“It was the Master Guardian that stopped the Ancient Enemy craft,” Asim said, “not the sword. Without the facing, the pyramid will not be found by the Ancient Enemy.” Asim pointed at Excalibur. “Without the sword, the Master Guardian is powerless.”
“How can that be?”
“I do not know but it is what I was told. And what people may desire in the duats along the Roads of Rostau are secure in one form or another.”
“Why did you have to use Excalibur and not your ceremonial dagger?” Khufu asked.
“The sword has another special power,” Asim said. “As you saw, it is the only thing that can kill the undead and the immortal.”
“The undead?”
“The Ancient Enemy.”
“The immortal?” Khufu stepped closer to the priest. “Someone has partaken of the Grail?”
“I very much doubt it,” Asim said, “but all who could have had access to the duats had to die.”
“I do not understand,” Khufu said.
“I do not either, my lord,” Asim said. “I only do what the Gods command. The sword is the key that must be hidden away again.”
“Why did the gods have us build that”—Khufu jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the pyramid—“if it would only bring enemies?”
“The Gods hoped it would bring their kindred Gods from the sky,” Asim said. It was the same answer he had given before, but Khufu felt despair.
“And now?” Khufu spread his hands wide. “Now what do I do?”
“You rule, my lord,” Asim said.
“What will I do with Excalibur?” Khufu asked once more.
“We will leave it in the sheath and return it to its place in the duats so that the Gods may have access to it when it is needed. When the Master Guardian is returned or needed again.”
On one hand, Khufu was reluctant to pass the sword back to the high priest. It was, after all, the sword of the Gods and obviously very powerful. But that same thought frightened him with the potential responsibility for having such a thing. He unbuckled it from his belt and handed it over to Asim, who tucked it under his cloak.
Asim left Khufu watching the desecration of the greatest achievement of his realm, indeed in the entire history of mankind, and headed toward the Sphinx. He used his scepter and the stone door slid open. He entered, the door sliding shut behind him.
He made his way down the stone corridor, scepter in one hand, Excalibur in the other. He paused, cocking his head, as if he sensed something was wrong. He waited several moments, then continued. When he reached the intersection, he turned right and came to a complete halt as a man stepped forward to confront him.
Asim held the sword in his good hand, across the front of his body, still covered by the sheath. “Kaji. I knew you would be about. Scurrying around like the rat you are.”
“Even a rat is better than being a slave,” Kaji said.
Asim spit at the other man’s feet. “You Watchers. You have betrayed our ancient priesthood.”
Kaji shook his head. “We betrayed? Whom did we betray? The ‘gods’ who left us to fend for ourselves? Who allowed our homes to be destroyed, our people killed? What did you perform today? How many people died today because of the ‘gods’? How many more will have to die?”
“You are a Watcher,” Asim said. “You can do nothing according to the laws of your order. Get out of my way.”
Kaji’s jaw was set. “My three brothers, my six nephews. Two of my three sons. They died today on the pyramid.”
Asim took an involuntary step backward. “You took an oath to only watch.”
“I am done with being a Watcher. My surviving son will be the next Kaji. The next Watcher of Giza, of the Roads of Rostau.”
“Still, you took an oath.” Asim took another step back.
“You know there are those beyond the Watchers,” Kaji said. “Those who act.” Kaji held up his hands, his fingers lacking the ring that was the symbol of the first rank of his order. “After opening a door to the Roads of Rostau I left my ring for my son to find.”
That struck Asim as hard as a blade. The priest held up the sword, but had not drawn the blade. “What good will it do to kill me?”
Kaji barked a laugh. “You’re not that important.” “Then what—”
“Excalibur,” Kaji said. “It is theirs. And it is the key. I will take it.”
“You cannot. It is only for the Gods.”
Kaji indicated Asim’s wounds. “Have you ever looked at yourself? What has been done to you?”
“It is the price of service.”
“To what end?” Kaji’s voice shook. “To what end does your service go?”
“To get eternal life,” Asim said. “To partake of the Grail.”
“The Grail has been around since the dawn of time and we have never been allowed to partake!”
Asim’s voice fell to a whisper. “It will happen someday. If not to me, then to those who follow. But only to the true believers.”
Kaji took another step closer to the priest. He was in range of the blade, but Asim did not draw it. “Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps partaking of the Grail might not be a good thing?”
Asim’s eyes widened. He blinked as if he had just heard that the sky was red, his head shaking in disbelief.
“Excalibur,” Kaji said.
Asim shook his head more firmly. “It must be kept safe.”
“You think this place is safe?” Kaji didn’t wait for an answer. “The ‘gods’ fight among themselves. Both sides know of the Roads of Rostau. It must be hidden from them or else we will have repeats of today’s disaster.”
“But the Ancient Enemy—” Khufu began.
“Yes, the Ancient Enemy.” Kaji nodded. “Excalibur must be protected from the Ancient Enemy also. I saw what happened on the top of the pyramid. What makes you think that was the only enemy that survived?”
“The enemy was destroyed.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Kaji said. “I saw the Libyan taken by the Ancient Enemy in the desert to the west of here. More danger could be close by. The sword must be removed from here.”
Asim frowned. “What do you know of the Ancient Enemy?”
A strange look crossed Kaji’s face. “The legends—” His voice trailed off.
“How did you know to go out into the desert?” Asim pressed. “Why did—” Asim continued but he didn’t complete the sentence as Kaji slammed his dagger into the priest’s chest.
Asim lay on the tunnel floor, dead. Kaji reached down and took the priest’s cloak, wrapping it around his own slender body, pulling the hood up over his head. He picked up Excalibur and the scepter. Then he headed toward the surface.
• • •
Khufu was alone on the roof of the pyramid temple. The removal of the covering stones was complete about a third of the way down. People from all around were at the base, taking the limestone with them, as the Pharaoh had allowed it. They could build homes with the stone. It might as well serve some positive purpose. Several large rough blocks had been emplaced on top to keep the semblance of a pyramid and also hide the fact that something else had once been up there.
He heard his guards snap to attention below and turned. A slight figure came up the ladder onto the roof, moving with difficulty. He recognized Asim from the high priest’s cloak and the sword in the man’s hand.
“I thought you were taking that back underground,” Khufu said. “Have you had second thoughts?”
The figure came closer. Khufu gasped as the sword was drawn and the blade came across his neck. He could feel the coolness of the metal against his skin.
“Are you insane, Asim?”
The man pulled his hood down, revealing his features. “Who are you?”
“A man. Like you. My name is Kaji.”
Khufu stared into the man’s eyes. “Are you going to kill me?” “Asim is dead. I killed him.”
Khufu looked back up at the defaced pyramid. The sword pressed tigh
ter against his throat. He waited to feel it slice his skin. Now, for the first time in his life, Khufu felt his mortality, and knew that he was not the favored of the Gods, that he was just a man.
“He lied to you because he was lied to,” Kaji said.
“Lied about what?” Khufu asked, hoping to avoid this dark fate as long as possible, thinking that perhaps one of his guards might check on them, also knowing that hope was futile, as no one would dare interrupt the Pharaoh while he was consulting with his high priest.
“The gods. The empty promises.” The sword was removed from Khufu’s throat and Kaji sheathed it, before hiding it under his cloak. “My Pharaoh—” Kaji pointed toward the pyramid. “That is what has been done to your people in the name of the gods. Perhaps it is best if these gods are not part of our lives. I will let you live if you give me your word as Pharaoh to rule as a man and not as a puppet to the gods.” Khufu swallowed and nodded, his confidence shattered by recent events. “Yes. Yes. I can do that. I will do that.”
“I do not believe you,” Kaji said simply. “Still, killing you will solve nothing and in reality, you have little choice now but to rule as a man. And there is doubt in your mind now. Perhaps that is all I can do here. Doubt is the seed from which one day may grow independence. The ability to think for ourselves. We have been lied to many times, by the gods, by the priests. We must make our own truth.”
With that, Kaji turned and disappeared down the ladder. He made his way along the processional path, the guards keeping their distance, recognizing the cloak of Asim, the high priest, second only to the Pharaoh himself. Kaji maintained the strange gait of the priest until he reached the Lower Temple. Then he went by the priest’s path to the nearby Nile where a small boat waited, manned by a young man who wore the medallion of the Watchers.
Set in the boat was a wooden box, three and a half feet long. The young man swung the top of the box open. Kaji placed the sheathed sword into the box, then closed the lid. He then handed the tube holding his report to the man. The boat slipped away into the darkness to make its long journey to deliver the report and sword.
CHAPTER 2: THE PRESENT
Area 51, Nevada
Lisa Duncan looked down her blood-spattered robe, fingers reaching into the hole in the cloth where the bullet that had killed her had gone through. The skin below was unblemished with no sign of the fatal wound. She touched the spot herself, as if not believing her own eyes.
“Who are you?” Mike Turcotte was in front of her and he placed his hands on her shoulders, fingers digging in a little too tightly. “I saw you die.” Turcotte said the words in a whisper, as if not believing them. “I held you in my arms and watched you die. I felt you die.”
A deep, accented voice caused Turcotte to look over his shoulder. “She partook of the Grail,” Yakov said, as if that explained everything. “The legends are true. She is immortal.”
Given that Yakov was the one who had shot her, Turcotte wasn’t feeling too kindly toward the Russian, even though Yakov had done it in a vain attempt to prevent the Grail from being stolen. The Russian was a huge man, standing almost a foot taller than Turcotte. He was a former agent of Section IV, the Russian equivalent of America’s Majestic-12, set up to monitor alien activity on the planet. Both Section IV and Majestic no longer existed, victims of the events of the past year.
Turcotte wore camouflage fatigues that fit loosely on his solid body. On both shoulders was the same subdued military patch: an arrowhead shape, with a dagger insignia crossed by three lightning bolts: the patch for the US Army Special Forces. He was of average height and stocky, with short dark hair sprinkled with gray. The stubble on his chin indicated it had been a while since he had enjoyed the comforts of a warm shower and a sharp razor.
“I’m cold,” Duncan muttered.
Turcotte let go of her shoulders and blinked, looking about, taking in their surroundings, as if realizing for the first time that he was standing in a morgue and Duncan was sitting on a stainless-steel autopsy table. She looked small and vulnerable inside the bloody robe. Her short dark hair was plastered against her skull and her face was pale and drawn.
Turcotte scooped Duncan up in his arms and headed for the door. Yakov, Professor Mualama, Che Lu, and Major Quinn followed, the core of the group that was leading the fight against the alien presence on Earth. By default they were the ones who now ran Area 51.
Turcotte carried Duncan to a parked Humvee and slid her into the passenger seat before going around and getting behind the wheel. The others piled in, Quinn just managing to get inside before Turcotte stomped on the accelerator. He drove toward the large hangar cut into the side of Groom Mountain. To one side a long runway stretched out of sight along the dry bed of Groom Lake. Various hangars and support buildings were clustered around the end of the runway, between it and the mountain.
Area 51 was about ninety miles northwest of Las Vegas, in the middle of nowhere on the way to nowhere, established on land that held no value other than its isolation. Numerous mountains surrounded the dry lake bed, land that the US government had gobbled up to make the location secure. The spot had gained its name from the training area designation number it received on the military map for the Nellis Air Force Base range of which it was ostensibly a part.
Most had thought Area 51 was placed in the location because of its remoteness. The truth, however, was that it had been placed where it was because of the shocking discovery during the early days of World War II of a massive alien spaceship in a cavern underneath Groom Mountain—the mothership. Over a mile long and a quarter mile in width at its center, the craft had both stunned and intrigued the scientists sent to investigate it. Images on plaques found in the cavern led the Americans to discover smaller atmospheric craft, called bouncers and shaped like golden flying saucers, in Antarctica. They had been brought to Earth in one of the holds of the mothership.
The entire discovery was classified at a higher level than anything had ever been in the United States. A committee—Majestic-12—was established to oversee the alien artifacts. For over fifty years Majestic kept the truth secret from not only other countries but Americans also.
But even Majestic hadn’t known the real truth about the aliens: that Earth had been visited by aliens over ten thousand years earlier and they had headquartered themselves on a large island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean—the legendary Atlantis. And that when other aliens of the same species, the Airlia, had arrived thousands of years later, there was civil war between them. One side was led by an alien named Aspasia, the other by Artad. The initial battling resulted in the destruction of Atlantis and a tenuous truce. Aspasia was banished to an Airlia base underneath the surface of Mars at Cydonia, where human astronomers had long been intrigued by anomalies on the surface. Artad and his followers, the Kortad, went to China, underneath the massive tomb of Qian-Ling, and like Aspasia and his people, went into suspended animation. But each side continued a subversive war throughout the millennia on Earth. Aspasia’s side was represented by the Mission, led by a continually regenerated human, Aspasia’s Shadow, who passed Aspasia’s memories and personality through succeeding generations via the ka, a memory device that could be updated much like a computer hard drive. Artad’s side was represented by the Ones Who Wait, Airlia-Human clones, and Shadows of Artad, such as King Arthur and Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China.
Throughout human history both groups fought covertly, using humans as pawns in their battles. Turcotte and the others had discovered much, but they still didn’t know the full extent of this interference in human history. They knew about the clash between Arthur (Artad’s Shadow) and Mordred (Aspasia’s Shadow) in early Britain; the development and spread of the Black Death in the Middle Ages; the rise of the SS in Nazi Germany; the invention of the atomic bomb from studying an Airlia weapon discovered underneath the Great Pyramid, also in the early days of World War II. Many other events throughout history were the result of efforts by one side or the other to gain
the upper hand.
Turcotte and the others had also learned that the human survivors of Atlantis had formed a group called the Watchers to monitor the aliens. The Watchers were former priests who had worshipped the Airlia as gods, and who tried to monitor their conflict.
The lid blew off all those covert actions when Majestic-12 was corrupted after discovering a guardian computer in South America. The guardians were golden pyramids secreted around the world by the Airlia, as part of their ancient outposts. Contact with one by a human resulted in a direct mind interface, with the guardian taking control and turning the person into a Guide. The members of Majestic were corrupted in this manner and Mike Turcotte was sent by Lisa Duncan to infiltrate Area 51 and discover what was going on. Turcotte had learned that Majestic was preparing to fly the mothership on orders from the guardian, most likely to go to Mars and pick up Aspasia and his followers. He also found information that initiating the mothership’s interstellar engine would attract the attention of the Airlia’s ancient enemy, known only as the Swarm, and bring destruction to Earth. Turcotte foiled that plan and all-out civil war had erupted between the two Airlia sides, the human race caught between them.
As it stood now, Turcotte had killed Aspasia and destroyed his fleet coming from Mars, but Aspasia’s Shadow was now secreted on Easter Island with the Grail in his possession and a burgeoning military force. And in China, Artad had been awoken by the Ones Who Wait.
It was this precarious world situation plastered all over the situation board at the front of the CUBE—command, control & communications, C3—deep under Groom Mountain, that the small group saw as they got off the elevator from the hangar above.
Turcotte ignored the sit-board and helped Duncan to the conference room. The others trooped in and the door was shut as an uneasy silence pervaded. Turcotte sat Duncan in the chair at the head of the table and slumped into the seat next to her.
Yakov was next to Turcotte. Mualama, an African archaeologist who had followed in the footsteps of Sir Richard Francis Burton and uncovered that explorer’s secret account of all he had learned of the Airlia and their influence on Earth, was next to him. Mualama had also uncovered the scepter that had allowed Duncan and him access to the Black Sphinx, deep under the Great Sphinx, which had contained the Ark of the Covenant and the Grail. They had also discovered that Mualama was a former Watcher.
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