and most had never returned.
Directly outside the palace, the streets were choked with people clamoring for entrance into the temple of the Gods. Warrior-priests manned the gates on the outer wall, with strict orders regarding who was to be allowed in and who was to be denied entrance. The latter outnumbered the former by a hundred to one. Some prescient souls were already in the harbor below the palace, buying their way onto sailing ships, but most had their attention on the palace from which the Gods had ruled for so long, unwilling to accept that change was coming and that the Gods would not take care of them.
Prayers were chanted, incense burned, and rich offerings were made to the warrior-priests, but no one was allowed entry unless they were on the list. A pattern soon emerged, as only those who had fought for the Gods and worshipped them with unwavering loyalty were allowed in.
The mothership came to a hover next to the top level of the palace, its center adjacent to the tower. Large hangar doors on the side of the craft slid apart and a narrow metal gangway extended out of the ship to the tallest steeple in the temple. Priests hurried across the gangplank and took up positions in the entrance to the hangar. Four priests carefully made their way across, two by two, on their inside shoulders a wooden pole. Supported by the poles was an object covered by a white shroud. Directly behind the four was a high priest, garbed in a white linen robe, over which he wore a sleeveless blue tunic, fringed in gold. On top of that was a coat of many colors, which glittered in the sunlight. The coat was fastened at the shoulders with two precious stones, carved with runes. On his chest was a breastplate encrusted with jewels. There were two pockets over each breast, each of which emitted a greenish glow thanks to the stones placed inside. On his head was a crown made up of three bands of metal. He was chanting in a strange singsong language as they made their way into the mothership and disappeared into its vastness.
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