The Cydonia Objective mi-3

by David Sakmyster

  “But…” Orlando leaned tentatively holding her hands.

  “Let me guess,” Temple said. “You saw nothing.”

  “Not exactly nothing,” Phoebe replied, a little bitterness in her voice. “More like—”

  “A soft blue light. A hazy fog?” Temple’s smile widened.

  Phoebe stared at him. “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Because such things—certain things like that are being shielded.”

  “How can that be?” Orlando asked. “And by whom?”

  Temple continued grinning at them like a schoolboy with a naughty secret. He held up a finger. “Shielding, we’ve found, is something that’s either being consciously enacted and continuously enforced—as it is in our case to cover ourselves, through great effort. Or in cases like these critical faith-based concerns, it may part of a collective will, that enough people, many of them with unknown psychic talents, are directing their thoughts so much on the present unknowable, unprovable faith, that they have managed to retroactively go back and shield the actual events in an impenetrable veil.”

  Orlando merely blinked at him, as if he had sprouted a second head with a gibberish vocabulary.

  “I don’t buy it,” Phoebe said.

  Temple shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. It is what it is. Our own RV members have experienced the same denial as you have, almost as if something…” he waved his arms. “…out there doesn’t want the truth to be known. Some of our members have even gone so far as to suggest certain nefarious elements have shielded these ultimate answers, so as to perpetuate the multitude of religious beliefs.”

  “Why would they do that?” Orlando asked as he held his stomach while the helicopter lurched and dipped again.

  “Why not?” said Temple. “If these other forces wanted humans to remain deadlocked, ever at each others’ throats, never advancing in harmony, never speaking the same tongues…”

  Phoebe nodded. “Like the Tower of Babel story. Scatter the people, keep them at odds through different tongues and beliefs. My brother Caleb’s always on about that theory too.”

  “Yep,” said Orlando. “Except he thinks we all had these abilities long ago, and that language wasn’t necessarily the spoken one, that instead we all had some kind of telepathy and clairvoyance and everything, and the tower symbolized our progress.”

  “Until the gods came and knocked it down and ‘confused our tongues’,” Phoebe said.

  Temple shrugged. “Whatever the case is, we’re working on it. Among other things, and… we need you.”

  Phoebe glanced at him suspiciously. “That’s why you rescued us? Because what? You want us to join you, work for you? Doing what?”

  “Doing what you’re doing. We’ve been following you, secretly cheering on The Morpheus Initiative.”

  Orlando struggled to follow all this. His head was pounding and his throat was parched. “What the hell for? And why, if you’ve got psychics, didn’t you come to us before? We could have used you.”

  “You were doing fine on your own. And if you found out about us, you would have also found out about them. And that would have derailed your search for the relics.”

  Orlando shook his head. “Relics, plural? Do you mean the keys? The other tablets?”

  Temple shook his head. “Nope. There are only two relics of power that our enemies seek. One is the Emerald Tablet, which they now possess.”

  Phoebe leaned closer. “And the other?”

  Temple sighed. “For that, I’ll let you use your powers. On the plane ride back to America. We’ll have time for that, and for planning. They don’t know exactly where it is, but I’m guessing you two can succeed where they failed. Ask the right questions, and find it. And give us the chance to stop them.”

  “But, Caleb and…”

  “They have their own path to take. One that will intersect with ours in time.”

  Orlando frowned. “And you know this by… what this ‘Dove’ said?”

  “Exactly. Now, enough talk, we’re approaching the airport.”

  Orlando’s stomach lurched as they descended, but he was determined to sound like he was in control, despite not once feeling that way since the limo had overturned. “Wait, tell us this at least. Who the hell are you guys?”

  Temple stood and bent forward to answer. “Years ago, Phoebe, you and your brother did us a great favor, ridding our organization of its corrupt leader. Since then, I’ve taken his place, done what we’ve needed to do, what we were able to do with limited resources in response to grave threats—so many that we’ve countered and continue to monitor. I hesitate to tell you, because we were responsible for what was done to your father, and what happened to your mother, but I promise you, now we’re more alike than you know.”

  “I had a feeling,” Orlando said, “even though it was before my time.”

  Phoebe gulped, her heart catching in her throat. “You’re—”

  Temple nodded. “Stargate.”

  2.

  Nina Osseni delivered the last instructions to the squad of men at her command, then looked up toward the flickering lights of the helicopter several hundred feet over their heads. “Is that one of ours?”

  “No ma’am,” said the lead agent. “Air support pulled back after you landed. Should we open fire?”

  She narrowed her eyes. Directly under the craft now, she took a deep breath. Let her body relax, her mind unhinge for just a moment…

  And then she was there, in the cockpit, looking backward.

  Ah. Phoebe. Orlando. There you are. And who’s that with you?

  She snapped out of it just as quickly. “Never mind,” she called over to the agent. “You have your orders. Discontinue the terrorist threat, but keep this area secure. Say that there’s still concern for a bomb or something. And keep everyone out until Mason Calderon gets here.”

  With my boys, she thought, suppressing a rising excitement, finding herself tempted to peer into their lives. Now that she knew they were there. Now that she knew what questions to ask.

  I’m a mother…

  Twins.

  She could hardly wait to see how they had turned out.

  #

  Back under the Sphinx, Nina stood before the obsidian door, the one that had slammed down on the hapless Commander Marcos, crushing him in half. His gruesome body still lay there, his left leg and arm splayed out, half in and half out of the mysterious chamber.

  Her men had already removed the other body—that of Robert Gregory. One-time keeper and leader of the Marduk Cult. Commander Marcos had shot him in the head after his failed bid to pass beyond the Obsidian Door. Mason Calderon had suspected it wasn’t Robert who was fated to enter the lost chamber. The prophecy called for one of three brothers to be the one to find the way inside and claim the contents of the iron box—the translation of the great Emerald Tablet, now in a pack over Nina’s shoulder.

  She could feel the Tablet’s power, vibrating up her arm, calling out to her and to the keys beyond this door. Keys made from the same material as the Tablet, keys that had been secured by great conquerors in history. Cyrus the Great, then Alexander, then passed on to Genghis Khan who had entombed himself with two of the keys, protecting them from the likes of Robert Gregory and Mason Calderon. Until The Morpheus Initiative members found their way down into that nearly impregnable tomb, bypassed the Khan’s defenses and took the keys.

  But now they were trapped behind the door under the Pyramids. Caleb, Alexander and Xavier. Trapped… but not without their own resources. Nina had glimpses of other things beyond this door: a long passageway through the darkness, converging with a shaft under the Great Pyramid. Some kind of path used in an ancient initiation ceremony. And beyond that: further labyrinths, multi-level chambers, grottos, winding staircases leading nowhere, tunnels ending in deadly traps and rooms where one false step would lead to eternal imprisonment behind walls of stone.

  She smiled, knowing that the three of them would have their hands full, but given their e
xperience, most recently with Genghis Khan’s elaborate tomb defenses, and earlier, with the diabolical traps under the Pharos Lighthouse, they would survive.

  Only two questions remained: Where would they emerge, and could Nina’s agents be ready to capture them?

  Being Xavier Montross’s companion and aide for over two years, Nina knew first-hand the man’s resourcefulness, and his uncanny ability to foresee danger to himself—and avoid it. She didn’t relish the task at hand, but at the same time, Mason Calderon had made it clear: capture of Caleb and the others was secondary to the main objective. They had to acquire the tablets of translation. And she was reasonably sure Caleb hadn’t been able to open the iron box, despite the keys.

  No, the tablets were still there, in the room beyond the door. Waiting for her and her boys. She would get those tablets. Soon. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to tie up loose ends at the same time.

  There was still the little matter of revenge. Despite the revelation that he was the father of her twins, it didn’t change the fact that Caleb had left her to rot. So many years in a coma under the old Stargate facility, where doctors had tended to her and even delivered her babies all while she was unconscious and possibly deliberately drugged to remain in that coma.

  Caleb could have found her. Should have. If he hadn’t been swept away by another woman. Lydia Gregory, Robert’s sister. Another Keeper. Another traitor. She had died—good riddance—after Xavier stole the Emerald Tablet and set off Caleb’s defenses under his own lighthouse basement in Sodus Bay. Lydia had been caught in the inferno, incinerated while Xavier escaped.

  Nina still felt the smug satisfaction of that retribution, but now… She was a mother. And things were different. Did she still want to kill Caleb? She couldn’t imagine what he was feeling now, realizing the impotency of his own powers. To think, he hadn’t even considered that Nina was alive, much less pregnant with his boys. She almost giggled with the thought of how his mind must be in turmoil. His place in the world upturned. His responsibilities in flux.

  Let him stew, she thought.

  And then she realized she had time before Calderon got here. Before she could see her own flesh and blood.

  Time.

  Time to peek in on Caleb. And on her boys. And possibly, if the visions allowed—her new master.

  She took a seat, cross-legged on the cold granite floor beside the dead body of Commander Marcos. Prepared her breathing, relaxing herself until feeling a tingling sensation rushing from the base of her spine outward toward her fingers. And then she reached for the dead man’s hand, finding and needing a connection to something, his lingering force. Willing from the dead flesh a host of memories, experiences and more.

  There was so much to see.

  #

  Commander Marcos looks away from the mirror, finished with admiring his chiseled features. Turns to the wizened older man in the shadows. Notes the same rugged confidence, the silvery-gray hair slicked back over a lupine face with deep-set blue eyes.

  Mason Calderon rises and steadies himself against a sudden shifting of the floor. They are on the sea, rocking with the waves. Calderon leans on a long cane with a gold handle featuring a scaled dragon speared through the throat with a lance. “Soon, my friend. We will be home at last. Rid of this world…” He looks down at his body. “And these… ornaments. For good.”

  Marcos bows, then fixes his attention on the head of Mason’s cane, the golden staff. “Then do we still need the other item, the relic the twins are seeking?”

  Mason takes his time in answering. “We only need to be certain of its whereabouts—and then protect it from falling into our enemy’s hands. Until we are done. After the translation—after the formula has been obtained and fed to our brothers in Alaska—then it no longer matters what our enemies have. They’ll be powerless to prevent our ascension.”

  Nodding, Marcos walks to the only other visible object in the shadowy room. A window. And beyond: waves. Dark water with turbulent crests, and farther away—the glinting lights of a massive city, a skyline punctuated by immense towers and bridges.

  And the shadowy form of a single backlit behemoth. An immense statue holding aloft a massive torch…

  #

  Nina’s mind moves on.

  Two infants swaddled and brought humbly before the man she recognizes as George Waxman, who peers at them with concerned but distant consideration. “These ones will have great power,” he says. “Twins are always stronger psychically, but these—sons of two powerful clairvoyants…” He makes a clicking voice with his tongue. “Keep them here, under observation. When they grow older, I will decide what to do with them.”

  #

  The scene shifts , and two young boys, maybe five years old, race big wheels across the polished floors of a great mansion. Blond-haired, both of them wearing matching blue suits, they race around great marble pillars, laughing and screeching until the huge doors burst open.

  Mason Calderon stands there, hands on his hips. Dressed in a tuxedo. “Isaac. Jacob. Stop at once. It’s time. Come, we must meet the others.”

  They both turn and brake at the same time, skidding to within feet of their guardian.

  Isaac looks to Jacob. “Does he mean us, brother?”

  “I think so, brother. Step to it!”

  Calderon scowls. “I’m not playing, boys. Now!”

  “Sounds serious,” says Isaac, backing up, then pedaling forward leisurely before stopping at Calderon’s feet, and then retreating again.

  His brother mirrors his actions. “I should say we better do as he says. Righto?”

  “You bet!”

  Calderon shakes his head with growing annoyance. “Boys, please. Today is a big day. I need you to show them what you can do. Show these men and women why I’ve invested so much time in your development.”

  “‘Invested’, he says.” Isaac grins to his brother.

  Jacob nods. “Sounds like livestock, we do.”

  “Pork bellies, us!”

  “Cow hides! Porcupine skins!”

  “Boys!”

  “What should we speak about, father?” Isaac stops now. He stands up and crosses his arms. His brother joins him.

  “Tell them what we sees, should we?”

  “Righto,” Isaac says. “Tell them what we likes to draw? The dead things? The bloody things?”

  Mason Calderon sighs. “They will ask you questions. You will answer truthfully.”

  “Questions,” Jacob says, looking at his brother. “Always questions.”

  “Gotta know the right ones to ask,” Isaac explains. “Bigtime smartee pants questions, righto, father?”

  Calderon nods. “Righto, boys. Now come.”

  “I’d like very much to talk about the Dragon.” Jacob says it. Quietly, looking down.

  “The dragon?” Calderon leans forward, his voice catching, eyes sparkling with sudden interest.. “How long have you been seeing… this dragon?”

  “Long,” Jacob says. “Long time. Him too.” He points to Isaac.

  “Dragon caught in a net. Dragon stabbed with spear.”

  “Dragon go boom!” Jacob whispers, eyes wide.

  Mason stands up tall.

  “Fine, boys. In fact, more than fine. Tell them that.” He smiles. “Yes, I think they’ll like that very much. The dragon. The spear…”

  Isaac and Jacob look at each other and grin.

  “Righto.”

  #

  Later…

  Older, a little bigger. The boys, stepping away from their snowmobiles. Taking off their helmets, revealing long blond curls. Shoulders broadening, arms thick, already tall for their age.

  They stand over the twitching body of a magnificent stag. The deer grunts, lets out a mournful whine, then kicks helplessly at blood spattered snow.

  Isaac removes the scoped rifle strapped on his back, the same one that had felled this creature minutes ago.

  “Hardly sporting, brother,” Jacob says, hands on his hip
s. “Did you really need a scope?”

  “Didn’t use it, you know. Never even saw the creature until I pulled the trigger.”

  “Oh, you saw it all right. Just with your other eyes.”

  “Righto.” He aims for the deer’s head. Fires. Smiles, never once blinking or looking away from the gore blasting outward from between the antlers.

  “So much for a souvenir for father Calderon’s wall.”

  Isaac shrugs. “He has enough. Besides, this is only practice. Isn’t that what he told us? Practice for when we meet mother.”

  Jacob nods, glancing off to the weakened sun dancing between the trees, drooping toward the horizon. A chill wind blows through the dead forest. “Practice.”

  “The time is coming soon, brother.”

  “I wonder…”

  “Yes?”

  “What he’s like.”

  “Our younger?” Isaac giggles.

  Sensing the mood shift, Jacob joins in. “Our brother from another mother.”

  “I bet he’s a tool.”

  “We’re all tools, brother. But us, we’re tools for the right side.”

  “Righto. The winning side.” Isaac slings the rifle over his shoulder and heads for the snowmobile.

  “Leave the carcass?” Jacob asks, lingering at the corpse.

  “The flesh is nothing.” Isaac closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, and his eyelids flicker as if he’s seeing a vast panorama played out behind them. “Before we’re done, every living thing on this planet will be like this…”

  Jacob nods, his smile matching his brother’s. He heads to the snowmobile, and together they drive off, leisurely weaving between the crooked trees, racing toward the spreading darkness.

  #

  Nina sighs, trembling. She’s about to let go and pull back from the visions, when one more rushes up at her like a wave and then drags her down into a maelstrom of furious images:

  Caleb Crowe, hanging onto his son Alexander’s hand, follows after Xavier Montross, pursuing the red haired man leading the way through the passageways. They pause right before the entrance to a circular chamber with a low chamber that fills suddenly erupts with spring-loaded spikes, skewering the air before them.