The Sphinx

CHAPTER 15

Larry Kincaid had worked around scientists all his life and was a scientist himself, but he had little patience for the intellectual type whose specialty was so narrow they couldn’t program their VCR. The scientist in front of him was one of those, and Kincaid had to force himself to try to figure out what the man was trying to say as he babbled at the mouth.

Joe Forrester was a NASA specialist and the head of the Hubble Telescope division. Forrester fit the NASA geek stereotype to a T, even to the extent of the pocket protector holding his pens and the sophisticated calculator behind the protector. His wire-rimmed glasses held thick lenses, and Kincaid found himself disoriented every time he tried to look the man in the eyes.

Kincaid was one of the few left at JPL and NASA from the early, exciting days of the space program. He wasn’t a specialist, but a jack-of-all-trades. He had been mission head for all Mars launches, a job that had thrust him into the spotlight when the Airlia base on Mars had been uncovered in the Cydonia region. He’d brought Forrester to Area 51 to coordinate surveillance on the Airlia base on Mars.

“Hubble is capable of tracking moving targets with the same precision as for fixed targets.” Forrester spoke as he typed into his laptop, which was hooked into the secure Department of Defense Interlink. “The images you had of Mars before were just snapshots taken by the Hubble’s FOC… faint object camera.”

Kincaid had dealt with men like this for decades, so he knew enough to just let Forrester talk as he worked.

“To track a moving object in our solar system we maintain a FGS… fine guidance sensor… fine lock on guide stars, and drive the FGS star sensors in the appropriate path, thus moving Hubble to track the target. Tracking under FGS control is technically possible for apparent target motions up to five arcsec.” Forrester looked up. “That is how we were initially able to follow the talon fleet as it came toward Earth.

“However, as happened in that case, this technique becomes unfeasible for targets moving more than a few tenths of an arcsec. What we do then is begin observations under FGS control and then switch over to gyros when the guide stars have moved out of the FGS field of view. If sufficient guide stars are available, it is possible to hand off from one pair to another, but this will typically incur an additional pointing error.”

With great difficulty, Kincaid still said nothing.

“Targets moving too fast for FGS control, but slower than seven point eight arcsec, can be observed under gyro control, with a loss in precision that depends on the length of the observation.”

“Can you see Mars?” Kincaid finally asked.

“We’ve always been able to see Mars,” Forrester said. “What you want is to see it with the full capabilities of Hubble, and I’m trying to explain to you what is needed to accomplish that.” Forrester continued without missing a beat. “The track for a moving target such as Mars is derived from its orbital elements. Orbital elements for all of the planets and most of their satellites are available at STScl. Moreover, STScl has access to the ASTCOM database, maintained by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory… which you have so kindly provided me with through the Interlink… which includes orbital elements for Mars.”

Forrester hit a key. “And thus we can get a tight shot, with the best that Hubble has to offer, of the target area in the Cydonia region you gave me. Much better resolution than we had before.”

Kincaid stared over the man’s shoulder as pixels changed color on the screen and a picture began to appear.

The most noticeable thing that became coherent in the image was the bright reflection from the large solar array from the open “pyramid.” It was still intact, no damage from the nuclear explosion apparent. The “Fort” where the talons had taken off from also became visible, the roof still open, the interior empty.

“At least they have no backup ships,” Kincaid muttered.

The “Face” on Mars, a massive structure two and a half kilometers long by two kilometers wide, and over four hundred meters high, appeared next.

“I wonder what that thing is,” Kincaid said.

“We’ve taken quite a few shots of the so-called Face,” Forrester said. “To those pictures we’ve applied bit-error correction, reseau removal, and brightness alteration. Then we’ve projected the images to a standard Mercator view. Two things we didn’t do that had been done with the previous photos of the Cydonia region… and which caused much of the controversy whether there was an actual ‘face’… were contrast/brightness enhancement and image sharpening. The reason we didn’t do those is that using those techniques would create different images, depending on the monitor on which they were viewed, and NASA didn’t want to get embroiled in the controversy.

“Another problem with much of the earlier imaging was the problem of accounting for shading. For example, light on one side of a slope can greatly distort the image of a hill. To account for this, we use a technique called shape-from-shading. We have even been able to project images of the Cydonia region so that it appears as if you are viewing it from a ground-level view.”

Kincaid waited, still not having received an answer. He often wondered about these men who called themselves scientists… to Kincaid they were technicians, experts at their field of study but with little interest in fields outside their own, and worse, little imagination.

The image of a “face” on Mars had been noted as far back as the 1970s, when the first Viking orbiter had taken pictures. The fact that NASA had never investigated the strange anomaly further until now and called it a natural phenomenon Kincaid knew lay with the influence of STAAR.

“So what is it?”

“Here.” Forrester turned his laptop so Kincaid could see the screen. “Looks like a bunch of rubble,” Kincaid said.

“It is,” Forrester said.

“Rubble of what?”

“We have no idea.”

“Can you print me a copy?” Kincaid asked.

“Certainly.” Forrester hit the enter key on his laptop. The printer hummed and a piece of paper rolled out. Kincaid looked at it. Something wasn’t quite right. He grabbed a magnifying glass and studied the image. He pulled open a file folder and retrieved an image of the same area made by Surveyor before it was destroyed. He put the two side by side and began comparing them.

“What the hell is that?”

There was something in the new image, to the side of the solar panels and Fort, in the direction of the Face. It wasn’t there in the earlier Surveyor picture. It could be an equipment problem, but Kincaid had a feeling it wasn’t. “Can you get a better image of this spot?” Kincaid asked, pointing to the small, darker-colored area that disturbed him.

“I can try different spectrums,” the scientist said. “Also, we’ll get some slightly different angles due to Hubble’s and Mars’ relative positions changing. Not much, but some.” He typed in some commands. “By the way, you were quite correct about the Face.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s not a face carved into the surface, as many UFOlogists wanted to believe. But it’s not natural either. It does indeed appear to be rubble. As best we can determine, there was a larger structure or mountain there and it was severely damaged.”

“By what?”

“We don’t know. There doesn’t appear to be any volcanic activity in the region, so perhaps an earthquake?”

“Or maybe the Airlia?” Kincaid didn’t wait for an answer. “Any idea at all what was there originally?”

“No.”

Another piece of paper came out of the printer. The black smear was still present.

“How large is this black area?” Kincaid asked.

The scientist looked at it, then pulled out a clear plastic rectangle with various measurements on it. He measured, then punched into a calculator. “About five hundred meters long by sixty wide.”

“Any idea what it is?”

“No, but it appears to be moving.” Forrester pulled a picture out of his briefcase. “This is imagery from last week. Notice the change in location. Appears to be moving from the Fort area toward the Face.”

Kincaid tapped the photo. “Keep Hubble on that site.”

Forester looked as if Kincaid had just asked him to commit a felony. “Hubble’s time has been locked in for over two years. Taking it off-line like that… well, there’s going to be a lot of very upset… ” The scientist paused when he saw the look on Kincaid’s face.

Kincaid returned his attention to the imagery for several seconds, deep in thought. What the hell were the Airlia doing? What had been where the Face was now? And what had destroyed that object, whatever it was? And why were the Airlia sending something across the surface toward it? And what were they sending?

Kincaid reached into a drawer and pulled out a handful of ibuprofen and popped them into his mouth, washing the painkillers down with coffee, hoping it would help with the raging headache these pictures had incited.

He looked up as another of his specialists entered the Cube. This one did not look like the scientist geek; he sported a Fu Manchu mustache, his long hair was tied in a ponytail, and he wore torn jeans and a black T-shirt.

“Give me some good news, Gordon.” Kincaid had taken over all scientific aspects of the Airlia investigation for Major Quinn. The newcomer was the computer expert into whose care the STAAR hard drives from Scorpion Base that Turcotte had recovered had been entrusted. The drives had been hastily wiped clean as STAAR abandoned the base, but Gordon was trying to recover the “shadow” of the information that was on them. The major problem he’d run into was that it seemed STAAR had also been trying to recover lost information, so they were two steps removed from what they wanted.

“We’re still tracking keywords according to Dr. Duncan’s instructions… Key, The Mission, and Ark.” Mike Gordon sat down across from Kincaid and rubbed his hands across his eyes.

“Anything?”

“Nothing on those words.”

“What do you have?”

“That name of the Guide from the Inquisition… Domeka… we’ve found it again in a couple of places.” Kincaid held out his hand. “Give me what you have.” Gordon handed over a file. Kincaid pointed a finger. “Get back to work.”

“It’s dead.” Yakov tapped the glass, as one would the side of an aquarium to get the fishes’ attention.

“What is it?”

Katyenka had turned on the small computer terminal at the base of the tank. The screen glowed with Cyrillic writing. “It says here it is called Otdel Rukopashnyi.”

“What does that mean?” Turcotte asked.

Katyenka translated. “Literally that means ‘sections of hands.’ They shortened that here to Okpashnyi. According to what I’m reading, they had no idea what it is.”

“I heard nothing of this being found,” Yakov said.

Katyenka had scrolled down. “As you noted, it was recovered at the end of the Great Patriotic War from the rubble of Berlin.”

“Ah,” Yakov said. “That makes sense. As I told you earlier, Section Four began during the war, when our aircraft encountered what you call foo fighters. But we had no idea of the scope of what we were dealing with, until we found what the Germans had.”

Turcotte was very familiar with the German interest in the alien and occult. “The Nazis were very hot after any sort of strange information or material,” Turcotte said. “They were the ones who were the first to realize the significance of the high runes.”

“They were also big believers in UFOs,” Yakov said. “They had enough information in the records we recovered to make your Project Blue Book look like a thin file.

“They knew the foo fighters were something very different the first time their aircraft encountered them. The Luftwaffe lost many planes trying to shoot a foo fighter down. They also sent many expeditions around the world, searching down clues for anything that seemed abnormal or paranormal. Hitler was obsessed with the subject.”

“What does that have to do with Ivan there?” Turcotte forced himself to look at the strange creature.

Katyenka answered that. “They must have found it in the same vault as the German foo fighter and other alien information files. That led the Section Four scientists to assume, besides the fact no one’s ever seen anything like that in the natural world, that it is extraterrestrial in origin. It is possible that it is some bizarre creation that came from the Nazi butchers in the camps, but they did not think so.”

“It’s an organism?” Turcotte confirmed.

Katyenka nodded. “Yes.”

“An Airlia pet?”

“They had no idea.”

“Was it found with Airlia artifacts?”

“It doesn’t say.” Katyenka had finished reading the material available. “It does say there were two found. The German scientists did an autopsy on the other one.”

“That’s one thing?” Turcotte stared at the parts floating in the solution.

Katyenka tapped the glass. “The center part… the ball with the eyes… is the head, as near as they could determine. The Germans found a four-hemisphere brain housed inside a very hard protective covering, much stronger than our human skull. The brain was complex, similar to ours but different in some key ways, besides having twice as many hemispheres.

“The other things… well, those are arms, legs, whatever. Each one is the same. The strange thing… well, there are many strange things… is that each arm has a small, complex stem of its own at the thick end, the end that connects with the ball. Perhaps just a nervous system end point, but it appeared to be more than that.”

“Why did they take all the arms off?” Turcotte asked, trying to assimilate this information.

“They didn’t. That’s the way it was found in the Nazi archives. From the autopsy it was determined that the arms… well, the best they could figure was that they were detachable and interchangeable. Not only on the main body.” She looked up from the computer screen and pointed. “See those humps? That’s where the arms attach, but possibly even between different main bodies.”

Turcotte blinked. “You’re joking. Like I could give you my arm.”

Katyenka shrugged. “That is a theory postulated by the scientists who left this record.”

“But what is it?’ Turcotte said. “Where did it come from?”

“We recovered much from the Nazis, but not everything. After all, you got the Airlia atom bomb. And there is much the Nazis didn’t find.”

Turcotte tried to imagine the thing in the tank alive, the arms attached, the three fingers at the end of each arm moving.

He shuddered.

Lisa Duncan paused in the door of the conference room and surveyed the two men already inside. Major Quinn had an unlit cigarette in his hands, turning it over and over. Larry Kincaid’s hands were wrapped around a large coffee mug, dark bags under his eyes, his gaze unfocused. In the corner of the room a clock indicated that Lexina’s deadline was only twenty-seven hours away.

She stepped inside, ushering Professor Mualama to a seat near the end of the table. She quickly made introductions.

“What happened in Montana?” she asked Quinn.

Quinn’s report was brief. “The NSA authorized use of an ICBM called Interdictor to try to take out the talon and Warfighter with a nuclear warhead. Somehow Lexina must have gotten intelligence about that and fired first. The warhead went off in the silo. Local damage was minimal, as the silo site was remote, but fallout could be a problem. Luckily, there are no winds in the area right now.”

“How did Lexina learn of the planned launch?” Duncan sat down at the end of the conference table, Mualama flanking her to the right.

Quinn shrugged. “A leak somewhere. We have to assume STAAR still has operatives infiltrated throughout the military and government.”

“Is the NSA planning any further action against the talon?” Duncan asked. “Not that they will admit to me,” Quinn said.

“Anything on the key?”

“No.”

“Anything on the runes?” she asked. She’d sent an image of the stone marker ahead via SATCOM to Quinn so the UNAOC high rune experts could take a look at them.

“Nothing so far,” Quinn said. “They’re still working on it.”

“That’s helpful.” Duncan’s tone indicated how she felt about that. “And the skeleton we brought back?”

“Sent to the lab,” Quinn said. “It will be examined.”

“Any word from Turcotte?”

“Nothing. Last report was he was landing at Stantsiya Chyort.”

Duncan turned to her right. “Dr. Mualama, anything you care to say?”

Mualama steepled his fingers together. “It is obvious that the Airlia have been on this planet for a very long time. The discovery of this particular corpse is the first Airlia body that we know of that has been found. The dating of the grave site puts it about ten thousand years ago, or after the destruction of Atlantis.”

“We know the Airlia have been here a long time,” Quinn said wearily.

“But the thing you don’t know,” Mualama said, “is how much influence the Airlia have had on our development. Initially, Professor Nabinger believed they had little to do with us after they destroyed Atlantis over thirteen thousand years ago. However, the skeleton site was newer than that, and the marker on top of the coffin was only about two to three thousand years old. Someone put that marker there a long time after the coffin was in place.

“The question that has to be answered is how much interference have the Airlia had in our history? Think of the discoveries by Professor Nabinger in China about the Great Wall and the tomb of Qian-Ling. The possible true purpose of the Great Pyramid that he uncovered. The guardian on Easter Island, the statues there that we now know mimic the Airlia themselves.” Mualama leaned forward. “We have to reevaluate everything we think we know about our history.”

“We know that,” Duncan said. “We’ve discovered other interference. We know the Guides from The Mission have been active at times throughout our history. We believe the Black Death in the Dark Ages was caused by The Mission. The thing we don’t know is why the various Airlia factions have been doing what they’ve been doing other than it appears to be a continuation of the millennia-old civil war and we happen to be caught in the middle.”

A phone buzzed, and Quinn picked it up. He listened for a second, then put his hand over the receiver. “We finally have Captain Turcotte on the SATPhone.”

”Put it on the speaker,” Duncan ordered. She leaned forward. “Mike, you there?”

Turcotte’s voice sounded clear, relayed through Department of Defense satellites from his location in Russia. “Yes.”

“The control for the talon?”

“Stolen.” Turcotte quickly updated her. “At least we know why Section Four was attacked,” he concluded.

Duncan told him of the explosion in Montana. Then she moved on to the actions off Easter Island.

“I think I know what happened to the Washington.” Duncan had been checking databases about that during the flight back. She’d had imagery of the aircraft carrier relayed to Turcotte’s bouncer. “I think the guardian sucked up a lot of information on nanotechnology from the Interlink and used it.”

“I’ve never heard of nanotechnology,” Turcotte said. “What is it?”

“It’s only a theory to us,” Duncan said. “We’re several decades from actually applying the theory.”

“It looks like it took the guardian only a couple of days to go from theory to application,” Turcotte noted.

“It makes sense,” Duncan said. “If I was the guardian, nanotechnology would be the way I would go.”

“And what way is that exactly?” Turcotte asked.

“The best analogy I can give you,” Duncan said, “is to think about the way computers deal with information. They can process it, change it, and reproduce it by themselves at practically no cost. They do that by breaking the information down to bits, the most basic level, and then manipulating or reproducing it.

“Imagine if a machine could do the same thing structurally at the atomic level. The real kicker to it is that it is almost like inventing a new virus, a machine virus, because the nanomachines are capable of taking new material, manipulating it molecule by molecule, and reproducing. A nanorobot can break down a molecule, change it, and eventually make another nanorobot.”

“So that was the virus that invaded the Washington?” Turcotte asked.

“Yes. The nanorobots were able to take apart the material of the Washington at the molecular level.”

“Jesus,” Turcotte exclaimed. “What about the people these things touched?”

“I don’t know,” Duncan said.

“There were over six thousand people on board the Washington,” Turcotte said.

“I know that. The Navy picked up almost four thousand crew members out of the ocean. They jumped overboard when Admiral Poldan gave the order.”

“And the other two thousand crew? We don’t know what happened to them?”

“From Poldan’s last transmissions, we know some of them were killed. The rest, well, I would have to assume they have been … the only word I could use is captured.”

“Can nanotechnology affect humans?” Turcotte asked.

“In various ways, yes.”

“Goddamn!” Turcotte exploded. “We stopped the Black Death and now we have this?”

“Nanotechnology,” Duncan said, “is the wave of the future in almost every area. It will revolutionize practically everything we know. Think of machines built at the molecular level able to go inside our bodies and help maintain them. Machines that can attack cholesterol at the molecular level in our bloodstream. Or be designed specifically to attack cancer cells.

“And nanotechnology removes waste in construction. Since the building is done at the molecular level, there is no excess or lost material. It is also extremely efficient of energy. It’s like”… Duncan paused, searching for an analogy… “like having a machine that is a paper copier, except dealing with machines rather than paper images… it would be able to make copies of anything.

“A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter,” Duncan continued. “You get about ten atoms per nanometer. What I think the guardian has mastered that we can’t do yet is be able to work the atoms individually and place them where it wants. We’ve barely begun to work at microtechnology, which are small robots you can see. You can’t even see a nanorobot.

“I call it a virus, because it’s the mechanical sibling of the organic virus. Capable of replicating on its own, operating at a level even smaller than that of organic viruses.”

“What is the guardian going to do now that it has mastered this?”

“I don’t know,” Duncan said.

“We’d better come up with something,” Turcotte said, “because it just sucked up the most powerful weapon system on the face of this planet. How many nuclear warheads were on board the Washington?”

“Eight.”

“Great.”

“Don’t forget that the Washington also had two nuclear reactors,” Duncan added. She leaned forward, and her voice lowered. “I think this is going to force UNAOC’s hand. They’re going to have to attack Easter Island.”

“Then you’d better hope those two thousand sailors are really dead,” Turcotte said.

“Even if they aren’t,” Duncan said, “when you have a virus, sometimes you have to cut off the infected part.”

“Jesus!” Turcotte exclaimed. “That’s a bit cold.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Duncan quickly said. Her hands were pressed against the side of her head. The others in the room were watching her, not able to offer any support.

“I know you didn’t, but is that the way UNAOC is going to look at it?” Turcotte asked. “When I was getting ready to go on an operation, we always had to ask ourselves some hard questions. One of those questions was what we would do if we had someone wounded and he couldn’t keep up with us.

“It’s real easy in the movies for that guy to volunteer to stay behind, or for someone to make the decision to leave that guy behind with a pack of cigarettes in one hand and a gun in the other, but in real life it’s a whole different ball game. Because the question we would ask was what if it was me, not some other guy.” His voice was tight. “Me that was the one who was wounded. The one we were talking about leaving behind. The one on Easter Island we’re talking about nuking.”

“I understand, Mike, but this is out of our hands now.”

“I know, but goddamn, two thousand men! And Kelly Reynolds, let’s not forget she’s still there.”

Duncan sighed. “Mike, let’s let UNAOC take care of this. The good thing is that Easter Island is very isolated. Whatever the guardian has planned, I hope we can contain it. Let’s keep our focus on finding this key. That’s the most immediate problem.”

“What about Che Lu?” Turcotte changed the subject.

“There’s not much we can do about that either. We haven’t heard from her since the nuke went off. The Chinese have sealed their borders.”

“Goddamn,” Turcotte swore. “This is ridiculous. We’re not only fighting the aliens, we’re fighting ourselves again.”

“Mike, I know that. We have to do the best we can.”

“And if it’s not good enough?” There was a short pause. “Does anyone there have anything useful?” Turcotte finally asked.

“I will try to interpret the high runes on the stone,” Mualama said. “I believe it will lead us to an even more significant find.”

“I have something.” Kincaid opened a folder. “My computer whiz guys have extracted more from the Scorpion hard drives.”

He handed a copy to each person and read it out loud so Turcotte could get it.

“This is most interesting,” Mualama said.

The others in the room looked up from their copy of the downloaded document. “If The Mission influenced the Crusades, they might have had an ulterior motive,” Mualama continued.

“Of course they did,” Duncan said. “They wanted to keep the human race in check.”

“No.” Mualama shook his head. “I am speaking of something much more specific. Europeans going to the Holy Land… perhaps The Mission was searching for something?”

A new voice came out of the speakerphone… Yakov’s deeply accented rumble. “And Kon Tiki Viracocha… the god that the Aymara in Tiahuanaco worshiped. Who was this Domeka? Was he Kon Tiki?”

Duncan put down the printout. “This is more information that leads nowhere. We need information that tells us about the key and where it might be. Right now… ”

The door to the conference room opened and Mike Gordon stepped in. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, sounding not sorry in the least. He waved a piece of paper at Duncan. “I thought you better see this right away.

She took it and read it out loud. “‘Appendix Two, cross references The Mission and Domeka. Research reconstruction and field report. Dated ten, twenty-one, ninety-two by Coridan.

“‘Overview: While recovering information about the Inquisition I pulled up a partial file about a figure named Domeka. No doubt a Guide who participated in the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Spanish exploration/exploitation of the New World.

“‘It is interesting to speculate that Domeka might not be one person but a reincarnation using a guardian imprint of the same mind on different subjects. Because the alternative… that the Domeka involved in these events is the same person… means that this individual has lived for over a thousand years, the latter figure devolved from the most recent revelation, that Domeka was a member of the Nazi party in the 1930s and a close confidant of the Fuhrer.

“‘There is no doubt that The Mission was intimately involved in the Nazi death camps. Also, the numerous operations mounted by the Nazis that have a direct bearing on Airlia artifacts:

“‘Bimini/Atlantis search by submarines, 1930s.

“‘The Great Pyramid SS expedition, 1941.

“‘Tunguska expedition, 1934.

“‘The Spear of Destiny, also known among us as the key of destiny!’” Duncan’s voice rose on the last sentence.

“Does it say where this Spear is?” Turcotte’s voice was as excited as hers. Duncan looked up from the paper at Gordon.

He shook his head. “Data retrieval failed from that point on. We’re still looking through the rest of the hard drives.”

“There might be another person… ” Turcotte began, but Duncan’s mind had already raced to that conclusion.

“Von Seeckt,” Duncan hissed as she threw the printout down on the conference table. “He knows more than he has told us.”

Yakov’s bitter laughter came through the speaker. “I told you that you could not trust the Nazis.”

Duncan stood. “Mike, get back here as soon as possible.”

“Roger that,” Turcotte answered.

“Major Quinn and Mr. Kincaid. I want to know more from the hard drives… anything at all about the Spear of Destiny or keys… and I want the medical evaluation of those bones, ASAP.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the two answered in unison.

“Professor Mualama. If you could help our linguists decipher what is on the stone you brought, it would help tremendously.” She turned for the door. “Let’s move, people. The clock is ticking. I’m going to see von Seeckt.”

Kelly Reynolds was more “alive” than she had been since she’d made contact with the guardian. It was as if the alien computer no longer needed her but didn’t want to discard her yet, just in case. The part of her mind that was still her self, her identity, found that darkly amusing, reminding Kelly of her mother, who could never throw anything out and as a result ended up with a garage full of items she might need someday but never did.

Kelly didn’t think someday would come in this case either. The guardian was reaching into the world now, bringing what it needed to it. Kelly “knew” of the fate of the Washington, and the message the guardian had sent with her name on it.

The guardian was doing thousands of things at once, absorbing information, giving commands, testing theories, planning actions, in communication with Mars. And Kelly knew that although it made human computers look likes abacuses in comparison, the guardian was still only a machine.

So as it learned about humans through her, she learned about it.