The Sam Reilly Collection

by Christopher Cartwright

  Almost three years later, I and the other seven men aboard entered the grand harbor which we had once called home, now so long ago.

  Longjiang, January 1446

  I stepped off the rowboat at the busy port I once called home.

  I felt no fear.

  My boat was only one of over a hundred inside the harbor, and no one looking at us could have imagined where we had come from.

  Except that the front of the boat was still ordained with the name of my master’s ship.

  Barloc Wikea.

  “You there – who is in charge?” It was one of the harbor guards.

  “I am,” I replied.

  “And who are you?”

  “I do not know what my father named me, but my master has always called me Rat Catcher.”

  “Then who is your master and where is he now?” The man was being intentionally rude.

  “My master is Barloc…”

  The man didn’t let me finish.

  “And where has Barloc gone? He left with three of our greatest ships – there is an order to have him executed upon his return for treason.”

  “Treason!” I complained. “He was the emperor’s most loyal servant.”

  “Then where is he?”

  “His ship was damaged in a far off land and he has remained to guard its most awesome treasure, which he has captured in the name of the emperor.”

  The man started to laugh.

  “And you expect me to believe this!”

  I was about to run, but someone had already gripped my wrists and bound them with rope.

  All eight of us were taken to a prison until our fate could be decided.

  Three days later a man entered the prison and advised us that we were all to be executed the following morning for treason.

  “But we are loyal servants of the emperor. Please, we come bearing news of Barloc’s great achievements and to guide a ship to retrieve the greatest of treasures,” I pleaded.

  “You have been away a long time, haven’t you?”

  Unable to decide what was expected, I remained silent.

  “We were losing so many men to battles upon distant shores that we were no longer able to keep our enemies from attacking our cities. The emperor decreed that his navy may no longer leave the harbor.”

  “No, but it must. Within the treasure that my master has claimed for the emperor, lies a weapon so powerful that it will yield unstoppable strength to its owner. I have seen it with my own eyes destroy an entire ship with seconds.”

  “That is not my concern. I am here to inform you that tomorrow morning you will be executed.”

  The man was obdurate.

  That night I called for a guard. The man appeared young, maybe less than sixteen years old and of all the sentries I’d seen, this one appeared most ill at ease around the prisoners.

  I relayed the story of our adventure to the young man. Where we had been, and what we had seen – and how my master had stayed with the stricken ship to protect the treasure so that the emperor could rule for eternity.

  The boy tried his best to explain that he couldn’t help us escape, even if he had wanted to.

  He has gone now, but when he returns in a few hours, I will shove these writings into his hand and make him promise to do what I could not, and return for my master.

  I only hope that these words will one day lead you to find my master and return the weapon to the emperor.

  Sincerely, Rat Catcher.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The large and cumbersome Chinook had been replaced by the much smaller and agile Bell UH-1Y Venom, AKA, Super Huey. With Tom at the controls, Sam sat comfortably as the craft flew over the Victorian town of Castlemaine and on towards Echuca, where Aliana and his father were waiting for them. They were going to follow Rat Catcher’s original map, from the Southern Ocean all the way back to where the Mahogany Ship had been finally destroyed.

  Sam found them sitting by an old, beat up Holden Utility, parked on the edge of town.

  “What took you so long?” his father asked.

  Sam ignored the question and walked up to Aliana. “I’m sorry to leave you with my dad, but I couldn’t risk Rodriguez finding out I’d escaped.”

  For a moment, he thought she might slap him, and even braced himself for the pain.

  And then she wrapped her long, slender arms around his neck, and kissed him. “If you ever do that to me again, don’t expect to see me here when you return.”

  “I won’t, I promise.”

  James loaded the equipment into the helicopter and the team of four carried on towards the Barmah National Park along the Victorian border.

  From the air, Sam remembered the story Jie Qiang told of Barloc’s men having attempted to carry the massive ship all the way from the southern coast, in an attempt to cross the enormous land mass and gain latitude. He tried to picture the monstrous ship being dragged over the crest of the hills, and for a moment, pictured creeks and troughs in the mountains as though they were possibly caused by the movement of the ship.

  “Let’s have a look at this map,” his father said. “You spent nearly six months in Longjiang, trying to find a lead about this map, and now, you’re telling me one of our enemies found it first?”

  “Yes, I know. Jie Qiang told me that he’d heard you talking to someone from his town. It was only then that he realized just how valuable this map really was.”

  “Right, well I hope you didn’t pay him too much for it. After all, it’s practically useless, without this map, too,” James said as he pulled out his great, great, Grandmother Rose’s map.

  “Let’s hope they’re both right.”

  Tom smiled as his eyes skimmed over the map. “I just can’t believe there isn’t a supermarket, or shopping mall, built over the top of it.”

  They flew over a number of rivers, including the great Murray-Darling, which Sam imagined had moved its banks many times in the centuries that had passed since the Mahogany Ship was carried through this area.

  Still he followed the map, until no more markers were left.

  And there, below them, rested the depressed marks of what could only have once been the most extraordinarily large ship of ancient times. No wood remained, and grass and trees had grown where the ship once rested, but from the air, there was still no mistaking this was the final resting place of the Mahogany Ship.

  *

  Michael Rodriguez looked at the drawing his great ancestors had made of the Ark of Light, all those millennia ago. It brought back memories of the first time his father told him of his true purpose in life.

  That his family had been chosen, thousands of years ago, to look after a sacred artefact that held the key to unlock all of mankind’s unimaginable powers. He still recalled the shame that he felt as his father explained that his family, sworn to protect the scepter, had lost it nearly six years ago. Followed by the pride to know that he would one day discover it again.

  But of course, he had no intention of protecting it. A device that offered such power would surely be a waste to keep buried. No, soon it would be his, and with it, he would introduce a new system of power on earth.

  Sam had done just as he wanted, and soon, his father would lead him straight to it.

  *

  “Okay, dad, do you want to read out that map of yours for me?” Sam asked, staring at the desolate land around them and wondering how such a monumental historical artefact could disappear into the sands of time, in such a place.

  “No need, I’ve read it enough to know it verbatim.”

  “All right then, let’s hear it.”

  “We need to fly exactly 22 miles due north of the northern tip of the bow of the Mahogany Ship,” James said. “And, before you ask, we’re going to need this to be exact, so let’s work out where the different tips of the ship are.”

  “Okay, I think it’s there,” Sam said, pointing to the ground to the right of them.

  Aliana leaned over, kissing him on his cheek, an
d said, “Good guess darling, but I think you’re wrong. Zheng He’s treasure ships had a two-tiered bow, meaning that the deep imprints that we can see now are the main keel, whereas the final southern tip would be another fifty feet back.”

  “She’s right son. Didn’t you study archeology or something at some stage as a minor?”

  “Egyptology, to be exact – never ancient China.”

  Tom banked to the left to make a large circle before starting the trip from precisely fifty feet back from where Sam had suggested the northern tip of the ship had once been.

  “Everyone happy?” Tom said.

  There was a general murmur of agreement, before they continued on along the treasure hunt.

  Aliana picked up and then looked at the old map. “Hey James, what makes you think any of these markers on this map are still there?”

  “Because old Jack Robertson may have been a murdering bastard, but as a crooked highwayman he’d been used to burying treasure for years. If anyone knew how to make a map that couldn’t be tainted by time, it was old Jack. Just look at this – all we have to do is find the tip of the highest point inside these three points and then walk north 150 feet. Easy.”

  After the 22-mile flight, Tom said, “Now where?”

  Sam’s father then pulled out the map that he said he’d memorized and looked at the landscape. “Just hover there for a minute, would you?”

  “You’re the boss, James.”

  Almost immediately, he put the map down and said, “Okay, take us down, over there.”

  Landing on the top of the mountain, Sam used the helicopter’s radar to determine if there was another mountain within fifty miles higher than the one they were on – and there wasn’t. “Well dad, I guess you have a bit more luck this time.”

  Together, the four members of the team counted 150 feet, and then stopped.

  The land was dry, with a few hardened native shrubs, the only plants to be seen.

  James looked around and happily said, “This is it. Here’s the spot.”

  “That’s great. Where’s the Ark of Light?” Aliana asked.

  “Below us… well, actually, it’s somewhere down a river that’s below us.”

  Sam jumped up and down a couple times and said, “The soil appears pretty sturdy to me. Did you have a plan of getting to the river below?”

  “Yeah. Tom, do you mind running back to the helicopter and grabbing that box I brought, while I dig a hole?”

  Tom nodded his head and then ran back to the helicopter, returning a few minutes later with the box.

  “What did you bring, dad?”

  “Dynamite. I’m not sure how old it is. I found it on the old homestead I was staying at, and thought it might come in handy.”

  “Shit, you could have killed us. Do you have any idea how unstable that stuff is, particular after a number of years, rotting away?”

  James laughed, “I’m only kidding. It’s just ANFO, ammonium nitrate/fuel oil, the more contemporary, and cheaper, explosive commonly used in mainstay mining and just a little more stable.”

  Sam, by this stage, had dug nearly three feet deep in the soft soil, but each time he tried to dig further, more surrounding sand seemed to fill the hole.

  “You want to keep digging until you reach that river, or shall I use the ANFO and speed the process up a little?”

  “Be my guest,” Sam said, stepping away from the hole.

  Sam watched as his father laid the ANFO and set the charge cable with surprising dexterity, making him wonder just how many times his father had done this before.

  “All right, everyone back… and I mean a long way back.”

  Five minutes later, James pulled the detonating switch, and the ground in the distance disappeared. Slowly, the small party of four, walked up to where the hole had been. What remained was a limestone cavern large enough to drive a truck through. And at the bottom, a small creek flowed gently, into the unknown.

  *

  Rodriguez drove his six-wheeler at a pace that would have made the German engineers at Mercedes proud. He knew where they were headed, but still hadn’t taken into account that they’d use a damn helicopter, making them a lot faster.

  Behind him, Frank and Byron struggled to keep up in their own six-wheelers, each armed with an AK 47, loaded and ready to go.

  Up ahead, and to the left of them, a giant plume of black smoke reached for the sky, followed by a loud boom, four or five seconds afterwards.

  “Shit, they’ve already reached it!” Rodriguez said out loud, as he swung the wheel and headed towards the smoke. His foot to the floor, he challenged every inch of the million dollar Mercedes’s engineering price tag.

  *

  Sam reached for the fourth dive tank from the back of the helicopter, ready to follow the stream down as a team of four.

  Aliana put her hand on it, effectively stopping him from removing the tank. “No way. I’m not following you or any of your other crazy people down through another one of those stupid subterranean rivers. I’ve been there, done that – not again.”

  “Really? I thought you’d had fun.” Sam grinned. “That’s all right, but I think you’re underestimating the significance of the Ark of Light!”

  “I doubt it. I’ve heard little of anything else from your father since you left. Says it has the ability to provide him with unlimited power… I thought that’s what he already has?”

  The two started walking towards the opening where the subterranean river flowed. Sam laughed. “Yes, that sounds like my father, but this could be the greatest historical artefact ever found. It could bring peace to the world, and in the wrong hands, destroy it.”

  “I hate to be the pessimist, but in the hands of mankind, I fear it’s more likely to do the latter. So what, exactly, is it supposed to do?”

  As they approached the cave, Sam saw that his father, already inside it, had started to run out a long cable, and smiled at Aliana, as though she, like a naive child, would never understand the importance of gold and power.

  “This scepter,” Sam continued, “when placed on top of the Pyramid of Giza at the midday of winter solstice in the year 2020, will point to the final vault of the ultimate artefact – the God’s Relic, an ancient requiem of all human knowledge, from the first cycle.”

  “What do you mean by first cycle?” Aliana asked.

  James smiled as he overheard the conversation. Sam recognized it as his ‘I’m about to tell you something that will blow your mind type smile’ and then replied, “The generation of humans before present day civilization occurred.”

  Aliana turned her head slightly as she thought about what he’d said. “We weren’t the first?”

  “Not even the second, I’m afraid. The human race only ever seems to evolve to a certain state, before we inevitably wipe ourselves out. Some civilizations get further than the next, but somehow we always seem to mess it up. It’s in our nature,” James said.

  “And where do we fit into this? Are we the furthest along the stream of evolution?”

  James thought about the question for a moment and then replied, “No. And we’re unlikely to beat some of the more successful civilizations.”

  Aliana stared at him. Her expression told them she was considering if there could really be any truth to any of it.

  “Legend has it that this scepter holds the key to a vault, which contains all human knowledge, spanning all the cycles of civilizations gone by,” Sam said.

  “How does the information get there?”

  “No one knows. Some people have hypothesized that earth has a caretaker… like God, who keeps an eye on things, and stores all the information that man accumulates until a cycle finally becomes so intelligent as to break the code.”

  “What code?” she asked.

  “The ability to not destroy yourself. Something that so far, all civilizations before us have failed to do.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It’s in the same realm as a child being told that Santa Claus del
ivers presents to children all over the world in a single night!”

  Grinning mischievously, Sam said, “Then again, it might just have been a longstanding fable, like the Mahogany Ship, that means nothing…”

  Aliana clearly didn’t believe a word his father had said. She replied, “Well this sounds very exciting, but if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just wait here until you retrieve it.”

  “Very good,” James said, then throwing his dive gear over his shoulders, impatiently said, “We’ll see you soon.”

  Sam kissed her and said, “I won’t be long.”

  Tom then looked at him, and said, “Actually, I’m going to leave this one to you and your father. I’m going back for the truck you stole earlier. Based on the weight predictions that James has given me, there’s no way I’ll get the Super Huey off the ground with that thing on board.”

  “You don’t want to dive now, and go back for it afterwards?”

  “No, it’s going to take a couple hours to get back with it, and I don’t want to be flying once it’s dark. Let’s not forget that Rodriguez and his men are still searching for it, too.”

  “Good point.” Sam said, unconcerned. “While you’re there, you might want to load the wooden crate from the Chinook, too.”

  “Okay, will do.”

  Sam picked up his netted duffle bag, and then slid into the water. Surface swimming to the end of the tunnel, he then disappeared below the surface.

  Ahead of him, Sam found his father dragging the cable over his shoulder.

  He caught up quickly and switched on his high powered, rock penetrating sonar so he could see the images of any heavy metals below.

  The two swam on.

  Like its surface siblings, the subterranean river meandered side to side as it searched for the easiest means of travelling towards the ocean hundreds of miles away.

  By the third corner, nothing was visible below with his naked eyes, but the sonar monitor displayed something.

  It was the outline of a staff, about six feet long. And next to it, a sheet of metal, no larger than a piece of A4 writing paper.