The Hole in the Magic Shield

By Lucian Randolph

In 41 hours, the world as we know it will end...

Like it has done every twenty-six millennia, the magnetic field of the earth is about to be short-circuited by a series of massive solar storms, which will destroy our modern technological society virtually overnight. It will take the planet two centuries before the natural protective magnetic field will build back up to full strength. While it is weakened, the surface of the earth will be scorched by the sun and daylight will become dangerous to all life. The first wave of storms and destruction has already begun, but the only people who have the means to help, aren’t aware of the impending disaster. And the only clue to when the disaster will occur is a mysterious clear rock locked in a black plastic case. New characters and fresh dangers arrive building the mystery and intrigue; all while the deadline approaches and the world unknowingly counts down to its doom.

THE HOLE IN THE MAGIC SHIELD continues with the unforgettable story and extraordinary characters from THE GOD IN THE CLEAR ROCK. Filled with more epic adventure, mystery, high-tech, science, and intrigue than the first fast-paced thriller, the story starts exactly where the last one stopped. Over the following 9 hours, out of only 41 hours left in the world, intertwined wheels of action and new people are set in motion. THE HOLE IN THE MAGIC SHIELD blends the counting-by-hour style of the TV drama ‘24’ with the intensely complex, larger-than-life characters and adventure driven plots of Clive Cussler in a page-turner that’s guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat. As the intricate story begins to twist and turn, fans will relish the cliffhanger maddening mystery and be left scrambling to pick up book three.

• Language: English
• Publisher: McDonald Press Publishing Co.
• Release date: Nov 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9780983609124

Lucian Randolph

Lucian lives in Florida with his wife and two sons. He also lives with a pack of ten (yes ten) miniature dachshunds that he uses to hunt Garden Gnomes. An avid Gnome hunter since his days with the Fifth Special Gnome Expeditionary Forces based out of Fort Bragg, he has personally been responsible for the reduction in the Florida pest population of the common Garden Gnome, Gnomiansis Gardenii.Unfortunately, since he uses mini dachshunds to hunt them, he only has a few intact heads in his trophy room.But if you're in Florida and run into him, he might show them to you.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

78,000 Years Ago

Alpha Site on the Yucatan Peninsula

• • • • •

The flash pulse radiated out from the mid-Atlantic ocean in a sphere of light as brilliant as a star. But the curvature of the Earth prevented the blinding first wave of the nuclear fireball from directly reaching the Alpha Site Science Station located on what is now called the Yucatan peninsula. The massive pressure wave from the immense explosion that spread out in a perfect circle across the ocean surface would not reach here, either. Nor could anyone directly see the enormous mushroom cloud that would stretch into the stratosphere before being beaten back down by the intense solar radiation storm pounding the daylight surface of the planet at this very moment. The only visible sign of the disaster that just occurred 3,000 miles away was a slight shift in the blue color of the cloudless sky, which passed in just a blink.

But that didn’t stop the entire science team from looking out the giant eastern window of the monitor control room. They had all just witnessed the event over live satellite imagery that was still streaming into the lab as part of the synchronized effort to stabilize the magnetic field of the planet.

An effort that just ended horribly.

The massive solar storm which had impacted the planet only a minute earlier was accompanied by an equally giant magnetic wave that overwhelmed the natural magnetic field of the earth by several orders of magnitude. A calculated attempt to boost the planet’s magnetic field at the arrival of the solar storm failed with the enormous explosion and destruction of the island homeland of the science team. The earth’s magnetosphere was short-circuited and collapsed within seconds of the first monster magnetic wave washing over the planet. Without the natural protection from the magnetic field, solar radiation and high energy particles burned directly through the atmosphere and onto the exposed surface of the planet. Now everything on the daylight side of the Earth was catching on fire from the unfiltered high-energy sunlight generated from the gigantic flare.

M’aaren broke the silence which had held the room for the last twenty-two seconds. We need to institute the protocol. His voice was emotionless.

Slowly, the team pulled their eyes from the giant window panel near the pyramid’s apex and turned to face M’aaren. All of the control team members were still seated at their workstations, but after he turned around, T’horte slowly stood up behind his console.

Why? He spoke directly toward the elevated workstation in the center of the large monitor control room.

M’aaren continued to stare intently at the monitor in front of the command chair belonging to him as the Dokor of this facility. And the Chief Scientist of the Alpha Site didn’t look up when he finally answered T’horte.

Because that is our duty. M’aaren was still emotionless.

T’horte was not. Everyone has been destroyed. There is no one left. To whom are we bound by this duty?  His voice deepened in tone and blasted toward M’aaren.

The others turned and watched, but did not move otherwise. The normal confrontational rules, which were the cornerstone of their society, had always been stretched by these two. However, this was unprecedented; as were all of the events of the last sixty seconds.

Finally, M’aaren looked up from his screen panel. His large, dark-blue eyes locked onto T’horte, who was still standing at his own workstation. M’aaren’s face remained emotionless, but his amber-brown skin turned darker around his neck, and his voice suddenly became thunderous. Massive vocal cords and giant-sized lungs combined to create a sound that had a physical presence, even if devoid of apparent feeling.

Dokor, or Dokor M’aaren. You will address me correctly.

His words boomed across the room. M’aaren maintained locked eye-contact with T’horte but tilted his head slightly.

And I will forget this insult. The slight inflection in this phrase was filled with an implied threat, which would be remarkable on any other day. ‘But not today,’ M’aaren thought to himself. Then he looked down and checked his screen again for just a moment before looking back up. After ensuring that no response was forthcoming from T’horte, he quickly scanned across the room making eye-contact with each of the control team members. He unconsciously took a deep breath, but before he could speak, an alarm sounded throughout the entire complex. He continued once the shock passed from the normally solemn faces of the group of giants before him.

We must prepare. We do not have much time.

Now, everyone else in the room moved. As the alarm continued to sound, each member of the control team deliberately rose and quickly moved toward the exit.

Except T’horte.

He did not move…

• • •

The island home of the science team was almost 3,000 miles from the Yucatan peninsula at the closest point. The giant ground shift that occurred as the land mass of the small continent rapidly subsided below the planet’s crust was accompanied by an internal mantle upwelling around the island’s perimeter. Like a gigantic splash from a diver entering the water off a springboard, the plates of the continental shelf buckled upward from within. Most of the surrounding plates of the underwater planetary crust were shoved up at an angle away from the crater of simmering lava and seawater now engulfing the remains of the sinking mid-Atlantic island. The largest upwelling of crust moved the entire floor of the ocean on the west side of the island upward over 500 feet in a little over a second. This created an energy swell that was over 300 feet tall in deep water and traveling westward just below the speed of sound at 600 knots. As it began to climb the continental shelf, the wave reared up to over 1,200 feet tall.

The Yucatan sits at the western end of a long, straight channel that was directly in front of the incoming tsunami. By the time the monster wave reached the beginning of the sea now called the Caribbean, the massive wall of water was over 1,900 feet tall and two miles long front to back. It got bigger as it began to cross over the islands in the Lesser Antilles. It rolled over the eastern islands in the archipelago chain as if they weren’t there and continued moving across the sea almost unabated.

The gigantic wave was so large, it simply washed over the mountain range on the next island it encountered, which is known today as Puerto Rico. After sloshing across Puerto Rico, the bulk of the wave continued west and ran into the long mountain range on the next big island that would someday be the home of the Republics of both Haiti and Dominica. The monster wave almost washed over the jagged peaks that stretched up over 10,000 feet tall. But the water crashed up the steep sides and then deflected off the rocky upwelling of old mantle. The bulk of 150 miles of the tsunami mass was redirected due west into the next large island.

On the southern edge of the island country we call Cuba, the wall of water began washing up several thousand feet along the side of the one mile high mountain range, which runs along its entire southern shoreline. But the wall of the tsunami only struck a glancing blow to the mountain as it headed westward. Like a seawall in a river, this huge shunting of water by the mountain range forced the wave to head south after it bounced off Cuba. This created a secondary wave front that was now running at a slight angle off the main wave.

And both waves were heading straight for the Yucatan.

As the inside edges of the giant waves intersected, the impact created a thunderous grinding turbulence at the bottom of the walls of water. This turbulence had the same effect as a massive explosion when it came into contact with anything in its path.

The enormous size of the initial wave amplitude kept the speed from dropping like a normal-sized tsunami would as it approached the shore. Devastating as they may be when they increase in height, tsunami waves that are caused by typical seismic activity will at least slow down when they finally start to hit shallow water. But not this one. This oversized monster of water moved over the Caribbean unimpeded. When the two giant walls of moving liquid finally reached the defenseless flat plains of the Yucatan, the waves topped 2,600 feet each; a half mile high.

The tsunami hit the Yucatan with both wave fronts still moving at over 500 knots.

Although it took over four hours for the enormous wave to get to the Yucatan from its origin point in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, only minutes after it crossed the eastern shoreline of the peninsula, it reached the pyramid-shaped Alpha Science Station. Unlike Egyptian versions, the massive Science Station pyramid had large rooms and halls inside the main building which were held up with a remarkable nano-strengthened alloy-stone superstructure. Completely self-contained and self-supporting, the combined living and research facility took seventeen years to construct in the rough wilderness that surrounded the four-sided science fort. But to a race with lifespans close to a thousand years, a seventeen year project was nothing.

There were also open terraces that contained topiary and food gardens along with large mezzanines on multiple levels of the 650 foot tall building, which was almost 200 feet taller than the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Protective coverings had been lowered into place on large mechanical mechanisms making the normally stepped structure into the familiar smooth four-sided polyhedron shape typically associated with pyramids today. Although this design was capable of lasting for several thousand years, and had lasted this long on their former island home, the churning turbulent front-edge of the tsunami impacted the towering pyramid with the force of a half-mile tall mountain-sized solid object moving at 500 miles per hour.

The superstructure of the pyramid, although made of a metal and stone composite material that was stronger than titanium and harder than diamond, had no chance. It buckled and collapsed within moments against the wall of moving mass. Once the exterior walls were breached, the massive pyramid structure blew apart like it was made of toy blocks instead of the stone, alloy, and concrete structure that it actually was.

As the science station totally disintegrated under the enormous force of billions of tons of fast flowing liquid, the gigantic wave picked up the pieces of everything it destroyed and carried them into the main mass of the moving water. The tsunami washed over the flat peninsula and impacted the mountain range running up Central America before diverting north into the Gulf of Mexico. When the flow of water rounded the northern crook of the Gulf, it spread out and inundated the entire southern coast of the North American continent before it finally slowed down enough to begin dropping the detritus it picked up on its trip across the Caribbean. The majority of the debris ended up at the bottom of the Gulf.

The rest of the planet fared no better. Giant shock waves from the subsiding island in the Atlantic reverberated through the liquid core of the planet, which caused the mega-volcano caldera under Indonesia, known today as Toba, to erupt with a blast far greater than the accidental explosion created on almost exactly the opposite side of the Earth. The ensuing destabilization of the planetary crust created ongoing and massive tectonic activity under the two greatest oceans on the surface of the planet, which in turn caused giant tsunamis that pushed several hundred miles inland on every continent on the entire planet. The mega-tsunamis continued to batter the continental land masses for weeks until the monster undersea turbulence finally subsided, and the tectonic shivering of the planet calmed enough to let the waters recede.

Barely more than a crushed foundation of the pyramid-shaped Alpha Science Station remained when the water finally fell.

After the water was gone, permanent cold nightfall settled over the land from the volcanic eruptions which would continue to spew out lava and ash for the next decade.

A deathly stillness also settled over the Caribbean where no land animal survived.

The stillness lasted for years.

And not just in the Caribbean.

For the five hours the solar mega-storm lasted, it was impossible for any living thing to survive in the direct sunlight as it baked almost two-thirds of the surface of the slowly rotating planet before fizzling out. Then came the nuclear winter caused by the ash and smoke shoved into the atmosphere from the explosion of the Toba super-volcano. It took over four decades for the skies to clear enough for full sunshine to reach the surface of the planet, which was probably a good thing. Because even after the storm passed and the sun returned to its calm personality, the magnetic field of the planet took 200 years to recharge fully, which is a blink of the eye in geologic time. But for the few thousand primitive humans who survived the nuclear winter and permanent darkness for decades, the time without the normal planetary protection of a fully charged magnetic field was much more consequential. Because when the sun finally began to shine on the planet through clear skies, the weakened field continued to allow dangerous radiation and high energy particles to hit the surface for another 150 years. Although the Sun’s dangerous cycle of mega-storms were now over for another twenty-six millennia, normal solar flares generated dangerous levels of radiation and lethal doses of high energy particles that were not shielded from the planet during the two centuries without a fully functioning magnetosphere.

And during this time, daylight became dangerous to every living thing on the planet.

CHAPTER TWO

52,000 years ago

Pacific Ocean and Asian Continent

• • • • •

No one was there to see the fantastic aurora; no ancestors of modern humans anyway. That’s because the descendants of the few thousand archaic homo sapiens who survived the Toba bottleneck event hadn’t made it this far out of Africa yet. The unbelievably bright pink and purple phenomenon sparkled above the giant Pacific ocean like an iridescent cloth fluttering in the wind over the entire sunlit side of the planet. The monster solar storm continued to build in intensity making the colors become solid and glow like neon paint. Suddenly, the aurora began to cleave open into wedge-shaped pieces along the magnetic field lines, leaving large growing gaps in the fading glow of the plasma field. Then with a silent snap, the aurora color was gone and could only be seen in a sprinkling of pinkish light dissipating in the shadow of the earth.

Once again, the magnetic field of the earth had been overwhelmed into submission and was essentially gone. The natural astral defense of the planet was short-circuited by a series of monstrously large solar flares and the magnetic waves that accompanied them. The peak radiation storm would only last three hours, this time. And fortunately for the expanding and migrating hominid populations spread across Asia, Europe, and Africa, the Sun would be over the vast and empty Pacific ocean for the majority of that time. They would not suffer from this storm as their ancestors did in the devastation of twenty-six millennia ago.

In orbit above the planet, the planetary satellite constellation had been reduced to only three functional units out of the nearly 3,000 which were in the system to begin with. For 26,000 years, these self powered orbital sensor platforms had continuously operated, taking images and data readings of the planet surface below it. Designed using solar collectors and technology with far greater efficiency and lifespans than anything that’s been developed today, these machines continued to function long past the lifespan they were manufactured to achieve. But nothing mechanical lasts forever. Slowly over millennia, some aspect of functional performance inevitably began to degenerate to the point that individual satellites surpassed the built-in repair capabilities of the on-board maintenance nano-robots. When the automatic guidance systems aboard these broken satellites eventually failed, the platforms slowly began to lose altitude and eventually burned up in the atmosphere.

When the magnetic field failed again, this time the ancient machines could no longer protect themselves against the harsh solar radiation, and two of the three satellites sizzled into blackness immediately. Only seconds later, the last working satellite finished a final burst of data from its damaged and dying transmitter before the wires powering it melted under a short circuit. Then it, too, was silent. As the final flashes of electronic sparks from the last of the three dying satellites dissipated into the vacuum of space, the only remaining ground-station received the satellite signal and began to process it.

These last three dead satellites would fall out of orbit and burn up over the next several hundred years.

Then the skies over the earth would have only one satellite again; the bright silver moon.

CHAPTER THREE

15,000 BC

5,000 feet above sea-level

Central American Mountains

• • • • •

The cairn of black stones was enormous. It reached up into the sky to the height of a modern three story rooftop. The stones were uniformly sized and shaped, and they appeared to be randomly stacked into a natural and stable cone-shaped pile with sides angled out like a large pyramid. Vegetation was grown up around the giant rock pile, but not one root, vine, or stray sprout reached up the sides of the stones. Nothing grew under the rocks either. In fact, plants never got closer than about twenty centimeters from the identically shaped artificial rocks. A neat line of dirt surrounded the pile and followed the exact outline of the perimeter of the mound as if it had been recently trimmed by a machine.

The tribe of primitive hunters now standing at the base of the large hill of stones had no way of knowing, but the geometric-shaped rocks had a unique defense which prevented plants from growing or rooting among them. Far more effective than any herbicide, no plant had successfully crossed this threshold since the mound was moved into this location over one-hundred years ago

The leader of the hunter tribe stood before the mountain of cannonball-sized rocks and could not believe his eyes. Never before had he seen so many of the black stones. He had seen two of the twelve-sided enigmas before in his life. But both of those incidents happened when he was in the presence of the most powerful tribal leaders in the lands where he and his hunters had traveled since his people arrived here in boats launched from Polynesian islands. Those stones were treated as treasures. They were kept polished and protected. The stones in the enormous pile before his eyes at this moment were covered in a fine layer of dust from being outside and piled up like a giant ant mound. He tentatively reached out with one hand near the base of the large pile and picked up one of the dark stones that were perfect dodecahedrons. As he held it close to his face to look at it, he could see strange linear-shaped veins of different colors running through the stone. He could see glints of sparkling light, too, like reflections of tiny pieces of mirror.

Although he towered over the other males in his group of primitive hunters, the leader of the tribe was barely over five feet tall. The artificial rock was large in his hand, about the size of a modern cantaloupe melon. If it were normal stone, instead of the lightweight metamaterial it was constructed from, it would have required two hands for him to hold it. The sun was shining directly overhead, and the mysterious geometric rock sparkled in the bright light. As the tribal leader held the stone in his hand and stared into the sparkly material, a faint glow started to emanate from within the stone. The twelve pentagonal faces of the dodecahedron began to glow at their perimeters, lighting the object up like it was drawn on a computer screen. The eyes of the tribal leader suddenly glossed over as the glowing rock got brighter and brighter. The entire tribe stared transfixed at the glowing orb; frozen in their bodies.

Behind the entranced tribal leader, the gigantic cairn of stones began to glow. Each of the geometrically shaped stones lit up from within and illuminated the perimeter lines of the multitude of pentagonal faces, turning the mountain of rocks into a visual pile of 3-D shapes like stick figures in a CAD program. The tribe didn’t flinch. All of their eyes were glazed over, and except for soft shallow breathing, they were not moving a muscle.

• • •

The God in the Clear Rock could sense the same aggression in these humans that stood before her now. She did not understand these tiny creatures. The vicious things they were capable of doing was beyond anything she could comprehend. They had proven that more than once. And yet she knew she must try to save them, despite themselves. So she peered deeper and reached out to touch their minds. Maybe one of them was different. Maybe…

• • •

The entire pile of rocks was glowing now. The tribe was still frozen in place next to the enormous mound of geometric bowling balls. Suddenly, the stone in the hand of the tribal leader began to wobble and then leapt through the air before landing against the mountain of identical stones. The moment it hit the other stones, the monster pile of rocks began to shake and glow brighter. As the shaking rocks continued to glow, the mountain of dodecahedrons suddenly began to shrink when the pentagonal faces of adjacent geometric rocks began to line up along the twelve sides. Slowly, the perfect dodecahedrons began to stack up in nested rows and columns. The lights of each geometric boulder got brighter as they individually interconnected, and then suddenly, the giant pile of rocks snapped into a solid mass with a gigantic pop.

None of the tribe members moved an inch during this entire procedure.

The dodecahedron shaped stones had all exactly stacked on top of themselves and were now formed into the familiar shape of a four-sided pyramid. The sharp lines of the outside pentagonal faces of the dodecahedron shaped balls caused the sides of the pyramid to be bumpy and not smooth. The final effect was a large pyramid with dimpled glowing skin on the four inclined outside walls. After the pyramid had finished forming and was stable, the bright lights in the stones began to die down. When the lights had completely faded, the tribe awoke.

The large leader of the group blinked his eyes for a moment then looked at his empty, outstretched hand. He dropped his arm to his side as he slowly looked at the other members of his hunting tribe. All of them were slowly looking around, as well. None of them seemed to notice the enormous black pyramid they were standing beside. The tribal leader turned and looked directly at the geometric enigma, but then he turned right back around as if it were just a large hill that was in his way. He slowly started to walk away from the giant pyramid, and his tribe followed behind. After a few minutes, they were gone. Not one member of the tribe will remember any of this. It will always stay just out of the periphery of their mind’s eye.

And in the end, it wouldn’t matter anyway. The entire lineage of the tribe would die out over the course of the next four generations because most of the earliest Meso-American settlers who arrived here by the sea had too few numbers to establish a permanent presence on the wild and uninhabited continents. Pioneering new territory has always been started with waves of failure followed by waves of new attempts with new technology and new knowledge. Each colonizing wave lasted longer than the previous one, but they all succumbed to the perils of nature and became extinct. The process of incrementally inhabiting and exploring the New World only became permanent when the transportation systems used to reach these new lands were dependably turned into round trips. This would take mankind sixteen more millennia to achieve for the Americas. In the meantime, every few hundred years, a new flock of settlers would arrive somewhere on the continents in a massive flotilla, or by single boats. Then, the attempt to conquer the New World would begin again.

And the God in the Clear Rock would begin her search again, as well.

Because she must.

After a few hours baking in the equatorial sun, the God in the Clear Rock felt rejuvenated. The ground beneath the giant pyramid in the jungle began to shake and rumble. The individual rocks in the structure began to glow again, and the rumbling got louder. The pyramid began to shake from the bottom up. As the vibration moved up the sides of the enormous solid mass, the structure suddenly exploded outward. But just as the rocks began to accelerate outward, they quickly stopped and reversed direction back into the glowing pile of identical stones.

With the sound of tumbling stones, the perfect geometric solids re-formed into a gigantic mound of loose rocks. The massive cairn of stones was back into the exact position it originally started.

It would be another five centuries before anyone else came by.

But five hundred years are nothing to a God.

CHAPTER FOUR

November 27, 2003 - 10:30 AM

White House Basement, Washington, DC

• • • • •

My Daddy told me about the work you did for him down in South America.

The President of the United States stood next to the sack of flour in his running shorts and shirt. He had his iPod on his arm, but the headphones were across his shoulders, not in his ears.

Sir… I… Marshall wasn’t sure what to say. That entire affair was still highly classified and under a complete denial order. And then there was the matter of their current meeting place. The President spoke before Marshall had to decide how to proceed.

Don’t bother saying anything. This isn’t about that. I need you to find someone, though… Like you did for my Daddy.

Now Marshall swallowed. This was his Commander In Chief. He was Marshall’s boss. He’d been fortunate enough to meet other Presidents. Marshall had even been given medals by other Presidents. One of them was this President’s father. But this time, Marshall had been summoned to the White House out of the blue and flown in from Fort Bragg, North Carolina within an hour of receiving the order. And when he got here, he was whisked away by Secret Service to the basement kitchen and then left alone. A few minutes later, the President casually walked into the kitchen, and without saying a word, waved for Marshall to follow him. Marshall had decided to wait before he said anything, either. Both men walked silently through the large kitchen, which was suspiciously deserted at that moment. After a short distance, the President turned down an aisle in the industrial subterranean food preparation facility and entered a large pantry room whose walls looked like they were made of concrete which was two feet thick. When they were both inside, the President closed the massive wooden door behind them. That was right before his comment about the classified operation that never existed in South America. Marshall cleared his throat before finally answering.

Of course, Sir. Then Marshall waited again. This whole affair was too strange to speak out of turn.

The President saw Marshall looking around and chuckled. You probably wondering why we’re meeting here and not in the Situation Room or something… Right?

Marshall stopped glancing around and looked at the President. The thought had crossed my mind, Sir.

Too many eyes and ears up there. What I need you to do is like that South American business that didn’t occur, and you weren’t involved in. In fact, you and me are not meeting right now, and none of this is happening, either. Get what I’m saying, Colonel?

Now Marshall’s attention was even more piqued, and cautious. Overall, the operation the President was not talking about was long and intense; and costly in the worst kind of expense; the human kind. Marshall answered, but slowly.

Yes Sir… Got it loud and clear.

Good. I don’t have long. I’m supposed to be upstairs running on the treadmill. You a runner, Colonel? The President looked Marshall up and down. As ordered, Marshall did not show up in uniform. Instead, he wore a jacket and slacks. But his physique was not hidden by the civilian suit. The President could see the soldier in front of him was in excellent shape.