True Traitor (First Wave Book 7)

by Mikayla Lane

  “We could have them fitted in a week, depending on how many ships you have,” Gracus said helpfully.

  Just then the comm flashed again, denoting Traze, David and Tara were checking in next.

  “We’re all clear at the caverns and ready for you to reseal the door into the Folly,” Traze said.

  Thjodhild was the first to speak. “We’ll seal the door now. Take all excess personnel, not needed to maintain the ruse of studying the aftershocks, and head into the forest to help retrieve the crash debris,” she ordered.

  Thjodhild turned to Austar.

  “Seal the door and open the comm,” she said.

  Austar nodded when the comm was opened. “We need all personnel clear of the old entrance to the Folly within 15 minutes. We’re blowing the top to hide the exposed tunnels. 15 minutes! No exceptions! No excuses!” she said, before ending the communication.

  Ivint looked at the partially exposed area on the 3D image and asked, “Are you sure that will cover it sufficiently?”

  Thjodhild laughed, her eyes twinkling. “It won’t matter. We have a few elemental hybrids here who can work with and manipulate the earth. When it’s blown, they’ll work their magic and the earth will seal it from discovery and stabilize the area so the humans will be safe from a real collapse,” she said with pride in her people.

  Thjodhild turned back to Slate. “How is the debris retrieval coming and what’s the status of the media blackout?” she asked.

  Slate pulled up a status report from their media division before responding. “We’re 50 percent complete on debris removal. Sam and Jax have redirected most of the animals to finding debris and looking for drones. Media is locked down to only a local area level. Radio and local news channels only. With the Internet and cell communications out we’re still good. Techs are going through everything the news and radio stations have and is receiving from viewers and deleting everything we need removed,” he said.

  Thjodhild sighed. “Activate our special assets, this may have gotten farther than we know and we can’t take any chances. I want all of them on deck,” she ordered to Slate.

  “Special assets?” Grai asked, while Ivint and Reven looked at her curiously.

  Thjodhild grinned.

  “I have spent a very long on this world and I know how it works. We put certain people, with certain abilities in places that would help us a long time ago. Embedded operatives. Much like some of your own,” she said knowingly as she winked at Grai.

  Grai chuckled at the tiny, but very intelligent woman. “Why do I get the feeling that you are fishing for information, rather than sharing it?” he asked with a quirked brow.

  Thjodhild laughed lightly, she hadn’t expected the men to fall for it. “You can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said.

  “No, I can’t,” Grai said, turning serious. “We do have embedded people. Probably in some of the same places that you do. Tell me who and what we need to help and I’ll pull in everyone I can.”

  Thjodhild nodded, her respect for the man growing by the minute. “We need military and government assets pulled. Pretty quick too. There’s what we refer to as a ‘Dark Faction’, led by the ‘one percent’, that controls certain groups within the government and military. You know the people I’m talking about, you’ve had to have encountered them. Anyway, they’ve dogged our asses for over 70 years and this kind of thing is going to send up major red flags. Right now, they know only of our Beta Base. This incident could easily expose the folly,” she said honestly.

  Thjodhild wasn’t sure if their assets could control this alone this time. It had gotten more out of control than she had ever expected Fiorn to let it get and she was much more concerned about their discovery than she was letting on.

  Ivint looked at her with raised eyebrows as Grai cursed in his mind. Grai ran through his operatives in his head and realized he needed a little more information before he could choose correctly. The risk of exposure was too great to use more than what was necessary to do the job.

  Grai turned to the DF.

  “I need to know what they know of you, in order to pull the right people to deflect this. Until now, I was unaware of a division that knew of your existence. Our existence. How the hell did this happen?” he asked, wondering just how exposed they were. The fact that someone knew and the regular humans didn’t, meant that whoever knew wasn’t the good guys.

  Thjodhild sighed.

  “Back in 1947, a man called Admiral Byrd had engine trouble in his plane when he was trying to fly over the pole,” she said shaking her head. “Wait, let me go back. We had a mini rebellion a decade prior that started it all. We had people in Germany when Hitler took over. Somehow, they were captured and that was when our hybrids and their abilities were first discovered. They were all Norwegian, from families in the old country, all blonde haired, blue eyed, special abilities . . .” Thjodhild trailed off.

  “Oh fuck — the Master Race,” Grai said, absolutely floored that he’d never made the connection before.

  Thjodhild nodded her head sadly. “Yes. The bastard’s sick doctors spent years torturing them, using their abilities against one another until they broke. I’d never seen Fiorn so enraged as when we heard what was being done to them,” Thjodhild said with a sad shake of her head, a single tear slipping down her cheek.

  “Sorry — it was a bad time for us,” she said before wiping away the tear. “It was how they created the Nazi Bell UFO and why they sent a contingent to Beta in 1939. They wanted to find us, make a deal for weapons and brood mares for Hitler’s select men. We didn’t let them near us. The rebellion came when Fiorn refused to allow more of our people into the war to stop them and what they were doing. Instead, Fiorn put our people on lockdown, trying to prevent any more from being captured. It created a rift in our people that as you saw, continues until today.”

  Grai’s mind was a riot of thoughts and feelings, he had so many questions that he felt a little overwhelmed but forced himself to concentrate on the immediate problem they faced.

  “How did the US government find out?” he asked.

  Thjodhild sat heavily, the memories obviously still powerful enough to shake her. “Before we could rescue our people, the Americans went in and liberated the camps and they got hold of the doctors and scientists that had been working on our people. They gave the animals immunity, changed their names and brought them over to the US to continue their experiments. They took the bell, all their notes and what was left of our people and brought them over as well,” she said, her voice more soft and emotional.

  Grai knew where this was going. “How did they contact you?”

  Thjodhild put her elbows on the table and leaned her head in her hands.

  “We tried many different ways to find out where they were being held and how they fared, but we had no luck. Not even through our assets, at the time. Finally, in 1947, this Admiral Byrd came flying over and our best telepath said that his intentions were peaceful and honorable. So we let him in to talk to him and see if we could broker a trade for our people, against Fiorn’s better judgment. He was only considering it to appease those still angry over the war,” she said, then looked up at Grai and Ivint who were listening intently.

  She snorted in disgust. “Byrd wanted peace and the cure for cancer, the government demanded technology, weapons and our promise not to tell the humans about us and the backdoor deals they were trying to make to fuck over the regular people. The super-rich wanted to rule with the ultimate authority on the planet. The bastards were bored and decided that they’d run through most every disgusting evil on earth to try and decided they wanted the ultimate God-like powers to determine who lives and who dies. And how quickly and painfully, to suit their amusement. We were sickened,” Thjodhild said, her stomach roiling with the memories.

  Reven and Ivint cursed, unable to fathom that the humans could harbor such evil within them. Grai, on the other hand, had seen how sick and pathetic these people were and wasn’t nearly as su
rprised.

  “So you cut communications with them?” Grai asked, trying to hurry the story along so they could figure out what was needed in the here and now.

  Thjodhild nodded her head. “Yes, but the situation was quickly turned over to the Dark Faction. Funded by the elite, the Dark Faction is a secret group within the world militaries and governments that handle all issues related to UFOs. They began hunting us and our craft, firing on us to try and down one.”

  Thjodhild paused and took a heavy breath. “Then they decided to kill our people if we didn’t establish communications. They murdered two of our captives before Fiorn had enough. In 1952, for two weeks in July, for two days each week, we buzzed the shit out of DC. A huge display of ‘Go fuck yourself’, from us to them. They stopped killing our captives as far as we know. We’ve been in a private war with the bastards ever since then,” she said.

  Grai sighed and ran a hand down his face, feeling exhausted. “So, they’re the true problem here and not the normal humans,” he said.

  Thjodhild nodded her head. “They know how we do things, they’ll recognize this as our signature and be here before we know it. So, if you’ve got anyone, anywhere that can give us a heads up on if they’re on their way or help to hold them off, now would be the time to call them,” she said.

  Grai nodded his head and pulled out his comm, scrolling through the list of people that were in a position to help, even though he already knew who he was going to contact. He just wanted to make sure he wasn’t forgetting about anyone.

  While Grai was busy, Ivint was struggling to understand how this could have happened. He’d learned a great deal about Earth history in the two years that he’d been here, but this was a shocking revelation he’d never considered before.

  “How the hell can an elected president have gotten away with this?” he asked.

  Thjodhild snorted. “There hasn’t been a fool in that White House who has known any of this since Eisenhower gave control of it all to the Dark Factions. They use their black ops groups to fund it through the back doors of other agencies. You don’t really think that the FDA needs four million bullets, do you? It’s all on paper, that money goes into the groups that are hunting us. The rest of the people’s tax money goes into building the space ships and bunkers for the elite to survive the conversion,” she said, having wondered for years how the regular humans hadn’t figured it all out yet.

  Slate added, “Just the US government takes in trillions of dollars a year in taxes from their people, if you included the taxes in other countries as well, then list what the people are getting for their money, besides the shaft, you can see that billions are being funneled into the companies of the elite through back door deals.”

  Ivint and Reven were stunned. Neither had ever imagined that things were this bad within the governments on the planet. It seemed that everything went back to one particular group of people.

  Thjodhild interrupted their thoughts. “Do not think that because they are normal humans, that they aren’t as dangerous as any Relian. In some cases, the dark factions are worse and the danger is more real because they are closer to home and blend in easier. It doesn’t help that they began dealing with another race around the time we told them to fuck themselves. We have never figured out who it is, but we don’t believe it’s the Relians. We have indications they were here, on the planet, before the outpost was there,” she admitted.

  That got Grai’s attention. “You think another race is here?” he asked, having thought the same thing a long time ago but had never been able to find proof.

  Thjodhild nodded her head and stood to pace the other side of the table. “Sadly, we’ve never been able to figure out who they are. This Dark Faction pays very well for secrecy and anyone who makes a mistake or is no longer useful is killed. And it’s usually made to look like a suicide so it’s much harder to track them and get any information,” she said, wishing like hell they did know something more.

  Like most of her people, Thjodhild wanted nothing more than to enter the fight. She was born and bred a shield maiden and couldn’t think of a better time or a better reason to sharpen her sword. The humans were her people too, and she believed they should have a fighting chance to survive the conversion. Not be crippled by lying governments who were controlled by a select few who wanted to observe the death, destruction and desperation from sheltered locations. The ultimate reality show. With the winners and losers chosen by them.

  Reven was confused and cleared his throat to get Thjodhild’s attention. “So is the military involved or not?” he asked.

  Thjodhild nodded. “Sort of. There are separate divisions, the regular military only knows them as a secret group who has authority over their installations, equipment and personnel at will, but they have no clue what their agenda is or where they are housed. We know they’re at Area 51, an underwater base in Florida, Wright-Patterson, and few other interesting places. Several other countries are in on it as well and have similar teams that work together,” she said, disgusted that it was so far reaching.

  Reven nodded, understanding now, while Grai finished sending an urgent message to several of his deep cover operatives to see if they had heard anything or could find out something for them without blowing their cover.

  Ivint turned to Thjodhild and asked, “What is their usual response time to an incident?”

  The small woman sighed dramatically. “That depends. In remote places like this, we have untold hours if we can get Internet and communications down quickly enough. Mostly because there is no military base close enough to be affected by a comm blackout. But, this got out of hand too quickly and it took too long for our people to act . . . I’m expecting them at any moment,” she said honestly, letting them know just how dire the situation was.

  Grai cursed under his breath, Thjodhild had been right, his people weren’t really good at this part. They went in, they blew things up and killed some bad guys and left as fast as they went in. Usually it was under the cover of darkness and done in a way to minimize exposure.

  Even so, his people had alternate identities for the regular human world to cut down on suspicion, it appeared Thjodhild’s people didn’t and some were actually known to the government through their previous interactions.

  Grai shook his head, unable to believe they were this close to being exposed.

  “What are your contingencies for this?” he asked, knowing they had to have one.

  “Blow the whole Folly with a targeted pulse weapon manipulated by one of our hybrids to vaporize all trace of anything technological,” Thjodhild said, obviously not thrilled with that particular option.

  Reven was incredulous that such a drastic option was necessary. “Our only option to head off something that extreme, is to what? Work faster?” he asked.

  Thjodhild sighed. “It’s a little more complicated than that. But, yeah, we need all hands on the surface helping with debris removal and on the communications, making sure nothing slips through the cracks. We haven’t heard anything on the military channels, but since this group works outside of them, we probably won’t,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Ivint was still a little disturbed by the news and needed clarification. “Do we have any idea what this group knows about us?”

  Thjodhild held up a finger and opened the comm. “Clear the surface area around the old works NOW! Detonation in 5… 4… 3… 2. . .” she nodded at Slate and the mountain was rocked by an explosion.

  Thjodhild opened the comm and said, “All teams check in with command and get the elementals to the site.”

  Grai watched the adept woman take multitasking to a new level. She was not only proficient, but very intelligent and Grai hoped that they would be able to forge an alliance with them. From what he’d seen, his people needed to learn how to go more deeply into preventing their exposure.

  Grai was a little sickened that he’d more reckless than he’d imagined, believing that they were unknown up to this p
oint. In his arrogance, he never thought that one of the Valendran survivors had created their own little fiefdom and that their people had been taken captive as far back as World War II.

  He wasn’t a fool, he knew the planet was evolving technologically and he thought his people had been keeping up with it to limit their exposure to the world, but they had nothing like this operation going on. This was impressive and more detailed than he imagined.

  There were over a hundred hybrids scanning human communication channels, using complicated programs that his people were currently in awe over as they sat with the mountain hybrids who were showing them how they worked to keep their presence from the humans. Anything potentially harmful was being deleted, more believable sources were sometimes altered to look fake in order to discredit them. A tactic that Thjodhild explained that they learned from the US government.

  Thjodhild turned to Ivint after all the teams checked in that they were safe after the blast.

  “They know enough to reverse-engineer Balal crafts and make their own. They’ve been testing them out around the world pretty regularly. They have almost as many craft in the sky at any given time as our people do,” she admitted then sighed heavily.

  “We also know that they are hunting our children. Once they realized that we were different and among them, they began looking for ways to test children to determine if they are hybrids. Some countries like China and the Soviet Union went on an active search for gifted children — most of which have disappeared into secret government facilities. Other countries like the US, use more deceptive means to find them. The kids are stalked until certain criteria is confirmed and then they disappear,” Thjodhild said with a shake of her head.

  Ivint was horrified.

  “You think they are taking our children and continuing the experiments on them?” he asked.

  Thjodhild nodded. “We know they are. They are looking for a way to steal our cell structure and longevity. The elite want to live forever with their money. And they are also weaponizing them for their own personal security,” she said with disgust.