Excalibur

CHAPTER 6: THE PRESENT

Aspasia’s Shadow lay perfectly still. His eyes were closed and his chest was barely moving. His body was bathed in the golden light of the guardian. The Grail was on the table next to him.

There were two things happening in the chamber.

Kelly Reynolds’s wasted body was twitching and vibrating as her mind struggled to find a way to send out a message of warning and information. She had picked out the critical parts of Aspasia’s Shadow’s plan and knew she had to get the information out. And she was quite close to accomplishing that very thing.

And at the end of Aspasia’s Shadow’s right arm, at the severed wrist, where raw flesh and bone met the air, there was a black-and-red foam bubbling up. And millimeter by millimeter, a new hand began to grow.

The Chinese president held a videotape in his hand as he entered the hall of the National People’s Conference. The buzz among the delegates about the suddenly called Assembly fell away to respectful silence as the president made his way to the front of the hall.

Just before he mounted the podium, he handed the video to a technician. He took his place behind the microphone.

“The videotaped message I am about to show you was just received by my office. It was transmitted from Qian-Ling.”

He gestured and the room went dim. The large screen behind him flickered. A short Chinese man in a golden robe appeared. Behind him was a seven-foot-tall alien with red cat eyes and red hair. There was absolute silence in the hall. The creature — an Airlia they knew from news reports from the West — began speaking in a singsong voice. The man in front translated in Chinese.

The speech went on for ten minutes but the summation was simple: join Artad or be his enemy. And Artad’s Shadow had been Shi Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, the founder of China as they knew it. They had less than one hour to vote and make their decision.

When the screen went blank the hall exploded in pandemonium.

Turcotte cursed. A buzzing noise had been sounding for the last minute. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his SATPhone. He cocked his arm back to throw it away. He was about a hundred meters away from the runway, a kilometer away from Area 51 and still walking into the desert.

Turcotte sat down in the sand. The phone continued to ring. Decades of training fought with his emotions. Discipline versus feeling. He flipped the phone open. “What?”

“It’s Quinn. The Chinese have been issued an ultimatum by Artad. Join him or fight him. The Stennis and the Washington along with the Jahre Viking are headed toward Hawaii and the ships are shielded. The Navy’s tried attacking the Alien Fleet — as they’re calling it — and lost an attack sub in the process.”

Turcotte lay on his back, staring up at the blue sky. His anger was gone. He felt so tired all he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep. To forget about it all. “And? Nothing I can do about any of that.”

“Kelly Reynolds has sent us a message. Text. Forwarded through Pearl to us.” Turcotte sat up straight. “Kelly?” The thought of the reporter stranded on Easter Island stirred him. She’d hoped the aliens could bring good to the human race and he knew that her current situation made him seem like a whining child. “Yes.”

“How did she get it out?”

“She piggybacked it via the guardian SAT-link to the fleet they’ve captured. I can display it on your phone.”

“Do it.” Turcotte pulled the phone away and read the lines on the small screen.

Turcotte read the message one more time, then put the phone back to his ear as he got to his feet. “What else?”

“Mualama has something on the second mothership. Also, Yakov’s been going through the German archives and has found some interesting stuff.” “What about Excalibur?”

“Mualama thinks the Watchers had it but then it disappeared.” Quinn paused. “I don’t know, sir, but I think this is all connected. The second mothership, the Master Guardian, Excalibur, and the shields.”

“What is Sagamartha?” “I’m checking on that.”

There was a lot in the message that Turcotte turned over in his mind. “What else?”

“Someone else must think we know something, too,” Quinn said. “Who?”

“I’ve got the CINC-PAC on the line. He wants to talk to you.”

“Why?”

“How the hell should I know?”

The explosion from the usually mild and meek Major Quinn caused Turcotte to smile for the first time in a long while.

“I think he wants your advice about the Alien Fleet, considering you had me send the warning about the shield,” Quinn added in a milder tone. “Given that we’re the ‘experts’ on the Airlia.”

“Put him through,” Turcotte said.

The entire Alien Fleet slowed to a halt. The maneuver took a while as the mass of the three capital ships was enormous and, even with their screws turning at full-thrust reverse, it was over twenty minutes before they became still. The massive doors the nanomachines had built into the bow of the Jahre Viking slowly swung open.

Inside, two submarines, identical in appearance down to the name stenciled on the sail — USS Springfield—floated side by side. One was the original, captured by Aspasia’s Shadow’s forces off the shore of Easter Island. The other was the copy, made by the nanomachines.

Both powered up and sailed out of the bow, slipping below the waves, taking their place in the fleet. All the ships began moving again, picking up speed. Inside the massive open area in the front of the Jahre Viking, two more copies of the attack submarine Springfield began to materialize molecule by molecule. The two in the water were different from the original Springfield, Los Angeles class, though. Near the bow on either side were newly constructed intakes. As the two submarines cleared the Viking, water was sucked in, passed along a series of baffles that increased the pressure and speed of the flow, then ejected it through two openings just in front of the rear fins.

A standard LA class sub was rated at almost thirty-five knots, very fast indeed for a submarine. With the added propulsion system, the two subs began accelerating away until they were slicing through the water at over sixty knots.

The F-14 carrying McGraw and Olivetti edged behind the S-3 Viking airborne tanker. A refueling probe extended downward and latched onto the intake on the F-14. Fuel from the large pods underneath the wings of the Viking flowed through the probe and into the nearly empty tanks of the F-14. The transfer continued for over two minutes until both pods were empty, then fuel from the rest of the Viking’s tanks were tapped until they were drained and the F-14’s full.

The probe disconnected. The Viking’s engines coughed, sputtered, then died. The plane nosed over and fell toward the ocean. The infected crew made no attempt to make an emergency water landing. It smashed into the ocean killing all on board and shattering into pieces.

In the sky above, the F-14 continued on its way across the Pacific on the mission assigned by Aspasia’s Shadow. Inside the cockpit, the nanovirus was at work on both men’s lungs, rearranging cells.

“Popeye” McGraw stirred in his machine-induced coma, crying out, almost like a dog having a bad dream, his hands weakly reaching out and pawing for the ejection seat handle. The cry turned to a yelp of pain as the Guide imprinting took charge, and punished the part of his brain that was still “free.” McGraw’s body was silent once more.

The vote in the Chinese Assembly in Beijing was swift and overwhelmingly in favor of siding with Artad. Several factors weighed in that decision.

First, was the fact that Artad’s Shadow had been Shi Huangdi. The first emperor in a country that, despite almost a half century of Communist rule, still revered the days when it was the Middle Kingdom and the center of the world. Here was an opportunity for China to return to its place as the leader of the world with the alien’s help. This was the deciding factor for the more emotional of the Chinese legislators.

Second, was the fact that the nuclear strike on Qian-Ling had been defeated. The more practical legislators saw it as a case of it you can’t beat him, join him. Even if the “him” was an alien.

Third, were the reports of what had happened to the American ships around Easter Island. A war was shaping up between the alien factions and there had been no offer of alliance from Aspasia’s Shadow on Easter Island. While the Chinese cheered the defeat of the Americans fleets, they also realized that the United States might just be the first domino to fall before Aspasia’s Shadow’s forces. Fourth, Chinese forces were already massing on the coast across from Taiwan and along the borders with North Korea and Vietnam. The world was in turmoil, the dreaded American fleet in the Pacific was for the moment not a factor, and the Chinese military was clamoring that it was time for China to strike. An alliance with Artad would undoubtedly help all their planned moves.

Fifth, Qian-Ling was in western China, where ethnic Muslim forces were revolting. With Artad’s help, the Chinese politicians believed they could regain firm control of the area and put down the rebellions.

In the end, only six of three hundred voted against the alliance. The agreement was messaged to Qian-Ling.

The six were taken out of the parliament into the Square and summarily executed with a bullet to the base of their skulls. Their bodies were strung up to lampposts with cardboard signs hung around their necks proclaiming them traitors to the new Middle Kingdom.

The orders for the various military forces to prepare to attack both Korea and Taiwan were also sent.

And special orders, as dictated by Artad, were sent to military detachments stationed in western China.

Over two thousand miles away from the capital in Beijing, Kashgar was the provincial capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. As such it was far removed from much of the political maneuvering that occurred in the east.

However, despite the distance, the Chinese military remained firmly in control in Kashgar.

When the commander of the garrison received the order from Beijing to prepare a special operations team for an assault to the west there was no questioning the command. The aircraft and troops were alerted. However, the orders stated they were not to move until some special envoys arrived.

A Chinese helicopter landed on a dirt road just outside the black shield wall protecting Qian-Ling. A crew chief jumped off, sliding the door to the cargo compartment open, then waited. The land was scorched from the nuclear weapon, which the Chinese had detonated in an attempt to destroy Qian-Ling and the aliens inside.

That things had changed was obvious as the shield wall flickered off for a few seconds and three figures walked out. The shield returned as they approached the helicopter and got on board. The aircraft was off the ground in a hurry, the pilots not wanting to be in the “hot” area or near the strange shield longer than needed.

In the rear of the chopper, Lexina and her cohorts, Elek and Coridan, were on the first leg of the mission they had been given by Artad.

Admiral Kenzie shut off his SATPhone. What Turcotte had just told him confirmed his worst fears. He looked at the satellite imagery once more. There was no mistaking the two carriers flanking the massive tanker. The last message from the Norfolk lay crumpled on his desk. Kenzie was CINC-PAC, Command in Chief, Pacific Area Command. The last month of his tenure had been a disaster on a scale exceeding the worst in American military history. The two captured carriers and assorted escort ships in the photo pictured two-thirds of his naval might.

He had one carrier group left in this hemisphere — the USS Kennedy. It was anchored less than a mile away in Pearl Harbor. And the Alien Fleet — his own ships — were less than a day away, steaming at flank speed.

Through the windows of his office, Kenzie could see Honolulu to the east, all the way to Diamond Head. There were a million people on Oahu, with another half million on the other islands in the chain. A million and a half people. Never, not once since taking this position, had Kenzie ever thought those people would be threatened. He never dreamed that he would have to make the decision facing him today.

His phone buzzed and his secretary’s voice came out of the box. “The president is on the line, Admiral.”

He stared at the phone for a moment, then picked it up. “Mister President, Admiral Kenzie here.”

“I’ve been listening to my National Security Council, Admiral, about the various options. None of them sound good to me. You’re the man in the hot seat. What do you say?”

“Mister President, I recommend Task Force Eighty put to sea.” “And?”

“Sir, we can’t penetrate the shields surrounding the ships in the Alien Fleet. I believe that fighting it out will only end the same way the last several confrontations with the Airlia fleet have been resolved — with Task Force Eighty becoming assimilated into their forces. And Eighty is the last line of defense not just for Hawaii but for the West Coast of the United States.”

The president’s voice rose. “So you’re just going to turn tail and hide?” “No, sir.” Kenzie turned his chair so he could look out of his office to the west. Like a forest of gray, he could see the masts of the ships anchored in Pearl. “I want permission to take the fleet to sea, swing westward around the Alien Fleet — which Aspasia’s Shadow won’t expect — and prepare to attack Easter Island when the shield is turned off.”

“And who is going to turn off this shield?” the president asked.

Kenzie realized he had to phrase this most carefully. “I am under the impression that various covert units are working on that very problem.”

There was a long silence, then the president’s voice came back. “That is the advice I am receiving here. God help us.”