by S. S. Segran
Black reached for his water bottle to moisten his dry mouth. “So the plan continues as scheduled, then?”
“Would I have it any other way.” It was more of a statement than a question. “Do you understand what is at stake, Adrian? Do you not see why I have raised this organization and its subsidiaries? Have you lost sight of the objectives of the Arcane Ventures? You, Vlad and a chosen few are, for now, the only ones with considerable knowledge of my intent. If you need to be schooled again, then perhaps I should reconsider your value to the future we are building. There is no room for error or complacency as we prepare to unleash an incursion that will alter the destiny of our planet.”
“Let me prove my worth again,” Black pleaded. “I assure you that I will not fail you anymore.”
Back in Central Park, the figure gazed up at the sky as the wind picked up, and caught sight of dark clouds gathering on the horizon. Standing up, the founder of Phoenix Corporation pulled on the gold-colored hood. “You better keep your word then, Adrian. There is a fierce storm brewing that no power on Earth can stop. And when it passes, I will be there to sow the seeds for a new harvest.”
List of Characters
The Five:
Aari Barnes
Jag Sanchez
Kody Tyler
Mariah Ashton
Tegan Ryder
The Elders:
Ashack [Ay-SHAK]
Nageau [Nah-GO]
Saiyu [SAY-yoo]
Tayoka [Tah-YO-ka]
Tikina [Tee-KEE-nah]
The Villagers:
Aesròn [Ay-zuh-RON]
Akol [AY-cole]
Aydar [AY-darr]
Breyas [Bray-YAZ]
Diyo [DEE-yo]
Fiotez [FEE-oh-taz]
Hutar [HYOO-tar]
Huyani [HOO-ya-nee]
Keno [Kay-NO]
Magèo [Ma-JAY-oh]
Matikè [Ma-tee-KAY]
Mitska [Mitt-SCA]
Mokun [Mo-KOON]
Relsuc [Rail-SOOK]
Rikèq [REE-cake]
Dema-Ki Animals:
Akira [Ah-KEE-rah], a golden eagle.
Chayton [SHAY-tun], a wolf
Tyse [TYCE] (rhymes with rice), a lynx
Phoenix Corporation:
Adrian Black — CEO, Phoenix Corporation
Dr. Albert Bertram — CSO, Phoenix Corporation
Arianna Abdul — Chief Geologist, Quest Mining
Elias Hajjar — Head of Security, Quest Mining
Francis LeChamps — Chief Mining Engineer, Quest Mining
Jerry Li — CFO, Phoenix Corporation
Dr. John Tabrizi — Chief Executive, Quest Chemicals
Luigi Dattalo — Chief Executive, Quest Defense
Vladimir Ajajdif — Chief Executive, Quest Mining
The Boss — Owner, Phoenix Corporation and all subsidiaries
Aegis League Book Two:
AEGIS INCURSION
by
S.S.Segran
Dedication
Dedicated to you, the dauntless reader who explores uncharted literary scapes of unknown authors.
“Whatever lies within our power to do lies also within our power not to do.”
~ Aristotle 384-322 BC ~
“There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom gives us lucidity so that we may use our best judgment, completely detached from impulse, and distinguish the right path to tread.”
~ Elder Nageau ~
Prologue
Lake Mead, Nevada
July 1948
“Gotcha!”
The wiry teenager, dressed in faded blue jeans and a red flannel shirt, vigorously reeled in his fishing line the moment he felt a hard tug. Careful not to tip the canoe, he pulled his prize closer and closer, a triumphant grin plastered on his face. Judging by the drag on the line, he could tell that it was a big one.
There was a splash as the largemouth bass leapt out of the water, struggling to get free of the hook. Startled, the sixteen-year-old yanked on the suddenly slack line as the fish fell back into the lake. The bass, with a flap of its fin as if waving goodbye, disappeared underwater.
The boy stared after it in dismay, then yelled, “Elwood, you knucklehead!”
He’d spent the last two hours trying to land a catch. Tempted as he was to hurl his fishing rod into the manmade lake, he forced himself to set the pole down and ran his hands over his face.
He sat quietly for a while, taking in the striking contrast between the beautiful teal-blue waters of the lake and the red sandstone hills. Once he was ready to give it another go, he picked up the rod. He opened his tackle box to grab a new hook and sinker, then rigged them to his line.
He took a few calming breaths and gazed around. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze and the cloudless sky was sunny and bright. The surface of the lake looked smooth and glassy, like a mirror.
Elwood had brought out the small canoe in the wee hours of the morning. He knew he’d be in trouble for missing his chores at the farm, but all he wanted was to catch his first fish of the season. If he was lucky, he would get a nice big one—maybe he’d clean it and give it to that pretty girl next door that he fancied so much, Rosemary. He smiled goofily at the thought, playing with the fraying brim of his father’s old Army Air Force cap as it shaded his eyes from the sun.
He knew Rose found aviation exciting. That, on top of his love of planes, drove his interest in wanting to join the Air Force. What better way to impress a girl and do what he loved? Not only that, but she liked motorcycles!
How he wished his next catch would be a chest full of treasure so he could buy his dream bike, an Indian Chief Roadmaster. Maybe they could ride across the country together, wind in their hair. He would make her laugh and she’d smile that angelic smile that never failed to brighten his day.
A sound in the distance snapped him out of his daydream. It was a low rumbling, like thunder. But that was impossible; the sky was still cloudless. As the sound gradually became louder, Elwood was able to pinpoint the direction and slowly looked toward the east. He squinted against the sun, then gasped when a shimmering silhouette emerged from the glare.
It was a large airplane.
Flipping through the deck of spotter cards in his mind, trying to find which plane would best fit what he saw, it hit him: A B-29 Superfortress, big brother to the B-17s his father had flown during the war. He stared in both amazement and fright as the aircraft began to descend and continue its path—in his direction.
He covered his ears as the roar of its four engines nearly rendered him deaf, and watched with wide eyes as the plane flew straight toward him. In his fear, he sat paralyzed in his boat though every fiber in his being screamed at him to jump into the safety of the lake. He realized that he could see the pilot of the aircraft in his cockpit, could almost imagine the horror on the man’s face.
The plane thundered right over Elwood’s head, so near that the vortex of air created by the plane churned the water violently, capsizing the canoe and pitching him into the lake. He struggled and attempted to cry out, only to choke on water. He floundered back up to the surface and sputtered and spat as he tried to regain his bearings.
Catching sight of the plane as it boomed overhead, he traced the aircraft, agape, as it hit the surface of the lake on its belly. The massive propellers struck the water, ripping three of the four engines from the wings. The plane skipped along, much like a flat stone would, before plunging into the lake for the last time about three hundred yards from Elwood.
Debris from the impact rained down around the canoe as the waves resulting from the crash rolled toward the boy. He paid no heed to the falling fragments and, with some effort, righted his canoe, thankful that it hadn’t sunk. His tackle box and fishing rod were gone, sadly, and he feared for what his father would say after finding out that not only had he taken the canoe without permission, he’d lost their fishing gear as well.
Elwood pulled himself into the craft and sat down, only
to find his feet submerged in ten inches of water. Groaning, he tried to scoop it out with his hands before giving up and looking back toward the B-29.
The plane’s nose rose, pointing toward the sky as water flooded into its aft section. Slowly, the aircraft began to sink into the lake. He watched as five men scrambled out of the escape hatch and clambered into life rafts. Four of them wore green Air Force flight suits and the fifth appeared to be a civilian.
The civilian, safely on the raft, started to argue with the men in uniform. So loud was his voice that Elwood could hear him from where he sat in his canoe: “It must be retrieved! We cannot lose it!”
Elwood hesitated, then cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled out to the men. “Hey! Are you fellas alright?”
The shouting stopped momentarily as the men looked for the source of the voice. When they saw the boy, they waved their arms over their heads and the civilian called back, “Yes, I think we are!”
Elwood slipped his paddle into the water as he made ready to reach the men, then paused. He was closer to the small beach than they were. He gestured to them as they began rowing over to him. “Can you make it to shore?” he shouted.
“Yes!” they called.
“Good! I’ll go ahead and get help!” Elwood gave them a confident thumbs-up before picking up his paddle and hurrying toward dry land. He hopped out of the canoe and pulled it as far up the beach as he could, then started running toward the town; his shoes squished with water at every step.
It wasn’t long before fire trucks and sheriff’s cars arrived, sending dust flying everywhere as they pulled up on the beach. The men from the plane, who’d made it to shore just minutes before the emergency responders arrived, were quickly tended to.
Elwood quietly returned for his canoe and left without a word, knowing that the survivors were in good hands. Neither he nor the men from the B-29 could have ever fathomed that the plane that had sunk to the bottom of the lake would remain hidden in its watery grave for over half a century.be
The mystery of its missing cargo would be a secret for a long time to come.
Northern California
The Present
The white delivery van cruised along a mostly empty highway. Sage bushes flanked both sides of the road but were barely visible through the pouring rain in the dark of the night.
Behind the wheel of the vehicle was a man in his early thirties. His dirty-blond hair was cut in a matte side-part and he sported a carefully trimmed beard. He was built tough, with a strong chest and biceps that stretched the sleeves of his collared t-shirt. Semper Fi was inked around his right wrist; it was his only tattoo and he bore it proudly. With his height and impressive build, he could have passed for a younger Hugh Jackman.
Bored with remixes of Top 40 tunes, he switched the radio to another station. A loud voice resonated through the speakers, familiar to his ears. With a small chuckle, the driver thought, Shock jock hour. As he listened, though, he was rather surprised to hear a slightly mellower version of the usually obnoxious radio host he was used to. Currently, the jockey was conversing with a female caller from North Dakota.
“I just don’t understand,” the woman was saying, sounding breathless. “All my crops. Can you imagine that? This is how I make my living, you know, and they’re gone! I wake up this morning and all I see are my crops—dead in one night.”
“Yeah, I’ve been getting a few other calls like yours over the past couple weeks,” the radio host answered. “Some crazy things are going down! Let’s get the tinfoil hats out, yeah? Next caller, whatchu got, man?”
“Hey, I’m a long-time listener, first-time caller . . . ”
The new caller went into an earnest ramble and listed off what he thought might be the causes behind the dead-crop phenomena that had been sweeping across parts of the mid-west. The driver of the van grimaced; most of it was conspiracy theories. He understood why some minds would drift toward that kind of thinking. If it had only affected a farm or two, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. This, unfortunately, had spread across a couple of states, thereby feeding more than a few wild theories.
The driver quickly checked his GPS to see how much time he had before his freeway exit. The wipers were working hard to clear the heavy rain. He shook his head in disbelief at the weather blanketing California. The state was experiencing its heaviest rainfall in ages.
He drove for a while longer, listening as the shock jock moved on to other topics and returned to his usual gaudy and boisterous self. As the driver exited the freeway near the town of Redding, the rain started to ease until it stopped completely. He turned off the wipers and drove past several small homes and businesses, breathing a sigh of relief.
Industrial buildings began to appear along the sides of the road. The driver instinctively turned the volume down on the radio, then caught himself and made a face. Why do people do that? It’s not like reducing the volume helps us see better.
He drove past a few large parking lots and more buildings until he found his destination. It was a gated single-story structure, built long and rectangular—generally looking like any other ordinary manufacturing facility.
The driver pulled up to a guard post and stopped before the boom gate. There were four guards inside. Why so many? the driver wondered.
The guard closest to the window peered out at him from under thick brows. “State your business, please.”
“Delivery.”
The guard checked his clipboard, then looked up at the clock in his post. Noting it was nearly midnight, he said, “You’re late.”
“Oh, lighten up. I’m not more than ten minutes behind. With the rain pouring the way it did for the past three hours, I had to stay well below the limit.”
The guard grunted. “Alright. Head toward the loading dock. Remember, in and out, that’s it. You don’t go anywhere else.”
“Yessir.”
The guard pressed a button and the boom gate rose. The driver gave the guard a nod of thanks and drove toward the back of the building where the loading dock was located.
When the truck was positioned properly, he turned off the engine and hopped out. Striding around to the back of the van, he threw the doors open and began offloading the heavy boxes. A couple of workers from inside the building came out to help him. Once everything was unloaded and documents were signed, the workers disappeared without so much as a word.
As he fished his van keys out of his uniform pants, the driver paused as an uncomfortable feeling grew in his stomach. He knew right away that it had been a horrible idea to grab a late dinner at the Chinese takeout. He should have known; the Kung Pao chicken had smelled and tasted funny. Just thinking about it now made him queasy. He needed to find a restroom, and quickly.
He glanced around. In and out, don’t go anywhere else had been the guard’s orders. The driver couldn’t wait; not with the way his insides were churning. He quickly made up his mind. Ignoring the ‘Authorized Personnel Only’ sign, he tried the door that the workers who’d helped him had gone through. It hadn’t closed completely, thank goodness. The driver entered the building and hurried down a narrow corridor, hoping that no one would see him.
A sense of urgency took over the further he went. Come on, come on, he silently pleaded. Then he spotted it: A stick figure nailed to a dark blue door. He practically bulldozed his way through the entrance and found a stall for himself. Once he was done, he reached out to open the stall door but froze when he heard the creak of the bathroom door swinging open. Two men in mid-conversation entered.
“But yeah, we really appreciate you coming all the way in from Reno,” one said. He spokespoke as thoughhe had a cold. “Your approval of the components will help us firm up the production schedule.”
The second man cleared his throat and responded. “Well, we are on a tight timeline. Anything I can do to speed things up. We need to get the parts to Quest Defense as soon as possible.”
The first man lowered his voice. “I know it’
s none of my business—we’re just producing components here—but, ah, there have been rumors spreading across the floor among the engineers.”
“Rumors? What kind of rumors?”
“I don’t know if I should say this, but a couple of engineers are making a link between what we’re doing here and . . . ” The man trailed off.
“And what?” the second voice demanded.
“And the farm phenomenon that’s been making news.”
“Garbage!”
“I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted to let you in on some of the chatter that’s been percolating along the production line.”
In the stall, the driver was breathing lightly through his nose, doing his best not to make a sound as he listened.
“You know what? There are rumors in every corporate corridor. It’s your job to keep it in check.”
“I get that, but there are a number of things that have happened lately that are feeding into this.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“For one, the company invested heavily in upgrading our cleanroom to a Class One facility.”
“Go on . . . ”
“And the fact that we’re producing a component for which we’re’ not given information about its intended purpose—that’s never happened before. There’s also been talk about supplies of a rare mineral that were brought in, possibly illicitly, from Northern Canada and Siberia several months ago. Add to that the bolstering of the site’s security with guards from Quest Defense. You know we only hire the best people to work for us, and these are pretty smart engineers I have in here. They’re quite capable of putting two and two together and with the news of the outbreak in Kansas and North Dakota, the question is: Is this more than mere coincidence?”
The driver of the van made the mistake of shifting his weight. A loose tile under his foot cracked as he moved, and thet sound was as loud as a gunshot in the enclosed space. He froze as the voices went silent. Then footsteps approached.
