Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (34 page)

Just over twenty-four hours. That was enough time to sharpen her knives then determine the best ways to twist them.

“I can get you in,” she said.

“How?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Terrence looked like he might pry further but knew he was talking to a performer. He extended his hand, and this time, Heather slapped the cylinder into it.

“Thanks,” he said.

Terrence was halfway to the door when Heather called his name. He turned back, waiting, tired of her shenanigans.

“You keep saying, ‘If it works,’” she said.

“Yeah.”

“You think it might not work?”

Terrence nodded. “I’d say it’s fifty-fifty. If I’d had more time, I could get to seventy-five-twenty-five, but I don’t. Tomorrow. Three p.m.” He sighed. “Unfortunately.”

“If it doesn’t work,” Heather said, “maybe you can try to uncensor the Internet later.”

Terrence gave her a humorless smirk.

“If it doesn’t work, there’ll be no Internet left, and the resistance will be cut off from any possible help. Totally blind.”

C
HAPTER
53

Cameron was reclining in the rear of a rather lavish converted recreational vehicle when his father stumbled back, rapping his thigh on a protruding table, to join him.

“Nervous yet?” Benjamin asked.

Cameron lifted his head. He had his fingers interlaced just above his collar, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. It wasn’t so much that he needed rest as the fact that the RV’s bed was more comfortable than the one he’d been sleeping on in the lab. Ever since the camp’s survivors had joined them, it had only seemed right to surrender the house. Nathan’s daughter, Grace, had lived out there before she’d left, despite her not getting along at all with Taylor, Olivia, or the other rebel remainders. Nathan had been sleeping in the lab, like Cameron. Even after more than a week in the same place, Cameron didn’t think the father-daughter pairing had exchanged more than twenty words.

The RV’s bed, however, was comparatively plush. The minute it had arrived and he’d fallen into its mattress, Cameron had wondered why Andreus hadn’t brought RVs from the start. They’d all been converted to run on solar and could go a few hundred miles on a charge, but even dead they’d have made for nice little houses. They weren’t fast, owing to the solar conversion’s lack of torque, but it hardly mattered. Considering that the Astrals thought they knew what the caravan was up to, they had all the time in the world.

“No, I’m not nervous,” Cameron answered.

Benjamin sat atop one of the padded benches near the bed.
“I’m
nervous.”

Cameron sat up. The bed was in a rear recess, designed to be closed off as a miniature bedroom. If he stayed put, he’d be talking to his father through a slit. Sitting, they were two feet apart. There was also a pair of feet from Danika, who’d been uncharacteristically painting her fingernails outside Cameron’s co-opted bedroom with a worried air, but that was fine. Danika, like Trevor and Andreus, already knew anything they’d discuss.

There were somewhere between twenty and twenty-five people on this errand across various vehicles, but the rest of them thought they were pursuing something that didn’t exist. Something, Benjamin had told him, that might be an ancient adding machine from a Smithsonian photo. Something that most certainly wouldn’t be in the Little Cottonwood Canyon genealogical archives.

It was cruel to send so many people into the beast’s mouth then send them away feeling like failures when they came up empty, but deception was necessary. The detector in Benjamin’s hand suggested the BB was elsewhere (possibly with Charlie, conducting another decoy lecture in a separate RV), but any gaffe could give them away and blow the whole thing.

Danika looked at Cameron.
“I’m
nervous. How can you not be nervous?”

“When all of this started, I was on the road with Dan. I headed to your lab, to find Dad. Dad’s message sent me to Vail. So I was on the road through the beginning and stayed on the road — or at least out in the open, once we reached Vail — for months. I was used to traveling in the fringe places Dad took me as a kid.” He set his hand on his father’s shoulder. “I guess I got used to the idea that everything is at least a little dangerous, and that the tide could change at any time.”

Cameron, hearing himself articulate the thought, found it profound. Danika looked unimpressed. She frowned and resumed painting her nails. To Cameron’s knowledge, she’d never had painted nails. She’d probably found the polish in the RV, and was whistling in the dark.

“Hmm. Very macho. Maybe they could put you in an Old Spice ad.”

“Old Spice? Who still wears Old Spice?”

“I wore Old Spice until I ran out.”

Danika cocked a thumb at Benjamin. “See? Macho.”

Cameron watched her for a moment. It took him a while to see what was off about her, given her usual sarcasm, but then he had it. Her movements were overly slow and precise — because the moment she stopped focusing on painting straight lines, her hands started shaking.

“We’ll be okay,” Benjamin said.

Danika frowned, not looking up. “I’m a scientist. I’m supposed to be in a lab, maybe in front of a computer. Maybe Rambo here grew up walking the desert and killing game to eat over an open fire, but I grew up reading my mom’s old Judy Blume paperbacks. Later, I graduated to sitting safely inside and reading cozy mysteries. My dad didn’t even let me date until I was practically out of the house, and by then I was afraid of boys, too. Probably Dad’s intention.” She looked up, and Cameron realized, for the first time, that Danika had no idea how pretty she was. She’d spent her life staring at data. Everything else had been an untrustworthy distraction.

“It’s okay, Danika,” Benjamin repeated. “Really. I wouldn’t have okayed taking so many people if it wasn’t.”

“We
had
to take this many people so — ” She stopped, looked at the BB detector to make sure it wasn’t alarming silently, then went on. “ — so it’s not overly obvious if three of us split off.”

“I still wouldn’t have allowed it. I promise.”

Cameron found himself looking at his father, waiting. He knew the man well enough to sense more in the story. Benjamin hoped, yes. He fantasized, yes. He had his head in the clouds in terms of his work and leaped to many unfounded conclusions in pursuit of excitement, definitely. But he didn’t promise lightly.

Benjamin saw Cameron’s stare but spoke to Danika.

“The Astrals at the archive will be conveniently absent when we arrive because they’re letting us in. They’ll be around so it doesn’t look too fishy, but they’ll allow us to sneak by and pretend they don’t know we’re there. They needed me to read the Templar tablet because they couldn’t, and because they know the adding machine thing I projected during our fake meeting isn’t what they’re looking for; they’ll know they have to
stay
out of the way and
keep
leaving me alone so I can keep doing what they want — what they think I’m doing all on my own, without knowing they’re watching everything I do.”

“Why?” Danika asked.

“Because we haven’t finished our job,” Cameron said before Benjamin could answer.

Benjamin nodded then resumed talking to Danika. “We’ve shown them what we’re after. They plainly saw it’s not the object they want to find — the device that was missing from the excavation site under the Heaven’s Veil Apex. But because they believe I’m reading the tablet faithfully, they have to assume our supposed codex is just a link in a longer chain. They need to stay out of the way so we can locate this first object … and then lead them to the
next
link in the chain, which they’re hoping will be Thor’s Hammer.”

“But it won’t be.”

“It
will
be,” Benjamin said. “But they won’t know we’ve found this first stepping stone. Which means that later, we can go after the hammer without them being wise.”

Danika put her fingers to her temples. Benjamin laughed.

“I know, right? That’s how I felt when Nathan explained it. We have a big game of chicken. There’s the thing we’re
pretending
to be after, which is different from the thing we actually are. We’re too smart to come in plain sight like this, and they know
we
know they can see us in their shuttles, not via that little spy BB and — ”

“Stop,” Danika said. “Just stop.”

“My point is that they won’t interfere. They
can’t
interfere.”

“But that’s what’s been bugging me, Dad.” Cameron watched Benjamin perk up at his rare use of the familial term. “
We
know they won’t interfere because we’ve learned we’re doing what they want us to do: find something that will lead them to their lost hammer. But in
their
version of what we must be thinking, what we’re doing is stupid. Because officially, they think we’d have to assume they were hostile. And yet here we are, heading into one of their protected outposts.”

Benjamin shook his head. “Not protected.
Preserved
. There’s a difference. That’s what Nathan explained when I was feeling like you are, Danika. We don’t know exactly what the Cottonwood archive meant to the Astrals once upon a time, but it’s carved into Utah cliffs, so there could be anything down there that the Mormons aren’t telling anyone about. The facility’s always been secretive — in human hands, I mean. Like the Templars. Like the Freemasons.” He smirked. “Like the Mormons apparently.”

“So?”

“There’s a reason this archive exists.” He made a face. “
Genealogy?
Seriously? Does anyone here believe that a secretive organization bored a series of massive tunnels in a canyon wall to store
microfilm genealogical records?
The idea’s absurd. There have been tours, just like there are tours of anywhere secretive and mysterious, but they smell like distraction. Racks and racks filled with tiny, impossibly long drawers of microfilm. Supposedly, there’s never been a digital storage system that’s as long-lasting, but I have a hard time buying that. So in the end, I have to ask: What’s really stored at the Little Cottonwood Canyon archive? And more importantly, why do the Astrals care?”

“You think Thor’s Hammer is right there? At the archive?”

Benjamin laughed hard enough to turn Ivan’s head from the RV’s passenger seat up front. He lowered his voice, wary of the military man’s attention.

“Oh, I know
exactly
where Thor’s Hammer is, Cam. You do too. That’s what kills me. As far as historical jokes go, it’s a doozy.”

“Where?”

Benjamin laughed softer. “If you haven’t figured it out by the time we leave to chase it, I’ll have to tell you. But think about it, Cam. A weapon from the ancient alien theorist texts. Where would it go?”

“Jesus, Dad. I got tired of your guessing games a long time ago. Did you read it on the tablet?”

“The tablet confirmed it, but it’s the sort of thing I kind of always knew.”

“If you read it on the tablet,” Danika pointed out, “that’s cheating.”

Benjamin waved it away. “It’s not at Cottonwood. The Templars would have to assume the Astrals would occupy Cottonwood.”

“Why?”

“Because of the records.”

“Records of what?”

“This is Charlie’s guess,” said Benjamin, “though don’t go asking just yet because remember, he doesn’t know what we’re really after. But you know all the research he’s done into panspermia? The idea that life here and other places was seeded from a common source — from Astral DNA, or their equivalent genetic material anyway?”

“Sure,” said Cameron. “You think the archive contains
those
records?”

“It’s genealogy, isn’t it? Lets the human keepers of the place say what they do there with a straight face. But the place would have been built — and by built, I mean the original catacombs we assume were initially in those cliffs, behind the archive, then surely expanded by Masons in ways the original creators didn’t know about because Masons like to hold an ace — with alien help. An ancient partnership. The newer tunnels were added, giving the thing a face and access. But the Astrals would know exactly what it was and why it mattered. But do you understand the difference now? A simple archive of records is the kind of thing you
preserve
, not necessarily
protect
. It’s informational, not strategic. They didn’t know the Mormons had hidden something new right under their noses.”

Cameron felt like he was missing something. “So what?”

“Nathan’s people have analyzed every speck of back satellite data they’ve ever had on Cottonwood. There’s also an Andreus Republic outpost near Salt Lake, and Salt Lake City itself is largely Andreus controlled, seeing as it’s not a capital and doesn’t have a mothership. And they’re positive that there are no Reptars at the Cottonwood Canyon facility. Why would there be? It has no strategic significance, and even now that they know there’s something there that matters, they want us to take it.” He tapped the table. “There are only Titans at Cottonwood. Only the intellectual, record keeping class of Astrals, whose panspermatozoic genetics we obviously share and are hence most equipped to curate such a place.”

Cameron looked at Danika, who seemed as unimpressed as he was.

“Again,” he said. “So what?”