Turcotte and the others had also learned that some of the human survivors of Atlantis had formed a group to monitor the aliens. Known as Watchers, they were former priests who had once worshipped the Airlia as gods, and subsequently tried to monitor their conflict over the millennia.
Turcotte had killed Aspasia and destroyed his fleet coming from Mars, but Aspasia’s Shadow had secreted himself on Easter Island with the Grail in his possession and a burgeoning military force. Aspasia’s Shadow had used a nanovirus and nanotechnology to capture most of the American fleet in the Pacific, invade Hawaii and threaten the West Coast of the United States. And in China, Artad had been awoken by the Ones Who Wait. He had allied with the Chinese government and supported them in their invasions of both Taiwan and South Korea.
Both sides’ efforts had fallen apart when the Area 51 team Turcotte led gained control of the Master Guardian computer and its key, Excalibur, and shut down the alien computers. Artad and Aspasia’s Shadow abandoned their offensives on Earth.
The Third World War had been brief, but what it lacked in length it made up for in savagery and devastation.
Seoul, South Korea, was a ghost town, having been struck by both Chinese nerve agents and American nuclear weapons. The best estimate was at least three million dead and four times that displaced.
Half of Taiwan had been scorched by a nuclear blast in a desperate attempt to stop the invading mainland forces supported by Artad. Scattered fighting was still raging as Taiwanese troops sought out and destroyed remnants of the invading forces. At least two million had died in fighting on that island.
Muslims in western China were rising in revolt, seeing their opportunity as Beijing’s backing of the alien Artad had backfired. That battle was still raging.
In the Pacific, the US Navy’s Task Force Eighty, centered on the super-carrier Kennedy, was linking up with Task Forces Seventy-eight and Seventy-nine. The latter two had been released from alien control and their crews once more had free will, as Aspasia’s Shadow’s nanovirus had been rendered inert without input from the Guardian computer. The US once again ruled supreme in that part of the world.
Iran and Iraq were still fighting, and other Middle Eastern countries continued to stand on the edge of war as diplomats desperately tried to avert disaster. Israel had its nuclear arsenal fully deployed for the first time in history and it was only that threat that kept the surrounding Arab nations from invading.
Still, the world was slowly backing away from the precipice of complete disaster and the two alien sides were fleeing.
With the aliens and their followers defeated, the Third World War was officially over, although the world was far from peace.
The tolclass="underline" at least twelve million dead with twice that many wounded and countless more displaced from their homes.
If the First World War had started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the Second World War with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland (although many would argue that the Second was actually begun with the end of the First and the Treaty of Versailles), then the Third World War had begun at a remote desert site in the United States called Area 51, with the discovery of an alien mothership by the United States government. That event started a low flame boiling underneath an uneasy truce that had spanned millennia. It took over fifty years for the lid to blow off, but in terms of millennia, that was a relatively short period of time.
Unfortunately, while the Third World War was over, the First Interplanetary War for Earth was looming as a very real possibility, a fact known only to a select few. And this danger was not currently known by the man who had retrieved Excalibur, the key to the Master Guardian, from its hiding place near the top of Mount Everest, and who now sat there, unconscious, slowly freezing to death.
CHAPTER 1: THE PRESENT
Mike Turcotte muttered irritably, wanting nothing more than to be left alone. He was wrapped in a warm blanket and felt very comfortable. A Sunday morning in Maine, the one day of the week he was home from the logging camp and didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn. He was wrapped in his mother’s handmade comforters. He so badly just wanted to continue sleeping. A dream kept intruding, an insistent, irritating buzz in his subconscious. A woman with dark hair, dressed in a white robe, standing on a beach. Looking at him. Her mouth was moving, saying something, but he heard nothing. There was something wrong about the place though. The shadows, the water. All wrong.
He focused on her lips and he knew he had tasted them many times. They were thin and pale, her face angular. He had known her—
“Get up.”
He didn’t hear as much as knew that’s what she was yelling at him. “Get up.”
Turcotte didn’t want to. He could never remember feeling as secure and comfortable as he did right now. He’d been so tired, he knew that, and however long he had rested, it wasn’t near enough.
“I need you.”
She had saved him; he knew that, although he could not recall details. Beyond that, he knew they had done much together, and been many places. And he had loved her fiercely. That emotion roared through him, shaking him out of his stupor.
Turcotte opened his eyes but all he could see was white. He blinked, feeling something wet on his face. He shook his head, slowly realizing it was snow on his skin. Panicking, he sat up abruptly, six inches of snow falling off the upper half of his body.
He looked about. Open air directly in front. Rock behind.
He was flanked by bodies. Frozen solid. One dressed in a black robe with silver fringe. Another in ancient leather armor. And a third in early-twentieth-century climbing gear — Sandy Irvine, who had disappeared in 1924 while attempting to summit with George Mallory. With a smile frozen forever on his face. That shook Turcotte. He knew he’d have died with a smile on his face also if he hadn’t woken. He could feel the cold throughout his body now. It was excruciatingly painful as his nerve endings came awake.
He looked down and could just make out the sword across his knees. Excalibur.
The key to the Master Guardian that he had freed from its scabbard, activating it.
Reality came rushing back to him. Yakov had to be in the mothership with the Master Guardian. Duncan was missing. And he was high on Mount Everest.
Next to the sword was a SATPhone, its surface frozen and covered with ice. With stiff hands he reached out and picked up the phone, shoving it inside his parka. The cold made even the slightest act extremely difficult.
Mike Turcotte forced himself to get to his feet, Excalibur gripped tightly in his right hand, an ice ax in his left. He knew he had passed the peak of power the amphetamines had given him and that the oxygen richness of the blood doping was fading. How long had he sat there, he wondered. It couldn’t have been too long because he still had some feeling in his hands and feet. He checked his mask, but there was no oxygen flowing. The tank on his back had to be empty by now.
He knew, as surely as he could feel the sword in his hands, that he could not make his way along the ledge or down the mountain in the same manner he had climbed up. He glanced down once more at the three bodies frozen next to him. They had known the same thing. And they had never woken from whatever their last pleasant dreams had been.