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  For years NASA scientists had ridiculed any who postulated that these objects were anything other than natural formations. At the same time, it seemed curious that not a single one of all the various probes launched to check out the fourth planet had ever successfully orbited over the site for a closer look. While NASA's public records indicated that no craft had ever been programmed with such an orbit, the truth was, several, like the Climate Orbiter, had secretly been given the task.

  The early Viking missions had succeeded in getting two landers onto the surface of the planet but far removed from Cydonia. Pathfinder, with its Rover, also landed far away from the site. Many on the outside felt these were deliberate attempts on the part of NASA to avoid getting better information about Cydonia. They were half-right. NASA did deliberately avoid Cydonia with the Viking and Pathfinder probes. But it did so because Majestic's first attempt to get a close look at Cydonia in 1975 using the prototype of the Viking orbiter and landing had resulted in the loss of both as it came within orbiting range of Mars. Majestic did not think this was an accident but it waited almost twenty-five years before trying again with the Climate Orbiter, hoping a higher orbit might protect the craft. Again, it was stymied.

  The Russians at Section IV, their equivalent of Majestic-12, had also tried to take a closer look. Stretching from the late 1960s to the present, the Russians had launched ten unmanned missions toward Mars. Two exploded on takeoff. They lost control of two and couldn't get them out of their intermediary orbits around Earth to make the journey to the

  Red Planet. Two more missed Mars entirely with haywire guidance systems and for all the Russians knew were still hurtling outward from the solar system. Three made it to Mars orbit but promptly went dead, transmitting no data. They actually did get one lander into orbit and were sending it down toward Cydonia when it began sending back very strange data before also going off-line.

  The Russians had speculated that the missions lost on Harm or en route had been sabotaged by the Ones Who Wait or Guides from the Mission. Because of the lack of data from Mars, they could only guess that there was some sort of defensive mechanism in Cydonia that destroyed craft that came close.

  It was only after the current war with the aliens began that the true nature of what was at Cydonia was revealed, as Aspasia and his followers came out of their millennia-long sleep, powered up their Talon spacecraft hidden underneath the Fort, and headed for Earth, leaving behind only a token crew to man the base. When Turcotte destroyed this fleet by booby-trapping the Area 51 mothership, the Airlia left on Mars were stranded but not inactive.

  They sent a small army of mech-machines from Cydonia across the surface of the planet toward Mons Olympus while other robots tore into the Face, pulling metal parts out of the wreckage of whatever had once been there.

  At Mons Olympus, the mech-machines had begun the greatest engineering feat in the solar system as they built a ramp up to and through the four-mile-high escarpment surrounding the peak. After making a way through the escarpment, the mech-machines had continued up the long, gradual slope to a point just below the summit of the extinct volcano. There they dug out a deep, dish-shaped depression, while lining it with a latticework of black metal. At three points around the circumference, the base for a massive pylon tower was put in place and two of the pylons were now completed.

  When Yakov used the Master Guardian to shut down the Cydonia guardian, which controlled the mech-machines, the dish array was already complete and two of the three towers finished. The third pylon towered over eight hundred meters high in the thin Martian atmosphere, but needed another two hundred meters of work to be completed.

  Without the aid of the mech-machines, there was only one option for the surviving Airlia — to complete the last tower and emplace the transmitting array by hand. Tracked surface vehicles that had long gathered dust in an underground depot were serviced and started. Space suits and portable surface habitats were checked and tested.

  Within eight hours of the guardian's shutdown, a convoy of twenty vehicles carrying sixty Airlia departed Cydonia, heading toward Mons Olympus to finish the array.

  AIRSPACE IRAN

  Someone was pounding on the door, very loudly.

  Mike Turcotte opened his eyes to the unique vision of floating in midair, a thousand feet above a desert with a jet fighter roaring toward him at five hundred miles an hour, spraying bullets. The rounds slammed into the side of the bouncer and ricocheted off, producing the noise that had brought him back to consciousness. His eyes followed the jet as it narrowly missed his craft. Iranian markings. At least that gave him an idea of where he had been when he passed out. Other than the noise, the rounds had no apparent effect on the surface of the alien craft.

  He shook his head, immediately regretting the act as his head throbbed painfully. Coming down off the blood doping and amphetamines he had taken in order to survive on Everest was proving as painful as climbing the mountain had been. At least he wasn't cold, his body drenched in sweat inside his heavy clothing. He took a moment to take off the outer garments. As he did so, he saw sunlight glinting off metal close by.

  He turned, reaching out for the sword that lay next to the slight depression in the center of the bouncer, wrapping his lingers around the handle. Reality and the immediate past came back to him in fragments. Excalibur. Sword of legend, made by aliens. The key to the Master Guardian hidden for generations on the nearly inaccessible north face of Mount Everest.

  That told him why he was where he was and where he had been heading. The Master Guardian. Yakov — the Russian must have made it into the second mothership, known as Noah's Ark in legend, and located the alien computer. Turcotte briefly closed his eyes and brought up a mental image of this part of the world. Turkey was west and slightly north of Iran. And Ararat was in eastern Turkey.

  The jet was coming in for another gun run, this time from the opposite direction. Turcotte pressed forward on the control stick. The bouncer accelerated and easily outdistanced the jet as it reached two thousand miles an hour. The ground was zipping by below. The Iranian jet faded in the distance behind.

  Turcotte grabbed the mike and keyed it. "Quinn, this is Turcotte. Over."

  An excited and concerned voice answered. "Geez, Major, we thought we lost you again. You just dropped off the air."

  "Have you heard from Yakov?"

  "Negative. We haven't received communications from him or any of the Delta men who went with him. I've intercepted some National Security Agency intelligence briefs indicating a lot of military action around Ararat. I don't think we were the only ones going after the Ark and Master Guardian. Fortunately, it appears Yakov got to it first."

  Which meant Ararat — and the mothership/Master Guardian — weren't secure yet, Turcotte realized.

  "Do we know anything about Duncan?"

  "Not much more than we did," Quinn admitted. "I've been checking and there is no indication there is another Majestic-12. No one knows who took Duncan but I don't think it was any government agency."

  "I'm heading for Mount Ararat," Turcotte said. "I want to see what kind of mess Yakov's gotten himself into. Keep looking for Duncan. I want to find out what the hell her story is. There's another layer to all this that we don't know yet."

  MOUNT ARARAT, TURKEY

  Yakov stepped back from the Master Guardian and staggered, almost falling off the narrow platform on which the red pyramid sat. He blinked, reorienting himself from the world the guardian had shown him to the real world.

  The large Russian smiled broadly in victory. He'd shut down the Easter Island, Qian-Ling, and Cydonia guardians. The damn aliens — both sides — were minus their base of power now.

  Yakov had spent most of his adult life serving in Section IV, the secret Soviet organization that had tried to keep track of the aliens and their minions just as the American's Majestic-12 had. It had been a mission fraught with danger. Yakov vividly remembered going into the wreckage of Section IV's base on the remote island of N
ovata Zemlaya, seeing the bodies of his comrades, killed by the Ones Who Wait, Airlia-Human clones who had waited millennia for Artad to be reborn. They'd done that to recover something from the

  Section IV archives. Today he had paid them back for that deadly deed.

  The room he was in was deep inside the mothership, a perfectly round chamber encompassing the Master Guardian. He had sealed himself off from the rest of the ship as Artad's troops were on board and had almost caught him before the Master Guardian was activated. The mothership was buried in a cavern deep inside Mount Ararat, hidden from sight for over ten thousand years.

  Yakov heard a buzzing noise and reached into his pocket, pulling out his SATPhone. "Yes?"

  "This is Quinn. Turcotte's coming to your location."

  "And how will he get to me?"

  "I don't know. Can you move—" Quinn's next words were lost since Yakov turned his head to the right as a loud thud echoed through the mothership. The sound was repeated a few seconds later. Yakov put the phone away and placed both hands on the side of the Master Guardian, making contact with the computer. He sorted through the rush of images that assaulted him, searching for some information on the current status of the mothership. He zoomed through several internal views until he received one relayed from a monitor in the cavern, looking down on the mothership just as a third thud reverberated through the ship.

  At first he saw nothing, then, near the nose, he spotted a clamp to one of the Talons withdrawing, slamming back into the hull of the ship, just as a fourth thud announced the action. The rapierlike ship floated free of the mothership and rose a few meters. Yakov tried to access a connection with the Talon via the guardian but he reached a dead end. He realized the Kortad must have cut any control the Master Guardian could have over the warship.

  But they were still trapped in the chamber, Yakov knew, as he turned his attention to any controls for an exit from the large cavern. At that moment, a golden beam lashed out of the nose of the Talon and struck the side of the cavern.

  Turcotte looked down on Mount Ararat, noting the still-smoldering ruins of armored vehicles on the lower slopes. He could see other tanks and armored personnel carriers on the roads approaching the mountain. Several helicopters with Turkish markings flitted about, but he ignored them.

  He'd gotten the coordinates for the mothership cavern from Quinn and he edged the bouncer up the Ahora Gorge toward the spot. As he got close to a half-mile-high rock wall, he abruptly pulled back on the controls as the rock exploded outward with a thunderous roar.

  A car-sized boulder hit the left side of the bouncer and the craft flipped from the impact. Turcotte had both hands on the controls and he stopped the rotation and leveled out, just as the nose of a Talon appeared in the large hole that had just been blasted.

  He held the bouncer still as the entire two hundred meters of alien craft carefully exited. It had the same black metal skin as the mothership and was thirty meters wide at the base, tapering forward with a slight bend to a needle point at the front. Once clear of the mountain, the Talon turned to the east and accelerated away.

  Turcotte keyed the radio. "Quinn, this is Turcotte. A Talon just exited Ararat and is heading east. I need you to get Space Command to track it. Over."

  "I'm on it," Quinn responded.

  Turcotte pushed forward on the controls and entered the cavern, seeing the mothership below, partly covered with debris near the front. He saw the other Talons parked on the outside and the empty space where the one that had just left had been stored.

  Yakov "saw" the bouncer enter through the hole the Talon had just exited. He accessed controls for the mothership and opened a hatch to a cargo bay not far from the room he was in. Then he headed for the exit to the Master Guardian room.

  Turcotte saw the hatch opening on the side of the mothership and guided the bouncer to it. He entered the mothership, the hatch closing behind him. He set the bouncer down and unbuckled from the pilot's spot. He held Excalibur in one hand and the MP-5 in the other as he climbed the ladder and exited the bouncer.

  The cargo bay was practically empty except for some debris littered across the floor. Turcotte walked over to the nearest pile. Broken clay pots and a leather sandal. Very old. He frowned, wondering how that had gotten in here. A door slid open and he smiled as he saw Yakov's massive form filling the opening.

  "Old friend," Yakov called out. He walked forward, arms spread wide, and Turcotte allowed himself to be caught in the Russian's embrace.

  Yakov let go and stepped back. He saw the sword. "Excalibur?"

  Turcotte nodded. "Yes."

  "Stupid question," Yakov said. "If you did not have it, I would not have been able to accomplish what I did." His smile grew broader. "We have defeated the bastards finally."

  "Who was in the Talon?" Turcotte asked.

  Yakov spit. "Airlia. I would assume from Qian-Ling as there were Chinese forces with them. They came here to get the Master but we beat them to it."

  "Where are the others?"

  Yakov's smile disappeared. "All dead. The Airlia and the Chinese almost defeated us. Many brave men gave their lives."

  More casualties. Turcotte had lost count of how many had died battling over control of Airlia artifacts. He silently made a promise to those who had given their lives that once this war was finally resolved, he would make it his mission to ensure that the Airlia legacy did not interfere ever again with the human race.

  "There's a problem," Turcotte said.

  "There is always a problem," Yakov lamented. "It is something a Russian learns to accept as a child. What is this new problem?"

  "The Airlia on Mars are building what Kincaid thinks is a communications array on Mons Olympus. He doesn't think it's quite done yet, but it's close to being finished."

  Yakov considered that information. "So. If Artad gets on that Talon and makes it to Mars, and they finish the array, he can communicate with his home world and bring more Airlia here."

  "Yes."

  "That is a problem," Yakov acknowledged.

  Turcotte felt faint and staggered, the Russian grabbing his shoulder and steadying him. "Are you all right?

  Turcotte ran his hand across his forehead, feeling the perspiration. He was burning up. "Just a little woozy."

  " 'Woozy' ?"

  "Too much altitude and temperature change, too quickly," Turcotte said. "Where's the Master Guardian?"

  Yakov indicated for Turcotte to follow him as he turned and headed down the corridor, staying close by his side. "What about Aspasia's Shadow and the Grail?"

  "The nanovirus is nonfunctional," Turcotte said.

  "I know. I shut down his guardian, which controlled it. All the subordinate guardians are shut down, including the one on Mars. That should delay their efforts there."

  "My navy has regained control of the two lost task forces.

  The combined fleet is heading toward Easter Island. Without the guardian, Aspasia's Shadow has no shield and little power. Quinn says he's fled the island on a bouncer, but they are tracking him. We ought to be able to deal with him and recover the Grail. The fleet can rescue Kelly Reynolds."

  Yakov frowned as he reached the door to the Master Guardian chamber. "You should not underestimate Aspasia's Shadow. He has been around for a very long time and faced adversity before. Plus, we must assume he has partaken of the Grail and is now immortal. Also, what about the Guides? Even with the Easter Island guardian shut down, they still have the mental programming they received. And I am sure there are more scattered around the world."

  "The Guides are few in number," Turcotte said as he paused in the entrance, looking at the glowing red pyramid. "Without the nanovirus, their power is limited." His thoughts went to Lisa Duncan, who had also partaken of the Grail and then been kidnapped, by who, he had yet to find out. "Have you picked up anything on Duncan's whereabouts from that thing?" he asked.

  "I have not tried," Yakov said. "I have been busy with other matters. I will also check to see
if there is any information on this array." He walked across the gangway to the pyramid and placed his hands on one side.

  Turcotte had no desire to meld with the Master Guardian. He'd touched a regular guardian once before, in the secret base at Dulce where Majestic had been conducting bio-experiments on people they abducted. The direct contact between his mind and the alien machine had repelled him on a visceral level.

  "Nothing," Yakov said after about ten seconds. "The only thing" — he frowned, his eyes closed — "strange. Very strange. I'm getting some images that were relayed from the other guardians once the Master activated before I shut them down."

  "Images of what?" Turcotte asked.

  "Something in the sky. Moving. Black. Spherical main body with six extensions. Some kind of spacecraft." Yakov paused, then continued, "It's exploding. High over endless forest. Ah, I have seen forest like that before. I know what this is." He let go of the Master Guardian and stepped back, turning toward Turcotte. "Remember General Hemstadt on Devil's Island?"

  It seemed to Turcotte that the destruction of the Mission's base of operations had happened long ago, though it was actually relatively recent. They had narrowly stopped the Mission's attempt to wipe out mankind with a deadly virus. "Yes."

  "His last words before he killed himself were about Tunguska. In 1908. I just saw the explosion that occurred there. It was caused by the craft I described getting hit by some sort of energy weapon."

  "An Airlia weapon?"

  "No. It appears to be a human weapon."

  Turcotte felt a stir of excitement. "What kind of weapon? Who made it?"