Area 51: The Truth (17 page)

Black sphere? Spearson had kept up with the torrent of intelligence reports about the recent world war, fought primarily in the Pacific and Middle East and he could recollect no such description. Something new. Something different.

Spearson had been under fire many times, in Northern Ireland, during the Gulf War, in Ethiopia—but he felt a shiver of unease as the Lynx’s skids hit the ground with a slight thump. He didn’t have to yell any commands. He knew the men would be right behind and spread out tactically. That was the difference between the
SAS
and a regular line unit. He ran from the chopper toward the black sphere, shoving his night-vision goggles down on their slot on his helmet. He blinked for a second as the darkness gave way to a bright green scene, The black sphere was perfectly still, hovering a few feet above the ground, part of the outer shell forming a ramp to the ground.

Spearson froze as a figure carrying a Sterling submachine gun came out of the opening. He had the muzzle of the MP-5 centered on the man, when he stopped his finger, just short of firing, as he recognized the uniform.

“Over there!” the constable yelled, pointing to the left, away from the monument. Spearson turned, as did all his men. Nothing.

Spearson heard the sound of an automatic weapon going off as the first rounds hit him in the chest, knocking him backward. The police officer was moving toward the
SAS
troopers, weapon to his shoulder, firing.

Spearson landed on his back, his chest aching from the impact on his Kevlar vest. He lifted his head as his men returned fire. He watched in disbelief as the cop was riddled with bullets, yet kept firing. Two more
SAS
men went down, one fatally shot in the face.

The cop’s weapon—an old Sterling, Spearson could see through the goggles—clicked on an empty chamber. The
SAS
troops kept firing, literally tearing the cop to pieces until his body collapsed.

Spearson got to his feet. One of his men ran forward and checked the body. Spearson indicated for the rest to follow him. He edged around so that he could see into the pod. A door blocked the way just inside. “Blow it,” Spearson ordered.

One of his men pulled a small shaped charge out of his pack and ran up to the door, placing it in the center. He pulled the fuse.

“Fire!” the demolitions man yelled as he exited the craft and dived for cover. Spearson hit the ground, tucking his head down. There was a sharp crack. He got up and cursed. Only a two-foot-wide hole had been blown in the door.

He heard shots behind him and spun about. The man who had been with the cop’s body had shot another
SAS
trooper right in the face. The second man screamed, hands to his face, blood pouring between his fingers. The
SAS
man fired at his comrades, head shots as he’d been trained.

“Goddamn,” Spearson cursed as two more of his men went down. He squeezed the trigger, the bullet hitting the man in the head, just above the right eye, below the edge of the helmet. Blood and brain flew out the exit wound in the back of his head. And still he fired. Another
SAS
man was down.

Spearson sensed something overhead, but didn’t take the time to look up. He fired, pulling the trigger as quickly as he could, head shots all, hitting his own man repeatedly until he finally collapsed.

“What the hell was that, sir?” one of his few surviving men demanded as they converged on the body. It was unrecognizable. Spearson had literally blown the man’s head off.

Spearson glanced up. The stars were gone.

Then he was blinded as a brilliant light filled the sky.

Turcotte was waiting right by the cargo door and as soon as Yakov opened it, he rushed down the still-extending gangway to the ground. He had an MP-5 in one hand and Excalibur in the other. The Russian must have also found some way to illuminate the ground below, because it was as bright as if it were high noon.

Turcotte took in the tableau. The large stones were right in front of him, the black pod, a Land Rover, bodies. A few men in uniform still standing, ripping off overloaded night-vision goggles. He recognized one of the men—Spearson—from the mission in Ethiopia.

“Colonel,” Turcotte called out as he headed for the
SAS
Commander.

Spearson blinked, trying to reorient himself, still confused and dismayed by the insane actions of his own man.

“Colonel, what do you have?” Turcotte was next to him, noting the bodies. “What happened?” Spearson shook his head, confused and shocked. “I don’t know. The police officer shot at us. Then one of my men—I don’t know why.”

Turcotte looked down at the headless body. Something was stirring in the area of the stub of the spinal column that poked above the neck. Something gray.

“What the hell is that?” Spearson took a step back.

The three-fingered tip of a Swarm tentacle emerged, grasping, searching for a new host. It was slithering out of the body, a foot now exposed. Turcotte swung Excalibur and sliced the tentacle in two, just below the “fingers.” The severed portion fell to the ground, and then began to “melt,” producing a foul smell.

“What the hell is that?” Spearson demanded.

Turcotte ignored the question. “Duncan? Have you seen Dr. Duncan?”

Spearson shook his head, still staring where the tentacle had been. “We just got here. The copper shot at us. Then my man went crazy. What was that thing in him? What is going on?”

Turcotte continued to ignore the questions, as there was no time to explain. He moved toward the pod, both weapons at the ready. It didn’t even occur to him to feel strange holding an ultramodern submachine gun in one hand and a legendary sword in the other. He stepped onto the pod ramp and saw the hole that had been blasted in it. He paused for a moment, then leaned over and poked his head inside. The skin on the back of his neck prickled as he waited for a tentacle to lash out at him. In the green glow he saw Duncan strapped to a table. He took in the massive amounts of blood under and around her; the half-regenerated hand; the Ark of the Covenant on a table next to her along with the crown.

Duncan turned her head and met his gaze. Turcotte could see the pain in her eyes.

“Mike.” She said it so softly, Turcotte wasn’t sure whether there was an actual word or he was interpreting the way her lips moved.

“I’ll get you out of there,” Turcotte said. The hole was too small for him to fit through. He would need more demolitions.

“Mike.”

He definitely heard her this time. He took a quick look around, half-expecting to see one of the creatures he and Yakov had found in the ruins of Section IV. “What?”

“I’m sorry.”

Turcotte staggered as the pod moved beneath his feet. “I’ll get you out.” He wondered if it were taking off. He pulled his head out of the hole and stepped back. It wasn’t the pod. It was the ground itself moving. The nearest standing stones were leaning precariously. A lintel stone fell off, slamming into the ground with a loud thud. Spearson was yelling orders, ordering his men to pull back.

Turcotte turned back to pod, just as the door he was standing on began to lift. He knew he had just a few seconds. “I’ll be back!” he yelled toward the opening, then he dived to the side, narrowly avoiding being crushed as the door sealed. The pod rose and moved to the side, out of the way of the hovering mothership. It stopped about fifty yards away. Turcotte stood, then had to dash out of the way as another tall stone came crashing down, missing him by a few inches. He felt the rush of air displaced by the stone as it hit the ground with a solid thud.

Turcotte’s fingers scrambled to grab hold of solid ground, but the dirt was sliding away beneath him. Then he felt metal, warm metal, which was strange. The mothership overhead was still illuminating everything and he looked down. Gray metal. More and more of it. The surface Turcotte lay on was slightly curved. He realized he was on some sort of craft, a type which he hadn’t seen before. And it was going up. On all fours, Turcotte scuttled toward the edge he could see about ten yards away. He heard a loud, echoing thud, which he could only imagine was one of the standing stones falling onto the skin of the craft.

By the time he made it to the edge, the craft was clear of the ground. It was saucer-shaped with a large protrusion near front and two more near the rear. Turcotte didn’t spend much time checking it out. He gathered himself and jumped off, the airborne training he’d received at Fort Benning so many years ago taking over. Black Hats with megaphones yelling: Feet and knees together, knees bent, arms tucked. Hit. Roll.

Turcotte lay on his back and saw the outline of the strange craft against the mothership’s lights. Then it darted off to the west, the Swarm pod following.

Earth Orbit

Artad stepped up, placing the front of his feet into the toe openings in the front half of the space suit and pressing himself against the interior padding. The rear half swung forward, locking shut. He scanned the display just below his visor, making sure all systems were working correctly.

The report from the scouts he had sent over to the derelict mothership had intrigued him. He felt little sense of time pressure as the last reports he had checked indicated the array on Mars was not yet completed. The humans might attempt to fly the mothership to Mars, but then what? He doubted they had more than the most rudimentary understanding of the craft. In fact, as he considered the options, he hoped the humans would fly the mothership there, so he could assault it and regain control. That would look much better when the fleet arrived. He paused—certainly it would be better to send the first message with the mothership under his control. As it stood now, he was calling for help in a situation that had gotten far out of control.

Secure in the suit, he went to the Talon’s airlock. Locking one door behind, he waited as the outer door slid open. They were adjacent to the main cargo bay of the mothership. A massive explosion had torn the doors off and ripped a quarter-mile-long gash along the side of the craft. Artad jetted across to the larger ship. Entering the large cargo bay, the first thing he noted was the devastation. While the rip in the outer hull was bad, the interior had been gutted, as the interior bulkheads weren’t quite as strong as the external skin.

There were also the smashed remains of several Talon craft—Aspasia’s fleet from Mars. Artad headed toward one of the Talons, where several of his suited Kortad waited for him. They shepherded him inside, through a hatch and into a corridor. There were several Airlia bodies floating inside, perfectly preserved by the vacuum of space. Artad ignored them, even though he recognized some, as one of his Kortad led him forward to the control room.

A half dozen dead Airlia were strapped to their chairs. They weren’t even in their space suits, indicating they had met disaster unexpectedly.

And in the command seat—Aspasia.

Artad came to a halt in front of his old nemesis. Over ten thousand years had passed since they had first fought. Their Shadows and their followers had continued the fight through the millennia. He had never expected that it would end like this, with Aspasia dead by human hand, depriving him of his revenge.

Artad reached a gloved, six-fingered hand forward and grasped Aspasia’s chin. He lifted the drooping head. The red eyes were cloudy, vacant.

Artad turned his head toward another Airlia body, behind Aspasia’s, still holding his adversary’s chin. A female. Artad’s fingers tightened on Aspasia’s chin, digging into the dead flesh. He remembered her. Remembered when she had left on the mission to this forsaken corner of the universe. Remembered their time together so long ago.

His arm jerked, snapping Aspasia’s neck. Artad looked once more at the female’s body, and then turned for the exit. Without a backward glance he departed.

Mars

Mars Pathfinder was launched on December 4, 1996. On July 4 the following year, Pathfinder reached Mars, taking an orbit that did not overfly or even come close to Cydonia. The lander entered the atmosphere and five miles from the surface its parachute deployed. Sixty-nine feet above the surface near Ares Vallis, the parachute was cut loose and Pathfinder, surrounded by airbags, fell to the surface and bounced. It continued bouncing for over half a mile before coming to a halt. The airbags deflated.

Four petal-like blue solar panels slowly unfolded. A weather mast extended upward along with the IMP, the Imager for Mars Pathfinder. Resting on one of the solar panels was a small vehicle, the Sojourner Truth, named for a nineteenth-century African-American antislavery crusader. The Rover was twenty-six inches long by nineteen inches wide and twelve inches high, weighing in at twenty- two pounds.

As dawn came to Mars on July 5, 1997, the
IMP
, which actually had two slightly offset cameras that produced a three-dimensional image when used together, took the first pictures of the surface of the planet from the surface. Sojourner’s wheels, retracted while in transit, slowly extended and locked into place. It rolled down onto the Martian surface, the first human moving vehicle on another planet since the last Apollo missions to the moon. Sojourner moved about sixteen inches to a rock, which controllers had given the name Barnacle Bill, and analyzed it using the
APXS
, Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer. The
APXS
bombarded the rock with alpha particles and measured the radiation that bounced back. The resulting data was relayed to Pathfinder, which then transmitted it back to Earth. Analyzing the results, scientists were able to get a very good idea of the rock’s composition.

One of the problems with moving Sojourner about was that it took two and a half minutes for images and data to make it to Earth and then the same amount of time for controlling information to be sent the other way. Thus, the controllers only could see where the vehicle had been and had to plan future movements very carefully. So fascinated was the American public with this accomplishment that forty-four million people logged onto NASA’s web site the first day Sojourner moved.