Kelly Reynolds looked at Cummings. “I think you had best leave for now.”
Cummings reached down, made sure the pillows were stacked correctly behind Reynolds, filled her cup of water, and left the room.
“Mike. This is Kelly. It takes two and a half minutes for my transmission to reach you and the same amount of time for me to hear back from you. I’m going to pause. Let me know if you, and whoever is with you, want to hear what I have to say. Because once I start talking, I’m not going to stop.”
Reynolds halted and glance at the clock. The second hand slowly made its way around the outer circle.
Turcotte had used the time waiting for a response to lift the spaceship up and do a flyby over Mons Olympus to check one last time that nothing had survived Duncan’s last mission.
The hole in the side of Mons Olympus where the array had been was huge, the devastation complete. Then he looked at Yakov. “Home?” “Home,” Yakov concurred.
Turcotte turned the front of the ship away from Mars as Kincaid began plotting the trajectory to return them to Earth.
When Reynolds’s message came over the speaker, Turcotte replied immediately. “We’re ready. Go ahead.”
By the time they heard Kelly’s voice again, they were clear of Mars orbit and heading inward toward the sun. The words from the small speaker sounded tinny and distant.
“It all makes sense if you think about what we’ve learned recently,” Reynolds said. “You know now that Lisa Duncan came from another planet. And she is human.”
Turcotte glanced at Yakov, realizing that Reynolds was using the present tense because she didn’t know what had just happened. “Which brings up the issue of how humans could have developed on two worlds.”
Turcotte tensed, sensing what was coming next. Knowing that Kelly was right, that it had been there in front of them all along.
“When I accessed the guardian underneath Easter Island,” Kelly continued, “I found traces of the past. Before Atlantis. When the Airlia first came to Earth.
“Mike, they brought us with them. We were planted here by them.”
Turcotte leaned back in the seat. He didn’t have time to feel the full impact of those last two sentences as Kelly continued.
“Just as Duncan and her people were planted on their world. We were not put on this world to colonize it, although in effect that is what we have done. We are a genetic cousin to the Airlia, which explains why we both breathe oxygen and subsist essentially in the same manner and look roughly the same. We’re similar to them because they developed us. They made us. And in the process of doing that they placed specific inhibitors on us as a species. We’re mortal with short life spans, while the Airlia live hundreds of times longer than we do. The Airlia made us mortal by blocking the growth of telomeres among our cells which causes us to age and die.
“And we cannot consciously use our minds to their full capabilities. The Airlia placed blocks on how well our two hemispheres could work together and how much of our brains we can access.
“The Grail, as you know, is the key for removing both those blocks. Accessing one side of it not only allows our telomeres to regenerate, it also infects our blood with a virus that can grow cells and heal illnesses and wounds. The other side, the one Duncan did not access, allows the human mind to function to the full extent of its capabilities.
“Why? That’s the question you’re probably asking now and the one I immediately asked myself when I discovered this.
“We’re an experiment. Designed to be cannon fodder. For the Airlia in their war against the Swarm. The Airlia developed us to be soldiers, then seeded planets around the perimeter of their empire with us. On each planet they put a contingent — here led by Aspasia — in charge of maintaining order and controlling the Grail. If we were needed to fight, we would be given access to the Grail and sent off to war to die for the Airlia and their empire.
“From what I could gather we were a relatively new experiment for the Airlia. They seeded about a dozen worlds with humans in a remote part of their empire. Duncan’s world was one. Ours was another.
“It didn’t work quite the way they thought it would. Aspasia grew fearful of being involved in the war, which was nowhere near Earth. He cut off communication with the Empire and began to rule from Atlantis like a God. He set up a cadre of humans as priests.
“Eventually, Artad arrived with the Kortad, who were Airlia police. They were under orders to bring the planet back into the empire. However, something else occurred that neither side had counted on — the arrival of Lisa Duncan and her companion.
“Their world had been like ours, a vassal of the Airlia. It was the first to be seeded. They revolted and after a bloody war, managed to defeat the Airlia caretakers on their planet. In the process they essentially destroyed their own world. They sent out a captured mothership with teams like Duncan and her partner to find the other seed worlds and help them to overthrow the Airlia.
“Duncan and her partner manipulated both sides when Artad arrived, causing civil war that ended in stalemate, the best any of them could achieve. They gained us time. For us to develop enough to be able to finally fight the Airlia.”
There was a pause. “That’s pretty much it,” Reynolds finally said, an understatement if ever there was one. She paused. “Did we win?”
Turcotte reached forward and picked up the mike. He pressed the transmit button. “Kelly. We’ve won. We’ll be home soon.” He released the button.
Silence reigned in the spaceship as each digested the import of what Kelly Reynolds had just told them. All four were so deep in thought they were startled when her voice came out of the speaker.
“Where’s home, Mike?”
The answer came without thought. “Area 51.”
EPILOGUE: THE PRESENT
The Fynbar floated above the seven-mile-long runway that marked the edge of Groom Lake. Turcotte brought it down to the tarmac in front of the massive doors for Hangar One. Both were wrecked, smashed by the attacking forces that had kidnapped Duncan. For Turcotte it seemed years ago, while in reality it had been only a few days.
Once the ship was stopped, he opened the hatch and exited, followed by Yakov, Quinn, Kincaid, and Leahy.
The survivors stood on the seven-mile-long runway dwarfed not only by it, but the mountain which the nearby massive hangar was built into. Mike Turcotte, Yakov the Russian, Major Quinn, Larry Kincaid, and Professor Leahy. The roll call of the living. Other names rang in Turcotte’s thoughts. Peter Nabinger. Che Lu. Lisa Duncan. All of whom had given their lives. And the millions more who had died in the battle to defeat the aliens.
He realized the others were looking at him, waiting. He faced them. “We don’t have a mothership so we can’t help other worlds. We don’t have the Grail or Master Guardian either. Both went down with Lisa Duncan on Mars when she destroyed the alien array.
“We are free of the aliens, though. That was her goal. And ours. And it must remain our goal. We know there are Airlia artifacts still here on Earth, hidden away. Some discovered by governments and kept secret, some not yet found. And we know for certain there is life out among the stars. The Airlia. The Swarm. Neither of which wishes us well. And undoubtedly other life-forms.” He paused, trying to articulate thoughts which had assailed him over the past year ever since arriving here at Area 51 and being confronted with the reality that we were not alone among the stars and that the world had been occupied by aliens since before the beginning of recorded time.
“What about telling the world the truth?” Yakov asked, cutting to the core as usual.
“Could the world handle it?” Turcotte asked in turn. “If you had asked me that question yesterday, I would have said the truth must be told. But that was before I knew what the truth was. Now—” He shook his head. “What good would it do? The world knows there are aliens. That they threaten us. Telling people that we were ‘grown’ to serve as soldiers for the Airlia in their war against the Swarm will destroy all the faiths. Beyond that, people will also know we destroyed their chance at immortality with the destruction of the Grail.