Montross sighed, looking up at all that activity. “Then you’ll feed the instructions into the machine?”
Calderon shook his head. “Actually, I think we already know what needs to be done. You already know.”
“I do?” Montross didn’t. Sure, he had seen this facility, seen what the aftermath of this day would cause: the cataclysmic devastation, the eradication of all life on the planet, but he didn’t know how. Didn’t know exactly how the Tablet would be used. He stared at the machine, at the chair-like structure, suitably fitted to one individual and one Tablet.
Calderon watched his eyes. “You know. The Tablet has already worked on you. And on Alexander. You can separate from yourself. And it’s in that phase, and only in that phase, that the Tablet’s true power can be accessed. Tuned to your own astral body, melded and amplified.”
Montross nodded slowly, the truth settling in. “So in the spiritual form, someone sits in the chair, and releases the dogs of war. So to speak.”
“So to speak.” Calderon stretched his arms, and held the cane tight lengthwise. “And then we finish what the Dragon started.”
Montross thought for a moment, a hundred questions surging to be let out, but it was Alexander, coming up behind him, that spoke what was foremost on his mind. “What about Mars?”
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 the guy 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.