Area 51: The Truth by Robert Doherty Read Free Book Online

toward the orb and attaching itself to a knob on the front side. Within seconds the two were reconnected.
    Data was relayed from the one-hemisphere brain at the stem of the tentacle to the four-hemisphere brain inside the Swarm scout: The Ark of the Covenant was working but slowly. The mental shield around Duncan’s real memories had been pierced in places. Penetration and retrieval into Duncan’s real memory was progressing but there was a long way to go, particularly with regard to her real identity, purpose, and origin, which were of utmost importance to the Swarm, as was the secret of her immortality.
    The details of the planet’s surface that had been displayed on the Ark’s screen were sent to the black box, which was a mainframe computer. The images were analyzed for a match. The result came back within seconds. Duncan’s home world was pinpointed along with the information that the Swarm had already harvested it thousands of years previously. And they knew a mothership had left there prior to the fleet arriving. The assumption had been that the Airlia had abandoned the planet on board that mothership. That assumption appeared to be in error. Not Airlia, but Duncan’s people had been on board. Which raised a new issue.
    The Airlia were a known enemy. Humans had been encountered, but by themselves had always been easily overwhelmed. But humans who had defeated the Airlia? Not once, but twice, as recent events on this planet indicated. This was something unknown. And the Swarm, with hundreds of thousands of years of experience in battle against other species in the universe, believed the unknown to be the most dangerous threat of all.
    The Swarm considered the problem. Time would normally not be a concern. After all, it had spent decades here in isolation slowly developing and putting into effect its plan to infiltrate and study the humans and counter the Airlia presence on the planet. It had even tried to destroy the key to the Master Guardian many years ago and again just recently, but been thwarted both times, losing two tentacles in the process.
    Thwarted by humans.
    Most strange and unprecedented.
    Which brought it back to the issue that time was now a problem.
    The Swarm had battled the Airlia and other intelligent species for almost half a million years on a front that stretched over dozens of galaxies. The Airlia had superior technology, but the Swarm had countered with numbers. The time and distances involved in this interstellar war were beyond anything humans could comprehend.
    However, the luxury of time here on this planet was now being denied because the Master Guardian had been reached and activated by the humans. And the few Airlia left on the planet were moving. And a human from one planet had contacted others across a great distance—and defeated the Airlia once more.
    The Swarm needed a way to relay information to its fleet so this planet could be targeted for infiltration, harvesting, and destruction. The escape pod that was attached to the oil rig could move through the planet’s atmosphere but could not make orbit or communicate on an interstellar scale.
    If the humans had the mothership, the Swarm knew, then the surviving Airlia factions faced the same problem it did. What were they going to do now? The answer came to it almost as quickly as the question was formed. On the screen in front of the Swarm, a planet was displayed, along with data stolen from the humans watching the Red Planet. Mars. The construction on Mons Olympus was highlighted. The Swarm had seen such an array before and destroyed every one it ran into. It knew what it was. On Mars was the means to contact its fleet.
    But to get to Mars a craft capable of spaceflight was needed. The humans had control of the only means of interplanetary travel on the planet—the mothership and the Talon warcraft attached to it. Even as the Swarm considered this option, it suddenly realized that those weren’t the only interplanetary