Source

G. Gee William

Description

An epochal discovery during the Gulf War beckons Armageddon, and only an unemployed young History Graduate has any chance to avert it; but first he must accept Legends as fact and put his life on the line, before trying to secure the survival of humanity - and maybe much more ...

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookPartnership.com
• Date de parution: 17 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909270107
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE SOURCE
Book One of the Source Trilogy

 

 

 

 
William G. Gee
 
Copyright

© 2012 William G. Gee
William G. Gee has asserted his rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
www.williamggee.com
Published by eBookpartnership.com
First published in eBook format in 2012
eISBN: 978-1-909270-10-7
Cover graphic source, courtesy of NASA.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All names, characters, places, organisations, businesses and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Ebook Conversion by www.ebookpartnership.com
 

 
For all of my friends and family who have encouraged me in my writing, and most especially Ann, for putting up with the hours I've spent at the keyboard! I hope you all enjoy the read.
Contents
Prologue CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER 27 CHAPTER 28 CHAPTER 29 CHAPTER 30 CHAPTER 31 CHAPTER 32 CHAPTER 33 CHAPTER 34 CHAPTER 35 CHAPTER 36 CHAPTER 37 CHAPTER 38 CHAPTER 39 EPILOGUE
Prologue
Al-Rashid Wadi … December 1990.

 
His pain-wracked body was soaked through with blood, and he knew with absolute certainty that he would pass out and die, once his body’s last reserves of energy had drained away past the hastily applied and ill-fitting combat dressing that clung limply to his fatigues.
There was no one to help him, but somehow that isolation had allowed him to tap into the pain, channel it into anger, then feed off the adrenaline rush it gave him; dragging his tired body along the ground until he was concealed within the confines of a fissure - maybe ten or twelve feet long - exposed by the detonation of an American rocket.
The space was only a few feet high, and not much more in width, but at least it was a refuge from the unrelenting attack that his patrol had fallen under. Feeling safer now, he raised his head just enough to watch with a professional eye, and even something approaching admiration, as the Apaches discharged more of their seemingly endless arsenal onto his scattered unit. It was a massacre, and he was, for the first time in his life, on the receiving end of a blood-letting.
With that thought in mind, he reasoned to himself that a second attack on the same spot would be unlikely - lightning never strikes twice? - then found himself flinching as a large calibre salvo, illuminated with tracers, thudded into the ground close by; sun-baked sand and chips of stone dancing into the cold night air. Gasping a lung-full of dusty air, he ducked below the lip of the fissure once again and with an even greater struggle against the pain, and the confines of the gap, managed to inch himself further into his haven.
It was all about survival, now.
Experience told him that the enemy would soon close in for the kill. The temptation to administer one of the shots of morphine he carried in his belt pouch was now almost too much to ignore, but then he knew he would be lost if he did; dying alone in a drug induced false euphoria rather than being blown apart by another rocket. There was no thought in his mind of capture. The ferocity of the attack was the best indicator to him that there would be no survivors from this one-sided encounter.
Twisting himself to one side, to try to ease the pain by a degree, his eyes caught a dull, green glow from the fissure’s stone surface. Reaching out towards it, he watched in fascination as it intensified. He knew he must have been hallucinating. Lack of blood and dehydration played the subtlest of tricks on a mind close to demise. Still, if these were indeed the last minutes of his life, then he had nothing to lose, so allowed the distraction to give him some small escape from his fate, letting his weakened fingers brush the stone gently.
The scream came unbidden from his dry throat as a searing pain shot through his head. It felt as if a white-hot needle had skewered him. He guessed that he had been hit again, and when weightlessness suddenly shrouded his body as if in free-fall, he thought that his time had come at last - was this how death felt?
A moment later, he hit the ground with a dull heavy thud, leaving him coughing fitfully as sand and dust settled on him. Strangely, some of the pain had gone away - subsided, anyway. Is this death? He wondered, without really caring any more, then shook his head to clear it and looked around.
He had fallen through the bottom of the fissure into a large cave, lit by the same green glow that he had reached out for in his haven only seconds before. Sitting up tentatively, the pain returned.
“Probably not dead then…” he whispered to himself through clenched teeth, rising shakily to his feet as he held his injured side and looked around at his new surroundings by the eerie, green light.
Even to his untrained eye, it looked as though he had fallen into the centre of some kind of temple. Close by was a large, ornately carved, stone altar covered in strange sigils, and appeared to be the source of the singular, cold incandescence. Off to one side were what looked like five short, black pillars; two of which lay on their sides.
He staggered around the altar, to see if he could find the origin of the light, and was surprised to see a large bound book lying on it. Strangely, it was the only object in the cavern not covered in dust.
Despite his pain, curiosity got the better of him again and he carefully opened it with his free hand. Before him was a thick, vellum-like yellowed-page, full of even stranger symbols than those on the altar. As he struggled to make some sense of them by the caverns dull glow, a dark ancestral corner of his mind, awakened since touching the glowing stone of the fissure above him, gave him the first instinctive feeling for what he should do next.
Incredibly, the strange archaic figures seemed to come to life in his mind, and now waited eagerly for release. Without any understanding of the real meaning of the symbols, he let his instincts lead him. With a guttural scream through clenched teeth, he dragged the blood and dirt matted combat dressing from his side and then placed a shaking hand close to the oozing, ripped flesh; the mental exertion of holding back the symbols in his mind was now too much.
They needed release - so he gave it to them …
First, there was heat: gentle and pulsing from within him, along with a creeping tingle through the hand that hovered above the wound. Then the heat began to increase, as he watched in absolute fascination. For a moment he was fearful, as the blood flow around the wound began to increase, but then, incredibly, he saw the torn flesh begin to knit and meld itself together.
Only seconds had passed before the wound had healed completely, leaving only a slight itching sensation and his body crying out for more of the strange and invigorating energy. Placing his hands on his chest, he let the strange energy course through him, leaving his whole body tingling and recharged. He felt stronger than he had ever felt in his life.
He turned the thick page over, laughing manically, eager to soak up more of the arcane symbols and their strange ancient power into his mind and let the energy they provided course through him. Still wondering if maybe he was dreaming, he reasoned that there was only one way to find out - try to rejoin life outside the cavern.
With new purpose, the Captain looked around. His eyes, now more accustomed to the strange green light, fell upon a small set of worn, carved, stone steps in the far corner that led upwards from the cavern floor, and maybe towards the surface …

 
When reinforcements finally arrived - after allied HQ had received a garbled and frantic call for help - it was a dozen soldiers who jumped to the ground close to the battle zone. Their chopper’s skids hadn’t even touched down before it was withdrawing as quickly as possible to a safe distance, clear of potential ground to air weapons. This was standard operating procedure - but to be flanked by two supporting Apache gun-ships was not.
They had responded unofficially, being from the same Airborne-Cavalry unit as the four overdue Apaches who had sent out the distress call; brothers in arms to four missing crews, and for them it was personal.
The desert-camouflaged airborne troop unit swiftly secured the immediate area and then, with caution, set about searching the surrounding area. There was no resistance on the ground, and only the bodies of a small, under-equipped enemy-unit were found … along with the remains of the four Apache helicopters.
The mangled and decimated fuselages of the four choppers were scattered amongst the dunes, belching acrid smoke. Within them, the twisted and broken bodies of the crews still twitched amongst the wreckage of their crafts, animated like macabre marionettes as stray rounds exploded inside the armoured cabs and ricocheted into their lifeless forms. The occasional cracks from the exploding rounds were like rip-raps, punctuating what had been, until the battle, a silent, moonlit night.
The troops were veterans and had seen death bef