The Nosferatu Chronicles: Return to Vambiri

by Susan Hamilton

  The Nosferatu Chronicles

  Book 3

  RETURN TO VAMBIRI

  Copyright © 2018 Susan Hamilton

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Line edited by Allister Thompson

  Cover Art Copyright © Dimitri Elevit

  SelfPubBookCovers.com/dimitrielevit

  DEDICATION

  To my husband, Dean Hamilton,

  My daughter, Alana Riley,

  And in loving memory of Alan Riley.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  UNBURNED

  GENESIS

  ANOMALY

  SPIRAL

  WORDS

  PRECAUTIONS

  ARRIVAL

  NAZARENE

  RECRUITS

  INTERVIEW

  BLOODLINE

  UNIFICATION

  CLOUDY

  PARALLELS

  SEETHING

  SECRETS

  RESEARCH

  PERSUASION

  INFILTRATION

  RISK

  ATONEMENT

  EXODUS

  TRANSMUTATION

  DOCUMENTATION

  HYPOTHESES

  CHIMERA

  VERACITY

  BREAKTHROUGH

  TRANSCENDENTAL

  REVELATION

  CIRCUS

  REBUILD

  MANCHURIAN

  CRISIS

  CONSPIRACY

  EMERGENCE

  DEPARTURE

  MENACE

  TERMINUS

  RETURN

  BLOWN

  MOURNING

  INTERIM

  INFILTRATION

  PLOTS

  INTERSTELLAR

  VIVIFY

  DELUSION

  ASCENSION

  SPIN

  PROLOGUE

  Kevak,

  The Vambir siblings have fooled us all. I have just discovered evidence of their duplicity—the brainstem injury sustained by the rogue Vambir was inflicted post-mortem. The true cause of his death was an electronic overload transmitted to the cerebral implant. I traced the transmission to the keystrokes entered by the siblings when they were inside the lifeboat.

  Beware of the siblings! They possess an intelligence far beyond their years and are devious beyond all measure!

  I pray to Iam that this email reaches you once you are revived from stasis on Vambiri.

  May Iam protect you, old friend!

  Emanui

  UNBURNED

  Mount Horeb, 1448 BC

  The shepherd attending his father-in-law’s flock of sheep was drawn to the red light emanating from the mountain. He had seen distant campfires before, but this was different. The light did not flicker. Instead, it glowed steadily with an intensity that surpassed the great bonfires constructed to warn of invaders.

  The silhouette of a large bush impeded his view of the light, so he drove the flock to the right. When he looked up again, he was dismayed to see that the silhouette was still directly in front of the light.

  How can that be?

  The flock was now grazing, and the shepherd knew that they would rest after they were sated. He had traveled this path with them many times before, and this particular region was free of predators. He decided to leave them behind so he could investigate the mysterious light, confident they would still be resting when he returned.

  After half an hour of walking, his ears detected a low hum, and he saw that the bush was not in front of the light — it was engulfed in it. Darting red and yellow beams made strange patterns on the leaves, yet it did not burn, nor was there any smell of smoke.

  The shepherd was startled by a series of loud crackles, clicks, and pops, and then, to his great terror, a booming voice emanated from the bush.

  “Do not look direc…into…light!” the voice commanded.

  The shepherd turned to run away, but the voice called out his name. “Moses! Moses!”

  Trembling, Moses pulled his robe over his face and kept his eyes focused on the ground as he stepped closer. “Here I am.”

  “Do not…closer!” ordered the voice.

  It was difficult to understand all of the words uttered by the voice due to the background noise.

  “I …the God…your father…God of Ab…ham…of Isaac and…Go…Jaco...”

  Moses continued to hide his face.

  “I…seen…misery…people…Egypt,” the voice continued. “I…send…you to Pharaoh…Israelites out…Egypt.”

  “Who am I to undertake such a venture?” asked Moses. “Suppose I go to the elders and tell them their God has sent me, and they ask me your name? What shall I tell them?”

  “I am…” said the voice, followed by more crackles, clicks, and pops, “…who I am. Tell them I am…has sent…to you.”

  “Yahweh!” exclaimed Moses in Hebrew, meaning ‘Who I am.’ “I have no talent with words and phrases! Why would Pharaoh listen to me?”

  “Your bro…Aaron…your prophet,” said the voice.

  Unable to make any more excuses, Moses listened passively as the voice explained how he would confront Pharaoh and set the Israelites free.

  *******

  Moses’ wife, Zipporah, and her father, Jethro, saw him approaching with the flock. He had lost his staff and walked as if in a stupor with his eyes staring blankly ahead.

  “You’re late!” cried Zipporah. “We were so worried!”

  “Moses,” said Jethro. “Your face — it shines!”

  Zipporah touched Moses’ cheek. “He has a fever!” she exclaimed to Jethro.

  “No,” said Jethro. “It looks more like sunburn.”

  Zipporah took Moses’ hand and pulled him toward the tent, but he wordlessly continued walking to the well. After drawing water for him to drink, she watched nervously as he rhythmically swallowed. His face was still expressionless, with a wide-eyed stare. After several minutes, he finally broke his silence.

  “Get word to Aaron. We leave at once for Egypt.”

  *******

  Mount Sinai, 1446 BC

  As Moses scaled the craggy rock with his bare hands, he relived the tumultuous changes that had taken place since receiving instructions from Yahweh in the burning bush.

  Aaron’s eloquence had failed to convince the pharaoh to free the Israelites, so Yahweh had turned the water of the Nile into blood, which poisoned the fish and water. The stench of decay was thick in the air, but the pharaoh still refused to relent.

  The frogs migrated en masse into the palace and homes of the court officials to escape the putrefaction of the Nile. All the dust throughout Egypt became infested with lice that fed heartily off man and beast alike. Swarms of locusts and flies further decimated livestock, and humans succumbed to virulent infections that caused them to break out in hives and boils.

  Immediately following these calamities, the sky remained dark for three days, and the terrified Egyptians begged Pharaoh to free the Israelites — no slave was worth the trouble that had been inflicted upon them by the god of Moses.

  But Pharaoh remained deaf to their desperate pleas, and the wrath of Yahweh came down upon the Egyptians in a final blow that was the most devastating of all: in one night, the firstborn son of every Egyptian was claimed by the Angel of Death. Not even Pharaoh himself was immune to the curse, and only after seeing the body of his dead so
n did he finally relent and set the Israelites free.

  However, as they left Egypt, Pharaoh’s grief turned to rage when he learned that the Angel of Death had passed over Jewish households with doors covered in lamb’s blood. His magnificent son was gone, while the offspring of slaves had been spared. Pharaoh sent his army after Moses and his people. With the Egyptian army behind them and the Red Sea in front of them, they were hopelessly trapped and lamented that they had ever harbored dreams of freedom.

  Yet Moses remained strong in his faith and called upon Yahweh to save them, which He did by parting the sea, facilitating their escape. When the Egyptian army followed them, anticipating an easy slaughter, Yahweh closed the sea before they could reach the Israelites.

  Yahweh had appeared to Moses in a dream, ordering him to receive His word on Mount Sinai, and so he set out with his assistant, Joshua, telling the elders to wait for their return.

  But within days of their departure, Mount Sinai was engulfed in a thick cloud cover, and Moses continued his ascent while Joshua stayed behind.

  The cloud cover lasted for six days, and on the seventh, Yahweh called out to Moses in the midst of the clouds, which suddenly parted. Moses had not spoken to Yahweh since the burning bush.

  Moses watched in awe as a needle-thin red beam carved cuneiforms into the rock with an accuracy that surpassed the best Egyptian scribes. Yahweh’s gift to his children was ten biblical laws by which to live. The first three governed the relationship between Yahweh and humans, the fourth through eighth regulated public interactions between people, and the remaining two concerned private thoughts.

  When Moses descended from Mount Sinai with the two holy tablets, Joshua told him there was a noise of war in the camp, but it turned out instead to be wild debauchery on the part of the Israelites. They were worshipping a golden statue of a calf that Aaron himself had helped to construct. An enraged Moses cast the tablets out of his hand and broke them on the foot of the mountain. He ordered the elimination of those who had worshipped the statue, and the golden calf was melted down and fed to the idolaters.

  The Ten Commandments were carved out on a new set of tablets, and Moses entered into a covenant with the elders by which the people of Israel would become the children of Yahweh.

  *******

  Mount Nebo, 1406 BC

  Hours earlier, Moses had addressed the Israelites on the banks of the Jordan River, in sight of the Promised Land of Canaan.

  “For forty years we have wandered in the desert,” he said, “unworthy to enter Canaan until the last of the generation that refused to go there had died. Even though we remained grievous sinners, each sunrise Yahweh provided the manna that sustained us. Our wanderings are now at an end, and it is time for you to cross the river and behold the Promised Land.”

  The Israelites were ecstatic, but their joy soon turned to sorrow when Moses informed them it had been foretold that he would not live to enter Canaan. “I commend you into the care of Joshua!” he cried as he set out to meet his fate on Mount Nebo.

  Eleazar, the son of Aaron, and Joshua accompanied Moses to the summit. Sensing that the end was near, Moses reached out to embrace them. At that moment, a vortex appeared in the sky, and a thick cloud enveloped Moses. Joshua and Eleazar shook with fear as they watched the cloud deposit Moses into the vortex.

  The book of Deuteronomy merely records that Moses died on the mountain, and God buried him in an unknown place. This was done because it would be unseemly to elevate Moses, a mortal born with original sin, to demigod status by implying that he was virtuous enough to ascend directly into Heaven.

  *******

  Israel, 865 BC

  Together with his foreign wife, Jezebel, King Ahab reintroduced the worship of Baal to Israel. But Jezebel was not content for the people to decide which God or gods they preferred — she wanted the worship of Yahweh eliminated and urged Ahab to systematically kill off all followers and prophets. Since Baal worshipers believed that their god made rain, it was a scandal of the worst order when an unknown prophet, Elijah — a great, hairy lump of a man dressed in camel skin and a leather belt so thick it looked like a girdle — seemingly appeared out of nowhere and boldly pronounced that he had been sent by Yahweh, and there would be no dew or rain in the years ahead until he, Elijah, gave the command.

  After three and a half years of drought, Yahweh spoke to Elijah. “Order Ahab to gather all the people of Israel and the prophets of Baal, and bring them together on Mount Carmel. Tell the prophets of Baal to prepare a sacrifice, and you will do the same. The deity that answers with fire shall be the only one worshipped.”

  There was one extra thing Yahweh instructed Elijah to do. “Make a trench around your altar and have the people drench it in barrel after barrel of water until it is thoroughly soaked.”

  “Why should I do this, Yahweh?” asked Elijah.

  “The dissolved ions in the water will become a conductor of energy,” he explained.

  And so it happened exactly as Yahweh said — a great, fiery thunderbolt raged down from the sky and struck Elijah’s soaked altar, setting it alight. The sacrifice, the altar, and even the dust on the ground were consumed in the flames. Embers floating in the air made contact with Elijah’s skin, and he felt a tingling as they were absorbed into his epidermis.

  The nation of Israel repented and returned to the worship of Yahweh, and Elijah commanded the rain to fall.

  *******

  Jordan River, 850 BC

  The end was near. Elijah, along with his disciple, Elisha, approached the river, rolled up the sleeves of his vestments and struck the water. The water immediately divided, and the men crossed on dry land.

  Elisha recorded that suddenly a chariot of fire drawn by horses, also of fire, appeared and separated them, and Elijah went up to Heaven in a whirlwind. As Elijah ascended, his vestments fell to the ground, and Elisha picked them up, noting that they, like Elijah himself, were untouched by the flames.

  GENESIS

  Planet Vambiri

  Earth Year 10,882 BC

  Ikato studied the dials on the instrument panel and made adjustments to his calculations. A triple-layered sphere hovered inside the isolation chamber. Lab assistants in radiation suits carefully placed a magnetized metal tube surrounded by another sphere made from strips of superconducting material into the center of the device. Ikato had theorized the superconducting material would deflect incoming fields. A final sphere was then placed over the whole works, which would make the deflection undetectable.

  A buzzer sounded, and the monitor showed a delegation from the Council waiting outside the laboratory entrance. He heard the swish of the automatic doors opening as soon as he pressed the button to let them in.

  “Councilor Veta,” said Ikato. “Right on time, as usual.”

  “What will we see today?” she asked without bothering to greet him.

  “The interior layer will transmit a magnetic field, while the outer layers will conceal the field’s existence,” he explained. “It’s the magnetic equivalent of a wormhole.”

  Veta looked disapprovingly at the lab assistants in the chamber. “So many Lowcastes,” she murmured. “Surely this is beyond their intellectual capacity. What if they forget something?”

  “Their duties are limited to repetitive tasks,” said Ikato with a shrug, “and Highcastes refuse to work in these conditions.”

  Veta shot an angry look at him.

  “They can’t hear us,” he assured her.

  “Are we at risk?” she asked.

  “An electromagnetic radiation leak would be contained in that chamber,” said Ikato, pointing at the Lowcastes, “and any resulting deaths would be inconsequential.”

  “The less we know about such things, the better,” said Veta.

  Ikato pressed the speaker button. “Standby to commence electromagnetic sequence,” he ordered. “Three, two, one, initiate!”

  The delegation watched as the computer tracked the magnetic field from one side of the
cylinder to another. It seemingly went invisible and reappeared out of nowhere on the exit side of the tube.

  “What just happened?” asked Veta.

  “The device transmitted the magnetic field from one point in space to another. The field was deflected while in transit, and the deflection acted as camouflage,” explained Ikato.

  “And this is how a real wormhole works?” asked Veta.

  “From a magnetic point of view, yes,” he answered.

  “How are you planning to get beyond the magnetic point of view?” she pressed.

  “That’s where the particle accelerator comes into play,” he said. “If you would all step into the elevator, I’ll show you the progress that has been made.”

  Minutes of awkward silence followed as the elevator slowly descended to a depth of two hundred meters below the lab. When the doors finally opened, the delegation let out a collective gasp at the enormity of what they saw. In the distance, they could make out Lowcaste workers melting a path through the solid rock with giant lasdrills. The fumes were sucked through an elaborate system of vents.

  “The collider will be contained in a circular tunnel that will have a circumference of five kilometers,” explained Ikato. “When completed, it will generate enough energy to create particles that exist in other dimensions.”

  “I’ve been told there is a possibility that ‘unparticles’ could be created,” said Veta, “which would be a source of dark matter.”

  “The instrumentation will be designed to check for any interaction that leads to the formation of unparticles,” said Ikato. “Once that interaction is detected, the system will automatically shut down.”

  “What do you expect to accomplish once the collider is completed?” asked Veta.

  “Based on spectrometer readings and the wobble effect, I’ve compiled a list of planets that should have large deposits of titanium and nickel,” he said.

  “The wobble effect?” asked Veta.

  “Planets that are too distant to be seen through long-range telescopes still exert a tiny gravitational force on the respective stars they orbit,” he explained. “This causes the star to wobble, albeit ever so slightly, and that wobble can be measured, which in turn indicates the density and size of the planet.”