“They knew the foo fighters were something very different the first time their aircraft encountered them. The Luftwaffe lost many planes trying to shoot a foo fighter down. They also sent many expeditions around the world, searching down clues for anything that seemed abnormal or paranormal. Hitler was obsessed with the subject.”
“What does that have to do with Ivan there?” Turcotte forced himself to look at the strange creature.
Katyenka answered that. “They must have found it in the same vault as the German foo fighter and other alien information files. That led the Section Four scientists to assume, besides the fact no one’s ever seen anything like that in the natural world, that it is extraterrestrial in origin. It is possible that it is some bizarre creation that came from the Nazi butchers in the camps, but they did not think so.”
“It’s an organism?” Turcotte confirmed.
Katyenka nodded. “Yes.”
“An Airlia pet?”
“They had no idea.”
“Was it found with Airlia artifacts?”
“It doesn’t say.” Katyenka had finished reading the material available. “It does say there were two found. The German scientists did an autopsy on the other one.”
“That’s one thing?” Turcotte stared at the parts floating in the solution.
Katyenka tapped the glass. “The center part… the ball with the eyes… is the head, as near as they could determine. The Germans found a four-hemisphere brain housed inside a very hard protective covering, much stronger than our human skull. The brain was complex, similar to ours but different in some key ways, besides having twice as many hemispheres.
“The other things… well, those are arms, legs, whatever. Each one is the same. The strange thing… well, there are many strange things… is that each arm has a small, complex stem of its own at the thick end, the end that connects with the ball. Perhaps just a nervous system end point, but it appeared to be more than that.”
“Why did they take all the arms off?” Turcotte asked, trying to assimilate this information.
“They didn’t. That’s the way it was found in the Nazi archives. From the autopsy it was determined that the arms… well, the best they could figure was that they were detachable and interchangeable. Not only on the main body.” She looked up from the computer screen and pointed. “See those humps? That’s where the arms attach, but possibly even between different main bodies.”
Turcotte blinked. “You’re joking. Like I could give you my arm.”
Katyenka shrugged. “That is a theory postulated by the scientists who left this record.”
“But what is it?’ Turcotte said. “Where did it come from?”
“We recovered much from the Nazis, but not everything. After all, you got the Airlia atom bomb. And there is much the Nazis didn’t find.”
Turcotte tried to imagine the thing in the tank alive, the arms attached, the three fingers at the end of each arm moving.
He shuddered.
Lisa Duncan paused in the door of the conference room and surveyed the two men already inside. Major Quinn had an unlit cigarette in his hands, turning it over and over. Larry Kincaid’s hands were wrapped around a large coffee mug, dark bags under his eyes, his gaze unfocused. In the corner of the room a clock indicated that Lexina’s deadline was only twenty-seven hours away.
She stepped inside, ushering Professor Mualama to a seat near the end of the table. She quickly made introductions.
“What happened in Montana?” she asked Quinn.
Quinn’s report was brief. “The NSA authorized use of an ICBM called Interdictor to try to take out the talon and Warfighter with a nuclear warhead. Somehow Lexina must have gotten intelligence about that and fired first. The warhead went off in the silo. Local damage was minimal, as the silo site was remote, but fallout could be a problem. Luckily, there are no winds in the area right now.”
“How did Lexina learn of the planned launch?” Duncan sat down at the end of the conference table, Mualama flanking her to the right.
Quinn shrugged. “A leak somewhere. We have to assume STAAR still has operatives infiltrated throughout the military and government.”
“Is the NSA planning any further action against the talon?” Duncan asked. “Not that they will admit to me,” Quinn said.
“Anything on the key?”
“No.”
“Anything on the runes?” she asked. She’d sent an image of the stone marker ahead via SATCOM to Quinn so the UNAOC high rune experts could take a look at them.
“Nothing so far,” Quinn said. “They’re still working on it.”
“That’s helpful.” Duncan’s tone indicated how she felt about that. “And the skeleton we brought back?”
“Sent to the lab,” Quinn said. “It will be examined.”
“Any word from Turcotte?”
“Nothing. Last report was he was landing at Stantsiya Chyort.”
Duncan turned to her right. “Dr. Mualama, anything you care to say?”
Mualama steepled his fingers together. “It is obvious that the Airlia have been on this planet for a very long time. The discovery of this particular corpse is the first Airlia body that we know of that has been found. The dating of the grave site puts it about ten thousand years ago, or after the destruction of Atlantis.”
“We know the Airlia have been here a long time,” Quinn said wearily.
“But the thing you don’t know,” Mualama said, “is how much influence the Airlia have had on our development. Initially, Professor Nabinger believed they had little to do with us after they destroyed Atlantis over thirteen thousand years ago. However, the skeleton site was newer than that, and the marker on top of the coffin was only about two to three thousand years old. Someone put that marker there a long time after the coffin was in place.
“The question that has to be answered is how much interference have the Airlia had in our history? Think of the discoveries by Professor Nabinger in China about the Great Wall and the tomb of Qian-Ling. The possible true purpose of the Great Pyramid that he uncovered. The guardian on Easter Island, the statues there that we now know mimic the Airlia themselves.” Mualama leaned forward. “We have to reevaluate everything we think we know about our history.”
“We know that,” Duncan said. “We’ve discovered other interference. We know the Guides from The Mission have been active at times throughout our history. We believe the Black Death in the Dark Ages was caused by The Mission. The thing we don’t know is why the various Airlia factions have been doing what they’ve been doing other than it appears to be a continuation of the millennia-old civil war and we happen to be caught in the middle.”
A phone buzzed, and Quinn picked it up. He listened for a second, then put his hand over the receiver. “We finally have Captain Turcotte on the SATPhone.”
”Put it on the speaker,” Duncan ordered. She leaned forward. “Mike, you there?”
Turcotte’s voice sounded clear, relayed through Department of Defense satellites from his location in Russia. “Yes.”
“The control for the talon?”
“Stolen.” Turcotte quickly updated her. “At least we know why Section Four was attacked,” he concluded.
Duncan told him of the explosion in Montana. Then she moved on to the actions off Easter Island.
“I think I know what happened to the Washington.” Duncan had been checking databases about that during the flight back. She’d had imagery of the aircraft carrier relayed to Turcotte’s bouncer. “I think the guardian sucked up a lot of information on nanotechnology from the Interlink and used it.”