72. Aru

Aru shifted on the hard boulder he"d been sitting on and turned to Negal. "I"ve thought a lot about it, and we will have to fake the twins" death. When the Kra-ell prepare the funeral pyres, we will wait for them to perform the rites and then one of us will have to light the torch while it is being filmed. The trick will be to do the same with the twins, given their state."

Negal pursed his lips. "What if we could create dummies that look like they did before they turned skeletal? The clan should be able to help us with that."

"Dummies will not fool our recording equipment, but you are onto something. We could wait until they are revived and back to looking healthy and then somehow make them appear dead."

"Right." Negal chuckled. "Our equipment will register even the faintest sign of life, and don"t forget the pyre. That"s going to be hard to fake as well."

Negal wasn"t wrong, but Aru had no other ideas. "If you have any constructive suggestions, I"m listening."

Negal shrugged. "Simple. We never found the pod. The mission to Tibet was a failure, and we are exploring other leads."

That actually was a good idea, but the question was whether the queen would agree.

Aru had a feeling that she wouldn"t. She"d wanted him to stage their death before reviving them for a reason. If the trickery didn"t work, she wanted them dead.

"The choppers are coming." Negal pointed a finger at the sky.

If not for the remaining salvaged equipment, they could have all fit in one helicopter, but they had managed to get a few more components loose, and Aru didn"t want to leave them behind. Since nothing worked, he didn"t know whether he"d found the flight recorder or anything else that could hint at the cause of the accident or where the other pods could be. Still, perhaps William could do something with all this junk without destroying it in the process.

As the birds touched down on the rocky mountaintop, Aru and Negal rose to their feet. Each lifted an armload of equipment before striding toward the helicopters.

Yamanu got out, holding several boxes of food from the restaurant. "Hungry?"

"Very." Aru put the components on the chopper"s floor and took one of the boxes from Yamanu. "We finished the last energy bar after you left." He opened the box and sat down on the step. "Everything is ready. So, once we get the rest of the equipment in, we can move out."

While Negal and Aru ate their lunch, Dagor and Edgar got busy bringing in the rest of the stuff, including the ropes and the rappelling equipment.

When everything was loaded, Aru and Yamanu got into the helicopter with Edgar, while Negal and Dagor got into Kalugal"s.

Clutching the detonator in his hand, Aru waited until they were in the air and Yamanu was shrouding the mountain before pressing the button.

As a muffled thump shook the ground below them, the sound of the explosion was almost anticlimactic. It was a fraction of the noise and fury he had expected.

A cloud of dust billowed up from the cavern"s depths, a blinding haze that obscured the mountain in a veil of gray.

Aru squinted against the onslaught, his eyes watering as Edgar guided the helicopter up and away until the dust settled a little. Then, he angled back for a better view.

It was hard to see, the dust still swirling and eddying in the air, but as Edgar made another pass over the mountain, Aru fought to peer through the haze and the sun"s glare and was satisfied with what he saw.

The crater was mostly gone, buried beneath rubble and debris. Only a shallow depression remained, a barely there divot in the rugged landscape that, in a few hours, would give no hint of the secrets that lay buried beneath.

All that remained was for them to return to base, gather the last of their belongings, and make their way to the nearest airport, where two private planes awaited them.