by Rick Jones
“She’s working on it.”
On the screen McCord leaned forward into the light, revealing fine lines that were naturally grafted onto his face and brow. “Once she does, then you are to appropriate all data and forward it to me without hesitation—data from every scientific department on board that ship.” He leaned back into his chair, into the shadows. “And stay monitored,” he added. “When the constituency I answer to believes that they have enough to work with, then I’ll give you the final command.”
“Understood.” The final command was no different from the Final Solution, at least by Whitaker’s thinking. Protecting the country was optimum. This has always been the First Rule of self-preservation, a rule that often came with the cost of lives, the term ‘collateral damage’ nothing more than a loose phrase justifying preconceived objectives. Everybody on board this ship was scheduled to die.
“When the time comes, you choose the method. That’s why we hired you,” said McCord.
“I know my duties,” he answered. “It’ll be neat and clean.”
“That’s good,” he returned. “Because we need the Mexican government to think that a catastrophe hit and the data couldn’t be saved. We’ll give them info of course—just enough to appease them, but not enough to help them with their research.”
Whitaker leaned forward, resting his forearms and elbows on the desktop. “There are three goals,” he said. “One, learn how to harness energy. Two, learn how to manipulate that energy. And three, leave no one behind.”
“So far, Captain Whitaker, you have yet to achieve a single objective.”
“I can’t control the first two, McCord. You know that. But I can control the third goal . . .” he allowed his words to trail as he leaned to the side of the desk, grabbed his assault weapon, and held it before the monitor’s eye. “With this,” he finalized, gently lowering the weapon to the desktop. “I’m a soldier, not a scientist. So my options are limited.”
“And so is time, Mr. Whitaker. The forces of nature will eventually catch up and still you’ll be sitting in that underwater tank, wondering what happened. In other words, time is of the essence. If things aren’t happening, make them happen. Look over her shoulder, if you have to. Absorb everything she says. Take everything in. Be a taskmaster, if that’s what it takes. Expedite things—move things along.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“This is not a vacation for you or your team,” he said, his tone bearing sharpness. “Be a second shadow to Ms. Moore, press her. But get that data. And get the data that’s flowing into O’Connell’s log, as well.”
Whitaker nodded. “Will do,” he said. Then: “Out.” He switched off the monitor.
Falling back into his chair he checked out the two flash drives sitting on the desktop next to the assault weapon. They were small, about the size of a thumb but thinner. On the bottom of his right boot was a removable heel. When removed the heel contained two cutout recesses large enough to hold the flash drives securely. It was old school, but effective. When the moment arrived of leaving with the data procured and hidden from Mexican authorities, he and his team would still become subjects of passing searches, since they were under Mexican jurisdiction. But nothing would be found.
Whitaker closed his eyes. He was fatigued almost to the point of falling asleep. But sleep was a weak man’s trait in times of duty, he considered. After opening his eyes he grabbed his helmet, his assault rifle, and made his way back to the Compound in search of the Light known as Alyssa Moore.
CHAPTER TEN
Alyssa opened the laptop. On the screen was a series of archaic symbols. On the first line she placed certain symbols in order, leaving gaps between ciphers. To Savage it looked like a crude game of Hangman, with spots needed to be filled in to make the message whole. When she spoke she did so in a manner that was giddy and excited.
She showed him the symbols:
তালিকার স য়িক প্রকাশрырыцы, ∑ыб তাসভ্য ліку ў асьв
“As you can see, I can piece together the known symbols in the syntax I know to be correct. However, there are gaps that need to be filled in before I can begin to decipher its meaning. It’s like a crossword puzzle. If I can put in a few more letters in the boxes, then I can figure out the word. If I can figure out enough words, then I can figure out the phrases.” She turned to him. “It’s an incomplete language; therefore, a puzzle. However—” She typed a few keys with quick taps of her fingertips.
When she was done lexicon tiles systematically moved across the screen of the laptop and filled in the gaps, completing it.
তালিকার সমসাময়িক ыкавнь প্রকাশ рырыцы. ∑ыбар তাসভ্যতার ліку быў асьв নাম
“The language is completely that of singular syntax.”
He looked at her with a quizzical look.
“Singular syntax,” she said, as if those two words were the keys to sudden enlightenment. “Singular syntax means that there is only one way to say something; a phrase or a thought. In other words, let’s take the phrase ‘I must go into exile.’ In English we can switch it up to ‘Into exile I must go.’ English has dual syntax. Same words—different combinations. But it means the same exact thing. English is one of the few languages that do that. However, this language is singular, which means that there’s only one way to convey a thought. So when I type in enough letters or symbols into their proper placements by syntax design, other symbols automatically fall into place because there is only one combination to communicate a specific thought.”
“Have you interpreted the meaning?”
She nodded. “This particular phrase, or line, I believe opens an archive regarding their origin.” She typed in more letters, a series of codes, her fingers rapidly tapping keys without error.
The screen on her laptop suddenly changed to images of a constellation. “Using the combination and the software encoded into this laptop, this is what I get.”
He shrugged. “It’s a constellation?”
“Not just a constellation,” she said, emphasizing the word ‘a.’ “It’s the Orion Belt.”
“OK.”
She clicked her tongue. “The Orion Belt,” she said firmly, as if the measure of her tone would suddenly make everything clear to him. When it didn’t, she continued. “These archaic symbols,” she went on, “some we discovered in Eden, others I know to have been discovered inside the pyramids of Giza—only the configurations of the characters have altered slightly over time due to the evolution of the language—shows a huge similarity to text and syntax to what was discovered inside this ship.”
Savage stared at her with his mouth slightly agape, looking as dumb as a bag of hammers.
“The construction of the three pyramids of Giza,” she continued, “is believed to imitate the three major stars of the Orion Belt: the Alnitak, the Alnilam, and the Mintaka. If you arrange the pattern of these stars with an aerial view of the pyramids, the stars line up perfectly with the tips of these structures. Perfectly. And the sizes of these pyramids are in direct relationship to these three stars with Cheops, or the star Alnilam, which is the brightest star, representing the largest pyramid. And the dimmest star, Alnitak, the smallest.”
“I know this,” he answered.
“But this pyramid constellation was chosen so that the Nile represents the Milky Way at the position of Orion’s Belt. And there’s this.” She typed a few more keys, showing aerial views of the pyramids at Dahshur and Abusir. “As you can see by this view,” she said, “these two pyramids at these locations close to Giza match the two brightest stars in the open cluster known as Hyades, with these two pyramids representing the exact head of where Orion should be.”
“I’m not getting your direction here.”
She raised her hand over the keyboard. “You will.” She said, and typed in more codes. What came up on the screen was a series of photos that looked li
ke squared-out holes in blocks of sand-colored stone. “You know what these are?”
He took an educated guess. “Shafts?”
“Exactly. You know where they were found?”
He hazarded a guess that sounded more like a question than a statement. “I’m assuming the pyramids of Giza.”
“Very good,” she said. And then: “There are four small shafts in the Great Pyramid with the upper and lower chambers having two each. It was first believed that these shafts were a source of ventilation. But it is now believed that they were created as gateways to the afterlife. Ironically, these shafts open up to a set of stars within the—”
“—Orion Belt,” he finished.
“Exactly. With little evolution regarding the archaic symbols and script, with similar syntax which we found in Eden and know to be inside the Great Pyramids of Egypt, and now to be found on this ship . . .”
“Oh my God,” he suddenly realized. “They’ve been coming here all along—all this time.”
She nodded. “These configurations, the way earthly creations mimic the stars of Orion, and these.” She typed more keys, bringing up three particular symbols:
ڱ €
“These three signs are the only consistent symbols found inside this ship, inside the Great Pyramids, and inside of Eden that have not modified over time. These three symbols represent the stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, respectively.”
He nodded and looked at the screen. “They’re telling us where they come from.”
“Exactly. I think I’ve opened up the archive of their origins long before the evolution of man, before . . . Eden.” Her excitement was brewing over. “What we can learn—if I can get their screen and open up—is their history and their technology.”
“You think you found the crack to open all the gateways?”
“Yeah, I do. If I can feed enough known symbols and characters into a certain pattern of singular syntax, then the software will at least do enough to align the symbols into a recognizable pattern for me to breach the ship’s library.”
Savage leaned back and smiled. “You did it,” he told her. “You found a way in.”
She raised her hand. “And I also found something else, something that ties in with the ship’s name. Do you remember the cuneiform we discovered outside the ship? The strange writings on the remnant’s wall as the sub made its way to the docking area of the platform?”
He nodded.
“Two words,” she simply said, typing in symbols closest to what she could recall of the characters. “These are not an exact match but close, very close. But from what I can tell there were two words. The first word having been interpreted to something we would acknowledge as the word ‘Nova.’ The other word I’m not really clear on. I’m not sure if we even have a word to define its meaning. But the closest I can gather is something along the line as ‘the great ship’ or ‘the massive ship.’”
He nodded. “Nova, the Great or Massive Ship.” He nodded once again. “It doesn’t sound right.”
“No, it doesn’t. However,” she tapped the keyboard again, bringing up a myriad of references. “We know that they have been coming here long before man ever set foot on this planet. And have been coming here until at least the pyramids were built. You agree?”
“Of course.”
“Through the ages stories are handed down, yes? Stories where the truth of what really happened often get diluted down into narratives that become nothing more than allegorical references.”
“All right.”
“According to the references, what do we have? We have the name of the ship, the Nova Something; a menagerie of creatures; and an end of the world scenario, an extinction event. And if we bring these all together, then we come up with an allegorical reference we know today.” She turned the screen so that he could see the picture dead on. “The word Nova—“
“Becomes Noah,” he said distantly.
“And the ‘Great’ or ‘Massive Ship’?”
On the screen was an oil painting of Noah’s Ark tossing with the constant roil of angry waves, a Christian portrait hanging in some museum marking a catastrophic event, an End of Times scenario.
“So what you’re saying, what you telling me, is that this remnant, this ship, or what’s left of it, is Noah’s Ark? Is that what you’re telling me?”
She waved her index finger back and forth. “No, not at all. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that when this ship became the so-called bolide that caused the final extinction event sixty-five million years ago, then there falls in line the possibility that over the period of time where primitive man evolved into modern-day man, that these beings did not completely restrict themselves to their own kind, but perhaps handed down the true story of the Nova that had from generation to generation evolved into the allegorical reference described in the Bible of man’s ultimate corruption leading him to the greatest catastrophe of all, the end of the world. Think about it: the great ship, the animals, the rebirth of man, the world’s end regarding water, which could be the Yucatan Peninsula. The story of Noah’s Ark could be the figurative reference of what this ship caused ages ago. But more importantly, it means that for this to happen—”
“Then there had to be some level of communication between us . . . and them.”
“Exactly.”
And there are worldwide references to this, she immediately considered, of humanoids with elongated heads from what was believed to be the resulting practice of head binding that was routinely portrayed by pictographs within pyramids from Egypt to Mesoamerica, images of those portrayed to be gods. But this idea was summarily dismissed by scholars, since the belief of binding a newborn’s soft skull between two boards formed an elongation of the cranium, the head becoming larger and more bulbous; the theory behind it to create a smarter and wiser child to mimic the images of gods who were stamped along the walls of ancient communities. At least in the minds of the leading professors the practice served nothing less than a primitive, if not barbaric, rites of passage rather than an impersonation of a higher race. But to Alyssa it was simply another consideration of man’s past, that the truth often lurked beneath the surface until someone brings it topside and gives polish to it.
Alyssa closed the laptop. “I need to get to one of those holographic consoles,” she said, “and work the screen. I think I can open up worlds of information,” she said, smiling.
. . . Worlds !. . .
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Mr. Savage, if I may have a quick word with you, please.” O’Connell appeared winded.
John looked up from his seated position, their eyes meeting. “Sure.”
“Alone?”
Savage shook his head. “What you have to say to me you can say in front of Alyssa.”
O’Connell nodded, quickly perused his surroundings, then took a step forward. To John the man appeared less confident, his shoulders turned inward as if he was closing in on himself. “I understand that you held a rather prying discussion with Captain Whitaker about his alleged affiliation with a certain group.”
Savage stood. “I did.”
“If I may be so bold, Mr. Savage. I’m afraid you were spot on.”
“What do you mean by ‘afraid’?” asked Alyssa. “Is there something I should know about?”
O’Connell nodded, more like a quick inclination of his head. And then to Savage: “You need to know something,” he began. “After your discussion, Whitaker came to me with concerns.”
“Such as?”
O’Connell closed the space between, his voice becoming a whisper as he pressed them into close counsel. “You were right about his affiliation,” he told him.
“He’s a Tally-Whacker.”
O’Connell nodded in affirmation. “He was surprised that you knew what a Tally-Whacker was. Not many do, since they only exist in the eyes of certain political circles.”
Alyssa stood, left the laptop on the cot, and joined in counsel until th
eir noses were inches apart from one another.
“They are a wetwork team working for the DOD—”
“Which is your unit,” interrupted Savage.
“I’ll admit, yes. But it appears that the DOD is also working in collusion with the CIA and, most likely, the NSA.”
“And by the way you’re whispering I assume that’s a bad thing?”
“The Tally-Whackers are creatures of a different breed,” he went on. “They’re killing machines who do so upon orders.”
“I know that,” said Savage. “My question is: why are they here? I thought this was a collusive operation between the governments of the United States and Mexico.”
“On the surface,” O’Connell simply said. “But it appears that there’s a subterfuge going on that was beyond my need to know.”
“Such as?”
“Whitaker said some things that made me question his purpose here—his true purpose. I was led to believe by the DOD that the Tally-Whackers were here to run interference should an unknown operative within the scientific team happened to be an operative from an insurgent group.”
“But that’s not the case, is it?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I believe our lives are in the balance,” he told them. “All of us.”
Alyssa said, “But we signed nondisclosure agreements. We were paid.”
“Those nondisclosure forms, Ms. Moore, are as worthless as the paper they’re printed on. They always have been. And I’m sure the money paid directly to your account has vanished without so much as a single fingerprint left behind in cyberspace.”
Savage was an ex-SEAL who realized the need to cover one’s tracks. “There was an employee of ours,” he said. “Jennifer DeNardo, the secretary who let you in.”
O’Connell sighed, the regret genuine. “I’m afraid that Ms. DeNardo, your secretary, met with a terrible accident,” he told them. “I’m afraid that Ms. DeNardo and her family—”