49. Aru

Aru lifted his gaze to the mouth of the cavern, searching for an angle that would provide him with the widest patch of view of the sky above. The satellite phone the clan had provided for him was state of the art, but it still needed a clear line of sight to the sky to connect with satellites in orbit, providing they were in the slice of space visible from his location. The surrounding rock and earth interfered with the signal, making it difficult to establish a connection, but if he could find a spot where the opening on the top was large enough, he could get a signal.

It was early afternoon in Tibet and nearly midnight in Los Angeles, but calling Kian this late shouldn"t be a problem. After all, they had been having nightly meetings for a while, starting at one o"clock in the morning. That was when the queen of Anumati was available to take his telepathic call and talk to her granddaughter through him and his twin sister.

Regrettably, it wasn"t possible every day now that they were out in the field.

"Do you have a signal?" Julian asked.

"Yes, I do." Aru selected Kian"s contact and placed the call, the dial tone sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness of the cavern.

Kian answered on the first ring. "What"s up, Aru?"

"We found the twins," he said. "And they"re alive, but barely so. Julian says we got to them just in time. Regrettably, the eighteen Kra-ell did not make it."

"That is indeed regrettable." Kian sounded appropriately somber. "How come the twins survived, and the others didn"t? Was it a deliberate sabotage of the others" life support?"

"I don"t think so. It looks like the pod stopped working a long time ago. The Kra-ell couldn"t survive without stasis chambers, but the twins, being half-gods, could survive unaided. They are completely emaciated. Their bodies have been feeding upon themselves to sustain critical brain and heart functions, but Julian can most likely explain it better than I can."

"Put him on."

"I"ll activate the speaker phone." Aru motioned for Julian to get closer, and they both sat atop one of the chambers.

It felt disrespectful to the dead, but it wasn"t as if they had an alternative except to go up to the surface.

"The chambers were sealed," the doctor said. "So, their bodies wouldn"t have had anything to convert into energy. Aru thinks the chambers operated at some minimal capacity, and I agree. Even gods cannot survive in a vacuum."

Aru frowned, a flicker of doubt passing through him at Julian"s assessment. As far as he knew, that wasn"t how unaided stasis worked. It was his understanding that the body"s metabolic processes were suspended and not dependent on external resources. But he wasn"t a medical expert, and there might be differences between pureblooded gods and hybrids in how their bodies handled stasis.

"Anyway," Julian continued. "Their bodies are too fragile to move out of the chambers or even attempt to revive outside of a clinic. I brought a lot of medical equipment, but it might not be enough. Frankly, I"d prefer to keep them inside the stasis chambers, bring them to a proper clinic, and have my mother do the honors of reviving them. I don"t have enough experience, and given their state, I don"t feel comfortable doing that."

"I"ll defer to your expert medical opinion," Kian said. "We will need to arrange for a private plane to transport the chambers."

"What about the Kra-ell?" Aru asked. "They deserve a proper funeral, and their people should do it."

"We can leave them here," Negal said. "Now that we know where they are, we can send a group of Kra-ell to perform the necessary rites."

Dagor shook his head. "We can"t leave them. What if someone finds the pod between now and the arrival of a delegation of Kra-ell? This place is too close to a military base. Leaving alien technology and bodies to be easily discovered is not advisable."

Aru rubbed the back of his neck. "They have not found it so far, and we wouldn"t have found it either if not for Jasmine"s scrying stick. The chasm is barely visible from above, even when flying low. Still, Dagor is right. We should not leave them here to be accidentally found by the Chinese."

"We can take the stasis chambers out," Negal said. "But there is no way we can move the pod. We can"t destroy it either because it"s indestructible. But maybe we could use explosives to collapse some of the cavern"s walls and bury it under a lot of rock."

Aru winced at the thought. "The problem is that explosions would make a lot of noise, and the resulting plume of dust might be high enough to be visible from the base. We might as well send up a flare announcing our presence."

Dagor groaned. "That"s not the only problem. How are we supposed to transport a bunch of stasis chambers from here to the airport? We can"t shroud an entire helicopter while it"s transporting the pods from here to the town, or an entire plane even if we can get one to land somewhere in the vicinity."

Aru"s mind raced, trying to come up with a solution. They had the truck with the extra fuel. They could unload the fuel, load the chambers onto the truck, and cover it with tarps. But then it would once again be difficult to shroud the chambers while loading them onto the plane. They would need to commission crates, deliver them somewhere inconspicuous, load the chambers into them, and then get them to the plane.

It would be complicated and time-consuming but doable.

"What about the technology in the escape pod?" Kian asked. "We could learn a lot from studying it. Can you extract some key components before you bury it?"

"I can give it a try," Dagor said. "I planned on doing that anyway. With the Chinese base so close, we can"t even think about extracting the entire pod, but maybe in a decade or two, the base will be gone, and then we can come back for it."

"We need Yamanu here," Julian said. "I tried to think of a way to avoid it, but with the base being so close, we can"t even fly all the chambers out of here without raising suspicion. Those things are big, and we can fit only one in the helicopter. Going back and forth twenty times will surely bring the Chinese military here. Yamanu will have to shroud the helicopter while it"s doing its rounds. We may also need William to supply us with a device to disrupt their radar. If William can"t send us anything, we may need to go back there and damage their power supply and backup generators to give us the window of opportunity we need for the operation."

Aru had the Anumatian disruptor, but that device would permanently disable the radar, and if possible, it was better to cause just a temporary malfunction.

"Then, once we have all the chambers out of here and secure, we can plant explosives in the cavern and bring down parts of the mountain on top of the pod while Yamanu shrouds the activity."

There was a moment of thoughtful silence on the other end of the line, broken only by the faint sound of Kian"s breathing. "Alright," he said at last. "I"ll send Yamanu with a chartered plane and ask William to see what he can do, but even if we move as fast as we can, it will take time for Yamanu to get to you. You will have to sit on it for about three days."

"I need to take the twins out of here," Julian said. "We will have to risk flying these two stasis chambers to the town and keeping them with us in the hotel. I want to keep an eye on them."

"I agree," Kian said. "Two round trips with the helicopter should not arouse too much suspicion."

Aru wasn"t sure Kian was right about that, but it wasn"t as if they had much choice. The twins needed medical supervision, and keeping them in the escape pod in the cavern until Yamanu arrived didn"t seem prudent either.

"Dagor and I will do our best to salvage as much as we can from the escape pod during those three days," he told Kian. "The tech is ancient, so there might be some non-solid-state components that can be reverse-engineered."

"Perhaps this escape pod can provide some clues as to the whereabouts of the others," Kian said. "Does it have something like a black box?"

Aru had heard the term before. A black box was a flight recorder used on aircraft. It collected flight data such as altitude, airspeed, heading, and various other data from the aircraft sensors, providing information that investigators could use to determine the causes of fatal accidents. He wasn"t sure if the same device also recorded the conversation in the cockpit, including radio communications between the crew and air traffic control, or whether a different device was used. In any case, black boxes were designed to be highly durable to withstand a crash"s force and the following conditions, including fire and deep-sea pressures.

"It should," Dagor answered for him. "That"s one of the things I"m trying to find. It could give us clues about the location of the mothership when it exploded and the trajectory of this pod. We may be able to extrapolate from that the likely landing sites of the other pods, or at least further narrow down the search area."