Slowly and carefully, Yakov began translating the runes on the stone. It was frustrating work and would have been impossible, except that Yakov had a very good idea of what he was looking at.
It was a record of history. Or, more appropriately, the end of a history for a people. Tiahuanaco had been founded in 1700 B.C. Historians agreed on that. But when the Incans began expanding their empire and came across the city in the thirteenth century, they found an empty place, devoid of human life. Sometime around A.D. 1200 this teeming city, home to several hundred thousand souls, and the empire it commanded for over 2,500 years, running along the Andes, down to the Pacific Coast in the west and deep into the Amazon rain forest in the east, had simply disappeared.
What had happened to the people? It was a question no one had the answer to.
Except now, translating the stone as best he could, Yakov had that answer, and it was one he had feared to find. There were two symbols that he had seen before, at other places on the planet’s surface, that he recognized all too well. It gave the reason:
The Black Death.
Rain lashed the enormous flight deck of the aircraft carrier, battering it with sheets of water so thick that visibility was less than a hundred feet. Despite not being able to see the forward end of the ship, Lisa Duncan was staring straight ahead through the thick windows of the USS George Washington’s bridge as if she could actually see the volcanic peaks of Easter Island. She knew that they were twenty miles from the island and even if the weather were clear, the land would be over the horizon. In the water around the flagship Washington were the other warships of Task Force 78.
A carrier task force was the most powerful military force the world knew. Centered around the Nimitz-class Washington were two guided-missile cruisers, three destroyers, two frigates, and two supply ships; under the waves, two Los Angeles-class attack submarines prowled the depths, while overhead planes in the CAP, covering air patrol, guarded the sky. One of those subs was going to make the attempt to get close to the island underwater and launch a probe.
The Washington itself carried the task force’s most powerful punch in the form of its flight wing: one squadron (12) of Grumman F-14 Tomcats, three squadrons (36) of McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18 Hornets, 4 Grumman EA-2C Hawkeye surveillance aircraft, 10 Lockheed S-3B Vikings, 6 Sikorsky SH-60B Seahawk helicopters, and 6 EA-6B Prowlers. But at the present moment, Duncan knew this powerful force was impotent.
“Kelly?” she whispered under her breath toward the dark gray sky as if that person could hear her. The events of the past several weeks had shaken Duncan badly, and she felt a momentary wave of loneliness and weariness sweep over her as she thought of the others who had been with her when they tore the curtain of secrecy surrounding Area 51 asunder.
Deep under Rano Kau her friend Kelly Reynolds was trapped by the guardian computer. That Kelly was trapped because she had gone there of her own free will in an attempt to stop Duncan and Captain Mike Turcotte from defeating the Airlia invasion was something Duncan had thought long and hard about over the past several days, ever since Turcotte had destroyed the incoming Airlia fleet.
Thinking of Turcotte, Duncan’s mind drifted south, where she knew he was joining the task force seeking to uncover the secret of Scorpion Base, where the mysterious STAAR organization had had its headquarters.
She could feel the power of the ship’s engines vibrate up through the deck under her rubber-soled shoes. She knew she looked out of place on the ship’s bridge, among all the sailors dressed in their uniforms. She could sense the military’s inherent distrust of civilians from the moment she came on board. It was something she had experienced before and knew there was no way to counter. “Ms. Duncan?”
The voice startled her. She turned toward the interior of the bridge where naval personnel bustled with the activity necessary to operate this floating city.
“Yes?”
A young ensign stood five feet behind her. “The admiral would like to see you in the commo shack.”
Duncan followed the officer through the bridge and through a door at the rear. Shack was a bit of a simplification for the room she entered. Able to communicate securely anywhere on the planet, the “shack” boasted top-of-the-line equipment, including numerous direct uplinks to various satellites.
Admiral Poldan, the officer who had commanded the last failed strike against the guardian computer on Easter Island, had not been a happy man the past few days. He led a task force capable of devastating whole countries, but the alien shield that surrounded the island had withstood the best his fleet could send at it short of nuclear weapons. Duncan knew he was itching to throw that last punch, but UNAOC — for the moment — saw insufficient threat from the Easter Island guardian to authorize such a drastic move in the face of political realities following recent events.
Duncan nodded at the admiral, who was giving orders to one of his men. Done, he gestured for her to join him in front of a large computer display.
“The guardian is talking” was his greeting. “The National Security Agency is picking up alien transmissions.”
“To who?” Duncan asked.
“The guardian on Mars.”
“Was there a reply from Mars?”
The admiral nodded. “Yes. Yes, there was.”
Duncan considered that piece of bad news. The nuclear attack on the Airlia compound on Mars via the Surveyor probe had been kept secret by the UNAOC for several reasons.
One reason had been not wanting to admit that the attack had occurred under the direction of STAAR, an organization about which they still knew practically nothing. The fact that STAAR had placed the nuclear bomb aboard the probe prior to launch, two years before, indicated that organization had been far ahead of any government in recognizing the threat the Airlia posed, or that there was even an Airlia base on Mars, something that seemed to have eluded NASA for years.
There was also the issue that there was still a sizable percentage of the world’s population that believed the Airlia represented good; that the destruction of the Airlia fleet was the most heinous act mankind had ever committed. The progressives, as they were called, felt that a remarkable opportunity for great strides in science — not to mention first contact with an alien race — had been destroyed.
Duncan had been hearing reports that a major reason Admiral Poldan wasn’t given the green light to nuke Easter Island was a powerful progressive lobby in the UN. This lobby felt that the guardian computer under Rano Kau was irreplaceable. While that looked clear on the surface, Duncan was concerned that there was more to the progressive camp than was readily apparent. The plan by UNAOC to send up space shuttles to rendezvous with both the mothership and talon seemed a bit rushed to her. Her paranoia, justified in her investigation into Majestic-12, was still alive and well.
There was a growing movement in the progressive camp making an icon out of Kelly Reynolds. Nuking the island would undoubtedly kill her — if the nuke got through the shield — and UNAOC was very concerned that would bring about a martyrdom that might incur severe repercussions from the progressive camp.
Several countries, most notably Australia and Japan, had threatened to pull out of the United Nations to protest the preemptive strike against the Airlia fleet commanded by Aspasia.
Duncan had been as surprised as Mike Turcotte at the backlash in the wake of the destruction of the Airlia fleet. It wasn’t that Turcotte had expected a parade down Fifth Avenue for his daring mission aboard the mothership, but he had not expected to be vilified in so many quarters. Nabinger’s interpretations from the guardian computer under Qian-Ling in China had been greeted with much skepticism, given that Nabinger had never made it out of China alive and they had only Turcotte’s word that Aspasia had been the enemy of mankind. The fact that the Airlia had destroyed a navy submarine near the foo fighter base had been explained away as an automatic defensive reaction by the guardian computer — as was the wall they now faced around the island ahead of them.