The three walked up a long spiral ramp that wound along the interior wall of the tower. It took over an hour to get near the top, where the Master Guardian computer was secreted. The entire journey was made in silence, and after getting past the guards at the bottom of the ramp, they saw no one. Jobb was able to use the medallion around his neck to open a large set of doors that blocked the ramp at the top. The doors swung wide, revealing a large, cone-shaped room. On a black platform in the center was a red pyramid, fifteen feet high. Its surface glowed, pulsing with power.
Gwalcmai put out an arm, abruptly stopping Donnchadh from stepping forward. She then immediately saw what she had missed in her excitement over seeing the Master Guardian. The black platform was attached to the three-foot-high ledge that ran around the interior of the space by only a single walkway on the far side. If she had taken that extra step, she would have fallen into an opening that went down the tower as far as the eye could see.
Donnchadh led the way around the ledge. When she reached the walkway, she paused. Halfway across the ledge was a crystal, three feet high. Set in it was a sword, its pommel extending up. From what they had learned on their own planet, she knew that the sword was the power control for the Master Guardian. Donnchadh walked forward and put her hand on the pommel of the sword, fingers curling around the metal.
“What are you doing?” Gwalcmai hissed as he came to her side, clamping his own hand over hers.
Donnchadh didn’t respond, her eyes glued to the glowing surface of the computer. With one hand she checked the silver chain around her head that would keep the alien computer from overwhelming her mind.
“If you turn it off, they will come,” Gwalcmai said. “We cannot defeat them. They will kill us and turn it back on.”
Donnchadh knew the truth of his words, but still did not let go. The sword was the key. She knew that. The key to the Master Guardian, which was the heart of the Airlia’s power. She allowed Gwalcmai to lift her hand off the sword. “I don’t see the sheath,” she said. “Putting the sword in the sheath turns off the master.”
Gwalcmai kept his hand on hers, watching her carefully.
“I’m all right,” she reassured him. She moved around the crystal. As she got closer to the Master Guardian, she slowed. The air felt as if it were changing from gas to liquid, pressing against her, absorbing her. Her hand reached out for the pulsing red surface, even as her upper body leaned away, her head going back, instinctively avoiding the alien device. She knew she had no choice. She was the lone scientist on this planet and it was her responsibility.
Like a solar flare, a glow came out of the computer and encompassed her hand. She tried to draw it back but was unable to do so. The glow enveloped her body. Donnchadh went rigid, a series of “visions” flashing through her brain. Planets. Great space battles between Airlia mothership/Talon fleets and Swarm Battle Cores. Other alien species, some of them warring with the Airlia, some as allies and trading partners. Things she couldn’t comprehend in the millisecond she “saw” them.
Even with the chain, it took all her willpower to gain a measure of control over the link. She had studied the data on the guardians prior to departing her planet, although she had never made contact with one before. She had a good understanding of how they functioned but the reality was almost overwhelming.
Almost.
Donnchadh felt Gwalcmai’s hand on her back, his presence giving her the strength to stop the runaway visions. Since he too had the silver chain around his head and wasn’t directly touching the alien computer, he wasn’t affected by the guardian. Donnchadh focused on communications. She“saw” the array on Mars that they had passed on their way to Earth. A green crystal was in the center of the massive dish. That was the transmitter.
But the messages originated here and were sent to a guardian computer on Mars to be transmitted. The same exact message each time. Just a code, which indicated this particular outpost. No details. And all that came back from the Airlia Empire was a simple acknowledgment. Donnchadh searched the logs. The same acknowledgment time after time. No new orders. No updates. Ever since this outpost had been established.
Donnchadh thought about that, then realized that the Airlia were afraid of the messages being intercepted. The message system was simple and functional. And Donnchadh knew enough about computers to set up a self-sustaining loop by which the messages were sent to the guardian on Mars and returned with an indication they had been sent—and acknowledged—when in fact they had not been.
Then she checked on something—how long it took a message to reach the Airlia command center and how long it would take a ship to travel to Earth from wherever that was located.
She then looked in a direction that scientists from her own planets had gone—examining the master plan for the development of the humans on the planet. There was a set schedule depending on population spread and Empire need. The humans away from Atlantis were to be allowed to breed and at the same time given the rudiments of civilization to allow more and more to be sustained by less and less land.
At the same time, two things were to be insinuated into society: a common bond and divisiveness. The first was to be done through the concept of God and religion. The second through national and ethnic differences.
For the first, the Airlia would use the promise of eternal life. A real promise, given the potential of the Grail, but one they would shroud in the concept of various Gods and dogma surrounding each.
For the latter, the Airlia introduced slight ethnic differences into the human gene pool—skin color, facial characteristics, and other overall minor aberrations. Warfare among the various human segments was to be encouraged. Population was to be allowed to grow up to certain levels, at which time the herd would be culled via disease and warfare.
Right now, this outpost was at Level One—the human population had been thinly spread over the arable land and was growing in numbers. Strong control was maintained at the Airlia headquarters on Atlantis, but outside of there, little influence was being exerted.
Level Two was estimated to be implemented sometime in the next several hundred years upon authorization from the Airlia Empire.
When she was done, Donnchadh had difficulty breaking her contact with the Master Guardian. She tried to pull her hand back, but the field kept her in place. She was able to shift her eyes enough to catch Gwalcmai’s attention. With one hard tug, he pulled her away from the alien computer.
“Finished?”
Donnchadh could only nod. They quickly retraced their steps, heading down the winding ramp. Donnchadh half expected an alarm to be raised, fearful that somehow the Master Guardian had alerted the Airlia, but nothing happened. They made it out of the temple and back to Jobb’s small house.
“And what now?” Jobb asked as soon as they were inside.
“Now we wait,” Donnchadh said.
“How long?” Jobb asked.
Donnchadh exchanged a knowing glance with Gwalcmai. They knew how long it had taken them to journey tothis planet on board the mothership. They both knew it would probably be many, many years before the Airlia reacted to the lack of contact from Earth. More than Jobb’s lifetime, that was certain.
“I don’t know how long,” Donnchadh said.
“You are going back to wherever it is you came from?” Jobb sat down on his bed.
“Yes,” Donnchadh said.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Watch. Write down what you learn. We will come back here someday.”
Jobb stared at the two of them. “I will not see the end of the Airlia, will I?”
Donnchadh sighed. “No. You won’t. It will be a long time.”
“But I have helped?”
“Greatly,” Donnchadh acknowledged.
“Then I am done,” Jobb said. He gestured toward Gwalcmai. “Finish me.”
Gwalcmai shook his head. “It is not our way.”
“I can’t live like this anymore,” Jobb said. Without another word
he drew the ceremonial dagger from the belt around his robe and slashed the blade along his forearm from wrist to elbow. Such was his determination that he was then able to switch the dagger to the hand with the cut arm and do the same to his other arm. Donnchadh belatedly tried to stem the bleeding, but Gwalcmai put an arm out, stopping her.
“It’s his choice.” Gwalcmai pushed her toward the door as Jobb slumped down on his cot, blood soaking the blankets and dripping onto the floor, his eyes closed. “There are worse things than death,” Gwalcmai said.
V
THE PAST, 10,000 B.C.
Darkness. Donnchadh woke to absolute darkness. She lifted her right arm and found that the movement was restricted by bands wrapped around it. She managed to get it in front of her face, the back of it lightly striking against something above her, and saw nothing. She pushed upward with both hands and realized she was in a tight, enclosed space.
Her heart rate accelerated along with her breathing. She reached out to the sides and hit cold metal. She blinked in the darkness, not even sure her eyelids were working, as she perceived no difference with them open or shut. Her mind wasn’t working right. She tried to recall where she was, when she had lain down to sleep, but couldn’t.
Where was Gwalcmai? Why wasn’t he by her side?
She slammed the palms of her hand against the metal above, hearing a slight thud, but experiencing no give in her prison top.
“Gwalcmai,” she cried out in a weak voice that only bounced back to her.
She screwed her eyelids shut and tried to concentrate. Where was she? What had happened?
A heavy weight suddenly hit her chest. Her son. Fynbar.
She knew he was dead.
But the name drew another thread of memory out of the confusion and she grasped onto it. A gray spaceship. Leaving a massive mothership. An Airlia mothership. Her mission. Gwalcmai’s and her mission. Earth. Atlantis. The high priest Jobb.
He had killed himself. That oriented her.
Time. That was why she was here. She was in the Airlia tube in the Fynbar. Coming out of the deep sleep.
Donnchadh fought to get her breathing under control.
She knew Gwalcmai was close by. In the other tube. He should also be coming out of the deep sleep. They had set the controls for five hundred revolutions of the planet around the sun. It had been just short of the number she had gleaned from the Master Guardian for the lack of messages from Earth to be noticed and a ship dispatched and travel the distance to the planet.
There was a latch. Donnchadh’s heart rate decelerated to normal as she remembered the latch on the inside of the tube. She felt to her right and her fingers curled around a small lever. She pulled it and, with a hiss, the top of the tube unsealed and slowly swung upward. At first it was just as dark, then faint red light invaded the tube and hit her eyes.
She had to close them for several minutes to adjust. This was the absolute minimum emergency lighting setting, activated by the movement of the tube’s lid as they had programmed, but it took a while for her eyes to be able to take even that much light after so many years of darkness. She used the time to remove the muscle stimulator bands from around her upper body.
Then Donnchadh sat up and opened her eyes once more. The familiar interior of the Fynbar was all around. She looked to her right, at Gwalcmai’s tube. The top had not opened yet. She smiled. He always was slow to rise after the deep sleep. She removed the muscle stimulators from her lower body, then carefully lifted herself over the edge of the tube and set her feet on the floor.
It was cold. And damp. Donnchadh shivered and grabbed a robe that was hung near the tube, sliding it over her head and shoulders and pulling tight a cinch at the waist. Then she slipped on a pair of leather sandals. They reminded her of the old lady in the south of this island who had made them and Donnchadh smiled once more, until she remembered that all the humans who had been alive when she entered this spacecraft were now dust.
She shivered and turned to Gwalcmai’s tube, impatient. There was the hiss of the lid unsealing. As the top swung open she went over. As Gwalcmai sat up, a slightly confused look on his face, and his eyes closed, she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.
“A good way to awaken,” Gwalcmai said, his voice hoarse and cracking.
Donnchadh grabbed his clothes and handed them to him as he finished removing his muscle stimulators and exited the tube. “Perhaps one time you will wake before me.”
“Perhaps,” Gwalcmai said without much conviction. He dropped to the floor and quickly did fifty push-ups, getting the blood flowing.
“What do you think has happened?” Donnchadh asked as she went over to the copilot’s seat and powered up the computer.
Gwalcmai shrugged. “I’ve no idea.” He pulled his sword out of its sheath and checked the edge. “I hope that the metalwork has improved in the past five hundred years. This thing would not last one blow against an Airlia sword.” He actually had an Airlia-made sword, from his time as a God-killer, on board the Fynbar, but did not take it with him most of the time as it was so obviously an anachronism that it would draw unwanted attention.
Always the practical one, Donnchadh thought as she shut down the tubes and the computer that governed them. In thevat behind the tubes were two more fully grown clones, their limbs almost entwined, they were pressed so tightly together. She stared at them for several seconds, realizing that someday she would inhabit the female one of those bodies. She found it interesting that the two were face-to-face. Gwalcmai came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her upper body. “Even they know our love,” he whispered in her ear. His lips came close to the back of her neck. “The surface will wait.”
It was raining as the hidden door set in the standing stone slid open. That was nothing unusual. What was unusual and stopped Donnchadh and Gwalcmai in their tracks was the fact that the stones they had set in place had been surrounded by a circle of wooden stakes set upright in the ground. Each stake was between six and ten feet high. And, of particular notice, on the top of each stake was a human skull, the bone bleached white by the sun and rain.
Donnchadh and Gwalcmai stood still as the door slid shut behind them. They slowly turned, surveying the area, but there was no sign of whoever had erected the stakes or placed the skulls there.
“They could be long dead,” Gwalcmai said.
“They could be,” Donnchadh agreed. She’d known that the stones sitting in the middle of the grasslands would attract attention from humans passing by, but not enough to attract attention of the Airlia. Apparently, for someone, that attention had turned into a form of gruesome homage. Or a threat, Donnchadh realized with a shiver not caused by the cold rain.
“Come on,” Gwalcmai said, stepping forward.
Donnchadh noticed that he had drawn his sword. They made their way onto the plain, heading south.
Metalworking had not improved much at all on the outer ring of Atlantis, they discovered shortly after landing there, having taken passage on a trading vessel. Gwalcmai found no sword much better than what he had had made the last time they were there. In fact, things in all areas appeared to have gotten somewhat worse, if anything. All they had known were long dead, but the black market and underground network were still alive and well. Human greed had not changed in five hundred years.
They integrated themselves into this fringe of society with more alacrity than the previous time, given their experiences. They learned that the Airlia were hardly ever seen anymore outside of the palace, and that even the high priests and Guides had begun to isolate themselves on the center island, as if the Airlia and their minions were drawing into themselves, away from their mission and the demands of the outside world.
The stories of the Grail and the promise of eternal life for obedience had faded into myth, as if the Airlia cared little for what humans believed anymore. Donnchadh took that as a sign that the Airlia here, having had no new communiqué from their home system, were losing track of their mandate.
Her hope had been that they would feel abandoned.
Apparently they did, but rather than be troubled by it, they appeared to be quite content with being out of the interstellar war with the Swarm and to rule the humans immediately around them as Gods. Donnchadh learned this by infiltrating the center island and mixing with those uncorrupted by the guardian. There were still many high priests and Guides in evidence, but their mission seemed more one of service toward the Airlia than spreading the word and influence of the aliens.
Donnchadh felt a little bit of satisfaction in that the Airlia plan for this planet seemed to be stalled, but there had been no apparent response from the Airlia Empire about the loss of contact with the outpost.
Now she and Gwalcmai must do as they had always done—wait.
The guardian on Mars was in contact with not only the Master Guardian on Earth and the transmitter but an array of sensors on the planet’s surface. They did not have to be very sophisticated to pick up the incoming spaceship as it passed the outer limits of the solar system, especially considering that it made no attempts to disguise its approach.
It was an Airlia mothership and it had been on sublight vector for the Sol System for over ten years—the amount of time the Airlia estimated to allow the transition from light to sub–light speed to be far enough away not to give the Swarm the opportunity to find the system. Traveling just below the speed of light, the mothership began to decelerate as it passed Pluto’s orbit. Nestled around the nose of the mile-long ship were nine smaller ships, shaped like a bear’s claws, curving inward from a large base to a sharp point. They were the Talons, Airlia warships, designed to defend the mothership and attack other spacecraft and planets. They weren’t capable of faster-than-light speed, so for long journeys they were attached to the mothership like remoras.
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