The Reply a5-2

by Robert Doherty

  “We can’t,” Lisa Duncan said. “We have to do our jobs just like you have to do yours.”

  “If I had done mine after we got Johnny out of Dulce,” Reynolds said, “he wouldn’t be dead. Instead I went along with you while you did your jobs, as you put it. I’m not doing that again.”

  “We’re not asking you to,” Duncan said. “This will be a classified military operation. All I ask is that you not report anything about it.”

  “I can’t do that,” Reynolds said.

  “Kelly”—Turcotte slowly removed her hands from his shirt and let go of them— “if you report this, the Chinese will know we’re coming and people will die. Namely us.”

  “If it’s the only way to stop you, I will report it,” Reynolds threatened. “You’re not going to stop us,” Turcotte said. “We’re going in no matter what you do.”

  “Damn it!” Reynolds exclaimed. “Why? Why does it have to be the U.S. against China? The Russians and the ship they hid? The South African corporation and what they hid? Why do we fight and lie among ourselves? We won’t be ready, like Aspasia thinks we are, if we keep doing this. Human against human.”

  “It isn’t about human against human,” Turcotte said. He stepped around her. “It’s about finding out the truth on our own.” He walked out of the tent, the others following, leaving Kelly Reynolds alone and listening to the sound of the storm batter the tent.

  * * *

  Inside Qian-Ling, Che Lu and the remaining students had backtracked their way to the doors they had come in. In the dim glow of the flashlight she could see that the doors were indeed shut, and even with everyone pushing they couldn’t budge the metal.

  A quick check of the meager supplies they had brought in revealed they had enough water to last perhaps four or five days at best if they were very conservative.

  Light was perhaps the biggest problem. Among the seven of them they had eight flashlights. Che Lu estimated even using only one at a time, they had less than sixty hours of light left.

  “All right,” she said to the frightened students who were huddled together around the one lit flashlight like moths around a fire. “We cannot get back out this way. Perhaps Lo Fa will come back, but I do not think so. We are on our own.”

  “Who would do this to us?” one of the young girls, Funing, wailed.

  Che Lu had considered that and accepted the obvious answer. “The army.” “But why?” Funing asked.

  “Because someone ordered them to,” Che Lu said. “Someone in Beijing must have realized that they shouldn’t have issued us the permission to go in, and this is the easiest solution.” She kept to herself the disturbing news Lo Fa had passed to her.

  “We’re going to die!” Funing cried out.

  “We’re not dead yet,” Che Lu snapped, “so quit your crying. I’ve been in worse situations than this.” She pointed down the main tunnel. “There were two side tunnels. They have to go somewhere. From the ancient records there are supposed to be miles of tunnels in this tomb. We can find another way out.”

  “But what about what happened to Taizho?” Funing cried. “We could walk into the same thing!”

  “We will be careful.” Che Lu took a bamboo pole that one of the students used as a walking stick. “Tie a cloth to this. Then we hold the pole out in front of the first person like this,” she demonstrated, “with the cloth hanging down. That will trip any beam like that which killed Taizho.”

  “And if there are beams in both side tunnels?” Funing asked.

  Che Lu was growing weary of the girl. “Then we truly are trapped and then we will die,” she said. “But we don’t know that right now and we won’t until we act. So get to your feet!”

  “I will take the pole,” Ki said, surprising Che Lu.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Let’s go,” Ki said, and headed down the tunnel toward the intersection, one of the other students slightly behind him, holding the flashlight. The rest of them followed, single file, like blind ducks in a row.

  * * *

  “Look at this,” Nabinger said, holding a piece of paper the driver had given him. They were in a HUMMV, being driven to the airstrip where a plane Duncan had requisitioned waited for them. The squeak of the windshield wipers added to the unhappy mood inside. Nabinger was in the front seat next to the driver, while Turcotte and Duncan were in back. “What is it?” Turcotte asked.

  “The translation of the Chinese characters on the stone that my friend just faxed back to the Naval Operations Center.” Nabinger read it to the others. “It reads: Cing Ho reached this place as directed. He did his duty as ordered.” “Who the hell was Cing Ho?” Turcotte asked.

  “I’ll have to look it up once we get airborne,” Nabinger said, turning back to the front.

  Turcotte felt a nudge in his side. He turned to Duncan, who leaned close so she could speak to him without being overheard. “I’m sorry about what Kelly said. About Germany. She said that to get to you. To stop you from doing the right thing.”

  “You know about Germany?”

  “It’s why I chose you to infiltrate Area 51,” Duncan said.

  “Because I was part of a fucked-up operation that got a bunch of innocent civilians killed?” Turcotte asked.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Duncan gently said. “You didn’t kill any of them. And you stopped the man who did as quickly as you could.”

  “I was there.”

  “Give me a break, Mike,” she said. “More importantly, give yourself a break. I picked you because you refused the medal they offered you for the ‘fucked-up operation,’ as you called it. Because you took personal responsibility.”

  The brakes squealed as they pulled up to the stairs leading up to their plane. As Turcotte started to get out, he felt Duncan’s hand on his shoulder, causing him to pause.

  “And remember,” she said, “the facts show I chose the right man.”

  * * *

  Major Quinn had been working on his laptop for the past three hours, weaving his way through the various codes and numbers that made up the Department of Defense satellite communications system. He had finally found what he was looking for, but the information did more to confuse the situation than clarify it.

  The strange woman, Oleisa, was making satellite communications back to a ground station located somewhere in Antarctica. A station that, other than having a routing number, did not exist in any government records, classified or not, that he could find, other than a reference to an organization named STAAR.

  Quinn leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. Then he typed some new commands into his control console, accessing the security camera that was in the part of the hangar Oleisa had taken over. He wasn’t surprised when the screen came back blank and the computer informed him that that camera had been taken offline.

  “All right,” Quinn said to himself, enjoying the challenge. “There’s got to be a mention of STAAR somewhere. And I’m going to find it.” He turned back to his laptop and began typing. Then, suddenly, he paused. Antarctica. There was a connection between that continent and Majestic-12. And there was someone who knew about that connection: the-only surviving member of the original twelve members of the committee.

  Quinn knew where he had to go now: the base hospital at Nellis Air Force Base where that man, Werner Von Seeckt, former Nazi and SS scientist, was being kept alive by machines.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Will Kelly report our mission?” Duncan asked.

  The three of them were in the forward part of the 707, left alone by the Air Force crew. The takeoff from Easter Island had gone smoothly, and now they were heading toward Osan Air Force Base in South Korea as quickly as possible.

  “No,” Nabinger said, “she won’t.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Duncan asked.

  “She wouldn’t put us in harm’s way.”

  “Seemed to me,” Duncan said, “that her take on it was that we were putting ourselves in harm’s way.” She loo
ked at Turcotte, who hadn’t said a word since they’d boarded. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think she will.”

  “I can give the order to shut her off from the outside world,” Duncan said. “To have her put into custody.”

  “Then what’s the difference between us and Majestic?” Turcotte asked.

  “Point made,” Duncan said. “I’m just a little worried, is that all right?”

  “I’m worried too,” Turcotte said. He didn’t want to dwell on Kelly Reynolds and the way she had been acting. “When is Viking going to be over Cydonia?”

  Duncan looked at her watch. “Five minutes.” She pointed to the rear of the plane. “We can access the secure link to Viking and get the images it sends back. At least we’ll be up to speed on that.”

  Turcotte and Nabinger followed her down the aisle and through the door into the communications section. Rows of computer consoles filled the space between the bulkheads, and the light was turned down low, emphasizing the glow from the screens. Turcotte recognized the plane as a command-and-control version that the Air Force kept deployed around the world.

  “Over here,” Duncan said, leading him to a particular computer. A young Air Force lieutenant was seated there, her screen empty except for a cursor.

  “Hook us in to the NASA downlink from Viking, Lieutenant Wheeler,” Duncan ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Wheeler quickly typed in several code words. Her screen cleared, then a dire warning came across the screen telling anyone who had gotten this far that they were violating federal law if they were looking at this screen without proper access and to stop now.

  Then the warning was gone.

  >JPL: REPOSITIONING NEAR COMPLETE. T-5 MINUTES

  “Is that our time or Mars time?” Turcotte asked.

  Duncan was confused, but Lieutenant Wheeler figured out what he was asking. “Our time, five minutes,” she said. She looked up at Duncan. “It takes two and a half minutes for a radio or data transmission to make it from Mars to Earth. Five minutes for us is two and half minutes for Viking plus two and a half minutes for the transmission to reach.”

  >JPL: T-3 MINUTES. IMAGING SYSTEMS CHECK COMING.

  >UNAOC: ALL STATIONS ON LINE. WAITING TO RECEIVE DOWNLINK.

  >JPL: SUPERSEDING VIKING LINK TO ALL STATIONS.

  >VIKING: IMAGING SYSTEMS ALL GREEN.

  “You ever wonder why NASA never checked out Cydonia before,” Turcotte asked Duncan, “if they could move Viking so easily over it?”

  “I looked into that,” she replied. “From what I’ve found out, there wasn’t that much fuel to move it around. I think this shift has burned all they have left. They used up the fuel that would have kept its orbit from decaying for a few more years.”

  “Going over the same route, year after year?” Turcotte asked. “Maybe Majestic-12 had something to do with that,” he suggested. “Maybe they knew more than they let on.”

  “That’s very possible,” Duncan said. “But we’re looking now.”

  >VIKING: ORBIT ESTABLISHED AT DESIGNATED COORDINATES.

  There was a pause.

  >VIKING: ALL SYSTEMS ON. INITIATING IMAGING.

  The screen cleared and then both Duncan and Turcotte leaned closer as the Face on the surface of Mars came into view, the image twice as large as the one they had seen from Surveyor.

  “Jesus,” Turcotte muttered. “How could they say that’s a natural formation?” There was no mistaking the image.

  “Look at the ears,” Nabinger said. “The lobes are long, just like the megaliths on Easter Island.”

  “Well, at least we know what they look like,” Duncan said.

  “There.” Turcotte put his finger on a rectangular object on the screen. “That’s the Fort.”

  “What’s that in the center of the panels?” Lisa Duncan asked.

  “I can’t quite make it out yet,” Turcotte said.

  >VIKING: SCANNING IN.

  The image began to get larger when suddenly there was a bright light in the center of the solar panels. The light grew larger. At first Turcotte assumed it was consuming the panels, but then he realized it was getting larger because it was coming toward the camera.

  The light expanded until it was the entire image, then suddenly there was nothing but static running across the screen, like the beginning of The Twilight Zone.

  >JPL: LINK IS DOWN

  >JPL: LINK IS DOWN

  >JPL: ATTEMPTING TO REGAIN LINK

  >JPL: LINK IS DOWN

  >JPL: ATTEMPTING TO REGAIN LINK

  >JPL: LINK CANNOT BE REESTABLISHED. ZERO CONTACT WITH VIKING.

  “It’s gone,” Turcotte said.

  “This wasn’t being fed live to the media?” Lisa Duncan asked.

  “No, ma’am, NASA was letting it out on a five-minute delay.” Wheeler shut off her computer.

  “So what do you think happened?” Turcotte asked the others, but there was no reply.

  As they headed back to the front of the plane, Nabinger stopped at one of the computer stations. He rejoined them in a few minutes with information. “Cing Ho was a Chinese admiral in 656 B.C. He was commissioned by the emperor to lead an expedition to the Mideast. They traveled into the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. According to historians, the expedition mysteriously turned back and the Chinese never again mounted any sort of naval exploration.”

  “So Cing Ho carried the ruby sphere to the Rift Valley, then went home” was Turcotte’s take on that information.

  “Looks like it.”

  “I wonder why,” Duncan said. “This was thousands of years after the rebellion among the Airlia was supposedly over. What happened in 656 B.C. to make the Chinese undertake such an expedition?”

  “Hopefully we’ll find out in the tomb,” Turcotte said. “And after what just happened to Viking, I think it’s all the more important we do this.”

  * * *

  At JPL they were focused on Viking and asking the same questions everyone else was about what had happened to it. Larry Kincaid knew the answer to the what: Viking II was gone. The how and why were two other questions altogether, with the latter predicated upon there being a deliberate act involved in the former.

  He had watched the backup view from the IMS and seen the bolt of light come off the surface of Mars and envelop Viking. When the light was gone, there simply wasn’t anything there, as far as the IMS could see.

  He sat in the back of the conference room as the JPL bigwigs were still working over what had happened. The most immediate problem was what to do with the tape of the incident. It had not been made public yet, and the networks were screaming bloody murder as they’d had to extend their programming preempt waiting for the first pictures of the Airlia Cydonia compound from Viking II. So far the only decision made had been to hold the tape and issue a statement saying there had been equipment malfunction and that they would have to wait until Viking II completed another orbit and was over the site again in three hours. The networks weren’t happy with that, but at least they could put their shows back on.

  It took the top JPL people another fifteen minutes of arguing before they did what they usually did and turned to Kincaid. He’d spent that time pondering the other aspects of the incident that preyed upon his mind.

  “Viking II is gone, gentlemen,” Kincaid said when finally asked. “Whether it has suffered a severe malfunction or no longer exists doesn’t matter, as we have lost all telemetry with the probe. Even if it is still up there in orbit and does go over Cydonia, it won’t do us any good.

  “Our instruments from Earth and in space, including the Surveyor IMS, recorded a bright flash of light from the center of the solar panel array at Cydonia just as Viking passed overhead.”

  “What was the light?” someone asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kincaid said.

  “Your best guess?” the head of JPL asked.

  “My best guess is that it was some sort of power discharge,” Kincaid said. “The
key question is whether it was incidental or intentional.”

  The JPL head frowned. “What?”

  “It could have just been a release of excess energy from the panel’s processor, which logically would be in the center of the array. Such a burst would be like that which comes off the sun occasionally, although on a much smaller scale. The electromagnetic pulse would have been more than enough to fry every circuit on Viking. If it was a very strong pulse, then it could have physically destroyed the probe. If this is the case, then it was simply bad luck that Viking was passing overhead when that occurred.”

  “And if it wasn’t?” a new voice asked from Kincaid’s right. He turned. A man with white hair stood there. His face was unlined, making his age indeterminate. He wore sunglasses despite being indoors and he was dressed in black pants, shirt, sport coat with no tie, and the collar buttoned at his neck. He had an access badge clipped to his coat, the color of which told Kincaid the man had the highest clearance available.

  Kincaid chose his words very carefully. “If it wasn’t coincidence, then the destruction of Viking was deliberate.”

  The room burst out in pandemonium at that statement.

  “Hold on!” The head of JPL finally got everyone’s attention. “Let’s not go off half cocked here. It was most likely just coincidence. But even if it wasn’t— even if it wasn’t,” he repeated over the low roar that produced, “we have to remember that the message we received from Mars was from a guardian computer, not from Aspasia himself. The message said that Aspasia would be waking up, not that he was already conscious.

  “And what does a guardian computer do? It guards. Perhaps there was some sort of defensive system that was brought automatically on-line when the pyramid opened and the solar panels were exposed? And what if Viking flying overhead triggered that system? I do not believe this was a deliberate act, and that is the position I will take with the President.

  “As far as the media are concerned, we will continue to tell them we have an equipment malfunction, which is basically the truth. We’ll tell them the malfunction was caused by moving Viking’s orbit.”