by Bob Mayer
Leahy noticed two Tesla bulbs weren’t working, but the rest gave off enough greenish light to adequately illuminate the lab. She opened the case and placed the Tesla computer on a bench.
By the time she reached the outer door, the pilots were back with the rest of the gear.
“Come.” She shut the door behind and led them to the lab.
“What is this?” the pilot asked. “Who else is going to land on that? We were damn lucky we didn’t—“ he didn’t finish as Leahy threw a switch and a jolt of electricity ‘short-circuited’ both men. It wasn’t enough to kill them, but their brains would never quite be the same.
Not that she cared about their brains. She wasn’t keeping them alive out of mercy.
She went to the racks, searching the small, peeling tabs on the shelves, dates written in barely legible pencil. It took a little while. Her grandfather had never been a fan of paperwork. She slid out the Watcher scroll from 2,528 BC.
Leahy cleared a spot of her grandfather’s odds and ends, using various components to hold the scroll open. She donned a pair of reading glasses and read.
2,528 BC. The Third Age of Egypt, when the first human Pharaohs ruled, directed by the priests who served the Airlia. Leahy could read the high rune language of the Airlia. And of the Watchers.
The wedjat of Giza had written a sparse and factual account, which her grandfather had annotated with his own impressions in pencil, scribbling between the lines and on the margin.
2,528 BC was when the first Swarm scout ship appeared in the Solar System, racing in at high speed to investigate a large, passive, but unnatural radar signal. It had used a slingshot maneuver around the sun to decelerate.
Picked up by the Sentinels and the guardian computer system, the Airlia automated defense had reacted as designed. The master guardian, a red pyramid, which had been emplaced as the capstone on top of the Great Pyramid, tracked the inbound space ship. There was some irony to that as the smooth limestone facing of the massive pyramid had been designed to send the very signal into space that had drawn the Swarm, instead of their own species.
The Airlia of Giza, led by Isis, had rolled the dice on contacting the Empire and lost.
Once alerted, the head priest of Isis, a man named Asim, had woken the Pharoah Khufu and taken him into the Roads of Rostau, tunnels in the Giza Plateau. Khufu had been the one who ordered the Great Pyramid built following directions relayed by Asim, as passed down from Isis and the other Airlia. In the Roads of Rostau they came to one of the six duats, chambers. This one held a red crystal and set in the crystal was a sword: Excalibur. The blade, with scabbard, was drawn from the crystal. Then Excalibur was unsheathed by Khufu, activating the defense system.
The master guardian on top of the Great Pyramid shot down the Swarm scout ship. It crashed in the desert to the west. There was more written on the scroll, about the search for and killing of surviving Swarm. This entailed the execution of thousands of humans while trying to detect any who had been infiltrated by a Swarm tentacle. Additionally, the text described the destruction of the smooth white limestone facing of the pyramid to get rid of the radar signal.
Leahy sighed and rubbed her forehead, straightening her back and stretching.
This was a dead end. The master guardian was gone, crashed into Mars by Lisa Duncan. And even if they had it, that had been just a single scout ship, not a Battle Core. Her grandfather had shot down the second scout ship using the cannon at Wardenclyffe in 1908, just as Leahy had destroyed the talon.
She didn’t think a Tesla cannon would have much of an impact on a Core.
She walked over to the racks. As best she could remember, and she could remember quite well, there was little else about the Ancient Enemy except for that passed down very early from the former priests of Atlantis who became the Watchers. Which of that was myth designed to scare and keep humans in line and which was fact?
The data she’d managed to gather from the guardian system, always fearful of tripping an alert, had leaned toward much of the myth being fact: The Swarm, spoken of as the Ancient Enemy, destroyed everything in its path.
There wasn’t much more.
Was it hopeless?
Leahy went back to the Tesla computer and put her hands on it.
The Ethos subtext running her version of the Strategy, with the added factor of the Swarm inbound, had finished processing.
Leahy examined it in her mind, as her grandfather had envisioned his inventions.
The present and near future was a massive junction. The largest probability? The complete extinction of mankind on Earth. At first it seemed it was the only probability, so large was that branch.
But there was a thread, a tendril of hope, also coming out from the junction. Another possibility.
PRIVATE ISLAND, PUGET SOUND
“Is it safe?” the Engineer asked the Chemist.
There was a two-foot by three opening in the vault door, the edges rough. There was no illumination coming from the hole, and shining a light only showed smoke.
“The air inside needs to be pulled out,” the Chemist said. He directed a new crew to run a venting tube after clearing away the bodies of the previous crew.
The Engineer checked his watch several times during this process. Finally the vent was removed. He wasn’t so impatient though to be foolish. He indicated for the Chemist to crawl through first.
“You get the honor, since you’re the one who got us in.”
The Chemist donned a hardhat, switching on the headlamp. The Engineer grabbed a more powerful light attached to a power cord. The Chemist slid into the opening and crawled through the vault door. The Engineer waited until he was in, then a few more seconds.
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
The Engineer entered, actually fell, into the vault.
“What is this?” the Chemist asked, trying to make sense of the contents.
The Engineer got to his feet. One item he’d expected. “That,” he pointed at the far wall, “is the control console for ICBMs.”
The Chemist didn’t comprehend. “What?”
“Cold War era,” the Engineer said. “Official Air Force technology. How he got it, we have no idea. Same with the nukes.”
“’He’? He who? What nukes?”
The Engineer answered. “The man, creature, who built this place. The nukes? There are twelve Peacemaker ICBMs in silos scattered around this island. Well-camouflaged, powered by a small nuclear reactor deeper than where we are now. Whether they still work, given the lack of maintenance, is questionable. They must have worked once upon a time. We didn’t dare mess with them, since we weren’t paid to.” He pointed at eight black boxes, each the size of a piece of luggage on a table. “Those are tac-nukes.”
“I don’t understand,” the Chemist said. “Who are you talking about? Who could have gotten backpack nukes? ICBMs?”
The Engineer had walked over to the large cube in the center of the room. “You don’t think the government actually announces when it has nuclear weapons stolen or lost? Once in a while, when it has no option, like dropping one by mistake in full view. But, hell, when you’ve got thousands of the things, they do go missing. Bureaucracies are notoriously inefficient.”
“Who did this?” the Chemist demanded, his voice getting shrill.
The Engineer directed his light at the cube. A biohazard emblem was on the exterior: four black circles on a yellow background. “Do you know what these four circles mean?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “One is for the agent. The second is for the host that the agent infects. The third is for the source from which the agent originates. And the fourth is for the mode of transmission.” He tapped the cube. “But do you see that there are three biohazard symbols on each side of the BioCube, each one a different color?”
The Chemist wasn’t listening. He was backing toward the hole he’d burned in the vault door.
The Engineer ran his gloved hand over the exterior. “This is Level Four conta
inment at its core. But it’s technically not up to CDC standards. All Level Four containment should be inside a Level Three facility. And there should be suits.” He laughed, a manic edge to it. “I guess he thought the vault was good enough for level three. And it is. Was.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” the Chemist said, reaching the door. “Or who built this place. This is crazy.”
“Vampyr,” the Engineer said. “Not the vampire in movies or romance novels. This was built by the real Vampyr. Spelled with a Y.”
“You’re crazy.” The Chemist turned toward the hole. Thus the bullet penetrated just underneath the back of his hardhat, exited the front, splattering the inner edge with blood, brain, and splinters of bone.
The Engineer holstered his pistol. He slowly turned, taking in the nukes and the containment cube. Then he misquoted: “We have become death, the destroyer of our world.”
Both Mrs. Parrish and Nyx would have noted the mistake.
ROCKY MOUNTAINS
“’Ark’?” Yakov said. “She must mean the mothership.”
“The real question,” Turcotte said, “is if there is an ark, what is the flood? Why would she need the mothership?”
“Maybe she feels World War III will get much worse,” Yakov said. “She plans on going up in the mothership and waiting it out?”
The flexpad buzzed.
“Perhaps ask her?” Yakov suggested.
Turcotte picked it up, but the screen was black except for the green button. He tapped it. “Mrs. Parrish?”
“No.”
Turcotte frowned. The voice was familiar. Female.
He gripped the flexpad tightly. “Leahy. I’m going to kill you for what you did to Quinn and Kincaid.”
“Major Turcotte,” Leahy said. “Yakov, I know you’re there. And Colonel Mickell. First. I didn’t kill them. That was Mrs. Parrish.”
“You work for Parrish,” Turcotte said. “Don’t try to—“
“Shut up and listen,” Leahy cut in. “There’s not much time. First, I used to work for Mrs. Parrish. But as you’ve probably figured out by now, she’s a bit of a loony. Been losing it ever since her husband died. Second.” There was a pause. “Well, that can wait. Don’t want to confuse things. The most important thing is that Mrs. Parrish has heavy equipment heading your way. She’s going to take the Fynbar. Have her mercenaries haul it away.”
“Why should we believe you?” Turcotte demanded.
“What do you gain by not believing me,” Leahy said. “I’ll try to help, but it’s going to take me a little while. You’ve got to keep control of the Fynbar. The fate of the human race depends on it.
“Bullshit,” Turcotte said. “Mrs. Parrish just told us that she controls the future of mankind with her ark, which I assume is the mothership.”
“She’s right, but she’s wrong,” Leahy said. She shook her head. “All right. Listen. There’s something she doesn’t know yet. Something really important. Something really bad. I’m going to show you.”
The screen blanked and then a black/red ovoid appeared against a backdrop of stars. Yakov and Mickell were behind Turcotte, staring at it.
“What is that?” Yakov asked.
“That,” Leahy said, “is a Swarm Battle Core. It’s six thousand miles equatorially by four thousand polar. It’s currently passing Saturn on its way here. When it arrives, every one of us will die.”
WARDENCLYFFE, SHOREHAM, NEW YORK
“Everyone calm down!” Reuben Shear was Leahy’s second-in-charge at Wardenclyffe. He had no clue where his boss had disappeared to. The techs were panicking at the sight of Army helicopters inbound to their location, just a few minutes away.
All the doors to the facility were electronically locked and they’d been unable to over-ride the code. The windows were barred on the outside, a detail that none had really noticed until now.
His attempt to stop the panic was futile, his shout lost in the sound of people arguing, trying to call out on cell phones that didn’t work, trying to over-ride the locks.
Shear was the second most knowledgeable person about Tesla technology; after, of course, Professor Leahy. He’s studied under her for five years, but still knew little about her personally. Like the bars on the windows, it was something he hadn’t paid much attention to, since the work was so fascinating and her mind so quick.
Shear was a tautly built, black man, six feet eight inches tall. Perhaps in addition to his race, many people, at first meeting, assumed he was a basketball player and were surprised to find he was a scientist. He pretended that the implicit prejudices involved didn’t bother him, but he wasn’t good at pretending. He was good at science.
He opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out a pistol, pulled the slide back and released it, chambering a round.
Then he fired into a corner of the brick lab.
The gunshot brought absolute silence.
“Now that I have your attention,” Shear said. “Does anyone know where Professor Leahy went?”
One of the techs pointed. “I saw her leave with that guard through that door. I’ve tried it. Locked like the others.”
Shear knew the door led to tunnels, but he’d never been allowed in those.
“What are we going to do?” someone else called out.
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” Shear said. “We’ll talk to the—“ he was interrupted as the Tesla lights dimmed and everyone felt a crackle of power.
“Is the cannon powering up?” Shear demanded.
“No, sir.”
Shear rushed to Leahy’s console and sat down, trying to determine what was drawing the power from the coil.
“The helicopters are backing off,” a woman called out. “There’s something in the air out there.”
Shear bit back a comment about the vague ‘something in the air’. He glanced at the security display. The helicopters were holding a quarter mile away and the reason was obvious. Something was in the air. A shimmering wall of power.
“We have a shield,” he said, at first in a low voice, to himself, then louder. “We have a shield people! We’re safe.”
The relief was palpable but Shear was already on to the next problem. For how long? And why?
SATURN
As it passed by Saturn, the Core looked different. There were no more open, red lines on the surface. The maintenance drones had sealed them, reducing vulnerability.
Saturn is the farthest planet from Earth that can be seen by the naked eye even though it is on average, 9.6 AU from the sun. Its equatorial diameter is over 37,000 miles, while its polar radius is 34,000 miles. This dwarfed the passing Battle Core. The rings range from four thousand to seventy-five thousand miles from the planet’s surface, but are surprisingly narrow, roughly seventy feet or so in width. The planet is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, two raw materials the Swarm was already mining in the Kuiper Belt.
The rings can be one of several things, most likely the leftovers of the original material that had formed the planet. Another possibility is that they are the remnants of a destroyed moon.
SATURN
Saturn has a dense atmosphere, composed mostly of nitrogen with trace amounts of methane and hydrogen. It has methane seas on the surface.
Saturn has numerous moons and one is so large that it might be classified as a planet in its own right: Titan. That moon has a surprisingly thick atmosphere, composed of 95% nitrogen with strong atmospheric pressure.
Per SOP, a dozen scout ships were sent to scour the moons and then drop into the planet’s atmosphere, relaying data back. The fact they couldn’t make it back up to orbit, given the large planet’s gravitational pull and the scout ship’s engine strength, was of no consequence to the Swarm.
Such sacrifices were part of the norm.
THE ANCIENT ENEMY
ROCKY MOUNTAINS
“That is not good,” Yakov said, staring at the image of the Battle Core.
The image disappeared, replaced by L
eahy’s face. “No. It isn’t. But right now you need to stop Mrs. Parrish from getting control of the Fynbar.” She looked to the side. “The convoy is less than a mile from your location.”
Turcotte responded to the call to action. He turned the flexpad off, shoved it in his backpack, which he slung over his shoulder. “Colonel, can you spare Yakov your pistol?”
“Sure,” Mickell said, handing the gun over to the Russian. He hefted his assault rifle. “What about you?”
“My weapon is on the ship,” Turcotte said, heading for the door. “Remember, this could be a trap. I don’t trust Leahy any more than I trust Parrish.”
They ran out of the house to the trail through the Aspen grove. The sound of heavy diesel engines carried through the crisp mountain air.
“She told the truth about the trucks coming,” Yakov said between breaths as they ran.
Turcotte didn’t reply. Reaching the edge of the grove he held up a fist and knelt, surveying the Fynbar and the surrounding area. He indicated for Yakov to sweep left and Mickell to go right, clearing the edge.
Judging by the sound, the trucks weren’t far away. Turcotte didn’t wait to get the clear signals. He sprinted across the open area, half-hunched, the way soldiers do when they know they’re exposed. He clambered up the side of the Fynbar, opened the hatch, and dropped inside.
He grabbed the MK-98 and made sure it was loaded and climbed up. It was too late to join Yakov and Mickell in the trees and conduct an ambush. The first vehicle, a black Suburban with tinted windows was pulling into the clearing via the dirt road.
Behind the SUV was a crane on a heavy equipment transport (HET). Several more black Suburbans followed.
Turcotte rested the barrel of the heavy MK-98 on the edge of the hatch. Pushed his shoulder against the flat plate that was supposed to attach to the TASC-suit for operations in zero and low gravity. Turned the gun on, a low whine indicating it was powering up. He adjusted the laser-aiming sight, centering it on the windshield of the lead vehicle, driver’s side and pulled the trigger, shifting to the passenger side to fire again, then center for good measure.
