by A D Davies
Grainger flicked through the brief but didn’t seem to read anything, then let it flop onto her side and addressed Colin. “There have been developments.”
“What sort of developments?” Toby asked.
Colin opened his mouth and made an aah sound. “American developments.”
Harpal edged through the small throng of newcomers. “They know about the threat?”
“Our transatlantic cousins are cooperative with the Guardian Protocols when it comes to internal security warnings, but when it comes to foreign affairs they get a little… tetchy.” Colin straightened his jacket, a condescending glance between Dan and Bridget. “They turned their fleet around in the Pacific and are heading back to the Korean peninsula. They’re ready to strike at the first hint that the North Koreans are about to launch.” Grainger accepted another piece of paper from her assistant. “We have assured them the threat is minimal because they do not have a vital component.”
“Me.” Jules didn’t want to be the center of attention but having experienced being hunted for certain tasks associated with the materials used by the Guardians and others, there was no point in being modest. He took the bangles from his pack and held them together, hunched over them to offer a little shadow. As usual, the flecks inside the rock lit up—green for the Aradia bangle, red for the Ruby rock. “If they want me, being out in the open might not be a good idea. Surely you just stick me in the ground somewhere until the threat goes away.”
“Were that it was so simple,” Colin said. “Unfortunately, you are not the goose with the golden egg in this scenario. Or maybe you are. We haven’t tested you yet.”
Jules let the bangles go dull and replace them in his rucksack. “Tested?”
“We aren’t certain what form their attack will take,” Grainger admitted. “We know about the shield they took. We know they have three more. And we know they are not interested in finding any more of them. It seems they are ready.”
Colin opened his arms and faced Toby. “How far have you gotten with the fact-versus-fiction around Achilles and the end of the Trojan war?”
“That family and allies fought over his magical armor, and it eventually ended up in the hands of the Guardians.” Toby frowned and paced to the left before putting his finger to his lips. “But the conflict between who would inherit the armor afterwards… Are you saying they split it into four?”
“Exactly. And when… whatever it is made from is brought together by these odd spheres, placed at strategic points, and blasted with that magnetic energy given off by the meteor rocks…” Colin pointed at Jules, or more specifically the items hidden in his bag. “We can only speculate. But there are other people here. Sensitive to—”
“Are you saying you trust them now?” Grainger asked.
Colin chewed his tongue, plainly annoyed at himself for getting carried away. “They, particularly the boy here with the glowing bracelets, do have certain qualities that may be useful. A way of looking at things that perhaps we haven’t thought of yet.”
Dan patted Colin on the shoulder. “There you go. It wasn’t that hard, was it?”
“This is no time for joking.” Grainger displayed a somber expression that got everyone’s attention. “Things we know. A private contractor with connections to the North Korean military and widespread international protection from the government has got his hands on unstable elements that are likely to consist of a weaponized use. It is somehow connected with a project we have been working on at a top-secret facility on the South Island ten miles from here. Without intervention, they will switch it on. Which means—”
“Without intervention,” Jules said, “the US military are going to bomb the hell out of wherever they’re keeping those shields. I’m guessing that dam in the Dragon’s Teeth valley?”
“We believe so,” Colin replied. “But we hope to disable it or render it neutral before the US warships arrive. If we can’t do that, and diplomacy cannot assure the US and its NATO partners of a peaceful solution, several cruise missiles will eradicate that part of North Korea. And if that happens, I don’t think we need to exaggerate the consequences.”
The air had grown heavy. Jules found his lungs needed extra effort to work.
It was Tane who voiced what they were all thinking. “World War Three.”
“How long do we have?” Toby asked.
“Unclear right now,” Grainger replied. “A few days at best. Maybe less. We’re working around the clock.”
“Our experience might fill in the blanks,” Charlie said.
Bridget nodded her agreement, her gaze passing over Jules first, and ending on the New Zealanders. “Or take a new tack. If we see something you thought wasn’t important.”
“Yeah,” Jules conceded. “We got a habit of doing that.”
Grainger closed her eyes briefly before focusing on Tane. “Take them to Ahua. Assess how much use they can be before exposing them to the inner workings. Then report in. I’m working to a forty-eight-hour launch window. After that, anything goes.”
Tane beamed back at the group, more akin to someone who had won a bet than who carried the weight of a world war on his shoulders. “This is something else. Prepare to be amazed.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The helicopter was a civilian transport, a once-luxurious model stripped bare to the essentials to minimize weight and cost. Bridget wasn’t fussy at this stage, though. She was just glad to be on the trail of another mystery. While that might have sounded naïve, or even cold and in bad taste given the prospect of war if they didn’t solve this, she put it down to the same rush soldiers felt after months of training, months of waiting on deployment orders. No one wanted to be in that situation, but it was what they were best at. Plus, it made killing that man feel like it happened to someone else, a surreal act she observed rather than perpetrated.
And Bridget was good at this. Not economics, business, or politics. Digging deep into codes and languages, brain-taxing puzzles her contemporaries couldn’t grasp, had given her a purpose. And buzzing the beautiful New Zealand landscape in a helicopter with her friends? There were worse ways to begin a new project.
It wasn’t a straight line between the low-key base and their destination, taking in valleys and low-lying mountain ranges. Harpal commented at one point, through the scratchy earphones and mics, that the route was likely to mask the destination from the group. Bridget glanced at Jules, his smirk telling her he was already mapping their twists and turns in his photographic memory. As long as he knew where they started, they’d be able to find their way back here should their hosts betray them.
“We’re coming up on Taone Pukepuke,” Tane said. “It means Hilltop Town. This is for the people who staff the lab, and the workers for our other projects up here.”
They passed over the town as promised, although Bridget interpreted it as smaller than she would label something a “town.” It was more of a village or township, with low-rise accommodation, hard-packed but not tarmac streets, suitable for a few hundred people. There was a road leading out of the town limits into a lush green forest spreading across the hillside.
They didn’t follow the road, instead trailing over a river. The waters below switched from serene flowing courses to being squeezed tight into rapids that frothed and broiled, then back into wider, calmer waterways.
“Next up on our magical mystery tour of Ahua,” Tane announced, “we have Kainga Pukepuke.”
They soared higher, showing how deep they were in this valley, carved out by the river that Bridget assumed came from a lake or meltwater, or both, up in the mountains. Those mountains extended ahead of them, farther than she could see, blanketed in cloud, and dusted with snow. The smaller mountains nearby were mostly green, tipped with the gray of cooler climates that would struggle to support the larger flora of the surrounding area. Below, a pier and jetty were equipped with what looked like traditional Maori longboats—wakas—alongside more modern contraptions, including Jet Skis. There was
no lingering here, though, cresting the hill and banking to the right. It was enough to view Kainga Pukepuke without disturbing the activity going on there.
Bridget said, “Oh, I get it. Taone means town, Kainga means village.”
“Spot on,” Tane replied.
All on board craned to view the village. And this one really was a village. A working reconstruction of a Maori settlement, albeit somewhat mechanical and laid out more like a western town planning council made up the plans. They were low enough to see people milling around, some dressed in regular fashions, others in tribal getups. As they veered away, about a quarter of a mile beyond the village, a parking lot came into view, hidden from the staged setting by yet more trees.
“It brings in some cash, and it’s great camouflage,” Tane said. “We ship workers in and out disguised as people running this tourist trap. It’s run by Maori, so they get an authentic experience and a bit of education about our history. We’re not conmen. But it’s a stop off for the coach tours and gives the tourists a good feed and an ‘authentic’ experience for folk who want to see the real New Zealand. Lots of arseholes, but mostly decent people, so we put on a show.”
“We?” Dan said. “I don’t see you getting all dressed up in native gear and dancing.”
“I put in my time as a kid.” Tane waved his arms to the side in what Bridget guessed was part of the show.
“I assume that’s where we are going?” Toby pointed ahead, over the pilot’s shoulder and out the front window at a conical mound.
Its distance was impossible for Bridget to gauge, but it looked different to the valley sides and the mountains encompassing the region.
She said, “Is that a volcano?”
Harpal and Dan groaned in unison.
Harpal said, “I had enough of volcanoes before I had to go freelance.”
“Don’t worry,” Tane answered. “It’s long extinct. And as far as any tourists are concerned, it’s sacred to my people. No one can set foot on it without express permission from the chieftain, who needs to get permission from the gods.”
Jules laughed and sat forward in his seat to get a better view. “They buy that?”
Tane laughed in response. “Hey, you’ve got to play certain cards when it’s for a greater good.”
Charlie had been quiet throughout, having spoken with Phil back in England before takeoff—in the middle of the night his time. Bridget had picked up that she promised this wasn’t like fieldwork, although Phil was concerned. Bridget wasn’t sure about the dynamics of Phil and Charlie’s relationship currently, only that with Phil having been injured in the line of duty—whilst performing the same role Dan now carried out—he treated Charlie more tenderly than the others. Although Charlie was ex-military, her expertise and her stated function in the group was that of an engineer. She wasn’t supposed to get her hands dirty in the field when violence threatened.
“This is all great,” Charlie scoffed, “but we’re not tourists. You can drop the bubbly demeanor and the useless facts. The Koreans have the Four Shields of Achilles. You have your own shield, I take it. As well as the power source. Why don’t you fill us in before we walk into your lair?”
“I hardly think they are James Bond villains,” Toby remarked.
“They still aren’t being straight with us.” Charlie waved her hand around the cabin. “You’re all playing along like this is just another trip to a dig. It isn’t. There are forces at work clashing with an immovable object.” Her pointed gaze landed on Dan. “Your friends in the US military will not take any chances. That’s going to bring other countries into it. If they bomb these things into oblivion, there will be no evidence they acted rationally. That Grainger woman was not exaggerating.”
“It isn’t about who used the Shields in the past,” Tane said. “The Achilles legend is simply what drew people out to locate them. The ones Ryom has in his gulag are one example.”
“You have others?” Toby asked.
“Of course they do,” Jules said. “And they have the means to activate them, too. Right?”
Tane nodded. “Okay, I was going to save this until we got there, but if it makes you more comfortable…”
“I’m not sure ‘comfortable’ is the right word,” Dan said. “But let’s hear it.”
Tane shored himself up. “You already know about the obscure language surrounding the Shields’ properties. They don’t only protect the bearer from physical objects. They can hide the persecuted from being detected. At least, that’s what we believe the Guardians did. They only fought when absolutely necessary.”
“You’re talking about cloaking technology,” Charlie said. “Science fiction.”
“We can already cloak from radar,” Dan said. “And I saw tech that hid equipment from human eyes and satellite way better than any camo net.”
“This is closer to what Charlie said,” Tane replied. “It’s cloaking tech that corrupt nations would love to have. Only, this device works by tapping into the natural make-up of the surrounding genetic structures. We could hide Kainga Pukepuke if needed. From above, it would look like unbroken forests and fields.”
“It refracts the natural habitat and expands on it,” Charlie said.
“The Native Americans in that region we visited lived through the civil war. No one bothered them. But the land where we found the shield, it was populated, wasn’t it? Residents and slaves hiding during their escapes?”
Bridget nodded. “Records dating back to that time and up to the modern era until the government relocated Native communities. Yes, it was populated.”
“But never targeted by white troops or the government during the conflicts. There are tribes who remained in that part of Alabama alongside landowners for decades. Before, during, and after the civil war, both sides avoided that land.”
Toby had listened intently, and now added his take. “You think it’s more than hiding people from prying eyes?”
Tane gave a shrug and dipped his head towards the extinct volcano that appeared to be the destination. “Although you can see it, it’s rare for anyone to ask about it. It’s almost like something in your peripheral vision, but a voice whispers to you to ignore it. Weird, huh?”
“Like consciousness observing and altering quantum behaviors,” Jules said. “We’re familiar with the notion. These bangles? When I’m asleep, you can lay ‘em on my skin and they’ll just sit there. Hunks of rock, shaped like jewelry. If I wake up and look at them, they glow.”
“What about the other application?” Charlie asked. “The ones the Americans are going to plunge us into war over?”
“Yes,” Tane conceded. “We can’t get it to do this for more than a few minutes, but if it is also used to deflect physical objects, if all the points activate, it can expand rapidly and destroy whatever is in its radius. To make a non-destructive dome, it has to connect to other shields at other points first, otherwise you can only shelter the immediate area—as I said, a small village or commune.”
Harpal rubbed his face and leaned his elbows on his knees, chin resting on his hands. “How far can it expand? Beyond the village range. You said it might form some irregular dome over North Korea and blast the surrounding nations with its energy field.”
“It’s all theoretical. We haven’t dared test it fully. But we do have the data from your experience in Kenya. Those orbs connected to one another all around the world. The volcanoes that were still active in some way, even if they’d been dormant for centuries, acted up. Ours didn’t. The lava flow and the plates under the crust have diverted far enough away over thousands of years of continental drift. But it activated our orb. We could power the shield, not ret-conning it as we had done before.”
“You’re welcome,” Jules said.
Tane checked out the front, the volcano looming large as they rose above the rim. There were small buildings dotted around the sides and just over the lip of the cone, the workplace for the town residents described earlier.
Tane said,
“But the theory doesn’t stop there. We think, if the metal plates that we see as shields are all powered at once, linked through the same neutrino particles and fed the right instructions, if it all hits the right angle at the right time, we believe all points will converge and potentially blanket the globe.”
“The meteor umbrella you mentioned in Alabama?” Sally Garcia asked, speaking up for the first time since taking off.
“Or aliens,” Dan said once again.
Most of them laughed. All except Sally. The Professor had been the quietest of them all. While the others were versed in factors escalating beyond what they had imagined, all Sally Garcia had wanted was to justify her outlandish theories about giants and expose the coverup. Added to that, Tane had not been entirely honest with her. Someone she had thought of as a friend as well as a bodyguard. She had seemed so upbeat about the fact she was important enough to warrant close protection from a foreign government, and now she knew they just wanted what was in her head. It must have been a real kick in the teeth for her.
“I’m serious,” Dan said. “Who’s to say these ancient people didn’t know about aggressive aliens out there? They still haven’t explained the NASCAR lines in South America.”
“You mean the Nazca lines,” Toby replied. “And they have explained them. It was nothing to do with aliens.”
“What is it with you and aliens?” Harpal asked. “Is that why you joined Toby? Because you wanted to prove they’ve visited?”
Dan crossed his arms and huffed. “I’m not dumb, you know. Look up the Fermi paradox. Look up dark forest theory. You’ll see this isn’t a stupid idea.”
“No,” Charlie said. “It’s just more likely they would know about meteors falling. They’d have seen the effects of it, might even have picked up some of the larger craters that it took astro-archaeology to detect. Like the one that blew away the dinosaurs.”
