Earth Before Man Page 7

  “I guess that’s the end result of a few victims accidently stumbling onto the trip door.”

  “Yes, and if it wasn’t for Santo’s quick reflexes, my bones would have been added to them.”

  As the drone slowly drifted through the horizontal tunnel illuminating the same shiny surface as the shaft, its laser measuring technology indicated a seven-foot ceiling and a four-foot wide tunnel. Because the drone was operating on a gravity deviation technology, the thick dust on the floor remained undisturbed. Kirk commented on it,

  “Well, for sure nobody has been in that tunnel for hundreds of years.”

  Still stunned by the horror of the bones, Maria remained mute and simply nodded her agreement.

  Suddenly the illumination broadened to show a massive cavern. Maria expressed her wonderment in one word. “Wow.” Kirk astonished her even more,

  “The measurements on the cave are a hundred meters by fifty with varying ceiling height averaging out to approximately five meters high. I counted five tables cluttered with what looked like medical equipment. Notice the overhead lights above each table.”

  She saw something of interest on one of the tables and quickly entered keyboard commands. When the screen zoomed in on her target, she could not believe her eyes.

  “Jezz, Kirk, you have discovered an ancient underground hospital. That’s a medical monitor and that one is a piece of diagnostic equipment and right there are surgical instruments.”

  She scanned the screen to the right. Albeit dirty and needing cleaning, both recognized life support equipment, medical ventilators, and dialysis machines.

  Suddenly the screen went blank. Readouts at the bottom of the screen indicated that the drone was zipping through the cavern and back to the tunnel and the mysterious pile of bones. Altimeter readings showed that it shot back up through the tunnel. Startled, Maria demanded,

  “What just happened?”

  Kirk explained,

  “After we scared the soldiers away Santo thought it best if we retreated. He turned the searchlights off and called the drone back. We quickly gathered up our equipment and fled.”

  Kirk then stood back and with a slight swagger asked a hopeful question.

  “Well, did I do good or not? Does this warrant further investigation?”

  Maria was deep in thought and did not even hear the question. While Kirk was waiting for a hopeful answer, she punched in some numbers. When the returning codes were accepted, she said to whoever she had called,

  “Reg, are the new ground penetrating mini satellites operational yet?”

  Reginald McCaw was the Chief Operating Manager for a Satellite Development Research Laboratory operated by the House of the Nazarene. Six months ago, Maria had authorized a budget for satellite imaging technology. Reg was one of the many very young, practically a kid, prodigies that Waldorf had recruited for the House. Once again, their ‘Think Tank’ was the finest in the world. It certainly helped when alien technology was added to the equations.

  Although everybody knew Reg’s age, he always tried to sound older by lowering his voice. Once he tried to grow a mustache but all that grew were a few long strings and laughter from his peers. He replied,

  “Yes ma’am. How many do you need?”

  “Just the one will do fine. Is it equipped with camouflage and gravity deviation technology?”

  “Yes ma’am. It has been ready to go on assignment for some time now.”

  “Good. I’m sending you some GPS coordinates in Turkey. I want a complete scan of a subterranean cavern as well as the surrounding area, at least by a hundred meters and I want the results ASAP.”

  “Can do, but you know we are located in Australia right?”

  Her reply dripped of scorn,

  “Yes Reg, I know where my labs are.”

  It was not what Kirk was hoping to hear. He did not want technology to explore the cave, he wanted to. After Maria was finished with Reg, he protested,

  “But we are going to explore by boots right?”

  Knowing his enthusiasm for an assignment, she cast him a wry look and said,

  “Yes Kirk, but I need to know what I’ll be sending a research team into first. Of course you will be assigned as the team leader.”

  She heard a sigh of relief from him and then added,

  “Go over to the storeroom and sign out a manometer. I want to know the condition and toxicity of the air in the cave.”

  Not sure why that precaution was necessary, he said,

  “But we felt an updraft in the shaft. Doesn’t that imply there is air circulation going through the cavern?”

  “Yes, but I want to know the quality of that air.”

  She then cast him a smirk and added,

  “Unless you want to go in there and report back how good or bad the air is according to your lungs?”

  He got it.

  “No, that’s fine, I’ll get the manometer.”

  She added,

  “If you discover something of importance I’ll organize a team of skilled people to investigate further. I don’t want inexperienced scientists in there mucking up equipment before it is properly identified and catalogued. For now, you go back there and do a preliminary for me. Be ready to go as soon as I get all the essential data.”

  Filled with excitement, Kirk could not leave her lab fast enough.

  Chapter 14

  Return of the Dark Spirits

  The night of the big scare in the field, seeing the Dark Spirits, the three soldiers returned to Alakata. They woke up the officer in charge of the village, Turkish Antiquities Police Inspector Buruk and reported their horrifying experience to him. As an authority on legends and myths of the region, he already knew of such stories and was not surprised to hear that they had been seen again. What did surprise him was how the soldiers reeked of alcohol. That alone explained many things to him. Through yawns and indifference, he listened to their rambling for a few minutes and when he thought it was enough they were dismissed. They were ordered to bed and not to babble things like this to the weaker superstitious villagers.

  When Buruk woke that morning, he dressed and walked down the street to the old lady’s home that had agreed to feed him for a price. A brisk mountain breeze from down in the valley was chilly but he always enjoyed a cold breeze in the morning. His way of thinking was that it got the blood flowing and it could only get warmer as the day dragged on.

  All was right with his morning until he saw a multitude of villagers huddled around the three soldiers who had suffered the fright of the so-called dark spirits of the field. As he walked past them, he slowed to hear their fanciful horror story. He heard the rambling of the one who feared the spirits the most and was the first to run back to their campfire.

  “They had long arms twice, no three times this length.”

  To stress the exaggeration, he outstretched both arms as far apart as he could. Another soldier swore and testified to Allah that he fired his rifle directly into the shadowy spirits but the bullets passed right through it. They howled and shrieked most earsplitting sounds. All three testified that they were lucky to escape with their lives.

  Stopping and listening to the stories, Inspector Buruk knew the mindset of villagers all too well. Although only two black spirits were seen, he understood that by noon the stories would be exaggerated to hordes running and floating around in that section of the mountain. Arms that were three times longer would soon magically grow to be almost an entire field long. Also listening in the crowd was the village Elder. With the help of his walking stick, he stumbled toward the story tellers and declared the haunted field a forbidden zone. Now that the dark spirits had returned, he was not going to take a chance and lose more valuable goats or for that matter, herders.

  What the Inspector did not see was Professor Asker standing in one of the doorways and listening to the rantings of the soldiers. According to a coded email just received minutes ago, the House of the Nazarene complimented him on a discovery they conside
red most important. He knew what the soldiers saw. He was not going to convince them that the evil black spirits were not real or explain what they really were. At least now, the House of the Nazarene can explore the field in peace. Surely, nobody was foolish or brave enough to venture over there now.

  However, that evening, under cover of darkness, three young intrepid village boys had snuck away from their homes. They met in the abandoned house at the edge of the village, the same ruined house with no roof that Kirk had landed his D-wing days before. They huddled and made daring plans. Before the full moon disappeared behind the far mountain, they would sneak over to the same spot where the soldiers had made camp and wait under the cover of darkness to see the black spirits for themselves. Soon after, three small shadows trailed out of their hiding place and made their way to what they thought was going to be an exciting adventure.

  Chapter 15

  At the House of the Nazarene’s D-wing hangar, Kirk had gathered what he considered essential for the preliminary exploration of the cave. He was in the process of checking off the list when Maria entered and said,

  “My, aren’t we the anxious one. It’s still hours before dark and you are practically ready to go. What’s the rush?”

  He turned and flashed her that flirty grin she always melted at.

  “I’ll be leaving at eleven tonight, just getting ready, that’s all.”

  “Well, I got the ground penetrating results from our Satellite Development Research Laboratory in Australia that I asked for.”

  Kirk’s attention suddenly peeked and she continued,

  “The drone measurements were correct about the shaft and the volume of the cavern. However, the satellite also located two other large caverns off to the north side of the main cave.”

  After a quick thought, Kirk cut in,

  “But there was no visual from the drone on that.”

  “I know. It implies they are behind doors or concealed walls. When you are there, see if you can locate them. Also, depending on the results of the manometer reading for air quality, you will be entering a fairly large cave. Did you bring enough tungsten lights?”

  “No ma’am. I’ll be using the night vision helmets Santo acquired from the labs in Brazil.”

  She nodded her approval.

  An awkward moment now passed between them. He wondered what else she wanted and why she was just standing there glaring at him. In turn, she stumbled over the proper words, saying,

  “It’s a two man job. I don’t want you going down in that cave without support from up top. I want you to pick a partner for this trip.”

  Kirk knew Maria well enough and what she was asking. Flashing that seductive grin again, while pretending to go into thought he said,

  “Well, it will have to be somebody I can trust, rely on and has plenty of experience in the field. Do you know anybody like that?”

  She playfully kicked him in the shin, walked away and said,

  “I’ll see you at elven tonight.”

  Chapter 16

  That same evening was one of the rare times Belle, Santo, and Maria were able to sit down at the dinner table together. As per rules, there was no shop talk over the table. Belle monopolized the whole time talking about what Robert did in school that was really bad but didn’t get caught this time. Both parents clung to every word as if it were an important battle plan.

  After dinner, as usual, Belle and her private tutor were upstirs studying the languages. Bulgarian was added to the three others she was already learning. The parents were downstairs in the living room talking about each other’s day. Santo had to confess that he did not understand a lot of what Jessika and Zak were telling him about the computer problems and the hacking. All he knew for sure was that he had to try to locate whoever was brilliant enough to cyber-attack Nazarene computers. To make his evening worse, Maria started to describe her problems with replicating fragmented alien DNA strands. She had discovered that alien DNA was capable of self-replicating and that allowed her to retro engineer the DNA code back over many thousands of years. She was trying to get back to what she called the alien ‘Eve Gene’ All Santo could invasion was a shower and a nice warm bed.

  After getting Belle to bed, it was close to ten o’clock and Maria was in the bedroom getting ready for her first field operation in over a year. Ever since taking over as leader of the House of the Nazarene it just seemed that all she did was sit behind a desk or argue with her computers, struggling to force her quantum processors to synchronize with her algorithm program. Something was jamming the program and she suspected that it was the needed DNA code from the elusive Anannaki.

  Santo entered the bedroom and saw her dressing in a field outfit. It was something he did not like to see. Although understanding her desire to get out in the field, for it matched his, his thought was that they are now parents and therefore fieldwork now belonged to the young. He knew the mission was simply reconnaissance of the cave but that did not stop him from worrying about her. When she was ready to leave, Santo gave her a big hug, held her tight, and inundated her with precautions and rules of engagement if that ever happened. After a kiss, she left him to get ready for his nightly security rounds.

  A few minutes before eleven, carrying a backpack, she entered the hangar. Kirk was already there waiting for her. Seeing her approach, he asked,

  “What’s in the bag?”

  Pretending to be nonchalant and while putting it in the back of the D-wing she replied,

  ‘Oh, just the usual things an experienced spelunker needs in the field. What did you bring?”

  Making fun of her, he said,

  “Oh, just the usual things an experienced soldier needs in the field.”

  Chapter 17

  As hoped, the night sky around the village of Alakati was again overcast. Like the night before, low clouds curtained off the moon and starlight. As the approaching D-wing entered the targeted field, Kirk stopped and hovered. He turned to Maria and explained,

  “Just in case somebody is snooping around in the dark down there, I’m going to sweep the ground with an infrared scan looking for human heat signatures.”

  It only took a second for the wide dispersal beam to locate three red dots huddled together behind a knoll not far from the D-wing’s target. Curious, Maria said,

  “Perhaps they are soldiers waiting in ambush?”

  “No,” said Kirk, “the readout indicates they are small, probably children wanting to catch sight of the dark spirits.”

  She asked,

  “Should we wait for them to leave?”

  Again, Kirk said,

  “No. That might take too long. I know how to scare them off.”

  A every concerned Maria, using a caring maternal tone said,

  “You are not going to hurt them are you?”

  His answer was vague.

  “Here, take control and set us down over the other side of the knoll.

  Under cover of both darkness and camouflage, while Kirk struggled into his dark suit, Maria gently landed the D-wing on a patch of nearby grass. Kirk stood beside the open canopy and reached for the night vision helmet. Now understanding his intent, she nodded her approval. She put on her helmet and as clear as if it were a bright sunny day, watched as Kirk snuck over the knoll toward the three unsuspecting intrepid boys.

  Young excited and courageous boys were scanning the surrounding night in all directions hoping to see proof of the dark spirits. One of the boys, in a fearful manner whispered,

  “I think I hear something.”

  Alerted, all three slowly poked their heads over the knoll with flashlights at the ready. That was when their wish came true. With their flashlights turned on, they saw the dark sprite of the ancient legends standing right in front of them and making bone chilling throaty drone sounds. They froze in fear until the spirit reached out its arms in a horrendous grasping manner. Fear snapped them into action and they ran toward the village as fast as their legs could carry them. With a job well do
ne, Kirk took off his helmet and smelled the result of his scare tactic. There was evidence in the air of one of the children releasing something into his pants.

  As he climbed back into the D-wing, he pointed to the GPS coordinates and said,

  “Bring us there. It’s just down the slope.”

  With her helmet still on, she said,

  “That was a mean trick.”

  In the same breath she added,

  “You would make a wonderful daddy one day.”

  He grinned from ear to ear and replied,

  “I know, right.”

  After landing at the base of the shrub, with his night vision helmet back on, Kirk bent down and removed the rock he had wedged in the trip mechanism and pushed that corner of the trap door open. As the lid rose, she looked deep into the hole. After inspecting the smooth glass-like wall, she said,

  “Santo was right. This was not the result of an atomic bomb.”

  The plan was for her to stay up top and guard the entrance while he went down to do a preliminary search of the cavern.

  However, before allowed to go down, she made him test the air quality first. After placing the manometer into the gentle updraft current, he read the reading aloud.