The Alpha Enigma Read online

  DAW BOOKS PROUDLY PRESENTS THE SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS OF W. MICHAEL GEAR:

  THE DONOVAN SERIES

  Outpost

  Abandoned

  Pariah

  Unreconciled

  THE TEAM PSI SERIES

  The Alpha Enigma

  Implacable Alpha*

  THE SPIDER TRILOGY

  The Warriors of Spider

  The Way of Spider

  The Web of Spider

  THE FORBIDDEN BORDERS TRILOGY

  Requiem for the Conqueror

  Relic of Empire

  Countermeasures

  ***

  Starstrike

  The Artifact

  *Coming soon from DAW

  Copyright © 2020 by W. Michael Gear.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Jacket design by Adam Auerbach.

  Jacket illustration by Tim Green.

  Sarcophagus of Harkhebit. 595-526 BC. / Album / Alamy Stock Photo

  Edited by Sheila E. Gilbert.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1867.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780756414474

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  pid_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by W. Michael Gear

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  A Note to the Reader

  Chapter 1

  Satay

  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

  Fatum

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Stulti

  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

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Fuga

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Furor et Animi Fractos

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Artifex

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Bonus Eventus

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  About the Author

  DEDICATION

  to

  Catherine Crumpler

  In special appreciation

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my dear and long-time friend Catherine Crumpler I owe a huge debt of gratitude. Catherine vets all of our work, ensuring our portrayal of mental disorders is clinically correct. Assuming Alpha Enigma works, it is because of Catherine’s commitment to psychiatry and her unstinting dedication to her patients.

  To Brian O’Neil, Dr. Laura Scheiber, and the real Reid Farmer, I owe special thanks for all the “what if” conversations we’ve had over the years. Hopefully, you’ll find the archaeological mystery contained herein as fascinating to read as it was to write.

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  The science in The Alpha Enigma is real.

  The Everett Many Worlds theory is accepted by many physicists as an explanation for the origin of our universe.

  Should you have doubts, Google “Hugh Everett III,” “Many-Worlds Quantum Mechanics physics,” “David Deutsch,” and “Multiverse.”

  Then prepare to be awed.

  1

  Grantham Barracks.

  Gray came to us without a name. She arrived at Grantham Barracks riding in the back seat of a nondescript black Lincoln Continental. Her car was the second, or “principal” vehicle, in a three-car security detail. I watched it enter our underground parking lot accompanied by the whisper of engines and the shish of tires. A gleaming black Chevy Suburban had the blocking position in front; the chase vehicle, a Tahoe, followed close enough behind to have nursed on the principal’s bumper.

  I stood outside Grantham’s underground entrance with a team of orderlies, Gray’s admission papers and commitment orders in hand.

  The vehicles rolled to a stop; armed agents wearing black tactical gear burst from the doors. After they established a defensive perimeter, a uniformed captain stepped out from the Lincoln’s passenger door. He looked around warily before opening the sedan’s rear coach door.

  I thought it all a bit overly dramatic for a patient transfer.

  The way the tall woman swung her legs out and emerged from the back seat, she might have been some exotic lotus. She wore a blaze-orange jumpsuit and white athletic shoes. Her wrists were manacled and chained, as were her ankles. The baggy prison garb barely disguised her supple body, high bust, and broad shoulders.

  I’d never seen a woman with such presence. Reaching her full height, she shook her tawny hair back. The effect was electric. She paused—a queen casting her curious gaze about a new but unbecoming kingdom. Then she fixed the most incredible eyes on mine: a piercing laser-blue like I’d never seen.

  Rather than beautiful, I would have called her mesmerizing. She looked patrician, with a high brow, straight and proportioned nose, sculpted cheeks, and delicate jaw. The slight crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes didn’t match the youthful tone of her bronzed skin; the lushness in her lips contrasted with the maturity in her gaze. My guess placed her around thirty.

  Ignoring the captain, she walked toward me with a dancer’s practiced grace. Each step measured precisely to the length of the confining chain at her ankles.

  She stopped a pace short and fixed me with an imperious gaze.

  The captain offered me a clipboard. Disturbed by the woman’s magnetism, I concentrated on the paperwork. Age, date of birth, and place of birth had “unknown” written in each box. Then I glanced at the line where it said “Name.” Her identity seemed to be “Prisoner Alpha.”

  The way my orderlies were gaping, Aphrodite might have sprung magically to life before their very eyes. I glanced sidelong at the woman, the skin on that side of my body almost prickling from her curious aura. “Do you have a name?”

  She was studying me with those intense blue eyes. “Medicus eras?” Her words were thick with an unfamiliar accent.


  “A psychiatrist,” I told her. “Both a PhD and MD. My name is Colonel Timothy Ryan. Retired. I’m in charge of Grantham Barracks. I’ll be responsible for your care and evaluation here.”

  “What . . . is?” She jerked her head by way of indicating the concrete pillars, the parking lot, and the glass doorway that led to the interior of Grantham’s Ward Six.

  “It’s a military psychiatric hospital,” I replied. “I’ve reviewed the transcripts of your arrest and interrogation. They’ve labeled you a threat to national security and think you’re either autistic or a very clever liar. I’m to find out.”

  I was watching for the tells, the slight dilation of the pupils, the tensing of an eyelid, or a quiver at the corner of the mouth. All I read was incomprehension. Fugue state? No, she was too alert and responsive, the eyes clear and much too intelligent.

  “Mistake,” she whispered. Then broke into a sorrowful string of incomprehensible utterances. When people speak in tongues, they follow the rules of pronunciation in their own language. English speakers don’t make up nonsense words beginning with ng, unvocalized L, or glottal clicks. She wasn’t a native speaker.

  “Sign here, sir.” The captain indicated the places on the forms. The name tag pinned to his chest said STANWICK

  I scrawled my name on the appropriate lines.

  “She’s all yours, Colonel.” He saluted even though I’m retired and technically a civilian contractor according to the Department of Defense.

  Captain Stanwick turned on his heel and marched back to the gleaming Lincoln. At his signal, the security team broke for the vehicles.

  I heard the hollow pop! Felt a weird tingling on my skin, my hair prickling, and the world seemed to wobble as if a wave had passed through it.

  I was still disoriented when the woman cried, “Ennoia! Muliebris canis!”

  Struggling for equilibrium, I followed the woman’s gaze. The outer ring of guards seemed to have fainted, their bodies limp on the concrete. Beyond them, a man and woman stood clutching small boxes with gleaming lights.

  Even as I watched, the green-eyed woman with auburn hair slipped the box behind her belt. She swung a slung M16 from her shoulder with the ease of long practice. The sights settled on Prisoner Alpha.

  Combat instincts either become hardwired, or you go home in a body bag. Mine kicked in. I grabbed the tawny blonde and jerked her off her feet. Even as we fell, a burst of 5.56 rounds cracked inches above us and pulverized the glass doors. My orderlies were diving in all directions.

  From the floor I caught a glimpse as Stanwick pawed at his sidearm, leaped to the side of the Lincoln and leveled his pistol over the roof. It barked twice, hot brass clattering on the concrete before my nose.

  The meaty snap of Stanwick’s popping skull mingled with the M16’s deafening staccato. His strings cut, the captain flopped onto the concrete. Blood and brains spewed from the back of his shattered head as it hit.

  I heard the attacking woman’s pained voice cry, “Dear God, no!”

  A couple of heartbeats later I felt that skin-prickling sensation, my hair standing on end, and then the hollow pop!

  Silence filled the garage. One of the security guards groaned as he struggled to his feet.

  “What the hell?” I whispered, trying to control my pounding heart. I still held the trembling woman, her lungs laboring for breath.

  I rose cautiously, staring through the Lincoln’s shattered window glass to the place where the assailants had appeared.

  The male attacker lay dying in the exit lane. I could see no sign of the woman.

  “Holy shit,” one of the guards cried as he staggered forward, the HK MP-5 he clutched at the ready. “Who is this guy?”

  The man lay on his back. Dressed in brown utility wear, a darker beard contrasting with his collar-length blond hair, he looked tanned and maybe thirty. Captain Stanwick had dropped him with a shot through the top of the heart. An M4 carbine lay just beyond his curled fingers.

  “What the fuck just happened here?” another of the guards asked.

  “More to the point,” a third growled, “where the hell did he come from . . . and where the hell did that woman go?”

  I helped Prisoner Alpha to her feet. She stared bitterly at the strange man’s sprawled body.

  I was trying to evaluate her absolute disregard for the captain’s gruesome corpse at her feet as she whispered, “Totem pereo.”

  She uttered the words with such hopelessness they engraved themselves upon my consciousness. Only later would I learn they meant “All is lost.”

  Satay

  In the Ch’olan language, the word is satay. When speaking in Latinum, my native tongue, one would say, pereo. I am lost. Lost to time, marooned in a barbaric and benighted world. Even before I could gather my wits, I was cast into the hell these beasts reserve for their mentally broken flotsam.

  They do not know. They cannot conceive.

  How, then, did the Ennoia find me? And who was that man who accompanied her? They have shown me his picture. I do not know him. All they have from their security camera is a three-quarter image of the Ennoia as she appears. They have enhanced the image. I can read the hatred in her green eyes.

  For the moment, I can only hope they will keep me safe.

  As long as they do, time remains my ally.

  I cradle time, draw it to my breast, and caress it like a lover.

  They have taken the navigator. And while it brought me to this vile place, eventually—assuming the stupid clods don’t destroy it in an attempt to learn its secrets—it will become the vehicle of my escape. Ignorant brutes cannot deny a sparkling seductress like the navigator as long as it remains in their hands.

  As the Kaplan woman’s recent visit indicates, they have realized its value. They need my help, and I shall repay them manyfold for this horror and humiliation.

  On that day they will weep.

  2

  Wadi Kerf, Western Thebes, Egypt. Site 65-A.

  Dr. Reid Farmer perched on the lip of the archaeological excavation and studied the sheer-walled canyon in which he worked. The tomb area had been cut out of the tan-and-amber canyon wall; it lay perhaps three meters above a dry streambed filled with rocks and gravel.

  With his archaeologist’s eye, Reid could reconstruct the valley’s original morphology. Higher beds of pale-yellow sandstone had been incised by hydraulic action—probably back in the Pliocene some four million years ago. During the ensuing 1.6 million years of the Pleistocene this part of Egypt had remained desert, and the canyon was occasionally scoured as runoff poured down the exposed slick-rock, sluiced into the wadis, and thundered down the channel.

  The ancient Egyptians had changed it with their copper, bronze, and—finally—iron tools. During the Eighteenth Dynasty, they’d quarried the exposed strata for stone and carved out the very bedrock to construct a series of tombs the length and breadth of the valley. For over three thousand years, wind, weather, and sun—along with occasional pillaging looters—had tumbled enough material down the slopes to reduce the valley back to rubble.

  Reid glanced up at the brass-hot sky and wondered what kind of damned fool would be out here running an excavation when the temperature was knocking on forty degrees Celsius.

  One who’s being paid extraordinarily well, he reflected. Almost too well.

  Though why Skientia had chosen him for the job still made no sense. His expertise and skills were in North American archaeology, not Egyptology. Excavation, however, was excavation, be it an Anasazi pithouse or an Egyptian tomb. Reid was being paid to dig and, by God, he’d get it done.

  Everything had been seen to with incredible efficiency: visas, excavation permits, travel and lodging, food, tools and supplies, and even security—a perimeter guard of uniformed security consisting of alert young men with slung Kalashnikovs.

  “Quite the operation,” Reid mused as he stepped over to their field tent and pulled out yet another bottle of water.

  “They really think something is here?” Yusif, the Egyptian crew chief, wondered. He was a broad-shouldered man, closing on forty, who sported a thick black beard. Skientia had chosen him for his expertise in excavation. “I’ve been doing this since I was a boy. Worked with the best. I have a PhD in Egyptology from Cambridge. Never have I seen a project as, how do you say . . . forthwith?”