David Sakmyster - The Cydonia Objective

“Mohenjo-Daro,” Templesaid after he had led them from the small landing strip to the edge of a hill overlooking a vast plain and a sprawling view of ancient red brick walls, ledges and boundaries, a few silo-like towers, arches and perfectly aligned streets. “The Mound of the Dead, as it’s translated.”

Orlando whistled. “I know this place.”

“Thought you might,” said Temple.

“Figures,” Phoebe said, rubbing the sleeve of her blouse across her forehead, dabbing the sweat. The sun was just descending, but painfully intense, baking the ancient ruins below. “It’s an old city, right? Archaeologists found it, and yeah it’s pretty cool. So why are we here?”

“We’re here to take a peek,” Orlando guessed. He cracked his knuckles, stretched his arms and gave a little jog in place, as if warming up before a race.

“Yes, a peek.” Temple waved his arm over the view. “Mohenjo-Daro was re-discovered in the 1920’s. They believed it was built in 2600 BC and that it served as one of the centers of the Indus Valley civilization, of which very little is known. An incredible degree of sophistication went into the planning and design of this city. Urban sanitation systems like we wouldn’t see again for two thousand years.”

“Always a good thing, but probably no plumbers union back then.” Orlando grinned, then shrugged at Phoebe.

“Precise geographical and astronomical layouts of the streets and buildings, and despite the best efforts of the world’s leading linguists, a written script that has never been successfully translated. A mature language that appeared in these two cities as well as several thousand other sites across the area—for which they can find no evolution or development. It seems to have just appeared.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Orlando said. “Get on with the real juicy morsels. You know, tell her what’s really crazy about this place.” He glanced at Phoebe. “I tried to get your brother to let us make Mohenjo-Daro an objective that we should scout out during our downtime. But he thought it wasn’t worth our effort.”

“Doesn’t sound like him. He must’ve been preoccupied.” Phoebe kept staring at the city, and in the hazy sun the ancient buildings began to shimmer and wobble. She was feeling the tug of a vision.

Temple coughed. “I can understand Caleb’s reluctance. But I must also now tell you in complete sincerity that what I’m about to say is above top secret, and—”

“Yeah, we know. Tell no one…” Orlando raised his hands in a gesture of being terrified. “…or else you’ll have to kill us.”

“Oh, I won’t kill you,” Temple said with a smirk. “But someone else assuredly will. Now, listen Phoebe, since I gather Orlando has already been briefed by Wikipedia or Conspiracies-R-Us…”

“Hey!”

“But this site, and its sister city not far from here, called Harrapan, are much, much older than 2600 BC.”

“How old?”

“Undetermined. The problem with you psychics is that while you can see the past, you never manage to glimpse a newspaper or something with the date on it.” He grinned. “Just kidding. But the problem of dating remains unsolvable. Best we can do is look to the geographic landmarks—or in some rare cases, we’ve had luck with the remote viewer coming out of the vision and drawing what the night sky looked like.”

“Ah,” Orlando said, clapping. “Plug the constellations into a computer program and let it match up the orientation with the patterns of stellar drift and the Earth’s precession and wobble, and—”

“All right, all right.” Phoebe rubbed her temples. “So did you do any of that with this site?”

Temple nodded. “But I’m not divulging that information yet, as uncorroborated as it is. I don’t want to taint your impressions. Bad enough you already have a guess as to the target, and Orlando has his… theories. I need you to try to see for yourself.”

“The target is Mohenjo-Daro,” Phoebe said, nodding and taking a deep breath, focusing on the city.

“The target,” Temple corrected, “is the event.”

“What event?” she asked.

Orlando let out a big sigh. “What he means, what he’s getting at but won’t tell you, is that the government’s not stupid.” He glared at Temple. “He knows what the scientists and the so-called quack archaeologists found. The skeletons flattened in the streets. Huddled in their homes, holding hands as they met their doom.”

“Flattened?”

“Devastated. The walls bear evidence of extreme heat and exposure to an unknown source of energy. Something that left a radiation signature across this whole place. A signature not seen again until Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

Phoebe frowned at him. “Conspiracies-R-Us?”

“Try, The Mahabarata . The old Vedic epic and holy book… there’s a whole battle scene in there that describes the gods raining these kinds of arsenals down upon their foes. I recall one of the verses went something like: ‘ …a single projectile, charged with all the power of the universe/ as bright as the thousand suns / a column of smoke and flame rose in all its splendor.’ Then something about reducing the people to ashes, corpses burning, hair and nails falling out. Descriptions that sounded way too much like nuclear fallout.”

Temple grinned. “You’ve said too much, Orlando. Let her work with an unclouded mind. Phoebe, just try to see what happened here. What did them in?”

“Why?” she asked. “If you guys apparently know it all? What’s the point?”

“Because,” he said. “We need to know exactly what we’re up against, and we need you to understand that what we’re doing isn’t because we’re power-hungry elitists who want to jealously guard the truth from the pitiful masses.”

“That’s a relief.”

“That’s the truth,” Temple said. “We have much bigger problems. Because whatever did this, whatever happened here, it’s going to happen again if we don’t get that Tablet back.”

She saw iton the way down the hill. Just a few steps from the first wall of red brick, the dust already kicked up by her shoes. Maybe it was the smell, the proximity to the ancient stone. The sudden feeling of belonging here. Being one of with Mohenjo-Daro’s population. Seeing it-

-for the first time… The sound, the bustling throbbing sound. A perfect cadence of voice and motion. People, such a mass of people. Bright colors, hats, silken scarves, elegant robes and practical coverings. Commoner and royalty, it seemed, merge as one in the streets and… flee.

Out of the city. Not a mob, but not so orderly as to be a ceremonious event. They’re scared. Carrying some possessions, boxes, bags. A little girl carrying a dragon-shaped doll…

A rumbling in the earth.

Screams, people turning.

Something in the center of the city draws their attention. A tower, of sorts. Pyramid-shaped, glowing at its tip. The rumbling continues, intensifies—and a gathering light at the tip of the pyramid appears. Brighter and brighter, until the crowd moves slowly away, as if mesmerized by the sight, yet terrified of what might happen next.

There are things in the sky. Lights moving bright against the blue background, multi-colored orbs and flattened disc-shaped brilliances. They seem to be at war with each other. Some are spinning, dissolving, falling in snowflake-like patterns across the sky and over the mountains.

And the light from the pyramid turns darker, a deep indigo hue that in the blink of an eye blasts upward with a force that shatters the outer layer of stones from the pyramid and flattens nearby homes. Now there’s a beam of light, pure nearly blinding light stabbing through the sky—and beyond. The air shimmers, people cover their eyes.