Earth Song: Book 1 in the Earth Song Series Page 2

  I must have seriously upset the god of weather, because the storm threw a final squall of rain at my back just before I entered the pub’s porch. The backs of my jeans were now completely soaked through. I shook off as much water as I could and opened the door into a face full of cosy warmth.

  Bliss.

  The pub was almost empty, but had a welcoming fireplace filled with crackling logs. It was huge – big enough to roast a wild boar. The thought made me even hungrier.

  I would have bagged the table in front of the fire to dry out, but a guy in his twenties with cropped dark hair nursing a pint of beer was already hogging it, a pit bull at his feet. No, I wasn’t going anywhere near there.

  Aside from him, the few other people in the pub turned towards me there own conversations abandoned.

  Oh, here we go, the standard you’re-not-from-around-these-parts reception.

  But their expressions were curious rather than hostile. They each watched me trail water across the floor to the bar. I felt like a mermaid who’d been thrown up on to land by the storm whistling beyond the pub’s windows.

  I sat on a stool, slid my rucksack off and propped it against the wall.

  A barman with thinning hair and a comb-over he really should have known better about appeared from a side door. Of course, it was at that exact moment a raindrop decided to drop off the end of my nose on to the wooden bar. But he looked concerned rather than irritated at the interloper, especially when I couldn’t stifle a shiver running through me.

  ‘Wet out then?’ he asked, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  I gave him a grin in return. ‘How did you guess?’

  He snorted and everyone returned to their conversations.

  ‘So what will it be?’ he asked.

  ‘Please tell me you have a room? I really can’t face going back out into that weather.’

  ‘Of course we do. I’ll ask my wife to turn on the radiator in it for you. But first, you settle yourself by the fire to dry out.’

  I jutted my chin as discreetly as I could towards the man with the pit bull hogging the table.

  ‘Ah, right, that won’t be a problem.’ The barman called across to the crop-haired guy. ‘Greg, could you free up that table for this young lady? We don’t want her getting pneumonia.’

  The guy looked up from his phone with slitted eyes. But then he got up, pulling his suitably unimpressed dog away from the heat of fire to a table across the room.

  ‘Thanks, I really appreciate it,’ I said to him as another trickle of rain ran into my collar, making me shiver again.

  ‘And why don’t we sort you out with a drink whilst you thaw out?’ the barman asked.

  ‘A margarita if you have fresh limes.’

  ‘Sorry, just the bottled stuff.’

  ‘In that case, I’ve been recently introduced to Highland Park. Do you have any of that?’

  The barman laughed, his eyes going all twinkly on me. ‘I’d be run off Orkney if I didn’t. A single?’

  ‘Make it a double.’

  ‘No problem.’

  I was soon stretching out my woollen-socked feet towards the flames licking over the logs of the fireplace. My boots steamed like two boiling kettles as they dried out on the hearth.

  I gazed up at the muted TV on the wall. The news channel was showing footage of the Sky Dreamer prototype mining probe, Ymir. I’d kept tabs on the mission as it had slowly closed in on an asteroid. A month ago it had successfully touched down and then drilled for deep-core samples. Going by the silent video on the screen, it had just taken off again. This was a big moment for space exploration. If the probe returned to Earth with its mined load, the next step would be to scale up the mission and launch a whole fleet of these machines. It seemed as if mining asteroids was finally about to become a real thing.

  I had to give some serious kudos to A. Jefferson, the guy who ran the Sky Dreamer company. He was one of the richest people on the planet, but he kept completely out of the limelight. No one even knew what he looked like.

  It had been his unwavering vision that had made this mission happen. A vision that our future as species was in the stars. He’d had many sceptics, including key players at NASA, who’d said that it couldn’t be done with current technology. But despite all the odds, A. Jefferson had just raised a proverbial finger at the establishment. My sort of person.

  The footage of the probe blasting off from the surface of the asteroid was replaced by a story about an MP called Alexander Langton. From what I’d read in the papers, the guy was utterly ruthless. Apparently he had his sights set on becoming prime minister, and had been plotting behind the scenes. It didn’t seem particularly unusual. There always seemed to be someone like Langton lurking and plotting in the political shadows.

  I returned my attention to my whiskey, deciding I really could develop a taste for it, when the barman reappeared at my table with a menu.

  ‘I can heartily recommend the special today,’ he said. ‘It’s our rather legendary fish curry.’

  ‘Legendary sounds good to me.’

  ‘Oh, I promise you, it is.’

  Maybe the Highland Park had loosened my tongue, or maybe it was the warmth of his smile, but before I could stop myself I was asking him that question.

  I dropped my voice to a whisper. ‘I don’t suppose you know anything about the strange quartz-crystal markings that have been appearing across Orkney, do you?’

  The guy’s face tensed, his jaw muscles tightening. And even though I’d whispered the question, all conversation in the room died and I felt wary eyes looking my way.

  ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ the barman said.

  ‘Right. But do you know anyone who might have seen them? There are photos all over the net about them.’ Perhaps I should have been slipping him a twenty-pound note and he’d be all smiles again. ‘I’d particularly like to know about any markings close to Skara Brae that might have appeared recently.’

  The man’s expression hardened to stone. ‘Look, miss, just a friendly word in your ear. I wouldn’t go asking those sort of questions around here. Do you understand?’

  The guy looked like I’d just threatened to burn his children, and the locals in here seemed just as hostile. Where was it all coming from?

  ‘No problem. Maybe I’ll grab a quick bath now and come back down to eat afterwards.’

  But the barman’s face didn’t soften and instead he crossed his arms. ‘Sorry, my wife just told me that we had some last-minute bookings I didn’t know about. We haven’t got any rooms left, I’m afraid.’ He tugged his ear.

  This guy was clearly lying through his teeth.

  ‘OK… Then I’ll just grab that legendary fish curry and I’ll find somewhere else to stay.’

  He gave a sharp shake of his head. ‘Sorry, I just remembered someone ordered the last special.’

  I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that whatever else I ordered would be off the menu too.

  I sighed. ‘I’ll be on my way then.’ I pulled on my boots and drained my glass. ‘How much do I owe you?’ I asked as I started to tie my laces.

  He shook his head. ‘It’s on the house.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I certainly wasn’t going to say no, especially when my funds were running low. Six months of trying to chase a metaphorical UFO rabbit down its hole without a paying job had taken its toll on my finances. And I had no way of accessing the inheritance from my aunt without tipping off the Overseers to my whereabouts.

  Of all the things that I might have expected at that moment, it wasn’t a look of regret passing over the barman’s face.

  ‘Just do yourself a favour and stay away from Skara Brae,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I tried to hold his gaze but his eyes slid away from mine. He walked away from me back to the bar.

  This wasn’t hostility. It was almost as if these people were too afraid to talk, but about what? The only thing I knew for certain was that I wasn’t going to find the answ
er in here.

  I shouldered my pack and headed for the door with everyone’s eyes still on me.

  A moment later, I was trudging up the path with my head bent into the squalling rain. If I’d had a smartphone, I would have used it to look for a taxi. But any sort of device that could be tracked had to be avoided, especially with a GPS come-and-get-me-why-don’t-you signal. On the plus side, it had done wonders to cure my previous screen addiction.

  The pub door banged behind me and I heard footsteps crunch across the gravel. I turned, half expecting to see the barman with a face of apology, telling me that they had a room after all. His wife had even just found one last portion of the fish curry in the back of the fridge. But, no, it was the guy called Greg, his pit bull trotting along behind him.

  I clasped the pepper spray I always kept in my pocket – ever since my last encounter with the Overseers.

  ‘Hold up a minute,’ Greg said with a strong Scottish accent.

  I judged the distance, wondering if I could land a kick on his fun sacks hard enough to bring him down. ‘What is it?’

  ‘You mustn’t mind them. They’re afraid.’ Rather than attempting to rip my leg off, his pit bull was wagging its tail at me.

  So I’d been right about the fear I’d sensed in the pub. ‘Is this something to do with the symbols? Is that what’s making people so nervous?’

  He flinched. ‘I can’t get into this. But there is one person who might talk to you. He doesn’t give a shit about…’ Greg’s words trailed away.

  ‘About?’ I asked.

  He just shrugged. ‘Anyway, the guy you need to talk to is the Viking.’

  I tried not to smile. ‘Yeah, right.’

  Greg read my expression. ‘Look, this is no wind-up. I don’t mean a guy wearing a horned helmet. He’s actually an American called Jack Harper. Tall blond guy with blue eyes, hence the nickname.’

  I hoped that was the only reason for his name, and not for pillaging and the rest. ‘OK… So where can I find this Jack Harper guy exactly?’

  ‘At the very place you seem to be so interested in, Skara Brae. He’s the chief archaeologist on the dig going on there right now. And when I say right now, I mean it. Jack is crazy-level driven. Whatever the weather, he’ll be working there every day until at least midnight – long after the rest of his team has cried off. And that’s despite what happened.’

  ‘What’s that then?’

  Greg looked away.

  ‘Why won’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because you could be one of them.’

  I tensed. Did this mean the Overseers were already here, and burying the truth yet again? ‘One of whom, exactly?’

  ‘Look, all I’m going to say is that it would be better for you to turn round and head home. I’ll you drive back to the ferry if you like.’

  ‘No. I’m going to Skara Brae whether anyone wants me to or not.’

  Greg sighed. ‘OK, cool down. If you’re going to insist, I’ll deliver you straight to the Viking, so you should be safe. But we never had this conversation, do you understand me?’

  Safe? I didn’t like the sound of that. I gave Greg a fixed smile. ‘What conversation?’

  ‘Then we understand each other.’

  ‘I don’t usually accept lifts from strangers.’

  ‘I’m not a stranger, I’m Greg McCallister.’ He thumped his chest and smirked.

  I gave him a slow smile in return and thumbed my pepper spray in my pocket. However wary I was, this Jack Harper sounded like a person I had to speak to. ‘Well I’m Lauren Stelleck, Greg McCallister and you talked me into it – let’s go.’

  ‘Good.’ Greg pulled at his dog’s lead. ‘Come on, Bambi.’ He towed the dog towards a beaten-up yellow Fiat Punto in the car park.

  ‘Bambi, seriously?’ I asked as I followed him.

  He flashed me a grin. ‘Wouldn’t hurt a fly, would you, boy?’

  Bambi wagged his tail as Greg opened the back door for him. Bambi leapt on to the seats, circled once and then settled down on a blanket covered in dog hairs.

  I dropped my rucksack alongside Bambi and jumped into the passenger seat.

  As Greg started the car and we headed off into the storm lashing the island, a pulse of excitement ran through me. After all my research, I was finally about to see Skara Brae, the Neolithic site at the very epicentre of the riddle. I could feel with every fibre of my being that I was closing in on something huge. And if the Overseers were already here, then I would just have to deal with that too.

  Chapter Three

  The wind threw thick grey sheets of rain across the road, which was barely illuminated by the Punto’s feeble headlights. Greg had driven me towards Skara Brae to the music of Dire Straits, ‘Money for Nothing’ thumping out of the car’s stereo since we’d left the pub. Before that I would have bet good money on him being a thrash metal fan.

  Bambi had zonked out on the back seat, seemingly unfazed by the rain hammering on the car’s roof like a barrage of ball bearings.

  ‘So is the weather normally this gorgeous around here?’ I asked.

  ‘At this time of year this is pretty typical,’ Greg replied. ‘The gales blow straight in off the Atlantic. But to be honest, this squall is nothing compared to what we can get.’

  ‘I bet they’re spectacular.’

  ‘Waves five metres high hitting the island? Yeah, you could say that.’

  We headed towards a bend and Greg dropped down a gear to the accompaniment of metal graunching against metal.

  He winced and cast me a sideways glance. ‘Needs a new clutch.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  He caught my smile and shook his head.

  As we rounded the bend headlights appeared in the distance. A vehicle was heading towards us down the narrow road. Thanks to the crash, my instincts kicked in. Lone road – check. No other witnesses – check.

  It seemed I was not alone in my concern because Greg clutched the wheel hard, peering over it like a granny with a bad case of astigmatism. He pulled into a lay-by to let the vehicle pass us, then sat back, his expression taut. ‘Lauren, get down. You don’t want to be seen by the people in that car.’

  ‘Who—’

  Before I could finish my question, Greg grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him. I caught a brief glimpse of a silver SUV closing in before my head ended up in his lap.

  ‘Hey, I’m not that sort of girl,’ I said, trying to inject some humour into the situation to disguise the worry spiking through me.

  ‘Funny, but just keep down until they’re past.’

  Headlights skimmed the Punto’s side windows as the vehicle flashed by.

  My tensed jaw muscles relaxed as I realised they weren’t going to ram us.

  Greg let out a sigh and released me.

  I sat up and peered at him. ‘So what was that all about?’

  ‘You just don’t want those people to take notice of you.’

  ‘Right, on the dark side of a stormy night and inside a car? How do you think they would have spotted me? Because of my sunny deposition shining out like a lighthouse?’

  ‘The thing is that strangers get noticed at the moment. Take the reaction to you in the pub. People are scared.’

  ‘And whomever it was in that vehicle is part of the reason that people are scared? Why no one will talk to me?’

  ‘I’d rather not say, Lauren.’

  I gazed out of the windscreen. So who were they? MI5, or was my paranoia right and the Overseers were already here? I turned the suspicion over in my head.

  In my old life I’d been a radio telescope operator at Jodrell Bank. I’d been there the night we’d captured a fast radio burst – an FRB signal – that had contained the code for an alien AI called Sentinel. MI5 had quickly turned up to investigate as Sentinel had hacked his way into sensitive databases around the world, heading us towards World War Three. And then things had got even crazier. An Overseers assault team had arrived, led by Mr Eye Scar himself, and they’
d shot the MI5 agents. They’d tried to seize the computer containing Sentinel’s core code, something that I’d personally helped put a stop to. Ever since then, the Overseers and how I could bring them down had dominated almost every waking moment of my life. And in the pursuit of that obsession it had been a long, torturous road. One that had led me to Orkney.

  I’d sounded out some of the key figures in the UFO community who I could trust to talk to about the secret organisation. The few that knew anything and were prepared to talk had told me that the Overseers were a powerful oligarchy that operated outside the rule of law and weren’t answerable to any government. They were old money with major interests in fuel, transportation, pharmaceuticals, utilities and even whole economies. Hence their desire to suppress the knowledge about UFOs and more specifically the advanced systems that powered the craft. The rumour was that advanced anti-grav tech had been reverse-engineered from recovered UFOs. If revealed to the science community and general population, that technology would outdate oil and even nuclear power in a heartbeat. Something that would lose the Overseers an awful lot of money, power and influence.

  So that was how I’d found myself up against the secret organisation that no one was meant to know about – know about and live at least. I’d crossed that line in my pursuit of the truth and my aunt had been caught in the crossfire. Now I wanted both truth and vengeance.

  But Overseers or not, whoever was behind the paranoia on the island, had done a great job to make people clam up about the runic symbols that had spread across the internet like the proverbial wildfire. And that was despite zero coverage on the main news channels. That wasn’t a surprise, of course, since the Overseers also owned most of the world’s press.

  The lack of official coverage about the markings had only heightened my suspicions. Especially when what little did leak out was through an editorial puff piece describing them as yet another crackpot hoax, despite the very unique characteristic that differentiated these from crop circles. These symbols were formed from quartz. And each new set of markings had appeared etched into the ground overnight – when no one was watching. That, combined with the fact they were Angelus symbols, the alien race that’d built Sentinel, had more than caught my interest. I’d decided that whatever was happening on Orkney had to be worth further investigation.