Area 51: Excalibur-6 (7 page)

Deep inside was an Airlia base, complete with a guardian computer. It was also the site where Artad, leader of one side of the Airlia, had gone into hibernation along with his followers. The outside of the mountain was now blackened soil, the foliage stripped bare by the Chinese government's detonation of a nuclear weapon in a vain attempt to destroy the alien base. However, the same type of shield wall that protected Easter Island had limited the effect of the blast to the charring of the surface around the shield.

Inside the alien base, Lexina, the leader of the Ones Who Wait, had managed to gain entry to the lowest level of Qian-Ling and resurrect Artad and his followers. Now they were ignored as Artad accessed the guardian, assessing the situation in the outside world.

Artad was Airlia, standing almost seven feet tall and looking almost exactly like the Horus statue that had once guarded the entrance between the paws of the Great Sphinx. Red hair, red elongated eyes, six fingers, disproportional body—all indicated his alien heritage.

Artad rapidly processed information concerning the ten thousand years since he had gone into deep sleep, until he was current on the present situation: Aspasia's Shadow was moving, using the power of the humans. He cloaked his forces with a shield that rendered them practically impervi-

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ous to the weapons of the humans. Infecting those humans his forces contacted with a nanovirus to control them.

Artad did a search of the guardian's database and frowned when he didn't get the answer he was looking for. He stepped away from the guardian and went out of the chamber. His Kortad, Airlia who had come to Earth with him so long ago, were lined up, awaiting his orders.

"Excalibur?" he asked Ts'ang Chieh, the human court adviser from the days when his Shadow ruled as the Emperor ShiHuangdi, commander of all the known world.

While he had been working the guardian, Ts'ang Chieh had been outside the chamber questioning Lexina.

"The key to the Master Guardian?"

"Yes."

'The humans—the Watchers, or those who had been Watchers—hid it long ago. So long ago that it is only a myth now."

A strange look crossed Artad's face, what in a human might have been considered a smile. "Foolish." He crossed the chamber to a control panel. He waved his hands over it and a series of hexagons were backlit with runes written on them.

Artad tapped out a code on the hexagons.

MOUNT EVEREST

Near the top of the highest point on the planet three dead bodies lay on a narrow ledge in front of a frozen chamber that was little more than a four-foot-deep indentation at the top of an almost sheer cliff face. They were suddenly bathed in a red light as the sheath in which Excalibur's blade was encased powered up. The glow was refracted by the ice around the crystal and pulsed out into the atmosphere.

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QIAN-LING

A red hexagon in the upper right-hand corner of the panel came alive. Artad nodded ever so slightly, then tapped in a new code. The wall in front of him shimmered and went white. A circular image appeared, coming into focus until it was obvious it was the planet as if seen from space. Artad tapped the red hexagon and the planet quickly rotated, then froze in position with a red flashing dot on the surface. He tapped the red hexagon again and the image grew larger. The location was on the border between Nepal and Tibet, in the midst of the Himalayas.

Artad nodded—it made sense they would hide it there. While Excalibur was in the sheath no mechanical transportation could come within several miles of it, a safeguard built into the system so that he—or anyone else—couldn't send a craft to swoop in and pick it up. The Watchers had placed it in the most inaccessible location on the face of the planet. There was only one way to retrieve the key.

Artad turned to Ts'ang Chieh. "Where are the Ones Who Wait?"

"They are outside, my lord."

"Bring them in."

Lexina led her companions Elek and Coridan into the guardian chamber, bowing low, fearing to look up and meet the red eyes of the one they had waited to serve for millennia.

"Is there a way to communicate with those who now rule this land?" Artad asked.

Lexina nodded, still keeping her head down. "Yes, my lord. We have radios. And their forces surround this area."

"Good. I have a message I wish to send them." His red eyes looked over the three Airlia-Human clones. "And I have a mission for you. Look up."

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They raised their heads. Artad pointed at the screen. "That is where you must go." He reached to his side and drew out a sword. "And something like this is what you must recover. It is most important. I will prepare you as well as I can."

EASTER ISLAND

Aspasia's Shadow's right arm ended abruptly at the wrist. Raw flesh and white bone marked where Turcotte's shot had ripped the hand off. A tourniquet was tied around the middle of the forearm, cutting deep into the skin, but it had stopped the bleeding. His skin, pale to begin with, was ghostly white.

The bouncer he was aboard had just descended through the lake in the center of Rano Kao crater on Easter Island. The bouncer was a gold-colored disk about thirty feet in diameter. It moved through a tunnel at the bottom of the lake as easily as it passed through the air.

A half minute later it surfaced in a pool in a large cavern, went up into the air, and settled down on the dry rock, which made up the other half of the area.

A half dozen US Marines awaited Aspasia's Shadow. Their eyes were glazed over, as they were controlled by the guardian computer via a nanovirus coursing through their brains and blood. The nanovirus could send electrical impulses through the infected persons' brains, controlling their actions, essentially making them part of the Easter Island guardian network. The chilling thing about persons infected by the nanovirus was that while it controlled and directed their nervous systems, a part of their minds was aware of this and unable to change it.

Three of the Marines, part of Task Force Seventy-nine, which had been captured by Aspasia's Shadow's forces, climbed onto the bouncer and opened the hatch.

While two

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of them grabbed Aspasia's Shadow and helped him out, the third picked up the Grail, which was covered by a thick white wrap.

Aspasia's Shadow staggered as his feet touched the ground and the Marines held him up. He had lost more blood than he'd thought. The Marines helped him into a tunnel lit by lines in the ceiling. The tunnel sloped upward, then leveled and turned to the right. Aspasia's Shadow and his escorts entered a cave. In the very center was a twenty-foot-high glowing, golden pyramid—the Easter Island guardian.

Aspasia's Shadow frowned as he noted that plastered on one side of the pyramid was a shriveled mummy with various metal leads connecting the guardian to the body. Aspasia's Shadow forgot about the figure as a Marine placed the shroud-covered Grail on a table to the right of the pyramid.

In his many reincarnations, Aspasia's Shadow had known much pain. It felt as if his missing right hand were still attached but on fire. He forced himself to ignore the feeling and went to the Grail. He removed the shroud, revealing an hourglass-shaped golden object. The end that was up appeared solid.

Aspasia's Shadow pulled a small wooden box from a deep pocket inside his cloak and opened it. Two stones were set inside—the thummin and urim of biblical note.

They glowed as if from an inner fire. With difficulty, Aspasia's Shadow took one of the stones. He held it over the edge of the Grail. The flat end irised open, revealing a small depression inside, the same size as the stone.

Aspasia's Shadow paused. He knew his forces were moving and that much was happening around the world. He forced himself to put the stone back in the wooden box for the moment and go to the guardian. He leaned against the side, placing his only hand flat against the metal. A golden

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glow encompassed him as he connected with the alien device.

Acting with just a few commands from him when he had been headquartered at the Mission underneath Mount Sinai, the guardian had done an excellent job of preparing and initiating his plans. He was updated on his fleet moving toward Pearl Harbor; on what was going on above him on the surface of the island; he grinned when he saw the unanswered messages from the stranded Airlia on Mars spooled up and waiting for him—they could rot for all he cared, in retribution for the millennia he had suffered and fought here on Earth while they slept; his guides were growing in power all over the world—all was going quite well.

Centuries of battling, of maneuvering from the shadows in the halls of power, of seeing kingdoms and countries crumble, had made him suspicious of good news.

There was always a weak link, a blind spot where disaster could strike from.

Artad? Qian-Ling was shielded, the guardian informed him. While that might be an automatic defense reaction by the Qian-Ling guardian, it was just as likely that his ancient enemy had awakened. He knew the Ones Who Wait had been searching for the Qian-Ling lower level key.

He had to assume Artad was finally awake, or at the very least another Shadow of him had been imprinted. And if he were Artad or his Shadow? Aspasia's Shadow had learned early in his many incarnations to think like his enemy in order to outmaneuver his nemesis.

The Master Guardian. It was the tool Artad needed to destroy him and rule supreme on Earth. Aspasia's Shadow accessed the truncated line that had once been the link between that guardian and the Master Guardian. Nothing, which meant the Master was still powered down. He knew what was needed to free it, so he accessed the search pro-

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gram for Excalibur, the sword that was much more than a sword.

In the course of their long war against the Swarm the Airlia had had ships captured and worlds overrun. In the course of that, guardian computers, including system masters, had been lost to the Swarm. Because of bitter experience, the Airlia had learned to safeguard their computer systems with devices like Excalibur. While it did several things, it was primarily a microtransmitter that was on all the time. What it transmitted was the authorization code for the Master Guardian, which allowed it to power up and link and control its subordinate guardian computers. But the transmitter only worked when the sword was removed from the specially designed sheath, which was made of a material that blocked the transmission. Having such a device in such a compact form allowed one person to control all of the guardian computers. There was a destruct built into Excalibur that could be triggered, wiping out the memories of all the guardians and shutting them down in an instant. The way to initiate the destruct was something only the Airlia commander who wielded Excalibur knew. That way was one thing that had not been passed to Aspasia's Shadow when he was first given Aspasia's memories.

He knew the Watchers had hidden Excalibur long ago. The damn Watchers—Aspasia's Shadow had killed many members of the meddlesome human cult over the centuries.

And there had been times when some of them had not simply watched but tried to search him out and kill him—a most foolish endeavor, as many had learned just before they died.

He had tried to gain Excalibur during his incarnation as Mordred, only to be joined in mutual defeat by Artad's

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Shadow masquerading as Arthur. And Merlin the Watcher? What had he done with the sword?

The guardian accessed scanners built into the slope of the volcano above and even reached out to Mars and the base at Cydonia where the few surviving Airlia who had followed Aspasia huddled in their underground caves.

They had picked up a signal from Earth's surface. Aspasia's Shadow knew immediately what it meant—the homing device on Excalibur had been activated.

Since he hadn't done it, there was no doubt who had. Artad was awake. And also looking for the sword.

And the location? When he saw the spot, Aspasia's Shadow cursed. Damn Merlin.

On the other side of the guardian, the withered body twitched, indicating there was life somewhere deep inside. The eyes were crusted shut, the muscles atrophied and consumed as the body tried to keep its core alive, the skin dried and leathery.

Deep inside the mind, the essence of Kelly Reynolds felt the contact of Aspasia's Shadow and the guardian like an electric shock, bringing her out of her almost-coma. She'd been there for weeks, ever since trying to link to the guardian when the island was occupied by the United Nations. She'd wanted to discover the truth about the aliens, to learn the advanced knowledge she had believed could be gained from the computer. Instead she had become trapped by the guardian, her mind scoured by the alien computer for information and then forgotten about.

During the intervening time she had slowly managed to regain some control of her mind although her body remained melded to the golden pyramid like an insect to flypaper. She'd even managed to tap into the massive flow of data that poured through the guardian. She'd slipped in the command

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for the nanovirus to leave her body and even managed to get a message out to her friends at Area 51.

She'd also learned some things about the Airlia. She'd "seen" the destruction of Atlantis—Aspasia's initial base on Earth— as a historical record inside the guardian. She'd "seen" one of the Airlia mothership float over the island and pulse down rays of golden power into the island, smashing it into the sea.

She'd also learned that the various guardians had once been linked together under a Master Guardian computer, allowing all the Airlia outposts on Earth, and even on Mars, to be coordinated and controlled. But during the civil war among the Airlia, the network had been shut down and the Master Guardian taken off-line.

As she sensed Aspasia's Shadow "work" the Easter Island guardian she saw that her minor efforts, which had taken so much of her willpower to do, were just drops of water on an ocean compared to the power that Aspasia's Shadow could exert as he became one with the guardian. She "saw" him absorbing data at a phenomenal speed. Kelly kept her psyche still, afraid to attract his attention.