Area 51 (41 page)

"Get to work, then," Turcotte said.

Five minutes after Nabinger began, they were all startled when a golden glow appeared above the apex of the pyramid. Turcotte was pleased to note that he didn't get the sick feeling that the other pyramid had produced. He was disturbed, though, when a gaseous golden tendril from the globe reached out and wrapped itself around Nabinger's head.

"Take it easy," Kelly said as Turcotte started forward.

"This thing, whatever it is, is in charge. Let Nabinger find out what it wants."

The first helicopter from the Abraham Lincoln came in at one hour and twenty minutes after Gullick had landed at the Easter Island international airport.

Given that there were only four flights into the airport every week—and today was one of the off days--they had no trouble taking over the airfield.

The fact that the island was Chilean and they were vio lating international law didn't overly bother General Gullick either. He ignored the agitated requests from the admiral in charge of the Lincoln task force and the relays from Washington as people in charge woke up to the fact that something unusual was going on.

"I want an airstrike prepared," Gullick ordered. "Target is the Rano Kao volcano. Everything you have. The target is under the water in the crater."

The admiral would have ignored Gullick except for one very important thing: the general had the proper code words to authorize such a mission. On the deck of the Abraham Lincoln smart bombs were rolled out and crewmen began attaching them to the wings of aircraft.

Two hours after beginning, Nabinger had a dazed look on his face as the tendril unwrapped itself and flowed back into the golden globe.

"What have you learned?" Kelly asked as they all gathered around.

Nabinger shook his head, his eyes slowly focusing back to his surroundings.

"Unbelievable! It's unbelievable! It spoke to me in a way I couldn't explain to you. So much information. So much that we never understood. It all fits now. All the ruins and discoveries, all the runes, all the myths. I don't know where to start."

"At the beginning," Von Seeckt suggested. "How did all this get here? Where did the mothership come from?"

Nabinger closed his eyes briefly, then began. "There was an alien colony--more an outpost than a colony as far as I can gather--on Earth. The aliens called themselves the Airlia.

"As best I can determine, the Airlia arrived here about ten housand years ago.

They settled on an island." The professor held up a hand as Turcotte started to ask a question. "Not this island. An island in the other ocean. In the Atlantic.

An island that in human legend has been called Atlantis.

"From there they explored the planet. There was a species native to this planet very much like them." Nabinger smiled. "Us.

"They tried to avoid contact with humans. I'm not totally sure why they were here. I would have to have more contact. I get the impression it might simply have been a scientific expedition, but there is also no doubt that there was a military aspect to it."

"They were taking over the Earth?" Turcotte asked.

"No. We weren't exactly an interstellar threat ten thousand years ago. The Airlia were at war with some other species, or perhaps their own species. I can't quite figure that out from what it told me, but I think it is the former.

The word it used for the enemy was different. And if the enemy had been some of their own I think I would be able to tell because . . ." Nabinger paused. "I'm getting ahead of myself here.

"The Airlia were here for several millennia, rotating personnel in and out for tours of duty. Then something happened--not here on Earth, but in their interstellar battle."

Nabinger ran his hand through his beard.

"The war was not going well and some disaster happened and the Airlia here were cut off. It seems that the enemy could find the Airlia by detecting their interstellar drives." He looked at Von Seeckt. "Now we know the secret of the mothership. The commander of the colony had to make a decision: pack up and try to make a run for it back to safety in their home system or stay. Naturally, the majority of the Airlia wanted to go back. Even if they stayed and weren't spotted, there was always the chance the enemy would find them anyway.

"Of course, if they left, they would be spotted and then it would be a race through space. There was an additional factor too. One that the Airlia commander apparently considered very important. He was the one who programmed the guardian, so most of what I learned is from his perspective. His name was Aspasia.

"Aspasia knew that even if they got away, the trace of their engine would be examined by the enemy and backtracked, and Earth would then be discovered by the others.

He pretty much considered that equivalent to sentencing the planet to destruction. He felt that factor by itself ruled out leaving. The regulations he worked under also said that he could not endanger this planet and the life on it.

"But there were others among the Airlia who weren't so noble or so entranced by the regulations. They wanted to go back and not be stuck on this primitive planet for the rest of their lives. The Airlia fought among themselves.

Aspasia's side won, but he knew that as long as they had the capability to return, it would always be a threat. He also knew that even their enclave on the island, Atlantis, would eventually violate their noninterference regulation.

"So he moved the mothership and hid it. He scattered his people. Some--the rebels--had already dispersed to other parts of the planet. Aspasia hid the seven bouncers down in Antarctica and"--Nabinger pointed over his shoulder--"he moved their central computer, the guardian, here to Easter Island. It was uninhabited then. He took the last two bouncers back to rest with the mother ship." Nabinger took a deep breath. "That is, he did that after he did one last thing. He destroyed their outpost on Atlantis so that if the enemy did come through this solar system, they would not discover that the fire-heads had ever been here. He completely wiped out that trace of their existence here on Earth and hid the rest."

Nabinger looked at the screen. "Aspasia left the guardian on with the foo fighters under its control in case the way of the war changed and his own people came back to his sector of space. Obviously, they never did."

The professor turned from the computer. "Others among the Airlia, those who did not agree with Aspasia, must have tried to leave their own message to their people, knowing the guardian had been left on.

"Now I know the why and how of the pyramids. They were space beacons, built by rebels using the limited technology they found and the human labor they could exploit to try to reach out to their own people if they ever came close enough.

"And the bomb the rebels took. Aspasia knew about that, but he couldn't go in and take it away, not without letting the humans know of his power and existence or without having the rebels set it off.

"You see, the rebels, there weren't many of them. There were never more than a few thousand of the Airlia on the planet at any one time. And they went other places and worked their way in among the humans. Jorgenson's diffusionist theory is correct. There are many connections between all those ancient civilizations, and there is a reason they all started at roughly the same time, but it wasn't because man crossed the ocean. It was because Atlantis was destroyed and the Airlia spread out across the planet."

"I saw a pyramid just like the guardian but smaller, down on the lowest level in Dulce," Turcotte said.

"Yes, that was the computer the rebels hid," Nabinger said. "Not as powerful as the guardian but still far more advanced than anything we could comprehend.

Gullick and his people must have just recovered that this year when the find was made at Jamiltepec in Mexico."

"And Gullick turned it on," Turcotte said, all the pieces falling into place.

"Yes," Nabinger said. "And it didn't work the way Gullick thought. He was no longer in control--the rebel computer was in control of him. It wanted the mothership.

That was the thing the rebels wanted more than anything else: the only way to get home."

Von Seeckt turned to Duncan. "I told you we must not try to fly the mothership.

General Gullick and his people might have brought the wrath of this enemy down upon our planet!"

"I don't think Gullick really knew what he was doing," Turcotte said, rubbing the right side of his head.

"The threat the Airlia faced was thousands of years ago," Duncan noted.

"Certainly--

"Certainly, nothing!" Von Seeckt cut her off. He pointed at the screen behind him. "This thing still works. The foo fighters this computer controls still fly.

The bouncers still fly. What makes you think the enemy's equipment isn't still functioning out there somewhere, waiting to pick up a signal and go in and destroy Earth? The Airlia turned the mothership off because they were obviously losing their war!"

Lisa Duncan nodded. "This is beyond us. We have to bring the President here."

The golden glow suddenly went white, then a three-di-mensional picture appeared.

It showed the early-morning sky and a phalanx of small dots moving across.

"What's that?" Duncan asked.

"You might not get the chance to talk to the President," Turcotte said. "Those are F-16's coming this way."

34

RAPA Nui (EASTER ISLAND)

Gullick sat in the-back of the large Navy helicopter parked on the runway and listened in on the command frequency as the strike force moved in. There was enough ordnance on those planes to reduce the volcano to rubble. After that--Gullick shook his head, trying to get rid of a pounding headache and think clearly. They would have to dig down to the mothership again. And then, then--

"Are you all right, sir?" The navy lieutenant was worried. He didn't know what was going on, but one thing for sure, the shit was hitting the fan.

"I'm fine," Gullick snapped.

"We've got bogeys!" the radar man called out. "Coming up out of the volcano."

The flight leader saw the foo fighters rising up to greet his planes. He'd been in the wardroom when the flight that had been dispatched to set the trap had gone down, their engines shut down by these very same craft.

"Eagle Flight, this is Eagle Six. Abort! Abort!"

The F-16's banked hard and kicked in afterburners, the foo fighters in hot pursuit.

* * *

In the guardian cavern everyone relaxed as they watched the warplanes turn away, followed by the foo fighters.

"Seems like this guardian can take care of itself," Turcotte said.

"Is there any way we can get hold of Washington?" Duncan asked. "I need to get this madman Gullick relieved."

"Can you ask the guardian to let us use the SATCOM radio in the bouncer?"

Turcotte asked Nabinger.

"I'll try," Nabinger replied.

Gullick had one last card up his sleeve. He knew there was an Aegis-class cruiser in the Lincoln battle group. He grabbed the microphone and called the admiral.

The three-dimensional glow suddenly shifted perspective and showed four trails of flame coming off a warship.

"What the hell are those?" Kelly asked, freezing Turcotte and Duncan in their tracks.

Turcotte spun around. "Tomahawk cruise missiles."

"He's going nuclear?" Duncan was shocked.

"No, those probably aren't nuclear, but they carry a hell of a wallop," Turcotte said.

"Do you think the foo fighters can stop them?

"No time. The foo fighters are chasing away the jets,"

Turcotte said. "They're out of position."

They watched, mesmerized, as the four missiles hit supersonic speed and crossed the shoreline of Easter Island, less than three miles away.

"We've got maybe four seconds," Turcotte said.

The image blanked out, then returned, showing the island unchanged.

"What happened?" Kelly asked.

* * *

On the Lincoln the admiral was asking the same question of his staff on the battle bridge. He ignored General Gullick's screamed demands as he talked to the officers working there.

"Near as I can tell, sir, there's some sort of force field around the volcano.

The Tomahawks were destroyed when they hit it."

The admiral rubbed his forehead. He didn't have a clue what was going on. He'd already lost six multimillion-dollar fighters, and now four Tomahawks.

"I demand you launch another strike!" Gullick was yelling on one frequency.

"Sir, I've got communication with someone claiming they are inside that volcano," one of the men said.

"Give me that frequency," the admiral said, ignoring Gullick. He picked up a mike. "This is Admiral Springfield."

"Admiral, this is Lisa Duncan, the President's science adviser. You'd better listen up and listen good. Who authorized you to attack this place?"

"General Gullick, ma'am."

"General Gullick is insane."

"He had the proper authorization codes and--

"Admiral, I want you to get me a direct line to the President. I'll give you my authorization codes to get that call through, and we'll get this all sorted out. Clear?"

The admiral gave a relieved sigh. "Clear, ma'am."

The golden tendril unwrapped itself from around Nabinger's head and returned to the orb. The orb pulsed and seemed to grow larger.

"What's happening?" Kelly asked.

"I don't know," Nabinger replied. "As much as I'm getting information from the guardian, it's getting information from me."

* * *

On Easter Island, Gullick was still yelling into the radio in the back of the helicopter when the navy lieutenant took off his headset and looked at the general. "Sir, I'm under orders to take you into custody."

Gullick's face twitched and he ripped off his own headset. "What? Who the hell do you think you are?"

"I have orders to take you into custody," the lieutenant repeated. He laid a hand on Gullick's arm and Gullick ripped it away.

"Don't you dare! I had served my country for over thirty years. This can not happen. We must succeed. We must fly the ship."