Humanity Unlimited 1: Liberty Station (3 page)

Abel grinned. “This is the most important find of this century and possibly any other. This city is probably from the late classical Mayan period, so around AD 700 to 900. I need your help in deciphering something critical.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “I’m an engineer. What I remember about archaeology wouldn’t fill a small notebook.”

“It would be much easier to show you. I’ve kept details on this particular aspect of the dig quiet. If word gets out, it will draw the wrong kind of attention. You’ve studied astronomy and other esoteric space skills for your work in orbit. That is the kind of assistance I need.”

Jess blinked in surprise. “Seriously? How can that possibly be useful?”

“Come inside and I will show you.”

Abel led her to a formidable pyramid. Someone had cleared part of it and she could see the ancient stones as they climbed the steps to the top. He grabbed a pair of flashlights sitting with some equipment and took her inside. They’d strung lights, but there were still pools of darkness between the widely spaced bulbs.

He led her down through a confusing series of shafts and rooms. They moved too quickly for her to do more than glance at the stonework. Carvings worn with age covered some sections of the walls. She couldn’t tell much about them. The stone beneath their feet was rubbed smooth by the passage of unnumbered feet. The almost oppressive weight of the ancient building above them made her crouch lower as they walked.

He finally reached a large chamber with a well in the center of the floor. Now every bit of stone contained images that tugged at her memory. She’d seen similar carvings in textbooks back in college. The room looked very important.

Oddly, they had passed no other people while getting here.

“Where is everyone?” she asked.

“Outside. I couldn’t allow them to see the last chamber I found.”

Jess saw that someone had put a wooden ladder inside the well when she stepped close. Rather than leading to water, it took them down to a chamber with four evenly spaced tunnels leading away into the earth.

Unlike the chamber above, this area was purely functional. None of the tunnels looked very stable, but one seemed particularly shaky. Someone had braced it with makeshift wooden beams. That was, of course, the direction Abel led her.

She eyed the ceiling warily. “That doesn’t seem very safe.”

“It’s good enough for the moment,” he said. “We’ll bring in stouter timbers once we have the find fully documented. Word cannot be allowed to spread or looters will descend on this place like a biblical plague.”

She ducked down and followed him through a twisting passage that led to another chamber. It was at least twice the size of the one above them. Rather than the rectangular shape she’d expected, it was circular. Except for the far wall, which was flat. The center of the room held another well. This one might even be real, as she could hear what sounded like water below.

The wall froze her in place. It held something impossible.

Though stylized, the inlay was obviously a map of the solar system. She remembered enough to know the Mayans didn’t display their representations of the planets like this. They made sky bands showing the planets and representing the paths they followed overhead.

Yet the scene before her wouldn’t be out of place in modern America. It clearly showed the sun as the center of the solar system. Something she wasn’t certain the Mayans had known. Even the spacing between the planets looked approximately correct. Each world had a line of inlayed gold for its orbital path.

Abel gestured toward the wall unnecessarily. “You see why I contacted you? This cannot exist, yet it does. I need you to tell me if this is some kind of elaborate forgery. It seems to be as old as the ruin, but I can no longer trust my judgment.”

Jess stepped closer and examined the jade insets representing the planets. They were about the right sizes, even for the worlds the Mayans shouldn’t have known existed. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but they only knew about the visible planets, right?”

“That’s correct,” he confirmed. “They knew of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon. They might also have been aware of one or two of the largest asteroids. Ceres and possibly Vesta. That’s it.”

She pointed at the worlds outside Jupiter’s orbit. “Yet here we have the outer planets. This shows the moons around them as little chips of jade. Even Pluto, Charon and Eris.

“And one even further out. A big one. I’ve read that scientists suspected that there were a few undiscovered bodies out there of significant size, but this one is almost as big as Earth. Quite the discovery, if true. How could the Mayan’s know any of this?”

The archaeologist shrugged. “I have no idea. And that’s not all. See this?” He pointed to another orbit, this one going around the sun inside Mercury and out beyond Eris. Its orbital path was inlayed with what looked like oxidized silver. “This looks like a comet. And here along its path? These markings are faint, but I think they’re dates from the Mayan calendar.”

The marks meant nothing to her, but she could look them up at some later point. “May I take pictures?”

“Of course, so long as you promise to keep them confidential.”

“I don’t imagine I’ll need to talk to anyone about it. There’s a very large database of heavenly bodies and their orbits. I can check it myself and use some computer time to see if these marks indicate a real time that matches any known orbits.”

He nodded slowly. “Take your pictures and we can go back to camp. Dinner will be ready soon. We have much to discuss.”

* * * * *

Nathan Bennett scanned the endless jungle outside the helicopter door. How could anyone find anything in this green hell? They could’ve flown over the target a half dozen times and been none the wiser.

His money had gotten them information that led to the river drop off, but none of the people he’d bribed had known where the ruins were located. They might be an easy day’s walk or a week down some hidden trail. He had to keep looking, though, because Mommy Dearest wanted this woman.

Not that he cared, but the target was an important cog in his father’s space hotel scheme. That idiocy seemed to matter to the old man, so his mother knew any disruption she could manage there would hurt him. And that’s what she wanted most in the world: to hurt her ex-husband, no matter the cost.

He’d rolled his eyes and loaded a team on his private jet when she’d ordered him to do so. He couldn’t imagine what use his mother would get from a space engineer. That made no sense at all.

Perhaps it was because she’d lost a lot of money and prestige when the US space program had collapsed. A decade ago, the liberal politicians in charge of the Federal government had wanted the money being “wasted” on the new ISS2 space station to go to public projects for the people who’d elected them.

The conservative minority had gone along so that some money could go to military spending. Unsurprisingly with the reduced budget, the project had come apart. Massive computer design failures crippled the control center when none of the software worked as promised. And his mother had already fired the people who could’ve walked the systems back to something workable to increase her profit margin.

In space, the station construction fell far behind schedule, even with the corners she’d cut, and the estimated costs rose precipitously. The government didn’t do what his mother had expected, which was to pay through the nose to complete the work.

Instead, they terminated the contract. Lagrange Multinational—his mother’s space company—had gone bankrupt, saddling her with massive debt and splashing egg all over her face.

The Russian government bought out all the international partners for pennies on the dollar, though he knew they didn’t have the spare cash to complete the proposed station. They were far too busy subverting and invading the nations of the old Soviet Union while the US stood around uselessly waving its hands.

Not that Nathan cared. Whatever his mother wanted, she got. So long as she paid.

“Smoke at two o’clock,” the pilot said over the intercom.

Nathan looked ahead of them and spotted it. Thin and grey, but undoubtedly smoke. “Find a place to set us down.”

“I might be able to drop you in the river, but that’s six or seven miles away. I haven’t seen a single break in the canopy.”

“Keep looking,” Nathan snarled. “I’m not dropping into the water and hacking my way through the jungle. I need a place where you can pick us back up.” Carrying an unwilling guest through this would be a nightmare.

His second in command, a bruiser named Jake Farley, jerked his chin toward the open door. “Why not drop in on top of them? We can rappel into their camp and get this over with.”

Nathan gave him a steady look. “Because this isn’t going down like the job in Syria. There’s far less paperwork for me if we don’t kill everyone that might recognize the helicopter or us.”

“It’s easier for me,” Jake said indifferently.

“Right up until one of the local guards shoots you while you try to get untangled from a tree. We do this my way.”

The man shrugged. “Whatever.”

Nathan really needed to get some new blood on the team.

The pilot circled around the ruins at a distance. The jungle would dampen the sound of the helicopter rotors to a soft murmur. Technology couldn’t completely eliminate the noise, but it was a lot better than it had been around the turn of the century. In his line of work, getting in and out quietly made the high cost of the equipment a no-brainer.

He finally caught a break about ten minutes later. A tree-covered hill rose above the canopy. The area it shaded from the sun had a relatively bare spot they could rappel into. He tapped the pilot on the shoulder and pointed. “We’ll go in there. How long for you to get here when I call?”

“About ninety minutes. Add half an hour to get the bird ready.”

“Bullshit. Keep the bird ready to roll. When I call, I want you in the air in ten minutes.”

The pilot’s acknowledgement was more than a bit surly, but Nathan knew the man would do what he’d told him. He’d seen firsthand the kind of pain Nathan could inflict on those who failed him.

It was already late in the day, so Nathan would get them settled in and wait out the darkness. Under other circumstances, he’d prefer to attack at night, but it would be far too easy to break legs and fall into holes stumbling through the wilds of Guatemala. Or be eaten by something. They’d strike out at dawn, locate the camp, and take the woman.

The pilot brought the helicopter to a hover over the bare patch and Nathan tossed his rope out the open door. He watched it fall to make sure it didn’t kink. That could cause someone to lose their grip and fall right to the ground. That would be their problem, of course, but he didn’t want to have less than a full team when he got to the camp.

Nathan checked his harness, took off his headphones, and stepped out onto the helicopter’s skid tube. One last check below and he kicked off, using his braking hand to control the speed of his descent. He slowed to a crawl just above the ground and landed lightly on his feet.

It took only a moment to disconnect his D-ring and raise his weapon to cover the landing zone. He stepped away from the rope and watched as his people come in with mild satisfaction. All six of them made it to the ground safely.

They spread out to watch every approach to the LZ as the crew chief pulled the ropes back up. The helicopter turned and headed back for the airfield.

Nathan led the way into the jungle. It stank, and there must’ve been a million different creatures making suspicions noises in the gloom. He couldn’t imagine why anyone would choose to live in a shithole like this.

The already faint light dropped off to almost nothing under the canopy. The way became congested with undergrowth so thick he had to put his rifle away and draw his machete.

This job was going to be a real pleasure. Thank God he’d fought hard for a bonus.

Chapter Three

The rented boat dropped Harry and his team off at what he might charitably call a dock just after dawn. It only extended into the river far enough to allow a shallow-drafted craft to use it. That was just barely enough, but it beat swimming.

He showed the owner of the boat a small wad of American dollars. His Spanish was good enough to get his message across. “You come back when I call you and this is yours.”

The skinny man shook his head. “Yes.”

Harry gave him a steady look. “If you don’t come when I call, I’ll take back what I paid you up front, even if you’ve already spent it. Understand?”

The man swallowed hard. “I understand. I will do as you say.”

“That will make me very happy. And when I’m happy, everyone else is happy, too.”

The team hefted their packs and stepped onto the dock one at a time.

His sniper, Sandra Dean, watched the boat head back the way they’d come. “Did you really need to go all hardass on him, Harry? We look like mercenaries in an action movie. He’s not crazy enough to double-cross us.”

He grinned. “I’m living up to the image. If we need to get out of here in a hurry, we don’t want him stopping for a beer.” He eyed the trail and shouldered his pack. “Time to hit the road. I’d prefer to be long gone by the time my unlamented brother arrives.”

* * * * *

Jessica stepped out of her tent and stared groggily at the cheerful people preparing breakfast. Actually, a glance at her watch showed they were getting ready for lunch. It was almost ten in the morning. She’d slept far longer than she’d intended.

Of course, she’d been up late studying all the pictures she’d taken yesterday. Not just of the amazing art deep in the pyramid, but of everything else inside the ancient building that they’d seen on the more sedate trip back out.

As far she could tell, only the one work was unusual. None of the other carvings, inlays, or paintings Abel had showed her after the big reveal held even a hint at the great secret buried deep inside the base of the ancient structure.