The Cydonia Objective mi-3

by David Sakmyster

  They sat on the bed, the box between them.

  “Is this smart?” Caleb asked, spear point poised over a seam.

  “What, using a priceless ancient artifact to open a delivery box, or just the fact that we’re even considering opening it at all?

  “Yes,” Caleb said, trying to be confidently humorless. “And you know as well as I, that we’re far too curious as to who sent this, and what it is.”

  “Go ahead,” Nina said, nodding. “Although I think we can already guess as to who sent it.”

  Caleb started sawing, gently slicing through tape and cardboard, freeing one side, then the next. “You’re thinking it’s from Montross.”

  Nina smiled. “And if so, it can only mean that he saw something. Saw that—”

  “We’d be here at this time.”

  “And,” Nina continued as Caleb set down the spear, parted the cardboard and paper folds and reached inside with both hands, “that we’d need whatever it is that’s inside there.”

  With some effort, Caleb lifted the object, just about the size of a bowling ball, and held it up to the light. Held it up so both he and Nina could admire its intricate gold and silver inlays, its detailed carved symbols unlike any language they’d ever seen.

  He turned it around and around, open-mouthed until finally, he set it on the bed.

  “Apparently it’s a wedding gift,” Nina said. “Otherwise, I have no idea.”

  “I was wrong before,” Caleb whispered. “About the Spear being the most ancient, priceless artifact in the world. Hell, it doesn’t even fit that description for this room.”

  “So you’re saying…?”

  “Whatever this is, I glimpsed two things while I was holding it.”

  Nina met his eyes, then suddenly reached forward and grasped his hand. Caleb moaned, fell forward towards her and suddenly her lips were there, pressing fiercely against his. His mind was rocked, his senses flattened. Something passed quickly from his mind to hers, and just as quick–the kiss, the connection–was severed.

  She was on her feet, holding her head, shaking it.

  “A ranch in Montana. A beat up old tractor hauling up the fossilized bones of a triceratops…” She rubbed her eyes, even as Caleb, through his reddened ones, watched her with begrudging admiration. “Men in suits taking away that… thing… that had been inside the dinosaur’s ribcage. Took it… to the Smithsonian…”

  “Where,” Caleb said, continuing the vision, “it languished in the forbidden archives until one Xavier Montross conned a beautiful employee to grant him access.”

  “He stole it,” Nina whispered. “And the girl… I’ve seen her before. Xavier’s never quite forgotten her.” A smile formed. “He still… loves her. This… Diana. Diana Montgomery.”

  Caleb picked up the globe. “Yes, well that may be. But he’s done us one solid favor here. No one will find us now, no matter how hard they look.”

  “Why? What does that thing do?”

  Caleb looked up at her. “The Morpheus Initiative spent years searching for Montross after he disappeared from Alexandria, but could never find him. Not even a trace, despite having the best psychics in the world.”

  Nina just gave him a blank stare until Caleb palmed the globe in his hand like a basketball.

  “He’s given us a shield.”

  4.

  HAARP Facility – Gacona, Alaska

  Alexander waited until his eyes adjusted to the darker interior of the control room before he allowed himself to take a breath. Whatever he was expecting, their entrance to the HAARP facility hadn’t been at all as he thought. It was rushed, just a quick ride down a descending ramp, past barbed wire fences beyond which the storming clouds obscured the sky and the mountains, leaving only glimpses of the sentinel-like radar arrays massed upon a field of unyielding ice.

  The storm erupted just as they neared the facility, and Alexander had the impression that the station was alive, brimming with its own weather system, occluding itself with a mantle of impenetrable snow and ice. The winds swirled cyclonically, and the snowflakes seemed to be the size of baby rabbits, racing hell-bent around in a maelstrom.

  And as much as the exterior was obscured, the interior was excessively bright. White walls, stainless steel doors and railings. Powerful lamps at every turn and glaring overhead bulbs seared at his eyes, eliciting smirks from his half-brothers, gliding ahead on their skateboards.

  Isaac circled around and glided up on the other side of Alexander. “Don’t worry yourself about the tour,” he said in almost a gleeful whisper. “We won’t be here long enough to enjoy it, not us. Not you. Right, brother?”

  Jacob’s skateboard slowed to a crawl, letting Alexander catch up. “Leave him be,” Jacob said. “Had a hard day, he has.”

  “A hard couple of days, I’d say,” Isaac said. “Wandering in lost mausoleums and catacombs, getting shot at, avoiding deadly traps. Oh, and nearly buried alive under the ruins of the twice ruined Library of Alexandria!”

  Alexander winced, looked down at his feet and clenched his fists.

  “How tired you must be!” Isaac taunted, now from the other side, still riding circles around him. And even Jacob broke down, joining his twin in a little chuckle.

  “Boys!” Calderon’s voice cut through the laughter. “Knock it off, we’re almost at the control room.”

  “Just having a little fun, righto?”

  Calderon leaned heavily on his cane, stamping it hard on the floor with every new step. And in his shadow, proceeding the two armed guards, Xavier Montross followed, head down. His red hair was in tangles over his face, still with the dust from the Cheops’ labyrinth trapped in the curls. He looked up once while Alexander glanced back, and they shared a mutual exchange: Hang in there, Montross seemed to say.

  But when Alexander turned, he saw the two twins gliding together, making figure eights down around each other, across a huge circular floor and toward the waiting guards at a set of double steel reinforced doors, and his hopes fled.

  This is it. And Alexandria was just the beginning. Montross is going to help them achieve his vision of the world’s destruction, and Dad –

  He stopped, closed his eyes and focused. Drove his mind like a spike through time and space. Dad!

  An arm on his shoulder pulled his vision away from a swirling pool of turquoise, complete blue in all directions. Alexander turned, and the hooded, owl-like eyes of Mason Calderon bored into his brain, and for a heart-stopping moment, Alexander feared Calderon could slip inside his mind and see what he himself couldn’t. That he could find Alexander’s father, and then it would all be over. His one, last chance. The only hope.

  For all of us.

  “What’d you go looking for, boy?”

  Jacob and Isaac braked their skateboards, then kicked them up together, ending the ride. Alexander saw them out of the corner of his eye, but couldn’t pull away from Calderon’s gaze. “I…”

  “Oh, leave him alone,” Montross’ voice came from the side, soft as a welcome breeze on a humid day. “Of course he’s looking for his father.”

  Calderon blinked. “And? Did you see him?”

  Alexander shook his head slowly. “Nope. I felt… blocked, like a wall was in the way.”

  Something grumbled in Calderon’s throat. “Or a shield?” His eyes darted away, landing on Montross, who just shrugged.

  “Doesn’t matter, does it?” Montross waved his hand toward the doors, and then pointed to the satchel over Calderon’s shoulder. “You have what you need. Caleb and Nina are too far away to be of consequence, your enemies cower in their tunnels, realizing there are no safe havens. The prophecy’s fulfillment is mere hours away.” He smiled broadly, stretching out his arms. “And you’ve got me at your side.”

  Calderon thought for a moment, then gave a slight bow of his head. “True.” His grip loosened on Alexander’s shoulder, and a gentle push turned him around and sent him toward the doors.

  “Inside, now. Time to see what t
his facility is truly capable of.”

  Struggling to stay on his feet, still fighting the recurring splotches of blue walls in his mind’s vision, Alexander stumbled on ahead after his laughing brothers. Never feeling more alone, or lost. In a daze, he looked up, past the blinding lights, to a railing where armed military personnel patrolled the hallways outside the offices.

  And for just a gleaming, hopeful moment, he thought he saw the afterimage of a woman, not unlike his mother, leaning over, smiling at him…

  And he clung to that hope with all his strength. That maybe he wasn’t so alone after all.

  #

  Keeping an eye on Alexander, but feeling at least he was safe for now, Montross entered the control room and found it just as he had envisioned.

  “Been here before, I take it?” Calderon was watching Montross’ reaction as the doors closed and the great chamber lit up.

  “Never in the flesh.”

  Montross let his eyes roam about, following the thousands of wires, ventilation tubes and piping snaking around the corners, connecting to various refrigerator-sized servers and computer banks. A glass-walled office overlooked the main floor, reached by a platform elevator.

  “Of course,” Calderon said. “I assumed as much. And we never had the luxury of the Afghans and their Shield. Or, I presume, our friends in the revived Stargate Program, with theirs.”

  Montross gave him a quick look, then continued his visual tour of the chamber. He took in the apexed ceiling, a hundred feet above, the sheer metal walls inclining to a point, leaving a gap straight above a device on the floor–a massive throne-like contraption that looked like it could fit a person after they had ascended the nine steps into the machine’s ‘seat’. The arm rests were enormous, and the one on the right supported a pedestal–with a slot wide enough to insert something the size of the Emerald Tablet.

  “There it is,” Calderon whispered, leaning forward with both hands on his cane. At his back, the twins had gathered, at last showing some reverence. They had left their skateboards outside and now stood, heads bowed as if in prayer.

  Isaac glanced sideways, first at Jacob, then past him and behind Montross, where Alexander seemed to be shrinking, trying to find a shadow. “Magnificent, eh brother?”

  Jacob couldn’t help himself, he was grinning ear to ear. “Think we’ll get to try it out?”

  “Could be fun,” Isaac said. “Me first though. I got me a list of cities I’d like to crush. Like Godzilla, Tokyo will be first. Then, I never liked Paris, so snotty. And…”

  Alexander felt a lump in his throat. “No. This has to stop.”

  Jacob shot him a confused glance, while Isaac merely chuckled. “The sad, motherless crow wants to fight destiny.”

  “Not destiny,” Alexander said softly. “Insanity.”

  Isaac took a step toward him, hands balling into fists. But Jacob was there in an instant, restraining his twin.

  “Boys,” snapped Calderon. “Stand aside, and be quiet until you’re needed.”

  After glaring at Alexander, who refused to back down, Isaac turned away and grumbled, “If we’re needed.”

  “Now,” said Calderon, pivoting on his cane and facing Montross. “To work, my friend. We have an ancient enemy to eradicate. One that has slumbered too long in the glow of false superiority.”

  #

  Montross kept his attention on the central device, even as he noticed the workers above; through the windows, he could see them getting ready, industriously running about preparing the equipment and calibrating the arrays. “And just how do I fit in? And Alexander? The boys?”

  Calderon gave a wolfish smile. “Alexander’s here just as insurance. So you don’t get any funny ideas of being a hero. My boys… well, if they’re needed, if you can’t do what we need, then they may step in.”

  Montross gave a little laugh. “They didn’t do so well at Liberty Island, if I recall.”

  Calderon shrugged. “They came through when needed at Cairo.”

  “But Alexander succeeded first.” Montross sent an admiring look to his nephew, where the boy still looked hopeless and lost by himself, keeping his distance from the central machine.

  “So let me guess,” Montross continued. “You need me to access the machine and interface with the Emerald Tablet and use its power to enhance this facility’s weaponry.”

  “In a nutshell,” Calderon said, stroking his cane’s dragon tip. He pointed up at the windows. “First, my team is cracking the code, translating the instructions on the Tablet from the cipher we retrieved, thanks to Thoth and his box of secrets.”

  Montross sighed, looking up at all that activity. “Then you’ll feed the instructions into the machine?”

  Calderon shook his head. “Actually, I think we already know what needs to be done. You already know.”

  “I do?” Montross didn’t. Sure, he had seen this facility, seen what the aftermath of this day would cause: the cataclysmic devastation, the eradication of all life on the planet, but he didn’t know how. Didn’t know exactly how the Tablet would be used. He stared at the machine, at the chair-like structure, suitably fitted to one individual and one Tablet.

  Calderon watched his eyes. “You know. The Tablet has already worked on you. And on Alexander. You can separate from yourself. And it’s in that phase, and only in that phase, that the Tablet’s true power can be accessed. Tuned to your own astral body, melded and amplified.”

  Montross nodded slowly, the truth settling in. “So in the spiritual form, someone sits in the chair, and releases the dogs of war. So to speak.”

  “So to speak.” Calderon stretched his arms, and held the cane tight lengthwise. “And then we finish what the Dragon started.”

  Montross thought for a moment, a hundred questions surging to be let out, but it was Alexander, coming up behind him, that spoke what was foremost on his mind. “What about Mars?”

  Calderon rubbed the silver dragon’s head, tracing the jagged horns and scaled jaws. “It’s all about angles, my dear boy. All about angles.” And with that, he approached the machine.

  #

  Alexander watched the guy with the white lab coat step off the elevator and come running over to Mason Calderon. He whispered something into the senator’s ear, and then showed some numbers and figures on his handheld PDA, a stream of symbols and text.

  Calderon nodded rapidly, and then patted the man on his shoulder before sending him back to the elevator. “Ready the array, Dr. Phelps. We’ll have a target shortly.”

  Montross approached the chair. “I don’t know about you, but I have no idea how to work this yet. We’re not ready.”

  “That’s all right. We have a test scenario first.”

  Montross raised an eyebrow. He glanced at Alexander, then at the twins, who were smirking to themselves. “I can only guess.”

  “Why guess?” Calderon asked. “Surely you can figure it out. Or Alexander can see it.”

  “Your target?” Alexander shot back. “You mean the next place you want to destroy. More buildings to crush, people to kill?”

  Isaac made a chuckling sound in his throat. “Just coming attractions.”

  “Before the main event,” said Jacob, with a little less enthusiasm.

  “We should have the actual coordinates momentarily from our feathered accomplice in the nest of our woefully under-matched adversaries.”

  Montross perked up. “You’ve got a mole in Stargate?”

  Calderon smiled. “We have followers everywhere. We could have struck and leveled them much earlier, but we’ve found it useful to have a viewpoint into our enemy’s activities.”

  “Staying one step ahead,” Isaac said. “Righto, father?”

  “Righto, as you say.” Calderon approached the back of the chair, where there was an LCD screen set on an angled post, and a keyboard. He tapped a few keys, grinning to himself. “Translation is done, my friends. And our scientists are working on calibrating the device, feeding in the new data. Simply…
astounding.” His eyes rapidly skimmed over the data and the schematics, the formulae. “It’s all here!”

  “Congratulations,” Montross said from the other side. His fingertips traced the armrests, caressing the smooth metal contours, all the way up to the rectangular slot for the Emerald Tablet. “So now you’ll have the power of the ancients.”

  Calderon looked around the side. Met Montross’s eyes. “The power of Tiamat and Marduk.”

  “The power of the universe.”

  “You’re like me, Montross. You can’t pass up this chance. You were born special, and now you’ve been given a chance to rise above the mass of humanity. To become like Marduk, like Thoth even, if you must compare yourself to him.”

  Montross closed his eyes. “A god.”

  “Leave your body. Leave this world, travel to a new one.”

  Montross’s eyes opened. “Mars?”

  And Calderon smiled. “It’s all there, waiting for us. Where the ancients left it.”

  Montross swooned. There was a flash in his mind—a desert of blue that suddenly cracked down the middle. Revealing: a glimpse of a monument in the sands, a giant face, and a tunnel-structure below it; a vast complex supported by reinforced pillars. Within the walls: flashing lights, tubes and wires, humming machinery.

  He held his head, shaking it until Alexander came to his side. “Was it—?”

  Montross kept his eyes on Calderon, who now appeared very interested. “Tell me, did you just get a look at our little secret?”

  “I saw something down there below the Face. A facility.”

  “The sacred texts are clear,” Calderon said, barely above a whisper. “The caretakers, just a few of them, remained after the War. Maintaining the banks of DNA, the memory tanks and flesh pods. When we need to be corporeal again, bodies will be ready for our arrival.”

  Calderon had the Emerald Tablet out now, and its glow was fierce. Pulsing, bathing the three brothers in its light, making Montross giddy with anticipation.

  “At first,” Calderon continued, “it was simply a safeguard. Redundancy in case something happened on the Earth. And there was a precedent, apparently. The meteor, what did in the dinosaurs…”