David Sakmyster - The Cydonia Objective

Calderon rubbed the silver dragon’s head, tracing the jagged horns and scaled jaws. “It’s all about angles, my dear boy. All about angles.” And with that, he approached the machine.

Alexander watched theguy with the white lab coat step off the elevator and come running over to Mason Calderon. He whispered something into the senator’s ear, and then showed some numbers and figures on his handheld PDA, a stream of symbols and text.

Calderon nodded rapidly, and then patted the man on his shoulder before sending him back to the elevator. “Ready the array, Dr. Phelps. We’ll have a target shortly.”

Montross approached the chair. “I don’t know about you, but I have no idea how to work this yet. We’re not ready.”

“That’s all right. We have a test scenario first.”

Montross raised an eyebrow. He glanced at Alexander, then at the twins, who were smirking to themselves. “I can only guess.”

“Why guess?” Calderon asked. “Surely you can figure it out. Or Alexander can see it.”

“Your target?” Alexander shot back. “You mean the next place you want to destroy. More buildings to crush, people to kill?”

Isaac made a chuckling sound in his throat. “Just coming attractions.”

“Before the main event,” said Jacob, with a little less enthusiasm.

“We should have the actual coordinates momentarily from our feathered accomplice in the nest of our woefully under-matched adversaries.”

Montross perked up. “You’ve got a mole in Stargate?”

Calderon smiled. “We have followers everywhere. We could have struck and leveled them much earlier, but we’ve found it useful to have a viewpoint into our enemy’s activities.”

“Staying one step ahead,” Isaac said. “Righto, father?”

“Righto, as you say.” Calderon approached the back of the chair, where there was an LCD screen set on an angled post, and a keyboard. He tapped a few keys, grinning to himself. “Translation is done, my friends. And our scientists are working on calibrating the device, feeding in the new data. Simply… astounding.” His eyes rapidly skimmed over the data and the schematics, the formulae. “It’s all here!”

“Congratulations,” Montross said from the other side. His fingertips traced the armrests, caressing the smooth metal contours, all the way up to the rectangular slot for the Emerald Tablet. “So now you’ll have the power of the ancients.”

Calderon looked around the side. Met Montross’s eyes. “The power of Tiamat and Marduk.”

“The power of the universe.”

“You’re like me, Montross. You can’t pass up this chance. You were born special, and now you’ve been given a chance to rise above the mass of humanity. To become like Marduk, like Thoth even, if you must compare yourself to him.”

Montross closed his eyes. “A god.”

“Leave your body. Leave this world, travel to a new one.”

Montross’s eyes opened. “Mars?”

And Calderon smiled. “It’s all there, waiting for us. Where the ancients left it.”

Montross swooned. There was a flash in his mind— a desert of blue that suddenly cracked down the middle. Revealing: a glimpse of a monument in the sands, a giant face, and a tunnel-structure below it; a vast complex supported by reinforced pillars. Within the walls: flashing lights, tubes and wires, humming machinery.

He held his head, shaking it until Alexander came to his side. “Was it—?”

Montross kept his eyes on Calderon, who now appeared very interested. “Tell me, did you just get a look at our little secret?”

“I saw something down there below the Face. A facility.”

“The sacred texts are clear,” Calderon said, barely above a whisper. “The caretakers, just a few of them, remained after the War. Maintaining the banks of DNA, the memory tanks and flesh pods. When we need to be corporeal again, bodies will be ready for our arrival.”

Calderon had the Emerald Tablet out now, and its glow was fierce. Pulsing, bathing the three brothers in its light, making Montross giddy with anticipation.

“At first,” Calderon continued, “it was simply a safeguard. Redundancy in case something happened on the Earth. And there was a precedent, apparently. The meteor, what did in the dinosaurs…”

Montross nodded, but was barely listening. “It’s clear now. Wipe out the earth, get rid of the competition. Just like the Tower of Babel or the Flood.”

“Except we’ll do it right this time. And this time, we—the Gods now—will be reborn anew on the planet that is our birthright.”

“Yeah,” said Alexander, brazen now, “but then what? It’s a desert. No atmosphere, no water. No Fun.”

Isaac smirked at him and Jacob just licked his lips.

“Good question,” Montross said. “But I don’t think Mars is their ultimate destination.”

“True.” Calderon moved up, then placed the Emerald Tablet over the slot. “It’s just a bouncing off point. The stars await—the true birthplace of our race, and we will venture out there, immortal, timeless. Sending out our astral bodies, to which there are no time and space limitations. But first, there is something we must do. One more loose end.”

Isaac grinned. “About time. We strike at the lunar base.”

“The what?” Alexander asked.

“The far side of the moon,” Calderon answered as he lowered the tablet gently into the slot and the machine began to hum “Where the last remnants of Thoth’s guard have lingered. Just as a few of Marduk’s custodians stayed behind on Mars, so did Thoth leave his faithful on the lunar colony.”

“On the far side,” Montross whispered.

“Always with its face turned away from Earth,” Calderon said. “Protected from telescopes and other prying eyes.”

“And from your reach with the HAARP weapon.”

Calderon nodded, as he finished inserting the tablet. He stepped back. “But now that we know the formula we have the power to separate from matter and can travel to the Mars facility—”

Alexander got it first. “—Where you can aim from there and strike at the lunar base!”

Isaac jabbed his brother. “God, he’s slow. Must’ve been home-schooled.”

Alexander took a step back as the Emerald Tablet disappeared into the slot and the machine trembled, sending vibrations through the floor. Then, it started to glow.

His skin prickled, and he swooned as a shooting pain tore through his skull.

Just as quickly as it came on, the pain was gone.

And he was standing over his body.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my—

A flash of green light, then pain, and he was back.

Phew! Back inside.

On the floor, holding his head. Relieved to be back, but just as certain that he’d just been given an opportunity to save the day—

—and blown it.

Mount Shasta

Phoebe raced out of the control center and rushed down the hall. She thought she’d get there first, but there was already an alarm sounding. Guards raced ahead of her, guns drawn. They took their positions on either side of the door.

“Orlando!” Phoebe shouted, just as Temple and Diana rounded the corner. “I saw a flash back there of a gun. Someone firing at him.”

“He was in the room?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” She couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. Could barely breathe.

They reached the door together, and when Temple tried it and found it locked, he nodded to the larger guard, who promptly entered an override code on the keypad, then threw the door open.

Phoebe pushed inside, wriggling in ahead of the guards, just slipping past Temple’s reach as he tried to hold her back.