Authors: Jeremy Robinson,Sean Ellis
Prime
PRIME
A Jack Sigler Thriller
By
Jeremy Robinson
and
Sean Ellis
Summary:
America’s best soldiers are about to discover the deadly secret behind one of history’s greatest mysteries.…
When a raid on an insurgent safehouse reveals a clue to decoding the world’s most mysterious manuscript—and possibly a recipe for creating the ultimate weapon of mass destruction—Delta operator Jack Sigler must forge a new black ops team to avert catastrophe; a team of deadly warriors with dangerous secrets—the Chess Team.
But nothing is what is seems…and no one can be trusted. As the search for the truth about the manuscript moves across Asia and into the darkest reaches of human history, the Chess Team will have to battle enemies beyond comprehension—nightmare creatures of myth and perverse creations of science—in order to preserve a secret as old as life itself.
In 2009, bestselling novelist Jeremy Robinson launched the adventures of Jack Sigler and Chess Team. Now, learn how it all began!
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Copyright
©2013 by Jeremy Robinson
All
rights reserved.
All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means without written permission of the author.
This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
No
part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews. For information address Jeremy Robinson at: [email protected]
Cover
design copyright ©2013 by Jeremy Robinson
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Jeremy Robinson on the World Wide Web at:
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Project Nemesis by Jeremy Robinson - Novel Sample
Fortune Favors by Sean Ellis - Novel Sample
PROLOGUE: ZERO
Baghdad,
656 A.H. (1258 A.D.)
The
most beautiful city in the world was dying.
Nasir al-Tusi sat astride his horse at
the edge of the River Tigris and wept.
As an advisor to the Great Hulagu Khan,
he should have rejoiced at this victory, but he felt only bitter sadness in his
heart.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing—not
just the horror of the city’s destruction, the smoke and the blood, and the absolute
ruin everywhere he looked, but what defied belief was that this had been
allowed to happen in the first place. The Khan’s quarrel was with the rogue
Nizari Muslims, not the Abbasid Caliphate. Yet, seemingly against all reason,
Caliph Al-Musta’sim had refused to pay tribute, in the form of military support,
to the Mongol ruler. As a result, he had also become the Khan’s enemy.
The Caliph had bragged that if the Khan
tried to attack Baghdad, the women of his city would drive the Khan off.
Indeed, when the Mongol army arrived at Baghdad, they found a city barely ready
to repel an invasion. No army had been summoned. The walls had not been
fortified to withstand the Mongol artillery. Even when Hulagu deployed his
forces on both banks of the Tigris River and began preparations for the siege,
the Caliph barely took note.
Too late to accomplish anything, the
Abbasid ruler eventually sent out 20,000 horsemen to engage the enemy. Hulagu’s
forces, led by the cunning Chinese general Guo Kan, had destroyed several
dikes, flooding the plain and drowning the cavalrymen, obliterating the
Caliph’s forces in a matter of hours. Instead of sending a fraction of his
military force and paying a token tribute to the Khan, the Caliph had chosen
instead to sacrifice his entire army in a futile display of arrogance.
The siege had been brutal and brief. The
Mongols encircled the city with a palisade and commenced an artillery assault
that shattered the city walls. Thirteen days after the Mongol army assembled on
the banks of the Tigris, the Caliph signaled his surrender.
Hulagu was in no mood to negotiate. “Now
that I have beaten him, the fool wishes to make peace? His treasury overflows
with gold, yet he did not spend even a
dinar
to defend it. I will shut the fool up in his treasury. If he prizes his gold so
highly, let him eat it.”
As a scholar, al-Tusi cared nothing for
the fate of the Caliph or his wealth, but there was something of inestimable
value inside the walls of the defeated city that did interest him. Baghdad’s
greatest treasure was not its gold, but rather its scholars and its libraries,
foremost of which was the House of Wisdom.
“You rule all the Earth now, Great
Khan,” al-Tusi had told Hulagu as the siege began. “With the knowledge in the
House of Wisdom, you and your sons will rule Heaven and Earth for a thousand
years…no, a thousand times a thousand years. You must preserve it.”
Hulagu however had been unmoved. “Knowledge
is like anything else that may be lost and found again. The Caliph’s arrogance
cannot be excused, and if it means the destruction of every book in the city,
then so it will be.”
Al-Tusi knew better than to argue with
the Khan, though he knew of one book kept in the House of Wisdom that could
never be replaced.
“However,” Hulagu had continued, “there
is truth in what you say. I appoint you, Nasir al-Tusi, as the protector of
this great trove of learning. When the city falls, you will gather whatever
remains, and then use it to establish a new House of Wisdom.”
Despite the concession, al-Tusi had not
expected the siege to end so quickly or so dramatically. Already, Guo Kan had led
his forces into the city to ‘prepare’ for the Khan’s arrival.
Al-Tusi wiped the tears from his eyes
and urged his mount to continue toward the ravaged shell of Baghdad. The Tigris
was running red with spilled blood, but there were pools of a black, oily
substance on its surface, which al-Tusi recognized immediately. It was ink, the
ink of thousands of scrolls and books that had been thrown into the river by
the marauding invaders.
The destruction of the House of Wisdom
had already begun.
I’m
too late
,
he thought, and the tears began flowing again.
But perhaps they haven’t found the Book yet
.
In his despair, he thought he could hear
his father’s voice, echoing from out of Paradise.
Inshallah
,
my son.
If Allah wills
it, you will save the Book. If it has been destroyed, then it is because Allah
does not will you to possess it again
.
The sentiment brought him no comfort.
As he reached the city gate, the vast
destruction became almost too much to bear. He wrapped his turban tightly
around his nose and ears, a futile attempt to keep out the stench of death and
muffle the screams of the dying. The streets were slick with blood, and the
marketplaces that lined them were filled with what looked like heaping mounds
of meat, swarming with black flies. In the distance, bands of infantrymen were
methodically searching houses, a process which seemed to involve tearing them
down to their foundations.
Al-Tusi felt a growing apprehension. The
Khan had assigned an
arav—
ten
horsemen—to serve as his escort, but in the mayhem and in the grip of
bloodlust, it might be difficult for the marauders to distinguish friend from
foe. After more than an hour of negotiating the ruins and circumventing the
larger concentrations of victorious invaders, al-Tusi reached his destination.
Even from a distance, he could see that
the House had not escaped harm. Pillars of smoke ascended from its courtyards.
Soldiers stood on its open terraces, pitching manuscripts into the river,
competing with each other to see who could throw them the furthest. Fighting an
urge to shout at them, al-Tusi rode right up to the main entrance, where he was
confronted by a group of Turkish soldiers.
“Let me pass,” he ordered. His voice was
weak, barely audible through the cloth he’d bound over his face. “The Khan
commands that this place be spared.”
“We don’t take orders from you,
Persian,” the leader of the group sneered at him. Then the man cocked his head
sideways as if contemplating something humorous. “But General Guo is waiting
for you inside.”
Guo
Kan is waiting for me
?
The Chinese general was aware that
Hulagu had ordered al-Tusi to preserve the House of Wisdom, so why was he
there, in the House, personally overseeing its destruction?
The Turk led him inside, following a
route that seemed purposefully designed to make al-Tusi bear witness to the
cruelty of the victorious army. Everywhere he looked, there was blood and ruin.
Scores of scholars and scientists, the most learned men in the Islamic world,
had been pinned with lances to the walls of the enormous reading rooms. The
tables, where these men had read, translated and copied the scrolls in the
House’s collection, had been hacked apart to make a path for mounted archers,
who were taking turns riding up and down the halls using the impaled men, some
of whom were still alive, for target practice.
At last, he was brought to the highest
tower of the House. He recognized this place, one of the many observatories
where astronomers studied the heavens and mapped the stars. Although the din of
the city’s destruction was still audible, the observatory was, for the moment
at least, still untouched. Shelves of scrolls and books lined the walls, all
arranged according to the orderly filing system employed by the House’s
librarians. Tables, with every manner of machine and scientific apparatus, had
been arranged in a ring around the center of the circular room. Guo Kan waited
there, casually inspecting the devices as if they were wares in the
marketplace.
“Ah, Persian.
Come to pick
the bones of the dead?”
Al-Tusi bit back a retort. He could ill
afford to offend Guo Kan. The Chinese general was highly regarded by the Khan,
and if Guo Kan decided to simply execute al-Tusi on the spot, Hulagu would
probably not even take notice. Instead, al-Tusi simply inclined his head in a
gesture of deference. “The Khan has ordered me to preserve as much of the
library as is possible.”
“The Khan is very wise.” Guo offered a
cryptic smile and gestured to the tables. “The treasures in this place are
greater than anything in the Caliph’s vaults.”
Al-Tusi chose his reply carefully.
“Unfortunately, ink and parchment is not so durable as gold. I fear much has
already been lost.”
The general seemed not to have heard.
“With enough gold, one man can buy an army of ten thousand, but with
knowledge…ah, with knowledge, one man can destroy an army. You are a man of
learning, Persian. Tell me, what do you see here?”
“These are scientific instruments for
taking the measure of the heavens.” Though his answer had been immediate,
reflexive, al-Tusi now scrutinized the machines and devices arrayed on the
tables. Some were quite familiar—astrolabes, clocks and planetary models—but
many of the others had nothing at all to do with astronomy.
“Are they indeed?” Guo watched him
carefully for some hint of duplicity. “There is a scroll here that purports to
hold the secret of Greek
Fire
. Over there—”
He gestured across to a table, upon
which lay several enormous dome-shaped objects that looked like the lids of
cooking pots.
“Polished mirrors that can focus the rays of
the sun and start fires, even at a great distance.
I think these
scientists
—” Guo spat the word like a
curse, “were trying to give the Caliph the victory of which he boasted.”
Then he smiled again. “But, I am no
scholar. I might be mistaken. Some of these machines do, indeed, appear
harmless. Take this one, for example.”
Al-Tusi’s breath caught in his throat as
he saw the apparatus Guo was inspecting. It looked at first glance, like a
large basket or a pot—al-Tusi reckoned he could not have encircled its
circumference with his arms. Instead of clay or woven straw, it was constructed
of lacquered wood, a flawless joining of curved panels that resembled the shape
of a gourd, resting on a rectangular base from which sprouted a number of metal
levers, each engraved with a distinctive symbol—symbols al-Tusi himself had
created, and which only a handful of other men had ever seen.
By
all that is holy, they actually built it
.
Now he understood why the Caliph had been
so defiant.
Six years earlier, al-Tusi had been part
of an unparalleled scholarly experiment. A group of intellectuals, scientists
and visionaries from every part of the civilized world had set out on a quest
to discover the source of life. They had originally thought to name the object
of their search after the paradise described in the holy writings of the Jews
and Christians, but their goal did not lie in Mesopotamia, where Eden was
thought to have existed. Besides, even if the sacred writings were to be taken
literally—something that none of the scholars truly believed—scripture
explicitly stated that God planted his garden after the Creation was complete.
Life could have begun anywhere. Instead, they named the thing they sought
prima materia
, the name Aristotle had
used in antiquity, and the place where they eventually found it, they had called
‘the Prime.’
For more than two years, they studied
the Prime, unlocking its secrets and recording their discoveries in a book—
The Book
—written in a language of
al-Tusi’s devising. They knew the world was not ready for what they had
learned. The Christian kingdoms lived in perpetual fear of scientific learning;
the possession of knowledge was a dangerous thing, an affront to God, and
anyone possessing such a book would be labeled a heretic and summarily
executed. Even in the enlightened Islamic world, possession of such information
was dangerous, but the men had agreed that the House of Wisdom, which had
endured for nearly five hundred years, would be the best place to safeguard the
Book. Al-Tusi himself had borne the manuscript, along with a second document, a
parchment roll that contained instructions on how to unlock the secrets of the
Book, to Baghdad, en route to his home in Persia. When he had entrusted it to
the keeper of the House, he had given the man explicit instructions to keep the
Book secret until the world was ready for such profound knowledge.
The
fools
,
al-Tusi thought.
These discoveries were
never meant to be used as a weapon; they cannot be used that way. It is
an impossibility
.
He felt the general’s eyes upon him, and
he knew that he’d already given too much away by his reaction. He did his best
to affect an expression of indifference, as he pretended to study the device.
“It is an
urghan
.
A
musical instrument.”
Guo pressed one of the levers
experimentally, and a low note resonated from the wooden body of the
urghan.
The sound continued to echo in
the room for a moment after he released the lever. “How does it work?”