What had taken the workers at Newport News Shipyard three years to put together was being torn apart in a matter of hours. The guardian had had the microrobots power down the two nuclear power plants for the moment, to prevent meltdown.
The large island where the bridge had been was just a frame. Most of the flight deck and the planes that had been on it were gone, already taken apart and examined. As the side plating was being removed by swarms of microrobots, steel girders poked into the air, like the ribs of some massive dead dinosaur.
As quickly as it was being taken apart, it was also being reassembled, in some cases the new construction being much superior to the old.
Of the 6,286 men and women who had been on board, most had escaped. Many of the rest had been killed when the ship was taken over. They were the lucky ones.
Along the edge of the main runway, the remaining hundreds of bodies were laid out, their arms and legs pinned to the ground by U-shaped brackets slammed into the ground by a large mech/robot, kin to the ones digging on Mars. The sailors were spread in clumps of ten, covering a large portion of the runway’s edge, each group set in a circle, heads toward the center. All of the captives were unconscious, the result of a large electromagnetic burst by the guardian once the ship was inside the shield.
But as time went by, the men and women began to come awake, and as they did, a different type of robot went down the line. It would roll up to a group, stopping just outside the circle. A tube extended out the front of this mech and would be positioned directly over the center of each cluster.
The tube would spray a small cloud, then move on.
Behind it, as the various forms of the nanovirus settled onto the prone bodies, other mechs pulled up to record the results and forward it to the guardian.
Some went as the guardian had predicted, others not so well, as the screams of the men and women indicated.
Airborne, Nevada
D - 21 Hours
Lisa Duncan watched the Nevada desert flow by below the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter as she headed from Area 51 to Nellis Air Force Base. She was thinking about the time she’d flown in the other direction, toward Area 51, prepared to shut down Majestic-12. So much had happened since then, and she felt every new truth she uncovered led to more mysteries.
Her musings were cut short by her SATPhone buzzing. She opened the phone and pressed on. “Duncan.”
“Dr. Duncan, this is Lexina.”
Duncan closed her eyes and shifted gears. “Still need your key?”
“Your time runs short.”
“You knew the space shuttles were going to be attacked, didn’t you?”
“I knew the automatic defenses on the surviving talon were still operating.”
“You allowed those people to get killed. I thought you were here to protect humans. You destroyed Section Four to get the control for the talon.”
“You are learning,” Lexina said, “but much too slowly.”
“You killed many in Florida when you destroyed Atlantis,” Duncan continued.
“I must be given the tools I need to do that job,” Lexina said. “I need the key.”
“You destroyed our missile in Montana and killed our people there.”
“You were going to attack the talon, and I could not allow that. The longer you play your games, the more dangerous it becomes.”
“‘More dangerous’?” Duncan repeated. “We just barely stopped the world from being wiped out by the Black Death manufactured by The Mission—with no help from you, I might add—and you’re talking about things getting worse? The only worse I see is you’re attacking us now along with The Mission.”
“Give me the key.”
“Give me answers.”
The phone went dead.
Area 51
D - 20 Hours
Mualama was not a professor of languages, but he didn’t feel that handicapped him. In fact, as he watched the UNAOC linguistic experts with their computers pore over the high rune text on the grave marker, he realized that not being an expert could be an asset. He was not bound by preconceived notions.
He did know much about hieroglyphics. He’d been in most of the major archaeological finds in Egypt during his lifelong quest. He’d even met Nabinger on two occasions, although the other had not shared his passion for the Ark and other artifacts just as Mualama had not shared the other’s passion for the high runes and Atlantis. And Nabinger had been the foremost interpreter of the runes and he, Mualama, had been just an archaeologist, not a linguist.
On a large computer screen at the end of the room, the UNAOC scientists had put up the symbols they knew the translation for, but it was less than a sixth of the writing on the marker.
Mualama had another advantage. He had a very good idea what the message on the marker might be about. On top of that, he also knew the mythological names the runes stood for.
So while the scientists chattered among themselves and consulted their computers, Mualama sat in a corner on a high stool from which he could look down on the marker. He had a pad of paper and a pencil in hand, along with the Nabinger interpretations of high runes that UNAOC did have. And slowly he began to write down what he saw.
In his backpack rested both Burton’s manuscript and the scepter. He was not prepared to show either to the UNAOC people until he was sure of his suspicions. He was beginning to feel he could trust Dr. Duncan, but someone had leaked word of his discovery in Ngorongoro and that someone had to be affiliated with the Americans. He had spent decades searching, and a little caution was most appropriate now, especially since this had cost Lago his life.
Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada
D - 20 Hours
Lisa Duncan stared down at the old man lying in the hospital bed and tried to control her emotions. He should have been dead, but he still clung to life, although why he did, Duncan had no idea.
“Can you wake him?” she asked the doctor who had accompanied her to the room. “He’s resting and—” the doctor began, but Duncan cut him off.
“I don’t care about his rest. I don’t care if talking kills him. Wake him up. I have the authority to order you to do it, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
The doctor stared at her for a few seconds, then went over to a tray and removed a needle. “I can’t take responsibility for—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Duncan said. “You work for the government, start taking responsibility for that decision.” She pointed. “That man worked at Peenemunde, helping to develop V-l rockets. He was a member of the SS, and he’s been lying to us all along. Don’t try to make me feel anything for him other than contempt.”
The doctor held the needle out to Duncan. “You do it. You take responsibility.”
Duncan took the needle, held it vertical, tapped the side to clear the air, squeezed a little of the fluid out, then inserted it into the IV line and pushed the plunger. She removed the needle and waited.
After a couple of minutes, the old man’s eyelids fluttered. While she waited, Duncan considered how to approach the former Nazi and scientist. Von Seeckt had been the key to her initially discovering information about Area 51 and Majestic-12. It was while investigating the history of Operation Paperclip that she first came across the name Werner von Seeckt.
Officially, Paperclip began in 1944 as the war in Europe was winding down, but Duncan felt that the real beginning of Paperclip was when von Seeckt was shipped over from England to the United States several years before that.
Von Seeckt had been captured by British Commandos in Egypt while he was on his way back from a most lower chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Von Seeckt, a young scientist of the Third Reich—and a member of the SS—had been chosen to accompany the military team that traveled to Egypt to investigate this, even as war raged across the desert and the Desert Fox, Rommel, closed on the British forces.
Von Seeckt and his companions broke through a wall in the Pyramid, discovering the chamber and finding a black box ins
ide that they couldn’t open. In their attempt to return to their own lines they were ambushed by the British and von Seeckt and his box captured. Eventually the radioactive box—along with von Seeckt—ended up in America, because when the Majestic scientists finally opened it, they found a nuclear weapon that gave the Americans great insight into what they were trying to do in the Manhattan Project.
Since 1942 von Seeckt had lived in the desert at Area 51, subsequently joined by other Nazi scientists formally brought to the States under the auspices of Operation Paperclip. As the war in Europe was ending, the United States government—and the Russians, of course—were already looking ahead. There was a treasure trove of German scientists waiting to be plundered in the ashes of the Third Reich. That most of those scientists were Nazis mattered little to those who invented Paperclip.
While other Nazis were being tried as war criminals, German scientists were being interviewed by American intelligence officers from the JIOA, Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency. Despite the fact that President Truman signed an executive order banning the immigration of Nazis into the United States, the practice went on at a feverish pitch in 1945 and 1946, all in the name of national security.
Majestic-12 had picked up Werner von Seeckt—an undisputed Nazi—and several other scientists used in the early work on the bouncers and mothership. While some of the former Germans working on the NASA space project were highly publicized, the vast majority of the work covered by Paperclip went on unobserved. When news of the project became public, the government claimed that Paperclip had been discontinued in 1947. Yet Duncan had affidavits from an interested senator’s office that the project had continued for decades beyond that date.
Now that they had the information from Devil’s Island about The Mission, Duncan was willing to cut her government a little bit more slack. It appeared as if The Mission had been behind Operation Paperclip as a means to siphon some of their best minions out of the crumbled Third Reich into new countries where they could continue their work.
While the German physicists had gone to MJ-12 and the German rocket scientists had gone to NASA, the largest group of Nazi scientists involved in Paperclip had disappeared—the biological and chemical warfare specialists, the foremost of whom had been General Hemstadt, who had died at Devil’s Island and helped invent the new Black Death The Mission had deployed in an attempt to wipe out humanity.
Von Seeckt’s eyes opened wide for a second, he saw Duncan, and they shut just as quickly.
“Schutzstafeel,” Duncan snapped in German. “Look at me, you SS pig.”
Von Seeckt’s eyes flashed open, and she could see the anger. “Do not talk to me like that,” the old man rasped. “I saved you. I warned you of the danger in Area 51.”
“Why?” Duncan leaned over his bed. “That’s what I want to know. Why did you do that?”
“I am old. I knew it would not be good to fly the mothership, and I wanted to make amends.”
“You lie.”
Von Seeckt’s shoulders slumped. “Believe what you will.”
“I want the truth.”
“‘Truth.’” Von Seeckt repeated the word as if it were a curse.
“I want the key.”
“Key?”
“The key to the lowest level of Qian-Ling. The Spear of Destiny.”
Von Seeckt closed his eyes and said nothing.
Duncan decided on another approach. “Who was Domeka?”
The eyelids flashed up. For the first time since she’d met the old man, Duncan saw fear in those pale blue eyes. Even faced with death from the cancer eating his insides, von Seeckt had never shown fear.
“Domeka.” Duncan repeated the name.
“Ahhhh—” Von Seeckt let out a moan.
Duncan walked over to the cart and picked up another needle. She inserted it into the IV line as von Seeckt dully watched her.
“I will kill you right now if you don’t tell me the truth.”
The old man’s face was slack, his eyes unfocused. “Kill me, then.”
The threat went out of Duncan’s voice for the moment. “You told Turcotte that you wanted absolution for your work on the Manhattan Project. You told him you had lived in fear all your life and you wanted to do something good. Something right. You told him what Oppenheimer said when the Trinity bomb—the first manmade atomic bomb—detonated in 1945. Did you mean any of that, or was that just lies like everything else you have said?”
“I told truth.” Von Seeckt seemed to be coming back to the room, to his reality.
“Some truth, but not all of it. Tell me all of it. The war—the war against the aliens and their minions—we’re going to lose it if we don’t know the truth. You’re human, you have that at least. Tell me!”
“Human?” The left side of von Seeckt’s face twitched. “You know nothing about what human is.”
“Then tell me!”
“Domeka.” Von Seeckt now spoke the name with awe. “Where did you hear the name?”
“Tell me where and what you’ve heard of him.” Duncan relaxed her thumb over the plunger.
“Heard of him?” Von Seeckt winced as he sat up a little. “Heard of him? I think Domeka was a name he had very early. Very early. It is Latin, you know. It means ‘leader.’ So maybe he was a Roman? But he predates Rome. Oh yes. He is old. I don’t know what his real name is. His names are legion. Even during my life he went by many names, so which name I first heard, I could not tell you.” Duncan pulled the needle out of the IV feed.
“Ah, where to begin?” Von Seeckt was lost in thought for a few moments. When he began speaking again, the change in subject matter startled and scared Duncan.
“Hitler was a failure,” von Seeckt finally said. “Historians have traced his life. It is known. So how did such a failure end up almost ruling the world? He was gassed in the First World War—the War to End All Wars, it was called. He had an undistinguished military record. Certainly there were many, many thousands of veterans who had shown more courage, more leadership than Hitler during that war.
“After the war he lived off his deceased mother’s savings. He went to Vienna to become an artist but was refused entry into the Academy of Fine Arts. He tried next to get into the School of Architecture and was again refused.
“What did he do then? He was an angry young man. Bitter at his treatment. So he went to the library.” Von Seeckt started to laugh, which immediately turned into a spasm of coughing.
Duncan waited the old man out. At the first mention of Hitler her skin had gone cold. She feared what von Seeckt was going to say, but she knew she had to hear it—no one had ever claimed the truth would be good.
“Do you know what was in the Hofberg Library in Vienna?” Von Seeckt didn’t wait for an answer. “Oh, there were books. Yes. Many books. Many books on the occult. On strange histories. Things we know now are true about our past but were looked at then as being like a cuckoo clock. Crazy.” Von Seeckt whirled a bony finger around his head.
“But there was something else in the library. An ancient spear. Said to be the Spear of Longinus.” Von Seeckt paused. “Do you know what that is?”
Duncan sat down on a stool to collect herself. “Longinus was supposed to be the legionnaire who stabbed Christ on the cross.”
“‘Supposed to be’?” Von Seeckt laughed, and this time there was no cough. He seemed to be gaining strength with each passing minute. “I agree, I agree. I do not know if Longinus was real. But there was a spear in the library there, and it was claimed to be Longinus’s. The Spear of Destiny. And a tool of destiny it turned out to be, as it shaped Hitler’s destiny regardless of its origins or its real purpose.
“Hitler was obsessed with the Spear and the legends that surrounded it. He would stand in front of the case holding it for hours on end, staring at it. He himself later claimed that seeing the spear was the one event that changed the course of his life. Of course, he was lying.”
“What do you mean?”
Von Seeckt
snorted. “You think simply seeing an old spear could change a person like that? No, there was more to it than that. The Nazis didn’t appear out of nothing. The stage had to be set. There was a man in Vienna during those days. A man named List.” Von Seeckt suddenly stopped speaking.
Duncan waited, then the pieces came together. “List was Domeka?”
Von Seeckt graced her with the ghost of a smile. “I believe so. The name he used for this phase of his life was Guido von List. He first came to notice as a member of Austrian Alp Society, which used the ‘heil’ greeting, which had roots in early German paganism. List claimed to be a channel, a man with a connection to an ancient group of German shamans called the Armanen. The emblem of List’s group was the swastika. And their written language was one of runes.”
“Jesus,” Duncan muttered.
“You can find these facts in many history books,” von Seeckt said. “They are not secret anymore. But until the Airlia came to light, it was thought an odd historical footnote, and it has been too soon for stodgy historians in their ivory towers to catch up to recent events. To reevaluate all this information, which is now much more important than anyone gave it credence.
“List even wrote a book about runes in 1908. He extensively quoted a Roman historian, Tacitus, who lived in the first century A.D., yet didn’t attribute the material to a source document in his bibliography. How could he do that?”
Duncan felt overwhelmed. “Was Tacitus also Domeka?”
“Perhaps. List was interested in many objects of the occult. The Spear, certainly. But also the Holy Grail. The Ark of the Covenant. Someone who was close to Hitler in those early days in Vienna said that Hitler told him that List conducted strange rituals and that Hitler himself was the subject of one of them. A rite of purification. Purification of the race, of the blood. That was when Hitler really changed.”
“What did List do to him?”
Von Seeckt ignored her. “Do you know how Nabinger found me here? Found us? He got my SS dagger from an Egyptian—a Watcher—at the Great Pyramid. On one side was my name. On the other the word ‘Thule.’
“Thule was the cover name in the 1930s for the secret societies of the occult in Germany. For List’s followers. For Hitler’s. The Society of Thule brought Hitler to power. There was even an expose book written about it in 1933, called Bevor Hitler Kam—Before Hitler Came. Of course, the author was assassinated, and all copies of the book seized and destroyed by the SS.
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