The Deadliest Earthling

by Gibson Morales

  “It’s not that bad, is it?” Morris interjected.

  Johnny cast his head from side to side, seething.

  “In the end, it changes nothing,” the Eagle said calmly.

  “Angels, Heaven, God. All that stuff was the Anunnaki, then? And here we are fighting them?” Johnny launched from his space on the sofa and walked for the door, not caring that the others were pitying him with their sorry gazes. Laura and Sledge murmured something, but he didn’t listen. The whole room felt like it was caving in on him.

  Raised his whole life to fight an enemy that couldn’t be beaten. Maybe an enemy that wasn’t supposed to be. Because if the Anunnaki really were here first then they couldn’t be all bad, could they? Angels, Heaven, and God seemed good things to him. The sickening thought confronted him that maybe it was humans who had gone all wrong and not the extraterrestrials. Maybe his whole life would’ve turned out differently if he’d always known this.

  As he reached the door, the Eagle rose in the corner of his eye.

  “Johnny,” the Eagle said with a calm authority. “Nothing in Earth’s past justifies the Anunnaki’s occupation of Earth. Ask anyone in this room besides your cousin. They know the Anunnaki’s reach into our history as well as I do.”

  He studied the others in the room and a face sought out his. Laura. The hurt in her gaze disarmed him. She genuinely seemed sorry for him.

  “As the only nonhuman here, I think I’m pretty qualified to give you an answer,” Magu said.

  “Yeah?” Johnny said.

  “The Anunnaki of today are different from the ones in Earth’s past. They aren’t all evil, but they’re not good in any human sense. They’re on this planet for selfish reasons. They see you humans as expendable. Like you might animals.”

  “But why all the secrecy with me and the other recruits? Why not tell us at least?” Surely it would’ve helped them to know their enemy better.

  “Because your youth has been mired too much already. Certain terrible truths have always existed. But that doesn’t mean you have to know them,” the Eagle said. “A week ago, I told you about the Shroud War. Our learning that the Anunnaki weren’t as technologically advanced as we’d thought helped us survive. Morale matters.”

  “Morale, huh?” He said it sarcastically, but she’d made a good point. Their talk in the bunker resonated enough to calm him. Besides, surely the Anunnaki had lied about plenty more.

  The new knowledge still stung, burning away at his own big picture of things, but he told himself he could tolerate it.

  “The same reason you are important as a symbol.”

  Johnny faced the sofa and took a single step toward it. He felt himself on the cusp of letting it all go. Finding that same page the Eagle was on and climbing aboard it.

  “Not to interrupt this family matters moment,” Magu said, a tremor in his words, “but I’ve got a response from the benefactors.”

  Silence swept over the room. No one blinked.

  Magu interlocked his fingers. His head fell. “There is no deal. They’re dead.”

  Chapter 43

  The room sat on a pane of fracturing glass. Terror froze them in place. Only Sledge dared break the spell by standing up. “Dead? How do you know?”

  Magu’s eyes diminished. “Their last message was an automated distress signal. It must’ve been recent.”

  Juan’s forehead creased in anger. Laura folded her arms. Voices erupted from everyone within seconds. Suggestions. What-ifs. Denials.

  In the commotion Johnny found himself struggling to wrap his head around it. This was beyond a disaster. Because if the Anunnaki discovered the sponsors, they could confiscate all their secrets.

  The chatter dwindled as ideas burned out and the reality sunk in. A palpable gloom filled the air among them.

  “Not good,” Zacharia said as things quieted. Juan brought out a bottle of whiskey and poured glasses for everyone.

  “But the Anunnaki only have three Conifers,” Johnny said, taking a sip.

  “That’s all they need,” Zacharia said. “Each Conifer offers a great amount of energy. They might not be able to be able to unleash the Ark’s full power with three, but they’ll still unleash hell. Technically, they could activate it with just one.”

  Despite this, Johnny suddenly wanted to run out to the shuttle and grab his Conifer. To wear it over his neck as he’d been doing for so long now. Frustration ravaged him. He’d assumed the Anunnaki needed all four Conifers. He was sick of these twists and turns. The deadliest earthling title, the purpose of Orun’s earring, the Anunnaki’s ancient history on Earth. Apparently everything he knew had to turn out to be wrong in some way.

  “Well, the good news is I don’t think they’ve traced our location here,” Magu said. “This site isn’t compromised yet.”

  Him saying that amounted to tossing sugar on garbage. Johnny clapped his hands together without actually making a clapping sound.

  “If they only need three Conifers, what’s stopping them from activating the Ark right now?”

  “If I may,” Zacharia said, looking to Dagos. She nodded and he continued. “We suspect a long-abandoned alien base on Mars has been sending out a special signal to the Ark—a remote operator from the ancient alien days that the Anunnaki gained access to when they came to Earth in 2012. The problem is that the signal is too weak except when Mars passes close enough to Earth. Anyway, this signal puts the Ark into standby mode. But to actually activate it, one must wait until the moment Mars aligns perfectly with Earth. That’s when the signal is at one hundred percent and it’s the only opportunity to actually use the Conifers to unlock it.”

  Zacharia cleared his throat.

  “The time frame for the perfect alignment is short. Minutes. If someone activates it during that time, then the Ark remains activated. Otherwise it’ll go right back into dormancy once Mars is unaligned with Earth. If you don’t use it, you lose it, so to speak.”

  “So the Conifers,” Johnny started, scrambling to gather his thoughts into an actual sentence, “are they reacting to a signal from Mars too?”

  “Yes. That’s why they respond with their own beacons. They were designed as a way to unlock the Ark.”

  Johnny stood up and walked over to bottle of whiskey and poured himself a bit more.

  “Okay. What exactly does this thing do?” he said after a sip.

  “The Ark of the Covenant is a special kind of mannadium reactor,” Zacharia said. “It converts Earth’s magnetic field into mannadium.”

  “So…?”

  “So Earth’s magnetic field could give off unlimited energy if someone had a device to conduct it properly. Enter the Ark of the Covenant.”

  Johnny thought about the Anunnaki’s massive energy costs. With access to an unlimited energy source, they could wage a full-scale war against humanity. Deploy their most expensive, powerful ships. Equip their soldiers with the best weapons. They wouldn’t have to hold back or obey the rules of the Shroud War peace treaty.

  It was hard to conceive of a device this powerful. Let alone a way to destroy it if it got activated. Which led to the obvious question.

  “Why don’t we just destroy it before they activate it, then?” Johnny said nonchalantly.

  “No human weapons can destroy the Ark itself,” the Eagle said. “Nothing we have access to, anyway.”

  “And we don’t know where it is,” Zacharia said, cleaning his sunglasses with his coat.

  “And even if we did, it’s probably highly guarded. Lots of Anunnaki soldiers and maybe some drones,” Magu added. “Not to mention the human slaves they’re using to excavate it.”

  “Slaves?” Johnny asked.

  “I’ve picked up enough intercepts to conclude they’re using a lot of slaves for a massive two-week excavation. That can only be the Ark.”

  “Can you track where they’re shipping the slaves?”

  “I’ve been monitoring their trafficking,” Magu said. “But apparently the slaves they’re usi
ng don’t have any tracking records.”

  Johnny’s expression turned to confusion.

  “Meaning they’re probably the Ascendi’s mind slaves. No need to record those.”

  Ascendi mind slaves. The last time he’d encountered them was at Fort Bloodhound. Johnny bit his lip, tasting the sharp remains of alcohol. “I might know where the Ark is.”

  He felt the eyes of the room on him and put his glass of whiskey down on the spot he’d been sitting. “When the Ascendi shared his thoughts with me, I saw this big dig site with slaves and a giant golden structure.”

  Johnny paused at the highly puzzled looks he was getting. He’d forgotten that no one else even knew about all the stuff that went on with him and Orun inside the Anunnaki base. Right, probably a good idea if I fill them in first. So he told them what happened.

  “You say you actually saw a dig site with a golden tower?” Magu asked twenty minutes later.

  Johnny nodded.

  Zacharia cupped his chin with his fist. “This must be the Tabernacle.”

  Morris’s eyes widened.

  “Now the question is how do we find it?” Sledge said.

  “Searching 196 million square miles won’t exactly be a cakewalk, as you might say,” Magu said.

  “One hundred ninety-six million square miles?” Johnny balked.

  “The surface area of Earth, of course,” Zacharia said.

  Magu nodded. “Remember, I’m the one who disabled Anunnaki surveillance around New Bagram. Hacking into their surveillance gliders isn’t too hard. Just takes some time.”

  “What if I showed you the dig site?” Johnny offered. “Would that narrow it down?”

  Magu leaned in from his black leather chair and motioned with his elongated head. “How could you show me?”

  “I’ve got the Conifer,” Johnny said matter-of-factly. All he needed to do was borrow it from the shuttle and make a hologram of what he remembered.

  Zacharia slid his hands together. “We’d better alert the pilots.”

  Chapter 44

  They listened to the plan. Then everyone else stepped out, leaving Johnny and the Eagle alone in the room. He wondered if her leg pained her too much to walk without her cane. Or did she want to talk to him?

  “This mission could kill me. Sure you want to risk that?” Johnny said. He didn’t know why he bothered to bring this up. Mostly he didn’t want her to try to manipulate him, so he was going to be the one asking questions.

  “The Anunnaki could kill us at any time,” the Eagle said impassively. “Trust me. You’ll get used to it.”

  More than likely his parents had, he thought glumly. They’d even known the perfect last words to say. Every Anunnaki is your enemy. Show no mercy. But the thing was, his parents’ final wishes didn’t quite apply to this situation. Sacrificing himself wasn’t the same as showing no mercy to the Anunnaki.

  The Eagle yawned. “Try not to psych yourself out. This isn’t your first life-threatening mission and it won’t be your last. Think about that.”

  Gee, thanks for the encouragement. Johnny curled his lip. “I’ll remind myself how unimportant this whole thing is,” he said wryly.

  “Oh, it’s important,” the Eagle said in a way that let on that she enjoyed casually correcting him. “If we mean to protect the New Bagram’s refugees. Remember, if you prevent the Ark’s activation, the Sinsers don’t need the Ascendi anymore. Once the Ascendi are gone, the Sinsers go back to the rules of the peace treaty and the killing of innocent humans stops.”

  “Then it will be back to only killing of humans who resist them,” Johnny thought out loud.

  Johnny woke in complete darkness with sore eyes and a clouded mind. The steady breathing of Morris reminded him he was in the spare bedroom Shatha had thrown together for them.

  He grasped at what he’d said to the Eagle. This mission could kill me. Yes, that much was true. And the discussion from the night before flooded back to him. After he’d generated an image of the golden tower, Magu searched through Anunnaki surveillance scans for such a structure. He’d located it after a few hours. The Eagle, Zacharia, and Sledge concocted the plan. Set off an electrostatic bomb at the base of the Tabernacle. It won’t do much damage, but it will temporarily disable the Anunnaki’s ability to activate the Ark. And the Anunnaki will have lost their chance. Because today was Easter and the day Mars would completely vanish from the sky.

  An electrostatic bomb would screw up the Anunnaki’s magnetized bodies, temporarily preventing them from accessing any of their machines. They would still able to shoot and move, but they wouldn’t be able to interface or even use their visors for roughly an hour. And they needed to interface with the Ark to activate it.

  The window for activating the Ark lasted only minutes. Zacharia and the Eagle seemed pretty certain of that. Zacharia had even given them an exact time: 12:00 p.m. Noon. So as long as they set off an ES bomb in range, they could stop the Ark’s activation.

  Everything checked out except the one big factor. His friends. Johnny had tried to shove it out of his head until now. He was surprised he didn’t dream about it. Maybe he did and he didn’t remember.

  Magu located the golden tower, the Tabernacle as Zacharia called it, and if that existed, then what the Ascendi showed him mentally must’ve been the real deal. He leaned his head back on his pillow and stared up. His eyes had adjusted, working with the little light that existed from the stars and the red glow of Mars from outside. The ceiling above was a mess of flaking paint and electrical wires.

  Those four slaves you saw in my hologram. Are they at the Tabernacle? He had asked Magu the night before. By now he should’ve found them.

  Johnny ran his chapped lips together and made a note to hydrate before they deployed later today. It couldn’t be more than a couple of hours until someone came by to alert him that they’d found Hamiad, Sarah, Krem, and Skunk. And then what?

  They could attempt a rescue mission, but that promised nothing. Heck, this whole mission could easily derail even if everything went right. His mind felt too weary, too worried about his friends to think about the lesser details.

  He cycled through the same thoughts as if there might be something he was missing. There was at least one silver lining. The chameleon scale he’d heard about from his drill sergeant months ago was real. And there were extras. The Snake-eaters picked them up the night before on the way back from dropping Magu off at an undisclosed location. He’d demanded to move his computer equipment somewhere safer.

  He noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. A black figure stood in the doorway with its palm up. His heart raced and for a split second he thought of an Anunnaki.

  “Reaction time is slow for the guy who was going to be a Snake-eater.”

  Zacharia’s words felt like a blow to the shoulder. Johnny rubbed his eyes, and the man’s shaggy hair and thick coat came into view.

  “Thanks for the wake-up call, but as a Watcher cadet, I don’t really need it,” he said, his heart still pounding.

  “I’m a man of my word. I’ve acquired an electrostatic bomb for us. And I made sure Magu searched all night for your friends before he left. Eventually we found them. They are there.”

  Johnny elbowed into a sitting-up position on his bedroll. The words were only a thin layer sliced off his greatest fear of never seeing them again. But he savored the relief, minor as it was.

  Zacharia clasped his hands together. “You’re going to have to make a choice. We might be able to save your friends along with the other slaves.”

  He let the words hang.

  “But?” Johnny asked.

  “But you’ll need to give an interview with someone.”

  “What’s that going to do?”

  “There’s a militia force within reasonable distance of the Tabernacle. They’re willing to help us out and attack it while you and the Snake-eaters plant the bomb. It might be the distraction we need. But they want to know they’re doing it for a good cause. For yo
u.”

  “A glider will wipe them out like nothing.” Johnny scowled.

  Zacharia shrugged. “They don’t seem to think so. And I’m inclined to agree. If they get close, the Anunnaki won’t risk launching any explosives. Not so close to the Tabernacle. And once that electrostatic bomb goes off, most of those gliders’ weapons systems will be offline.”

  Johnny pictured his friends’ rescue at the hands of some rogue militia group. He didn’t know that sending in more troops would guarantee anything. In some ways it might be a greater danger with all the bullets flying around. And regardless of what Zacharia said, the militia would sustain losses. Probably a large number because the Anunnaki would guard the Tabernacle well.

  He tried not to think about that. Instead, he focused on the hope of seeing his friends. This might not be the ideal way, but it was a way.

  “The militia will only help if I’m there?”

  “Yes,” Zacharia said. “You’ve become as much of a beacon as the one your Conifer was emitting.”

  Johnny massaged his temple with the bottom of his palm. The militia were only doing this because of the whole deadliest earthling symbol the Eagle created. There was no way to get around it. Yet, deep down, he knew he needed to save his friends. So for all his hesitation, he knew he had only the one decision to make.

  “I’ll do it, but I have a condition.”

  “Yes?”

  “After this I’m done. No more deadliest earthling. No more Keeper. I want my own life without any strings attached.”

  “I find that a real shame. After all those years of training and hard work, you could do lots of good for humanity. Maybe even bring about an end to the Anunnaki. Your parents almost did.”

  Johnny clenched his jaw. “Is it a guarantee?”

  “Maybe I’m not the one you should be asking.”

  Johnny gathered that he meant the Eagle.

  “Maybe. But for some reason I feel like you are.”

  Zacharia smiled. “You’re a smart kid, Johnny, but also a little shortsighted.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, heat in his voice.