The God Complex: A Thriller (41 page)

Anya had come to find them as they neared what she had hoped would be an exciting part of the flight. Sadly, the conversation with Cash had left her little hope that her son would ever come to terms with who he was. She still wanted to share the moment; it might make them realize they were part of something bigger.

She found them in the front lounge, laughing and joking as a family. She thought back to her days with Cash’s father. They had shared scenes not dissimilar. She had even dreamt of moments during the pregnancy when she, Charles and Cash were in the same position.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “You may want to look out of the window, we’re about to witness something you’ll never see again.

Caleb directed the submersible expertly well. He had been practicing for a long time and had designed the system himself. The practice runs had been perfect but this was the real thing. He checked the depth meter, almost seven miles below the ocean’s surface. It was the deepest part of the ocean floor and one of the most unexplored places in the visible universe, the perfect place to store and hide spaceships, particularly ones that had no fuel or source of power to make them do anything.

That was
all about to change. He illuminated the darkness below with spotlights and maneuvered the tube, developed to withstand the thousand times normal pressure, and began to transfer the fuel only recently developed by Anya.

Lights beyond the spotlights illuminate
d, and the image on Caleb’s screen being beamed from seven miles below filled with sediment. The ship was moving. It was pre-programmed to rise to the surface once fuelled. He moved the submersible back and away to its right by a few hundred meters. He had to repeat the same process another four times. He walked out onto the deck of the deep sea vessel that had been stationed over the same spot for weeks and waited. Although darkness had already fallen, the water was lightening. The spaceship was rising. The tip rose first and cut into the surface, opening the way for more of what was a far bigger vessel than he had envisaged. He knew it was big, but didn’t realize it was that huge.

“Holy f—”

“Kyle!’ Sophie
screeched when the tip burst through the surface. Their plane was circling overhead.

“I think if there were ever an occasion a boy’s allowed to swear in front of his mother that might be it
,” said Cash, holding in more than a few expletives himself as the full majesty of the spaceship revealed itself.

“It’s absolutely enormous!” said Kyle.

Bands of lights reached its full length, each one progressively larger as it worked its way down to the base of the craft. It hovered inches above the water’s surface, stretching up almost five hundred feet into the sky.

“They’ll put more fuel in it, a pilot will climb aboard and I’m sure they’ll switch off the lights before they move off to the spaceport,” said Anya. “I’m afraid we need to get a move on. They travel far faster than we do.”

Sophie took another long look. “Well, we solved one other mystery,” she said.

“What?”

“Why everyone started building pyramids all around the world!”

“Of course, they must have spotted one of these and tried to copy it.”

“The only ones we built were the Giza ones, the good ones,” Anya said. “They’re the only ones that come close to replicating the ships, in size and perfection of design. Just a shame all we had was stone to work with back then.”

“Why did you build the Great Pyramid?” asked Cash, thinking back to Rigs, still praying he was on his way to stopping the Nobles.

“To try to contact our home. We’ve not been able to talk to them since we arrived. The distance outside of the convergence is too great and there are too many systems in the way.”

“Convergence is that what you call the eighty-year window,”

“Yes, it’s—”

“Please, enough astronomy for the evening,” said Cash. “So the pyramid is going to send a signal?”

“Yes it will send a signal when the first transport leaves. It’s a hugely powerful bolt of light that will travel faster than the speed of light and deliver the news that we are ready to welcome them to their new home,” she said proudly.

“How can light travel faster than the speed of light?” asked Cash.

“You said no more astronomy talk,” said Sophie,

“I did,” he said. “It needs a lot of power to do that?”

“In any other building, the power left by the bolt would destroy it. The pyramid was built for just this purpose. They didn’t have the power source before. They tried tapping into the planet’s own but it just needed more oomph.”

Anya had work to do and disappeared again.

“I need to make a move. I can’t just let them take our planet from us!” said Cash.

Sophie agreed wholeheartedly.

“It means putting you and Kyle in danger.”

“I understand,” she said hugging him. “If we die, at least we’ll die together.”

“For the record, I have no intention of you or Kyle dying.”

“So what’s the plan?” she asked eagerly.

He told her, and she begged him not to.

Cash walked casually up the stairs towards the upper deck. Kyle was only a few paces behind him. The four-man security team, as they had done every time Cash had ventured upstairs, took note. When Kyle appeared behind him they relaxed. Cash looked round and waved at them, tripping on the last step and falling straight onto the floor.

“Dad!” said Kyle, rushing forward.

“Are you okay?” asked one of the security team walking to check he was unhurt. Cash tried to pick himself up but slumped back down when Anya came to see why Kyle had shouted.

“Help him
,” she ordered, rushing over herself and trying to lift him despite his being almost twice her weight.

Under orders from Anya, the security men rushed to his aid. Kyle stood back, out of the way, as they rushed to the top of the stairs to help Cash to his feet.

Once in place, Kyle sprang forward, hitting two of the security men with his best rugby tackle. His Noble genes had given the young man a physique and strength beyond his years. Caught completely by surprise, the two guards cascaded down to the bottom of the stairs.

“Kyle!” screamed Anya in horror at her grandson’s actions. Cash leapt to his feet, and with
only two guards to deal with, he sent a crushing punch into one’s neck while crashing the point of his elbow into the other. Both went down. Kyle, despite Cash shouting “no”, jumped on top of the one who had been punched in the neck and sent a fantastic right hook across his chin, knocking him out cold.

The one who had been hit with Cash’s elbow was going nowhere. Cash bounded down the stairs as the two guards below were still trying to recover. He kicked one out cold and the fourth raised his hands in surrender. Between their ties and other items from around the plane, Cash and Kyle tied and bound them to their seats.

“Okay,” said Cash. “Stage one complete!”

Anya stood looking at him with utter contempt.

“If you truly understood being a parent, you’d understand,” said Cash, brushing past her.

“You’ll never get through
the cockpit door,” she said.

“I don’t need to,”
Cash said. He reached back, grabbed Anya, and put a knife to her throat. He marched her towards the cockpit door. “I just need them to open it.”

“They won’t
. They’re trained not to,” she said. “Anyway, I know your plan, you know what we’ve got on board this plane.”

Cash tried not to let her see she had seen through his plan.

Anya heard one of the door locks open. “No!” she shouted. “Jettison the cargo before you open that door!”

Cash threw her out of the way and tried to open the door. He felt the plane shudder and knew the four nukes had been dropped into the ocean below. “Shit!”

The door opened and the captain and co-pilot appeared. He wanted to punch them but managed to hold back.

“I want this plane down at the nearest airstrip you can find!’ he said. “Or I swear I will kill somebody.”

Anya nodded. She had stopped Cash delivering a nuclear bomb to the island, the last four nuclear bombs in existence. They were out over the ocean in the middle of the Pacific exclusion zone. There wasn’t even anyone they could raise on the radio, other than from Wake Island, the spaceport.

The captain landed at an old
, disused airbase on the southern area of Enewetak Atoll, pointing out that Cash shouldn’t venture to the north of the atoll, as it still hadn’t been cleared as safe after numerous nuclear test explosions back in the forties and fifties.

“Everyone out!”
Cash had shouted, opening the door and waiting for the internal emergency stairs to unfold.

He helped Sophie and Kyle down and assisted the security men who, with their hands tied, did not find the descent easy. The
captain and co-pilot had looked on with disinterest until Cash had ushered them off also. Anya sat resolute in the front lounge watching Cash throw everyone off of her plane.

“
Come on, you next.”

“I’m not getting off,” she said.

“You may not live to regret that!”

He turned back to the door and began retracting the staircase. Sophie spotted it too late, it was already out of her reach by the time she got to it.

He blew her a kiss and mouthed “I love you!” and closed the door. He walked back to the cockpit, followed by Anya, fascinated at what he was doing.

Cash sat in the
captain’s seat and began to familiarize himself with the controls.

“You can fly?” she asked.

“I’ve had a few lessons,” said Cash. “The principles are the same. In fact, this is far more automated than the little Piper I’ve flown.”

“Getting up’s easy, but you have to land it at the other end.”

“No I don’t,” he said looking down longingly at Sophie and Kyle. Sophie was hugging her son tightly, her body convulsing as he looked up at him.

“You’d sacrifice
yourself for them?” she asked incredulously.

“In a heartbeat,
” replied Cash.

Cash pushed the throttle forward and positioned the aircraft for takeoff. He waved and threw the throttles forward. A buzzer sounded as they hit takeoff speed and he pulled backwards on the joystick that controlled the plane.

“So, Mother, let’s you and I have the chat of our lives,” said Cash, noting they were due to arrive just ten minutes before the first transport was due to leave.

Sophie was inconsolable. When the nuclear bombs were jettisoned, she thought his crazy idea was over. But at least he’d had a chance of coming back. She knew the second he retracted the stairs, he was going to use the plane as his bomb. Cash was never coming back.

Rigs heard a scrabbling noise. He hadn’t heard a thing for hours and rushed back to the King’s Chamber. It was coming from the entrance the Sicarii had sealed earlier. He rushed down as the entrance opened. Joel stood in the entranceway, sweat pouring from his brow, his arm once again secured in plaster.

“I just discovered they locked you in here. They really weren’t supposed to harm you,” he said.

Rigs nodded. “Explosives?” he asked.

“Yes, I brought some in case I couldn’t get the door open, why?”

Rigs didn’t think there was time to chat. He rushed across to the Jeep that Joel had used and grabbed his bag. He ran back to the pyramid and straight past Joel without slowing down. A faint rumble started. He ran faster. He didn’t know what the pyramid was going to do but whatever it was, he thought it best it didn’t. He ran back down to the Queen’s Chamber door and placed the bag. He ran back up the stairs and into the gallery. The rumble had increased. The floor beneath him was shaking.

“Get out of there!” shouted Joel.

The walls began to shake wildly. Rigs triggered the explosives. He didn’t even feel their force, such was the power that was surging through the pyramid. Rigs bounced off the walls as he tried to climb back down the stairs to the Queen’s Chamber below. He reached the door, a hole just large enough to squeeze through. The noise was deafening as the power was slowly building. He covered his ears and climbed through the hole, his insides shaking. His teeth rattled wildly in his mouth and his bones vibrated. He fell to the floor, his legs unable to hold his weight. He tried to reach for the switch but his arm shook wildly. He focused all of his efforts and energy on that one point, as though it were the only place in the universe that mattered.

Bea checked the water system again. The Senator still hadn’t triggered the mechanism. It wasn’t time critical but it was her baby. She wanted to know it had worked. She was going to fly back on the first transport and wanted to know everything was working before she left. She turned to Antoine, but his eyes were transfixed in the distance. She looked around. Five enormous transports were slowing as they approached, dwarfing the space port complex as they positioned themselves on the island’s perimeter.

“Magnificent,” said Antoine. His moment had come. He had succeeded.

The first ship moved into position, touching down on the platform, which would allow the full force of the ship’s power to propel it into space.

Bea spotted the name.
Atlantis.
She hadn’t known its name. She thought of the myth of the lost island, and advanced culture lost forever, or more precisely, until Anya had managed to create the fuel their ancestors knew they needed but weren’t able to create without modern technology.

Bea looked around. “Where’s Anya?” she asked.

“Is she not here?’ said Antoine, disappointed. He had insisted that every Noble be present for the momentous occasion. Only the Senator had been unable to attend. He had assumed she had been somewhere in the spaceport complex working on last minute details. She had been more responsible for the success of the event than any other Noble there.

“Her plane’s on its final approach,” said Conrad.

“Bertie’s still not triggered the toxin,” said Bea. “I’m about to board, would you mind if I…” She trailed off. Anya’s plane; it wasn’t heading for the runway, it was heading for the platform.

“What is she doing?”

Conrad radioed the plane. “Anya, what are you doing?” Everyone else started to run from the platform.

Bea’s hand hovered on the mousepad, ready to click. The plane was still a few seconds from impact.

“Antoine?” she asked again.

“She still has time to pull up,” he said, ignoring Bea. “What is she doing?”

“Anya!” shouted Conrad.