Black Sun Rising (Order Of The Black Sun Book 3)

by P. W. Child

  The North Las Vegas Airport stretched beyond the windows toward the distant mountains. It hardly seemed worth loading everyone on the Boeing 737 SX-VIP for such a short journey, though Nina could imagine that she would feel otherwise if faced with the prospect of traveling the whole way by coach—and she could not deny that there was a certain decadent delight in taking such a brief flight in such a fancy aircraft. She stretched out in the spacious seat, luxuriously upholstered in soft white leather, and spread a cashmere blanket the color of butterscotch across her lap. Even in the cool breeze of the cabin's air conditioning, it was nowhere near chilly enough to warrant a blanket, but it seemed a pity not to make use of it.

  This is crazy, she thought, as she settled her head on the small white pillow. I'm not one of these people. They're rich, successful, and used to stuff like this. And I'm . . . not. I'm an under-employed, underpaid academic—well, ex-academic, I suppose—and before I met Purdue I'd never experienced anything like this. Damn it! I have got to get used to calling him Dave. It's been a month now; it's ridiculous still to be thinking of him as Purdue when we're—

  Her train of thought was abruptly derailed by Purdue's sudden appearance beside her. He had been looking around the plane and was enthusing about it, babbling happily about its technical specifications and the ways in which it could be modified to incorporate all sorts of new software. Every single word of it went over Nina's head. "I thought your professional field was software and technology, not engineering?" she said.

  "Oh, yes," Purdue nodded. "That's my primary area of expertise. Aviation is merely a hobby! But it is a fascinating one. I can't say that I've ever flown in this particular model before, but the pilot has kindly agreed to talk to me about his experiences."

  "Let me guess—you're spending the flight in the cockpit? Again?"

  Purdue dropped a kiss on the top of Nina's head. "You'll have company this time," he assured her. "I took care of it."

  Before she could ask any questions or raise any objections, Purdue strode up the gangway and disappeared into the area marked "Cabin Crew Only." Nina hardly had time to register her annoyance before a flight attendant materialized to show another passenger to the seat beside her. She didn't even need to look up.

  "Hello, Sam."

  Damn you, Dave Purdue. Damn your stupid, twisted sense of humor. Nina was torn between laughing and swearing under her breath as Sam slumped into the seat next to hers. She noticed that he looked around first to see whether any of the other seats were free, but he was the last person to board and there was no chance of his being reseated.

  "Where's Purdue?" Sam asked eventually, when it became clear that the cabin crew was not going to tell him there had been a mistake and ask him to swap seats. "I'd have thought he'd be sitting here."

  Nina shook her head, carefully keeping her face neutral. "He's in the cockpit."

  She watched with increasing amusement as Sam tried to find the right way to phrase the questions he clearly wanted to ask. At length he gave up his search for something tactful, subtle, or original. "I thought that you and he were . . . er . . . that you were, you know . . . together? Was I wrong about that?"

  "Oh, no!" She smiled sweetly, unwrapping a mint and offering one to Sam as the plane began its path along the runway. "We're here together. I wouldn't be attending this shindig if he hadn't invited me. As for whether we're together in the sense of, you know, together . . . I have no idea."

  "Has it been going on for long?" Judging by the tone of Sam's voice, he was equally curious and reluctant to know the answer.

  Nina sighed. "For fuck's sake, Sam, you know it hasn't. When's the last time we saw each other? March? April? And you knew I wasn't seeing anyone then. I actually didn't cross paths with him again until July, if that's what's troubling you. If you want the details, I was teaching at summer school, he was giving a talk at some STEM event, we were both at the same drinks reception, and he asked me out. I said yes. And here we are."

  "Look, I'm not judging," Sam's tone was, to Nina's ears at least, a little defensive. "What you do is entirely your business. I'm just trying to make sense of it, that's all."

  "Christ, you and me both."

  In a display of unusual tact, Sam did not question Nina further. She felt a little bit bad. That response had been snappier than she had intended it to be, and she was irritated with herself—partly for sounding like a teenager trying to be enigmatic and partly for letting Purdue's little joke get to her. The last thing she had expected was to run into Sam in Las Vegas, and the prospect of spending the next couple of weeks in close proximity to him, with Purdue engineering opportunities to leave them alone together just to see how they would react, did not make her happy.

  I don't know why he thinks it's so bloody interesting anyway, she thought. It's not as if anything really happened between me and Sam. One kiss, that's all. I didn't think anyone was even paying that much attention. But then, Purdue never seems to miss a damn thing.

  With a muffled roar, the plane glided smoothly from tarmac to air. Nina's fingers closed around the arms of her chair and dug in deep. Her mind with images of screaming passengers, of flashing lights, of the white hot fireball that the plane would surely become when it inevitably crashed. She had not always been such a terrible flyer. For a long time she had been able to keep her claustrophobia under control when traveling by air, but it had taken a turn for the worse after her experiences in the submarine during the Wolfenstein expedition, followed by a turbulent flight home from Ushuaia and then the disastrous confinement of Deep Sea One. She had not flown again until this trip to America. In retrospect, I should have done some short flights first, she thought, and got my hand in again. Doing another long-haul trip was insane.

  She jumped as she felt a hand cover hers.

  "Sorry!" Sam took his hand away again. "I just thought you might want—I remembered that it used to help you, having a hand to hold. I didn't think. Sorry."

  "No, it's ok," she said, holding her hand out to him. "It's fine. You just took me by surprise, that's all. It does help. It really, really helps. I just hate feeling that if the plane goes down, I'm going to die alone."

  "Well, you're not. All of these nice people will be right here with you, keeping you company. And if we're going to die, I promise you that I won't hold it against you if you break my fingers." He smiled. Despite herself, Nina smiled back. She wanted to hold onto her reluctant distance from Sam. Damn it, he was not supposed to interfere! He wrote that feature on Frank Matlock, advertising his book, knowing full well that Dr. Matlock had shafted Nina by stealing her work. It had damn near killed their friendship for good.

  It took perilous experiences well beyond her acceptance and surreal terror under the thrall of an ancient relic to mend their fresh camaraderie. Then her subsequent emotional collapse ripped her from Sam's friendship and she had to make the harsh decision to distance herself long enough, to keep her episode utterly secret from all who knew her, and retreat into the drudgery of devising her next move in life. And with all her plans in place, finally working out, Sam had to plummet back into her life.

  The plane finished its steep ascent and settled into a comfortable cruise. Little by little, Nina relaxed her grip on Sam's fingers. She wondered whether she was being unreasonable. Leaving the faculty was a welcome blessing to freedom disguised as a suicidal move at the juncture her career had reached, at the time a bold decision while in the throes of severe emotional trauma and unsound resolve.

  Besides, she had already been uncertain about her academic career. The harder she tried to be angry about her missed opportunity after Wolfenstein, the more certain she became that she had not lost anything that she really wanted. There would have been other opportunities, if she had really wanted them. And there were. The hunt for the Spear of Destiny was as equally glamorous as revealing the existence of a secret Nazi ice station. Besides, plenty of people managed to forge successful careers based on less momentous material. She could have continued
along the tedious path she had been on, churning out publications just for the sake of it, going to the right conferences, and kissing the right asses.

  It's just a bit of a funk, she told herself. Everyone goes through it at some point. I'm sure that once I've had some time away from academia, I'll remember why I once thought it was my vocation. All I need is a different route to the same goal. God, I hope this is the right one this time.

  The captain's voice came over the speaker, announcing the plane's descent. Nina realized that she still had not let go of Sam's hand. It had been a short flight, barely forty-five minutes, but still, she should not have left her hand in his the whole time. She wondered whether it would be more awkward now to remove it or to leave it where it was. She decided in favor of leaving it where it was. Taking it away would only draw attention to the awkwardness, and she did not want to risk him offering it again to comfort her during the landing.

  "Nina?" Sam touched her arm as she stood up to disembark.

  "Yeah?"

  "About the material we gathered on Deep Sea One . . . "

  Nina shook her head as she slung her bag over her shoulder. "Not yet, Sam; soon, but not yet." Sam was uncertain what that meant, but her tone was polite and serene and he trusted her to return later to that statement. A brisk nod was all he got from her, but he smiled, nonetheless, as she walked down the passage. Purdue had emerged from the cockpit. He smiled and greeted Sam as he passed, then Nina took his hand and they left the plane together.

  ☼

  Chapter Nine

  "Welcome to Parashant!" Jefferson beamed, striding toward Sam with his heavy-looking, artfully rugged backpack held on one shoulder. "Looks like we'll have a nice cool day for building our camp! That's good. It's a lot more work getting it all set up when it's hot."

  Sam, wilting in the Arizona heat, made no reply. All his energy was currently being divided between lugging his holdall and staying on his feet without dissolving into a puddle of whisky-flavored sweat. It might have been a cool day by Jefferson's standards, but at 22° C, it was far too hot for him.

  After disembarking from the plane at Grand Gulch, the group had been met by a fleet of Jeeps and ferried along winding dirt roads. They had passed the signs for Parashant National Monument some time ago and were now far off the beaten track, leaving the edge of the Grand Canyon far behind. They found themselves in an expanse of parched wilderness, sparsely populated by scrub vegetation. Some way off, Sam thought he could make out the shimmer of water—he assumed that they must be close to a river, because they would need some source of water. However, he was not sure. In the blinding sunlight, with nothing to shield his eyes, the thing he took for water could just as easily have been rising heat.

  The group of delegates contained a variety of people, such as Sam (clearly not use to the heat and exertion and already starting to feel dehydrated) to glossy, fit, and well-prepared individuals (looking as if they just stepped out of an air-conditioned gym). Among the latter group, Paige Daniels was clearly the leader. Her crisp cotton shirt was not white, since Labor Day had passed, but it was such a pale shade of pink that it made little difference. Navy blue shorts revealed toned, tanned legs that could just as easily have belonged to her daughter. Henley, however, had refused to shed her black attire. She was dressed in what appeared to be a partially destroyed ballet tutu and boots from Doc Martens. Her eyeliner was smudged across her left cheek.

  "Dad, how far do we have to go?" she moaned. "Where's the base?"

  "It'll be around here soon!" Jefferson lifted his daughter's wheeled suitcase. "Just as soon as we've built it. This wasn't the greatest choice, was it, honey? Why didn't you bring the backpack your mom gave you?"

  "I'm not carrying that thing. It's butt ugly." She took the case from her father. It was a little too heavy for her, but she was determined not to concede that the backpack might have made her life easier. "So, are there going to be tents or something? Where are they?"

  "Right over here, Miss Daniels," Cody called from a little way off. He was posing on a rock, well aware of the figure he cut in his stone colored shorts and white T-shirt with the clear blue sky as his backdrop. He looked like some kind of advertisement. Sam's dislike for him deepened just a little further, but he joined the delegates in moving obediently toward the pile of tent materials to which Cody was pointing. As much as Sam hated being given orders and was not keen on physical labor, he was happy to pitch in and help with anything that would afford the group some shade from the intense sun.

  His attitude was shared by many of the delegates. Within minutes everyone's belongings were heaped in a pile and hands that had not touched anything less refined than a keyboard in years were gripping long wooden tent poles and wielding spikes and mallets. Sam had decided that he would prefer to stick with the devil he knew, so he had sought out Purdue and chosen to work alongside him. There were no instructions telling them how to erect these tents, but he was willing to bet that Purdue would either know, or he would be swift to work it out.

  Sure enough, Purdue had assembled a small team and was busy issuing instructions. He had found Nina and Julia Rose, but he had also recruited a stocky man with close-cropped, dark hair and a man, with a long, mopey face and a slight, premature paunch, whom Sam took to be one of the programmers. There was no time for introductions, not with the sun getting increasingly hot overhead. Purdue flitted among the members of the team, working out angles and making suggestions. He seemed to have had the foresight to fill a small notebook with instructions. Sam caught glimpses of it concealed in his palm as he moved around the group.

  They were not the first group to finish. That honor went to a team led by Dylan Thoreau, the CEO of a massive social media network. From what Sam had heard about him and succeeded in eavesdropping, it seemed that he had previously participated in several sweat lodges and presumably had experience in putting up these teepee-style tents. Nevertheless, it was too hot to care about finishing first. As soon as they were certain that the tent was stable, Sam dived gratefully into the shade.

  Soon Cody appeared at the flap of the tent with an armful of empty waterskins. He carried out a swift head count of the little group and left a skin for each person. The stocky man, speaking in a heavy eastern European accent that Sam found difficult to place, gathered them and offered to fill them at the river.

  "Anyone know who that guy is?" Sam asked in a whisper, as soon as he thought the man was out of earshot. "I haven't seen him before. Is he one of the FireStorm people?"

  Purdue shook his head. "Not at all, Sam. He's my new bodyguard—well, reasonably new—no more than a couple of months. Kai is his name. Kai Gretzsky."

  "Wait—your bodyguard?" Nina said. "How is it possible that I didn't realize you had a new bodyguard?" Flashes of Calisto Fernandez, his last bodyguard, seeped into Nina's mind. She briefly remembered the woman who saved her from getting shot in the face by a Norwegian henchman. She realized that Purdue was on his third bodyguard in as many years.

  "I asked him to keep his distance, because you didn't get on with the first one." Purdue's tone was bright, but Nina shuddered at the memory of Ziv Blomstein, the first bodyguard to protect Purdue, some time ago during the Antarctic trip. Much taller and more physically imposing than his current successor, Blomstein had been a silent, threatening figure who had been ready to kill Nina during their time on the submarine as they escaped the ice station. Despite his eventual act of self-sacrifice that had saved them all, Nina had good reason to feel uneasy at the mention of Blomstein's name.

  "We tried to find a way for him to continue protecting us from a distance while we are out here," Purdue continued, "but it simply proved too difficult. Straightforward enough in a hotel, but considerably less easy in the desert. Here, he will simply have to share my accommodations."

  "Remind me to stay near you," the young man chimed in. "Oh, right. I haven't introduced myself. Sorry. I'm Hunter Sherwood. I'm a programmer for Kari. You've probably seen my boss, Sakura, around.
"

  "Sakura Ito?" Julia Rose asked. "Oh, my god, she's amazing! I was so excited when I saw she was here. How come you're with us? No offense, but if I had a connection to Sakura Ito, I'd be right there trying to impress her."

  Hunter grimaced and shifted a little closer to the door, fanning himself with the flap of the tent. "Hmm. She's ok, but I'm avoiding her right now. If she'd picked one of the people who actually wanted to be here instead of doing random selection, I'd be at home right now. Sorry. I know you probably really want to be here. I'm just not really into this kind of stuff."

  As Kai returned with the waterskins and everyone proceeded to quench their thirsts, Hunter held forth. He quizzed the others about what they knew of the organization and was delighted to hear that none of them knew anything that had not come straight from Sara, Cody, or Jefferson. Sam shot a questioning look at Julia Rose, wondering why she was not telling Hunter about her research, but she replied with an almost imperceptible shake of the head and he did not push it further.

  It seemed that Hunter was extremely skeptical about the claims that FireStorm was making about "bringing the world together." He believed that there was nothing to the organization but marketing—packaging spirituality and wisdom in fancy ways so that they could be marketed as luxury goods.

  "It's bullshit," he stated flatly. "These people who buy into it, they're the ones with a ton of time and money, right? They've got time to sit around worrying about whether they're connected to other people's unique special snowflakeness, or whatever it is. The rest of us . . . do we care? I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have time to care. And if being spiritually connected is going to cost me tens of thousands of dollars, I can't afford it. I'll just have to settle for being disconnected.

  "But you know the worst thing? It's not even about that. People have been selling this togetherness stuff for years, ever since the hippies, maybe even earlier, but these people have taken it to the next level! Word is that they're trying to get people to integrate or some shit, and you have to get all their software and products to do it. I've never before heard of any religion that needed an app."