Bones of Angels (14 page)

She had handed Quiz a piece of paper with her email address and cell phone number.

Quiz folded the paper and put it into his jeans’ pocket, wondering if he would ever use it.

Catherine Caine’s Private Office

Aboard the Alamiranta

Charles and Quiz passed each other in the waiting room of Caine’s office. The young man had been summoned to Caine’s inner sanctum by Michael Zoovas, who occasionally protected her office in his role as ship’s Security Chief.

“Have a seat,” said Caine.

Quiz sat in the chair his grandfather had vacated only moments earlier.

“You carried out your two missions admirably,” said Caine. “If I didn’t need your skills so badly in the Ops Center and our research labs, I’d make you a full-fledged member of one of our assault teams.”

Quiz blushed.

“That was quite a feat — operating on DJ,” Caine said.

“As I told DJ a few minutes ago, I read a lot.”

Caine brought her hands together, fingertip to fingertip. “Quiz, I’m not the only person on board who hears you talking to yourself sometimes.”

“A silly habit. I usually have a lot on my mind, and it occasionally spills over.”

“A reasonable explanation,” Caine said calmly, “but we both know that something more is going on in your thought processes. Something in the Whittington lineage has bestowed very unusual talents and abilities on you. In some ways, you and your grandfather are quite alike.”

Quiz sat up straighter. He hadn’t expected to be confronted about Dante. Usually relaxed, he was very nervous.

“Relax,” Mrs. Caine said reassuringly. “I merely called you in to say that when you want to talk about it, I’m here. So is Grace.”

Quiz nodded his head slowly. “Thank you, ma’am. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Shotgun Alley

Aboard the Alamiranta

The battle simulation had been spirited and productive. Titan Six had routed terrorists from the crowded, dangerous streets of Beirut. Hawkeye, however, had been listless. After an hour, the team headed for the exit.

“You were a bit sluggish out there today,” Shooter told Hawkeye.

“Was it that noticeable?” asked the team leader.

Shooter laughed. “If this had been live in the field, you’d have been killed a dozen times, and that’s a conservative estimate.”

“I’ve been dead once already. I think that’s enough.”

“Then why did you miss so many targets and leave yourself vulnerable again and again?”

“I’m not entirely sure. I’m a soldier, and I’m clearly called to continue in that vocation in the here and now. But when I felt myself drifting through space after Reynard killed me, well . . . I felt that there’s something I’m missing.”  He raised his assault rifle. “Something more than this.”

Shooter draped her arm around Hawkeye’s shoulder. “I think there’s hope for you yet, Michael.”

Hawkeye looked Shooter in the eye. “Maybe. But it still doesn’t mean I couldn’t whip your ass one-on-one.”

They both laughed.

Ship’s Library

Aboard the Alamiranta

I guess it was inevitable that one day we would be confronted about our ongoing conversations. I just didn’t think it would come from Mrs. Caine herself.

* I thought she was both supportive and gracious. *

Yes, but I think it might be more prudent to confide in my grandfather one of these days. He’s into all kinds of weird stuff. He would find the whole thing fascinating.

* I agree, although he might want to conduct some experiments that might sever our connection. He is a bit balmy in the head despite his superior intellect. Most true geniuses are. *

I hadn’t thought of that. No telling what might happen to our symbiotic relationship if he hooked me up to one of the machines in his basement labs.

* Do you think we are true symbiants? *

It didn’t start out that way, but I think that my particular brain chemistry owes a great deal to my Whittington genes. I think that certain beneficial genetic mutations allowed a symbiotic relationship to develop.

 * Quiz, do you believe I’m real? *

Yes. I mean you’re real to me. Or maybe you’re the one who’s real, Dante, and I’m the imaginary one. Just a character in your fertile poetic imagination.

An interesting hypothesis. *

But suppose I’m mad as a hatter.

* There’s a fine line between genius and madness. *

Continue reading

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by Christopher Forrest

Chapter 1

Summer Solstice

Temple of Kalpur-az

The young king and queen walked slowly behind High Priest Ixmilan, who held the sacred artifact of light in his cupped, tanned hands. The gleaming blue crystal, housed in a polished stone reliquary, had been passed down for thousands of years. The clear hexagonal crystal was eight inches long and possessed great power, though its source of magic was unknown.

Legend claimed that the sacred stone had been found on the western plateau by a child. Others said that Ixmilan was a shaman who had made the crystal himself.

King Enhaht and Queen Qu-lo were adorned in the traditional white robes of ceremonial purity. The loose-fitting royal garments would be worn until the final moment of the ritual. The High Priest, wearing colorful robes and ceremonial headdress, was preceded by the incense bearers and temple maidens as they approached the temple.

Behind the royal procession were the citizens of the large city, the great walled fortress of Raj Kithune. The throng chanted as they swung knotted prayer ropes of hemp above their heads. The skin of all women had been painted with a yellow paste made from ochre dust.

It was the Day of Light and Death.

Gongs were struck throughout the city: in the temples of the gods and goddesses, in the royal palace, atop the astronomical observatory, along the row of step pyramids where previous rulers had begun their journey to the afterlife, and beside the clear pool of Ashtak, god of water, which was fed by a dozen streams from the fertile plains surrounding the city.

With great solemnity, the procession ascended the entrance to the temple. The terraced stone edifice rose one hundred steps toward the heavens, where Kalpur-az dwelled and smiled upon his dutiful servants on the green and blue earth below.

Ixmilan entered the mating chamber and peered at the round hole in the stone ceiling high overhead. Soon, Kalpur-az would reach the proper point in the endless blue sky.

The incense bearers and temple maidens remained outside the chamber, kneeling. They prayed that the royal rulers of their city might bear many strong sons and daughters.

The High Priest opened the reliquary and placed the blue crystal in the niche carved into the sandstone pedestal in the center of the chamber. He then bowed from the waist and slowly backed into the ante-chamber, where he knelt with the temple maidens, his hands raised in supplication to the source of life above. Ixmilan knew how sacred his obligations were.

The moment had arrived.

The sun shone through the hole at the apex of the temple, directly striking the crystal. The crystal pulsed with energy for several seconds before filling the chamber with a pure, radiant, bluish-white light. Even the colorful paintings of amorous couples on the walls were washed away momentarily by the brilliance of the sun’s dispersed light.

Enhaht turned to his queen, who spread her arms wide, allowing her robe to fall to the floor. The king kissed his queen sensuously on the lips and placed his strong hands on her slender, bare shoulders.

Outside, the city feasted and lived in the glory of the divine ecstasy experienced by their rulers. The people knew their kingdom would last forever.

Chapter 2

U.S. Petroleum Corp., Camp 12A

Northeastern Nevada

Martin Benneker, CEO of U.S. Petroleum Corporation, didn’t spend much time in the field. He’d been born in Manhattan fifty-one years earlier, and he disdained the dust and dirt produced by the thousands of drilling sites of his company, nicknamed U.S. Pet. But he made exceptions when there was an opportunity to put billions of dollars on U.S. Pet’s balance sheets. He preferred the look of newly printed greenbacks to the sheen of shiny black oil.

He entered Trailer 3 and shook hands with Chief Geologist Ted McDonald, who was also Benneker’s son-in-law. Nepotism was alive and well in the boardroom of U.S. Pet. McDonald was on day-shift with his assistant, Charles Glenn.

Benneker wore a stylish khaki safari outfit, complete with Indiana Jones hat, while McDonald and Glenn wore jeans and checkered shirts. The CEO sat down in the air-conditioned trailer and was handed a cup of coffee by his son-in-law. The trio was surrounded by a bank of computers, all scrolling data. Printers occasionally came to life and clacked out hardcopy stats.

The trailer windows admitted a view to the scrub desert beyond. It was a mercilessly hot day, with the temperature hovering at 110 degrees. A distant brown mountain range cut jagged teeth into the skyline. The terrain was flat and dry, dotted with sagebrush, snakeweed, cheatgrass, and an occasional pricklypear cactus. Tire tracks had carved paths in the mix of sand and desert hardpan.

The Great Basin Desert covered 190,000 square mile of America’s west. It was bordered on the east by the majestic Rocky Mountains, on the west by the Sierra Nevada Range. The Columbia Plateau was its northern boundary, the Mohave and Sonoran deserts its southern. It was expansive enough to cover portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregan, Utah, and Wyoming. The U.S. Petroleum CEO and his employees were sitting one hundred miles northeast of Elko, Nevada, a mere stone’s throw from where the state lines of Utah, Idaho, and Nevada intersected. It was a barren, dry land with no other towns than Elko within hundreds of miles of the U.S. Pet Trailers.

“It’s a hell of place to change the world,” Benneker remarked.

“A hell of a place to make a fortune,” said McDonald.

“It’s a hell of a place — period,” said Glenn, pouring an ounce of Jack Daniels into the cup of each man in the trailer. “I sure wouldn’t want to land here after I die.”

The three men laughed as they looked at the Hemmington 5600 Drill two hundred yards to the north. A large titanium corkscrew, twenty feet long and twelve inches in diameter, hung from a black steel tripod. It was fastened to a heavy-duty cable assembly that descended straight down into the earth’s mantle for three miles. A half dozen bare-chested men walked near the site in hard hats. They wielded enormous wrenches and other tools.

“Who would have thought that oil really was the answer to the earth’s energy crisis?” Benneker said, taking a long sip of coffee and bourbon. “Here’s to the limitless supply of oil beneath our feet.”  He pushed his hat back leisurely, revealing a broad forehead and thinning hair.

The three men clanked their ceramic mugs together.

“Here’s to abiogenic petroleum!” McDonald said.

Benneker let out a loud belly laugh. “The Department of Energy thought we were crazy when we requested permits to start drilling here!  Even the environmentalists didn’t care if we placed a few Hemmington screws in the middle of nowhere.”

“Maybe the mountain lions and rattlesnakes will picket us,” said Glenn.

The men broke into a fresh round of laughter.

A rumble spread across the desert floor, rocking the three men gently in their chairs.

“Probably another mini-quake out in California,” Glenn said. “The San Andreas has been burping over the last month.”

“That’s not from one of the screws?” Benneker asked.

“Nah,” said McDonald. “There’s a screw down there now, but . . . ”  He glanced at one of the computer screens. “She’s humming along at 500 rpm’s, as sweet and smooth as can be.”

The trailer rocked from side to side, throwing Benneker and Glenn from their chairs. Outside, the drillers were running from the tripod.

“I’ll check our seismology office down in Vegas,” McDonald said, concern now creasing his forehead.

Cracks appeared in the desert crust, sending hardhats scrambling for their pickups. Steam rose from the drilling hole, and two storage buildings next to the trailer complex collapsed.

“What the hell is going on?” Benneker cried, his coffee spattering against a map on the wall as the trailer tipped thirty degrees.

The ground shook violently. Black smoke poured from the well, accompanied by a heavy shower of dust and rocks. A large boulder shattered the glass window of the trailer.

“I don’t care what the hell is going on!” Glenn yelled. “I’m getting out of here.”

The three men bumped into each other as they tried to crowd through the narrow door simultaneously, looking almost slapstick in their attempt to retreat from the trailer, which was lurching from side to side like a bronco.

Benneker was the first man out, rushing for his $80,000 SUV. A seam split the desert floor in two, swallowing the CEO.

The trailer rattled, its left side sinking into a newly-formed crevice.

“What the --!” cried Glenn. “Did you see that?”

“Move!” yelled McDonald.

The two men were thrown to the ground. Behind them, the tripod and titanium corkscrew toppled onto the hot sand as the desert erupted in a violent explosion. Gas poured from the drilling site and erupted into an orange fireball extending a half mile into the washed-out sky.

What followed next was an event no geologist had ever witnessed.

The ground began to collapse in every direction around the site. An implosion was taking place, with the earth literally swallowing desert, machinery, trucks, storage sheds, and trailers. Fault lines spread like spider veins as the ground sloped at a steeper and steeper angle. Sand had grown so hot that it was melting into a conglomerate of silicon and glass.

Then came a final peal of thunder as the process reversed itself, the desert exploding for a second time in a haze of dust, gas, flames, and boulders both large and small. Then nothing but silence.

A crater almost two miles in diameter had formed in the vast expanse of desert.

There was no sign that human life had ever been present in the desolate region. A blast of heat spread outwards from the crater, scorching the sagebrush. An observer might have surmised that the desert had been impacted by a meteor, assuming an observer could have viewed the site with any clarity.

A cloud of smoke and dust hung in the sky, turning the air yellowish-brown.

For the time being, the Hemmington 5600 would not be making a fortune for U.S. Petroleum.